by Tom Holt
“All right.” She stretched past him and got the map. “But I’m rubbish at map-reading.”
A truthful girl, whatever her other faults. If she’d been Columbus’s navigator on the Santa Maria, the world’s leading superpower in the twenty-first century would probably have been Australia. Eventually, after a misguided tour of half the lanes-with-grass-growing-up-the-middle in the Midlands, they floundered out onto a dual carriageway that he knew, unfortunately going the wrong way. But it only took ten minutes to get to a junction where they could turn round, and that left them a mere forty-five minutes behind schedule—
“Do you get lost a lot?” she asked.
“No,” Chris replied.
Thanks to some dangerously reckless driving (Angela didn’t approve of speeding, Chris could tell) they reached Cotterells an hour after they should’ve arrived. Not good; Mandy the manageress was a nice girl, but heavily into punctuality.
“This is Angela,” Chris said—he found he still couldn’t remember her surname—”she’s going round with me for a few weeks, learning the ropes.”
Mandy the manageress smiled at her, and he could practically feel the goodwill bounce off and shatter. Great start. It was as though all the friendliness and rapport he’d built up here over the last few years had been hoovered up into a great black bag. Mandy was distinctly chilly as he tried in vain to interest her in the new range of bottled dreams, and the portable parking spaces went down like a lead balloon. Even the DW6 order was down by a dozen on last time (yes, but what do they do with it?) and he wasn’t offered a cup of tea, which was definitely a first.
Curiously, when they got back in the car and set off for the next call the girl seemed marginally happier. At least, the sharp edge of her frown blurred just a little, and after ten minutes she spoke without being spoken to first.
“You didn’t have much luck there,” she said.
“No.”
“I don’t think that woman likes you very much.”
“Mandy?” Chris frowned. “Oh, she’s all right. We get on pretty well, usually.”
Pause; then, “I expect it’s really important, getting on well with the customers.”
“It helps,” he said. “I mean, obviously there’s going to be some who just don’t want to know, but basically we’re all in the same business. If they want stuff to sell to their customers, they’ve got to get it from somewhere, and our range just happens to be one of the best in the trade. Got to believe in what you’re selling,” he went on, “because if you don’t, they pick up on it really quickly, and then it’s forget it. Believe in the stock and try and be nice to people, that’s really all there is to it.”
Angela shrugged, as if to imply that the other one was festooned with little tinkly silver bells. “I don’t think I’d be any good at this,” she said. “I don’t get on well with people.”
No, Chris thought, you don’t. “It’s a knack,” he said. “You learn it, along with the other tricks of the trade. Mind you, it helps if you like the sound of your own voice.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I think my voice sounds horrible.”
Two things we agree about; at this rate, we could be friends. “So, you aren’t planning on going into the marketing side, then?”
Angela shook her head. “Research and development,” she said. “I’ve got extremely advanced magical abilities, or at least that’s what they told me when I went for my interview. They seemed very keen to have me,” she added mournfully. “Specially when I told them about my uncle.”
“In the trade, is he?”
She nodded. “Professor of Applied Effective Magic at UCLA,” she said. “And his father was head of demonology for Leclerq Freres in Sao Paulo, so it sort of runs in the family.”
“Sounds like it,” Chris replied, trying really hard not to sound in any way jealous or resentful. “Of course,” he went on, “my grandad was in the trade too.”
“Oh yes?”
He nodded. “Senior chargehand at JWW Industrial by the time he retired. Spent most of his working life in the genie-bottling plant. Very responsible job, you can imagine.”
Angela didn’t say anything, and on balance Chris approved of her decision. Not a lot to be said, really. But the silence got on his nerves after a bit, so he said, “Research and development generally, or is there anything in particular you’re—?”
