May Contain Traces of Magic (37 page)

Chris tried closing his eyes and counting to ten, but only got as far as three. ‘What are you doing here, SatNav?' he asked, in a sort of snarly whimper. ‘This is Jill's mind, she doesn't even—'

‘No, it's not.' She laughed; a silvery tinkling laugh, like a mountain stream. For two pins, he could've strangled her. ‘This is
home
. Where I live.' And then she said, ‘Thank you.'

The two words he'd been least expecting. He blinked, as though she'd just handed him a fish.

‘Oh,' he said. ‘Right.' And then, ‘Why?'

She laughed. ‘For setting me free, of course.'

Well, of course. Silly him for not guessing. ‘Did I just do that?'

‘
Yes.
' There was something in her voice, the loosing of a ferocious tension. It had dissipated entirely when she went on, ‘Well, I'm here, aren't I? So, yes, I must be free. Thanks,' (tacked on with a sort of soupy breathlessness that put him on edge right away), ‘to you.'

‘Oh. Well, I'm pleased about that.' Chris wanted to leave it there, but couldn't, quite. ‘Free from what?'

‘Slavery.' Melodrama. ‘Imprisonment. I was trapped in that - in that
box
, and now I'm here, where I belong. I really should be very grateful.'

Someone who chooses her words carefully. ‘Where exactly is this, then?' he said. ‘I thought I was in Jill's mind, but you're saying—'

As Chris spoke, the faint light grew stronger and he could make out walls, a floor and ceiling. And cubicles. And wash-basins.

‘Now you know where you are,' SatNav said. ‘Though properly speaking, of course, you shouldn't be here at all.'

I'm not the only one, he thought. ‘This is where I think it is, right?'

‘Yes. Now, if you had one of those watches that shows you the date as well as the time, you'd be able to see when you are as well as where. But that's OK,' SatNav added cheerfully, ‘because I'm here to tell you.' And then her voice shifted just a little; her business voice, and she said:

‘You have now arrived at your destination.'

Insight, a bit like a First Great Western train, gets there eventually. ‘At Honest John's,' Chris said, as much to himself as to her, ‘I wasn't flushed down a toilet, was I? I was flushed
up
.'

‘Congratulations. And you worked that out all by yourself.'

‘I was supposed to end up here.'

‘Correct.'

Chris could hear something; a long way away, echoing, like a voice in a tunnel. ‘Can you hear that?'

‘Hear what?'

Someone in a panic, yelling a name. His name. Jill's voice. ‘Excuse me,' he said, ‘but does Jill know I'm here?'

‘Afraid not,' SatNav said, and he didn't like her tone. ‘She wanted to show you the inside of her head, so you'd know she was telling the truth. But—' Little laugh. ‘I guess you must've slipped her mind. That's all right, though. This is where you've been headed, all along. Just as well you've got me to point you in the right direction.'

‘Here?'

‘If I were you,' SatNav said pleasantly, ‘I'd duck into one of those cubicles and lock the door. It'd be really embarrassing if someone came in and saw you.'

‘Yes, but—'

‘Really,' she said firmly. ‘It was bad enough when you were fifteen. If they catch you now, they'll probably stick you in jail and throw away the key.'

She had a point, at that. Chris hurled himself into the nearest cubicle and slammed the door.

‘All right?' SatNav's voice, filtered through the partition.

‘Yes. Look, can I go home now? I don't like it here.'

‘Shh. Someone's coming.'

He shushed, carefully slid the bolt across, and sat down on the toilet seat. Someone, he noticed, had written KH4CP in biro, just above the toilet-roll holder. KH, he thought. Karen Hitchins. That hadn't been there, the last time.

He tried to remember the third girl's name. Ellie something. Jill would know. Well, of course she would. After all, Jill had murdered her, in this very toilet. No, correction: Jill was just about to murder her, in this very toilet—

‘SatNav,' he whispered.

‘Keep your voice down.'

‘SatNav,' he repeated, a little louder, ‘is that why you've brought me here? To stop it from happening?'

‘Stop what?'

