"What do you know about Greydawn?" he asked.

"Uh... nothing," confessed Sharon. "Only what this goblin said."

"I've heard of her," offered Rhys. Two pairs of eyes turned to stare. Under their semi-disbelieving gaze, he sensed sneezing soon to come, and babbled as fast as he could. "She's Our Lady of 4 a.m., the One Who Walks Beside, the Keeper of the Gate, the... the... aaaaahhh..."

"You might wanna stand back," offered Sharon.

Mr Roding raised his eyebrows and took a step back just as Rhys erupted in a sneeze that sent clouds of air freshener gusting across the room.

"I'm so sorry, it's just that I... aaahh... aaaahhhh..."

"He does this a lot?" asked Mr Roding.

"Dunno," replied Sharon. "Don't really know him. But yeah, so far I'd say it's like, a serious thing."

"I don't mean to, it's just I... I... I..."

"You tried anti-histamines?" asked Mr Roding.

"They make me dro... drow... sleepy."

"What's so special about this Greydawn?" asked Sharon as Rhys turned his back to dab his streaming eyes. "Why's everyone worked up?"

Mr Roding put his cup down and leaned against the padlocked fridge. "Been a shaman long?"

"I'm learning," she replied, sharper than she'd meant.

"Then you might want some pointers on the city's major powers. Seven Sisters, Bag Lady, Fat Rat, Greydawn, Midnight Mayor, Beggar King..."

"I think I've met the Midnight Mayor."

Mr Roding looked surprised. "You met him?"

"Yeah, sure. Dark hair, blue eyes, bit of a twat, that him?"

"I don't know," murmured the necromancer, a thoughtful expression spreading over his face. "Very few know him personally. He's rumoured to be incredibly powerful and extremely dangerous."

"He looked kind of... scruffy."

" 'Scruffy'?"

"Yeah. You know. A bit... crap."

"You're certain it was him?"

"Well... he did grow these blue electric wings, and had blood on his hands and, like, Sammyhe's my goblinwas all like 'Yo, Midnight Mayor' and that. So, yeah, I'm guessing he was the guy. He important?"

Mr Roding scratched thoughtfully at his chin, tracks of white skin flaking off beneath his nails. "Midnight Mayor only comes out for bad things," he murmured. "His involvement never bodes well. Did he tell you anything?"

"Um... he told me to find the dog. Which, I gotta admit, even though I'm supposed to be a shaman and know all sorts of crap, I found majorly unhelpful."

"And you say Greydawn is 'missing'?"

"Yeah. Like vanished, only in a spooky mystic way that no one is telling me about. And, actually," Sharon demanded, "what the hell is the point of going 'You've gotta do shit' and then not telling me what the shit is I've gotta do?"

"I can see your problem. But then Greydawn is of the spirit realm, and only the shamans can understand that."

"D... druids are also... interested... in spirits..." tried Rhys, his shoulders shaking with the effort of suppressing the latest allergic reaction.

"Druids!" groaned Mr Roding. "Preserving the urban lore is all very well, but what do they do with it? Not even bingo nights!"

"Bingo nights!" exclaimed Rhys with a sudden enthusiasm that briefly overcame even his endocrine system. "We should have bingo nights for Magicals Anonymous! Or those social nights with a band?"

"I'm not sure we're kinda there yet."

"Or maybe trips to Margate? Although," Rhys said, deflating at the thought, "I guess it'd have to be night-time trips for Kevin and Sally." "Have you been to Margate, young man?" demanded Mr Roding.

"No..."

"That must be why you consider this a good idea."

"Can we just focus on the fate of the city?" said Sharon. "Like, who the hell is this Greydawn and why is everyone so like 'Whoa' about her?"

"She divides the day from the night," sighed Mr Roding, the patient teacher faced with a particularly dense student. "Which, in more practical terms, is to say that she is the gatekeeper between what is, and what is underneath".

"That's practical terms?" asked Sharon.

