May Contain Traces of Magic (33 page)

He'd lost her. ‘Who told you that?'

‘Sa—' He stopped, unsure whether it'd count as a name.

‘My satellite navigation device,' he said. ‘Only really, she's a princess of the Fey. At least,' he added rather desperately, because she was giving him ever such a funny look, ‘that's what she told me she was.'

‘Well, she's quite right,' she replied. ‘Partly, anyhow. Actually, she's about six hundred years behind the times, but the Fey are a bit like that, not so hot on linear time. No, there was a—' She paused, then said, ‘Don't know whether you'd call it a lively debate or a civil war. Anyhow, it was hundreds of years ago, and what I suppose you'd call the good guys won. Which is why there's only a handful of demon attacks a year your side, of course, carried out by the tiny minority who refused to give up the old ways. The vast majority of us live off sustainable emotion, like you just said.'

Well, that did make a kind of sense, Chris supposed; but it wasn't what SatNav had said; and it didn't really fit well with Jill's reaction, either. ‘All right,' he said. ‘Let's say for argument's sake I believe you. So, who's this one-who-is-to-come person?'

She pulled a sad face. ‘Just one of us,' she said. ‘Originally she was the leader of the traditionalist faction. When they lost the debate, she went off to your side of the line in a huff, and I'm afraid the rest of us said that if that was how she felt, she might as well stay there and not bother coming back. But since then we've changed our minds; there's no point keeping the old wounds open, it's just divisive and spoils everything, so we're looking for her to tell her it's all right to come home. That's all it is, really. But we're a very tightly knit community. It's probably hard for you to understand how much we mean to each other, because - no offence - your lot sometimes seem like they care as much or more about stuff than about people. It's not like that here. We're all we've got. So, naturally, one of us going into self-imposed exile is quite a big deal. Also, we have an idea that she either doesn't know or doesn't believe that we want her to come home.'

Bullshit, Chris thought; but he looked at her, and he found it pretty well impossible to believe that she was lying. All right, sucker for a pretty face, fair enough, and surely by now he'd learned not to trust the uncorroborated evidence of his eyes in any case. It wasn't like that, though. Either she was one hell of an actress, or—

‘I'm sorry,' he said, ‘but I don't believe you.'

Grin. ‘Thought you mightn't. All right, then, look at it this way. If our people really did have to kill in order to get what they needed the murder rate on your side would be so colossal that no government would be able to keep a lid on it. I don't know if you're aware of it, but there's close on a thousand of us. We'd be having to slaughter two and a half thousand of you every week just to keep soul together. And your people would notice that, now wouldn't they?'

Nastily valid point she'd got there, and it echoed what Chris had thought when she'd first claimed to be one of the nice demons. He could almost believe he was convinced—

‘You think I know where she is, right? This—'

‘The one who is to come. That's right.'

‘Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I haven't the faintest idea. I don't know who she is, so how could I possibly—?'

‘Yes, you do.'

Said quietly, pleasantly; statement of a fact so obvious it hardly counted as a contradiction. She smiled at him.

‘No, I
don't
,' he said irritably, raising the aggravation level to mask the guilt that came with the lie. ‘If I knew, I'd tell you, now that you've explained. But—'

‘We can smell her on you,' she said.

Oh. He'd been right about that, then. ‘Can you?'

‘Oh yes.' Friendly nod. ‘That's why we've been following you, trying to have a quiet word with you, only you wouldn't—'

‘A quiet word,' Chris repeated, and this time the anger wasn't synthetic at all. ‘You call what you did to me at the Et—at the car park place a quiet word, do you?'

A sad look. ‘We're really sorry about that,' she said. ‘We misjudged you. We thought you were weak and cowardly, and that the easiest thing to do would be to scare it out of you. It was a really stupid thing to do, and we apologise unreservedly.'

Um, he thought. Can't say fairer than that. On the other hand, if SatNav hadn't come along when she did and cut the seat belt - ‘You were going to kill me,' he said.

