May Contain Traces of Magic (42 page)

The hell with that, Chris thought, as his whole life flashed in front of his eyes; not the second-best, make-do-and-muddle-through life he'd settled for all these years, but the marvellous alternative he could, should have had: Jill and Chris, the perfect couple, so much in common and their differences perfectly complementary, two people forming one ideal fusion. Well, maybe not that good, but a damn sight better than the other one. And consider Karen, a tiny voice added in the back of his mind; a fair old mess you made of her life, while you were at it, and you owe it to her to put it right now you've got the chance—

He looked at SatNav. ‘Who
are
you?' he said.

She grinned. ‘I like to think of myself as a dream come true,' she replied. ‘Or I should have been. But I never got the chance.'

Chris could hear voices. They were coming. He could make out their conversation, or else he was remembering it, the way you can anticipate the actors' words when you've seen the film often enough.

‘Get in, quick,' she hissed. ‘Come on.'

He thought: it can't ever be wrong to save a life, can it? ‘Hang on, though,' he said. ‘What if you're wrong? What if she doesn't fancy me, or not enough to stop her doing what she came this side of the line to do? I could get
hurt
.'

‘It won't come to that. Get back in the fucking cubicle.'

Well, that he could agree to, at least. He darted back in and locked the door.

Changing history, Chris thought.

Saving a life, he thought.

Why the hell
me
? he thought.

Someone, he noticed, had written KH4CP in biro, just above the toilet-roll holder. KH, he thought. Karen Hitchins. Oh
shit.

I've tried to get him to notice me, he heard Karen's voice saying, but it's like I'm just not there.

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.

‘I think he's got his eye on that new cow.'

‘What, Ellie? 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.'

Any second now, and the door of the next cubicle would open, and SatNav would come out and Jill would raise the—

Raise the—

He heard the bolt grind as it moved back. Now or never. He threw open the door, nearly colliding with SatNav as he lurched out and found himself face to face with—

‘Chris?' Karen said. ‘What are you
doing
—?'

Jill was staring at him; disbelief, then anger. Then she looked past him and her eyes locked onto SatNav, like a targeting system. I can't do this, Chris thought, then changed his mind and took a long step forward, placing himself between SatNav and Jill.

‘Get out of the way, human,' Jill said.

‘Sorry,' he heard himself say. ‘Look, Jill, I can—'

‘Get out of the
way .'

It occurred to him that SatNav might have been the one who'd misjudged the nature of Jill's feelings towards him. Right now they weren't difficult to interpret, and they didn't involve spring flowers, bluebirds or little pink hearts. Time to run away, urged his better part of valour, but his legs didn't seem to want to move.

‘Jill,' Karen was saying, ‘what's going on, why are you—?' Jill wasn't listening. She had that perfect stillness that raises the hairs on the back of your neck, the stillness before the spring.

Oh, Chris thought. Oh well.

- And then, somehow, his hand was in his jacket pocket, his fingers closing round the tapemeasure; he was pulling it out, fumbling the blade out of the casing (and, while he was doing it, he remembered the last time he'd been here, seeing a tapemeasure in Jill's hand as she stood over a headless trunk;
his
tapemeasure—

He remembered now, a memory of something that was just about to happen, remembered by someone from a different, altered future. She'd been about to jump him. He'd drawn the pantacopt. She'd knocked it out of his hand, pushed him out of the way, used the pantacopt to slice off SatNav's head. A memory of what was about to happen, what had happened—

What
had
happened—

Jill was looking at the pantacopt. Clearly she knew what it was. Possibly a moment's doubt, maybe even fear, but quickly swept away by resolve. Chris thought: if I can remember it, then it must have happened this way. That must be where she got the murder weapon from; she took it from me. But I didn't have a pantacopt when I was fifteen. Therefore, I must've been here before, with it in my pocket. This must be—I must already have done it, he thought, changed history. I must've been here before and done it, and then forgotten, or been made to forget. So everything's
already
screwed up, all my fault, because—

He heard SatNav in his mind. Quite right, she said. A demon can't kill a Fey with just claws and teeth. She needs a weapon. You provided it. It's all your fault. Now do what you have to do, and we can all go home.

