Free The Minority Council by Kate Griffin Page A

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    “Your friends are in 512. Do you want me to call up, let them know you’re here?”
    “Hey hey hey hey that’s like really nice of you you know but yeah I’ll just go up and say hi I mean they’ll know I mean of course they will yeah, you know?”
    She nodded, her eyes half-drifting-shut, and turned her attention back to the screen. I let my mind linger in hers as I headed for the nearest elevator, and only when the doors were sliding shut did I let the spell go, the fog drifting clear from her thoughts too late.
    I rode the elevator to the fifth floor, and walked along a corridor of endless samey doors until I got to 512. I could hear more heavy music and a man laughing the laugh of the alcoholically lost. The lock on the door was a key-card job. In my wallet I found a business card that had once advertised the services of Sexy Babe Nadine, natural blonde and exotically talented, until I’d purloined it from the phone box where it had been placed, and scrawled over it with blue-black enchantments. I slipped it into the lock, pushed with just a bit more than physical strength, concentrated, and heard the lock click. Very gently I pushed the handle down, and eased the door open.
    Inside, the living room was in darkness, but I couldstill see the outlines of a sofa, a low table, a TV with its red standby light glowing and a minibar. The sounds of music and excitement were coming from the bedroom, through a half-open door which spilt yellow light. The bathroom was full of steam, its light still on, revealing discarded clothes and soggy towels. On the floor of the living room were more clothes. The door to the balcony was open, letting in a cold night breeze. I padded across the carpeted floor, then drew quickly back into the bathroom as a voice in the bedroom said, “Hold on…”
    In the steam-dripping bathroom mirror, I saw a man enter the living room. He was wearing a blue dressing gown too small for him and a pair of black socks. He turned on the lights and started fumbling through the pile of clothes on the floor. Pulling a little silver box from the pocket of his trousers, he sat down on the sofa and reverentially opened it. He pinched something inside it, then held one nostril shut and drew in a deep, long sniff. His whole body rocked back, eyes closing with relish. At length he closed the box, leaving it on the table, and stood up.
    His gaze roamed towards the bathroom and I recognised him: dark brown hair cut short, thick neck, eyes a sickly yellow stain. His eyes slid right over my reflection in the mirror, and his body seemed to start, as if his limbs recognised something there, but his brain couldn’t quite catch up. As he turned back to the bedroom we marched up to him, grabbed him by the hair and dragged him onto the balcony before he could squeak; there, we pushed him backwards until his head was out over the five-storey drop and his feet barely touched the floor. With one hand over his mouth we leant in until all he could see was ourface. “You,” I hissed, “are going to tell us all about the dusthouse.”
    He made a little numb sound, and we said, “We know you know something. That thing coming off you now, it’s not surprise, it’s not uncertainty, it’s not even hope of escape. It’s pure, unrestricted terror. We saw it when the dusthouse was named, we see it in your yellow eyes. What are you so afraid of? Try not to scream.”
    I eased our hand away from his mouth, and he drew in a few raggedy breaths. Then he wheezed, “Man—you are totally going to die.”
    I felt it a second before it hit, a surge of power from the middle of his being. It slammed into us and threw us straight back into the room, knocking us against the arm of the sofa. From the bedroom I heard a voice raised in concern, before being hushed by someone having far too good a time to care about anything else. I picked myself quickly back up as the man in the dressing gown followed me into the room. His hair