“You have an important engagement elsewhere,” Rosalynne said, locking eyes with him. “And you are late.”
“Is, ah, that the time?” Smith asked looking at his watch. “I, er, have to go. You’ll have to let me take you out to dinner another day. Let me know when you have the stuff.”
Smith rose, clutching his briefcase like it contained his rich grandmother’s only will. He almost ran out of the pub, tripping over another customer’s legs in his rush.
“Bye,” said Rosalynne, raising her glass to the bald, flabby, middle-aged, retreating figure.
The thought of a romantic dinner with Smith gave her goose pimples. She smoothed down her leather skirt over long and, even though she said so herself, slim and elegant legs. Rosalynne was far too curvy to be a fashion model but she had inherited blonde hair, high cheekbones and pale blue eyes from her Saxon forebears.
Magic came in many forms. Rosalynne could work the oldest spell of all on her clients when she dressed to impress, especially when those clients were men of a certain age. The only drawback was getting rid of them after they agreed to her terms.
The pub was like any other East End drinking hole that had yet to be gentrified. A large varnished bar dominated the room. Pint mugs hung from a wooden screen running along the top. A huge mirror behind the bar proclaimed the merits of Gordon’s London Gin. Tables were scattered around and screened alcoves along the bar’s walls allowed patrons to drink and converse with a degree of privacy.
East Londoners have a saying: “On the seventh day God rested by popping down the Whitechapel Road for a swift half at the Blind Beggar.” The pub was built in the eighteenth century on the site of an even older coaching inn, which had itself accreted around a toll booth charging travelers on the old Roman road to Colchester.
Whitechapel was one of those places where the walls of the world stretched and thinned. Thoughts and more tangible things could slip through. Sensitives were attracted to Whitechapel and inspired to do great and terrible things, releasing powerful bursts of psychic energy that further distorted reality. The Blind Beggar was at the focus of this whirlpool so year by year, decade by decade, century by century, the pub slipped deeper into shadow.
Rosalynne finished her drink, feeling suddenly at a loss. The night was too young for her to return to her flat but she had nowhere else to go and no one she wanted to go with. She rose from her table and walked up to the bar.
“Hey, Henry, has that fat poufter been in tonight?” asked a customer perched on a barstool.
“Not yet, George,” said the barman.
“Buy you a drink, love?” George asked.
“Thanks, Mr. Cornell, but I prefer to get my own,” Rosalynne replied.
He laughed, “Your loss, love.”
George Cornell was a powerful, heavy-set man, who would never have been considered handsome. He might have been sexy, in a thuggish sort of way, but for the ragged bullet hole in his forehead. He flickered slightly, outline blurring.
“Another, Rosalynne?” asked Henry.
She indicated assent and he poured a generous measure of gin into a glass.
“Not too much tonic, Henry,” Rosalynne said. “My dentist claims the sugar content is bad for my teeth.”
Henry nodded as if he had never heard the hoary old joke before. He moved methodically but surely, despite the sepia-stained bandage that completely covered his eyes.
“What’s he doing in here?” she asked, indicating the other drinker with a swivel of her eyes. “I thought he had wound down.”
Henry shrugged. “He appeared again just before you came in. There must be magic in the air tonight.”
Henry gave Rosalynne a pointed look.
“Has that fat poufter been in tonight?” Cornell asked.
“Not yet, George,” said Henry.
Rosalynne ignored the exchange. Eidolons tended to go around short loops. It was dangerous to interact too closely with one. You could get inserted into their pocket of reality.
Ronnie Kray, the fat poufter in question, had unsurprisingly taken great exception to being described as such and had expressed his displeasure with a Mauser 9 mm parabellum. This all happened in the Blind Beggar, one rainy night way back in the sixties.
“I wanted to have a word with you, Rosalynne. I’ve had to warn you before about using magic in the Beggar,” Henry said.
