Service Delivery Option
IN SOME HOUSEHOLDS you only have to turn up three times before you’re expected to make your own tea, draw up a chair in front of the telly and call the cat a bastard. The Oswalds’ wasn’t that kind of household, not least because they don’t have a telly, but at least Mellissa seemed almost pleased to see me—or more likely Beverley.
“She’s a bit short of female company round here,” Beverley had said as we drove up the steep lane to the Bee House. “There are certain topics she can’t discuss with her granddad.”
I’d asked her to see if she could find out who Mellissa’s parents were, but she made no promises—not even to tell me if she did find out. “Some things are private,” she’d said. “Even from the police.”
Which explained why, when we arrived, I was peremptorily waved up the stairs to the study while Beverley and Mellissa hustled into the kitchen with cries of glee and a vague promise that refreshments might arrive at some point in the future. Up in the study, I carefully cleared space on the gateleg table and removed a stack of old Bee Craft magazines from the wooden and leather desk chair. The cover of the topmost magazine was dark pink and showed a line drawing of a hive and almost abstract pictures of flowers in the bulbous ink style that I associate with Gerry Mulligan covers of the mid-sixties. I remember staring at the cover of Feelin’ Good for hours when I was twelve, but that was not necessarily down to the Art Nouveau stylings of the design.
The trick, when rifling through the library of a practitioner, is to find the books with the notes written in the margins. I don’t know why—perhaps it was something they encouraged at Casterbrook—but I’ve never met a wizard yet who could resist jotting his thoughts down on somebody else’s work. The History of Ludlow by Thomas Wright Esq., MA, FRS, Hon. MRSL, 1850 having been extensively scribbled on as well as having obviously, judging by the stamp, been lifted from the Bodleian Library. There was quite a lot about wolves and their rampages in the tenth century alongside which Hugh, I recognized his handwriting, had written alas no more. One book caught my eye because it had a distinctive plain burgundy cover that I’d learned to associate with the limited editions published in Oxford for use by the Folly. I opened it to the frontispiece to find the title—A Survey of Significant Locations in England and Wales by Henry Boatright. Published in 1907, it was a vestigium survey of Earthworks and Ancient Monuments with, where possible, a compendium of any information gathered by reputable practitioners about said sites. I checked the entry for Northern Herefordshire and found listings for Croft Ambrey, Brandon Hill, Pyon Wood Camp and the battlefield at Mortimer’s Cross.
Boatright had diligently noted his impressions of possible vestigia as he examined the locations. But, being from the last century, he had yet to take up the ultramodern Yap scale of magical influence.
Should have got yourself a ghost-hunting dog, I thought. That’s the way us go-ahead twenty-first-century practitioners calibrate our science experiments.
Boatright was an unspeakably dull writer but, hopefully, conscientious—he certainly went on at length about his sense impressions in a manner that would have made Henry James proud. I did The Turn of the Screw for GCSE English, in case you wondered. And I’ve got to say, I preferred the metaphysical poets—so there.
But Boatright certainly loved Pyon Wood Camp, which was situated the other side of the road from Croft Ambrey—talking about its numinous quality and air of ancient solemnity. He also rated Croft Ambrey because of its lofty aspect, but was disappointed because he found nothing that would verify his theory that this was where Caratacus made his last stand against the Romans. Brandon Hill gave him a weak feeling in his bowels which he later attributed to some dodgy boiled beef he’d eaten the night before. I skipped Mortimer’s Cross because it was on the other side of the Lugg and, judging by Beverley’s face-off with the unicorn, whatever was running around on the ridge didn’t like to cross the Lugg. Why that might be was something I planned to get Beverley to find out.
Caratacus suffered the double indignity of being taken to Rome in chains and having an opera written about him by Elgar. Apart from the need to deal with stroppy British chieftains, the Romans didn’t have much interest in northern Herefordshire except as a route up to Wroxeter and places North. They did this by constructing Watling Street, which runs diagonally across England like the zip on a Mary Quant dress from Dover to Wroxeter. This is the road that crossed the Lugg by the Riverside Inn and that I had admired from up on the ridge—imposing itself on the landscape for certain. I made a note to check and see whether it was possible that either Pyon Wood or Croft Ambrey might be the castle Hannah had talked about. Perhaps the castle had been as immaterial as the unicorns—a product of magic. Or possibly even more insubstantial—a ghost of a castle like the incorporeal apple trees I’d seen in the moonlight. If that were true I’d have pegged the Roman Road to be the one she’d described crossing. Only she’d said it was partially overgrown. According to the OS map the nearest disused section of the Roman road started over a kilometer north of Aymestrey and continued on to skirt the eastern side of Wigmore.
