Not many people forgot the first time they'd met Blue Malefici. Vaje Chusson was no exception, but his memory was tainted with humour amidst the fear.

 He had been sat at a bus stop, pretending to be immersed in a tacky conspiracy thriller. The rain pattering down plastered his hair to his head, but his attention was on neither the book nor the weather but across the street, where a young homeless man huddled under a shop awning.

 Vaje had spent almost a fortnight covertly watching this particular vagrant, a witch who had been cast out from his circle and his home for researching illegal spells. While the sun was up, Vaje was Pursang's eyes and ears; his partner-in-crime got the graveyard shift. Between them, they were compiling a file on Edward Lucna, but it was hard going.

 Watch him, had been the orders. Discover the scope of his abilities and if you think him suitable, recruit him. Otherwise, extract his knowledge and kill him with due decorum.

 Quite how one exercised decorum with murder, Vaje wasn't sure. Was it a matter of "I'm terribly sorry to burst in like this, but I just need to put this bullet in your head. I'll try not to stain your exquisite collection of tea cosies, though."

 Either way, Edward Lucna was proving as impenetrable as Colditz. He'd obviously been taught to defend his mind against the likes of vampires and shapeshifters, and on top of that, he had a paranoid streak that would have made him a revered member of any respectable cult. Vaje had found himself under scrutiny more than once, and despite the fact he did nothing more menacing than get on the bus every day, Lucna focused on him with the dead eyes of a fish.

 Of course, every day, Vaje returned an hour later disguised as a busker and sang on a street corner until he was hoarse. He didn't make much money, and nor did he make much headway. Lucna never moved - not so much as an inch from his crouched position against the wall - and he never took his attention from Vaje. It was off-putting and had caused him to warble in more than one rendition of 'Killing Me Softly'.

 There was no way Lucna could know that the smart yuppie in the tailored suit and the shabby singer swaddled in a trenchcoat, giant sunglasses and a battered hat were the same man, yet he stared at no one else. And every time Vaje tried to probe his mind, he found only a fog of half-finished thoughts and disturbing images distorted into a riot of psychedelic colours.

 So the phone call came as something of a relief.

 "Vaje? Our mark still giving you googly eyes?" Faith, always straight to the point.

 "More serial killer than googly. Thought you'd be asleep."

 "I was until Marie called. Nightfire have sent us some trainee none of their people want to work with. Guess whose bouncing baby son he is?"

 "Yours?"

 "Ha bloody ha. No. Dios Malefici's."

 Vaje whistled. He'd heard Nightfire's leader had a son, and most of Pursang had been taken bets on whether 'Daddy Dios' would indulge his son or run his little mini-me into the ground. "So we're getting him?"

 "Marie said he needs seasoning." Faith sounded sour. "Very good at killing, she says, but not so sharp on the preliminary work. Let's throw the little bastard onto the streets, see if he can get close to Doctor Death. We can't get into his head, so we've got to get the info verbally. He knows you and me, but the kid might have more luck. If he's any good."

 It wasn't a bad idea. Homeless Nightpeople were rare; most adults had enough power to magic, coerce or bribe their way into a comfortable life. But children didn't have that capacity, as most families didn't start to teach their offspring until their powers matured naturally. Except in the Furies, where children had those abilities honed from the very beginning of their training.

 "I'll be back in an hour," he informed her.

 "Great. I'll be in bed. You can fill the brat in."

~*~

 When he arrived at the rented flat, the boy was already there, reading through a stack of notes he could only have stolen from the safe.

 "I see you're a capable thief," commented Vaje.

 God, but he was a weird-looking kid. Dios in miniature, he thought until the boy raised his head and Vaje saw he'd been mistaken. The lurid blue hair and cloud-white skin that screamed 'I need to get out more often' had come straight from his father, but the bony angles of his face promised a future elegance of feature that was nothing like Dios's craggy countenance. And those blue eyes were all the boy's own, regarding him with icy appraisal.

