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

we never get to find out what she is afraid of because Simon’s mum turns on her. Which is a bit of a relief for me – I can tell you.

‘Do you like your current job?’ Simon’s mum asks her. ‘Would you like to continue in it?’

DC Jonquiere glances at me over Simon’s mum’s shoulder and I give her a friendly smile to show it’s all right. She’s obviously making a rapid risk/benefit assessment, and then decides that I ain’t worth her career. She leaves. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but for now I just file her name away for later consideration because Simon’s mum has turned back to me. I reckon I’ve got maybe three sentences to sort her out.

‘I know you’ve looked up Nightingale by now,’ I say. ‘And Peter Grant and the Folly. So you know magic is real.’

‘I know the official position,’ she says.

‘So you know what a genius loci is,’ I say, and she nods. ‘Well, there’s one in that house and it can make pocket dimensions and put stuff in them that it wants to keep.’

‘Pocket dimensions?’

‘It’s probably more complicated than that,’ I say. ‘So when the Feds search the house, the kids are in there. Only sort of sideways – just out of reach. Do you get me?’

‘Why shouldn’t I just bring in Nightingale right now?’ she asks. ‘Surely he’s more experienced than you.’

‘Because I’m the only one that can get Simon out of that house. And if Nightingale or Peter find out, they won’t let me go back in.’

She’s not stupid. She wants to know why it has to be me, so I tell her. She doesn’t like the explanation, but she can see the logic the same as I can. House collects children – no adults allowed. She’s frowning at me and suddenly I think that maybe we’re the same – we both see the world the same way.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘What do you need from me?’

‘You’re a spy, right?’

Simon’s mum is too cool to give anything away, even when she’s sick with worry, which to me just means she’s a good spy.

‘I’m a civil servant,’ she says.

‘So you can get information, right?’

‘What sort of information?’

‘Births, deaths, Land Registry, stuff from old newspapers – that sort of thing.’

‘What do you need it for?’

‘Rescuing Simon and Indigo,’ I say, and remember something Peter always says. You make a plan without intelligence – you might as well not have a plan at all.

Simon’s mum snorts – it’s almost a laugh.

‘Is that it?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I say. ‘You’ve got to get me out of here before Lady Fed calls Nightingale in herself or, worse, my mum.’

‘Okay.’

‘And I need some stuff,’ I say.

‘What kind of stuff?’

I tell her and she nods at each point and it’s obvious she understands the logic because she doesn’t ask rubbish questions. I realise I like her more than I thought, and a little treacherous part of me wishes she was my mum – or at least like an aunty or something.

Yeah, an aunty, the cool aunty – that way, I’d still get to be me and get all the cool stuff.

‘You can’t tell anyone you’re helping me,’ I say, and she gives me a funny look like she’s annoyed and amused at the same time. ‘If Nightingale or Peter find out you helped me get back inside, they’ll be seriously vexed.’

‘Let me worry about that,’ says Simon’s mum.

32

Going Equipped

I’m inside Simon’s pop-up tent in his back garden, briefing Lucifer. Simon’s mum walked me out of Holmes Road and I came here while she got on with her jobs. Lucifer is fidgeting, which is bare wavy for her and a sign that she’s not taking Indigo’s loss at all well.

‘Nobody’s come out since I went in, right?’

‘Not that we know of,’ she says.

According to Simon’s mum, some of the kids that had ‘returned home’ had gone missing again and then turned up again. I reckoned that a lot of the kids, Natali, Jessica, Nerd Boy and the rest, were only being possessed puppets part-time. Or at least part-time until now, because Simon’s mum said that Natali was missing again and had been overnight.

‘I think we set something off,’ I say. ‘I think it’s getting stronger.’

‘You say “we” but you mean “you”,’ says Lucifer.

‘Say it’s my fault if it makes you feel better,’ I say.

‘It definitely does.’

‘But I’m going to fix it for cert,’ I say. ‘I’m going to go in there and get Indigo, Simon and all the kids out.’

‘How?’ asks Lucifer, and I tell her.

‘Is this wise?’ she asks.

‘How should I know?’ I say. ‘You guys got all the wisdom.’

*

I have a nap and wake up to find Simon’s mum squatting in the doorway of the tent. Sugar Niner is curled up on my legs and Lucifer is pretending to be a cushion by my head. I watch as Simon’s mum’s eyes slide from one fox to the other, and then to me. I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t. Instead she crooks her finger at me and beckons me out.

It’s early evening and the Earth has turned so that half the garden is shadow and Simon’s climbing tree is lit up green and gold. I do some stretches while Simon’s mum briefs me on the house and its owners. The cuts on my arm ache, worse than when I first made them. My upper arm feels hot, swollen and constricted by the bandages the police doctor put on at Holmes Road.

‘They’re an eclectic bunch,’ says Simon’s mum. ‘Working backwards – the current owner is an offshore property company acting for Chinese investors. They bought it two years ago from Jan and Helena Dvorˇák, who inherited it from their parents Julias and Grace Dvorˇák.’

I remembered being Grace and carrying the bowling ball that must have been one of the kids. There are fragments of somebody else’s memories still in my mind.

‘He was a pilot in the war – weren’t he?’ I ask.

‘Both of