The man sitting in front of me did not, technically, exist. His name was Anthony Dove ('Call me 'Tone'') and he consisted of water. Now, I know that we all contain something like 96% water but it's supposed to be mixed with a bit of calcium and carbon and iron and whatever but he was just clear water in a man shape. Even his suit was water and it looked like something from the eighties, as far as I could see. It had wide lapels, which went out of fashion before I was born.
He was water and he wanted to know what we could do about it.
'How long have you been like this?' I said, wondering if his trousers were flares to go with the jacket.
'Just a day or so,' he said. His voice was perfectly clear so his voicebox was working normally. I could even see, under the kipper tie, the air in his lungs contracting and expanding. And, below the lungs, random bubbles that I assumed were incipient farts. I'm used to weird but the sight of his farts were somewhat gross.
'And tell me what happened.'
'I work in The City,' he said. 'You know The City?'
'Our head office is there,' I said. 'I know it well.'
'Right, then. You know Bevis Marks?'
I nodded. Despite the strange name it is a street in the eastern part of The City.
'I was in a meeting in an office on Bevis Marks, and they didn't offer us any tea or anything.'
'Criminal,' I murmured.
'Bloody inconsiderate,' he agreed. 'So when I got out I was basically gasping, so I went into one of those café places and got a bottle of water.'
'Okayy,' I said. Something was stirring in my mind. 'So did you aquefy when you drank it?'
'Not immediately,' he said. 'I put it in my briefcase and brought it home. I had another swig when I got back here, to finish it off and felt a bit odd and … well, here I am.'
"Here" was his flat in Chiswick, which was a bugger to get to and I could understand why he hadn't wanted to come to our offices. It was a longish journey and he was fairly noticeable. It was a nice flat, in a good location, so he must be something high-ish powered.
'Did you keep the bottle?' I said, trying to get a handle on his story.
'I've got it here,' he said. He got up and walked to the kitchen. I noticed that his chair wasn't even damp.
He came back with a fairly ordinary bottle. 'I was interested in it,' he said. 'It's glass, and I was expecting, you know, plastic. I suppose glass is supposed to be more environmentally friendly, these days, but I thought it was a nice bottle. That's why I kept it.'
It was very ordinary but rather old fashioned. It had a metal screw top and the neck of the bottle had lots of little bobbles on it, suggesting bubbles in a fizzy drink. There was no label. The use-by date was etched onto the glass and it was still within date. Not that I thought that was the problem. It didn't smell of anything when I unscrewed the top.
'I'm sure you're right,' I said. 'It was drinking the bottle that triggered the aquefication, but I can't tell off-hand whether it was the bottle itself or the contents that caused it.'
'So what can you do about it?'
This is the problem with the populace and magic. They've got their heads around the idea that it exists, or some of them have, but they can't get their heads around how it works. To them it's like a black box. A wizard puts something in at one end and gets something out at the other. They don't realise that it's just another technology and not all wizards can do all types of magic. There are specialists.
'I can tell you that there's some sort of magic involved,' I said. 'I think that it was a very old Curse called Aqueo, which was used a lot in the fifteenth century but is pretty much unknown now.'
'You mean I've been cursed?' he said in alarm.
'Not all Curses are malevolent,' I said. 'And quite a lot of Charms are.'
'Then what's the difference?'
'You have to keep a Charm going,' I explained. 'It needs input and you have to be there, or close by. A Curse is locked, and once it has been triggered it will keep itself going until the key is found.'
'What's the key?' he said. 'How do you know about it if it's never used?'
'I don't,' I said. 'I just know of it. It's like a history fact. It was used when throwing witches into water was fashionable. If they drowned they were innocent and if they floated they were fished out and burned at the stake, or whatever. The idea of Aqueo was that you cast it over yourself when you hit the water, swam downstream a bit and climbed out when you were out of sight. It's not really an issue these days so I don't know the Curse itself or, more to the point, how to find the key.'
'Well, who does know it? And why did it attack me?'
