Swift (Strangetown Magic Book 1) by Al K. Line Read Free Book Online

went public and it was pretty smooth sailing. Everyone adjusted. The vamps got donors queuing up, wizards and witches got good jobs, and some of us became official Justices. We kept our kind, the Strange, under control. Once a bad word, we took it back, and it's stuck.
    It was a good job. It beat trying to hide and always moving on, but ever since the Rift it's been a major headache with no rest, and we've been left to it here at the center of the problem. Deal with it yourselves, was the consensus. The police simply couldn't hope to cope and with so few Normals remaining you can't really blame them—they aren't equipped to deal with beings that are magic to the very core.
    So I was on yet another job.
    What did I take with me as I left the church? Nothing, just me, my phone, and my magic. I had the clothes I wore, no need for a sweater as I can change body temperature at will, and I don't need wands or talismans or anything like that.
    I'm not a noob, I've got experience, and all those aids went out with my apprenticeship. Now I have it inside of me, can call it from the Pool, use it, and it is who I am. A witch. A Justice. A fighter. A woman.
    I marched out, confident and with a full stomach. Ready for action, ready to right wrongs, and ready to kick ass.
    So I felt a bit daft popping my head back around the door and saying, "Don't forget to get Mr. Moppet. I didn't have chance to pick him up, what with all the falling walls and everything." I may have blushed.
    "We won't," came the smiling replies.
    Look, Mr. Moppet is my only personal link to my past. A tattered rag of a thing, not much of him left, but he's a rabbit doll, made by my mum, and I have slept with him every night since I was born.
    No laughing!
    I left again, but the effect was ruined, so I skulked out and really wished I had a hat but no way was I going back in now. I have standards to maintain.
    I stood on the steps outside my new home, breathed deep, and smiled. "Another day, another job in Strangetown."

 
     
     
    Same Old Crap
    I felt like I'd come home as I stepped into what you would call a pub, although that's being mighty generous. The carpet was so faded, so beer-stained, so full of burn holes from decades of cigarettes—although now we have to stand outside in what Yuki calls the beer garden and the rest of us call the place around the back where all the crap gets stored—the air so thick with vapor from a wide variety of alcoholic drinks that I swear you don't even need to buy anything to get half drunk.
    Yuki Ye was behind the bar, same as always. He's as timeless as the pub itself—imaginatively named Ye's—and the only place in town you could possibly consider going to if you wanted a drink without feeling like you'd stepped into a marketing nightmare. I've watched it happen over the years, seen every pub in the city morph from a dark, smelly, intimate place with personality, to a bright, airy, sweet-smelling faux "Olde Worlde" place with about as much charm as a comatose politician.
    It's nearly all gone now, same as the cafe's, the restaurants, the lot. Everything is a chain and everything feels the same. Boring, unwelcoming, and alien. Things are changing back though, and that's because of our new friends. They have brought diversity and character, and I embrace it.
    Ye's is legit, the real deal, and not a lot has changed inside for over a century. Sure, he bought carpet when they came along, updating from sawdust, but that's about it. It's been there ever since, same as the wooden benches, chairs and stools, same as the bar that has more knife wounds than Yuki Ye himself, and the beer is to die for.
    Standing in the entrance, just sniffing the air, watching dust motes dance in the light streaming through the open door, admiring the yellowed pictures of scenes from ancient Japan mixed with those of customers in various states of inebriation on the dreaded Wall of Shame, it calmed me, allowed me to put my rather insane morning behind me