It was five minutes later.
Rhys was boiling another kettle for yet more tea. Tea for everyone, he realised, was an ongoing project. But he didn’t mind; it was something he felt comfortable with.
Mrs Rafaat sat between Chris and Gretel, explaining to the fascinated exorcist that the only way to handle dogs was to show them that you were firm because you cared.
Eddie Parks, comforted perhaps by the sight of a troll eating custard creams, was on the verge of almost relaxing when–
“Oi oi, slime-shitter,”
–a goblin, a sorcerer and the girl-shaman were standing right behind him.
He’d never realised how threatening a pencil could be. But the way the goblin held it–perfectly upright, tip pointing at the ceiling, combined with a maniacal grin–invoked in Eddie’s imagination all sorts of unwelcome things.
“You’ve screwed up the city big time and you’re gonna pay, shrivel-brains,” added the goblin. “Back in my tribe, if shits like you stepped out of line, we’d get two buses and a length of chain, and drive really slowly while—”
“Tell us how to break the spell,” interrupted Sharon.
“Really?” said the sorcerer. “I was interested in hearing how Sammy’s story ended.”
Eddie’s eyes flashed from one to the other, in search of the Good Cop among this wall of unimpressed features. Failing, he looked instead for the Least Bad Cop and, in a moment of naive desperation, focused on Sharon.
“Y-y-y-y-you need blood!” he stuttered. “I don’t know how it was done before, but I know you need blood!”
“Can we see if he has any?” asked the goblin. “I hear that if you nick the femoral artery just right—”
“Let’s say we haven’t got blood,” interrupted Sharon again. “How else do we fix it?”
“Uh… you need the sacrifices.”
“What sacrifices?”
“The s-s-sacrifices we used to summon and compel. They’re part of the spell.”
“Okay, how do we get them?”
“Burns and Stoke kept them,” he said hurriedly. “They’re in the office vault.”
“Your office has a vault?” demanded Swift. “My office doesn’t have a vault–why do you get a vault?”
“We could hang ’im upside down,” suggested the goblin, “and collect the blood in a really big bucket! Though I s’pose we’d need a lid for it, to get it across the city. And maybe ice. People never think about the temperature of bodily fluids when casting magics like this. Incompetent bastards.”
“What about the spell?” demanded Sharon. “How do we get Greydawn back?”
“There’s a c-counter spell,” he stammered, “to release all bindings! You need the sacrifices to perform—”
“Any special preparations? Ritual baths, ceremonial massages, that kind of crap?”
Eddie shook his head. Moisture clung to his skin as his body suffered a sweaty, adrenaline-fuelled overdrive.
“Excellent!” Swift slapped his hands together, business-like and brisk. “Get sacrifices. Say spell. Job done. Early night. I’m on board with this.”
“You… need a shaman!”
The way Eddie said it seemed to suggest that this would be the final straw which broke the camel’s back. But Swift grinned, patting the quaking wizard on the knee. “Way ahead of you there, sunshine.”
“Blood. You still need blood.”
Sammy looked at Swift; Swift looked at Sharon; Sharon shrugged. “I got nothing,” she said. “Can it be from the donor banks?”
“Uh, babes,” Kevin chimed in from across the room, “I don’t want to be the voice of civic responsibility here or anything, but there is like, a serious stock crisis going on right now across all major blood groups.”
A glare from the assembled room induced some polite cowering. “Then again,” Kevin grumbled, “maybe saving the city is an okay use of limited NHS resources.”
“But it’s not about haemoglobins!” exclaimed Sammy. “Else we’d all be using rump bloody steak and chips in our magics! It’s about life–blood as life. What peanut-balls is saying–” here, a firm kick connected with Eddie’s shins “–is not ‘You need some sticky red stuff’ but ‘You need life and death.’ ”
“Whoa!” Sharon gestured defensively. “When I signed up for this, I had this big thing about no feathers, no dancing and no blood.”
“Dancing?” queried Swift.
“And no blood! My mum would have a fit if I got piercings, especially if it was feathers. And can I just add, cos I think it’s important, no blood!”
There was a embarrassed pause while Swift patted her on the shoulder with the lightness of a man toying with nitroglycerine.
“Well,” he said at last, “maybe we could try three sheep and a—”
He was interrupted by a ringing sound.