Mr Roding's lips curled in annoyance, revealing a hint of purple gums and yellowing tongue. "There are layers to the city," he proclaimed. "There's what people seecars and buses and windows and all the rather more superficial aspects of our existence. Then there is what people choose not to perceiverunes in the graffiti, spells woven from telephone wires, wards cut out of pieces of scrap paper, those who walk under glamours and enchantments, or those who have mastered the shaman's walkat which all eyes look away and don't know why. And beggars, of course. Beggars and shamans both know the way to move in the city, and be seen without ever being perceived.

"Then there are the things that lurk just beneath perception, a thing that is neither seen nor perceived, but is sensed in the deepest part of the soul. They are the shadows at the ends of alleys, the urge to run down an empty street in the middle of the night, the fear of the thing that falls on the floor upstairs when the house should be sleeping, the creak of a door that should not be openthe thing, if you like, in the cupboard, the nightmare that has no name.

"Everyone knows it's superstition, that none of it is real, and for the most part it isn't. But there are some truths, some buried truths, that lurk just the other side of the dark, in the place where the dream walkers go, in the corners where the darkness is a little too thick; and they are always watching, looking for a way to crawl from the night into the day. Shadows and ghosts, spectres and wendigos, the death of cities and the memory of a blackout, they probe continually, looking for weaknesses. Greydawn keeps them at bay. She is the Keeper of the Gate, the One Who Walks Beside. She keeps the unreal things unreal. And now, you say, she is missing, and the Midnight Mayor is talking to the shamans, and you want my help."

In the silence that followed Rhys even stopped sneezing.

Then Sharon said, "Mr Roding, may I shake your hand?"

Surprise flickered over the necromancer's face. He examined his own hand curiously, just in case he'd misremembered the decaying nails and the shedding skin. Then, to make sure Sharon wasn't just embarking on a joke too rude to be borne, he held it out to her, and she clasped it in her own and warmly shook the clammy flesh. "That," she explained, "is exactly the kinda thing people should just straight up tell me. What the hell is it with this cryptic crap?"

"It's curious," added Mr Roding, reclaiming his hand and turning it over a few times in surprise, "that the Midnight Mayor should make mention of a dog."

"It is?"

"In traditional images of Our Lady of 4 a.m. she is sometimes depicted as having a dog at her side. But if you really want to know about Greydawn," offered Mr Roding, "I'd try talking to the Friendlies."

"Who are they?"

"They're her followers. Worshippers, if you will."

"Um... do you mind if I ask my standard questions when someone tells me something like that?"

"Your standard questions?"

On her fingers Sharon ticked off the by-now regular list of enquiries. "No nudity? No drumming? No animal sacrifice?"

"Not when I last enquired. Why, is that something you've encountered a lot in your work?"

"Just playing safe. What about this ward?"

Mr Roding examined his crooked flaking fingernails. Then, "You think that this... Burns and Stoke is connected to Greydawn's disappearance?"

"I think they're connected to all the other spirits going missing. And Greydawn sounds like a spirit, and she's missing. So, yeah, you know what, as I'm a shaman and supposed to just know shit, then yeah, I'd say it's probably not gonna be a coincidence."

"In that case, if you can get me into Burns and Stoke without causing any unwanted questions, I will dismantle their wards for you."

"Seriously?"

"Necromancers have an unjustifiably bad reputation," complained Mr Roding. "And," he turned to Rhys, "do you really think lavender oil will work?"

Rhys brightened. "Oh yes. All I need is some lavender, a saucepan, some polenta, a tub of half-fat yoghurt, three cinnamon sticks and some water from the stagnant puddle that grows above a three-days-blocked drain, and I can do marvellous things for your skin!" He hesitated. "And maybe some rubber gloves."

Mr Roding, in as much as his facial muscles were animated, looked almost pleased.

"These Friendlies," asked Sharon, putting down her cup of tea. "You got their number?"

"No," he admitted. "But you can probably find them in the Yellow Pages."

Chapter 42.

Sammy Oi oi.

Name's Sammy.

Sammy the Elbow.

Only gonna say this once so you get it.

Head of the tribe is the head, council is neck, warriors is arms, scavengers is belly, hunters is feet, and meI'm elbow. Cos I'm sharp and pointy and you don't wanna get me mad.

One other thing we gotta get clear here, while we're at it.

