I know a lovely gasometerspacious, warm, fascinating acoustics? suggested Sally from her perch.

Edna, meanwhile, couldn't stop looking with horrified fascination at Dog and Mrs Rafaat. Kevin nudged her conspiratorially. While Eddie Parks's hand trembled its way down a health questionnaire, the vampire had tried to disguise the bloody hole in his shirt with a tactfully draped tea cloth, albeit in vain.

"Uh, babes?" he murmured. "You're kind of staring at the nice lady with the giant monstrous killing machine, and that's like, not really polite."

Edna forced her features into something more composed and shuffled uneasily towards Mrs Rafaat. Dog sniffed as she approached but, at a pat on the head from Mrs Rafaat, sank back down on his haunches.

"Um... my lady?" hazarded Edna. "Ma'am? I'm Edna. I'm uh... I'm your high priestess."

"Are you?" snuffled Mrs Rafaat, whom the evening's events had now made rather teary. "That's very nice of you, dear, but I'm afraid I really don't know what you're talking about."

"You are Greydawn, aren't you?" demanded Chris the exorcist. "I mean, you're who all this fuss is about?"

"That's what people tell me," she sighed. "But really, I don't know. Everyone seems to think my little puppy here" she fondled behind Dog's ear, provoking a potent whine of appreciation "is somehow mystical and... well... anti-social. But I keep explaining he's just my little diddums."

Edna's gaze turned to the bloodied face of Mrs Rafaat's little did-dums. She took a step back, her throat pulsing as she swallowed. "Uh... well, I just wanted to say what an honour it is, ma'am, and I, uh... Thanks for all your hard work." She retreated, desperate to take her eyes off Dog but not quite able to do so.

In a corner of the wrecked hall, Sammy, Swift and Sharon were huddled in urgent conference on the problem of Greydawnnamely, that Mrs Rafaat didn't seem to realise she was Greydawn.

"She's human," murmured Sharon. "I mean, isn't that it? She's human and she's Greydawn. But mostly she's just human. Like, I look at you," pointing at Swift, "and I can see you're a sorcerer and other shit too. And I look at Rhys over there, and I can see he's got like, these major psychological issues with his allergies and stuff, but is also a druid... but I look at Mrs Rafaat and she's just... Mrs Rafaat."

"On the other hand," Sharon mused, "I kind of doubt Dog would let anyone other than Greydawn give his tummy a rub. And if Burns and Stoke tried to capture Greydawn, and if Dog has been killing the summoning team involved in that, then I guess it's not a huge leap to say that something clearly went crappy last time Burns and Stoke tried to bind and compel Our Lady of 4 a.m., and so... and so..." Sharon spoke with the care of someone double-checking every logical twist before even thinking of uttering her thoughts out loud "... maybe Mrs Rafaat is the side effect of what went wrong?"

"What, you think the Lady's mortal form is some Indian bird from Wembley?" demanded Sammy.

For once Swift's face was not a picture of discontent. "Speaking as someone who has been at the centre of many mystical cock-ups, I can think of several ways in which-"

"But why Mrs Rafaat?" interjected Sharon. "Why'd she become this woman?"

Swift hesitated, then grumbled, "I have no idea." His eyes surveyed the room and fixed on the cowering shape of Eddie Parks. "Why don't we ask?"

Chapter 76.

Eddie Hi, I'm Eddie...

(Hello, Eddie) ... please don't let the monster hurt me.

I got into magic at uni when I puked up in my hall of residence's cabal. They were well secret, but I was well pissed and I thought it was my door I was opening, but it was theirs and they were in the middle of this ritual thing and I'd had a few, and I guess you could say...

Anyway, they said they could curse me, or I could join, and I figured yeah, looks cool, I'll do it! I'm not very good at magicI get the words muddled and forget if I'm moving the sigil from left to right or right to left, but I do okay, you know? But it doesn't really pay, and I've always wanted money. I mean, not just for the sake of having money, but because it's there, someone's gotta have it, and if I have a choice between being the guy who's happy and the guy who's not, I'll take happy any day. And so thank you, yes, very much, for a Christmas bonus, you know? People talk about greed like it's a bad thing, but it's notthere's always gonna be rich people and there's always gonna be poor, and all greed is a conscious decision of which end of the ladder you're gonna fall. I think that's admirable, actually; I think that's something to make you proud.

I joined Burns and Stoke seven years back. They were good times on the market, and I'd forgotten most of the magic stuff anyway because it wasn't worth shit next to knowing where the derivatives market was gonna go. I knew there were a few others in the department who dabbled, you know, but it was all regulated and we had this deal with Harlun and Phelps, who everyone knew was seriously into the magic shitno major financial gain through mystical means unless it was run by the Bank of England first. And getting anything by those tossers is practically impossible, so we just ignored it. Didn't need it, you know?

