by Peter McLean
And now I was looking for Debbie. Was it selfish of me to try and find her, knowing what I had become? Yeah of course it was. I’m a selfish bloke, I know that. All the same, I knew the Burned Man didn’t have any sort of beef with Debbie, whereas it hated Trixie almost as much as it both respected and fancied her. That wasn’t as much as I fancied her, admittedly, but then I was also hopelessly in love with her. The Burned Man really wasn’t.
It called her “Blondie” and it liked looking at her arse, but I knew that if it thought for one moment it could get away with wringing her neck it wouldn’t hesitate for a second. She had tried to steal it, to be fair, but all the same…
I didn’t have any illusions about getting back with Debbie, and since I had fallen so hard for Trixie I didn’t even want to. I just wanted to see her, you know what I mean? Debbie had been my sort-of girlfriend for almost twenty years, but for all that time she had also been my best friend. She had always been there for me, and now that she wasn’t I missed her like I’d lost an arm or something. I just wanted to… I didn’t even know what I wanted, really. To make sure she was all right, I supposed. To see her again. To see if she had stopped hating me yet.
I had to admit, for all that I was in love with Trixie, I still wondered… oh, I don’t fucking know. Debbie was normal, you know? Well, as normal as an alchemist can be, I suppose. She was at least human, anyway. She lived for her work, the same as I had, but alchemy exists on the very fringe of the magical lifestyle. If you squinted at it and ignored the blood and toads you could say she was an experimental chemist, I suppose. That was beside the point, though. What I mean is, Debbie had been my last, probably my only, chance at a normal life.
Yeah I loved Trixie, but I had loved Debbie once too. In my own shitty way I had, anyway. Sort of. I had never really made any sort of commitment to her but I had always thought that maybe one day we’d make a real grownup go of it, just because that was what you did. I had thought that maybe one day we’d have enough money to get a house together. Maybe we’d even get married and have children, I don’t know. After how my dad had been, the thought of having children of my own frightened the life out of me, but it’s what normal grownup people are supposed to do, isn’t it? Maybe… I couldn’t help but think that maybe it would have been my chance. My chance to put things right, for everything I had done over the years.
Whatever, I wanted to find her.
The trouble was, Debbie didn’t seem to want to be found. It didn’t take me long to find the sort of people who would know where to find an alchemist. I met with a wealthy Wiccan high priestess in a restaurant so expensive the prices made my eyes water, with ceremonial magicians in trendy city centre bars and with various seekers in the friendly atmosphere of nice normal pubs.
Of course they all knew an alchemist, but none of them seemed to know Debbie. That, it seemed to me, was a tiny little bit unlikely. Debbie was bloody good at what she did, and more to the point she didn’t really know how to do anything else. Unless she was flipping burgers to pay the rent then she had to be working as an alchemist somewhere in Glasgow. Someone as good at their job as Debbie gets known quickly, yet it seemed that she wasn’t. I smelled a rat.
“Listen mate,” I said to the dapper little chap sitting across from me in the pub. “I need an alchemist. A decent one, you understand me?”
“Aye, I heard you,” he said. “And I’m telling you, my pal Chris is the best alchemist in Glasgow.”
This guy’s name was Willie McLaughlin and he was a seeker of some note. He was wearing a green jacket and a tweed cap and drinking a pint of dark brown real ale, and spinning me a fucking yarn.
“I don’t know your pal Chris,” I said. “I heard there was this bird moved up from London a while back, amazing with her tinctures and that. Debbie her name is. It’s her I want.”
“You’re Don Drake, are you not?” he said.
I nodded. There didn’t seem to be a lot of point in denying it, and it’s always nice to be recognized by a fellow professional. “Yeah, that’s me,” I said. Too late. I could feel the shutters come down behind his eyes.
“Thought so,” he said. “Never heard of her.”
