Eddie Parks was sitting, a wretched bundle of twisted suit and tie, in the centre of a wide circle of Magicals Anonymous. Members stared at him, mouths, or perhaps jaws, agape.
“Well,” said Sharon at length. “So,” she added when no one stirred. “Usually I’d offer you a cup of tea and ask you about your issues and that. But actually I think you’re gonna crash and burn, and I’d kind of like to point and laugh while you do.”
Hearing herself, she flinched. “Did I say that out loud? Sorry, that’s really unprofessional of me, I mean… sorry. But yeah.”
This wasn’t the sympathetic reception Eddie might have hoped for. But any urge to come back with a sharp reply was discouraged by a low grumbling from the pit of Dog’s belly. It seemed unlikely that the animal understood much English, but he did seem to have got the gist.
“The cleaner,” ventured Sharon, “was Mrs Rafaat?”
As he talked, Eddie had gone to great lengths not to look at Mrs Rafaat. But now there seemed no choice.
“Yes,” he admitted. “It was… it was…” He gestured feebly towards the old woman, who couldn’t quite prevent herself from touching a hand to her chest and raising her eyebrows in a “No, me?” manner.
“But I’m not dead!” she exclaimed. “And I certainly don’t remember being used as a human sacrifice.”
“Ever worked as a cleaner?” asked Sharon with forced brightness.
“Well, yes… but that was years ago!”
“Maybe… two years, for example?”
Mrs Rafaat rubbed uneasily at Dog’s back, a comfort gesture she didn’t notice herself making. “But surely I’d remember being stabbed?” she suggested. “I don’t want to disappoint anyone here, but really this all seems very unlikely.”
“Blood,” said a voice so soft that at first no one believed it had spoken. Sharon peered around to look at the speaker.
“Blood,” she said again; and there was Edna, high priestess of the Friendlies, very still on a broken plastic chair, staring at Dog and his mistress.
“Uh… blood in a nice way?” hazarded Sharon.
“In the old days, in the darker days,” murmured Edna, “Greydawn was… more complicated. Before street lighting, when the smog was in the streets, when the rats brought the plague and traitors’ heads were put on spikes on London Bridge… she was still the protector of the wall, she guarded the lonely travellers in the night. But her touch was… more than just protection against the coldness and the nightmares. Her favours could be bought, with blood.”
Several pairs of eyes tried their best not to stare too hard at Mrs Rafaat, who’d just become distracted by an earnest conversation with Sally the banshee about whether green was really such a bad colour for a sari.
“What kind of favours?” asked Sharon. “Though I really think I’m not gonna like the answer.”
“It was said that for a prick of blood on the end of your finger, she could guard your path against all ill. But that for the blood of life, for a dying breath, there was no power that could stand before her.”
There would have been silence, except that Rhys sneezed.
“Okay…” said Sharon. “I guess that kind of explains the whole Burns-and-Stoke-hunting-her-down thing.”
“But why?” demanded Swift, scowling with frustration. “I mean, put me on the spot and ask me what I’d do with unimaginable power and I’d have… well, a failure of imagination.”
“Lots of toothpaste,” replied Sammy with a malignant glow in his eye. “And I’d make sure everyone got the truth about stupid bloody Blistering Steve and his stupid bloody spontaneous combustion.”
“I need a new job,” admitted Sharon. “I mean, I’m okay with working nine to five, but I’d kind of rather do ten to five, or maybe even ten to four, and I’d have a short lunch break and work really hard, and un-install solitaire from my computer and that…”
“People!” cried Swift. “We’re talking about she who divides the night from the day, Our Lady of 4 a.m., Greydawn herself, being paid for with the lifeblood of mortals! I think we’re a bit past a supply of toothpaste and reasonable working hours!”
“Yeah, but you didn’t graduate into a recession,” grumbled Sharon. She raised her voice. “Hands up everyone here who wants infinite power.”
One hand was cautiously raised from the far end of the room, before someone swatted it back down.
“And hands up everyone here who wants an annual income of around £35,000 after tax and a reasonably sized one-bedroom flat within Zones 1 or 2 and easy walking distance of an Underground station?” Nearly every hand shot up, including one or two which bore talons. Sharon turned to Swift, grinning with satisfaction. “This,” she explained, “is why I’m a shaman, with people skills and that, and you’re just some git in a tatty coat.”
Swift threw his hands up in exasperation. “Okay. But the fact remains that Mrs Rafaat–the first Mrs Rafaat–was stabbed and died and made a wish, and now this Mrs Rafaat, our Mrs Rafaat, is sitting here alive and very not dead. Can you explain that, shaman?”
Sharon looked at Mrs Rafaat, who shrugged. “I’m so sorry, dear. I rather feel like I’m having something of an existential crisis. Might I have another cup of tea?” Rhys was at the kettle before Mrs Rafaat had completed her request. This was something he did know how to accomplish. In the confusion of recent hours, replete with human sacrifice, blood-soaked monsters and a CEO with an ambitious and unusual business model, tea was a lighthouse of certainty in a stormy sea.
