May Contain Traces of Magic

by Tom Holt

  She was telling him about someone she’d met who’d actually met someone who knew Morrissey. He suppressed a frown. That was first-date chatter, and besides, she didn’t seem to be giving her full attention to the traffic and other road users. In which case; for some reason Chris couldn’t begin to guess at, he’d recently become special, an object of interest to a community he’d only vaguely heard of until they started popping up all round him, ripping off heads, hitching rides in his car, kidnapping him and asking him weird questions. Was it logical to assume that he was caught up simultaneously in more than one strange and inexplicable sequence of events? Not really.

  But consider the facts. Angela the trainee had come into his life on the insistence of his boss, Mr Burnoz—crass, prosaic, insensitive, perhaps the most annoying man he’d ever met in his entire life—but nevertheless safe. He simply couldn’t imagine him being mixed up with demons or even demon-hunting. Mr Burnoz was a simple man. He existed only to supervise the exchange of goods and money, and anything that didn’t directly concern that process was as alien and irrelevant to him as a Rachmaninov piano concerto to a Trobriand fisherman. And—not just presumably, but as a matter of record—Mr Burnoz knew Angela, had known her some time as a friend of the family, probably given her a vague smile as she sulked at dinner parties; Mr Burnoz proved that she existed, that she was a real person with a family and a history, therefore not a demon-wrought illusion. By implication, he vouched for her, and although there were times when he’d gladly have fed Mr Burnoz to a tankful of piranhas, Chris was prepared to take his unspoken word on something like this.

  Maybe he should ask Jill what she thought; but that didn’t feel right, somehow. He could see the look on her face, the twitch of an eyebrow, the expression that said, you know perfectly well why, and please bear in mind that Karen’s my friend too and it wasn’t like that, he was prepared to bet money on it, but that’d be the conclusion she would jump to, if only because it was a perfectly reasonable one—to an outsider who wasn’t there to see for herself.

  “And the scary coincidence is,” Angela was saying, “that a friend of my dad’s was at college with a girl who went out for a while with a man who used to work for the same company that did the lighting at a gig in Preston where the warm-up band had once—”

  “Look out,” Chris yelled.

  Poor road skills but top-notch reflexes; she dragged the wheel round, nearly crunching the jeep into the crash barrier but avoiding the oncoming lorry by at least a quarter of a millimetre. A horn dopplered away behind them; she straightened up and went on, “—Been on tour with Morrissey back in the nineties, well, when I say on tour, they did a couple of gigs with him in Scotland, I think, but even so, it just goes to show it’s a pretty small world—”

  Chris was forgetting to do something: to breathe. He gobbled a double ration of air, and made his hand let go of the seat belt. “Is that right?” he whimpered. “Like you say, it only—”

  He forgot the rest of what he’d been going to say. He was staring down at his left hand, slowly unclenching from around the seat belt. A habit of his, purely unconscious, when he encountered lethal danger as a passenger on the road. He’d done it only yesterday, tearing a fingernail as he’d dug his nails into the canvas while the demon prowled round him. And again just now, when he’d grabbed a handful and squeezed—

  But not dug his nails in, he was pretty sure about that. There hadn’t been time, and his fingers were still sore from yesterday, so instinctively he’d squeezed instead of digging. A personal choice, and equally valid.

  In which case, though—he glanced quickly across so make sure Angela wasn’t looking, then down at the belt, to confirm. In which case, why were there nail marks, deep and crisp and even, scored into the webbing at precisely the point on the belt where he’d just grabbed it?

  CHAPTER SIX

  There were, of course, alternative explanation’s. For example: the demon who’d abducted Chris yesterday had borrowed Angela’s car, while she was in her room doing her college assignment, and put it back again after the bungled kidnapping attempt was over. Piece of cake for a demon; but why bother? Any old car would’ve done, since he hadn’t had a clue what she drove, or even if she had a car at all. All right, then, how about: she was a distinctly unnerving driver, and the nail marks weren’t his; they’d been left there by a previous passenger. He liked that one a lot, but he didn’t believe it.

