We stood at the head of a short paved alley. When London had been no more than a huddle of herders’ huts in a clearing on the hill now called Ludsgate, this spot had been the beginning of a path that had linked two sacred groves. Now it was blocked by a crooked little house whose ground floor was given over to a cafe. Warm light fell from its plate-glass window onto the plastic tables and chairs on the flagstones in front of it. A neon sign boasted that it was open all hours.
“I haven’t been here for a long time,” I said, “but tonight it’s the nearest haven. Even if you don’t want any refreshment, we can at least sit comfortably while we talk.”
“What have we got to talk about?”
“I can see everything that you can see. We can talk about that, to begin with,” I said, and stepped inside the cafe. After a moment, to my immense relief, the girl followed me.
Fluorescent light shone on worn wooden tables and chapel chairs, the glass-fronted counter and its polished steel top. A man in a grey suit sat in one corner, toying with an espresso in a doll’s-house-sized china cup; in another, a taxi driver studied an old copy of the financial Times, his laminated licence on a chain around the neck of his short-sleeved shirt.
Rose, the pleasant, round-faced woman of indeterminate age who had owned this place for more than a century, materialized from the shadows behind the massive coffee machine. Her silver hair was caught up in a bun with a pencil stuck through it. Her lipstick was bright red. Her smile was wide and warm and welcoming. “Mr C! What a pleasant surprise. Will you be having your usual? And what about your friend? You both look in need of a refresher.”
“We ran into a little local difficulty.”
“Down by the canal, I expect,” Rose said, as she bustled behind the counter, slapping bacon rashers on a griddle, buttering two slices of white bread.
“You know of it?”
“It’s been lying low in the Hackney Marshes ever since I’ve been running this place, Mr C, but recently it’s been growing bolder, if you know what I mean. Change is in the air, isn’t it? Yours isn’t the only old face I’ve seen recently,” she added in a more confidential tone, nodding towards the man in the grey suit as he threw down some coins and left. “Foreigner, he is, but I’ve a feeling I know him from way back when.”
I watched him walk away down the little alley. He was unfamiliar, but I could not help wondering if he had anything to do with the two men in the red Jaguar.
“He’s been coming in about this time for the past week,” Rose said. “Sits in the corner, drinks his coffee, doesn’t say a word to a soul.” She smiled at Miranda, who was staring at the taxi driver. “And what will you be having, dear? A Coke, perhaps. A little sugar does you good after you’ve had a shock. Much better than coffee or alcohol. You’re lucky you fell in with Mr C. He looks a little odd, I know, what with that black suit of his, and his bow tie and his hat and his cane, but he’s the best of us.”
I took off my Homburg and executed a small bow. “Why, thank you, Rose.”
“Pish-posh, Mr C, I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. That’s why I’m pleased to see you out and about again.”
While Miranda sucked on the straw stuck in her can of Coca-Cola, I squeezed brown sauce from the plastic bottle into my bacon sandwich, stirred three spoonfuls of brown sugar into my tea, and added a dash of brandy from my flask. I asked her about the imp she had made into her familiar, where she had found it and how she had mastered it, but she shrugged off my questions, and took out a crushed pack of cigarettes and lit one. The left side of her face was reddened, beginning to swell from the blow she’d received. She blew out smoke and said, “You think you’re a character, don’t you? What with your fancy words and your funny clothes.”
“Something happened just now, on the canal bridge. Something attacked you.”
“If that bloke tries it on again,” Miranda said with sudden cold ferocity, “I’ll cut off his dick. I swear I will.”
“You know quite well that I do not mean Liz’s boyfriend. Did you see it, Miranda, when it took your familiar?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Miranda said, but the hand holding her cigarette was shaking. I saw thin white lines on the skin inside her wrist. I saw oval white scars.
“You can see imps, and you can make them obey you. Your familiar was one such. You found it and trained it to do your bidding. That attachment grew a kind of leash or umbilicus between you and your pet, and it nearly caused your downfall. The revenant that ate your familiar swallowed the umbilicus too, and for that reason you were briefly attached to it. You may not have seen it, Miranda, but I know that you must have felt its hunger.”
The girl shrugged, and would not meet my gaze.
“You tried to use the imp you had captured and trained against the man. He wouldn’t be able to see it, but it would have scared him away. I believe that you wanted to do it for a good reason. You wanted to help the girl. Is that how you always use the imps you make into your familiars?”
Miranda drew so hard on her cigarette that its tip crackled, and gave me a flat, challenging stare. She said, “What do they look like to you?”
“They are mostly black, and most of them are no bigger than insects. They are spawned by discharge of violent emotion, or by delirium induced by drink or drugs. The one you had tamed was exceptionally large.”
“There’s a bloke that lives near me. He drinks a lot, and he’s always angry at something or other. His flat is full of ‘em. Law courts are good places too. Lots of fear and anger there. I get ‘em to follow me, feed ‘em up, get ‘em to do what I want. It ain’t so different from training a dog.” Miranda drew on her cigarette again. “I suppose you’re gonna give me grief about it.”
“There are worse things in the world than imps,” I said. “You met one of them just now.”
“I see all kinds of things. People who aren’t really there. Dead people. Ghosts. There’s one over there, reading a newspaper. He’s one of the harmless ones. I try to make them do stuff too, but they don’t listen. How about you? Can you make them do what you want?”
“You have a rare gift, Miranda, and it frightens you. It makes you feel that you are different — that there is something wrong with you. You punish yourself because of it. You cut your flesh with razor blades. You stub cigarettes out on your skin. You punish your body because you believe that it is betraying you. I understand, because I have that gift too. I see the things that you see-”
“You don’t understand nothing,” Miranda said. She crushed out her cigarette on the table’s scarred red Formica and stood up. Her can of Coca-Cola fell over, spilling a fizzing slick. “I don’t know what your game is, but I want you to leave me alone. All right?”
I was surprised to discover that I felt disappointed by her rejection. As she turned away, I said, “If you want to talk to me again, come here and ask about Mr Carlyle. Will you do that?”
She kicked the door open, and walked straight out.
Behind the counter, Rose looked at me and shook her head slightly, but whether in amusement, sympathy, or disapproval it was impossible to tell.
Eversince my parents died and I quit Edinburgh for London, I have spent most of my life alone, and for most of that time I have lived in a tall, narrow Georgian house in Spitalfields, at the edge of the City of London. It is a quiet, comfortably shabby place. The only modern improvements are the gas lighting and the gas geyser that, when lit, with much volcanic rumbling spits a miserly stream of hot water into the bath. The few ghosts that inhabit the house are harmless; they, and the mice in the walls, are my only company. I make sure that every threshold is well protected, and I do not advertise for clients. Anyone in need of my services must find their own way to me.