by M. V. Stott
‘Are you going to hear me out or just get bladdered?’
I smiled and took another swig.
‘Something is happening in this city, Stella. It’s like the stitches that hold everything together are starting to fray.’
‘Oh relax, will you? You’re dead, put your feet up for an age or two, you’ve earned it.’
‘Stella, this is serious—’
‘No. It’s not. I’m Stella Familiar of the London Coven. Dealing with evil is just a Tuesday for me. If anything comes my way—anything at all that threatens this city—I’ll take care of it just fine. So, thanks for the tip, Jake, but you’re interrupting happy hour.’
I took another mouthful of my tequila beer and smiled as I felt the bar begin to sway.
‘I’ve gotta say, I’m disappointed.’ said Jake.
‘I’m devastated. Don’t let the door pass through you on your way out.’
‘I heard you were a big deal. London’s great protector. But here I am, and all I see is a stuck-up drunk.’ He shook his head. ‘See you around, Stella.’
‘Hey—’ I turned, but he’d already gone. Disappeared in the time it takes to blink. I snorted, then giggled, then wondered what I was laughing about, then giggled some more, enjoying the warm glow of booze spreading through my body.
‘Ah,’ said David, settling back on his stool, ‘That may have been a contender for the world’s longest piss. Hey, where’d Casper the Smirking Ghost get to?’
I dropped David’s tequila glass into his pint pot. ‘Less talk, more drink.’
4
The night air was cold as we staggered back to the coven. I pulled my leather jacket tight and leaned my head back, eyes closed, enjoying the sensation of the breeze buffeting against me.
‘Whoa there,’ said David, yanking me out of the way of a lamp post I was about to collide with. He corrected my stagger and steered me on in a straight line. ‘So, any idea how I can suddenly see ghosts?’ he asked.
‘Well, the thing is, ooh, look at that moon. Look how big it is! Big moon! Big-ishly big moon!’
I was off my face and had already coated one alleyway with the contents of my stomach before insisting we head to the nearest burger van for a refill. I may have been alive for sixty years, and The Beehive was the place I’d been inside more than any other building, my coven aside, but I wasn’t what you’d call a drinker. At least not until a few months ago. Until Mr. Trick happened.
There was a clicking noise and my swimming eyes focussed on David’s snapping fingers.
‘Here we go. Focus, Stella.’
‘I’m not drunk!’ I said, loud enough to turn the heads of some people at the far end of the street.
‘Of course not, and neither am I. So, ghosts? How come I can see them?’
‘Prolly… probably something to do with, you know, the bastard. Being inside you.’
‘Mr. Trick?’
‘That’s the tosser. Such a tosser. Evil bastard tosser.’
I felt my eyelids begin to droop and shook it off.
‘It’s cool though, right?’ asked David. ‘It seems cool, being able to see ghosts.’
‘Second shite. Sight. The Second Sight. Spooky vision eyes, woooooh!’ I waggled my fingers in front of David’s face until he swatted them away and I almost toppled backwards over a bag of rubbish.
‘I wonder what else I can do. Maybe I can do magic! Or X-Ray vision. Or the ability to never have another hangover! Christ, I hope it’s that last one.’
I laughed and turned to him, throwing my arms around his neck and hanging off him, looking up into his eyes. They were nice eyes. Had I noticed that before?
‘You know, I like you. Being around. Around me. In front of me. And stuff.’
‘Well I like you too. Even if you have made me realise the world is a terrifying place and full of things that want to kill me.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I told him.
‘You never said.’
‘Never said what?’
‘Jake, the ghost, was there any reason he came looking for you?’
‘Pfft, just, you know, ghost worries. Ghost things. Thought he knew more than me about what was going on. Bit big-headed.’
As I hung from David’s neck he bent closer and closer until I could feel his breath against my mouth. Our eyes locked and I felt my stomach begin to do a strangle-swirl thing, and wondered if I was going to throw up again.
