by M. V. Stott
‘Well, don’t take it personally, but maybe you’re not his type.’
I smiled and sipped at my drink.
‘Funny, but I think that is exactly it. I was born an adult, so I don’t have any childhood pain for it to take notice of. I might as well not exist as far as it’s concerned. Maybe it literally can’t see me because of that.’
David sighed and shook his head, lifting his drink to his mouth again.
He looked normal.
There was no trace of the power, the magic that had exploded out of him. No evidence of the white-hot flames that had burned out of his eyes, his mouth, his entire head.
‘You know, my nut is banging here; I must have hit it on the ground or something.’
“Or something” was right.
Was this connected to his new ability to see ghosts? What the hell had Mr. Trick done to him?
‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ asked David.
‘Like what? I’m not looking at you like anything.’
‘You’re looking at me like a big-eyed puppy that you’re about to put down. What’s up?’
‘Nothing, just… I didn’t like to see you like that. In the alley, I mean. That’s all.’
Well, that was sort of true. Just not in the way he would take it.
‘Yeah, well, it wasn’t exactly a picnic for me either. You know, I’d happily locked that memory up in the dark recesses of my noggin, and now here it is again. Any time I want to I can picture those three turds stood over me, knife in hand. I can even remember how I smelled after I pissed my pants. Of piss, if you were wondering.’ He snorted and shook his head.
I should have told him, I know that. It’s like finding out someone has an illness and deciding it’s better for them if they don’t know. It’s never better for them, but I didn’t know exactly what it was that had happened to David. It may have had nothing to do with the effect of Mr. Trick living inside of him. Maybe what had happened in the alley was just some, I don’t know, “natural” backlash to the creature messing with him. Maybe, because he was an adult, his body had just reacted like an antibody, fighting off an infection.
It was possible.
No, I didn’t believe me either.
‘Stella,’ said David, indicating past me with his head, ‘Oi, mate, turn that up will you?’
I looked over to see the barman pick up the remote control and turn up the sound on the pub’s television. It was a news report. A woman with a serious face and serious hair was informing London about the strange spate of children slipping into comas that was happening across the city. Since we’d last checked in, the number had grown.
Eighty-seven.
Eighty-seven kids had closed their eyes and failed to open them again.
‘It’s spreading,’ I noted.
‘And the number’s increasing each day.’
The woman put forward one viewer’s tweeted theory that the children had drunk a contaminated soft drink; a chemical attack by terrorists. The Daily Mail was running with that one for the next day’s front page. One crackpot pundit said it was down to the soup of Wi-Fi waves we live in, affecting the brainwaves of developing minds.
The newsreader moved on to discussing the opening of London’s fourth cereal cafe, and the barman switched over to the football.
‘It’s only getting worse,’ David lamented. ‘What’s our next move, Stella? How do we batter this thing?’
27
My witches would have known what to do.
Kala, Trin, and Feal; they would have taken this thing down as easy as you like. The creature wasn’t even real, not in the dictionary sense of the word. It was just a magical creation, pulled into existence by the emotions of children. Kala and the rest had already taken it down once, before my time. They’d tackled the thing and beaten it. Protected the children of this city from saying the rhyme; from falling asleep and never waking up again.
But my witches were dead, and whatever safeguards they had put in place to stop this thing, to stop things like it, were growing weak. Now there was only me left to try and stop it. Well, there was Giles L’Merrier, but nowadays he seemed disinterested in the plight of man. Kala used to speak about him a lot. Of the brave and mighty L’Merrier, of the people he would save and the evil he would brush aside and stomp under his foot. She spoke about him with a sort of reverence in her voice, like he was one step above even them. Like she almost worshipped him. But that wasn’t the man holed up in his dusty antiques shop. Now it seemed like the world bored him. Irritated him. I wondered what it would take for L’Merrier to step out of that shop and lend a hand.
I sent David to the coven to check on Amy. I didn’t want to go back. Didn’t want to see her, not yet. Not since the promises I’d made were no closer to being kept. So I walked the streets of West London, pulling my leather jacket tight around me, lost in my thoughts.
Or at least that’s what I was doing at first. After that I was just pretending to be distracted. Pretending like I didn’t know someone was following me.
When you work in my line of business you develop a sort of sixth sense. A little twinge that lets you know when someone is stalking you. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A prickle that worked itself up and down my spine.
I knew the routine by now. Knew how to snatch a look at who it was surveilling me without letting on that I knew they were there. I’d stop in front of a shop window, pretending to scan the goods inside but actually catching a glimpse of the person lingering behind me. Then I’d make a sudden change of direction, turning back on myself. The surprise would cause whoever was following me to stop, to waver in surprise, caught off guard. In the split-second it took them to right themselves, I’d learn who was on my tail and what they looked like.
It only took rolling those two strategies out a couple of times to figure out two things: first, it wasn’t one person following me, it was several. One was stalking me for a while, for five or ten minutes, then someone else would take their place, like they were part of a tag team. Second: I knew what it was. It was a breed of low-level Uncannys, all from the same clan. I knew that because they always kept to their own, and besides, I knew this one by name.