Then it all kicked offLehmans, Northern Rock, the Eurozone debt crisis, Greece, Spain, Italyand we hadn't been too stupid, you know, we'd spread our bets and taken our positions carefully. But in that climate it didn't matter where you were at because everything, all of it, stank. And it's fucking stupid, yeah, because the government will bail out the banks when it's like, little people's money and that, but they won't raise a finger when the real fat cats, the guys who drive everything, when they're gonna burn. And so there we were, and we were all eyeing up our favourite pencils and the knick-knacks on our desks and wondering how much stationery we could sneak out of the cupboard before the entire thing went down, when he turned up.

Mr Ruislip.

I don't know where he came from, but one day I was called into a meeting and he was just there, sat at the head of the table. And he said: "Good afternoon, Mr Parks. I hear you have some mild skills with magic. Kindly remain in the office after work today. I will see you at 8.45 p.m. precisely."

And that was it.

I turned up at 8.45 like the guy said, and there were like, a dozen other guys there including my boss, Gavin McGafferty, who even I thought was an arse, and I work in finance. And Mr Ruislip walked in just as the second hand hit the button and said: "Gentlemen, you have been requested to remain behind as you have some moderate skill with summoning magics. I am not expecting wonders from you, yet, but from now on please consider your Tuesday and Thursday evenings to be within office working hours. And if you could each see to purchasing a box of latex gloves, that would be appreciated."

And he got us... doing things.

Spells I'd never heard of.

Big spells too, like... proper bindings, and compelling. We'd go to buildings all across the city, every Tuesday and Thursday night, and we'd make the summoning circle and we'd pull these... creatures out of the walls and floors. I guess you had to call them spirits, but they were all twisted shapes on the air, or odd bends of light, or shrieks with no bodies.

I was kind of freaked out at first. We were pulling out the souls of a place, but we always bought the building we were gonna perform the spell in, because that made it easier, because Mr Ruislip said if you held the deed of ownership in your hands then the binding would sit better on the stones. And he was right.

I got really good at it, in fact; though I didn't see why we were bothering until, one day, McGafferty said, "You're a fucking stupid little arse, Parks, and I'm only gonna fucking show you this once so you can piss off and shut up, okay?"

And he took me downstairs, I mean right downstairs, lower than the lift went, to the basement of the building, past locks and doors and men with fucking gunsI mean, guns, can you believe it?and into this giant vault thing. And at the bottom of this vault there was this great black hole, this spinning, whirling black pit. And I'm not much good at magic, but I could taste it, hear it on the air, and I looked into this thing and thought, shit, that's it, they've opened up a portal into hell. But it wasn't like that, it was a... a prison. They'd made a prison in a pit under the building and in it they trapped all the spirits we'd been summoning from the buildings, hurled them all together. And McGafferty said: "These fucking ghouly-ghosts are old, old as the fucking streets. And they've changed with the times and they've become powerful with the times, and even the smallest little shit-rag spirit sucked from a fucking stupid laundrette has power. And we've got them now; we've got 'em and we can make 'em work for us, the way nature should be."

He told me that they had spells to suck the power out of the spirits, and spells to make them dance and obey, spells of summoning and control; that he himself had sent the soul of an Internet cafe flying round the world to steal data from a Hong Kong computer and made two point three million that day. Or the spirit of an abandoned fire station which he'd dispatched to burn the warehouse of a company he'd bet against. Or the soul of a nursery school which he'd sent to sing lullabies into a trader's brain so he bid up, up, up, when he should have just sold.

"Usually these beasties just sit around in the city and do shit," he explained, "like the 'soul' isn't a fucking commodity! Fuck that, I say to you, fuck that! This is the twenty-first century! Time for the fucking soul to earn its way."

That's what we did.

We made magic a commodity. That's kind of what we do, I guess.

And I was okay with it. Jesus, I know you're gonna hate me now, but I was okay with it because I was selling high and buying low, and it didn't matter what the real value of the product was because if it went too high I could just wave my fingers and tweak it back, and if it went too low, no worries! Click my heels and problem solved. It was great, I mean really, really greatit was what magic should've been, no sweat, no consequences. So when Mr Ruislip called us into his office I was on top of the world. I was like, "Yeah, screw you!" and "Rock on, universe!"only not to his face, of coursebut that's how it felt, you know?

"Gentlemen," he said, "I am moderately satisfied with your efforts so far. Stocks are recovering and there shall be Christmas bonuses for us all."

He liked to talk about bonuses a lot, even when it was only spring, did Mr Ruislip.

