The meanest Flood

the window. There was a big man standing on the pavement. Flamboyant. Black leather trousers and shoes and in the gap between the two a pair of sky-blue socks. When the man turned to look up and down the street Danny could see that he was wearing a black silk shirt. He had a shark’s tooth set in a gold cap on a chain around his neck. Over the shirt he wore a brown suede jacket with a belt.
    The magician froze. He watched the man while he knocked again. The shark’s tooth was a talisman of some kind. Danny didn’t know what its exact significance was. The man might not know himself, he looked like a yob, but you never could tell. No one knew better than Danny Mann that things were not always what they seemed.
    The man came over to the window and Danny stepped back behind the curtain. He watched the man shade his eyes and push his face close up to the glass, squinting to see through to the interior of the house. He could be a friend of Sam Turner’s, Danny thought, or someone he worked with. But there was something about the man’s body language, his sense of purpose, which gave Danny the impression that he was as much of a stranger to Sam Turner’s house as Danny was himself.
    A debt collector, maybe? That seemed closer to the mark, some heavy sent over by a loan-shark to collect on Sam Turner’s debts. The magician smiled in spite of himself; the correspondence between a loan-shark and the shark’s tooth that was dangling around the man’s neck seemed momentarily ludicrous. But the world was filled with weird correspondences. Acts of magic were performed on a daily basis by people who had no knowledge whatsoever. A shark’s tooth, whatever talis-manic properties it possessed, would work as well for a loan-shark as for an initiated wizard. A schoolboy who purposefully wore odd socks to bring himself good luck and to protect himself from evil was putting himself into contact with the spiritual world in exactly the same way that a shaman or a priest does. Professionals did it with a degree of consciousness and wisdom, but the world of magic was open to all-comers. Anyone who sought esoteric or occult secrets would not be ignored by the beings who inhabited those worlds.
    Under other circumstances, Danny thought, he would answer the door to this man, talk to him about the significance of his shark’s tooth, get engaged with another practitioner. Because it didn’t matter that the man dressed the way he did, that he was obviously from a different class of people. He was another magician, perhaps not a professional like Danny, but he’d heard the music, no doubt about that.
    Danny Mann remained frozen until the man moved away from the window. There was another knock on the door, but it had no heart in it and a few moments later Danny heard the man’s footsteps receding along the street. The magician breathed a sigh of relief.
    His heart was racing and he pulled one of the chairs away from the table and sat on it. He increased the tempo of his breathing, letting the ‘hoo-haa’ sounds come from his throat as he hyperventilated, keeping the image of what he had to do clearly before him in his mind’s eye. He squatted on the floor and continued the rapid breathing until a thin film of sweat spread over his forehead.
    There was another knock on the door and Danny saw from the window that it was the woman. He took a few moments to compose himself and went to the door and pulled it open. She was pale. She had on her green wellingtons and a black duffel-coat, a long lamb’s wool scarf wrapped around her neck. She was smaller than Danny remembered. She looked vulnerable standing there on the street.
    She took a step back. ‘Have I got the right house?’ she said.
    Danny gave her his professional smile. ‘Are you Alice? Come in. Sam’s upstairs.’
    She stepped over the threshold and removed her boots. She picked them up in one hand and placed them against the wall. ‘Will they be all right there?’
    ‘No one’s going to run off with them,’ Danny said. He chuckled. ‘Do you want to go up?’
    The woman hesitated as some intimation of danger crossed her mind. She was already trapped and in a fleeting moment became conscious of the fact.
    The magician spoke quietly and clearly. ‘He’s with Conn. I think the boy will be all right.’
    Magic words.
    Danny watched them work on her. All thought of danger instantly vanished. ‘Conn?’ she said. ‘He’s with Sam?’ She brought one hand to her mouth.