drained tea bags were floating on the surface. I said, “Oh, you have got to be taking the piss!”
“You disrespectin’ us?” demanded another voice. I looked up and saw another woman’s face, younger, not out of her teens, hair dyed black and bright purple, face drilled with metal rings, in her ears, her lips, her cheeks, her tongue, her eyebrows, her nose.
“Erm . . .” I mumbled.
“Biscuit?” A third voice, a third woman. This one had steel-silver hair, a cream blouse with gold buttons done all the way up to her drooping chin, a dark blue tartanesque suit and an expression of mild reproach. She held a small plate of assorted biscuits, neatly arranged.
“Um . . . thank you.” We never say no to free food.
“You can dunk, you know,” added the old woman, and to prove her point, selected a digestive from her plate, and dipped it in the bubbling black cauldron.
“You know, this isn’t how I imagined the Museum’s archives department . . .”
“Huh!” grunted the young woman.
“Oh, dear,” sighed the middle-aged woman.
The old woman looked at me like I was a persistent fly circling closer to the sticky paper.
“. . . but I mean I’d heard stories, wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t heard stories . . .”
“Of course you have.”
“. . . and I suppose in a way, it makes sense . . .”
“Well, duh.”
“Maybe we can help, dear.”
“Another biscuit?”
I looked at them. Three ladies in a room beneath a museum, with a cauldron full of tea. There are certain things that never change. Call them Fates, Muses, Furies, Prophets, Seers or just three twisted biddies with a caffeine fixation, the magic of three women and a cauldron will never fade, even when the cauldron is full of PG Tips.
So I bowed, opening my arms wide in a gesture of peace, and said, “Ladies.”
The young one said, “Fucker!” It would have been nice to call her the Maid. I doubted I could.
The middle-aged one said, “So nice to meet a polite young man!” It would have been appropriate to call her the Mother, but I wasn’t sure how she’d take it.
“Society is on the down!” concluded the old woman. We wanted to call her the Hag, and were smart enough to steer clear of the idea.
But whatever we called them, we could recognise them for what they were. Three women with a cauldron - that meant power, ancient and old power, and old power meant old traditions, and that meant rules, and rules usually meant risk, since 90 per cent of the time rules are invented to stop something, that could be bad, from being even worse.
Then the Maid said, “He’s a fucking sorcerer. Jeezus.”
Then the Mother, patting me nicely on the shoulder, said, “They’re the blue electric angels.”
Then the Hag, putting the biscuits down, leant straight over to me and grabbed my bandaged hand. She jerked it towards her and I, still seeing just old woman - forgetting the rules - staggered straight into her grip and half fell at her feet. Turning my hand every which way, she dug her sharp fingers into the bandages until we nearly screamed.
“He’s the Midnight Mayor,” she said. She leant up close, steel-coloured eyes beneath silver hair that didn’t even twitch with her moving. “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?” I looked into her perfect false teeth made of plastic, smelt tea on her breath and ancient, ancient magic in the dull thick cut of her jacket, and heard her say, “You’re the Midnight Mayor. Say it until it becomes natural, say it until you believe it. You’re the Midnight Mayor, sorcerer. Electric angel. Isn’t that what you needed to hear? That bit of info’s a freebie, take it or leave it.”
She squeezed one last time on our bloody hand and let go. We flopped against the edge of the cauldron, cradling our hand and hunched around the pain until our eyes were no longer full of blue electric fire, biting our tongue to force away everything but staying in control.
“He doesn’t look much like a Midnight Mayor,” sighed the Mother.
“You look kinda a dork, mate,” concurred the Maid.
The Hag grunted, picked up the biscuits and set about carefully nibbling around the sticky centre of a jammy dodger, saving the best for last.
I dragged us back onto our feet, leaning heavily on the edge of the cauldron. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a cup?” I asked at last.