Jill was looking at the blade of the tapemeasure, thinking, making calculations. Chris kept perfectly still, not breathing.

‘Jill,' Karen said.

Then Jill made her move. It was beautifully elegant, pure predator, the crouch and the leap all one fluid action. She leapt at him, just as he remembered her doing, and he remembered how she crashed into his left shoulder, spinning him round so she could disarm him with a lazy swat of her hand, grab the pantacopt, shove him aside and strike the killing blow. Perfectly clear in his mind, as though it had just happened. So, naturally, he took a step to the right.

Jill sailed past him, missing him by a clear inch, crashed into the cubicle door, smashed it into Western-bar-room-brawl splinters, nutted herself on the toilet, swore loudly, jumped up, crouched and got ready to leap again. Chris couldn't remember any of that. He was on his own.

‘Jill,' Karen was yelling, ‘for God's sake, what are you
doing
?'

Hold still
, said the voice in his head.
Just hold still
.

Jill leapt. Chris held still; not through conscious choice, but because she moved too fast for him to react. As she came flying through the air at him, he thought: she wants to watch out, the blade's in the way, she could do herself an injury.

She did.

She hit the blade, and it cut her in two, starting with her nose, neatly bisected lengthways, right the way through to her spine. Half a body shot past him on either side. Chris heard the thump as the two halves hit the floor. His mind went completely blank as his hands let go of the tapemeasure and it clattered on the concrete floor.

‘There,' SatNav said. ‘Now that wasn't difficult, was it?'

Karen was staring at him, her mouth perfectly round, no sound coming out. This is silly, Chris thought, what I just saw can't really have happened, I can't have cut Jill in two down the middle. And then he thought, I'm going to be in so much trouble.

‘Quick.' Karen had grabbed his arm, she was dragging him into a cubicle, shoving the door shut on him, as though trying to close an overstuffed suitcase. ‘Just get in there and stay quiet,' she said, her voice deadly calm. ‘It was self-defence, I saw it.' She stooped down, grabbed the tapemeasure, folded it away without even looking at the blade and shoved it in her pocket. ‘It's all right,' she said, ‘I'll get rid of it, just stay in there and remember, you never came out, you didn't see anything. Just leave it all to me and it'll be fine.'

Chris tried to speak, but Karen shut the door in his face. The last thing he saw as the door swung towards him was the pair of pretty but strictly-forbidden-by-the-dress-code earrings Karen was wearing. Enamelled silver, in the shape of hummingbirds.

 

Not so long ago, if asked what travelling by tube meant, Chris would have said it was what commuters did in London. Not any more. He emerged from his own toilet like a dolphin leaping after a flying fish, landed awkwardly on all fours, and banged his head on the edge of the bath.

His bathroom, more or less as he'd left it. That came as a relief; he couldn't have changed history too much if his bathroom was the same. And, since it had been painted and decorated by Karen, that implied that the change hadn't edited her out of his life. He got onto his hands and knees, and saw a pair of tights drying on the radiator. History had changed.

He grinned. Either she was back or she'd never left at all; didn't particularly matter, just as long as she was here, in residence. The surge of relief took his breath away, and he thought: so I really did love her all along, without knowing it. Just as well, really. Splendid.

The door opened, narrowly missing his head, and a voice said, ‘What are you doing on the floor?'

A voice. Not Karen's, but familiar. He looked up. Angela the trainee, in a white fluffy bathrobe with her hair all wet, was looking down at him. ‘Do you wear contacts, then?' she asked.

‘What? No.'

‘Oh. Only, you look like you've dropped one and you're searching for it.'

‘What the hell are you doing here?' Chris said.

