A Madness of Angels: Or the Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin Page A

manner that I hoped was apologetic but firm. “Perhaps I should just go through,” I offered.
     
He pawed at his neck and made gagging sounds. I nodded politely, and swept past reception and through the curtains leading to the gloom beyond.
     
     
The irritating nasal droning was even louder in the shadows beyond the curtains, and the smell of cheap incense almost giddying; its thick smoke spilled out of every corner and tickled the eyeballs. There was only one source of light: on a table in the centre of the room a crystal ball was glowing white. It didn’t really emit light, so much as hug the shadows, defining a tight area of space against which the darkness pressed. I didn’t bother with it, since its colour and texture felt entirely mains-powered, rather than anything worth the name of magical. From beyond the next curtain, of a thick black velvet, a voice like snow swishing across a mountainside said, “Since you’ve come so far, you are welcome.”
     
I pushed the curtain back.
     
Half lost in a cloud of incense, the woman sat at the back of the room on a chair upholstered in red silk. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, and a deck of cards lay on the table in front of her. She was wearing more gold medallions and fake gold chain than I had ever seen on a single living creature. The jewellery hung from a headpiece resting precariously on her dyed-black hair, dangled over her heavily made-up face, swept across her shoulders and down her arms, tinkled along her fingertips, drooped down her front and spread out in waves around her ankles and across her bare feet and polished toenails. When she moved, each motion a delicate twitch, she jingled, she glinted, she glowed.
     
She said, not raising her eyes from the cards, “Will you not sit, since you are so eager to hear your fortune told?”
     
I said, spreading my arms wide in disbelief, “What the bloody hell is this?!”
     
“The mystical often takes us by surprise…”
     
“No, but seriously, what the bloody hell is going on? Where’s Khan? What’s all the shiny stuff for, why do you have a glow-in-the-dark crystal ball, who’s the man in the tight trousers, what’s up with all the incense, I mean really and right now? What kind of establishment is this meant to be?”
     
For a moment, just a moment, she looked surprised. Then her expression reset itself into one of semi-divine entrancement, her hands drifting up around her face in the swirling patterns of the smoke she disturbed, a beatific smile settling over her bright scarlet lips. “I am the seer of the future,” she intoned, “I am here to grant to you…”
     
“Where’s Khan?”
     
“I am here to grant you a vision into…”
     
“Bugger a vision into the unknown mists of fucking whatever, I want to see Khan, and I want to see him right bloody now!”
     
She hesitated, a flicker of something real passing over her serene features for a moment, and in a slightly more sensible voice, tinged with a hint of Peckham, she enquired, “Why would you seek this man?”
     
“Do you know who Khan is?”
     
“A king, an emperor, a lord…”
     
“ We are not here to play games! ”
     
She froze, and this time made no effort to recover, the surprise clear on her face. I glared at her, daring her to mumble a single line more of inane waffle, itching to throw something. Finally, with a little breath, half a laugh, half a start of surprise, she said in a much clearer, sharper voice, “Why are you here? What do you know about Khan?”
     
“Alfred bloody Khan,” I snapped. “Seer of the bloody future. Something, may I add, which you are not.”
     
There was a flash of anger behind her eyes. She stood up, gathering her skirts in a single sweeping, practised gesture, and exclaimed, “Be careful. You were not invited here.”
     
Then, to our surprise, she stepped right up close to us, and stared at our eyes. She drew in a long breath between her teeth and whispered, “Well then…”
     
She reached up to touch my face, and