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

instinctively I caught her wrist, the metal across it cold and uncomfortable. “Tell me” – I struggled to keep our voice tame – “where Khan is.”
     
She hesitated, then smiled a thin, humourless smile. “Alfred Khan died two years ago,” she said flatly. “You are behind with the news. Anything else I can do for you, sir – aura cleansing, mystic divination, unfolding of the sacred secrets? No?”
     
I let go of her wrist, before I could forget that I held it. We were not entirely surprised; nevertheless I didn’t know what to do, what to say, how, exactly, I should behave. So we did nothing, but waited to see if an emotion would strike, curious to know how we responded to such news, whether we cried or shouted or became angry or felt nothing at all. We hoped we would cry; it was the most human response. My eyes remained firmly dry, my mouth empty of any words.
     
The woman was staring at us, waiting to see how we reacted. We sat down on a padded stool covered in silk. In that close space, she towered over us, a proud tilt to her chin. I guessed she was in her mid-thirties, that the yellowish colour of her eyes came from a pair of tinted contact lenses, and that somewhere underneath that headdress the roots of her hair were blond. She waited for the news to settle, and the flat waters of incomprehension to start bubbling into a sea of embarrassing self-pity, before she said, “You knew Khan well?”
     
“Sort of.”
     
“Former client?”
     
“He once read me my future in the flight of a plastic bag,” I replied with a shrug. “He derived the secrets of time in the patterns of vapour trails in the sky, or the drifting of scum on the surface of the canal. Sounded like a load of pretentious balls at the time, but I guess, in retrospect…”
     
“What did he tell you?” she asked.
     
I smiled despite myself, ran my hands nervously through my drying hair. “He said, ‘Hey man, you’re like, totally going to die.’”
     
“That sounds like him,” she conceded. “Tact is not part of the service.”
     
“He was right,” I scowled. “He was bloody right.”
     
Silence a while.
     
Then she said, “You really didn’t know? That’s he’s dead?”
     
“No. I’ve been away.”
     
“It was two years ago,” she repeated. “I run this place now.”
     
“You’re not a seer,” I snapped. “How can you even breathe in all this bloody incense?”
     
She shrugged. “I understand what people want to hear, I have a good enough brain to see things, an excellent manner and a husky, sensual voice.”
     
“Is that the qualification, these days?” I asked.
     
“And I know things,” she added, firmer.
     
“Any useful things?”
     
“I know how to spot a magician.”
     
I looked up sharply, found her staring straight back down at me. “Yeah,” I said at last. “I bet you can. But you’re still not quite hitting the money, are you?”
     
“You come here to have your fortune read, magician, or is it something else you’re looking for?”
     
I found myself forcing a smile. “I was never a believer in having your fortune read, even by Khan. It was all too fatalistic.”
     
“Even the best-told fortunes can be evaded,” she said with a shrug and a jangling of metal. “I don’t take kindly to anyone barging in, by the way, magician or not. It’s rude, and it’s unprofessional.”
     
“It’s not been a good day.”
     
“A poor excuse. Stand up, I want to look at you.”
     
“Why?”
     
“You have interesting eyes.”
     
“I do?”
     
“Very blue.”
     
We were surprised she had noticed; not a total fool, then. Perhaps she could see in our eyes a signal, to all who dared look, of our true nature. “That interests you?” I asked, for want of anything more intelligent to say, and to buy time.
     
“I am interested in all unusual things.”
     
Then, and I was too numb by now to resist, she grabbed my wrists with the same forceful gesture by which I’d grabbed hers, and turned my hands over. She studied my palms, my fingers, my knuckles, my nails, the veins