Ringing wasn’t quite the word; ringing implied a bell. This was an electronic pumping sound, an eight-beat intro followed by a little tinny chant. The chant proclaimed:
“I’m so cool, I’m so cool, I’m so cool, yeah!”
All eyes turned to the source of the sound, and Eddie Parks cringed. Through the material of his trousers, the bright white screen of a mobile phone was visible. Mr Roding said, “Will someone please stop that ghastly noise?”
Eddie levered the phone out of his pocket, handling it like lit matches in a sea of oil. He passed it to Sharon without a word. She looked down and saw that the number was “Unavailable”.
“I’m guessing this isn’t your mum, calling at 2 a.m., to check up on whether you’re going to the dentist?” she hazarded. At the ripple of surprised expressions she added, “Come on, like I’m the only one that happens to.”
“I-I-I-I-I-I-I…” Eddie’s attempt at responding dissolved into a wheeze of despair.
“Fine,” grumbled Sharon and, before anyone could stop her, she thumbed the phone on and put it to her ear. “Hello, Magicals Anonymous, self-help for the mystically traumatised. Sharon speaking, can I help you?”
A stunned silence on the end of the line. Then, “Please hold.”
A pre-recorded assault on a Chopin theme began. Sharon put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered loudly at the room, “I think it might be a sales pitch.”
Then, “Is Eddie Parks dead?”
The voice was soft, cold and smooth, male inasmuch as it wasn’t overtly female. It sounded detached, and was entirely recognisable. It was the voice of Mr Ruislip, the wendigo.
“Uh…” The sound just came out, a default filler in the empty air.
“What is ‘Uh’?” asked the voice on the other end of the line, keen and curious. “I’ve heard people make these noises as though they have meaning–uh and ah and um and aaaggh–and I did investigate them in the dictionary but found it unsatisfactory. Do they imply an emotional state? Or have they a meaning in the human mind that language does not have the capacity to fulfil?”
Sharon hesitated. The entire room was staring at her, dozens of faces contorted with the doubt and fear of people who knew, who just knew, who and, perhaps more importantly, what, was on the end of the line, but really didn’t want that knowledge confirmed. In the silence, Sharon took in the upside-down face of Sally, dangling from the rafters, the puckered frown of Kevin, the disgruntled query of Mr Roding, the hopeful, open eyes of Rhys as he seemed to say, without twitching a muscle in his flushed face, Go on, go on, go on…
And it occurred to Sharon, with an almost physical shock, that someone in this room, for reasons beyond her comprehension, believed in her. She tried to remember if anyone had believed in her before. Certainly the careers officer hadn’t, nor had her boss Mike Pentlace. Indeed, throughout her whole life…
“Kind of both, actually.” She was amazed to hear the words pass her lips, amazed at how confident they sounded. “Uh is a kinda filler sound, sorta like going ‘Fuck me, I don’t know what to say to that, but shit, I’d better make this kinda noise to make it clear that I’m still paying attention.’ So I guess you could say it’s rude, because it’s like going ‘Please hold’ only without saying it. But I think it’s actually okay, because it’s like saying ‘Please hold while I come up with a sensible and groovy response to you.’ And we’re always told, aren’t we, that you should stop and think about your replies, and I guess life would be better if more people did that, you know?”
It was Mr Ruislip’s turn to be silent. Sharon ploughed straight on, warming to her theme, provoking a dangle of astonishment in the corner of Rhys’s mouth, and filling with an energy she hadn’t known she possessed.
“But the great thing about uh is it’s so context-specific, you know? I mean, like, when you just called now, and I went ‘Uh,’ it wasn’t so much ‘Please hold’ as a kind of ‘Bugger me, I’m talking to a wendigo.’ So there was, I guess, fear and surprise and a bit of curiosity, but mostly terror in it, as well as the ‘Please hold’ meaning. So you see, actually, uh is this really flexible sound; I mean, it gave you all of that, didn’t it, so didn’t really need me to say it.”
Eventually he said, “I see.”
“See!” she went on, almost hysterical now with enthusiasm for her theme. “ ‘I see’ is another example of those filler things. Because, when you said that, it was totally obvious that you don’t see, that you haven’t, in fact, got a frickin’ clue what I’m talking about. But you felt this need to fill the space, didn’t you?
