Authors: Kate Griffin
The Glass God (27 page)
Rhys cringed, but was saved from further discomfort by Sharon. “This whole earth-tearing-apart business. If it
was
Old Man Bone clawing his way up from the pits of the dead, which I’m really hoping it’s not, but I guess we oughtta budget for it maybe – if it was that, then I don’t suppose you could put a timescale on how long we have until the city is stinking and all plaguey?” She wasn’t sure about the word “plaguey” but, then again, on the list of things she wasn’t happy about in her life grammar was probably a low priority.
“You don’t actually believe that Old Man Bone is coming back, do you?” demanded Arthur.
“Um… I’m hoping no and assuming yes?”
“But why?”
“He’s a kinda grumpy dead dude, so I’m not really down on his reasoning, to be honest with you. Unless, Mr Roding…?”
Mr Roding scowled. “I see,” he grunted. “You’re assuming that because you’re dead, you’re grumpy? And that because
I
happen to be a practitioner in a difficult and controversial field, I naturally understand the mentality of all your… ‘grumpy dead dudes’.”
“Maybe the young lady thought you were knowledgeable on the grumpy side, rather than the deceased side?” offered Arthur. His smile was benign, but, at his words, Mr Roding’s face twitched. It was hard for a man who was only two parts living tissue to three parts magical graft to flush, but Mr Roding gave it his best shot, a slow splotch of orange spreading like ink through cotton across his cheek.
“I’m sure we’ve met,” he declared, arms folded tight. “You used to dabble?”
“I was a wizard,” conceded Arthur, his good nature a bright light in the face of Mr Roding’s growing intemperance. “But I gave it up a long time ago. You know how it is – you get older, you get wiser, you start to ask yourself, ‘is it any use being able to summon creatures of the nether deeps when I could be watching BBC4?’”
“Where did you do your wizarding?”
“I was with the Westminster Coven for a while. Had a few skills in my day, mind. I made a couple of bob on the side providing blessings and curses for well-paying clients – the company motto was ‘Make Your Good Luck Happen’, and we…”
There was a crack. It was the sound of Mr Roding’s fingers tightening so hard around his half-pint that the glass splintered, forming tiny lines through which thin wounds of beer began to well. “Make Your Good Luck Happen,” breathed Mr Roding, staring not at Arthur but through him, his eyes fixed on some distant place beyond the back of his head. “You’re Arthur Huntley.”
Arthur’s smile didn’t falter. “Yes. You’ve heard of me? How terribly flattering.”
Mr Roding said nothing. Then all at once he stood, and began to push his way elbows first, out of the pub, Sharon smiled at Arthur and murmured, “I was thinking of the grumpy, yes – excuse me.”
Arthur gestured magnanimously, but Sharon was already heading for the door.
Mr Roding stood outside in the settling gloom of the street, breathing in the evening air. Sharon made her way up to him, and said, “‘Make Your Good Luck Happen’?”
The necromancer glanced sideways at her, and it seemed that his scowl was at least habitual rather than a direct insult. She waited.
“It was a company,” he said. “Run by a bunch of wizards down in Westminster. Dabblers. Not just in magic – in ordinary things. Daily life. People came to them with problems. Wanted a beautiful lover, needed more cash, wanted success in business, respect, wanted their boss to realise how good they were, or maybe to take an early retirement – that sort of thing. None of it was illegal, it was all… exertion of influence. The kind of influence you get when you’ve got a Barbie doll, a lock of a stranger’s hair and a very sharp needle.”
“Okay… doesn’t sound strictly fluffy.”
Mr Roding let out a rotten-toothed sigh. “Arthur Huntley… he was the greatest. The greatest wizard of the Coven. He crafted the circle which contained the sewer crawlers when they came up through the grating at Tottenham Court Road. He put the zephyrs of the BT Tower back to sleep, summoned the Regents Canal wyvern, crafted the Deep Downer’s lime-scale armour and forged the Titan’s prison at Bank station. It’s what wizards do, why they’re more useful than bloody sorcerers and that crowd. Sorcerers are all fire and light and spontaneous destruction; but a good wizard, he’s about craft, patience and skill. A proper academic, properly working on his subject to create the most beautiful spells you’ve seen. Stunning. True works of genius, the spells of Arthur Huntley. Then… he stopped.”