“Well,” she said, “in my second year I did quite a bit on transmigration of energy—you know, spontaneous generation of morphogenic fields, subatomic disruption, ionic interface re-sequencing, all pretty basic stuff but potentially quite interesting if you look at it from the standpoint of effective metanormal transmutation, and my tutor’s currently working in theoretical cross-dimensional transmigration, which of course would change everything if he can make it work, so I think I’d quite like to be in on that, if it comes to anything. I mean, the practical applications in the construction and entertainment sectors alone would be pretty exciting, not to mention the possibility of finally bridging the effective/practical dichotomy—”
Chris tuned out. It was depressing; she made it sound like science, and surely the whole point of what they did in the trade was that it wasn’t science, it was better. All that stuff about energy and atoms and ions; it sort of took the magic out of it, somehow. At any rate, she seemed happy enough babbling on about it, and she clearly hadn’t noticed how what she was saying was affecting him. That or she didn’t care. All in all, he was in a thoroughly bad mood when they rolled up outside Domestic & Commercial Magic for their next call.
“Just let me do the talking, all right?” he said (which, he’d have been the first to admit, was like telling the Pacific Ocean not to catch fire). “This lot—well, I’m not saying they’re difficult exactly, more sort of cautious. Don’t particularly like reps. But I can handle them, so—”
Angela nodded, and Chris led the way into the shop.
It was the smell, more than anything: a strong but delicate scent of violets and roses, combined with just a hint of woodsmoke. A civilian would’ve taken no notice, or made a mental note to ask the shopkeeper where they got their potpourri from. But Chris was no civilian, and he’d come across that smell before.
“Get out,” he said. “Back the way you came. Don’t look at anything. Do it”
Pitch the tone of voice just right, and even graduate trainees will do as they’re told. Angela backed out of the shop; Chris really, really wanted to follow her, but he couldn’t, not without looking, just in case there were survivors. Not that there’d be much he could do for them—
Slowly he turned his head, and for a moment he wondered if he’d lost it completely and made all that fuss over nothing. No blood, severed limbs, giblet-splatters on the walls; the shop-fittings untrashed, the stockroom door still squarely on its hinges. But the shelves behind the counter were bare, and he knew without having to look further that there was nobody else in the shop. Nobody human.
But why? he asked himself. Not that they need a reason—
One of the things that made Chris uncomfortable about what Jill did for a living was the heroism element. She never called it that, of course, pulled a face at him if he ever used the word, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t appropriate; and he had this, thing about heroes. Didn’t hold with them. They made him nervous, mostly because he simply couldn’t fathom what made them do all that stuff. Why anybody with more brains than a teaspoon would willingly advance into danger, when they could perfectly well run away, he couldn’t begin to understand. Altruism, to save others, to make a difference; the thrill, the adrenalin rush, the only time you feel really alive is when you’re staring Death in the tonsils; he’d heard all the justifications loads of times, from some of the best heroes in the business. Made no difference. He still didn’t understand.
He was, therefore, both surprised and extremely unhappy with himself for taking a couple of very tentative steps forward, away from the door, towards the counter. Out of my tiny little mind,
he told himself, why the hell am I doing this? And the only answer he got was: Please hold, we’ll get back to you as soon as we’ve figured it out for ourselves. In the years and decades and centuries and millennia it took for him to cross the seven yards separating the door from the counter, Chris tried to remember everything he’d ever learned about Domestic & Commercial Magic Ltd that might conceivably be relevant. Didn’t take long; they were an average, run-of-the-mill small chain operation, consisting of five shops in the west and south Midlands, stocking an unambitious range of general merchandise for the commercial, manufacturing, construction and entertainment & media sectors, with small but active niche markets in spatio-temporal design and archaic enchanted weaponry—
Oh, Chris thought. Three guesses what they came for, then.
He’d reached the counter. Very slowly, he leaned across, to see if there was anything— There was. He had to look twice before he could make a positive identification. Looking back the second time was the most unpleasant task he’d ever set himself, and he wasn’t getting paid for it or earning brownie points or anything.
