The kitchen floor's so clean and shiny that it seems a shame to be bleeding all over it, but I don't have a choice. There's only so much you can do with your hands before it dribbles through your fingers and splatters down, wasting all that polishing.
But I'm not really thinking about the floor. I'm thinking about my bleeding face and is my nose broken and how hard the bastard hit me and just generally what the fuck?
I can see his feet stepping closer as I'm struggling to my knees, and I know he's reaching for me again.
And I'm thinking: some bloody safe having this turned out to be.
"All right, Johnny," he said. "Bit surprised to see you in here tonight."
I kept chasing that bit of fag-end around around the porcelain. "Me local boozer's gone and turned into a bleedin' sports bar, innit? Screens everywhere you look. So I'm slummin' it down here for the moment."
"Yeah, but here? Tonight?"
I frowned at him. Tommy "Two Pints" Chester. Small-time bookie -- small enough not to bother with all that official licensing, if you get my drift -- and all-round wanker. But he does keep his ear to the ground. "What are you jabberin' about?"
He just shook his head slowly. "See, we see you come in 'ere, me an' the boys get to wond'rin' what your game is? Some say you're bein' a stupid, arrogant bastard. Some just reckon you ain't 'eard yet."
I was getting pissed off with the tosser by this point, the fag-end forgotten.
"'Eard what, Two Pints?"
"You disappoint me, Johnny. I was saying, we was talkin', and the smart money was sayin', hold on, this is John Constantine we're talkin' about. 'E'll 'ave some scheme, some plan. Otherwise, no way he'd breeze into the Grazers' old stampin' ground only a day after Alfred Grazer pops 'is clogs."
"He fuckin' what?"
Two Pints nodded, shaking his todger and zipping himself back up. "As the proverbial doornail, mate. Word to the wise. Anyhoo, I'll tell 'em you've gotta plan."
"Cheers, mate", I said. "'Preciate that."
He snorted. "No problem. 'Cause then I'll clean up when you do somethin' fuckin' stupid, like aways."
Needless to say, I didn't hang around in the Duke. Out the back way, and into the Underground.
Alfred Grazer. Shit. Alfred fucking Grazer. As in "the Grazer brothers." Freddie and Bertie to their mother, and Alfred and Albert to everyone else. Young Albert - sixty-five if he's a day - is a vicious bugger if you get near in when he's in one of his moods, and so far as anyone can tell, he's been in one since nineteen seventy-four. Only thing that kept him in check was big brother Alfred. Bertie did what - and who -- Freddie told him. Consequently, so did everyone else.
And now little Albert would be running the firm. Taking care of business. And who'd be the first bit of business he'd want to take care of? Oh yes.
I didn't head straight back to my flat. Rode around London at random for a bit, well out of the Grazers' area of influence, keeping an eye on my fellow travellers. After a while, all the faces had changed. None of them looked like they were following me. But still?
When I got back to my street, I bought a couple of packets of Silk Cut from Mr Singh's, and worked my way through them, watching the bedroom light from an entry-way across the street, looking for tell-tale signs. Wondering if my reputation could get me out of this, like it did last time. You wanna watch out for that Constantine. Tasty Geezer. Bit of a magician too, they say. Yeah, right. That'd help -- that was what got me into it in the first place
Most of all, I had to get out of London. Lay low for a bit, see if the old grey matter could come up with some kind of plan.
Deborah was the tricky part.
The light had gone off, over the street, so she'd have finished her Grisham and rolled over. I stood in the shadows, just a glimmer of embers, thinking long and hard about just turning around and walking away. It'd be tough, I told myself, going it alone, giving up Deborah, someone I was in-- well, quite fond of, but it wouldn't be fair to drag her into all this. After the best part of a carton, I even had meself almost believing it. Well done, John, I told myself. You're such a noble bugger. But under it all, I knew what I was really thinking was: what if Grazer's boys are already inside, and waiting for me?
Except, that was the preferable scenario. It would be worse if they weren't waiting for me yet. The problem with Albert Grazer was that, if he wanted to get to me, he'd use any means available, and that included Deborah. I could leg it now, and by morning be so far outside of Grazer's circle that I'd never hear what kind of leverage he'd tried. I'd be okay.
Deborah wouldn't.
And Grazer wouldn't care. He'd just shrug, and try something else. It wouldn't matter to him, just like it hadn't mattered two years ago, with Nina.
Deborah was in the shower, while I was trying to think of good reasons we should both just bail and skip town for the next few weeks. She wouldn't like that, wouldn't want to miss work without a good excuse. What could I tell her?
I was ten fags down already and still drawing a blank when she emerged. "Jesus, John," she muttered, "It's less cloudy in the bathroom."
"Sorry, luv. Got a bit on my mind. I'm a bit out've sorts, that's all."
"Mm, well," she said, rubbing herself down with the towel, "maybe what you need is a break. Something to take your mind off it. I've got the perfect thing. Elizabeth's invited us up for a house-warming barbeque."
"Elizabeth?"
I got a roll of the eyes for that one. "My sister."
Couldn't help myself. "You've got a sister?"
For that, I got a flick across the chest with the wet towel -- which also improved the view, no end.
"You!" she said sternly, a smile on her face. "Behave!"
Something surfaced from the depths. "This sister you claim to have -- would she be the one who's just moved to Coventry?"
