May Contain Traces of Magic

by Tom Holt

  (No wonder, Chris thought, as he verified his assumptions by looking up DW6 in the FAQ section of the JWW Retail website—where he’d never thought of looking. Why? he asked himself; because I’m stupid, obviously—we sell so much of the stuff. After all, ninety per cent of the people I know have turned out to be bloody demons, so clearly there’s a lot of them about.)

  Chris had a bath. He shaved. He put on his best suit. And (because it’s not every day your future life flashes in front of your eyes) a tie.

  While Chris was polishing his shoes he got a call from Mr Burnoz, confirming his appointment as area sales manager. He made a point of sounding laid-back and cool about it, but when he put the phone down afterwards he was grinning like an idiot. Not that he’d be any good at it, not after tonight, but from what he’d seen of previous incumbents of the job nobody was ever going to notice. He’d miss the road, of course, being stuck in an office a lot of the time, but there would be compensations; not least of them being that he’d no longer have any need of a satellite navigation system. Wonderful gadgets, if responsibly used, but if you’re not careful they can lead you astray.

  Chris had forgotten what she looked like.

  Incredible but true. When he answered the door, he saw Jill and someone else, a nice-looking girl about his own age, with straight chemical-red hair and very dark blue eyes and a nervous expression that made him want to smile. It took him maybe as long as three seconds to realise it was Karen.

  Jill nudged past him into the hall. “Well?” she said. “Where is it?”

  He closed the front door and stood with his back to it. “Here,” he said. “Where?”

  “Right here.” He smiled. “But let’s have dinner, I booked a table for us over the road.”

  Jill frowned. “Oh, not curry,” she moaned. “I never did like curry.”

  “You never liked human food, period,” he said to her, looking at Karen. “But that’s OK. There’s other stuff on the menu that’ll suit us all.”

  Karen hadn’t said a word. That was disconcerting, like dry rain or the sun rising in the west. “I like how you’ve done your hair,” he said.

  “It’s horrible,” Karen replied. “I hate it.”

  Which confirmed she was who she appeared to be better than any retina scan could ever manage. “I missed you,” Chris said.

  “I’m not back,” she said quickly. “I’m just here.”

  “That’ll do,” he replied. “Like I told Jill, this is business.”

  (He’d forgotten the elegant curve of Karen’s neck, the length of her hands and fingers, the exquisite ratio of mouth to chin. Correction: you can’t forget what you never really noticed before. Who was it, he tried to recall, who said that the best place to hide something is in plain sight?)

  “Right,” Chris said, “let’s make a move.”

  What could be more natural, he thought as they filed out into the street, what could be more pleasantly normal than this: three old school friends going out for a meal? Well, four, if you counted the demon.

  “I never liked this place,” Karen said. “We came here once and the food took half an hour to arrive and then it was cold, and I wanted to complain and you were afraid to make a scene.”

  “Yes,” Chris said. “But it’s got to be here.”

  “Why?”

  “Something I read in a book.”

  Karen wanted to argue, but Chris pretended he hadn’t noticed. They crossed the road and he led the way in though the door, over which, on a basic plastic fascia board, was the name:

  GANDHI

  Indian Restaurant & Take Away

  (Now he came to think of it, everything had been staring him in the face all along.)

  “Hi,” he said cheerfully, as a waiter came up. “Table for four—Popham.”

  The waiter gave Chris a long look. “Ah yes,” he said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  On previous occasions when they’d gone there, Chris had wondered why it was that they had a back room, larger than the front area, filled with tables set out with tablecloths and cutlery, which they never used. He’d abandoned it as one of those mysteries that probably has a perfectly simple explanation, if only he could be bothered to find it out. Always a mistake, that.

  “Have you really been keeping this room for us—?”

  The waiter nodded. “Sixteen years,” he said. “But you’re here now, so not to worry.”

  They sat down; and immediately, all the other tables vanished and the door faded away into the wall, like a ridiculously fast-healing wound. The waiter smiled, handed them each a menu, and faded into a spinning column of smoke, which blew away in the gentle breeze from an electric fan.