Second greatest shaman ever! Second! Not third, not bloody third, because Blistering Steve was a bloody moron and it was bloody spontaneous combustion what he did, not transcending to a higher plane or that! There were scorch marks on the ceiling! There was a carbonised shoe on the floor. I'm seriously pissed that you wankers would think that Blistering Steve, that incompetent prat who wouldn't know a subduction spell if it went off under his frickin' bed, is remotely on the same level as me! I'm good at my job! It's not just me being modest or anything, I am that good and that's the truth of it and I don't see why I should say anything other.

The problemthe only problem I have, because when you're as on it as me there ain't many things what can drag you downthe problem is people. Human people, as you're asking. They just don't get me. I can walk up to your average Joe and tell him everything about his life, because I've seen it, I've seen all the echoes and all the stories you people carry around with you in your shadow, and I'll be right, and what'll Joe do? He'll scream and point and go "Goblin, goblin!" and call pest control and a wizard and I'll be like, "Oi, bozo! I'm frickin" telling you a frickin' smart thing here so don't give me this goblin crap because I am on it like mussels on the side of a polluted pier!"

Everyone's all like "It's not discrimination; you're a goblin" and I'm like "That is discriminatory whatsit or whatever" but they don't listen because, like they said, I'm a goblin! It is so frustrating having to deal with all these morons!

I'm not how you'd say a people person.

Chapter 43.

Always Offer Friendship in Adversity They are the Friendlies.

Technically, they are the Association of Friendly Members and Concerned Interests but, since none of their members really remember that and "afmaci" sounds like a dangerous Italian drink, they are, by unspoken consent, the Friendlies.

They are the union of late-night workers, of lonely beggars and the widows who sit alone looking out of darkened windows into the lost hours of the night. Their members are the cleaners who leave work at 5 a.m., the men with dirty faces slipping through the midnight tunnels beneath the city streets when the trains have stopped. Night bus drivers and street cleaners whose beat is five square miles of untended turf where the rubbish collects faster than they can clear it; security men who sit in cabins by closed gates watching TV that is meant only for gamblers and the lonely.

The Friendlies is where the lonely may be lonely together and, perhaps more importantly, where they may be told that for all the streets may be empty and the skies may be dark, no one who walks by themself in the dead of night is truly alone.

They have many shrines around the city. Usually these are discreet things at the back of community halls or tokens tied to park railings. A message scratched into the bark of a plane tree; the bicycle wheel left chained to a fence, though all other parts have been removed; the lifeless string of fairy lights that hang from a lamp post, though no one can quite work out why. But they only have one temple and it is...

"Here?" exclaimed Sharon, as they looked up at the sign Sellotaped to the door. "What kind of lame crappy temple is this?"

The sign taped to the glass front read, Association of Friendliesno flyers please.

A much larger sign remained, faded and cracked, on the hoarding overhead. Its original orange letters had long since been pulled off, with only their pale outline still visible on a black background. This read, EDNA'S TANNING AND BEAUTY SALON.

"How about pinnacles?" demanded Sharon. "How about red carpets, the smell of incense, chanting and all that? I've only been doing this magic thing for a while, but no one has chanted at me once! What the hell is that about?"

Rhys hoped his shrug had a degree of consolation about it.

Sharon scowled. She glared around the street they'd come to and her scowl deepened. Since leaving Walthamstow they'd gone from full daylight to darkness, but then, in urban terms, they'd gone from the end of the earth in one direction to the end of the earth in the other.

"Tooting," she growled. "What kind of stupid religion builds its temple in Tooting?"

"There's a Hindu mandir in Neasden," offered Rhys.

"Yeah, but there's an Ikea near Neasden!"

"Is there a connection between Brahma and Ikea?"

"What I'm saying," grumbled Sharon, "is you can sort of get Neasden. It's a dump, stuck between more dumps on the end of a dumpy line which people only use to go from London Bridge to the Dome anyway, but! Even if there's nothing else about Neasden, at least you know that there you can always find a flat-pack table and an air cooler in the shape of a sunflower. But..." her face fell further yet as she surveyed the entrance to the temple "... Tooting?"