silver_sun (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silver_sun) wrote2014-08-29 06:27 pm
silver_sun) wrote2014-08-29 06:27 pm
Vintage Spirits (2/2)
Vintage Spirits.
You know how when you’re in a hurry to get somewhere suddenly everything that can go wrong immediately does. Well it decided right there and then to do so. We’d left Cranleigh with its odd mix of old country village charm and soulless commuter belt blandness and headed up the A281. We’d been making good time and I was looking forward to whatever Molly had made for us, when the traffic in front of us ground to a halt about two thirds of the way through Shalford.
Shalford looked like the sort of place that would have an amateur dramatics society, an active WI and where everybody was on the neighbourhood watch to keep tabs on their neighbours and complain about wind turbines and fracking rather than from any real risk of crime. It was probably a lovely place, but at the moment it was doing a good impression of a car park. It was a look that I associated with London during rush hour, not a smallish village on a Sunday afternoon.
Annoying as sitting in stationary traffic was it wouldn’t have been problem had Nightingale and I not overlooked one thing. Okay overlooked wasn't exactly the right word and I was willing to give Nightingale some slack on it as he was beginning to look knackered and had started every so often to rub the shoulder where he’d been shot little more than five months ago. He'd been doing alright lately, but I still worried sometimes that he was pushing himself too hard. The fight on the rooftop with Faceless really hadn't helped and he'd been exhausted by the time Simone and her sister had tragically finished our case for us. He looked out at the rapidly darkening sky and frowned, then said, "Peter, what time is it?"
I looked at my phone, momentarily confused at why was getting dark when it was only just gone three in the afternoon. I wondered for a moment if it was because London was so filled with artificial lighting that I'd assumed that the sun was setting well after five, then I realised what had happened.
"I assume from that look something isn't right," Nightingale said.
You can't easily kick yourself while sat in a car, but I really felt like I should. It was the last Sunday in October, the clocks had gone back. I had remembered for a change. That wasn't the problem. No, the problem was that my phone had helpfully put itself back an hour as well. So there we were stuck in traffic, with sunset little more than an hour away and no hope of getting to the Folly before our dodgy wizard in aa bottle did his thing.
The phone did manage to redeem itself a bit a minute or so later when, after finding there was no wifi signal secure or otherwise that I could hook up to, I decided to run up my phone bill by using it to get online. The unfortunate result was I discovered we were even more screwed than previously thought. There had been a crash where our road joined the A3100, so going through Guildford was right out. Which gave us two options. Turn around and try to join the A3 below Guildford and hope it was actually moving or take the next right, assuming anybody would let us, and cut across country and join the A24 at Dorking and head up to the circular car park also known as the M25. I gave Nightingale our options, which he looked far from happy about.
"Assuming that the time is actually just after four, we have approximately forty-five minutes until sunset," he said looking at the gloomy, rain filled sky. "We cannot possibly reach the Folly in that time, therefore we need to find somewhere remote. I had hoped to be able to reseal the bottle and avoid a confrontation, but that is no longer an option open to us. Should Pulver make an appearance I will need to deal with him without interruption."
I could already feel the vestigia attached to the bottle growing stronger, filling up the car with its mental bad smell of wet paper and pointy things. There was something sickly sweet with it now as well, like rotting meat. The whole carefully worded not a zombie thing from the internet sounded a whole lot more worrying now and I was suddenly glad that I'd not been able to get those chips.
Fifteen frustrating minutes later we'd finally managed to get the Jag a mile further up the Shalford road and made the right turn that would take us through the middle of nowhere on the way to Dorking. Dorking being a small market town whose one and only claim to fame was producing a breed of five toed chicken. Amazing what random facts you pick up while you're looking for anything weird about the area. How the people round here contained their excitement I didn't know.
"Do I want to know why it would be a bad thing not to have got this sorted out by the time it gets dark?" I asked as when Nightingale switched on the headlights. The narrow road with its thickly overhanging trees was like a tunnel and I wasn't sure if we were going to get where we wanted to go before the sun set. What if just being somewhere dark made it do its thing? Was some bizarre zombie-wizard-ghost combo going to pop out of the bottle like the worlds oddest genie and try to eat our brains?
"Why wouldn't you want to know?" Nightingale replied. His voice sounded strained and as much as I wanted to put it down to the fact that he didn't like driving down a road that was only about one and a half cars wide and with more blind corners than anywhere should rightfully have, I suspected that some of it was the fact his shoulder was hurting. Nobody drove with one arm held as still he was unless it was getting uncomfortable to move it.
"Ignorance is bliss if you're about to be eaten by zombies."
"Really, Peter. Zombies don't eat people," he said. Which was no comfort at all as it still left it open for there to be zombies who could kill you in nasty painful, chewy ways.
"If you want to be useful," he said sounding tense. "You could you get the map in the glove box and find somewhere with as few houses and people as possible."
Even the inside of the glovebox was finished to the same standard as the interior of the Jag. That was real quality, you just didn't get things like that on your every day car. The glovebox was of course tidy and along with the map really did contain a pair of leather driving gloves. Which made a change, as in my experience the glovebox tended to get used as a handy spot to put your empty crisp packets and sandwich wrappers. There was just enough light in the car to see the map was about twenty years out of date, but I didn't think the roads around here were likely to have changed much or possibly at all in the last couple of centuries. "Okay," I said, running a finger down the creased page. "We should nearly be at a village called Shere. We need to take a left after the church. It goes up onto a place called the Hurtwood. It looks pretty empty up there."
Nightingale nodded, all concentration on the road. I suspected he was already planning what he was going to do when and if Pulver appeared. At least I hoped he was, because I had no idea what you did with ghost wizards.
The back roads were deserted and we soon got to Shere. Shere seemed to be one of those villages that appeared on postcards to show foreign tourists what an English village looked like. A Medieval church, an old half-timbered inn and a little stream running through a ford in the heart of the village. There was no time to hang about however, and few minutes after leaving Shere we pulled up in a tiny gravelled car park in the middle of nowhere. It was obviously meant for hikers as the there was handy compass point, an information board telling us that on a clear day you could see the Shoreham Gap, and a little bin for dog mess.
There seemed to be nothing but gloomy woodland with a few pines standing higher than the rest on the next hill top. It didn't seem right that there could be somewhere so empty looking so close to London. London or at least the light pollution from it was visible as a dull orange glow on the northern horizon.
"We can't risk doing this in the car park," Nightingale said taking a couple of heavy duty torches from the boot of the Jag. He also took out his staff and a leather satchel which had been hidden under a few odds and ends. Okay, maybe not well hidden, but enough that you didn't see it right away.
We picked the widest of the tracks that left the car park and followed it into the woods. The path was sandy, proper fine, yellowish sand that half the beaches on the south coast would have loved to have had. Which made the dense pine trees all the more odd. They weren't Christmas tree type pines that get used for forestry plantations because they grow in a few years, they were Scots pines. It was amazing the the facts that you picked up at pub quizzes and still remembered a few years later.
The path eventually opened out into a clearing where it met four other similar looking paths. Nightingale looked around, torch swinging arcs of pale light against the scrubby bushes spread a metre or so back from the edge of the path and into the tree line. "Here will do, Peter. There's enough space."
"For what?"I asked, wondering just how big he expected the thing in the bottle to be.
"For the containment circle," he said. "This was covered in Grafton's guide to ceremonial magic. I thought you had completed that. I set it for you because had a very comprehensive over view of demon traps. After what Wheatcroft left for us in his flat I felt it necessary that you understand how and why things are made and most importantly how to deactivate them. Really Peter, I might not alway be there to help you."
He sounded worried more than angry, but even more than both of those he sounded tired. I wanted to be annoyed that he thought I wasn't studying as hard as I could or that I wasn't competent to do this, but the fact was the book had been almost terminally boring and after seeing what Faceless could do on the rooftop knew with a sick certainty that there was plenty of magical stuff out there that I was nowhere near ready to face. All the same, I have my pride, so I said, "I'd not realised that was what you were planning to do. Do you need me get anything to make the circle?"
"I will construct the circle," he replied. "There is a compass in the bag, I need you to mark out the cardinal points on the outer circle once it is drawn. And then you will need to get the bag of salt. The unopened one, if you please, and make an unbroken line following outer circle."