Hugh’s annotations were extensive but cryptic, being mainly memos to himself. Things like BA disagrees and See IB07, BA confirms IB06. Most promising to me was a note on the Croft Ambrey page which read Activity stops in 1911 BA has no explan. It took me another half an hour of systematic searching before I located a row of old battered notebooks with dun-colored cardboard covers on which was handwritten Incident Book, County of Hereford and then a year 1899 to 1912. If I had any doubts about what kind of incidents they recorded then these were dispelled by the words ipsa scientia potestas est—knowledge itself is power—written in a ponderous cursive hand on the inside cover of every single notebook. And under that, a name. Barnaby Atkins Esq., MA (Oxon) CP (Herefordshire). CP stood for County Practitioner, a term that I’d heard Nightingale use. But I’d never taken it very seriously. It made me think of pith helmets and tea on the veranda with the District Commissioner. But there he was—Barnaby Atkins, aka BA—and his incident books, or IB, listed by year 99 to 12.
These were working notebooks full of abbreviations and words that I don’t think meant what I thought they did. I was particularly suspicious of the number of women Barnaby had a “brush” with during the course of his activities. Most of his cases were referred to him by the Chief Constable of the Herefordshire Constabulary, local magistrates or, and this surprised me, the Bishop of Hereford. It all seemed very informal, relaxed and entirely lacking in concern for the rights of anyone on less than £160 a year. I knew there was a section of the mundane library at the Folly which consisted of loose pages bound into ledgers—each one had been embossed with the name of a county. That must be where Barnaby Atkins Esquire’s formal reports had gone—Nightingale would have to have a look for me—but I suspected a great deal was fixed on the down low and never got reported. Especially things like, Wednesday Morning a happy bit with Mary who is maid to Mrs. Packnar—most satisfactory.
Barnaby’s sexual exploitation aside, it took a while to skim through the material. I started in 1912 and worked backward to see what activity BA had no explanation for, and which stopped in 1911. TH complains that there have been no more visitations of the ghostly horses to Croft Ambrey and that he is £5 out of pocket through loss of custom. He claims that the visitations were common enough in the summer months but that has seen nothing of them since the year before last. I told him that it was in the nature of spirits to be mercurial and that such matters were only my concern when they caused a breach of the peace. TH remonstrated that a loss of £5 was very much a breach of the peace but I repeated that I could not assist him and bade him farewell.
Ghost horses, Croft Ambrey, the summer months—any of this ringing a bell?
Barnaby, to give him his due, did investigate further and found that a number of other magical phenomena at Aymestrey, Mortimer’s Cross and Yatton—two ghosts and, ironically, an unearthly ringing bell, had also ceased.
I was wondering why Barnaby hadn’t asked any of the local rivers if they knew anything, when I found this in IB05—Came upon one of the river nymphs in a pool by the bridge at Little Hereford today and overcome by her beauty foolishly sought to grapple with her. At which point she landed me such a blow upon the side of the head that I had to take myself straightway to a Doctor and thereafter to my bed for a fortnight.
I took a photo of that to show Beverley later.
1911, I thought, what happened in 1911?
More to the point, did it have anything to do with my case? The ghost horses said yes, but back in those days horses were as common as people so . . . coincidence?
I heard a scraping noise from the staircase and, thinking that maybe tea had arrived, I stuck my head around the corner to see if I could help. To my amazement, Hugh Oswald was making his way up the stairs to see me—one step at a time. When he saw me he raised a shaking hand in greeting, but was obviously too breathless to speak. I moved to help him, but he waved me away, shaking his head. It took him at least ten minutes to reach the study, and at the end he accepted my arm over to a hastily cleared spot on the sofa.
He sat down gratefully and wheezed at me while making apologetic little gestures. It was painful to watch. I offered him a drink from the bottle of water I had in my bag and he took it gratefully, making sips between gasps.
“I don’t think you should have come up those stairs,” I said.
The wheezing became suddenly ragged, which worried me until I realized he was laughing.
“I had a chance at a bungalow in the Palladian style,” he said. “But I wanted the tower.” He paused for breath again. “You can’t even fit a chairlift, either—Mellissa spent almost a year trying to find a way. Perils of living in a listed building.”
I offered to go fetch Mellissa, but he was having none of that.
“She’ll come looking for me soon enough,” he said. “I wanted a bit of time alone with you. And she does fuss.”
