Read Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) Online
Authors: Kate Griffin
Tags: #Fiction / Occult & Supernatural, #Fiction / Fantasy - Contemporary, #Fiction / Action & Adventure
Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous)
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“A shaman? A shaman is the knower of the path, the seer of truth, the wanderer of the hidden ways. The dude who is in the know, the one who sees what the kids are too dumb to look at. To put it in little words so as you’ll understand—your half-decent shaman always knows where the nearest public bog is, and if it’s worth legging it for the bus.”
Samuel the Elbow,
How to Be a Shaman—a Beginner’s Guide
“They say that the soul of the city is being ripped apart.
I’ve never had much time for ‘them’ and the things ‘they’ say but, for once, I find myself forced to agree. It begins with a rusting, a place where new foundations were laid and which are now turned to orange-brown. Then a cracking, the road beneath your feet splitting though the tarmac is fresh. Then a dripping, the water coming through from the pipes overhead, then a creaking; wood splinters against wood, glass breaks and someone may leave a bin bag behind the pane to keep out the draught but that is all, and it is forgotten, and it withers, and it dies. People don’t understand how a city dwindles like a living thing, but that is what it is and, like all things that live, it too can die.
And this shaking, this crumbling, this death by little silences falling in busy streets, this hollowness of all things—I am powerless to prevent.”
M. Swift, 127th Midnight Mayor of London
How to Become One with Everything
It was raining when Sharon Li became one with the city.
The rain may have had nothing to do with her moment of profound spiritual revelation but is worth mentioning just in case. The kebab she was eating definitely had nothing to do with it but will prove relevant in the sense that if she hadn’t dropped it onto her trousers, she might have stood in the rain a little longer marvelling at the majesty of the universe, which could have had a long-term medical impact and thus affected the course of events yet to come. As it was, the sensation of orange goo oozing into the fabric of her jeans would provoke her to take practical action where other minds might simply have dissolved in mystical wonder.
Meanwhile she stood, bits of salad falling from their plastic box, her body temporarily forgotten. The rain rolled down her face, glued her black hair to her pine-coloured skin, deepened her orange top to sodden brown and seeped through the soles of her shoes. On a nearby railway line a goods train clanked by at ten miles an hour, its wheels screaming like golems being beaten to death. Two streets away the night bus threw up a sheet of dirty water from a blocked drain over a drunken group from a stag party wrapped in cling film and not much else. A car alarm wailed as a trainee thief smashed a window and made a grab for the mobile phone left on a seat. A door quietly closed as a
husband, heading off for the flight to his conference in Spain, tried not to disturb his wife; she, entirely awake, lay sensing the warmth he had left behind. A fox stopped on its walk through the night and turned its head towards the sky as if wondering which star tonight shone for it behind the bank of sodium cloud. Paint dripped down the metal shutter of an off-licence from an amateur attempt at graffiti. A lorry laden with tomorrow’s milk skipped a red light because it could, and just tonight, just this once, the speed camera forgot to flash.
And for a moment, just one brilliant, burning, unbearable moment, Sharon Li knew everything there was to know about the city, every street and every stone; and her thoughts were in the wheels of the cars splashing through the puddles and her breath was in the gasps of air drawn through the railway tunnels and her heart beat with the turning of the river.
Then, because the human mind is only capable of comprehending so much, she forgot.
One Door Closes, Another Opens
Later, in circumstances that Sharon Li would certainly have frowned upon, the entire balance of reality is about to be pushed off the bungee.
Soft cloth drags on carpet.
A door closes in the night.
Flicker of shadow across a door.
Sound of falling.
She says, “They’ll find you they’ll find you you have to get out now!”
Her voice is a gabble of forced breath, sandpaper in the throat, glass in the lungs.
A finger of wind commanding silence.
“Oh God.”
A brush of something soft against rapidly cooling skin, a whisper of sound that has no words, nor has ever felt the need.
“Let me live.”
Paper stirs across the floor.
Something…
… changes.
She says, “No. That isn’t what I—”
And she dies.
Time Is Only a Perception
That was then.
This is now.
He snuck in the back way as always, hoping that today his PA would get bored of trying to catch him. But there she was, as always, waiting at the bottom of the lift, papers in one hand, half-eaten egg and cress sandwich in the other.
He puts his face into neutral-yet-resilient and summons the lift. She slips in beside him, as if she’d casually been waiting at this place, at this time, a fortunate coincidence, two professionals having a chance encounter. And says, “Have you read it?”