Using his staff, Nightingale drew a circle in the sand about three metres across and then another circle around it about half a metre out. There was magic going into the formation of the circle. I could feel it. This was hard core stuff and I wondered how far an apprentice normally was by the time they ended up doing stuff like this? Probably a lot further through than I was, but even that was okay, as it gave me a stupid warm feeling that Nightingale actually trusted me with stuff like this.
It didn't take long to mark out North, South, East and West on the circle Nightingale had drawn. Then holding the torch in one hand and the bag of salt in the other I tipped it in outer circle. It used pretty much all the bag, but salt is cheap and I got the feeling that this wasn't something that you wanted to skimp on for the sake of a few pence.
Nightingale had spent the time making a series of marks in the space between the two circles. It was too dark to see just what he was doing, but it had to be to prevent whatever came out of the bottle from crossing out into the wider world. I could feel the prickle of energy from it on my skin, the hairs rising on my arms and the back of my neck.
"What should I do now?" I asked. I knew Nightingale wouldn't set me anything he thought I wasn't able to do safely. Although that did mean I was getting the feeling thatI was mostly going to be standing around watching Nightingale do something scarily impressive. I doubted there was much that could get the better of Nightingale in a fair fight. I mean he'd blown up tanks with fireballs, I was proficient in making fruit explode. Great if our wizard-zombie-ghost in a bottle had a terrible apple allergy, but not so much otherwise.
Nightingale walked as close as he could to the edge of the inner circle without breaking it. "You are to wait here for me finish this." His hand moved forwards like he was going to put in on my arm and then he pulled it back. Although whether that was because he'd thought better of if or whether it was to do with the circle I didn't know. "Peter, promise me whatever happens, whatever you see, you won't cross into the circle under any circumstances."
"What if..." I began. I wasn't sure where I was going with it, okay I was, but I didn't want to think about anything happening to him and me before forced to stand by totally unable to help.
"The circle will prevent anything magical from escaping it. I will neutralise it once the threat has been dealt with. Until then Peter, please do not do anything that might disrupt the circle." He turned away from me and then said, "In the very unlikely event anything untoward were to happen to me the circle is designed to destroy whatever is inside should I fail to reinforce the wards every ten minutes."
Now that was pretty damn terrifying. I mean what if he was knocked out or something? Could he get killed by his own spell? It didn't look like Nightingale was in the mood to talk about it right now, and I reluctantly came to the conclusion that now wasn't the time to ask about it. Later, when we were both okay and on the way back to London in the Jag with the air con turned up as high as it would go to dry us out from the drizzle that had begun to fall, I'd ask him. Who knows? I might even get an answer.
I wasn't sure what I expected to happen once Nightingale was ready to deal with the bottle. Him smashing the top off it using his staff wasn't it. It was anti-climactic really as absolutely nothing happened. Even Nightingale looked taken aback by that and he prodded the broken glass with the staff.
"Is it empt..." I began, then I saw thin tendrils of what looked like oily smoke starting to curl from the shattered neck of the bottle.
"I believe that answers your question," Nightingale replied with wry amusement. He raised his staff, holding it across himself. "Now stay back. I really can't have the distraction of worrying about you while I do this."
I hadn't really seen Nightingale use his staff before. I knew the little he'd told me about it, that it was kind of like a magic storage battery. Which was probably necessary for something like this as doing this sort of magic without a store to draw on would otherwise probably turn your brain to irreparable mush.
The smoke had quickly formed into a human-like shape and was now rapidly gaining enough definition for it to become something recognisably a person. Nightingale didn't make any kind of move to do anything while Pulver solidified into the most real looking ghost I'd seen. Excluding Henry Pyke, of course, but Pyke had been a special case. His long robe like coat, flapped about him, which when combined with his thin face and a roman nose Julius Ceaser would have been envious of meant he looked like a great crow. Or rather a giant crow in a wig, as he'd got one of those curly shoulder length things like the statue of Newton had back in the Folly.
Pulver also appeared to have a staff of his own. I wasn't sure if a ghost staff was likely to be more of less dangerous than the real thing. I didn't particularly want to find out by way of a practical demonstration either, but it looked like that was what was going to happen, as he'd raised it in a mirror image of what Nightingale had done.
Illuminated by the light from my torch I watched as they began their tense face off. Circling each other, they both carefully avoided the lines in the sand. If either of them were talking I had no idea what they were saying as no sound escaped the circle. I could see Nightingale's mouth moving, forma being combined to do...well I wasn't sure what, but it whatever it was it was something totally beyond my abilities as yet. I could feel the power of it a few metres away, like static electricity building up before a storm. The circle was dampening how much I felt outside of it, the power contain with in it, must have been incredible and I actually felt rather disappointed that I couldn't get closer to the action and feel just how powerful Nightingale was. Which sounded all sorts of wrong when it was put like that, but I couldn't think of any other way of describing it.
Pulver was clearly reluctant to make a move and had lowered one of his arms from the defensive position that it had been in. I was beginning to think that Nightingale was about to quickly and quietly zap him out of existence when I saw a glint of something in Pulver's hand. The knife had obviously been concealed inside the sleeve of his frock coat and was still mostly hidden by his hand and sleeve. From where Nightingale was I doubted that he could see it. Was bringing a knife to a magical duel the equivalent to bringing a gun to a knife fight? or was it like facing up to nuke armed with a rock? Did Pulver have the upper hand in the fight? or was he about to try something desperate because Nightingale completely outclassed him?
In the end I decided that whatever Pulver's reasoning was it didn't actually matter. All that mattered was the fact that he intended to hurt Nightingale. I had no idea whether a ghost knife could actually hurt you and it if it did whether it would cause damage like a real knife or if it would do something else. Either way I doubted it would be good for Nightingale to get stabbed with it. The question was how to stop Pulver without distracting Nightingale or breaking the circle.
So after a quick look around I decided to go with the tried and tested method of chucking something at the other guy's head. Crude perhaps, but pretty much always effective. The only thing in the circle that I could pick up using Aer was the remains of the witch bottle.
Pulver had edged closer and I knew that he was getting ready to make his move so I picked up the remains of the witch bottle and threw it at Pulver.
It certainly distracted him. As the moment it hit him there was a flash of light and then it was like being in an explosion. Only there wasn't any noise or heat. There was force though, like being hit with a massive gust of wind and I felt myself being pushed back and then lifted off my feet.
I landed about five metres back from where I'd been. Lying still, I tried to work out if I'd managed to do any more damage to myself than a few bruises. I didn't feel like it and I took a moment to be thankful that I'd been thrown into the short scrubby berry bushes that lined the side of the path, rather than into the massive pine tree less than a metre to my right.
Why did so many of the things I did with magic end up with things going boom? I wondered as I got to my feet. I expected Nightingale would have a thing or two to say about what I'd just done. It seemed to have worked however, so that was in my mind a win.
Nightingale had been thrown back out of the circle and was just getting to his knees as I hurried over to him.
"Whatever were you thinking?" he snapped before I could ask him if he was okay. "Or is just the case of you not thinking at all? You could have been killed."
"Pulver had a knife," I said, realising that he'd probably not seen it. It had been mostly behind Pulver's back after all. "He is gone, isn't he?" I asked, really not wanting there to be a round two. Nightingale wasn't in any shape for it and I wasn't sure I could take on anything that could survive being so thoroughly exploded.
"I didn't see it. I should thank you," Nightingale said sounding surprised and shaken now. "It was still a very foolish thing to do, Peter, you could have seriously hurt or even killed." He looked me up and down, before finally asking, "You are alright, aren't you?"
"Nothing a nice long soak in hot bath won't fix," I said and then offered him a hand up as he was still sitting on the ground. "Are you okay?"
There was definite noise of discomfort as Nightingale got to his feet. Pressing a hand to the shoulder, he gave it a couple of tentative movements, before finally saying, "I will be. Just a little stiff from an awkward landing, that's all."
I wasn't a hundred percent sure I believed him. Nightingale didn't seem to get the idea of taking it easy for a while and I suspected that most people wouldn't have even been back at work yet, never mind driving around the countryside and getting thrown through the air by exploding ghosts. I also suspected that he'd still be claiming he was fine when we got back to the car, but the Jag for all its vintage loveliness didn't have power assisted steering and that had to be hell with his shoulder being as sore as it plainly was. I hoped that he'd let me drive it back, not just because I wanted a chance to show him that I could drive it without running it into a tree, but because I wasn't convinced that he was in any shape to be behind the wheel at the moment.