“If you’re sure,” I said.
His face lost some of its livid mottling and his breathing its rasping edge.
“I’ve got something for you,” he said and directed me over to a chest that had been hidden under a dusty red floral cushion and two volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I opened it up and smelled camphor and the warm smell of old cloth. Inside was a long cylindrical khaki bag with a rough webbing shoulder strap. I’ve spent enough time rooting around in the Folly’s basement to know army surplus when I see it. Stenciled along the side of the bag was Oswald, H. 262041 and it was held closed with three buckles. The contents were heavy—at least two or three kilos, I reckoned, when I lifted it out of the chest. Under Hugh’s direction I placed it on the floor in front of his feet and crouched down to unbuckle it.
When I got it open a thick booklet with a dull red cover fell out—written on the front was Soldier’s Service and Pay Book. When I picked it up a photograph fluttered out from between the pages—sepia toned and faded, of a young man. Younger than me, I realized with a shock, stiffly posing in his uniform—unmistakably Hugh Oswald. I retrieved the photograph and handed it and the booklet to Hugh, who took them without looking at them. He nodded down at the bag.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Inside the bag were two staves the size and shape of pickaxe handles. At one end they sported grips made of wrapped canvas and leather and at the other an iron cap. Branded neatly into one side was the same number sequence as on the bag, at a guess Hugh’s service number, and the hammer and anvil sigil of the Sons of Weyland—British wizardry’s legendary smiths.
Makers of staffs.
“Don’t be shy,” said Hugh. “They won’t bite you.”
A couple of bad experiences has taught me a certain amount of caution when handling unfamiliar arcane objects, so at first I just let my fingertips brush the surface of the wood. I felt it at once, the rasping, dancing, wriggling honey-soaked warm intimacy of the hive.
“Have you been keeping this in your attic?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes. Well spotted,” said Hugh. “Take a good grip. It won’t hurt you.”
I closed my hand around the staff and lifted it like a club. It was heavy and comfortable and could, if I was any judge, serve usefully as a hand to hand weapon in a pinch. Had it ever come to that pinch? Had the frail old man, who had to muster up his strength to eat toast, smacked some poor unsuspecting German with it? Take that Fritz! Eat English Oak. I felt the heart of it then, the beating of the hammers and the hot breath of the forge and behind that the rivers of steel and oceans of coal and the clang clang clang of Empire.
I don’t know about the enemy, but it scared the hell out of me.
“I want you to have them,” said Hugh.
“I’m not sure I should take these,” I said. “Doesn’t Mellissa want them?”
“Now you listen to me, lad,” said Hugh. “In 1939 we had no inkling of what was to come—the end of the world can arrive with no warning at all and a wise man makes sure he has a big stick tucked away, just in case.”
I nodded.
“Thank you,” I said. I replaced the staff in its bag and buckled it up.
A more practical weapon, I thought, from a less civilized age.
“What did happen at Ettersberg?” I said. The question I’d been aching to ask.
“Operation Spatchcock,” said Hugh.
“What went wrong?” I said.
“What went right? We got greedy, we thought the war was all but over and started thinking about after, what would be our role, what would be the Folly’s, the order’s, England’s, the Empire’s.”
He looked at the bottle of water he held, as if trying to remember what it was for. “Hubris is what it was.” He took another sip and when he spoke again his voice was stronger.
“Nightingale was against it from the start, said we should send in the RAF and bomb the camp from altitude. He said it was the only way to be sure.” He gave me a puzzled look. “Did I say something funny?”
“No, sir,” I said. “You mentioned being greedy. Greedy for what?”
“There were some bright young sparks before the war,” said Hugh. “On both sides. People like David Mellenby, who said they thought it might be possible to formulate a theory that would unite magic with relativity.” Hugh paused again eyes unfocused. “Or was it quantum theory, which one is the one with the cat?”
“Schrödinger’s cat?”
“That’s the bugger,” said Hugh.
“Quantum theory,” I said.
“Closing the gap he called it,” said Hugh. “Had lots of foreign friends, particularly in Germany—all practitioners or boffins—which was damned unusual, you understand. He took the start of the war very badly, saw it as a personal betrayal. You see, the Nazis took his work and . . . I’m not sure what the word is.”
“Perverted it?”
“No,” said Hugh. “We thought they might have closed the gap, but the methods they used . . .” Hugh was trembling and I considered calling his daughter, but then I saw the look in his eyes and realized it was anger. Not just anger, but rage—even seventy years later. “They did terrible things to live prisoners, to men and women and the fae and . . .”
