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There are things, as any copper in the world will you, that you don’t share with your superior officer. I’m not talking about the outright illegal things – those, you’ll find, more often than not involve said superiors – I’m talking about the side-trip things. The times when, between knocking on this door and breaking up that row, you’re off elsewhere lightly abusing your rights and privileges as an officer of the law.
Not that I was doing that now, exactly. If I’d actually brought surveillance equipment, that would have crossed that line.
It may have been a week cooler than when I’d offered myself up to a queen of the fairies, but nothing had happened in that week to make me forget that I had been living with one just like her for near two years now. That fact had spent a day or so screaming its head off around my brain, but the words hadn’t found a way out of my mouth. Partly because denial is always an option for at least a while. Also partly because it was easy enough to distract Nightingale with Hugh’s staffs and the fact of an alternate-reality-cum-Fairyland – new old magic is a guaranteed conversation starter around the Folly.
Mostly, though, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what I knew. I mean, maybe you want to try bursting out with ‘Molly’s the kind of fae who steals children!’ without some kind of helpful follow-up, see where that gets you. Me? I was doing a little research first.
I’d started with my fellow Fairyland traveler, Beverly. “You spend all that time with her. You had no idea?”
The look she had leveled on me would have done any mum proud. I’d backpedaled posthaste.
“The question I meant ask is, what did you think she was? Before.”
Beverly had shrugged, almost distracting me as that motion did wonderful things with how her breasts pressed into my chest. To be honest, if I hadn’t seen the smirk as she started wriggling down to a vantage point suited for more effective distraction, it might have worked. But I’m a trained interrogator, or so says the money Her Majesty’s government spent on me.
Now I was keeping discrete obbo on an alley off the north Embankment, courtesy of a cat. The alley didn’t look like much when I’d resorted to Street View, but I could tell from the vestigia coming off the rough stone that covered the ground why it might be good for, as Beverley said, “Molly things.” A sharp light coming off the edge of a river of silver scales pierced the air every time I breathed in, and I shoved down the need to look over my shoulder for a drawn longbow.
Molly didn’t come here, Beverley said. I didn’t expect so, as you couldn’t get Molly to answer the front door, much less go through it. But getting vestigia of that strength so deep in the heart of London explained a lot. If the thing I was most afraid of was capable of embedding itself that deep this far from its patch, I’d have a strong think about becoming a shut-in, too. She couldn’t stay completely away though, I realized. No more than I could stray from the need to burn my insides raw with spice at least once a month. It wasn’t a compulsion, mind, just a thing that had to happen.
As for the cat, it shouldn’t have surprised me that Toby wasn’t Molly’s only four-legged best mate, but it’s not like I’ve ever seen a cat around the Folly. Beverley, once she told me where to look, became the latest to point out that I can sometimes miss a detail or two.
The one I’d followed here ticked all the boxes for supernatural familiar: black, lithe and standoffish. And currently making its way down the cobbled street with far more confidence than the tourists. I hadn’t sensed any glamour, and it had extended an arched-back, hissed feline warning when a spotted mutt crossed its path, so I was fairly confident in it in fact being a cat. No one had stooped to coax it over, though, not even as it walked right up to the door where the vestigia was strongest, plonked itself down, and waited, head up, until the door opened as if it had knocked.
I was far enough back to not be seen. That hadn’t stopped me from having the start of a whacking strong impello ready in a corner of my mind. Rank calls this justified caution. I call it keeping my head attached to my shoulders, thanks.
The woman who had peered out – straight down at the cat, no hesitation or confusion – didn’t look like one of Molly’s lot. Short and round, and I didn’t think they believed much in variety. Then the cat stood to wind its way around her ankles, and she’d said in the best of West London voices, ‘Wondered if you’d come this month, little one,’ which settled that, and I hadn’t dared follow when the cat went in with her, the door closing solidly behind them.
It had stayed shut for near a half hour, though. I now was about to have to decide if I wanted to take that dare. Thankfully, as I called myself an idiot, the door opened and the cat came trotting out like it hadn’t a care.
I didn’t know what to do as I followed it straight back to the Folly. I didn’t know what to do when Molly saw me, flinched, and quickly slid off into the depths of the kitchen with the cat on her heels. I didn’t know what to do when I went up and sat on my bed, and wondered, What the hell do I do now?
I did know that I was soon going to have to tell Nightingale something. And now there was even more that I didn’t know. I suppose I should be getting used to that.