The Bureau of Spies

Wolfgang Clyde thought the hardest part of life was passing his A-Levels. He was wrong.

Seventeen-year-old Wolf lives with his weary, secretive mother in a damp Westminster flat where the kettle’s always boiling and hope feels like a rumour. When his stepfather dies and his savings vanish in a late-night crypto crash, he assumes failure is his inheritance — until a series of strange events begin to rewrite his world.

A mysterious deposit appears in his online trading account. His exam results are impossibly good. And a vision — black wings, candlelight, a woman in uniform — erupts from the pages of an old green spellbook bearing his great-grandmother’s name.

When Wolf confronts his mother, she tears out the page and warns him to stop digging. But it’s too late. A man with a wooden leg, calling himself Mr Savage, appears at their door claiming to work for the government. He says Wolf’s been chosen for a “training programme” — one that promises purpose, money and answers.

Soon Wolf is drawn into a secret world hidden beneath modern London — a place where ancient magic and cutting-edge technology merge, where blockchain networks double as spell ledgers, and where the children of the old World War Two Witches League are quietly being recruited again.

But as Wolf begins to see the threads of light and symbol woven across the city — sigils hidden in data streams, shadows alive in code — he realises he isn’t being trained. He’s being tested.