Poor Mr Newsome. Not his favourite shop manager, by any stretch of the imagination. He had an infuriating habit of whistling softly under his breath while you were trying to pitch him a new line; he never took more than four dozen of anything (except DW6, of course), and he was a terror for sending back anything that had the slightest mark or crease on it Over the years Chris had got the impression from the two girls who worked there that Newsome was a bit of a martinet, inclined to snarl and whine about sixty-five-minute lunch hours and incoming personal calls on the company’s phone lines. Nearly everybody who’d ever met him compared him, appearance and personality, to Captain Mainwaring (but without, according to Veronica from Zauberwerke, the wit, charm and sex appeal). Not, then, the most endearing man who ever lived. Even so.
Whatever it was that had done for him had aimed for outright decapitation. Probably it had underestimated the density and tenacity of Mr Newsome’s unusually thick neck. Consequently, it had managed to tear through the left-side skin, flesh, tendons and blood vessels and had cracked open the spinal column, but that was as far as it had managed to get. As a result, Mr Newsome’s head lay tilted to one side, as if it was a removable component that had got stuck. Apart from that, he looked fine—suit neat, shirt hardly stained at all, shoes still bright-shiny polished, nicely manicured hands limp and relaxed at his sides. In an ideal world, you’d be able to fix him by unscrewing the damaged components and slotting in new ones. But the world isn’t ideal, and even magic has its limitations. Poor Mr Newsome.
Oh well, Chris thought; I knew I recognised that smell, and I was right. Clever old me. Now do something really clever, and get yourself out of here in one piece.
From the counter to the door, seven yards, seven ordinary paces, seven small steps for a man. No way in hell was he going to turn his back on the counter. He started to move; and, more to keep his mind occupied and off the thing behind the counter he couldn’t see, he looked around him, at the otherwise perfectly normal shop that just happened not to have anything on its shelves right now—
Correction: he’d missed something. In the middle of the top shelf, perfectly still and facing him, was the ugliest garden gnome he’d ever set eyes on in his life. Odd, Chris thought; that’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a garden centre rather than a magical-goods shop. Not that anybody, not even the disturbed people who buy garden gnomes, would ever part with money for that—
The gnome winked at him.
Not supposed to do that.
The gnome winked at him again, and grinned. And, now he came to think of it, that wasn’t a gnome, it was something quite other; and the long, flat shiny thing that it was holding in its palpably-not-gnome’s hands wasn’t a fishing rod, either. Oh, he thought. Well, it was a pretty lousy excuse for a life, but it’ll be over any minute now, and then maybe I can be something else.
The thing that demonstrably wasn’t a gnome was looking at Chris, head tilted just a little on one side; considering him, quite calmly, weighing up the necessary expenditure of effort against the likely rewards and benefits. He kept perfectly still while the un-gnome was thinking, just in case any action on his part, any slight movement, say, or funny little squeaking noise he might make should affect the creature’s judgement. It took its time, and he had a nasty feeling that his left foot, frozen in the act of taking a step back, was starting to go to sleep. He was wondering just how long he could keep it up, in fact, when the creature (not a gnome; quite sure about that) shook its disproportionately large head an inch or so from side to side, and its lips moved, shaping the words no, not today.
As Chris put his weight on his numb left foot, he wobbled, and that made the creature twitch; like a wolf, he thought, instinctively programmed to react to movements of prey species that were suggestive of weakness or panic. But he kept going, and it didn’t move, though its eyes were still fixed on him, downloading information at a tremendous rate, every detail of his body weight and mass, likely speed, agility, defensive and evasive capabilities. As his shoulders drew level with the frame of the open door he saw it yawn. Then he spun round and ran.
Angela was standing by the car, for crying out loud. “Get in,” Chris howled, lunging for the door handle, his other hand scrabbling in his pocket for his keys.
“What’s going on?” she said. “Has something—?”
“Get in the fucking car!”
Tone of voice, you see. Only, he knew it wasn’t something he’d be able to do in cold blood, so to speak. It needed that extra incentive.
Chris didn’t actually look to see if Angela was safely inside, or if she’d fastened her seat belt. He twisted the key, felt a stab or pure joy as the engine fired, and jabbed his elbow down on the locking pin to lock all the doors. A quick glance back towards the shop door, then a fluent wrench at the gear lever, and his left foot stamped down on the clutch—
“Aren’t we going to make the call, then?” Angela said.
