Magicals Anonymous: Glass God (Magicals Anonymous, 2)

Sharon Li: apprentice shaman and community support officer for the magically inclined.It wasn't the career Sharon had in mind, but she's getting used to running Magicals Anonymous and learning how to Be One With The City. When the Midnight Mayor goes missing, leaving only a suspiciously innocent-looking umbrella behind him, Sharon finds herself promoted. Her first task: find the Midnight Mayor. The only clues she has are a city dryad's cryptic message of doom and several pairs of abandoned shoes . . .Suddenly, Sharon's job feels a whole lot harder. Shaman Sharon Li's adventures continue among the magical beings of modern-day London in this spell-binding sequel to Stray Souls.

N.K. Jemisin

"I'm fully convinced that Kate Griffin is a literary sorceress. She weaves the most intricate spells with clever, artful, snarky, luxurious prose, characters who are both painfully human and gloriously badass, and settings so magical you forget they're real places. When I get my hands on a new Kate Griffin book I put down everything else. She's just that good."

Mike Carey on A Madness of Angels

"London's magic has seldom if ever been brought to life so electrifyingly and convincingly."

Publishers Weekly on A Madness of Angels

"Griffin's lush prose and chatty dialogue...create a wonderful ambiance."

RT Book Reviews on A Madness of Angels

"Griffin's novel mixes fantasy and reality into a plot that brings to mind Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere."

Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"Wonderful. This utterly charming protagonist easily elevates Griffin's second magical London series above the urban fantasy crowd."

RT Book Reviews (4 stars)

"Griffin does it again: In this outstanding follow-up to the excellent Stray Souls... the characters are so unique and enjoyable quirky."

