May Contain Traces of Magic (43 page)

Oh, he thought.

Looking back at him, with a very sad expression on its face, was a demon.

 

 

A
short while later, Angela found Chris in the bathroom, standing with one foot in the toilet bowl. ‘What are you doing?' she asked, with what he had to concede was admirable restraint.

He explained that he'd been trying to get a good look at the top of the bathroom cabinet, which he suspected of starting to come away from the wall; to this end he'd stood on the toilet seat, but his foot had slipped, and the rest she knew or could figure out for herself.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘Funny thing to be doing at this hour of the night.'

He shrugged. ‘I'm an impulse kind of guy.'

She gave him a sideways kind of look, then said: ‘And was it?'

‘What?'

‘Coming away from the wall. The cabinet.'

‘Didn't get a chance to look.'

‘I'd leave it for now,' she said. ‘Come to bed.'

‘In a minute,' he replied. ‘Got to dry off first. In fact, I think I'll have a bath.'

Angela frowned, said, ‘Suit yourself,' and withdrew. Once she'd gone, Chris lifted his foot out of the toilet, sat on the edge of the bath, closed his eyes and tried very hard not to scream. Going back the way he'd come wasn't an option, then - bitterly unfair, he felt, because if he'd suddenly metamorphosed into a demon, surely that should mean he had special magic superpowers like they had. Apparently, though, it didn't work like that; or, if it did, it didn't extend to being able to travel by the Sanitary Express. He put in the plug and turned on the bath taps.

A demon, he thought. For crying out loud. But I don't feel different, not in the slightest. He tried to remember what Jill had told him about - he fumbled in his memory for the technical term: sleepers? Carriers? Something of the sort. Humans piggybacked on by demons. It was the only explanation he could think of. Lying in the bath, he closed his eyes and tried to poke about inside his own head, looking for his demon lodger, or at least some indication that it had been there. Trouble was, he had no idea what to look for, or how to recognise it if he did happen to find it. Also, it gave him a headache, followed by a nosebleed. He gave up.

All right, Chris said to himself. Jill dies, SatNav escapes, I pick up a transdimensional squatter, what else? Something else must've happened, or not happened, because Jill had died instead of SatNav, and if he could only figure out what it was maybe there'd be some way of putting it right and getting home, or at least back to the school toilets.

Figure it out: right, piece of cake, just a matter of doing a degree course in metaphysics and another in temporal mechanics, then spending fifty years doing the maths. Easy-peasy.

If only, Chris thought, there was someone he could ask.

Maybe there was. A remote enough possibility; quite possibly Derek of the department, owner of the DS polo shirt, hadn't become a demon-hunter in this timeline. Guaranteed stone-cold certainty he wouldn't know who Chris was, if he turned up on the doorstep with a wild story about demons and pantacopts, time travel and the Fey. On the other hand, Chris couldn't think of anybody else. Motion carried.

He stayed in the bath long after the water had gone cold, to give Angela plenty of time to go to sleep. A nice enough kid, he exaggerated wildly to himself, but not my type. Eventually, shivering a little, he climbed out, dried himself off with a towel and crept through into the living room. No light on in the bedroom. For now, at any rate, he was comparatively safe. He flopped onto the sofa, pulled the collar of the towelling robe tight around his neck, and closed his eyes.

 

He was in his car, but he wasn't moving and there was nothing to see out of the windows. The radio was playing, so quietly that he could barely hear it, but the song was one he'd recognise anywhere. ‘Shake It Loose', by the Lizard-Headed Women.

He tried the door, but the handle was jammed. On the fourth savage wrench, it came away in his hand.

‘Now look what you've done,' said a voice beside him.

‘SatNav,' he said, but even before the words had left his mouth he knew they weren't accurate. Like her, but different. He looked round.

Whoever she was, she smiled. Nice smile. ‘It's all right,' she said. ‘I'm not her, if that's what you're thinking.'

‘But you're one of them. The Fey.'

‘You say it like it's a bad thing to be,' she replied defensively. ‘Which is really unfair. Particularly,' she added pointedly, ‘coming from one of
you
.'

‘One of me?'

