#couldn't get FV yet? maybe do this here instead

[weepylucifer]

Let’s Go in the Garden - Ch. 11

David makes a mistake. Thomas makes an entrance. Peter deescalates.

The theatre was dark. The sun was fairly well set by now, and the streetlamps were flickering to life. The heat was easing up by increments, the air already less sweltering and humid than it had been all day. David popped round to the back entrance, as agreed upon, where Cora Watley let him in.

She looked wary. Also tired. She’d borne this secret all week... she’d borne her other secret inconceivably longer. David imagined it had exhausted her.

He nodded at her. “Ma’am.”

“You’re really... police?” she asked with no further preamble.

“I’m...” Well, this required some mental acrobatics, but technically David had never stopped working for the Folly, had he? “I’m a specialist with the...” What had Peter called it? “The Special Assessment Unit.”

Ms. Watley raised an eyebrow. “That’s... special.”

“That’s what Mamá used to say about me.” The joke... well, it didn’t quite fall flat, but she sort of winced. Perhaps in solidarity.

She gestured for him to head inside, so he did. The back door was a heavy steel monstrosity, and David almost got his fingers crushed as he pulled it shut. “Where is the object?”

“I’ve hid it in my dressing room,” Ms. Watley confessed. “Are you... sure you can handle this thing? Because someone’s been murdered over it and I don’t want to really... leave it with a normal person.”

“I’ve been handling objects like this one before your mother’s mother left the hill.” Well, perhaps that was a slight exaggeration. Fae have long lives. “What do you mean you left it in your dressing room?”

“It’s not been searched.” Cora gave him a pale smile. “Nobody bothers me overmuch.”

Glamour. David nodded. “Still, why did you not call anyone? I’m told the Folly’s relations to the demi-monde are rocky as ever, but surely not so rocky as to half-inch a murder weapon before even considering going to the police.”

Cora shook her head. “You lost me. The relations of what to what?”

They had reached the backstage and were proceeding to the actress’s dressing room. “The... demi-monde, people like you.” Was that not the term anymore?

The actress turned around to face David. “People like me?” In the dim light of the hallway, she suddenly looked very young. “There’s never been people like me. I never knew any... there’s always just been me.”

How lonely, David thought. How very lonely.

Cora’s hands shook as she pulled a ring of keys out of her pocket and unlocked her dressing room. “I’m the only weird thing I ever saw. Until that goddamned crystal ball that Deirdre brought.”

She let herself and David in, and dropped to her knees to rummage in the bottom drawer of her vanity. “She bought this thing at a flea market or garage sale or something...” Goblin market, David mentally inserted, “...but she said she felt weird about having it at home. Like... it was showing her weird things she didn’t want to see. So she brought it here, thinking maybe we could use it as a prop or something... but I started noticing how other people got... weird around it. Never me, though. So I talked to Deirdre, thought maybe I could get her to throw it out or give it away or we could smash it maybe, but she kept it in the props department... and then I found it next to her dead body.”

David couldn’t help his eyebrows shooting up. “You found the body?” He began patting down his pockets. Perhaps he’d thought to bring a notebook? He should probably write this down, like a proper policeman. Oh, or didn’t his new-fangled telephone have a recording device? He pulled it out.

“Yeah, I found it,” Cora said, still bent over her cluttered vanity. “Look, I knew someone was going to call the police. But the damned thing’s cursed or whatever. Was I gonna give it to just any police guy? They’d get got by the curse just like people here did.”

“There‘s special police for special cases,” David said.

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Cora got up, in her hands a round object, wrapped in a silk shawl. “And heeeere we go.”

“Very good,” said a voice in David’s back, accompanied by a sound that rang awfully familiar from the war: the telltale click of a gun being cocked. “Hand it over, Cora, nice and careful.”

----

I was in the tech cave just finished feeding the interviews we had conducted during the afternoon into HOLMES when Nightingale swept in. It wasn’t quite a burst in, but not a normal entrance either: yes, a sweeping.

I was actually about to go home, but I clocked that something was off. Far as I knew he’d headed to the basement once we’d got back, and now he was here, and notably by himself. “Everything okay, sir?”

Nightingale clicked his tongue. “It’s David. He went out and left this... cryptic message and now he won’t answer his phone.”

He handed me a post-it with a scrawled-upon note. I read the cryptic message. “’Actress is a demi-fae’? Does he mean Ms. Watley?”

“I assume so.”

“He’s not... he didn’t go meet up with her or something, did he?” But a sinking feeling in my gut said he’d done precisely that.

