The Dope Fiend

by Lavie Tidhar

Mother’s advice, and Father’s fears,

Alike are voted—just a bore.

There’s Negro music in our ears,

The world’s one huge dancing floor.

We mean to tread the Primrose Path,

In spite of Mr. Joynson-Hicks.

We’re People of the Aftermath

We’re girls of 1926.

In greedy haste, on pleasure bent,

We have no time to think, or feel

What need is there for sentiment

Now we’ve invented Sex Appeal?

We’ve silken legs and scarlet lips,

We’re young and hungry, wild and free,

Our waists are round about the hips

Our shirts are well above the knee

We’ve boyish busts and Eton crops,

We quiver to the saxophone.

Come, dance before the music stops,

And who can bear to be alone?

Come drink your gin, or sniff your ‘snow’,

Since Youth is brief, and Love has wings,

And time will tarnish, ere we know,

The brightness of the Bright Young Things.

—“Women of 1926” by James Laver

· · · · ·

I’d known Edgar Manning for a number of years, and I was

there at the event that introduced him, rather

notoriously, to the rest of London.

I was at Lizzie Fox’s restaurant in Little Newport

Street. A group of us had been to the races the weekend

before, Mrs. Fox having had a weakness to the laying of

money on horses akin to mine. Lizzie won seventy pounds.

I’d lost a hundred, and another hundred on champagne.

Manning, who was also there, won, but not as much as

Lizzie.

Which is what started it all.

I’d been sitting in my usual place by the window,

reading the paper, smoking. Watching the door. Watching

Yankee Frank come in, his ugly face made even uglier by

the cheap cigar in his mouth. He came straight up to

Manning and demanded a pound.

“I have not a pound to give you,” Manning said. His

manners have always been impeccable, and his voice

stayed quiet and calm.

“You’re a fucking thief,” Frank said. “I know how you’re

earning your living.”

There was a moment of silence. London may have not, by

that time, heard of Edgar Manning, but the people at

Mrs. Fox’s had, and that silence should have served as a

warning to the faux-American.

Manning merely shook his head.

“You’re a fucking shitpot,” Frank said to him. I saw

Manning’s handsome black face go blank as he

contemplated Yankee Frank’s future. He may have let him

go at that, but then Frank turned to Molly O’Brien, an

actress and a slip of a girl who was sitting at a nearby

table. “You’re a bloody prostitute,” he told her,

chewing on his cigar.

Mollie may have been slight, but she wasn’t one to take

insults from anyone, and certainly not someone like

Yankee Frank. “It’s a pity you don’t go and work for a

living,” she said to him. “You’re only a ponce.”

It was true Frank’s main form of income was from

small-scale extortion of local hoodlums, an act commonly

knows as poncing but it didn’t mean he liked Mollie

calling him that. Before I could move he threw the cigar

at her and punched her in the eye. Blood swelled up over

delicate, white skin. “If there wasn’t so many people in

here, I’d do something else to you,” he said, and ran

out.

I looked at Manning; his face had closed even more,

unreadable as a fetish mask, but it was open and kind

when he asked Mollie if she was all right, before

leaving a short while after.

What happened next became a legend, and it happened like

this:

Outside, Mollie O’Brien ran into Yankee Frank again, who

was walking with his brother, Charles. As I said, she

didn’t take crap from nobody, and she let him have it.

In turn, he punched her in the stomach and ran off. The

two brothers then met up with a friend, Robert Davies,

another lowlife.

They were just turning down Shaftesbury Avenue when,

outside the Palace Theatre, they met Manning.

They attacked him.

Manning ran around a passing bus. Then he pulled out a

piece, and, with careful aim, he kneecapped all three

men.

· · · · ·

This much is public knowledge. The News of the World

delighted in the headline “Evil Negro Caught” and called

Manning the “King of London’s dope traffic.” He was

Jamaican, the son of slaves. A jazz musician who came to

England from America during the war. He was always

impeccably dressed, articulate, attractive.

In the event, he was sentenced to only eighteen months.

When he got out of jail he came to see me.

It was a cold November night; my apartment by the meat

market of Smithfields was draughty. It was a bad night,

and I did not wish to be disturbed. I had cleared the

floor of all furniture and arranged half-melted candles

in a Star of David on the floor, contained within a

chalked pentagram.

I was about to begin when there was a knock on the door.

Outside wet lights blinked in the dark. On the steps

stood Manning, hat in hand: the time in prison had

bulked him up, and his face looked lined and worried.

“Tzaddik, I need your help,” he said.

“Come in,” I said. He followed me into the hallway.

“Sorry about the mess.”

Manning took only a desultory look at the arrangements

on the living room floor. He knew my working methods. I

led him into the small kitchen and set to making tea

while my guest sat down.

“I didn’t know you got out,” I said.

“It was only two days ago,” he said. “And I’ve been

trying to lay low for a while. Luckily my network of

employees is still mostly in place. Here ” He reached

into a coat pocket and took out a small paper packet

which he placed carefully on the table. “For you.”

I didn’t need to look in the bag to know what was

inside. Nevertheless, I did. I placed some of the powder

with care between my thumb and forefinger and snorted

it, feeling exhalation take hold of my brain.

“They don’t call it joy dust for nothing,” I said.

Manning nodded, but his face did not reflect my

lightening mood. So, “What is it?” I said.

He looked up at me, his fingers wrapping around the mug

of hot Earl Grey I had given him as if seeking to draw

strength from it. “It’s Billie,” he said. “I’ve seen

her. I don’t know what to do.”

I sat down opposite him and looked at his eyes

carefully. His pupils were normal-sized, his eyes

anxious.

“Billie’s dead,” I said.

Manning slammed a fist on the table, droplets of tea

decorating the tabletop like liquid marbles. “I know

that, Tzaddik!”

And then he started to cry.

· · · · ·

Billie.

Billie Carleton.

The World’s Pictorial News called her “the very

essence of English girlhood.” Billie Carleton, with her

short cropped hair and large eyes that hinted at both

tragedy and joy. A small, perfect mouth and a voice to

match. I saw her in her first big performance, when she

replaced Ethel Levey in the lead of Watch Your Step

at the Empire. Charlie Cochran, who gave her that first

break, later recalled her as “a young girl of

flower-like beauty, delicate charm, and great

intelligence.”

She was also a cocaine addict.

I thought of those beautiful eyes, closed in death, and

of a certain gold box I had kept, out of sight, in the

sea-chest upstairs.

“She’s dead,” I said again.

Manning’s voice, when it came, was dangerously quiet.

“You and I both know, Tzaddik, that death is not an

entirely unknown country.”

“Isn’t it?” I said. “I’ve never been there to know.”

And Manning slowly smiled. White teeth made his mouth

look like an ivory gate into the dark. “No,” he said.

“You haven’t.”

It is dangerous to deal with men who know your secrets.

So, “Tell me about it,” I said, and waited.

“I started seeing her two months ago,” Manning said.

“She came to me in prison. At first only in my dreams.

Her face, as beautiful as I remembered it to be. She was

trying to tell me something. Her mouth moved, but if she

spoke I couldn’t hear her.”

“You were dreaming,” I said. He ignored me.

“I got to a stage I didn’t dare go to sleep anymore,” he

said. “She haunted me until I feared sleep.” His tea

stood untouched on the table. I pushed the bag of snow

on the table toward him, and he helped himself to a

pinch and snorted it. “So she began to appear when I was

awake. Eighteen months, man, eighteen months of hard

labour. I thought I was losing my mind.”

“You still have to convince me you haven’t.”

He laughed. “She gave me this,” he said, and reached

into his pocket. “One night she came into the cell and

touched me. I could feel her skin, warm and alive, and I

could smell her, the scent of French perfume and lilacs.

She gave me this,” he repeated, and put a small, gold

box on the table, watching me.

“A snuff box?” My voice was steady, my hands weren’t.

Manning could see that. Well, damn him. I reached for

the bag and helped myself to another pinch of cocaine.

Damn Manning, I thought, and damn Billie too.

“Her coke box,” he said. “The one that was resting on

the table beside the bed the night she died.” His eyes

searched my face like a snake charmer watching his

cobras. He noted the hands but didn’t comment, and I

gave him credit for that.

“Can you raise her?”

It was a request, not a question, and I had seen it

coming.

“Possibly,” I admitted. “Not a good idea. Not tonight.

Not on any night.” I was babbling, and in his eyes I

could see he was reading me, not knowing but still

guessing the source of my anxiety.

“Will you do it though?” Manning’s large hands rested on

the table, palms open as if in appeal.

“Can you not get a houngan to do it?” I said.

Manning laughed, a short, dry laughter that sounded like

a cough. “I tried. The loa are refusing to

communicate with me. Apparently.” His tone of voice

suggested he was not much pleased with the voudon

priest, and I suspected the man was probably dispatched

himself as a sacrifice to Baron Samedi. Manning was not

a man to tolerate incompetence.

I needed to think. I needed to buy time to think.

“I’ll have to make some inquiries,” I said. “Also, some

preparations. Where are you staying at the moment?”

He measured me up. “At the Montmarte Café,” he said at

last.

“With Zenovia?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” I said, decided. “I’ll find you there. If

you need to contact me, leave a message with Motty in

the sandwich shop.”

