CHAPTER TEN

George?’ said Mr Sprague. ‘Who’s George?’

‘You are.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Mr Sprague looked down, and Frank couldn’t help being reminded of a small boy who’s been caught out in an obvious lie. ‘What a silly question,’ he said. ‘I’m here.’ Then, as if he’d just remembered that he was the injured party: ‘What do you mean by bursting into my office like this? I have no idea who you are. Get out right now, or I’ll call the police.’

Frank clicked his tongue. ‘You’re not very good at this, are you?’

Mr Sprague’s face fell, and again, Frank got an impression of extreme youth. Odd, since Mr Sprague had to be at least fifty-five. ‘I don’t have to talk to you,’ Mr Sprague said. ‘Go away. Immediately.’

‘Not until you tell me what you’ve done with George.’ Frank took a step forward; Mr Sprague jumped out of his chair and retreated behind his desk. ‘Oh for crying out loud,’ Frank said wearily. ‘It’s bloody obvious you’re not him.’

‘Isn’t.’

‘It is.’

‘Isn’t.’

Frank Carpenter wasn’t a violent man. He preferred to resolve conflicts by quiet, rational argument or (better still) by running away. There are times, however, when even the gentlest soul can be goaded into fury. Frank lunged, stretching across the desk, and grabbed the lapels of Mr Sprague’s suit jacket in both hands. ‘Is!’ he roared, and at precisely that moment, Mr Sprague disappeared, leaving Frank baffled and empty-handed.

Not quite. As he stood and stared at the place where Mr Sprague had been, he noticed something sticking to the palm of his right hand. It was a single long blonde hair.

‘We’re here to see Mr Pickersgill,’ Emily said.

The receptionist looked up at her. ‘Have you got an appointment?’

‘No.’

‘Just a moment, I’ll see if he’s free. Who should I say—?’ No harm in giving her name, or the firm’s. After all, she was here because the board-the rest of the board-were paying for her to do a job. ‘Emily Spitzer,’ she said. ‘Carringtons.’

‘I’m afraid he’s on the phone right now,’ the receptionist said. ‘If you’d care to take a seat, I’ll ring through as soon as his call’s finished.’

This time, Erskine had brought something to read; well, he would have, wouldn’t he? It had been a suggestion rather than a direct order, but obviously he’d taken it to heart, considered it and seen its self-evident merits; probably written it down in a notebook. The book he’d selected was Hasdrubal and Singh on banshee management; Emily’d been told to read it for her final exams, but she’d never managed to stay awake past the introduction. Erskine, she noticed, was two-thirds of the way through, and was using a pink requisition slip as a bookmark.

Needless to say, she’d forgotten to bring a book of her own. She glanced down at the selection of classic issues of Country Life and The Times colour supplement, all of them so old she was surprised they weren’t bound in vellum and chained to the table. Not for her, she decided. Instead, she half-closed her eyes and tried to run scenarios for the job ahead. It was what you were supposed to do when you were waiting on a mission like this. She’d never managed to get the hang of it.

Instead, she thought: how the hell can you have a troll on your board of directors and not notice? A goblin, now; that’d be quite understandable. Goblins were natural shape-shifters. Ditto dark elves, gnomes and the Fey. Even giants-there were some very short giants, and some of the full-sized ones had techniques for shrinking down to normal proportions for up to seventy-two hours; a really smart giant with access to the right equipment could probably pass for human indefinitely, or at least until his morphic signature began to break down under the strain. But trolls? No. Sunblock and dark glasses helped them cope with the daylight issue, but there wasn’t really anything they could do about their size, their shape, or the fact that their mouths were full of precious stones instead of teeth. You’d notice something like that, surely.

(Without taking his eyes off the page, Erskine reached in his top pocket, took out a small notebook, and wrote something down. Emily hated him.)

Yes, of course you’d notice. In which case it stood to reason that the other directors had noticed, probably long before Mr Pickersgill was promoted to the board, and they were fine about it-no silly prejudice, no bigotry, this is the twenty-first century after all. It therefore followed that if they now wanted their colleague terminated with extreme prejudice, it wasn’t because of his inhumanity. There’d be some other reasona difference of opinion over a takeover offer or a recapitalisation issue, or maybe they had a buy-back option over his shares and wanted to get them cheap from his executors before higher than anticipated mid-term profits sent the share price soaring. All sorts of possible reasons; and it was all quite legal and legitimate, since Mr Pickersgill happened not to be human. You can’t murder a monster, you can only kill it, and provided you abide by the requirements of the Supernatural Vermin (Welfare) Regulations 1977 and the various EU directives, they can’t have you for it. Which, Emily had to concede, was generally fine by her. Ninety-nine per cent of the creatures she dealt with in the course of her professional life were ruthless instinctive killers who had to be disposed of in order to make the planet habitable for small, weak, squishy human beings. The other one per cent-well, omelettes and eggs. No room in this business for sentiment or Disneyeqsue anthropomorphising.

Even so. She did what she always did when she reached this point, and thought about something else. Frank Carpenter no, we won’t think about him. All right, then, his problem. The disappearance of Mr Sprague.

That was all right. It was challenging, interesting, and sufficiently remote not to bother her. Emily considered the facts as she knew them.

The laws of metaphysics categorically state that people don’t just vanish. They can be changed into something else (Practical magic) or made to look like they aren’t there (Effective magic); in the latter case, they can even be made to believe themselves that they aren’t there, a useful trick if you can do it. They can be transported from one place to another (telekinesis). They can be killed and their component molecules instantaneously dispersed (Gardner’s Hammer); they can be banished to the interdimensional void through Probability Snares, Better Mousetraps and Consequence Mines, or retuned to super-low intensity frequencies that mean they can only be detected with a Kawaguchiya RF7000 oscilloscope and three-way litmus paper. Any one of these processes can give you an effect indistinguishable to the layman from vanishing. But people don’t just vanish. Doesn’t happen. Can’t be done.

Simple, then. She had to get into Sprague’s office with an RF7000 and take readings. That’d tell her what had happened to him, and thereafter the mystery should solve itself. It wouldn’t be difficult, not for Frank and his Portable Door; when everyone had gone home, and there was nobody to worry about apart from cleaners and night security. And then they could have dinner, to celebrate—

Emily’s train of thought skidded on the wet leaves of shock and ploughed into the embankment of shame. She wasn’t quite sure why. She’d do him a favour, naturally he’d want to thank her, they could discuss her findings over Thai chicken with lemon grass, and what was so very wrong about that? She couldn’t put the reason into words, but then, she didn’t have to. It’d be-what? Betrayal? Surrender? Prostituting her craft in order to worm her way into the affections of her mark?

