by Heide Goody
“And how much does it cost?”
“It’s free.”
“And how much does it cost?”
“It’s definitely free. However, it does start tomorrow evening and I understand that’s very short notice.”
Jenny smiled politely. “Well, this has certainly been entertaining, but I have other plans.”
“We can help with transport if that’s a problem,” he offered.
“Thanks all the same,” she said, waving the brochure to emphasise she still had it. She stuffed it in her jacket pocket and walked away.
“Come on,” she called to Jizzimus. “I need more chocolate.”
Jizzimus threw the tabla drums into a flower stall, bit the heads off some lilies and caught up with Jenny as an argument erupted behind them.
“You see that?” he said. “You see that, guv? I did that. Mental.”
A second large bar of chocolate didn’t help.
Jenny sat on the stone steps overlooking St Martin’s church and munched mechanically. Jizzimus ran backwards and forwards, bringing her stones for her to throw through shop windows. By the time evening had rolled in, there was a pile of stones, half-bricks and weighty lumps of scrap beside Jenny but, to Jizzimus’s annoyance, no broken windows.
“’Ow do you know you don’ like smashin’ windows unless yuv tried it, eh?” he said.
“I’m not interested,” she said. “I’m not interested in curses or hexes or blighting crops or—”
“You did a bit of blightin’ the other day,” said Jizzimus.
“When?”
“That bleedin’ codpiece at the sandwich shop.”
“I made his salad wilt. That’s not the same thing. And he was being an arse.”
“Tell you what. I bet some of the shopkeepers round ’ere are arses too.”
“I’m not smashing any windows!” She sighed heavily. “Jizzimus, tell me: am I fighting a losing battle?”
“Yes,” he said, placing a lump of masonry in her free hand.
“Kevin’s right,” she said. “I’m racing towards forty and my life is a mess. I can’t hold down a job, a home, any kind of relationship. It’s like I’ve got this terminal condition and I just keep fighting and fighting and I know a day will come when I don’t want to fight it anymore.”
“Don’ put off ’til tomorrow what you can do today,” said Jizzimus.
“It’s just…”
She popped the last of the chocolate in her mouth, dropping the lump of masonry back on the ground..
She was a wicked witch: something she was never going to shake off. There was the small stuff, mere colouration to her nature: the immunity from drowning, her troubles with iron, the tendency to accidentally cackle now and then. Other stuff was more potent, more dangerous: the curses that came to her lips so easily, the ability to conjure witchfire without even thinking about it, the imp familiar. Then there was the real problem, the big one, the one that would be her downfall one day.
“I could have eaten that toddler,” she said.
“Could’ve. Didn’,” grumped Jizzimus.
Children were simply bloody scrumptious. Whereas to ordinary humans they smelled of soap and biscuits and sweat and what-have-you, to wicked witches their scent was delicious beyond compare. They didn’t actually smell of chocolate, but something about the aroma of young humans worked on the brain’s chemistry in exactly the same way. Except chocolate was to children what milk was to ice-cream; what grapes were to wine. God, children smelled nice.
And when they were sad or angry or afraid, their sweet bodies sang with insanely enticing aromas. That crying toddler: no human cuisine could have possibly compared with eating that little one raw. But Jenny resisted; she had always resisted.
She wanted to cry.
“I can smell him even now,” she said. She sniffed at her fingers. She could smell something. Or someone. Not the toddler, but a child. The city was awash with the background aroma of hundreds of thousands of children, but there was one scent in the air: something keen and rich and more striking than any other.
“Can you smell that?” she asked Jizzimus.
“Are you going to eat it?” he replied moodily.
“It’s—” She stood and sniffed deeply. “Sour. An older child. A teenager maybe. But it’s… Oh, God, that’s gorgeous.”
“Are you going to eat it?”
“He must be absolutely terrified.” She sniffed again. “She. She’s terrified.”
“Fine. Are we going to eat her?”
“No,” said Jenny. “But we’re going to find her.”