I knew damn well I was being stonewalled. I sipped my pint of Tennents and glowered at him. Unless I was being more paranoid than usual, it looked like Debbie had spread the word. I could almost hear her telling them that if a Don Drake ever came around asking after her then she didn’t exist. I sighed. I supposed I could hardly blame the bloke. She was the best, and if he did know her then he would want to carry on being her customer. That, I was starting to suspect, was dependent on him not telling me where she was.
“Ah go on then, fuck off,” I said.
He frowned at me.
“There’s no need to be like that,” he said. “And this is my local not yours, pal.”
I coughed. I suppose he had a point – I was forgetting my protocol. I was too used to doing my business in the Rose and Crown back in good old South London where Shirley would forgive me just about anything and big Alf was always on hand to sort out any difficulties that might arise. I wasn’t in Kansas any more, that was for damn sure.
“Yeah, course,” I said. “Sorry.”
Twat, the Burned Man said in the back of my head.
Oh shut up, I thought at it as I got up and put my coat on. The bloke’s got a point.
He’s got a fucking silly hat and no manners, the Burned Man said. Doesn’t he know who we are?
No of course he didn’t, and it was going to stay that way. If he had known about the Burned Man living in my head he wouldn’t have been likely to have sat down with me in the first place. Running away would have been his more sensible course of action. The Burned Man’s reaction to any threat or slight, real or imagined, seemed to be to set fire to something or preferably to someone. That might have been acceptable in the bronze age but it was no way to get business done these days.
Just leave it, I thought. He’s been nobbled the same as the rest of them.
Debbie didn’t want to be found, all right. Or more to the point she didn’t want to be found by me, that was becoming abundantly fucking clear. I didn’t know if Debbie had ever shared my thoughts about the future, and I supposed the fact that we had never really talked about it in the best part of twenty years spoke fucking volumes. Even if she had been entertaining visions of a cottage with roses round the door and all that shit, I supposed her encounter with Ally would have well and truly put paid to that. I could hardly blame her, but that wasn’t the point. I wanted to find her, and like I said before, I’m a selfish bloke. I’d explain myself when I was looking her in the eye.
Chapter Two
Of course it wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever fucking is.
I worked my way gradually down the spectrum of Glasgow’s magical initiates, from that glittering high priestess through the seekers and magicians until I was all the way down to the scummy sort of shitbags I knew best. All the time I was looking over my shoulder for Menhit’s people, waiting for Mazin and his mysterious organisation to show up and spoil my day, but so far I seemed to be getting away with hiding. Thank fuck for that, that’s all I could say. The thought of Menhit the Black Lion of Nubia catching up with me was enough to give me nightmares all by itself, and that was without everything else that kept me awake at nights.
Christ knew what this pub was even called – the sign outside was too covered in graffiti to read. I was on the outskirts of Glasgow now, in the sort of estate where the television people like to set gritty kitchen sink dramas about razor fights and battered wives. If it hadn’t been for the Burned Man seething quietly in the back of my head I would never have dared even set foot in a pub there, but there was something sickly comforting about knowing I could reduce the entire place and all its patrons to sticky ashes if I had to. I didn’t want to, but it was still nice to know that I could. That is about where my moral compass was pointing by then, in case you hadn’t got the idea yet.
&nbs
p; I shouldered my way to the bar and ordered a pint, trying not to sound too English and failing miserably. I could feel the hostility around me in the warm wall of tracksuits and leather jackets, threatening as it pressed closer.
I looked hastily around and found my guy across the room, wedged behind a corner table between the fruit machines and the pool table. I waved and headed over, and when people saw who I was with they reluctantly parted to let me through. This bloke obviously had respect in here, I realized. He was old and balding and scruffy, with a big grey beard and the sort of army surplus greatcoat that only tramps seemed to wear these days. His remaining hair hung in long grey straggles around his face, his scabby bald spot shining in the bright overhead lights from the pool table. He had a bottle of fairly decent whisky on the table in front of him though, with two glasses and a greasy looking deck of cards split in two. He reminded me uncomfortably of Wormwood, for all that he was unmistakably human. His dull, fuzzy blue aura was enough to tell me that.