‘Razor,’ I said, nodding my head by way of a greeting as I sat on some stone steps, waiting for him to catch up.
‘Familiar,’ he said, spitting the words past his small, sharp teeth.
‘Is there something I can do for you? Your whole clan seems very interested in my movements.’
‘Yeah, because I asked them to find you. We eaves know things, hear things; if someone needs to be found, we can track them down.’
‘I’m still waiting for an explanation. And believe me, I’m not in the best of moods right now, so if you’re just here to piss me off, or try to feed my some more dog shit, I’ll be more than willing to take a little frustration out on that ugly mug of yours.’
‘So disrespectful. The High-born always are.’ He slapped his forehead. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, you weren’t “born,” were you? You were puked out by some witches to do their bitch work.’
I stood, hands throbbing with power, and Razor snarled, baring his teeth.
‘A little frustration therapy it is then.’
I raised a fist, magic swirling around it in molten threads, expecting Razor to either attack or run. Instead, he sagged his shoulders and bowed his head.
‘What is this? You talk big and then give in at the first sign of trouble? That is very disappointing, Razor. But don’t think it’ll stop me knocking those yellow teeth out of your skull. I don’t like being followed.’
I raised my fist and stepped forward, ready to teach Razor his—by my count—seventy-fifth harsh lesson. But something stopped me. He looked up, and for the first time I saw something in Razor I’d never seen before.
Vulnerability.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘I… I need your help, Familiar.’
‘You need what now?’
/> ‘Your help. We all do.’ He broke eye contact, like he was ashamed. ‘It’s our children. You need you to help our children.’
28
Razor and I had never exactly spent quality time together. The extent of our relationship to date had amounted to me tapping him for information at The Beehive, or leaving a cracked tooth in his jaw when he did something to piss me off. Needless to say, strolling down the street by his side felt more than a little strange.
Obviously I didn’t trust him, never could and never would, so I was on high alert the whole time, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Was he leading me into a trap? That seemed the most likely end result, but then what for, and for whom?
We didn’t make small talk as we walked, which was fine by me. He lead me through the streets of Hammersmith, up back alleys, down blind alleys hidden from the normals of London, through doors that lead places they shouldn’t have. He was taking me to his den. To his home. The eaves hide their nests where no one can find them, even if you’ve been taken there before and think you’ve memorised the location, you’ll soon find yourself lost and trying to figure out which wrong turn you took. It was one of the things they did with the magic they received in exchange for knowledge. Because when your stock in trade is tattling and telling tales, the last thing you want is to be traceable, otherwise who knows what will come knocking on your door.
Razor and I walked across rooftops then through a door into the sewers, swatting away the curious fairies that lived there. Well, I swatted them away, Razor grabbed a few and snapped them open, drinking down the magical juice within. For some reason fairy magic doesn’t have the same effect on the eaves as the magic I gave them. For Razor and those like him the fairy juice was like chewing nicotine gum. It scratched an itch, but wasn’t the same.
Finally, we found ourselves before a large, wooden door that had seen better days. It had been painted bright red once, but now the only paint left on it was huddled in small, peeling patches.
‘We’re here,’ he said. ‘Wipe your feet on the way in.’
As he opened the door I looked up at the large, three-storey Victorian house and wondered which street we were on exactly. I looked around me, squinted, but any time I looked away from the house it was like I was wearing goggles that someone had smeared gloop all over.
Giving up, I stepped into Razor’s house, wiping my feet on the mat inside and closing the door behind me.
‘D’you want a cup of tea?’ asked Razor.
‘Tea?’ I replied, surprised. ‘I never imagined you be much of a host, Razor.’
‘Yeah. Well. I do have some fucking manners.’
He turned and trudged up the staircase. I could hear the noise of a TV seeping down from above. I looked back at the closed door and wondered what the hell I was doing. How was this helping the job at hand? How was this helping me keep my promise to David about saving Amy?
‘You coming or what?’ said Razor.
I followed up the stairs. ‘You get five minutes,’ I told him. ‘Some of us have got work to do.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
Eyes peered at me from darkened rooms as I walked, and I heard a few unpleasant words muttered as I passed. I could hardly blame them for that. I’d never exactly been pleasant to them.
The house itself looked like a crack den; an abandoned, dilapidated building that the eaves has found and moved into. Squatted in, made it their own. From the look of the place, not to mention the smell, eaves weren’t too house proud.
‘In there,’ said Razor, pointing to the room at the end of the corridor.
‘And what am I going to find in there?’ I asked. ‘Because if this is some sort of trap, I’ll be leaving you with more than a few bruised ribs this time, understand?’
Razor snarled then spat onto the threadbare carpet. ‘Just get in there you piece of… just, in you go.’
He went inside and I followed.
I wasn’t expecting what I found.