Two hours passed but the smell did not fade. It swirled about them but Jenny unravelled it, following its twist and turns down into Digbeth and then Deritend; down among dim side streets and the lanes of an ancient town.
“You don’ have to ’unt down this one child, guv,” said Jizzimus, bored. “We could just go to McDonald’s. Get a kid ’n’ shake to go.”
“We’re almost there,” said Jenny.
“Yuv already said that.”
“She’s here.”
She stopped in front of a pair of thick double doors in an old brick edifice. The doors were padlocked, iron. Jenny stood on tiptoes and tried to peer through the small grimed windows set high up in the doors.
“Can’t see anything,” she said.
“The door’s only wood,” said Jizzimus.
“If there’s a girl in there, I’m not going to eat her,” she told him.
“What are you gunna do then?”
Jenny looked up at the building. It might have once been a factory, back in the days when the city actually had an industry. Now it was dark and lifeless.
“Maybe she was hiding in there – a game, or she’s homeless – and now she’s trapped. Kids get trapped in fridges and things, don’t they?”
“Mmm,” agreed Jizzimus happily.
Jenny tutted at him. She placed her hands against the centre of one of the doors, reached down for the witchfire that came so easily to her fingers. A ball of green flame punched a three foot hole in the door.
“Won’ smash windows but will blow up doors,” noted Jizzimus.
Jenny spat a splinter of wood from her lips, coughed at the dissipating smoke and climbed through the hole she’d made.
The interior of the building was a ghostly shell. Stanchions of masonry and unpainted patches of wall were testament to the machines and fixtures that had once stood there. The floor was mostly brick dust, scuffed by vehicles tracks and footprints. It took a while for the smoke and dust to clear from Jenny’s nose.
“This way,” she said.
In the next room, there was nothing but a stack of black plastic crates: wide sturdy things to carry machine parts or some such. Jenny sniffed at them and shuddered at the odours clinging to the empty crates. The fear. The despair.
“I don’t like this,” she said.
“I know,” said Jizzimus. “They’re bloody empty.”
“What the hell is this place?”
“Whatever it is, they’ve shut up shop, guv.”
She shook her head and pointed to a set of stairs, dimly visible in the gloom. It was night outside and now lightless within. Jenny conjured witchfire at her fingertips to give some illumination.
“Up here.”
She climbed slowly, testing each step in turn. It wouldn’t do to break a leg on dodgy stairs.
The first floor was a single open space with large windows facing the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal. It had probably once been a workshop, filled with seamstresses or engravers. The only thing in it now was a trunk-sized black crate in the centre of the floor. It stank of fear. Mouth-watering fear.
The crate was bound with canvas straps. As Jenny extinguished the witchfire and pulled at the straps, there was a grunt from within and a frantic thumping.
“It’s okay,” she called. “I’m here to help.”
The interlocking lids flew open and the girl within uncoiled from her confinement
. She rolled out onto the floor with a cry. A cloud of child-funk enveloped Jenny and she hated herself for the wave of pleasure it raised in her.
Jenny kept away from young people and was no expert on them. The girl wasn’t much shorter than Jenny; might have been thirteen, might have been eighteen. She wore a leather biker jacket and an expression that was an even mixture of terror and fury. She crouched defensively, her hands extended to fight.
“It’s okay,” repeated Jenny. “I’m here to help.”
The girl looked about wildly.
“What happened here?” said Jenny. “I don’t understand. Who did this to you?”
The girl shifted and recoiled. Jenny followed her gaze. There was torchlight on the stairs.
“It’s the fuzz,” said Jizzimus.
Jenny fumbled for her phone. Police. She should call the police. She should have called the police a long time ago.
By the time she got the phone in her hand, the man was in the room. He was a shaven-headed Caveman with a torch in one hand and a what looked like either a Taser or an electric razor in the other. She hoped it was a razor.
“Who the fuck are you?” he growled.
