Velma had grown up in Glasgow, but when her father’s shop had gone under, at about the same time her mother had been made redundant, they’d moved down south to Nottingham, to be closer to Aunt Ginchiyo in London, as much as all the other reasons. The bulk of her father’s stock had been sold off for much less than it was worth to accommodate the move, and now, he ran a little cake business at home.

She’d hated it, at the time, having to move away from home and have to put up with all these new schoolmates, missing her friends, having to deal with English people all the time, but now…

She didn’t know if she’d go back to Glasgow, once she had her next degree. She’d used to say she would after she was done studying, when she was a kid, but she liked the convenience of London, liked being so close to her parents and to her brother, in case anything went wrong, in case they needed her. It was important to be on hand, if she was needed.

Aunt Ginchiyo’s apartment was down in Chelsea – she didn’t have a formal shop like Velma’s father had, just specialist goods for specialist buyers, kept out in one warehouse or another, and the home office at her flat.

Velma’s dad had often had enchanted and magical furniture, but it was in amongst the broader swathes of vintage and antique work, especially imports from Japan and other parts of East and South Asia. Aunt Ginchiyo didn’t care nearly as much where or when the furniture had come from, so long as the magical work on it was robust and able to withstand stress and testing.

Velma didn’t need to ring the doorbell: she knew the code to allow her into the building proper, and had her own key to Ginchiyo’s studio, which turned as easily in the door as it ever did.

Stepping over the threshold, Velma bent to draw off her shoes, setting them neatly on the mat for the purpose, and she closed the door behind her with a quiet click, setting her briefcase aside under the end table.

“Aunt Ginchiyo?” she called, but there was no answer, and she moved down the corridor, glancing at the empty kitchen, dipping her head into the empty living room, too. There was no sign of anybody, but Velma still knocked on Ginchiyo’s office door twice before she opened it, flicking on the light.

It was the barest she had ever seen the room.

Ginchiyo’s office was, ordinarily, covered all over with whatever pieces of research Ginchiyo was focusing on at the moment, snatches of spellwork or photocopies from history books pinned to the wall between photographs and sketches; every surface was ordinarily covered in neatly stacked books, pages of notes, artefacts on strings.

The long table against one side of the room was empty and bare, showing its wide, cherry surface; the architect’s easel at one side of the room was empty, the stool neatly tucked in; the side tables were empty, the bookshelves the most organised and scantly filled Velma had ever seen them.

Ginchiyo’s computer desk had a stack of business cards, a small stack of paperwork, and a handwritten note, and Velma moved toward it, glancing over the papers. They were deeds, deeds and transfers of ownership waiting for Velma’s signature, and she picked one up, reading over the address of a storage locker in Peckham, a key attached to the page, the note outlining transfer of ownership from Ginchiyo to Velma Kuroda.

She picked up the note.

Velma.

I am retiring! As you read this note, I am probably on a plane out of the country to Jamaica: I will be spending some time there. If you have questions about my work, or about antiques… Ask Hamish MacKinnon! If you have questions about my retirement, or about magic, ask Hamish MacKinnon!

If you have questions about anything else… Ask Hamish MacKinnon!

Be back soon, probably not,

Love,

Ginchiyo

Staring at the note for a long, long moment, Velma shook the mouse in front of Ginchiyo’s Mac, frowning when – as was always the case – the computer and monitor were already on, logged into Ginchiyo’s profile.

She had to pull the tape off the web cam as it began to ring on Ginchiyo’s end, and when the camera came into focus on the other hand, pixelated and shaky at first, then settling on a slightly blurry image of Ginchiyo behind the wheel of a car. Looking past her, out of the window, Velma could see long stretches of dessert landscape, and a flash of a green road sign.

“Are Jamaican road signs green?” Velma asked.

“Some of them,” Ginchiyo said guardedly, not taking her eyes off the road.

“And do they all have the highway shields on them?” Ginchiyo’s face froze, her mouth opening, and then closing again, and Velma went on, “You know, the ones they have in the US?”

“D’you know, Velma, nobody likes a smartarse. Anyway, my name isn’t Hamish MacKinnon. I left very specific instructions.”

“Aviemore, Edinburgh,” Velma said. “The accents sound basically the same, and I got confused.”

