The Midnight Mayor ms-2

by Kate Griffin

  “Does the little sorcerer need protecting?” crooned Oda.

  Anissina didn’t bother to reply. I sunk deeper into the sofa.

  “Tea,” I said. “Tea will make it all better.”

  I drank tea with a painkiller chaser.

  It made things a little better.

  Not hugely — but enough.

  A knock at the door. Oda answered it, gun tucked away out of sight. A motorbike courier, all black helmet and padded jacket, presented a box. The box had a pair of shoes in it. We felt almost pleased to see Mo’s shoes unharmed.

  “What use are these?” demanded Oda.

  “They’re very good for walking in,” I replied, and put them on.

  Anissina had a car. It had a driver. He wore a peaked hat. I took one look at it and said, “Let’s walk.”

  “To Willesden?”

  “To the Underground.”

  Her nose wrinkled in distaste. Oda rolled her eyes. “Perks, sorcerer,” she snapped. “I am sure you understand perks.”

  “I understand free lifts,” I replied. “I also understand that driving around in a black car with windows shaded black and a driver in a black silk suit who opens a door with a black handle and black leather upholstery inside is not as discreet as you might want.”

  Oda grinned. “Not so easy to kill,” she said. “Still dead, though.”

  “Remind me why you’re here?”

  “Sooner or later, someone’s going to end up shot.”

  “Any idea who?”

  “I’ll write you a list.”

  We took the Jubilee Line. The station was new — glass doors and glass panels in front of the platform, just in case someone wanted to jump. The train driver missed on his first attempt, didn’t slow down fast enough, didn’t quite manage to align the doors of his bright new train with the shining glass panels. He had to reverse a few clunking inches, while the platform’s scant inhabitants sighed and waited. Hard to tell which annoyed them more — delays caused by overshooting trains, or bodies on the line. It was going to be one or the other.

  The Jubilee Line took us back north. Back to Dollis Hill. Darkness, cold, a slow sideways rain that came in across the streetlamps and stained the pavements, glaring reflective orange. I knew the route now, knew which way the shoes wanted to go, knew the swagger they wanted to walk with. Easier now, despite the drugs addling my brain and the ache in my bones. Despite being scared, despite the company. Easier to find a rhythm and strut like a seventeen-year-old jackass who should not, could not, must not be, and very clearly was, involved in this mess.

  Back walking the streets with the swagger. Easier — much easier now I knew at least the beginnings of where we had to go. The empty skater park beneath the railway line, still empty, still dark, dry paint fading on old wood slopes. The pub showing the football, Arsenal up at half-time, an empty wall where the kids should have sat drinking booze, a pavement stained with the leftovers of some long-ago binge, the off-licence, shutters drawn down over the windows, no lights on inside, and on the shutters a scrawled warning:

  ŞAPKAMI GERI VER

  Along with the usual mess of scratched letters and names.

  Anissina said nothing. Oda said, “If you’re wasting our time . . .”

  I ignored her. The swagger ignored her. It knew when it was dealing with the ignorant, not worthy of respect.

  A patch of concrete that might possibly, sometimes, be a garage. A length of chain drawn low across the fence. Inside, a public phone, the receiver hung neatly on the hook, under a single fizzing neon bulb. We wanted to stop and stare, to look at it for hours and will the night to be another night, some time before; but the shoes wanted to keep on walking, and I didn’t have the time or energy to care. It was how it was. The rain had washed off our blood.

  I kept on walking. Unfamiliar territory from here on, never got past the phone in the garage last time. I turned my head down towards the pavement and watched the stones pass underfoot, trusting — despite our better judgement — in Oda and Anissina to warn us of impending cement lorries — and let the shoes do the walking.