But Angela just grinned. ‘Relax,' she said, ‘my train's not till seven. Plenty of time yet.'

Plenty of time? Time for what? She was smiling at him. Plenty of time, the smile said, for all sorts of things, including but by no means limited to doing a week's ironing or playing a game of Scrabble. Or something.

It occurred to Chris, with something of the force of a cave-in down a mine, that Karen wasn't the only person in the world who wore tights.

Oh well, he thought. ‘Angela.'

‘Mm?'

He sat up on his heels and looked at her. ‘This is probably going to sound strange, but I seem to have lost my memory. I must've slipped and fallen,' he added, proud of himself in spite of everything, ‘and bashed my head quite hard, which would explain why I'm down here on the floor.'

‘You poor thing - are you all right? Are you feeling dizzy?'

Chris shook his head (which rather spoiled the effect). ‘No,' he said, ‘but I really and truly have lost my memory. Do you think you could just sort of remind me?'

‘Remind you of what?'

‘Everything.'

Angela sat down on the edge of the bath. ‘You're sure you're OK? Not sleepy or nauseous or—? Fine,' she added, as he shook his head again, ‘I was just a bit concerned, that's all. Honestly, you humans are so
fragile
.'

You humans. ‘Remind me,' he said hopefully. ‘Please?'

‘Oh, sorry. Right, how far back do you want me to go?'

Chris shrugged. ‘Start right back, and I'll let you know if I want you to skip a bit.'

‘All right,' she said. ‘Well, in the beginning the Earth was without form and void, and God . . .'

‘Skip,' Chris said. ‘Take it from when we first met.'

He'd said the right thing. Angela blushed. ‘It was your boss Mr Burnoz who brought us together,' she said. ‘He arranged for me to come on your rounds so I could see what it was like, as part of my practical work experience. We hit it off straight away, and pretty soon we both knew it was more than just, well, you know. So you told your girlfriend, she moved out six weeks ago, and I moved in. Ring any bells?'

‘Fine,' he said. ‘When did I find out you're a—?'

‘Oh, straight away. I told you the first time we had dinner together, before we—'

‘Got you, right. Was I, um, funny about it?'

Angela shrugged. ‘Not really,' she replied. ‘I was impressed, actually. It was one of the first things I really liked about you. Not like the other guys I'd met at all.'

‘Ah.'

‘But you were absolutely fine about it. I said something like, before we go any further, I really think you ought to know I'm not entirely human, and you just shrugged and said, fine, as a matter of fact neither am I, and then we both laughed, and we talked about it for a bit and found out we'd got so much more in common than we'd originally thought, and things just went on from there.'

If she'd reached down Chris's throat and cut out his tongue, she couldn't have shut him up any more effectively. As a matter of fact, neither am I. Oh
shit
—

‘Can you stand up?' Angela was saying. ‘Only, if you've had a nasty bump on the head, maybe you should go and sit down.'

Chris smiled feebly and nodded. She helped him up, and he tottered rather unsteadily (not acting) into the living room and dropped into the armchair. Angela knelt down beside him and put her hand on his arm. ‘How's that?' she asked. ‘Any better?'

‘Much,' he replied, carefully not looking at the coffee table beside him. ‘You couldn't get me a cup of tea, could you?'

‘Of course,' Angela said. ‘Won't be a tick. Kettle's just boiled, as it happens.'

As soon as she'd gone, Chris leant forward and scooped up the object lying on the table, the object he'd been at such pains not to stare at when he'd entered the room. How they'd got there he had no idea. Nor did he care. At that precise moment, however, Frank Slade's special sunglasses were exactly what he needed.

The nearest mirror was in the bathroom. He hobbled over to it and looked at himself. Chris Popham: no oil painting, but exactly the same as he'd been last time he'd seen himself. All right, that was the easy bit.

He stuck the sunglasses onto his nose, closed his eyes, turned his head back towards the mirror, opened them again.