Ginchiyo clucked her tongue, glancing toward the phone, and then looking forward again.

“Are you in trouble?” Velma asked.

“No, I’m not in trouble. Why would you think I’m in trouble?”

“Because you closed down your business of forty-five years, passing all control over to your inexperienced niece, then fled the country, all without warning. Including leaving a note saying you were going to Jamaica, when, in fact, you’re in… Where, Arizona?”

“I didn’t say Jamaica to everybody. Just to you. Gave a different lie to everybody of importance.”

“If I could give you some advice—”

“Don’t answer the phone,” Ginchiyo said, nodding. “That’s what I get, making exceptions for my beloved niece.”

Velma smiled, leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest. “What’s happening, Ginchiyo?”

“I wanted to retire,” she said. “What, you want me to wait until I’m Hamish’s age?”

“That man is sixty at the oldest.”

“That man is pushing five centuries.”

Velma sat down.

“I wanted to retire,” Ginchiyo said again. “Every time I mention it, everyone would get all panicky about it, or offer me more money. Well, now, I have enough money, and I’m going to travel.”

“And so your solution to everyone trying to contact you was to get them to contact me, instead?”

“Yeah,” Ginchiyo said. “I actually forgot you were at your da’s last night, so I posted you the email login shite, but it’s in the wee notebook in the top righthand drawer as well. Feel free to use my flat as an office, by the way.”

“Coulda fuckin’ told me,” Velma muttered, reaching for the notebook and bringing up the email login in a separate tab. There was a phone number printed underneath the email info, as well as a voicemail code, and she could see the phone in the drawer, wrapped neatly in its charging cable. It was an old-fashioned phone, a flip-phone – the point of it was only to receive calls and texts, for business in the field, and she could open emails on her own phone. “Wouldn’t have to be sharing a flat with the pricks I live with.”

“Hey now, I told you not to live with mundies, and you ignored me. No wonder they’re pricks. Fella grows up not realising a lass can curse him so his prick falls off, he’s gonna be a prick himself.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works, Ginchiyo,” Velma said, inwardly groaning when she saw the tab on screen declare, in cheerful blue text, Unread (113). “You announced this yesterday?”

“Set up a redirect, too, so all the emails to my account go to yours starting Friday, I think. And only the family can ring me on this phone. Blocked everyone else.”

“Dearest Ginchiyo, have you gone completely mad? Your niece is a child, and is a bumbling idiot compared to you,” Velma read aloud. “Am I really to invite a twenty-something cartoon fanatic into my home?”

“Email him back,” Ginchiyo suggested. “Tell him he’s a cunt.”

“Is that how you do good business?”

“You don’t want business with a cunt,” Ginchiyo said. “Anyway, that’s Rutherford Hanes, isn’t it? He’ll change his tune next week when he’s accidentally released another fuath into his house.”

“How the fuck do you accidentally—”

“He’s a driftwood artist,” Ginchiyo said. “Doesn’t pay any fuckin’ attention to what he picks up – wild mushrooms, salt, stone, branches, whatever, takes it home, then boom, big surprise, there’s a broonie smearing shite on his walls and calling him a prick.”

“Where’s he live?”

“Portree.”

“Christ,” Velma muttered, flicking through emails. “Ginchiyo, I’m not ready for this.”

“So? I wasn’t ready for it when I was your age, and I started younger’n you did,” Ginchiyo said. “Take the ones you feel ready for. You’re not the only lass who can do this stuff in the world. They can work with you, they can work with someone else, doesn’t matter. You just do what you feel like.”

“And if I don’t want to do any of it?”

Ginchiyo shrugged. “Then, don’t.”

Velma pursed her lips, letting her eyes scan over the email subjects, many of which had the words “unacceptable” or “unprofessional” in them, or a great many exclamation marks. She clicked on one titled Urgently in need of assistance, and opened the email.

“Dear Ms Kuroda, I got your email address from a local psychic, and I hope you will help myself and my family, as we are in a time of great upheaval and require your assistance, for we are being plagued by small spirits, pictured here. They are destroying all the fibres in the house, and we haven’t been able to… Those aren’t spirits.”