  I don’t know exactly where we ended up. Somewhere to the south, doubling back on our previous route. It was a shopping street doing its very best to be trendy, and not quite making it. Pubs were pretending to be wine bars, condensation on the windows and punters pouring out into the streets, despite the rain; restaurants had hiked their prices up by two quid and added aubergine, even the curry houses, and the newsagents advertised local “cultural events” by amateur theatre groups or community choirs. We walked past it all, feeling water seeping through our shoes and itch inside our socks, shimmering bright blackness sparkling down the streets into the spitting drains. The rain drained away the usual smells of the streets — kebabs and bus exhaust — and left cold numbness in their place, invigorating until it started to stick.

  Nor do I know how long we walked. Time was measured in strides, not seconds; distance in the warmth of our legs, rather than metres or miles. It seemed nothing at all. Oda said it was a long way.

  And without warning, we stopped and turned, toes pointing in at a street wall. I looked up. The wall was an ordinary terraced house which had had extraordinary things done to it. Its entire surface was covered over with bright aluminium, into which a thousand glittering would-be diamonds had been implanted around a core of plastic purple jewels, the bulbs just visible within them, pulsing out in a hypnotic rhythm the blazing word “VOLTAGE”.

  Beneath the sign, a pair of aluminium doors, reinforced on the inside and padded with purple silk, had been swung back. They led into darkness; a red cord strung from a brass stand marked the beginnings of a queue line into this place. A man in black with a radio stuck in his left ear was standing on the door, gloved hands folded across his belly, one on top of the other. He stank of treacle, of deep dark maple syrup without the sugar, all thickness and no charm, a stench of magic that reminded me of Charlie, Sinclair’s loyal assistant.

  He was good at not meeting anyone’s gaze, but scanned the street constantly as if we weren’t looking at him, his ridiculous dark glasses pushed up on a great fat nose. Oda, seeing us stare, said, “There? You want to go in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” she sighed. “When I last checked, you were a sorcerer, not a Jedi.”

  “You’ve seen Star Wars?”

  “Seen it and denounced it.”

  “You’ve denounced Star Wars?”

  She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Hollywood should not glorify witches.”

  “I think you’ve missed the point . . .”

  “I also denounce Harry Potter.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because . . .”

  “. . . because literature, especially children’s literature, should not glorify witches.”

  “Oda, what do you do for fun?”

  She thought about it, then said, without a jot of humour, “I denounce things.”

  “Let’s forget I asked.”

  Anissina, as always, said nothing. I nodded towards the door. “I want to go in there.”

  “Do you really think this is the most productive way you can go about . . .” — Oda grimaced, then spat the words, “. . . saving this damned city?”

  “You used ‘damned’ in a . . .”

  “Purely literal sense. I do not blaspheme nor have a sense of humour.”

  “Mo’s shoes want to go into Voltage.”

  “You speak as if they have a life of their own.”

  “You speak as if you can’t imagine they could. I had a pair of shoes, a few years back, that had been rained on by the Singapore monsoon, got sand in them by the Indian Ocean, run the best part of the Bronx and been scoffed at by waiters in Istanbul. And that was after it was sewn together by a child in rural China, carted on the back of a truck across the country, boxed and flown around the world for me to buy. Find me a pair of shoes that hasn’t got a life of its own, and I
’ll find you a blister plaster that actually works. Deal?”

  Oda scowled, and looked towards the dark door of the gaudy club. “Voltage?” she asked.

  “Voltage,” I said.

  The bouncer took one look at us, and said, “Wrong shoes.”

  You can’t intimidate bouncers. It’s not just that they’re paid to be tough — it’s that they’re paid and bored. It’s a bad combination.

  I said, “Really? You sure?”

  “Sorry, mate. You can’t come in with those shoes.”

  As he spoke, a gaggle of kids, not out of their teens, were waved through without a glance, bundling down the dark passage of the stairs into the pumping gloom inside. I asked carefully, “Am I too old?”

  “You know, mate, I’ve got my instructions . . .”

  A CCTV camera was hanging over the door. I considered it, I considered him. CCTV cameras are easy to confuse, if you know how. I didn’t even have to wave at it, and it was willing to turn the other screen. I said, “Shapeshifter.”

