‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s get to the coven and think of something else.’
‘Okay. Also, can I borrow a new bra when we get there? I’m telling you, this one has soaked in a good cup full. It is not comfortable.’
I tried my best to ignore that image as we headed for the front door, opening it to reveal a familiar face.
‘Well, well,’ said Layland, David’s partner. ‘Would you look who it is.’
16
I blinked a few times, trying to take in what Detective Lauren Layland had just told me.
‘Can you say that again?’
‘What’s wrong? Hard of hearing now, as well as full of more shit than a backed up turd machine?’
I’d like to say I hated Layland, but the truth was I sort of respected her take-no-crap attitude. Still, I can’t say I hadn’t occasionally thought about the sound my fist would make connecting with her nose.
‘Please, just repeat what you said.’
‘I said, have you been in contact with Detective David Tyler since he dropped off the face of the fucking Earth three days ago?’
Yeah. The fight in The Beehive was, it turns out, three days ago.
‘Three days?’ I repeated, turning to look at Eva.
‘Hm?’ replied Eva, still more interested in the now almost empty box of bran cereal she was clutching.
‘It’s been three days since… well, you know.’
Eva frowned, then began to count on her fingers. ‘Oh, right, yeah. I suppose it was three days.’
Layland narrowed her eyes at us as I tried to dance around the subject.
‘You might have mentioned that,’ I told Eva.
‘Hey, in my defence, I forgot.’
‘That isn’t a defence.’
‘It had the word defence right there in the sentence,’ she said, turning to Layland for support. ‘Hey resting bitch-face, am I wrong?’
Layland bristled and took a step forward. ‘What did you just say to me?’
‘Just ignore her,’ I said on Eva’s behalf. ‘She was dropped on her head as a baby.’
Eva laughed. ‘That’s actually true. A small section of my skull is made of wood.’
‘You’re both fucking loonies. And I must be a loony too for putting up with you.’
‘Detective Layland,’ I said, trying to get things back on track, ‘we haven’t seen David. That’s actually why we came here, because he hasn’t been picking up his phone and we wanted to check on him.’
‘How long have you had a key to his home?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Maybe.’
‘A while.’
‘Want to be a little more specific?’
‘About six months.’
Layland nodded, then wrote it down in her notebook.
Eva nudged me with her elbow. ‘I do not think that this pig likes you.’
‘Nope, and I also don’t like you,’ replied Layland without looking up.
‘I respect that. I’m an acquired taste.’
‘I’m ignoring her now,’ replied Layland, focussing on me. I didn’t like the way her eyes bored into mine. Those eyes that radiated suspicion. An unfocused suspicion, but one that assumed—rightly too—that I was at fault somewhere in all of this.
‘The last sighting we have of Detective Tyler was on the street with you, heading through Ealing Broadway on foot. Care to tell me where you were going?’
A hidden pub for magic people that he then wrecked with his ever-increasing and terrifying Uncanny powers.
‘We had a drink at a pub to talk over the case. The strange murders.’
‘Which pub?’
‘I don’t remember exactly. They all look the same, don’t they?’
Layland snorted and scribbled more notes.
‘And then?’
And then I travelled back in time for a while.
‘And then I left him to finish his drink, and that was the last I saw of him.’
Layland fixed me with her eyes again, searching my face for any sign of a lie, for any giveaway tics. A standard technique, put the suspect under pressure, make them sweat, and they’re more likely to say more than they ought to.
‘Okay,’ said Layland, flipping her pad shut and pocketing it. ‘You’ll tell me if he gets in touch, right?’
It was an order, not a question.
‘Of course.’
‘Detective David Tyler might be soft in the head, but he’s my partner. My friend. And if anything has happened to him, and you’re in any way connected, then I’ll have you.’
I couldn’t blame Layland for the way she reacted to me. She knew something was off, and didn’t like her partner dragging in seemingly crackpot outsiders onto her cases. The very fact she allowed it, when I knew full well she could block me from getting anywhere near her crime scenes, told me how much she actually respected David. It might piss her off, but she let him have his weirdo friend pop in every now and again. Part of me wondered if it wouldn’t be easier just to go to her with David and let her in on everything. On me, on the uncanny, on the world of monsters that shared her streets. But no, too many normals who find out the truth end up dead.
‘I believe it,’ I replied.
‘You’d better believe it,’ said Layland, as she turned and got in her car.
‘Now that,’ said Eva, ‘is one hell of a woman.’
17
We made our way back to the coven, at which point Eva staggered off to bed.
I paced the main room and tried not to think about the fact I’d recently been speaking to my dead masters in this very room, if not this time period.
I tried not to think about the fact that I’d had a chance, probably my only chance, to save them. To change history and overturn what Mr. Trick had done. If only they’d listened, if only the three of them hadn’t been so caught up in the rules of right and wrong. Maybe if they’d known their lives depended on it they wouldn’t have been so quick to tie my tongue and—
‘Stella.’
I heard it, but it was faint. A distant whisper on the edge of my hearing.
