What he was doing was, of course, against magus rule. In fact, if he were found out, it would probably result in his death. Meyer pondered the fact for only a second before deciding that he was old enough not to care anymore. Life was short and making it a fraction shorter at his age made very little difference.

“Why on the earth have they brought us in, when they are gonna have one of their secret little meetings. Made to stand out here like lemons we are. A right couple of melons-no wait, did I say lemons before?” Ruth said.

“Oh do shut up woman.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If you want to come and take a seat with me, I can tell you what is happening inside.”

Ruth battled with herself for a moment, no doubt struggling to resist the urge to issue some retribution for Meyer's rudeness. The two settled into a pair of armchairs at the corner of the room, hidden in the shadows between the skylights.

“That reminds me,” she said. “Aniseed twist?”

She held out a crumpled bag of red sweets to Meyer, the smell of aniseed immediately filling the air with an unmistakably pungent smell. It would be rude not to take one and besides, Meyer rarely declined an offer of food. Unwrapping the boiled sweet, he made himself comfortable in the chair and calmed his mind, ready to enter Charles' consciousness.

Meyer passed through some minor resistance, Charles had had some training, but it was at the early stages, so he would never know what was happening. Charles was nervous, that was the first thing Meyer noticed. The fact he preferred to be called Charlie was the second. His favourite food was lasagne which, as he was a little hungry, he was thinking of now, and lastly, an emotion Meyer knew all too well. Love. Charlie loved his fiancé in ways even his mind could not make sense of. However, fear loomed over his relationship; his government job meant they were growing more and more distant. A tough situation and something Charlie was at a loss how to fix, that part of his life flickering across his consciousness like a cold breeze, constantly nagging at him. Charlie hated Helena, which made Meyer smile to himself, although he knew that not to be an exclusive club.

“What's going on?” Ruth said.

“Dear, please be patient,” Meyer replied.

“Don't you be calling me dear.”

Infiltrating someone’s mind like this is a basic part of all mentalist training, it was the subtitles of the art where the skill lay. The human mind has to somehow comprehend the millions of bits of information it is constantly bombarded with, and if you add magic to the complexity of the neural network, well, the whole idea of 'consciousness' takes an interesting turn.

Stepping through a door, Meyer found himself on a balcony overlooking the Thames. Leant against the railing was Charlie, completely focused on the view. Meyer moved quietly behind him, trying not to alert him to his presence. Standing next to the manifestation of Charlie's conscious thought, the pair watched a live stream of what Charlie was experiencing that stretched out across the sky.

The council chamber housed a toroid table around 5 meters in diameter that comfortably sat thirty people. It was dark, apart from the light falling from the domed skylight above that lit the empty centre of the room and reached as far as the bodies of those around the table, their faces left in shadow. Charlie took a deep breath.