The Glass God (13 page)

Hello Rhys
, she wrote in her immaculate, old-fashioned hand once she’d come through the window. It had taken Sally a long time to master the art of holding a pen in her talons without spraying ink everywhere, and Rhys wondered if the skill of writing had not, with its slow, careful strokes and elegant, practised slopes, coloured the language of the banshee herself.
May I say how marvellously your shirt complements your complexion today?

By 9 p.m. the room was almost full; beanbags and chairs were overloaded with legs, bums and claws. There was Gretel, seven foot nothing, troll by birth, gourmet chef by inclination; across from her, Mr Roding with his perpetually peeling skin and nails, who couldn’t understand why necromancers had such a bad press. Chris was there, who believed that exorcism was a conversation, not an imposition; Amy, who possibly kept a kingdom in her black sequined bag, but hoped no one would tell; and, of course, Kevin the vampire, who couldn’t believe just how disgusting human eating habits had become in recent years.

At five past nine, Sharon pushed back her chair, swallowed a last mouthful of tea, laid her mug to one side and straightened up.

“Hello everybody,” she began.

“Hello Sharon!” chorused the room.

“For new members – and I think I see a few new faces tonight – let me quickly introduce myself and what we do. My name’s Sharon, and a few years ago I became one with the city…⁠”

Chapter 19

Panic Is Your Own Worst Enemy

Same time, different place, and she says,

“I’m tired.”

He says, “I know. You’re doing very well.”

“I’m so tired, Daddy, I’m so…⁠”

“I’m very proud of you.”

“But Brid…⁠”

“Brid understood.”

“I don’t know if I can do this much longer.”

“You can. You’re strong. You’re so strong.”

She smiles, but there is no light left in it. He holds her by the arm, pulls her close. “Just a few more,” he breathes. “A few more nights, just a few, and that’s it, that’s all we’ll need. Then you can stop.”

“They’ll all be so disappointed…⁠”

“They won’t matter. It’ll all be how it was, how it should be. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“You want to make things better?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“You want for us to be happy again?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Then just a little bit more. A little longer, and you can put the glass one back to sleep.”

“I know.”

“You’re my girl. And I’m proud of you.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

He gives her another squeeze of the arm, then lets her go. “It’s all right,” he murmurs. “Soon we won’t need any gods at all.”

Chapter 20

Put Other People First

“The price of good summoning supplies these days…⁠!”

“⁠… and I said to him, it’s not like I don’t want to, it’s just that full moon is a really bad time for me…⁠”

“What kind of curse is unto the hundredth generation? That’s, like, two thousand years of warts!”

“⁠… and I said, it’s not ‘frigid’ this isn’t me being ‘frigid’ this is me thinking about you, thinking about the surface wounds, because they can go really nasty if not disinfected…⁠”

“⁠… cheap knock-off dragon claw, made in China, naturally, and when I put it into the pan the entire potion went…⁠”

“So hard to dry clean sacred robes…⁠”

“Is a wand an offensive weapon? Only, the police have been really cracking down in Peckham lately and if I get stopped, I don’t really know what to say…⁠”

“⁠… and my flat stank for months and the neighbours complained so the council sent a man round and when he saw the pentagram he was incredibly judgemental and told me that unless I found a way to store the dry products in an air-tight container, he’d have to contact the local health authority…⁠”

“‘Undead’ is such a pejorative term…⁠”

“The pigeon-only diet is just so…⁠”

“O- blood, like, eight per cent of the population have it and what do they do? They eat at McDonald’s, fuckers!”

“⁠…
so…⁠”

“All I want is a man who understands the lunar cycle…⁠”

“⁠… so chewy, and I was thinking, some garlic and a bit of rosemary…⁠”

“And that’s the problem.”

“⁠… would make all the difference.”

“It’s just so nice to talk to someone about it.”

“But things can only get better, can’t they?”

Sharon sat and nodded and smiled as the words washed over her. No one was obliged to speak at Magicals Anonymous meetings, and indeed most new members took several hours even to give a name or hint at their various mystical problems. However, once people had become comfortable among their undeniably eclectic fellow members, it would all come out at once. Great sighs of:

“⁠… just because I do it as a hobby doesn’t mean I don’t seal my wards properly…⁠”

“Getting the ectoplasm off the walls has been incredibly hard…⁠”

“He keeps buying it for me, and it’s incredibly generous, but how do I explain why I can’t wear silver?”