"I now feel confident enough in your endeavours to propose a far more ambitious project. There is a spirit known to the sentimental as Our Lady of 4 a.m. To date we have only attempted to bind petty souls, little dabbling shadows, but Our Lady is a different creature entirely. She can command life and death itself and grant the wish of any standing before her willing to pay the price. I have produced a mission statement and business strategy for our next steps in capturing, binding and compelling her; you will all find your tasks inside."

We did itI mean, of course we did. Our heads were spinning with money, with the taste of it, especially since so many other firms were struggling, but wewe were the smart ones, we were frickin' gods! I was tasked with finding appropriate sacrifices to compel this spiritwhich took fucking weeks I may addand then we all assembled at 11 p.m. sharpMr Ruislip always meant sharp when he said sharpnine of us, to perform the summoning. McGafferty was leading it, and as it got under way Mr Ruislip came in with a woman.

She was a cleaner.

She was shaking.

Crying.

Scared.

And you know how you know something, you know it but you can't quite believe it? I didn't believe it, I didn't think we could, but then they put her in the middle of the circle and she was sobbing, this Indian woman with greying hair in a blue cleaner's overall, and she was begging and McGafferty had a knife and I thought no, he's not gonna, it's a trick, he's not really gonna, but I knew he was, he had to, but I couldn't say anything because no one else was saying anything and fuck knows I wasn't gonna be the prat who asked a stupid bloody question or blew everything now, and besides she'd seen my face! I didn't know... I mean, I couldn't...

... so I guess I didn't. Because no one else did. And looking back now, I suppose everyone else there was kind of thinking the same thing. But fuck me, why did I have to be the guy to speak? Why did I have to do it; why couldn't someone else?

We got to the height of the spell, and I could feel the power, feel the moving, and it was 4 a.m., bang on 4 a.m., and I thought, here we go, and McGafferty stepped into the circle and raised the knife and just... he just did it. We were all swaying and chanting and there was this power in the air, this incredible pressure, and I was burning hot from it and felt like I was about to be snapped in two and McGafferty stuck the knife in, wham, and I nearly laughed. Jesus, I nearly fucking laughed because when the blood came out of the cleaner's chest you could feel it, the power of it, the weight of it. I could taste it in my mouth, boom! She fell to the floor and we all waited but...

... nothing happened. McGafferty just stood there, blood dripping off the blade, shaking, this stupid fucking grin on his face, but nothing happened. The spell was fucking working, we knew it was working, but Greydawn wasn't there. We must have stood there for five minutes, waiting for something to happen, until suddenly McGafferty dropped the knife like he'd only just realised he was holding it, and the stupid grin vanished from his face and he just stood there, still trembling all over, muttering, "Fuck fuck fuck fuck..."

Then someone was sick. Someone else went to the door and puked outside. Other guys just sat down where they stood. I felt dizzy, confused, the blood still spreading across the floor. I went to the window and pressed my head against it, and Mr Ruislip was standing there, silent, hands folded behind his back, and I thought, he's gonna kill us, he's actually gonna kill us.

"Gentlemen," he said when the last of us had found some sort of composure, "shall we adjourn to the boardroom?"

And we would have adjourned to that fucking boardroom, blood still on McGafferty's hands, but someone said, "Where's the woman?" and we all looked round and she was gone. There was this trail of blood, not footsteps, just a great wide dragged-along streak of red, heading through the side door to the emergency stairs, and we all followed in a panic, fighting with each other, and I knew then, if she was still alive, I'd kill her, not to finish the spell but because she'd seen my face and had to die. She'd pulled herself all the way to the office below and collapsed on the floor. There was paper everywhere, like a whirlwind had been through the room, like a tornado had torn it apart, and she was already dead, staring up at nothing, and the lights were on and there was no fucking blood in her left to bleed and I felt relief, so much I nearly cried, to know that she was dead. But I thought I heard someone running down the hall, and I was too frightened to follow.

Only after, when Dog started hunting, did we begin to realise what had gone wrong with our spell.

It takes all your blood, every last drop, to summon and compel Greydawn.

But by the time the cleaner died, she wasn't in our summoning circle any more. The magic was good and true, but it was the dead woman who got her wish, not us. I just hope she wished for something good.

We didn't try that spell any more. All of us, we were too shaken. I knew Mr Ruislip was angry about it, but when we tried to scry for Greydawn, see where she was at, we got nothing. Like she wasn't even in the city any more.

Then things started to happen.

Rumours at first, odd warnings of things breaking out into the night which shouldn't have been there. Then one night Christian said he thought he'd heard howling, and Gavin said that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard, and Scott said he thought there'd be consequences. And the next day Gavin was dead, torn apart in the dead of night, and there was no sign of his killer, except these footprints that had burned the earth. Then Christian heard the howling again, and he was dead two days after that, and Scott said, "We have to run we have to tell someone," and Mr Ruislip said, "You are entirely overreacting. Please, consider your bonus," and Scott, I think, did try to run, and did try to get help, but he didn't make it in time and the police asked me to identify the body, and I knew, Jesus, I knew it was gonna come for me too. There are nine of us in the summoning circle; now only three are left. I said: "We gotta go to the Midnight Mayor! We have to get help!"