  He had shoulder muscles the size of an ox. They tensed. His coat nearly rode up a foot from his ankles. I waited. He said, “OK. Wizard.”

  “Not quite.”

  “It’s not your kinda place.”

  We laughed. “I know that. What’ll it take to get inside?”

  “I’d like to help you mate, seriously, I’d . . .”

  We reached forward suddenly, not blinking in warning, and snatched the glasses from his eyes. Beneath, his irises were solid spheres of bright orange, tinted yellow at the edges and filling the expanse of his eyes. A pair of pigeon’s eyes in a human’s head. He reached for me instinctively, one hand pushing back my chin, the other going for my right arm, all martial arts glitter. A sharp and purposeful click stopped him. Oda’s sleeve was pressed to the back of his neck. There was something in it more than a hand. She said, “If this wasn’t an area of public view, it’d be your spinal cord on the pavement. Let go of him.”

  His fingers eased back; I staggered away. Oda looked at me nicely and smiled. “Are there any alleys round here?”

  “Don’t kill him.”

  “Imagine the trouble if I don’t kill him. This is for your good as well as the city’s.”

  “You’re smart. Use your imagination. Don’t kill him.”

  “He’ll only . . .”

  “Cause trouble, yes, I know. We just don’t care. Deal with it.” Her face flickered in annoyance. “You know, I could just . . .”

  “If you kill him, we’ll know,” we snapped. We weren’t sure how we’d know, but she didn’t need to know that. We looked her straight in the eye and added, “We’ll know. Deal with it nicely.”

  “I’ll go.” Anissina. When she did speak, she was to the point. “Give me the gun.”

  Oda scowled, but carefully shifted places with Anissina, whose fingers slithered over the black metal pressed into the bouncer’s neck. Oda pulled the Alderman’s sleeve sharply down over Anissina’s hand, to hide the worst of the barrel. “Don’t think about it, sister,” she hissed, wrapping Anissina’s fingers tighter round the trigger. “When he tries something, don’t think. It’ll be easier that way.”

  Anissina said nothing. We had no idea if she was going to kill the bouncer either. But I figured he stood a better chance with anyone who wasn’t Oda.

  “Walk,” said Anissina, and slowly, obediently, the bouncer began to shuffle from the door. I watched them walk down the street. It looked like trouble, all awkward movements and turns; but if an Alderman couldn’t look after things, then who could? They vanished round the corner into a side street, and like the wise woman said, we chose not to think about it.

  “Shall we?” asked Oda, looking into the dark mouth of the club.

  “Dance?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Shall we dance, it’s a . . . forget it. Come on.”

  We went inside.

  If the outside had been all glitzy gaudy glam, the interior of Voltage did its best to live up to the name. I could smell the electricity, sizzling the air, making every breath buzz. I could feel it, hear it like the hum of a computer battery kept overcharged; it made the hairs on the back of my hands stand on end, and it was all we could do to walk without sparking.

  Flat plasma screens had been embedded in one wall, round circles of not-quite-glass within which wriggles of blue, green, purple and white mini-lightning danced and twisted. When we pressed our fingers against them, all the current danced towards our finger ends, turning them the colour of their own fire. The ceiling was set with twisting lights that gave off every colour except ordinary white, while above the bar in the corner deep UV blue mingled with a flickering strobe to set off the painted faces of the bartenders in psychedelic strangeness. And all the time, there was the music.

  It went:

  Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum

  — too loud to hear anything else, though we knew from the open mouths of the dancers pressed close on the floor that they were shouting, screaming, talking, flirting, with all these inaudible things lost behind the relentless heartbeat of the bass. Lost too, any lyrics or other rhythms and beats; there was just dum dum dum dum, to which heads bopped, hips thrust, elbows flapped, knees jerked, feet turned, sentences tumbled, blood pumped. The air tasted of salty teaspoons, smelt of thin slices of cucumber peeled away with a razored steel blade, and sweat, and static, and of course, there it was slicing through it all, a flash with every beat, the scarlet stench of magic. You don’t have a shapeshifter guard the door unless there’s something worth guarding.

