May Contain Traces of Magic

by Tom Holt

“I’ll take four dozen” she squeaked.

  “Sorry,” he snapped, moving abruptly away from her. “Minimum order: six dozen. Shipping costs, batching considerations, you know how it is.”

  “All right, then, six—”

  “And I can’t promise—I’ll do my best for you, you know that, but I can’t lay my hand on my heart and promise I’ll be able to restock you before my next visit if you run out—and something tells me you will run out, because this product isn’t just going to be big, it’s going to explode. So,” he said, turning on the sunny smile. “Better make that eight dozen, while you’ve got the chance.”

  She was staring at him, rabbit-in-the-headlight eyes. “All right,” she said. “Eight.”

  He considered her, poor weak creature that she was. He could run her up to ten, he was sure of it, but he decided against it; sell her eight dozen this month, and he’d be able to hit her for another eight in four weeks’ time. Old salesman’s proverb: the good shepherd shears his sheep, he doesn’t skin them. “Eight dozen it is,” he said, producing the order form as if from thin air and holding it out to her, along with a pen. “You’ll thank me for it, I promise you.”

  The crazy thing was, they did. The stuff he unloaded on them actually sold. Maybe it was just a coincidence, or maybe the same fierce spirit that burned in his eyes when he sold these days jumped from his eyes to theirs and possessed them as well. Like it mattered, so long as the stuff got shifted. She signed quickly and gave him back his pen.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Now then, let’s talk desiccated water.”

  Her expression hardened. “Thanks,” she said, “but we’re all right for that. In fact,” she added, “we’ve hardly sold a packet all month.”

  The wise predator knows when to back off; knows that once the quarry finds the desperate courage to turn at bay, the risk outweighs the possible gains. He shrugged, smiled; so reasonable, so understanding. “Fair enough,” he said. “Last thing I want to do is lumber you with stuff you can’t get rid of. All right, how are you for The Book of All Human Knowledge? Brand new edition with the very latest updates—”

  For some reason, you couldn’t give the dried water away lately. Everywhere Chris went it was the same. No demand. People weren’t interested. Not even three-for-twos and buy-one-get-one-frees had done any good. JWW were seriously considering rebranding the stuff, maybe even dropping it altogether. And still he didn’t know what they did with it; and neither, to his great surprise, did Mr Burnoz—

  ( “What’s it for?” Mr Burnoz had repeated. “How do you mean, exactly? It’s for selling?”)

  “No, no,” Chris had snapped impatiently. “The punters, the people who buy it. What do they actually do with it, once they get it home?”

  The silence that had followed had been long and sticky. “I have absolutely no idea,” Mr Burnoz had said eventually, as much to himself as to Chris. “The question’s never arisen—”

  “But you import the stuff, market it, distribute it. You must’ve made the decision—yes, we’ll do this. So you must know.”

  “Well.” Mr Burnoz had sounded confused, uncertain; probably for the first time in his life. “Actually, it was already a cornerstone line when I joined the firm. It’s—well, it’s just always been there, if you know what I mean.”)

  Not to worry. There were plenty of other lines; such as the all-new JWW Retail Storm In a Teacup, just add boiling water and pour, and you get six weeks’ constant rain: a must for farmers, hosepipe-ban sufferers and any cricket team faced with the prospect of playing Australia) or the JWW Retail Gardener’s Friend (a tiny, semi-sentient replica of John Prescott that patrols your lettuces by night, eating slugs); not to mention the latest jewel in the crown—

  “All new,” he said, “nothing else at all like it on the market right now, a hundred and ten per cent guaranteed and backed up by the JWW name, which stands, as you know, for quality. Most of all, though, a hundred and twenty per cent certified safe.”

  She looked at the box. Her nose twitched. “We don’t do them,” she said. “Policy.”

  He smiled. He loved a challenge. “Then you’re going to miss out on the biggest thing to hit the trade since flying carpets,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking—people are afraid of the very concept, it’s just too much hassle waiting to happen. But—no disrespect—you couldn’t be more wrong. This is the product that’s going to change all that. This is the product that’ll put entity-powered satellite navigation back on the shelves and on the punters’ windscreens for good.”

