I was enveloped by cold. When I opened my eyes I was shivering.

'First time?' said the bald man. 'Can get you like that, stepping through something unreal. Body don't know how to take it. Come on, let's get you a drink before your soul buggers orf.'

I was certainly lightheaded. I felt as though I could simply float away.

I let him lead me further into the room which was quiet, library-like, like an echo of the museum space I'd just come from. Tall bookcases – so high I couldn't see where they ended – lined the walls. There was a vaulted ceiling overhead, maybe, but it was too distant to pick out the details.

He pushed me into a wingback armchair and handed me a glass of amber liquid. It swam in front of my eyes.

'Wha's thiss?' I slurred.

'Whiskey. Drink up.'

He disappeared from my field of vision, which was just fine because I was having trouble focusing on him anyway. I gulped down a measure of hot spirits and suddenly plummeted back to earth.

Voices behind my head appeared to be arguing.

'Why'd you let this shithead in? I don't know him, Arnold!'

'He said he was with you!'

'And you believed him?'

Angry footsteps reached me, heralding the appearance of a skinny goth girl with a bird's nest of dark hair and heavy eye make-up. She slammed both hands onto the arms of my chair and thrust her face right into mine.

'Right, mister! Who are you, and why are you following me?' she demanded.

'Um.' My thoughts were still putting themselves back into the right order, and the first thing they came up with for this situation was: 'Why do you smell like oranges?'

She twitched. I think maybe some colour flowed into her cheeks. 'You're imagining it.'

Behind her, the bald chappie smirked. 'Told you so, didn't I? Don't use too much, isn't that what I said?'

'Shut up, Arnold,' she hissed.

'How's your skin feeling? Any peel yet?'

'I'm not going to turn into a fucking orange!'

'Hmm. Well, it hasn't made you any sweeter, that's for sure.'

She strangled a curse into a half-scream in her throat, then rounded back on me. 'You think you're funny, shit-head? How about I turn you into an orange? Tell me who you are now or I'll . . . I'll do something drastic!'

I shrank as far back as the chair would allow. 'I'm Jack. Please don't do something drastic.'

'Why are you here, Jack? Are you a Vagrant? Did Seven send you? I told him I'd pay back the debt next week! He knows I'm good for it. Or is it the Shamanic mob? I'm done doing runs for them–'

'I'm not anyone!' I blurted. 'I'm just Jack! I'm a student here! I study Classics!'

The following silence was heavily punctuated by the scrape of an oak drawer, and the metallic clunk of a metal rod being placed on a table.

'Don't mind me,' said Arnold, polishing what looked like a sharp iron poker. 'But be warned that I'm not keen on liars.'

I scrambled out of the chair and pressed my back to a bookcase. I couldn't tell where I'd entered the room from. There were no doors. No way out.

'Obviously I'm somewhere I shouldn't be,' I stammered. 'They should put a sign up, you know? 'Private: Incorporeal Wall', something like that. Um. Didn't mean to disturb you, so I'll be going . . .'

I glanced down, because of the sensation of something nibbling at my fingers. It turned out to be a book. A papery tongue lapped at my palm.

I screamed.

It's the only sensible reaction, in the circumstances.

I flailed and knocked into one of the impossibly tall ladders that lined the shelves. It wobbled and then, very slowly, toppled. It dragged books from their perches on its descent, to a chorus of rustling shrieks and howls that sounded horribly like children.

When the dust settled, I looked numbly over a large mound of quietly whimpering literature.

'Um. Sorry–'

The girl grabbed my arm and shoved me towards a shelf. 'Let's go!'

'Wha–!' I caught sight, for a split-second, of a hideous creature where Arnold had been standing. It looked very angry.

And then cold substance glooped around me, and we re-emerged back in the Petrie Museum. The girl was grinning.

'I love Arnold, but that was funny as hell. We need to run though, because he'll also be mad as hell. Nice one, Jack.' She laughed at me over her shoulder. 'I'm Cora. C'mon!'

* * *

Running through the streets of London is rarely a good thing. It usually means you are being chased, or you are running for fun (and neither of those are good things).

While I was running through the streets of London with Cora, for the first time, from a mad beast-man and a pile of sentient books, I was vaguely aware that I was meant to be in a lecture hall somewhere, reciting some passage from The Odyssey before quietly falling asleep on top of my textbook.

And it rather felt like running was the better option.

We ended up on Waterloo Bridge, huffing and laughing our exertion into the Thames.

'So you really just walked in after me?' Cora asked.

'I knocked first.'

'No!' She fell into giggles, hanging off the railing while other pedestrians shot us odd looks as they passed by. 'Why would you knock? Who does that? What were you expecting?'

'Definitely not . . . whatever it was that happened.' I was sobering up fast and struggling to find sensible explanations for any of it. 'Who was that guy? What was that place?'

She waved a hand like she thought they were dreary questions. 'Most people just call him The Librarian. He's got the biggest collection of magical books in England. That's all.'

'That's all,' I echoed. 'And what about you?'

She drew herself up haughtily. 'I'm a witch.'

At this point, one might be tempted to do the standard up-down look followed by an arched eyebrow and quippy remark, but I felt my survival was dependent on my ability to go with the flow. So I responded with, 'Okay.'

'Okay? Okay? Is that it? Met many witches, have you?'

'. . . No.'

I bit my tongue when it considered saying that she didn't look like a witch. Because honestly, how would I know?

I was careful to keep my gaze level with her face, but it was at risk of sidling downwards. I felt she wasn't going to be at all flattered by my attention, so I'd been doing my best to observe her haltingly from my periphery. She wore a simple black crop top and cargo pants, exposing her navel with a piercing that I was definitely not looking at even if you paid me, and a pair of great stomping boots that could easily crush someone's skull if needed.

