by M. V. Stott
I looked around at the destruction and wondered what had happened to everyone else. As if on cue, there was a ripple in the air, a dark blur, the sound of twisting metal, and then Lenny appeared on the ground, back from wherever David had sent him, his eyes springing open.
‘I did not enjoy that,’ he said, in his low rumble of a voice.
‘Lenny, you’re okay, thank God.’
Lenny looked around at his pub, then over to me. ‘I think you and your mate are barred for a bit.’
‘Yeah. I think we are.’
I headed after Eva, my boots crunching glass, as the others began to appear, one by one, back from their own short trips through time. I grabbed Eva and we hung back, out of sight, until they all left, staggering off to lick their wounds. I’d hoped David would appear at some point too, but he didn’t.
As we turned down David’s street I tried his phone for the twentieth time, but like the previous nineteen, it went to voicemail. Didn’t even ring, just straight through to the increasingly annoying recorded greeting.
‘Give it a rest,’ said Eva, ‘he’s not answering.’
I glared at her and pocketed my phone.
‘Look on the bright side, maybe he disintegrated. Maybe that was it. His big bang, and L’Merrier just overestimated what sort of damage he was going to do. Instead of leaving London a smoking crater, he just broke a few chairs, popped the lot of you back in time for a bit, and then turned himself into a fine powder of some description.’
‘So, your brightside is David is dead?’
Eva shrugged. ‘Well, better he dies and hurts no one else than, you know, he hurts millions of people, or even maybe you have to kill the poor sod.’
I didn’t have a response for that. It was true. If David was okay, all that that meant was that L’Merrier was right, my witches were right. Everyone was right. David was a danger and the danger was only ramping up. What just happened in The Beehive was evidence enough of that. A tremor before the big one. I needed to solve this, I only hoped to God it wouldn’t mean my killing him.
Whatever happened, I’d find a way.
I had to.
I knocked on David’s front door a couple of times, then let myself in with the spare key he’d given me. A few letters were piled on the welcome mat, which was about all the evidence you need that someone hasn’t been home. We went in anyway though, just in case. His outburst had sent me—at least briefly, and in another time—back home. Back to my coven. Maybe it had done the same for him.
‘Eva?’
‘Hm?’ she answered distractedly as she rummaged through a kitchen cupboard and retrieved a box of cereal, which she began to eat dry from the box.
‘If David had sent himself home, sent himself here, but to an earlier time, would you be able to sense that?’
Yeah, we’re both familiars, but Eva is more skilled than I am. She may have been dulling herself with bad living, but of the two of us she still had more experience, power, and ability.
‘Yeah. Probably. Kind of an effort though. To do the sensing bit. Like trying to squeeze out a difficult poo, if you know what I mean.’
‘Great.’
‘I mean a giant, bone-dry hog of a turd.’
‘Thanks, I get it. Can you just do it, please?’
She shoved another handful of cereal into her mouth, then sighed, sending a cloud of crumbs firing out. ‘Fine. You know you’re a needy bitch.’
Eva sat at the kitchen table and laid her hands down flat, closing her eyes. I felt the magic in the air begin to ripple around me, then surge towards Eva as she willed the Uncanny into her and searched for any signs of time disturbance.
There was a rattle to my left. I turned to see dishes on the drying rack trembling, then cupboard doors vibrating, the light fitting juddering. Eva reached out with her senses, not just into the here and now, but probing fissures to the past. Sweat beads began to form on her forehead, then roll down, her face twitching as her body shook with the effort.
Finally, she opened her eyes and the kitchen fell silent again, apart from Eva taking ragged gasps of air.
‘Well?’
‘No, I’m not. I’m severely shagged out.’
‘Did you find anything? Did David send himself back here but to an earlier point in time?’
‘Oh, no. I got nothing besides a damp bra,’ she said, scratching her underboobs.
‘Fuck.’
David was alive, I knew it. I was sure that if he’d obliterated himself I’d feel it. I had to find him before someone else did and decided to finish the job the patrons at The Beehive had started.
Or before he took out the entire city.
‘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 around 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.’