Manning smiled unexpectedly. “Motty still there?”

I nodded.

“Still dealing to the tourists?”

I smiled back. “We’ve all got to make a living,” I said.

Manning nodded. The smile evaporated as he stood up.

At the door, he turned to face me. The expression on his

face was unreadable. His hand felt warm and heavy in

mine as we shook. He looked like he was about to say

something, thought better of it. I watched him disappear

into the darkness. I shut the door against the outside

and raced upstairs, searching for the box. But it was

gone, and by then it was too late, and the darkness had

already filtered inside.

· · · · ·

At that time of the night—so late it was almost

morning—Limehouse was shrouded in fog; a pack of small

dogs rooted through the garbage outside the Shanghai

restaurant, and from a distance came the muted sound of

a late-night reveler stumbling out of an opium den and

throwing up on the pavement.

There were no lights behind the windows of the Shanghai.

I watched the place for a while, unseen, but no movement

was visible. After fifteen minutes I gave up my watch

and progressed down the causeway until I reached a

small, unmarked door at the end of a narrow alleyway.

“You no come in.” It took several loud knocks before the

door was opened by a young Chinese man who stared at me

with hostility.

“I’m looking for Chang,” I said.

The lad looked blank. “No Chang here!” he said, and

tried to close the door in my face.

“Not so fast, butterfly,” I said, and pushed the door

open again. I reached into my pocket, watching him. “My

card.”

He moved his hand away from the knife hidden in his coat

and accepted it. When his head came up again, he was

grinning. “So you’re the Tzaddik? Sorry about that, you

know what it’s like around here at this time of the

morning.”

His sudden cockney accent could have broken glass, and

there was something familiar about the shape of his

face. “Are you related to Xing He?” I asked as he closed

the door behind me.

His entire face lit up. “He’s my uncle. Says you’re the

best player of pai-ke-p’iao he’d ever seen.”

“Don’t believe everything he tells you,” I said, and we

both laughed. “Is Chang around?”

He shook his head. “You can wait for him here, if you

like,” he said. “I’ll do you a pipe on the house.”

He saw my face and lowered his voice. “From what I hear

he’s got a new lady friend somewhere near Seven Dials.

Should be back before too long.”

Brilliant Chang always had a new lady friend. The son of

a wealthy family based in Hong Kong, he drew women to

him: I believe the Sunday Express once quoted a group of

flappers who enthusiastically referred to him as “the

rich young chink.” I knew the man, and knew his methods:

he once showed me the pile of identically-worded notes

he carried everywhere in his pockets, to hand out like

sweets to women who caught his fancy:

“Dear Unknown—” it said. “Please do not regard this

as a liberty that I write to you, as I am really

unable to resist the temptation after having seen

you so many times. I should extremely like to know

you better, and should be glad if you would do me

the honour of meeting me one evening where we could

have a little dinner and a quiet chat together. I do

hope you will consent to this, as it will give me

great pleasure, and in any case do not be cross with

me for having written to you.” It was signed, “Yours

hopefully, Chang. PS—If you reply, please address it

to me at the Shanghai Restaurant,

Limehouse-causeway, E14.”

“All right,” I said to the young Chinese man. “I’ll take

you up on the offer.” He smiled, and led me away into

the main room of the house.

At this time of the morning few people were inside: two

sailors in one corner, lying comatose with the glowing

remains of a pipe still clutched in their hands; a man

and a woman, with clothes that marked them out as

members of the privileged class, sat together on large

red cushions on the other side, similarly indisposed.

Low-hanging lanterns cast dim light.

In yet another corner a man lay in shadows; the scent of

incense wafted heavily throughout the room as did the

pungent smell of burning opium. I took a seat on one of

the cushions as my companion began preparing a pipe for

me.

I let the sweet smoke fill my lungs and felt my eyes

threaten to close as the drug took hold of me. As always

when it did images of my expulsion from the Thirty-Six

invaded my mind. What are drugs to an immortal? I

shouted at them. They found me in the boarding house in

Paris, in that other, even-dirtier century: I was lying

comatose on the barren floor, my arms and legs bare and

punctured, lying in my own excrement. The thirty-five

other men and women of my circle, the hidden guardians

of our people. Immortals, Guardians, Tzaddiks, call them

what you will. In Hebrew the word means someone who is

righteous: and they looked at me then with expressions

ranging from pity to disgust.

Another breath of opium, and another, and the memory

faded. The room receded into darkness, and I let my mind

open, welcoming in a rare sensation of peace. There will

be time, I thought, to tackle the problem of Billie

Carleton. For now, let this be enough.

I watched the room with my eyes hooded. The toffs had

finally got up and were escorted out of the room, a cab

no doubt already waiting for them outside. The sailors,

I decided, did not look like they were going anywhere in

a hurry. My young Chinese friend was busy preparing

another pipe for them.

And that person whose face I couldn’t see… I watched the

corner of the room and tried to guess at the features of

the one who sat there. I felt a prickling at the back of

my neck, as if I, in turn, was also being watched. I

opened my senses wide, cast a net around the room. I

felt the drug-induced haze of the two sailors,

nightmares of raging seas and visions of monstrous

creatures rising from the deep, felt the sweat forming

on their skin, the taste of bloodied salt on their

tongues. I tore myself from their shared nightmare and

tried to focus on that corner of darkness I was after,

but to no avail: it was as if nothing living was sitting

there, nothing that could feel, or touch, or remember.

I rose from my seat and stepped toward the shadows, the

pipe falling from my hand. But it was not my body that

had stood: I was a pale, transparent form, a ghostly

semblance of my body lying still and cold. I walked

toward the darkness, my steps making no sound.

That corner of the room attracted and repelled me now.

Its shadows thickened, became solid as walls. I thrust

my hands into the darkness, drawing myself closer,

intent on seeing the face hidden within.

My spectral hands formed shapes in the air, and a cold

white fire burst from my fingers, penetrating the

darkness.

There were not one, but two figures sitting there: two

faces, clearly seen for the briefest of seconds, before

a force I did not reckon on encountering hit my chest

and pushed me violently back into my own body, where I

lay, shivering and vomiting and no longer in the throws

of delirium.

Two faces, glimpsed for the briefest of moments: I

shivered again as I recalled Billie’s beautiful diamond

eyes looking into mine, and beside her, his hand on her

thigh, a man with no face, whose body was shadow and

bone.

· · · · ·

I had my fingers wrapped around Brilliant Chang’s neck

and I wasn’t about to let go. He hung against the wall,

the expensive fur coat flapping in time to his legs

kicking the empty air.

“What the hell,” I said, “did you get yourself involved

in?”

I let him go and watched him fall to the ground,

clutching at his neck and breathing hoarsely.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he said.

“No?” I took the small gold box from my pocket and waved

it in his face. “Do you recognize this?”

It was Billie’s snow box. The box that had lain secure

in my sea-chest since her death on that night at the

Victory Ball in the Albert Hall. The box that, somehow,

made its way into Manning’s hand, given to him by a

ghost.

Chang’s eyes widened when he recognized it. “Where did

you get this?” he said.

“Bill,” I said, “let me ask the questions, alright?” I

was breathing hard, the aftereffects of the opium dream

hitting me in waves. “There was a man in your

establishment earlier today. I want to know who he is.”

Chang looked at me. We weren’t friends, but we’d worked

together in the past, and he could tell I was anxious

and angry. I looked into his eyes and read understanding

there, but also fear, a fear I was certain was not

inspired by me. It was not an emotion I had seen in

Brilliant Chang’s face before.

I watched him think it through. Then, “Let me buy you a

drink,” he said, and rose up slowly to his feet. He

looked at me and smiled lopsidedly. “You might need it.

I know I do.”

I had found Chang at Lily Rumble’s flat off Holborn,

alone and preparing to go out. I’d gone there straight

from Limehouse: when I recuperated from the psychic

attack, the mysterious man and his ghostly companion

were gone, as if they had never been there. The young

Chinese lad, Xing He’s nephew, had also disappeared. A

waiter at the Shanghai Restaurant finally gave me, after

I coerced him, the address and swore Chang would be

there. I left him to contemplate the prospects of the

information proving incorrect and made my way to

Holborn.

“Alright,” I said. I felt tired and angry and the

thought of a drink was appealing. We left Lily’s flat

and walked the short distance to the Princess Louise. I

followed Chang into the dim interior; Big Vi and Brixton

Peggy were sitting in a corner. Dealing. When they saw

Chang they began to rise, but with a look from him

returned to their seats.

“Business good?” I said.

Chang shrugged. “You know how it is,” he said. “Everyone

wants the dust my girls sell.”

I said, “Let’s go upstairs.”

The upstairs bar was even dimmer than below, and mostly

empty. I scanned the room, but there was only the usual

crowd in there, the lowlifes and the permanent drunks.

Chang ordered two glasses of cognac, and we took a seat

in the corner by the windows. Chang pulled out two

packets of twisted paper from his pocket, offered one to

me.

“Ta.”

The cocaine perked me up; the cognac soothed the edge of

my anger. “Start talking,” I said.

“It’s to do with Manning,” he said, and looked to see my

reaction. He nodded. “I don’t know what he’s been up to

in that prison: some fucked-up shit, by the sound of it.