“So your ‘I see’ didn’t mean ‘Yes, I comprehend.’ What it actually meant was ‘Bloody hell, this isn’t going where I thought it would and what is this woman talking about I really don’t get this crap but I wish I did.’ And, Mr Ruislip, I was thinking about this, because it seems to me that you’ve got serious issues, with like, language and death and stuff, and I was wondering if you’d considered talking to someone about them.”
Rhys’s mouth was now hanging all the way open. So, for that matter, was Swift’s. “Recognising the problem,” she hissed down the phone, almost conspiratorially, “is the first step to recovery.”
This time she let the silence linger.
“Is Eddie Parks dead?” The question sounded to Sharon’s ear like a retreat to familiar territory.
“Why, should he be?” she asked.
“Apparently Mr Parks heard a howling,” sighed the wendigo, “which is usually indicative of an imminent demise. However, my office informs me that a few hours ago the professional gentlemen I hired to conduct some private research for this company vanished. And though Dog howled, it seems there is not as much blood being spilt as I would have predicted from this event. And so, I wished to enquire of Mr Parks directly whether he was, in fact, deceased.”
“Uh… no, he’s not. Sorry.”
“In that case, may I speak to him?”
Sharon glanced at Eddie, who shook his head, hands shaking in his lap.
“I think Eddie here has got some issues he needs to work on in a private way,” sang out Sharon down the line. “Maybe another time?”
“In that case, would you kindly inform Mr Parks that, in the light of his attempting to run away and contact the Midnight Mayor for assistance, his contract has been terminated, and his blood, muscle, bones and all other associated vital bodily fluids are now mine for the taking?”
Sharon raised her eyebrows. “Wow,” she said. “That’s like, one hell of a contract.”
“In matters of private enterprise, penalties must be equal to rewards,” replied Mr Ruislip primly. “We are not running… a public-sector enterprise.” The words dripped off his lips like venom. “On a similar theme,” he went on, “I must inform you that, should you and your ilk fail to hand over the spirit known as Greydawn, I will most reluctantly be forced to hunt you all down and kill you one at a time. Is reluctantly the word? Was its usage correct?”
“I dunno,” murmured Sharon. “Depends whether you’re going for literally ‘I’ll be really sorry to do it and it’ll be a right pain in the arse,’ or more kind of ‘Whoopee, I’ll kill everything that moves and bathe in its blood, but let’s be all polite while telling people about it in order to freak out my prey.’ ”
“Then, yeah, I guess you could go with ‘reluctantly’.”
“Thank you, Ms… Sharon, was it?”
“That’s right.”
“Sharon, thank you. It’s so refreshing to meet someone willing to clarify these finer points. Tell me, if I were to inform you that I shall take great satisfaction in ripping you apart limb by limb, tearing your body asunder to the smart pop of bones pulling out of their sockets, the gentle tear of tendons ripping under a slow but inexorable pressure, would that add to the sense of growing terror and imminent destruction that I am attempting to imbue?”
“It’s pretty good,” she admitted. “I like the way you said ‘satisfaction’ there–kinda like it was more ‘I’m a professional, controlled psychopath and therefore you should be afraid’ vibe than if you’d gone with ‘glee’ or ‘delight’ or anything like that, which would’ve implied you’re a wacky out-there psychopath and therefore kinda easier to deal with.”
“How marvellous!” exclaimed Mr Ruislip. “Satisfaction it shall be, then.”
“Excuse me?” The speaker was Swift, one hand raised. “I’m sorry to butt in like this, but as the Midnight Mayor I really feel I should be threatening to rain hellfire down upon the wendigo’s head, if that’s okay.”
Sharon turned to listen, then added down the phone, “Mr Ruislip sir, I hope you don’t mind but the Midnight Mayor wishes to inform you that he shall rain hellfire down upon your head. How’d you feel about that?”
“Kindly inform the Midnight Mayor,” murmured Mr Ruislip, “that I have long relished the opportunity to hunt one worthy of my skills. And when we two at last meet in the heat of bloody battle, and the stones turn black beneath our feet, and the sky cracks at the screams torn from our throats, I shall experience an immense… satisfaction… in the experience of the moment, quite regardless of who is destroyed at the end of it.”
