The Neon Court (33 page)

I was aware of every ridge in my mouth, the lingering taste of blood on my tongue. “What will you …”

“You will swear!”

“Careful,” warned Bakker. “Careful.”

“The Tribe have never been our allies, Mr Mayor,” whispered Dees. “The Court have.”

“Fine,” I breathed. “Fine. I’ll … do as you ask.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear.”

She smiled.

We felt a sickness inside, a fist in our belly, a more-than-words pressure in our throat.

Her hand relaxed and she turned away. Immediately her followers, thralls and servants, began to bustle towards the door, moving as one, ants serving their queen. Umbrellas were raised as she stepped outside, gate opened, stretched cars standing with their doors ready to receive, and as quickly as she had arrived, Lady Neon and all of hers were gone.

Bakker said, his voice low and dark, “Words are power, power is magic.”

I bit my lip hard enough to taste the blood.

The man in the red coat was still standing in front of us.

He said, “I’m coming with you.”

“You’re what?” I blurted.

“Sir,” interjected Dees smoothly, “the Midnight Mayor is quite suitably protected by the Aldermen, and while we appreciate your offer of assistance …”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Mate,” I said, “it’s pissing it down out there and you aren’t even wearing a T-shirt.”

“You have not proven reliable, Mr Mayor,” he snapped. “I am here to guarantee reliability.”

Bakker said, “Take him.” My eyes flicked uncontrollably to him. “The man is clearly an assassin, but an assassin for hire. He will attempt to manipulate and use you, but you are aware of this fact and can play the game better. No – not true.
I
can play the game better. Take him with you. If nothing else, he will provide useful distraction should you need someone to put between yourself and Oda.”

I looked back at the man in the red coat. “You’ve got a name, mate?”

“Theydon.”

I raised my eyebrows. “As in …?”

“Just Theydon.”

I shrugged. “Fair enough, sunshine jimbo. I should warn you that in the course of the last however many hours it’s been, I’ve been chased, burnt, blinded, dropped from great heights, threatened with all manner of weapons ranging from the magical to the mundane, tied up, beaten up, chatted with a giant rat and shared my consciousness with the ghost of a sorcerer renowned for the systematic murder of all his kin.”

“Systematic is a curious choice of word,” offered Bakker. “But I sense now is not the time.”

My smile grew a little thinner. “So sure: you want to come along for the ride, come along. It’s up to you.”

His knuckles looked like they were about to pop out from under his skin. But all he said was “I’ll make the arrangements.”

*

I took Dees to one side.

“Bakker’s not being cooperative.”

“That’s hardly fair!” exclaimed Bakker, flicking his fingertips idly at the drooping leaf of a potted palm tree and sighing as it failed to stir at his incorporeal touch.

“Having no better plan for the moment,” I went on through gritted teeth, “I’m going after this JG person.”

“JG?” echoed Dees.

“The chosen one.”

“Because of the Court?”

“Because of the Court, the Tribe, O’Rourke, the prophecy, because all this can’t be a coincidence, and the fact that Oda said ‘Where’s the girl?’ And because, at the end of the day, Dees, Lady Neon was right – it’s all gotta be connected somehow.”

“‘Where’s the girl?’” Dees’ voice was the hollow emptiness of someone who has opened the fridge on a hungry night and found nothing left but a lump of rotting cheese and half a lemon: resigned to what must be.

“You want to have the Court and the Tribe and Oda on your back all at the same time?”

“Not especially.”

“Well, then.”

“Are you sure this is …” She gestured uneasily. “… the most prudent course?”

“You have a better one?”

She thought about it. “If I suggested a meeting, you would make an inappropriate sound, possibly coupled with derogatory remarks?”

“Yep.”

“I thought so. And how exactly do you propose finding this chosen one?”

“Start where it all began: Sidcup.”

Silence. Dees studied her shoes. I waited. When I could wait no more I blurted, “All right, come on! What’s wrong with this otherwise flawless scheme?”

“Sidcup,” she echoed.

“Yes, Sidcup, the place of the fire, the place where Court and Tribe went looking for her, the place where Oda was stabbed and I was summoned: Sidcup, oh, Sidcup, yes?”

Dees coughed politely to cut me off before I could embark on my ode to irritation. “Sidcup,” she said gently, “vanished from the pages of the A–Z about forty-five minutes ago.”

Silence.

