Magic City Read online

  I walk up and down the streets, pacing myself, covering my patch. I have a lot of ground to cover every night, and it has to be done the traditional way, on foot. They did try cars, for a while. Didn’t work out. You miss far too much, from a car. You need good heavy shoes for this job, strong legs and a straight back. And you can’t let your concentration slip, even for a moment. There’s always so much you have to keep an eye out for. Those roaming gangs of Goths, for example, all dark clothes and pale faces. Half of them are teenage vampires, on the nod and on the prowl, looking for kicks and easy blood. What better disguise? You can always spot the real leeches, though. They wear ankhs instead of crucifixes. Long as they don’t get too greedy, I let them be. All part of the atmosphere of Soho.

  And you have to keep a watchful eye on the prossies, the hard-faced working girls on their street corners. Opening their heavy coats to flash the passing trade, showing red, red smiles that mean nothing at all. You have to watch out for new faces, strange faces, because not everything that looks like a woman is a woman. Some are sirens, some are succubae, and some are the alien equivalent of the praying mantis. All of it hidden behind a pleasing glamour until they’ve got their dazzled prey somewhere nice and private; then they take a lot more than money from their victims.

  I pick them out and send them packing. When I can. Bloody diplomatic immunity.

  Seems to me there’s a lot more homeless out and about on the streets than there used to be: the lost souls and broken men and gentlemen of the road. But some have fallen further than most. They used to be Somebody, or Something, living proof that the wheel turns for all of us. If you’re wise you’ll drop the odd coin in a cap, here and there, because karma has teeth; all it takes is one really bad day, and we can all fall off the edge.

  But the really dangerous ones lurk inside their cardboard boxes like tunnel spiders, ready to leap out and batten onto some unsuspecting passerby in a moment, and drag them back inside their box before anyone even notices what’s happened. Nothing like hiding in plain sight. Whenever I find a lurker, I set fire to its box and jam a stake through whatever comes running out. Vermin control, all part of the job.

  From time to time I stop to take a breath, and look wistfully at the more famous bars and nightclubs that would never admit the likes of me through their upmarket, uptight doors. A friend of mine who’s rather higher up the magical food chain told me she once saw a well-known sitcom star stuck half way up the stairs, because he was so drunk he couldn’t remember whether he was going up or coming down. For all I know, he’s still there. But that’s Soho for you: a gangster in every club bar, and a celebrity on every street corner doing something unwise.

  I stoop down over a sewer grating, to have a chat with the undine who lives in the underground water system. She controls pollution levels by letting it all flow through her watery form, consuming the really bad stuff and filtering out the grosser impurities. She’s been down there since Victorian times, and seems happy enough. Though like everyone else she’s got something to complain about; apparently she’s not happy that people have stopped flushing baby alligators down their toilets. She misses them.

  “Company?” I ask.

  “Crunchy,” she says.

  I laugh, and move on.

  Some time later, I stop off at a tea stall, doing steady business in the chilly night. The local hard luck cases come shuffling out of the dark, drawn like shabby moths to the stall’s cheerful light. They queue up politely for a cup of tea or a bowl of soup, courtesy of the Sally Army. The God botherers don’t approve of me any more than I approve of them, but we both know we each serve a purpose. I always make a point to listen in to what the street people have to say. You’d be amazed what even the biggest villains will say in front of the homeless, as though they’re not really there.

  I check the grubby crowd for curses, bad luck spells, and the like, and defuse them. I do what I can.

  Red turns up at the stall, just as I’m leaving. Striding out of the night like a ship under full sail, she crashes to a halt before the tea stall and demands a black coffee, no sugar. Her face is flushed, and she’s already got a bruised cheek and a shiner, and dried blood clogging one nostril.

