After class Steven had other business to attend to. His niece was apparently obsessed with her phone, ever since her messages had arrived and class had ended, her eyes had been glued to the screen, her fingers typing faster than the human eye could follow. He didn’t anticipate trouble from that corner.

And indeed, she waved half-heartedly as he mentioned stepping out for a bit. He waved away Mister Stone, who wanted to know if he was going by car, and if so, which one. Steven didn’t feel like driving however, he was going to take the phonebooth. As the doors of the mansion closed behind him, he walked towards the east wing of the house.

Snugly nestled in the corner of the mansion stood a red phonebooth. He opened the door and stepped inside. There used to be a time when mages had been obsessed with telephones and the types of magic one could perform with them. It had been a fad, proven outdated rather quickly.

These days, teleportation stones were shipped in large quantities from somewhere in China. Why waste time setting up connections, when a quick word whispered to a stone could bring you to almost any place within a five-hundred-mile radius. The answer was simple, when you set up your own connections you couldn’t be monitored. He dialled a number.

Way down south, in an identical phonebooth in London a phone started to ring. Steven took a deep breath. “Viatoris.” He spoke and was sucked into the telephone wire. For a few seconds as the telephone at the Cairn mansion fell and the one in London rang Steven didn’t exist. He didn’t think or feel, he was just an assembly of sound. Then, he picked up the phone. The other end of the line was dead.

He hung up the phone and stepped outside, breathing the city air. “I fucking hate London.” He said after a few seconds, making some pedestrian glare at him. His eyes scanned the street, no cabs. His annoyance was steadily growing. It started raining. His annoyance rose further. England, he thought as he ducked into London’s grey streets, wasn’t his favourite country in the world. There was a reason he kept the British government out of his business, but if he was honest with himself that might be more because of the government part than the British part.

He finally found a cab, which was warm, dry and thus felt very welcoming. It wasn’t necessarily that Steven disliked the idea of a government, something had to keep the masses in check after all. It was more that he disliked the idea of a government which he didn’t lead. And since the council felt that it had to answer to someone, in this case some woman chosen by regular people, there wasn’t a chance that he would demean himself by answering to someone like that. Democracy, he found, was just a bit too silly an idea for him to get behind.

The cab stopped in front of an office somewhere in Canary Wharf. He looked up at the towering building made from blue glass. It was, of course, his. Or more accurately put, he was a co-owner of the building and the company inside. He walked through the revolving doors into the bowels of the building. The ground floor was abustle with activity, lawyers coming and going, carrying an air of importance around them. Steven smiled, he didn’t come here often enough.

Above the counter, which was manned by young, smart looking men and women, written in serious looking letters the name of the company was spelled out.

ARCANA INCORPORATED

Beneath that in smaller, more formal, letters the company’s slogan was slapped on.

Protecting traditional rights and privileges since 1932

He didn’t bother heading to the counter, opting to go directly to security instead. He took his time getting there however. Security was tight and included both magical and non-magical measures. Already he was attracting attention as people started to recognize him from the large portraits that hang upstairs. He paid it no attention however, his eyes still fixed on the security measures, trying to find a flaw.

When his curiosity, and perhaps paranoia, was sated he walked in a straight line towards the checkpoint. The security guard almost saluted him as he recognized his boss. “Mister Cairn, we have been expecting you, the other members of the board are already inside. Please, allow me to let you trough.”

Steven shook his head. “No.” The security guard became pale.

“Sir?” He asked, at a loss for direction. Steven’s lips curled into a smile.

“No, you won’t just let me in. You will insist on running through the protocols, like everybody else.” The security guard became even paler.

“Sir.” He demonstrated weakly.

“I insist.” Steven said softly, but no longer amused.

The entire reception hall had gone quiet, watching the standoff. The security guard swallowed. “Yes sir.” He rasped. What followed was an awkward procedure, which took about three minutes, but felt like hours. Once Steven made it through the procedure he nodded once.

“I am satisfied. Inform your superiors that they won’t have to inspect you this year. You did your job to a satisfying degree.” The guard nodded shakily.

Without further acknowledgement of the man Steven turned around and walked towards the elevator. He punched in the button for the top floor and quietly waited for the elevator to reach his destination. Eventually the doors opened and he stepped into a marble hallway, which ended in a set of double doors, made of steel and glass. The glass wasn’t see-through, but clouded over, as if some white fog clang to the other side of it.

Arcana Incorporated for the largest part was a regular advocacy group, dedicated to protecting the powerful, old and rich families of the United Kingdom. As such, most people employed there knew nothing of magic or the magical world. Some might be vaguely familiar with it, but in a roundabout sort of way. The company was built to reflect that, for all intends and purposes it was a normal office, filled with normal lawyers. The only floor that diverted from this carefully constructed front was the top floor.

As Steven walked towards the double doors, he got the feeling of being in a cathedral. Pillars of black marble rose impossibly high to support a roof, which the building clearly didn’t have. That wasn’t the hallway’s main feature however. Every two yards there was a large alcove with a statue inside of it. Each of the six board members had its own statue, which was dressed in traditional mage getup.

Vanity had its place after all, and what they had accomplished was quite great indeed. He was already late, but he took a moment to pay respect to a seventh and eight statues. The two men who looked remarkably similar and shared characteristics with Steven. Plagues beneath the statues proclaimed them to be CEO Henry Cairn and CEO Thomas Cairn, his grandfather and father respectively.

For a second, he wondered whether they would approve of the direction he had taken the company in. Then he remembered that their approval no longer meant anything and he walked on. He touched the heavy double doors and they swung open for him. Five mages stared at him from a raised set of desks.

“Well than ladies and gentlemen, shall we begin?”