'I suspect you are a random victim,' I said. 'But you need a Healer, They know how to find keys. I'm not a Healer.'
'Well, where can I find one?' he said starting to look anxious. 'Is there a hospital, or doctors or something. They said you were the go-to people.'
'For City stuff, we are the go-to people,' I said. 'But this is not our speciality. There's St Mungo's Hospital,' I told him. 'I'll take you there.'
'Where is it?'
'It's in Aberystwyth,' I said. 'It used to be in London but they relocated in 2014.'
'But that's miles,' he said. 'Hundreds of miles.'
'We'll take a short cut,' I said and took a PortalStone out of my bag. It looked like a pretty pebble, but it emanated a blue glow when I put it on the floor and activated it.
'That looks cool,' said Tone. 'What does it do?'
'You walk into the glow and it takes you to our offices,' I said. 'You go first. Take the bottle, the Healers will need to see it. I need to pick the stone up when I follow you.'
He walked into the glow and vanished, which was a relief. PortalStones were safe enough, but are sometimes unreliable. If they work they are great, but if they didn't they just leave you looking stupid. I walked through the glow myself, pausing to pick up the stone, and found myself in our PortalBooth with Tone peering around with fascination. Not that there's anything to see: the booth is just a white box.
'That was amazing!' he said. 'So magic works!'
'Of course it works,' I said, mildly irritated. What did he think had caused his aqueousness? 'Come along and I'll reset the Portal for St Mungo's. And I need to tell people where I'm going.'
The door slid open and we stepped out into the portal room, which just had a desk, a filing cabinet, a chair and the door to the PortalBooth in it. 'Wait here and I'll be back in five.'
'Can I come with you?' he said, sounding like a five-year-old. 'This is so fascinating.'
'It's pretty boring, actually,' I said. 'Just a very ordinary office. Just like yours, I dare say.'
'Very clean, though.'
'That'll be the elves,' I said, and he actually squeaked. 'Okay, come along then. I'm just going to see one of my colleagues.'
I knocked on Boot's door and put my head around the corner as far as was safe. He was wearing a bubblehead so the Flatulus Charm he had picked up the previous week hadn't worn off.
'I'm just off to take a client to St Mungo's,' I said. 'Shouldn't be long, if anyone wants me.'
'Have fun,' he said. 'Say 'Hello' to Gloria, if you see her,' he leered theatrically and his Rovingeye spun. Gloria was in one of the portraits and had taken a shine to Terry when he was last in there.
'You see?' I said as I ushered Tone back to the portal room. 'Very boring.'
'Why was he wearing a goldfish bowl?' he said. 'And what's wrong with his eye?'
'You don't want to know,' I assured him. 'Now, sit down while I set this for St Mungo's.'
We go to St Mungo's so frequently that it has its own simulacrum, which is just a clay model of the building to remind users where they are going. It would become a pebble by the time we got there.
There was a pedestal in the booth for the stone or the simulacrum. I put the model on the pedestal and gestured to Tone to walk into the glow.
When I joined him, once I had put the pebble in my pocket, I looked around in surprise. We should have come to a PortalBooth very like the one in the office, but we were in a street. A deserted street. It looked a bit like one of the Alleys but there was no-one walking around where there should always be bustle. All the shops were shut. It took me back to before the Bad Times when the Ministry had interrogated me but back then, at least, there were people around to ask.
One thing was sorted, though. Somehow we had found the key and Tone had his body back. His suit, however, was the one he had been wearing when the Curse was in effect. It was a definite eighties number with big shoulder pads in a horrible bluey-purple tweed. The collar points of his shirt were long and the tie was geometrical. He looked like an extra in an ABBA video.
'Wow! That's brilliant!' he said, looking at his solid hands.' I thought you said you couldn't do it.' He hadn't clocked his suit.
'I didn't expect it to improve quite so quickly,' I said, 'but that's what Curses do: once you've got the key they just stop. I'm not sure what the key was but we seem to have found it. Now, I don't know this place but we must be close to the hospital.'