Rosalynne cut across him, impatiently. “And I’ve had to warn you before that I do as I please, where I please, when I please, and anyone who has a problem with that can do the other thing. That goes double for some loser who has risen to the dizzy heights of bar staff in a naff East End boozer. Got that, blind man?”
Henry shrugged and said nothing but his jaw clenched until the skin was white.
Rosalynne smiled cruelly. It was not the first time she had slapped Henry down. It was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel but sometimes fish in a barrel were the only target around.
“I know what I’m doing,” she said.
Henry stared blindly at her, then began to chuckle. Once started, he could not stop until he guffawed with uncontrollable mirth. Rosalynne was unnerved. She had never so much as seen him smile before.
“Oh, girly,” said Henry, in a venomous tone. “What a high-spirited little chit of a thing you are. I had quite forgot what it was like to be young and so full of piss and vinegar. You know what you’re doing?” Henry shook his head.
Rosalynne was angry now. How dare he patronize her?
“I may not be as old as you . . .” she said sarcastically, old being a synonym for senile in Rosalynne’s dictionary.
“You are just another leaf in the autumn wind.” Henry said, crushingly. “There’s a point where a witch becomes ripe for burning. You’re almost there.”
It sounded like a threat: no—worse than a threat—a prediction.
“Hey, Henry! How about another drink?” asked Cornell loudly, banging his glass on the bar.
Henry moved to serve him.
A shiver ran down Rosalynne’s spine. It was almost as if Henry knew something she didn’t. Maybe it was just someone walking on her grave. She took her recharged glass into one of the partitioned alcoves along the wall.
The pub door banged and a blast of air from an older, colder London blew in. Rosalynne smelt sulphur and animal waste. A man strolled across the room and sat at a central table. He wore the clothes of a Victorian gentleman on an evening out. A red cravat at his neck was a splash of color against an all black outfit of top hat and double-breasted frock coat. He carried a carpetbag in his left hand and in his right, an ebony walking cane topped with a silver pommel.
The gentleman kept his top hat on. He tapped the cane on the floor thrice and signaled Henry with an upraised finger. Rosalynne waited for the explosion. To her astonishment, the barman meekly poured out a glass of port from a crystal decanter and carried it to his table.
Top Hat drank deeply. He caught Rosalynne watching him and tipped his hat to her. His eyes ran arrogantly down the curves of her body, lingering on her legs. Rosalynne was used to being the focus of unwelcome male attention and had developed an automatic response.
She glared at Top Hat, which was the signal for him to direct his lecherous intentions elsewhere. He slowly worked his way back up until he locked eyes with her. There was something cold and predatory in his gaze that made her think of snakes. She looked away first.
In the nineteenth century, the world’s desperate poor crowded into Whitechapel’s slum housing, forming a Dickensian “rookery,” a concentrated pit of human misery and despair festering at the heart of the greatest and richest city in history. Gentlemen from West London would come to enjoy themselves drinking, gambling and whoring in Whitechapel’s sixty-two brothels—gentlemen like the man in the top hat.
The bar abruptly went very quiet. That was not a good sign. She peeked through a gap in the alcove partition so she could see the length of the room without being visible. Two people, a man and a woman, stood in
the pub doorway. The man was dressed in a perfectly fitting, classic pin-striped suit that murmured Savile Row. It was the sort of suit that implied Armani was nouveau riche. The clothes, the haircut, the bearing, not to mention his level of fitness made her think of an army officer. He should have been completely discordant in the Beggar but he radiated such self-assurance that it was everyone else who looked out of place.
In contrast, his companion fitted in just fine. She was tall, slim and genuinely beautiful, with a perfect complexion and bright green eyes. Rosalynne disliked her on sight. The woman’s dark, straight hair framed a pale-skinned face that contrasted sharply against her black-leather biker outfit.
The man took a flat silver case from a breast pocket, nonchalantly pulled out a cigarette, and tapped the end on the case. His eyes swept the occupants of the bar. Rosalynne shrank back into her alcove, her apprehension turning to outright fear. He lit the cigarette in direct contravention of the United Kingdom’s health and safety laws. No one protested.