We spent a couple of minutes picking up the fragments of glass from the bottle, and then while Nightingale erased what was left of the circle by scuffing it out with his shoe and with the end of his staff, I decided to check my phone. I had switched it off to avoid it getting zapped. You learn handy things like that when you're an apprentice wizard. Unfortunately when Pulver had gone kaboom and I'd nearly ended up in a tree my phone hadn't been so lucky. It was now soaking wet from where it had landed in a puddle and sporting massive crack in the screen. I had a go at switching it on, but all it did was make a brief whistling noise and then stopped working entirely. Phone number four bites the dust. From now on I decided, I was just going to buy the cheapest, most basic thing I could for everyday use. It getting too expensive otherwise.
Not that that would help us right now or changed the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere in the dark, without a map or a working phone. That we were both soaking wet, cold and sporting more bruises than I wanted to think about really didn't help either.
"Can you recall which of these paths will get us back to the car," Nightingale said, once he was satisfied that there was nothing left to show our confrontation with Pulver.
I looked around. The light from the single working torch didn't do much at all against the wet and windy evening and finally I had to admit defeat. "I don't know," I said eventually. "Sorry."
"It's not your fault, Peter. I've been in worse situations," Nightingale said, putting a hand on my arm. Then seeming to realise what he'd done pulled it back like he'd grabbed a hot pan. "I believe the path we took to get here went uphill, it should lead down on the way back."
Unfortunately of the paths leading away from where we were seemed to be flat, so in the end we just picked one and started walking.
After about half an hour I knew we'd picked the wrong path. We should have been back at the car park by that point, not surrounded by increasingly thick and creaking trees and things that scuttled and rustled unseen in the bushes around us.
"I've never liked pine woods," Nightingale said suddenly. "That's all that grew around Ettersberg, you know. They grew so close together they seemed to block out the sun. It was so dark and cold, I've never felt anything quite like it either before or since."
There had been something thin about his voice, and I should have probably asked if he wanted to talk about it. I knew Ettersberg was a pretty big deal for him and for all wizards who'd been around in the Forties, but I chickened out and said, "No sun to block out here, it's night time already."
"Yes. Yes, of course it is," he said, stopping and looking round at the trees that crowded in on every side of us. "I've got to remember that. I'm not there."
I wasn't sure he was entirely aware he'd said all of that aloud, and if the way he kept looking about us, head moving sharply round at any small sound, was anything to go by I guessed he was having a hard time remembering it. I ended up bumping into him a couple of times as he suddenly stopped walking. It was how I realised he shivering, as we ended up grabbing hold of each other to avoid ending up in a heap on the path. I hoped it was only the cold and damp, but I wouldn't have taken any bets on it.
I was shivering too, but that was mostly because my jeans were half soaked from where I'd been thrown into the bushes growing in the ditch at the side of the path. Wet demin is pretty damn unpleasant. My knee hurt as well and I suspected that I'd find a cracking bruise in the morning, but all in all it could have been a whole lot worse.
Fifteen minutes or so after our last collision I realised Nightingale had started limping as well. Not badly, just a small hitch in his step, but made me worry all the same. I wished I could say stop and rest, but we couldn't. So I kept close to him and felt rotten about making him walk. He didn't complain, but I was of the opinion that his leg could have fallen off and he still wouldn't have said anything. Even when he'd been recovering from being shot he'd never said when it was hurting or he felt awful and needed to rest. Which after the fight on the rooftop with Faceless had actually been a bit of an issue, as he'd all but collapsed from exhaustion by the time we'd got back to the Folly. I'd nearly ended up calling Dr Walid to make sure he'd not done himself any permanent damage.
We wandered round for a bit longer and I was serious beginning to think that we'd somehow managed to end up in some weird forrest dimension when the path suddenly dipped down through the pines and abruptly ended at the side of a narrow road. A road was good, I told myself, trying for a positive spin on our current situation. After all a road had to go somewhere, otherwise why build it? It was about the only positive thing though, as the drizzle that had started shortly before Pulver had shown up had decided to steadily increase until it had become a freezing wet torrent.
We'd been squelching along for about five minutes when we saw a flicker of light ahead further up the road and the rumble of an engine as a motorbike came towards us. I would have preferred a car. We might have been able to get a lift if they stopped long enough for us to show them our warrant cards and let them know we were police rather than some weirdo hitchhikers. Even a bike was better than nothing, as even though they couldn't give us a lift they still might be able to tell us where we were or make a phone call for us. Not that I had any idea who we could call. Walid was visiting his family up in Scotland, Lesley wasn't cleared to drive again yet and I doubted we'd ever live it down if we called Seawoll and told him we needed a police pick up because we'd lost our car because it was dark.
As the bike got closer I decided to wave my arms and hope they'd stop. It worked. The bike slowed down and pulled over next to us, its substantial engine still noisily ticking over. The person on the bike proved to be a young woman with a West Country accent and long blonde hair that poked out from under her helmet. She looked at us somewhat dubiously from behind her visor. "What happened to you two?"
She sounded slightly suspicious and honestly I could think of no good reason why she shouldn't be. I would have been suspicious if I'd seen us too. Honestly I was surprised that she'd stopped at all. Surprised, but bloody relieved.
"We parked our car and went for a walk," Nightingale said, somehow managing to sound almost like his usual cool, calm and collected self. "However, we appear to have lost track of where we are and where our car is."
She pointed back down the road the way she had come. "There's a village about half a mile or so that way. Peaslake. There's a nice little pub there, does cracking home cooked meals. And I'm totally not biased because my Mum works there." She laughed. "They do rooms if you can't find your car tonight. I wouldn't recommend wandering around the Hurtwood in the dark. There's enough places where there's a sheer drop, especially if you head over onto the Coldharbour road and round Windy Gap."
I smiled and nodded. I didn't have the faintest idea where any of those places were, but I was willing to take her word for it that we didn't want to be wandering around there in the dark.
"Thank you," Nightingale said. "It is very much appreciated."
"I hope you have a nice evening," she said, and then with a wave left us alone on the dark, wet road. "And next time, maybe consider booking a room."
"Did she just assume we were together?" Nightingale said once she'd disappeared into the night. He sounded genuinely confused as he added, "She didn't seem to be offended."
"A lot of young people these days aren't, I mean its been legal since their parents were little kids," I said. I felt kind of sorry for him. I mean if he was that way inclined, which I suspected he was, it must have been horrible growing and living in a world that hated you for how you felt.
Nightingale nodded, and then said nothing more about it. Which was I'd come to find how a lot of our conversations had ended recently.
"If its called the Slaughtered Lamb or the Prancing Pony I think we should keep walking," I said once we'd started walking again. Although I couldn't see him all that well I could tell Nightingale was giving me a baffled look, so I then spent the next few minutes explaining pop culture references. He didn't seem to be following it all that well, but he was apparently grateful of the distraction from the wet, cold night, so I kept talking.
Either we were walking very slowly or it was closer to a mile, but we were chilled to the bone when we finally saw the lights of the couple of dozen or so buildings that made up the heart of the village. The place was tiny, just a few houses clustered around a big white painted inn, an old village shop and war memorial that served as a mini roundabout for the junction of three roads that looked like they rarely got any traffic down them. There were probably more people living the tower block along with my Mum and Dad than there were in all of Peaslake.
"So what's the plan?" I asked, pausing before we went into the warmly lit pub. When he didn't answer I turned back to look at him. Which was a good thing as it turned out as I ended up having to put an arm about him as he swayed on his feet and made a not very coordinated grab for the door frame.
He blinked owlishly at me. "I'm really not feeling at my best, Peter. I'm not sure. I'm sorry."
His hand was like ice and he'd mostly stopped shivering, which my somewhat limited first aid skills told me wasn't a good thing. Getting him warm and dry was top priority, even over retrieving the Jag. I'd give him half an hour in the warm pub and if he wasn't looking or sounding any better I was going to call NHS direct and bug the hell out of them until I got an answer. That or call 999, which seemed like an overreaction which Nightingale wouldn't appreciate, but I could handle the idea of a grumpy Nightingale far better than one who was really sick because I'd not looked out for him.
