Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) (29 page)

A moment to consider the Midnight Mayor.

He has not, contrary to popular opinion, vanished.

He did, he must admit, fail to set up an email auto-reply on his system. But he has other things on his mind.

“Hello, are you Sally?”

Good evening, that is correct. May I help you?

“My name’s Matthew Swift, I’m the Midnight Mayor. May I say I love what you’ve done with this place.”

Thank you. It took me a while to find an appropriate paint that would stick to the internal tiling, but I now believe I have achieved the perfect mix.

“Is this one…?”

I call it “Homage to an abandoned gasworks, in the style of Monet”.

“It’s nice.”

I’m glad you think so. Forgive my bluntness, but was there something you needed?

“You know, it’s funny you should say that.”

I merely ask, as not many people come to see banshees for social purposes.

“But you seem charming!”

Thank you. Are you interested in modern art?

“I’m sure I would be if I had the time. As it is, I do have this little problem…”

The van stopped in Battersea, just south of the river.

A place where men who dreamed of apartments with glass balconies overlooking the waters of the Thames had competed with others who pictured white-tiled shopping estates and soft-seated cinema complexes, who had in turn fallen foul of the environmentalists who in turn had waged bitter war on the local council officers who saw in this empty patch of nothing a golden opportunity to build their latest recycling centre. Between all these competing forces, the net result had been nothing. Nothing had been done, and nothing had changed.

A hoarding of blue plywood fenced off a stretch of the river from joggers, dog walkers and tourists. To the west, Battersea Power Station was a monument to architectural insecurity; on the far bank, young trees sat beneath new lights framed by towering apartments for wealthy young couples who knew that there was yet more wealth to come. Trains spat blue-white sparks into the night as they rattled across the bridge to Victoria; empty freight containers huddled beneath silent cranes whose wires hadn’t shifted more than a few inches in a strong wind for many years. The water of the river was silent against the embankment, the padlocks were rusted; the wind was beaten off by the plywood walls.

Only one light glowed, shining tungsten-yellow behind the half-open door of an ancient white freight container with the words
OFFICE SUPPLIES EXPRESS
stencilled on the side.

Ms Somchit parked the van with its rear doors facing this light, then she, Edna and Kevin manoeuvred Rhys towards it. His eyes were closed, his body a sack to be dragged by its dangling parts. Sammy hopped from foot to foot muttering, “Come on, come on, put some backbone into it!” while the three of them sweated and strained.

Sharon opened the door to the glowing container as they approached and heard a voice exclaim, “You know, I was in the middle of making a cake?”

She looked inside.

A metal wheeled stretcher, a bright bulb hanging from the ceiling, a white locked filing cabinet, a white locked cupboard. A high wooden stool and, perched on top of it like a proud parrot on its stand, a woman. Her skin was tea-coloured after a respectable dose of milk; her hair was black, cut to a short bob; her legs dangled from a smart black skirt, and as she swung them to and fro her sturdy-heeled black shoes flapped and flopped against her heels. Only a white coat with a row of coloured biros in its pocket suggested that this woman might be what she was–a doctor.

Rhys was manhandled onto the stretcher trolley. The woman tutted, shooed his sweating companions away, leaned over and said, “Now, who’s been playing silly buggers with a wendigo?”

Kevin raised one gloved and bloody hand. “Excuse me,” he ventured, “but I have been in like, contact with all sorts of bodily fluids this evening and
none
of them have been screened and I was wondering if you could like, test me?”

“Test you? For what?” asked the doctor.

“Um… everything?”

The doctor lowered her head and looked up into Kevin’s eyes. “Sweetie,” she said, “I don’t want to sound dismissive or anything here, but you’re the walking dead. Deal with it.” She paused, and added, “Wow! That was a bit dismissive wasn’t it? I surprised myself–was anyone else surprised by that?”

Sharon felt a tug on her sleeve. “Oi,” said Sammy. “Soggy-brains. Wanna talk?”

They walked along the river. Neither Sammy nor Sharon felt the urge to move in the shadows, so they simply walked along the waterfront, goblin and shaman, side by side through the night.

“Dr Seah’s okay,” said Sammy. “Lotsa stupid doctors out there, but she’s good. Your druid mate will be fine.”

“I don’t get this.” Sharon’s voice wasn’t angry or frightened, just the dead flat of fact. “I don’t get what this is about.”

