Amanda barged into her son’s bedroom, the door slamming into the wall and rattling the light fixtures.
Michaela and Darren leapt from the floor to their feet, Michaela’s hand darting behind her back hiding something from view.
Anger flashed across Darren’s face at his parent’s intrusion.
Amanda pinned them both in place with a glare. Simon came in behind her and she only got angrier when she saw the relief on both kids’ faces.
They’d set a small fire in the middle of a small frying pan, contraband Abra herbs floating on wax in low water. Two small crude fetishes made from pipe-cleaners and sparrow feathers sat either side, completely unnecessary and used only by amateurs.
She kicked it with a crash into a corner of the room. The water put out the flame, the metal rang like a muted bell. The children recoiled before their mother’s anger.
‘Hey, what the fuck!’ Darren protested at the water dripping down his wall.
‘Emily, you little snitch,’ screeched Michaela. Amanda didn’t need to look to know her youngest was peering around the doorway to see the explosion that she had sparked.
‘Don’t you DARE make this about her,’ Amanda snarled, jabbing a finger up under her elder daughter’s nose. ‘You bring this filth into my house don’t you fucking dare put any of it at her feet. I could smell it from the fucking garden.’ Their eyes darted to the window they’d opened to deal with the smoke.
Amanda paced, fists clenching and unclenching, working off the excess energy that screamed to be used. She looked to her husband, now leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed, lips a perfect mirror of his son’s. Here to make sure she didn’t go too far, just like she’d asked.
‘What was it?’
‘Nothing,’ mumbled Michaela.
‘What?’
‘Nothing! We were just mucking around.’
‘Not with this you fucking… show me your hands. Both of you, show me your hands.’ She was already grabbing at Darren’s arm, pulling it out from around his back.
Michaela, quicker on the uptake, held hers out for inspection. Both boy and girl had their index fingers bandaged tightly, blood specking the fingertips and Amanda knew that amongst the little tuft of half-burned grass smouldering in the corner, she would find two fingernails.
She snatched at Michaela’s other hand, held palm down so her mother wouldn’t see what was clutched in it – her provisional driver’s licence.
‘What the fuck do you think you were playing at?’
Neither answered, each looking to the other for solidarity.
‘Kids,’ warned Simon. ‘Come on. How do you expect this to play out where you aren’t grounded?’
‘That’s not fair,’ they both shouted in unison.
‘We were just…’ Michaela caught herself before she blurted a full confession.
‘Just what?’ demanded Amanda.
‘We were just…’ The words lost strength half way through, like if she said them but Amanda didn’t hear then she’d get the best of both worlds. ‘Making a glamour.’
‘You were using magic in my house to make yourself a fake ID?’
‘It’s no big deal! Dad makes—’
‘And who told you how to make this?’
The boy was good. Smart. Years of growing up with a poker professional had taught him how to disguise a few tells. It didn’t stop him casting a guilty look to the side of his bed but made him realise he’d given the game away when he had.
His phone was lying on the floor by the bedpost, the screen still open.
The boy was fast but Amanda was faster, snatching the phone up before he could move. ‘Hey, you’ve got no right.’
Amanda pinned him back in place with a look, scrolling quickly through the document. It was some amateurish glamour ritual, so convoluted there’d only been half a chance it would have worked. The more likely result would have been Michaela fabricating some lie about how her licence had melted tomorrow morning.
On the floor where the phone had been sitting was a small glass lens, popped from a pair of glasses. She could feel the weak enchantment through her skin as she picked it up, the tingle up her scars putting her even more on edge.
‘We just want what’s best for you, kids,’ said Simon as she looked through it. Everything looked the same, though she bet that if the spell had worked the lens would help imprint the caster’s desires on the now-enchanted laminate, like, say, an earlier date of birth.
‘We were just trying it,’ said Darren. ‘I didn’t say yes to any of the rest. Neither of us is any good at art and since Dad—’
‘Excuse me?’ said Simon, anger touching his voice now.
And Darren knew he’d fucked up. He hadn’t seen what Amanda was looking at on his phone and jumped the gun on defending him and his sister against something else.
Simon, Michaela and Darren started arguing, the blame going from one to the other to no-one in particular as Amanda checked the boy’s texts.
‘What’s this?’ she brandished the phone under Darren’s nose.
‘I told you, we were just trying it out. I never said we’d do the rest.’
‘Not the fucking IDs we’ll get to that in a minute, the couriering.’
