Ghost Electricity

by Sean Cunningham

  He held the phone a few centimetres away from his ear. “Not in today, sir. Not sure why. Guess he’s got the ’flu.”

  “He’s not answering his God-damned phone!” Mr Bainbridge said.

  Rob had a vivid memory of Dean’s teeth flying past him the previous night. “Uh huh.”

  “I was happy with things the way they were, Rob,” Mr Bainbridge said. He sounded like he was pacing. “This is an important time for my business and I wanted someone who knew it well. Vince Argyle promised me this Dean bastard would hit the ground running and the first time I need him, the very first time, he’s AWOL.”

  Rob dropped into his chair. The time on his computer was ten past five. “Mr Bainbridge, I have a pen and paper in front of me. Tell me what’s happening.”

  Gordon Bainbridge growled and cursed and Rob took notes. When he had all the details and Bainbridge had begun winding himself up to another high-volume avalanche accompanied, from the sounds of it, by a large fist pounding on a desk, Rob said, “Mr Bainbridge, give me fifteen minutes. I’ll call you back to let you know I have everything sorted.”

  “Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes, Rob. My business expansion lives or dies on this deal.”

  “I’ll call you back.” Rob hung up. He looked at the notes he’d taken. He looked at the time in the bottom corner of his computer screen.

  Rob threw himself out of his cubicle and loped down to the tea room. From the drinks machine he bought a can of the energy drink Julian liked, cracked it open and downed it in one long pour.

  Until he healed from Dean’s silver bullet, his body would absorb and metabolise everything he ingested straight away. The drink hit his bloodstream like rocket fuel. His pulse thundered in his ears. He was on his first call before he’d even made it back to his desk.

  Thirteen minutes later he swung into Julian’s cubicle. Julian had just shut down his PC for the evening. His head snapped up at Rob’s sudden appearance and his fingers curled at his side as if to grip something, but Rob didn’t notice.

  “Can you drive, do you have a valid driver’s licence and a valid passport and can you stay awake all night?”

  “What? Well, yes. Yes to all of that, I suppose. Why are you sweating?”

  “Great!” Rob pulled out his phone, found Gordon Bainbridge’s number and hit dial with a shaking hand.

  “Do you have good news for me, Rob?”

  “Everything’s sorted, Mr Bainbridge,” Rob said. “I’ll have your cargo to the drop point in Paris on time tomorrow morning. I’m on this personally.”

  “I live or die by this deal, Rob.” Bainbridge hung up.

  “What did I just volunteer for?” Julian asked.

  Rob wiped his brow with one hand and wiped his palm on his shirt. “Bugger me, I feel sharp. How the hell did you drink three of these things in one day without vibrating into little pieces?”

  “Rob?”

  “I could get a van but I couldn’t get a driver and I don’t have a valid licence, mate, I’m sorry. I know I’m asking a lot here. Thanks for helping out.”

  Julian’s eyes narrowed. “Helping out with what?”

  “I need you to drive us up to Birmingham tonight in one of the company freight vans,” Rob said. “We pick up a cargo at a certain time and get it to Paris tomorrow morning. That bit should be easy, but getting to Birmingham on time will be tight. We’ve still got to swing by our place and grab our passports.”

  “Mine’s in my bag.”

  “Just mine then. I’ll grab my stuff and we’ll head to the depot. Someone’s going to stay back to let us in and sign us out with the keys. You’d think I’d asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage, the way he carried on.”

  “Should you even be doing this tonight?” Julian asked. “Aren’t you meant to be at Mrs Prashad’s?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Rob said. “I can handle it. I’ve cut loose recently and I’ve got my chain. I’ll be fine.” He took two steps towards his cubicle, stopped in his tracks and swung around. “You didn’t have anything on for tonight, did you?”

  Julian sighed. “No.”