The truth was that I had absolutely no idea where we were, but the one cast iron rule in magic (apart from the one about not prodding sleeping dragons) is that you never admit ignorance or errors to members of the populace. We're wizards, godsdamit, so we're supposed to be wise.
I didn't think we were anywhere near the hospital, and I was beginning to form a horrible theory about where we might be.
'Where did you buy the water?' I asked.
'Some café down St Mary Axe.'
St Mary Axe is another weirdly named street in London. It was where the first City bomb exploded, back in the nineties.
'That Café Nero place on the corner?' I ventured.
'That's the one,' he said. 'Do you know it?'
'I had coffee with a colleague there a couple of months ago,' I said. What I didn't tell him was that said colleague, or old school friend, thought that a hidden alley came out into the coffee shop. The original building had been redeveloped in the eighties and the entrance to the alley had been lost.
I suspected that the bottle was a cry for help from the closed off alley. Now I had to find whoever had sent it and/or get out before they discovered that I couldn't help them.
'Let's see if we can find someone who we can ask the way,' I said. 'Don't be surprised by anything you see. Even magical folk can find St Mungo's unsettling.'
We set off down the deserted street, which wasn't deserted any more. The figure that emerged from a seedy looking pub was wearing a suit, but it was much more like Tone's new look than mine. It was dark blue with a wide and prominent chalk stripe and, yes, wide lapels. He had floppy hair and was carrying a thick leather folder stuffed with documents.
I was starting to wonder whether, not where we were, but when.
'Hi, man,' he drawled.
'Hi,' I said, resisting the temptation to say 'Peace'.
'You made it, then,' he said. 'We were wondering.' He had an affected, cod-American accent that sounded as though he had picked it up from watching too many old movies. Perhaps they were new movies when he watched them.
'We're here,' I said. 'I don't know whether we've made it. I take it you sent the bottle.'
'Yeah, well, we did,' he said. 'Not me personally. Did this Muggle pick it up?'
'We don't call them Muggles anymore,' I said. 'But yes. I would guess that we're some way from St Mungo's.'
'Yeah. That's on the other side of town,' he said. 'Never been there myself.'
'What's going on?' said Tone. Confused he might have been, but stupid he wasn't.
'Are we in Physic Alley?' I said.
'Nah. That's the next one along,' said the laid back one. 'This is Chemic Alley. Not so posh.'
Things were starting to make a little bit of sense. 'Did you get locked in?' I said.
'Yeah,' he sighed. 'We got the alert one lunchtime, well, tea-time, I guess. Someone yelled that the spell was about to fail, but we thought there was time for another round and by the time we piled out the gate had disappeared.
'Where were you?' asked Tone.
'Bongo's,' said the laid back one. 'Drinking club.'
'Not The …,' I looked at the pub. 'Flying Carpet?'
'We started there,' he admitted, 'but when it closed we adjourned to Bongo's. Do you know it?
'Before my time,' I said. 'Speaking of, what year is this?'
'Dunno, man. The gate shut in '82 but we know we sleep a lot and wake up from time to time. What year is it outside?'
'Twenty twenty-one,' I said, and he whistled.
'Forty years! Shit! We missed the millennium? Bummer. Must have been a helluva party.'
'How long have you been here?' I asked.
'It feels like a week,' said the laid back one. 'Couple of weeks? Less than a month. Not like half a century. It's like we're all asleep, then we all wake up, but sometimes only one of us wakes up, which is why we know the rest of us are asleep, if you see what I mean.'
'And time only passes when you're awake?' I said.
'It's Brigadoon!' said Tone in a fake Scottish accent. 'It's bloody Brigadoon!'
'You watch out,' I told him. 'The next thing that character did was die of a heart attack.'
'And there's more of them,' said Tone, nodding down the street to where another four time-lapse trendies were shambling towards us. There was a bald guy with an entire suite of luggage under his eyes, a short one and a tall one. The fourth looked strangely familiar, but I couldn't think where I'd seen him.
'Well, hello!' said the familiar-looking one. He had a very plummy voice. 'Visitors! How nice it is to have visitors.'
