The Midnight Mayor

right at the bottom of the map, Morden.

End of the line.

The driver even announced it as we arrived.

“End of the line,” he said. “All change, all change, end of the line.”

Oda was waiting at the top of the stairs. She had a big sports bag over one shoulder. As I came out through the barrier, she said, “You feeling inaugurated?”

“Sort of. Does that make me a higher priority for the hit list?”

“There’s an argument there. On the one hand, the Midnight Mayor is a magical entity whose very existence is an insult to the works of Heaven. On the other hand, we don’t yet know how to kill it, the title, even though the men die easy. So there’s a school of thought that says we should keep you alive, just so we know who you are, and how to hurt you.”

“Goodie.”

“Pleased to see me?”

“Thrilled.”

“Where are we going?”

“The Aldermen have traced our blue van to a place not far from here.”

“Why Morden?”

“It’s the end of the line.”

“Does that mean anything?”

“Maybe. Come on.”

Suburbia. Squalid suburbia, to be exact. Close enough to the inner city for rich retirees seeking a rural dream in proximity to a convenient supermarket to find it unpleasant; far enough away for rich workers in the centre of town to find it unsatisfactory. Morden was a left-over borough for the ones left behind. Streets of white concrete bungalows, and half-timbered semi-detached villas with lattice windows, and panes of fake antique glass in each front door, bulbous and distorted. And, every few hundred yards, a run-down shopping parade boasting the chippy, the betting shop, the newsagent and the launderette. A few unlikely hangovers survived: here the frontage of the little shop where they fixed watches, there the open garage door of the bicycle-repair shop, across the road, the post office selling beach balls, plastic toys, birthday cards with kittens on and, if you were lucky, a first-class stamp as well.

It could have been anywhere, any town in any place; and only the intrusion of the Underground and an old music hall converted for bingo let it still claim to be London.

We walked through the streets of Morden, following the instructions Earle had given me. I counted CCTV cameras, imagined a blue van driven all the way from Kilburn sliding through these sleeping streets. The sky was grey and overcast, the wind smelling of rain yet to come, the lunchtime bakeries selling suspicious sausage rolls: quiet, business not really interested today. Oda said, “No back-up?”

“They’ll meet us there.”

“And where’s there?”

“Not far now.”

“No patience for cryptic, sorcerer. ‘Cryptic’ is something people use in order to feel smug about their knowing and someone else not.”

I sighed, but she had a point. “Earle’s people traced the van to a site near here. We think it’s where the boy, Mo, is.”

“And the boy is still important?”

“Yeah.”

“To whom?”

“To me.”

“That’s what I thought.”

We kept on walking.

“What did you see, last night?”

“What?”

“The Midnight Mayor is supposed to see things. It would be useful information for us to know what you saw.”

“The Order are the last people I would possibly ever tell.”

“But you did see something, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me?”

“Is there a difference?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I tell you, aren’t I just telling the Order?”

She thought about this half the length of the street. Wheelie-bins, parked cars, delivery vans, mothers with buggies, bright red postbox, pigeons scuttling out of the middle of the street as a learner driver pootled uneasily past. Then, “One day, I’ll kill you.”

“Yup. I know.”

“Because you’re a sorcerer.”

“Yup.”

“And one day you might have to kill me.”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Because I’m part of the Order.”

“Pretty much. I think you’ll probably shoot first. But what if you miss?”

“It has nothing to do with my being Oda or your being Matthew. It’s just how it is.”

“Yeah. I know.” We kept on walking. I said, “I saw a dragon.”

“Cheesy.”

“It wasn’t Jurassic Park. I mean, I saw a thing that looked like a dragon simply because if it had looked like itself my brain wouldn’t have been able to comprehend it. Things we do not understand . . . the brain does its best to fit them into some sort of vehicle that allows us comprehension, to simplify it down so that the part of us that thinks with words, not instincts, has even a vague chance of understanding. It wasn’t a dragon.”

“OK.”

“It was everything else. Up, down, in, out, forward, back, time, width, length, depth, stone, brick, leaf, pipe, iron, steel, gas, breath, dirt, dust, fear, anger, madness, fury, hurt, life . . .”

“You’re rambling.”

“It was the city. Too big and wild to ever understand, except to call it a dragon and hope your brain doesn’t dribble at the thought.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oda?”

“Yes?”

“There’s a reason I don’t tell you things either.”

And then, she smiled. It was such a strange and alien expression on her lips that at first, we couldn’t comprehend it. But it was in her voice as well, a moment, an actual moment, when psycho-bitch wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and there was just a woman with a gun in her pocket. “Matthew,” she said, “if you weren’t already thrice damned and stuck on a spit, it would almost be human that you tried.”

We didn’t know what to say, couldn’t think of anything except a sudden awareness of all the air inside our chest, that slipped over our tongue without being able to take anything but the feeblest of shapes.

Too much thinking, too much trouble.

Our solution for everything.

We kept walking, and said not a word.