Library Journal

"Griffin has delivered another example of urban fantasy at it's best."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Glass GodBy Kate GriffinOrbitCopyright © 2013 Kate GriffinAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-0-316-18727-5CHAPTER 1Listen to the ExpertHe said, "No, wait, you don't want to ..."But, as was so often the case, no one listened.Which was why the next thing they said was, "We told you so."Things went downhill from there.CHAPTER 2Keep Your Feet on the GroundHe feels something press against his thigh, and half turns in indignation.But the person who just brushed by is still walking calmly on, shouldershunched, head down beneath a trilby hat, and Darren, as he brushes his leg,can't feel any blood, and is already half wondering if he imagined it. Perhapshe did. He's had a bit to drink and while he's okay–of course, he'sfine!–it's easy to get jumpy on a lonely night.He walks on, past the shuttered convenience store and the locked-up laundrette,beneath the painting on the wall of the grinning monkey, banana in hand, andthrough the accusing stare of the policeman drawn on the metal grille thatguards the tattoo parlour, whose graffittoed face warns all passers-by that thisshop is his shop. He turns the corner into the terraced road where helives, six to the flat share, a house with a nice back garden where theysometimes try to have a barbecue in order to force the weather to turn to rain,walks three more paces, and pauses.Stops.Stares at nothing in particular, then down at the ground.He seems ... surprised.It appears to Darren, and indeed to anyone who might be observing Darren at thetime, that suddenly everything he's known up to this point has been meaningless.All that was has passed him by, and all that remains is everything which is, andyet to come. He is used to having such profound thoughts at two in the morningafter a night in the pub, but it seems to him that this is, perhaps, revelatory.A feeling deeper, truer and more meaningful than anything he has everexperienced with or without the aid of illegal substances, ever before.And so, for tomorrow can only come if we let go of today, he reaches down to hisshoes, and carefully slips them off his feet. His socks are stripy,multicoloured, a reminder, he always felt, that underneath his veneer of cleanwhite shirt and sensible trousers, he once fought for social freedoms andartistic expression. He flexes his toes on the ground, feeling the sudden dampchill of the paving stones rise up through the clean fabric, into the soles ofhis feet. He lifts up his shoes, carefully unpicking the knot in the laces,then, once they are free, ties the laces back together, one shoe to the other.He raises his head, looking for something suitable for his purposes, and sees alamppost with a long neck sticking out over the street. He steps back a fewpaces, to get a better line of sight, then, whirling his shoes overhead, spinsthem like an Olympic champion and, with a great heave of his arm, lets the shoesfly. They tumble through the air, one over the other, and hook across the neckof the lamppost, tangling a few times round as they come to rest, to form anoose of shoelace across the metal top.And, just like that, Darren is gone.CHAPTER 3Honour Your AncestorsIt wakes.This is a long process, made longer by the great deal of time it has spent notwaking. Its mouth is stuffed with soil, its bones pressed down by the crushingweight of earth above it. Not all the earth is pure dirt: it stirs, andsomething sharp and brown lodges against its back. It smells dust, skin-dust,that has seeped down through the grains of broken stone and rotting wool. Thefibres of the clothing around it tangle and pull like the threads of a spider'sweb, and as it stirs into slow, irritated consciousness, one thought above allelse intrudes into what, for want of an argument, shall be called its livingmind.How dare they?How dare they?!CHAPTER 4Friendship Is PreciousIt began as a Facebook group.The name of the group was:Weird Shit Keeps Happening To Me And I Don't Know Why But I Figure IProbably Need HelpAs soon as he'd been granted admin privileges, Rhys had gone about changing thatname, and the group had become known as: Weird Shit Keeps Happening.However, there were still too many people requesting permission to join who weresimply troubled teenagers, or adults coming out of difficult relationships, orold folk who'd forgotten to take their medicine, and, of course, the ubiquitousspammers.WEIRD SHIT HAPPENING TO YOU?? FOR ONLY $55 UNICURE WILL FIX IT!Sharon had said, "Yeah, but isn't it kinda indiscreet to just put up a sign, onthe internet, proclaiming 'magic is real and here we are'? Only I've seenmovies, and usually what happens next is these government guys in black suitsand glasses turn up and start asking you questions like 'Have you now or haveyou ever been an agent for the Soviet government?' and before you know it,there's medical experimentation going on, and I can't be having that."Sharon Li, it turned out, couldn't be having a lot of things."Well, we can make it only open to friends of friends," suggested Rhyscarefully. "And we could message any applicants first, just to make sure thatthey understand what they're getting into. And Facebook isn't the only way, ofcourse; I mean, there are other tools on the internet for social networking,especially if the network contains two vampires, five witches, threenecromancers and a troll, see?"Sharon still didn't look happy. "But this is daft!" she exclaimed. "If everysecret society the world over had an internet page, it'd be the death ofconspiracy theories