Oh, come off it.

But. She scowled, and Erskine, happening to look up from his book, intercepted her ferocious glare and shrivelled like a salted slug. Good, she thought; serve him right for-well, for whatever it was he deserved to be punished for. Existing, for example.

‘Mr Pickersgill’s free now, if you’d like to go through.’

Who the hell was Mr Pickersgill? Oh yes, the troll they were here to kill. Emily stood up abruptly and marched towards the open door, Erskine trailing behind her like the tin cans behind a newly-weds’ car.

As soon as the door closed behind them, her mind reverted to tactical mode. They were in a small, bare room-interview room-with a plain table and three chairs; one door, but there was a nice old-fashioned sash window (sealed shut with nine or so coats of paint) and they were on the ground floor. She glanced through it and saw a grubby, overshadowed courtyard, empty apart from a colony of wheelie bins. Escape route, in case things went wrong. She ticked Priority One off her mental list, and relaxed very slightly.

‘Where should I sit?’ Erskine hissed at her.

Stupid question, she thought; no, scrub that, it’s a very good question, since he’ll be doing the sword work. She stared at the backs of the two visitors’ chairs, her mind a sudden blank. For sure, one of the chairs was better, strategically speaking, than the other, but just then she didn’t even know how to set about deciding which. ‘That one,’ she snapped, pointing at the space directly between the two.

‘Right,’ Erskine said, in a clipped, efficient voice, and took the chair furthest from the window. Well, of course. It placed him on the victim’s left, so he’d have space to use his right arm.

Assuming he was right-handed. Emily realised she hadn’t bothered to notice.

The door opened, and a troll walked in.

Other than his size-eight foot two, at a guess-there was nothing remotely intimidating about Mr Pickersgill. He was broad in proportion to his height, but cheeks like slices of grey spam and a veritable harem of extra chins dissipated the effect of his bulk. He was bald, with a shiny, pointy head that rose through a chaplet of fuzzy white hair like a mountain through clouds. He wore thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles and a plain dark blue suit with the sort of tie that only gets bought by children for Daddy’s birthday.

I can’t kill that, Emily thought.

Mr Pickersgill smiled. It was a pleasant smile, faintly apprehensive. ‘Ms Spitzer?’ He held out a big, soft hand. She shook it. ‘Sorry to keep you hanging about, call from one of our suppliers. Now then.’ He waited for them both to sit down, then lowered himself carefully into his chair. ‘What can I do for you?’

Erskine was looking at her. He was practically quivering, like a dog watching a rabbit. She gave him a tiny frown. Oh God, she thought.

It was, she realised, all about spiders. As a little girl, she’d squashed spiders because she was terrified of them. Really, there wasn’t anything else she could do. She couldn’t leave them be, in case they ran up her leg-unthinkable, yuck. She couldn’t catch them alive and put them out the window, because that’d mean touching them. She didn’t have the dexterity or the quick reactions to trap them in matchboxes. But a swift, decisive blow with a long-handled hairbrush turned them into a smear on the wall, and that was the problem solved. The killing aspect-an inoffensive living thing brutally and arbitrarily crushed to death never crossed her mind. Then, later, she killed spiders because they scared other people, and by then she was hardened to it. After that-spiders, dragons, vampires, manticores, harpies, the world was a better place without them. An article of faith, and no grey areas. A few brown, sticky ones, maybe, but no grey.

Mr Pickersgill, on the other hand, wasn’t a spider, not even by Emily’s extended definition. He was just a rather large man whose skin happened to be the colour and texture of pumice. He didn’t invalidate the spider principle; it just didn’t apply to him, that was all.

Which left her in an awkward position, with only one way out. She took a deep breath.

‘I work for Carringtons,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Excellent firm,’ he said. ‘By the way, how’s old Colin Gomez these days? He did a marvellous job for us once. Infestation of pixies at our Swansea plant. Had ‘em all cleared out in no time, we hardly lost any production.’

She thought about the pixies. The recommended method was cyanide gas. ‘It was Mr Gomez who sent us,’ she said. ‘On behalf of your fellow directors.’

She’d hoped that that would be enough to send the penny tumbling through space. But he just looked mildly puzzled. ‘Oh yes?’

‘That’s right. They hired us to kill you.’

Mr Pickersgill froze; all apart from his eyes, which turned round and huge. Magnified by his glasses, they looked like fried ostrich eggs.

‘Because,’ she went on, ‘you’re a troll. And, as you probably know, trolls count as supernatural vermin, which means they can be killed-well, any time, so long as you obey the regulations.’ She paused, to give him a chance to digest what she’d just said. He seemed to be having trouble with that.

‘Killed,’ he repeated. ‘Heavens.’

‘Now,’ Emily continued, and to her surprise her voice sounded level and calm. ‘You can tell by the fact you’re still alive that-well, I’ve got a few issues with this assignment.’

‘Issues.’

She nodded. ‘The way you people run your company is none of my concern,’ she went on, ‘but I’m assuming they want you out of the way for some other reason besides you being a—’

‘Quite. Yes.’

‘Fine. On the other hand-‘ (help me out here, damn you) ‘- you’ve got to appreciate my position. If I go back to my bosses and tell them I didn’t do the job because I don’t like the thought of killing someone because they’re a nuisance to their business colleagues, I’ll quite probably lose my job. And-no offence my career means more to me than your life does.’

‘Perfectly reasonable view,’ Mr Pickersgill mumbled. ‘Perfectly reasonable.’

‘So.’ She was making terribly heavy weather of all this, she knew. ‘I’m asking you if you can think of any way I can not kill you, without disobeying a direct order and being told to clear my desk by half past five.’ Pause. ‘I’m open to any sensible suggestions, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to hurry you along a bit. I’m sorry, but I’ve got a whole load of paperwork to catch up on when I get back to the office—’

‘It’s all right.’ Mr Pickersgill held up a doormat-sized hand. ‘I do apologise. This has come as something of a shock, but I think I can see a way. Would you mind very much waiting here for a moment, while I see to something? I’ll get Denise to bring you in some coffee and biscuits.’

The biscuits turned out to be ginger nuts and Rich Tea. Emily watched Erskine eat one of each and not die of arsenic poisoning, then helped herself. The coffee was good, too-proper filter coffee, not instant.