"More Birmingham, really. Hampton-in-Arden. Lovely-sounding name, don't you think?"
Christ. I could see it already: fourteenth-century-esque 'coaching inns' built in the Thatcher years, regimented homes, all privet fences and season tickets for commuting to the City. "Lovely. So when is it?"
"This weekend. Is that okay? I know it's short notice, so if you have other plans---"
Birmingham. A long way from Grazer's territory. "Nothing I can't cancel."
She smiled as I took her into my arms. "So you're okay with this?"
"Depends," I said. "Is she as good-looking as you?"
For which I got a pinch on the arse. And a lot more.
It's a three-hour drive up to the Midlands, in Deborah's Mondeo. Took half of that just to get out of the Smoke and past the M25. Once beyond the Great Carpark, I felt safer, as if I'd escaped Grazer's view for the moment, and was free to concentrate on the planning while Debs watched the road.
My biggest problem was how to convince Albert I wasn't a threat. Any direct hold I had over him disappeared along with the rest of Nina's stuff, when her family cleaned out her place. Not that I'd told him that, of course, but I'd convinced Alfred it wasn't wise to mess with a magician, and Alfred was always the cooler of the two heads -- even if that was only relatively speaking.
So, realistically, I needed a weapon, which meant tracking down Nina's stuff. But that was only a back-up plan. I needed to get rid of Albert's interest in me.
I didn't have a clue how.
We got to Hampton-in-Arden mid-afternoon, and it was every bit as bad as expected. Thankfully, Deborah cruised past the identikit buildings and took a narrow lane that looked like the only regular users were sheep. Hedges brushed the sides of the car, and I kept thinking we were about to meet the business-end of a tractor round the next blind bend, but the track -- I could hardly call it a road -- widened next to a sprawling farmhouse. Deborah pulled the Mondeo up next to a shiny BMW.
"What does Elizabeth do, again?", I asked, peering up at the looming buildings through the window.
"She helps Trevor with the business, nowadays," Deborah said. "He's a builder. Does up old properties and sells them. Did this place up, too."
Doing all right for himself, then, I thought, as we got out. It was a pretty impressive place.
And Elizabeth -- I could see the Carmichael family blood at work there as soon as she opened the door. Same onyx-black hair -- Elizabeth's cropped short, though -- same pointed chin, same almond eyes.
"Lovely to meet you," she said to me, leaning in for a kiss on the cheek. "Deborah's told us so much about you. And this is my husband. Trevor, this is John."
I released Elizabeth, and saw this beefy bloke lumbering towards me from the
kitchen, and I thought, oh fuck.
We'd never been introduced, but there were family resemblances there, too. Plus, I'd seen him at the funeral.
Nina's brother.
"Glad you could make it," he said, extending his hand. I took it, looking for any sign of recognition.
"Lovely place you've got here,"
"Thanks. Come on through."
I followed him into the vast kitchen, all shining surfaces, polished marble and gleaming chrome. Aga-saga by way of Ikea. A wide window over the sink showed a freshly-mown lawn out the back, the barbeque set up, and in the distance, a brick outhouse, looking sad and forlorn, like it was a pensioner packed off to the nursing home to die. "Big garden," I said, turning back to him, and next thing I know, pow, he lamps me one right in the face.
I didn't even see the blow coming. Suddenly, I was down on the floor, holding my nose, wondering if it was broken again. Blood was everywhere: my face, my fingers, all over the tiles. I saw him step closer, as I struggled to my knees, convinced he was going to hit me again.
Trevor grabbed me shoulder, pulled me up, and gave me a cloth.
"That's for Nina," he said. "Now we'll say no more about it. Leave the cloth in the bin when you're done."
Deborah and Elizabeth were just behind Trevor, looking on from the doorway with stunned surprise. "What the hell---" Elizabeth started, as Trevor strode past them. "Trevor? What's going on? Trevor!"
"Ask him," Trevor said, opening the front door again. "I'm going to get some more stuff for the barbeque. I'll be back in an hour."
Two heads turned back from the hallway to the kitchen. Two sets of wide eyes looked at me as I leaned against the working top, and held the cloth to my face. "Don't suppose you've got any ice, 'ave you?"
"John?" Deborah asked.
"It's jus' a little misunderstandin'," I said.
She came over and took the cloth away gently, winced, and put it back. Elizabeth was rummaging in the freezer. "Doesn't look that little, to me," Deborah said.
"Well," I said, "'E's a bit upset over Nina, innee? An' 'e reckons it's my fault she's dead."
Deborah's hand froze, mid-dab. Her eyes locked onto mine. "What?"
I sighed. "Like I said, it's a bit've crossed wires. There was this gangland thing goin' on. It was an organised crime hit, and they used a car bomb. She was just giving me a lift."
"Someone was trying to kill you?"
"Course not," I lied. "Think I'd still be around now if that were the case? It must have been a screw-up; someone got the wrong car. But Trevor's right," I added. "If it hadn't been for me, she'd had never have been in that part of London at all." You right bastard, John. How magnanimous of you to toss that in amongst all your bullshit.
"I think it's stopped," Deborah muttered to herself, then added, "well, if that's the case, then it's not your fault, is it? I mean, not really."
"'Course not."
"So why's Trevor--" but I waved it away.
