Vaneclaw.’
‘Well, boss. What it is, is this. Once you disappeared—’
‘I did not disappear.’
‘All right then, well, once you were, I dunno, not around, I was at a loose end. A lot of us were. And at first that was fine, because I’d been accidenting people for a thousand years by then, non-stop, and I didn’t mind the thought of having some time off, right? But after a decade or so, it’s like, I’ve had my holidays, what now? Accidenting’s what I do. So I got back into it, and for ages everything was fine, honest. You should have seen me. It was top stuff. Calamity Central. But then one night I’m in a crowded pub and the woman I’ve been plaguing for the last twenty years has just died in a freak tofu-braising incident and so I’m ready for pastures new, and I spot this geezer. Total git he was. Perfect. So I thought, right mate, you’re mine. Have some of this. And I threw myself at him, claws out. The bastard moved, though. So I flew right past and ended up stuck to the guy who was behind him, that Ron bloke you just pulled me off, who I freely admit did not deserve what I have put him through. But you know how it is – I was stuck.’ Vaneclaw shrugged, causing himself to slip off the stool again, to land on the bar’s dirty concrete floor with a quiet splat.
The old man waited while he scrambled back up. ‘You’re an idiot,’ he said.
‘Couldn’t agree more. But whoa, boss, it’s magic to see you. Let the bad times roll, eh? Where you been, anyway?’
The old man looked at the imp for a long moment. ‘I fell asleep,’ he said.
‘You what?’
‘The specifics of how I spend my time are not your concern,’ the man muttered.
‘Mine not to reason why, eh? Especially as reasoning has never been my strong suit. Never really understood what it even is, be honest with you.’
‘Do that, yes, Vaneclaw.’
‘What? Reason?’ The imp looked uncomfortable, as if being asked to do something well above his pay grade.
‘No. Be honest with me.’
‘Oh, always! But … what about?’
The old man was looking at him very seriously. ‘Have you been praying? Have you been making sacrifice?’
‘Of course I have, guv.’ The imp was bewildered to be asked the question. ‘Morning, noon, and night, even when I was on holiday and not actively accidenting because of, you know, what I said earlier. First thing in the morning, last thing at night, and, well, somewhere around lunchtime, either before or right after, depending, I have prayed every single day to your infernal majesty, unhallowed be your eternal everlasting dreadfulness, et cetera.’
‘What about sacrifices?’
‘Yes! My every deed and thought is done in your awful name, for a start. Every single time I do something bad or disappointing, slip another mishap someone’s way, I consecrate said deed to the glory of your appalling self.’
‘Hmm.’
The old man seemed to be watching the only other patrons in the bar, a pair of very ugly men at a table in the corner. The men were talking in low tones, and even an imp as unsmart as Vaneclaw could tell they were not good people. After a moment the old man looked away, as if weary of the sight of them – weary, or extremely preoccupied.
‘Boss?’
The man remained silent. The imp waited nervously. If you’d told him when he woke that morning (curled up on the roof of Bad Luck Ron’s house) that he’d be seeing his lord and master that day, he’d have jumped for joy (and fallen straight off the roof). He still felt that way, but increasingly cautious, too. Something was on the old man’s mind, and experience had shown that the kind of things that the big man had on his mind were seldom good. Vaneclaw felt it safer to remain very, very quiet.
Eventually the old man turned to him. ‘I want you to do two things for me.’
‘Anything, boss, you know that.’
‘The first is I want you to look into my eyes.’
Vaneclaw suddenly felt very nervous indeed. He realized that what he’d previously been feeling hadn’t been nervousness after all. It had been … something else. Maybe … solitude, or what was that other one that began with an ‘S’? He couldn’t remember. Speciousness? Didn’t matter. The point was that what he was feeling now was nervousness. The imp knew very well that the old man could cause people to go absolutely shrieking insane merely by glancing at them. Not just humans, either, but imps and snits and demons and full-grown snackulars, whom even Vaneclaw found a bit creepy.
But, on the other hand, Vaneclaw thought if the old man looked into his eyes and drove him totally walloping bonkers, the imp would be unlikely to be able to do whatever the second thing was going to be, on account of being out of his mind. Saying you were going to ask two things of someone, and then preventing them from being able to even attempt the second, because of the first, was exactly the kind of mistake that Vaneclaw himself might make. But not the old man.
‘All right,’ the imp said, and slowly raised his eyes.
Precisely one minute later, the old man nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I see you speak the truth.’
The imp was so relieved that he felt as though he’d turned to jelly. It had been a very unpleasant sixty seconds. It was as if an acidic worm with spikes was crawling through every tiny, crooked nook and cranny of what passed for his mind; at times he’d felt also as though he was getting a glimpse in the other direction, seeing fire, and blood, and long-ago dust.
It was over now, though, and he’d evidently passed the test. ‘So what was the third thing, boss?’
‘Second thing, Vaneclaw.’
‘Oh yeah, sorry.’
‘Go now, throughout the district. Locate every one of our personnel in the area. Every single imp, demon and snackular, each familiar and shadow, soulcutter and schrank. Bring them here. Do it quickly. Do it now.’
‘I am so on it, boss.’
‘Not while you’re still here.’
‘Oh yeah.’
The imp slid quickly off the stool and scampered away into the night, leaving the man in the linen suit alone at the bar, looking intensely thoughtful.
And tired.
And old.
Ten minutes later the two ugly men from the table walked up to the counter, having decided that they would like to rob him.
‘Look into my eyes,’ the old man said.
One of the men left the bar five minutes later and killed a family in a house six streets away, before stealing a car and driving it into a wall, dying instantly.
The other staggered off into the dark, cold night and spent the short remainder of his days living in a box under a bridge, convinced that every time he breathed, his eyeballs filled up with spiders.
Meanwhile, the old man waited in the bar for the imp to return.
Hannah picked at her food. It wasn’t that she didn’t like it. Everything she’d eaten in the hotel so far – dinner the previous night, breakfast this morning, and now lunch – had been good. Not as nice as when Dad had his game on but, on the other hand, not frozen pizza three nights in a row. She simply wasn’t hungry.
She hadn’t slept well either. She’d been woken several times in the night by the mournful sound of wind. It would sweep past the windows and over the roof of the cabin with