The Neon Court (42 page)

“Yes …” I began.

“I mean it’s like I just did it and there was so much power but I controlled it and you are here I saved your life, I mean, I saved it, I did it right and …”

And some of the sweat below her eyes was tears, not sweat, and some of the shaking in her hands was terror, not tiredness. I caught her fingers as she gestured feebly at the magic circle, held them tight. It didn’t seem enough. Not knowing why we did, or what we did, we leant over and caught her in our arms, pulled her tight. We did not know if we did it for her, or for us. We held her and she held us and she was shaking, tears rolling freely down her face. When to hold her any longer was to never let go, we pulled ourself free, looked her in the eyes, bright, brilliant, human eyes, and smiled.

“Yes,” I said. “You did it. You saved the day. Again, may I add. I am dead on proud of you.”

She wiped the tears away with the corner of her sleeve, sniffed noisily, straightened up. “I wasn’t … don’t think I was crying because of you!”

“I know you weren’t.”

“I … I was worried but it wasn’t you.”

“I know.”

“I thought that the power … there was so much power and when I did it, when I made the spell work, I knew I could … that if I didn’t … I can do so much, Matthew.”

“I know you can.”

“I can do too much, Matthew.”

“Me too. But right here, right now, you did exactly what was needed.”

She bit her bottom lip, even as her mouth parted in a nervous smile to mask her tears. There was a slow clapping, one heavy slap at a time. I looked round. Bakker was sat, pristine as ever, half on, half off a case of fortune cookies.

“Well done,” he said. “You have trained an apprentice who, in her wilder days, nearly destroyed all of London by mistake, and you gave her even more power than she already had, and the confidence to try and use it. Very well done.”

An absence slowly impressed itself on the corner of my mind. I looked a little further, then quickly back to Penny, who was straightening out her top self-consciously, like an applicant before an interview. “Penny?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice calm.

“Yeah?”

“Where’s the girl?”

“The …”

“The girl. The girl I snatched from the jaws of death to bring here, that girl.”

“Oh yeah, her. She arrived screaming like a banshee, punching and kicking and talking crazy shit. Aldermen took her upstairs to give her a wash, a drink and, with luck, a tranquilliser.” She hesitated, then added, “Matthew … where’s the Alderman? The psycho-nut Court guy? Where’s Dees?”

I looked down, hands burnt and stained with blood.

I heard Penny take in a sharp breath, let it out deliberate and slow. “They …” Then she stopped.

We were silent.

Even Bakker was silent.

Then Penny said, “There’s a toilet in this place. You’ll want to get cleaned up. And there’s food. The chef is … sleeping. So’s the staff. But I think there’s prawn crackers and stuff.”

She held out one hand, palm soft and clean and pink. I took it. I could feel things screech and scratch inside as I stood up, and nearly lost my footing, clinging to her shoulders for support. “I’m fine,” I wheezed. “I’m fine. I’m tired, that’s all. I’m just … very, very tired.”

“Toilet? Food? Drink?”

“Water,” I said. “Water would be good.”

“I’ll get you some. It’s going to be OK, Matthew. You know that, right? You’ll do the whizzo Midnight Mayor shit and some of that blue electric angel shite and it’ll all be cleared up by … by sunrise. It’s going to be OK.”

“Yeah,” I lied. “I know.”

The toilet was a chipped thing of broken red tiles and suspicious odours.

I sat for a long time, head pressed into the wall.

When I felt like the wall and I had shared every secret we had to tell, I crawled to my feet and stood for a long time, fists curled round the edge of the sink. There was a face in the cracked mirror above it. Blood and ash and dust had made it a monster in the dark, eyes too white and blue, the only thing about it left with any brightness.

When I grew sick of that face, I ran the cold tap and washed it.

Not even the icy water could take the tiredness away now.

I stayed friends with the wall all the way out of the toilet, up the stairs, past the kitchen. It was a dirty off-white thing, mates with many more species than just human, in which sacks of rice and bags of noodles waited to be cooked on the now sleeping stoves. Hushed voices beyond it kept me climbing, through a processed wooden door and into another room. This one had pink wallpaper adorned with thin white cranes, images of wild horses and flowing water. It had round
tables covered with plastic tablecloths, a fish tank containing one lonely fat carp, and a trolley containing cold half-eaten plates of food. A chubby Asian woman in a white frilly shirt and black skirt lay, head in her hands, across the table next to it. At the table behind her was a group of Aldermen. Skin pale, eyes red, what little low conversation they’d had stopped as I entered. There was a jug of water on the table between them, empty, and several packets of pills, popped. Penny leant, arms folded, against the wall beside them. Her eyes were puffy and pink.