‘Excuse me.’

‘Mm?’ she replied with her mouth full.

‘With all due respect,’ Erskine said, and you could believe he actually meant it, ‘should you have done that? I mean, warn him and—’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

‘No, I should’ve let you chop his head off with the magic sword. Then we’d have got the work order signed by one of the other directors, and gone back to the office. But I didn’t feel like doing that, so I didn’t.’

‘Ah.’ Short, thoughtful silence. ‘This is one of those ethical things, isn’t it?’

Emily sighed. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Actually, you may want to write this down. Ready?’

Notebook out. ‘Fire away.’

‘Good. In this business,’ she said slowly, ‘we don’t do ethics. As far as we’re concerned, ethics is southern East Anglia pronounced with a lisp. Got that? You can call it Spitzer’s Law if you like. By the same token, we don’t go around scragging company directors, either. It’s—’ She paused, trying to think in Erskinean terms. ‘It’s beneath the dignity of our profession. We have an understanding with the Mafia. We don’t rub out people’s business rivals, they don’t tamper with the fabric of perceived reality. It’s perfectly simple. And it’s I after E in “perceived”.’

‘Right.’ Erskine reversed his pencil, erased a few letters with the rubber end and made the correction. ‘So what do we do?’ Emily frowned. Good question. ‘We drink our coffee,’ she said.

There was a long, pensive silence after that. It lasted until the door opened and Mr Pickersgill came back in. He was smiling and holding an envelope. There was blood all round his mouth.

‘I’ve discussed the matter with my colleagues,’ he said, ‘and we won’t be requiring your services after all. I’ve signed a cheque for your wasted time and call-out charges; I’ve left it blank, perhaps Colin Gomez would be kind enough to fill in the correct amount. Please give him my regards, by the way.’

He put the envelope on the desk. There was a big red thumbprint on the back flap.

‘Your colleagues—’ Emily said quietly.

Mr Pickersgill burped and apologised. ‘My former colleagues,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much for your sensitivity and discretion. I’m sure we’ll be doing business again in the near future.’ He took the handkerchief from his top pocket and dabbed at the blood around his mouth. ‘I’ll see to it that the new board puts all our supernatural work your way in future, it’s the least I can do.’ He winced sharply and put a hand on his chest. ‘Dear me,’ he added, ‘indigestion. My doctor did warn me about eating between meals.’

Erskine, she noticed with a small degree of pleasure, had gone ever such a funny colour. ‘That’s all right, then,’ she said. ‘We’ll be getting back to the office. Nice to have met you.’

‘The pleasure was all mine.’ Mr Pickersgill beamed at her. ‘Let me show you out.’

He led the way back to the front office. Emily followed, with Erskine trailing nervously after her, hugging the golf bag in his arms like a baby. At the street door she shook hands once again with Mr Pickersgill, trying hard not to see what was under his fingernails. Then he reached inside his mouth with a forefinger and thumb and tugged at something. She heard a brittle snapping sound; then he reached for her hand and pressed something in it. ‘A small token of thanks,’ he said. She hesitated, then glanced down. It was slightly damp, about the size of the top joint of her thumb, and it sparkled. ‘They grow back,’ Mr Pickersgill assured her with a pleasant smile. Then he noticed Erskine, who was standing there looking fuddled. ‘And one for your colleague, of course,’ he added.

‘Really, you shouldn’t,’ Emily started to say, but by then Mr Pickersgill had broken off another tooth and pressed it into Erskine’s hand. He stared at the troll as though he’d just kissed him on the mouth, then looked at what he’d been given, yelped and dropped the golf bag. It came open at the neck, and the magic sword slid out like a landed fish.

Mr Pickersgill looked at it with an expression of extreme distaste. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, in a slightly strained voice. ‘For the— Well, you’d have had to, I can quite see that. Allow me,’ he added, as Erskine went to retrieve it. He stooped down-an impressive performance, given his size-and took hold of the sword’s hilt. It screamed.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Emily heard herself say, as embarrassment flooded her mind. ‘They’re programmed, you see, and technically you’re a—’

The scabbard fell off the blade, and it twisted in Mr Pickersgill’s hand until he dropped it. The sword fell to the floor, nicking his trouser leg on the way down. Mr Pickersgill hopped out of the way with an agility hard to credit in such a large creature. ‘I do apologise,’ he mumbled, his eyes fixed on the sword, which was still quivering a little as it lay on the carpet. ‘Thoughtless of me, I do hope I haven’t damaged it in any way. If there’s anything like that, you must send me the bill, I insist.’ The sword shuffled half an inch towards him across the carpet, its edges shining blue. Magic swords will cut through anything, but they’re criminally lacking in tact.

‘Put it away,’ Emily hissed, but Erskine was frozen solid. She darted forward and grabbed the sword like a mother pulling her child out of a fight. She was prepared for it, but even so; as her hand closed round the hilt, she was filled with an urgent need to strike, send the troll’s head spinning off its shoulders— Without stopping to think, she snatched up the scabbard and ran the blade down into it. She felt the sword shiver, then relax.

‘Oh dear,’ Mr Pickersgill was saying. ‘Now you’ve cut your finger. Lorraine, plasters and disinfectant, quickly, please.’

News to her; Emily glanced down and saw a little red line on the pad of her middle finger, like a paper cut. Instinctively she put the finger to her lips and licked it. ‘Please don’t bother,’ she said loudly and clearly. ‘It’s just a—’

But the receptionist was already there, with enough medical supplies to equip a hospital. Emily gave up, and held her hand out obediently. As she did so, she had the strangest feeling. It was very faint, and it was definitely centred in her hand, though gradually starting to creep up her arm; but the nearest thing she could compare it to was the wonderful clarity of hearing you get just after you’ve had wax syringed out of your ears. Silly, of course, because you don’t hear with your fingers—

‘There you are,’ the receptionist said brightly. ‘Good as new.’

That was what she said, and Emily heard it perfectly clearly, every word. At the same time, though, just as if someone else was speaking simultaneously, she could just make out the same voice—

-Load of fuss about nothing, as if I didn’t have enough to do—

- only very quiet, just on the threshold of her hearing. She stared at the receptionist, who smiled pleasantly, gathered up her first-aid stuff and went back to her desk.

‘Thanks,’ Emily muttered. ‘Now we really must be going. Goodbye, Mr Pickersgill. Come on, you.’

