‘The curtains are drawn.’ She craned her neck to peer up at the two windows on the upper floor. ‘All the curtains are closed.’
‘Looks like more than that to me,’ Kellog said. ‘It looks to be heavier than just curtains.’
There was a sound from the back seat, a shuffle and a bit of a hiss, and Nisa turned to see Faline’s tail vanishing through the door. ‘Faline… Damn, she’s gone looking.’
‘That might be easier than us trying to look inside,’ Kellog replied. He reached into his jacket and produced his gun, checking the magazine.
Nisa swallowed and reached for her bag to get her own pistol. And then she heard the voice in her head. ‘Hurry!’
‘Shit, she’s in there!’ Grabbing her bag, she fumbled for the door handle and tried to force her way out even before the door had opened.
Kellog was more composed, swinging the door open as he began the process of summoning energy for a spell. He stepped out of the car and was on his feet before Nisa had the door open on her side, and he was stepping up to the door of the house as she struggled around the car and fumbled her gun out of her bag. Maybe the little zip-up pocket had not been such a great idea. And the house door opened as soon as he put his hand on it, which meant she knew what the spell was he had been working as he moved, and she knew what spell she should probably prepare herself.
Kellog pushed in, leading with his pistol through the small porch and into a dimly lit room with a sofa and tacky, mock-flock wallpaper, and Trina strung up by her wrists from a hook in the ceiling. Nisa felt her muscles tense at the sight of her friend and would-be lover hanging there. There were thick needles through her nipples, more metal sticking randomly out of joints and various areas of flesh. And there was no sign of Faline or the Skinwalker, but Trina was flicking her head rapidly toward the back of the house, behind her. There was a clattering sound from upstairs which seemed to indicate where their target was.
‘Wait here,’ Kellog said quietly. ‘If it comes out past me, shoot it.’
‘Right.’ Nisa looked up at Trina, hanging there naked and bloody. She really did not want the conversation that this was likely to result in, but Trina had been dumped into the weird world of London now…
Kellog moved forward, pushing open a door at the back of the little lounge. Nisa guessed that this would lead into a kitchen, or onto a hallway with stairs and a door into a kitchen. There had to be stairs back there somewhere, and why the Hell had Faline led the thing upstairs anyway? And the answer to that came as Faline dropped through the ceiling right in front of Nisa, falling gently to the floor with a serenity that belied the look of fear in the cat’s eyes.
‘She’ll come right after me,’ Faline’s voice said in Nisa’s head. ‘Down the stairs behind me.’
Nisa looked up at the back of her partner. ‘Kellog, she–’ Kellog’s huge gun fired three times and then there was a crashing sound which Nisa fervently hoped was the sound of the Skinwalker falling down the stairs, but somehow she did not really believe that, and when the Hell had she started building the fireball in her hand? And the door was yanked open right then and Nisa saw a female shape silhouetted against the light from the door at the back of the corridor and she threw the bolt she was holding right into Jilly’s chest without even thinking about what she was doing.
There was a scream, and Jilly-Skinwalker tumbled backward, collapsing onto the floor beside where Kellog was pulling himself upright. Nisa figured the thing must have hit him from the stairs and then tried to run past. Advancing, Nisa lifted her pistol and made sure the safety was off, and began firing into the still moving body even as the scent of burned flesh assaulted her nose. And then Kellog was firing as well. They both emptied their clips and reloaded, and kept firing. Kellog unloaded another seven rounds from the big IMI and then began summoning up a fire spell as Nisa kept shooting…
And then there was silence and the stink of burning, rotten flesh.
Westminster, October 10th.
‘Your Mister Norbery is some sort of miracle worker,’ Trina said. She was still sounding like she had spent the last week screaming, but she was looking better now than she had when they had got her down from the ceiling of Jill Meers’ house. ‘I mean, I don’t know what he gave me, but I slept like a baby and I think I should be hurting more than I am.’
Nisa nodded. ‘He’s… good with herbs and medicines.’ Nisa was still waiting to find out exactly what she could tell Trina, but overtly lying to her seemed stupid.