Nightingale frowned down at his phone. “I’d know that if he’d answer any of my messages.”

And that... was worrisome. David had had a mobile phone for less than a week, but he was already startlingly adept with it, and he delighted in carrying it with him wherever he went. “Hey, maybe he’s just... out for a walk. Maybe he needs... time to himself.”

Nightingale now glared witheringly at his phone, probably so as not to glare witheringly at me. “Or maybe he put himself in danger.”

Just then, his phone beeped, alerting us to...

“What is that thing?” Nightingale asked.

I stepped up next to him and peered at his screen. “Oh, he sent you a voice recording. The app has a function that lets you record something and send it...”

“Oh, spare me,” Nightingale muttered, and looked at his phone in thinly-veiled disgust, so I took it from him and played the recording.

“Yeah, I found it,” we heard a female voice say. People often sounded different on the phone, but this was most definitely Ms. Watley. “Look, I knew someone was going to call the police. But the damned thing’s cursed or whatever. Was I gonna give it to just any police guy? They’d get got by the curse just like people here did.”

“Hrm,” Nightingale said.

I stood still, excitement mounting. If David had managed to get us a spoken confession...

“Would’ve thought most of the demi-monde at least knew of us by now,” I commented.

“There‘s special police for special cases,” David said.

“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Some rustling was heard. “And heeere we go.”

“Is she actually handing it over?” I asked. Nightingale shushed me.

Then we heard a clicking, and a male voice, empathically not David’s, said, “Very good. Hand it over, Cora, nice and careful.”

Here the recording ended abruptly, as if... well, as if something had prevented David from recording any further.

I looked at Nightingale. He’d gone pale, his jaw clenched, his eyes slightly widened. Other than that, he betrayed no emotion. He went... cold, rigid, all over.

“Shit,” I said.

“We must locate them.” Nightingale’s voice was calm, but only because he was expending considerable strength of will on making it so.

“Probably the theatre, right?” I suggested, but there really was no way to tell. If only I could track David’s phone. But we hadn’t exactly stuck a tracker on him, and why would we have?

“Is there a spell for tracking them?” I asked.

Nightingale shrugged. “Not that I know of.”

“Bev always knows where I’m at.” Later, I would ask myself what on earth I’d meant by saying that.

“Well, I’m not a river deity,” Nightingale snapped. “I can’t well scent my lover.”

Lover. That word, so casually, from Nightingale, somehow made me shiver. And was that what Bev was doing? Scenting me? “Technically, you’re... something, sir,” I argued.

Now Nightingale outright gave me the glare. “This is hardly the time.”

----

“Get behind me,” David murmured. He ignored how Cora hissed “What?” and cast his shield, only to remember... oh, right.

He couldn’t cast at all.

“What the fuck did you just try to do?” Cora hissed from over his left shoulder. This, David thought detachedly, was probably the first time she’d seen (an attempt at) Newtonian magic.

“I won’t repeat myself,” said the man with the hunting rifle, whom David vaguely recognized as Mr. Sheen, the theatre’s director. Behind him, a taller man - the janitor, right? - was looking on with a deeply conflicted expression. “Hand me that crystal ball, and no tricks, and we might just get out of this one with nobody getting hurt.”

“Howard, the damned thing’s cursed,” the actress said. “This isn’t hyperbole, I genuinely fucking mean this.”

Mr. Sheen waved his rifle. “Will you bloody hand it over already?”

It was good of Ms. Watley to warn her employer, David thought, but unfortunately useless. The signs were all there. Mr. Sheen was utterly enthralled by the enchantment permeating from the object. It was potent in a way that he had rarely witnessed, and only decades of experience prevented David from reaching for it himself. And it had apparently been in this building for a lengthy amount of time, several days at least. Being so exposed to the enchantment, a susceptible mind might be driven to lengths...

Ms. Watley took a deep breath in. Wisps of her glamour escaped from her, but David nudged her side. “He has a gun, do as he says.”

“But I can--”

“Your glamour doesn’t make you immune to bullets, you know.”

Slowly, extremely reluctantly, Cora handed the crystal ball over.

Mr. Sheen unwrapped it from the silk shawl that had covered it and, aglow with triumph, held it in his hands. “Finally someone sees sense here.” He turned towards David. “Now, who on earth are you?”

And David realized exactly what else it was the crystal ball did.

The enchantment enticing people to take it, to seize possession of it and own it, well, that was one thing. But it was not the object’s actual use.