He stopped, his chest heaving, and looked around his study, blinking his eyes.
“And, being German,” he said finally, “they wrote it all down, typed it up in triplicate, cross-referenced it and filed it neatly in a hundred filing cabinets in a central bunker in a camp near a town called Ettersberg.”
“Oh shit,” I said. I realized the implications. Hugh gave me a reproachful look. “They wanted the research data,” I said. “That’s what the operation was all about.”
“We couldn’t let the Russians have it, or the Americans, or the French for that matter,” he said. “It was obvious to everyone by ’45 that this was the Empire’s last hurrah. The Russians were gearing up to win the Great Game and the Yanks couldn’t wait to get us out of the Far East. I think some believed, including David, that this could put us back in the game.”
“What game?”
“Precisely,” said Hugh and looked so pleased with me that I didn’t explain that I meant the question literally. “And we secured the library, the Black Library we called it after that, for all the good that it did us. Nightingale’s job was to cover the extraction, and by god that’s just what he did. But even he couldn’t save the men who were cut off at the camp.”
And so Operation Spatchcock had fallen apart and the raiding force, over eight hundred men in all, was broken up and destroyed in detail while the remnants fled west in squads or as individuals—werewolves on their tail.
“Were they real werewolves?” I asked. “Or just special forces?”
“Nobody knows for sure,” said Hugh.
Nightingale being among the last of the few stragglers that made it across the Allied front line.
“He made sure the wounded were on the gliders with the Library, me among them, and he gave up his own place so that David could escape,” said Hugh.
“David Mellenby got out?” I said. “I thought he was killed in action.”
“No,” said Hugh. “Took his own life sadly. Locked himself in his lab and shot himself in the head. Wasn’t the only one, certainly not the only one, come to think of it.
“You have to understand, Peter,” said Hugh. His voice was shaking and I saw there were tears in his eyes. “I regret nothing, and if I could go back in time to my young self I would tell him to stop being a weak sister and get the job done. Sometimes you have to make a choice and sometimes you have to act on blind faith and trust that your mates won’t let you down.”
I heard his granddaughter call his name from below.
“But when you do that, Peter,” he said, “make sure you know who your mates are.”
Mellissa bounced into the room and made her displeasure known to both of us. I let myself be chivvied downstairs. Hugh looked done in and I didn’t want him to hurt himself. I grabbed the staves along with my other stuff, the heavy wood clonking against my hip as I swung the strap over my shoulder.
In the kitchen I found Beverley seated behind a stack of cardboard pallets containing squat green glass jars with home-printed labels on them.
“I hope you made her pay for those,” I said to Mellissa.
“Got my money’s worth,” she said and winked at Beverley, who laughed.
“You can help get them into the car,” she said.
If I couldn’t speak to Hannah, I figured I could talk to the next best thing. Her mum. So I called up DS Cole and asked if I could interview Joanne. She said in fact Joanne had been asking after me, so I could visit straight away? Providing I agreed to keep it informal. Which is police speak for waiting until the subject can’t see you before taking down your notes. I was getting good enough at navigating the lanes around Rushpool that I could swing around to drop Beverley off at the Swan and then go on to the Marstowe’s without having to do any reversing or tricky three-point turns. I did notice that some of the press pack were back in the Swan’s car park and, when I turned into the Marstowe’s cul-de-sac, I spotted a photographer staking it out. He fired off a couple of shots as I passed, but it was an automatic gesture. Routine.
I also noticed that Andy Marstowe’s Toyota wasn’t parked outside the house, so imagine my state of unsurprise when I found Derek Lacey with his feet firmly ensconced under the kitchen table. I followed Joanne inside and he jumped up when he saw me and shook my hand.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
And then, surprised to find he was still holding my hand, he let go and offered me a seat opposite him and Joanne.
“Thank you,” he said again. “It seems such an inadequate word.”
There were two open bottles of wine on the kitchen table and two glasses. As I sat down, Derek, obviously familiar with the kitchen, located another wine glass and plonked it down in front of me.
“Red or white?” he asked.
I went with white. After all, I was under instructions to keep it informal. The beauty about the whole “coppers don’t drink on duty” rule is that people think that if you’re drinking you’re not on duty. They’re wrong, of course. We’re always on duty. It’s just that sometimes we’re a little bit unsteady as well. Although, strictly speaking, I should have sought preauthorizing by a senior officer of Superintendent rank or above before I emptied my glass.