"Who else is he gonna let rip at? Shady East-end gangsters? The unfairness of the universe?" I shook my head. "This is just his grief talkin'." And my guilt.
After that, things were a little strained in the living room, to say the least. I sat on the sofa with a packet of frozen peas wrapped in a tea-towel and clamped to my face. I alternated between staring at the ceiling and resting my eyes, pretending to be invisible. Elizabeth and Deborah made small-talk about family matters. After a while, I righted my head again, and dabbed cautiously. "Looks like it's stopped," I said.
"Well," Elizabeth said brightly, trying to salvage the weekend, "would you like a tour?"
It was a nice place, I'll give them that. Done well for himself, had Trevor. Big master bedroom with en suite. Guest bedroom with same - though I wasn't yet convinced that I wouldn't be kipping downstairs on the sofa.
"What's in there?" I asked, as we passed a closed door instead of peering in.
Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. "Junk room," she said. "We call it 'the rug'."
I nodded, understanding. "That's where you sweep it all, yeah?"
"Everything we don't have time to sort out yet," she agreed. "It's like a bombsite in there, but we'll get around to it."
"I'm sure that won't be long, given how you're going," I said, "and you've already done such a good job." Laying on the old Constantine charm. By the time we'd been through the whole house, Elizabeth had quite forgotten the scene in the kitchen, and led us out into the sunshine. Trevor was at the barbeque, stirring the coals. There was a small stack of cool-boxes on the grass beside the barbeque, bursting with meat. There were bowls of salad, trays of bread baps, and small jugs of sauces. Plates and glasses were nearby. Trevor himself was now decked out in a full-length white apron. He even had one of those blue cook's plasters wrapped around his left fore-finger.
"Drink, John?" he asked, as if he hadn't just smacked me one in the kisser. "There's plenty of beers on ice, or there's wine and spirits, if that's what floats your boat." There was something in his tone, determined and deliberate. We're past that, now, it said. We're moving on.
"G'n'T, ta," I said.
"Coming right up. Deborah, how about you?"
And that was it. No more about Big Bad John and his nicely swollen nose and lip.
We talked about property, the weather, the Yanks, football - anything to skirt round the looming black hole of despair that Nina's death represented. Good little adults on our best behaviour, not making a scene. Lots of words, but not saying anything.
Which was fine by me. I was busily trying to get back on Deborah's good side, and all the while, a nagging suspicion about that junk room had given me some hope about dealing with Albert Grazer.
"This is an interesting sauce," Deborah said to her sister, smearing the spicy brown gunk over the remnants of an incinerated steak." What's in it?"
"You'll have to ask the chef about that," Elizabeth answered. "I think it's a racial memory, personally. If it's cooked in a kitchen, it's my job, but move outside, and suddenly it's 'make way for the man.'"
"Nah," I said. "We're all just bloody pyromaniacs, is all. Can't resist playing with fire."
"Hm. Very Promethean," Deborah muttered, around a mouthful of blacked sirloin.
"It's mostly tomato," Trevor said, "with pickles and Worcester Sauce. Plus some special ingredients."
"Like what?"
"Ah," he answered, winking, "you wouldn't expect a magician to reveal his secrets, now, would you?"
The sun went down. The moon came up. The booze kept flowing, and we were out in the garden putting the world to rights. Deborah slumped in a deck-chair, and Elizabeth kept blinking to keep herself awake, like a proper hostess. The flood-lights from the house threw grotesquely tall shadows of us down the garden, towards the outhouse nestled in the trees at the end. Gradually, the temperature dropped, and the conversation slowed. Deborah called it a night, and Elizabeth agreed, leaving just the two of us.
The tone changed, then. With the girls gone, it was just us. Just the pissed-off brother and the cause of his complaint. We kept jabbering away, about this and that, but the pauses got longer and the sideways glances more frequent. Slowly, surely, we were spiralling closer to that thin ice. Like suds in a sink swirling around the plughole, we were heading inevitably for the one topic we'd been avoiding all day.
"'Scuse me," I said, getting to my feet and draining my G'n'T. "Gotta pay a visit."
"Rightio," Trevor said. "Fancy a spot of port, when you're done?"
"Sure," I said.
"Top," he said. "Cigars?"
I nodded, and sauntered up the path to the house. As soon as I was out of sight I legged it for the junk room.
Elizabeth hadn't been kidding. It was piled high with boxes of various sizes, bin liners full of squishy stuff, and miscellaneous bric-a-brac. It'd take me ages to sort thorugh all this - longer than I had.
Better use a different approach.
I grabbed a feather duster that was propped in a corner, held it out lightly between my fingers, and turned slowly, eyes closed.
Tug, tug.
Follow the pull, closing in, letting the connection draw me, until the duster rested lightly against a cardboard box.
I tore open the parcel tape, and looked at the junk inside. There were photos, ones I'd seen before, two years earlier. At Nina's. Bingo.
So far, so good. I had had a hunch that some of Nina's possessions had ended up here, and the old Constantine nose had been twitching ever since we'd passed the closed door, earlier in the day: magic.
Something in this room was tugging at me, which meant that it had to be what I'd left at Nina's.
I burrowed through the box, rummaging around through unopened letters and hand-written notes, before thinking, sod this, and dumping the entire contents all over the floor.
