have any friends.
‘Oh, in that case then you’ll want to speak to Wanker Maykov.’ Burlesque nodded Clement in their direction.
Bastard.
Clement strode across the room to stand by Vanka’s table. ‘Are you the psychic who performs under the name Mephisto?’ he snarled.
It was useless to deny it. ‘I am,’ said Vanka quietly. He slid his hand under the table and around the butt of the Cloverleaf he had in his belt. He detested violence, but if things got really bent out of shape…
Clement nodded towards Ella, his nostrils twitching as though he was offended by some unpleasant smell. ‘And this Shade: who is she?’ he sneered.
‘This is my PsyChick, Miss Marie Laveau.’
‘Ah didn’t think NoirVillian women were allowed to travel outside their Sector.’
‘She’s from the JAD.’
That was explanation enough: the nuJu Autonomous District was the only place in NoirVille where women were free of HimPerialism’s rabid misogyny.
A sniff from Clement. ‘Black scum ain’t welcome in the ForthRight.’
‘Miss Laveau has a visa to visit the ForthRight,’ interrupted Vanka, thanking the Spirits that Ella now had papers to support her nom de magie. ‘She is here as part of the cross-cultural exchange organised by Vice-Leader Beria to foster a better relationship between the ForthRight and NoirVille.’
Clement spat on the floor. ‘Ah don’t give a damn about Comrade Beria’s good works.’ He turned to the SS captain. ‘Clear the room: only the psychic Mephisto and the Shade girl are to remain.’
‘Wot abart me, yer ‘ighness?’ enquired a grovelling Burlesque.
‘Get out!’ A disgruntled Burlesque and his thirty customers were pushed and shoved out of the pub, leaving Vanka and Ella to the tender mercies of the SS. The pair of them sat waiting for almost ten minutes, sitting in splendid isolation in the centre of the deserted pub with only the silent and sullen SS StormTroopers for company. It all, to Vanka’s mind, seemed a little odd. As he understood it, usually those arrested by the SS were simply manacled, dragged out to a steamer and then…
Well, there was never any ‘then’: people taken by the SS were never heard of again. Once they were inside the SS stronghold of Wewelsburg Castle their existence was over. They became nonNixes.
A thought struck him: the real oddity was that neither he nor Ella had actually been arrested. In fact Clement had been – by SS standards – remarkably restrained: he hadn’t hit Vanka once. And as he understood it the SS’s usual treatment of Shades – especially young, attractive female Shades like Ella – was a lot more physical than the scowls and the black looks Clement and his men were shooting at the girl.
They hadn’t even searched him.
No, their treatment of him and Ella had been almost respectful.
Strange.
The explanation for this softly-softly treatment came striding through the door of the pub a moment later, when His Holiness the Very Reverend Comrade Crowley swept into the Prancing Pig.
Oh, fuck, thought Vanka, anybody but him.
Crowley: the Demi-Monde’s pre-eminent expert on the occult and all things relating to the Spirit World. Crowley: the most exulted Prophet of UnFunDaMentalism. If there was one person who would be able to spot a scam or a phoney Psychic Practices Licence, it was Aleister Crowley.
Vanka used the opportunity afforded by the distraction Crowley’s entrance caused amongst the SS – he had never seen so much bowing and scraping in his life – to lean towards and whisper in Ella’s ear: ‘That’s Crowley. Call him “Your Holiness”. And be careful, he hates Shades.’
Crowley looked around the Prancing Pig in disgust. It wasn’t often, Vanka guessed, that someone of so elevated a rank came so close to the ForthRight’s blood poor: normally he would have his steamer’s armoured glass between him and the hoi polloi, but today he was seeing how the have-nots really lived. And despite Burlesque’s best efforts to tart the Pig up, the pub’s back room was still the epitome of poverty chic.
Raising a scented handkerchief to his nose, Crowley held a quiet conversation with Clement, then looked in their direction, threw off his golden cloak and walked across the pub. Immediately Vanka sprang to his feet, made the Party salute and recited ‘Two Nations Forged as One’.