and late-night movies on Channel Five!""But ... we're not a secret society, are we? Aren't we open to everyone who hasa problem with their mystic nature?"Sharon considered. Rhys had always admired the way in which Sharon Liconsidered, her entire face drawn together and her body stiff as if to declarethat, while the world might be passing her by, nothing was more important thangetting this thing right. It was an attitude she had extended most ofher life, from learning the skills of a shaman, seer of the truth, knower of thepath, wanderer of the misty way and so on and so forth, through to getting herfive fruit and veg a day and organising the once monthly pub quiz night formembers of the society."Okay," she said at last. "Just call the damn thing Magicals Anonymous."So he had.Few people could have been more surprised than Rhys was himself when offered thejob of IT manager for Magicals Anonymous. Then again, he'd quickly discoveredthat being an IT manager in an office of two–himself and Sharon–wasin fact a polite way of expressing the notion of universal dogsbody,administrative minion, sometime sort-of-secretary and, above all else, regularpurveyor of cups of tea to all who came through the door. Within days he'draised this last skill to a high art form, and could now prepare the perfect cupof tea for goblins, sidhes, magus and tuatha de danaan, although his firstattempt at providing tea for the danaan had nearly resulted in a diplomaticincident when he put in two lumps of sugar rather than one. The tuatha dedanaan, it turned out, took these things seriously.If Rhys minded that his job had, in fact, little to do with computers, he didn'tshow it. His last job had been heavily to do with computers, but had endedabruptly when it transpired that the computers in question were owned by awendigo and his soul-enslaving committee of bankers: a termination processincluding no fewer than two trips to hospital and the destruction of asignificant part of Tooting High Street. At heart, he concluded, he'd been asoftware man anyway, rather than a hardware kinda guy."But why hire me?" he'd asked Sharon, in a rare moment of boldness.Sharon Li had looked up from her desk, with its magnificent collection ofmulticoloured highlighters, colour-coordinated folders and, stashed secretly inthe lowest drawer, a book entitled Management for Beginners. "Well," shesaid, "I figure I was hired to do this gig, not because I've got officeexperience or know anything about local government, which is what, I guess, weare, in a kinda social services way, but because I can walk through walls, andthe souls of the city whisper their secrets to me from beneath the stones of thestreets. So, when I was asked to find someone to work with me, I guess I justfigured I shouldn't get anyone who'd show me up too badly."Two weeks later, Rhys still wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad.The office of Magicals Anonymous was on the ground floor of a polite Georgianterrace, conveniently sited, Rhys couldn't help but feel, next to a walk-inmedical, in one of the terraced streets that criss-crossed behind Coram'sFields. Little Lion Street was presumably named after an incident hundreds ofyears ago which concerned something little and almost certainly involved astreet but, Rhys felt, had in no way included a lion. Not quite Islington butdefinitely not Holborn, it was in an area defined by the superb transport linksmaking great efforts to avoid it. Since the former family homes lining thesewide, tree-shadowed byways were too large, impressive and old to be affordableas somewhere to live, dozens of little offices and firms had sprung up withinthem. Magicals Anonymous sat on the ground floor across the hall from where fiveladies of a certain age and one male youth of infinite despondency publishedlittle books on gardening, cooking and healthy living, RRP £1.99 from all goodorganic food shops. One floor up, and a solicitor who spoke in the brisk tonesof the contracts she perused held meetings behind a closed black door; on theother side of the landing from her, three young men, with their sleeves rolledup to demonstrate masculinity where no other clues were available, struggled todevelop the Perfect App for the modern age, and bickered about operating systemsand mobile phones.If anyone asked Rhys what Magicals Anonymous did, he told them it was amagicians' party service. Which, he realised, was unfortunate, as he had alreadyreceived three letters asking if they did children's birthdays, and oneenquiring about weddings."I'm not sure how the kids would react to seeing Gretel," Sharon had said. "Mindyou ... seven-foot trolls probably are fascinating when you're five, andI'm sure she'd like making the cake."Sharon Li.Despite working in what she dubbed "local government", Sharon had made fewconcessions to the job in terms of personal appearance. For sure, on the firstday she'd come into work in her mother's oversized and mismatched trouser suit.But next day she'd gone right back to what she usually wore: tatty blue jeans,purple ankle-boots, bright orange tank top and, if she was feeling racy, a badgepurloined from the vast collection pinned to the side of her battered green bag,proclaiming–Ask Me Anything, I'm A Shaman. With her straight black hairdyed bright blue at the front, and her almond skin polished to a well-fed glow,Sharon exuded the brightness of a firefly, the confidence of a double-deckerbus, the optimism of a hedgehog and the tact of a small thermonuclear missile.However, aware perhaps that her CV mightn't be ideal for a guidance counsellorto the polymorphically unstable and mystically