  “I think I’ll start with an onion bhaji,” Chris said.

  Karen and Jill weren’t even looking at their menus. “Chris,” Jill said, “any particular reason why this table’s set for four?”

  He looked up and smiled. “It’s all right,” he said, to neither of them. “You can come out now.”

  And out the demon came.

  It started as a faint grey wisp of vapour, rising from each of them like steam off wet clothes. As it rose, the three strands twisted together, weaving a shape that gradually became recognisable, then familiar. As it pulled a third of itself out of him, Chris felt a great surge of emotion deep inside: first anger, then panic, then the unbearable sorrow of parting and loss. Then there was a faint noise, a sort of pop, and the demon dropped out of the air into the chair that the waiter had pulled out for it. They all looked the same to Chris, needless to say, but it did remind him ever so much of what he’d seen in mirrors.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Chris said.

  Hard to tell, because of all the fangs and distorted features, but Chris fancied it was looking distinctly sheepish. “Thanks,” it said.

  “No worries. Now then,” Chris continued briskly, “introductions. Jill, meet the one who is to come. Karen, this is the demon who’s been stowing away inside all of our heads ever since that day in the girls’ toilets at school.”

  Jill jumped so violently that she knocked over a wineglass, “All of—”

  So nice to be able to justify a really patronising grin. “All of our heads, that’s right. Actually, I honestly can’t believe it took me so long to figure it out. So obvious, really. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  The demon nodded its grotesque potato-shaped head. “We apologise,” it said, “for any inconvenience.”

  Chris poured himself a glass of water from the jug and was pleased to see how steady his hand was. “Just to set my mind at rest,” he said. “That day, in the toilet. You were inside Karen, right?”

  The demon nodded. “She was to be our host,” it said.

  “Quite.” Chris nodded. “And what about me?”

  The demon broke eye contact. It might even have turned a slightly deeper shade of grey. “Our larder,” it said.

  Chris nodded again. “Which is why—sorry about this, Karen, but I’m assuming you didn’t know—which is—why Karen fancied me, ever since we were both fifteen. That was the whole point of the exercise, wasn’t it? Your grand plan for weaning demonkind off killing humans and preventing an all-out war between you and us.”

  “Quite so. We could see no other way.”

  “Just a minute,” Karen interrupted, and Chris recognised the tone of voice as the first puff of smoke from the volcano. He held up his hand for silence and, amazingly, it worked.

  “Again,” he said, “it only goes to show how truly stupid I am, because I only just worked it out. Your lot need emotion to live. You figured that instead of killing us for it you’d be better off making us into a sustainable resource, milking us for your emotional needs. The main problem was how to get enough emotion out of your human host to live on, and how to do it so as not to wear us out or drive us crazy. You needed a way that we wouldn’t notice or object to. Like the birds who pick the teeth of crocodiles. What’s the word—?”

  “Symbiotic,” Jill mutter
ed.

  “That’s right, thanks. A symbiotic relationship; something in it for you, something in it for us. Now, which human emotion fits the bill perfectly? Anyone?”

  Jill was frowning. Karen just looked stuffed. So: “Love,” Chris said, “of course. When you designed your human host—Karen—she was pre-programmed to love someone; as it turned out, me. Good choice; because, obviously, when a charmless, unprepossessing specimen like me finds out that a beautiful, intelligent girl like Karen fancies him, the last thing he’s going to do is ask questions or mess about, he’ll say yes please and thank you, and that’ll be that. True love, happy ever after, and a lifetime supply of gourmet eating for you. Well thought out, and no harm to anyone, so long as Karen and me never learned the truth. Unfortunately,” he added, “it didn’t work out.”

  The demon dipped its head. “Alas,” it said.

  “Because,” Chris went on, “instead of falling head over heels for Karen like I was supposed to, I fell in love with Jill instead. Typical awkward human; and what made it ten times worse, Jill wasn’t even a human being, she was a demon; a demon, what’s more, who’d been sent here to arrest you and bring you back. Must’ve been a nasty blow for you. I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” the demon replied. “Ours. Inadequate preliminary research, based on false assumptions and bad science. It is we who should apologise to you.”