  He couldn’t stop talking. While Julian got them out of London with, he was too high to realise, the considerable care of a person remembering how to drive, Rob gabbled on about a girl he chatted up at the college pub one night, about how he’d succeeded in getting a kiss out of her and then had a drink thrown in his face when he accidentally gave away that he’d done it on a dare from one of his friends. He told a few stories of stupid things he’d done in high school in Manchester for a laugh, like the careers day when he and his friends all agreed to tell the career’s advisor they wanted to be serial killers and how the principal had got them up in front of the school for it. He grinned as he recalled the fine looking work experience girl whom he’d narrowly avoided snogging at the last Christmas party.

  “Can’t be doing that sort of thing anymore,” he said. “Not with the way I am. Bit much to ask of a girl, isn’t it? Sorry love, it’s that time of the month, I’m off to Mrs Prashad’s. If I didn’t tell her why she’d think I was cheating on her and if I did she’d call the cops on me or I don’t know what. Do the cops have an anti-werewolf squad, you think?”

  One of his hands gripped the handle of the door beside him. He’d locked the door just to make sure he didn’t do anything completely stupid like yank it open and dive out. His other hand had been tapping out a rapid beat on his thigh for the last hour.

  “Funny isn’t it? That the three of us should all end up working at the same place? I’m counting Dean here, the bastard. But funny. A werewolf, a vampire and a magician or whatever you go by. All at the same place in a big city like London. What do you think the odds of that are?”

  “You don’t know about that?” Julian asked.

  He hadn’t spoken since they’d left the depot at Hammersmith. His scent was a sharp, cold anger and it had held steady since they’d left the office two hours ago.

  “Know about what?” Rob asked.

  “Everyone at Odd’s Transport is from our world. Dean’s the only vampire and you’re the only werewolf, but everyone else has at least one foot in our world. You really didn’t know?”

  “Everyone?”

  “Everyone,” Julian said. “I don’t know what everyone’s story is, but I know there’s something to each of them.”

  Rob’s mouth opened and closed. “Like who?”

  “How old would you say Vincent Argyle is?”

  “Fifty?”

  Julian shook his head. “At least a hundred. Alchemy, I think, but I don’t know for sure. Then there’s Asad. Have you ever seen his girlfriend? What was her name? Louisa?”

  “Not in person,” Rob said. “I’ve seen a picture though.”

  “I saw them out a couple of weeks ago. Asad is a regular guy, I think, but she’s most certainly not human. My guess is that through him she gets to experience a mortal human life while he gets …” He thought for a moment. “Well, he gets a hot girlfriend. Although I suppose they could be in love too.”

  “What kind of not human are we talking about here?”

  “I don’t know,” Julian said. “I only saw them briefly and they were a good distance away. She’d probably have noticed if I probed in her direction.”

  “What about Jolene in reception?”

  “Our gatekeeper,” Julian said. “Gatekeepers have a talent for enforcing boundaries. It’s the same kind of magic as the old spell that prevents vampires from entering private spaces uninvited. No one can get into our offices if Jolene doesn’t allow it. One day I’d like to see someone try.”

  “Graham in IT?”

  “Ever noticed how few computer problems we have? Lift your keyboard up and you’ll see one of his charms glued to the underside. They’re simple probability magic but they’re effective enough. He maintains the security charms around the components of our network too – just the parts that are physically within our office. The company that hosts our off-site data centre have
their own people for their side of things. Have you tried one of Jenny’s cakes?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Try one of her cakes. She adds a psychoactive substance to the cake mix and then uses an empathic projection charm to stir an emotion into it. It’s a creative little trick. I quite enjoyed her Victoria Sandwich Cake. It contained, as she put it, ‘the remembered pleasure of a sunny afternoon at the park with friends’ and it was spot on. You really never suspected? Didn’t all the things we ship around the place make you wonder?”

  “What? What about them?”

  “Take Mrs Udowa for example.”

  “All those weird cooking herbs and shit she always wants us to find for her?”

