Chapter Text
“Ah,” Dr Walid said, “I see we've arrived at the California school of cooking.” Molly smiled, baring her sharp teeth at him gently, as she set down a “salad” of sliced artichoke hearts and grapefruit slices in olive oil.
“Chez Panisse,” I explained, “though I doubt they ever served broccoli rape pizza with chopped liver.”
“Thank you, Molly,” Nightingale said, ever the gallant gentleman, “this is absolutely delicious,” and he really did spear up the pink and green slices with gusto. It must be a joy, I thought not for the first time, to feed a man who had gone through the British boarding school system of culinary education.
These regular monthly dinners had become a fixture after I'd had a building collapse under me and Leslie had left us to become a minion of the Faceless Man. All three of us had felt the chill of that even if it had been only me who had been tasered in the back. Molly's cooking and lighthearted conversation about possible ways of measuring vestigia , the numerous ways in which magic can kill people, and Latin grimoires, had become our own personal bonding ritual.
This time, for a special treat, there was going to be a magical corpse or two after dinner .
“So, Peter,” Dr Walid asked, “are they done grilling you yet?”
When your partner and best friend defects from the force, your superior officers and internal review tend to take a sudden and painful interest in all areas of your life. By now it was likely that, between daily interrogation and psychological tests, the Met actually did know me better than my own mother. And that really was saying something.
I grimaced. “Not quite yet, no. At least they seem convinced by now that I'm not actually a follower of the Faceless Man myself.” The thinly veiled insinuations that Leslie had led me over to the dark side by my dick had been quite insulting. They ' d also stopped rather abruptly after a day or two, as if someone high up had come down hard on those doing the questioning.
Considering Nightingale's stony face whenever the subject came up, I had a certain suspicion as to who that might 've been. Nightingale gets oddly protective at the strangest times.
Dr Walid just nodded very seriously. “I still worry that I'm partly to blame for the whole situation,” he admitted. “I don't think I took her anxiety about how slowly her healing process was progressing quite as seriously as I should have. At the very least I should have pushed her harder to accept regular counseling.”
Nightingale's smile had a bitter touch. “I don't think any of us realised just how vulnerable Leslie really was,” he said ruefully, “she was awfully good at hiding it.”
“Yeah,” I said hoarsely. I put my fork aside, the lump in my throat having effectively absorbed my appetite for duck breast and fennel gratin. It was more than a sore spot that even I hadn't realised what was going on in Leslie's head.
There was a bit of an awkward silence while I tried to swallow my feelings and Nightingale and Dr Walid pretended not to notice.
“Right,” Nightingale finally said after he and Dr Walid had finished the jam roly-poly (Molly's approach to dessert having staid comfortingly conservative), “let's move and then you can tell us all about this new case, Abdul.”
Because living in the Folly, in some ways, was eerily similar to inhabiting a Jane Austen novel, we actually did pick up our glasses and moved to the Drawing Room right next to the library.
The Drawing room had a big old fireplace with comfortable leather armchairs grouped around it and was generally one of the warmer rooms in the Folly. I liked it and thought of it as a bit of a cozy nest. Even today I could feel the warmth and the reassuring depth of the armchairs leech some of the tension out of my body.
Which was why I jumped about a foot in the air and sloshed port all over me when Zach Palmer's head suddenly appeared over my left shoulder.
“Evening gents,” he said pretending to doff his cap.
“Bloody hell,” I demanded when I'd managed to re-start my heart, “how the fuck did you get in here?”
Nightingale normally reprimands me for swearing when surprised but seeing how intensely and suspiciously he was eying Zach, he didn't seem to give a toss this time. We'd all become a bit touchy about unannounced guests suddenly turning up in our headquarters now we had our very own rogue magician on the loose.
“Answer him!” Nightingale ordered sharply,
Zach looked shifty, as per usual, but also a tad annoyed. “Molly let me in, didn't she? Need to do a spot of research,” he explained with a languid wave of his hand at the sliding doors to the library.
Nightingale and I shared a concerned glance. Molly was usually extremely conscientious about announcing visitors and brutally protective of the Folly's inner rooms. That she ' d simply let Zach wander in, who was, after all, under suspicion of being in contact with Leslie, was more than a little worrying.
“As per ancient custom,” Zach explained in an annoyed tone when it became obvious we wouldn't let him off the hook that easily. “To give shelter and assistance to those in need whether by sword, provisions or knowledge, ekcetera, ekcetera.” He sounded as if he was quoting something and Nightingale briefly looked as if he had bit a lemon.
Then he visibly relaxed his stance and nodded and I rolled my eyes. “You've got to be kidding me! Another ancient custom nobody bothered to bloody well tell me about? Just how many of the damn things are there?” My guv'nor's reluctance to keep me in the loop with regard to our various alliances and treaties with diverse supernatural entities had become a bit of a sore point lately.
“It really is just a bit of research,” Zach said again as he gestured towards the library, “there's a bit of a....family situation. They need my help.” His expression had become pleading and he now looked like Toby when there were sausages for breakfast.
“You have family?” I asked incredulously but Zach just shot me a dirty look.
“What kind of situation?” Nightingale wanted to know and Zach sighed.
“Look, it's fae business, ok? I can't really go around telling the filth.”