When the silence was reaching critical mass, Bakker added, “Oh dear.”

“Define … ‘vanished’.”

“There are empty pages where Sidcup should be. It has become like Cockfosters: a memory of a name without a geographical reference point.”

“I imagine that makes it … difficult to get to?” I hazarded.

“All roads are cut off, all maps are blank, no train nor bus will go to it,” she intoned.

A thought slipped through the dull fog of my brain and waltzed all the way to the tip of my tongue. Before it could be stopped, I’d blurted, “Your family live south of the river.”

Dees’ eyes flashed, a moment of something bright and fierce and dangerous in her face. Then, very quietly, “Yes. They do. In Croydon, to be exact.”

“And Croydon is …”

“It was one of the first boroughs to vanish from the map. No trains reach it, no bus, no car. The roundabouts send traffic back the way it came, brick walls block the cycle paths, ancient paint on the stones declaring ‘end of the line’ or ‘wrong way’ or ‘no way out’. Croydon, to all intents and purposes, no longer exists, if it ever did.”

“Your family …”

“Both mobile and landline numbers are no longer recognised.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke, but stared at some distant thing out of reach and out of sight, for her eyes only.

I said, “Sorry.”

“We know what this is,” she replied. “It has been remedied before. It will be so again.” Dees looked smaller, all the same, than I had ever seen her. The bruised weariness of her eyes was too deep and dark for her subtle make-up to disguise.

Theydon called out: “I’m ready.”

Dees said, “So, Mr Mayor, can you think of a way to get to a place where no one else can?”

I heard a chuckle next to me. “Oh, yes,” said Bakker. “Of course you can.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I can think of a way.”

There was something I had to do, before going back to Sidcup.

Penny found me sat by a bank of indoor plants, flicking through my battered and much loved copy of the A–Z London street map. Dozens of pages were empty, nothing but a number in a corner to indicate that anything had been there to begin with.

Penny sat down next to me, said, “Well,
I’ve
had a lovely snooze and a cup of coffee. How about you?”

I didn’t answer.

“Nah,” she agreed. “Didn’t think your day was getting better. What now, Mr Man?”

I closed the A–Z, dropped the little book back into my bag. “I’m going back to Sidcup in the company of an assassin from the Neon Court to find a chosen one who may or may not be responsible for either a war or the end of daylight.”

“Yep,” sighed Penny, “as ideas go, it’s another fucking winner.”

“I don’t have a choice any more. This chosen one – JG – is all I’ve got left to go on.”

“I heard on the grapevine that Sidcup has vanished.”

“Along with most of suburban London,” I added with a scowl. “The city’s contracting in on itself, throwing up walls; and on the other side …”

Bakker said, “And on the other side, you can be assured, there is nothing good.”

Penny spoke over him, unaware there was a third party to our conversation: “What do you want me to do?”

“The way the city is shrinking – edges first – suggests that central London will be the last place to get swallowed up by whatever this is. So find somewhere bang smack in the middle.”

“Hide?” she echoed. “Is that it?”

“Not this time, no.” I glanced left, I glanced right, saw no one within ready earshot, lowered my voice for luck and leant close to her. “You remember how to do a recorded delivery?”

Her lips tightened, muscles moved in her throat. But she nodded and said, “Sure, yeah, I remember.”

“I may need one in the next few hours. Me at the very least, possibly one, maybe two others. I may need a very fast rescue – faster than your car can get from Lewisham to Mile End – and that takes planning. Can you do it?”

A flicker of hesitation, a moment of indrawn breath. Then she nodded, all stubborn chin and unwavering eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “Sure. I can do it. Hey – you expecting this assassin fucker to try and pop you?”

“I’m expecting
everyone
to try,” I replied, trying to rub some of the weariness out of my eyes.

“And you think you aren’t psychologically damaged!” offered Bakker.

“Besides,” I added through gritted teeth, “the sun not rising, the city shrinking, Oda going psycho-shit, Sidcup, the burning tower – dig that connection.”

Penny raised her eyebrows. “You think Oda’s still gunning for you?”

“Of course she is,” sighed Bakker.

“Probably,” I added.

“All this,” Bakker went on, “every single part of it, they’re all tied up together, strings in the hand of a puppet master. Your apprentice is terrified, Matthew.”

Our eyes went to Penny’s face. Her lower lip was curled in, as if she was trying hard not to bite it. She caught our look and flashed an uneasy smile. “Gotcha,” she said brightly. “OK. One fucking recorded delivery coming right up. I’ll charge my phone and everything.”