There: a jam jar. One of the old Robinsons ones, a single-serving one from way back when they used to have a "golliwog" as their brand. Not that the milky slime smeared on the inside of the jar was even vaguely related to fruit. But it was what I needed, to get Albert Grazer off my back.
Time to clear up and get back down before someone twigged to how long I've been gone. But as I grabbed the junk and stuffed it back into the box, the hand-written notes caught my attention. I didn't know why. They looked like junk - meaningless syllables scrawled in clear, black capitals.
It wasn't a language I recognised - and while my grasp of foreign tongues isn't exactly spectacular, I've been around the world often enough to spot the local lingos when I see them - but there was something familiar about it, all the same.
I tried reading it through, to myself, but it still took a moment to realise what I was looking at.
Oh, bloody hell, I thought, when I twigged. Oh, you complete and utter arsehole--
The notes were spells, written out phonetically, for someone who couldn't read the originals and - most likely - didn't understand what they meant.
After that, there was nothing to be done but read through the whole lot.
The garden was empty when I returned, jar in one hand, magic for dummies in the other. The house had been quiet, so I went on down to the brick building at the bottom, walking softly in the long grass at the end of the garden. The bushes near the house cast shadows down this side, and I stayed in them. By the time I reached the trees at the bottom, I could hear noises from the out-house nearby. Trevor emerged, and collected a cardboard box from beside the barbeque. I stayed deep in the shadows, and waited until he was almost on me before I spoke.
"I 'ope you know what you're doin'."
He jumped, barely holding onto the box. I lit another cigarette, illuminating my face in the shadows, like an apparition from beyond the veil. It's grandstanding, I'll grant you, but it does the trick. Classic Constantine.
"What?" he said.
I stepped out of the darkness, trenchcoat swirling around me. "Magic's dangerous," I said. "It ain't the sort of thing you wanna muck about with."
"Magic?" he said, not particularly convincingly. "I don't know what you mean."
I waved the papers at him. "Oh," he added.
"'Oh.' What exactly d'y'think you're playin' at?"
He drew himself up a little. "I want to know what happened to Nina."
"I told you what 'appened."
"You told me your version. I'm gonna find out the truth."
"You're gonna get yourself killed," I corrected. "You don't wanna mess with Albert Grazer," I told him. "You're just bloody lucky it's me standin' 'ere right now, instead of Lullaby Morgan."
He'd been baffled since I mentioned Grazer. "Who?"
I threw me hands in the air. "Oh, for Chrissake! Grazer! The bloke who set the bomb! The bloke you were tryin' to draw in with this," I said, holding up the jam jar. "Look," I told him, "this is dangerous stuff you're messing about in. You're angry about Nina. I get that. But you don't wanna go this way. I'll make a deal with you: I'll tell you everything about how Nina died, and you promise you'll leave the magic well alone. Agreed?"
After a moment, he nodded.
We retired into the out-house, which was almost as bad as the junk room. There were boxes again, plus a fair-sized collection of tools, both gardening and DIY. There were even strange iron utensils like manhole-cover lifts, earth core-samplers, that sort of thing. Artifacts from the building trade, I guessed. I'd used such things myself, but I'd always had more esoteric reasons: London's subterranean world holds many dark and dank places, and I'd had cause to visit far too many of them. And when I'd been out in cemeteries in the small hours, churning up some grave with a core sampler, I hadn't been checking to see what the clay-content was like.
So my life's different from other people's. That's okay. So long as they leave it like that.
Trevor had unearthed a couple of camp chairs, and he placed them side by side in the open space in the middle of the building. He put the cardboard box he'd been carrying on the sand-strewn floor in between them, and then opened it to remove a bottle of Taylor's tawney.
He passed me the first glass, and filled it to the brim.
"To the truth," he said, raising his glass.
"To the truth," I agreed, and began.
So I was in the Duke's Head, enjoying a quiet pint with my mates, when suddenly this big shadow falls over the table, like a solar eclipse. And I hear this feeble voice goin', "taxi for Mr Constantine." So right off the bat, I know it's Lullaby Morgan. And that means Trouble.
Lullaby is Albert Grazer's personal stress-o-gramme. Huge bloke, fat as a hippo with a pork-pie habit, and tall with it. I dare say he's strong too, but generally, he just leans on people. Literally. With all that weight squashing you, you can't breathe. And you can't get past the belly to hit him anywhere he'd notice - like his face - without scaffolding and a gantry. He's always out of breath, 'cos his ticker's permanently on the edge of giving up, so everything comes out as this feeble whisper. Hence the name.
And as for smarts, ol' Lullaby's right up there with the reptilian hind-brain of the dinosaurs. "Taxi for Mr Constantine" is his idea of a joke, and he uses it every time. For everyone.
Naturally, I'm hardly enticed by the prospect of a personal audience with the Grazers, but they're not the kind of people you turn down. Not twice, anyway.
The brothers' current office is in the back room of a bingo hall. There's two hundred and fifty biddies out front, thumping cards with felt-tip markers, and forty geezers in the back clustered around a perspex box, betting on the outcome between the cobra, the mink, the spider and the scorpion.
"You Constantine?" Alfred asks, when Lullaby marches me in, so I nod.
"I'm guessing you must be Alfred. And you'd be Albert."
"So we all know each other. 'Eard a lot about you, son. Got a bit of a name. So it seems to me you can 'elp us wiv a little problem."
