His breath stank of tuna, the closest he deigned to come to sourcing his own food, with a vague odor of something that could have been brimstone. It could also have been something unmentionable out of next door’s bin. It was best not to know the answer to some questions.
“I keep telling you… you’re not a kitchen witch. Why would I, the great Lord Mephistopheles, shackle myself to a mere kitchen witch?”
She shrugged, ignoring the fact he’d pronounced the word kitchen in the same tones as one would “cockroach.” Mr. Big City had won the confrontation and boarded the train before the other suited norm. Perhaps there really was a pecking order between them?
“I don’t know, your lordship…” she murmured, looking up.
Above the milling crowds and the illuminated boards the norms used to signal when the next train was due sat a wrought-iron balcony. Crouched on it, his knees up by his ears and the top of his smart uniform hat almost scraping the ceiling, was the biggest gargoyle she’d ever seen. He saw her looking and acknowledged her with a nod, writing something on the tiny clipboard in his gargantuan hands.
She sighed in relief and watched the board beneath his clawed feet. It was the old-fashioned kind like the sort used to mark sports scores in days gone past, each number flipping over the last. It marked the time until the next train was due in. Currently it read zero zero point three zero.
Thirty seconds…
Almost before she’d finished the thought, the train rolled into the station.
“Excellent,” Garlick muttered in her ear. “Early. We might just make it before Whippy’s rounds.”
She nodded as the train pulled to a stop. Unlike the norms’ train in its modern metal and plastic glory, the trains of the Paranormal Transportation Company were straight out of the last century. Gleaming brass and painted metal, it chuffed into the station with all the noise and ambience of a steam train… but with no smoke to choke everyone on the platform half to death.
“This is us,” she trilled, checking her watch. They might just make it to the museum on time… or at least before Ms. Whipsnide started her rounds.
She pushed her way through the unmoving crowd of norms still filling the platform. None of them could see the ghost train, standing staring into space or looking at the tiny little screens on their phones. Several muttered in annoyance as Daffi passed by, her magic interfering with their devices. It was the reason most witches didn’t carry phones. The magic-blocking spells that enabled them to work were generally cheap and crap, either not working at all or working so well they blocked the witches’ magic as well. Others worked properly but were so expensive you’d need a mortgage and possibly an inheritance from the Merlin family as well.
Reaching the door, her gaze fixed on the panel on the side. Sign-written with an ad for some magical malady cure, the letters were moving. Nothing unusual, the magic that drove the advertisement was spelled to do so. But then familiar words resolved right in front of her…
“Remember who you were before you forgot.”
“No thank you,” she said smartly, yanking open the door and hopping aboard with Garlick still on her shoulder. Those words had haunted her childhood, sometimes literally, and she wanted nothing at all to do with them. “I know exactly who I am, thank you very much.”
She was Daffodil McGee from a long line of McGee kitchen witches—a very modest, but honest, lineage. Nothing close to the upper classes like the Rhegeads or one of her coworkers, Sybil Bulcock, whose blood was bluer than a field of cornflowers.
“You should listen to them,” Garlick commented, settling himself around her shoulders like a furry stole. “They know what they’re talking about.”
“Oh, do they now?” she quipped, moving along the corridor and looking for a free compartment as the train pulled off. Or even a free armchair. But all of the ones she looked in were occupied, each small compartment stuffed to bursting with large, comfortable-looking armchairs. Every single one was occupied, witches and warlocks looking up at her as she poked her head in the door.
“Crone’s tits,” she hissed in defeat and reached for an overhead handle. “Looks like the cheap seats for us.”
Garlick chuckled.
“Talk for yourself. Familiars get to ride, baby, ride.”
2
“See? This is what happens when you don’t say no to people!” Garlick trilled as they raced down the street. Delays on the line had meant the train was late, and they were now dangerously pushed for time. The moment the big clock on the front of the main museum building chimed nine, she would be late. And since Ms. Whipsnide had spelled all the doors to report any staff late arrivals, she couldn’t even sneak in. Not unless she climbed in through a window, but she wouldn’t have put it past the woman to have spelled those as well.
“Shut up,” she told him and then groaned as a woman with seventeen dozen chihuahuas blocked the street ahead. Most norm pets couldn’t see witches… or, in the case of cats, completely ignored them… but chihuahuas were an exception. Daffi grabbed Garlick and skipped onto the road to get past them.
Each furry domed doggy head followed them, buggy eyes glittering with barely contained malevolence. Daffi shuddered. They were utter demonic little land-sharks just looking for their next kill. She was convinced their collars were actually control devices stopping them from going on a rampaging feeding frenzy through the streets of London.
Garlick sniggered and somehow managed to flip them off even though he technically didn’t have a middle finger.
“Would you stop that?” she huffed as the street behind them erupted into doggy chaos. Each rage-filled dog tried to reach the cat at the same time, but then the red mist took over and several attacked each other instead. Then it became a free-for-all that took up the entire sidewalk and half the road. Black cabs swerved, and a bus nearly ended up in a coffee shop.
All the while a high-pitched woman’s voice called out,, “No no, Mr. Snufflepoo, please don’t bite Mrs. Cottoncuddles… Mister Wufflebottom, don’t you dare! Oh my… you are all bad doggies! Bad doggies, I say!”
Garlick huffed. “She went for the bad doggy switch early. Dammit!”
Daffi cast a look over her shoulder to see all the demonic little puffs of fluff doing their best to look innocent and contrite.
“Shit-stirrer,” she hissed at Garlick, who had made his way up to her shoulder again. Why she was so out of breath when she hauled his furry ass around all the time, she did not know. She’d need cupcakes at break for sure now. A mountain of them. Like most witches, she burned through calories like no one’s business.
“Oh, thank the crone, just in time,” she huffed as she ran up the steps at the front of the museum, stepping into the revolving door just as the clock began to chime nine. Her heart pounding, she waved to Dave, the flirty weredog who ran the ticket booth and gift shop.
She didn’t get to talk to him much, but he was a hit with female visitors with his good looks and cute, long blond hair in a man-bun. She was fairly sure he got a lot of women’s numbers written on tickets shoved down the back of his pants. She didn’t blame them. If she wasn’t so homely, she might have tried to chat him up herself. At least he’d never seen her with her freaky real hair, the pure white covered up with a red dye.