Crowley didn’t even do Vanka the honour of returning the salute. ‘You are the psychic who presided over the seance where that scoundrel Morris was unmasked as a seller of fraudulent Psychic Indulgences?’ he asked, and indicated to one of the StormTroopers that he should be brought a chair.
Vanka’s courage nearly failed him, then with a great effort of will he answered in as casual a voice as his strangled guts would allow: ‘I am, Your Holiness.’
‘And this is the PsyChick, Marie Laveau?’
‘Yes, Your Holiness. She was instrumental in the unmasking of Morris.’
To Vanka’s astonishment he saw that – ABBA only knew how – Ella had managed to unbutton the top buttons of her bodice, revealing her long, slender and very tempting neck. As she was introduced she began to squirm around on her chair like a lovesick schoolgirl, wriggling her remarkable body in a really quite coquettish way. She giggled and simpered and if he hadn’t known her better, Vanka would have been positive that she was making a pass at His Holiness. His Holiness seemed to be of the same opinion.
What the Hel was she playing at?
‘You will instruct her to remove her veil,’ Crowley ordered with a decided catch in his voice.
Artfully, Ella did as she was told, throwing His Holiness several lascivious little glances when her beauty was revealed. She sat there looking simultaneously coy and vampish, batting her huge eyes and looking impossibly sexy. Vanka watched as conflicting emotions danced across Crowley’s face: there was revulsion at being in such close proximity to one of the races UnFunDaMentalism proclaimed to be little better than animals, and then there was lust. Shade or no, Ella was a beautiful woman, and even someone as racially myopic as Crowley appreciated beauty when he saw it.
Lust must have triumphed over revulsion because, amazingly, he demeaned himself to address Ella directly. ‘I am informed by Comrade Colonel Clement that you are in the ForthRight at the behest of Comrade Beria. Am I to presume that you are one of those Shade witches skilled in the WhoDoo arts?’
Ella bobbed in acknowledgement, managing to give her interrogator a disconcerting peek down the front of her bodice as she did so. When she answered, to Vanka’s surprise she adopted the cod-accent of a WhoDooist. ‘Ah am, Your Holiness, ah am de WhoDoo Queen Marie Laveau, de most powerful mambo in de whole of NoirVille. Ah am able to speak wit Papa Legba, de Lord of de CrossRoads, who guards de doorway dat divides de people of de Demi-Monde and de loa, de Spirits of my people. It is Papa Legba who has bestowed upon me mah powers of clairvoyance.’
To Vanka what Ella was spouting sounded like arrant nonsense but it certainly had an impact on Crowley. He sat down in his chair and the quite obscene expression on his face segued into one of respectful caution: something had certainly struck a chord with His Holiness. But he still seemed unconvinced. He turned back to Vanka. ‘I give you a chance to admit that the unmasking of Morris was accomplished through artifice. Admit that you exposed Morris’s villainy by means of trickery and legerdemain rather than by use of occult talents and I will be moved to be lenient.’
Bollocks.
‘Your Holiness, there was no artifice. Miss Laveau has the ability to read the thoughts of all those she touches. For corroboration of this you must speak with your man Tomlinson: he witnessed the seance.’
‘I have spoken to Tomlinson. He has been interviewed rigorously.’
Poor bugger.
Crowley ran a finger idly along the edge of his mildewed teeth as he struggled with a decision. ‘I would like a demonstration of your PsyChick’s ability. I wish to be convinced of her talent as a clairvoyant.’
Now this should be interesting.
‘Then I must counsel you, Your Holiness, that to commune with the Spirit of another, the mambo Laveau must connect with them, flesh against flesh.’
Vanka saw the man’s eyes sparkle as his imagination kicked in. But excited or not at the thought of being flesh against flesh with the beautiful Ella, he still hesitated. It was Ella who – literally – took matters into her own