Voices. Voices that Chris recognised. Karen was talking. I've tried to get him to notice me, she was saying, but it's like I'm just not there. He cringed.

You're overdoing it, he heard Jill reply, you're trying too hard. Just be yourself, act natural, otherwise he'll just think you're strange. SatNav, he thought. Get me out of here, please
.

He heard her laughing, inside his head. ‘One good turn deserves another? I don't think so.'

Come on, please. It's going to happen any moment now, and I really don't want to be here. Not again.

‘It's not as though you freed me on purpose,' SatNav's voice went on, in the precise centre of his head. ‘I just happened to be in your pocket when she pushed you, and you just happened to ask for directions once you'd landed, which meant I could wake up and come out; pure chance, you see. So I don't owe you any favours.'

Someone had just turned on a tap; hand-washing noises. Karen was saying, ‘I think he's got his eye on that new cow.'

‘What, Ellie?' Confirmed: he'd been sure Jill would've known her name. ‘Hel-
lo
, I don't think so.'

‘He was looking at her in RE.'

‘He's got to look somewhere.'

‘Yes, but I saw how he was looking at her. I hate her, she's horrible.'

Next door, Chris heard the sound of a bolt moving, the creak of a hinge. The conversation stopped dead; and then he heard Karen say, in a tiny little voice,'Hi, Ellie.'

Now or never, he thought. I can save her, just so long as I—

And then he thought: hold on,
next door
. Isn't that where SatNav—?

He heard a swish, and then the scream, and then the scream's abrupt end, as if the sound had been sliced off with a blade (and he thought,
cuts through anything)
; then a silence that was the scream in negative, equal and opposite. And then Karen's voice, saying, ‘Jill . . .'

And Jill saying, ‘I never liked her much, either.'

SatNav
, Chris thought, and burst through the cubicle door.

There was Jill, standing over a body, a tapemeasure in her hand, and there was blood - real blood - in a pool on the floor. Too late. She'd already done it.

She looked up at him, and smiled. ‘Fancy seeing you here,' she said.

(Where was Karen?) ‘SatNav,' he said. ‘You killed her.'

She shrugged. ‘You know what she was,' she said. ‘It's only like a game death - reset to zero. Her parents'll be upset, of course, but I can't help that. Human emotion—' She licked her lips, then frowned. ‘You shouldn't be here,' she said. ‘If they catch you, you'll be in so much trouble. Illicit time travel
and
spying on teenage girls in a lavatory. If I were you, I'd go back the way you came. I'll pull the chain after you.'

Chris wasn't looking at her. He was staring at the body, and the blood. Never seen a girl hacked to death before. SatNav, he thought; I loved her, and you killed her.

Something slapped his face, hard enough to make him stagger. It was the wing of a very small bird, and the second slap knocked him off his feet. He fell back into the cubicle, balanced for a moment on the edge of the toilet seat, and fell backwards into a long, smooth-sided shaft—

 

Chris was standing in water up to his ankles. People were staring.

‘Where the hell did you get to?' Jill was saying. He didn't reply. He was looking down.

He realised what was wrong with the ducks; why they were floating like that, sort of on their sides with their heads trailing in the water. They were dead.

‘Chris?'

The ripples nudged a dead duck against his shin. ‘What?'

‘Come out of there,' Jill hissed. ‘Before someone calls the police.'

He frowned, staring down at the water. ‘Jill,' he said, ‘what happened to the ducks?'

‘Get out of the water, you idiot.'

Well, yes, he thought, that'd be a sensible thing to do. ‘The ducks,' he repeated, as he squelched ashore. ‘Did you—?'

‘You've got to understand,' she said, dragging him along by the arm, ‘this isn't a bloody game. The sort of forces being used here aren't to be trifled with.'

‘Jill—'

She shook her head. ‘Something happened while you were gone,' she said. ‘It was pretty nasty, actually. I had to earth it, so to speak, before it blew both of us away. Just as well those ducks were there, or God only knows what might've happened.' She let go of his arm but carried on walking fast, so he had to work hard to keep up with her. ‘You didn't answer my question, ' she said. ‘Where did you go?'