All the Aldermen stood as I approached. All sat when I took the one spare chair. There was silence. Then one, the oldest, blurted, “Dees …”

“Blackout killed her.”

Silence.

I said, “Where’s the girl? JG? Where is she?”

“Upstairs,” said another. “She was hysterical.”

“Guarded?” I added.

They nodded.

“What’s happening?” I asked. “Why’s there no one here? Where are the rest of you? What’s going on with the Court, the Tribe?”

They shifted uneasily. Then the one who’d spoken first said, “People are falling asleep. Technically, we’ve all been awake for days. Some people napped at first, but now when they nap, they don’t wake up. And more places have … vanished.”

He pushed an A–Z across the table to me. I flicked through the pages. Kentish Town, Hammersmith, Bethnal Green, Elephant and Castle – all gone. Just blank pages. There was more whiteness now on this map, than there were streets. I closed it and pushed it back to the Alderman.

“The Neon Court’s man?” asked one.

“Dead,” I replied.

“He …”

“Blackout killed him too. Oda. She was there, in the darkness.”

“But you got the girl out. The … chosen one? This girl upstairs … is the chosen one?”

I nodded dully. “Yeah. That’s her. Right pain, isn’t she?”

“What does this mean? Can we fix it?”

I didn’t answer. Looking past the Aldermen, I could see through the
restaurant window the cheery lights of Chinatown, red lanterns and windows full of ducks, bright calendars made of bamboo strips, nests of thin translucent noodle and little custard cakes. But no people. The signs on all the doors said closed; no one walked the streets, not even the dustman with his barrel and brush. The Aldermen waited. Not like them.

“Any food in this place?” I asked.

“Just left-overs and a microwave,” offered Penny.

“That’ll do. The girl – JG – is she still hysterical?”

“Should be calmer,” answered an Alderman.

“Good. I’m going to have a chat with her.”

I managed to drag myself to my feet. We felt old, horrifying, crippled old, a concept which once upon a time we would have had no means to understand.

A small staircase, grey, walls painted dull pale green, led upwards. A single Alderman sat by the door, her eyes flickering on the verge of sleep. I walked past, knocked on the door she guarded. No answer.

“JG? It’s Matthew? I’ve got some food coming, some drink. You OK in there?”

No answer.

Slowly I turned the handle, eased the door open.

A single unsheltered bulb burnt from a wire in the ceiling. JG sat on an abused, sheetless bed, knees tucked into her chin, staring at the one picture on the wall. It showed a Chinese pavilion, a lady in flowing robes meeting a man with a mighty beard beside the still waters of a lake. I sat down on the bed beside her, resisting with every ounce the desire to lie down, just for a moment, just a little moment.

She didn’t acknowledge my presence, but there was a concentration in her face that hadn’t been there before, in that dust-filled room with the TV.

“Are you all right?”

She didn’t bother to reply.

“I need to ask some questions. I’m sorry. But I have to know.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Lives at stake.”

“Whose?”

“Everyone’s.”

“I hate you. Go away.”

She went back to her studies.

Penny came in, a grubby silver tray in her hands. “Right!” she said. “I’ve got reheated rice, reheated sour and sweet pork, reheated chicken with mushroom, reheated chow mein with ginger and, as a special treat, reheated duck with plum sauce and pancakes.”

She laid it out on the bed. JG didn’t bother to look at it. “Don’t want it.”

Penny’s smile didn’t falter. “I am not,” she said, “a fucking waitress.”

“You look like a fucking waitress,” replied JG.

“And you look like someone who didn’t get enough thick ears as a kid … oh, no, wait, you still are a fucking kid! Eat up or you’ll go to bed and never wake up!”

JG grabbed a plate at random and made to throw it at Penny. I caught her wrist before she could, prised the plate free from her, put it back down. Penny’s face was bright with anger, her fingers twitching at her side. “JG,” I sighed, “I don’t care what you think right now, and I’m too tired to try and puzzle it out. But you should probably know that the nice lady you just tried to cover in plum sauce saved your life out of the goodness of her shiny little heart, so try and be nice.”