David pulled me up and I let go off him, staggering back a step.
‘Okay, here we are,’ said David, and I turned to see the blind alley opening up before me. It lead to the coven, my home. The London Coven, like The Beehive, sits at the end of a blind alley, so-called because, generally, only Uncanny people can see them. The rest of London, the normals, they walk past and never see them. Never see the vast array of hidden streets that thread through their world.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Bed is calling.’
I looked back to David, unsure what it was I was hoping he might say. He looked at me, smiled, then nodded.
‘Yup, better, you know… better head off home. I’ve got a shift tomorrow and something tells me I’m going to feel like death.’
He turned and headed off down the street. I watched him walk away until he turned out of sight, vaguely disappointed in some way I couldn’t quite pin down.
I shrugged and stumbled up the blind alley.
5
I rarely have good dreams these days, and that night was no different. My witches were there of course, Kala, Trin and Feal. I would talk to them and pretend it wasn’t just a dream for a while, then Mr. Trick would appear, and nothing good would happen after that.
‘They screamed, Stella. Screamed.’
I woke up gripping the bedsheets, the room tilting as my hangover made itself known.
‘Oh shit….’
I lurched onto my side and heard the splatter hit home in the bucket I’d placed there the night previous. I’d done this enough times over the last few months to know I’d need it, even when I got home blind drunk past midnight.
I flopped back and stared at the ceiling as an image of last night’s events flashed through my mind. I had my arms around David, looking up into his eyes. His breath against mine, moving closer and—
—Oh Christ, no. No, no, no.
I stood up and paced the room, feeling something I hadn’t experienced in my entire sixty years of life. I was mortified.
Had I really made a pass at David? No. No, he wouldn’t think that. Nothing had even happened, not really, I was just a drunk woman hanging off his neck, that’s all. So what if our eyes had locked for longer than normal and our lips had been seconds away from touching. Drunk people do stupid things, and he probably, hopefully, didn’t notice anything anyway.
I left my room and headed to the kitchen, pouring myself a tall glass of cold water, downing it, then doing the same twice more.
I’m a familiar, I’m not created to have romantic relationships, or even have romantic thoughts, let alone sexual ones. I don’t have time for that kind of thing. Making sure people don’t get their heads bitten off by monsters takes up a lot of your time. A partner? Love, marriage, kids? That stuff just wasn’t on the cards for me.
Even if I tried to ignore all of that and “date” someone, there was the unavoidable fact that I didn’t age. I’ve lived sixty years and looked the same for all of them. Other people grow old and die, but not me. I’ll die alone and look just the same as the day I was born.
I stood and cursed at myself, pushing the thoughts aside. It was stupid, it was impossible, it wasn’t right. Just a silly drunken moment that wouldn’t be repeated.
I turned my mind to Jake instead; the ghost. I’d fobbed him off in The Beehive, ignored his warning, but it was clear he was genuinely worried about something, even if I’d been too drunk to pay him attention at the time.
Before Mr. Trick, if someone had appeared with a warning like that, I would have taken in everything he had to say and r
eported it back to my witches. But the witches were dead and gone, so there was no one left to report back to. There was only me, and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Not really. I was making it up as I went along. Waking up every morning to a cold, empty coven and running out the door, looking for danger to punch in the face. Anything to keep me busy; to stop the fear getting on top of me and prove to myself and all of the Uncanny that I had what it took to replace my masters. To show that I was good enough. That London would be safe in my hands. That I wasn’t just some abandoned tool, collecting dust after the craftsmen left the workshop.
A fellow Uncanny had come to me looking to me for help, with a warning, and I’d brushed him aside like he wasn’t worth my time. But what was I supposed to do with Jake’s information anyway? Something is happening. Something. That’s what he’d said, but what use is that? Being told something might be happening is about as much use as not being told at all. There were no specifics there to look into. No leads to follow.
