Kevin was saying, “You can’t have too much antiseptic…”
He stood in the wrecked remains of the hall surrounded by a largely curious gathering of Magicals Anonymous. The crowbar was still lodged firmly in his chest but, from the fact he was still on his feet, this didn’t seem cause him nearly as much physical distress as hygenic.
Two witches, their hands covered by latex gloves, their faces by white masks, were tentatively slathering the crowbar with bright pink antiseptic fluid from a bottle found in the copious depths of Kevin’s bag. Sharon approached gingerly, and at the sight of her Kevin shrieked, “Face mask, face mask! Oh my God, haven’t you people heard of germs?”
A face mask was proffered, by Chris the exorcist, whose eyes were locked on the crowbar protruding from the vampire’s chest.
Holding the mask over her nose and mouth, Sharon mumbled, “You okay, Kevin?”
“God no!” he replied. “They completely missed my heart, but have you seen this?” He gestured at the crowbar, all the while dripping a mixture of blood and medication onto the floor. “It just screams tetanus!”
“It’s a magical crowbar through your chest, stupid!” corrected Sammy.
“That’s worse!” wailed Kevin. “What if it carries magical tetanus?”
Nearby, Rhys sat, a cup of tea pressed into his hands by the concerned Mrs Rafaat. Every aspect of his body language suggested that here was a druid who had been pushed to the edge and whose survival could only be attributed to luck.
“Is that it?” he murmured as Sharon came over and sat next to him. “Have we won?”
“Uh… yeah. But kind of no.”
“Oh,” he said. “But at least it’s progress?”
“I think it’s all terribly sad,” put in Mrs Rafaat. “I mean, those poor psychopathic builders probably had no choice about being a composite destructive murderous personality. I blame their upbringing.”
Sharon turned to stare at the older woman. There was something about this lady, a certain… normality that, in this place, made no sense. Mrs Rafaat smiled, fidgeting with the long embroidered scarf around her neck. “Well, that’s just what I think,” she offered.
Sharon thought she saw the white-suited shape of Dez flit across the wall behind Mrs Rafaat. “You… get weird dreams, right?” she asked carefully. “I mean, you’re not like… magical or unstable or explosive or anything like that; it’s just that you get, you know, weird stuff happening, yeah?”
“I wouldn’t want to exaggerate things,” ventured Mrs Rafaat. “There are so many people in this world who are far worse off than me.”
“Out of interest,” Sharon heard her own voice, as if from a long way off, “when did these weird dreams start happening?”
“A few years ago, but really shouldn’t we be focusing on this nice vampire with the impaling problem?”
Turning on the spot, a full 360 degrees, Sharon looked slowly round the room. As she did she saw, with a shaman’s eye, all the truths behind the shapes–of Kevin
so gross so gross so gross
of Chris the exorcist, who wondered:
will the builders haunt this place I don’t know it looked like a peaceful way to go, in a violent sense, but then with mystic forces such as these there are always deeper issues at work…
Her gaze wandered up to the rafters, where in the clouds of pigeons still flapping around she could see another shape, drawn out of the falling feathers, which swirled and drifted round each other and which formed, for a very brief moment, the shape of a human arm curling round the verminous flock, or a hint of a human face twisting up. Look a little deeper, and there were the shadows of the things which had taken place in this hall–kids in judo uniforms tumbling on old stuffed mats; actors prancing round the room doing whatever exercises actors did as preparation for emoting; the Sunday prayer seminar for singles concerned about their love lives. Can’t find a boyfriend? Can’t sustain a relationship? Monstrous sounds or manifestations while having sex? Come to our singles prayer seminar, and all shall be explained.
And there was Dez, white suit and fake tan, big red microphone held up as he exclaimed, “And now a message from our sponsor! Do you have problems seeing the truth of things? Is the journey down the hidden path just a little too hard-going? Not convinced you’ve got the right aura of shamanly wisdom? Try doing it better, the ultimate solution for a difficult situation!”
Sharon glared at him, and her spirit guide had the good grace to fade unobtrusively into the grey realms of psychological discord from which he had sprung. Finally Sharon turned back to Mrs Rafaat: there she stood, a nice old lady with curling grey hair, one of Wembley’s finest saris modestly sparing her ankles from the gaze of lewd observers, and she was… normal. Utterly and entirely 100 per cent Mrs Rafaat, not a hint of power, not a shadow of a doubt, not a glimmer of magic, not a—
What had Edna said?
“Derek did hire a couple of very nice wizards to try and scry for Greydawn, but they didn’t find anything. Which was odd, as you’d have expected some sort of mystical residue or glow, but it’s really as if she’s just vanished into the city.”
And being a shaman wasn’t, Sharon recalled, about being invisible. It was about being so much a part of your environment that no one even bothered to look.
“Excuse me?” Mrs Rafaat was staring politely at Sharon’s left shoulder. “Um… Ms Li? Are you still there? Only you do appear to have vanished into thin air.”
For a second the two of them stood there, shaman and smiling old lady, trying to puzzle each other out. Then Sharon turned around, snapping back into the world of perceived reality, her mouth already opening to shout, “Sammy! Get your arse here now!”
The goblin shimmered out of nowhere to appear where he’d always been, just behind Sharon. “No need to shout,” he grumbled. “Drama drama drama, that’s all humans ever–ow!” Sharon’s fingers had closed round one of his ears and she dragged him towards the troll-sized remains of the door. “You can’t! It’s my… This is not dignified!” shrilled the goblin as he was pulled out into the night.
She dragged him into the alley down the side of the hall, let go of his ear and hissed, “At one with the bloody city!”
Sammy paused, just in case he’d missed a deeper meaning to this sentiment. “I know you’ve got potato brains,” he concluded, “and you’re gonna have to talk me down to your intellectual level.”
She hissed with frustration, turning on the spot like a caged animal. “At one with the city! That’s how you vanish, that’s what being invisible means–being at one with the bloody city!”
“Yeah, and—”
“And why would anyone care about us lot anyway, really? I mean, I know that like, Chris is looking to get more business and Rhys has these allergy issues, but no one cares about Magicals Anonymous.”
“I’m with you there.”
“But Mrs Rafaat isn’t magical, isn’t special, isn’t powerful, isn’t dangerous, isn’t angry, isn’t anything really that you’d think would make seeking help important; but you know what? She’s so much not all of these things it’s like she’s nothing else, do you see?”
“No. What are you talking about?”
“That’s all she is! Mrs Rafaat is too human!”
“Too—”
“Too human,” insisted Sharon, “to be bloody true.”
“Oh.” Then silence. “Oh!” repeated Sammy, struggling with this syllable as being something not present in regular vocabulary. Then, raising his voice a little, “You may look thick as a brick wall, but maybe you’re not so dumb after all.”
“Thanks.”
“Which isn’t to say you’re right, cos you probably ain’t…”
“That’s fine.”
“… but if you are, then well… yeah. That’s something, innit?” mused Sammy. Then, as if the desire to say it had been welling up until it became unstoppable, he exclaimed, “If it was so bloody obvious all this bloody time, why the bloody hell couldn’t the Midnight Mayor arsehole figure it out for himself? Incompetent wanker!”
There was a polite cough from the end of the alley.
Sharon turned with the shuffle of one who has seen a lot of disaster but can’t believe she’s seen the last of it.
A man stood at the end of the alley, a disruption of the dark.
“Excuse me?” he said. “Would you be talking about me?”