  On the other hand, did he really believe that Angela the trainee, vouched for by Mr Burnoz, hand-picked by JWW Retail as a future jewel in their corporate crown, was really in league with demons, and had helped them set him up? Harder to swallow than a razor blade. Also, the same objection held true: why use her car, he thought again, when any old banger off the street would’ve done just as well? Unless, of course, the jeep had been specially modified to do the necessary magic to get him into the demons’ dimension. As a hypothesis, however, it was still thin enough to grace any catwalk in Paris; and even if he believed it, which he didn’t, what (being realistic) was he proposing to do about it?

  Well: one thing Chris quite definitely wasn’t going to do was risk any sort of confrontation. Quite apart from the possibility that Angela had demon allies at her beck and call, accusing someone of being a cat’s-paw for the forces of darkness would be quite excruciatingly embarrassing. How would he work it into the conversation? And what was he supposed to say when she looked at him and said, “You what!”

  No: a sensible, rational man would do what sensible, rational men are supposed to do when confronted with the raw face of evil; look the other way until it’s gone, and then call a policeman. In this case, Jill. Either she’d tell him not to be so paranoid, in which case he could revert to the terrified-previous-passenger theory and think no more of it, or else Jill would send in the black helicopters and it’d be out of his hands and someone else’s problem. Assuming, of course, that she wasn’t leading him into another trap. Well: he could feel the casing of the tape-measure, pressed by the seat against his hip. He felt slightly reassured, but not nearly enough.

  “Here we are,” Angela was saying, “Boisdark Road. That’s the address, isn’t it?”

  Chris nodded. “About halfway down on the right. I usually park on the petrol station forecourt; just opposite, look.”

  Messrs Ackery & Slade, trading as Magical Mystery Tour: a hard sell at the best of times, but although they were notoriously reluctant to take more than one dozen of anything (except DW6, of course) he’d always got on well with Dennis and Frank. A plan of action started to take shape in his mind.

  “Hi, Dennis.” Big smile. “Look, can I use your phone? My battery’s flat.”

  No problem. He left Angela the trainee giving Dennis the BB27K spiel and darted into the stockroom. So far, so good.

  So far and no further. The voice at the other end of the line was sorry, but Ms Ettin-Smith was out of the office for the rest of the day. Yes, they had her mobile number but they weren’t authorised to disclose it. They would, of course, be overjoyed if he left a message for her and would pass it on as soon as she came in tomorrow morning; no, they couldn’t pass on a message right now, as Ms Ettin-Smith had left strict instructions that she wasn’t to be disturbed except in an emergency; no, they weren’t prepared to accept his assurance that this was an emergency, and they’d be obliged if he wouldn’t take that tone with them. So sorry. Have a nice day.

  Chris hung up, feeling worried. Always the problem with policemen: never one around when you really need one. Ludicrous situation, he thought: there he was, doing the rounds with someone he had reason to suspect was in league with the Common Enemy of Man; a half-sensible human being would run a mile, hide, emigrate to somewhere comparatively safe, like Iraq or Afghanistan, instead of getting back in the car, the quite possibly enchanted car in which he’d very nearly been murdered less than twenty-four hours ago, and driving to Lichfield to sell yet more powdered water to the retail magic trade. Why? Because he was afraid that if he dr
opped everything and ran for it, he’d lose his job? Well, fine. A bit like refusing to leave a burning house because you haven’t finished watering the plants.

  I could do it, he thought; I could sneak out the back, get a bus into the town centre, find a travel agent, get myself booked on a flight to Switzerland (the only country in the world where magic doesn’t work; nobody had ever managed to find out why, though it was generally reckoned that the banks had something to do with it), stay there until it’s safe to come back-He shrugged. It was entirely feasible, but he couldn’t do it, purely and simply because there was the possibility that he was wrong, and he wasn’t being stalked by demons, which meant he’d be making a whole lot of inconvenient and disruptive fuss over nothing, and then he’d feel really silly. Quite. And, no doubt, that was probably the way people’s minds had worked when there’d been a chance of stopping Hitler or containing the spread of the Black Death. Which was just another way of saying that people tend to get what they deserve; true, but massively unhelpful.

