Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) Read Free Page B

perhaps–yes and without wanting to be judgemental–perhaps
it
said, “May I have another biscuit?”
    Several gazes flickered back to Sharon. “What? I mean of course. The biscuits are here for everyone to enjoy. Please, help yourself.”
    “Thank you,” he/she/it replied, rising with the majesty of a sunken submarine from beneath raging depths. All eyes watched it go to the bar. All eyes watched it pick up a biscuit with a grace and care that surely came from having fingertips larger than a lion’s paw, and all eyes watched it return to its chair, which groaned under the imposition. It ate and, for a moment, there was an impression of teeth in that not-quite-face, teeth indeed that no wishful thinking could deny.
    “Well, I think that’s just the kind of thing we should talk about,” said a voice at last, and Sharon nearly shuddered with relief as she turned to the new speaker. This was a man, mid-fifties, with demarcated strands of mouse-grey hair combed across his spotted, massy skull. He wore a navy-blue suit and a red club tie, complemented by a thick leather belt done up several notches too tight. But his face… Somewhere the gods of grease and the gods of time had drawn up their battle lines, and as their wars had raged the mercenaries of wart and spot had joined the foray, fighting to a standstill entrenched in the bags beneath his eyes, under his wattled chin and all around the remnants of his frayed hairline. At the gaze of the others, he bristled, and with petulant pride he declared, “You don’t see
me
coming here in a chameleon spell, and a cheap one at that, do you? I may see the appeal of an occasional glamour, the odd protective enchantment, when inmore refined social circles. But here, surely, we must by definition wear our true colours!”
    “There won’t be nudity?” queried someone. This was a question which Sharon had been hoping to posit herself, and so dismiss before the evening could get out of hand.
    “I don’t think we should rush into things…”
    “How does this work then?” asked a third.
    This time Sharon was ready. She coughed, pushed her chair back, stood up with arms folded in front of her, and said, “Uh, yes, so I guess, uh, I should explain.” She took a deep breath and launched, far too fast, into her prepared speech. “Thank you all for coming to this very first meeting of Magicals Anonymous. I’m pleased to see what a good response we got from the Facebook campaign and on Twitter and I’m sure as the weeks go by we can come to help each other and… and stuff. Here we aim to support and assist each other with all our… our…” the eyes of everyone in the room, so carefully avoided, were beginning to burn into her “… our issues and things, and as this is the first time we’ve met I guess we should say a bit about ourselves and why we’re here. So, yeah. My name’s Sharon…”
    “Hello, Sharon,” sang out a cheerful voice, into a silence. “What?” asked the speaker. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to say?”
    “… and I can walk through walls.”

Chapter 9
Pride Is Only the Self-Knowing of Great Men
    He is the second greatest shaman who’s ever lived.
    At least he thinks he’s the second greatest shaman who’s ever lived, but actually the matter is open to debate. He’s definitely in the top three, but it’s undecided as to whether he, or Blistering Steve, late of Streatham Common, is the true claimant to second place. The argument arises thus: did Blistering Steve succeed, in a moment of transcendent magical brilliance, in crossing the boundary between spirit and flesh and become, in a veritable flash of blinding light, a creature entirely of smoke and air;
or,
less impressively, did he merely contrive his own spontaneous combustion in an experiment gone tragically wrong? The evidence is vague either way, but as Blistering Steve’s rival to the title would point out, if his experiment had gone so well, surely he’d have been back,