‘Yeah… And I was thinking of getting my nipples pierced anyway.’
Forced humour, the fall-back of difficult situations the world over. ‘They’ll heal up quickly if you don’t put something through the holes. And Norbery says the other wounds should heal nicely. Your wrists may take a bit longer, but he doesn’t think there’ll be any permanent damage.’
‘Just to my brain then. Of course, that could have been worse if your cat hadn’t walked through the wall and scared Jilly.’
‘Uh… yeah…’
‘And then I am trying not to think too hard about you throwing a fireball, because that’s impossible too. Is there a stick with a flashing red light I have to look at?’
‘Honestly? I don’t know. They never gave me that option. Look, don’t worry about it now, okay? Get better and, um…’
‘We’ll see what happens?’
Nisa nodded, smiling. ‘Yeah.’
‘Right. But I’m not nuts, right? Jilly… She wasn’t Jilly? She was something else?’
‘You’re not nuts,’ Nisa replied, turning for the door, ‘but forgetting you saw any of it might be better for your sanity.’
Hanson was standing outside, watching through the observation window. Nisa turned to stand beside her, watching as Trina settled back in bed and closed her eyes.
‘So what does happen to her?’ Nisa asked.
‘That depends upon Miss Norris. If she’s willing to be reasonable and the experience has not done real psychological damage, we let her go and she carries on as before. There are ways to eliminate her memories of the event if there are problems, but they are magical and subject to the usual problems, and we prefer to avoid them if we can.’
‘And Jilly? Have we got a cover story sorted out for her?’
‘Oh yes, the Skinwalker provided a complete one in a way. It killed her parents to get the house.’ Which they had discovered when they went upstairs to find the skinned corpses tucked up in bed together. Nisa had almost lost her breakfast at that one. ‘So Jill Meers was a serial killer in the making who self-immolated rather than being caught. We’ll tell Miss Norris the story and see if she’s willing to go along with it.’
‘I think she will. Right now, I think she’s trying to work out whether to pretend none of it happened or work out a way to make sense of it.’
Hanson barked a short laugh. ‘If she manages to do that last one, would you get her to explain it to me. Most of the time this stuff makes no sense at all.’
Part Eight: When Everything Changes
Tower Hamlets, London, October 17th, 2014.
Trina was not looking her best as she waited for Nisa outside Leopold Tower on a slightly damp evening in October. Physically she was fine: she had made a full recovery, Norbery had been happy with her, Sandra had been happy with her, and she seemed fit to Nisa. Mentally… Hanson had been happy to let her go because she seemed quite content with the idea of forgetting that any of what had happened with Jilly had ever occurred. Nisa, who knew Trina better than her boss, was not quite so sure, but she was also quite sure that Trina was not going to say anything about it to anyone.
Nisa had not seen the tall blonde for a few days now. There were, she imagined, things to be done about the Leopold Queens and Jilly’s effect on them. Now, as Nisa walked across the car park and saw Trina standing there, she knew her friend needed to talk. The sun was already down – paperwork had kept Nisa bogged down at the office – and Trina looked grey in the dimming, autumn light. As Nisa
approached, Trina mustered a smile and opened her mouth, but Nisa just held up a hand. ‘You’d better come upstairs.’
‘Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that?’ Trina asked as Nisa unlocked the door and ushered her friend in.
‘Yeah, of course. Let me check the junk mail.’ Nisa’s key unlocked the little box where her mail was dropped while Trina stood there fidgeting. Nisa could not recall ever seeing her fidget before, and she had not been doing it outside where anyone else could see. There was, indeed, junk in the box, but also a rather official-looking letter in one of those posh, textured envelopes. Nisa looked at it, saw the crest on it – shield, flame, twin dragons – and decided that it could wait.
‘That doesn’t look like junk, unless it’s some sort of expensive dining club,’ Trina commented as she saw Nisa frowning at the envelope.
‘That’s… almost accurate. It’s a work thing, and it’s Friday.’ She started for the lift at the back of the lobby. ‘Work is not my first concern until Monday.’
‘Well… I was kind of hoping to talk about your work.’
