The Glass God (4 page)

“Just because she’s dead doesn’t mean she hasn’t got feelings…⁠”

Sharon’s head hit her desk, and bounced lightly off the thick wad of notes and paperwork which had sprung up during the morning’s meetings. She heard a polite cough by her elbow, and raised her head very, very slowly to see what new calamity awaited. Rhys was there, a fresh cup of tea in one hand and a small plastic bag in the other. “Um, Ms Li? What with the meetings running so long, you missed lunch, so I went out and got you a…⁠” He fumbled in the bag. “⁠… cheese and pickle sandwich, but then I thought you might not like pickle, because some people don’t, see, so I also got cheese and ham, but some people are allergic to cheese, so I also got a BLT but then you might be vegetarian so there was egg and cress and I thought, who doesn’t like egg and cress so I got one of those and also some crisps but I didn’t really know what you liked so I got salt and vinegar, cheese and onion, smoky bacon and ready salted. And some orange juice. Oh – and some apple juice, too, because sometimes you don’t really want orange juice but you get this craving for apple and uh… well… see…⁠” Rhys’s words dissolved into silence in the face of Sharon’s stare. Her hands felt their way across the desk to the plastic bag.

“Rhys,” she said carefully, “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here, because I’m saying this in a strictly professional way, but I love you.”

He flushed, an instant burst of redness from the roots of his hair to the ends of his fingertips.

“Thank you, M-M-M-Ms Li, that’s v-v-v-very…⁠” The end of his nose began to shake, the echoes rapidly spreading down through his whole body. Wordlessly, Sharon held out an industrial-strength tissue from the box by her desk. Working with Rhys, a stockpile of tissues had become something of an obligatory addition to the workplace, and now he grabbed it gratefully and held it to his nose as his body trembled, quivered, shook and finally jerked beneath the force of a great, lung-shattering sneeze.

Sharon waited for things to settle down again, then added, “What are you having?”

“I ate earlier, Ms Li,” he explained, depositing the bag on her table like a box of crabs. “I hope there’s something there you like!” The thin carpet almost smoked beneath his feet with the speed of Rhys’s departure back to his own desk.

Sharon stared down at the great pile of food. There was enough to keep her going for a good four days, and yet somehow she knew it would all be gone within two. Even if she didn’t eat all of it, Gretel the troll was always interested in trying new things, even if that new thing was Worcestershire Sauce drunk straight from the bottle; no one wanted to critique the culinary habits of a gourmet troll.

She reached out for the nearest sandwich, not caring which one it was, ran her finger down the join in the card, smelt the rich tang of yellow, plastic cheese, felt saliva spring unbidden in her mouth and heard…

“Oh my God, I just love the beanbags!”

The sandwich was already halfway to her lips. Sharon raised her eyes with the slow inevitability of the prisoner before the firing squad.

“And look at all the tea you have – where did you get this one? I’ve been trying to find this for months, but not even Waitrose has it any more!”

The woman speaking held up a packet of tea in a bright blue package. The packet was in fact the brightest thing about the picture, as the woman in question wore black. Black shoes, black trousers, black coat buttoned up with fat black buttons all the way to her neck, and even, tucked discreetly into the corner of her black bag, a black hat. Her pale skin and auburn hair should have mellowed the picture, but in fact the contrast only seemed to deepen the quality of black about her. However, if her wardrobe was worthy of a mortician, her smile was a burst of radiance to put any searchlight to shame. She used it now to sweep the room, taking in Rhys at his desk, who tried to hide behind the nearest hard drive; and Sharon, her sandwich still hovering, ready to be consumed. Her gaze settled on Sharon and, if possible, the smile brightened to an almost dazzling luminescence.

“Ms Li!” exclaimed the woman, scampering forward to seize Sharon’s fingers in a two-handed shake. “Such a pleasure to see you again – we met briefly before, I think – I’m Kelly Shiring, Mr Swift’s PA? I bought you doughnuts…⁠”

A packet of doughnuts was deposited on Sharon’s desk.

“⁠… and this umbrella…⁠”

An umbrella, long, blue, with a ripple effect carved into the handle either for greater grip or maybe artful whim, was propped up carefully.

“⁠… and congratulations!”