The man and woman walked methodically down the alcoves, examining the occupants carefully before moving on. He was cool and businesslike, almost casual, but his companion moved like a lioness stalking zebra in the long grass.
A coil of fear slithered in Rosalynne’s stomach like a chilled roundworm. She knew of these people by reputation. Every magical freelancer in London knew of Major Jameson and Karla, the Commission’s London enforcers.
Rosalynne had no reason to think that they were after her. Nevertheless, her stomach gave another little lurch because she remembered being trapped. She remembered the police interrogation room. She remembered the smell of stale tea, sweat and mould. Most of all, she remembered the fear.
* * *
“Who was in it with you? Who did the actual hacking?” asked the police interrogator.
“No one,” she replied. “I worked alone.”
The police interrogator leaned forward, chin thrust out aggressively.
“Come off it,” he said. “You don’t have the computer skills to hack into a sausage roll let alone a bank. You left a clear trail right back to your own account. You claim you worked alone, right, so how did you hack the computer?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Rosalynne, perfectly truthful.
“I suppose you are protecting some boyfriend,” said the policeman. “Silly little girl. Lover boy will be shagging a new bird when you are slopping out your cell and fighting off butch lesbos in the showers. A pretty little thing like you will be in demand amongst the lifers.”
She did not answer. What was there to say?
The policeman got up and walked to the door but, before he left, he turned and had one last try. “They will throw the book at you if you don’t cooperate.”
She shrugged, displaying an insouciance that she did not feel. Inside, she was terrified.
“Well, suit yourself. Have a nice time banged up in one of Her Majesty’s holiday camps.”
Rosalynne was left alone for what seemed hours, but was probably only ten minutes. A middle-aged man in a suit entered and sat down in the policeman’s vacated chair. He offered her a fag. She was about to refuse, then remembered that it might be her last for some time. He smiled at her like a kindly uncle proffering a birthday present and lit the cigarette. Rosalynne drew the hot smoke deep into her lungs and held it, letting the nicotine rush through her veins. She fully intended to give up, one day, but it never seemed to be the right time.
“You are in a bit of a pickle, aren’t you, my dear? If you don’t talk they will double your sentence, but you could end up sedated in a loony bin if you tell the truth.”
She tried to hide her surprise.
“Magic and electronics have odd interactions,” the man mused. “Something to do with consciousness and quantum mechanics, so they tell me. Don’t understand a word of it myself but it’s amazing how a spell can bugger up a computer system.”
He beamed at her. She did not reply.
“You have a way out,” he said, talking very precisely as if to a small child. “I work for an NDGO called the Commission.”
She looked blankly at him. She had no idea what Commission he meant. NDGO sounded like the authorities. The establishment and Rosalynne were not entirely compatible. This was not her first brush with them.
“Non-Departmental Government Organization,” he said, confirming her suspicions. “We have room for a bright girl with magical talent. Join us and I could arrange to have your sentence suspended.”
Rosalynne stalled by sucking in another lungful. She had absolutely no intention of wasting her skills as a wage slave. No one ever got rich working for someone else. In her opinion, people who labored for the common good were either mugs or just too gutless to branch out on their own. She thought about taking up his offer and then pulling a disappearing act but decided it was too risky. She had no idea of the extent of the Commission’s powers but they must have a long reach if they could fix a trial. Maybe it was best not to annoy them.
“Thanks but no thanks,” Rosalynne heard herself say. “I don’t think that I would make a good civil servant.”
“Very well, serve your time,” said the man. The smile left his face and his eyes became very hard, the avuncular persona dissipating like morning mist. “No more magical crimes when you get out or we will be the people who come for you, not the police. You won’t like who we send and they won’t put you back in a cell. Our agents solve problems permanently. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she had replied, compliantly.
“Good,” he said as he left. “I am glad you have learnt your lesson.”
Rosalynne smiled submissively after him but really she was disdainful and angry. Who the hell did he think he was? Did he really think he could intimidate her with silly death threats? This was England and she had rights. She was sure she had rights.