Chris reversed fast and without looking, felt the back end of the car bash into something, stuck the gearstick into first and floored the pedal; round the corner, thirty seconds at maximum burn up the main road, then into the first lay-by he came to. He didn’t make a totally wonderful job of stopping; in fact, he rammed the car’s nose into a hedge and stalled the engine. Then he wound down his window, stuck his head out of it and—
“Are you feeling all right?” Angela asked.
—Threw up with prodigious force; which was, he felt, about as much answer as her question merited.
“Fine,” he croaked, wiping his mouth. “Never fucking better. And you?”
Now she was looking at him as though he had two heads. “What’s the matter?” she said. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
“You might say that.” His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t even get his phone out of his pocket. “Here,” he snapped, “make yourself useful. Ring this number.”
With surprising meekness, Angela took out her phone, flipped up the lid, and waited. Chris couldn’t remember the number, of course. It was stored in his phone, along with all the other useful data.
“Call the office,” he said, his voice flat as he gave her the number. “Ask Julie on reception to get you the number for Felixstowe. She’ll know what that means,” he added quickly, as her lips parted. “Then dial that number and hand me the phone, OK?”
He’d never actually spoken to Felixstowe before, and when a cool, brisk female voice came on the line and asked him which service he required, his mind went blank, and he sat frozen for several seconds while the phone squeaked “Hello?” at him, until the girl poked him hard in the ribs, and he pulled himself together with a snap.
“Demon control,” Chris said.
“Putting you through,” said the cool voice, and a moment later, a man was asking him where he was, how many, what subspecies—
“I don’t know, do I?” Chris sn
apped. “Lesser greater spotted Ibbotson’s fucking warbler. It was smallish and sort of grey, it was sitting on a shelf in a shop and it winked at me. All right?”
The man told him there was no need to shout (which was, Chris strongly felt, simply not true) and started asking him for his name, date of birth, address, occupation, work and home phone numbers, e-mail address—
He gave it, then doubletook and said, “What do you need my e-mail address for?”
“We’re compiling a database,” the man replied, “as part of our ongoing e-technology initiative. Would you like to receive our monthly newsletter?”
Quite some time later, the man told him to stay put and a dedicated incident-management team would be along at some point to sort it all out. “Thank you for calling Demon Control Services,” he concluded. “Should you require further assistance, access our website at doubleyoudoubleyou...”
“Here,” the girl pointed out, “that’s my phone. Don’t do that, you’ll break it.”
“Sorry,” Chris said, and handed it back.
She put it away. “They didn’t seem very helpful,” she said. He shrugged.
“Government,” he replied. “Anyway, they’ll take it from here. None of our business any more. We just stay put and wait for them, and everything’!! be just fine,” he added, glancing to make sure that the car doors were locked. Not, he reflected, that a little bit of glass and pressed steel sheet would slow up one of them for very long.
“Back there.” Angela’s voice was quieter and a little bit higher. “Was it really a—?”
“Yes,” Chris said.
“Oh.” Not scared, though; he’d assumed it was fear, but it wasn’t. He couldn’t actually decide what it was. “What had it done?”
“Killed the manager,” he replied. “Which is unusual,” he added, more thinking aloud than communicating, “because they aren’t usually that violent. I’ve got a friend in the agency, and she’s told me a bit about them. They don’t usually attack unless they have to, it uses up a lot of energy and they’re very-efficient.” He frowned. “I don’t think it was hungry, the body was just lying there, hadn’t really been touched. Also, it had cleared off all the shelves, like it was looking for something. My guess is, it was there to get weapons. It’s a line DCM specialise in, and the one I saw was holding something like a great big knife; sort of turning it over in its hands and looking at it, the way you do when you’ve just bought something.” Chris shivered. “Anyway, like I said, not our problem. I’d better phone in and explain, get Julie to ring round the shops, tell them we’ve been held up.”
