Masked Read online

  The group of straight sightseers in front of them had also been watching, but now they’d gone back to arguing with the doormen. That bar had a door policy of quizzing people who wanted to get in, trying to enforce gays only.

  The Guardian didn’t understand how people could be like that.

  With a thought and a rainbow blur, he was there.

  He took the hat from the kid who was holding it. “Dangerous magic. Would you please let me deal with that, sir?”

  “Sure, sorry.” The kids were beaming at him. “Bloody hell, it’s you!”

  “It is!”

  “He’ll tell you!” one of the girls from the party by the door called out. “We’re mates of his!” She gestured over her shoulder at the party of grinning straight lads with her. “Tell him we’re all very very gay!”

  The kid who’d given the Guardian the hat looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. Go on!

  The Guardian turned to Tall Ben, who was the one who stood at the door of this place on busy nights now, asking the embarrassing questions, with a hefty bouncer on either side of him. Ben met his gaze. The Guardian had never liked Ben, even before Ben had license to not just tell people they weren’t gay, but that they weren’t gay enough.

  “What can I do for you, hero of all gay people?” Tall Ben asked.

  The Guardian gestured to the girl and her boozed-up mates. “You’ve humiliated them enough.”

  “No, mate, I’ve just started. That lot just want to have a look at what they’ll never have. They want to point and laugh.”

  The Guardian frowned the frown of a man impatient with debate.

  Ben’s clothes were suddenly ruffled by a blur of air. And there was the concussive noise of the door opening and closing too fast to see—

  And the group of kids had vanished inside.

  And the Guardian was back, his hands behind his back, whistling nonchalantly.

  The kids from the Uni tried to hide that they were laughing.

  Ben looked at the bouncers, and they tiredly headed inside to find the straight boys. “Guardian, or should I say Chris Rackham—”

  The Guardian found himself taking a step toward the man, provoked despite himself. “I am not—”

  “Oh, right, it’s different when it’s you being pointed at. Whatever. You do that again and you’re barred. Whatever you’re calling yourself.” And he let the party from the Uni in, just to show he was on the side of good.

  The Guardian stood sizing the man up, feeling lost in a way that didn’t suit the costume he wore.

  It was then he heard the noise.

  The applause his magic hearing had picked up came from the tower of the old Refuge Assurance building.

  It was the sound, across the city, of one woman clapping.

  “Well done! Bravo!” she had placed her ivory staff to jut out from a ledge on the tower, and was standing on it like a gymnast, one foot in front of the other. She was wearing her long white coat and mask, her form-fitting white costume under it, black hair tumbling down her back. Very red lipstick and nails. Her voice was upper-class, unashamed, committed.

  The Guardian grasped all this in one magic glance.

  And then he was standing in the air in front of her, his arms folded, aware of every car and individual on the street below, every face looking out of every hotel room window. Aware of them in a distant way. Much more aware of her.

  “Bravo,” she said. “Well handled, there.”

  The White Candle was a thief who stole art, mostly from gay men’s houses (probably more because of her area of operations than anything else) through magical means. She imagined herself to be doing nothing particularly wrong. The Guardian disagreed. They’d crossed paths three times before. She’d somehow avoided capture every time.

  “This is daring,” he said. “Even for you.”

  “I couldn’t help but applaud your part in that little confrontation,” she said. “I can tell, you see. With my magic gaydar.”

  “What?”

  “Whatever that rainbow costume of yours says… you’re one of us, darling.”

  The Guardian raised an eyebrow and stepped forward to confront her.

  Jim woke up at the sound of the curtain being pushed back, the familiar slide of the window closing in the spare room. The soft concussion of air that marked the change.

  Chris went to the bathroom, then came into the bedroom. He looked thinner than ever. Jim was sure he’d dropped half a stone in the last three weeks. Ever since this nonsense had started. It was all the Mighty Sphinx’s fault. If he hadn’t come out as really being that tiny librarian, maybe nobody would have started linking Chris, a man with a runner’s physique, with the insanely muscled Guardian.

  The shape of their faces was different, even, because of the muscles. But if you had the thought in your head, and you got a good look… and of course the Guardian would never wear a mask…

  Chris was still wearing his suit because they’d gone for a pint after work, before that bloke with the hat had popped up again. He took off the jacket and plonked it on the hanger, tried to smooth out the creases.

  “How did it go?”

  “Bang, zoom, to the moon. As bloody usual. I got the hat this time.” He held it up, and put it down on the side table.

  “That’s what people were saying. It sounds like you were hard on Ben.”

  “Yeah. S’pose I was. Couldn’t help it.”

  “I see why that place does it. I’d feel the same if a bunch of twats came in and started taking the piss.”

  “Me too.” Chris had finished undressing, and now he got into bed. “I kind of agree with it, even. I was chosen to be the Guardian by the Coven because I’m all about… well, letting people be who they are. But the Guardian takes that right up to eleven. He’s very focused. More—”

  “Straightforward.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, he doesn’t really do complexity.”

  “Right.”