'Who are you?' said the bald one. He had protruding eyes and an aggressive Essex accent. 'How did you get in?'
'This is Anthony and I'm Michael,' I said. 'Tone found the bottle of pop and I brought him here to see if we could sort him out.
'You're a wiz?' asked the familiar one.
'I am,' I said. 'Tone isn't.'
'What do you call them?' said the familiar one.
'Muggles,' said the laidback one.
'Except we don't call them that any more,' I said. 'Who are you? Are you wizards?'
'Oh, sorry, man,' said the laid back one. 'Yeah. I'm Dave, this is Nosher,' indicating the bald one. 'This is Blow.' Short one. 'Denzil'. Tall one. 'And Nige. Den and I are wizards.'
'Do you work in the City?' asked Tone. 'I mean, did you?'
'Yeah. Nosher, Blow and I are Lloyd's brokers,' said Dave, indicating his leather folder. Nosher and Blow had similar ones. 'Den and Nige are in commodities. Den's a tea auctioneer and Nige is a junior in the Metal Exchange.'
'I'm not a junior,' said Nige. 'I'm a broker.' He didn't look young enough to be a junior.
'Was,' said Den. 'I don't suppose they held our jobs open.'
'Yeah. Longest lunch-hour ever,' said Nosher happily. 'What year did you say it was?'
'Twenty twenty-one,' said Tone. 'How have you been eating? Surely the foods all gone off.'
'Nah. It's all under preservation Orders,' said Dave. 'There's plenty. Loads of drink, too.'
'Then I guess we'll leave you to it,' I said.
'Hang on,' said Den. 'We want to come too!'
'No can do this time,' I said. 'The stone's only set for two. I'll come and get you later. How did you get the bottle out if you can't get your bodies out?'
'We woke a couple of weeks ago, I suppose,' said Dave. 'We'd decided to have a go the next time we woke. Den and I really forced an opening where the old gate was, then Nige reached a long arm through with the bottle and put it on a shelf.'
'Nige being the tallest, other than me, and I was busy at the time,' said Den.
'It was a bloody stupid idea,' said Nige. 'And I nearly lost my arm. Why do you want to go out anyway?'
'You do seem to have everything you want,' said Tone. 'And you might not fit in very easily. A lot has changed. You-know-who is dead, for a start.'
Dave and Den didn't seem very interested, and the others didn't know who I was talking about.
'It would be nice to have a chance to talk to someone other than this lot, for a start,' said Blow.
'Yeah, well,' said Dave, looking uncomfortable. 'I want to see what Lloyd's looks like. They were talking about rebuilding it over the road, last time I heard.'
'It's built,' said Tone. There's loads of new buildings. The Shard, the Cheesegrater, the Can of Spam. The Gherkin's just down the road, if this is off St Mary Axe.'
'Didn't you wake when the bomb went off?' I said. 'You must have felt it.'
'I thought I heard something,' said Nosher. 'Just before we woke up properly the first time. But I was feeling a little fragile. I thought it might have been that curry repeating itself.'
'Well, The City's always regenerating,' said Dave. 'It'll be interesting to see what it's like.'
'Horrible,' said Nige. 'I should think,' he added quickly. 'Full of immigrants. Nig-nogs and pakis.'
Gulp. He was definitely going to need some readjustment. I froze, and glanced furtively at Tone. He glanced furtively at me, but the others took it all in their stride.
'Some of them are okay,' said Nosher. 'We got some Indian guys in Lloyd's. They're fine. Just like us, really.'
'It's not the Indians that are the problem,' said Nige. 'At least they're Empire.'
Nige was beginning to creep me out, and not in a magical way either. I decided it was time to return to normality. I'd have to think about what to do about the others.
'Just to check,' I said, changing the subject. 'Tone won't revert to water when we get outside, will he?'
'Shouldn't do,' said Den. 'It was just Aqueo in the water itself, which triggered when the bottle was emptied and locked until it returned to the Alley. I put in a homing Order so it would return here if someone Apparated.'