  “This punter got a bit frisky,” she says, dismissively. “I told him; that’s extra, darling. And when he wouldn’t take the hint, I hit him in the nads with my knuckle-duster. One of life’s little pleasures. Then when he was down I kicked him in the head, just for wasting my time. Me and a few of the girls rolled him for all he had, and then left him to it. Never touch the credit cards, though. The filth investigate credit cards. God, this is bad coffee. How’s your night going, Charlie boy?”

  “Quiet,” I say, and work a simple spell to heal her face. “You ever think of giving this up, Red?”

  “What?” she says. “And leave show business?”

  More and more drunks on the street now, stumbling and staggering this way and that, thrown out of the clubs and bars once they run out of money. I work simple spells, from a safe distance. To sober them up, or help them find a safe taxi, or the nearest Underground station. I work other protections too, that they never know of. Quietly removing weapons from the pockets of would-be muggers, driving off mini-cab drivers with bad intent by giving them the runs, or breaking up the bigger street gangs with basic paranoia spells, so they turn on each other instead. Always better to defuse a situation than risk it all going bad, with blood and teeth on the pavement. A push here and a prod there, a subtle influence and a crafty bit of misdirection, and most of the night’s trouble is over before it’s even started.

  I make a stop at the biggest Chinese Christian Church in London, and chat with the invisible Chinese demon that guards the place from trouble-makers and unbelievers. It enjoys the irony of protecting a Church that officially doesn’t believe in it. And since it gets to eat anyone who tries to break in, it’s quite happy. The Chinese have always been a very practical people.

  Just down the street is an Indian restaurant once suspected of being a front for Kali worshippers on the grounds that not everyone who went in came back out again. Turned out to be an underground railroad, where people oppressed because of their religious beliefs could pass quietly from this dimension to another. There’s an Earth out there for everyone, if you only know where to look. I helped the restaurant put up an avoidance spell, so only the right kind of people would go in.

  I check out the dumpsters round the back, while I’m there. We’ve been having increasing problems with feral pixies, just likely. Like foxes, they come in from the countryside to the town, except foxes can’t blast the aura right off you with a hard look. Pixies like dumpsters; they can play happily in them for hours. And they’ll eat pretty much anything, so mostly I just leave them to get on with it. Though if the numbers start getting too high, I’ll have to organize another cull.

  I knock the side of the dumpster, but nothing knocks back. Nobody home.

  After that, it’s in and out of all the pokey little bars in the back streets, checking for the kind of leeches that specialize in grubby little gin joints. They look human enough, especially in a dimly lit room. You know the kind of strangers, the ones who belly up to the bar next to you with an ingratiating smile, talking about nothing in particular, but you just can’t seem to get rid of them. It’s not your company, or even your money, they’re after. Leeches want other things. Some can suck the booze right out of you, leaving you nothing but the hangover. Others can drain off your life energy, your luck, even your hope.

  They usually run when they see me coming. They know I’ll make them give it all back, with interest. I love to squeeze those suckers dry.

  Personal demons are the worst. They come in with the night, swooping and roiling down the narrow streets like leaves tossed on the breeze, snapping their teeth and flexing their barbed fingers. Looking to fasten on to any tourist whose psychic defenses aren’t everything they should be. They wriggle in, under the mental barricades, snuggle onto your back and r
ide you like a mule. They encourage all their host’s worst weaknesses—greed or lust or violence, all the worst sins and temptations they ever dreamed of. The tourists go wild, drowning themselves in sensation—and the demons soak it all up. When they’ve had enough they let go, and slip away into the night, fat and engorged, leaving the tourists to figure out where all their money and self respect went. Why they’ve done so many things they swore they’d never do. Why there’s a dead body at their feet, and blood on their hands.

  I can See the demons, but they never see me coming. I can sneak up behind them and rip them right off a tourist’s back. I use special gloves that I call my emotional baggage handlers. A bunch of local nuns make them for us, blessed with special prayers, every thread soaked in holy water, and backed up with nasty silver spurs in the fingertips. Personal demons aren’t really alive, as such, but I still love the way they scream as their flimsy bodies burst in my hands.