‘Goodbye, Ms Spitzer.’ Horrible, vicious creature. Get rid of it, make it go away. ‘Safe journey.’ Hope it falls under a bus, serve it right, vicious, nasty. ‘See you again, I hope.’

By the time she’d reached the pavement outside, her head was spinning, and her whole body felt like one enormous, bloated ear. She staggered across to a lamp-post and leaned against it, desperate to get a grip. Voices in her head; they warned you about that in college. An occupational hazard, particularly in pest control. If you’re lucky, they go away again after a bit, but whatever you do, don’t listen to them or do what they tell you, and most especially, don’t be tempted to raise an army and drive the English out of Aquitaine— But no, it wasn’t that kind of voice. It wasn’t telling her to do anything; it wasn’t really a voice in that sense. It was more like-yes, that was it; more like the simultaneous translations they have at the UN or Brussels, but without the slight time-lag. When the receptionist and Mr Pickersgill had spoken to her, she’d heard them twice; the words said out loud, and a translation—

Oh, Emily thought. That.

‘Are you all right?’ Erskine was peering into her face, intruding unbearably into her space. ‘You’re acting very strange. Shall I call an ambulance?’

‘Shut up, Erskine.’ Yes, she knew exactly what this was. She’d read about it, years ago, in mythozoology. Except, she hadn’t… She screwed up her eyes, as though peeling onions. The sword. She’d cut herself on it, after it had fallen on Mr Pickersgill’s leg and cut him first. Could it really have happened like that? It seemed so unlikely. But the effect; she most definitely wasn’t imagining it.

Bloody hell, she thought. ‘Taxi,’ she snapped. ‘Come on, don’t just stand there. And watch what you’re doing with that stupid thing.’

Erskine scuttled away, leaving her feeling weak but somehow-lightened, as though someone had turned the gravity down by a third, just for her. Because if she was right, and it was what she thought it was … She blinked three times in a row. It was amazing. People had died trying to achieve what she’d just done by accident, and just think of the advantages.

And the drawbacks, she reminded herself. The drawbacks.

Erskine had caught a taxi; it was sitting purring at the kerb, its door invitingly open. She managed to wobble across the pavement, nearly banged her head on the door frame, and flopped into a wonderful, comfortable seat. She heard the door slam, and the driver said ‘Where to, miss?’

(Nice arse, tits too small, bit on the chunky side but— )

‘Cheapside,’ she snapped angrily. ‘And you’re disgusting.’

‘Oh. Right you are, miss.’

The taxi jolted along steadily for a while. Emily didn’t feel like talking, and Erskine just kept turning the diamond tooth over and over in his hand.

‘Is this worth a lot of money?’ he asked eventually.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’ Pause. ‘Do you think-I mean, are we allowed to keep them? Or—’

‘Depends,’ she said, too weary to bother looking at him.

‘Ah. I mean, depends on what?’

‘Oh whether you’re stupid enough to tell anyone you were given it.’

‘I see.’ Another pause. ‘But don’t you think we should?’

‘No.’

‘Right.’ And another pause. ‘I’m sorry about what happened. With the sword.’

Emily sighed. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Just try not to be so clumsy next time.’

‘I will, definitely. Um, what did happen with the sword?’

‘What? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, basically, it’s allergic to trolls. And goblins and dark elves and vampires. Instruments of darkness generally. It’s so the bad guy can’t take your sword off you in a fight and use it against you. Assuming the bad guy isn’t human, of course.’ She grinned. ‘That’s the sort of assumption they tended to make, back when magic swords were in fashion. Naive, or what?’

‘I understand, thank you.’ Erskine took a long last look at his diamond and put it away. ‘That troll,’ he said.

‘Mr Pickersgill.’

Nod. ‘Did he—?’

‘Yes.’

‘What, all of them?’

Emily shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Presumably he took out enough of them to make sure he had the majority shareholding. He may have had to leave one or two alive to make up a quorum at a board meeting, so he could vote himself managing director. I’m afraid I don’t know much about company law.’ She frowned. ‘Have you got a problem with that?’

‘Me? No. Well.’ Erskine pulled a thoughtful face. He looked like someone on his way to a fancy-dress party, dressed as Thoughtful. ‘I mean, he’s a troll, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘But, on the other hand, the other directors can’t have been very nice people, or they wouldn’t have wanted to kill him just to get control of the company.’

‘Yes.’

‘Which is what he just did,’ Erskine said. ‘By killing them.’

‘Yes, but—’ Emily hesitated. Yes, but they started it. Yes, but he was polite and nice. ‘Look, the customer’s happy and we got paid. Nothing else matters. All right?’ He looked at her as though she was a burning bush.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

Aaargh, she thought.

The taxi stopped. She let Erskine pay, since she didn’t particularly want to communicate any further with the driver. ‘I’ll fill out a yellow chit so you can get it back off expenses,’ she told Erskine as they walked into the front office. ‘Would you mind doing the report? I’ve had about enough for one day.’

‘Of course. Thank you for trusting me with the responsibility.’

‘My pleasure. Now put that stupid thing back where you got it from.’

Erskine trotted away, and Emily wandered slowly back to her room, closed the door behind her and dropped into her chair. There was the usual wadge of While-You-Were-Out notes and yellow stickies on her desk, but she couldn’t be fussed to look at them.

The advantages, she thought. And the drawbacks.

The phone jarred her out of her contemplations. She snatched at it and snapped, ‘Yes?’

‘Call for you.’ Aren’t we in a mood, then?

‘Fine. Who is it?’

‘Frank Carpenter. About Mr Sprague.’

Oh, she thought. ‘Put him through.’

‘Connecting.’ What did your last slave die of? Click, then Frank’s voice, saying ‘Hello.’

Emily froze. If she was right about what had happened to her at Mr Pickersgill’s office, she really didn’t want to talk to Frank right now. It could be—

‘Hello? Are you there?’

‘Sorry, can’t talk now,’ she said quickly. ‘Meet me after work?’

‘Yes.’ Yippee!

Oh God, she thought. ‘Where?’

‘That pub. Westmoreland or something.’

‘Cumberland Arms?’

‘Yes. Quarter past six. Bye.’

Emily rammed the phone down as though plugging a leak with it. Hell, she thought, this is going to be so embarrassing. Unless, of course, there was some way of controlling it.