‘I…’
‘Three weeks, it says here.’
‘What’s going on?’ asked Simon.
‘Your son has been muling contraband around London for…’
She raised the phone up like she was going to hurl it at the wall. She could hear it in her head, the crash of it like crockery, like her own childhood mealtimes. She thought better of it.
‘Yeah, but I wasn’t in no danger,’ said Darren.
‘I’ll just…’ Michaela made to leave.
‘Don’t you move,’ said Amanda.
‘Darren,’ said Simon, ‘if you’d been caught that’s serious jail time.’
‘Wasn’t going to be caught, was I? ’Sides, Skeebs had this new thing for me.’
‘He’s just using you to get at me,’ said Amanda.
‘What? That’s bullshi—’
‘Language,’ Simon warned.
‘You think Skeebs just texts you out of the blue, for no reason after AK fires me? How’d he get your number?’ Unable to look at it any more, Amanda handed her husband the phone. Looking more upset than angry, Simon began to scroll through the texts, following the story.
‘I dunno. Maybe he thinks I got what you’ve got.’
‘Skeebs has got nothing to do with this. It’s AK. He wants me to know that he can touch someone I care about. It’s just a fucked-up power play.’ She was explaining as much to Simon as her son now, the pair of them wearing identical, angry expressions.
‘It’s not like that.’
‘So what is it like?’ asked Simon.
‘That’s code,’ Amanda explained to her husband, jabbing at the list on screen. ‘AK’s been having him pick up packages.’
Darren sighed. ‘I’m not stupid. I opened a couple of them. He was just testing me.’
‘So you can qualify to pick up the really illegal stuff?’ Simon was raising his voice now.
‘It was just random junk. One was just some old telescope, or a pair of jeans or old SIM cards. Now he wants me making fake IDs so we can sell them. Good money. But I wasn’t gonna. Mum, come on!’
Amanda had turned to look out the window, gripping the sill until her fingertips hurt, counting under her breath. There was the strong urge to leave the room before something happened.
‘That’s worse,’ said Simon. ‘What I do, I do everything to keep us anonymous and keep us safe. But glamours? Both of you? That doesn’t get you in prison. They hang people for this.’
The words lingered in the air.
Amanda rounded on the pair of them, light-headed. ‘You little fucking…’ Amanda went for the boy.
‘Amanda!’ Simon warned.
There must have been something in Amanda’s eyes because Michaela stepped back into the wall with a thud.
Amanda cleared her throat, tried to rein herself back in. ‘You’re not leaving this house,’ she managed. ‘No internet. You’re not seeing them again. Not AK, not Skeebs. You’re off limits.’
‘This isn’t fair.’
‘You want more?’ Amanda clenched her fists, could feel her veins running like charged copper wires under her skin. ‘You want to tell me about unfair?’
The boy quailed and Amanda let out a snort of triumph. She’d cowed the boy. She looked to her husband to see if he saw it and then felt something wither inside her when she saw the look of fear in her daughter’s face.
And the look of disappointment on her husband’s face. Her work had breached the family sanctuary. Something she’d sworn would never happen.
‘Fuck this. I’ll sort it.’ She stormed from the room.
There was nothing for it but to flee. Five minutes and she was in the car, hands shaking on the wheel, still gripping her son’s phone. The gun they kept under the bed was on the passenger seat.
She was not her father.
Word was out, Amanda was looking for AK. That meant he couldn’t be found.
Caleb called, then Jamison. Back off, calm down, go home. Simon must have told them.
The gun was in the glove compartment but even there, she could feel its weight.
Nobody returned her calls. But then they hadn’t for months now. The old job was closed to her.
That didn’t stop her. It wasn’t just AK’s childish attempt to get at her, it wasn’t just that he was using Darren to do it. There was something about those items Darren had been picking up. Alarm bells for something she half remembered but couldn’t grasp.
Cars and pedestrians slid by beyond the glass. There was the close feeling of an incoming storm, a hammer to shatter the heat.
She stopped at the club. Nothing. Pubs, warehouses, taxi firms. Anywhere AK or Skeebs did business. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Just old men who used to be friends telling her to go home and cool off.
Where would he go? What would he do?
And there it was. Those packages made a cold, cold sense. Childhood memories coalesced in a waft of cigarette smoke, her father drunk, trying to impress a little girl by telling her things she’d rather not know.
Bridget was preparing to try the summoning and binding – confident at last in her theories.