  “She’s one of the south-east’s biggest witches,” Julian said. “The potions she creates with those ingredients are highly sought-after. She doesn’t want to trust her products to a courier company that doesn’t understand the value and potential dangers of what she makes. She doesn’t want the hassle of arranging for the transport of fragile and valuable freight herself. That’s why she sends all her orders out through us.”

  There had been occasions in the time Rob had handled her account in which she’d instructed him to source medical-grade transport for her goods. “I thought she was just being fussy.”

  “She is,” Julian said, “but not at all without reason.”

  Rob stared out of van’s windscreen. “I’ve said some really nasty things about Mrs Udowa when I’ve been blowing off steam. Think she heard me?”

  “If you said them at the office you’re probably safe, thanks to Graham,” Julian said. “I’d lay off it though. Sometimes people who are that powerful are also very prickly.”

  “What don’t I know about Gordon Bainbridge?”

  “He makes occult furniture, both decorative and functional,” Julian said. “He’s mostly worked with wood and glass. Good man for a mirror, or so I hear. I gather he’s branching out into some other materials and thinking big. You’d know more about that than me.”

  “Doesn’t sound like I do, does it?” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I was hired because I’m a werewolf? How did they even know? It’s not like it’s on my CV. There wasn’t a ‘what kind of monster are you’ question in the interview.”

  Julian glanced at him. “It must be a lot of work, fitting into a new city and a new workplace when you’re a werewolf. I suppose that’s why you didn’t notice the rest of it.”

  That made him feel a little better. “You have to really want it, I’ll admit. The big city night life and the career and a pretty girl or three until you find the right one.” He shrugged. “Though that hasn’t gone well for obvious reasons.”

  “There are other werewolves in London,” Julian said.

  “Yeah, but I steer clear of them.” His mouth twisted and he got that old sinking feeling in his gut. “I don’t smell right.”

  There was a pause and Rob knew that if it ended in laughter, he’d just about want to stab himself.

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Julian asked.

  “They say I don’t smell right.” He sank a little lower in his seat. “The werewolf that bit me, he was different, crazy. It took five other guys to bring him down. They were hunting him when he got me.”

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Julian look at him a little longer, this time with a furrowed brow. “Surely they should cut you some slack, then?”

  “Oh, no, this all happened in Australia a few years ago,” Rob said. “I was travelling on my gap year. The five guys, they were from one of the Australian packs. They were really sorry and they helped me out a lot. They’re the ones who gave me this wrist chain. I’d have liked to stay, to be honest, but I couldn’t sort out a visa. Anyway, once I got back I put out some feelers, found some guys down here in London and met up with them. It, ah, didn’t go well.”

  It had turned into a big argument amongst the members of the pack. He remembered that starlit meeting, at Southbank at low tide, down on the muddy bank below the river wall where they wouldn’t be seen. He’d found them easily enough by scent but their hackles had already been up when he reached them. Within seconds he knew that he wasn’t going to be accepted amongst them. When the pack leader asserted his authority, ended the shouting match and told Rob to go, such was his disappointment that he’d gone without a word.

  Julian’s scent had changed. He was still angry, but it was a different kind of anger. “I see.”

  Rob got the feeling he really did. There had to be other magicians or whatever they called themselves in London. He remembered that middle-aged Sudoku player on the night bus. Rob hadn’t really known Julian for more than a few days, but in that time he hadn’t been in contact with any other magicians, or even mentioned them.

  Before he could ask about it, Julian said, “How are we doing for time?”

  Rob pulled his phone out of his pocket. “On time with a little to spare. Why?”

  “There’s a problem up ahead.”

  Red and blue lights flashed from police cars at the top and bottom of slip-road, where they’d been parked to block traffic. Halfway up the slope a stationary vehicle was turned at an odd angle and several figures moved around it.

  A satnav sat on the van’s dashboard, the one Rob had arranged for since he barely even knew the way to Birmingham, let alone how to get around within it. The yellow line of their route went up the blocked slip-road.