But Mr Ruislip replied, "Should you be so foolish as to refer to this gentleman for assistance, I shall be forced to refer you to that clause in your contract regarding premature termination." And by now I wasn't standing still for shit, I wasn't gonna do that stupid fucking thing of going "Does he mean it?" Because I fucking knew he meant it, he meant every word.

Then last night I heard the howling.

And I rang this guy at Harlun and Phelps and said, "I know everything. I know about Greydawn. I know why she's missing. It was us, we did it," and then the Midnight Mayor got on the line and he said: "You're a shifty stupid little shit, but you're the best I've got to work with, so run."

And I ran.

I ran so hard, and so fast, and so far...

... and it brought me here.

Chapter 77.

Listen Well and You Shall Learn Eddie Parks was sitting, a wretched bundle of twisted suit and tie, in the centre of a wide circle of Magicals Anonymous. Members stared at him, mouths, or perhaps jaws, agape.

"Well," said Sharon at length. "So," she added when no one stirred. "Usually I'd offer you a cup of tea and ask you about your issues and that. But actually I think you're gonna crash and burn, and I'd kind of like to point and laugh while you do."

Hearing herself, she flinched. "Did I say that out loud? Sorry, that's really unprofessional of me, I mean... sorry. But yeah."

This wasn't the sympathetic reception Eddie might have hoped for. But any urge to come back with a sharp reply was discouraged by a low grumbling from the pit of Dog's belly. It seemed unlikely that the animal understood much English, but he did seem to have got the gist.

"The cleaner," ventured Sharon, "was Mrs Rafaat?"

As he talked, Eddie had gone to great lengths not to look at Mrs Rafaat. But now there seemed no choice.

"Yes," he admitted. "It was... it was..." He gestured feebly towards the old woman, who couldn't quite prevent herself from touching a hand to her chest and raising her eyebrows in a "No, me?" manner.

"But I'm not dead!" she exclaimed. "And I certainly don't remember being used as a human sacrifice."

"Ever worked as a cleaner?" asked Sharon with forced brightness.

"Well, yes... but that was years ago!"

"Maybe... two years, for example?"

Mrs Rafaat rubbed uneasily at Dog's back, a comfort gesture she didn't notice herself making. "But surely I'd remember being stabbed?" she suggested. "I don't want to disappoint anyone here, but really this all seems very unlikely."

"Blood," said a voice so soft that at first no one believed it had spoken. Sharon peered around to look at the speaker.

"Blood," she said again; and there was Edna, high priestess of the Friendlies, very still on a broken plastic chair, staring at Dog and his mistress.

"Uh... blood in a nice way?" hazarded Sharon.

"In the old days, in the darker days," murmured Edna, "Greydawn was... more complicated. Before street lighting, when the smog was in the streets, when the rats brought the plague and traitors' heads were put on spikes on London Bridge... she was still the protector of the wall, she guarded the lonely travellers in the night. But her touch was... more than just protection against the coldness and the nightmares. Her favours could be bought, with blood."

Several pairs of eyes tried their best not to stare too hard at Mrs Rafaat, who'd just become distracted by an earnest conversation with Sally the banshee about whether green was really such a bad colour for a sari.

"What kind of favours?" asked Sharon. "Though I really think I'm not gonna like the answer."

"It was said that for a prick of blood on the end of your finger, she could guard your path against all ill. But that for the blood of life, for a dying breath, there was no power that could stand before her."

There would have been silence, except that Rhys sneezed.

"Okay..." said Sharon. "I guess that kind of explains the whole Burns-and-Stoke-hunting-her-down thing."

"But why?" demanded Swift, scowling with frustration. "I mean, put me on the spot and ask me what I'd do with unimaginable power and I'd have... well, a failure of imagination."

"Lots of toothpaste," replied Sammy with a malignant glow in his eye. "And I'd make sure everyone got the truth about stupid bloody Blistering Steve and his stupid bloody spontaneous combustion."

"I need a new job," admitted Sharon. "I mean, I'm okay with working nine to five, but I'd kind of rather do ten to five, or maybe even ten to four, and I'd have a short lunch break and work really hard, and un-install solitaire from my computer and that..."

"People!" cried Swift. "We're talking about she who divides the night from the day, Our Lady of 4 a.m., Greydawn herself, being paid for with the lifeblood of mortals! I think we're a bit past a supply of toothpaste and reasonable working hours!"

"Yeah, but you didn't graduate into a recession," grumbled Sharon. She raised her voice. "Hands up everyone here who wants infinite power."