“Marjorie, Marjorie, it’s a disaster, the record company’s been on the blower, no one likes the album. Get down to the studio, we’re going to have to remaster.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t…” She stepped back. Neither boy nor man touched her, but they walked with her, in perfect time with each other and with her, so she remained corralled by them. “What are you, what are you…?” she said.
The man said, “We was particularly hoping you might be able to persuade that guitarist to stop by again, lay down some licks. What was his moniker? Billy?”
Marge stopped moving, and started again. The man breathed out smoke. She staggered backward. She wanted to run, but she was hobbled by normality. It was daylight. Three feet away people were walking; there were vehicles and dogs and trees, newsagents. She tried to back away from the man, but he and his boy walked with her, and kept her between them.
“Who the bloody hell are you?” she said. “Where’s Leon?”
“Well that’s just it, isn’t it? We’d posalutely adore to know. Technically I grant you it’s less Leon that we’re chasing than his old mucker Billy Harrow. Leon I’ve a sense of where he might be-lose some weight, Subby says; I can’t help it I says, little morsels like that-” He licked his lips. “But Billy and we was just catching up and then it all went fiddly. So. Where’d he get off to?”
Marge ran. She made for the main road. The two stayed with her. They kept up with her, moving crabwise, the boy on one side, the man on the other. They did not touch her but stayed close.
“Where is he? Where is he?” the man said. The boy moaned. “You must excuse my loquacious friend-never bleeding shuts up, does he? Though I love him and he has his uses. But he’s not wrong also; he raises an excellent point-where is Billy Harrow? Was it you spirited the lad away?”
Marge was gripping her handbag to her chest and stumbling. The man circled her as she kept going, ring-a-rosying with the boy. People on the street were staring.
“Who are you?” Marge shouted. “What did you do with Leon?”
“Why, ate him up, bless your soul! But let’s see who you’ve been chatting to…” He licked the air in front of her face. She shied away and screamed, but his tongue did not quite touch her. He smacked his lips. He breathed out, another jet of smoke, no cigarette in mouth or hand.
“Help me!” she shouted. People around her hesitated.
“See, it was easy to find you because of all the spoor dribbled between here and Leon-the-vol-au-vent, so I’d expect to…” Lick lick. “Not much, Subby. Tell the truth now, chicken, where’s old Billy?”
“You alright, love? You want a hand?” A big young man had approached, fists balled and ready. A friend stood behind him, in the same fight stance.
“If you speak again,” the shabby man said, not glancing at him, still staring at Marge, “or if you step closer, my lad and I will take you sailing, and you will not enjoy what’s under the mizzen. We’ll run you up a dress in taffeta. Do you understand me? If you speak we will bake you oh my god but the worst cake.” His voice was dropping. He whispered but they heard. He turned then and stared at the two potential rescuers. “Oh, does he mean it does he mean it we can take him you take the kid old flabby’s mine ready on the count of three only he does to be honest seem a bit lairy and et cetera. Want some cake?” He made a ghastly little swallowing laugh noise. “Take another step. Take another step.” He did not speak the last two words but exhaled them.
The birds still shouted, the cars complained, and a few metres away people were talking like talking people everywhere, but where Marge stood she was in a cold and terrifying place. The two men who had come to her aid floundered under Goss’s stare. A moment went and they retreated, to Marge’s horrified “No!” They did not leave, only stood a few feet farther away, watching, as if the punishment for losing their nerve was to spectate.
“Now if you’ll forgive that interruption…” And Goss licked the air around her again. Marge was clamped between the two figures as surely as if they actually touched her.
“Alright then,” Goss said at last, stood up straight. “I can’t get a snifter.” He shrugged at his companion, who shrugged back. “Seems not, Subby.” They both stepped back.
“Sorry to bother you,” Goss said to Marge. “We just wanted to check out whether you knew anything, you see.” She retreated. He followed, but not so close as before. He let her get away a little. She tried to breathe. “Because we’re so eager to find out what young Billy’s up to, because we thought he knew everything and then we thought he knew nothing, and then disappearing like that, we thought maybe he must know everything again. But I will be buggered if we can find him. Which”-he waggled his tongue-“means likely enough he has ways and means of not leaving his savour-trail. Wondered if the two of you had spoken. Wondered if you might’ve done a little magery-knackery-jiggery-pokery. I taste not.” Marge breathed in big shudders.
“Well, you mind how you go then, we’ll be on our way. Forget you ever saw us. It never happened. Word to the wise. Oh, unless if Billy does happen to give you a tinkle, do let us know, won’t you? Thanks ever so much, really appreciate it. If he contacts you and you forget to let us know, I’ll kill you with a knife or some such. Alright then? Cheers.”
Then, only then when the man and boy had, it could only be said, sauntered away, not until they had actually turned a corner and were out of sight, did the people nearby run to Marge-including the two who had aborted their rescue, ashamed-looking but mostly just terrified-and ask if she was alright.
Her adrenalin spiked and Marge shook and leaked a few poststress tears, and she was enraged with everyone there. Not one of them had helped her. Recalling Goss and Subby, though, Marge admitted to herself that she could not blame them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A DELEGATION OF FAT BEETLES WENT FROM PIMLICO BY WALLTOP and sub-pavement route to a workshop in Islington. They were ink-carriers, little slave things, experimental subjects imbued with temporary powers as part of a savant’s writing of an exhaustive volume of one school of magic, the Entomonomicon. The man’s writing was on hold, because, while individually they were as dumb as specks, the insects were collectivised under a gestalt field, were thinking like a brain, and were on strike.
Where they went birds circled in the air over the town hall. This unlikely flock-an owl, several pigeons, two feral cockatiels-were all familiars, high-ranking enough to be imbued with considerable portions of their masters’ and mistresses’ clouts. They were protesting where several particularly exploitative wizards worked, now struggling with ill-trained scab mannequins.
The idea was that under the stewardship of a UMA activist the coleopteric set would be a flying picket, would join the birds in their aerial circuit. It was reciprocation for the birds’ sympathy picket outside their own workplace the previous week. It had been a powerful symbol of solidarity: some of the strongest hexed assistants in the city feather-to-chitin with some of the weakest, predators avianly chanting alongside what would generally be their prey.
That was the plan. The press had been told to expect visitors. The UMA full-timer signalled to the circling birds that he would be back, and went to caucus with the newcomers. Around the corner in a tiny park, the beetles emerged from a crevice, little bullets of iridescent black waiting for their contact. They milled in leaf litter, gathered in an arrow shape as they heard footsteps.
It was not their organiser, however, who approached. It was a burly man in jeans and black boots, a leather jacket, his face covered by a motorcycle helmet. Waiting by the fence was another man dressed exactly the same.