‘We made threats, to scare you. We're sorry.'

‘You were going to kill me,' he went on, ‘because I'd told you I didn't know where she was, and you
believed
me. You could see I was telling the truth. So why the hell are you still bugging me now?'

‘We did believe you, yes. We were wrong.'

‘So you're saying I'm a liar?'

She shook her head, clearly in great distress. ‘No, it's not like that. You see, we know you've been in contact with her, there's absolutely no way we could be wrong about that, but obviously you don't realise who or what she is. And why should you, after all? As far as we can tell, you're not the sort of person who ought to be involved at all. It must just be sheer accident. I know it sounds screwy—'

‘Actually,' Chris said quietly, ‘the same idea had occurred to me.'

‘Well, there you are. It's really unfortunate, and we do sincerely, genuinely apologise for the inconvenience, but you've got to see it from our point of view, you're the only lead we've got, and the thought that one of our people is over on your side of the line, alone, frightened - We've got no choice, we're sure you can see that. Will you help us? Please?'

Something new here, and he didn't think he was going to like it. ‘I just told you, I can't.'

‘Yes, you
can
.' She was looking Chris straight in the eye, her lovely face shining with hope. ‘It'd only take a minute, we promise it won't hurt or do you any harm, and it'd mean so much to us. Of course we'll understand if you say no, but we're sure that now you understand, you'll want to help us. Go on,
please
.'

Jesus, he thought. They terrify you, chase you, kidnap you, flush you down bogs, get at you in your sleep and then they ask you nicely. The ruthlessness of the CIA, the persistence of a Jehovah's Witness, the face of an angel and the dumb charm of a cocker spaniel.
Help
, he tried to say, but his mouth refused.

‘Please?'

‘What would it involve?' he croaked. ‘In, um, layman's terms.'

‘Oh, nothing to it,' she said quickly. ‘We just make a tiny little hole in your head and take a peep inside your brain. It doesn't hurt, it's the sort of thing your doctors do every day, except they stick horrid bits of sharp metal in you and we just look.'

‘Just look.'

Confident nod. ‘A hundred per cent non-invasive. And of course we'll be doing it on your side of the line, so you'll be asleep the whole time and won't feel a thing.'

Not sure about that. ‘What about this side of the—?'

‘Silly,' she said, smiling. ‘This side you haven't got a body, have you? So, no body, no nasty old nerves and synapses to feel pain
with
. It'll be just like having a bright light shone on you.'

Chris kept still and quiet for three seconds or so. Then he said: ‘If that's all there is to it, drill a little hole and take a look, why are you asking me? Why haven't you just held me down and got on and done it?'

A look of horror crossed her face. ‘Without your permission? We couldn't do that, it'd be - well, we just couldn't, that's all.'

‘You don't seem so very fussed about killing people.'

‘Yes, we
are
.' Any minute now, she'll burst into tears; only without the water, presumably. ‘I told you, it's just a very few of us, the ones who cling to the old ways. And we want to stop that. It's why we want to bring them home, re-educate them, make them understand that it's wrong. That's why we need your help, don't you see that? You won't just be helping us, you'll be saving the lives of your people as well. Because if we can bring home the one who is to come, the leader of the stick-in-the-mud traditionalists, it'll be a message to all the rest of them that there
is
another way and it
can
work—'

‘No.' Chris had tried to keep the fear out of his voice, but it would insist on showing itself. If they got inside his head and saw what he knew, about Jill being the one they were looking for . . . the demon woman had to be lying, because he
knew
the one-who-is-to-come was Jill, just as he knew she couldn't be the leader of the killing-people-is-OK faction. What the hell was he thinking about, even listening to this creature? ‘No, sorry, can't be done. Wish I could help but I've got this morbid fear of needles, daren't even have flu jabs, that's why I never go away on holiday, scared stiff of the inoculations. Besides, you're completely wrong, I have no idea who this person is you're looking for, I can promise you that. And drilling holes in my head isn't going to change that, so you'd better forget all about it, all right? And now I think I'd like to wake up, please.'

