Corrollary

His bag slung over his shoulder, Luc stepped out of the tube station and began his walk back to the flat. It was one station further than his actual stop, but the latter jump-off allowed him to face threats from the rear whilst also giving him time to sort out his amulets without untoward attention. He pulled out his phone in case he was being watched while his left hand remained hidden in his pocket, rolling an amulet mother piece. The daughter pieces had been planted on the various routes to the block of flats he was heading towards. The mother-daughter combination allowed him to scan the area for significant changes like unusual clumps of magic signatures or even traps laid down in his absence. Luc still regretted not being able to acquire the flat’s freehold. Without it, a threshold warding was impossible.  Why a freehold was necessary was one of those old magic conundrums no one could explain. It was all well and good laying down defensive wards, but a threshold warding could extend a couple of miles around and sometimes, deep beneath the building it was anchored to. A warding like that was like an all-encompassing defensive shield, a giant blunt instrument with no expiration date. Still, he had been lucky to find a flat in an older building.  At least with the pre- war structures, there was enough history to exploit for the laying down of wards. Newbuilds offered nothing in comparison.  Not enough history, not even enough brickwork to plug into. The age and location of the flat were the main reasons he still held onto the place, despite its current challenges.
Luc reached deeper into his pocket and switched amulets. His fingers tingled as he ran over the pitted edges, confirming that his traps were still active. Even though he considered himself retired, it still made sense to stay prepared. It was that old truism of letting down your guard on approaching safe ground.
He stumbled as he considered whether the flat could still be characterised as safe. If he was being honest, the past year had been spent travelling and avoiding the place. Waiting at the roundabout for the pedestrian lights to turn green, he stretched his neck from side to side, before releasing his hold on the amulet. He crossed the roads and then stepped into the building, walking to the end of the foyer to take the stairs up to his floor. He had deliberately set out without much luggage, since all he really wanted to do was check things over…and see if she was still around. He reached his floor without running into any of the neighbours. Not that they would have recognised him, but he didn’t have it in him to pretend at superficialities. Checking that his entry wards were still intact, Luc squared his shoulders and pushed open the front door.
The wards reset as the door swung shut behind him.

Luc shrugged off his jacket onto the coat hook on the wall and rifled through the letterbox. The box was bulging with the weight of his absence, filled with envelopes and leaflets advertising handymen, pizzas and gyms. He turned to walk away when a small green business card appeared to drift up out of the box before flitting slowly onto the floor. 
He stopped. That card had all but leapt out for his attention.  He eyed it warily. The card danced over the wooden floor in the hallway before settling. He frowned as a memory trickled through his brain, something his teacher, the fourth Sage, had mentioned. A visiting card, a trick…  yes, that was it, an old magic trick. What was it doing here? This definitely wasn’t from The Crowd. Those belligerent, short sighted lot were too obsessed by their need to control the use of amulets. They certainly weren’t partial to the old ways. Especially, if he remembered it right, this trick was about announcing one’s intention to visit but with enough deference to avoid the risk of a hostile reception. Quite frankly, most of the Crowd would consider it beneath them to defer to anyone. Ever since the Fifth Sage had taken over, Luc had cut his ties with them.
He crouched down over the card, a little charmed by it. He could see the appeal although, he was still perplexed as to who could have sent it.  The Fourth Sage had been the last of his set to disappear into the ‘country beyond’, the place where older magicians retired to, simply by having survived long enough. He waited but when nothing more happened, he rose and walked over it. The card flitted up as if being wafted by a stray breeze. It danced up to his eye line. Luc stepped back. Old-fashioned or not, he plucked the card out of the air. It was blank on one side, but the other side had just one word in large, stylised bronzed print, ‘Garden’.  His mind blanked as his fingers let go of the card. Memories hovered in his mind, the cobbled lane, the girl. Luc locked them down.

This at least confirmed what his teacher had been saying all along, that the Old Man in the Garden had more tricks up his sleeve than he let on. Luc moved to step over it again. However, the card wafted right back up before him. Luc eyed it, now a little annoyed. Fine! He reached for the card to dispose of it, a little more permanently. The old man and his Garden had been a lifetime ago. But as if his intention to destroy the card triggered a response, Luc suddenly found himself swamped with memories, of his time with the old man and the girl he left behind. He pushed back. He had walked away and had no intention of being carried back there. He held the card up with one hand and grabbed his personal amulet from his back pocket, rubbing it between his right index finger and thumb, he forcibly dispelled the power in the card, letting it drop back onto the floor. He hadn’t given the Old Man much thought, not since he left, and he had no desire to return to that time in his life. If the power to travel back in time existed, the Garden would not be the period he would return to. Still, why now? Why was he reaching out to him now? He wrangled with the question as he walked towards the living room.  Then a strange metallic scent hit his nostrils, lifting his head. Luc stopped, shocked to find a stranger in the flat. The shock that someone had found a way through his locked door and wards, was quickly eclipsed by a wave of fury as he saw that the stranger was sitting in her chair.

 He didn't stop to think. He simply walked straight up to the man, growling, “GET OUT OF THAT CHAIR”, his voice, rising with each word. He grabbed the man's arm. There was pain, agony and then darkness.