by Kate Griffin
Her shaking slowly stopped. She pulled away from our hold and looked through the veil straight into our eyes. The bandaged stub of a hand brushed our cheek, sending a shudder through our skin. “So blue,” she whispered. “No wonder you went away.”
“Why did Bakker do this to you?” I asked quietly. “Why would he do this thing?”
“He wanted to hear the angels,” she whispered. “He wanted to find them, to see the blue, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he tried and they wouldn’t answer, he was too far, too quiet, they didn’t come for him, he couldn’t understand and he said… he said…” The bandage pressed against my cheek. “He asked you,” she hissed. “To find them, he asked you. And you said no – why did you have to say no? I would have kissed you and you said no, and he needed another sorcerer, he needed someone to give their senses and their blood and you said no so he asked me. He tried to bring them back and when I couldn’t do it, when I couldn’t do it, he said it was all right, he was sorry, he said he loved me, he forgave me and… and …”
And Elizabeth Jane Bakker, just like her brother, was a sorcerer, and her skin burnt my cheek to the touch, even through the bandage, and the lights spat and fizzed around her and the floor hummed like a train was passing beneath us. I grabbed her arm and whispered, “Listen to me, listen to me… what did Bakker want you to do?”
“He is so hungry!” she whispered. “So hungry…”
“Did he bring us back?” we demanded. “Does he still want the angels, did he bring us back?”
“Make me a shadow on the wall.” She nearly wailed it, clung to my face like she wanted to press it into some new, better shape. “I said I was sorry, so sorry, that I wouldn’t say no again and it just kept on, kept on burning, kept saying that I didn’t understand, so sorry, so sorry, make me a shadow on the wall…”
“Bakker did this to you, because you wouldn’t help him?”
“So sorry…”
She was shaking again. I ran my hand over the top of her head, across the white fabric of her veil and felt the odd stubble of patchy hair underneath it, and whispered soothing noises as she pressed her face into my shoulder and the humming in the floor gently started to die down and the rats scuttling in the walls began to breathe again. “It’s all right,” I whispered. “It’s all right. We’re here now.”
“He wouldn’t kill me, he wouldn’t. He said I should feel what it’s like, know how it felt, understand…”
“It’s all right,” we repeated, not sure what else we could say. “Shush, it’ll be all right.”
“So hungry,” she whispered. “I’m so hungry.” We leant away slowly, staring into the vague shadow of her eyes. She stared straight back, lips twitching under the veil. “He said I should live and that I would always be hungry, always be thirsty, always be ugly, always be in pain, because I didn’t help. Matthew?”
“I’m here,” I murmured.
“Why didn’t you do what he asked you to? Why didn’t you help him?”
I thought about it. “Because it was obscene,” I said finally. “What he wanted was obscene.”
“Missed you,” she whispered. “Just like the song said. They always said the world was bigger than the current could flow, and when you’d touched every corner, you could drift away into the stars… did it hurt, your death? He said you were dead. I screamed at him and called him names. I screamed and screamed until they burnt my tongue, make me a shadow on the wall, I said, make me a shadow… I would have helped if you weren’t dead. I called him murderer. He said I couldn’t understand, that it wasn’t… that you weren’t… but they kept on and he said… they were always there and then it just stopped!”
“Shush, shush,” I whispered, stroking the odd, coarse tufts of her hair. “I’m here now. We’ll see you safe.”
She leant up and with the rough, uneven edges of her mouth, through the veil, kissed my lips, once, gently, and put her head into my shoulder. “My angels,” she whispered. “My electric angels.”
I stayed with her for the rest of the day, and she didn’t say anything more, and neither did I. And that, too, was sorcery.
Shortly after dusk, we left her sleeping, kissing the whisper of our voice into her tiny, lobeless ear, and went to finish San Khay.
The newspapers reported pretty much what I knew. The Amiltech office was in ruins, the staff had been sent home. It wasn’t safe any more, they said, and those who stayed too long thought they saw the glimmering of aluminium wings in the fan vents, and heard the chittering of the fairies.
Clients, while sympathising greatly with the clear campaign of hate that had been taken up against Amiltech, were making tactful enquiries about switching security firms for the simple reason that Amiltech was plainly unable, in its current state, to fulfil obligations.
There was more I could do, and I knew it. A little arson, a bit of trashing – this was not enough to bring down a company permanently, this was something insurance could still cover. I could be methodical, thorough, find every blood bank and illicit financial record, burn them all, expose them all, tear Amiltech apart.
But now, we were not in the mood to wait. We wanted San Khay, we wanted to pull down the king at the top of this particular house of cards, and with him gone, we knew that even the Tower would feel the blow.
What we didn’t know was whether we wanted to kill him, or if he was simply a pawn on the way to the ace in the sky – Bakker.
We knew now that we wanted to kill Bakker.
I thought about the blue drawing of a burning angel I’d found under San Khay’s desk.
I remembered the taste of blood.
I remembered…
… give me life… .
… be free…
… my electric angels…
Bakker had to die. And if that meant going through San Khay, so be it.