Way I hear it, he met some crazy houngan there.

Someone not entirely human. Some awfully powerful horse

being ridden by Samedi.” He took a deep breath. “You

know how he’s been about Billie,” he said, and it was my

turn to nod. Manning had never gotten over her death,

but I suspected Chang hadn’t, either.

Chang looked reassured, but his face changed when he

began to talk, his eyes narrowing. His fingers drummed a

nervous staccato on the tabletop. “A man arrived at my

establishment two nights ago,” he said. “He was tall,

almost gaunt, with a way of moving that reminded me of a

cat. I can’t recall his face clearly: all I could see

were his eyes, emerald green and hypnotic. It was like a

strange elongated skull mask with two pools of burning

light where its eyes should have been.” He shuddered and

swallowed the rest of the cognac. “He knew everything!

Every detail of every transaction; he reeled out the

network to me as if it were a family tree. Every

connection, every shipment, everything.”

“What did he want?” I said. There was a strange feeling

at the back of my head, a warning, like we were being

watched. I scanned the bar crowd slowly, but it had not

changed and I felt exposed, my nerves tingling in

anticipation of attack.

“What did he want?” Chang gave a low, bitter laugh. “He

wanted me. My organization. To start with. I have seen

things in my time, Tzaddik,” he said, “but I have seen

nothing like that man, if it was a man. He had power,

and he held me helpless.” He paused, and snorted more

cocaine. His eyes were moving frantically in their

sockets. “He told me you would come. He arranged to be

there when you did. What did he want? Maybe he wanted

you. I don’t know. But I know this, Tzaddik: something

Manning did brought this man here.”

“How do you know?” I said. The sensation in the back of

my head intensified.

Chang’s fist hit the table. “Because I saw them! I

followed him, you see, and I saw them! In Highgate

cemetery, digging up the coffin of Billie Carleton!”

Something didn’t ring true in Chang’s narrative. “All

right,” I said. “Two questions. One, how do you know

about Manning’s houngan?” I didn’t believe the

story about the cemetery, but I wasn’t going to

interrogate him on that. There were more effective means

at my disposal to ascertain the truth. They were never

pleasant, but they were there and I knew I would have to

use them.

“Two, if this man has the power you say he has, why did

you follow him? And why are you talking to me now?”

Bill Chang smiled a slow, cold smile. “That’s three

questions, Tzaddik,” he said. “Technically.” He

signaled to the bartender; waited for two new glasses to

arrive.

“Cigarette?” he opened a slim silver case and proffered

it to me.

“No thanks.”

He helped himself to a cigarette, lit it. Inhaled. The

cold smile remained. “No one fucks with me, Tzaddik,” he

said. “No one. I don’t care where that son of a bitch moshushi came from, he’s not muscling in on my

territory. I fulfilled my part of the bargain. He wanted

to meet you. Knew you would come. If you ask me, it’s you who needs to start looking out.”

He took a sip from his cognac and sighed. I knew then

that Chang was lying to me, that somewhere in the last

few days I had unwittingly walked into a maze of danger

and deceit, and had to step cautiously if I wanted to

survive it.

Chang tapped ash from his cigarette. A cloud of pale

blue smoke covered his face like a cloud heralding

storm. “As for Manning’s witch doctor? Uncle Lee is in

prison, as you probably know. He told me the rumours.

That’s all they are. All I know is what I saw. That

Manning is now free, and a grave-robber to boot, and

that a Feng-Huang is set loose in London. Make of

it what you will.”

While he was talking I was watching his hands. Chang’s

hands were a lover’s hands: Billie used to say that.

Long, sensitive fingers that trembled now, sending smoke

up in a crazy spiral. I watched his eyes, the quick

twitch in one corner; watched the sweat form on that

smooth pale skin. The feeling at the back of my head

refused to abate.

I knocked back the cognac and stood up. “Thanks for the

drinks,” I said. “I’ll be seeing you.” He nodded at me

slowly.

I left him there and walked out, feeling like a rabbit

caught in the sight of an unseen gun.

· · · · ·

I was caught in a web of lies, and somewhere—unseen but

for a brief glimpse in Chang’s opium den—somewhere was a

spider, spinning the threads that threatened to bind me.

I sat down in my armchair back at Smithfields and

thought about the situation. On the one hand Manning,

haunted by Billie’s ghost, carrying with him the gold

box that I had thought secure in my possession. On the

other, Chang, with a strange story about a man with

fiery green eyes and the power of suggestion.

I had seen for myself the power of the stranger, and

found in it something that I recognized. Manning’s

people may have called it a loa; Chang’s word for

it was Feng-Huang. And in my own long history I

had known ones who were like this mysterious entity,

glimpsed from beneath darkened skies and on the edge of

worlds beyond time…

My people called such beings mal’achim: angels.

I felt forced into doing something that was perhaps best

left undone. There was danger here, and no clear

motives, no understanding of the deeper powers at work.

To have an angel materialize on the human sphere, on Assiah… I thought of my time serving with the

Thirty-Six, and of a day and a night long ago in the

deserts of Kush. Specifics evaded me like water flowing

through grasping fingers. I had seen this before, but

the memory was weak and unreliable, as is always the

case with beings from the higher Sephirot.

It was time to make a decision, and so I did. My living

room was already prepared: I redrew the symbols on the

floor and lit the candles and placed protection about

me, the symbols and icons of long-forgotten religions.

The candles flickered as I began the summons, and the

wind howled outside, sending leaves fluttering against

the windows like moths drawn to a flame.

A darkness formed in the heart of my chalked star, a

cold and empty darkness as of space itself. Pinpricks of

light appeared and disappeared inside it, and I could

feel my power being tapped, drawn to feeding the portal

between the spheres, between the Sephirot.

The lights in the darkness slowly grew, resolved

themselves into a being of light. As if from a great

distance the sound of beating wings was heard, rattling

the glass of the windows.

“Tzaddik…,” a voice whispered from the star. Eyes the

size and brightness of suns regarded me. “You are still

alive… How disappointing.”

Not taking my eyes off it, this thing summoned from the

sphere called Binah, Wisdom, I reached into my

coat pocket and pulled out a small packet of snow. The

bright eyes regarded me with hunger. I took a small

pinch between thumb and forefinger and snorted it. Then

I blew the rest, gently, into the circle of light, and

the being inside it made it disappear.

“I want to know what it is that had made its appearance

on Assiah,” I said, when it had quieted.

A slow chuckle like the death of stars. “The Emanations

are disturbed,” it said. “The path from Ketter

has been opened, and the Tree of Life itself is in

turmoil. What have you done… human?”

The apparition’s words disturbed me. “I have done

nothing,” I said.

The chuckle again, grating like a nail against glass.

“Then perhaps that is the source of the disturbance,” it

said. “When the guardians do not guard, who will guard

the guardians?”

“Wait!” I said. The burning figure was diminishing, the

darkness of space returning to the place of summoning.

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes…,” whispered the

voice, and the burning eyes closed, and were gone. The

echoes of its mocking laughter resonated in the room,

leaving me standing, alone and exhausted, in the thin

light of candles.

· · · · ·

“Manning’s been looking for you, boss,” Motty said. He

stood behind the counter of the sandwich shop, chopping

onions.

I slid onto a stool and opened the paper. Life was

getting much too complicated, and I wanted a rest. I

also needed the kind of information Motty and his boys

could usually be relied on to supply.

“Thanks.” I accepted the steaming mug of coffee and

sipped the hot liquid.

“You want a pastrami and gherkin on rye with it?”

I smiled and lit a cigarette. “You know I do,” I said.

“Sure thing, boss.”

For the next ten minutes we didn’t talk; I drank the

coffee and settled down to enjoy Motty’s creation. When

I was done, I lit another cigarette and sat there,

enjoying the momentary peace.

“Did Manning say what he wanted?”

Motty shook his head. “Said he needed to see you. Urgent

like. Said you know where to find him.”

I did. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to.

As I sat in the rare sunshine, a half-smoked cigarette

in my hand and a new mug of coffee on the counter beside

me, I found myself going back to the night on the

twenty-seventh of November and the Victory Ball, when

lights were once again allowed to dispel London’s

after-hours darkness.

Billie wore a frock designed by one of her cohorts,

Reggie De Vaulle: she looked stunning in it, like a

butterfly awakened from a cocoon all ready to fly and

dazzle. In the early evening she appeared in Freedom

of the Seas. I was in the audience that night, and

when the curtain fell I had felt a premonition, a fear.

The curtain was about to permanently close on Billie

Carleton.

The Victory Ball glittered with the ladies’ jewels; the

Brigade of Guards played Rule Britannia. Then

came the dancing.

It was a night that lasted forever. The dancing didn’t

stop and neither did the trips to the lavatories, where

men and women separately took cocaine to fuel their

dancing. Billie had her gold box with her, and by the

end of the night it was nearly empty. I danced with her

once, and then she disappeared into the crowd.

It was a night that women ruled supreme. A night to

welcome in a new era and lay to rest the old. Too many

men had been lost on the battlefields of the Great War,

and the change this had wrought was profound and, for

many, unsettling. Billie danced all night, and the women

of London danced all around her.