There had to be. She jumped up, pulled Bowyer & Leong’s Foundations of Magic Procedure & Practice off her bookshelf and dived into the index. Telepathic communications, reception, suppression of: 12, 78, 566, 819ff.

When she’d read all the references, she put the book back, sat down again and said ‘Bugger,’ out loud and very clearly. There was a procedure, right enough. Basically, it consisted of saying nursery rhymes over and over in your head when you didn’t want to hear what someone else was thinking. With enough practice, the book reckoned, it became automatic, so you didn’t have to do it consciously. Eventually you’d be able to filter out what you wanted to hear and ignore the rest. Eventually.

Emily looked at her watch. Quarter to five. She didn’t have time for eventually.

There must be another way. She tried the New Oxford Thaumaturgy, which said the same as Bowyer & Leong. Likewise O’Shaugnessy’s Theory & Practice and Morrison’s First Steps In Commercial Sorcery. With a sigh, she turned to her last remaining resource, Magic For Dummies. It too recommended nursery rhymes, though in rather less formal language …

- But hey, who can be bothered with all that, right? So instead, try 2ccs of lithium cryptosulphate on a sugar lump. Works a charm, and you don’t have to share your head with Mary’s lamb.

A greatly underrated book, Emily said to herself as she pulled open her desk drawer and took out her bare-essentials stash of chemicals. She didn’t have anything to measure the lithium cryp with, but she was a good guesser: two drops on a cube of Tate & Lyall’s best, and down the hatch.

Count to five; then pick up the phone.

‘Yes?’ reception answered.

‘Could you be awfully sweet,’ Emily said, ‘and just nip over to the closed-file store and get me everything on the Skallagrimson job? 1982, I think it was, but you may have to dig down a bit. Some time in the Eighties, anyhow.’

Pause. ‘All right.’

‘No rush. Any time between now and half past five.’

‘All right.’

Emily kept her mind closed for the ‘all’, then opened it on the ‘right’. The result made her sit up very straight in her chair, but it proved conclusively that the lithium cryp was doing its job, but hadn’t wiped out the effect completely. Far from it. She wondered where Nikki on the front desk had learned how to swear in goblin.

‘Thanks ever so much,’ she said, and put the phone down. That was all right, then. If she could control it (was the lithium-cryp effect permanent, or did you have to keep it topped up? She’d find out soon enough), she was definitely onto a winner. All advantages, no drawbacks, and wouldn’t it look good on her CV? If, of course, she chose to mention it to her employers, future or present…

She sat back in her chair. The thought hadn’t occurred to her before; but if there was someone at Carringtons trying to kill her-because of work; what other reason could there be? wouldn’t the simplest, safest thing be to resign and get another job? She could do that. Just think: no more Colin Gomez, no more credit-control meetings with Mr Hook. No more waking up in the mornings and thinking, Oh shit, I’ve got to go to that place again today. And, of course, no more people trying to kill her. Werewolves and dragons and Atkinsonii and dark elves, yes, but not her colleagues. Presumably.

Emily frowned. It wasn’t as though she liked it at Carringtons; but it was her job, and she felt strangely reluctant to part with it. Silly, really; actually, stupid verging on suicidal. Even so; her job, her office (her beat-up filing cabinet with the sticky top drawer, her frayed carpet, her chair that went sproing if you leaned too far back, her overflowing in-tray, her Too Difficult pile, her sheaf of While-You-Were-Outs, her fluorescent-tube ceiling light that flickered very faintly all the time and guaranteed a headache after forty-five minutes). Her life.

There’s an old saying in the magic biz: all work and no play makes Jack a junior partner by age thirty. She wanted that; not a desperate, dream-haunting longing, but as much as she’d ever wanted anything. It’d all be different, after all, when she was on the letterhead. No more being ordered around by idiots, told off about her late invoices, badgered into ripping off the clients to meet some wildly overblown quarterly target. Her destiny was the centre seat, command, a starship of her own to roam the galaxy in. If she changed jobs, it’d mean starting all over again, settling herself into a new and probably hostile hierarchy, learning a whole new set of people.

Excuses, Emily realised. I’m just too lazy.

My life, she thought; and for some reason that conjured up a mental image of Frank Carpenter, of all people. Someone she’d only met once or twice (that she could remember …), someone she hardly knew. Someone she couldn’t really have much in common with, since he wasn’t even in the trade. Someone.

Oh for crying out loud. Shaking her head, she reached for the stack of notes and stickies and shuffled through them, dividing them into piles - Not Now, Maybe Tomorrow, Sometime, Never. For a moment, she was tempted to sweep the whole lot off her desk onto the floor in a grand gesture; but she’d only have to pick them up again later, so why bother?

Indeed.

Now she was feeling guilty. So she picked out a note at random and looked at it. Mr Allenby at English Nature, please call back re application to cull giant spectral hound on Dartmoor within a site of special scientific interest. Silly. Someone had to go and dispose of the wretched thing before it ate a tourist, but she was going to have to grovel and plead and be made to feel she was being done an enormous favour by a stupid little man who’d probably wee in his pants if she saw so much as a single fluorescent footprint. Wouldn’t it be better, she caught herself thinking, if people could be made to deal with their own spiders? Probably not. If you left that sort of thing to the general public, bless them, the spiders’d probably end up squashing people.

So she rang Mr Allenby, who was actually very nice and helpful, and promised to push the paperwork through as quickly as possible so she’d have her dispensation order before the autumn rains started and the moor turned into impassable bog. No trouble, that’s what we’re here for.

Emily thought about that. Just when you’ve squared up to the solemn realisation that life is a bitch, it turns round and does something nice, just to confuse you.

At twenty-five past five, Nikki staggered in with an armful of dusty old files and manila envelopes. ‘What’ve you got there?’ Emily asked her.

‘Skallagrimson files,’ Nikki grunted. ‘Where do you want them?’ Of course she’d forgotten all about that. ‘Oh, on the floor, anywhere,’ she mumbled guiltily. ‘Thanks.’

“Salright.’ Nikki dumped the files on the floor, wiped cobweb out of her eye, and left. Yes, but it was a necessary experiment, Emily told herself. Like Bikini Atoll. She got up and shifted the pile so she wouldn’t trip over it all the time. So much for command. Now she thought about it, maybe she wouldn’t like it so much after all.