The heating felt like it had been cranked up to full in the pub and I could have happily stood next to the radiator for the next hour or so. The woman on the front desk who I guessed dealt with anything that wasn't drinks orders was giving us a curious look. Yeah, I knew what she was thinking, no magic needed. Rich city bloke with his ethnic trophy boyfriend out for a dirty weekend in the country. It was what biker woman had no doubt assumed as well. It made more sense than England's last wizard and his apprentice who'd got lost after battling a seventeenth century magician who'd been trapped in a bottle after failing to take over the world with plague zombies. Thinking about it like that just about any explanation made more sense than the truth. The funny thing was the more it happened the less I minded, which confused the hell out of me, so I tried not to think about what that said about me.
She smiled as we made our way over to her. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
"I was wondering if you had any rooms for the night?" I had the feeling that this place was probably horribly expensive, but Nightingale had paid for everything else so far today. "We've misplaced our car, and I don't think we've got a chance of finding it until it gets light."
"I'm sorry to hear that," she said. She took the register out from under counter. "Both of our double rooms are currently let. We've got a twin room left, and I can ask Barry to move the beds together." She gave us an apologetic smile. "I don't want you two gents thinking that we've got anything again couples like yourselves. We can do without that kind of publicity."
"The twin room will be fine," I said, not wanting to argue that we weren't together like that. One twin room would be cheaper than two singles, I reasoned, and it would mean that I could keep an eye on Nightingale. He'd claim that he didn't, but I suspected he was feeling pretty awful since he'd let me do all the talking, either that or he thought it was funny to let me deal with the inevitable 'you're a couple' assumption. I was never sure whether he had a sense of humour or not. I'd eventually come down on the side of he did and on the rare occasions that he let it out it belonged to school kid. I mean who else would find it funny to conjure up a mini rain cloud and have it follow somebody?
The keys to the room clutched in my hand, we made our way up to our room. The room was at the top of the pub, accessed by a twisting wooden stair case that made me glad I wasn't trying to carry a suitcase up it. Nightingale just about made it upstairs without assistance and once we were in the room he sat down on the end of the bed nearest the radiator.
There was the issue of clothes. Namely we were soaked and had nothing to change into, and sitting around in wet jeans all night was horrible. The idea of seeing Nightingale wearing nothing at all didn't weird me out as much as I thought it should, which somehow made it even more awkward. It didn't make any sense, but so much in my life didn't any more I gave up wondering about it and started to take off my own soggy clothes and hang them over a radiator. Not all of them admittedly, as when it finally came down to it having Nightingale see me in anything less than pants and a t-shirt felt odd after all, like I wasn't ready to go there yet. Which raised more questions than in answered. I was pretty sure I wasn't ready to ask myself those particular questions and I knew I wasn't ready for the answers that would follow. I doubted Nightingale would be either and he'd had a whole lot more time and experience in thinking about that kind of stuff.
The room was en-suite and I could hear a nice, hot shower calling me, but I told Nightingale that he should use it first, because I'm nice like that and he still looked frozen. He'd made an attempt to get out of his wet clothes, and I couldn't miss the look his face as he tried to get out of the saturated suit jacket. Or how he'd stopped and pressed a hand to his shoulder, his eyes closed.
"Should I be asking the staff here where the nearest hospital is rather than what they've got for dinner?" I asked. I wasn't entirely serious, but I really did want to know that he was going to be okay before we got any more settled into the place.
"You really do over react sometimes, Peter," he said as he opened his eyes again. "You're nearly as bad as Abdul. It's nothing serious. I believe I landed on it when Pulver exploded."
By which he meant when I'd made Pulver explode. So I helped him out of the jacket, because it kind of felt like it was my fault his shoulder was playing up. He managed to get out of his shirt by himself and at that point I decided to give him as much privacy as the small room allowed by looking out of the window which had a view of not very much apart from trees and rain.
Once he was in the shower I hung up his clothes over the other radiator. It was a terrible way to dry a suit, but I doubted letting it sit around soaking wet would do it much good either. This way at least he'd have something dry to put on in the morning.
"How are you feeling?" I asked once he was out of the shower and wrapped in a towel and a duvet. He looked better than he had. Still absolutely knackered, but not like he was about fall over from exhaustion any more.
"Cold and a little foolish for not marking our route back to the car," Nightingale said, pulling the duvet tighter around himself. "However, I would count today as a success. The Pulver has been dealt with and nobody died."
Given our track record so far with Henry Pyke, Simone and her sisters and then with the Little Crocodiles and the Faceless Man, alive and not horribly injured was a resounding success. I supposed we had to get lucky occasionally.
Nightingale got the staff to agree to bring food up to our room while I was taking my turn at defrosting in the shower. Power showers really have to be up there in the top ten Twentieth Century inventions. Between the food, a couple of mugs of tea and the hot shower I was feeling a lot happier by the time my clothes were dry enough for me put back on. Nightingale looked better as well, still exhausted, but he'd stopped shivering and I actually believed him when he said all he needed was to rest.
It wasn't all that late in the evening and I didn't fancy sitting in the bar by myself or watching Nightingale sleep, as that was something that should be reserved for questionable romantic fiction, I decided I'd better do something useful. So after telling Nightingale what I was going to do, I called the AA. It took a bit of explaining and finally I dropped the hint that we were both police and had been working and would appreciate the help, rather than us being a pair of run of the mill idiots with no sense of direction. Eventually they sent somebody out to collect me and we drove round the back roads until we found the Jag.
It was fine, which was just as well as I didn't fancy telling Nightingale anything had happened to it because we'd picked the wrong path off the Hurtwood. After thanking the AA man, who seemed amused by the whole situation, I drove it back to the pub. I could live with being the subject of gossip until the guy had a more amusing story to tell.
It was cold in car and my clothes were still a little bit damp,so I didn't enjoy the drive at all. Which was a shame as I didn't get to drive the Jag anywhere near often enough for my liking. The narrow, unlit roads and the pouring rain had made me wish for the brightly lit, well signposted streets of London, and I was relieved when I was able to park it in the small car park at the side of the pub.
The long day was catching up with me by now and I was barely awake by the time I'd made my way back up the room. Nightingale was asleep having taken the bed by the radiator. Lying on his side, the duvet had slipped down a little and I could see the scar from where the bullet had exited through the back of his shoulder. It was a reminder of how close it had been, of how you could have as much magic as you like and something so bloody mundane as a bullet could end it all. I could also see that he was going to have some pretty spectacular bruises for a few days.
"Goodnight, sir," I said, and pulled up the edge of the duvet, covering him again. It felt weirdly domestic. Which was odd, because most of what we did was really if I thought about it. We lived in the same house, ate pretty much all our meals together and seemed to plan what we were going to do with our free time around each other. So I wasn't sure why this should be different. Maybe it was all the people today who'd thought we were a couple. There were worse things to be mistaken for and part of me actually found it kind of flattering. I'd noticed guys before, but mostly it had never been anything more than that.
I was too tired to think about what it all meant or at least that was my excuse, so I went to bed. In the morning we'd have to make an early start and drive back to the Folly. For now though it was best that we both got a good nights sleep, because who knew what would be waiting for us when we got back. Which was another worrying question.
Coppers are meant to have nasty suspicious minds and I couldn't help but wonder if we'd been got out of London for a reason. Consequently sleep took rather longer than I thought it would to come. But I totally didn't spend that time trying not to think about why somebody would want us gone by thinking about Nightingale instead. Totally.
The End.
Notes:
I've not yet decided whether they were got out of London for a reason or not. It all depends whether a plot for a sequel type fic comes to me.
The Surrey Hills area (Abinger Hammer, Shere, Peaslake, Leith Hill, the Hurtwood and Friday Street) that Peter and Nightingale find themselves is an area well know to me as I spent most weekends of my teenage years walking just about all the footpaths that cross them. The 'not quite a town' Cranleigh, Dunsfold with it Top Gear connection (The race track is at Dunsfold Aerodrome) and Dorking, of the five toed chicken fame, are also places that were frequently visited.
Pinecote cottage and Matthew Pulver are however made up for the this story.