Sharon covered the mouthpiece and muttered at Swift, “The wendigo says he’s groovy with that.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“As it is,” went on Mr Ruislip, “I believe the Midnight Mayor right now should be more concerned by the fact that Burns and Stoke will be withdrawing all its finances from Harlun and Phelps, thus seriously undermining the stability of the company and depriving a large number of Aldermen of their Christmas bonus.”
Sharon covered the mouthpiece again. “He’s gonna use finance on you,” she hissed.
Swift scowled but made no reply.
“As for yourself and all the other members of Magical Anonymous… May I call your organisation quaint? Quaint… curious… unexpected… really, what adjective would best describe it? Anyway, would ‘annihilate’ do or is that rather jumping the gun? What is the origin of the phrase jumping the gun, do you know? I understand its usage but not its—”
“Let’s stick with quaint,” interrupted Sharon.
“Oh, very well. As for yourself and the members of your quaint organisation, if you hand Greydawn over to me right this second, I may spare the majority of you. If you refuse to cooperate, I will be forced to take aggressive action, namely to annihilate you and all your kind. I hope these terms are agreeable to you?”
Sharon considered long and hard. “You know how you have language concerns,” she said. “Have you considered evening classes?”
“What?”
“Evening classes,” she repeated. “I mean, I know it’s kind of a middle-class thing, because, like, everyone who really needs extra education is probably too poor to pay for it and the government is totally trashing public services. But you sound like a rich guy, and money buys you time and time buys you opportunity, and I seriously think you’re the kind of limb-rending psychopath who’d do really well with a few evening classes, a bit of counselling, maybe a course in ethical philosophy and cookery or something. Maybe Italian food or that, because that’s quite relaxing.”
“I’m sorry, is this your fear reaction?” asked Mr Ruislip. “I do find the telephone makes it so much harder to judge, as I cannot actually smell the terror dripping off your skin like blood from a butcher’s blade. So I am forced to enquire: do you in fact manifest these words as a result of a deep horror and dread of who and what I am?”
“Uh… I guess a bit,” she admitted. “But actually I really think the world would be a better place if people just sat down and looked at their lives. I keep lists of things I’ve gotta do before I’m thirty, and I practise breathing out slowly while counting to ten. But I’m guessing you’re not into that sorta thing, which is really sad. And I like completely see how you’re probably not gonna get past the rending-limb-from-limb thing, which you’re stuck on, any time soon. So I guess all that’s left to say is… well… uh… bring it on?”
Even as the words passed her lips, she flinched.
“Bring… it… on?” Mr Ruislip echoed each word with dull astonishment.
“Uh, yeah. Kinda. I mean, in that if you do try and hurt me or anyone here, then I guess we’ll have to like, get all aggressive with you, which is really sad. But you know, sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. So, uh. Yeah. Sorry about that. I just want you to know how embarrassed I feel to have to resort to mystical violence like this. But so it goes. Was there anything else?”
Mr Ruislip was silent save for the slow in-out of his breath between clenched teeth. Sharon found herself grinning at nothing much and no one in particular.
“Okay then!” she sang out. “Well, it’s been great talking to you. Hope you’re okay with this and are moving on to a new and groovy place, and see you on the other side of the bloodbath! Bye!”
She hung up, and nearly dropped the phone in her haste to pass it back to Eddie. Eddie whimpered as it fell into his hands and threw it to Rhys, who just about caught it and looked around for guidance as to what to do with it. The nearest person who could help with that turned out to be Gretel, who very carefully picked up the phone between her thumb and index finger and crushed it to a handful of electronic debris.
Throughout the room every eye was on Sharon, mostly in astonishment. Sammy and Swift were looking at her open-mouthed, and there was a glow in the goblin’s eye that could have been disbelief at the foolishness of his apprentice but also pride in her work. Rhys was looking at her with a strange dreamy grin plastered on his face. He was, Sharon thought, a man lost in thoughts that she didn’t particularly want to divine.
As she turned, the flash of Dez’s white suit was visible as he flickered in and out of existence between the crowd, and she half-imagined his tanned-orange thumbs were raised at her from behind Kevin’s head.
“Now you’ve done it,” whispered Dez in a corner of her mind, but was he laughing?
“Right,” she said, sensing that something profound was expected.
“Well,” she added.
Then, “Okay.”
After the rush of talking to the wendigo, she evidently wasn’t handling her audience well.
“So,” she concluded, “we’re screwed, aren’t we?”