She knew where AK would be.
The sun was already setting fire to the horizon when Amanda reached Shoreditch, the orange sky deepening the colour of the old firebrick buildings and blinding the windows to incandescent white.
Something was already in motion. An oppressive feeling cloaked the street, the thin rain making the streetlamps hold their light close, and making deep pits of the doorways.
It was as if the air itself pressed around her feelings, heating and compressing, fermenting them into something dark and old. Amanda gritted her teeth and bore it, the feeling was more than familiar to her – magic of the blackest kind. She didn’t have long.
She pulled in, took out the gun. She could see her destination from the driver’s seat – one of the few doors without a trendy sign and a re-purpose. The old warehouse loomed, several floors high, stitched up the side with old cargo doors.
It hadn’t been hard to find out that the Abra, Bridget, had set up shop here.
She should go home. But she knew she wouldn’t.
A couple sheltering in a doorway from the drizzle had begun to argue. Dogs were barking, pulling at their leashes or turning on their owners. Birds squabbled on the rooftops. Car horns began to blare in the next street. All around Amanda, the aura of a powerful summoning was taking its toll, passers-by succumbing to the haze and lashing out. It was only going to get worse.
Candlelight flickered down from the top window of the warehouse.
Hunching her shoulders, Amanda leapt from the car and headed over, not bothering to conceal her weapon.
The doorway offered little shelter. The door window was rippled but there was no movement beyond.
The lock was an old combination key pad, one she’d seen plenty of in her time. It was a sturdy bugger but no one had thought to take it off the default code. It was almost too easy.
Inside tasted of copper and tin. There was that feeling of holding a battery to your tongue but across the whole body, every nerve tingling like it was expecting to be touched.
Rain rattled off the windows like it was a world away. Mottled light swirled and shifted on dusty floorboards, beaded patterns on bare plaster columns. The building reached far back, more than Amanda would have guessed from the outside.
There was a clean streak through the dust between the front door and the stairs, fresh cigarette ends crushed on the bottom step.
Far above, she could hear a mutter of voices. They’d already started.
She resisted the urge to run. Being fast and stupid wouldn’t help anybody.
The stairs were too solid to creak but every noise she made sounded loud to her ears.
The light was just enough to see by.
She checked the gun again, the feel of it alien in her hand. Her skin crawled, the muscles up her arms ringing with the memory of the recoil of the shotgun. She could feel the ghost of the bruise that still haunted her ribs where the butt had kicked back into her.
But that was a long time ago. She’d be quick, methodical and hope her body didn’t betray her with tremors or hesitations. She would burn the building down if she had to.
Cars continued to hiss by outside, the rain crackling under their tires. Somewhere outside she could hear a fight breaking out.
The first and second floors were empty. The third was darker, the street lights casting their light from below. Candlelight crawled across the ceiling above. She could hear Bridget’s Edinburgh lilt, could hear her excitement.
Amanda didn’t bother with stealth on the final flight. ‘Hey!’ She wanted them off-balance. Anything to disrupt the ritual.
The final few steps and the air closed around her. The anxiety that was settling down on the street below like ash was nothing compared to its potency here. Amanda’s shoulders cinched, her neck tensed, her jaw tightened. She bit her tongue as anger ran like venom through her veins.
After the dark, the top floor was a supernova, the light too bright to see by and the shadows too deep to fathom. At first, she was only getting impressions – four people in the middle of the room, protective circle drawn around them, designed to keep them safe from the thing they summoned.
Bridget stood closest, her spectacles rendered opaque with the candlelight. There was no mistaking her surprise, whatever words she had been saying dying on her tongue.
The two men to one side were people Amanda had once considered friends. The candlelight made them look gaunt, gouging deep shadows in the pits of their cheeks and under their eyes. Rituals were hard, they took something from you and now these men could feel it as a deep ache in their bones.
Then there was the fourth man, the man in the circle.
He was tall, tall as Caleb, but rake thin. His clothes, ragged and stained, didn’t fit him, two or three sizes too large making him seem bigger and thinner both at once. His beard was wild and shaggy, his hair more so. The smell that came off him hit Amanda in a wave; damp cloth, moulding earth and the sweet stench of alcohol.
Everything about his appearance screamed derelict. They’d needed a vessel for the thing to inhabit. What was easier than snatching a homeless man off the street?