  There weren’t any stools at the bar. Comfort wasn’t part of the atmosphere. I leant on the counter and rubbed my temples, tried to drive the ache from the strobe out of my skull. Oda leant next to me, smiled at the barman and said, “You got anything that isn’t alcoholic?”

  The barman looked at her like she was a mammoth.

  She shrugged. “My hopes were few.”

  There was a list of cocktails laminated to the surface of the bar. For each cherry-topped drink, I could have had three home-microwaved suppers. I pointed at one and said, “That.”

  “A Hot Red Sex?”

  We weren’t sure how to answer. “Sure,” we mumbled. We’ll try anything, once.

  The barman turned; the barman worked. The thing he ended up putting in front of me was, in the UV light, the colour and consistency of lumpy custard. We sniffed it carefully and smelt booze and peach juice. We dipped a finger in it, licked it dry, couldn’t really taste anything. We held it up to the light. Oda said, “Are you going to drink it or not?”

  We took a careful sip. It was like swallowing a fermented mango soaked in a vat of acid. We wheezed. Oda turned away, and smiled. Teetotal. It made a sort of inevitable, self-righteous sense. I pushed the glass across the counter to a safe distance, just in case it started to melt, and turned my head towards the dance.

  Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum

  “See anything that sets your Satanic senses buzzing?” asked Oda nicely.

  “Yes.”

  “Going to do anything about it?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t know what it is yet.”

  “That’s the problem with mystic forces,” murmured Oda. “They tell you that you’re going to die, but they never specify how. It’s so you can feel the fear before the end, as some small redress for the life of arrogance you have led.”

  “You know, you could learn something from Anissina.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “No, seriously. You could learn how to be quiet.”

  “Information,” she replied primly, “is not truth.”

  Mo’s shoes didn’t seem much help any more. Now that we had arrived, they didn’t even seen inclined to dance. I looked at the people on the dance floor, faces coming and going like a jerking film in the glare of the strobe. All young: kids, teenagers, dressed in the kind of scruff that needs a rich man’s budget, jeans slashed the right way, skin pierced with
the right studs, hair done at a hundred quid for each gelled-up spike, brands artfully aged on cotton deliberately stained. The bouncer had been right — we didn’t fit in. Too old, too mundane. Only our shoes were in the right area, all style and huff.

  Their dance had a strange uniformity. It wasn’t what we’d imagined dance should be; our thoughts filled with ideas of roses, moonlight, a boy, a girl, or at the very least two individuals with a thing for each other, an expression of something for when the crude mundanities of speech failed, a way to mention sex — a concept we found absurd, if fascinating — without having to go into biology. This was about sex; there was no denying it. But it had no sexiness, no intimacy nor sensuality, but was merely about fondling as many bottoms as you could in a single night, or peering down as many tops as your height would permit, all the time wiggling and shaking with strange expressions on your face as though to say, “you think I can do this with my hips now, wait till you see me naked”. Some did it better than others, and danced in a way that spoke of sex but promised you this was the nearest you’d get, distance making it more alluring. Others just fumbled and writhed, but always, always the floor twisted and rose and fell and turned and moved to the relentless bass coming out of . . . where? I couldn’t see speakers, couldn’t see any source for the sound, it just seemed to shimmer into being behind the eardrums, not bothering to soften down its punches on the way in.

  Oda said, “You’re ogling.”

  “What?”

  “You are staring lewdly at the dancers.”

  “I am not!”

  “You are. It is highly distasteful.”

  We bit our lip. “Listen,” I said, nearly shouting over the din, “there’s something . . . off.”

  “You use ‘off’ like I use ‘rotting’, yes?”

  “Where’s the music coming from?”

  She opened her mouth to say something smart, looked round, and closed it again just in time. There was a long pause as she scanned the room, peering into every corner, over the ceiling and through the faces bobbing on the floor. Finally she said, “All right. So there’s no speakers. So?”