Sammy sighed, louder than he needed.

“Politics,” he explained. “Humans and their politics–why they just can’t disembowel each other with the sharpened teeth of the varg like civilised people, I will never suss.”

“Tell me,” snapped Sharon, “about the politics.”

“It’s the Midnight Mayor.” Sammy kicked a stone as they walked, watched it bounce into the water with a heavy plop. “He’s got all this politics on his hands. So, a while back–months back–things start happening. Nasties start crawling out of places where nasties shouldn’t have been. Signs have been there a while–spectres in the street, Blackout possessing the walking dead, death of cities summoned by some big-mouthed kid–these things happen, but lately they’ve happened too easy.

“And the Mayor, he’s thinks all this looks bad, which is obvious to
anyone with even minor skills, so he starts investigating. He talks to wizards and witches, seers and alchemists what stink of rotting eggs, and finally gets the brains on him to come talk to a shaman–talk to me. And I put him straight. It’s the spirits of the city, I say, those shadows on the wall and voices in the stone–them you don’t see because you’re too thick to see but which you know are always there.

“Only they ain’t there, are they? Because they’re vanishing. Being pulled out of the buildings, and where they were, now there’s gaps. Hollowness, emptiness, and things are… coming through. Getting in through the place where these voices oughtta have been. And Greydawn’s gone, our Lady of 4 a.m., she who guards the wall. And with her gone, who knows what shit is gonna start coming through the holes in the city walls?”

Sharon remembered City Road, heard the howling of a dog, saw the claws of a dragon.

“There’s a dog,” she breathed. “It has blood in its fur, and its footsteps burn the earth.”

“Not a dog, not
a
dog!” declared Sammy.
“The
Dog! Greydawn’s pet, her companion! He’s only meant to exist in the shadows, in nightmares and memories. But Greydawn’s gone and the gates are open, so now he comes here, he hunts in the city at night, looking for his mistress. And Matthew Swift is a sorcerer, which makes him great at blowing things up but shit at dealing with the stuff of dreams, and Dog
is
the stuff of dreams. He’s shadows and blood, and the Midnight Mayor ain’t gonna fix that. You need a shaman, someone who can walk the spirit walk, deal with this sorta shit.”

“So why can’t you?” demanded Sharon. “Why do you need me?”

“Racist bastards,” spat Sammy. “I may be the second greatest shaman ever, but the wankers don’t talk to me. They shout ‘Goblin’ and they hide, and sure, I can dream-walk the brains out of a baboon, but that don’t mean shit when all you want is a good lawyer and a pack of toothpaste. He needed someone human, someone who could get into places, no history or baggage or that. Swift was like ‘Come on, Sammy, help me out’ and I was like ‘You can’t force this stuff; if there’s a shaman out there then he’s gotta find his own way.’ And then look at you! You bloody turn up doing the shaman thing. And Swift is impressed, but I say, ‘Have you seen her?’ and he has, but seems to think this is a good
thing–a good thing that the new shaman is a girl-thing with stupid hair.”

“Don’t you even
think
about dissing my hair,” growled Sharon. “You look like a used vacuum-cleaner bag; don’t you
ever
comment on my style.”

Sammy grunted, possibly in acquiescence.

“Anyway, it’s clear we need a shaman, and someone who’s not got… stuff behind her, so yeah, I teach you. Because you’re a shaman and you need to be taught. And because the walls are down and you gotta fix it. So lump it, okay?”

Sharon bowed her head, staring at the ground. Grass was trying to poke up between cracks in the concrete. A small pyre of broken bottles and crumpled cans marked the place where kids sometimes came to smoke, and drink forbidden drinks.

She said, “What do you mean I was ‘doing the shaman thing’? Everyone keeps saying that, but what does it mean?”

“You were leading your tribe!” exclaimed Sammy impatiently. “That’s what shamans do!”

“That’s bollocks. I don’t have a tribe; I wasn’t leading nothing. It’s not…” Her voice trailed off. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “You don’t mean… But that’s not how it was meant to work!”

“Magicals Anonymous is a bloody stupid idea,” declared Sammy. “But you started it and you brought people together and you became the leader of the tribe. With Facebook,” he added in disgust. “You used Facebook to lead your tribe, which I think is just bad kudos, but okay. So the Midnight Mayor goes ‘Hey hey, this looks kinda weird’ and he sends Ms Somchit down to keep an eye on it and Ms Somchit is all ‘Whatcha know, there’s a shaman there’ and he’s all ‘Great, maybe she can find the missing spirits!’ and next thing you know you’ve got running and shouting and all this bloody drama. In
Tooting
.”