‘No, you want to talk about what happened to you, and you want a friend to talk about it to, and it just so happens that I’m about the only person who isn’t going to have you committed when they hear the story. This…’ She waved the envelope with its carefully hand-written address and intricate coat of arms embossed into the surface, trying for a second to describe what it meant. ‘This is office politics.’ Actually, she had no idea why the Hermetic Order of the Eternal Flame was sending her letters, but she was not going to worry about it until she had Trina sorted out.
‘I guess I can see the difference.’
‘Good.’ Nisa stepped out of the lift as soon as the doors opened, walked down to her door, unlocked it, and spoke as she pushed the door open. ‘You remember Faline, right?’ It was a warning to the Witch Cat as much as anything: we have a guest.
‘The cat? The one I’d swear ran through a wall and somehow saved my butt?’
‘Uh, yeah. That’d be her. I was more hoping for “the one I met in the park,” but that’s Faline. She can be a little shy of strangers.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Trina said as she walked in to see the black cat peering at her from the arm of the sofa, ‘she looks really nervous. I seem to recall her vetoing my idea of sleeping at the foot of your bed in a cat tail and ears.’ There was a prrt sound from Faline.
‘Maybe she’s defending me from your dishonourable intentions then.’ Another prrt. ‘Sit down. She doesn’t bite. Or she’s never bitten me.’ Which was not entirely true, but Nisa was not planning on going into the circumstances in which Faline had bitten her. ‘Trina needs someone to talk to, Faline,’ Nisa said, trying to sound like talking to a cat was perfectly normal, which it was for quite a lot of cat owners, she guessed.
Trina sat, looking a little uncomfortable, especially when Faline bounced into her lap. ‘I’m not really that much of a cat person,’ Trina said as Faline circled and then settled.
Nisa heard the purring start as she went to the kitchen to fill two glasses of wine. ‘Faline has a way of growing on you.’ And, sure enough, by the time Nisa was walking back into the lounge, Trina was stroking the cat between her ears and lying on the sofa like a limp rag. The purring faded as Nisa walked back in, which was good because there would have been two limp rags otherwise. Nisa waited for the glaze to start fading in Trina’s eyes and then held out a glass of red wine. ‘How are you holding up?’
‘I… I don’t know, exactly. You know? I keep having these weird nightmares.’
‘I know all about weird nightmares.’
‘I keep seeing Jilly, standing there holding a knife, and I’m tied up, hanging from a butcher’s hook.’
‘Sounds pretty much like I’d expect, considering.’
‘Yeah, but then she takes the knife and splits her own face open instead of mine… A-and then she kisses me, all lipless… And then…’
‘There’s the waking up screaming part?’
‘Yeah. You’ve done that too I guess.’
‘Once or twice, especially recently. No one told you what… Uh, no one said what had happened to Jilly to make her come after you?’
‘That scary boss of yours, Hanson, she said I’d be better off not knowing, but if I needed to know I should talk to you about it. I’m still not sure I need to know, or want to know, but I need to talk about it. I don’t think anyone said anything specific. Just that something had taken her place.’
‘Huh.’ Nisa frowned. The nightmare seemed too specific for it to be random fear, but if no one had said anything to her… Nisa’s gaze flicked to the window and then to the cat in Trina’s lap. ‘It’s dark, Faline. I could really use your help.’ Affronted prrt! ‘Trina’s not going to hurt you, and she’s not going to give you away to anyone. She owes you her life, right?’
Trina was looking perplexed, but she said, ‘I do. I don’t know exactly how I do, but I’m sure I saw you doing stuff normal cats don’t do, and I’m saying nothing about any of this to anyone.’
‘Please,’ Nisa added. With a grumbled mrowl of complaint, Faline hopped down from Trina’s lap and padded off to the bedroom.
‘She doesn’t sound happy about whatever you want.’
‘I said she’s shy. Faline’s a Witch Cat and she’s been around quite a while so she knows a lot about all the weird shit going on out there. And I think it’d be good for you to see that some of the weird shit doesn’t want to skin you.’
‘Jilly said that. She said she was going to skin me.’
