Some four and a half hours before a goblin walked into Sharon Li’s life and demanded extra large tea with milk and sugar, Sammy the Elbow, second (possibly third, really, who could say?) greatest shaman who’d ever lived, was annoyed if unsurprised to receive a visitor to his den.
The den was in Camden, and had been advertised as a “studio flat”, which was far too small for Sammy with his bed of cardboard, soft beds being for losers, and his extensive collection of tinned food and toothpaste.
This visitor, from whose back blazed wings of blue fire that might have been those of an angel, or perhaps of a dragon, and whose eyes were two endless pits at the bottom of which burned unending madness, said, “Wotcha.”
Sammy had replied, “Oi oi, you look shit, don’t you?”
His visitor considered this proposition. Since it came from a three-foot-nothing goblin whose body had clearly interpreted the genetic command to sprout hair as relating more to ears, nose and belly button than any real growth on the surface of his skull, he wasn’t sure if he was ready to accept Sammy’s diagnosis without querying the perspective from which it was made. Then again, what Sammy lacked in outward presentation, he more than made up for with a certain unstoppable grasp of the situation. So the visitor gave a shrug and said:
“Rough couple of… well… everything.”
“You know about Dog?”
“I love the way you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Just know stuff.”
“I am the second greatest shaman ever to walk the earth, ain’t I; how thick would it make me if I didn’t know shit? It’s not like you get to be as talented as me without picking up some stuff.”
“It’s killed again.”
“Some prat in Clerkenwell, I know.”
“It—”
“Tore his throat out, ripped off his ear. I know, I know!”
“And last night I went to the place where the spirits were and heard—”
“Its howl, of course you fucking did, it’s been howling for weeks now and you’re just too fucking ‘boom’ to do anything about it, aren’t you?”
“Its footsteps—”
“Burn the earth, I know, I know!”
Silence. Then the man whose blood was fire and whose eyes were an endless storm, said, “Sammy, in all the many things you know, and I get that there’s a lot, has it occurred to you that sometimes it’s just plain good manners to let the other guy finish?”
“I’m a busy goblin, I can’t sit around for everyone else to catch up. Besides, you’re the Midnight Mayor–what you going to do about it?”
The man addressed as the Midnight Mayor sighed. “I’m trying. It’s hard.”
“Fucking lame.”
“I’ve found someone I think you should meet.”
“You wanting favours now? Bad habit to get into, needing favours.”
“She’s a shaman.”
“Any good?”
“Maybe. Maybe very. But she needs training.”
Sammy spat, a single globe of green-tinted spit flying across the floor. Where it hit concrete, it began to smoke, giving off a thin acrid white vapour. “Can’t be handling kids.”
“It’s important.”
Sammy’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, a finger waggling towards the other’s face. “You… scheming, Midnight Mayor?” he asked.
“Me? Scheme?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I think you look like a thicko in a bin bag just like everyone else, but then that got me thinking, maybe you want to look like a thicko in a bin bag, maybe that’s all part of the game, pretend to be a thicko so that when you stop being a thicko everyone’s so surprised that no one notices you’re not that bright anyway.”
“I can see you’ve thought this through.”
“Too right.”
A silence stretched like the screech of chalk across a blackboard.
Then, “She’s founded this thing, this society. It’s called Magicals Anonymous.”
“Shit name.”
“Dog’s killings aren’t random.”
“Course they ain’t.”
“He’s targeting a very specific group of people, all connected to a very specific operation.”
“Course he is! But you’re too tied up with the cash thing to do nothin’ ’bout it!”
“The four greatest killers the world has ever seen are in town.”
“What’s new?”
The man addressed as the Midnight Mayor said, “I think they were hired by a wendigo.”
Silence again.
Then, “You pillock.”
The man called the Midnight Mayor grinned. “Thought you might say that.”