“You can if you want to read our books,” I said crossing my arms in my best bouncer impression, “quid pro bloody quo, mate.”
Dr Walid was watching the confrontation unfold from one of the armchairs. He seemed rather unperturbed. But then, it wasn't his home that had just been invaded by the fae's equivalent of the no-good, junkie cousin, who tends to make away with the silverware.
“Fine, fine!” Zach flopped down into one of the armchairs like a puppet whose strings had turned out to be imaginary. “Look,” he said, “they've got a door that's stuck, OK?”
“What, and you're the resident fairy handyman?”
Zach shot me a poisonous glare. “Yeah, actually, as a matter of fact I am!”
Nightingale studied Zach silently for a moment and then heaved a sigh. “Right then,” he said, “you can look. As per ancient custom . Just don't take anything home and remember, the custom goes both ways.” His voice became just a tad menacing as he quoted “ He who abuses his guest-right, his life shall be forfeit from one end of the earth to another. ”
Zach sprang to his feet again, gave a deep theatrical bow and rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, don't worry about it. You won't even know I'm here.”
“I doubt it,” Nightingale muttered as we watched Zach slink away into the stacks. “And I'll definitely have a word with Molly.”
“Right,” he said then, turning to face Dr Walid, “Abdul, why don't you tell us about that autopsy.”
I sat down as well and took out my notebook. With Zach running around scattering background magic I wasn't going to risk our digital voice recorder.
“Well,” Dr Walid said thoughtfully, “There might be more than one case, actually. Today, around 6 PM, I got a call from my friend Wen Hui who wanted me to stop by her forensic lab and take a look at the brain of a young man who had apparently dropped dead without any apparent cause. He was 28, white and in excellent health. His brain showed strong evidence of hyperthaumaturgical degradation.”
“Do you think he was a practitioner?” I asked. There had been more and more of them coming out of the woodworks lately and it was causing no end of trouble.
“I really don't think so,” said Dr Walid, “He isn't on our list of Little Crocodiles and I was able to administer our questionnaire to his sister, who he was living with before he was admitted to Highgate Mental Health Centre. There are no signs whatsoever that Stephen Eggles knew anything at all about magic or the occult.”
“He was a patient at Highgate Mental Health Centre?” Nightingale asked.
Dr Walid nodded. “Admitted four weeks previously because of flashbacks and hallucinations that didn't conform to any known pattern. And just now, when I was on my way over, Wen Hui called again to tell me that she had just got a second corpse from the same hospital. Apparently, a young woman in the same ward just dropped dead as well. And she had been exhibiting the same symptoms: Flashbacks, hallucinations but none of the other symptoms associated with PTSD or psychosis.”
He looked at Nightingale questioningly. “Ring any bells?”
Nightingale frowned. “I can't say it does, no. But we'd better check both bodies for vestigia tomorrow and have a look around the hospital.”
I managed to restrain myself from whooping with delight. Anything, really anything is better than sitting around waiting to be questioned again by internal review.
When we left the Drawing Room, I tried to check in on Zach but only found one of our reference desks piled high with works on Faerie and a suspicious absence of any actual fae. Except for Molly, that is, who seemed to be tidying the books away.
“Did you really let him in?” I asked. Molly just narrowed her eyes at me and cocked her head. As this coincided with a wave of clammy dread sweeping over me, I decided to leave her interrogation to Nightingale. The fae are a strange lot and I was having enough nightmares without Molly messing with my head, too.
Instead I simply entered this evening's information into our very own database and updated the file in which I had started to record all our various treaties and deals with the Rivers, the quiet people and other not-quite-human citizens. Nightingale tended to make vague noises when I asked him about previous records but hadn't yet produced an exhaustive list.
I tried to put off going to bed as long as I could but when I started seeing double, I bowed to the inevitable.
The nightmares had gotten less frequent and I was pathetically grateful that they had gotten less noisy, too. At least these days I wasn't usually shaken awake by my concerned boss who had heard me scream from all the way across the building and had come to rescue me in his dressing gown. I could do without Nightingale patting me on the shoulder and handing me a glass of water with a disconcertingly fatherly air .
This time Leslie was with me at the top of Skygarden Tower and the wind was whipping at her mask as she stood shoulder to shoulder with the Faceless Man.
“Come with us!” Leslie demanded and stretched out her hand. “It's all your fault in the first place!”
I could feel the tower shaking under ou r feet as charge after charge detonated.
I shook my head dumbly but Leslie took a step in my direction. “I'd never have lost my face if it wasn't for you and your bloody ghosts!” She screamed. “At least now you can help fix me!”
She was close enough to touch now but just before her outstretched hand could grab me, I took a step backwards and bumped right into Beverly Brook.
She was standing behind me, arms crossed across her chest and head cocked to the side. As her eyes narrowed she seemed more real than anything else around me.
“What the hell do you think you're playing at?” She asked. “Guilt dreams? This isn't going to solve anything.”
And then the roof collapsed under me and I was falling, falling, concrete pieces smashing into me and bruising my body, the wind driving any air out of my lungs, no Faceless Man there to break my fall this time and –
I woke up screaming but at least this time I didn't have to look whoever had placed the glass of water on my bedside table in the eye.