Suddenly the man looked up and sniffed the air. He turned, and Quill felt his gaze sweep the crowd. Any second, he was going to spot him.
Quill felt afraid, but he was more afraid of looking afraid. He didn’t want to experience how whatever this man was going to threaten him with might chime in with the emptiness inside him and with the previous impotence he’d suffered at the hands of this lot, further diminishing who he tried to be.
‘Hoi!’ Quill bellowed. ‘I want a word with you, sonny Jim!’
That terrible gaze engulfed him, and the fear accompanied it. But, a moment later, with a crash of boxes-
The man was running for the door!
Quill felt an old energy come flooding into him. He sprinted off after him.
Costain had been surprised to find that the dangerous gang boss he’d had in his head when he’d considered this move had turned out to be a gawky young man in a T-shirt advertising an occult shop. He seemed to be in charge of this large stall that had so many punters flocking to it. Sefton had then popped over to check out the other side of the hall, and reported back about the other shop, that what they were actually looking at here was a room seemingly shaped not by occult power but by money.
So where had the power gone? Costain couldn’t feel it now they’d got here. It almost seemed as if it was. .
‘Hiding,’ muttered Sefton under his breath. ‘It knows we’re here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘You get used to this stuff. Just tune into it.’
‘Do you?’
‘It’s now under something. . or someone on that stall’s gone dark on us.’
Costain summoned all his confidence. And, yeah, that felt like a blanket that had a lot of holes in it now. He straightened up and began walking as if he had a gun on him. He headed straight for the young man, and noted Sefton peeling off behind him to check out the merchandise further along the stall. ‘Hey,’ he began, ‘. . no, never mind about the queue, I’m talking to you, son. Who’s in charge here?’
‘The Book of Changes.’ The woman sat opposite Ross, staring coldly at her, and held up the small volume. ‘Pick a number between one and three hundred and sixty-eight.’
Ross took a while to consider. She was wondering if she should text a message to the others to converge on her position. After their business was concluded, she was going to have to try to apprehend this woman. ‘Two hundred and. . seven.’
‘One to three?’
‘Three.’
‘One to seventy?’
‘Three.’
‘Right,’ the other woman said tersely, ‘that’s Fives Court. That’s the first part of your answer.’
‘Is that book. . the London A-Z?’
The woman was silent. She clearly wasn’t going to offer any more than she had to. ‘Again.’ This was even more like the sort of divination which might have found them Losley. Ross gave her three more random numbers. ‘Four Seasons Close. You’ll “win” by favouring the first over the second. That’s your answer. Five is better than four.’
‘What does that mean: five is better than four?’ Four what? What was five? ‘Do the locations have anything to do with it? Does the rest of the address matter?’
The woman remained silent.
‘Listen,’ said Ross, ‘you know we’re after Mora Losley, and you surely can’t agree with what she does. You could help save those children-’
‘I won’t help you. Not your kind. Never.’
Ross pursed her lips. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s go for the Tarot of London.’
Quill burst out of the hall into the corridor outside. The man he was chasing was just ahead. ‘Police!’ he yelled. The ragged red-faced man spun on his heel and, for a moment, Quill thought he was going to stop. But he was fumbling to get something out of his pocket. He found it and snapped it up to head height, pointing it straight at Quill. Who threw himself into cover behind a pillar adjacent to the wall. He hadn’t got a good look at the thing, but it was close enough to a gun to make him move.
‘I really do just want a word with you!’
But, as he said it, something enormous rushed at him from behind. Quill was hauled away from the wall and thrown into the middle of the corridor. He reflexively put his arms around his head and staggered, aware that he was being battered left and right by. . air. Air carrying leaflets and rubbish and cardboard boxes. But what was worse was the anger of it: the air was hot and furious and needed something, was missing something as much as Quill was. It was nothing to do with this man, he realized. The man was just. . using it. That understanding let him find his feet. He could hardly see the bloke now, just a shape in front of him. He couldn’t see how he was producing this effect with whatever he’d grabbed. The beating around Quill’s head got worse, and there were stones now, and suddenly one shot through his guard and struck him across the temple.
Quill focused all his anger on the man in front of him, put his head down, gave a roar and charged.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ The young stall manager was looking at Costain fearfully.
‘Don’t give me that. Where is he? Where’s the boss?’
‘Barry’s back at the shop-’
‘Fuck me, do you want me to tell him how you were like this? You know what I’m talking about, ’cos if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be scared: instead you’d be angry. I’m talking about-’
‘London stuff,’ said Sefton, arriving beside them as if his boss had called him over, looking bigger somehow than Costain was used to seeing him. ‘London rules, you feel me?’
Costain was sure there was a crowd gathering around them now. But not one of them questioned the basis on which he was verbally abusing this poor kid. This was like a market where the stallholders paid protection money. A lot of people here knew vaguely that there was another class of people who came round here sometimes, and so did this kid. And all Costain had to do now was keep carrying on like one of those.
‘We. . we don’t have. . We’re just. . paraphernalia.’
‘I’ve got all the crystal unicorns I want, boy. You know what I’m talking about.’
‘Are. . are you the ones who were going to collect the package?’
Costain looked skywards in apparent relief, and bumped fists with Sefton. ‘Finally!’
The man went to look under the table. He came back a moment later, carrying what looked like a bit of flat red stone wrapped in a sheet of paper. ‘It’s nothing to do with us,’ he said. ‘He just left it here and said someone would come asking for it.’
Costain nodded as if this was all entirely expected, and took the package. ‘You can now go about your business, my friend,’ he said. ‘Good day to you.’ He led Sefton away from the stand, and the crowd parted meekly for them.
‘Wish we could have asked for a description,’ remarked Sefton.
Costain just about managed not to snap at him. He was holding the paper-wrapped package between two fingers, hoping that he hadn’t messed up any fingerprints left on it. By means of the Sight, he could feel the burden of something notable, the strange weight of it in his hand. ‘You feel anything?’
‘Yeah. It’s a tiny bit different to what we felt from across the room, so I reckon we must have felt whoever left that here, and then that feeling changed a bit, without me noticing, ’cos then I was just feeling the presence of this.’