Chris didn't answer straight away. He'd noticed that he was holding something in his hand: an earring, in the shape of a hummingbird. He stopped dead in his tracks, and looked at it.

‘Chris?' Jill had stopped too, and was staring over his shoulder. ‘What've you got there?'

‘Oh, nothing,' he said, but too late. She'd seen it.

‘Where did you get that, Chris?' she asked.

He turned his head and looked at her, and at that moment he didn't need Dave Ackery's sunglasses. ‘It's Karen's,' he said. ‘She got them in—'

‘No, it's not,' Jill said firmly. ‘It's mine.'

She held out her hand, just like a teacher confiscating bubble gum, but he closed his fist around the earring, so hard that its little pointy wings dug into his palm. ‘Debenhams,' he said. ‘That's where she got them. She told me so herself.'

And then his fingers unclenched and opened, like the petals of a flower, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. Jill picked the earring up between her thumb and forefinger, then dropped it immediately, as though it was hot or something.

‘That's one of a pair I had for my fifteenth birthday,' she said. ‘I was really fond of them. If you turn it over, you'll see there's a little tiny letter K just next to the pin.'

‘It was in my hand,' Chris said weakly. ‘Haven't a clue how it got there.'

He felt his hand come back under his control, and immediately shoved the earring into his shirt pocket. ‘What happened, Chris?' Jill said. ‘I need to know, you must see that.'

It was as though he'd taken off a coat whose pockets were filled with lead bricks. ‘Search me,' he said. ‘I fell down this pipe thing, I think it was a sewer, and I came out in the girls' toilets at school. I think it was the day when—'

‘Oh.' She blinked twice. ‘Well, I guess that's possible. That occasion's most definitely in there. But it wasn't where I wanted you to go.' She frowned. ‘Did you—?'

‘I heard it, yes,' Chris said quietly. ‘I was in a cubicle, so I didn't actually see—But I heard the scream. So, you didn't send me there?'

‘Certainly not. It isn't something I'd want to share with anybody. I was planning on showing you my birth, actually, the moment when I became human.'

‘Ah. Glad I missed that, actually.'

Jill muttered something about men under her breath, and they walked on for a while in silence. Chris was thinking: Ellie, the girl in the cubicle next to mine, the girl who got killed, and then the hummingbird earring. Serves me right for skiving off work, I guess.

‘Have you made up your mind yet?' she said.

‘What about?'

‘Whether you believe me or not.'

‘Does it matter?'

‘Yes.'

Chris sighed. ‘On balance, yes, I think I do.'

‘Good,' Jill said firmly. ‘Only, our friendship's important to me.'

Indeed, he thought; the way pigs are important to a sausage-maker. But he took that back. The crazy part of it was, even though he was pretty sure she wasn't actually human, she was still Jill, a fundamental part of the furniture of his life, even though their shared past was rapidly falling to bits all around him. Lunatic, he thought; human, he thought. And of course it's our duty to embrace diversity in all its many-splendoured forms.

‘Right,' he said. ‘What now?'

She looked at him. ‘What now what?'

‘What do we
do
?'

Jill sighed. ‘Well,' she said, ‘I get on with protecting humanity from malignant demons, and you get on with selling portable parking spaces to gullible people. I think that ought to cover it.'

Chris stopped and stared at her. ‘You mean, we don't do anything.'

‘
We
don't, yes. We, as in you and me as a team, heroine and sidekick. It's not like anything's changed,' she went on. ‘Yes, all right, they've been hassling you—'

‘
Hassling
—'

Stern look. ‘You're still alive, aren't you? All right,' she conceded, softening the glare a lumen or so, ‘they've been after you because they think - correctly, as it turns out - that you know where I am. Fine. You've drawn this to my attention, and I'll deal with it. Note,' she added, ‘the pronoun. Not
we
'll deal with it. This is what
I
do. What I need from you is dumb cooperation, not input. I'll get rid of the demons for you, and that'll be that. We can all go back to normal.'