“Boss?” Motty’s voice shook the memories away like drops

of falling water. “I don’t know what Manning was after,

but there is something you should know.”

I picked up the cigarette but it had run too low to

smoke. I let it drop and helped myself to another. “What

is it?”

Motty scratched his dark beard. He looked at me

carefully. “Last night the boys were down by the Isle of

Dogs. Helping remove a late night shipment, if you know

what I mean.” He smiled to himself. “They were nearly

finished when they heard a dog barking at the river,

loud enough to raise the dead.” His smile vanished. “Or

so they thought. You and I both know it takes more than

a bark to…”

“Yes.”

“They went over to check what the noise was about. When

they came close enough, they saw it. It was a corpse.”

I sipped the coffee. Corpses were not an unknown cargo

on the Thames. They came floating up, bloated with gas,

and lodged themselves in the reeds on the bank amidst

the rest of the rubbish thrown into the river. For a

corpse to remain unseen, it would need to be weighed

down; letting it rise from the depths meant one of two

things. Either the killer or killers were amateur, or

they wanted the corpse to be found, as a message or a

warning or both.

“Go on.”

“It was a black man,” Motty said. “His body was covered

in faint blue tattoos from head to foot. Serpents and

dragons and lizards; the boys said they seemed to move

of their own accord, the lines glowing faintly in the

moonlight.” He sighed and rubbed his chin. “Boys.”

I tapped the ash from my cigarette and waited. I had

long ago found that Motty was not one to be hurried

along. “Go on.”

He lowered his voice. “It was a sangoma, Tzaddik.

A houngan. Alfy Benjamin recognised him, even

though the face of the corpse was frozen like a mask

carved with fear. Alfy said he looked like he screamed

for a long time; he said he looked as if, even in death,

he was still screaming.”

“You say Alfy recognised him?” I said. Possibilities

were resolving themselves in my head, worrying me.

“Where did he come across a houngan?”

Motty’s answer was the one I was expecting. “In prison,”

he said. “Two, three years back. This guy was doing life

with hard labour for some muti that went very

wrong. Three people died, and a baby.”

“I remember.” There were rumours of a cover-up, that it

was someone at Cabinet level who ordered the botched

ritual. The houngan, as far as I could remember,

remained quiet on that front. “What did the boys do?”

Motty shrugged. “What could they do? They cleared out as

fast as they could. But I don’t like it, Tzaddik. He was

a powerful sangoma, that one was. Alfy, he said

he saw him draw a window once on the wall of his cell.

Said the window came alive, that there were things on

the other side of that window he never wanted to see as

long as he lived. Someone like that… Someone like that

doesn’t turn up floating in the river, Tzaddik. Not

unless…” He left the thought unspoken.

Motty had given me a lot to think about. It seemed the

story Chang fed me was at least partially true, and that

meant I had to find Manning and get the truth out of him

in turn. What worried me, though, was that the houngan was sent down the river as a warning: as a

message, addressed to me. The Feng-Huang was after me. I

just hoped he would stop skulking in the fog long enough

for me to kill him.

“Thanks Motty,” I said. “You and the boys try and keep

out of this, alright? Keep out of trouble for a few

days.”

Motty winked at me across the counter. “We’ll keep our

noses clean,” he said, mimicking putting snow to his

nose and snorting it. “Don’t you worry, Tzaddik.”

I shook my head and walked out, into the dregs of the

sunshine. Shadows were gathering over the old stone

buildings and the alleyways, and I wondered if it would

ever be possible to be rid of them. London was such a

city, in which light and shade were inexorably bound. I

feared the darkness that was circling around me,

stalking me in the shape of the Feng-Huang. And I

feared the thought of Billie, a ghost forced to return

to the scene of her death. The dead should be left

alone, should be left to death. To force them into a

semblance, a mockery, of life, that was a crime, and for

that violation I knew I would have to act.

· · · · ·

The Montmarte Café was dark and smelled of vinegar and

smoke. I came up to the counter and greeted Zenovia

Iassonides, patron of the Soho Church Street

establishment and Manning’s unofficial business partner.

In the corner, two chorus girls were going over a script

while blowing enough snow into their nostrils to kill an

elephant. Cocainomaniacs, the papers called them, and

they came to the café for Zenovia’s true trade, not for

her cooking.

She greeted me with a closed face. Zenovia was a hard

woman to read.

“I’m looking for Manning,” I said.

She snorted, and brushed a strand of graying hair from

her temple. “Who isn’t?”

I ignored that. “Is he here?”

Her hand took in the small, dank room and its shabby

occupants. “Do you see him anywhere?”

I wasn’t in the mood for games. “He wanted me to get in

touch with him, and this is where he said he’d be.” I

paused, then added, “Please don’t answer that with a

question.”

She unexpectedly laughed. “It’s good to see you,

Tzaddik. Where have you been hiding?”

“In broad daylight,” I said, and she smiled and nodded.

“Best place to hide, Tzaddik. Best place to hide.”

I thought of Manning’s story, of Billie Carleton’s

ghost, and of the Feng-Huang walking the streets

of London. It was not I who was hiding but Manning, and

in his place, I thought, wouldn’t I be hiding too?

“Come with me.” She opened the latch on the counter and

I came through. She took me to a small door underneath a

wooden staircase that looked riddled with worms. She

pushed the door open and pointed me in.

“Watch your step on the stairs,” she said. “There isn’t

much light down there.”

I thanked her and stepped through, and she closed the

door behind me and left me in darkness.

The steps were stone, and old. I could feel a chill

coming off them and taste moisture on my tongue. It was

damp and humid and yet increasingly cold as I descended.

At the bottom of the stairs I stopped and let my eyes

adjust to the scant lighting. There was a table there,

covered in a grimy red cloth, with a single candle on

it. There was a small cabinet, with nothing but a

handgun on it, and a narrow bed.

“Edgar…,” I said.

The body on the bed jerked up, a hand grabbing the gun

from the cabinet and pointing it at me.

“It’s me.”

He looked at me with wild, unseeing eyes before some

sort of sanity returned and he lowered the gun. “Won’t

do much good against you anyway,” he said in an almost

inaudible voice.

“No,” I agreed. “And it won’t do you much good against a

loa, either.”

His head snapped up. “What are you talking about?”

“Put the gun away,” I said. He hesitated, then put it

back on the cabinet.

“Good.” I scanned the small subterranean room. “Do you

have any opium down here? Or some alcohol?”

He grunted and reached for a drawer in the cabinet,

pulling out a bottle of red wine and handing it to me.

I uncorked it and found two dirty mugs under the bed,

which, after some thought, I poured the wine into.

“Drink this,” I said. “I need you calm.” I waited as he

gulped down the red liquid. “You look like shit.”

Some of Manning’s old fire came back to him when he

answered.

“Fuck you.”

“Ah.” I lit a cigarette and offered it to him, lighting

another for myself. I hoped the smell of smoke would

help mask the mouldy, decaying atmosphere of the cellar,

but in the event I can’t say the effort was overly

successful.

“Now,” I said. “Tell me the truth. Tell me about the loa.”

I looked at him and waited. His face changed, anger

receding as a kind of dead man’s hope crept into his

eyes. Yet the overwhelming emotion on his face was fear.

“Tell me about the loa.”

I did not want to use the word of my people, mal’ach.

Angel. To do so would be to perpetuate a Christianised

image of the word: of saintly, holy beings, granting

peace and tranquillity and the touch of God. Those

angels stared down at people from Church windows and

from the pages of thousands of religious tracts, and I

had no doubt it would have been a better, more just

world if it were true.

“How much do you know?”

My patience was gone. It was not my job to play

nursemaid to a man who had put me in danger, and it had

been a long, long day besides. My fist hit his face and

sent him reeling back, the cigarette dropping from his

lips onto the floor. I grabbed him by the throat,

lifting him up in the air and pinning him against the

wall.

I watched as his feet tried to find purchase and failed.

“Don’t fuck me about,” I said. Each word was like a

jagged knife I wanted to run across his neck. “You

fucked up, Eddie. You fucked up big time. Now tell me

what I need to know or you are going to find your

skeleton in this cellar for the next hundred years with

nothing by Billie Carleton’s ghost for company. Do you

understand?”

He was turning blue, but still he tried to nod.

“Good.”

I opened my fingers, let him drop onto the bed, where he

lay holding his throat and coughing. He tried to reach

for the wine, but I knocked it out of his hand. The wine

spilled like a pool of blood on the decaying mattress.

“Talk.”

His words when they came were barely more than a

whisper. “Prison was hard. They treated us like dogs.

Worse, because the English value their dogs. They

treated us like cattle, like we were nothing more than

animals destined for the meat grinder. The wardens beat

us, and at night the screams of the weaker prisoners

could be heard echoing throughout the prison. We didn’t

treat each other any better.”

He coughed and this time I poured him some wine. He

drank it quickly and continued. “There was one prisoner

nobody else dared treat this way. Not the wardens, not

the prisoners. His name was Beauregard. Saturday

Beauregard.” Manning drew a shape in the air with his

hands. “He was a big, mean badman. A bull bucka.”