The putting the clock back on the phone and then the phone doing it too is taken from something that happened to a friend who ended up turning up for a train an hour early.
You know how when you’re in a hurry to get somewhere suddenly everything that can go wrong immediately does. Well it decided right there and then to do so. We’d left Cranleigh with its odd mix of old country village charm and soulless commuter belt blandness and headed up the A281. We’d been making good time and I was looking forward to whatever Molly had made for us, when the traffic in front of us ground to a halt about two thirds of the way through Shalford.
Shalford looked like the sort of place that would have an amateur dramatics society, an active WI and where everybody was on the neighbourhood watch to keep tabs on their neighbours and complain about wind turbines and fracking rather than from any real risk of crime. It was probably a lovely place, but at the moment it was doing a good impression of a car park. It was a look that I associated with London during rush hour, not a smallish village on a Sunday afternoon.
Annoying as sitting in stationary traffic was it wouldn’t have been problem had Nightingale and I not overlooked one thing. Okay overlooked wasn't exactly the right word and I was willing to give Nightingale some slack on it as he was beginning to look knackered and had started every so often to rub the shoulder where he’d been shot little more than five months ago. He'd been doing alright lately, but I still worried sometimes that he was pushing himself too hard. The fight on the rooftop with Faceless really hadn't helped and he'd been exhausted by the time Simone and her sister had tragically finished our case for us. He looked out at the rapidly darkening sky and frowned, then said, "Peter, what time is it?"
I looked at my phone, momentarily confused at why was getting dark when it was only just gone three in the afternoon. I wondered for a moment if it was because London was so filled with artificial lighting that I'd assumed that the sun was setting well after five, then I realised what had happened.
"I assume from that look something isn't right," Nightingale said.
You can't easily kick yourself while sat in a car, but I really felt like I should. It was the last Sunday in October, the clocks had gone back. I had remembered for a change. That wasn't the problem. No, the problem was that my phone had helpfully put itself back an hour as well. So there we were stuck in traffic, with sunset little more than an hour away and no hope of getting to the Folly before our dodgy wizard in aa bottle did his thing.
The phone did manage to redeem itself a bit a minute or so later when, after finding there was no wifi signal secure or otherwise that I could hook up to, I decided to run up my phone bill by using it to get online. The unfortunate result was I discovered we were even more screwed than previously thought. There had been a crash where our road joined the A3100, so going through Guildford was right out. Which gave us two options. Turn around and try to join the A3 below Guildford and hope it was actually moving or take the next right, assuming anybody would let us, and cut across country and join the A24 at Dorking and head up to the circular car park also known as the M25. I gave Nightingale our options, which he looked far from happy about.
"Assuming that the time is actually just after four, we have approximately forty-five minutes until sunset," he said looking at the gloomy, rain filled sky. "We cannot possibly reach the Folly in that time, therefore we need to find somewhere remote. I had hoped to be able to reseal the bottle and avoid a confrontation, but that is no longer an option open to us. Should Pulver make an appearance I will need to deal with him without interruption."
I could already feel the vestigia attached to the bottle growing stronger, filling up the car with its mental bad smell of wet paper and pointy things. There was something sickly sweet with it now as well, like rotting meat. The whole carefully worded not a zombie thing from the internet sounded a whole lot more worrying now and I was suddenly glad that I'd not been able to get those chips.
Fifteen frustrating minutes later we'd finally managed to get the Jag a mile further up the Shalford road and made the right turn that would take us through the middle of nowhere on the way to Dorking. Dorking being a small market town whose one and only claim to fame was producing a breed of five toed chicken. Amazing what random facts you pick up while you're looking for anything weird about the area. How the people round here contained their excitement I didn't know.
"Do I want to know why it would be a bad thing not to have got this sorted out by the time it gets dark?" I asked as when Nightingale switched on the headlights. The narrow road with its thickly overhanging trees was like a tunnel and I wasn't sure if we were going to get where we wanted to go before the sun set. What if just being somewhere dark made it do its thing? Was some bizarre zombie-wizard-ghost combo going to pop out of the bottle like the worlds oddest genie and try to eat our brains?
"Why wouldn't you want to know?" Nightingale replied. His voice sounded strained and as much as I wanted to put it down to the fact that he didn't like driving down a road that was only about one and a half cars wide and with more blind corners than anywhere should rightfully have, I suspected that some of it was the fact his shoulder was hurting. Nobody drove with one arm held as still he was unless it was getting uncomfortable to move it.
"Ignorance is bliss if you're about to be eaten by zombies."
"Really, Peter. Zombies don't eat people," he said. Which was no comfort at all as it still left it open for there to be zombies who could kill you in nasty painful, chewy ways.
"If you want to be useful," he said sounding tense. "You could you get the map in the glove box and find somewhere with as few houses and people as possible."
Even the inside of the glovebox was finished to the same standard as the interior of the Jag. That was real quality, you just didn't get things like that on your every day car. The glovebox was of course tidy and along with the map really did contain a pair of leather driving gloves. Which made a change, as in my experience the glovebox tended to get used as a handy spot to put your empty crisp packets and sandwich wrappers. There was just enough light in the car to see the map was about twenty years out of date, but I didn't think the roads around here were likely to have changed much or possibly at all in the last couple of centuries. "Okay," I said, running a finger down the creased page. "We should nearly be at a village called Shere. We need to take a left after the church. It goes up onto a place called the Hurtwood. It looks pretty empty up there."
Nightingale nodded, all concentration on the road. I suspected he was already planning what he was going to do when and if Pulver appeared. At least I hoped he was, because I had no idea what you did with ghost wizards.
The back roads were deserted and we soon got to Shere. Shere seemed to be one of those villages that appeared on postcards to show foreign tourists what an English village looked like. A Medieval church, an old half-timbered inn and a little stream running through a ford in the heart of the village. There was no time to hang about however, and few minutes after leaving Shere we pulled up in a tiny gravelled car park in the middle of nowhere. It was obviously meant for hikers as the there was handy compass point, an information board telling us that on a clear day you could see the Shoreham Gap, and a little bin for dog mess.
There seemed to be nothing but gloomy woodland with a few pines standing higher than the rest on the next hill top. It didn't seem right that there could be somewhere so empty looking so close to London. London or at least the light pollution from it was visible as a dull orange glow on the northern horizon.
"We can't risk doing this in the car park," Nightingale said taking a couple of heavy duty torches from the boot of the Jag. He also took out his staff and a leather satchel which had been hidden under a few odds and ends. Okay, maybe not well hidden, but enough that you didn't see it right away.
We picked the widest of the tracks that left the car park and followed it into the woods. The path was sandy, proper fine, yellowish sand that half the beaches on the south coast would have loved to have had. Which made the dense pine trees all the more odd. They weren't Christmas tree type pines that get used for forestry plantations because they grow in a few years, they were Scots pines. It was amazing the the facts that you picked up at pub quizzes and still remembered a few years later.
The path eventually opened out into a clearing where it met four other similar looking paths. Nightingale looked around, torch swinging arcs of pale light against the scrubby bushes spread a metre or so back from the edge of the path and into the tree line. "Here will do, Peter. There's enough space."
"For what?"I asked, wondering just how big he expected the thing in the bottle to be.
"For the containment circle," he said. "This was covered in Grafton's guide to ceremonial magic. I thought you had completed that. I set it for you because had a very comprehensive over view of demon traps. After what Wheatcroft left for us in his flat I felt it necessary that you understand how and why things are made and most importantly how to deactivate them. Really Peter, I might not alway be there to help you."
He sounded worried more than angry, but even more than both of those he sounded tired. I wanted to be annoyed that he thought I wasn't studying as hard as I could or that I wasn't competent to do this, but the fact was the book had been almost terminally boring and after seeing what Faceless could do on the rooftop knew with a sick certainty that there was plenty of magical stuff out there that I was nowhere near ready to face. All the same, I have my pride, so I said, "I'd not realised that was what you were planning to do. Do you need me get anything to make the circle?"
"I will construct the circle," he replied. "There is a compass in the bag, I need you to mark out the cardinal points on the outer circle once it is drawn. And then you will need to get the bag of salt. The unopened one, if you please, and make an unbroken line following outer circle."
