The Minority Council by Kate Griffin Page B

the Midnight Mayor.”
    “You took someone he likes, that’s all it is! Last I heard about it, he went mental in this club in the city and beat up these users…”
    “Which club?”
    “Some place called Avalon; why, does it matter?”
    Prince already had his phone out. I heard the little beeps of dialling. He didn’t have to wait long to be answered and, evidently, hear someone confirm what I’d just told him.
    Hyde Park was passing by, locked away behind dark trees and pointed railings. Prince wore a frown of concentration as he said, “The Aldermen sent you?”
    “Yeah. They don’t want to piss off the dusthouse. I mean I know they work for the Midnight Mayor and stuff, but have you heard about him? We’re talking about a serious wacko. He’s like this undead sorcerer guy with this serious, like, demon thing attached and the Aldermen say he doesn’t listen to a word they ever tell him.”
    “Who’s this friend?” he asked quickly. “The one he’s looking for.”
    “I don’t know…”
    “Tell me what you do know, or you’re out of this fucking car right now, and don’t think we’ll slow for the corners.”
    “Okay, okay! Jesus! It’s some chick named Meera or something.”
    “Meera what?”
    “I don’t know, I swear, I don’t know. She’s a witch or something and he must be really into her, I mean
really
into her.”
    Prince’s associate was already dialling again, a bare flicker of eyebrow enough of a command from his master. “Yeah, me. Look, did we get some woman called Meera pulled tonight?… I don’t fucking know, just check it, okay?…”
    And at the same time, Prince was making another call to a different number. “… Yeah. Yeah, I know the time, do I sound like I care? Listen—I need some info. Your boss, where is he?…”
    Something in my stomach clenched up tight.
    We tasted petrol on our tongue, felt the hum of the engine beneath us. We were ready: at a single sound we would pop the engine of the car like a cork, burst the tyres, set the fuel on fire beneath our seats. One whisper out of place, and we’d turn Morris Prince and his men into kebab meat.
    Prince hung up. He hadn’t got his answer after all. “Fucking amateurs!” I forced out a slow breath, and let the power go. Let it seep back into the churning engine and the humming car, let the smell of petrol out of mynose and mouth, the heat of fire waiting to happen out of my veins. “Can he track us?” he demanded, turning to glare at me.
    “He’s the Midnight Mayor,” I replied. “He can find us anywhere.”
    “All this for some woman?”
    “He’s not normal. He’s got no sense of perspective, no grasp of politics or the greater good. He’s a liability to himself and to others.” I gave a weak smile. “I did try to warn you, so yeah, if you wouldn’t mind throwing me out of the car at the nearest corner, that’d be lovely, thank you.”
    “You stay.”
    For men who showed no feelings, they were starting to look fidgety. We entered Soho: by day a place of art publishers, graphic designers, film executives and a perpetual smell of chilli, garlic and ginger on the air. At night, though, Soho turned on the red lights, threw beer cans into the streets, set the policemen patrolling with growling Alsatian dogs and let its hair down. A reveller looking for a good time could start in an Irish pub, swing next door for a chicken korma, stagger out across the street to holler away in a karaoke bar, fuelled by sushi and vodka, and then fall into the moderately priced arms of whichever gender took their choice, all within twenty yards of each other.
    Even at this hour of the morning, especially at this hour of the morning, men and women wearing too little for the cold tottered down the middle of the street on each other’s arms, arguing about which way was for the bus and which for the cab, and who lived where and with whom.
    And there was something above us, too.
    I didn’t point it out. I figured they’d find