The Aftermath.

The reality is we live in England, and our enemies are normal men. They’re more normal than they want to be, but they were never monsters. It was hard to know what to do with these men, who had broken into my home, threatened to kill me, beaten up my friend with the rest of us in mind. We couldn’t call the police – Samuel stopped me. He feared for how much would come out into public knowledge, and managed to convince me for Norman’s sake. Enright’s hired hands were tied up and dumped in the one car that was left, dazed and broken in a few of their limbs. Nicholas Graham and the other two carvers had run away like wayward wives down a country lane. This left us with the boy Enright and his adult clone.

When Samuel understood what we told him, he slapped the boy around the face and took off, after the other copy at the casino. We hadn’t decided to let them go at that point. We had to in the end, or else we were kidnapping them. The only victim of an assault was the absent Samuel. I felt like a teacher who used to use the cane and was now left only with empty threats.

“So what did happen? Were you caught out?” I asked the boy. He didn’t look like he would say anything, but Angela – annoyed at not hitting anyone yet – punched him full in the back of the head.
“I don’t hit kids.” She told me honestly. “But this isn’t a kid is it. So I’m happy to smack him around until he answers your questions.”

The grown up Enright, still fatherly, struggled against Norman’s hold to protect his master. It looked terrible, like domestic abuse, and this added to our eventual decision not to call the police. The police would probably take the side of the child with a bloody nose over the nutters who claimed he was really a middle-aged magician in disguise. I’m glad though that Arthur didn’t guess at our lack of resolve.
“It happened on Tuesday Midnight,” said the boy. “I could feel it, like a pressure building, dissolving the walls of my sanctum. I had the potion to hand – I’d been keeping myself younger for the past twenty years. As a precaution I drank the whole vial, thinking that as magic was draining, maybe its power had already dissipated. It was the correct thing to do, in uncertainty.”
“Good job it wasn’t a bigger bottle.” Said Angela. “You’d be a foetus.”
Enright didn’t acknowledge her. He repeated the earlier line, but this time using his own voice, that the third clone had killed himself willingly, so there was no real crime to answer, just awkward questions.
“What about David Challoner?” I asked.
“Day? Oh, your magical theorist friend. What about him?”
“He knew the whole thing was a fake, but he helped you to build the illusion. Did he threaten to expose you before he disappeared?”
“I didn’t know he’d disappeared. We had no arrangement with him, did you speak to him at all?” He asked his grown up.
“No, I wasn’t there yet.”
“It must have been one of the others.” Said Arthur, looking up at me.
“Why didn’t you get older?” Asked Norman. “When the spell wore off.”
“Because it wasn't a youth spell that held me, it’s a proper spell that rewrote me. How long do you intend to hold us for?”

As we hoped, when we let them go, Arthur Enright’s name is totally discredited. Carvers and candlelighters alike are slowly returning to their homes around the country. The Russians were furious. Alex Reeves is officially outraged and denies all the rumours that he knew. Angela heard a version of events in which I ran into the street shouting “It’s a boy child!”

I can’t believe Samuel though. After all that’s happened, he hasn’t called to tell us he’s safe or where he’s gone. Enright’s house is empty and for sale. The pub is still running as before, in fact Angela has a job there. If Samuel has pursued Enright, no one knows where that might be to.