Sunlight was a cheap shot. It hammered through the gaps in unfamiliar blinds, a physical assault on his eyeballs. The ache behind them was an old friend, the kind you keep meaning to get rid of but never do. He groaned, a raw sound in the quiet room. The sheets smelled of lavender and something else, something clinical. Not his. Nothing here was his.
He sat up. The room swam, a watercolour of pale blue walls, a dark wood dresser, and a window framing a typically miserable London sky. A woman’s room. Tidy. Too tidy. He ran a hand over his face, the rasp of stubble a foreign texture. Who the hell was he? The question wasn't a panic, not yet. It was a flat, dead thing sitting in the centre of his chest. Memory was a locked room, and he couldn't even find the door.
His body, at least, felt familiar. Long and lanky, all sharp angles and aches. A persistent throb in his left wrist drew his eye. A puckered, angry burn mark, unnaturally dark at the edges, circled his skin like a brand. It didn't look like it was healing. It looked like it was waiting.
Footsteps approached, soft on a wooden floor. A woman appeared in the doorway, and the air in the room shifted. She was holding two mugs, steam ghosting from their rims. Dark hair, a face that belonged on a silent film star, and eyes that held an exhaustion so deep it looked like part of her anatomy. She wore a simple black jumper and jeans, but carried herself like she belonged in silk and spotlights.
"You're awake," she said. Her voice was low and clear, each word placed with precision.
"Looks that way," he rasped. His own voice was a gravel pit. "Right. Questions. Who're you? Where am I? And who pays for this real estate, because a view like this in London costs a fortune."
A ghost of a smile touched her lips, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I'm Zatanna. This is my flat. And you don't have to worry about the rent." She set a mug down on the bedside table. Tea. Looked weak as piss. He hated weak tea. He knew that, at least. A small, solid fact in a sea of nothing.
"Zatanna," he repeated. The name meant nothing. "And I am...?"
She watched him, her gaze analytical. "John. Your name is John Constantine."
John. He tried the name on for size. It felt like a borrowed coat, two sizes too big. "Right. John. And what's my story, Zatanna? Am I your long-lost brother? The milkman? An amnesiac wanker you found in the gutter?"
"The last one," she said, without a trace of malice. "Mostly. I found you near Embankment. You were... in trouble."
"What kind of trouble?" He swung his legs out of bed. His clothes were folded neatly on a chair. A familiar, rumpled trench coat lay on top. He reached for it instinctively, a homing pigeon returning to a coop it couldn't remember.
"The kind that leaves marks that don't heal," she said, her eyes flicking to the brand on his wrist. She knew something. She knew everything. He could see it in the careful way she held her mug, a porcelain shield.
He ignored her, pulling on his trousers and shirt. They felt right. Worn in. He shrugged on the trench coat and it settled on his shoulders like a second skin. His hands, acting on their own accord, dove into the pockets. He needed to be doing something. Always. He realised he’d been pleating the edge of the bedsheet into a sharp, tiny accordion without even thinking about it.
"Do you remember anything, John?" Zatanna’s voice was softer now.
"I remember I hate weak tea and I like pockets," he said, pulling out their contents. A crushed packet of Silk Cut cigarettes. A brass lighter that didn't spark. Lint. And a flimsy cardboard matchbook from a pub called The Black Friar. He flipped it over in his palm. His thumb brushed against a design drawn on the back. It wasn't ink. It was a dark, reddish-brown, flaked and brittle. A crude, five-pointed star, misshapen, with a slash through the middle. A sigil.
The word appeared in his head, fully formed and ugly. *Sigil*.
He didn't know how he knew that word, but it tasted of ash and sulphur. He looked up at Zatanna. "You're a magician, aren't you?"
Her professional calm finally cracked. The surprise was plain on her face. "How... how did you know that?"
He didn't know. The knowledge was just *there*. He felt a strange thrum of energy in the air around her, a faint pressure against his senses. Like the air before a thunderstorm.
"Lucky guess," he lied. He held out the matchbook. "This mean anything to you?"
She took a step closer, peering at the symbol. She didn't take it from him. Her face went pale, a stark contrast to her dark hair. "Where did you get that?" The careful precision in her voice was gone, replaced by something sharp. Fear.
"Found it in my pocket, love. Seems to be the one souvenir I kept from my... 'trouble'." He watched her, a predator’s stillness coming over him. She was withholding. Not just the story of what happened, but something more. Something about this symbol.
His own frustration was a hot coil in his gut. Without thinking, he clenched his fist around the brass lighter in his other pocket. A flicker. The overhead light in the bedroom buzzed violently and then blew out, plunging the room into the grey morning gloom.
They both froze.
Zatanna stared at the dead light fixture, then back at him, her dark eyes wide with an emotion he couldn't name. It wasn't just fear. It was a terrible, dawning understanding.
He looked from her to the useless lighter in his hand, then back to the matchbook. The sigil. The burn on his wrist. The dead lightbulb. These weren't separate facts. They were beads on a string, and he could feel the line pulling taut. He didn’t know who he was or what he’d done, but the evidence was piling up, and none of it pointed to a quiet life. This sigil felt like a key. And whatever lock it opened, Zatanna wanted it to stay shut.
He traced the brittle symbol with his thumb again. It was just dried... something... on cheap cardboard. But as his skin touched the lines, a phantom heat, searing and sharp, lanced up his arm from the brand on his wrist. He flinched, not from pain, but from the sudden, gut-wrenching certainty that something was still attached to him. Something from the night before. Something that had followed him home.