  “Did you make your call?” The round, bearded face of Frank Ackery was beaming at him from the edge of the stockroom door.

  Chris nodded. “Thanks,” he said.

  Frank grinned. “That assistant of yours,” he said. “Bit keen, isn’t she?”

  You could say that “Sorry,” Chris said. “Is she making a nuisance of herself?”

  Shrug. “She’s sold Dennis two dozen of those parking spaces of yours, which I’d have thought was impossible, and now she’s within an ace of talking him into five dozen pairs of winged sandals, even though we’ve got nine dozen of the Zauberwerke version on the shelf right behind your head, and you could grow potatoes in the dust.” Frank sighed. “Fifteen years we’ve been in business together, I’d have sworn he was charmproof. She permanent, or what?”

  Chris shook his head. “Management trainee,” he replied. “Just getting a few weeks’ experience in the trenches.”

  “Thank God for that,” Frank replied. “The last thing this business needs is reps who actually sell us stuff.”

  “Quite.”

  That was the cheery badinage done with, but Frank didn’t move; he was deciding whether to say something. “I gather you’ve had an exciting time of it lately.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My cousin Penny in Demon Control,” Frank replied. “Like your shirt, by the way.”

  The polo shirt, with DS on the pocket. “Not mine,” Chris said. “Borrowed it from—”

  “She told me,” Frank went on, dropping his voice a little, “that you’ve had a bit of aggravation from them.”

  No need to ask who they were. “Yes,” Chris said.

  “Sorry to hear it,” Frank said gravely. “Been there,” he added. “Not nice. Did you ever know Billy Tomacek?”

  “The name’s vaguely familiar—”

  Frank nodded. “My best mate at school,” he said. “Married my cousin Penny. The reason you recognise the name is, he was killed by demons about five years ago. The biggest bit of him they ever recovered fitted nicely on a microscope slide.”

  “Oh.”

  “You could say that, yes. Reason I bring it up is, before they killed him they’d been hassling him for weeks; turning up everywhere he went, that sort of thing. The first three times, he managed to give them the slip. He was a bright lad, Billy.”

  “I see,” Chris said, his voice suddenly weak. “What happened—?”

  Frank was silent for a moment. “We’re still not exactly sure,” he said. “He left a message on Penny’s phone at work to say he’d got her message and he’d see her there; which didn’t make any sense, because she hadn’t called him. So they took his answering machine apart and found it stank of demons; one of them must’ve got inside it and left a false message from Penny telling him to meet her somewhere. And that’s where they were waiting for him.” He shrugged. “No idea why, of course. It’s like they picked him at random. The only link was Penny working for the department, but that’s a bit tenuous, obviously.”

  Quite, Chris thought; as far-fetched as his best friend being the head of the demon-hunters. “Coincidence?” he heard himself say.

  “We just don’t know. The only other thing he said in his last message was something about Gandhi, which makes no sense at all. Anyway, when Penny told me about your spot of bother, I thought, I know him, he comes in our shop, next time I see him I’ll tell him to keep his head down. So,” Frank added. “Think on.”

  “Yes,” Chris said feebly. “Right.”

  “Also.” A marked hesitation this time. “You might find you have a use for these.” Frank dipped his fingers into the top pocket of his jacket and fished out a pair of sunglasses. “Here,” he said, “try them.”

  Chris frowned. “But it’s not very bright in here, Frank.”

  “Try the fucking sunglasses, Chris.”

  Put like that, how could he refuse? He took them, and noticed how heavy they felt, as though the frames were lead and the lenses inch-thick steel. He perched them on his nose. They hurt.

  “Fine,” he said, in a suffering-gladly voice. “So what’s the big—Oh.”

  Frank was still there, still standing exactly where he’d been a moment ago, but there was a difference. To be precise, he had something sitting on his shoulder. It wasn’t a bird, but it had wings. It most definitely wasn’t human, though it had hands and feet and a more-or-less round head. “Frank,” Chris said quietly, “what’s that on your—?”

  Frank smiled at him. “My constant companion,” he replied, “ever since Billy died. Other people have chips on their shoulders when they’re pissed off about something. You might say this is taking it to the next level.”