Dutifully she made a file note of her chat with Mr Allenby, filled in Mr Pickersgill on her time sheet, wrote a memo to Colin Gomez and paper-clipped Mr PickersgilPs cheque to it; and then it was five past six. Doesn’t time fly when you’re doing tedious chores while racked by deep-rooted existential doubt? She switched off the plugs, turned off the lights, hurried upstairs to the stationery cupboard and signed out an RF700 0 scanner.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she panted, as she slid into a chair in the front bar of the Cumberland Arms a quarter of an hour later. ‘Got held up. Not a problem you ever have to face, I expect.’

Frank smiled at her. There was a glass half full of what looked like orange juice in front of him on the table. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Partly because of the Door, but mostly because I don’t have an awful lot to do most of the time. I guess you rush about a lot.’

My life, Emily thought. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s called earning a living-you should try it some time.’

He looked at her. ‘Should I?’

Shrug. ‘Maybe not. I don’t think it’d suit you. I’m not sure it suits me, actually, but I don’t have much of a choice.’ No, not where she wanted the conversation to go, even with a head full of lithium cryp. ‘You said you wanted to talk to me, about your Mr Sprague.’

Frank gazed at her for a moment, then said, ‘I went round there.’

‘To his office, you mean?’

Nod. ‘I sort of slipped in,’ he said.

‘And did you get to see him?’

‘Yes and no.’ Frank hesitated for a moment. ‘I saw something, but I’m not sure what it was.’

‘Ah.’

‘I mean,’ he went on quickly, ‘it looked just like George, but it definitely wasn’t him. More or less admitted it, even. But when I tried to—’ He smiled feebly. ‘Actually, I sort of made a grab at it, and it vanished.’

‘I see.’

‘And all I was left with,’ he went on, ‘was this.’

From his pocket he took an envelope; a New Zealand stamp, Emily noticed, and for a moment she wondered what it must be like, living with the Door. He picked out a single human hair. ‘I grabbed at him,’ he said. ‘Actually got a grip on his collar, and then phut, like turning off a light. And I’m pretty sure this wasn’t in my hand before. I mean, I don’t know anybody with long blonde hair.’

‘Except me.’

They looked at each other for a moment. Then she leaned forward and picked the hair up, tweezering it between thumbnail and forefinger. ‘That’s not mine,’ she said after a short, rather tense silence. ‘For one thing, it’s your actual movie-star blonde, as opposed to—’

‘Mouse?’

‘Mellow light brown. Hang on,’ she added, pulling the scanner across the table towards her. ‘Just as well I brought this.’ Frank’s eyebrows huddled. ‘What is that?’

‘Technology,’ she replied. ‘Don’t worry about it. But it might—’ The little screen flickered and the annoying welcome message came up. ‘Come on,’ she growled, and the screen went blue. ‘It takes a minute or two,’ she said.

‘Ah. A Microsoft product.’

‘No, but almost as bad. Right, here we go.’ Emily picked up the hair and laid it on the screen. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s human, for what that’s— Natural, no signs of chemical treatment, but it has been subjected to an intense transmorphic field at some time in the last forty-eight hours.’ She prodded some buttons, swore at the screen as a little hourglass icon popped up, prodded another button and twiddled a little rollerball thing. ‘If it says program not responding, it’s going to get an unscheduled flying lesson … Ah, that’s better.’ She studied a clutter of symbols that Frank didn’t recognise, then looked up at him. ‘I’ll hang on to this,’ she said, sweeping the hair back into the envelope. ‘Just a hunch, but I think I may have an idea about this. It’s perfect, you see.’

He gave her a puzzled look. ‘Perfect?’

She nodded. ‘Absolutely perfect. Hair any woman would die for. No colour, no conditioner or jojoba-root essence or moisturiser or any of the crap we spend billions of dollars a year on as a species; just perfect, natural hair. Doesn’t that strike you as just a bit suspicious?’

‘Urn,’ Frank said. ‘Well, no.’

Emily glanced at him. ‘That’s because you’re a man,’ she said. ‘But you can’t help that.’ She tucked the envelope away in her bag and switched off the scanner. It chimed at her, and she winced. ‘You don’t happen to have your friend George’s home number, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Pity. Because I’m prepared to bet he won’t be there if I call him. Or at the office. Or anywhere. First thing in the morning, give him a ring. I’m ninety-nine per cent sure he won’t be at his desk tomorrow, not unless— Where are you going?’

‘Won’t be a tick. Don’t go away.’

‘All right. Would it be OK if I got myself a drink? Only, this is supposed to be a pub, you see, and it’s been a long day.’

‘Fine,’ Frank said, and scampered off in the direction of the lavatories.

Emily got herself a drink with plenty of gin in it. By the time she returned to the table Frank was back. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘Not there.’

‘You phoned him?’

‘At the office,’ he replied. ‘Tomorrow morning. Mr Sprague won’t be in today. Well, tomorrow.’ He shook his head. ‘I know, it confuses the hell out of me sometimes, too. So,’ he went on, leaning forward a little, ‘how did you know that?’

She smiled. All right, he could nip off to the toilet and Portable Door into the future to make a phone call, but she knew things. ‘It’s magic,’ she said.

‘Ah.’

‘It’s a Chinese invention,’ she went on, ‘like most things, really. You can take a bit of yourself-hair’s the usual choice, for obvious reasons, though a bit of toenail clipping will do, or even a gob of spit-and turn it into a replica of yourself. Sort of like cloning, only magic, so cheaper, quicker and you don’t need specialist equipment or a licence or anything. If you’re really clever, and there’s only a few people in the trade right now who can do this, you can turn it into a copy of someone else.’

‘Oh,’ Frank said. ‘That’s—’

‘Quite.’ Emily frowned. ‘It has its limitations, of course. The replicant is usually pretty basic. They’re not generally very bright, for one thing. They’ve only got a very limited memory capacity, and you can get the appearance fairly exact, but the personality’s usually a bit sketchy. If you want to do a thorough job of replacing someone, you’re better off transfiguring a whole animal or making a golem. For a quick and dirty job on the fly, though, it’s a useful technique.’

Frank wallowed about in the unfamiliar concepts for a moment. ‘You think that’s what this is?’

She nodded. ‘When you grabbed at him, I guess you overloaded the programming and it broke down. Turned back into a hair. Hence, no Mr Sprague at the office tomorrow. And if I’m right about where that hair came from—’

‘Yes?’

She shook her head. ‘Let’s not jump the gun,’ she said. ‘And don’t you dare go forward through that Door thing of yours and find out. If I’m stuck in boring old linear time, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be too.’