He said, hopefully; but nothing happened. The demon woman hadn't moved, she wasn't crouching to pounce or anything, but she didn't need to. It wasn't as though he could jump out of a window and run for it, not in a place where windows weren't even
real
. Might as well try and walk home from the Moon.

She was looking at him very keenly. ‘Are you being completely honest with us?' she said.

It's relatively easy to pass off fear as anger. ‘You're doing it again,' Chris shouted. ‘You're calling me a liar.'

She shrugged apologetically. ‘Well, yes,' she said.

‘Tough. What're you going to do about it?'

Now she looked really, really sad. ‘We could try appealing to your better nature.'

‘Haven't got one. Now for crying out loud, someone
wake me up!
'

She shook her head. ‘We can't do that. We can put you to sleep, but not the other way round. It's like you can jump off a cliff, but you can't fly back up again.' She paused, then added quietly, ‘You could wake up if you really wanted to.'

‘No, I—'

‘If you really don't believe us, you'd wake up,' she went on. ‘We think you're protecting someone - at least, that's how you see it, you think she needs to be protected from us, but it's not like that, honest. You know you can trust us, that's why you can't make yourself wake up; it's a basic defence mechanism, to defend humans from the Fey, but it only works if you know you're really in danger. And you're not. Are you?'

Chris closed his eyes, but it didn't make any difference; he could see just as well with them shut. ‘All right,' he said. ‘Prove you're the nice guys. Prove it by letting me go.'

A smile. ‘We can't. Haven't you been listening? We can't wake you up, you've got to do it yourself.'

Was it his imagination, or had she come closer? He hadn't seen her move, but she was bigger, somehow, filling more of his field of view.

‘Is it the drilling a hole that's bothering you?' she said. ‘Because there's another way of doing it.' She drew the tip of her pink tongue across her top lip. ‘It takes longer, but it doesn't hurt. Quite the reverse, actually. I'd have suggested it earlier, but I didn't want you getting the wrong idea about us.'

Definitely closer; and something about the light was having a soft-filter effect. It wasn't InstaGlamour cream that Angela had been using, he realised; it was just something these creatures could do, at will, like wiggling their ears. Chris turned his head and looked away, but that didn't make any difference, either; she was there, just as close or closer, her lips slightly parted, just like in the films. ‘Just one little kiss,' she was murmuring, ‘now that's not going to kill you, is it?'

Try to think of something else. Work; think about filling out travel-expenses claims. Think about stock numbers, returns vouchers, VAT invoices, green slips and yellow slips and blue slips and there's many a slip between cup and—

‘It works both ways,' she was saying. ‘We can see inside your head and you can see inside ours, and then you'll know we're telling the truth. We wouldn't say that if we were lying, would we? After all, isn't that what a kiss should be all about: a meeting of minds, a melding of souls?'

And coffee breath, and spit, and teeth banging together. ‘I really do want to wake up now,' he whispered, as her mouth opened and came towards him like the ramp of the Cross-Channel ferry—

There was a hummingbird; and the beating of its wings made a whirring noise, a whirring sort of hammering noise, like the sound of an alarm going off. But that was no good, he told himself, because I'm not in the bedroom, I'm asleep on the sofa, so there's no alarm to save me, so it must just be the beating of my heart, or something equally useless. He felt his own mouth relax, and start to pucker—

‘Ow!' he squealed. ‘What did you do that for?'

Chris's eyes opened. His cheek was stinging. Karen was standing over him, white with rage.

‘You hit me,' he said.

‘Yes,' she said, and hit him again, this time with a bit more wrist to it.

‘For God's sake,' he protested, jumping up and shrinking away. ‘What the hell are you hitting me for?'

‘You were talking in your sleep.' Her voice was low and quiet, the sound of concentrated fury. ‘And making little sighing noises. And puckering up. And—'