  Jim let himself lie with his head on Chris’s chest, like always. But it didn’t feel good now. He wanted to get to the point. “So then what did you do? After Tall Ben? I was kind of thinking you’d be here when I got back.” Benefit of the doubt. He wasn’t going to be the jealous one. The thought crossed his mind that he was being cruel anyway, that it would have been easier on Chris to yell at him. “Did summat else happen?”

  “Kind of.”

  “What?”

  A long silence. Oh God. Jim found himself controlling his breathing. It’s just time, just move on through time, get to the tough bit, you’re strong enough to deal, you know you are.

  “White Candle—”

  Jim closed his eyes. “Again.”

  The Guardian had stepped onto the roof and moved carefully closer to her. He could smell her perfume. It was trying to intoxicate him, to suggest all kinds of drama and exoticism about her, to mentally take him to the bedroom mirror where she put it on—

  He stopped himself. Yes, it was indeed just perfume.

  What was wrong with him? He couldn’t sense any magic making him look into her face, making him concentrate on her eyes and mouth, making him consider how soft her hair was. Making his eyes glimpse her breasts and the shape of her pelvis.

  There was no such magic coming from her. There hadn’t been the last time they’d met either.

  He knew what was wrong with him.

  And it was very wrong.

  He knew everything was simple, when you took away the evasions and lies that made life complicated.

  But he was not what he was supposed to be.

  He felt like punching her into the next building for making him feel like this.

  But that would be wrong too.

  “How about you don’t run away, for once?” he asked. “How about you really take me on?”

  “I could say the same.” Her voice was brittle. He could imagine the noises she’d make. He killed the thought.

  And she’d suddenly laughed and thrown hersel
f off the building.

  He sped after her.

  She danced across the rooftops, throwing glamours and dazzles and feints expertly behind her, some of which he walked through, some of which he had to smash aside, some of which he had to suddenly duck because otherwise they’d have had him.

  A clever pattern of harmlessness, then punch, varying always, uncertainly deadly.

  He ducked ducked ducked, chose a moment when she’d stopped throwing and had to leap, was in midair—

  And flashed past her.

  He pulled the air carpet from under her and heard the fragments of the levitation spell fall singing into the void over Oxford Road.

  Crowds were rushing onto the pavement from the Cornerhouse bar and the BBC and the hotels—

  He caught her before she hit the ground.

  She lay there in the crook of his arm, curled like a pussycat, an unperturbed smile on her big mouth. “If I’ve done something wrong,” she said, “then you should punish me.”

  And then she kissed him.

  And he let her.

  “Oh, stop, stop right there!” Jim was sitting up, the quilt pulled defensively around him. “Did she really say that?! I mean, that’s the sort of thing you like, is it?! Or are these your smutty fantasies?!”

  “Not mine —”

  “Bollocks! If it’s not you, how come I recognized you, three years back? That’s why we’re together, remember, because I saw through your clever disguise of a pair of glasses!”

  “But—”

  “You’re saying he’s not you. Even though he looks just like you in a Charles Atlas Before and After. How come you remember everything he does, then? How come you can do a little bit of detective work as you, and then change into him and—?”

  “I don’t know! I’ve got different… opinions than him—”

  “If you act different when you’re him, maybe that’s just ’cause you with muscles knows he can finally get the girl, while mild-mannered you has to settle for—”

  “Because the gays are so much less about the body beautiful than girls are!”

  “Well tell me then! Tell me how you in a costume and muscles is different from you now, to the extent where it’s okay if—”

  “I didn’t say it was okay ! Even he doesn’t think it’s okay!”

  “You don’t normally say you and him. Up until now it was all ‘I saved him’ and ‘I fought that villain!’”

  “Because I was proud of it up until now!” And that was a bellow.

  Jim found himself silent in the face of that.

  He didn’t want to lose himself by matching that anger. He didn’t want to lose… this.

  That was why this was so terrible.

  But damn it, he needed something. Something to balance this huge gaping harm that, in that calm, laid-back voice of his, Chris had just…

  “Beer,” he said. “Now.”

  They went into the kitchen and sat down with a beer each and didn’t say anything until they’d each thrown it back and got another.

  Chris tried again. Carefully. “It’s… like some sort of… drug.”

  “The power, you mean?”

  “No. I mean… all the muscles—”

  “What?! Being macho means you go straight? My own research would seem to indicate—”

  “I mean maybe there’s summat chemical that goes with these particular muscles! They’re not just my arms pumped up, they… replace my arms. When I change.”

  “Your eyes are the same. Your teeth and hair are the same. Well, maybe your teeth are straighter. And it seems that’s not the only thing.”

  “They only look the same. The eyes can do all the magic stuff. The teeth and hair are bulletproof. Until now, I always thought it was the same brain in here, but—”

  “Oh, what? You’re saying being gay… or not being gay… is a brain thing?”

  “Well… since everything about a person is a ‘brain thing’—”

  “I mean, not a mind thing, but something to do with the physical… brain! You’re saying being gay is about your glands, a pituitary condition! So, you’re the same mind, the same bloke, but when that mind is in the Guardian’s body, with a healthy pituitary gland, all thoughts of faggotry—”

  “I didn’t say anything like that!”