He saw my expression. “Someone who butts heads with a

bull, Tzaddik. A bully, and that’s exactly what Saturday

Beauregard was. That, and a houngan, a horse for

Baron Samedi. I saw him when he was possessed, and you

knew then that the only thing keeping him in prison was

that he liked it. He liked it! He enjoyed ruling

the prisoners and the wardens. He had a good life, like

a king. And he liked breaking the weaker men most of

all. The loudest screams always came from his cell.”

Manning shivered when he spoke, and his eyes looked

haunted by memories. I offered him a cigarette, and he

took it.

“Anyway, I got on with him all right. There were few

enough black men in that prison, and Saturday was our

boss. He had strange powers, but he was still a man. He

liked talking, and he liked to hear stories, too. Also,

he was a heroin addict. I think that was one reason he

didn’t escape. He needed a regular supply, and once he

had the drug he didn’t care much for anything. I still

had my contacts, of course—I was only sent down for

eighteen months—and so I ended up being his main

supplier.”

I listened. A strange feeling was forming again at the

back of my head, as if we were being watched. I got up

and checked the stairs, but we were alone. I sat back

down and let Manning continue.

“One night I slept badly. I dreamed, and in the dream I

saw Billie, not dead but alive, walking toward me across

a stormy sea. She seemed to walk on the waves, her hands

reaching out to me, but when she finally came close

enough to touch, her hands were as cold as marble and

her hug was ice. I woke up then, and couldn’t return to

sleep. In the morning, Saturday picked up on it, and I

was forced to tell him about the dream, and about

Billie.”

The feeling in the back of my head intensified. I stood

up but again there was nothing. The cellar was silent

save for Manning’s voice.

“He knew who she was, and he enjoyed my discomfort. I

think that’s when he had his idea, though he only

approached me several weeks later. When he found me he

was shaking. He needed more heroin, and he had a

proposition for me.” There was something in Manning’s

face that made me think of an old clock, badly broken. I

gave him another cigarette, and he continued.

“He said he could bring her back from the dead. That he

had the power to negotiate with the Baron. In exchange,

I would supply him with all the heroin I could get hold

of, for free. I thought he was mad.

“You might not know what it’s like when you’re

incarcerated, though I suspect that you do. For me,

trapped in that prison, racked with dreams and held

captive by a constant, dull fear, the thought was soon

too much to bear. All I could think of was Billie,

Billie’s warmth against mine, Billie’s laugh that was

like a spring garden, Billie’s humour, Billie’s touch…

“After a week of that, I went back to Saturday, and I

said yes.”

I didn’t hear any more. When the last word left his lips

a cold, damp wind blew through the basement and the

candles were extinguished. I heard the door at the top

of the stairs move on its hinges as if caught in a

storm, beating out a rhythm as it banged against the

frame.

Without conscious thought I pushed Manning down, reached

for his discarded gun, and in one move turned around and

shot the figure standing at the bottom of the stairs.

· · · · ·

He fell with a grunt of pain.

Human, then, and not the dark shape with the burning

green eyes that I had half expected to be there.

More shapes moving on the stairs.

The gun rang out, once, twice, and two of them fell, but

more kept coming in.

“Is there any way out of here?” I shouted to Manning.

One of the intruders reached the bottom and attacked. I

felt a knife cut through my clothes and penetrate my

skin. I twisted, broke the man’s wrist, and plunged the

knife into his eye.

More, jumping down from the staircase. There was a

tattoo on the man’s wrist, the one I had just killed.

A sword was thrust at my head. I ducked, kicked out at

the attacker’s face, and at his knees. He dropped with a

scream, and I wrenched the sword out of his hand, using

it to inflict wounds on two more of the attackers as

they jumped down.

Then I was choking. Fingers were wrapped around my

throat from behind, thumbs pressing into my windpipe. My

elbow connected with the attacker’s chest but didn’t

remove the pressure. I struggled, then found the

pressure had lifted, and I could breathe again. Turning

around, I saw my attacker on the floor, a bloodied gash

in his head.

Above him stood Manning, and he was grinning.

“There’s a way out through the sewers,” he said. “If you

could hold them for just a minute…”

He pulled the bed away from the wall. I turned back and

into the whirling blade of another of the assassins. I

broke his nose and watched him collapse. It was becoming

difficult to move with all the bodies around, and more

and more of the silent assassins were coming in through

the door.

“Come on!”

Manning removed the bed; below it was a rug and a wooden

box, which he opened. He pushed the rug with his foot,

revealing a trapdoor. I ran toward him in a crouch.

“Get down there, I’ll follow you,” he said. There was a

stick of dynamite in his one hand, a lighter in the

other. He must have had them hidden in the box.

Edgar Manning, Always Prepared.

I jumped down the hole.

· · · · ·

An explosion of heat above me and Manning dropped like a

lead balloon, knocking into me. I fell into rancid

water; a rat scuttled by, startled by the commotion.

It was a big rat.

“Who the fuck were those people?” Manning said as he got

up. He looked dazed, but the grin on his face showed

that, all of a sudden, he was enjoying himself.

I told him about the tattoo I saw. Manning let out a

whistle. We were moving as fast we could through the

sewers: the smell of excrement and waste was

overpowering, and dirty water kept dripping on our heads

and clothes from the metal ceiling of the pipe we were

in. “Tongs? I didn’t expect that.”

“I did,” I said. “I think someone wants you dead.”

Manning turned his head: a man appeared behind us, and

Manning shot him clean through the head.

“Or you,” he said. “Which is the answer I find more

likely.”

I had thought of that, and the thought gave me no

pleasure. Manning, on the other hand, seemed buoyant.

He led me through the glistening tunnels; there were no

more followers. Our passage made the pipes reverberate

and produce odd echoing sounds, and our feet splashed in

the waste water.

“You don’t want to be caught down here when they flood

the sewers,” Manning said and moved his index finger

along his neck with emphasis.

“I don’t want to be caught down here at all,” I said.

I followed him, but a feeling of foreboding began to

steal over me. I was used to feeling the connection with

the ground, with the skies, and now I felt that

connection disappearing, barred to me behind the lead

piping and the layers of earth. Down here elementals

ruled, in a simpler and more dangerous world, a world

closer to the Old World, a buffer zone between this

world of Assiah and the outer Sephirot.

“Chang told me you dug up Billie Carleton’s coffin.”

He stopped and pushed me against the wall of the tunnel,

his breath hot against mine. I didn’t fight him. His

face was hard, like iron that was smelt and remade in

the furnace. “Then he lied.”

“Did he?” I said. “It seems to me you both have an

unhealthy interest in the dead.”

He lifted his hand to hit me. I shook my head. After a

moment he lowered his hand and continued walking.

“I could say the same for you,” he said over his

shoulder.

I trudged after him without an answer.

We were walking, it seemed to me, for too long. We had

descended in Soho; surely there would be a manhole cover

somewhere nearby? Instead, I felt our path was leading

us farther down, into the bowels of the city, and I was

growing disturbed. I looked at Manning’s back: he seemed

to walk with a purpose in his step, leading me… leading

me where?

“Stop,” I said. The tunnels were getting darker and

darker, and it was difficult to see. The air turned

humid and hot, and deformed rodents ran in the murky

water at our feet. “I said stop.”

He didn’t seem to hear me.

“Manning!”

I watched him disappear into the shadows ahead.

I looked at my surroundings, sighed, and moved on to

follow him. From a coat pocket I removed a small packet

of snow and snorted it. I thought of Manning: he seemed

scared when he came to see me, and scared again in the

basement, and yet the fighting seemed to have revived

him. And now he was leading me through the sewers like a

Dybbuk, a man possessed. I thought of simply

knocking him out, but then where would I go? I didn’t

want to leave him down here, and I had no idea how to

get out. I was, literally, out of my depth.

Somehow, the thought made me giggle. I felt happier now,

as if decisions and their making were no longer

important. I followed behind Manning as we walked

further and further into the bowels of the earth.

· · · · ·

We walked in silence, the only noise produced by the

treading of our feet in water.

I followed Manning through turnings in the sewer system,

into tunnels that were made of stone; clumps of moss

grouped together for comfort on the cold walls providing

a faint luminosity. There were writings on the walls,

letters and drawings that I felt I should recognise and

yet didn’t.

The quality of light changed: as we journeyed I began to

notice strange crystal globes set in the walls, emitting

a clear, bright light.

After more time had passed the tunnel we were in began

to widen, and at last came to an end in a cavern of

white stone. Here the light was brilliant and yet

comfortable. Crystal globes were set at regular

intervals along the walls, turning the cavern into the

semblance of a ballroom, or a temple.

On the floor of the cavern was a giant drawing, and when

I saw it my mind returned to me. It was the Tree of

Life.

A dark snake was coiled around the Sephirot. Its

tail was touching Malchut and its head was by Keter.

Beside me, Manning’s face slackened, then closed.

Without a sound the big man fell to his knees and to the

floor, where he lay with a look of peace on his face.

As he fell, the lights had dimmed. I kneeled down and

took his pulse. Manning’s heart was beating a strong,

steady beat. He looked like a man in the throes of a

deep, drugged sleep.

Nothing stirred amidst the newly formed shadows. I

opened my mind and let it encompass the cavern. Slowly

it expanded, and yet I encountered the presence of no

living being, only a kind of ancient, drowsy solitude

that seemed to emanate from the stones themselves.

“Tzaddik.”

