"Ash. Ash!" Gabe grabbed my arms and shook me. I just met his gaze flatly. I liked him, I really did. There was something that with a bit of nurturing and some time to get to know each other, could turn into something deeper; deeper than I'd ever really gone before. But right now I only felt a slight shadow of it, a whisper that said perhaps I shouldn't burn all my bridges here, that I might regret it later. I resisted the urge to tell him to fuck right off. What he thought, wanted was irrelevant. Someone had my sister; I felt her loss like I missed a limb or something. It was a cold, hard, unending pain that made it hard to breathe. I would try to placate Gabe with as few words as possible and then go through with Natty to get her.
"What do we need, to get Tess back?" Gabe asked, taking the words right out of my mouth. I looked him over, noted the strain in his face, the deep lines around his eyes. "Gold, something flashy to catch his eye. He won't just let her go. A talking smooth skin is a rare find. Most are little more than animals."
"I can get that," Gabe said, "though the gold is a little harder. Give me a few hours, Ash. Please, I'm begging you."
"Why?" I asked with a frown. The prospect of waiting a few hours, carrying this weight on my chest was daunting. I knew that if I got going, it would lift somewhat.
"You are much more likely to get through to Gump with a show of force, otherwise what's to stop him taking you as well?" Natty asked.
At least then I'd be with Tess, I thought, but I shook my head. "Fine," I said, the weight dropping down deeper into my chest.
"I'll be back, love, as soon as I can. Sit tight; I promise we'll get her back." And with that, Gabe took off, out of the shop and onto his bike. Natty watched me as I sat down on a chair, staring at the ground. I knew I needed to snap out of it, I needed to make coffee, find equipment, ring Jez, sort out a message for the boys, make sure Jez had enough cash to keep things running for the next month at least, as we had no idea when we would be back or how time flowed on the other side of the portal.
“Are you alright?” Natty asked hesitantly.
“What happened?” I asked, looking up at him. “To Tess, I mean. Obviously, you saw her, but where? How?”
“I saw her come through the door. I live in a place off of the alley that the portal opens on to. It was hard to miss her; she was walking around, stumbling over boxes and bins, trying to take everything in. I had a pot of rice boiling, so I turned the cooker off and went to go and see if she was alright. When I came out, she’d made it to the main road and one of Gump’s boys, Daffer, who works the corner, was talking to her. I couldn’t walk right up to her, not with Daffer and his boys all there, so I followed them. They took her in their dog cart up to the Golden Monkey.” I looked at him blankly. “It’s a pub that serves as Gump’s headquarters. When I came in, Gump had her sitting by the fire, talking with some of the Imperial Guard boys.”
Gump, Daffer, Imperial Guard, my brain struggled to put it together, but I wasn’t getting far. I looked Natty over, his big brown eyes and his slitted leathery nose. Was Gump like him, covered in a light-brown coat of fur? Or was he something else? For a moment my mind flicked through progressively more disturbing combinations of human/animal hybrids. I could see my sister leaning in closer to some crocodile-jawed thing with a gleam in its eyes. . . . “What is Gump? And the Imperial Guard? I’ve never seen anyone outside of a sci-fi movie that looks anything like you before, so break it down for me, Natty.”
His eyes widened, then narrowed, as if he found this difficult to believe. “Gump’s . . . the head man in town. He looks like me, I guess, but much, much bigger. When the Imperium fell after the Emperor was cursed, they set up a democratic government, but it doesn’t do much. Gump’s the real power in town.”
“So, he’s like the mafia or something.”
“What’s a mafia?”
“This is harder than I thought. Um . . . does he like, run an organised crime ring? Y’know, whacking people who get in your way?”
“He hits people, yeah, but not just when they are in his way. He sends the boys around to anyone who doesn’t pay him protection money, or starts mouthing off about him. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of blokes working for him. He’s got his own bloody army.”
“OK, I think I know what we’re dealing with. So, how do we get my sister back?”
“Make him think it’ll be too expensive not to. It’s all about the money with him. If it’s profitable to sell your sister, he will. If it’s not, he won’t.”
Right, money and lots of it. I looked around the shop, then got up out of my seat and tried more floorboards. We’d found one gold stash that way; maybe there was another. “Go and have a look in the shop out the front,” I said to Natty. “Look over the stock on this side, see if there’s anything Gump’d think was valuable.”
I probably shouldn’t let a 6’3” furry with big bunny ears walk around in clear view of the street but right now, not freaking out early morning joggers wasn’t high on my priority list. God knew where Gabe was going to get gold from at this time of night; I couldn’t rely on him.
“What the fuck is that!”
I looked up, bleary-eyed, to see Flea standing in the doorway of the storeroom as Natty and I sorted through piles of magical supplies that may be worth bartering for my sister. Of course, there were some things Gump really wanted, like cockatrice feet, but ours had all mouldered away to a dank smelling grey powder that was apparently useless. “Hey, Flea,” I said.
“Um, I’m Natty.”
“So, she was serious,” Flea said, looking over the supplies spread over the table and Natty, wide-eyed. “She wasn’t just drunk. You have a portal to outer space in the shop.”
“Not outer space. Alternative dimensions? I’m not sure; I’ll have to ask Merlin next time I see him.”
“So, that’s true, too? That guy with the eyes–”
“Was Merlin? Yep.”
Flea came closer, raking his fingers through his fine, dark hair, messing with it until it stood up all over his head. He paced back and forth, Natty and I just watching him move. “She . . . she came home with me last night.”
“Yeah? As in . . .?” Flea nodded. “She hasn’t done that in a while.”
“She talked about this place, about what she was going to do. I thought she was just some trippy magic chick who believed in fairies or something. Shit, they’re probably real, too, huh?”