 "It didn't take much effort," the boy said.

  "Don't bother. I designed that lock. If it took you less than twenty minutes, you're better than your father, and I've never met anyone quicker."

 Some of the stern pride melted, but there was still an astounding self-confidence to him. "Forty three minutes."

 "Good. You've got a knack then." Vaje sat opposite him. "Salvaje Chusson. I've been with Pursang for nearly a hundred years now, and I've spent most of it amassing information on our marks and subjects of interest. If you want to know something, ask. I'd rather hear stupid questions now than clean up stupid mistakes later."

 "Bane Malefici. Everyone calls me Blue."

 Vaje eyed him. "Kid, if Blue's the worst nickname they've given you, you got off lightly."

 The boy bared a set of neat teeth. "They did try for 'Cookie Monster'."

 "What happened?"

 "I smothered one of them with cookie dough." There was a rich satisfaction to his voice that set Vaje's internal alarm system off. He didn't think that was a joke, and while it wasn't the strangest story he'd heard, it spoke of an innovation and a hunger for pain that would have to be carefully monitored.

 This one loves to kill, he thought. And I'll bet they have trouble holding him back.

 "Well, let's get something clear now. If you don't like the way Faith and I work, you're welcome to voice your opinion. But you're the trainee here, so we may tell you to shut up and put up. And if you don't do it, cookie dough is going to look like the soft option."

 "It was quite soft," Blue commented. That black wit reassured Vaje. "Agreed. I do have a question."

 "Fire away."

 "Is it true you've been to Hades twice?"

 There was an eagerness in the vampire's eyes you didn't often see when Hades was mentioned. Only in those of us who have to be the best, he thought sourly. I couldn't settle for mediocrity. Not in anything, no matter how it hard it was.

 "It's true. Once to the Acheron, once to the Phlegethon."

 "What was it like?"

 Vaje thought about it. Hades...going there once was a terrifying experience, but it was only the terror of the unknown. Fear of the known was much more compelling, paired as it was with the certainty of pain. "It's the river of fire. Think about what fire does."

 "It burns," the boy pointed out, the words jaded and disapproving. "But everyone knows that."

 "Knowing it is one thing. Experiencing it is something else. It does burn, and that's a lot of what will happen to you. It'll hurt. People have died from the shock. But if you don't die, you'll walk out knowing more than people who've been here for five hundred years but never gone further than the Acheron."

 He searched for words to explain something that was pure sensation. He could barely remember what had happened to him then, but even the ghost of the pain was enough to make his stomach twist.

 "Fire burns, but that's not all it does. It cauterises, it purifies, it cleanses - and it illuminates. If you can bear to see every part of who you are laid out before you, bear to see everything you could have been and once were, and bear to have every weakness scoured from you...go. Drink."

 "It seems a fair price," the boy said, his eyes narrowing into dual blue blades. "Lose all your weaknesses in one go."

 "And what if you can't recognise your weaknesses?" Vaje answered. "What if you valued taking time to decide or preferring gut instinct to cold logic? You don't know what you'll lose to the Phlegethon."

 "It's a gamble," admitted Blue. "But I think I'd win more than I'd lose."

 "Maybe. Back to business, kid. Let's see what you got from those notes."

 A hint of peevishness infiltrated the boy's tones. "Is this a test?"

 Touchy. "I'm asking for your opinion as a member of the Furies. I've been told you're smart. Show me."

 For a moment. Vaje could have sworn something bleak and ancient and dreadful stirred in the boy's eyes, but it was gone so swiftly he was left with only unease.

 "There's some oddities with this one. His family and friends claim not to know who he was trying to raise. Most necromancers are trying to bring back someone they loved or someone they hated. Secondly, he'd been estranged from his family for the last three years. All of a sudden, he returned, hugs and nostalgia all around. Three weeks later, this. It feels to me like someone, somewhere is lying."

 "Me too. Which is why we want to talk to Lucna."