She had learnt her lesson. From now on, she would watch her trail and work for cash payment only.
* * *
Rosalynne’s mind raced, trying to devise a way out. Keep calm, she told herself. Don’t give yourself away by acting suspiciously; they probably aren’t looking for you anyway. Her stomach still lurched as the fear-worm took a bite out of the lining. Jameson and Karla were two alcoves away. Should she run or try to bluff it out?
A man stood up suddenly, throwing aside his table. He twisted, vanished and in his place something beastlike roared. It leapt, claws slashing at Jameson’s throat. The enforcer twisted, right hand reaching beneath his jacket. The heavy, charging body knocked Jameson over. A dull-black, bulky pistol flew out of his grasp, skittering across the floor. The beast landed on its back legs, claws scrabbling on varnished wood. Gaining purchase, it sprang at Jameson, who rolled over towards his gun. The beast howled in triumph. Jameson would never make it.
A black streak intercepted the monster in midair, smashing it aside. Karla and the beast rolled over in a tangle of legs and arms. As they separated, Karla did something that was too fast for Rosalynne to see but the beast howled in pain and anger. It fell on its back and rolled over, growling and showing its fangs. Karla flipped gracefully onto her feet. She snarled back, her open mouth revealing impossibly long canines.
The beast charged her on all fours. She caught it by the throat with her right hand; her fingers, her claws sinking deep into fur and flesh. She pushed it upright until it was dancing on its back legs. It snapped at her face. Karla intercepted the beast’s snout with her left hand, holding its jaws closed. Slowly, she forced the beast’s head back, bending its thick neck to a more and more extreme angle.
Rosalynne saw stark terror in the beast’s eyes. Its front claws ripped at Karla, tearing open the leather jacket. Blood ran down her breasts. Her face never changed expression but her eyes glittered metallic green.
There was a deep thump of displaced air that Rosalynne felt more than heard. The beast’s back exploded in gore. Jameson stood in the classic pistol shooter’s position, body turned sid
eways, arm outstretched, looking down the gun. He fired again. The gun made a whump noise and jolted his arm. Blue electrical flashes sparkled around the barrel.
The beast rocked in Karla’s grip. She pushed it away contemptuously, like a woman disposing of a disappointing lover. It smashed a table as it fell, causing a shriek of splintering wood, but the monster still would not die. It tried to crawl away on its front paws, its paralyzed rear legs dragging uselessly behind.
Jameson walked deliberately round to the front of the beast and pointed the bulky pistol at it. The monster gave one last snarl of defiance. Jameson shot it in the head. The beast collapsed, finally stilled. Blood ran out of its eyes.
Rosalynne eyed Jameson’s weapon. She smelt tube trains, an acrid tang of ozone quite unlike the friendly Guy Fawkes firework-night smell that she associated with firearms. The pistol hit like a sledgehammer, however it worked. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for a chance to escape. Maybe they had come for the monster? Maybe they were not interested in her at all?
“That was my kill. I could have taken him,” Karla said to Jameson, her metallic green eyes narrowed. Her hands were still extended into claws and the long canines thickened her speech.
“Of course you could,” Jameson said, diplomatically. “But I could not bear to see you hurt.”
He sounded like a man mollifying a lover. Karla seemed to soften, the metallic shine in her eyes dulling back to a deep emerald green. Her teeth retracted, the claws became fingers and she looked like a woman again. The leather jacket was irretrievably ruined but she had already stopped bleeding.
Jameson turned the body over onto its back—the naked body of a short thickset man. “Who the hell is he?”
Karla shrugged. “Were,” she said, in a voice like a breath of tropical breeze.
Even Rosalynne found it sexy and she had not the slightest interest in women. Then the important part of their conversation struck her. Jameson did not know who the monster was. He was after someone else. The shape-changer had barely slowed the Commission’s torpedoes down. What chance would she have?
The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge Page 20