The Midnight Mayor by Kate Griffin Read Free Book Online

My legs were a long way off, and somewhere between me and them there was a satellite delay. She slung my arm over her shoulders and walked me like a granddad up the stairs to the black front door of the white building, groped in her pocket for a set of keys, found one, opened the door. The corridor inside was all echoing tile and bare walls. A lift the size of a fat man’s coffin was at the far end. It climbed upwards like it resented the service, discharged us onto the third floor. Another black door, another set of keys. An apartment, furnished in plywood and polyester straight from Ikea, no pictures on the wall, nothing to mark it out as individual except on the inside of the door, where someone with a spray can had painted a giant picture of a lollipop lady, hat drawn down over her eyes, sign turned to “stop”. The Whites understand how to paint a good protective ward.
    There was a sitting room that was also a kitchen, a bathroom with barely room enough to fit the bath, and a bedroom, mattress without any sheets. Vera didn’t bother to offer any, but deposited me straight down on the bed. There were thin net curtains across the window that filtered out the shape of the streetlamps outside while letting in all their yellow light, that stretched great shadows across the floor and up the wall.
    I stammered, “Doctor . . .”
    She said gently, “There’s one coming.”
    I nodded, then let my head fall back on the mattress and closed my eyes, not bothering to peel away my ragged clothes.
    “Jesus, Matthew,” muttered Vera. “What the hell happened?”
    “Attacked,” I stumbled. “Attacked. A phone rang and I answered and . . . and it burnt me. I hit my head. A phone rang and . . . then creatures came. They came for us. It rang for us . I just need a safe place . . .”
    “I’ll put the kettle on,” she said.
    Or perhaps we imagined it.
    We closed our eyes.

    Dawn was grey and sullen.
    Whoever was pulling the watch off my wrist did so by the light of a lamp by my bedside. The plastic made a sound like velcro as it peeled away from my flesh. I opened my eyes. Vera stood at the end of the bed, drinking a mug of coffee. On the mug someone had written “I ♥ London” in large pink letters. With her duffle coat off, underneath I saw that Vera was still wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown. We felt the sudden and odd urge to cry.
    Seeing our eyes open, Vera said, “Go.”
    It turned out not to be directed at me.
    A sudden searing agony indicated that the target audience had done as commanded, and ripped, like a plaster from flesh, the burnt remnants of the watch from my wrist. A thousand pinpricks of blood welled to the surface, and we looked away, sickened at the sight.
    “Cool,” said a voice by my left ear.
    I risked a glance at its owner.
    The creature of torment who had pulled my watch free was roughly the same height as her stethoscope would be, if it was unwrapped to its full length. She had a round, cheerful face, short dark hair that somehow managed to be both straight and bouncy at the same time, and a casually merry attitude towards my distress that marked her out immediately as a member of the medical profession. I half-recognised her. She said, “Have you been getting into shit or what ?”
    “I know you,” I breathed.
    “Really? You know, that happens to me a lot.”
    She opened a bag. There were things in there that only a genius with no moral compass could have invented. She pulled out a syringe. Perspective plays tricks on things that are going to happen to you: a three-inch syringe when it’s intended for someone else’s arteries is just a three-inch syringe. When it’s coming for you, it’s a foot long and gleaming.
    “What are you doing?” I asked.
    Vera answered. “This is Dr Seah. You can trust her.”
    “You can’t . . .” I began.
    Dr Seah knew the sound of a refusal when she heard one, and knew that the only way to get round these things, was to ignore them before they could