  “I don’t know,” she mumbled, and he knew he’d got her. He relaxed into the patter: completely redesigned containment technology, new added foolproof backup safeguards, firewalls, metaphysically sealed captive-environment cells, the entity isn’t even present in our dimension, you talk to it through a non-return-valved portal, so there’s absolutely no way in hell it can possibly get out.

  “It’s just, you hear things about them,” she said. “People who’ve been taken over and all sorts. My cousin Jacky’s hairdresser’s nephew—”

  “Tell me about it,” he broke in sharply. “Been there, been possessed by that.”

  She looked at him. “Really?”

  Nod. “It was really bad,” he said gravely. “I got a rogue entity, it messed with my head, it was touch and go for a while. So,” he went on, “if I’m endorsing the new JWW Safe-I-Nav, after all I’ve been through personally, you can bet it’s completely, utterly safe. Hundred and thirty per cent.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’ve got one in your car, then?”

  “Naturally,” he lied. “Don’t know where I’d be without it.”

  Slight pause; the time it takes for a split to widen into a crack. “Well,” she said, “if you’ve got one, I guess it must be all right. OK, I’ll take a dozen.”

  “Two dozen,” he said, as though pointing out a careless mistake.

  “Two dozen. How much did you say they were, again?”

  Last call of the day. Still, there was always tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, new worlds to conquer, new records to break, until the time came for his elevation to Folkestone, the area managership, followed in due course by a seat on the board, the inner circle, the MD’s personal parking space. It was inevitable; he had the momentum, and nothing could break it.

  Chris drove home—rather longer than he’d anticipated, thanks to a poorly signposted diversion that led to him seeing parts of the Midlands he never even knew existed—parked, climbed the stairs to the flat. He had a load of paperwork to get through, which suited him fine. Nothing kills time and deadens thought better than invoices, requisitions, stock chits, expenses claims, time sheets, and the GZZ14(a), a green form of which Folkestone was particularly fond, and for which he could see no purpose whatsoever.

  He turned his key in the lock, walked in and stopped in his tracks.

  There was something on the little telephone table in the hall that hadn’t been there when he’d left for work that morning. He looked at it. It looked at him. It was a man’s severed head.

  “Hello,” it said.

  Chris’s eyes were as wide as hubcaps. “Hi, John,” he replied.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Honest John grinned at Chris; an effort, since his chin was resting on the table. It meant having to lift the whole head.

  “Where’s the rest of you?” Chris asked.

  “Lying down,” John’s head replied. “On your bed. I find long journeys very tiring these days, thanks to you. Arsehole,” he added.

  The shock was wearing off, and Chris wanted to sit down. “Come on through into the living room,” he said. “Funny man.”

  “What? Oh, I see.”

  “You’ll have to give me a lift,” John said. “Unless you want me to wake my body to come and fetch me. I warn you, though, it might get a bit stressy with you. I’m basically the forgive-and-forget type, but the rest of me’s not so laid-back.”

  “All right,” Chris said. �
��How do I—?”

  “Not the hair,” John said. “Probably best if you went into the kitchen and got a tray.”

  So Chris did that, and carried John’s head into the living room and balanced it carefully on top of the TV set, so it’d be more or less at eye level when he was sitting down. “Now, then,” he said. “Can I get you anything? Drink?”

  John sighed. “What do you take me for, a potted plant?”

  “Sorry. Presumably nothing to eat, then, either.”

  “No, but if you wouldn’t mind going next door, in the top pocket of my body’s jacket you’ll find a pack of small cigars and a lighter.” John sighed. “It’s the only real pleasure I’ve got left, and so long as I smoke ‘em while I’m not connected to my lungs, completely harmless.”

  Put like that, Chris couldn’t really refuse, but he opened all the windows and turned on the kitchen extractor fan. “Right,” he said, as he sat down and John took a long drag at his cigar. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Smoke seeped disconcertingly out of the base of John’s neck, where it rested on the tray, making him look a bit like a Christmas pudding. “I was a god once,” John said sadly. “Well, as good as. I was a supernatural entity at a time when there weren’t all these rules and regulations. All you had to do was whip up a thunderstorm or make the sun go dark and humans would worship you—it was great. Try that nowadays, your feet wouldn’t touch. Now look at me. And they call it progress.” He sighed, sending billows of blue smoke in several directions. “It’s bad enough being demoted from Lord of the Ravens to running a poxy shop in the armpit of the universe. This—” He wobbled his head from side to side, making the tray rattle. “This is too much, and I’m not standing for it.”