I turned, my mind shrinking back to one focal point from

which I tried to see the speaker. The voice was

feminine, and somewhat familiar, like the taste of

vintage Judean wine sampled a long time ago and never

entirely forgotten.

She stood in the drawing of the Tree, in the heart of

the Pillar of Equilibrium, over the sphere called Tiphe’ret, Beauty. Her hair was short, where I

remembered long; white, where I remembered the blackness

of strong coffee.

“Amat…”

She laughed. I remembered her laughter, but it was

buried deep, under the layers of memories that recorded

every detail of her death, the screams as she fought the

Leviathan in the old Egyptian kingdom and was pinned by

the dying god into the mud of the Nile, her body broken

and the magic whispering as it ebbed away… Amat

al-Qadir, Servant of the Almighty.

Under her feet the dark snake came alive. It crawled

from the Tree of Life and wrapped itself around her like

a scarf. Reptilian eyes regarded me; a forked tongue

hissed as it tasted the air.

“It hardly seems credible that you are alive,” I said.

She nodded. A small smile caught at the corners of her

mouth like a butterfly threatening to escape. “Hardly,”

she said, and we both laughed.

“Come here, fallen guardian,” she said. I walked to her.

She held her hands to me, but when I touched her I felt

nothing, only whispering air. I looked into her face, no

longer smiling. “You died.”

She inclined her head in agreement.

“The paths between the spheres are disturbed,” Amat

said. “The passage of those seeking an end to death has

unbalanced the twenty-two ways.”

I stood back and looked at her, feeling both sad and

annoyed. “Don’t you think I know that?”

She shook her head. “It isn’t a question of what you

know, it is a question of what you do.”

“Amat,” I said. “You can drop the sphinx act. I’m too

old for riddles, and I am no longer bound by the code of

the Thirty-Six.”

She smiled at that, and it brought back memories of her

and Ma’ani and Sarwa—the three golden girls of the

hidden temple—in days long gone, when the sun seemed

never to set and the waning and waxing of the moon were

reflected in the Nile and in the lives of our people.

Still, I felt the old bitterness rise in me again.

“You were always a rake,” she said gently, and I felt

the anger pass as swiftly as it materialised.

“I’ve come to deliver a message,” she said. Her hands

stroked the snake, and its tongue hissed against her

skin, scenting her. “There is a thing let free on Assiah which is not meant to be so.” She looked into

my eyes and said, “And it is your problem.”

“Strictly speaking,” I said, “it’s the Thirty-Six’s

problem.”

Her eyes betrayed amusement. “Oh, they will probably

move in if you can’t solve it,” she said. “But of

course, you’d be dead by then.”

“And wouldn’t that be just dandy,” I said. But I thought

about her words, realised they had hidden a warning.

There was something on Assiah that could kill a

Tzaddik. No wonder the Thirty-Six were sitting it out,

hoping I could do the job for them or, even better,

finally die in the process. I thought about my old

comrades and decided I’d rather stick around, if only to

give them a two-fingered salute.

“Is that it?” I said, feigning a confidence I didn’t

quite feel.

That smile again, returning with its parasitic host of

unwanted memories.

“That’s it,” she said. “No more ‘sphinx act,’ alright?

You know the consequences of failure or success.”

“Fine,” I said. I had always found it difficult to argue

with Amat. I reached out with my hand, wanting to touch

her one last time, to feel her hair between my fingers,

to say good-bye. But again there was nothing there, like

a mirage painted on air.

I looked around me, at the cavern and the painting on

the floor. “What is this place?” I said.

“A hiding place,” Amat said. “During the riots and blood

libels of Richard the First’s rule, a group of rabbis —

with an understanding some say has never been surpassed

since — built this place as a refuge for our people,

deep under the king’s city.”

“It couldn’t have done them much good,” I said, thinking

of the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. I had

never heard of a secret dwelling underneath London, or

of the mysterious rabbis Amat talked about.

“Their understanding of the Zohar was

unparalleled,” Amat continued. “They utilised…”

I let her speak as I opened my mind again to my

surroundings. In life, Amat loved to show off her

knowledge, and it seemed she had retained the tendency

in death. Still, I could not detect her presence. My

mind moved over the curious crystals and their cold

light, sensing nothing. Beyond one of the walls I felt

space, and within it giant, hushed figures. My mind

moved over them, sensing enormous bodies made of clay:

statues, perhaps? My mind moved around them, then shrank

back as I detected a slow, regular beat coming from

them. Were they alive?

I looked at them in my mind’s eye. They were

enormous, each easily the size of ten men, and the clay

they were made of seemed ancient. Their faces had no

features, and their hands were closed into fists. Hard

diamonds were strewn in a pattern throughout their body,

a pattern I had just recognised.

They were imbued with the Tree of Life.

“Enough,” Amat said. I returned to myself and stood

facing her. On the floor beside me, Manning snored

loudly. “Time is running out, and the angel is growing

stronger. It will come looking for you. Be prepared.”

“I thought you were going to quit the Sibyl role,” I

said, but her eyes mesmerised me. I was lost in them,

seeing the faraway shapes of curious mounts and rivers,

clouds that seemed like faces, and giant creatures

gliding on the winds… I reached for her, a third and

futile time, and felt pain explode in my hand like a

grenade.

“Remember me…,” she whispered as the snake’s venom

coursed through my blood: I felt a hot, searing pain, as

if my brain were exploding.

Then I passed out.

· · · · ·

I came to on the floor of my living room. My hand

throbbed. Two puncture marks were visible on the flesh

between my thumb and forefinger. I stood up. Underneath

my feet was my chalked Star of David. Around me,

furniture and belongings lay in broken heaps.

I moved through the house, feeling weary: room after

room had been smashed up and its contents scattered.

There were pools of piss in the bedroom and human

excrement left on the kitchen’s floor.

I didn’t care about any of that. I went down to the

basement, not surprised to find it had also been

ransacked. The false brick in the southern wall,

however, was undisturbed. I slid it out and helped

myself to its mysteries: a bottle of Scottish whiskey, a

small bag of opium, and a curved wooden pipe, the shape

of a wingless bird. There were also some vials I had

left there for a day of need, and these I pocketed

carefully.

Then I proceeded to have a party.

It went well as far as solitary parties go, and when

there was no more whiskey and only a little cocaine I

curled up into a ball on the floor and went to sleep,

figuring a house that had already been broken into might

just be the best place to lie low for a little while.

I slept, and in my sleep Amat’s face returned to haunt

me, uttering more nonsensical warnings; I saw the dark

figure of the Feng-Huang stalking shadows, moving

through my dreams, but he never turned back, never

turned to look at me. I followed him through dreamscapes

of torn memories, returning at last to the

boarding-house in Paris, to a self centuries in the

past, lying on the floor, choking on vomit, body wracked

by drugs.

It occurred to me, then, that my life had not, perhaps,

changed as much as I thought it had.

In my dream, the Feng-Huang loomed over me and

laughed. Its eyes were burning emeralds, poisonous

green, and its laughter was that of the hyena, a mad,

deep sound that hurt my skull.

I tried to turn away from it, and in the way of dreams

the scene was somehow gone, and I was dancing in the

Albert Hall, Billie Carleton in my arms, the band

playing music that made us soar together like two birds

tied by a string. I could see Manning sitting at a table

by the bar, Brilliant Chang opposite him. They were

playing cards, their faces grim, and the pot was

Billie’s golden snuff box.

Their cards, I noticed, were Tarot cards, and I strained

my neck to see who would win the game, but the swirl of

dancing partners passed between us and when I looked

again they were gone.

“You smell lovely tonight,” I said to Billie, and she

smiled at me and held me tight and so we danced, until

the ballroom was gone and only the two of us remained,

dancing in a perfect darkness, our lips touching in one

blossoming, perfect kiss.

As I tasted her I felt her move away, become lighter.

“Billie, no!” I cried, but her form began to melt in my

hands, to ebb away, and I cried and tried to hold her,

to keep her, all to myself.

Then somebody kicked me hard in the ribs and I woke up

shivering on the basement floor.

· · · · ·

“You son of a bitch,” I said. Motty put out his hand and

helped me to my feet.

“Sorry, boss,” he said. “We tried waking you up but you

were gone. And time is something we don’t have an

abundance of right now.”

He motioned for the boys, who were leaning against the

walls of the basement. Aviel brought forward a flask of

hot tea and a bag full of sandwiches, then retreated and

lit himself a cigarette.

“Thanks.”

The hot tea washed away memories and dreams alike; I ate

quickly, while Motty and the boys waited. Then, “What’s

going on?”

“We’ve been trying to find you since yesterday,” Motty

said. “Zenovia came to the shop screaming murder. Said

that you and Manning had been attacked by tongs, then

disappeared. We came to your house, but it was already

broken into. I left Daniel outside to watch if you came

back, but being the useless boy that he is it took him

until now to let me know.”

The boy foremost left shook his head. “It wasn’t my

fault, boss. This whole area is crawling with police.”

“Why police?” I said. I had a feeling I would not like

the answer.

Motty coughed. It wasn’t a gentle cough, but the cough

of a smoker who had pursued tobacco with a passion.

“You’re wanted for the murder of Saturday Beauregard.”