Using his staff, Nightingale drew a circle in the sand about three metres across and then another circle around it about half a metre out. There was magic going into the formation of the circle. I could feel it. This was hard core stuff and I wondered how far an apprentice normally was by the time they ended up doing stuff like this? Probably a lot further through than I was, but even that was okay, as it gave me a stupid warm feeling that Nightingale actually trusted me with stuff like this.
It didn't take long to mark out North, South, East and West on the circle Nightingale had drawn. Then holding the torch in one hand and the bag of salt in the other I tipped it in outer circle. It used pretty much all the bag, but salt is cheap and I got the feeling that this wasn't something that you wanted to skimp on for the sake of a few pence.
Nightingale had spent the time making a series of marks in the space between the two circles. It was too dark to see just what he was doing, but it had to be to prevent whatever came out of the bottle from crossing out into the wider world. I could feel the prickle of energy from it on my skin, the hairs rising on my arms and the back of my neck.
"What should I do now?" I asked. I knew Nightingale wouldn't set me anything he thought I wasn't able to do safely. Although that did mean I was getting the feeling thatI was mostly going to be standing around watching Nightingale do something scarily impressive. I doubted there was much that could get the better of Nightingale in a fair fight. I mean he'd blown up tanks with fireballs, I was proficient in making fruit explode. Great if our wizard-zombie-ghost in a bottle had a terrible apple allergy, but not so much otherwise.
Nightingale walked as close as he could to the edge of the inner circle without breaking it. "You are to wait here for me finish this." His hand moved forwards like he was going to put in on my arm and then he pulled it back. Although whether that was because he'd thought better of if or whether it was to do with the circle I didn't know. "Peter, promise me whatever happens, whatever you see, you won't cross into the circle under any circumstances."
"What if..." I began. I wasn't sure where I was going with it, okay I was, but I didn't want to think about anything happening to him and me before forced to stand by totally unable to help.
"The circle will prevent anything magical from escaping it. I will neutralise it once the threat has been dealt with. Until then Peter, please do not do anything that might disrupt the circle." He turned away from me and then said, "In the very unlikely event anything untoward were to happen to me the circle is designed to destroy whatever is inside should I fail to reinforce the wards every ten minutes."
Now that was pretty damn terrifying. I mean what if he was knocked out or something? Could he get killed by his own spell? It didn't look like Nightingale was in the mood to talk about it right now, and I reluctantly came to the conclusion that now wasn't the time to ask about it. Later, when we were both okay and on the way back to London in the Jag with the air con turned up as high as it would go to dry us out from the drizzle that had begun to fall, I'd ask him. Who knows? I might even get an answer.
I wasn't sure what I expected to happen once Nightingale was ready to deal with the bottle. Him smashing the top off it using his staff wasn't it. It was anti-climactic really as absolutely nothing happened. Even Nightingale looked taken aback by that and he prodded the broken glass with the staff.
"Is it empt..." I began, then I saw thin tendrils of what looked like oily smoke starting to curl from the shattered neck of the bottle.
"I believe that answers your question," Nightingale replied with wry amusement. He raised his staff, holding it across himself. "Now stay back. I really can't have the distraction of worrying about you while I do this."
I hadn't really seen Nightingale use his staff before. I knew the little he'd told me about it, that it was kind of like a magic storage battery. Which was probably necessary for something like this as doing this sort of magic without a store to draw on would otherwise probably turn your brain to irreparable mush.
The smoke had quickly formed into a human-like shape and was now rapidly gaining enough definition for it to become something recognisably a person. Nightingale didn't make any kind of move to do anything while Pulver solidified into the most real looking ghost I'd seen. Excluding Henry Pyke, of course, but Pyke had been a special case. His long robe like coat, flapped about him, which when combined with his thin face and a roman nose Julius Ceaser would have been envious of meant he looked like a great crow. Or rather a giant crow in a wig, as he'd got one of those curly shoulder length things like the statue of Newton had back in the Folly.
Pulver also appeared to have a staff of his own. I wasn't sure if a ghost staff was likely to be more of less dangerous than the real thing. I didn't particularly want to find out by way of a practical demonstration either, but it looked like that was what was going to happen, as he'd raised it in a mirror image of what Nightingale had done.
Illuminated by the light from my torch I watched as they began their tense face off. Circling each other, they both carefully avoided the lines in the sand. If either of them were talking I had no idea what they were saying as no sound escaped the circle. I could see Nightingale's mouth moving, forma being combined to do...well I wasn't sure what, but it whatever it was it was something totally beyond my abilities as yet. I could feel the power of it a few metres away, like static electricity building up before a storm. The circle was dampening how much I felt outside of it, the power contain with in it, must have been incredible and I actually felt rather disappointed that I couldn't get closer to the action and feel just how powerful Nightingale was. Which sounded all sorts of wrong when it was put like that, but I couldn't think of any other way of describing it.
Pulver was clearly reluctant to make a move and had lowered one of his arms from the defensive position that it had been in. I was beginning to think that Nightingale was about to quickly and quietly zap him out of existence when I saw a glint of something in Pulver's hand. The knife had obviously been concealed inside the sleeve of his frock coat and was still mostly hidden by his hand and sleeve. From where Nightingale was I doubted that he could see it. Was bringing a knife to a magical duel the equivalent to bringing a gun to a knife fight? or was it like facing up to nuke armed with a rock? Did Pulver have the upper hand in the fight? or was he about to try something desperate because Nightingale completely outclassed him?
In the end I decided that whatever Pulver's reasoning was it didn't actually matter. All that mattered was the fact that he intended to hurt Nightingale. I had no idea whether a ghost knife could actually hurt you and it if it did whether it would cause damage like a real knife or if it would do something else. Either way I doubted it would be good for Nightingale to get stabbed with it. The question was how to stop Pulver without distracting Nightingale or breaking the circle.
So after a quick look around I decided to go with the tried and tested method of chucking something at the other guy's head. Crude perhaps, but pretty much always effective. The only thing in the circle that I could pick up using Aer was the remains of the witch bottle.
Pulver had edged closer and I knew that he was getting ready to make his move so I picked up the remains of the witch bottle and threw it at Pulver.
It certainly distracted him. As the moment it hit him there was a flash of light and then it was like being in an explosion. Only there wasn't any noise or heat. There was force though, like being hit with a massive gust of wind and I felt myself being pushed back and then lifted off my feet.
I landed about five metres back from where I'd been. Lying still, I tried to work out if I'd managed to do any more damage to myself than a few bruises. I didn't feel like it and I took a moment to be thankful that I'd been thrown into the short scrubby berry bushes that lined the side of the path, rather than into the massive pine tree less than a metre to my right.
Why did so many of the things I did with magic end up with things going boom? I wondered as I got to my feet. I expected Nightingale would have a thing or two to say about what I'd just done. It seemed to have worked however, so that was in my mind a win.
Nightingale had been thrown back out of the circle and was just getting to his knees as I hurried over to him.
"Whatever were you thinking?" he snapped before I could ask him if he was okay. "Or is just the case of you not thinking at all? You could have been killed."
"Pulver had a knife," I said, realising that he'd probably not seen it. It had been mostly behind Pulver's back after all. "He is gone, isn't he?" I asked, really not wanting there to be a round two. Nightingale wasn't in any shape for it and I wasn't sure I could take on anything that could survive being so thoroughly exploded.
"I didn't see it. I should thank you," Nightingale said sounding surprised and shaken now. "It was still a very foolish thing to do, Peter, you could have seriously hurt or even killed." He looked me up and down, before finally asking, "You are alright, aren't you?"
"Nothing a nice long soak in hot bath won't fix," I said and then offered him a hand up as he was still sitting on the ground. "Are you okay?"
There was definite noise of discomfort as Nightingale got to his feet. Pressing a hand to the shoulder, he gave it a couple of tentative movements, before finally saying, "I will be. Just a little stiff from an awkward landing, that's all."
I wasn't a hundred percent sure I believed him. Nightingale didn't seem to get the idea of taking it easy for a while and I suspected that most people wouldn't have even been back at work yet, never mind driving around the countryside and getting thrown through the air by exploding ghosts. I also suspected that he'd still be claiming he was fine when we got back to the car, but the Jag for all its vintage loveliness didn't have power assisted steering and that had to be hell with his shoulder being as sore as it plainly was. I hoped that he'd let me drive it back, not just because I wanted a chance to show him that I could drive it without running it into a tree, but because I wasn't convinced that he was in any shape to be behind the wheel at the moment.