“⁠… relationships when you have armour-plated scales…⁠”

“⁠… finding trousers where you can fit a tail…⁠”

“⁠… she just doesn’t understand…⁠”

“⁠… sometimes I feel so…⁠”

“⁠… confused…⁠”

“⁠… lonely…⁠”

“⁠… lost…⁠”

It had occurred to Sharon early on that Magicals Anonymous was potentially disastrous for its members. What if someone came to the meetings who
didn’t
understand the difference between abjuration and ensorcelment? What if a journalist caught on to their activities, or a social worker with an inflexible approach to community support? Or what if she herself did damage? She had no experience of community counselling; yet, through the dubious fact of being a knower of the truth, here she was in this frightening position of responsibility, looked to by seers and sages, necromancers and pyromancers for wisdom, guidance and insight. It was bad enough giving the wrong directions to a stranger in the street – how much worse could it be when that stranger exhaled ethane gas and had incisors of flint in their mouths for striking a spark to the same?

Then again, as conversation grew louder and more personal, and sorrows more true, it had become evident that there was a need for Magicals Anonymous, a lack in the life of the city’s magic practitioners that had to be fulfilled. A life of secrecy, of working spells beneath the streets, produced in many a need for company and self-expression that could not be found in your average pub or meeting place. Sharon had read a lot of books on the subject of human society and psychology, and after a great deal about social identity and pack spirit, had taken away this simple conclusion:

It is far better to talk bollocks at great length and feel okay about it, than to talk about nothing at all and end up killing people. With an axe. Or a fireball, or talons, or razor-glass teeth, whichever came most naturally. The point was – death = bad. And if talking = decrease in psychological stress = decrease in violent outbursts of a magical nature = less death, then who was she to get worked up about the finer implications? The point was – the point
was
that… look, just because she was in her early twenties with two dubious A-levels and seven even more questionable GCSEs, plus six weeks’ experience as a barista, five weeks as a call-centre assistant and twelve months in a posh soap shop… well, that didn’t mean she wasn’t
right
. About whatever it was people expected her to be right about, dammit.

Then there was Rhys. The ginger druid toiled silently in the background of all things, never complaining; and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he had
faith
. In her. She’d say something that, to her ears, was ridiculous, and Rhys, rather than leap upon it with a snarl and a rousing cry of “what total bollocks is this, get back to serving coffee!” would nod, and smile, and ask quietly if there was anything he could do to help. And this, more than anything else, terrified her.

The meeting wound on.

At the end, there were comments and suggestions.

“How about a singles’ night?”

“Craft workshops – how to enchant jewellery for beginners.”

“Health and safety tutorials for exothermic invocation.”

A late-night trip to the Royal Academy, no questions asked?
 

“Pub quiz? Maybe with a theme of gnomes, goblins and grimoires?”

When it was done, Sharon shook the various appendages of attending guests, and as her skin brushed theirs, so her thoughts filled up with fragments of their lives, slipping off them like dust from an overcoat, telling stories of the places they had been, the people they had seen, and the dreams they wanted to make come true. Gretel the troll was one of the last to leave, the blur of her chameleon spell shimmering across her skin. The spell didn’t exactly alter her appearance, but merely made it hard to look too closely, before the mind decided that what it saw it could not possibly be bothered to comprehend. It was a kind of invisibility, a comfort in a busy city street, and a vital protection for a seven-foot-tall troll.

“I was thinking,” she murmured, her voice the roar of an engine, her murmur the blast of a backfire in a silent night, “that next time I might bring canapés?”

If there had been consternation in the society as to the hygiene of eating food prepared by a troll whose present domestic address was 1, The Tunnels, Under Tower Bridge, London E1W 3RP, this had been quickly dispelled by Gretel’s first attempts at gourmet cooking. Once you saw past the slime-encrusted Tupperware boxes, and adjusted your point of view to consider fairly the fist-sized nibbles tucked up inside, an awareness dawned that here, in food form, was a genius which could not be denied. Even Kevin tried some, grumbling all the way, and, having grumbled, he stole some more and hoped no one would notice.

“That sounds great,” said Sharon, craning up to peer into the troll’s hard-to-focus-on face. A bit of a smile burst beneath the spell, a flash of small eye in round, brick-built features. Then, as Gretel turned towards the door, she hesitated and said, “What are the pictures for?”

