Page 20 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
“Hello?” Frank sounded uncertain, perhaps because he didn’t recognise the number that was calling.
“Frank!” she gasped in relief, tears welling in her eyes at the sound of a familiar voice. It was afternoon back in London, and Magda imagined Frank behind the desk in Bell Street Books. She wished dearly that she were back there with him, back where the world was safe and sensible.
“Magda?”
“James Wei is dead,” Magda said, and then a stream-of-consciousness ramble of thoughts and recollections tumbled out of her, even as her mind coolly observed that she was probably in shock. “We were looking at the object in his office and then a man came in. I’d seen him at the restaurant, but he shot James! He had a gun, Frank! And I don’t know how he knew where we were. How could he follow us?”
She stopped to suck in a breath, closing her eyes as a trembling hand reached up to massage her forehead.
She had never before felt this way. This was terror, she knew; this was the thought that she might have died, just like James.
James!
The memory of James replayed again. She opened her eyes to banish it and stared out at the buildings of Kowloon across the harbour, the towering shape of the ICC, where she had been less than an hour before. She wondered if the man with the gun and the pale blue eyes was still there, or was he already on his way to her hotel?
“I’m sorry?” Frank answered finally, as if he had heard none of what she’d said. “What’s that?”
Magda sucked in a breath and repeated the story, consciously trying to make more sense. “I don’t know who this man was,” she said, starting to grab her things off the counter and throwing them into the bag she hadn’t even fully unpacked. “But he killed James. He followed us and killed James to get the artefact.”
Frank was silent, infuriatingly so.
“What do we do?” Magda demanded.
“I... I don’t know,” Frank admitted. “Do you have the item? Is it safe?”
Annoyance sparked in Magda like a struck match. “I said hekilled James,” she said. “Are you listening? He could have killed me!”
“I know, I know,” Frank said. “I’m sorry. Do you have it?”
“Yes,” Magda said, patting her jacket pocket for reassurance. “I have it.”
“Come home,” Frank said. “Don’t waste any time. Come straight home and make sure the item is safe.”
“I’m sorry,” Magda said, not knowing why she was apologising. “James was nice, Frank. He was a really nice man, and... he was shot. He waskilled,Frank.”
“Okay,” Frank said, but to Magda it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t understanding just how nice James had been, how horrible the murder.
“It was awful,” she tried, failing to capture the enormity of her feelings in simple words.
“It’s not your fault,” Frank said. “It’s just... I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
Frank seemed unable to offer the wisdom and advice Magda craved. As her liquid emotions started to solidify again, another, more worrying thought occurred to her.
“How did he know about the item?” she wondered, asking herself as much as she was asking Frank. “James only told you? How could he possibly have known?”
“You should come back,” Frank said, not answering. “It’s not safe out there. Come home, Sparks, come home right away.”
The Man with the Gun
Owen Maddox stood on the balcony on the eighty-second floor of the International Commerce Centre and watched until the short ginger woman was a dot in the distance amongst the lights of Hong Kong Island. He reflected that sometimes things could still surprise him. Despite his many years knowing about magic, it could still catch him off guard, like hearing a really good song from a shitty boy band. Sometimes seemingly impossible things did occur.
He exhaled heavily through clenched teeth, trying to ride out the waves of fury and frustration that rippled through his body. He had been so close, but it had been snatched from his grasp. He didn’t even know what the item was, or what it did.
But he meant to find out.
The woman was British, he had heard it in her accent, but he didn’t know if she was local to Hong Kong or if, like him, she had travelled to retrieve the item.
Owen turned away from the edge of the balcony and stood motionless for a moment, the warm air caressing him like a lover trying to calm his fury. It did no good. He snarled suddenly, grabbing one of the nearby chairs and whipping it out and over the edge of the balcony, throwing a furious roar after it. He calmed himself, breathing heavily through his clenched teeth until his temper settled enough for him to plan.