I sat down opposite him and nodded in greeting.
“You Davey?” I asked.
He returned my nod with a sly, oily smile that said he knew something I didn’t.
“You’ll be Drake, then,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “You look set up for Fates there, mate. I didn’t know anyone played it north of the border.”
“Oh aye, a few of us,” he said. “If you know where to look.”
I nodded again, and wondered why my skin was crawling. Sure he was grotty, but I knew a lot of grotty people. Something about this bloke was nasty in a whole new way.
“I was told to come find you,” I said. “She told me to tell you ‘Kelmeth at midnight, in the shadow of the La’hah’.”
Davey snorted. “Someone doesn’t fucking like you, do they?”
“A lot of people don’t fucking like me,” I shot back at him. “Comes with the job, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?”
“Oh don’t fucking give me that, mate,” I said. “Buggered if I know what your little handshake phrase means but I’ve said it now so I assume you must know who sent me to you. And you’re set up for Fates, and you’re sitting in a shithole like this. You’re my people.”
He grinned and poured whisky for us both.
“Oh I am most definitely your people, that’s true,” he said. “All the same, your name’s poison in these parts.”
Of course it was. I remembered Vincent and Danny McRoth, and everything that had gone wrong with that job. I remembered the child. I saw his ruined face, and shuddered. Edinburgh wasn’t so very far from Glasgow, after all. Of course everyone knew.
“Shit,” I said. “Look, about that…”
He shrugged and waved me quiet.
“I’m old and I’m reliably told I’m horrible,” he said, giving me a leer that showed me his eight remaining brown teeth. “I don’t really give a fuck about all that.”
Of course he didn’t. This bloke was the very bottom of the chain, the dregs of the magicians’ hierarchy. All the same, the lovely aristocratic ceremonial magician who had told me what to say to him had seemed to respect him. In a wary sort of way, anyway. It’s often people like this Davey, people like me come to that, that the higher-ups end up having to be scared of. We’re the ones who do their dirty work for them, after all. Even so, there was something about him that was just making me itch.
“Fair enough,” I said. “So will you help me find Debbie?”
“Why the fuck would I do that?” he asked. “I said I’d meet you, that’s all. Maybe I just wanted to meet the famous Don Drake. Maybe I wanted to meet Danny’s bane, the child killer.”
“Oh fucking look here, that was an accident…” I started, but he waved me to silence.
“Listen for a minute, pal,” he said.
He picked up the thicker deck of cards, the suits of the minor arcana, and started to shuffle them noisily. I got the impression he was trying to use the sound to cover what he was saying, and leaned forwards across the sticky table to hear him better.
“You have to understand, Danny McRoth was a bitch,” he said. “Her old man wasnae so bad really as black magicians go, but her? Oh, she was an evil cow and no mistake. You maybe did the world a favour ridding us of a necromancer… but then there was that wee boy.”
Oh yes, there had been that little boy all right. He had been five fucking years old and my screamers had torn him to bloody rags. I screwed my eyes tight shut and saw his face all over again, the bloody holes where his eyes had been. Cheers Davey, I fucking needed that right now. Oh thanks a bunch, you horrible old wanker.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well that did you no favours with folk around here,” he said.
“I suppose it wouldn’t have,” I muttered.
“Ah but then you see, there’s people like me,” he went on. “Old Davey’s a horrible old cunt, anyone’ll tell you that. Anyone except Margarite it seems, as she told you the words to say to me. Silly wee lassie, bless her. That aside, you’re here now. Will you play a hand?”
I looked at him. I wasn’t born yesterday, and I could feel the jaws of the trap quivering in the air around me. That, and there now seemed to be a circle of leather jackets and tracksuit-wearers around our table, watching us in hostile silence. Watching me.
“What are we playing for?” I asked him.