'What about the suit?' I said. 'It wasn't the suit he was wearing when he was aquefied.'
Den shrugged and looked enquiringly at Dave. 'I didn't do anything,' he said.
'Maybe a camouflage effect of the Alley,' said Dave.
That sounded quite possible. 'I'll be back later,' I said. 'Is it just you lot?'
'Just us,' said Dave.
'And will you just go back to sleep when we leave?' asked Tone.
'Tonight,' said Dave. 'We'll stay awake for the rest of the day and wake up when you get back.'
'What do I do about the suit?' Tone asked when I delivered him back to his flat and checked everything was as it should be.
'Put it on eBay and buy another,' I said. 'You might even make a profit.'
'Are you going back?'
'I said I would, so I must,' I said. 'I can't imagine what it's going to be like for them but I said I would, so I must.'
'I suppose they'll just sleep,' he said. 'I wonder what's been waking them up.'
I had been wondering that too. The first thing I did on leaving the flat was call Hermione.
'You know that street you were convinced ran off St Mary Axe,' I said once the pleasantries had been exchanged. 'You know, Chemic Alley.'
'Yes. Physic Alley, you mean.'
'No. Chemic Alley. I've been there.'
'What?!' she said, then, more quietly, 'sorry, sorry. I'm in a library,' she explained. 'You went there? You physically went there?'
'Ha ha. Yes. And chemically, too.' I explained about Tone and his troubles.
'Wow!' she said. 'Really, wow! Are you going back there? Can I come too?'
'Sure,' I said. 'I don't see why not, and it might be useful to have two modern wizzes. I don't know how strong Dave and Denzil are.'
'What about the others,' she said. 'Are they completely mundane?'
'So they say. Just massively racist and, presumably, sexist as well.'
'Children of their times,' she said. 'When are you going?'
'As soon as I can persuade Mr Grobentius to purchase a group rated PortalStone. I know that none of ours can handle more than three.'
In the end we had to borrow one from the hedge fund where Mandy Brocklehurst (as was) works and she got very sniffy when I said I had promised first dibs to Hermione. She's always been a teensy bit jealous of Hermione. They used their stone, mostly, for client entertainment and it was set for Las Vegas. This meant that she had to reset it, and then I had to take it to the Alley (using the first stone) so that the more powerful one would know the way.
Her infection had turned out to be pretty mild and she usually just got a bit hairier at full moon. She only transformed completely during eclipses and she had taken to hedge fund finance like a wolf to slaughter. She insisted on coming too which, I suspected, was a way of getting one over Hermione.
Or perhaps not. 'This is Dave,' I said. Dave emerged from The Flying Carpet, rubbing his eyes, but Mandy completely ignored him.
'You know there's some serious real estate value, here,' she said, staring around. 'All this property right at the heart of The City. It's a gold mine.'
Dave and I exchanged glances. 'Somebody owns it,' he said. 'It's not like The Moon.'
'But I bet they don't know they own it,' she said. 'And if they do it's not worth anything to them.'
'What's she taking about?' said Nosher, coming up behind Dave. 'You the rescue party?'
'Who owns these buildings,' I said. 'And how much they're worth.'
'Well, Monty Whipsnail owns the Carpet,' said Nosher. 'I used to date his daughter.'
'Used to own it,' said Dave. 'That was forty odd years ago.'
'Probably Julie and her brothers, then,' said Nosher. 'I doubt his liver has lasted forty years.'
'Where's Nige?' I said.
Dave and Blow shrugged. 'He went for a walk after you left,' said Denzil. 'I haven't seen him since.'
'We can come back for him later,' said Mandy, who was clearly desperate to get back to her office and start buying up property. So would I, mind you, but I'd be keen to know who the owners were first. Putting one over goblins was not an activity to be entered into lightly.
'So how do we do this?' said Dave. 'Is it like Apparition?'
'It's more like a Portkey,' I said. 'Except that you don't have to hang on to anything. Just walk into the glow and wait at the other end.'