Sharon looked from the doughnuts, to the umbrella, to Kelly’s brilliantly smiling face. In the doorway stood a man, also dressed head to toe in black, and holding back lest he disrupt the impeccable positivity of Kelly’s presence. Kelly Shiring – magician, Alderman, personal assistant to the Midnight Mayor (defender of the city, guardian of the gate and so on and so forth) and truly fabulous cook, though she always denied the same, gazed down at Sharon Li and waited for the shaman to say something significant.

Carefully, aware that eating pickle might detract from the aura of sagely wisdom that a shaman was supposed to cultivate, Sharon laid her sandwich aside. “Uh… thanks?” It was the best she could manage at short notice, and usually it did seem to do more good than trying to invent a profundity for every occasion.

“You’re welcome!” sang out Kelly. “Now, if you need anything, you have my number, I think, and of course anything we can do to assist, you only have to ask.”

“I do?”

“Of course! This project,” Kelly gestured around the office, “is being financed almost entirely out of the Aldermen Development Fund, which, I must tell you, has taken a serious hit in recent months what with Burns and Stoke folding and the difficult financial times… but look how well you’ve done with the resources available to you! I’m sure this little business will be absolutely fine, now that you’re on it.”

Sharon’s stare deepened. “That’s great,” she ventured, still baking beneath the brilliance of Kelly’s gaze. “And thanks for the doughnuts and everything but, uh… which little business?”

Something flickered across Kelly’s face, a little harder and a little darker than the jubilation she usually projected, but it was gone so quickly Sharon wondered if she’d seen it at all. “Have a doughnut,” the Alderman said.

“I was about to have a sandwich…⁠”

“Oh, Miles!”

The man addressed as “Oh, Miles” detached himself from the doorframe and stepped inside, closing the door behind him lest rumours of his participation escape beyond the nearest four walls. He inclined his chin in the universal nod of manly-men-respecting-each-other’s-masculinity to Rhys as he passed, inducing another quiver at the end of Rhys’s already inflamed nose, and held out a polite hand for Sharon to shake. His grip was firm without being oppressive, loose without being limp, and as their fingers brushed she tasted

                    finest coffee beans ground beneath a brass handle in the morning

shoe polish, never too bright, never too polished

               laughter of children in the playground

stab of regret

                    click of the gun in the night

before their hands parted. Pulling up a stool, the man called Miles settled by the corner of her desk. Kelly swung herself into the chair opposite Sharon, and began testing its manoeuvrability as if on the verge of shouting “whee!”

“I really feel you should have a doughnut,” she declared, satisfied by the motion of the chair. “They’re marvellous things. Did you know that the doughnut has a Jewish origin? During Hanukkah the Temple of Solomon was besieged, and they didn’t have enough oil to keep the sacred flame alight but, would you believe it, the flame made it! And there was something to do with sacred oil as a result, and therefore doughnuts – I’m a little vague on the details but aren’t doughnuts just the most marvellous thing to ever come out of organised religion?”

“Miss Shiring…⁠”

“Kelly, please!”

“Kelly,” corrected Sharon, “I’m really grateful for the doughnuts, and I’m sure Rhys is, like… giddy… about them, too, and I don’t mean to seem rude or nothing, but why are you here?”

“I don’t think you’re rude, Ms Li – may I call you Sharon? – I don’t think you’re rude at all! Did you think she was rude, Miles?”

“Absolutely not,” murmured the Alderman.

“Of course you’d want to know why we’re here, why not? And of course the answer is, I’m here to give you the umbrella because Mr Swift specifically requested that you should have it, and to inform you that you’ve been deputised and the Midnight Mayor has vanished, and to bring you doughnuts because I believe in the project!”

Silence, punctuated by the sound of Rhys trying to blow his nose with all the discretion of a steam engine. Sharon gingerly pushed the doughnuts to one side, in case they were somehow contaminated by the news they’d arrived with. Kelly waited, her smile fixed in place. Her companion sat hunched forward, elbows on his knees, fingers twined together, watching Sharon, waiting for a reaction.

Sharon spoke slowly and carefully. It was, she’d found, the best way to create an illusion of shamanly wisdom, as people often mistook cautious speech for being thoughtful instead of panic-struck. “When you say… the Midnight Mayor has
vanished…
⁠?”

“Yes,” sighed Kelly. “Embarrassing, really, as I’m supposed to be his PA.”

“And ‘vanished’…⁠?”