“Why?”
Mr Roding shrugged; it was an awkward gesture, lopsided. “There were… rumours. Some said something had gone wrong, a mistake, a spell that backfired. Others said he’d made so much money he couldn’t be bothered to work any more. One or two said he was dead, and, to be honest, he’d vanished so completely that was as believable a thing as any other. Truth is… no one really knew. Not for sure. And now there he is, in the pub, having a pint. Damn me.”
Sharon bit on her fist to suppress a yawn. It wasn’t that Mr Roding was boring, or even that she wasn’t engaged; it was simply that the desire for sleep was beginning to overwhelm all other instincts. Mr Roding looked at her again, and for a moment there was a flicker of something which might have been concern. “When’d you last sleep?”
“Um… few days ago?”
He tutted. “Not sensible, not sensible at all. Sleepy people make stupid mistakes.”
“I was thinking I might have a little lie down later…”
“Can’t be having you making stupid mistakes when dealing with Old Man Bone!”
“… maybe a hot chocolate and an early night…”
“Can’t be seen making stupid mistakes in front of Arthur Huntley!”
Sharon’s jaw dropped. “You… respect him?”
“Course I bloody do!”
She spoke quieter, a thought sneaking through. “You…
fear
him?”
Mr Roding shuffled on the spot. She’d never seen him avoid anyone’s gaze, even when confronted by the truly profane. “I respect him,” he repeated. “Don’t say that about many people.” Sharon yawned again, despite herself. “You should get some sleep,” he repeated. “Can’t be unprofessional.”
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “I guess you can’t at that.”
Chapter 45
Clear Communication Is Vital to Success
The sun was down over the city, but the mobile phone masts, clinging to the tops of council estates and high, shabby municipal buildings, never slept.
New SMS
20.59 They’re still looking.
21.01 So? What can they find?
21.02 They’re being more persistent than I expected.
21.04 But the Midnight Mayor is gone. They can’t do anything.
21.07 They’re getting closer.
21.08 Spike them.
21.12 They know about the blade.
21.13 You want us to handle it?
21.15 Maybe. If they come too close. How long will it take you to summon him?
21.21 A few hours. Do you want us to call the meeting?
22.26 Yes. Call it. Let’s stop them now.
Chapter 46
This time, when Sharon walked through the door of her flat, she was very careful about what happened next. She went upstairs and took off her shoes, untying the laces and tucking them neatly away. She went into the kitchen and took out some bread and crunchy peanut butter. She warmed her hands on the toaster as the bread grew crispy, then licked up the crumbs from the plate once the main event had been consumed. She went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth for exactly two minutes fifteen seconds, combed her hair, sat down on the edge of her bed and promptly fell into it. She was asleep within minutes, the light still burning brightly overhead.
A sleep, deep and true, but not entirely complete.
Sharon Li stood in the grey, twisted place of the dream walk, and listened.
Early still, too early for most people in the city to be asleep. Showers were steaming, TVs were flickering in the dark. The youngest children had been put to bed, but many were still huddled under their duvets, reading by torchlight or cowering from thoughts of monsters unseen in the wardrobe. She drifted out of the walls of her room, sinking, soft as lavatory paper, down to the singing flagstones in the backyard of the maisonette, and felt the brush of a jumbo jet passing miles overhead, the passengers settling down to sleep for their long trip across the ocean. Behind her flat, but visible from her bedroom window, was a great block of single-floor apartments, nine storeys high, the windows lit up in giddy new configurations every night, figures moving in silence behind the glass. She turned, and two doors down, Mrs Phang was already asleep and dreaming of…
… the night we danced together, damp grass beneath giant flip-flops…
The shaman turned, drifting back towards her own body, restless and a little annoyed.
A sound in the night.
A sound, as strange and alien to the grey world of the dream walk as the silver whispers of dreams were to the bright light of day.
It went…
Ring ring!