“You said–” Sharon resisted the urge to kick Eddie as she spoke “–that Mrs Rafaat–the other Mrs Rafaat–died on the floor of the office. That by dying she completed your spell. What if she made a wish with her dying breath? What if Greydawn granted it?”
“What on earth could she have wished for that would lead to all this confusion?” demanded Mrs Rafaat.
“ ‘Oh God, let me live’?” murmured Sharon.
Breaking the silence that followed, Swift admitted, “It does make a certain sense. I know that’s what I’d be thinking.”
“Maybe she made this wish,” Sharon pressed. “And maybe Greydawn heard it, but maybe she didn’t quite understand. The blood had been spilt; the spell had been cast; they’d summoned Greydawn. But it was Mrs Rafaat’s blood on the floor and Mrs Rafaat who whispered her desires–and Greydawn tried to fulfil them? Only, she couldn’t bring back the dead, couldn’t undo the blood, so she tried the next best thing. She tried to make Mrs Rafaat live.”
All eyes turned inexorably towards Mrs Rafaat.
“No,” murmured the older woman. “That’s just not…”
Dog crooned at her feet, turning all attention back to him. He’d rolled onto his back and now lay, stretched out with his paws in the air, tail beating like a piston. Mrs Rafaat hesitated. Her gaze roamed from Dog to Eddie to the eyes fixed on her from all round the room, then up to the cracked walls and shattered windows.
“No,” she repeated, shaking her head. “No, it’s not…”
Words failed her, and she stood up. Dog rolled onto his feet and followed her as she turned away and hurried towards the door.
Swift moved to go after her, but Sharon got there first.
“You’re still an arsehole. I’ll do this.”
Outside, the old woman stood leaning against an iron bollard. Dog sat by her side, the street scorching lightly beneath his feet. The evening’s drizzle had turned into night-time rain, thick cold splats falling with a busy static buzz.
“You okay?” asked Sharon.
“I remember… I remember everything,” Mrs Rafaat insisted. “My whole life. Where I was born, where I grew up, my husband, my work–I remember being me! That is who I am.”
Sharon said nothing, but waited as Mrs Rafaat turned on the spot, looking this way and that like a startled cat.
“Even if I am… even if there is any truth to this,” she declared, “I don’t know how not to be me! I don’t know what they did to… to me.”
“It’s okay.” Sharon shuffled closer, soaking up the worst of Dog’s glare as she did so. “We’ll work that bit out.”
“I don’t think I want to be Greydawn,” snuffled Mrs Rafaat, dabbing at her eyes. “I don’t know what it means.”
Sharon hesitated. Then, “Mrs Rafaat? Can I tell you something I haven’t really told anyone? I mean, seeing as how you’re probably the living essence of an immortal spirit, I figure… Can I tell you?”
“Of course, dear–I mean, if you don’t mind that I might not be a living essence.”
“That’s cool,” said Sharon. “That’s fine. Only, the thing is…” She took a slow, deep breath. “The thing is… five days ago I had a job, kind of crappy but still a job, and a flatshare I could just about afford as long as we didn’t leave the central heating running, and I was gonna try and apply for this temping agency, and life wasn’t great, but it was okay.
“But now… now… I’m on the wrong side of a wendigo; I’ve got this howling monster thing sat here, by the wreck of a community hall I might be responsible for, along with a bleeding druid, a wailing vampire, a toothpaste-addicted goblin, a gourmet troll and a socially inhibited banshee, not to mention there’s this confused sorcerer who’s not as much use as he should be, plus there’s a hundred pigeons to round up. And as if that wasn’t enough, my social life is a mess, my job prospects are nil, and I haven’t got a boyfriend.”
Mrs Rafaat’s face was a picture of trying-to-help-despite-herself.
“And I know,” insisted Sharon, “that not having a boyfriend is, compared to finding you’re probably not who you think you are but maybe the walking essence of an ancient power, pretty low on the ‘Oh, shit’ scale of things. But it matters to me, because it’s not like you can just go up to your friends and say ‘Everything’s crap. Please hold me unconditionally.’
“So, basically–” Sharon gestured in frustration as she tried to seize control of what she was saying “–what I mean is… I think my life might not be going where I thought it was gonna go. And I’m not sure what the hell I’m meant to do about it, but…” She was breathless with the force of her own oratorical conclusions. “But! If there’s one thing I do know, it’s that a shaman’s gotta have a tribe. And that lot in there,” indicating the remnants of the hall, “are my tribe. It’s like that thing they told us about in school–social identity and that. We’re all brought together by a shared-identity thing, and it’s not black, or white, or Christian, or atheist, or good at knitting or anything like that, it’s…”
She considered, then declared with sudden relish, “It’s totally screwed up! We are the tribe of guys who are screwed up, each in our own different screwed-up way. And the best bit about it is, that’s kind of what makes us human. That’s what makes us ourselves. So yeah.” Suddenly grinning at Mrs Rafaat. “You’re screwed up, basically. And, more than any other crap, that’s what makes you human. So come inside and have a cup of tea, and we’ll work something out, yeah?”
Mrs Rafaat smiled despite herself and blew her nose. “You’re very nice, dear,” she said “even if you are a little strange.”
“Come inside,” repeated Sharon. “We’re here to help, aren’t we?”