inclined, she had embraced a do-it-yourself approach to management that, for almost every five minutes of toil,generated nearly ten minutes of memos."It's important!" she'd exclaimed. "Apparently, when you're in management andhave a position of care in the community, you have to have rigorous paperwork inorder to reduce future liability. What would happen if some wannabe demigodcomes walking in here complaining about feelings of inadequacy and, instead ofsaying, 'hey, you're a wannabe demigod, would you like a cuppa tea and a chat?'we give him a biscuit and tell him to get over it? The feelings of inadequacywill grow, with a sense of loneliness and confusion as he staggers through thisuncaring mortal world, and, finally, explosions! Death! Fire! Destruction!Armageddon upon the earth! And when that comes, we, as responsible members oflocal government, have to make sure we documented our actions!""But ... Ms Li ... don't we answer to the office of the Midnight Mayor?""Absolutely!""And isn't the Midnight Mayor ... I mean, doesn't he have this thing about howall paperwork is, pardon my language, Ms Li, pestilential putrefaction designedto confound the real work of society in a quagmire of bullshit?""What is a quagmire?""I'm not sure, Ms Li, that's just what I heard he said.""Can a quagmire be made of bullshit?"Rhys managed, just, to clamp down on his response. Well, Ms Li, you are theshaman in this room, the one who is the knower of truth, and I'm just a humbleweb-designing druid; surely you should know? Its utterance would have madeno one happy.CHAPTER 5Through Education, EnlightenmentBy day, community support officer for the magically inclined. It wasn't the jobdescription Sharon had in mind when she left school. But then again, when she'dleft school, hairdresser had seemed like a challenging prospect.And by night ...?"You gotta let 'em get used to you! You're being thicko!"Sharon considered this proposition. At three foot nothing, the author of thisidea had as many hairs on his head as inches to his stature, but made up forthis loss with a truly astonishing growth of nasal and, she suspected, navelhair, in whose thick fibres viscous and largely unimaginable fluids clung withall too solid reality. Dressed in a faded green hoodie which proclaimed Skate OrDie, Sammy the Elbow–sage, seer, scholar, goblin and, as he frequentlyliked to point out, second greatest shaman the world had ever seen–had aremarkably black and white view of the world for one whose understanding of themultifaceted layers of reality went so deep. Things were either "okay all thingsconsidered" or they were, more often, "crap, innit?"How she had wound up with a goblin as her teacher, she still wasn't sure. But heseemed the only thing going and, while Ofsted might not have approved of hismethods, simply being there counted for something. Most of the time.They stood, the goblin and his apprentice, in that grey world where realityfalls away and all things that people choose not to perceive become visible atlast. It was the invisible city, where the beggars dwelt, just out of sight, andwhere the shadows turned their heads to watch passers-by; a place where truthswere written in the stones themselves, and the houses swayed with the weight ofstories swimming against their darkened windows. Reality swept by, andoccasionally through, the two shamans; great buses of lost faces, their wheelsburning black rubber into the tarmac; taxis with only the yellow "for hire" signblazing through the greyness like a dragon's eye; half-lost figures moving downthe street, over ground sticky with embedded chewing gum and the rubbed-offsoles of a thousand, thousand steps which had gone before, their pasts writtenin their footsteps, whispers of things which had gone before and which might,perhaps, be yet to come. It was easy to grow distracted in this place, to letthe eye wander through glimpses of,the door that slammed in the night as the woman stormed away, I hate you, Ihate you, never coming back, to return tomorrow cold and damp safety glass onthe pavement as two kids, him thirteen, her twelve, smashed the window, firstever robbery, car radio far too well embedded for them to pull it outpolice caught them two days later, a reprimand; don't ever do that again, smashagain in the dark two days later, this time they stole a map, so they could saythey'd stolen somethingroar of the garbage truck which mistakenly crushed an old lady's catslipping of tiles down the roof in foul weathershoe thrown over the telephone line, the man vanished beneath soft earthbreaking beneath the city streetssmell of ..."Oi! Focus, soggy-brains!"A sharp rap on Sharon's shins snapped her back to attention. With his diminutiveheight, there were only so many parts of Sharon's body which lent themselves toeasy abuse on the part of her goblin teacher; over the months in which she'dbeen studying, her shins had taken a lot of punishment. (Continues...)Excerpted from The Glass God by Kate Griffin. Copyright © 2013 Kate Griffin. Excerpted by permission of Orbit. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

About the Author

Kate Griffin is the name under which Carnegie Medal-nominated author Catherine Webb writes fantasy novels for adults. An acclaimed author of young adult books under her own name, Catherine's amazing debut, Mirror Dreams, was written when she was only fourteen years old, and garnered comparisons with Terry Pratchett and Philip Pullman. She read History at the London School of Economics, and studied at RADA. Find out more about the author at www.kategriffin.net.

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