He was more, or less, than that now. It was in the way he held himself; straight backed and with a glint in his eye that was more than the light. A smile split his wild beard, revealing terrible teeth. His stained jacket and the rumpled shirt beneath was unbuttoned so that Amanda could see the tangle of tattoos that painted his skin in swirls, shifting, writhing. He eyed Amanda hungrily.
Amanda brought up the gun, pointed it at the guards long enough to get the message across then swung it around to the thing.
She wasn’t too late, the circle on the floor was unbroken, the thing still confined.
‘No!’ Bridget stepped forward, already far too late. ‘Don’t shoot, you’ll kill us!’
The shot took the thing clean in the face. There was a cloud of blood, bone and teeth followed by a wet, tangled thud as it fell to the bare floorboards to leak blood around the islands of candlewax.
There was a long, stunned silence, the gunshot still ringing the air.
The younger of Bridget’s men, barely older than Darren, collapsed to the floor. He began to convulse, eyes wide in shock, limbs juddering and striking the floor.
‘Don’t!’ shouted Bridget, both to Amanda and the other man before either of them could move. ‘You fucking idiot,’ she said to Amanda as she moved to the fitting man’s side, ‘do you realise what you just did?’
‘Just saved your fucking life,’ Amanda snapped. ‘That thing…’
Bridget ripped the fitting man’s shirt open to reveal his chest. Tattoos flowed across his tanned skin, more appearing all the time.
Amanda blinked, looked back at the demon’s body. The skin was clear, tattoo-free. Empty.
‘Did you think it would be that easy?’ asked Bridget, a hand on the comatose man, now demon’s, chest. ‘It could have jumped into any one of us. You could have killed me, then where would we be? Come on.’
Amanda watched, mouth open as Bridget and the remaining man lifted the demon back into the circle. The second guard wore a pale, stretched expression, like he couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. He only nodded and obeyed when Bridget instructed him to move the body of the homeless man.
Muttering beneath her breath, Bridget pressed a thumb to the thing’s head, her free hand describing shapes in the air. She stopped when the thing’s eyelids fluttered.
Amanda only recovered her wits once Bridget stepped back out of the circle, the demon beginning to wake within.
Shifting aim, Amanda touched the gun barrel against Bridget’s cheek. The woman recoiled at the feel if it.
‘Send it back.’
‘What?’
‘You can’t kill it then send it back.’
To Amanda’s surprise the woman stood straighter, looked her in the eye. ‘No.’ She was still shaking, fighting the urge to recoil, eyes filled with defiance. ‘If you had any idea what it took to bring him here. The work and research—’
‘We don’t have time for this.’ Amanda’s gaze kept flicking to the thing as it began to stand. ‘Send it back or I’ll put a bullet in you.’
‘You don’t understand. I control it. This is history. I’m the first to have got a demon to obey. Once I break this circle—’
‘Don’t move.’ Bridget had stepped towards the edge of the circle, her toe a hair away from the fresh paint glistening on the floorboards. She’d almost stepped into it, breaking the line.
‘I told you it’s under control.’
The demon was on its feet again, wearing its new host as comfortably as the last one. The way it watched without fidgeting, the hundred little micro-movements that humans made absent, was disconcerting. Its own gaze didn’t waver. Its eyes were fixed on her now.
‘Yeah, you figured out something that no one ever has before.’
‘Is that so hard to believe?’ Bridget was sweating in the candlelight.
Down from below there came the sound of the door opening and closing, the tread of someone climbing the stairs.
Glancing back, Amanda took a step back so she could cover the stairwell. It was enough time for Bridget to dart a toe and scrape it through the paint.
The darkness thickened, clogging senses and freezing nerves.
The figure in the circle seemed to grow. Every detail of him screamed, like he was in sharper focus than everything around him. Amanda could see every speck of dust, count every individual hair, so much information that it hurt to look at him.
Bridget turned, looking up into that quiet, intense face as it looked back down at her. She rolled up her sleeve, tugging until it was up over her elbow.
Amanda watched as she delicately placed two fingers to her forearm.
The feeling receded. Amanda could almost see the thing’s aura retreating back into its slender frame. Its absence left a strange vacuum, like a ringing in the ears, broken when Bridget gave a brittle, nervous laugh.
‘It works!’ She looked around as though expecting the others to join in. Among the Abra tattoos on Bridget’s arm, Amanda could make out a fresh one, a scab of blood and ink. It stood out, a professional job opposed to the homemade tats around it.
The creature said nothing. Did nothing. It just followed Bridget with its eyes, the same way a tiger would follow a child capering around its cage.