  “You’re not standing for anything, John.”

  “Very witty. Ha bloody ha.” John’s one eye blazed at him, and Chris decided to rest his comic muse for the remainder of the interview. “The demons say they can stick it back on for me,” John went on. “I didn’t reckon it was possible, thanks to your bloody illegal pantacopt, but they seem to think they can do it, and right now I’m prepared to try just about anything. But they want something in return.”

  Chris frowned. “Something I can help you with, John?”

  The head nodded precariously. “Apparently.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Chris said slowly. “It’s all over, isn’t it? The civil war and all that.”

  “Don’t ask me, I’m just the messenger. Anyway, they told me to tell you, it’s nothing heavy, they just want to ask you a few simple questions—board of inquiry, something of the sort. Just an hour or two of your time, and they’ll glue me back together or whatever it is they’ve got in mind.” John’s face creased and folded into what was presumably meant to be a smile. “You won’t mind doing that for me, will you? No skin off your nose, and I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Board of inquiry?”

  “Something like that. Mad keen on the old red tape, demons.”

  On the face of it, reasonable enough. But, on the face of it, Jill and Karen had been human beings. Appearances deceive. “No offence,” Chris said, “but why you?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Why did they choose you as a messenger? I mean, wouldn’t it have been simpler to write me a letter or something?”

  John’s head shuddered slightly, his face frowned, then assumed a look of frustration. Chris realised it was because John had tried to shrug and had found he couldn’t. “How should I know? They came to me and said, do you want to do this little job for us, and in return we’ll mend your neck. Naturally I accepted.”

  “Fine,” Chris said thoughtfully. “Only, in that case, why come to you to come to me, instead of just calling on me direct? Seems a bit elaborate, for a species that hates wasting energy.”

  “I’m sure they have their reasons,” John said, a trifle impatiently. “Meanwhile—”

  “I’m interested, that’s all,” Chris said. “Come to that, why did they enlist you the first time? In your shop, I mean, when you flushed me down the—” He broke off, suddenly mesmerised by the glaring inconsistency dancing before his eyes.

  “I have absolutely no idea,” John said wearily. “Why don’t you ask them yourself when you get there?”

  “I’m asking you,” Chris replied. “Tell me about it. Such as, how did they contact you? What did they say?”

  “Can’t remember,” John mumbled. “I get these gaps in my memory, ever since you cut off my head.”

  “Try.”

  John sighed. “All right,” he said. “They came in my shop, all right? It was soon after poor old Bob Newsome got killed, so when I saw them I was shit-scared, naturally. They told me what they wanted done, and I didn’t argue. Yes, it wasn’t a very nice thing to do, shoving you down the bog, but it was you or me. That’s all there was to it.”

  Something not quite right; something obvious. “Is there anything you aren’t telling me, John?” Chris asked. “Because if you’re playing funny games with me, I swear to God I’ll make you regret it. You may have noticed, I’m not quite as limp and pathetic as I used to be, and I’ve still got the pantacopt, and I reckon eternity will get to be a real drag for a bloke with no arms and legs.”

  As Chris said that, he listened to himself saying it, and wondered, When did that happen? When did I start getting a kick out of making threats? Not a very nice thing to do, but definitely fun, watching John squirm. Memo to self: cut that out, before you stick like it—

  “Look,” John said wretchedly, “are you going to help me out or not? I reckon it’s the least you can do, considering.”

  Chris sighed. “Sorry,” he said, “but there’s something smelly about all this, and I’m not—”

  Arms clamped around Chris’s chest, crushing the air out of his lungs. As he was lifted out of the chair into the air he saw the grin on John’s face. Served him right, for sitting with his back to the bedroom door. “I’ll get you for this,” Chris wheezed as John’s body hauled him towards the bathroom. “You’re salami, you hear me?”