‘OK,’ he said, rather solemnly. ‘And thank you. I think I’d be dead from bewilderment poisoning by now if it wasn’t for you. Which only goes to show,’ he added, ‘how high my bewilderment threshold is, since I didn’t actually understand a word of what you’ve been telling me. But that’s all right,’ he added quickly, as she opened her mouth. ‘Just so long as one of us knows what’s going on, I’m not all that fussed if it isn’t me.’ He pulled a face and nodded toward the scanner. ‘What is that thing, anyway? And don’t say technology again.’

Emily smiled. ‘It’s a scanning device,’ she said. ‘Just as well I brought it along, wouldn’t you say? Talking of which …’ She hesitated, then said, ‘Have you got any plans for the rest of the evening?’

A look came over Frank’s face which she had difficulty interpreting. ‘No. Why?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I thought we might go over to your Mr Sprague’s office and take some readings, see if we can pick up any morphogenic residue-decay signatures.’

‘Oh. I mean, yes, if you think it’d help, that’d be great. Wonderful. Thanks ever so much.’

Again, she wasn’t quite able to read his expression, and for just a moment she was tempted to override the lithium cryp and listen in … But no, she couldn’t do that. It’d be unethical and a gross violation of his sentient rights. Also, she was a bit afraid of what she might hear.

‘Right, then,’ Emily said, finishing her drink and standing up. ‘Let’s get going.’

For some reason, Frank didn’t seem as enthusiastic as she’d been expecting. Odd; after all, he’d asked her to help him solve the Sprague mystery and here she was, all energy and do-itnow, and he seemed-disappointed? Not quite. But almost, as he swilled down the dregs of his orange juice and got to his feet. ‘We’ll use the Door,’ he said.

‘I assumed we would.’ She said it ever so casually, but in spite of everything - years in the trade, seen it all, done it all-a tiny part of her was squeezing its hands and hopping up and down in excitement. (Look at me, everyone, I’m going through the actual Portable Door, isn’t that just so amazing?) Colin Gomez had never been through it, or Mr Hook, or even Amelia Carrington herself. So cool—

(And, even further back in her mind, in the grubby back streets where she preferred not to go, a little voice said: you know, a thing like that, it’s wasted on him. I mean, not even in the biz, doesn’t know how it works, could be really dangerous in the hands of the clueless. But if we had it … And then the rest of her mind reflected that when a part of you starts talking in the plural like that, it’s only a matter of time before it starts mucking up its grammar and saying ‘precious’ a lot. She closed her mind to the little voice and it crept away to its lair in the guilt stacks.)

There was a convenient alleyway behind the pub, with a nice broad brick wall. Emily watched Frank tap the Door out of its cardboard tube and flick it against the bricks like a veteran fly-poster. She hadn’t really watched closely before, not enough to observe the fine details with a professional eye; the way the lines went so subtly from two to three dimensions, the way it flowed rather than popped into existence. There was enough material for a doctorate, and he hadn’t even turned the handle yet—

He opened it, and over his shoulder she saw into the room beyond: an office, dark but faintly lit by the lamps in the street below, shining up through the window. It was the sort of perspective that creased your mind, and instinctively she looked away; but he was hissing ‘Come on’ at her, and she felt ashamed. She followed him, heard the Door click; and then he leaned past her to catch it as it unrolled off the wall.

We wants it, yes, precious, we wants it for our own—

Stop that, Emily ordered herself. Even so; there was a line in the marriage service that referred to worldly goods. Whether the Door counted as worldly was perhaps a moot point, but if well, if they somehow metamorphosed into a couple (in her mind’s ear the word sounded strange, bizarre, even faintly obscene), surely Frank would have no objection if she wanted to borrow it, just now and then, for a specially demanding job.

She shook her head, rattling the voice about until it shut up.

‘Switch the lights on,’ she snapped irritably, ‘before I fall over something.’

A moment later, there was a click and a wash of bright white light from the overhead tubes. Mr Sprague’s office turned out to be just another enclosed space for making money in; the desk was bigger than hers, maybe, the chair a bit more sumptuous and commanding; but the framed photo of Anonymous Wife And Child was in almost exactly the same place on the desktop as its counterpart in Colin Gomez’s room, and the two people in it wore exactly the same long-suffering expression. It’s a basic law of magic that all places are one place, and where offices are concerned it’s literally as well as metaphysically true.

‘I’ll set up the scanner,’ Emily said.

‘Great,’ Frank replied awkwardly. ‘Anything I can do?’

For a moment, he could have been Erskine: a superfluous life-form with the potential to get under her feet and impede her in the execution of her duties. ‘What? No. I mean, yes,’ she added quickly, because he wasn’t Erskine. ‘Keep watch, let me know if anyone’s coming.’

‘Right.’ Hesitation. ‘How, exactly?’

Good question. She’d said it because that’s what they say in films; and then the spare character goes offstage somewhere while the hero does his stuff with his impressive techy gismo. ‘Just keep still and don’t interrupt,’ she said, because every meaningful relationship is founded on total honesty. She was both surprised and impressed when he did exactly as he was told. In her experience, men were creatures who stood over you, saying ‘What does that bit there do?’ and ‘Are you sure you’ve got that the right way up?’ Maybe, Emily thought, he really is the only man in the world for me.

The screen flickered. The annoying chime made her jump. She pulled down the functions menu and tapped the little pad with the tip of her forefinger. A shoal of Mortensen data flooded the screen, and she frowned and ran the cursor across to Analyse.

The screen went dark.

Technology, she thought; oh well. Nothing for it but to reboot and start again.

‘How’s it—?’

‘Shh.’

‘Sorry.’

The flicker. The bloody stupid chime. The little dancing hourglass that she hated so much. The functions menu. The Mortensen numbers—

‘Now we’re getting— Bloody hell,’ she said, as the numbers vanished. The screen flashed brilliant white two or three times, and then filled with an image she’d never seen on it before: a single sea-blue eye, gazing straight at her.

Under different circumstances, she’d have assumed it was a practical joke, a virus, an Easter egg, something of the kind. Sad, technically proficient members of the profession had been known to play funny games along those lines, though the screen-filling eye was invariably red and usually bordered with darting flames. Intuitively, she knew this wasn’t anything like that. For one thing, CGI doesn’t jam your windpipe or turn your knees to aspic. The eye on the screen was too real. It wasn’t just pixels dancing on the face of a tube. It was alive, and looking at her with amused, malicious interest.