“Good morning Mr Mayor, how are you? Why, isn’t it lovely if surprising to see you, I just happened to be passing!” he intones.
“Good morning, Mr Mayor. How are you?”
“I’m very well, thank you, Kelly, and yourself?”
“Absolutely topping, Mr Mayor, completely the best. Would you like a foot massage and a cup of tea before commencing the business of the day?”
He sighs. Every day they have this encounter, and every day it ends the same way. “What was the first question?”
“Have you read it?”
“Vague as that is, let’s play safe and go with no.”
“Mr Mayor—”
“Kelly, I’ve got things to do, people to see…”
“I really feel it’s important.”
“You said that last week, with the white paper on basilisk activity in the Barking sewage works.”
“Well, it is important–you can’t think it’s not.”
“I’m sure it’s important. I just wish you hadn’t tried to prove your point by sending me on a field trip.”
“Mr Mayor,” she tries again, at once wheedling and determined, “just take a look at
this
.”
She hands him a paper. Since she’s been his PA, Kelly has got good at knowing just how much paper to give him at any time. Only one sheet of A4 and he feels patronised; an entire folder and he won’t bother reading. Five to seven pages of essential notes have become the standard, with the really important stuff, the absolutely
vital
stuff, tucked in around page 3.
He reads page 1 and huffs. Flicks to page 2 and sighs. Gets to page 3, shows no reaction, turns to page 4 and…
… turns right back.
She watches his eyes dance over the words as the lift slows to a halt on the top floor. The doors open but he doesn’t move. His lips move silently as if the portion of his brain usually dedicated to absorbing this kind of information is crying out for assistance from any other interested lobes.
He says, “No but what?”
“You’ve found the…”
“Too bloody right, and no, but seriously,
what?”
“I told you it was important!”
“Yes but no but I mean sure, I get where this is coming from, but actually—”
“I’m told they get a lot of interest from Facebook.”
“Facebook!
Facebook?!
I’ve got a city infested with horrors of the night crawling from nether darkness; I’ve got monsters and demons and missing fucking goddesses and creatures whose footsteps burn the night and wards failing and meetings–bloody hell, I’ve got bloody fucking fiscal meetings with the directors’ board–and they’re doing this with
Facebook?!”
“That’s how I understand it, Mr Mayor.”
“Couldn’t someone tell them to stop?”
“I’m not sure that would be a good idea.”
“But it’s ridiculous!”
“I think it’s rather sweet.”
He looks up from the paper, and now there’s no attempt to keep the horror off his face.
“ ‘Sweet’?”
“Well, in its way…”
“Kelly, you’re a guardian of the night, a magician who wears black and not for its slimming properties; you’ve been trained in how to kill people in many different ways and when you’re not giving me bad news, you’re in theory running around the city hunting down all the things too nasty to be named, and you think this is
sweet?”
She thinks about it. “Beats blood-drenched midnight orgies.”
Good Preparation Is the Key to Success
The hall was hung with dusty red velour curtains. There were orange plastic chairs stacked against the wall, and a trestle table bearing an unwashed coffee mug, a free newspaper from yesterday afternoon, a ruptured tennis ball and a discarded umbrella with its workings mangled by a strong wind. One door led into the church next door; the other said
FIRE ESCAPE
and led into the mite-filled alley between the hall and the neighbouring barber’s shop.
The barber, Antonio Anthonis, born in Athens, raised on Eurovision, described the hall as “a nice enough place for the kids, yes?”
The vicar’s wife, who handled all the hiring and scheduling of events, described St Christopher’s Hall as “a friendly community venue where people of every age and disposition can come together in celebration of each other and their local area.”
The vicar, the Reverend Adam Weir, with a more liberal understanding of most things than his missus, described it as “twenty-five an hour and you’ll wonder why you’re forking out so much, but, believe me, when you see the other places you’ll just be thrilled. Price goes down to twenty pounds an hour if you can convince me you’re doing something moral or pious, and fifteen an hour if there’s free tea and biscuits. Church reserves the right to take leftovers and I don’t drink Earl Grey.”
Sharon explained what they did.
The vicar listened. His eyes had run politely but thoroughly over Sharon as she’d talked, taking in her ankle-high purple boots, cropped jeans with the tattiness left in, orange tank top and the streaks of electric blue dyed into the front of her hair. He nodded appreciatively at the key bits, though his eyes did eventually start to glaze over.
“So,” she concluded, “I think, yeah, that it’s… it’s moral
and
has biscuits.”