  “Yes,” said Chris. “But anyway. There you were, pretty comprehensively screwed. And then you had a brainwave. And this,” he added, “is where I start to get quietly angry with you, OK? Just so you’re aware of it—it’s only fair. You thought, what I need is something or someone to make the human fall in love with my carrier. Presumably you considered a love potion, something like the JWW love philtre—”

  The demon shook its head. “Poison to us,” it said. “Highly toxic. May contain traces of nuts. Not a viable option.”

  “I see, fine.” Chris shrugged. “So instead, you called in a fey, because they’re supposed to be able to get into humans’ heads through their dreams and change all the settings. But you can’t trust them, can you? Once they’re across the line and in our reality, they’re like kids with a bottle of whisky and the keys to their dad’s car. As soon as she got here, your fey bolted; got inside the head of that other girl, Ellie, took her over, forgot all about what you wanted. Fat lot of good it did her, though, because along comes Jill, looking for you, sees the fey in Ellie’s head, assumes it must be you, and the next thing anybody knows about it, there’s blood on the toilet floor and everything’s completely fucked. Well?”

  The demon nodded sadly. “Tragedy,” it said.

  Maybe not the word Chris would have chosen. “You were in a real fix,” he said. “Jill was on the rampage; she’d made a mistake the first time and killed Ellie instead, but you knew she’d try again as soon as she realised her mistake; she’d almost certainly succeed the next time around, which’d mean you going back to your side of the line and getting beaten up by the authorities; also the failure of your great and noble experiment, before you’d had a chance to give it a fair go. So, on the spur of the moment, you improvised. You baled out of Karen, tore yourself in three, jumped straight into our heads and made yourself at home.” He sighed. “And there you’ve been ever since. You converted Jill into a secret sympathiser, you made poor Karen here keep on loving me, even though—well, anyway. I don’t know what you wanted me for, unless it was just as a backup. You know, in triplicate, like a parking-permit application. Or maybe you just wanted me for all the rotten bloody miserable emotions I’ve been feeling this past sixteen years. Really, I’m surprised you’re not as fat as a pig by now.”

  For a relatively long time—between ten and twelve seconds—nobody moved or spoke. Then Karen slowly pushed back her chair, stood up, grabbed the water jug and emptied it over the demon’s head. Then she sat down again.

  “I know,” she said. “Empty gesture. But so what?”

  The water, which had fallen through the demon as through a colander, was pooling on the floor under its chair; liable to give entirely the wrong impression, Chris couldn’t help thinking, to someone coming unexpectedly into the room. The demon just looked faintly puzzled, as if wondering what the polite response would be.

  “So why now?” Jill said. “After sixteen years, why choose now to come back out again?”

  The demon opened its mouth, but Chris got in first. “Two things, I guess. One, your lot—sorry, you ex-lot, the authorities back home, sent another—what was the word you used? Avenger?—anyway, another one of them, to do the job that Jill should’ve done before she changed sides. That was my late lamented colleague Angela, who presumably is back in the office right now explaining to her boss why she cocked it up. The other reason, I imagine, was that the Fey who cheated you just happened to show up again, trapped in my SatNav, and she had the bright idea of making me go back in time and change history so that she never got separated from her hijacked body back in the girls’ toilets.” He turned to the demon, who was looking surprisingly small and meek. “Is that about the shape of it, more or less?”