  Chapter 14 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  “Recalculating,” the satnav said. Rob thought it sounded sulky.

  He pressed his forehead to the cold glass of the window and watched the activity on the slip-road as they drove by. It had the look of a car accident. He glimpsed debris scattered on the slope and saw a police officer in a fluorescent yellow jacket leaning into the car to speak to someone inside.

  “We’ve lost about ten minutes, if the satnav is to be believed,” Julian said. “That’s not so bad.”

  “That’s not so bad if nothing else goes wrong.” Rob’s hands were locked on his thighs. “Can you promise me nothing else will go wrong?”

  “I’m sure the next turn-off to Birmingham isn’t far away,” Julian said.

  “Bainbridge said his business lives or dies by this deal. I’ve long believed the man can have your kneecaps crushed with an iron pipe if he’s of a mind. We could be about to find out if I’m right.”

  “Considering you can take a bullet and heal from it, are you really worried about that?”

  “Would you want your kneecaps broken with a length of iron pipe? I don’t care if I’d be better the next day. I just don’t want to know what that feels like, all right?”

  “It’s only ten minutes,” Julian said.

  “It’s not your kneecaps.”

  It took several agonising minutes to reach the next turn-off. Rob’s legs were jittering with the need to leap out of the van and run, run fast through the scrub and the ranks of suburban homes, run through the moonlight with the wind racing by and the night alive to his senses.

  He grabbed the iron chain around his wrist and willed himself to stay in the van.

  He was tested when a slow-moving truck pulled out in front of them on a road just busy enough for overtaking not to be an option, but the truck turned off again before Rob had time to get really worked up. He hugged himself when the satnav started taking them down narrow suburban lanes and chewed on his knuckles when he saw signs indicating not only children but blind people crossed the street.

  “Would the radio help?” Julian asked.

  “No!”

  Birmingham traffic was coming down from its evening peak and they only crawled through intersections twice. Rob held himself as still as he could. He didn’t lunge across the van, pull the wheel and stamp on the accelerator. He didn’t lean out the window and scream at the cars ahead of them to hurry up.

  “You have reached your destination,” the satnav said.

  Rob had been checking the time di
splay three times every second. “We’re not late,” he said. “Bugger me, we’re not late. I don’t believe it.”

  “What are we supposed to do next?” Julian asked.

  They had pulled into a driveway blocked by a chain fence gate. A heavy padlock and chain were clearly visible in the headlights.

  Rob swung out of the van and had to pull himself up when he instinctively dropped into a crouch. He was still in human shape. He had to remember that. The sky was mercifully black with clouds. It would have been harder had the moon been visible.

  He hooked his fingers through the gate. An asphalt-paved yard lay on the other side of the gate but with the van’s headlights ruining even his supernatural night-sight, he could only see two cone-shaped wedges of it. He called, “Hello?”

  Footsteps approached in the darkness, just audible over the muttering of the van. He caught the scent of wood and moss. A flashlight flicked on and shone directly into his face.

  “This is private property.” It was a man’s voice, creaking with age.

  “I work for Odd’s Transport,” Rob said. “We’re here to make a pickup.”

  The light came closer. When it was so close he could feel the heat of it on his face it swung down to his feet. In the headlights, Rob saw –

  – a man made of wood, hoary with age. He smelled of loam and moss and the gentle decay of dead and fallen leaves. His limbs arranged themselves in twisting movements that contained a vigour far beyond that of idle, soil-rooted trees. His eyes were the oldest and most alive things Rob had ever seen.

  – a man with brown skin that was mottled by time, dressed in the blues of night security and topped with a peaked cap. He had a thin grey beard and his glasses reflected the headlights of the van, hiding his eyes.

  “I’m Arden, the custodian,” he said. “We spoke on the phone.”

  That was a blurry fifteen minutes to Rob, so he just nodded. He had no idea what to say next, but his mouth didn’t let that stop it. “We’re running late due to an accident, so we’d appreciate it if you’d let us in quickly.”