“Yeah. I know. That’s why it didn’t really work. Bottles!”
She handed me four, put another one in my coat pocket, kept two to herself, held in either hand. “This will kill spectres?”
“Contain them. The invocation of an ASBO will slow them down as well, if there’s more than one of them, but, like you saw, it’s not a perfect spell. And if the cigarettes burn down before the bottle is filled, they won’t work either. But it should be enough to get us to the seventh floor.”
“I can’t . . .”
“You push the bottle into their faces, and if it doesn’t work, tell them, ‘respect’. Say it like you mean it.”
“I can’t just do ma—”
“You can.”
“I can’t! I’m not some . . .”
“It’s a simple binding, nothing more than a piece of sympathetic magic. You want to live?”
“And not be damned!”
“Well, you’re gonna have to pick one or the other. Come on!”
I dragged her, or maybe she dragged me, or maybe we just got in each other’s way, out of the kitchen, across the dull office floor turned the colour of blood, or crosses, or dragon’s eyes, or maybe just a tasteless brothel-red, to the stairway. And there it was, the beat in the stair, echoing up the concrete walls: dumdumdumdumDUH dumdumdumdumDUH dumdumdumdum . . .
“Another stair?” I gasped.
“Sure, because I know—”
“It’s not really a question!”
There was another staircase, tucked in at the opposite end of the office floor.
sshssshsssCHA sshssshsssCHA sshssshsssCHA . . .
“Where now?”
“Down, gotta get down . . .”
“Do you even know where this Ngwenya woman is?”
“Sure I do,” I muttered. “The death of cities is about to kill the Midnight Mayor; that’s the last defence the city’s got, the last thing that’s gonna stop us all burning. Of course I know where Ngwenya is!”
“Jedi spidey-senses?”
“Obscure mystic forces.”
“The spectres are here, Swift! Mr Pinner is here; do you really think we can just walk this one down?”
“Right,” I scowled, dragging her back. “Fine.”
Red light, spinning chairs, dull desks, silent sleeping computers, big glass windows behind the doors of the executive cubicles, plywood doors, plaster walls. “Do you suppose there’s those big vents like there are in American thrillers?” I asked hopefully.
Oda grunted in reply, her eyes still fixed on the stairwell door through which was coming the sound of:sshssshsssCHA sshssshsssCHA dumdumdumDUH dumdumdumDUH dumdumdumDUH
“OK.” I looked down at the floor. Our hands were shaking, we hadn’t even noticed this time, the edge of our vision seemed to be going off on its own business.
“I can see them coming!” hissed Oda, scrambling back from the doorway at a sight on the stairs. “They’re nearly here!”
“How many bottles do we have?”
“Maybe six? Can they hold more than one spectre?”
“What do you think?”
“I’m thinking that life was not made to be easily lived.”
“I was thinking something ruder than that, but yeah, you’ve got the basic gist.”
I could see shadows moving behind the door; taste them. And something else, something that made the fingers of our right hand curl in disgust and fear. “Back into the office,” I hissed. “There.”
Oda obeyed, kicking back a plywood door to reveal an office garnished on a theme of golf: clubs, pictures, trophies and all. The far wall was nothing but glass, slightly curved outwards, looking down on the dark/red soak of the city. I ran my hands over the window, felt the cold glass, pressed my nose up against it, ran my tongue over it, tasted the dull dirt. “This’ll do,” I muttered.
“For what?” she hissed.
“You still got your penknife?”
She handed it over; I wrenched through the blades until I found the pointed end of a four-head screwdriver. Turned the point towards the glass.
And a voice from the door said, and there was no hiding the anger, “Give me back my hat, sorcerer!”
I glanced over my shoulder, and there he was, Mr Pinner, and he wasn’t smiling, not now. His jacket billowed, his hair stood on end, his face was cold and pale, and behind him the office trembled. The furniture bounced gently on the floor like flowers in a breeze, the computer screens cracked, the chairs spun giddy on their axis, the files on the shelves split open, the paper started to tumble out, a few sheets at first, then more, dozens, hundreds, endless walls of paper spilling out into the room, caught in a whirlwind, blasting and screaming in the air behind him, filling the doorway with nothing but an A4 snowstorm.