Alfred tells me there's this copper, DI Compton, who's been a bit too zealous in cleaning up the region, and actually has a case against the brothers. They'd like it to go away, thanks very much. Now, given their reputation, you might wonder why they'd need me.
"We don't need you," Alfred says, "but you've got diff'rent methods, ain'cha? Ones that won't show up in any future cases, if some other bleeder decides to get stupid."
"Don't kill 'im," Albert adds, "or scare 'im off. None o' that. We want 'im discredited. So that no bleeder's gonna believe 'e's gotta case. So that he don't believe 'e's gotta case."
"An' I'm supposed to do that, how?"
"Don't come the innocent wiv me, Johnny," Alfred says. "I know your form. You've left a trail o' barmies long enough to full a dozen loonie-bins. What's one more?"
Right, thinks I. "And what's in it for me?"
"Our gratitude," Alfred tells me. "Which you do want, don'cha?"
"Okay," I say - like there's anything else I can do. "But this magic lark, it's particular, if you get my meaning. There's some things I'm gonna need, to do this."
"Like what?" Trevor asked.
"Well, not much, to be honest," I told him, "but I wanted to give the Grazers their money's worth, so to speak." I knocked back the last of my port, and he obligingly filled the glass again. "Mostly, I needed somethin' of the copper's, like some hair, blood, that kind of thing. Albert suggested a finger," I added despairingly. "Blood's best, but lots of things'll work. What else? A chicken, something like that, as a sacrifice. Candles. Chalk. The usual gubbins. I told 'em I'd bring all that. They had to get me something from Compton. An' since this was particular to them, I needed somethin' from them, too."
Two weeks after the meet in the bingo hall, I get word that've got the necessaries, and it's time for me to arrange for the spell. I give Chas a bell, and he runs me over in his black cab.
The Grazers are in the back of a sweat-shop this time, rows of immigrant women and kids stuffing pirate DVDs into boxes.
"Here," I say to Alfred, handing him an empty jam-jar.
"Plum jam? Wossis for?"
"Your contribution to the spell. It's gotta come from the two of you." He's still looking blank, so I add, "I need a sample."
I know this is gonna piss him off, so I'm ready, but Albert still moves faster than I'm expecting, and Christ, he's a strong bugger, too - he damn near lifts me off the ground. "Are you 'avin' a laff?"
"Easy!" I tell him. "Calm down. No, I ain't. These spells are... touchy. It's gotta be exact." Which ain't quite true - other things would do, but I'm thinking ahead at this point, and the other spells I'm expecting to need, they don't give much margin for error. "I'm not exactly 'appy about this either," I say.
Albert glares at me for a moment, trying to decide whether to kill me there and then, 'til Alfred says, "Let 'im down, Bertie." And my heels can touch the floor again.
"How much do you need, boy?" Alfred asks me. "You want us to fill it?"
"I'd be bleedin' impressed if you can," I say, "It's not that kind of sample."
They still don't get it. Not 'til I pull a couple of issues of Hustler out of the bag.
Trevor was holding the jar in his hand at that point, looking at it curiously. Then his eyes widened, and he dropped it - into his lap, as it happens, which was lucky (if not downright Freudian) since I'd be needing it later.
"You're kidding."
"Uh-uh. As I live an' breathe. Which was touch an' go, at that point. I'm just glad they didn't twig to the label - which had seemed like a good idea when I picked the jar."
He read it and rolled his eyes. "Plum jam. You were taking the piss."
I shrugged. "It's me contrary nature."
"So what happened?"
"I did the spell. Which was really a summoning. And DI Compton spent the next three weeks bein' followed by a homonoculus, whisp'rin' in 'is lug-'ole an' waftin' random objects about 'is office an' 'ouse when no-one else is lookin'. Didn't take long for his sanity to collapse, an' the case with it.
"But now we're getting to it," I said.
"It?"
"Nina."
I returned his gaze for a bit, then continued. "I went back to see the Grazers, make sure we were square, and cancelled the spell. Only this time, Chas was busy with some fare, and I couldn't get him, so I got Nina to run me over. Well, I was only gonna see a bloke, wasn't I? She went around the shops while I was in talkin' to the lads. Once the spell was done, I headed back out to the car, where she was waitin', after her shoppin' trip. I got some more fags from the corner shop on the way, and then, of course, it started pissin' it down. Three hundred yard dash to the car, wasn't it? Well, you know Nina, kind-hearted girl that she was..."
He covered his face with his hands. "She tried to drive over to stop you getting wet."
Close enough. "And as soon as she turned the key - boom. It wasn't me, Trevor. It was the Grazers. Specifically, Albert Grazer. Didn't like seeing someone like me runnin' round as a loose cannon. Thought he'd get rid of me before someone got me to do to 'im, what I'd just set up for Compton."
Trevor looked up. "Is it just me, or is it dark in here?" He took the empty bottle off the box, and opened it up to reveal some chunky off-white church candles, which he started putting on boxes around the room. "Been meaning to get a ring-main run down here, but you know how things are."
I nodded, feeling much more favourably disposed towards the bloke who'd clocked me one earlier in the day - for reasons I could hardly complain about, given my past. Maybe it was the port; I'd had most of the bottle, after all.