  Of course, some tourists bring their own personal demons in with them, and then I just make a note of their names, to pass on to the Big Boys. Symbiosis is more than I can handle.

  I bump into my first group of Grey aliens of the night, and make a point of stopping to check their permits are in order. They look like ordinary people to everyone else, until they get up close, and then they hypnotize you with those big black eyes, like a snake with a mouse, and you might as well bend over and smile for the probe. Up close, they smell of sour milk, and their movements are just wrong. Their dull grey flesh slides this way and that, even when they’re standing still, as though it isn’t properly attached to the bones beneath.

  I’ve never let them abduct anyone on my watch. I’m always very firm; no proper paperwork, no abduction. They never argue. Never even react. It’s hard to tell what a Grey is thinking, what with that long flat face and those unblinking eyes. I wish they’d wear some kind of clothes, though. You wouldn’t believe what they’ve got instead of genitals.

  Even when their paperwork is in order, I always find or pretend to find something wrong, and send them on their way, out of my area. Just doing my bit, to protect humanity from alien intervention. The Government can stuff their quotas.

  Round about two or three a.m., I run across a Street Preacher, having a quiet smoke of a hand-rolled in a back alley. She’s new, Tamsin MacReady. Looks about fifteen, but she must be hard as nails or they’d never have given her this patch. Street Preachers deal with the more spiritual problems, which is why few of them last long. Soon enough they realize reason and compassion aren’t enough, and that’s when the smiting starts, and the rest of us run for cover. Tamsin’s a decent enough sort, disturbed that she can’t do more to help.

  “People come here to satisfy the needs of the flesh, not the spirit,” I say, handing her back the hand-rolled. “And we’re here to help, not meddle.”

  “Oh, blow it out your ear,” she says, and we both laugh.

  It’s not long after that I run into some real trouble; someone from the Jewish Defense League has unleashed a Golem on a march by British Nazi skinheads. The Golem is picking them up and throwing them about, and the ones who aren’t busy bleeding or crying or wetting themselves are legging it for the horizon. I feel like standing back and applauding, but I can’t let this go on. Someone might notice. So I wade in, ducking under the Golem’s flailing arms, until I can wipe the activating word off its forehead. It goes still then, nothing more than lifeless clay, and I put in a call for it to be towed away. Someone higher up will have words with someone else, and hopefully I won’t have to do this again. For a while.

  I take some hard knocks and a bloody nose before I can shut the Golem down, so I take time out to lean against a stone wall and feel sorry for myself: My healing spells only work on other people. The few skinheads picking themselves up off the pavement aren’t sympathetic. They know where my sympathies lie. Some of them make aggressive noises, until I give them a hard look, and then they remember they’re needed somewhere else.

  I could always turn the Golem back on, and they know it.

  I head off on my beat again, picking them up and slapping them down, aching quietly here and there. Demons and pixies and golems, oh my. Just another night, in Soho.

  Keep walking, keep walking. Protect the ones you can, and try not to dwell on the ones you can’t. Sweep up the mess, drive off the predators, and keep the world from ever finding out. That’s the job. Lots of responsibility, hardly any authority, and the pay sucks. I say as much to Red, when we bump into each other at the end of our shifts. She clucks over my bruises, and offers me a nip from her hip flask. It’s surprisingly good stuff.

  “Why do you do it, Charlie boy? Hard work and harder luck, with nothing to show but bruises and bad language from the very people you’re here to help? It can’t be the money; I probably make more than you do.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s not the money.”

  I think of all the things I See every night that most of the world never knows exists. The marvelous and the fantastic, the strange creatures and stranger people, gods and monsters and all the wonders of the hidden world. I walk in magic and work miracles, and the night is full of glory. How could I ever turn my back on all that?

  “You ever think of giving this up, Charlie boy?” says Red.

