Know When to Run: Black Ocean: Mirth & Mayhem, Mission 1 by J. S. Morin

Author:J. S. Morin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Magical Scrivener Press

Nancy lifted her chin as the top pearl button on her collar popped through its buttonhole. It took three tries and a firm admonition to her fingers to stop shaking. Her reflection in the dressing table mirror looked back with a firm set of jaw and steely blue eyes. The woman behind the glass had the poise of a sculpture, the bearing of a queen, and the presence of a mighty sorceress—so long as she kept her trembling hands out of view.

Annabeth approached, heels clacking as she topped the stairs at the end of the hall and headed for the royal suite. “Ma’am, the hover is here.”

Nancy opened her mouth to speak. No sound came on the first try. She wetted her lips and made a second attempt. “I’ll be down presently. Ceddie and Cassie are with the tutors?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Very good. See to the breakfast plates and take the rest of the day off.”

“Ma’am?”

“You heard me correctly.”

The maid curtsied. “Of course, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

Nancy wondered when she’d become accustomed to such deference as a matter of course. She hadn’t grown up a Brown. Now, with Mort running from the Grand Council’s investigators, she wondered how long such treatment might persist.

Today’s foray across the Atlantic would play heavily into an answer to that question.

She bustled down the stairs, fidgeting with the rings on her fingers and the gem set into her necklace. Heirlooms. If things went badly, they might not make the return trip with her that evening.

The pilot of the hover held the door for her and closed it behind her with the quiet efficiency of a butler. When he took his seat at the controls, all he said was, “Headington?”

“That’s right,” Nancy confirmed, keeping her hands stuffed inside opposing sleeves. And with that, the hover lifted off.

Boston’s skyline whisked by in seconds. Then, they were over the ocean. Nancy shut her eyes and measured her breathing, rehearsing how she’d make her case.

The transatlantic flight was far too short for her to reach any satisfactory draft of the conversation. Before she knew it, the shining cities of the British Isles raced beneath the hover. Geography eluded her as the towering spires and glittering, multi-story complexes rolled across the countryside like terrain with no elemental earth visible to support them.

Soon enough, the illusion that Britain was composed of naught but glassteel and plastic gave way before a manicured and tended patch of greenery not so different from the wizardly conclave within Boston Prime.

Oxford University.

The sibling rivalry between Boston Prime’s Harvard and the esteemed old university on the far side of the pond was of little concern to most with no affiliation to either. However, despite living in the Convocation’s back garden and a decade since graduation, Oxford was a second home for Nancy.

Slowing to local ground traffic speeds, the hover swooped low and breezed across the campus, a paradise of old-world charm amid a world of modernity and excess. Nancy allowed herself a brief reminiscence before the reminder that meeting Mort here was the origin of her present troubles.

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