  “Frank—”

  The thing, whatever it was, yawned, revealing three rows of upper-jaw teeth and four below. Eight eyes, and the lobes of its ears drooped like streamers. “It’s a Fury,” Frank said. “Oh, there’s loads of other names for them. It’s a cross between a memory and an obligation, I guess you could say. Or an external conscience, maybe. Like I said, it came to live with me when Billy died, because he was my best friend and there wasn’t anybody else. It’ll stay there until I do something about his death; and, since I’m a coward, that means we’re more or less stuck with each other. Actually, it’s no bother; doesn’t eat much, toilet-trained, you’d hardly know it was there; and nobody else can see it, of course. Not unless they’re wearing the specs.”

  Chris thought about that. “Hardly any bother.”

  Grin. “It talks to me,” Frank said. “When we’re alone. Reminds me. Really very polite and reasonable, you couldn’t accuse it of making a fuss. It just says things like pity Billy couldn’t be here to see that or that’s a good one, just wait till you tell Billy, no, sorry, I forgot, you can’t. The really bad thing is, you get used to it after a while. I feel a bit ashamed about that.”

  The Fury stretched its wings, gently brushing Frank’s cheek; it’d be like a brief itchy feeling, Chris supposed. Then it stuck its head under one wing and went to sleep.

  “Anyway,” Frank said, “that’s the glasses for you. You’d be amazed what you can see with them on. Not a JWW product,” he added. “Feinwerkhaus of Vienna, pre-war; haven’t been made for years, so they’re pretty rare now. I’ll have them back when you’ve finished with them, but right now I reckon your need’s greater than mine.”

  The pain in Chris’s nose was getting tiresome; he slipped the glasses off, and at once the Fury disappeared. “Can they show up-”

  “Demons?” Frank nodded. “But not all the time, which is a bit of a bummer. As I’m sure you know, demons don’t hang around this dimension any more than they can help. Once they come through, of course, they’re pretty obvious—you don’t need smart specs to see them. Otherwise, when they’re on the other side of the line waiting to come through, the specs aren’t a lot of use, except for one thing. You get a sort of shimmer effect, a bit like— Oh, sod it,” he said, as the phone started to ring. “Hang o
n, I’d better get that. Don’t go away.”

  While Frank was talking—just a bunch of yeses and I sees—Chris examined the sunglasses a little more closely. The frames looked like plain orange plastic, but he could just make out, in tiny raised letters on the sides of the arms, the letters DS.

  “Sorry about that,” Frank said, and his voice was distinctly strained. “Anyway, there you go, hope they’ll be of some use to you. I’d better get back to the shop now, if that’s OK.”

  “Hang on,” Chris said, “what about the—?”

  He was talking to an empty doorway. Odd, he thought, to break off like that just as he’d got to the useful bit, A sort of shimmer effect. Could mean anything.

  Even so. Now he came to think of it, he had an idea he’d heard of something similar; not sunglasses, but a mirror, in which things were reflected as they truly were, not as they pretended to be. The same basic technology, presumably. In any event, he could see how they could come in very handy, and not just for identifying demons. Then he thought about the Fury, and it occurred to him that some things are best not seen.

  He went back through into the shop. Frank was serving a customer—a refill for one of the old PP12N genie lamps, by the look of it—while Angela was showing off the new GF92 instant thunderstorm to a thoroughly dazed-looking Dennis Slade; wisely, she’d set it up inside an upturned goldfish bowl, and even from across the room he could see the lightning flashes piercing the inky black clouds. Frank won’t like that, he thought. He’d bought fifteen of the old model last year, and even though the R&D people swore blind that they’d thoroughly debugged it and it was now possible to turn it off-Chris realised he was still holding the sunglasses. Quickly he slipped them into his pocket, almost as if he was afraid Frank would change his mind and ask for them back. Give them back? No chance. The thought crossed his mind the way a rabbit darts across the road in front of you, just before you jump on the brakes and listen to your tyres lose half their value. Stupid, he thought. If Frank wants them back, of course he’d return them. He just hoped very much that he wouldn’t.