I wished my masters were with me still. They’d know what to do. They’d know what I should be doing next. No need for thinking on my part, just a job given. A task to execute. A wall to run through.
Christ, life had been simple in those days.
My phone began to vibrate on the kitchen table, snapping me out of my dreary thoughts. I looked over to see David’s name. I pulled away from it like it might nip me, then shook my head. I was being stupid. It was just the booze, that’s all. Nothing had happened between me and David. Nothing could happen.
I grabbed the phone and hit answer.
‘What is it?’
‘And a good morning to you, Stella. How’s the head this morning?’
‘Fine,’ I replied, ignoring the ice pick lodged in one of my frontal lobes.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because I’ve got something that’s going to be right up your alley.’
Given where my mind had been, I only hoped he was talking about a new case.
6
I strode into Ealing Hospital, the automatic doors sighing behind me as they closed, cutting dead the wind from outside.
‘Six kids?’
‘Yup, six kids; they all slipped into comas for no good reason on the same night. Sounds like our kind of thing, right?’
I went over our phone conversation again, trying to come up with a working theory as to what might have happened. A curse? Some sort of sleeping spell? Maybe it was just a coincidence. Yeah, six kids slip into a coma on the same night, totally could be a coincidence. Nice one, Stella.
I strode to the front desk where David was stood. He turned from a uniformed officer he was talking to and smiled, waving. I realised I was smiling back, but managed to stop myself from returning the wave.
‘Pretty weird stuff, am I right?’
I grunted and nodded.
‘Christ, you sound how I feel. Come on, I’ll take you upstairs for a nose. They’ve put them all in the same room.’
As the lift hummed to a stop and the doors slid open I felt the muscles in my neck tense. David stepped into the corridor and out of view, then leaned back with a quizzical look on his face.
‘You coming or just gonna hang out in the lift? I mean, it’s a nice lift, as far as lifts go, but come on, chop-chop.’
He ducked back out of view and I followed, turning sideways to slip through the closing lift doors.
Something was wrong with the magic in the air.
Magic is everywhere. It’s not something that we Uncanny just call upon, or have burning inside of us; the entire planet, every street, every rock, every car, naturally emits a sort of background magic. I and others like me can see it, washing around us in great, colourful waves. We draw upon it, feed upon it. Cast spells using the power we pull into ourselves. And now, as I walked through the wash of this floor’s magic, I could sense something was… off.
I didn’t know what it was, but it put me on edge. A taste in the air that I couldn’t place, but knew shouldn’t be there.
‘What is it?’ asked David, looking back at me, his hand on the door to one of the rooms.
‘Not sure. Maybe nothing. Maybe something.’
‘Maybe something bad?’
I nodded. ‘Let’s take a look at these kids.’
I followed David into the room.
Inside were six beds, each filled with a child, flat on their backs, eyes closed, machines by their sides beep-beep-beeping along to the rhythm of their heartbeats.
‘Bit creepy, right?’ said David.
‘Just a bit.’
It was worse in here, that sense of something being wrong. It was apparent right away that something Uncanny had happened to these kids.
‘They all look the same age,’ I said.
‘That’s because they are. All twelve years old, and all from a local school.’
‘The same school?’
‘Not just the same school, the same year and the same class. Miss. Henshaw’s, to be specific.’
‘So, six kids, all from the same class, all went to bed last night like nothing was wrong.’
‘Uh-huh, and none of them woke up again. Well, not yet.’
I moved to the nearest bed and looked down at the face of the child laid within it. She was still, face calm, red hair splashed across the pillow. You could barely tell she was breathing. If it wasn’t for the beep of the heart monitor, you’d think she’d already slipped away.
But there was something else to see.
To almost see.
I went from one bed to the next, from one slumbering child to the next.
‘What is it? What’re you seeing, Stella?’
‘I’m not sure.’
I squinted and turned my head to try catching something in the corner of my eye. Tried reaching out with my senses to see if they’d pick up anything being purposefully hidden from me.