  “Precisely so,” the demon said, with a funny little bow. “As you correctly deduced, the subject of our research was the human emotion that you call love. We had heard of it, but found it impossible to believe that such a thing could exist. Therefore we came here to prove it by controlled experiment. We infiltrated the female human” (Karen pulled a truly horrible face, but stayed put) “and used the good offices of the Fey you call SatNav to induce her to fall in love with a male human, chosen at random. To begin with, the results were most satisfactory. The female human’s emotions, which we believe fell into the category of unrequited love, were highly nutritious and contained the full recommended daily intake of vitamins A, B, C, E and G2. However, we recognised that unrequited love cannot be expected to last any appreciable length of time, and we were disappointed and frankly surprised to find that the male human entirely failed to reciprocate the female’s emotions, being already enamoured of the second female, the avenger. When the avenger detected our presence in the first female, we quickly enlisted the Fey to run interference, not anticipating the extent to which the avenger would be confused. Naturally, we regret the Fey’s unfortunate fate. Our primary concern, however, was for our own safety and the future of the mission. As the male human has just explained, we subdivided and occupied all three of them—a manoeuvre, we might add, hitherto believed impossible, and we intend to write a paper on the subject as soon as we return to our own side. Since then, we have lived quite comfortably on the emotions of all three of you: the unrequited love of the male and our original female host, and the second-hand emotions collected so assiduously by the other female in her capacity as confidante and confessor to a close circle of friends. In passing, we note that we entirely underestimated the enduring power of unrequited love. In both cases, it lasted sixteen years; indeed, it might be said to have matured, with corresponding improvements in both nutritional qualities and flavour.”

  The demon stopped talking, then beamed suddenly and licked its lips. “Thank you,” it said. “We greatly appreciate the waves of hatred and revulsion emanating from all three of you. After sixteen years of subsisting almost entirely on various forms of love, the change is both welcome and refreshing. And anger too” it added, closing its eyes in pure bliss. “Really, this is too much. We doubt whether our digestion can stand it.”

  Me too, Chris thought. From his pocket he took a fold of kitchen towel, in which were wrapped six ice cubes. They’d hardly thawed at all since he’d pocketed them, shortly before Jill and Karen arrived. He tumbled them into a glass, topped it up with water from the jug and growled, “Here, drink this.”

  The demon frowned, sniffed the glass, grinned broadly and gulped, swallowing the ice cubes whole. “Thank you” it croaked, as first steam and then smoke began to stream out of its ears and nose. “We believe we are indeed ready to go home. Our researches are complete. Once again,
we apologise for any—”

  Then it burst into flame. For about five seconds, it burned keenly with a clear green flame, and then there was nothing, not even a sprinkle of ash.

  There was a long silence. Then Karen said, “I don’t know about you two, but I’m starving. Pass me that menu, will you?”

  Something in her tone of voice; Chris fished the sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on.

  Human. A hundred per cent.

  Still, he had to ask.

  “Karen” he said.

  “Mmm?” She didn’t look up from the menu. “The hummingbird. Was that—?”

  Still without taking her face out of the menu, Karen brushed her hair back over her ear, to reveal the hummingbird earrings. “They’re magic” she said, “belonged to my aunt Jessica. I tell them what to do, and they do it.” She shook her head a little; one earring detached itself, flew across the room and came back with a wine list clutched in its tiny beak. “Years ago, when we first got together, I told them to look after you, if you got into trouble and I wasn’t there. Bit of a nuisance lately—it means I’ve been going round half the time with only one earring.”

  “I see” Chris said. “Thanks.”

  “ ‘Salright.”

  “Fine,” Jill said, and there was a brittle quality to her voice that put Chris on notice that something was about to happen. “Well, apparently that’s that sorted. Well done, Chris. I don’t know, it’s been staring me in the face all these years—literally, for crying out loud—and I never saw it. About time I packed in this undercover stuff. Never was my cup of tea.”

  Of course, it could mean she was considering leaving her job with the department, but he didn’t think so. “You’re going back,” he said.

  Jill looked at him, straight in the eye. “I think so,” she said. “I came here to do a job and I screwed that up. In fact, I screwed it up so badly that I allowed myself to get taken over by the enemy. Worse still, even now it’s cleared off out of my head I still feel the same way.” She shook her head sadly. “Sort of puts me in my place, doesn’t it? What’s it called—Stockholm syndrome, is it, where after a bit the hostage starts agreeing with the kidnapper? Never knew it could affect demons, but there you are, learn something new every day. Anyhow, as far as I can tell, things really have changed back home. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if that pompous little turd gets elected president. In which case,” she added, with a sad smile, “it owes me, and I intend to collect. I think I’ll insist on being Head of Security. We may be no great shakes at love, but we do have a finely developed sense of irony.”