What Abigail Did Tha Summer, Ben Aaronovitch [if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt] 📗

forward, threading between the scattered bodies. I follow her and, as we walk deeper into the meadow, I feel the quality of the air shift around me. As we approach the far end, the colour of the sunlight deepens and thistledown swirls in a breeze off the pond that smells of the sea – which is pretty effing unlikely, given the nearest proper seaside is fifty kilometres away.

At the end of the meadow a picnic has been laid on a red and white checked cloth and a group of women lounge around, drinking white wine coolers. At their centre is a broad-shouldered and dark-skinned black woman. She is wearing an expensive blue tankini with a halter top that shows off her broad shoulders and muscled arms and legs. Her hair is shaved down to a shadow, her eyes are black, her nose is flatter than my dad’s and when she sees me her mouth stretches into a Cheshire cat grin.

‘Abigail,’ she says, and beneath her voice is the roar of the printing press and the crackle of telegraph wires. This is the spirit of the River Fleet that rises in the heights of Hampstead and Highgate, then feeds the ponds before rushing underground beneath the Farringdon Road and joining her mother at Blackfriars. The great mechanical presses that once thundered out the news and gossip may have gone from her valley, but the spirit remains.

‘What brings you to my court?’ she asks, and her words draw me closer with promises of secrets and gossip, of witty conversation and smoky after-hours clubs. This is the seducere, also called the glamour, and these supernatural types like to try it when they meet you. It’s a test. But that’s okay, ’cause I’ve always smashed it at tests.

I’ve got my hands on my hips and my face set in a way that is pure my mum when someone from the council, or the school or the hospital, is griefing her.

‘I’ve got some questions,’ I say.

A woman in a pink bikini next to Fleet opens her mouth and laughs. She is long and thin and so pale she’s almost blue. She has a pointy chin, a snub nose and violet eyes. Her hair is swept back and up and is as white and fluffy as the thistledown blowing off the pond.

‘This is the cousin, right?’ she says, uncoiling from the ground, head tilted to the side as she sways in my direction. ‘Ghost hunter, fox whisperer, troublemaker.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, trying not to shake. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Thistle,’ she says with her face right in mine. ‘Dancer, shaker, swimmer – Riverwife.’

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath through her nose like I’m something tasty. She opens her eyes and circles around me, but I’m not moving. I know better, I’ve read books – Thistle is fae and the fae are like cats. They like to play games.

‘Not yet taken up the power,’ she breathes in my ear. ‘Why not?’

‘I can wait,’ I say.

‘Liar,’ she whispers in my other ear. ‘But wise to wait.’

‘Leave the poor girl alone,’ says Fleet, and pats the ground by her side. ‘Sit.’

The roar and oil stink of the printing press is all around me, and around its edges like a cloud are the ballad sheets, pamphlets, flyers, earworms, slogans, memes, likes, dislikes, follows and friends. This is the seducere again and it pulls at me like the sound of my mother’s voice.

But I can ignore my mum when I have to, and so I stay where I am and count to ten – slowly.

Thistle laughs with a sound of little bells and Fleet narrows her eyes at me.

‘All right, girl. You’re a badass,’ she says as Thistle slides down to wrap herself around her back, one arm draped comfortably over her shoulder. ‘But I’m not standing up, so it’s sit down or go home.’

11 This is another import from American English and means rich and/or pretentious. Derived, it seems, from the word bourgeoise.

12 According to my great-niece this means scared or possibly shaken up.

16

A Localised Heat Differential

I am sitting right in the middle of the Summer Court of the Goddess of the River Fleet. Or I am sitting down to a picnic with a bunch of women in the sunbathing meadow of the Kenwood Ladies’ Bathing Pond.

Maybe I’m doing both – sometimes it’s hard to tell.

‘Bubbly?’ asks Fleet, holding out a fluted wineglass full of champagne. I know it’s champagne because I can smell the alcohol. Thistle is leaning against Fleet’s back, her chin resting on Fleet’s shoulder – watching me, her eyes bright.

‘No, thank you,’ I say in my mum’s posh voice – the one she uses on the telephone to the hospital.

‘There’s no obligation,’ says Fleet. ‘You may eat and drink at my table without fear.’

‘No, thank you,’ I say.

‘Something else?’ says Thistle. ‘A cordial? Dewdrop, cowslip – elderflower?’

‘No, thank you,’ I say. Because not only don’t I take chances – but, dewdrop? Seriously?

Now that I’ve got used to Fleet and Thistle, I start to notice the rest of the crew. They’re whiter than I expected and most of them are what my dad calls eiwashi, which is a Themne word that means size zero skinny. A lot of them I reckon are part fae, but Peter says we’ve got to be careful about making assumptions because people come in all shapes and sizes, anyway. And thinking you know what somebody is is worse than not knowing anything at all.

‘So, what do you want, Troublemaker?’ says Thistle.

‘To make trouble, perhaps?’ says Fleet.

‘I want to know what’s going on,’ I say.

‘In general, or could you localise it a tiny bit?’ says Fleet.

‘The missing kids,’ I say, and Fleet frowns.

‘As I understand it, there aren’t any,’ she says. ‘Has that changed?’

‘Something is recruiting teenagers,’ I say. ‘Something weird.’

‘What does the Nightingale say?’ she asks. And when I don’t say nothing she draws the right conclusion. ‘Don’t you think you should tell him?’ she asks.

‘When I have something to