“What the ever-loving fuck?”
“They’re afraid of demons crawling out of the HDTV screens and eating people.” Imp took a slow, moody drag on the butt of the joint, then stubbed it out on the sole of his boot and glowered at the dustsheet-draped baby grand piano. “Clunge-licking magic.” There was a jangling discord of tiny bells: “No offense,” he added hastily.
“So you need more money because now you have to pay for film and development costs on top of everything else?”
“Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”
“Well.” Del side-eyed him. “This film had better be fucking worth it in the end, mister big-shot director.” Standing, she added: “No more improv capers, understand?” He nodded. “Next time, you give us a script first and we all kick the tires.” He nodded unenthusiastically. “And it’s a team effort. And there is no I in team, are you with me? We’re doing this together. I’m not your sidekick, dude, we’re all equals here. Partners in crime.” Imp managed to nod and hold his tongue. “Good.” The echo of a frightening smile danced at the corners of her mouth. “Now let’s go and tell the boys, shall we?”
Wendy Deere caught the bus home to Lewisham, where she lived in one of half a dozen bedsits in a converted 1930s family house. It was cramped, damp, and inconveniently close to the diesel fumes and noise of the high street, but it was all she could afford. As she walked the last couple hundred meters the gray overcast finally began to drizzle. It had been a clear, cold day when she’d left for work. Coatless, she was now exposed to the kind of irritatingly persistent rain that lingered like a drunk in a pub doorway.
Annoyed, she raised her left hand tentatively and willed the handle of an umbrella into existence in her palm. She knew she shouldn’t, but … Hard, knobbly plastic slid from imagination into reality, tugging in the intermittent gusts as raindrops pattered across it. Head bowed and brolly lowered to cover her hair, she sped up, dodging dog turds and uncollected refuse, resisting the uncanny tugging on her mind which always came with such manifestations. (The papers were full of scare stories about Metahuman-Associated Dementia and saying it was connected to overuse of talents: well maybe, but then again, most smokers didn’t die of lung cancer, did they?) She crossed the street and fumbled for her front door keys; while she was distracted the umbrella returned from whence it came, leaving her bare neck exposed to the icy droplets.
Shitgoblins, she swore silently, and fucksticks. She closed the door and flicked the light switch to no avail. Of course the card meter had run out of credit while she was at work, because the landlord-supplied fridge-freezer kept icing up. The door wouldn’t close properly and it kept trying to freeze the entire living space. (Her so-called kitchen was an illegally windowless nook with about a square meter of floor space, separated from the main room by a doorless doorway. Before the house had been turned into bedsits it had probably been an airing closet.)
Wendy changed out of her work uniform into her parkour gear (combat pants and a hoodie), pulled her DMs back on, stuffed her phone, keys, and purse into trouser pockets, then grabbed the electricity meter keycard and went out to buy a top-up.
Poverty was expensive, and electricity on the card plan cost nearly twice as much as a regular tariff. As with her mobile phone bill, and the gas. Wendy lived week to week on top-ups, buying a little extra when she got enough work to cover it. At least today she could afford to turn the lights on again (and bloody had to, before the food in the laughably small freezer compartment defrosted and went off). If Gibson came through—
There was a note taped to the inside of the shared front door in the lobby. She hadn’t noticed it on her way in, too intent on getting to her own bedsit, but now she read it.
“Fuck,” she swore aloud.
NOTICE TO ALL TENANTS:
THE FREEHOLD ON THIS BUILDING
IS BEING SOLD TO—
There goes the neighborhood. Gentrification was a cruel predator, pricing real people out of homes, regardless of their circumstances, however long they’d lived there. In retrospect, the signs had been obvious for months. Houses up and down the road were boarding up their windows, long-term residents draining away like an outgoing tide. A developer was moving in, determined to buy all the old semis and replace them with an estate of luxury apartments with valet parking and a residents’ health club, single bedroom flats starting at only £900,000, truly a bargain, snap yours up now—
They can’t kick us all out immediately, Wendy reasoned. Assured shorthold tenancies had to expire first. Something would come up, and if it didn’t, at least on her new contract she’d be earning enough to move somewhere better. (She hoped.)
Gearing up to a brisk walk, Wendy headed towards the post office in the shopping center a half mile away. The rain had let up, dwindling to an intermittent spatter of small droplets. She turned the corner onto another residential street, to see more signs outside boarded-up ground-floor windows reading THIS SITE PROTECTED BY HIVECO HOME
