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library for tea one day and Lily only had to touch her arm to make her fertile. She had a beautiful little girl now; Kit had brought photos in of her, and Lily had been so happy for her.
    Lily settled herself at one of the computers and caught a glimpse of the headlines on Yahoo:
    Cattle blight strikes South of England.
    That was the third outbreak in the last couple of weeks; Scotland and the Midlands had already been hit, and scientists were desperately trying to find out what was causing it. The word was that it was a new strain of anthrax, and the government were panicking, desperately trying to control it. She could only feel sorry for the poor farmers and the animals that were being put down and burnt by their thousands. It wasn’t only Great Britain that was suffering, to all accounts there had been escalating plagues and blights all over the world in the last few months, ranging from a new strain of virus that was killing sheep out in New Zealand, to a crop blight that was wiping out wheat crops in Kansas. World health organisations were going ballistic trying to find out what was going on, and placard waving ‘The End is Nigh’, devotees were proselytising on every street corner.
    Lily did suspect that there was something unnatural about this avalanche of curses, but hadn’t really felt any arcane involvement in them – at least not yet.
    She put her memory stick into the slot, pulling up her project, idly sorting out files, but found it hard to concentrate. She suddenly realised why: someone was reading out loud – a very simplified version of the Wind in the Willows by the sound of it. She glanced across to the rather bony woman perched on the too-small children’s chair, reading to the cross-legged group in front of her. So much for getting some work done.
    It was only after a few moments that she realised that the group being read to were from the local residential home for people with learning difficulties and behavioural problems, mostly Down’s Syndrome or autism. It had only been open for a couple of weeks. These all seemed to be quite young, boys and girls in their late teens. She supposed that was just coincidence, unless they had deliberately filled the new home with people of the same age, so that they would feel more at home. She’d seen them around the village, just about a dozen of them; it was a very small home, but she been impressed by the way the carers treated them, with kindness and respect, and she’d often wave to them and send them her best goodwill magic. That kind of magic was just a general good luck charm, to make their day a little brighter, hopefully bring something good to them, a little gift or blessing – the equivalent of the American ‘Have a nice day’, but with magic to back it up.
    In some ways she could relate to these youngsters far better than she could to the rest of humanity – she could certainly relate to them a hell of a lot more than she could the three Bs: being something out of the norm was never going to be easy.
    Lily found her mind wandering and suddenly realised that she was picking up impressions from the young people across the room, not thoughts exactly, but images and feelings, just random patterns emanating from each of them. She tried to focus on what they were thinking. With most people all she could pick up was a chaos of jumbled miscellany, shopping, kids, petrol, dinner  – a detritus of thoughts that meant nothing – the useless mundanities of everyday life, but she was getting very clear impressions from these young people. What she was picking up was definitely not thoughts as such, but certainly feelings. They were enjoying the story. In many cultures those who had learning difficulties were called blessed, and perhaps she could see why now; their innocence and way of seeing reality was so much better than the cynical and jaundiced view the rest of humanity had.
    And then she realised that one of them was staring hard at her.
    It was