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Everybody else nodded.
Red shrugged. She began to walk forward.
Every finger on every trigger tightened, almost of its own accord. Lead and the smell of cordite filled the air. Red’s cocktail glass smashed in her hand. The room’s remaining mirrors exploded in lethal shards. Part of the ceiling fell down.
And then it was over.
Carmine Zuigiber turned and stared at the bodies surrounding her as if she hadn’t the faintest idea of how they came to be there.
She licked a spatter of blood—someone else’s—from the back of her hand with a scarlet, cat-like tongue. Then she smiled.
And she walked out of the bar, her heels clicking on the tiles like the tapping of distant hammers.
The two holidaymakers climbed out from under the table and surveyed the carnage.
“This wouldn’t of happened if we’d of gone to Torremolinos like we usually do,” said one of them, plaintively.
“Foreigners,” sighed the other. “They’re just not like us, Patricia.”
“That settles it, then. Next year we go to Brighton,” said Mrs. Threlfall, completely missing the significance of what had just happened.
It meant there wouldn’t be any next year.
It rather lowered the odds on there being any next week to
speak of.
Thursday
THERE WAS A NEWCOMER IN THE VILLAGE.
New people were always a source of interest and speculation among the Them,20 but this time Pepper had impressive news.
“She’s moved into Jasmine Cottage and she’s a witch,” she said. “I know, because Mrs. Henderson does the cleaning and she told my mother she gets a witches’ newspaper. She gets loads of ordinary newspapers, too, but she gets this special witches’ one.”
“My father says there’s no such thing as witches,” said Wensleydale, who had fair, wavy hair, and peered seriously out at life through thick black-rimmed spectacles. It was widely believed that he had once been christened Jeremy, but no one ever used the name, not even his parents, who called him Youngster. They did this in the subconscious hope that he might take the hint; Wensleydale gave the impression of having been born with a mental age of forty-seven.
“Don’t see why not,” said Brian, who had a wide, cheerful face, under an apparently permanent layer of grime. “I don’t see why witches shouldn’t have their own newspaper. With stories about all the latest spells and that. My father gets Anglers’ Mail, and I bet there’s more witches than anglers.”
“It’s called Psychic News,” volunteered Pepper.
“That’s not witches,” said Wensleydale. “My aunt has that. That’s just spoon-bending and fortune-telling and people thinking they were Queen Elizabeth the First in another life. There’s no witches any more, actually. People invented medicines and that and told ’em they didn’t need ’em any more and started burning ’em.”
“It could have pictures of frogs and things,” said Brian, who was reluctant to let a good idea go to waste. “An’—an’ road tests of broomsticks. And a cats’ column.”
“Anyway, your aunt could be a witch,” said Pepper. “In secret. She could be your aunt all day and go witching at night.”
“Not my aunt,” said Wensleydale darkly.
“An’ recipes,” said Brian. “New uses for leftover toad.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Pepper.
Brian snorted. If it had been Wensley who had said that, there’d have been a half-hearted scuffle, as between friends. But the other Them had long ago learned that Pepper did not consider herself bound by the informal conventions of brotherly scuffles. She could kick and bite with astonishing physiological accuracy for a girl of eleven. Besides, at eleven years old the Them were beginning to be bothered by the dim conception that laying hands on good ole Pep moved things into blood-thumping categories they weren’t entirely at home with yet, besides earning you a snake-fast blow that would have floored the Karate Kid.
But she was good to have in your gang. They remembered with pride the time when Greasy Johnson and his gang had taunted them for playing with a girl. Pepper had erupted with a fury that had caused Greasy’s mother to come round that evening and complain.21
Pepper looked upon him, a giant male, as a natural enemy.