"But that's the thing, Trev," I said. "This magic business, you can do a lot, but you're just digging yourself into a hole. It always ends up costing you more'n you thought it would. These spells, this thing"--- I held up the jar --- "I can tell you're doing a drawing spell, trying to get Nina's killer, but you're bloody lucky you screwed it up. You could 'ave 'ad Albert bleedin' Grazer 'imself at that door, with Lullaby in tow, instead o' me. Just be grateful that the spell worked on the jar instead o' the jizz inside."
He shrugged, striking another match and throwing another set of shadows around the room.
"An' as for this," I held up the second set of pages, "I dunno what you thought you were doin', but this can't be it. Even if it worked against Grazer --- 'cos it won't work against everyone" --- me, for example --- "you'd be in deep shit."
"What's it do, then?" he asked, lighting the final candle.
"What's it matter? No more magic, remember?"
He nodded, muttering, over by the wall. Then there was a whoomph, and a nasty burned-air smell as a shit-load of dust and sand vaporised in a burst of power.
The lines of the circle, lying under the muck on the floor, shone through, throbbing like a doberman about to bite. The candles at the five points of the pentagram burned high and steady, instead of the normal flickering of moments ago.
A summoning circle. A bloody summoning circle. With me sitting in the middle of it. The bastard had set the bloody candles and lit them, and I'd just watched him.
"I lied," he said.
Nice one, John.
He walked around the edge of the circle, wagging a finger thoughtfully. "You know what bothered me," he asked. "I'll tell you. It wasn't losing Nina. Oh, sure, I was devastated when she died; we all were.
"But what got to me --- really got under my skin --- was how. I mean, a car bomb. Nobody uses car bombs. Not on people like Nina. We haven't had random innocent bystanders attacked with car bombs in this country for, what, twenty years.
"So I asked around. I stuck my nose in. I got in people's faces. And what did I find?
"John Constantine."
He stopped pacing, and looked at me. "D'y'know, John, a lot of people seem to have heard of you, or met you briefly. But not many people say they know you. And d'y'know why that is?"
Too bloody right, I did. But let him have his little circus for now.
"They're all dead," he said, mock surprise on his face. "You're a bad person to have as a friend, John. You're a walking disaster zone. I'm going to fix that. But before I do, we're going to get to the bottom of why Nina ended up smeared across a brick wall in the arse-end of London, while you're still wasting good air."
"You don't want to do this, Trevor," I said. "I've already told you why Nina died. She was just unlucky."
"Actually, I think I do want to do this, thanks," he answered, "and funnily enough, I don't think I can believe a word you say." He spread his arms, taking in the circle. "Hence this."
"And these?" I asked, holding up the pages in front of me. A slight nod of the head touched the glowing end of my fag to the corner of the paper, and flame sprang up. I tipped my hand down, letting it catch nicely, before dropping the burning wad to the floor. "Oops."
He just smiled, and pulled some folded pages from his back pocket. "I made copies."
"Trust me," I said, trying reason. "that spell isn't going to do what you think."
"Let me guess: it'll bind our minds together, until I release you, and I'll be able to ferret around in the grubby sewers of your memory."
Okay, so he did know. Sort of. "Normally," I agreed. "But there's a lot more to it than that. There's a guiding potion, and even if you could make it, there's no way I'm going to drink---"
I stopped, looking at his expression. There should have been at least some doubt creeping in, now. Not triumph. A very nasty feeling was creeping over me.
He needed blood: blood from me, blood from him, to bind us together. And from one more source: the target of his enquiry.
His own blood, that was easy; the blue plaster on his finger explained that. Mine? Well, he'd been lucky enough that I'd spilled a puddle of the stuff onto his kitchen floor...
Or maybe not lucky. Maybe it had been quite deliberately planned. And here I'd been thinking that it had been my knack for trouble that had led me straight to that box in the junk room. Nope, the bastard had set out to pull me here intentionally.
It even explained why Grazer was suddenly interested in little old me; all those 'coincidences' nudged in just the right direction by a spell.
But his potion wasn't in the port; I'd have tasted that. He caught my glance towards the bottle, and laughed. "Not there. Too easy."
"Oh Christ," I said, thinking back. "We all ate that sauce." No wonder he'd put so many spices into it - he had to mask the flavour. After all, wasn't that why spices were first used --- to mask the taste of rotten meat? Dead flesh, decomposing. Nina.
And I'd thought he'd been using the core-sampler like a normal person.
"You have no idea what it is you've done," I said. "But you're going to find out."
"Time to reveal your secrets, John," he said, and began the chanting.
He'd been taught well, for all that he didn't have a clue what he was doing. The circle was solid, desite it being smaller than I'd like, with the candles closer than usual. The chant was spot-on. On anyone else, it would have worked perfectly.
But he picked me. And despite all he'd dug up, he'd missed a crucial part of my past.
Some years back, I'd had a nasty run-in with a particularly rabid lunatic church. The kind that tries to breed its own messiah. They left me damn near dead and wired up to more hospital machines than I could count. But a demon called Nergal wanted them stopped, and sharpish. He filled my veins with his own blood, to speed up the healing process, which got me back on my feet and able to do his dirty work.
So it was Nergal's blood Trevor had used in the binding spell, not mine.
He finished the chant, eyes closed, and waited. And waited. A frown started to appear on his brow. I lit up another Silk Cut, as he opened his eyes.
