They had persuaded Mrs Rafaat back inside the hall.
Dog had padded quietly after her, and now sat, a shaggy, panting monster at his small mistress’s feet, examining the members of Magicals Anonymous with a beady, bloody stare. Whenever his gaze turned to the barely conscious form of Eddie Parks, his lips curled back in rage, and only a gentle pat on the head and a cajoling “Who’s a naughty doggy?” from Mrs Rafaat appeared to quell Dog’s otherwise unrestrained loathing. Eddie Parks quaked at Dog’s stare, and turned away only to find a clipboard and a biro hovering in front of his nose.
“Hi,” exclaimed Kevin. “So, I just lost like, disgusting amounts of blood tonight, and I was wondering… what’s your rhesus type?”
Rhys passed Mrs Rafaat another cup of tea, his hand shaking as Dog’s great head turned to examine the brew. The druid had always worried that animals never liked him, and now his anxiety made him feel quite faint.
“Thank you, dear,” murmured Mrs Rafaat. “It’s been a very stressful night.”
Sharon was examining the wreckage of the hall, aghast. Whatever heightened state of non-drumming-based spiritual enlightenment she’d reached a few minutes before, it was fading fast against the onslaught of practical considerations. “Oh shit,” she muttered. “Am I gonna have to pay for all this?”
“I’m sure they’ve got insurance,” offered Ms Somchit. The black-clad Alderman was cradling her mug of herbal tea like someone whose happiness is proportional to their share of tannin.
“Yeah, but I haven’t!” wailed the shaman. “And where are we gonna have meetings now?”
I know a lovely gasometer–spacious, warm, fascinating acoustics? suggested Sally from her perch.
Edna, meanwhile, couldn’t stop looking with horrified fascination at Dog and Mrs Rafaat. Kevin nudged her conspiratorially. While Eddie Parks’s hand trembled its way down a health questionnaire, the vampire had tried to disguise the bloody hole in his shirt with a tactfully draped tea cloth, albeit in vain.
“Uh, babes?” he murmured. “You’re kind of staring at the nice lady with the giant monstrous killing machine, and that’s like, not really polite.”
Edna forced her features into something more composed and shuffled uneasily towards Mrs Rafaat. Dog sniffed as she approached but, at a pat on the head from Mrs Rafaat, sank back down on his haunches.
“Um… my lady?” hazarded Edna. “Ma’am? I’m Edna. I’m uh… I’m your high priestess.”
“Are you?” snuffled Mrs Rafaat, whom the evening’s events had now made rather teary. “That’s very nice of you, dear, but I’m afraid I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You are Greydawn, aren’t you?” demanded Chris the exorcist. “I mean, you’re who all this fuss is about?”
“That’s what people tell me,” she sighed. “But really, I don’t know. Everyone seems to think my little puppy here–” she fondled behind Dog’s ear, provoking a potent whine of appreciation “–is somehow mystical and… well… anti-social. But I keep explaining he’s just my little diddums.”
Edna’s gaze turned to the bloodied face of Mrs Rafaat’s little did-dums. She took a step back, her throat pulsing as she swallowed. “Uh… well, I just wanted to say what an honour it is, ma’am, and I, uh… Thanks for all your hard work.” She retreated, desperate to take her eyes off Dog but not quite able to do so.
In a corner of the wrecked hall, Sammy, Swift and Sharon were huddled in urgent conference on the problem of Greydawn–namely, that Mrs Rafaat didn’t seem to realise she was Greydawn.
“She’s human,” murmured Sharon. “I mean, isn’t that it? She’s human and she’s Greydawn. But mostly she’s just human. Like, I look at you,” pointing at Swift, “and I can see you’re a sorcerer and other shit too. And I look at Rhys over there, and I can see he’s got like, these major psychological issues with his allergies and stuff, but is also a druid… but I look at Mrs Rafaat and she’s just… Mrs Rafaat.”
“On the other hand,” Sharon mused, “I kind of doubt Dog would let anyone other than Greydawn give his tummy a rub. And if Burns and Stoke tried to capture Greydawn, and if Dog has been killing the summoning team involved in that, then I guess it’s not a huge leap to say that something clearly went crappy last time Burns and Stoke tried to bind and compel Our Lady of 4 a.m., and so… and so…” Sharon spoke with the care of someone double-checking every logical twist before even thinking of uttering her thoughts out loud “… maybe Mrs Rafaat is the side effect of what went wrong?”
“What, you think the Lady’s mortal form is some Indian bird from Wembley?” demanded Sammy.
For once Swift’s face was not a picture of discontent. “Speaking as someone who has been at the centre of many mystical cock-ups, I can think of several ways in which—”
“But why Mrs Rafaat?” interjected Sharon. “Why’d she become this woman?”
Swift hesitated, then grumbled, “I have no idea.” His eyes surveyed the room and fixed on the cowering shape of Eddie Parks. “Why don’t we ask?”