Sharon glanced at the wall behind her desk, where Rhys had painstakingly pinned up photos from their day of wandering. “Oh,” she said with a shrug. “We’re saving the city again.”

Gretel considered this, nodding slowly. Every gesture she made took a while, partially because she didn’t want to hurt anyone or damage anything by rapid movement, but mostly, Sharon suspected, because the laws of inertia just weren’t on the troll’s side. At last, and having considered all the implications, Gretel said, “If you need any help with that, I’ll bring sandwiches.”

And the troll departed.

Sharon sighed and turned. A flapping of leathery wing briefly obscured her view as, with a hop and a spin, Sally detached herself from where she’d been hanging off a ceiling light, and flopped down onto the floor in front of the pictures. The banshee had struggled with modern fashion, trying to find clothes that provided discretion, protection and decency, while allowing her wings to spread in flight, and even letting a little of her personality shine through. A great robe of black was her usual garb, with strategic holes permitting her limbs to protrude. Fabric which might sag was pinned in place to minimise a disruption to the flow of air, while on her legs, which bent backwards sharply at both knee and ankle, Sally wore black and white striped leggings, which clung with elastic determination to the skeletal structure of her limbs. It was, Sharon felt, an interesting means of self-expression, but one she could find surprisingly easy to respect.

Now Sally stared up at Rhys’s pictures on the wall and, as she looked, the banshee reached unconsciously for the whiteboard and pen she wore on a string around her neck, and wrote:

Interesting composition. Nice use of light. Not sure about the exposure. Symbolic, or simply a natural representation of urban life? Interesting shoes motif. Rather samey angle.
 

Sharon peered down at the proffered text, then back up at the pictures. “Shoes?” she murmured, as much for herself as for the banshee.

Sally was already rubbing out the message to replace it with another.

Could it be argued that they present a form of social chiaroscuro to the overall work?
 

Sharon stared from the message, to the banshee, to the pictures, and back. Then, “You know, for years, I thought chiaroscuro was something that people did to their feet, but I’m guessing, based on context and that, that I got it wrong.”

The banshee shrugged, great shoulders of bone sending ripples down to the tips of her wings.

Chiaroscuro is the interplay between the conflicting forces of light and dark across an artistic motif. That, at least, is how I have always thought of it, though I might have misunderstood. Thank you for another pleasant evening, Ms Li. It’s always so nice to drop by.
 

“Any time.”

So saying, Sally waved with a talon, hopped up onto the ledge of the open window and, with a great beat of wing, was gone.

Sharon watched her vanish into the sky, then turned back to stare at the pictures on the wall. Behind her, Rhys was clearing biscuits away. “I think it went well tonight, don’t you, Ms Li?”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes wandered up and down, over and across Rhys’s photos, moving from shrub to car, road to house, window to door, a picture of a journey from Hampstead to Haringey, marked out by little red dots on a missing man’s map…

Her jaw dropped.

“Bloody hell.”

“Ms Li?”

“Bloody hell!” she repeated, louder.

“Is everything all right?”

She grabbed a picture off the wall, then another, and another. “Shoes!” she exclaimed. “Bloody shoes!” Rhys drifted over with the sidling half-step of a man who wants to know, but doesn’t want to put himself in danger. “Shoes!” she repeated, slamming the photos into the desk. “Bloody shoes!”

He looked from one photo to the next, and, as he did, the light of revelation began to shine. There, hanging off the branches of a tree on the edge of Hampstead Heath, the pair of brown leather shoes tied together by their laces that he’d noticed on their very first stop. Here, slung over a telephone line between an office block and an off-licence, a pair of white trainers, laces threaded in a neat bow. A streetlight in Highgate was draped with a couple of black loafers; in Alexandra Palace, against a background of broadcasting masts above the rows of neat, red-brick houses, a pair of trendy blue sneakers dangled off the arm supporting a giant satellite dish, while from a municipal hanging basket whose flowers had long since withered among the commercial walkways of Wood Green, two smart, black, polished ankle boots, with deadly heels, swung above a sign warning dog owners to clean up after their pets. Sharon stabbed her finger at the pile of photos, and barked, “It’s frickin’ bloody stupid bloody shoes!”