Free Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) by Kate Griffin

clash of Greg dropping the tray as he surveyed the bare-footed three-toed little creature quivering with rage against caffeinated consumerism and all its follies, or for–oh God–for the moment Mike Pentlace swanned back in while trying to make a Very Important Phone Call, only to be stopped in his tracks by the bodily odour of a creature who had heard of this showering thing but thought it was for nonces.
    She poured in too much milk and the cup nearly overflowed, its contents held in by surface tension alone. She tipped some away, then remembered the size of the goblin’s gesture when he’d ordered his tea. A thin line of brown now dripped down, sullying the clean white cardboard with the trickle of shame.
    Still no screaming.
    She turned back to the counter and pushed the tea towards the questing fingertips of the goblin.
    “Two twenty, please.”
    The fingers stopped mid-curl around the mug. “Two fucking twenty? For a cup of fucking tea!”
    “A very large tea,” corrected Sharon, and flinched even as she spoke. “In the mornings we do tea free with sandwiches between 8 and 10 a.m., or in the evenings sometimes we knock down the price on the muffins because if we don’t then we have to throw them away or sell them the next day at the very front and hope no one notices.”
    “Where do you think I’m going to get two twenty from?”
    Sharon considered. “Aren’t there charities?”
    “For goblins?”
    “Um… I didn’t know people were allowed to discriminate on grounds of… you know, ethnicity.”
    “Are you calling me ethnic?”
    “No sir,” blurted Sharon. “I’m just saying you’re uh… you’re probably a minority group and that’s maybe good because you know when you get those forms and it says ‘Do you consider yourself disabled?’ and you say ‘Yes’ because then they have to give you an interview in order to fulfil their quota, well, you being like, you know, a goblin and stuff, you could probably say you’re disabled and discriminated against and that’s really good for these access questionnaires and—”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” demanded Sammy the goblin, so loud that Sharon knew, she
knew
someone had to hear, someone was going to look, they were going to see her talking to a goblin and that would be it, another ignoble end to another ignoble job, sacked for a reason no one could quite name but everyone accepted, because they could have sworn they saw her turn invisible but weren’t completely sure.
    “Discrimination,” she babbled. “I mean I know there’s people who say that positive discrimination is still discrimination just like unpositive discrimination, I mean like negative discrimination but you gotta look at things and go ‘Shit, there are way more rich white dudes than rich black dudes’ but then I guess it’s all proportional and really I don’t know much about it so—”
    “Which are you? White or black?”
    “What?”
    “You?” demanded the goblin. “What ‘ethnicity’ or whatever are you?”
    “I’m… well, I suppose I’m ethnically Chinese but I was born in Barnet.”
    “Barnet, Barnet, shitty shitty Barnet!” sang out the goblin, and Sharon closed her eyes, waited for the shout, the gasp of horror, the cry of amazement, and it was…
    … nowhere.
    She opened her eyes and looked–really looked–and saw the world as if through a broken magnifying glass, or a TV screen set to interfere. Someone had sprayed a settling mist over all things, but rather than cause the world to thicken, it seemed to make all things that it touched a little more translucent. The glass shimmered in the shop front like a caged liquid trying to break free, and at the empty tables sat the shadows of those who had sat there before, their features shifting in busy silence. The light from outside made each mote of dust visible, rippling away from her fingers as she moved them through the air. And looking round at the people, she saw…
    She saw not one