‘She… it wasn’t exactly Jilly. We call them “Bugs,” but Faline doesn’t like the classification and I can’t say I blame her. Jilly was a… Well, the name’s not really important, but they can steal another person’s shape, by taking their skin.’
‘A-and Faline’s like that?!’
‘I am something else,’ Faline said from the doorway to the bedroom. Nisa looked around to check that she had remembered to put clothes on. ‘I am a Witch Cat, and while I can take a different form at times, I do not need to steal it from someone else.’
Trina’s eyes were wide. ‘Oh… wow.’
‘Yeah,’ Nisa said, grinning, ‘it was a bit of a surprise for me when I first saw her like that. You are one of very few people to see her human form.’
‘I admit,’ Faline said, walking around and settling into the space between Nisa and Trina, ‘that I have some sympathy for someone a Skinwalker has taken an interest in. They are creatures out of a nightmare at the best of times.’
‘Skinwalker,’ Trina said, almost tasting the word. ‘So… something that walks in another skin. A shapeshifter. Last month I’d have said those were myths. Werewolves. That’s Hammer Horror territory.’
‘Werewolves,’ Faline said, ‘are quite different, and often magicians.’
‘Or magical curses,’ Nisa added. ‘Which is pretty Hammer, thinking about it. There’s a whole ecology of weird and wonderful creatures. Not all of them are bad, like Faline for example.’
‘Most of them are rather more inimical to humans than my kind,’ Faline pointed out, ‘or have learned to dislike them. Fairies and a number of nature spirits have a justifiable dislike of the mess humans have made of things. Most of us are simply trying to get by, but our… nutritional requirements can have unfortunate side effects.’
‘That gangland hit I was involved in?’ Nisa said. ‘That was a cover-up. I was attacked by an incubus, but that was kind of my fault because I’d been using magic too much.’
‘You’re really a witch?’ Trina asked.
‘Nope. Norbery’s the witch. I’m a reality hacker. Everyone has their own way of doing it. Norbery calls them paradigms.’
‘Right. What kind of magic does Hanson do?’
‘The most terrible kind. She wields the awesome power of administration. Hanson’s a real policewoman, a normal woman.’
‘I am quite convinced that she possesses demonic powers,’
Faline said. ‘She threatened to make me wear wool!’
‘Faline doesn’t really like clothes,’ Nisa said, grinning.
‘I kind of guessed,’ Trina replied. ‘Could those shorts be any smaller?’
‘I have never understood the human desire to wrap themselves in bits of cloth,’ Faline replied. ‘If you need the warmth, you shouldn’t have evolved your fur away. That is really not the point of the evening, however. You wanted to talk about what happened to you, Trina. You wish to understand it?’
‘I need to… come to terms with it. I need to know why she came after me and I need to know I’m not insane.’
Faline smiled her feline smile. ‘Oh no, my dear, you’re not insane. If anything, you’re more sane than everyone else. It’s simply important that the general populace doesn’t know.’
‘Why?’
‘What’s the point in having a secret everyone is privy to?’ Faline replied as though the answer was obvious.
October 18th.
On another occasion, Nisa would have considered waking up on a Saturday morning with Trina lying beside her a really bad thing. As it was, they had got drunk, all three of them, and then stumbled off to pack themselves into Nisa’s narrow bed at some point in the early hours. A few hours later, Faline had got up to pad out of the room; presumably dawn was beginning outside, but Nisa still had her bedroom windows thoroughly blacked out. There had been a warm cat against her feet a few minutes later. Trina had never tried anything. In fact, she had not even undressed entirely and lay in the bed in knickers and T-shirt, and that was how Nisa left her as she slipped out of the room, her stomach demanding breakfast, to discover it was mid-morning.
The letter from the Order jumped out at her as she ate cereal. The envelope was that thick, expensive paper with a lot of texture and the suggestion of something important inside. The embossed crest tended to suggest that this was some sort of official communication, but quite why the stuffed shirts at the Order would want to communicate with her she had no idea. She tore it open, took another mouthful of muesli, and pulled out a thick, white card.
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