I opened my mouth. Then I closed it. Then I said,

“Fuck.”

The boys all nodded.

“According to the papers,” Motty said, ploughing on as

if determined to unburden himself of the bad news as

quickly as he could, “Beauregard escaped prison the

night after Manning was released. And according to

eyewitnesses he was seen in Limehouse, and later again

he was seen having a fight with a man matching your

description. Also,” the cough stopped him again, but

only briefly, “his body was found last night, downriver

from the place we saw him. You’re wanted for

questioning.”

“Very convenient,” I said. I thought about the

situation. The Metropolitan Police were not known for

moving very fast, so their quick mobilisation must have

had an external agent of some sort. It didn’t take long

to work out who or what was behind it.

“Any word of Manning?”

“No,” Motty said, a faint note of surprise in his voice.

“We thought he was with you.”

“Clearly,” I said, “he isn’t.”

There was a noise from upstairs, and Alfy Benjamin came

rushing down the stairs.

“Looks like we were spotted,” he announced. “There’re

pigs and tongs all over this area and they seem to be

heading this way. Separately, of course, but this looks

like trouble.”

I motioned the boys, and they followed me as I climbed

back up to street level. The time for running around and

being pursued was over, or so I tried to tell myself.

Through the window a dull afternoon light cast a tired

haze over Smithfields market. I had lost twenty-four

hours according to Motty, though I suspected my time in

the sewers and my time in the dream were somehow longer

than that. There were plainclothes policemen milling

about in the street, trying unsuccessfully not to look

like policemen. There was also a large contingent of

Chinese men, sticking to the shadows in the entryways of

buildings. It almost made me want to find a way back to

the sewers. But not quite.

“Where one sees only a problem,” I said, “another sees

opportunity.”

“What are you going to do?” Motty asked. I turned to him

and grinned. “I’m going to magic us away,” I said.

“Oh. Good,” he said. He didn’t look reassured.

We left through the front door. Me in the middle,

surrounded tightly by the boys. Alfy and Motty strode

ahead, shouting for the crowd to make way, that a

dangerous criminal was caught. The policemen were close,

and were approaching us now, but we continued to move,

directly toward the tongs.

It was a dangerous game to play, with me as bait and the

boys with the very real chance of getting hurt. But it

was a game worth playing.

I could almost see it in their eyes, the moment the

decision was made. The tongs wanted me. And they hated

cops. On the other hand, the cops wanted me. And they

really hated the tongs.

I heard the shot go off as planned. Motty, soon followed

by another, this one from a policeman. The tongs

returned fire.

I watched the riot begin.

“Since when do the police have firearms?” I shouted and

felt exhilaration grip me like a vice. “Watch out,

boys—it’s magic time!”

I took out the two large vials from my pocket and broke

them with a flourish against the ground. Rancid smoke

enveloped us.

I hit out, as a man—I couldn’t tell which faction he

belonged to—charged at me, and then we ran, me and the

boys, while behind us smoke billowed and guns sounded

and the whole of the street descended into a manic, wild

brawl.

· · · · ·

A guy came through the door with a gun.

He put the gun into his belt as he came in, and took off

his hat. The face leathery and tough and wrinkled and

as pockmarked as the face of the moon curved into a

smile.

“Shalom, boys,” he said cheerfully. His voice was

American, soft, well-articulated. I could see Alfy and

Motty tense beside me.

“Adam,” I said. “How are you.”

He laughed. “It’s good to see you too, Tzaddik. I hear

you’ve landed yourself in trouble again.”

I made a sign, and the boys got up and filed out of the

door. When we were alone, I motioned for him to sit down

and poured him a glass of brandy from the crystal

decanter. We were in a safe house in Hampstead. At

least, I hoped it was safe. In any case, I did not

intend to stay long.

Adam Worth regarded me with a smile. He brought out a

small silver case, opened it, offered me a cigar. When I

declined he took one out, returned the case into the

hidden pocket in his coat, and took great care in

trimming and lighting it. Fumes rose in the room like an

ill wind.

I watched him in silence and waited for him to speak.

Adam Worth, the man Sir Robert Anderson, the head of

Scotland Yard, once called “the Napoleon of crime”; the

man who inspired Doyle to create his fictional Moriarty.

“I thought you were dead,” I said.

“Did you?” he shrugged. “I am under that name.

The Civil War—though why for God’s sake they call it

that I have no idea—ended some time ago. It was time to

assume a new rôle.”

“What do you want?” I didn’t need this complication. And

I didn’t want anything to do with Worth, regardless of

what he was calling himself in these more enlightened

times.

“Do you know,” he said, puffing on the cigar and looking

at me keenly, like an interested father, “Pinkerton once

said that ‘in the death of Adam Worth there probably

departed the most inventive and daring criminal in

modern times?’ he said that of all the men he had known

in his lifetime, I was ‘the most remarkable criminal of

them all.’” He smiled and shook his head, as if

remembering better times and better days.

“Did he?” I said. Then I had to smile. “You were always

a great thief.”

Worth waved his hand in false modesty. “You’re not so

bad yourself, when you put your mind to it.”

“So what do you want?” I said again. He shook his head

at me, admonishing. “You fucked up, boy,” he said.

“There’s a ghost and an angel on the loose in your city,

and you seem to think hiding here and drinking brandy is

the answer to all your problems. Look how long it took

me to find you. If you’re trying to hide, you’re not

doing a very good job of it.”

“I’m not trying to hide,” I said, annoyed. “I’m trying

to think. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Don’t you?” We were indulging in the Jewish Dialogue:

trading a question for a question for a question. He

dropped his ash carefully into the ashtray. “Or is it

because for you, the ghost is more than a ghost, and you

are reluctant to face her? No, don’t answer that,” he

said. “I understand no one knows exactly what happened

on the night Billie Carleton died, and I’m sure that’s

only right. I also know a small gold-plated snuffbox

that she habitually carried on her person could not be

found when the police got to her room, though I’ve heard

it’s been seen recently around town.”

I watched him, this fat, immortal Jew, who sat like a

contented spider in his web of information. I should

have been flattered he was here at all, but I remembered

Genoa, and the murder there. I was not the only one to

be expelled from the Thirty-Six over the long, long

years.

“The heart of the mystery,” Worth said, “is at the

heart. Cherchez la femme, ah?” He winked at me

and blew a smoke ring that turned into Billie Carleton’s

face before ebbing away.

“Impressive trick,” I said, but I was rattled. Worth had

come here to tell me something. Time was running out,

and I had to act.

“What do you mean?”

He stood up, drew out his gun, twirled it on his finger;

raised it to his lips and blew smoke from the barrel.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he said. “Or not. As the case may

be.”

He walked out of the room, putting the gun into his belt

as he did so, leaving me alone to think of a woman, and

her grave.

· · · · ·

Cherchez la femme, Worth said, and so I had come

at last to find her: the night was moonless and the

skies patterned in stars, and the tombstones projected,

ghostly and grotesque, over the lengthening fog that lay

like a thick residue on Highgate Cemetery.

I had taken some coke beside the gate to the cemetery,

afraid of what I might find inside. Dubious of Chang’s

story of the desecrated grave and yet apprehensive. I

felt my consciousness grow as the drugs took hold of me,

and knew the ways between the Sephirot were wide

open tonight. The Feng-Huang might not be the

only thing to walk Assiah on this night.

Her grave lay, undisturbed and modest, beside two larger

graves, one sporting an angel with wings unfurling, the

other a curious figure: an innocent, androgynous child

with eyes of stone that caught the distant light of

stars. As I approached it, the feeling of dread at the

back of my head intensified.

I turned—and found him. A piece of darkness detached

from the night.

The Feng-Huang laughed.

It was a deceptive sound, full of the warmth of a spring

day and the lucidity of lakewater, and yet it made my

skin go cold, as if a skeletal hand had laid bony

fingers on my wrist.

We stood facing each other without movement, without

sound. He was tall and dressed in a black, flowing robe

that formed a closed circle on the ground. His face was

hidden in shadows: only the green eyes burned within the

darkness.

The eyes found me and held. Finally, he spoke.

“You are like a ferret, set on a scent and left to run

and run in circles until you reach its source,” he said.

“You are no longer dangerous, but you may be useful.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

The Feng-Huang laughed again. “I don’t think so,”

he said. The fire in his eyes intensified.

Burning pain burst in the back of my head, and I fell to

the ground.

Hands grabbed me. Hauled me to my feet. I felt my hands

being tied behind my back.

“Your rivals for the affections of the delightful Ms.

Carleton,” the Feng-Huang said. As he did, two

figures materialised in front of me.

“Hello, Tzaddik,” Chang said. “You took your time

getting here.” He was dressed in flowing, vaguely

oriental robes, his dark hair tied back in a ponytail.

In his hand he held what seemed to be a very sharp

knife.

But the man I was watching was standing next to Chang.

Edgar Manning wore a calm expression, but the pupils in

his eyes were abnormally large. In his hand, too, was a

knife. I was getting a bad feeling.

“To bring the dead back to life,” the Feng-Huang

said, “can only be done at a perilous exchange. A normal

human life would not do, as that exchange is only equal.

You understand?”

Chang and Manning nodded, the motion mechanical like

that of automatons.