We spent a couple of minutes picking up the fragments of glass from the bottle, and then while Nightingale erased what was left of the circle by scuffing it out with his shoe and with the end of his staff, I decided to check my phone. I had switched it off to avoid it getting zapped. You learn handy things like that when you're an apprentice wizard. Unfortunately when Pulver had gone kaboom and I'd nearly ended up in a tree my phone hadn't been so lucky. It was now soaking wet from where it had landed in a puddle and sporting massive crack in the screen. I had a go at switching it on, but all it did was make a brief whistling noise and then stopped working entirely. Phone number four bites the dust. From now on I decided, I was just going to buy the cheapest, most basic thing I could for everyday use. It getting too expensive otherwise.
Not that that would help us right now or changed the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere in the dark, without a map or a working phone. That we were both soaking wet, cold and sporting more bruises than I wanted to think about really didn't help either.
"Can you recall which of these paths will get us back to the car," Nightingale said, once he was satisfied that there was nothing left to show our confrontation with Pulver.
I looked around. The light from the single working torch didn't do much at all against the wet and windy evening and finally I had to admit defeat. "I don't know," I said eventually. "Sorry."
"It's not your fault, Peter. I've been in worse situations," Nightingale said, putting a hand on my arm. Then seeming to realise what he'd done pulled it back like he'd grabbed a hot pan. "I believe the path we took to get here went uphill, it should lead down on the way back."
Unfortunately of the paths leading away from where we were seemed to be flat, so in the end we just picked one and started walking.
After about half an hour I knew we'd picked the wrong path. We should have been back at the car park by that point, not surrounded by increasingly thick and creaking trees and things that scuttled and rustled unseen in the bushes around us.
"I've never liked pine woods," Nightingale said suddenly. "That's all that grew around Ettersberg, you know. They grew so close together they seemed to block out the sun. It was so dark and cold, I've never felt anything quite like it either before or since."
There had been something thin about his voice, and I should have probably asked if he wanted to talk about it. I knew Ettersberg was a pretty big deal for him and for all wizards who'd been around in the Forties, but I chickened out and said, "No sun to block out here, it's night time already."
"Yes. Yes, of course it is," he said, stopping and looking round at the trees that crowded in on every side of us. "I've got to remember that. I'm not there."
I wasn't sure he was entirely aware he'd said all of that aloud, and if the way he kept looking about us, head moving sharply round at any small sound, was anything to go by I guessed he was having a hard time remembering it. I ended up bumping into him a couple of times as he suddenly stopped walking. It was how I realised he shivering, as we ended up grabbing hold of each other to avoid ending up in a heap on the path. I hoped it was only the cold and damp, but I wouldn't have taken any bets on it.
I was shivering too, but that was mostly because my jeans were half soaked from where I'd been thrown into the bushes growing in the ditch at the side of the path. Wet demin is pretty damn unpleasant. My knee hurt as well and I suspected that I'd find a cracking bruise in the morning, but all in all it could have been a whole lot worse.
Fifteen minutes or so after our last collision I realised Nightingale had started limping as well. Not badly, just a small hitch in his step, but made me worry all the same. I wished I could say stop and rest, but we couldn't. So I kept close to him and felt rotten about making him walk. He didn't complain, but I was of the opinion that his leg could have fallen off and he still wouldn't have said anything. Even when he'd been recovering from being shot he'd never said when it was hurting or he felt awful and needed to rest. Which after the fight on the rooftop with Faceless had actually been a bit of an issue, as he'd all but collapsed from exhaustion by the time we'd got back to the Folly. I'd nearly ended up calling Dr Walid to make sure he'd not done himself any permanent damage.
We wandered round for a bit longer and I was serious beginning to think that we'd somehow managed to end up in some weird forrest dimension when the path suddenly dipped down through the pines and abruptly ended at the side of a narrow road. A road was good, I told myself, trying for a positive spin on our current situation. After all a road had to go somewhere, otherwise why build it? It was about the only positive thing though, as the drizzle that had started shortly before Pulver had shown up had decided to steadily increase until it had become a freezing wet torrent.
We'd been squelching along for about five minutes when we saw a flicker of light ahead further up the road and the rumble of an engine as a motorbike came towards us. I would have preferred a car. We might have been able to get a lift if they stopped long enough for us to show them our warrant cards and let them know we were police rather than some weirdo hitchhikers. Even a bike was better than nothing, as even though they couldn't give us a lift they still might be able to tell us where we were or make a phone call for us. Not that I had any idea who we could call. Walid was visiting his family up in Scotland, Lesley wasn't cleared to drive again yet and I doubted we'd ever live it down if we called Seawoll and told him we needed a police pick up because we'd lost our car because it was dark.
As the bike got closer I decided to wave my arms and hope they'd stop. It worked. The bike slowed down and pulled over next to us, its substantial engine still noisily ticking over. The person on the bike proved to be a young woman with a West Country accent and long blonde hair that poked out from under her helmet. She looked at us somewhat dubiously from behind her visor. "What happened to you two?"
She sounded slightly suspicious and honestly I could think of no good reason why she shouldn't be. I would have been suspicious if I'd seen us too. Honestly I was surprised that she'd stopped at all. Surprised, but bloody relieved.
"We parked our car and went for a walk," Nightingale said, somehow managing to sound almost like his usual cool, calm and collected self. "However, we appear to have lost track of where we are and where our car is."
She pointed back down the road the way she had come. "There's a village about half a mile or so that way. Peaslake. There's a nice little pub there, does cracking home cooked meals. And I'm totally not biased because my Mum works there." She laughed. "They do rooms if you can't find your car tonight. I wouldn't recommend wandering around the Hurtwood in the dark. There's enough places where there's a sheer drop, especially if you head over onto the Coldharbour road and round Windy Gap."
I smiled and nodded. I didn't have the faintest idea where any of those places were, but I was willing to take her word for it that we didn't want to be wandering around there in the dark.
"Thank you," Nightingale said. "It is very much appreciated."
"I hope you have a nice evening," she said, and then with a wave left us alone on the dark, wet road. "And next time, maybe consider booking a room."
"Did she just assume we were together?" Nightingale said once she'd disappeared into the night. He sounded genuinely confused as he added, "She didn't seem to be offended."
"A lot of young people these days aren't, I mean its been legal since their parents were little kids," I said. I felt kind of sorry for him. I mean if he was that way inclined, which I suspected he was, it must have been horrible growing and living in a world that hated you for how you felt.
Nightingale nodded, and then said nothing more about it. Which was I'd come to find how a lot of our conversations had ended recently.
"If its called the Slaughtered Lamb or the Prancing Pony I think we should keep walking," I said once we'd started walking again. Although I couldn't see him all that well I could tell Nightingale was giving me a baffled look, so I then spent the next few minutes explaining pop culture references. He didn't seem to be following it all that well, but he was apparently grateful of the distraction from the wet, cold night, so I kept talking.
Either we were walking very slowly or it was closer to a mile, but we were chilled to the bone when we finally saw the lights of the couple of dozen or so buildings that made up the heart of the village. The place was tiny, just a few houses clustered around a big white painted inn, an old village shop and war memorial that served as a mini roundabout for the junction of three roads that looked like they rarely got any traffic down them. There were probably more people living the tower block along with my Mum and Dad than there were in all of Peaslake.
"So what's the plan?" I asked, pausing before we went into the warmly lit pub. When he didn't answer I turned back to look at him. Which was a good thing as it turned out as I ended up having to put an arm about him as he swayed on his feet and made a not very coordinated grab for the door frame.
He blinked owlishly at me. "I'm really not feeling at my best, Peter. I'm not sure. I'm sorry."
His hand was like ice and he'd mostly stopped shivering, which my somewhat limited first aid skills told me wasn't a good thing. Getting him warm and dry was top priority, even over retrieving the Jag. I'd give him half an hour in the warm pub and if he wasn't looking or sounding any better I was going to call NHS direct and bug the hell out of them until I got an answer. That or call 999, which seemed like an overreaction which Nightingale wouldn't appreciate, but I could handle the idea of a grumpy Nightingale far better than one who was really sick because I'd not looked out for him.