"You wanna be careful whose blood you swallow," I told him. "All sorts of nasties in my veins. Just be thankful I took care of Nergal some time ago, or you'd be makin' first-hand acquaintance of a Demi-lord of Hell about now. And they're a right miserable bunch."
No response. Not even a blink.
Shit.
I'd expected the spell to simply fail, what with Nergal being history, but apparently that hadn't happened.
Channel was open. Phone was ringing. But no-one was answering at the other end. Looked like Trevor was stuck in limbo. Which meant I was stuck in here until the candles burned out.
And the cheap sod hadn't even provided another bottle of port.
I was a couple of fags in, when I heard his voice again. Except, not quite his voice. Same lungs, same voicebox, same mouth. Just not the same person talking.
"Constantine," he -- or, more likely, it -- said. "My master will be pleased to meet you."
Oh, shit. This, I hadn't expected. With the door wide open, someone had wandered through. Normally, that's bad enough - you don't want random denizens of Hell turning up unannounced -- but usually, you summon them so that they're stuck inside the circle, and you can dismiss them. Having them free to roam, in the catatonic body of the only person who could send them back, well, that could only be described as a complete balls-up.
Demons are weird creatures. Touchy. You have to know how to handle them. Be aware of the nuances.
"Oi," I said, "this is a private party. I 'ope you brought a fuckin' invitation."
Like I said, gotta know how to talk to them.
It growled -- a less-than-terrifying effect, given that it was coming from a Brummie builder, but that didn't mean it was without power. It could tear me to pieces without thinking, and God-knows-what-else besides.
But I've faced worse.
And right now, I was scared, but it wasn't me I was worried about. At least, not while I was inside the circle.
"I think I'll spend the next thousand years stuffing your eyeballs with maggots, and watching them eat you from the inside," it said.
I drew on the cigarette butt, and gave it a doubtful look. "Come'n get me, you miserable heap of pus." Because if 'Trevor' so much as passed a finger beyond that glowing boundary, the circle would be broken and I'd be diving for the far candles before you could blink. C'mon, you bastard, I thought, watching it step closer. Just a little further. I'm almost within grabbing range...
It stopped, right at the edge. "Pretty," it said.
Not quite the response I'd hoped for. "Which is more than can be said for you," I answered, confused.
"And she loved you, too," it said. It twisted its head, watching something. "She loved you, and you let her die."
The guidance part of the spell. Bollocks. "Everyone dies."
"But you let her, didn't you, Constantine? Oh, but that alone will earn you centuries of torment. I can barely wait."
"You'll 'ave to, mate," I muttered, flicking the glowing butt at him; it bounced off the mystical barrier between us. Nothing from me could get out - nothing physical, nothing mystical. He had to come in. "Get in line. There's worse'n you itchin' to get their talons into me. You'll 'ave a good long wait before you get your chance. Unless you take it now."
He shook his head. "She curses your name now, you know. Would you like to hear what she calls you, Constantine? Would you like to hear how her hate has damned her? How she pleasures the Fallen for eternity?"
Not real. That's not real. Stick to the plan. "Yeah, didn't think you'd 'ave the stones for it," I said, turning my back on it. "That's the trouble with you bottom-level demons - you're all talk. All this shit about evil an' horror an' disobeyin' God - an' all you ever do is what you're told. Too fuckin' scared to stand on yer own."
"I'm going to kill you very slowly, Constantine. Nerve by nerve. I'm going to unpick you like a woollen blanket. But not yet. First, I think we can have a little entertainment. How long do you think the two of them will last?"
Shit. I was afraid of this. Fucking Trevor and his amateur fucking magics, We were far enough from the house for this creature not to smell or sense Debs and Elizabeth - probably - but that didn't matter after Elizabeth's shit-for-brains moron of a husband fed them both parts of a binding spell that must've lit their psyches up like the fucking Luxor casino in 'Vegas. This bastard probably would be able to see them from orbit.
If it just came after me, and it did take its time, I'd probably survive until the candles went. Probably. But the girls? They'd be fucked.
"Don't wanna do that," I said, trying to sound convincing. "I don't plan on letting you get to the house."
"You can't do anything," it said, "not while you're in the circle. I know how this works."
"Far as you know," I said. Sounded lame, even to me.
It smiled, and turned towards the door. "We'll be back shortly," it said.
Shit. It walked away, leaving me trapped in my cell, pressed close by my flickering warders.
Very close, actually. Closer than normal. I smiled. "'Ay, shithead!" I called. The bounce was back in my voice, enough to make the creature stop. I broke out another cigarette. "You know 'ow it works, do you?" I said. "I don't think so. You've read the rules, but you don't really understand 'em, do yer?"
Trevor's face frowned. "What are you talking about, Constantine?"
"You can 'ear me, can'tcha?"
"So?"
"So---" I said, taking a vast drag on the fag, filling my lungs with glorious, warming, nicotine-laden ash, feeling the buzz behind my eyes, 'til I could hold no more. He could hear me. Hear sound from inside the circle. And sound was nothing more than just moving air.
I blew all the smoke out towards a candle in one big, long, burst. Six seconds. Seven. Eight. Blow. The candle gutted, and died. The circle faded. Trevor collapsed to the floor.
He didn't move. I stuck the fag between my teeth and went over to him. Rolling him over, I could see that he was still breathing, but his eyes were unfocused. "You all right, mate?"