She clicked on the photo to make it bigger, and she looked at the demon’s chitinous body, brightly yellow and green, at its laughing mouth as it patted its dozens of hands together, sitting back on its hind portions.

“They’re sticky imps.”

“Ah ah,” Ginchiyo said. “Full identification, please.”

“Class Demonata, Order Insecta, Genus Atermorpha? The Genus is demonata viscosa, but this one is the main species you find in houses, conches viscosa, I think? We call them sticky imps because of the residue they all leave when they build their nests and lay their egg sacs – they chew up fabrics and fibres, then vomit up this awful ectoplasmic shite.”

“Good,” Ginchiyo said. “And how do you get rid of them?”

“It’s easy. You just need to burn some betony in the house, and once they all flee, smear a paste made from the ashes on the doors and the windows. They hate the stuff, and once they’ve left for a few weeks, they won’t come back.”

“So, write them back. Tell them so.”

“Is that what you’d do?”

“No,” Ginchiyo said. “I’d make an appointment, pick up some betony, and drive out to their house. If they can’t recognise sticky imps, they won’t be able to recognise anything else. Charge them a callout, come back home, make a few quid, cash-in-hand. Better than having to comb through charity shelves for six days hoping to find some Observers with the dustjackets still on, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t your callout charge a hundred and fifty?”

“Aye.”

“A hundred and fifty quid to burn a wee bit of herb? Twenty minutes’ work, all told?”

“It’ll be more than twenty. You won’t just be burning the herb, remember – you’ll be explaining what they are, how they breed, how to break their residue down, how to wash what’s left, how to clear their eggs away. Back in the eighties, you could drop your card into the local village, and get through a good few houses before you had to do anything else – just go to different houses and cart ‘em out, then charge a big premium for a little town council meeting, tell everyone how to do their preventative measures.

“I wouldn’t let them go free these days, though – mundies won’t notice, but magical people would. Take a box, capture them, separate box for the egg capsules, and you turn them into the English Society for the Protection of Magical Species. They’ll relocate them.”

“I’ve never tried capturing a colony of anything before,” Velma said. “I normally just look at an object and offer to take it when it’s making someone’s walls scream at night, not take a few dozen demons out of their house.”

“It’s not hard. Put a bit of rug in the bottom of a big box. Watch ‘em all get in the box. Put a lid on the box. Put the box wherever you like. Job done.”

“Aren’t they a bit smarter than that?”

“No, no, they are not. Stupid wee cunts, they are.”

“How can you—” Velma started, and then she pressed her lips together, her hands clasping one another in her lap. “How can you just go? What do you mean, retire? What are you going to do?”

“Relax,” Ginchiyo said. “Watch television. Go to concerts. Swim! Go to the beach. Fuck four girls in one night.”

“Ginchiyo!”

“I’m retiring, Velma. That means… I’m going to relax.”

“Sounds like a lot of fucking exercise.”

“Maybe that’s how I relax.”

“Relax,” Velma repeated. “You have a responsibility—”

“Your responsibility now. I’m gonna leave you to it, Velm. My stop’s coming up.”

“I’m not ready for this.”

“So, get to it when you’re ready,” Ginchiyo said. “Bye bye, sweetheart.”

The call cut out with a quiet blip, and Velma leaned back in Ginchiyo’s chair, pressing her lips together as she glanced at the clock. It was nearly nine o’clock now, and she’d wanted to get the bulk of her essay started before she went to bed, but even as she looked at the screen, the current title of Unread (109) became Unread (110).

She wouldn’t reply to any of them, not until she’d made a definite decision, but it only made sense to sort them, so that when it came to replying to them, if she ever did, it would be easier. She wouldn’t. She didn’t have the time, and she didn’t want to be…

Basic folders, first.

Some of the emails were simple questions. A photograph of some droppings, and a question as to what demon had left them: Velma was fairly certain the “demon” in question was an urban fox; a photograph of a vanity table with an in-depth description of the enchantments inlaid into the mirror, with the simple question of when the actual table had been made; a question about proofing a new house against demons and small faeries.

Queries were a subfolder, then. But—

Some of them were just so easy.

It was the work of a minute or two to reply to each one of them, with a simple answer, and then to sort them into a subfolder for answered queries. It wasn’t difficult – and it was barely even work, really.