“Off the face of the earth. Well! Maybe not off the face of the earth, we have no evidence for that per se, and it seems a bit of a leap to assume that, because we can find no trace of him, he is in fact not here. But from what we can tell, he has disappeared completely, utterly and without a word. Which he has done before,” she added. “But never like this, and never so… silently. Usually when he disappears it’s to blow things up, or engage in nefarious acts with dark forces, but this time there’s been none of that, and I’m a little concerned.”

“You’re concerned that things
aren’t
blowing up?”

“You have met him,” Kelly pointed out.

“Okay,” Sharon admitted. “So maybe it is worrying. But I don’t get why you’ve come to me!”

“Besides the doughnuts…⁠”

“Besides the doughnuts, yes. You’re an Alderman, aren’t you? You’ve got this whole… scary people with guns thing – though I’m sure you’re not scary,” she added. “I’m sure you’re very nice people and you use guns in a very safety conscious manner for the public good. But when I last checked, you were all about protecting the Midnight Mayor and the city and that, whereas we’re more about…⁠” She glanced for support at Rhys, who ducked behind his computer, pretending he didn’t exist.

“⁠… about social evenings and group therapy,” she concluded with a sigh. “I don’t get why you’re here.”

“Ms Li!” exclaimed Kelly, slapping the desk for emphasis, with depressing effect. “You’re far too harsh on yourself! You are a shaman, a knower of the truth, and a figure of immense respect. Why, Miles here was only saying last week how much he was looking forward to meeting you, weren’t you, Miles?”

“It’s a pleasure, Ms Li,” he confirmed, with a half-bow of his head.

“So really, you shouldn’t do yourself down!”

Sharon glanced again towards Rhys, but a flurry of tissue was the only sign of life at his small, cluttered desk.

“Okay,” she tried. “Not that I’m, like… ungrateful for the ego boost and that, but still, I’m just saying, the Midnight Mayor deals with dudes with guns, and
you’re
dudes with guns, and while I’m totally up for being mega-super-cool, which would be a nice change, Sammy hasn’t yet taught me how to walk
through
bullets. So, uh, thanks for the doughnuts, and um… good luck!”

Kelly looked at Miles. Across her face mild embarrassment blossomed like the evening primrose. “Well,” she said. “There is of course the question of the umbrella.”

Sharon’s gaze roamed over to it. A long blue umbrella, not new, but hardly an antique; someone had knocked the point off, so that now it seemed stubbier than it had once been, and rested on the surface where the ribs came together. “Is it a mega-mystic umbrella?”

“I don’t think so – do you think so, Miles?”

“Couldn’t say, ma’am.”

“Maybe it is, then!” exclaimed Kelly. “I’m really not sure! But Mr Swift did ask that I give it to you, should something bad happen to him. And of course he requested that you be informed that you have now been made Deputy Mayor and that you were to, as he so charmingly put it, shift your bottom into gear.”

Sharon’s eyes flashed up from the umbrella to Kelly. “I’m
what
?”

“Deputy Mayor.”

“Since when?”

“About forty-eight hours ago. I’m sure Mr Swift sent you an email…⁠”

“He bloody did not!”

“⁠… and if he didn’t, I’m sure he
meant
to.”

“I can’t be Deputy Mayor!” wailed Sharon. “I’ve got paperwork to do! I’ve got a social evening to arrange, health and safety assessments to fill out, bookings for singles dating night for all those unable to flirt during full moon, bingo for retired witches! I can’t go around being Deputy Mayor! I refuse!” She thumped the desk, then flinched as the noise sunk away into the walls. The Aldermen were silent.

Kelly gazed at Sharon. Across her brow there flickered a mixture of sympathy and, much worse, mild disappointment. “I understand,” she said, “that this must be difficult…⁠”

“Difficult! Do you know how many Post-it notes this office gets through?”

“⁠… and it’s a pleasure to see you taking such interest in your work, really it is! They say that the private sector motivates people more than the public one, but I’ve always felt that the public sector is where people with a genuine passion go to find their path, and you clearly have that passion and I think we should respect that, shouldn’t we?”

“Absolutely,” chorused Miles.

“And if you’re too busy to help us find out what fate has befallen the defender of the city, guardian of the night, watchman of the slumbering dark, then of course it’s your decision and I fully understand how, in this difficult day and age, you’d want to abide by that. Obviously a shaman’s unique skills could be of great service in this hour of need, but I’m sure, despite the circumstance, we’ll find our way and, hopefully, we can do so without any unnecessary loss of life, don’t you agree, Miles?”