  “Well, good, because I have never heard anything so homophobic in my life.”

  “Whether it is or not, it might just be true, like.”

  “Well even if it is, how does this scientific explanation help?”

  “This magical explanation. If you want science heroes—”

  “I want London, I know. I wonder if their queero—queer hero, see what I did there?—I wonder if he has these problems. Shall we call the Ravenphone and ask?”

  “You said homophobic,” said Chris suddenly. “Oh. What if that’s deliberate?”

  “I’m not past you shagging a woman on the roof of the Arndale Centre, so don’t talk like we’re into postmatch analysis now.”

  “No, listen, I change into the Guardian by saying a magic word. We know the spell was created back in the eighteenth century. What if whoever started this put in… design limitations?”

  “Oh, right. Because good magic is about natural things, noble things, heroic things, and not a bunch of fags like us, and that this is just you reverting to that—”

  “Oh, don’t be—”

  “What? My boyfriend tells me that, for the first time in—”

  “Ever. I’ve never fancied women. I started looking at blokes when I was nine. Everything I do as the Guardian, when I look back on it, feels like a dream I had. In this particular dream, it’s like I was… eating something I’d normally hate, like broccoli, only in the dream I’m really enjoying it.”

  “I don’t want to hear about whatever it was you ate. I’m thinking of packing my bags. I really am. Because we can’t go on like this, Chris. This hurts too bloody much.” He got up and walked around the kitchen a bit. And managed, after a swig of beer and a deep breath, to get to the point. “All right. When you’re him… do you still fancy me?”

  Chris closed his eyes. A very long silence. To the point where Jim was about to interrupt by thumping him—

  “No. No, I don’t think he does.”

  Jim was about to… he didn’t know what he was about to do, but Chris got up and stopped him doing it. Put his hands to Jim’s face.

  “I didn’t know that, okay? Not until just that second, when I thought about it. Because in all this time I’ve only been him for a few minutes here and there, saving people and fighting villains and stuff—”

  “And you haven’t really had much time for dating?”

  “Listen to me! I still fancy you! I love you—!”

  Jim couldn’t answer.

  “I don’t want to do anything to hurt you—”

  “Chris, everyone will have seen. And everyone already bloody knows you’re him! What happens the next time you become him, and she turns up? Because I suppose you let her go—”

  “She slipped out of his… out of my clutches—”

  “What happens?”

  “Well, he’s a very moral person. He doesn’t want to see you hurt either. He just… can’t be anything he’s not. He doesn’t do shades of gray.”

  “So he’ll try to be… not faithful, ’cause he doesn’t want me, but… celibate…”

  “And eventually… he’ll fail.” There was such quiet loss in his voice as he said it.

  “So what you’re saying is, you’re going to turn into him next time, knowing that sooner or later you’re going to be unfaithful to me.”

  Chris was silent. Looking away.

  “It’s like you… get drunk on a regular basis, and every time you say it’s not me who’s doing this woman, it’s not me who’s driving this car…”

  “You’re right. You’re right!” Chris threw his arms in the air, admitting defeat.

  He slumped against the wall and looked out the window into the night.


  Then he looked back at Jim. “Okay. So I’ll stop.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll stop being him. I’ll pass the magic word onto someone else.”

  Jim felt suddenly more loved than he’d ever been in his life. And more guilty. At the same time. He rubbed his fist into his brow. “You’d really do that?”

  “Yeah.” And the look on Chris’s face said he meant it.

  “Okay. Great. Do that.”

  Chris nodded, started moving, decisive as always. “I’ll call the Coven, tell them to get the ceremony ready and start searching for someone worthy—”

  Jim grabbed his arm. “Don’t.”

  They sat back down together, looking at each other, silent.

  “I love you,” Chris said again. Meaning that he really would do this.

  “And I love you.” They snogged for a bit. Found great relief in holding each other, knowing they were going to stay together. “But, Chris, are you sure about this? It’s not just us, is it? You’re very good at being the Manchester Guardian. Any new guy… it’d take him ages to get it together. It took you ages, didn’t it? And in the meantime, who knows what’d happen? Who knows who’d come after Canal Street? Especially with all this publicity. It’d be a hell of a risk for you to do this now.”

  “None of that is more important than me and you. And besides, what choice do we have?”

  Jim didn’t know.

  They went back to Canal Street the next night. Putting on a brave front.

  It wasn’t quite like that Welsh village where they’d flounced through the door of a pub and then, under the influence of a lounge bar of stares, marched to the bar like navvies.

  But it was close.

  Everyone was looking at Chris. Betrayed.

  Jim wanted to say to them that the very same night their representative hero had been with a woman, he’d also saved the whole street from a villain who’d never cared what damage he did to the people and property who suffered in his endless vendetta against Chris.

  And it wasn’t as if this lot had unreservedly loved the Guardian lately, was it?

  They went into Mantos. Jim thought for a moment that the barman wasn’t going to serve them, but he finally did. So this was what it had come down to, feeling that old nervousness about whether or not people were looking, in one of their own bars, on their own street.