He felt nothing as the director probed his thoughts (nothing but a sense of revulsion, of violation that was uniquely his own) but he certainly saw the man turn pale.

“What the hell...?” Mr. Sheen said. For a moment, he recoiled, startled, and David lunged.

It earned him the barrel of the rifle jabbed into his ribs.

“You better not try that again,” Mr. Sheen said. He gave the crystal ball an appreciative pat. “This little gizmo here alerts me to anything you’re thinking to do. Now, Derrick, if you’d please...”

The janitor stepped forward. In his hand, he was holding a roll of zip ties.

“One of you acts up, I’ll have to shoot the other,” Mr. Sheen proclaimed, and David couldn’t tell whether or not he was bluffing. Most civilians weren’t quite prepared to actually eliminate a person at close range. But on the other hand... that certain glow in Mr. Sheen’s face, the rigidity of his features, that frozen smile... he was deep in the throes of the enchantment, practically possessed. There was no telling what he would or wouldn’t do.

“Derrick, are you fucking nuts?” Cora demanded as the janitor pushed her into a chair and began tying her hands behind her back.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Johnson whispered. “It’s just... he knows.”

Knows what? David wondered. But there would be time to find that out later. For now, he thought it best to not resist as his hands, too, were tied.

“Derrick, take their phones, will you?” Mr. Sheen commanded. David held his breath as his mobile phone was fished out of his pocket. Now they’d know he’d sent that recording off...

“Now what’s this?” Mr. Sheen asked, holding David’s phone aloft for everyone to see the screen. There were about half a dozen unanswered texts. “A gentleman caller?”

Thomas, David thought, and then tried his utmost to suppress the thought. But it was too late.

“Is this the same Thomas Nightingale who has been investigating this place? The same one I am seeing so prominently displayed in your memories?”

“I’m not saying anything,” David said.

Mr. Sheen shook his head. “An utterly futile effort.”

----

Suddenly there was a sound from Nightingale’s phone.

“Well, thank goodness,” he huffed, acting put-upon but poorly masking his actual pure relief as he took the phone back from my hand and glanced at the screen. The relief was short-lived.

“Sir?” I asked. “What’s the news?”

Wordlessly, he waved me closer so that I could read over his shoulder.

There were the unanswered texts that Nightingale had sent David’s way, in his usual flawless grammar and diction which has a way of looking weird in text message format. They ran,

David, this is extremely vexing. Where are you at?

You are utterly out of line. There is a very good reason why I prohibited you tampering with the investigation. Come home.

I am not mad at you, but we must address this along with everything else. Do not put yourself needlessly in danger. Do not take any unnecessary risks.

Answer your damned phone, Davey.

And below that, a picture that someone, empathically not David, had sent. It depicted David, back to back with Cora Watley, both zip-tied to chairs by their wrists and ankles. The background showed that this was clearly the stage that we’d only recently stood on during our encounter with the theatre ghost. While Ms. Watley looked enraged and scared in equal measure, David’s face showed, if anything, deep indignation at being so held. Someone else was barely visible in the very margin of the picture, little more than a hand and, unfortunately, the barrel of a rifle.

The text below said, “I’m sure we are all reasonable men here. The two of them will be set free upon your payment of a modest fee and a guarantee that I should be left undisturbed. Do not alert any further authorities. The consequences will be severe.”

Our mystery texter had included below the message proper the ‘modest fee’ they wished to be paid. (We would later find out that it covered the theatre’s various debts, plus a little extra.) It was a pretty high six figures.

“Shit,” I repeated. “This has become a hostage situation.”

Nightingale shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

“Sir?”

“A hostage? David “Gold Star” Mellenby, the scourge of the Wolfsstaffel, a hostage?”

“He... is wearing the cuffs still, sir.” I contained myself from asking what either of those epithets meant.

For a moment, Nightingale went very silent. Then he said, “Well, that is true,” but I got the distinct feeling that what he meant to express by that ran more towards “Fuuuuuuuck.”

“We’re heading over,” he said.

I nodded and grabbed my own phone. “I’ll call Belgravia for backup.”

Already in the process of sweeping back out, Nightingale paused. “You think we will have need of them?”

“It’s their murder case.”

“Quite frankly,” Nightingale said, “I don’t think the situation warrants extensive support. In fact, I’ll head in by myself.”

Woah, I thought, what? “Sir, there’s no way I’m not coming with you.”

This got me a steely, grey-eyed stare. “It’s one man, I’ll be quite able to handle myself.”