“Truth,” he said. “What else is there?”
Well there was money, as far as I was concerned, but right now it was truth I was after.
“Do you know where Debbie is?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Play me and if you win you can find out,” he said.
“And if I lose?”
“Then you’ll have to tell me a truth instead,” he said.
I frowned at him. This was feeling more one-sided by the minute, and I knew there really was something wrong about this guy. I just couldn’t put my finger on what. I wasn’t even sure if he actually knew where she was, after all, and if I lost, then Christ only knew what he’d want me to tell him. And of course we were in a pub that was pretty much on the outskirts of Hell and where it seemed he was the only thing keeping me from getting knifed. Oh, how the fuck had I let that Margarite talk me into coming here?
Because she looked a bit like a poor man’s version of Blondie and you’re a twat, the Burned Man helpfully pointed out.
Oh fuck off, I told it.
It sniggered. What do you make of old Merlin here? it asked me.
I don’t like him, I thought back at it. I don’t really know why but I just fucking don’t, and I like his little ned army even less. All the same, he might be grotty but I think he knows his shit.
Yup, it said. Whether he knows where your Debbie is I couldn’t tell you, but he didn’t just fall out of a tree that’s for sure.
No, I hadn’t thought so either. Whatever it was about Davey, whatever I didn’t like about him, I could tell that he knew which way was up. I looked at Davey and nodded.
“Go on then,” I said. “I’ll play you.”
He grinned again, flecks of spit bubbling in the gaps between his teeth.
“Thought you might,” he said. “You’re in here now.”
“Don’t think that gives you a fucking edge,” I said, and I knew that was the Burned Man talking for me suddenly. “Don’t you think for one fucking moment that a room full of scummy little neds is going to bother me. We’ll play fair or I’ll burn this place and everyone in it to the cunting ground, you understand me?”
Davey looked at me, expressionless, and none of the lads looming behind me seemed particularly moved. He didn’t look very impressed, I have to admit. He didn’t know the Burned Man was inside me of course. No one knew that, except Adam.
And Trixie, I thought bitterly. Trixie knows. I told myself to shut up.
All the same, I could tell he was switched on enough to know that hadn’t been just a slightly shabby London magician talking to him.
I leaned over the table and got r
ight in his face.
“Danny’s bane,” I whispered. “Think about what that means.”
“Yeah all right,” he said. “You can stop showing off now, laddie. Cards, aye?”
The Burned Man left me all at once and I settled back into the seat opposite him, my palms sweating. Fuck, that was me told, wasn’t it? The Burned Man had done its full sneering, swaggering, “fuck you, I’ll eat you” routine at this Davey geezer and it had just bounced right off him. That didn’t exactly fill me with confidence, shall we say.
“Cards,” I agreed.
He nodded and started to deal. I watched closely, very closely. I’m good with cards myself, and unless they’re a master at it I can usually spot when someone else is tickling a deck. Davey didn’t even seem to be trying. Every card came off the top and there were none of the distraction techniques I was expecting to see, nothing to cover the palming of a card here and there. He actually seemed to be on the level, which surprised me. I cheat like hell whenever I get the chance, personally.
“I’m no a cheat,” Davey said, as though he had been reading my mind. “Fates is as much about divination as it is about gambling, and where’s the point in trying to cheat that?”
Well of course there were all sorts of reasons you might want to cheat on a divination for someone else, but I wasn’t about to get into that. The time I had fobbed Gold Steevie off with a spread that promised him a one-way ticket to Hell if he did something I didn’t want him to do sprang to mind, but that was a while ago now and none of Davey’s business. Gold Steevie was dead now, anyway, and Davey actually seemed to be on the up and up. I have to admit that threw me a bit. I suspected that might be why he seemed to be even more skint than I was. There was no money in honesty these days, not by a long way there wasn’t. Oh fuck it, who was I kidding? He wasn’t on the up and up, he was just a better liar than me. That’s fucking saying something, believe you me.