‘Stella.’
It wasn’t Eva, she was sound asleep, her door closed. This was a disembodied voice. Something not quite of this realm.
‘David?’
‘Stella, I… where… am I...?’
David was here, somewhere. Sort of here. I needed something of his to try and focus the pair of us on. I scrambled around the coven, trying to keep him talking, trying to keep in contact, as I searched for something of his.
‘David, tell me where you are.’
‘I don’t… dark… can’t seem to…’
His voice was so weak. So far away. A ghost of a thing.
‘David, tell me about something real. Tell me about the last thing you remember eating.’
Silence.
My heart leapt in my chest.
‘David? David! David, can you hear me?’
Had I lost him? Had I been too slow?
‘David!’
‘Chips. Bad chips. Greasy, from a van.’
‘Okay, good, keep thinking about those chips.’
A pen, one end chewed; David’s. I grabbed it and ran back to the main room.
‘David, you’re lost, but that’s okay because I’m here and I’m holding a lifebelt.’
‘I think.... drifting apart…’
I grabbed some chalk and drew a pentagram on the large square of dark slate set into the wooden floor, then I placed David’s pen at its centre. Dropping to my knees, I willed the magic in the room to flow into me. To assault me. To drown me. Then, with a grunt of effort, I thrust my hands towards the pentagram, feeding it with the magic I’d absorbed.
‘David? David, are you still there? Stay with me!’
‘Here. I’m still…’
‘Okay, okay good.’
I began to focus on David’s pen, sat in the centre of the now glowing pentagram. The pen began to float, to glow as ribbons of energy coiled ar
ound it.
‘I’m going to bring you home, David. Just try to focus. Try to see something that wasn’t there before. Can you see it?’
‘Not… what are you…?’
I fed more magic through myself into the pentagram, into the spell, the pen glowing brighter and brighter still.
‘David, look for it, a faint spot of light, do you see it?’
Silence.
‘David!’
‘I see it.’
‘Okay; move towards it! Move towards that point of light! You need to grab hold of it, and—’
I fell back in surprise as a hand thrust out of nowhere and grabbed the floating pen.
‘David!’
I lunged forwards and grabbed the wrist, wrenching back, pulling David back into this realm, back into the coven. I collapsed back with him crashing on top of me, knocking the wind from my lungs.
I looked up to find David’s face so close to my own that the tips of our noses were touching.
‘Hey, magic lady.’
I laughed and threw my arms around him.
I placed a cup of tea on the kitchen table in front of David and took my place opposite.
‘So, what do you remember?’
‘Not a lot. There was a fight, I was getting my arse kicked, and then, well, nothing until you started talking to me about chips.’
It seemed like whatever had overtaken David hadn’t knocked him through time, or obliterated him entirely. Instead, it had, for want of a better way of putting it, phased him out of this visible realm and hidden him in another. Like an unconscious move to yank him out of harm’s way.
‘How am I going to explain going M.I.A. for three days at work? To Layland?’
‘We can tweak the spell I use to make your colleagues accept me at crime scenes. Feed it with a ton of extra magic and make them forget they’ve even been looking for you. That you’ve been missing at all.’
David blew on his tea, then looked up at me, making my heart skip. I could see fear in his eyes. The eyes that, the last time I had seen them, had been engulfed with white hot flames. ‘Stella, tell me what’s wrong with me.’
‘I’m not… I don’t know. Not exactly.’
‘You know enough though, right? L’Merrier warned you about something. I know you didn’t tell me, but somehow I know he did anyway. I’m scared, Stella. Make me less scared.’
I wished I could.
‘Something happened to you. Mr. Trick, the most powerful Uncanny creature I’ve ever met, took over your body for an extended period. Couple that with the black magic I used to bring you back to life, and, well, it’s altered you.’
David nodded slowly as he took in the information. ‘Am I dangerous?’
I paused, then nodded once.
‘How dangerous?’
‘Dangerous enough that Giles L’Merrier told me I needed to murder you.’
David’s eyes widened as he went to speak, stopped, then tried again. ‘Okay. Well, shit.’
‘“Well, shit,” indeed. You’re pulling in a massive amount of magic. You’re not doing it consciously, it’s just happening, and you keep… turning. Having ‘episodes’, I suppose you’d call them.’
‘Did I kill anyone? At The Beehive?’
‘No, you just trashed the place and sent us all back in time for a bit.’
‘Oh. Cool.’
I thought about my lost opportunity to save my masters. Nothing about that was cool.
‘What do Giles and the others think I’m going to do, exactly?’
‘They think… they think you’re like a bomb. Of sorts.’
‘Okay.’
‘That you’re soaking up more and more magic, and, at some point, the end result will be more than a few trashed rooms and time travel trips. The end result will be London becoming a smoking crater and millions of people being… less than alive.’
David shrank back in his chair, trying to take it all in. It’s not every day you’re told that your future is probably going to amount to you murdering millions of people. All things considered, he took it pretty well.
