Sammy came in a van.
The quickness with which he arrived suggested he hadn’t been far away to begin with.
The van was driven by a familiar face.
Sharon said, “Ms… Somchit?”
Five foot two, black hair, black jacket, black trousers, black shoes, Ms Somchit exuded friendly unstoppability as she clambered out of the blue Transit van and inspected Rhys. They’d dragged him up onto a park bench, where he lay, head in Edna’s lap, Kevin keeping a hygienic distance.
Ms Somchit, who had attended the first meeting of Magicals Anonymous and offered advice on Council Tax, beamed.
“Hello, dear,” she exclaimed, easing back the sodden mess of shirt pressed to Rhys’s side. “Sammy said you might need a lift.”
Sammy the Elbow hopped down from the passenger side of the van, unimpressed by the distance he had to go from vehicle to earth comparative with the length of his knobbly grey legs. He waddled over to Rhys, peered at the bloody mess, sniffed and exclaimed, “Wendigos. Amateurs.”
“He needs a hospital,” whispered Edna.
“He needs a sterile controlled environment staffed by qualified professionals!” added Kevin, his voice a fraught almost-shriek.
“We need help,” corrected Sharon, “and you,” a finger stabbed towards Sammy’s face, “are gonna give it right bloody now.”
The back of the Transit van smelt of rubber and wet dog.
Kevin exclaimed “Oh, God, that is so—”
“Can it, vampy,” snapped Sammy, “or I’ll go garlic on you.”
Edna, Kevin and Rhys rode in the back, with Rhys held steady by Edna at his head and Kevin, after two pairs of latex gloves and a sterile scrub, at his feet. Ms Somchit drove the van with the grace of a runaway train, cheerfully unaware of lesser beings that might get in the way.
Sammy and Sharon sat beside her, and Sharon seethed.
She seethed through the backstreets of Tooting and onto the main road to Balham.
She seethed past Wandsworth Common and beneath the railway lines that congregated round Clapham Junction. She seethed towards Battersea, until at last Sammy exploded:
“Bloody hell, can you sulk or what?”
Sharon’s fist slammed into the dashboard, hard enough to make its dials jump. “I,” she declared, each word falling hard and slow, “have been used.”
An embarrassed silence.
“All this… all this teaching me to be a shaman, Midnight Mayor, fate of the city crap–you’re just using me. The Midnight Mayor potters around in the background and I get to deal with the shit. And you know what? All that’d be okay–I mean crap but okay–because it’s not like I had much of a clue what to do with a homework assignment which was ‘Save the city’, but!” Her fist slammed into the dashboard again, making even Ms Somchit wince. “But now Rhys is bloody bleeding back there and there’s a guy who’s been buried alive and we could’ve bloody died so you–” Sammy had the good grace to shy away from Sharon “–you are gonna tell me what the hell is going on, right bloody now! And no cryptic shit, because I’ve had it up to here with cryptic shit. And no calling me soggy-brains, because you’re basically five parts nasal hair to one part mug, and I won’t be having it any more!”
Sammy looked at Ms Somchit. Ms Somchit found herself very interested in the middle of the road. Sammy rolled his eyes–an impressive deed considering the eye-to-skull ratio the little goblin could achieve.
“Okay,” he grumbled. “So maybe we’ve been a little… you know… thin on some stuff, okay? But that’s only because we thought you’d be bright enough to work it out.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” demanded Sharon.
“The Midnight Mayor, course!” exclaimed Sammy. “The protector of the city and all that. Ms Somchit here is an Alderman what works for him.”
“Hello there,” sang out Ms Somchit from behind the wheel.
“So you what… you came to Magicals Anonymous to spy on us, is that it?”
“No!” Ms Somchit insisted. “I mean of course I did, naturally I did, because no one in the office could believe anyone would do something quite as… remarkable as organise a society for the magically confused. And you know, I really do think it’s an excellent thing you’re doing, Ms Li, and if the entire welfare of the city wasn’t under direct and immediate threat, I would be applauding your efforts and possibly providing fragrant herbal tea.”
“What about you?” said Sharon, glowering at Sammy. “Why’d you come to the coffee shop? Why’d you decide to teach me?”
Sammy suppressed a groan with the infinite patience of the learned dealing with the naive. “Because,” he said, “you’re a shaman and they’re bloody hard to find. And I’m bored with there being so many amateurs out there who think they can do it ‘in their spare time’, because that is shit and it leads to shoddy work and I can’t be having that, no thank you. Also,” he added, “because the Midnight Mayor asked me and I’m just a sucker for toothpaste.”