I didn’t need to smell the power coming from it to guess what it was - magicians of every generation have always collected artefacts of power. I wondered how much the Whites had paid, or if they’d paid at all. Pieces of the Berlin Wall fetched a good price, these days, and for good reasons, although very few people appreciated what they really were.
There were pieces of slogans still visible on the wall. A remnant of:
—ISTIAN LIEBE FAMK—
Or:
GEBEN SIE MIR MEINEN HU—
Or a sad half-remnant of the CND logo, framed in flowers.
I crawled to the end of the sofa, unable to resist my curiosity despite the fire cha-chaing up my nervous system and the ice weighing the rest down. I reached out to touch the concrete, brushed my fingers over a dozen layers of bright paint, tasted . . . grey dust in the mouth, empty tightness in the belly, neon popping in the ears, crashing delight at the back of the neck, burning heaviness at the ends of the fingers, blue sadness behind the eyes - mostly just sadness, so deep and big you could fall for ever and never even notice you were heading down. The man who owned this particular artefact didn’t need spells to protect him. A whiff of this magic and grown assassins would just sigh away.
I drew my fingers away. I heard the door open behind me in the sense that when he spoke, I was not surprised; but I did not listen to the sound until he actually said: “You like it?”
We didn’t take our eyes from the concrete.
“Yes.”
“Four and a half thousand euros. You believe that? Four and a half fucking thousand euros for a piece of concrete with some paint on. Best buy I ever made. Drink?”
Wrenching my eyes away was like turning away from the dying man who’s just asked you for help. I looked at the man who’d entered the room. He was young, trying to look older than he was by cutting his hair so thin it bordered on the bald, growing grizzle but no beard and wearing carefully aged and scuffed black leather. He leant on the end of his desk with the casual air of a guy who’s seen everything and, while impressed by nothing, is still prepared to be amused by it. We disliked him instinctively.
I said, “I need Vera.”
“You’re Swift, right?”
“Yes. I need to see Vera.”
“She’s kinda busy at five in the morning, you know? How can I help?” His smile was like the spinning mirrored whiteness of the disco ball.
“You can get me Vera.”
“You look sorta crappy, gotta tell you.”
“Help me. I need . . . I need a doctor. I need Vera.”
“I thought that Matthew Swift was like, you know, tough.”
“I’m not tough,” I replied through gritted teeth. “I’m lucky. I’m so lucky that I can be killed by a shadow on the streets and come back without a scar on my skin. I’m so damn lucky that when I hear a telephone ring, I have to answer it and it’s always for me, always. I’m so lucky I can be attacked by a pack of spectres and walk away with all my limbs attached. I’m so lucky that I am we and we are me, and I’ve gotta tell you, we could rip your eyes out and feed them to you right now and forget in the morning that we were even here. You think you’re that lucky? Now get me Vera!”
He made the telephone call while I watched.
It went:
“Hey, yeah, sorry about the time, it’s . . . yeah, before you . . . just listen . . . no, I’ve got this guy here . . . says his name is Swift . . . what? Uh . . . blue. Bright blue. Yeah. No, pretty bad way. Like . . . you know . . . blood. Sure. Sure. Yeah, sure thing. No, I’ll . . . yeah . . . I’ll let him know.”
That was it.
Her name was Vera.
She was the almost properly elected head of the Whites. Almost properly, because it was generally agreed that if there was an election, she’d win, so what was the point of testing it?
She owed me.
She owed us.
She was one of the only people in London who knew that when the death certificate said I’d died, it hadn’t gone into enough of the details.
The clock on the wall said 5.45 a.m. when she turned up. She was wearing a big