I needed equipment.
I spent a night and a morning in bed recovering from my encounter with Charlie. I spent the afternoon purchasing from every general store, haberdasher and art shop I could find, as much dye of every kind as I could find. Bottles of ink, capsules of fabric dye, in every conceivable colour; I purchased everything I could get my hands on and which could fit into my bag. I also went round the junk stores until I found the shattered remains of a large grandfather clock, from whose face I stole the minute and hour hands, and acquired a small bell, a set of six six-sided dice, a blanket and a very large, heavy-duty permanent marker. From the supermarket I bought a week’s supply of egg and cress sandwiches, a bunch of bananas, a pair of buckets and six litres of bottled mineral water. Lastly, I went to the second-hand bookshops on Charing Cross Road and trawled up and down through their shelves until I found a copy of The Train Journey’s Companion, published in 1934, its dusty cover red and heavy, smelling of crushed insects and dry leaves.
Then, I hired a van. The man who let it to me was willing, for £400, to ignore my lack of valid driver’s licence and ID. The van stank of cabbage and cornered like a drunken elephant. It would do.
The next day I spent looking for just the right kind of place. In the newspapers, San Khay vowed to take revenge on the enemy of his company and his employees, and bring them to justice for their crimes. His share price fell by sixteen pence on the London market, and everyone expressed immense sympathy. The vice-president of the company moved his family to Cornwall, after all the walls of his house were scratched by dozens of very, very tiny aluminium fingernails. San’s personal secretary complained that she couldn’t sleep because the shadows kept moving on her walls, and there were voices in her head, and as a result, she’d have to take a holiday in Corfu as soon as possible while the company repaired itself.
I found what I needed eventually in a for-let garage space underneath a railway line in Camden, with solid metal doors and a single light high in the roof. I cleared out a dead fridge and half a bicycle from inside the garage, and then set to, creating my magic circle.
Circles are a very traditional form of magic;
mine was no exception. With my permanent marker pen (do not be deceived by those who favour chalk – an unreliable, amateur substance) I drew a big, slightly wonky circle on the floor. Inside this I placed the buckets, and next to them I put the pile of preservative-heavy sandwiches, the six litres of water, the bananas, and the blanket, neatly folded.
Around the edge of the circle on the outside I placed the six dice, going clockwise in ascending order with the top side showing one to six as they went round, at equal distance from each other. At the top of the circle I put the salvaged hour hand, pointing inwards, and at the bottom, nearest the door, I put the minute hand, also pointing inwards, directly towards its counterpart in the north.
This done, I then did something that I do very rarely, and got down on my knees at the bottom of the circle, and prayed.
It was a summoning as much as a prayer, an invocation, that passed my lips. I knelt on that spot for the best part of an hour whispering my hopes and aspirations to the spirits of that place. The floor was hard, and my knees ached, but once embarked on such an incantation, you do not break out of it lightly. I summoned all the powers that might watch over that small garage under the railway line, begged them, cajoled them, enticed them with every inch of will and magic I had available, and half-thought that they weren’t going to come – until the vibration of the train passing over my head became too long, rattling on and on and on so that I thought perhaps the train wasn’t one, but a whole herd of the things, all going home for the evening, rushing along the same track.
It took a while to equate that pounding noise, the regular cuthunkcut-hunkcuthunk of the wheels over the joins in the silvery track, to the cold breeze growing on the back of my neck, and the way my breath condensed in the air, even though it was not so cold outside. When the spirit of that place began to appear, it did so gradually, a shimmer of navy blue that flickered in and out of existence – flash and then gone – bringing with it the distant mournful whistle of a train heard in the night through a locked bedroom window. I kept on with the summoning, feeling at my side for the copy of The Train Journey’s Companion to reassure myself, the only warm thing in the place, while I waited for the spirit of that place to come fully into being.
It appeared on the other side of the circle a bit at a time, like the Cheshire Cat, not entirely sure if it was coming or it was going, and when it was definitely there, even then bits of it kept focusing in and out with the faint rushing of wheels that defined it, its left arm suddenly snatched away by a cold breeze, only to be replaced a moment later by another copy, its face suddenly twisted into a fading patch of dark brown fog before it snapped back into place, its hat fading on and off its head, sometimes changing styles, at one moment big and broad and dark blue, the next tight and black, the next with a silver badge on the front, quaint and old-fashioned. Around its neck hung a small grey plastic machine with a slot for a credit card, in its hand was a book of pinkish paper tickets, in its breast pocket a multiplicity of pens and pencils, on its feet, the only thing that seemed constant about its shifting form, a pair of black leather loafers.
It was, in short, the spirit of the railway conductor, guardian of that place, and its expression, as it looked at me, was decidedly unimpressed. When it spoke, its voice was like the rushing of wind through a dark tunnel, and it said,
“All tickets, all tickets please!”
I held up The Train Journey’s Companion and said respectfully, “Sir, I have a gift?”
The book opened itself in my hands, the pages rustling like leaves on the line, blurring the words and pictures. Then, as ethereal as the creature standing in the garage in front of me, it too began to shift, move, fade away, leaving just a cold breeze on my fingertips.