The black clothes ticked at least one of my internal checkbox's for 'witch', so I left it there.

She'd been observing me, too. Her eyes narrowed. 'You said you're a student, right? From that university?'

'Yeah. Classics.' I winced, wishing I'd picked something cooler.

She dipped a hand into one of her massive trouser pockets and withdrew a transparent ziploc bag. Inside was a dried-out, moss-like mixture. 'I reckon you'd like this.'

'Is it drugs?' I said doubtfully.

She scoffed. 'Don't be boring. This is a spell. Or it will be, once it's had an infusion of filtered moonlight. It's a charm for success. Great for passing those exams or whatever.' She hesitated. 'I can only get it to work for multiple-choice questions, though. Because that's just a matter of balancing the probabilities to find the best outcome. I haven't figured out how to make it work for essays yet. I really thought orange peel would do the trick . . .'

'So you sell this stuff?' I held the little packet of herbs up to the light. 'Do you smoke it or . . . ?'

'No. Don't be stupid. It's not weed.' She snatched the bag back, then brightened up. 'But I do have some, if you're buying.'

'Some what?'

She allowed me to continue staring stupidly for a good long moment. 'Some weed,' she said slowly.

'Oh. No, thank you . . .'

She stuffed it back in her pocket. I felt that she'd expected a more impressed reaction – and inwardly, I was very impressed, but not by the little bag of herbs – but I was still reeling from the implications of the whole situation.

'So. You being a witch. And that little bag of stuff. You're saying it's . . . magic?'

'Yes. Of course it is. You must've had your eyes closed to not figure that out yet. You've really not met anyone like me before?'

'Never,' I said honestly.

'But you saw me walk through the wall?'

'I did think you were a ghost, at first.'

Her lips pursed into a little black triangle of thought. 'Maybe you just have good eyesight.' A slight flutter of lashes as her eyes widened and I caught the edge of a grin. 'Here, come with me! I'll show you something cool.'

I found myself running after her again, off the bridge and into the darkness of an underpass. She held a finger to her lips, now openly grinning, and backed away from me. I watched her melt, slowly, into insubstantial shadows.

I waited several seconds before a nervous laugh got the better of me. 'All right. Very funny. Where are you?'

There was enough light that I could see the graffiti on the walls, and all the way to the end of the tunnel. Cora was nowhere. Like she'd vanished, somehow before my eyes.

'I'm here,' said her voice. My eyes strained to find her.

'Where?'

A snigger. 'This way, shithead.'

A shape unpeeled itself from the graffiti. The black and purple countours of an S became her hair and face, the stains on the wall solidified into her body. And then she was just there, standing in front of me again, beaming wickedly.

'Cool, huh?'

'How did you do that?'

'It's called unfocusing,' she said excitedly. And then, as if to reign in her own enthusiasm she became flippant. 'Everyone I know can do it. Only normies that can't. People like you.'

'Can you teach me?'

A pause – a pretence. 'I suppose. If I wanted. Though I don't see why I should.'

Without thinking, I grabbed her shoulders. 'Please teach me. I want to know everything about all of this! About witches, and magic, and The Librarian, and unfocusing! It's all incredible. You're incredible! I've never met anyone like you before.'

Suddenly self-conscious, I let go and stepped back. I cleared my throat. 'Um, sorry. But I can't not be excited about the idea of magic being a thing that actually exists.'

She didn't seem perturbed. Her smile was impish. 'More than magic.' She leaned forward. 'Hey, do you want . . . to see a unicorn?'

'You're shitting me.'

'I'm absolutely not.' Her hands fluttered as she talked. The words ran into each other like she couldn't hold them back. 'Someone brought it all the way from Scotland! There's an auction happening tonight. Deep underground, I don't think even the Regulators know about it. I only know because Blind Gill had a vision and Soggy No-Toes heard it from Jittery Bob who says he saw it being moved into an iron-clad stable and I swear I heard Seven mention it too though he doesn't know I heard him . . .'

She appeared to flicker at the edges as she continued, until suddenly, mid-sentence, she disappeared.

I blinked at empty space.

'Cora?'

She faded back into view, looking decidedly embarrassed. 'Sorry,' she mumbled. She tucked her hair behind her ear, glancing off to the side. 'Sometimes I get a bit . . . wrapped up in what I'm talking about, and I sort of . . . forget to remain in the here and now. I end up unfocusing by accident.'

'Wow. You must be really good at it.'

Her head snapped up and she looked ready to throw out a comeback – but was derailed, I think, by the sheer earnestness in my naïve-as-fuck face. She rallied with a quick eye roll. 'I'm brilliant at it, actually.'

I bounced on the balls of my feet. 'So this unicorn. How do we find it?'

'You're not serious? Like I said, it's real deep Black Market stuff.'

'But do you think we could find a way in?'

She left an exaggerated silence before answering. 'Do you think you can handle it? You can't even unfocus.'

It's an overused metaphor to speak of the fire in a person's eyes, but Cora's really did burn. They burned right through me.

'I can handle it,' I said.

She exhaled, and her flickering edges calmed into solid matter.

'I think I know a guy.'

* * *

Author's Note

So - is Cora what you thought she would be?

I didn't want to split any of this section up so you could enjoy a full introduction, which is why it's such a long 'chapter'. I've spent some time debating whether this should be a choppy sort of episode jumping from flashback to flashback - seeing different stages of Jack and Cora's time together - or whether it should be a single complete story: their first ever adventure. I've opted for the latter. =)

Are you ready to go to a unicorn auction?