  “What?” I say. “And leave show business?”

  Simon R. Green was born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England (where he still resides). He obtained an MA in Modern English and American Literature from Leicester University; he also studied history and has a combined Humanities degree. He is the bestselling author of several series, including twelve novels of The Nightside and The Secret Histories (book seven, Property of a Lady Faire, is due out soon). Once in a Blue Moon, eighth of the Hawk & Fisher series, came out earlier this year. His newest series, The Ghost Finders, will also have a fifth novel, Voices From Beyond, published this year.

  The City: Cleveland, Ohio.

  The Magic: A modern witch makes her living weaving love spells for others, but the magic in her fingertips goes still and cold when she tries to find romance for herself.

  PARANORMAL ROMANCE

  Christopher Barzak

  This is a story about a witch. Not the kind you’re thinking of either. She didn’t have a long nose with a wart on it. She didn’t have green skin or long black hair. She didn’t wear a pointed hat or a cape, and she didn’t have a cat, a spider, a rat, or any of those animals that are usually hanging around witches. She didn’t live in a ramshackle house, a gingerbread house, a Victorian house, or a cave. And she didn’t have any sisters. This witch wasn’t the kind you read about in fairy tales and in plays by Shakespeare. This witch lived in a red brick bungalow that had been turned into an upstairs/downstairs apartment house on an old industrial street that had lost all of its industry in Cleveland, Ohio. The apartment house had two other people living in it: a young gay couple who were terribly in love with one another. The couple had a dog, an incredibly happy-faced Eskimo they’d named Snowman, but the witch never spoke to it, even though she could. She didn’t like dogs, but she did like the gay couple. She tried not to hold their pet against them.

  The witch—her name was Sheila—specialized in love magic. She didn’t like curses. Curses were all about hate and—occasionally—vengeance, and Sheila had long ago decided that she’d spend her time productively, rather than wasting energy on dealing with perceived injustices located in her—or someone else’s—past. Years ago, when she was in college, she had dabbled in curses, but they were mainly favors the girls in her dorm asked of her, usually after a boyfriend dumped them, cheated on them, used them as a means for money and mobility, or some other power or shame thing. A curse always sounded nice to them. Fast and dirty justice. Sheila sometimes helped them, but soon she grew tired of the knocks on her door in the middle of the night, grew annoyed after opening the door to find a teary-eyed girl just back from a frat party with blood boiling so hard that the skin on her face seemed to roil. Eventually Sheila starte
d closing the door on their tear-stained faces, and after a while the girls stopped bothering her for curses. Instead, they started coming to her for love charms.

  The gay couple who lived in the downstairs rooms of the apartment house were named Trent and Gary. They’d been together for nearly two years, but had only lived together for the past ten months. Their love was still fresh. Sheila could smell it whenever she stopped in to visit them on weekends, when Trent and Gary could be found on the back deck, barbequing and drinking glasses of red wine. They could make ordinary things like cooking out feel magical because of the sheer completeness they exuded, like a fine sparking mist, when they were near each other. That was pure early love, in Sheila’s assessment, and she sipped at it from the edges.

  Trent was the manager of a small software company and Gary worked at an environmental nonprofit. They’d met in college ten years ago, but had circled around each other at the time. They’d shared a Venn diagram of friends, but naturally some of them didn’t like each other. Their mutual friends spent a lot of time telling Trent about how much they hated Gary’s friends, or telling Gary about how much they hated Trent’s. Because of this, for years Trent and Gary had kept a safe distance from each other, assuming that they would also hate each other. Which was probably a good thing, they said now, nodding in accord on the back deck of the red brick bungalow, where Trent turned shish kabobs on the grill and Gary poured Sheila another glass of wine.

  “Why was it probably a good thing you assumed you’d hate each other?” Sheila asked.

  “Because,” Gary said as he spilled wine into Sheila’s glass, “we were so young and stupid back then.”