May Contain Traces of Magic (46 page)

He grinned weakly. ‘Not quite,' he said. ‘I phoned them.'

‘Oh.' She sounded impressed. ‘So you had got it all worked out.'

Shrug. ‘It was something you said, actually,' he replied. ‘You kept telling me that I was stuck with being a demon for the rest of my life.' Chris looked away; he was trying to remember what had made him so certain it'd work, but he couldn't. Scary thought, that. ‘I came to the conclusion that it was worth a try and I didn't have a hell of a lot to lose. But what I was expecting to happen was that the Delendi Sunt boys would kill the demon and I'd be left over, so to speak, but still marooned in the other timeline. This—' He waved vaguely at the universe. ‘It's a bonus I really wasn't expecting. Which means there's got to be more to it than just having the demon killed.' He shook his head. ‘I don't suppose you're going to tell me, are you?'

The Fey smiled sadly. ‘Sorry, can't. You're on the right lines, but you're going to have to work it out for yourself. Otherwise it'd be cheating.'

‘What's wrong with cheating?'

She gave him a cold look. ‘I'll pretend I didn't hear that,' she said.

‘Fine. What happened to Angela, by the way?'

‘Dead. Oh, don't look all sad about it. Just means she's back on her side of the line, explaining to her bosses how she came to cock up the mission. But I don't suppose they'll be too hard on her. After all, she more or less succeeded.'

Chris wasn't expecting that. ‘No, she didn't,' he objected. ‘She was supposed to find the dissident ringleader.'

The nice Fey smiled at him, the reassuring smile you use when talking to an amiable idiot. ‘Yes, she did,' she said. ‘And maybe she didn't bring it back, but that hardly mattered, since it came back of its own accord at more or less the same time as she did. Think about it,' she added, as she vanished in a cloud of blinding light and deafening noise.

 

Which turned out to be the phone, ringing in the hall. Chris swore, extended his cricked neck and cramped legs, and hobbled out to answer it.

He recognised the voice, though it gave him a nasty jolt when he heard it. ‘Hi, Jill,' he said. ‘Talk of the—'

‘What the
hell
do you think you're playing at?' Jill yelled at him.

‘Nice to hear your voice too, Jill. What can I do for—?'

‘I've just got off the phone with the permanent secretary,' Jill snarled at him. ‘I've been trying to explain to him why the demon high commissioner in London's just thanked him officially for extraditing the dissident ringleader back across the line. But we haven't, I said. Yes, we bloody well have, he said, and your name was expressly mentioned, you and some old school friend of yours. I have no idea who you could possibly mean, I lied, let me look into it and get back to you. You bastard, ' she added, with enough pressure of feeling to power a steam turbine. ‘What've you been up to?'

Chris sighed. He'd always liked Jill, a lot, but this time he wasn't in the mood. He put the phone down, counted to three and then lifted the receiver off the cradle and laid it gently on the table. ‘I just saved your life, you ungrateful cow,' he said aloud. Then he tottered into the kitchen and cut himself a sandwich.

Amazing what two slices of processed bread and a thin layer of stale cheese can do. Unfed, the most he could say for himself was that he'd somehow managed to survive the past. With a cheese sandwich inside him, he was very nearly ready to face the future. Whichever future it turned out to be.

So: the demon had left him, gone back to its side of the line. All well and good, and he was delighted to be rid of it. (He munched a mouthful of sandwich.) But there were still far too many questions hanging over him. Where had the demon come from in the first place? And which one was it?

Chris chewed steadily until he'd finished the sandwich to the last crumb. Then he took out his wallet, found a business card and dialled a number.

While he was waiting for the visitor he'd summoned to arrive, he hoovered and dusted the flat, washed up, cleaned the kitchen floor and did two loads of washing. He was surprised how much it helped; to the point where, when Derek from the department arrived, Chris was much calmer than he had any right to be.

‘Thanks for the loan of them,' Derek said, handing over Frank Slade's special sunglasses. ‘I wouldn't mind borrowing them again some time, if you're not using them.' Derek didn't look nearly so terrifying in this timeline. In fact, he wasn't scary at all.

‘My pleasure,' Chris said. ‘Oh, and I wonder if you'd mind getting rid of this for me. I've only just found out what it is, and I don't like having it in the house.'

Derek recognised the tapemeasure instantly, just as he'd recognised the sunglasses. ‘Where the hell did you get—?'

‘Little old lady found it in her attic,' Chris replied.

‘You do know what this is?'

‘Yes, and so do you. Just take it away and put it somewhere safe.'

(Somewhere I'll never be able to get hold of it again, he didn't say.)

As soon as Derek had gone, Chris went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror and put the sunglasses on.

‘Shit,' he said aloud.

They all looked alike to him, of course, so he couldn't be sure, but if he had to express an opinion he'd have to say he was sure it was the same demon face he'd seen in this very mirror in the other timeline. Wonderful, he said to himself, I'm a demon.

But now at least he understood why.

So.

Typical bloody Karen, he thought, she buggers off in a huff and doesn't think to let me know where she's gone. Grand gesture, but utterly inconsiderate.

There was, of course, one person who could be relied on to know where she'd got to. Information central, the social hub. Chris took a deep breath and phoned Jill's number.

‘If you've called to apologise, you can—'

‘No,' he said. ‘I need to talk to Karen.'

‘I don't know where she—'

‘Yes, you do.'

(In spite of everything, the stress, the aggravation, the threats of death and serious injury, a tiny bit of him was smirking.)

‘All right,' Jill conceded, ‘maybe I do, but she told me that she doesn't want to see you. She was absolutely clear about it. Look, I'm really sorry, but—'

‘This isn't true love,' Chris interrupted harshly. ‘This is business. '

She reacted as though she'd never heard the word before. ‘I don't understand,' she said. ‘How can it be—?'

‘I've found the one who is to come,' he said. ‘You know, the dissident ringleader. The real one,' he added, a trifle spitefully. ‘You want it, you fetch Karen over right now. No,' he added quickly, as a tiny cog slid into place in the gear-train of his mind, ‘this evening, here, the flat. Let's all three of us go out to dinner.'

‘What? Chris, are you feeling all right?'

He grinned. ‘Never better.'

He rang off, then phoned the Indian restaurant across the road and booked a table.

Lots of things to do before then. First, Chris nipped down to the car and rummaged about among the boxes of samples until he found what he was looking for. Just the one packet; he hoped it'd be enough. He took it through into the kitchen, read the directions on the back of the packet (they were delightfully simple: just add water) and emptied the contents into the biggest bowl he could find. Then he filled the measuring jug with water and slopped it in. It didn't say you had to stir it, but he thought it couldn't do any harm. Wrong. Two seconds, and it dissolved the head off the wooden spoon.

And to think (he thought) it's taken me all this time to figure out what it's for. How thick can you get?

 

Add dried water to pure distilled water and you get pure distilled water. JWW Retail DW6 powder is
essence of nothing
- because if it was anything at all, when you added it to pure water you'd get pure water plus something: impure water.

Conventional science recognises matter and anti-matter; DW6 is neutral matter. Make it into something, and that something won't exist, definitively; but it's still matter, and has 1001 handy applications around the home, workshop and office. Mix with turpentine to create an easily moulded putty which sets hard to the consistency and with the properties of brick, and you can build a solid, useful structure that
isn't actually there
. Make a saturated solution of DW6, pour it into an ordinary household ice-cube tray and pop it into the freezer, and you end up with the philosopher's stone of applied demonology, null ice. Ten cubes of null ice (roughly the amount you get out of one standard-size sachet of DW6) is sufficient to embody one average adult male demon.

(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:

(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.