Jenny backed away, struggling to find words. He came at her and slammed his torch into the side of her head. Her vision went black for a moment; she was on the floor. There was a noise, like a kettle whine. Jenny wondered if it was her scrambled brains, or the girl beginning to scream.
Jenny blinked. The man stood over her but he was looking at the girl, pointing his weapon at her and shouting. White electricity crackled at the end of the Taser.
Jenny’s addled thoughts wrapped around a sudden hatred. She pointed her hand at him and flung every ounce of witchfire within her. The world turned a fiery copper green.
There were hands under her armpits, lifting her. And tinier hands tugging fearfully at her trousers.
The man was on the floor, rolling and hollering and clutching his burned face.
Arm in arm, supporting each other, Jenny and the teenager stumbled towards the stairs and down into the darkness.
The girl spoke only twice to Jenny that night.
The first was when she pulled at her arm as they made their way to Digbeth police station. “No police,” she said.
“We need to get you help,” said Jenny.
“No police,” the girl insisted. She had a slight foreign accent.
“We don’ trust the fuzz,” said Jizzimus.
Jenny didn’t have the power to argue. Her head throbbed. She was sure she could feel blood dripping from her ear. She wondered if her skull had been cracked. She waved down a taxi and they climbed in.
“Pine Walk,” she said to the cabbie, gave a twenty pound note to the girl, and fell asleep on the back seat.
Jenny woke again as the taxi pulled up outside her home. The girl had Jenny’s head cradled in her hand. The monstrous headache seemed to have gone.
“You’ll stay with me for one night,” Jenny said as they walked up the path to the front door. “Just one night. And then it’s the police or the hospital or somewhere else that isn’t here.” She opened the door, momentarily pondering the wisdom of letting a stranger into her home. More worryingly, letting a child into her home.
She looked at the teenager. The girl was a blank, emotionless slate. Numb? Shocked? Catatonic withdrawal?
“Why did they have you in there?” Jenny asked. “What were they doing?”
The girl looked at her.
“Have you got family looking for you? Are you local?”
The girl said nothing. Jenny didn’t want to have to deal with this alone.
“Cat got ’er tongue,” said Jizzimus. “I know a recipe for tongue. Wiv onions.”
“You need to get cleaned up,” said Jenny. “Washed. You stink.”
She mimed scrubbing under her armpits. The girl didn’t move. Jenny turned her around and propelled her towards the bathroom. Jenny pulled towels off the rail and turned on the shower.
“I’ll find you some clothes.” She considered the difference between them. “Small clothes.”
Only when the door was shut and she heard the girl moving about and getting undressed did Jenny retreat to the kitchen and pour herself a large glass of wine.
“A child in my home.” She shook her head.
“A child of sorts,” said Jizzimus. “Def’nitely going off. But wiv some onions…”
“This is a new low for me,” said Jenny.
Jenny put the girl’s jacket on a chair to air and found a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that wouldn’t look too baggy. She made up a bed on the sofa. The girl ate the beans on toast Jenny cooked, drank the glass of water and didn’t utter a word throughout. She didn’t have a phone or a purse or any ID.
Eventually, Jenny began turning the lights out for the night. Part of her hoped that, when she got up the next day, the girl would be gone.
“I wish I knew who did this to you,” said Jenny. “Can’t you even tell me your name?”
The girl, laid out on the sofa, beneath a tartan rug, put her hands together as though in prayer but held them an inch or two apart.
“Kay,” she said.
“Kay?”
“Kay Wun.”
“Hi Kay. I’m Jenny.”
Jenny turned off the last light and went to bed.
Jenny was woken by Jizzimus bouncing on her chest. This was not unusual.
“W’time is it?” she mumbled.
“The fuzz are ’ere,” said Jizzimus.
“The what?”
Jenny was out of bed and at the window in an instant. A police car and a dark unmarked saloon had just pulled up in Pine Walk. Jenny mashed her tired face with her palms.
“How did they know?” she wondered, and shrugged. “Well, we’d have to get the authorities involved in the end.”