Ring ring!
An old-fashioned telephone sang out.
She looked, turning this way and that, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound, before finally walking back through the wall of her own house and into the living room. The TV was on, a pair of bright crimson nails, sharpened to a point, reaching out from the screen to beckon at the fixed stare of Trish, her eyes open wide, her mouth hanging a little too low, her mind so stupefied she may as well have been asleep. The TV itself was nothing but a muffled background buzz in this place, but Trish’s mind was as much a display of what was on the screen as any dreamer’s might have been. Ghosts of men and women in scanty, tight clothing, burst and popped around her thoughts, their features distorted by greed, grief, joy and hate.
Somewhere in the dark, the phone kept ringing.
Sharon drifted through the house, and out the other side, into the enclosed crescent of the small estate. She wandered past the community hall, where ten men and one token female practised a martial art with great heavy sticks held in either hand, and the shadows of what they wanted it to be – glorious, powerful, and physically just a little improbable – danced at their feet as they moved through the rhythms. Still the phone kept ringing.
She wandered past silent patches of wannabe garden turned to must-always-be weed, beneath the arch that sealed off the small parking area for those rich enough to afford such a luxury, and rounded a corner where the graffiti blazed on the wall, to see a small phone box. The glass panels on one side were smashed, and the debris glimmered like frozen diamonds on the ground. A dozen cards offering illicit services cooed and sang at Sharon from the walls, the images coming to life as she approached, women pouting, writhing, calling and crying quietly from the card. A single dull white bulb flickered, brighter than the shadow of the dream walk, calling her closer.
The phone handle was black, shockingly solid in the translucent world.
She reached out and was surprised to find it hard, cold beneath her fingers. She picked it up.
The ringing stopped, and even the twisting figures in the flyers pinned to the back wall seemed to hold their breath.
“Hello?”
Her voice was shockingly loud, almost real.
Silence.
“Hello?” she repeated.
“Sharon?”
A man’s voice, distant, twisted through static, uncertain but, undeniably, irrefutably, familiar. She swallowed, then wondered how such a mundane reflex was possible in this unreal place. “Swift?”
The voice of the Midnight Mayor, far away, blurted, “I – I – I can’t – I – I – don’t know where to they – they us there’s – too much noise can’t think! Can’t think here can’t…” The words stopped abruptly, a burst of static rushing over the line.
“Swift?” she repeated, turning her back on the now-keenly-staring women in the flyers. “Where are you?”
“I – I – I – I’m here I’m – I’m there here here there I’m – everywhere I’m – trapped!” The words crackled, an electric gasp. “Help me!”
“Tell me where you are, what happened?”
“Trapped,” he exclaimed. “They – they – they took a part of – of me! Us me us me us us me me SHUT UP! It went like this. 078. 0781 it was 07812 07812 07 it’s HELP ME!”
“I’m trying! I don’t know where you are!”
“Find me,” he hissed. “Find me. Put me back!” The line burst with noise, so loud she snatched the phone away from her ear.
Then nothing, but the busy
beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
of the open dialling tone.
Swift was gone.
Chapter 47
Sharon woke with a start.
A phone was ringing.
For a moment, two worlds hung over each other, the living and the sleeping, competing for the best billing.
Reality won.
The ringing of the phone became a tinny cascade of sound effects.
The cascade was the calling tone of her mobile phone.
The light was still burning in her room.
Her mobile phone was still in her trouser pocket.
She eased it out, and looked blearily at the time. 23.10. She’d been asleep for barely an hour.
She looked at the caller, groaned, and answered the phone.
“Hi, Miles.”
“Hello, Ms Li – you weren’t sleeping, were you?”
“What? Me? No, not sleeping, just thinking about… work and that. What’s up?”
“Good news from the tech boys, Ms Li – thought you’d want to know. They’ve managed to recover some of the data on the dead woman’s phone.”
Sharon’s head bounced back against her pillow. For a moment she stared up at the light in the ceiling, and wondered what it would be like if she
could
blow it up with nothing but her mind and a bad temper.
“Ms Li? Ms Li, are you there?”