“Terrified,” added Bakker, leaning in until his mouth almost brushed her cheek. Then he drew back again with the slight hiss of a satisfied conclusion. “But not of you. I sometimes saw this look in Dana too, before she died.”

My head snapped round, the words were past my lips before I could stop them. “Don’t you dare talk about …” I bit back on the rest of the sentence, but too late.

Penny said, “Uh – what the fuck?”

I half closed my eyes, tried to shake free of the anger. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “Trouble with the staff.”

She hesitated, then a strange smile spread over her face. “Hey,” she said, “you know, you don’t have to do the hero business alone.”

“I know.”

“Sure you do. Sure. You going to kill this Oda?”

“I –” I began, then faltered. “I don’t know.”

“Of course you are,” said Bakker easily. “I mean, are we even pretending you aren’t?”

“She helped me in the past,” I said, finding myself unable to meet Penny’s eye and unwilling to meet Bakker’s. “She wasn’t … not a friend … but when you do all that together, then … but she is the cause, the reason why the sun doesn’t rise. If I can get this Blackout creature out of her I will.”

“You can’t,” said Bakker.

“And if you can’t?” asked Penny.

“We’ll see how busy the waters are below that particular bridge when we come to it.”

She looked up, met my eye. There was something there that was almost concern. Almost something more. “You be OK, OK?” she said.

“That’s my big party trick,” I sighed, stretching. “Everyone’s gotta have a talent.”

It was raining outside.

It seemed to have been raining for a very long time.

“Yes,” said Bakker, head tilted upwards to study the orange-black-sodium sky. “That happened last time too.”

Nearby stood a hotel of white walls and glass, windows lit up in the reception area. The lift stood still, a little box of light in a tube of darkness. In the restaurant a waiter had fallen asleep over a half-cleared table of picked bones and smeared sauces. A pile of suitcases, off the train from Paris, filled a tall gold trolley, which showed no sign of moving. Outside in the street, the traffic lights were set to red. The buses queued four to a bus stop, no one waiting to board. In the second-hand bookshop opposite someone had stuck up a sheet of paper with words written in felt-tip pen –
NO ONE HOME NOTHING TO SEE –
as a substitute for the “closed” sign. One couple ate pizza in the restaurant next door, four waiters gathered round one table, not sure if they were coming or going.

I mumbled, “What time is it?”

Dees instinctively moved to check her watch, then hesitated. “Does it matter?”

The man called Theydon, his coat forming a peculiar shape about his hips where it just clipped the edge of the two hidden blades strapped to his back, gave a little half-shrug. Muscles bunched and unbunched; here was a man who wanted you to know that he could carry a mammoth on his back, without the crude embarrassment of actually telling you. Our dislike deepened.

“Well?” said Dees, and it took me a moment to realise she was talking to me. “I gather an official car is out of the question, so just how are you planning on us getting to Sidcup?”

“Night bus,” I replied.

Silence.

I outwaited Dees by a microsecond.

“Well, we’re all quivering, Mr Mayor,” she blurted. “Enlighten us. Exactly how does a night bus break down the magical walls currently closing in on this city, where all other means of transport fail?”

“Ah-ha!” I intoned.

Bakker said, “Was I as insufferable as you when imparting the ancient mysteries of our craft?”

“First thing you need to do,” I went on, “is get very, very uncomfortable.”

It took twenty minutes.

I walked up Grays Inn Road, shoes tied together and slung round my neck, socks saturated black from soaking through in a heartbeat, sleeves rolled up, head bare, flesh goosebumped, eyes stinging from the rain. Behind me came Theydon, coat pulled off, feet bare on the rain-reflective paving stones, looking, to our intense annoyance, as bedraggled as a superstar in the movies. Behind him walked Dees. She had arguably got the worst deal of us all, since we had discovered on leaving the British Library that one of the receptionists had a similar (yet not quite right) shoe size, and was, praise be, wearing particularly silly shoes. They were red, with a high heel that should have been outlawed along with landmines and mustard gas. Dees was limping. Her suit jacket was open, and her shirt was wet enough to sag. Her skin had turned a chicken-flesh colour, with hints of blue about the
lips, and in her eye was the look of someone who, having knowingly committed to the most inane plan in the world, would stay committed to the death.