 "Yes. Edward Lucna. He doesn't do much but sit in one spot all day. He doesn't eat. You've never seen him use magic, which is odd, considering he was exiled for performing illegal spells. Illegal spells which would have needed a very powerful witch or a moderately powerful coven."

 Standard conclusions. "Carry on."

 "He doesn't seem to talk. Maybe he's just one of nature's introverts, but I'm inclined to think he overreached himself in one of his spells. If he didn't have enough power to handle the spell, the incantations could have damaged his larynx."

 Good. That fitted the evidence, and not many non-witches would have come across the phenomena.

"He was banished for using necromancy," continued Blue, "and all spells which involve reaching between life and death need that kind of power."

 "Know what the problem is with all the necromantic spells we've come across?"

 Blue nodded. "None of them work."

 "Yup. And like everyone else, Lucna failed to raise anything more than few people's hackles. But unlike everyone else, his mind is intact, which is why we want him. He's managed to protect himself from the backlash - which usually leaves 'em dead or stark raving mad. So how's he done it?"

 "He's altered the spell." The boy had a scholarly interest on his face. "But how?"

 "Well, all the other victims that didn't die went stark raving mad. Emphasis on the raving."

 Blue's eyes lit up. "He...sacrificed his voice to keep his life."

 "We think so. What we want from him is the exact adjustments he made to the spell. As you've read, we can't just reach into his mind and get them because he's got airtight defences."

 "Maybe to you," the boy said with superb arrogance. "But I could get past them."

 Vaje kept his scepticism to himself. "You're more than welcome to try. You can come with me tomorrow."

~*~

 "Hey..." Vaje caught the boy before he reached the door. It was early enough for yawns to creak around his jaw. "Where do you think you're going?"

 "I thought I was going to crack Lucna's mind," the boy said with the patronising patience of the young talking to the senile.

 Something about the way he said it unnerved Vaje; as if it wasn't the terminology of a burglar but of a torturer.

 "Not like that, you aren't," he said shortly. "You'd stick out like a sore thumb."

 ~*~

 "I'm not wearing that," declared Blue.

 Vaje waved the ginger wig at him. "Yeah, you are."

 "It's revolting."

 "Well, excuse me, kid, I forgot we were on the catwalks of Milan. Do you want to go and touch up your eyeliner?" snapped Vaje. Part of him thought very quietly that if the vampire really did go to the Phlegethon, that vanity would be seared right out him. "Wear it, and these clothes."

 Blue stared at the tatty clothes, smeared with mud and food. "What the hell are these?"

 "You're supposed to be destitute."

 "Destitute. Not lost to reason."

 Vaje reflected that in many ways, teenagers were all the same. Especially the ones in the Furies, who had a five figure salary to play with. "Look, while you're on those streets, you're not Blue Malefici. You aren't a scary little sod from Nightfire who's cluttering up my assignment. You're just some unlucky schmuck who's been kicked out of home because he bit the wrong neck."

 Suddenly he was starting to see why no one in Nightfire had wanted to work with the kid.

 "I'm scary?" the boy echoed, a fey light catching in his face, the full power of that stare turned on him. The inhumanity in it shone out, and Vaje saw right there, right then, that Blue Malefici was judging his worth, deciding whether he should live or not.

 Just try it, you little shit, he thought ferociously.

 The only problem was, he thought the kid might. He wouldn't win, not now...but in a few years, this one was going to be formidable. And Vaje had picked an early date to make an enemy of him.

 He looked right back, staring down death. "You know you are. That's why the Furies want you. And if you've got the brains to learn what we've got to teach you, they'll still talk about you in a thousand years. But if all you can do is kill, you're just another one of a hundred interchangeable barbarians. And someone in Nightfire will do for you long before you know enough to stop them."

 "I'm listening," was all the reply he got, but new shrewdness was in the predator's stare. Interest me, it said. Prove your worth.

 "You've already alienated everyone there. If you want to rise high, you need to be so valuable they'll think twice before they kill you. So you'd better shut up and learn how to get information that no one else can. That's what we run on: information."