“So much is changing,” the figure whispered sadly. “We are not what we were. All change, please, all change.”
“Martin Mill, Hither Green, Three Bridges, Woolwich Arsenal, Mudchute, Bounds Green, Gospel Oak…” I replied, rattling off the names of the train stations as they came to mind.
Its form shifted, a hint of a big leather belt, seen and then gone, the flash of brass buttons, the gleam of a corporate badge. It seemed to smile. “They would rather just leave and arrive, leave and arrive, than take a journey. This place will fade with the rattling of the train.”
“In the names of Thameslink, First Capital Connect, Southern Railway, South Western, GNER, National Express, Great Western, Chiltern Railways…”
It raised its head and said, “It is always nice to be remembered, even by little sorcerers who would rather fly. Where do you want to go today?”
“I need to keep someone here. I need to make sure they are safe and well, but cannot leave, and cannot be found by others who may come looking. Will you help me?”
“It is nice to be remembered,” the figure repeated. “We will keep your magic circle, and think of you, when we pass by.”
With that, it started to fade, taking with it the touch of the cold breeze from a train rushing by the platform edge, and the taste of mechanical steam.
I stayed a while longer, until the next train passed overhead, and stood up, my place now secure, my magic circle now guaranteed, and went to find San Khay.
Say what you will for San, even in times of crisis his routine was fixed. I found him on the roof of a building on the edge of the City of London, where its boundary merged with that of the City of Westminster. He was sipping champagne. The roof comprised a wide balcony, warmed by tall heaters with hatlike tops, which blasted away with the intensity of gas cookers, and a large glass conservatory. All this had been added as an afterthought onto a grand 1930s art deco building whose clean lines and simple silver curves housed grand offices beneath its exclusive roof garden. The conservatory was full of trickling fountains, ornamental trees, floodlighting and, this evening, women in little black dresses, and the hubbub of tipsy chatter. I watched it through the eyes of a pigeon circling overhead, the patterns of people’s movement as they bounced from group to group; the more wealthy and senior members of the club seated at tables where their drinks were brought to them along with small dishes of olives and oil, while the aspirant and younger members circulated from table to table, easing themselves in, networking, and moving on.
San sat at his own table, flanked by two bodyguards, and politely, as always, talked to those who came to see him, and was reasonable and calm with them all. He was also shrewd; and as the evening wore on, his eyes would dart more and more to my pigeons circling above his table until at last, at 11.30 p.m., as the gossip was hotting up and the champagne was flowing yet more freely, he looked up, straight at the creatures in whose brains I was nestled, and raised one hand, as if in invitation, or as a toast. Then he leant over to one of his bodyguards, who nodded and left.
I withdrew my mind from the pigeons’ and abandoned the bench on the street corner where I had been sitting while my mind drifted in their thoughts. Putting down the handful of feathers I’d collected from the street, which had given me the connection, I turned towards the doors of the building in which San waited.
In due course, the bodyguard San had spoken to appeared in the doorway. I walked up to him. He wasn’t actively waving the gun wedged under his right armpit, and didn’t seem up to throwing much magic, so I said, “Are you looking for me?”
“Mr Khay would like to know if you would join him,” he replied politely.
“Guns such as yours make me nervous.”
“He was most insistent that I didn’t use it, despite, naturally, my skill in such matters,” said the bodyguard smoothly. His smile dazzled.
“Was he?”
“Indeed, sir. He said, sir, that should I attempt in any way to threaten you, you would most likely explode my heart in my chest before I had a chance to remove the safety; and that, therefore, he would deal with you in person, if sir would be willing to settle this matter that way.”
I thought about this, shifting the hefty weight of my satchel on my shoulder. “You hold that tho
ught,” I said. “And I’ll have a drink with Mr Khay.”
In real life, San Khay was taller than I expected, but that might have been the good posture with which he sat, even at eleven thirty at night, on a low bench that wasn’t comfortable, but was probably art. He nodded courteously at me as I sat down opposite him on the balcony. “Drink?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“I hope my assistant was tactful.”
“Very. Didn’t start shooting or anything.”
“I explained to him the likely consequences. You are, after all, a man of significant power, yes?”
I hesitated. The question in his voice threw me – not necessarily in an egotistical way, since the definition of “power” was one that had been up for debate ever since my unlikely return to the waking world over a week before. It did suggest, however, that he didn’t know the extent of what I could do, beyond the proof he’d seen on his walls.
I said, “You’ve seen what I do.”
“Of course. I am, naturally, curious as to why you do it and to what end – and would be happy to hear your views on both.”
He spoke in neat, clipped tones and the hint of an American accent, probably from too many years getting an expensive education. His only motion was the tiniest tapping of his little finger against the stem of his champagne glass.
“I’m afraid it’s complicated,” I replied.
“You are a warlock, perhaps?”
“No, no, not really.”
“You are clearly a man of means.”
I laughed, despite myself. “No,” I said with a smile, “not that either.”