‘Okay, could Mr. Trick be behind this? Could any part of him be hanging on through me, making this happen? One last nasty trick?’
‘No, I killed him.’ I don’t know why I said that with such authority. Why I felt like I had to lie. The truth was, I had no clue, and it wasn’t as though I hadn’t wondered before if David being alive gave Mr. Trick some sort of weak grip on existence still. Who knew what something so powerful, so other, could be capable of?
‘So what do we do?’
‘We stop you.’
‘Right. ‘I take it you’re not…?’ David mimed dragging a knife across his throat.
‘What? No! Of course not!’
‘Good. That’s good. I appreciate that.’
I hoped to Christ it was true, that it wouldn’t come to that. That I’d never find myself having to make that choice.
‘But what if it’s the only way? I don’t want to kill anyone, Stella. I’m not worth all those lives.’
I went to say, “You are to me,” but bit my tongue.
‘You’re not going to hurt anyone, and nobody is going to hurt you. We just need to find a way to stop you going boom.’
‘You’re sure there’s a way?’
‘Of course,’ I lied, ‘there’s always a way. Trust me.’
David looked at me hard for a few seconds, then smiled and nodded. ‘Okay, magic lady. I trust you. But if it comes to it, promise me you’ll do the right thing.’
‘Don’t—’
‘Stella, I’m serious. I won’t hurt all those people. If you have to, if it’s the only way, you do your job and you stop me. Do you hear me? You stop me.’
18
I looked down at the pile of dried-up, withered bodies stacked on top of each other in the centre of the living room. A family of five, a mother, a father, three kids, in a three-bedroom house in Hammersmith.
Lorna had indulged in a sick feast to celebrate our return.
‘Why do you keep inviting her,’ said Layland, eyeing me evilly, cup of coffee in hand.
It hadn’t been easy covering David’s absence, Layland especially had needed three or four doses of the spell before she forgot he’d been missing. Even after all that I got the impression she was aware she was pissed off for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
‘You force this woman on our crime scenes because you think she can help in some way. Well, this is crime scene number three of this case, and I’ve yet to hear one useful word drop out of her mouth.’
This really was the problem with our set up. If I was involved, it was because something Uncanny was going on. Something Uncanny that we were never going to just capture, put on trial, and lock up like your normal criminal. As far as Layland was concerned, I was about as useful in an investigation as a house brick. Worse than a house brick. At least with a brick she could pick it up and throw it away. I kept coming back.
‘Layland,’ replied David. ‘Trust me, she helps.’
Layland grimaced at him. ‘I can’t help but think there’s something I’m forgetting to shout at you about.’
As she turned and left us, I dropped onto my haunches to look closer at the bodies. I wanted to really see, close up, the result of my ineptitude. Five more people dead, including children, because I’d failed to uphold my duty to keep the people of London safe. I reached out and touched the arm of the smallest body, a girl named Sally. She’d only recently celebrated her fifth birthday, and now that would be her last, because of me.
Had I murdered her myself? No, of course not, but it was my job to stop things like Lorna, and now she had seven bodies on her slate, and more to come if I didn’t get it together and take her down. It didn’t matter what Anya had said; that she thought it her mess to clear up and that I should stay out of it. Three days had passed since that confrontation, and still Lorna was on the streets, murdering innocents.
This had to be the la
st of them. No more. This bitch was going down.
I leaned in to the girl’s body. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough, but I’ll get her. I’ll get your killer.’
The girl’s corpse opened her eyes. ’He must be destroyed.’
I jerked back in shock.
‘David, tell me you can see that.’
‘I see it. And hear it. And I really don’t like it.’
The girl’s eyes had no colour to them. Two dried out, white prunes sat in their puckered sockets. How was this possible?
‘Kill him. Stop him. He is death,’ said the girl, her voice dry and whispery, empty of life, of emotion.
Someone was using the bodies to get a point across. Some sick bastard playing with the dead.
And then, one by one, the other bodies began to open their eyes and join in with the girl’s demands for me to put an end to the dangerous man. I didn’t need to ask who they meant.
I looked around the room to see if anyone else was seeing what we were, but they carried on, oblivious. This wasn’t real, this was an illusion meant just for us.
‘Listen, you sick fuck,’ I said, leaning in as I spoke so no one else would hear me and wonder why I was threatening a pile of dead bodies, ‘if you think this is going to scare me, you’re wrong.’
David raised a hand: ‘Job done over here though.’
‘I promise, if you or anyone else tries to force my hand, or tries to take him out by yourself, I will fuck you up.’
I stood and turned away from the bodies, David following as I left the house and the bodies fell silent.
19
We needed to get back to the coven and find a way to track down Lorna before any more corpses piled up. Hopefully Eva would still be there and I could actually convince her to lend a hand.
‘Just so we’re clear, they meant me, right? That you should kill me?’
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘Blimey. Even the dead want me dead. I mean, I’ve not always been the most popular of people, but this is a new low, even for me.’
‘That wasn’t the dead speaking, that was some fool speaking through them.’
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