“Fuck off fuck off fuck off!” screamed JG. “Why won’t you people leave me alone?!”

“Is it too late to send her back?” asked Penny.

JG was on her feet, glaring straight at my apprentice. “Do it!” she hissed. “Go on, do it, fucking do it, send me back there, I want to go back, do it now! You can’t keep me a prisoner here!”

“You’re not a prisoner,” I sighed, trying to rub some of the fluff out of my eyes.

“Yeah, then why’s there a guard on my fucking door?”

“Because all sorts of nasty people are probably out to get you right now, including, I gotta tell you, the woman you and I know as Oda.”

She spat. A round blob of spit rested on the thin carpet and began to sink in. We watched the dark dampness of it spread in busy silence. Penny’s face was a twisted pattern of disgust. JG slumped back down on the end of her bed, face puffed and furious, and said nothing.

Penny said, “You going to let that pass?”

I shrugged.

“You are one bloody crap childminder.”

“Not a child!” snarled JG.

“You’re acting like one.”

“Am not!”

“Oh yeah, that’s so mature.”

“Get out get out get out get out!” shrieked JG, and as she screamed, she beat her fists against the air and the bulb in the middle of the room hummed and dimmed, and it seemed, for a moment, that there was something wild and bright behind her eyes, and a taste of smoke on the air.

Penny’s eyes met mine. I said, “That wasn’t …”

“Not me,” she replied, raising her hands in defence. “You know me, boss, I am cool-cat-Ngwenya these days, super sorceress extraordinaire. If I want the lights to schiz out, I do it properly.”

I looked back at JG. The girl was still shaking with rage, fists clenched, eyes tight. Rage, and a bit more besides.

“Great,” I sighed. “Because all the situation needed was a little more complexity.” I shuffled round, closer to JG and, in her pride, she didn’t move. Bakker was in the doorway, watching now, back again for the fireworks.

“JG?” I breathed. “JG, please listen to me. No one here wants to hurt you, no one here is your enemy. I think you know that. I think you understand that. But I need to know things, otherwise it’s all going to get much, much worse. I need to know how you know Oda.”

“Go away.”

“I know you knew her. I said her name and you trusted me; she told me to find you, she seemed … she looked at you and you didn’t go blind. JG? You must know something’s wrong with her. I was … I am Oda’s friend. I want to help her.”

Her head snapped up, she glared at us. “You attacked her. I saw you do it! Yo u nearly killed her!”

“She attacked us,” I replied. “You know that’s true. Yo u saw it. She … she killed my friend. You saw that happen too. You saw it, JG, you saw her kill my friend, a woman with a husband, a child, Oda killed her and didn’t have a moment’s regret. You saw Oda’s eyes. You saw what happened to her in the fire. You must know, you must, you must
understand that whatever your relationship with her is, that relationship is as good as dead.”

A flicker of doubt? Then, “You’re lying! You lie about everything!”

“Think about it, JG. I haven’t lied about one thing. I’ve told you the absolute truth. Oda asked me to find you. ‘Where’s the girl?’ she said. She was in that tower block when it began to burn, she called me to try and help her.”

“Then what are you?”

“Matthew Swift. I’m a sorcerer. This is Penny, my apprentice.”

JG’s eyes flickered from me to Penny then back again. Her fingers tugged unconsciously at the neck of her hoodie. “If you hurt me,” she whispered, “my sister will hunt you down and kill you.”

We had not thought the human body could reel from words spoken, as if words were weapons. Yet we reeled, our eyes flying to Penny’s and seeing in them equal shock as suggestion danced the dance with realisation. Even Bakker detached himself from the door where he’d been leaning, craning in closer to hear.

I licked my dry lips, tasted broken skin. “JG,” I murmured, “is Oda your sister?”

Silence.

“Oda’s sister is dead,” breathed Penny. “Sinclair told us; Oda’s sister died, she was … killed by her brother, by Kayle, Oda’s sister was …”

Bakker’s nose almost brushed JG’s as he leant in closer. “There is a resemblance. Although suggestion does prompt imagination.”

I grabbed JG by the shoulders and she flinched away, face crinkling in dislike. “Get off me!”

“JG, this is absolutely the most important thing you can tell us. I need to know right now – is Oda your sister?”