Emily had a nasty feeling that she could put a name to it.

How long she sat there staring at it, she had no idea. It was only when an arm reached across her and hit the off-switch that it occurred to her that she might have been there for quite some time.

‘It’s not meant to do that, is it?’ Erskine - no, Frank. Frank’s voice, calm but worried. The eye was still there on the screen.

She tried to say ‘No, it isn’t.’ Her lips moved, but someone had pressed the mute button, and no sound came out. She couldn’t turn her head, either.

‘Hold on.’ She heard rustling, somewhere outside her field of vision; then a page from a broadsheet newspaper came between her and the screen, and she pulled away as though she’d been burned, overbalanced her chair, wobbled and fell off it onto the floor.

‘Are you all right?’

Emily scrabbled for a moment like a beetle on its back, then found her feet and jumped up. The eye was still there, in negative, a black oval with a burning white centre, printed on her retina. She massaged her eyelids, and it gradually faded.

‘The bitch,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

‘The miserable cow.’ She groped her way to the desk and sat on the edge of it. ‘What a mean, nasty—’

Frank was there, standing in front of her. ‘What’s wrong?’ he was saying, looking so wretched that she nearly laughed. ‘That picture—’

She felt a lot better. ‘Booby trap,’ she said, as her heart started beating again. ‘Bloody Amelia Carrington. To stop people borrowing the firm’s kit for private work, I guess.’ She shuddered. ‘I know we’re not supposed to, but even so, that’s a bit extreme. It scared the life out of me, staring at me like that. Like she was looking right at me—’ She broke off, as a horrible thought struck her. ‘She was looking at me,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be in so much trouble in the morning.’

Frank was gazing at her, a pictorial dictionary’s definition of mortified. This time, Emily couldn’t help it. She giggled. ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly, ‘but really, you should see your face.’

He frowned; still tortured by guilt and remorse, but a bit hacked off, too. ‘I’ve gone and landed you in it,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry, if I’d known—’

‘Forget it,’ she sighed. ‘It’s not your fault my boss is a miserable, sadistic cow with a warped sense of humour.’

‘But you could lose your job—’

‘Big deal.’ The words came out before the thought took shape in her mind. ‘Face it, would you want to work for someone who’d pull a stunt like that? Putting a lock on the stationery cupboard door, that’s one thing, but scaring people half to death, that’s got to be harassment or something like that. Not that it’d do me any good,’ Emily added ruefully. ‘We don’t do industrial tribunals in our profession. Last person who tried it ended up relocating to a lily pad. No, if they want to fire me, let them. But they won’t. I do a good job and bring in money. I’ll just get a bollocking, that’s all.’

‘Well, that’s bad enough,’ Frank said. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here, before it gets any worse.’ Before she could argue, he’d spread the Door on the wall and turned the handle. ‘Where to?’ he added. ‘I can drop you off anywhere you like.’

Anywhere she liked, just say the word. Venice, Acapulco, Barbados, the Alps, the Serengeti. She remembered something they’d made her read at school, when she was a little girl, about the cat who walked by herself and all places were the same to her. Sure, everybody wants to travel. But this would be too easy. Like giving in.

‘Just drop me off outside the office,’ Emily said, forced-casual. ‘I’ll get the bus home from there.’

Frank looked at her, but all he said was, ‘You sure?’

No, of course I’m not, you stupid man. You’re supposed to say, don’t be ridiculous, I can take you direct to your doorstep. She waited, a whole two-thirds of a second, but he just stood there looking blank. Not a word out of him, not so much as a muted squeak. He couldn’t have declared his lack of interest more plainly if he’d taken a thirty-second prime-time slot on ITV.

‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘Right, is this thing ready?’

He nodded and she pushed past him, nudging him out of the way. As her elbow prodded his solar plexus-accidentally; a happy accident, you might say-she heard his voice saying ‘Ow.’ And, at the same time, it said: I love her, but obviously she’s not the least bit interested, she’d rather take the bus home, well, fine, serves me right, won’t be making that mistake again in a hurry.

Hell of a time for the lithium cryp to wear off.

Emily froze in mid-step, but her weight was over her front foot, carrying her forward, under the two-and-a-bit-dimensional lintel of the Door. ‘Actually, you’re wrong,’ she blurted out; but by that time she was over the threshold. She jammed her heels down, wobbled, caught her balance and spun round, to find herself an inch or two away from a blank, featureless wall.

‘Shit,’ she yelled.

Calm down, she told herself. Any second now, the Door will open in this wall, he’ll come through, I’ll tell him-well, I’ll say something, any bloody thing just so long as it stops him thinking like that; and then we’ll have a calm, sensible talk about things, and it’ll all be fine. It’s nothing two rational human beings can’t iron out in a minute or two, and then we’ll both know where we are, and—

She shoved past him and lunged through the Door. Frank stepped smartly back to get out of her way. The Door slammed, then unrolled and fell off the wall.

Fine, he thought. Be like that. I can take a hint, particularly if it’s ferocious enough to make the floor shake and bits of loose plaster come off the ceiling.

He stood quite still for a moment, thinking about his life and its general futility. No change there; except, for the first time ever, there was something he wanted, and now it was pretty clear that he wasn’t going to get it.

The hell with it, he thought. The hell with love, and happiness, and waking up each morning to greet the unlimited promise of a new day. The hell with all of it. The hell with her.

Frank stooped wearily, picked up the stupid Door, slapped it hard against the wall, opened it, went through, shut it, caught it, put it away and flopped onto his hard unmade bed.

No Door. No thin black lines forming on the whitewashed plaster. Emily frowned. What was keeping him? Naturally he’d come after her. Ordinary common politeness—

Oink, she thought. Whitewashed plaster wall. Not many of them in Cheapside. Whitewashed plaster interior wall. Forming part of a dimly lit, musty-smelling room. No windows. No furniture, apart from a single chipboard and square-section steel table, with a thermos flask and a plate of sandwiches on it. Aside from that, and Emily Spitzer of course, no contents of any kind.

And no door.

Oh, she thought. That’s not right. Got to have some kind of door, of the everyday, small-case-first-letter kind, or how the hell are you supposed to get into it? Or, come to that, out again? Magic?

Oh.

I’m being stupid, Emily thought. There’s got to be a door, but it’s in the shadows somewhere. I’ve just got to look for it, and there it’ll be.

She looked. Didn’t take long.

No door.