Alex Verus 5: Hidden Read Online Free PDF

been bitten by his cat. And some were depressing, like the girl who’d cut her wrists and now was afraid someone would see it. Anne asked, gently, why she’d done it. After some probing, the girl revealed it was because her boyfriend had been threatening her. Anne asked if she’d considered leaving; the girl said she couldn’t, she loved him. The conversation more or less hit a dead end from there.
    Watching Anne’s technique for treatment was interesting. She hardly used any active magic at all; she’d just do a quick check-over, then recommend a remedy. She’d make a show of doing a physical examination, but I was pretty sure what she was really relying on was her lifesight. It’s one of the signature abilities of life mages, letting them “see” someone’s physiology and the workings of their body just by looking at them, and it makes diagnosis
really
easy, not to mention being great for spotting people. Lifesight’s probably the weakest spell Anne knows, but in magic, as with many other things, the most powerful techniques aren’t necessarily the most useful. In theory Anne could just cure anybody who walked in, healing their wounds and rebuilding their bodies, but doing so would exhaust her quickly—healing spells consume a lot of physical energy, as well as being really hard to pass off as coincidence. By using her abilities to diagnose people and then recommending a nonmagical treatment, she could help them a lot more efficiently and without any risk of being revealed as a mage. It was a smart way to handle it.
    As I kept watching, though, I started to notice something odd in how the patients reacted to Anne. Anne didn’t seem to be charging money, she was attentive and polite to everyone who came through the door, and she was faster and more accurate than any doctor. Her patients ought to have been grateful, and some were . . . but a surprising number weren’t. Many had a kind of entitled attitude; they didn’t seem to acknowledge anything that Anne was doing for them, they just treated it as their due. Others would argue when they didn’t get the diagnosis they wanted. Strangest of all, though, were the ones who seemed weirdly uncomfortable in Anne’s presence. They’d ask for her help but with reluctance, as though even being near her made them uneasy. And it wasn’t just one or two; it was something like every third person through the door.
    After I’d been watching for somewhere over an hour, I heard a commotion. A new guy had arrived at the end of the line; apparently he hadn’t been pleased by the length of the queue, because he’d started shoving his way to the front. The people already in the queue—some of whom had been waiting for over an hour—objected. The shouting and swearing grew steadily louder until the new arrival barged into Anne’s flat. I listened to the raised voices for a few seconds before rising to my feet and slipping downstairs past the crowd, homing in on the noise.
    The room inside Anne’s flat was sparsely furnished, obviously meant for public access rather than her own use, but there were touches of her personality all the same: green-upholstered chairs, potted plants by the window. Two doors led inwards, both closed. The crowd had spilled a few feet inside but were hanging around the door, apparently unwilling to get any closer.
    The reason for their reluctance was standing in the middle of the room, shouting at Anne. He was a big guy, powerfully built with a scarred and shaven head. There was a spider’s web tattooed on the side of his neck, and
ACAB
was spelt out across the knuckles of his right fist in blue India ink. His speech was a little hard to decipher but he seemed to want something, and Anne was standing right in front of him.
    Anne is tall and slim, with black hair and reddish brown eyes. She’s got a quiet way of speaking and moving which tends to make her blend into the background, although it wasn’t working very well this time. Some