“Yes, but w-wait…” Sharon stuttered, gesturing. “If the Midnight Mayor–if this Swift guy–wanted my help, why didn’t he just ask? Why all this cryptic ‘There’s bad shit’ shit? Because I gotta tell you that’s rubbish and I can’t be having it.”

“Politics, I said, innit! The Midnight Mayor is a powerful guy. But you been to Burns and Stoke, right? You seen what they got? Their head honcho is a wendigo, which for you soggy ignorant thing makes
him serious bad news! They’ve hired the four deadliest assassins the world has ever see—”

“The builders?”

“Yeah, the builders! Them against whom no lock can hold, the unseen ones, the forgotten faces, them!”

“They’re the deadliest assassins ever?”

“You never find the corpses of them that they kill, and people never remember them. Cos you don’t, do you? You never remember the guys in the fluorescent jackets. They’ll turn the walls against you, the floor you stand on. Even the Midnight Mayor thinks twice before fighting them.”

“But I still don’t get—”

“He needed help. The Aldermen are meant to serve him, they’re meant to be on his side, but he’s got a dodgy history with them, and even magical protectors gotta eat. They gotta have cash, and offices, and paper clips and all that crap. And Burns and Stoke got themselves into the Aldermen’s good books years before Swift came along. They bankroll the Aldermen. They’re partners in everything the Aldermen do.”

Sharon paused as the words sunk in. “You are bloody kidding me.”

“You getting it yet, potato-head?”

“But that’s stupid! If Burns and Stoke are run by a wendigo—”

“Racist?” suggested Sammy.

“It’s not racism if he’s a blood-obsessed torturing murderer!” she retorted. “I mean, I’m sure there are lots of very nice wendigos out there—”

“Hah!”

“—but the fact is that he wasn’t very nice, and him being a blood-soaked monster of the night may be a contributing factor. I mean, I’m sorry, I know it’s not politically correct to say that, but that’s how I feel.”

“You see why Swift had a few issues, right? He can’t trust no one in his own office. Ms Somchit is one of
two
Aldermen he actually likes to talk to, and the other one is his PA or whatever the human job is what should be called the Hand. And the Midnight Mayor… It’s not just one guy, it’s an inheritance thingy. The Aldermen could turn on Swift and say he’s not doing it right and kill him–well, try to kill him. I think it’d be even for the first few corpses, and I don’t usually say that about
people what take on the Aldermen. Anyway, and the power of the Midnight Mayor would just pass on to the next thick shit and he’d be dead. And it wouldn’t be the first time the Aldermen had tried. Going against Burns and Stoke was a stupid idea, and he needed them that weren’t part of the Aldermen to make it work. Needed another tribe, you see? He needed—”

“Magicals Anonymous,” breathed Sharon. “They’re my tribe.”

No response.

“Well,” she said at last.

And stopped.

“Okay,” she added.

The river lapped against the embankment.

Then, “This shamaning thing isn’t all how I thought it’d be.”

Sammy grinned. “Don’t give up the day job.”

“It might be too late for that. Kinda think I got myself fired.”

“Oh. Well, it was a stupid bloody job and you weren’t no good at it anyway.”

Sharon looked thoughtful.

Then she said, “No, wait, hold on! You said the Midnight Mayor couldn’t go around obviously pissing people off! But he called me, back in Tooting! He called me and said ‘Adopt the brace position’ and then there was this bus which could have bloody killed me anyway. And I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but it was obvious it was him, and the wendigo guy was there and the four builders and…”

“He did screw up the discretion thing there, didn’t he? Always thought he was crap at it.”

“So what happens now?”

“I guess the Christmas bonus is out.”

“Screw him,” snapped Sharon. “If he was serious about this whole saving-the-city shit, then he’d have talked to me properly and skipped this politics stuff and… I dunno, bought me a posh meal and a bus pass or something. I mean, what happens to us now? The wendigo knows who I am. He must’ve seen me at the office, at Burns and Stoke; and the walls were screaming there, they were screaming, and I was gonna go in and do the shaman thing, whatever that is. But now…”