‘You plural. Demonkind. If one of us is entitled to think in outmoded species stereotypes, it's me.'

He groaned aloud. ‘It's true, then,' he said. ‘That's what I am. A—' He couldn't bring himself to say the word.

She nodded. ‘But am I bigoted and instinctively hostile?' she said. ‘Am I holding my nose and sticking two fingers down my throat?' She shook her head, and her hair floated round her shoulders, reminding him of—‘You could do worse than learn from my example,' she said. ‘It'd make you a better person, believe me.'

‘Bit late for that,' he snapped. ‘Please, can you tell me, how long—?'

‘Thought you'd ask,' she said. ‘About sixteen years, give or take a month. You're what's known as a carrier. You're familiar with the term?'

He nodded. ‘Is there anything I can do?' he asked. ‘Or am I stuck with it?'

‘What are you asking me for? Contact your own kind, ask them. I'm sure they'll be able to tell you.'

His own kind . . . A chill ran down Chris's spine. His own kind had murdered poor Mr Newsome just for being there, to eat the fear of his last terrified moments. From now on, at least until he could get rid of the loathsome parasite burrowed deep inside him, his own kind were so incomprehensibly alien that the very sight of them made his guts twist like the rubber band on a balsa-wood airplane. His own kind, for crying out loud. Did that imply he had a demon family somewhere on the other side, a demon mother and father, demon aunts and uncles who'd tell him how much he'd grown and how sweet he'd been when he was little, who'd be offended when he forgot their birthdays?
Sixteen years
; in this timeline, at any rate. Whatever kind of havoc must he have been responsible for, feeding off emotions for sixteen years?

‘You're upset, I can tell,' the Fey said. ‘Is anything the matter?'

Chris had no idea why he told her, apart from the fact that she'd asked; and because this was just a dream, so he was just thinking aloud in his sleep. When he'd finished, she made a garage mechanic's tooth-sucking noise and said, ‘I see.'

‘Well?'

‘You're screwed,' said the Fey. ‘I really don't see how you're going to get out of that.' She sighed, a deep and genuine expression of compassion and regret. ‘God, I'm glad I'm not you.'

Nice of her to care, but she really wasn't helping. ‘Oh,' Chris said. ‘I was hoping you'd be able to suggest something.'

‘Not really. I mean, I'd like nothing more than to be able to say, do this, do that, follow the instructions to the letter and you'll be home free. Not possible, unfortunately. Terribly sorry to be so useless, but that's a real collector's item of a mess you've got yourself into there.' She paused, and frowned. ‘And you're telling me it was a Fey who did this to you? One of our lot?'

He nodded; then said: ‘Hold on. Did this to me?'

‘Well, yes. Stitched you up. I don't think that's overstating it, do you? I mean, there you are, caught up on the sidelines of this demon civil-war thing but not really involved to any significant extent; and this Fey of yours suckers you into changing history just so she doesn't get killed and stuck in a box for sixteen years. Now that really wasn't a very nice thing to do. Not the sort of behaviour we expect.'

‘Right,' Chris said, nodding enthusiastically. ‘So, does that mean you'll help me? Your lot, I mean, the Fey. As a point of honour,' he added hopefully.

‘Wouldn't have thought so,' the Fey replied. ‘Think about it for a moment, will you? The only way you'd be able to undo all the damage and reset to zero would be to go back to the critical moment, not kill your friend, allow your friend to kill the Fey, and then get someone to take you back to your proper time. And that's not possible.'

‘Yes, it is. Must be. After all, she did it, SatNav. She took me there—'

‘Illegally,' the Fey replied gravely. ‘Completely against the law, mucking about with time. Technically, yes, it can be done, but none of us'd ever do a thing like that, not even to help out someone like yourself. A demon wouldn't have those kinds of scruples, but a demon wouldn't be able to do it, wrong kind of dimensional focus. The Acme Portable Door could shift you through time, but they've all been hidden or destroyed, so you can forget that as a possibility. No,' she concluded sadly, ‘I don't want to depress you or anything, but there's nothing anybody can do. You're stuck like it. Sucks, I know, but who said life was fair?'