  “Only if you come back,” John replied. “Hence my total lack of panic”

  Chris was swung round as John’s body shouldered the bathroom door open. He tried struggling, but he might as well have tried to stop an elephant by throwing peanuts at it. He looked down, saw the toilet beneath him expand like a mouth opening; he raised his knees and kicked frantically, as John’s arms, let go and he was falling—

  It’s all right, Chris told himself as the tiled walls flashed past. Any second now, a hummingbird will zoom out of nowhere, and everything will be just fine.

  He fell. Then he fell some more. After a while, falling just got boring. He wished he’d brought a book to read.

  But he hadn’t, so he thought instead. He thought: three guesses where they’re sending me. Now, do I believe John when he says it’s just some board of inquiry, or do I assume there’s something rather more sinister going on? Unknown at this time. Come along, little hummingbird. The further you let me fall, the further you’ll have to lift me up again.

  Was it his imagination, or was he falling faster this time? It was, Chris realised, possible to gauge his speed by counting the interval between the lights mounted on the walls: two seconds. Pity he hadn’t thought to do that last time, or the time before. It felt like he was falling faster, but there could be any number of reasons for that. Besides, don’t things fall at a standard speed anyhow, Galileo and cannon-balls and the leaning tower of Pisa? Should’ve paid attention in physics; too late now.

  Slowing down? No, not quite. At some point, he realised he’d stopped falling down, and now he was falling up. There was a circle of light directly overhead; tiny, but growing fast, and oval. Reckon we can hazard a guess as to what that’ll turn out to be.

  Still no hummingbird, but he was definitely decelerating as he rose up into the oval glare. It was so bright that he had to close his eyes, and when he opened them he knew exactly where he was—and
when, to within ten minutes, give or take a minute. He stuck out a foot, like someone getting off an escalator, balanced on the toilet seat and hopped awkwardly down, taking care not to crash into the cubicle door.

  Well, well, Chris thought. Now we are again.

  He glanced at his watch hopefully, but both hands were missing. Fine, he thought, be like that. He unlocked the cubicle door and peeped round it. Nobody there yet.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “For crying out loud.” She sounded angry and nervous. “Keep your voice down or someone’ll hear you.”

  “SatNav?”

  “Shush!” she thundered in his ear. “And don’t look round. You mustn’t see me.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s bad luck.”

  “What, you mean, like at weddings?” “Quiet!”

  Defeating the object of the exercise there, Chris thought; but to humour her he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Is that really you, SatNav? I thought you were dead. I saw your body—there was blood.”

  “Quite,” she hissed back. “Your friend Jill murdered me, in cold blood. Robbed me of my physical form, reducing me to a mere voice trapped in a plastic box. I suppose she told you all about it.”

  “Well, yes.” Well, no, actually; because SatNav wasn’t a demon, was she? “She said you were a dissident ringleader, no, scratch that; she said she mistook you for a dissident ringleader.” He hesitated. “That’s not true, is it?”

  Hoarse, unhappy laugh. “No,” SatNav said, “it isn’t. I’m not even a demon. She murdered me just because of what I am. Because she could, basically.”

  “Oh.”

  “She didn’t tell you, did she?” SatNav went on. “About how the demons hunt us, kill us on sight. That’s why we’re practically extinct now, on both sides of the line. The stupid thing is, they won’t even tell us why—whether it’s for food or because we’ve got something they want or because of something we said that pissed them off; we have no idea, but they keep on killing us all the same. We used to try and fight back, but it was pointless, we can’t touch them, they’re far too strong. And when they kill us, the bitch of it is that we don’t die. If only. It’s like being what you’d call a ghost, I suppose. A consciousness, a memory, a voice if you’re lucky, if you can find something you can talk through, a way of getting a foothold. I was one of the fortunate ones. After I’d been drifting for ten or so years, I got caught in a metaphasic filter and stuffed inside a plastic box. Better still, my box sat right next to a radio and a CD player. When the right music played, I could just about come through, for a little while, a tiny bit of me.” SatNav sighed, and Chris felt suddenly cold. “But you know what? It’s not the same, somehow. Not like having a body of your own, and three dimensions, and a life.”