No response. I slapped him on the cheek a few times - and if I was a little too enthusiastic about that, can you blame me? -- but to no effect. If Trevor was still at home, he wasn't answering the door. It was going to be interesting explaining this one to Debbie and Elizabeth.
I sat back on my heels, crouched down beside him, and watched saliva crawl slowly down his cheek to his ear.
"Well, John," I said to myself, "You've really fucked this one up."
"As usual," said a voice from behind me. A voice from two years ago.
I sighed, closing my eyes against the grief that came from nowhere, as strong as it had been before. I nodded to myself: this was about par for the course.
I stood and turned to face her. "'Allo, Nina. 'Ow've you bin?"
"Dead. How'd you think?"
She was still beautiful, still as I remembered her, standing in the shadows of the outhouse. Same hair. Same lips. Same tilt to her hips. Her eyes were different, though, They'd never been so disappointed before.
"Yeah, well," I said, taking the fag in my hand and looking at it. "Sorry about that, luv."
"'Sorry'. Is that all you have to say? 'Sorry?'"
"Well, whatja expect me to say? 'I'll try not to get you killed again'?"
She shifted in the shadows. "Actually, why would be nice."
I shrugged. "Albert Grazer's a fuckin' bastard."
A glint from the darkness. "Spare me. You knew. You knew, you bastard."
"I didn't! I swear I didn't." I looked away. "Not for sure."
"You had a fucking strong suspicion!"
I rubbed my forehard, eyes closed. Her voice was empty, hollow, when I couldn't see her, as if it were just the wind.
"At least tell me why," I heard. "You owe me that much."
"You were a sweet kid," I said, after a while. "Really fun, most of the time. An' the way you looked at me, like I was the coolest fucker on the planet -- I didn't want to lose that. John Constantine," I said, arms wide, "rake at the gates of Hell, laughing at the darkness with a sly wink an' a smile. How's it look if I'm all knock-kneed at the thought of some geriatric in a tux? Gettin' all twitchy about gettin' in cars? Look," I said, "I didn't think they 'ad really done it! An' anyway, Christ! I didn't bleedin' know it was gonna start rainin' when I went for some fags! It was your own idea to drive over and pick me up."
"You could've stopped me! But you'd rather keep your image."
I nodded. "An' besides" - deep breath -- "besides, if I was wrong, I wouldn't 'ave to go through another break-up."
I could hardly see her, now. I could feel her gaze, though, worse than anything the demon had directed at me.
"Tell her, John," she said, at last. "Tell her, or leave her."
"It's not that simple---"
"It is. It's exactly that simple. Promise me."
"Luv---"
"Promise."
"All right. All right. I promise," I said. But I was talking to an empty room.
The lights were on in the house. Debs and Elizabeth were sitting at the kitchen table clutching mugs like they were tethers to reality.
"John!" Debs said when I opened the back door. "Where've you been? Where's Trevor?"
I thought of Nina, fading in the dark. "He's down the garden," I said. "He's--- He was sleepwalking, or something. I think 'e's 'ad a stroke, or somethin'." Sorry, Nina, luv.
They shared a look. "A stroke?" Elizabeth echoed.
"Yeah. He was mumblin' all sorts o' nonsense, an' then 'e sort of passed out. I think you'd better call an ambulance, Liz."
She nodded, went off to get the phone. Deborah looked down at the cup in her hands. "Will he be all right, do you think?"
"I dunno," I said. "Maybe."
"Do you know what caused it?"
I shrugged, taking a seat beside her, pulling her close. "Who knows why these things 'appen," I said. "Maybe the doctors will figure somethin' out."
"So it wasn't magic, then?"
I froze, for a second. "Magic? 'Course not! Where'd you get that idea?"
"Oh," she said distantly, "it was just something I heard."
They took Trevor away in an ambulance, Elizabeth holding his limp hand. Debs followed along in the car, me beside her as moral support, muttering inanities and not thinking about Nina. I barely paid attention to what I was saying or where we were going until Debs pulled up at Birmingham New Street Station.
"I don't think we need to catch a train to get to the 'ospital, luv," I said.
"Get out."
"You what?"
"Get out. You can get a train back to London."
"No, it's okay, I'll---"
"I know, John. I saw it all. I saw it all."
I looked at her eyes, and I knew.
They'd both had the guiding potion. They'd been caught up in his spell. They'd both seen the same memories that the demon had seen. I thought of Liz and Debs sitting in that kitchen, listening to me jabberin' on about strokes and them just accepting it for the bollocks it was. There was no point panicking about doctors, all that nonsense. They'd known it was all a formality.
Her hands were white on the steering wheel. "It was like a dream, but Elizabeth and I both saw. We saw what you did to Nina."
And that was that. I looked at her for a moment, then opened the door.
"Look---" I started to say, but she cut me off, throwing up her hand. Her eyes were screwed shut, her teeth gritted.
"Don't! Just--- Just go."
The door was barely shut when the car lurched off. I watched it disappear into the traffic, then went looking for the next train to Euston.
Down on the platform, I stood beneath the No Smoking sign and lit up, looking across the tracks towards the crowds opposite, seeing the familiar face hidden in the shadows, her dead eyes reproaching me.
In my game, you don't look back. You leave a trail of scattered souls behind you, and you don't look back.
You don't need to.
ENDS