There was a thump from downstairs and a gasp.
“Our guest is up then.”
A man in a black three-quarter length coat got out of the saloon and walked over to one of the uniformed coppers. He was a big guy with a shaved head and the right side of his face had been burnt a raw pink. She had only seen him for a few seconds the night before and it had been dark, but there was no doubt in her mind.
Jenny’s brain tumbled through a whole sequence of incomplete thoughts which included: What? Who? How? Cop? Dirty cop? and Shit!
“Oh, hell!”
Jenny grabbed last night’s clothes from the foot of the bed. One of the uniformed cops was walking up the path. Jenny grabbed her jacket as she ran for the stairs.
“Jizzimus! We can’t let them in!”
Downstairs, Kay was up, dressed and pulling on shoes.
“He’s out front!” hissed Jenny. “The guy from last night!”
“How?” said Kay, alarmed.
There was a heavy thump at the door. “Miss Knott! It’s the police. Open up!” A shadow moved across the gap in the curtains.
“You’ve got to help me!” said Kay. What was that accent? Spanish? Italian?
“Open up!” shouted the police officer.
Jenny grabbed Kay’s hand and pulled her towards the kitchen.
Jizzimus, all twelve inches of him, was braced against the front door, ready for the onslaught. “I’ve got this!” he said.
Jenny, shoeless, opened the outer door and ran into the yard that backed onto the alley that ran down to Rectory Road. Suddenly, there was a figure in a luminous jacket and a hand on her wrist.
“Not so fast!”
Jenny spun, placed a finger on the copper’s forehead and uttered three powerful syllables. The police officer fell to the ground, unconscious.
They ran, through the back gate and down the rough-paved cut-through past St Laurence’s church to Rectory Road. As they turned a corner, there was a shout. Jenny’s bare feet were already cut and bleeding. She decided to use that to her benefit.
She dragged Kay into the shadow of the church door, drew a semi-circle around them with her bloody foot
and held Kay close.
Seconds later, a police officer and the burnt bald guy ran past towards the Northfield shopping centre.
“That was lucky,” said Kay.
“Lucky, yeah,” Jenny whispered.
Jizzimus came hopping and skipping across the church yard, his hooves sending up little puffs of smoke each time they touched the consecrated ground.
“Bacon-Face and the Day-Glo rozzers are gone, guv,” he said.
“We have to get out of here,” said Jenny and stepped out of the protective semi-circle. “We have to find somewhere to lie low.”
“You’ve hurt your feet,” Kay said to Jenny.
Jizzimus stared at his tiny smouldering hooves. “It kinda tickles. Like a footbath.”
Jenny managed to hobble up to Northfield high street. There was the sound of a siren, a couple of streets away. She stopped at a cash machine. She didn’t have her purse or her cards.
“Keep an eye out,” she told Kay.
Jenny put her hand on the screen and muttered an incantation of opening. The machine spat out a score of banknotes. She stuffed them in a bundle into her jeans pocket.
“It’s him!” said Kay.
“Where?” Jenny spun about and stumbled as the big guy, Bacon-Face, slammed into her. She rolled painfully on the pavement.
Kay cried out in pain as Bacon-Face grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her head down. Jizzimus scuttled up Bacon-Face’s coat and bit his ear.
“What the—?” he yelled, swatting at the sudden pain.
Jenny found her feet as Kay attempted to twist out of his grip. Together, through luck, they slammed into him as one, pitched him off a high kerb and sent him sprawling into the road with Jizzimus still clinging to his head.
And they were running again. A few very early shoppers, stopped, stared and pointed. Jenny was beyond noticing or caring. She didn’t even look back to see if a conveniently timed bus had run the bastard over.
They slipped and stumbled onto the high street. Hardly anywhere was open yet and they needed somewhere to hide.
Kay pushed Jenny through the door of a tiny charity shop. Jenny turned to shut the door behind them and Jizzimus came sprinting through the closing gap.