I tasted the wine. A year sitting at Nightingale’s table meant I could at least tell good from bad—and this was not bad.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” said Derek. “South African.”
“So how’s Nicole?” I asked.
“Don’t they keep you informed?” asked Joanne.
“I’m just a constable,” I said. “I’m pretty much the last person that anybody tells anything to.”
“She’s coming home tomorrow morning,” said Derek. “That’s why I’ve been sent ahead to make sure everything is shipshape and Bristol fashion.”
“So she’s over the shock?” I said.
“Not entirely,” said Derek and drained his glass. “But the doctors think that familiar surroundings might help.”
Help what? I wondered, but sometimes it’s better just to look interested and hope for the best.
“She’s having trouble talking,” said Derek. “She keeps forgetting words—aphasia the doctors call it. She was completely non compos mentis when we first saw her, but much better now.” He paused to fetch another bottle—a Sauvignon blanc this time. “I’m just relieved to have them back.”
“Peter,” said Joanne, and then stopped and looked at Derek, who took a breath.
“If something had happened to the girls . . .” he said. “The police wouldn’t keep it from us—to spare our feelings?”
“No,” I said.
Not unless you were suspects, I thought, and even then . . .
“Definitely not,” I said.
“You’re sure?” asked Joanne.
“Do you think something happened?” I asked.
Derek filled his glass and topped up mine.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They’ve always been such happy girls—ask anyone. It’s worrying to see Nicky so withdrawn and uncommunicative.”
“And we were worried the last time,” said Joanne.
“The last time?” I asked.
Derek sighed.
“It’s not the first time one of mine has run away,” said Derek.
This was not in any case summary I’d read and, believe me, in missing kid cases “has run away before” tends to be pretty prominent in the initial assessment.
“Nicole ran away before?” I asked. “When?”
“God, no,” said Joanne. Her glass was empty so I topped it up—it was only polite.
“This was a long time ago,” said Derek. “And it wasn’t Nicole. It was my eldest—Zoe.”
“I didn’t know you had an eldest,” I said and thought—if it’s in the files Lesley would be so pissed off with me for missing that.
“By Susan, my first wife. She’s all grown up now,” he said. “Lives over in Bromyard.”
I filled my glass and took a sip—the second bottle wasn’t as good. Not that Derek seemed to notice. I filled his glass as well.
Given the amount of wine we’d necked, I decided to just come out and ask them what happened.
“Zoe was always a difficult child,” said Derek.
“She was a perfectly good girl,” said Joanne.
“Well, she loved you, didn’t she?” said Derek to Joanne.
Joanne turned to me and said in mock confidence, “I used to babysit her when she was small.”
“And spoil her,” said Derek. “And listen to her stories.”
“She had a wonderful imagination. Loved Harry Potter and all those fairy books,” said Joanne.
“Did she say why she ran away?” I asked.
“No,” said Derek. But he said it way too quickly, and his eyes shifted unconsciously to look at Joanne, who was pretending to be taking a long sip of her wine while she thought of something convincing to say. I gave her as long as she needed.
“It was just a silly argument,” she said, and then uttered the phrase you should never utter in front of the police. “It wasn’t anything important.”
“And we found her quickly enough,” said Derek.
“Just in time,” said Joanne. “We were just about to call you lot.”
“Where was she when you found her?” I asked.
“By the lay-by on the main road,” said Derek. “The one you reach if you go left toward Lucton when you come out of the village.”
I pulled out my phone and got them to pinpoint the location on Google Maps. I think they wanted to avoid the subject, but they couldn’t do that without drawing attention to the fact that that was what they wanted to do.
The location was east of Rushpool, the opposite direction from where Hannah and Nicole were reckoned to have crossed the same road while heading up to Bircher Common.
“Why do you want to know?” asked Joanne.
“Habit,” I said and took a gulp of wine. “It’s the way I’m trained—ask questions first, worry about what the information is for later.”
I didn’t stay much longer after that, and I left the pair of them polishing off a third bottle. I wondered what was going to happen the moment I stepped out the front door and was tempted to double back and peer in through the windows. I decided not to—even the police have to have some standards. And anyway, they might see me and that would end their use as sources of information.
I arrived home at the cowshed to find Beverley rifling through my stuff.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She was kneeling by my trunks, dressed only in a pair of blue silk knickers and a matching camisole, and systematically laying out the contents on the floor around her.
“I was languorously awaiting your return,” she said, “but after ten minutes I got bored.”
“That explains the underwear,” I said. “Which is very nice by the way.”