“To give the dead life,” said the Feng-Huang, “an

immortal life must be sacrificed.”

“You didn’t think I came here alone, did you?” I said,

trying for a bravado I didn’t quite feel.

“That is exactly what I think,” said the Feng-Huang.

“Like I said, you were like a ferret, led on a leash.

You believed Manning when he lied to you. You believed

Chang when he, in turn, fed you the rest. And you

believed them because each was telling you some of the

truth, and you were too weakened by your drug habit to

comprehend the whole.”

“I’ve had a perfectly healthy drug habit for many

years,” I said. The Feng-Huang laughed. “Manning

was the fool who asked Saturday Beauregard for help in

raising Billie’s spirit. And Beauregard was a fool for

consenting, and for trying to take on powers far beyond

his control. But we are all pawns in somebody else’s

game, Tzaddik. Even you and I. For Manning, there was

another man who moved the pieces on the board.”

“Chang.”

The Feng-Huang moved the darkness that was his

hooded head in assent. “Chang wished to have his

mistress back. And so he used one of his men, a man by

the name of Uncle Lee, to impress upon Manning the idea

of the summoning. But he was useful, too: for all his

bravado he is mine, now.”

“And so,” I said, “all the actions of mortal men led

only to bring forth a creature like you onto this earth.

Compelling stuff, I’m sure, but I do not play games with

either mortals or angels. You will not be allowed to

remain.”

As I spoke my fingers moved, analysing the knot. The Feng-Huang had wanted me out of his way, wanted me

chasing reflections in the fog as he waited for this

night, the night when the spheres were aligned and the

spirits of the dead—as well as those of the living—could

travel across the Sephirot with relative ease. He

set me on a goose chase, planting the seeds that would

lead me here at last, to this lonely grave in this place

of the dead.

“She meant a lot to you, didn’t she?” he said. “Would

you like to see her again?”

I didn’t answer.

“No? A pity.”

The Feng-Huang’s eyes rose in flame. He extended

his arms as if in an embrace—and into the darkness of

the night materialised the face of the woman I once

loved, and lost.

“Billie…” The word was drawn from our collective

throats. Chang and Manning and I, together, under her

power still.

Her face was white and still beautiful. But her eyes

were dark and vacant, the eyes of the dead, and when I

looked into them I saw only the abyss between worlds.

“Release her!” I said.

My tormentor laughed again. “At what price, Tzaddik?

Would you sacrifice your life so she could live again?

Or would you have me send her back to death?”

“She is already dead,” I said. “And what you have there

is only a pale and empty copy of the woman that was

Billie Carleton. You could never bring her back—such a

thing is beyond your power and mine. Listen to me,

Chang!” I said. “And you, Manning. She is dead, gone,

and you must let her be!”

Chang slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he

said. “Why is it that I, the son of an ancient and

powerful culture, am here in this city, in this place

and time, treated like an animal? A menace? They call me

a Dope Fiend, the Yellow Plague, when I am a man with a

heart as good as any Englishman’s. But they would never

let me and Billie be. And you could say the same for

Manning, Tzaddik. Or indeed for you.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “She is dead. Truly

dead. This creature is preying on your desires for his

own ends.”

“Then so be it,” Chang said with sudden anger. “I have

made deals with worse and survived.”

“Unlikely,” I muttered.

And then, like in a nightmare one expects but dreads all

the same, Billie spoke.

Her voice was flat, lacking the exuberance, the joy and

excitement of her living days. It was the voice of a

ghost, but a familiar one, and I knew what she would say

before she said it.

“My box,” she whispered, her dead eyes finding mine. “My

golden snuffbox. Why did you take it?”

The Feng-Huang turned his eyes on me; there was

malicious glee in their burning essence.

“What is she talking about?” Manning asked. “Billie,

what do you mean?”

“She means,” the Feng-Huang said, “that the

Tzaddik is the one who removed her little box of poisons

from her deathbed. Perhaps you’d care to ask him why?”

“Why, Tzaddik?” Manning said. There was real anguish in

his voice, and I realised then, with a springing of

hope, that he and Chang were not yet entirely under the

Feng-Huang‘s control, that he was waiting to see

if he could use them without destroying their minds. And

it gave me a chance.

“He gave me the pills,” the thing that was once Billie

Carleton said. “The pills I took, after the ball. They

made me fast and happy and filled me with energy.”

“What did you give her, you bastard?” Chang said, and I

was aware of the knife in his hands moving toward my

face.

I sighed. My fingers worried at the knot, loosening it.

I had to hope talking would keep me away from the Feng-Huang‘s ultimate purpose, at least temporarily.

“I gave her the pills she asked for,” I said, suddenly

weary. “I gave her everything she asked for.”

“She didn’t die of the cocaine, did she,” Manning said,

and his knife, too, was rising toward me. “She died of

the pills you gave her.”

“I died,” Billie said. Her empty eyes looked into mine.

“I died for you.”

“You never loved me,” I said. “You never loved any of

us.”

The Feng-Huang moved. It was like mercury, heated

up and sliding on pure glass, the movement inhuman and

frightening. “Enough,” he said. “Gentlemen, I have

offered you a deal. For your love to live, an immortal

must be sacrificed. Please don’t let me keep you from

your job.”

“Stop!” I said. The knot was nearly untied. Chang and

Manning looked at me. Their eyes were still their own. I

had hope. “Believe me. If there was a way to bring her

back, I would gladly do whatever is needed to do so. But

the dead must remain so. It is the law of nature. To

undo it would be to destroy everything.”

“He is lying!” the Feng-Huang said. “Kill him,

mortals, and you will have your woman.”

Would they do it? How much were they blaming me for?

They raised their knives.

“Chang! Manning! Please!”

And then my hands were free. I raised them as the Feng-Huang howled, and I drew a symbol in the air.

Chang and Manning blinked, looked around. When they saw

Billie they both looked scared.

“Is that what you want?” I said. “A ghost? That is all

she will ever be.”

“No,” Chang said. And again, “No!” And he moved the

knife in an arc and sliced at the Feng-Huang‘s

throat.

“Chang!”

The Feng-Huang roared; he took hold of Chang and

threw him in the air. Chang’s head hit a tombstone with

a sickening sound, and he lay still.

“Go, Edgar!” I said. “Go!”

Manning moved slowly away, the knife held in front of

him.

“This is between you and me, angel,” I said. “The road

between the spheres is open tonight, and I suggest you

take it back to where you came from.”

“You,” the Feng-Huang said, “are going to die.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. While standing in the

cemetery with my hands tied, my foot had been able to

draw, again and again, a symbol in the ground. Now, I

moved away from it.

On the ground where I had stood was a Star of David,

etched deeply into the soil as if branded there. “Clay

and magic,” I said. “And the Tree of Life.” There was a

small leaf, half broken, embedded in the circle. I hoped

it would work.

“What is this?” the Feng-Huang said. “This is

nothing. Is that the best you can do?”

He didn’t wait for my answer. The clothes containing him

drew and tore, and out of them grew the true darkness of

the angel. It was a darkness such as encountered in an

underground river that had never seen the sun, the

darkness of the inside of snails, of the other side of

the moon, of death. It grew, threatening to absorb me,

to touch Chang’s unmoving body, to engulf Manning as he

stood there, uncertain, the knife in one hand.

The earth shook.

It shook with the fury of an earthquake. The darkness

that was the angel hovered above, suddenly unsure.

And from below the graves they rose: the beings I had

glimpsed beneath the foundations of London, the buried,

secretive giants.

They were creatures of clay, and yet the lifeblood of

the Tree surged in them, the strongest I had ever seen

or felt. They had arms like tree trunks, and as they

rose out of the earth they took hold of the angel, the

loa, the Feng-Huang, and held it.

He screamed.

He screamed for a long time as the great golems

descended back into the earth; screams that could still

be heard, echoing in my ears, from far below the ground.

“Tzaddik.” It was Billie, and the voice was her own,

that voice I had fallen in love with, the voice that

commanded me and entreated me, and got me to supply her

with the drugs that were to kill her.

I turned, and her eyes were once again her own, loving

and happy and mischievous.

“I am sorry, Billie,” I said. “I am so, so sorry.”

“I know,” she said, and she moved towards me, growing

insubstantial as she did. “I know.”

And then she kissed me. Her lips touched mine, for the

longest second I can recall. And then she disappeared.

· · · · ·

“Was it a dream?” Manning said.

We were sitting in the upstairs bar of the Princess

Louise. There were only the three of us: the Jamaican,

the Chinese, the Jew.

“No,” I said. “Though I wish it was.”

Chang returned to the table, carrying with him a tray

with three more glasses of bourbon on it.

“Future generations will judge us,” he said, and cut

three lines of snow on the table. We each snorted one.

“And perhaps, after all, they will not judge us, nor

Billie, too harshly.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I said.

The End

I am indebted to Marek Kohn’s nonfiction work, Dope

Girls, for the historical background and characters.

Anyone who would like to know the true and fascinating

stories of Edgar Manning, Brilliant Chang, and Billie

Carleton, or indeed the secret history of the London

drug underground, should consider it essential reading.

© 2005 by Lavie Tidhar and SCIFI.COM

Poem © copyright Estate of James Laver 1926, used by permission

of David Higham Associates

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