me a few years ago, I’d have said ‘sorcerer’ hands down. Summoning the monsters, sending fire down the phones - it all stinks of serious magic. But the sorcerers are either dead or mad, except you, and you’re hardly the purest example of the kind. Which leads to the question, who or what else could be after you?”
“The old sorcerers are dead,” I replied. “Doesn’t mean new ones can’t take their places.”
“You taught any newbies how to summon spectres lately?”
I shook my head.
“See? It takes clout and experience to do these things. Some random sparking kid isn’t going to hack it. Who’s this kid you were looking for anyway?”
“Just a kid.”
“Is that it?”
“Pretty much. I made a promise that I’d help - he’s nothing special.”
“OK. You should know.”
Silence a while. I felt groggy again, fat on food and sluggish from the warmth. My skin tingled in a warning of imminent pins and needles. I hugged my knees to my chest, put my chin on them and watched the shadow of the bare trees outside moving across the glow of the streetlights. “What time is it?” I asked.
“Nineish. You slept deep.”
“I am grateful . . .”
“Matthew?”
There was something in her voice. It was a high breath that had rolled out despite itself, a push all at once through a clamped-up throat. I looked round, to find her eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Matthew,” she said again, firmer, getting control. “Matthew Matthew Matthew,” she added with a sigh.
“Vera?”
“You believe in coincidence, Matthew? You believe . . . things like this are unconnected?”
“No.”
“No,” she said at last. “Me neither.”
I waited for something more, but by now her gaze was locked, fascinated, upon the ceiling and there was no turning it away. I said, “I’ll be gone in the morning.”
“You think that’s smart?”
“The doctor gave me painkillers.”
“I think she may have mentioned something about taking it easy too.”
“Someone attacked us,” we replied. “We are going to find them.”
“Sure,” she sighed, rubbing the back of her neck with one pale hand. “‘Course you are. Sure.”
She turned the TV back on. There was something more that she’d wanted to say, but she didn’t seem to have the inclination to say it any more, and I was too tired to press her.
I went back to bed.
A telephone woke us. It wasn’t ringing. But we knew the instant we were awake that there was a telephone conversation happening nearby. We could feel the tingle of its energy up and down the length of our spine. Still dark outside; probably only a few hours had elapsed.
Through the bedroom door I could hear Vera’s voice, a series of mumbled sounds and shapes on the air. I rolled stiffly out of bed, padded to the door, listened. I don’t know why I listened. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but paranoia was what tied it up in a sack and buried it in wet concrete.
I heard Vera say, “Yeah. Yeah, I know. Didn’t tell him yet. He’s in a bad way . . . Look, I know how it seems, but I don’t believe that he . . . no, don’t do that. No. It’s just his word for it, and the spectre in the bottle. You ever see him summon a spectre, it sound like his style? Don’t give me that bollocks. For Christ’s sake, I don’t believe that for a minute - look, the guy seems genuinely freaked, I don’t think this is the right time to . . . yeah. Yeah, I know. Look, I’ll . . . if you must. But they won’t like it. You say that, you haven’t met them yet. I swear to God, if there wasn’t a fucking sorcerer still in that skin, they’d have ripped the city apart just for kicks. No, that doesn’t mean . . . yeah. I understand. You know where to go? OK then. Bye.”
She hung up.
I slunk back deeper into the shadow of my room, and heard her footsteps approaching the door. Quickly, instinctively, like a child about to be caught reading in the dark, we rolled back into bed, putting our back to the door and forcing ourself to take slow, steady breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. A spike of light spilled over us and up the opposite wall as Vera opened the door, looked in, then closed it again. We counted to ten and sat back up, looking round at the empty neon-washed gloom. Paranoia seems more reasonable when you’ve got