“Yes, it is,” said Beverley.
“But what are you doing in my stuff?”
“We need a present to give to Hugh,” she said. “In return for what he gave you.”
“I don’t think he wants anything in return,” I said.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Beverley. “He’s given you the most important thing he owns—that’s an imbalance—you can’t have that. He’s an old man—what if he dies?”
She pulled out the Purdey lightweight two-inch self-opening sidelock shotguns, cracked the breeches and gave them a disturbingly professional once over.
“Do you think he’d like these?” she asked.
I sat down on the bed and started taking off my clothes.
“I think he’s done with weapons,” I said. “Don’t you?”
I decided to leave my boxers on—a man should maintain a certain amount of mystery after all.
“Yeah,” she said. “And Mellissa would only give them to her harem.”
Beverley closed the trunk and looked at me.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m waiting languorously,” I said. “For you to get into the bed.”
“What make you think I’m still in the mood?”
“Unlike some people,” I said, “I’m committed to this state of languor. I’ve been putting in the hours. If necessary I can maintain it for an extended period.”
“I could go back to my room at the Swan,” she said.
I slowly put my hand behind my head and cocked my left leg provocatively.
“But then,” I said, “you’d be all alone and I’d still be here being irresistibly languid.”
She made me wait at least a minute, and then she climbed onto the bed with me. There followed some kissing and some grabbing of parts—the details I will not bother to bore you with, except to say that just as we were getting down to business I paused long enough to ask—“We’re not going to be like fertilizing this garden or something, are we?”
“Peter!” snarled Beverley. “Focus!”
Afterward we lay sweating on top of the duvet, spread-eagled to catch the faint breeze coming in through the door, not touching except where her hand rested on my thigh and my hand covered hers.
“When you were eleven,” I said, “did you ever sneak out of your house?”
“All the time,” said Beverley.
“Where did you go?”
“Into the river of course,” she said. “Where else?”
“You didn’t dance about?”
“On dry land?”
“Yeah?”
“Might have done—don’t know.”
“Naked?”
“When I was eleven?”
“I just wondered if it was a fae thing,” I said. “I’ve seen you swimming around without your kit on.”
“I know,” she said and rolled over to face me, propping her head up with her hand. “I’ve seen you watching me.”
“Couldn’t take my eyes off you,” I said.
She reached out and twirled her finger tips around my belly, making me laugh and gasp at the same time.
“Children do strange things,” she said. “They don’t have to be different to want to dance around as free as a chimpanzee.”
She swept her hand up to my chest, pushing ahead a little wave of water, my sweat I realized, coalescing in a way that could not be explained by momentum and surface tension.
“I was naked the first time I saw you—do you remember?” she asked. Her palm swept across my shoulders like a child gathering material for a sand castle.
“That was you in the river at Richmond,” I said. “What happened to your wetsuit?”
“I was at mum’s house and my wetsuit was at my place—when we got the alarm I had to go as I was. We went up the river like crazies—me, Fleet, Chelsea and Effra—if you’d seen us then you’d have freaked big time.”
With a twist of her wrist she held out her hand out palm up, and above it floated a globe of water.
“We’d chased Father Thames’s little boys back to their boat, and we’re just giving them some lip when down swoops the Jag and the Nightingale comes storming out. I was totally stealthy because, you know, Nightingale . . . Mum’s got views about us getting into too much trouble. The next thing I know I’m seeing this gormless-looking boy standing on the shore.”
The globe started to rotate and flatten out slightly.
“You swore at me,” I said.
“I cut myself on a wire cage,” she said. “Some stupid environmental anti-erosion measure or something.”
I extended my hand and concentrated, which wasn’t easy with one of Beverley’s breasts brushing against the side of my chest. Aqua was a forma I’d only learned quite recently, but I managed to get a respectable globe of water hovering over my own hand.
“Why, thank you,” said Beverley and without any fuss my globe jumped over and merged with hers. She saw my startled look and grinned.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” said Beverley, and with an elegant flick of her hand the globe shot up toward the ceiling and exploded in a puff of vapor. A cool mist floated down around us, beading her shoulders and hip and making me shiver.
I could tell she knew I was going to ask again, because she leaned over and kissed me until I’d forgotten what I was going to say. After that one thing led to another, but fortunately Beverley paused long enough to do the vapor thing again so we didn’t collapse from heat exhaustion.
Alas all good things must end—even if only to avoid back strain.
“And what’s your plan for tomorrow,” she asked.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’m going high tech.”