The room was quite large; larger than you would expect for an upstairs room in a house like this. More evidence of magic. They obviously used it for more than getting off their heads and making their dens tricky to locate.
The walls were lined with single beds. Next to each sat an eaves, who looked up to me with barely concealed contempt as I entered.
‘What is this?’ I asked, my voice a whisper.
‘You know exactly what it is, Familiar,’ replied Razor, and went over to one of the beds, joining a female eaves who was sat next to it. I moved around the room from bed to bed. Each contained a small figure. A child. The young of this eaves clan. All had their eyes closed and were sound asleep. The reality of the situation was obvious.
‘They spoke the rhyme?’ I said.
‘Of course they did,’ replied Razor.
‘How did they get hold of it?’
‘We’re eaves, Familiar. We listen. That’s what we do. Something like that rhyme wasn’t going to be passed around our streets without us getting wind of it eventually.’
There were nine beds in all. Nine beds containing nine young eaves.
‘How long?’
‘First few went down two nights back, the rest since,’ replied Razor, one hand resting on the arm of the young in the bed he sat next to. Was that Razor’s own child? In my wildest dreams I’d never imagined he was a father. To be honest, I’d barely given him much thought at all besides what I could get out of him, or what I would do to him if he sold me out.
‘Why am I here, Razor?’
‘Why are you here?’ He stood, a snarl baring his sharp, yellow teeth. ‘You’ve got the nerve to stand in this room, to look at these beds, and ask why you’re here?’
I tensed and took a step backwards, looking at all the eyes now on me. They weren’t happy eyes. They were angry, eager, ready to attack.
‘This isn’t my doing Razor, I’m trying to stop this.’
‘You’re “trying”? Trying doesn’t make our young open their eyes, does it? They’re alive right now—just about—but how long is that going to last? Huh? Will they die today? Tomorrow? Is there any way back for them?’
I never let Razor talk to me like that. Usually my fist would have connected with his jaw a few sentences in, but I felt weak. Powerless. Because he was right.
‘I know what the creature is. I found it.’
‘Then why aren’t my young awake?’
‘I just need to figure out a way to stop it. To destroy it if I can.’
‘“If”? I bring you to my den, show you this, and all you’ve got is an “if”?’
‘I can’t promise anything.’ I thought about what I’d said to David. The promise tumbled out easily then, more than once, because I wanted him to believe in me. I wanted him to believe I was going to take that pain away.
‘You know how long it took your witches to deal with this the last time? One day. One morning kids in Hanwell didn’t wake up and by the evening they’d taken care of the whole thing. The creature never affected another child. How many nights have passed this time?’
‘I’m not my masters,’ I replied.
‘No, you’re not. You’re a weak little familiar that they made out of dirt and spit. A mindless thug without an ounce of their knowledge. You think you’re what London needs? That you can just take up the mantle of the London Coven all on your own and keep everyone safe?’
I realised I was backed up against a wall, my heart beating like a jackhammer. He was right. I wasn’t as good as my masters, nowhere near. Maybe I didn’t have what it took to replace them. Maybe I doing more damage than good.
‘I’m trying, Razor. I’ll beat this thing, I pro… I’ll beat it.’
Razor snorted and his eyes narrowed. ‘You’d better. Because it’s not just the young of normals being taken. It’s everyone’s. And we all know whose job it’s supposed to be to fix it, so if you don’t, we’ll be coming for you. All of us.’ He pointed to the door. ‘Now get the fuck out of my house.’
29
David was slumped on the couch in the coven’s main room when I got back, his mobile phone discarded on the floor several feet away.
‘Good walk?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. No. Not really. Razor took me home to see the family.’
David looked at me with a not unreasonable amount of confusion. ‘Say what?’
‘Oh, he was just showing me what a shit job I’m doing, that’s all.’
‘Fair enough.’
I gestured at the phone on the floor, ‘What’s happened now?’
He sat up and sighed. ‘I called my sister. Had a nice chat. Lied to her about her daughter, the one in the coma that she might never come out of. You remember Amy, right?’
‘I remember.’
‘I told her Amy was going to stay a few more nights because we were having so much fun, and that the reason she wasn’t replying to calls or texts was because she dropped her phone into the toilet and we were trying to dry it out in a bag of rice. So, I feel really amazing right now and not at all like a subhuman piece of shit.’
I flopped on a chair and pictured the room of slumbering eaves, all being terrorised by the creature in its nightmare realm. They’d have been up and about had my witches been alive. Had Mr. Trick not dropped into our world and murdered them.
‘You know, Magic Lady, the whole defeated body language you’re rocking there isn’t filling this detective with a lot of confidence.’
I waved a middle finger in his general direction.
‘Ever the lady. Okay,’ said David, ‘enough with the sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves stuff, let’s actually try and get this sorted out, shall we?’
‘Don’t you think that’s what I want? I don’t know what to do, David. Everyone is relying on me to stop this thing and I don’t know how.’