Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) by Kate Griffin Page A

recollecting place. “Drowning, once. Being impaled on a tribal spear; crushed by an Underground train; electrocuted in a substation; eaten by a cockatrice although I think that weren’t what dunnit, I think it was the manticore’s sting what was the problem; spontaneously fucking combusted; shot at close range by a killer from the Order; and pneumonia, sure, all of that! But never, not once, not never, cancer.”
    “Oh,” murmured Sharon. Seeing that this was Sammy’s best shot atcomfort, she added, “Good.” Then a thought hit and she gestured furiously at the empty air. “I am not sticking feathers through my nose!” she exclaimed. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful or whatever, but I’m not having any of that! My mum would do her nut!”
    “Feathers in your nose?” shrilled Sammy as they rounded the Royal Opera House and headed east towards the imperial architecture and health-aspiring coffee shops of Kingsway. “Why the hell should you stick a feather up your nose?”
    “I googled shamans,” she explained weakly. “And mystic dancing–I mean, I’ll give it a go if it’s like, really important, but last time I went to the disco my mate Sue was all like, ‘Hun, it’s nice that you’re trying’ which meant I had two left feet and everyone else was way sexier and, like, knew what they were doing but if it’s absolutely essential then I guess I can try.”
    “Dancing?” Once more Sammy’s indignation rose towards its default level of fever pitch. “Feathers?!”
    “Wikipedia said—”
    “Wikipedia! Wikipedia!” He threw up his hands, and there was a change to his walk, faster, slightly too fast for the world around him, invisibility straining against the righteousness of his anger. “Wikipedia is what’s wrong with modern wizardry!” he shouted. “Everyone’s like ‘Wow, I can do that’ and then what do they do? They cross their secondary summoning circle with the shield line, and they invoke with sodium instead of fluorescent and they’re all like ‘Wow we’re so good at what we do’ and then who has to clean up the bits of brain splattered up the walls? Experts! Experts have to fucking do it and I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you!” His whole body trembled with outrage and as he walked, Sharon couldn’t help but notice. The air seemed to shimmer around him, lights flickering in the street as if the universe yearned to help him endure his heightened emotional trauma, but couldn’t quite work out how. “It’s always the goblins that get blamed! Racist, that is! Racist discriminatory ethnic social fucking whatsit!”
    Sharon glanced around to see if anybody had noticed. There was no one around, which was lucky considering that Sammy wasn’t just verging on visible, he was heading for inflamed. But there was something watching: shapes in the darkness, shadows that hid
between
the light of the street lamps, figures that turned away when she raised her head toexamine them, the passing image of a cleaner sweeping away the dirt before Sam’s bare three-toed feet, the flicker of a head turning in a window above to see what all the fuss was about, the scuttle of a fox pausing in its passage across the street to marvel and disappear. None of it real, and yet all watching.
    And even as she watched back, Sammy’s pace slowed again, and they all began to fade, receding into the same shadow world through which the goblin moved. “Mr Elbow sir?” murmured Sharon, once the tide of Sammy’s indignation had retreated, to reveal a little pool of potential calm. “Do you… I mean, you probably don’t but have you ever… There’s this webpage I run, okay, it’s called Weird Shit Keeps Happening to Me—”
    “Sounds crap.”
    “We’ve got this help group going.”
    “Bollocks!”
    “You say that,” pressed Sharon, warming to her theme, “but I don’t think you’re the only one who feels discriminated against because of your… your appearance and your… well, your smell and