'Twenty-first century, here we come,' said Nosher and he led the way into the glow.
'I hope this doesn't come as too much of a shock to them,' I said to Mandy. 'An awful lot has changed.'
'Whatever,' she said, licking her lips. 'That's their lookout.'
I was really wishing I'd brought Hermione.
The booth was crowded when I appeared in it and everyone was relieved to get out. I think we had forgotten how washing habits have changed in the last forty years and the atmosphere was a little close.
They walked through the office staring around in amazement at everything. Computer screens: 'But they're so flat!' Mobiles: 'But that's just like Star Trek.' Phones. 'Where are the phones?'
They were absolutely mesmerised by the huge News screen in the lobby, with the rolling news ticker marquee across the bottom: 'Wow, it's on the screen! It's not on paper!' Mandy rushed off while I tried to corral them to stop them wandering off. Most of all they needed somewhere to stay the night and then somewhere to live. This meant getting on the phone to the Ministry and telling them things that they really didn't want to know. Like Mandy, they were focused on ownership of the property. I had to beat them round the head, remotely, to get them to concentrate on the welfare of two wizards and two mundane guys for whom they felt no responsibility whatsoever.
Suddenly, Dave shouted, 'There's Nige!' What?
'There! He's there, talking on the telly!' said Den
'Sounds like him,' said Nosher. 'Saying the sort of things he says as well.'
I looked at the screen. There he was; a well-known amateur politician of extreme views expounding on how everyone who wasn't British should jolly well bugger off home, though he didn't put it quite like that. Now I knew why he had looked familiar. I saw him every day during the Referendum, leading the charge of those who wanted to turn back time.
'How did he get out?' I said. 'This is live.'
'Did you recognise him?' said Dave.
'In the Alley? Sort of,' I said. 'I recognised him but I couldn't place him. But he's famous. He's been spouting this sort of crap for years.'
'He can't have been,' said Nosher. 'He's been in the Alley with us.'
'He's been in the Alley when we've been awake,' said Den.
'He's been waking us up,' said Blow. 'He's been getting out, and when he comes back it wakes the rest of us up.'
'And he always goes for a walk last thing,' said Den.
'And that's when he gets out' said Dave. 'Sneaky sod. I thought he was looking older than he was when the gate first closed but I thought that was because he didn't have magic.'
'Neither have I,' said Nosher.
'But you looked older anyway,' said Dave.
I left them arguing and gazing at the screen and took a call from the Ministry. They wanted all of them to come for a debrief and planned to offer them accommodation at a Ministry hostel while they sorted themselves out. This was going to run and run.
I called Hermione on my way home to break the news that Mandy had beaten her to the Alley, news that she took philosophically though she was interested, very interested in Nige's reappearance.
'It must have been the bomb,' she said. 'It must have disrupted the wards, somewhere and he found a gap. We'll have to go back and see if we can find it.'
'Bit mean of him not to tell the others,' I said.
'It sounds like he's that sort of person,' she said. 'I bet there's a gold rush with everyone trying to claim that they own property there.'
'I think The Ministry are expecting that,' I said. 'It was the first thing they homed in on.'
'I'm sure that's what Mandy's trying to do right now,' she said. 'Good luck to her with that.'
Mandy wasn't the only one who was doing obscure property searches. I must confess that I took it upon myself to inspect the Arcane Property Register whilst on a visit to the Ministry to help sort out the others. On my way down the long corridor to The Archives I met Hermione on her way back.
'Don't bother,' she said. 'I know what you're trying to do.'
'Like you weren't,' I said.
'Yes, well, I have a very tidy mind,' she said loftily. 'And it was niggling me. Mandy's going to be spitting,' she said. 'I can tell you that almost every property in both Alleys is owned by your friend Nigel.'
He had been a busy little bee. Clearly living in the past hadn't stopped him planning for the future. It probably explained why he kept coming and going.
'The Ministry's going to love this,' I said. 'All that magical property owned by someone mundane.'
No wonder he'd given up politics.
end