Some of the questions were more complicated, or required further discussion. She replied to those, asking for photographs, or asking to clarify points, or asking for more information.

There were genuine requests for help – for her to come out and identify a piece of furniture, when it had been made, who had made it, what spells and enchantments were laid into it; for her to come and deal with a pest problem, mostly demons, although a few seemed like lower classes of fae or spirits; for her to break certain curses, certain spells.

Not all of them needed someone to come out. Just from a glance, some of them were such simple cases that it would only take for her to see some better photographs and write out some instructions to follow. Some problems weren’t problems at all – for one, a woman from Kettering was complaining about demons ruining her roses, but they were scaldra, demons that ate aphids and other small insects, that helped maintain a garden and encourage it to flourish. The only thing ruining her roses, Velma was fairly certain, was her apparent tendency to over prune them.

And others…

SUBJECT: Spirits in Pipes?

Dear Miss Kuroda,

I’ve been having a problem with noises in the pipes running through our family home. We’ve been abroad for nine months, and upon return, we’ve noticed strange whisperings in the walls, noises that seem to be coming from the pipes themselves, travelling along the same lines as the plumbing system.

Attempts to plunge the system or flush it out have done nothing to change the frequency of the noise – they’re low murmurs, where some words can occasionally be distinguished, but never any complete phrases. Nothing about them seems threatening or intended as harmful – merely that they’re loud enough to keep us awake at night, and they continue all through the day and night.

The initial thought when we called the government helpline was of course a basic haunting, but there’s no consistency to the words spoken or the schedule at which they sound, nor where in the house one hears them. We thought it would be best to call in a private contractor, in case of a spirit that needs to be somehow relocated.

The waiting period for a callout from the Department of Demonic & Fae Affairs is at least eight months, and so I’d be very eager to get a look at your rates, or to get a referral from you if you haven’t got the time on your docket. Even just information would be very helpful.

Yours,

Roberta Hammond

That was interesting.

If it wasn’t to a regular schedule, it wasn’t a haunting – hauntings were normally connected to places, although she’d known them to be connected to objects, and they were caused by what the textbooks called “transferred life energy”. It wasn’t a living spirit or demon – it was just the echo of previous “life force” left accidentally imprinted on a space. They normally occurred on a loop, set to a very specific schedule. Because there was no consciousness in them, you couldn’t solve them – you had to eliminate whatever the residual “life force” was attached to.

She hated the term “life force”. It always sounded like it should mean soul, but it didn’t mean that, didn’t have that much emotional weight to it. Ginchiyo had explained it, once, had explained hauntings as… graffiti made with shadows as a stencil.

It wasn’t as simple as that, of course. Sometimes, spirits attached themselves to the echo people left behind – that was what made a ghost you could reason with, talk with. They weren’t quite the same as people – couldn’t get really complex about it, couldn’t think deeply, couldn’t get into the complicated. They just animated what little was left – they puppetted the shadows left behind, but that was all they were, really. Puppets.

But this…

It was interesting. She’d never dealt with a spirited haunting before – she’d dealt with one or two haunted objects, but you broke that sort of haunting in the same way you broke an enchantment, by cutting through the imprint that had been left behind. But spirited hauntings became more than just a physical imprint – they almost had a life of their own.

There were other emails to go through. Other emails to sort, to reply to, to—

It was three in the morning when she looked at the clock, and the screen read Unread (29), all of which were people asking to make appointments now.

“Fuck,” Velma mumbled, putting her head in her hands, and she shook her head as she stood, dropping the notebook and the phone both into her briefcase, shrugging her coat back on.

No more today. No more.

She would go home, she’d sleep for what scant hours she could, and then she’d go in for her seminar, and… And then she’d pick up a date book. She wouldn’t do all of them. She’d deal with the sticky imps – they weren’t too far away, some little village an hour and a half’s drive out of London – and the spirited haunting, and there were one or two interesting little cases, all of things she’d dealt with before, or had seen her dad or Ginchiyo deal with countess times.

Just the easy stuff.

She didn’t have to become a complete professional. It would never be necessary for her to devote all her time to this, not really, but— But the easy stuff, yes.