Somehow, that wasn't what Chris had been expecting. ‘You mean I've got to spend the rest of my life in this timeline, with a demon stuck inside me? I can't do that. That's just not me, I'm sorry.'

She smiled at him. ‘Cheer up,' she said. ‘Maybe you'll die young. Although,' she added, ‘there's not very much chance of that, seeing how hard demons are to kill. I mean, you can forget about all your human diseases and old age and all that. A pantacopt'd do it, or a direct strike from a bolt of lightning; I gather there's some poisons, though they're incredibly rare, and I've heard it said that twenty-four hours in the core of a nuclear reactor's been known to work. Apart from that, though, it's not good. Which is why,' she added, ‘if you read the small print of nearly all pension schemes, demons are specifically excluded, because they live too long. You can see their point, can't you?'

Chris didn't reply. He was replaying what she'd just told him:
it was a Fey who did this to you.
Not that he was prepared to take her word for it, or anybody's word for anything any more, not even if a United Nations delegation headed by God were to come to him and tell him his name. But belief wasn't required, just a calm analysis of the facts. For the reasons given or some other motive, SatNav had induced him to change history, and that was why he was here. Her fault. And, almost certainly, deliberate. Well, he thought, nice to know finally who the enemy was.

‘Cheer up,' the Fey said. ‘After all, it could be worse. That Angela seems like a nice enough kid, and so long as you're with her, you'll never go hungry. Absolute genius when it comes to stirring up stress and angst. Stick with her, you'll be all right.'

He groaned out loud. Hardly something to look forward to. ‘Look,' he said desperately, ‘do you think you could find SatNav for me? The Fey who did this to me? Maybe you could talk to her, get her to send me back, if she's the only one who could do it.'

He'd said the wrong thing. ‘I don't think so,' she replied icily. ‘I don't associate with entities like that. Oh, I'll find her all right, and then I'll report her to the authorities, and they'll really make her wish she'd stayed in your plastic box giving you directions. She's in for a really nasty time, if that's any consolation. '

No, not really, Chris wanted to say; but he woke up instead. Angela was standing over him, scowling and shaking his shoulder.

‘What're you doing out here?' she said. ‘I've been waiting for you.'

Hell, he thought. ‘Sorry,' he said, ‘I thought you were asleep. Didn't want to disturb you.'

‘Since when were you so considerate?' Her scowl shifted into a grin. He couldn't make up his mind which was scarier. No, belay that, he could. ‘Anyway,' Angela said, ‘I'm awake. Come along, on your feet.'

‘I'm very tired,' Chris said. It had always worked a charm when Karen said it, but maybe he didn't quite have her delivery, because Angela said, ‘Tough,' grabbed the lobe of his ear between thumb and forefinger and hauled him out of the chair. ‘You're not still on about that bang on the head, are you?'

He'd forgotten about that. ‘Yes,' he said immediately. ‘Actually, I've started feeling dizzy and sick, so it could be concussion after all. I really think I should sit down again.'

She wasn't happy about it, he could tell; probably suspected he was lying, but knew she couldn't prove it. ‘Oh,' she said. ‘Pity. Never mind.' She let go her grip on his ear, and he flopped back into the chair. He had a strange feeling of having just narrowly escaped, like a fish pulling itself free from a hook. ‘Sorry,' she said, in a slightly softer voice, ‘it's just that, well, there's few enough perks to being stuck in these monkey suits. Seems a shame to let an opportunity slip, as it were.'

Chris looked up at her, at the faint gleam in her eyes. No way, he thought, not if you were the only girl in the world and I was the only boy. Not even if it'd solve global warming. ‘Oh well,' he croaked. ‘There'll be plenty of time later, when I'm better.'

He'd said the wrong thing again. She shrugged, see-if-I-care, went back into the bedroom and slammed the door. He wondered if he was still human enough for his emotions to be nutritious, or whether they were like alcohol-free lager, nothing like the real thing.

No way back, the Fey had told him; stuck here and now for the rest of his life, like a convict transported to Australia. Worse still, there was a huge gap in his understanding of the plot. It was like being back at school, being set some God-awful boring novel to read for English, trying to bluff his way in class on the basis of the blurb on the back cover.