The gun dipped in Amanda’s hand.
Bridget jabbed a finger at the thing. ‘Tell me your name!’
It stared at her, stared so long that Bridget’s pointed finger began to curl. Her thumb dug into the forearm tattoo, denting the skin.
The thing’s voice was a rasp, vocal cords shaking off rust, ‘…Reeves.’
‘Reeves,’ repeated Bridget, turning to everyone with a childlike smile of satisfaction. ‘His name’s Reeves. You see? Can you believe you almost stopped this from happening? I’m about to take this organisation to new heights. The things that we’re going to be able to do now with this wee beauty on our side. This is going to change the world.’ She clapped her hands.
Amanda raised the gun.
She didn’t even see it move, it was suddenly there in front of her, eyes locked with hers. It studied her and then tasted her name.
‘Amanda.’
The gun slipped from Amanda’s fingers, every nerve in her body shutting down. She fell backwards, the breath pushed out of her from the impact.
The thing stepped forward, a grin stretched across its face, slender fingers uncurling, red thirst building—
‘Stop!’
And it did, its eyes flashing pure fury. Bridget breathed another relieved smile.
Feeling returning, Amanda snatched the weapon from the floor, but Bridget was between them again. ‘You see? I control it!’
‘Amanda.’ Jamison was breathless from the stairs, the top button of his shirt undone. ‘Put… the gun down.’
Amanda gritted her teeth looking from her old teacher to the thing standing over her.
Jamison eyed the thing up and down. If he was disconcerted by its gaze he didn’t show it.
‘Jamison, this thing needs to be put back. Right now.’
‘We have just made history,’ said Bridget. ‘No one in the history of magic has attempted this and succeeded.’
‘Amanda, I want you to come outside with me,’ said Jamison.
‘Jamison, if we don’t—’
‘Come with me now.’ Jamison descended the stairs again, grunting with each step.
Bridget smirked with satisfaction.
Reeves was taking in the room, dipping a finger into the hot wax of a nearby candle. But it wouldn’t stop looking at her, like they were the only two in the room.
Amanda got to her feet. ‘You’ve just fucked us all,’ she said. ‘That thing is going to get you all killed and it’ll kill and kill and it won’t stop until it decides it’s finished.’
‘I pity your lack of vision,’ was all Bridget replied.
Amanda caught up with Jamison outside. The rain had eased. The traffic crawled past.
‘They’ve made a huge mistake,’ Amanda started.
‘What were you doing in there?’
‘Your new boss was gunning to recruit my son. Darren told me about Bridget’s project, he’s been helping collect the ingredients. Did you know about any of this?’
‘I only just found out. I knew she was getting close with her research but…’ Jamison sighed. ‘I’ll talk to him about your boy.’
‘He even listen to you?’
‘You don’t think I’ve been trying? He has no respect for the business. AK’s a soldier not a leader. That’s why the Indians picked him. He just told them what they wanted to hear so he could win but he doesn’t know what to do with the prize. Everything we built he’s pulling down around his ears.’
‘Then he needs to be out. You need to take him out. Take his place.’
Jamison sighed. ‘I’m old, Amanda. I’m old and I don’t want the responsibility.’
‘Responsibility found you. There’s no one else that can do it. That thing in there is going to get us all killed.’
‘She had it under control.’
‘But for how long? My old man used to talk about this as something he wouldn’t do. That’s how fucking bad this is. It needs to be stopped before it gets worse.’
‘There’s nothing we can do.’
‘We cannot afford to mess with this shit.’
‘“We” aren’t. It’s just me. And if things go wrong, it’ll be just you.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘Did you think you could just hit the boss in the face and walk away? I promised the Indians that if this went wrong the Abra-killer would be on hand to contain it.’
‘You promised me away again?’
‘What choice did I have? I’m trying to protect you from your own stupid decisions. If that thing breaks loose then you’ll be the one hunting it or AK and the Indians will have no reason to let you live.’
‘Fuck that. You guys made this mess. If that thing escapes I’m the least of your problems. You can go to hell with the rest of them.’
Amanda walked out into the rain.
‘It’s already seen you,’ Jamison called after her. ‘It doesn’t matter what I agreed. If things go wrong, you’re in this already. You were here, it’ll come after you. You saw to that.’
Amanda didn’t look back. There was blood running in the gutter and Amanda remembered hearing a fight outside. Reeves had claimed his first victim already.