 "Knowledge is power." The boy spoke as if he was truly tasting the words for the first time, savouring them.

 "Damn right. So are you going to learn, or am I going to send you back to Nightfire with a few scars to remind you just who's better right now?"

 The boy glared at the ginger wig. "And that's part of it."

 "Yep. Hiding knowledge is just as valuable as finding it. We don't want anyone knowing that a Malefici is running round these streets, because there are a lot of people out there who want to know what Edward Lucna does. And he might be willing to tell some of them."

 With a look of deepest loathing, the boy put it on, and changed into the clothes.

 He had won this power struggle. Something as simple as humiliation was going to keep this boy in line. The carrot, and the stick, thought Vaje. The carrot-coloured stick.

 Vaje had to resist the urge to smirk. "Well, you've got the skin tone of a redhead."

~*~

While he sat at the bus stop, flicking through his pulp fiction, the boy settled himself at the base of a statue. With his arms curled around his legs and his shoulders hunched against the wind, he did look like a hapless urchin. The ginger hair flopped around his ears, adding a note of the ridiculous to the scene.

 Even from the bus stop, fifty metres away, Vaje felt the boy's mind when he dropped those shields: a lively blue that sizzled and popped like fireworks. He was surprised at the delicacy with which Blue reached out, the power growing thinner and thinner until it was like a cobweb, spinning out to Lucna.

 Vaje followed the boy, intrigued, eyes fixed on the book, mind walking above that thread of pure psyche. It vanished into the shifting miasma of Lucna's consciousness, and though Vaje tried to imitate the boy, refining his power down and down again, thinner and thinner until he was barely a ghost of a thought, he could go no further.

 How long must he have practiced to do that? he wondered. That kind of control...Malefici must have spent days outside his own body, moving further and further away.

 This kind of penetration required separating yourself from your body to move into someone else's mind; that meant you had to effectively distil yourself down to your very essence, stripping away thought and feeling to leave little more than the first spark of awareness. The better you were, the closer you could get to that ideal.

 And this boy was good. Very good.

 He could get inside my mind, Vaje realised. If he was careful, if I was distracted...yeah, he could slip right past my shields. And god knows what he could do while he was there. I'd notice him eventually - he's distinctive, but he'd have a few seconds of grace.

 That's why no one at Nightfire will work with him. That's why he's such a spooky monster. He'd get inside your head for no better reason than his own edification, and then he'd do whatever amused him most at the time. He might drive you to madness, or to hopeless love, which is almost the same, or he might send you for a stroll on the highway.

 Jesus. What's he going to be able to do in a few years?

~*~

 He felt the boy spring back into his own mind like an arrow soaring to a target. Then the voice came into his mind, all edges and precision. I got in.

And?

Vaje blinked. What? But...look at him.

 Suddenly a dozen things made sense. Vaje hissed between his teeth. No wonder that prodigal son stuff seemed so false. It was. They lured him back to kill him. And that's why they exiled him. He didn't cast the spells - his family did! And that fog...I'll bet my life they put it there to keep anyone from realising he wasn't even alive. They killed him, and then they raised him from the dead. A real live guinea pig.

The boy's voice held a strange note. So you can raise the dead.

 Vaje looked into Edward Lucna's staring eyes. Dead eyes, he'd thought, and he'd been right. Did that stare fix on him because he was part of the Nightworld? To try and frighten people? Another spell, perhaps.

 Who'd want to? he answered. If they come back like that?

 He got no reply. Years later, he would shudder when he thought of that conversation.

 Nightfire's young trainee stayed with Pursang for another six months, but he didn't work with Vaje Chusson again, at his request. Edward Lucna was unceremoniously laid to rest - again - and Pursang dealt with his errant family with the same brisk way. Memories were erased, the spell was procured and handed over to a team of witches to examine, but Vaje Chusson kept his memory.

 Sometimes, he wished he hadn't.