ItCP27

## Chapter 27

**Chapter 27** of **Into the Crooked Place** is the first to follow **Krause**.

## **Full Version**

VICE DOYEN ARMIN KRAUSE was not impressed with the underboss of Creije. The only problem was, he had no way of telling him.

Wesley *damn* Thornton Walcott still had not checked in. He had not made contact through crystal ball or *delg* bat, and at this moment, Krause would have settled for a flare so he could at the very least know where the underboss was heading next. What was he planning? And were those plans going to betray the ones they had agreed on?

The magic markets carried on, buskers selling their cheap tricks and gullible little magic-lovers lapping it all up. Krause cleaned his glasses just to take a break from looking at them.

He needed to get out of this city and away from its charms. Better Fenna Schulze get rid of it all and throw anyone who dared use magic in a cell. Better, when once Wesley—*if* Wesley—managed to kill Ashwood, they burn it all to the ground. Better they burn the underbosses with it. If only Fenna had the backbone to do so.

The mess Wesley and his band of crooks had caused at the train station was a political nightmare, which was the most dreadful kind of nightmare. Shooting up factory buildings and public property with dark magic, in full view. Destroying tourist monuments with that same kind of *paraphernalia*.

Krause sighed.

Nearby, a group of buskers was putting on an excessive performance, throwing tricks into the air like fireworks, juggling with balls of light and speaking in riddles to the patrons. Pretending like nothing was happening, had happened, or was going to happen very soon. Though they must have known, because all buskers were crooks and had their ears to the awful deeds of past and future. Krause didn’t doubt they knew of the elixir and had, perhaps, even sold it themselves.

Without their underboss, they were going quite rogue.

As much as Krause hated to admit it, the streets of Creije were restless without Wesley, and the magic sickness was creeping slowly into the quiet of the night. There had been five cases just this week alone and Fenna was powerless to stop it. They all were. The only man who knew where Ashwood was and had the same darkness in his heart, the same awful magic and crooked crew, had disappeared into the ether. Krause had no way of informing the underboss that his city was reaching its limits.

Then again, perhaps Wesley was dead.

Perhaps they were all doomed.

“Do you believe in magic?” a man asked in his ear.

Krause took a disgusted step back.

Despite the stretching sun, the man was hidden by the shadows of a building, his voice as quiet as a whisper.

“Get away from me,” Krause said.

He had no patience for buskers trying to peddle their filth.

“We must protect the magic,” the man said.

His voice was not quite right.

He held out a pale hand, fingers short and bony. In the center of his palm was a vial and inside that vial was a magic more beautiful than Krause had ever seen. It glowed purple in the day, tiny orbs of sunlight running through it like blood.

Krause couldn’t look away.

In the distance, someone screamed.

There were panicked footsteps, a crash. Someone swore. And Krause knew, he could sense it, perhaps even see out of the corner of his eye, that people were running. But Krause couldn’t stop looking at that vial. It was so beautiful and so bright, and against the stark white of the man’s hands it looked almost like a chasm. A pathway into another world.

Krause reached out for it, but just as he was moments from taking the strange vial, one of the running people clipped his shoulder and his concentration broke.

Krause swiveled around to confront the clumsy fool and saw chaos.

The stalls of the magic markets, broken by bodies. People were fleeing in panic, their screams so loud that Krause wasn’t sure how they hadn’t pierced through to him sooner.

There was blood everywhere, alongside magic and knives, and Krause couldn’t work out who was doing the killing and who was doing the defending.

A boy lay on the ground, begging and bleeding. A woman poured something into his mouth.

Magic. Purple. Like the one in the man’s hand that was so, so beautiful.

The boy sat up, smiled at the woman, and ran into the crowd.

“Would you like to help us?” the man asked.

Krause looked back to him and the moment he stepped out from the shadows Krause’s breath stopped. His heart felt like it stopped. The man’s eyes were as black as rotten trick dust, and there was blood across his face like vessels rising to the surface.

“You filthy little addicts,” Krause spat. “What is this madness?”

“It is not madness,” the man said. “It is magic. It is truth.”

And then from nowhere, Krause felt the slice of a blade. Through his heart, across his spine. He felt the ungodly pain as it pierced through skin and bone, and heard the noise, over the man’s laughter, when he slid it back out. A wretched, damp swish.

Krause fell to his knees.

The man looked down on him.

Krause grabbed at his ankles to stay upright.

“We must protect the magic,” the man said.

Krause staggered for breath and looked up and into the black, black holes of the man’s eyes, which held the end of everything.

And then the world faded away, until only screams remained.