‘There’s something… wrong with them,’ I said.
‘Well, yeah, I put that together myself, Columbo.’
‘No, I mean… I’m not sure. It’s like I can almost see something. A dark fuzz; a slight shadow sitting above each of them. Only I can’t actually see it. Like, I almost see it in the corner of my eye, but I don’t. It’s more that I sense it. Taste it in the magic surrounding each bed.’
‘Okay, well, what d’you think that means?’
‘It means that something dark has taken these children, and if we don’t find out what, none of them will ever open their eyes again.
7
The first child, the one with the red hair, was called Lucy. She lived in a nice three bedroom house on Clitherow Avenue, a two minute walk from the nearest tube station.
Her mother let us in, David smiling a comforting smile and showing her his badge.
‘I’ve just stopped back to have a shower,’ she explained, apologetically, as though we might judge her for not being at the hospital. Was that suspicious? Shouldn’t she be there, at the hospital, sat in the waiting room with the rest of the terrified parents?
‘That’s okay, Miss Callow,’ said David. ‘We just wondered if we could take a look at Lucy’s room.’
She nodded, hands worrying the cloth of her shirt, then led us upstairs. Lucy’s bedroom door was decorated with a sticker that pictured her name written in flower petals. Miss Callow’s hand dithered on the handle.
‘It’s okay,’ said David, his voice soothing. He was used to situations like this. ‘We can take it from here, Miss Callow. You leave us to it and go take that shower.’
Her mouth twitched momentarily into a smile. ‘She always got up early. That’s why I… I shouted up. Then knocked on the door. Then stood over her, nudged her, then shook and shouted. She just wouldn’t wake up. I thought she was… at first, you know? Thought she must be, because why wouldn’t you wake up if someone was stood right over you? Shaking and shouting at you? Why won’t she wake up, detective? Why won’t my Lucy wake up?’
Tears were pouring down her cheeks, but as David went to comfort her she
turned away and headed off down the corridor towards the bathroom.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘Let’s take a look.’
He opened the door to Lucy’s room and stepped inside. I lingered and looked down the hallway to where Miss Callow had disappeared. I heard the shower start to blast, loud enough to almost cover her sobs. That deep-down love that a parent has for a child, was that what my witches had for me? Had they thought of me like that, or was I nothing more than a device to them? Something they fashioned from dirt, spit, and magic to make their job easier?
‘Oi,’ said David, popping his head back out of the bedroom, ‘You coming in, or what?’
I stepped into Lucy’s room, leaving her mother’s tortured tears behind.
The room was beyond neat; even the items on the dresser were placed just so. Posters of grinning young men covered the walls.
‘Which one’s your favourite, then?’ said David pointing to a poster featuring four non-threatening males, none of which looked as though their face had known the feel of a razor.
‘What are they?’
‘What are they?’ he parroted, rolling his eyes. ‘You know, sometimes you really do sound like a sixty-year-old.’
‘That is my age.’
‘Well, yeah, but… look, never mind.’
Lucy’s room had a heavy scent to it. A mixture of clashing smells. Chemical, flowery smells from a variety of sprays and creams and fat, multi-coloured candles.
‘Lucy’s mother,’ I said. ‘Do you think there’s anything in that?’
‘What?’ asked David. ‘You think she might be some sort of evil witch? Or a monster pretending to be Lucy’s Mum?’
‘Well, no, I don’t think so. I didn’t sense anything off about her, at least not like that. But isn’t it a bit weird that she’s already left her daughter alone at the hospital?’
‘Maybe, but I wouldn’t read too much into that. This sort of thing hits people in different ways. I’ve had husbands who were just informed their spouse had been murdered go into work the same day. Like they’ve gone into autopilot, going through the motions of their day like everything was just fine. I can understand her wanting to get out of that hospital and take a shower. To feel vaguely human for a minute.’