The heating felt like it had been cranked up to full in the pub and I could have happily stood next to the radiator for the next hour or so. The woman on the front desk who I guessed dealt with anything that wasn't drinks orders was giving us a curious look. Yeah, I knew what she was thinking, no magic needed. Rich city bloke with his ethnic trophy boyfriend out for a dirty weekend in the country. It was what biker woman had no doubt assumed as well. It made more sense than England's last wizard and his apprentice who'd got lost after battling a seventeenth century magician who'd been trapped in a bottle after failing to take over the world with plague zombies. Thinking about it like that just about any explanation made more sense than the truth. The funny thing was the more it happened the less I minded, which confused the hell out of me, so I tried not to think about what that said about me.
She smiled as we made our way over to her. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
"I was wondering if you had any rooms for the night?" I had the feeling that this place was probably horribly expensive, but Nightingale had paid for everything else so far today. "We've misplaced our car, and I don't think we've got a chance of finding it until it gets light."
"I'm sorry to hear that," she said. She took the register out from under counter. "Both of our double rooms are currently let. We've got a twin room left, and I can ask Barry to move the beds together." She gave us an apologetic smile. "I don't want you two gents thinking that we've got anything again couples like yourselves. We can do without that kind of publicity."
"The twin room will be fine," I said, not wanting to argue that we weren't together like that. One twin room would be cheaper than two singles, I reasoned, and it would mean that I could keep an eye on Nightingale. He'd claim that he didn't, but I suspected he was feeling pretty awful since he'd let me do all the talking, either that or he thought it was funny to let me deal with the inevitable 'you're a couple' assumption. I was never sure whether he had a sense of humour or not. I'd eventually come down on the side of he did and on the rare occasions that he let it out it belonged to school kid. I mean who else would find it funny to conjure up a mini rain cloud and have it follow somebody?
The keys to the room clutched in my hand, we made our way up to our room. The room was at the top of the pub, accessed by a twisting wooden stair case that made me glad I wasn't trying to carry a suitcase up it. Nightingale just about made it upstairs without assistance and once we were in the room he sat down on the end of the bed nearest the radiator.
There was the issue of clothes. Namely we were soaked and had nothing to change into, and sitting around in wet jeans all night was horrible. The idea of seeing Nightingale wearing nothing at all didn't weird me out as much as I thought it should, which somehow made it even more awkward. It didn't make any sense, but so much in my life didn't any more I gave up wondering about it and started to take off my own soggy clothes and hang them over a radiator. Not all of them admittedly, as when it finally came down to it having Nightingale see me in anything less than pants and a t-shirt felt odd after all, like I wasn't ready to go there yet. Which raised more questions than in answered. I was pretty sure I wasn't ready to ask myself those particular questions and I knew I wasn't ready for the answers that would follow. I doubted Nightingale would be either and he'd had a whole lot more time and experience in thinking about that kind of stuff.
The room was en-suite and I could hear a nice, hot shower calling me, but I told Nightingale that he should use it first, because I'm nice like that and he still looked frozen. He'd made an attempt to get out of his wet clothes, and I couldn't miss the look his face as he tried to get out of the saturated suit jacket. Or how he'd stopped and pressed a hand to his shoulder, his eyes closed.
"Should I be asking the staff here where the nearest hospital is rather than what they've got for dinner?" I asked. I wasn't entirely serious, but I really did want to know that he was going to be okay before we got any more settled into the place.
"You really do over react sometimes, Peter," he said as he opened his eyes again. "You're nearly as bad as Abdul. It's nothing serious. I believe I landed on it when Pulver exploded."
By which he meant when I'd made Pulver explode. So I helped him out of the jacket, because it kind of felt like it was my fault his shoulder was playing up. He managed to get out of his shirt by himself and at that point I decided to give him as much privacy as the small room allowed by looking out of the window which had a view of not very much apart from trees and rain.
Once he was in the shower I hung up his clothes over the other radiator. It was a terrible way to dry a suit, but I doubted letting it sit around soaking wet would do it much good either. This way at least he'd have something dry to put on in the morning.
"How are you feeling?" I asked once he was out of the shower and wrapped in a towel and a duvet. He looked better than he had. Still absolutely knackered, but not like he was about fall over from exhaustion any more.
"Cold and a little foolish for not marking our route back to the car," Nightingale said, pulling the duvet tighter around himself. "However, I would count today as a success. The Pulver has been dealt with and nobody died."
Given our track record so far with Henry Pyke, Simone and her sisters and then with the Little Crocodiles and the Faceless Man, alive and not horribly injured was a resounding success. I supposed we had to get lucky occasionally.
Nightingale got the staff to agree to bring food up to our room while I was taking my turn at defrosting in the shower. Power showers really have to be up there in the top ten Twentieth Century inventions. Between the food, a couple of mugs of tea and the hot shower I was feeling a lot happier by the time my clothes were dry enough for me put back on. Nightingale looked better as well, still exhausted, but he'd stopped shivering and I actually believed him when he said all he needed was to rest.
It wasn't all that late in the evening and I didn't fancy sitting in the bar by myself or watching Nightingale sleep, as that was something that should be reserved for questionable romantic fiction, I decided I'd better do something useful. So after telling Nightingale what I was going to do, I called the AA. It took a bit of explaining and finally I dropped the hint that we were both police and had been working and would appreciate the help, rather than us being a pair of run of the mill idiots with no sense of direction. Eventually they sent somebody out to collect me and we drove round the back roads until we found the Jag.
It was fine, which was just as well as I didn't fancy telling Nightingale anything had happened to it because we'd picked the wrong path off the Hurtwood. After thanking the AA man, who seemed amused by the whole situation, I drove it back to the pub. I could live with being the subject of gossip until the guy had a more amusing story to tell.
It was cold in car and my clothes were still a little bit damp,so I didn't enjoy the drive at all. Which was a shame as I didn't get to drive the Jag anywhere near often enough for my liking. The narrow, unlit roads and the pouring rain had made me wish for the brightly lit, well signposted streets of London, and I was relieved when I was able to park it in the small car park at the side of the pub.
The long day was catching up with me by now and I was barely awake by the time I'd made my way back up the room. Nightingale was asleep having taken the bed by the radiator. Lying on his side, the duvet had slipped down a little and I could see the scar from where the bullet had exited through the back of his shoulder. It was a reminder of how close it had been, of how you could have as much magic as you like and something so bloody mundane as a bullet could end it all. I could also see that he was going to have some pretty spectacular bruises for a few days.
"Goodnight, sir," I said, and pulled up the edge of the duvet, covering him again. It felt weirdly domestic. Which was odd, because most of what we did was really if I thought about it. We lived in the same house, ate pretty much all our meals together and seemed to plan what we were going to do with our free time around each other. So I wasn't sure why this should be different. Maybe it was all the people today who'd thought we were a couple. There were worse things to be mistaken for and part of me actually found it kind of flattering. I'd noticed guys before, but mostly it had never been anything more than that.
I was too tired to think about what it all meant or at least that was my excuse, so I went to bed. In the morning we'd have to make an early start and drive back to the Folly. For now though it was best that we both got a good nights sleep, because who knew what would be waiting for us when we got back. Which was another worrying question.
Coppers are meant to have nasty suspicious minds and I couldn't help but wonder if we'd been got out of London for a reason. Consequently sleep took rather longer than I thought it would to come. But I totally didn't spend that time trying not to think about why somebody would want us gone by thinking about Nightingale instead. Totally.
The End.
Notes:
I've not yet decided whether they were got out of London for a reason or not. It all depends whether a plot for a sequel type fic comes to me.
The Surrey Hills area (Abinger Hammer, Shere, Peaslake, Leith Hill, the Hurtwood and Friday Street) that Peter and Nightingale find themselves is an area well know to me as I spent most weekends of my teenage years walking just about all the footpaths that cross them. The 'not quite a town' Cranleigh, Dunsfold with it Top Gear connection (The race track is at Dunsfold Aerodrome) and Dorking, of the five toed chicken fame, are also places that were frequently visited.
Pinecote cottage and Matthew Pulver are however made up for the this story.
The putting the clock back on the phone and then the phone doing it too is taken from something that happened to a friend who ended up turning up for a train an hour early.