The expression on Nightingale’s face put fear into me. Not fear for him, or for myself, but for our very unlucky kidnapper. “Yeah?” I asked. “You will be?”

----

“This is insane,” David said. He strained against his ties a little, more for the look of it than anything else. Besides which, they felt uncomfortable around his wrists.

“Hush,” Mr. Sheen said.

They had been herded at gunpoint out onto the stage, and pushed down into two folding chairs that maybe served as props for the musical. Perhaps the actors just sat down here during reading rehearsals normally. David didn’t like it here. He felt put on the spot, and the, well, dramatics of having the hostages sit on the stage struck him as deeply overwrought and annoying.

“No, I mean it. This device you’re holding lets you sample my memories, no? So you realize this is going nowhere fast for you. You’ve seen what Thomas did in fall 1944 when we captured those two Abteilung Geheimwissenschaften officers and were civilly questioning them for intel and then one of them called me a Saujude and the other one grinned?” The memory was definitely at the forefront of David’s mind currently. “You’re seeing what Thomas did to another human being because he grinned? Mr. Sheen, you better let me out of here while you still can. I know my lover. Thomas will not pay a bloody ransom, Thomas will kill you.”

“Bluffing,” Mr. Sheen said calmly, but it was a projected calm. David could see the beads of sweat on the man’s brow. He reckoned that some part of Howard Sheen knew that he was in too deep and with no feasible way out, and that setting Thomas “The” Nightingale on his trail had been the dumbest decision he had made today or perhaps in his life, but the thrall of the object was stronger than reason. Besides which, the ‘modest fee’ (David wasn’t sure, if the idea was even being entertained, if the Folly budget would survive it) beckoned, promising an end to the theatre’s financial problems.

“I’ve also sampled your recent memories. Nobody’s coming to rescue you.”

David clenched his fists at his sides, and stayed silent. Oh, yeah... that.

“What the fuck is he doing,” Cora whispered. “Trying to blackmail a police officer?”

David nodded. “Said police officer happens also to be my boyfriend, so there is that.”

Is that the one with the walking cane? The one who made out with Roger? That’s nuts. That guy was radiating don’t fuck with me so hard I could feel it all the way across the hall.”

Briefly, David wondered who Roger was. Would’ve liked to see that. “That aptly describes Thomas.” These days, anyhow.

“What fucking is he? I tried getting him to leave this place alone and he just stared me down. I put on a show and everything. Most people just sort of do what I want them to when I do the... you know...”

“We call that a glamour,” David muttered distractedly. What was Thomas, these days? It was an interesting question. Of course, being impervious to glamour, especially a clumsily wielded one like Ms. Watley’s, could simply be chalked up to experience. Decades and decades of experience. But clearly nowadays there was more to Thomas. Why, for example, was he not aging? Did he not technically qualify as fae now, by virtue of that?

“I thought he might be... weird like me,” Cora contributed, as if on cue. “Because he resisted. No other people ever did that.”

“That’s a hypothesis we must certainly consider,” David agreed. Good gracious, if only he had his magic. He would have gotten rid of these plastic ties already. “But frankly, I don’t know. They have a medical professional trying to figure that one out.”

“You figured me out,” Cora said almost accusingly.

“It’s not so hard to unmask a demi-fae, if one knows what one’s doing.” Not just the ties, but also that rifle. And Misters Sheen and Johnson... well, suffice to say they wouldn’t be upright still. David was slow to anger. He considered himself a good-natured, mellow, even-tempered person. But he was beginning to grow peeved, and when that happened, there tended to be consequences, as evidenced by certain parts of the former Third Reich where grass would likely never grow again.

“Demi-what?”

David sighed. His mind was swirling with thoughts of Thomas, of his situation, of how on earth he was going to get out of this one. (Was there a way to get these ties gone without magic...? Unfortunately his pockets had been searched earlier, and even if he’d carried any useful little tools of escape artistry with him, which he hadn’t, those would have been gone by now.) And he wasn’t really all that confident that Thomas would come get him. Not after all that had happened between them.

But there was a man with a mind-reading device in the room with him, a man who might just shoot him if he deemed him useless, and answering Cora’s questions was at the very least a way to focus his thoughts elsewhere.

“Demi-fae,” he repeated. “That’s the scientific term for people like you. Or at the very least it was that when I was last active.”

“I didn’t know there was a scientific term,” Cora said. “Or more people like me. I’m a... changeling, that’s what I know. I’m weird and I can do some stuff. But I was always the only one I knew of. I just... kept my head down and tried to live like normal.”

David nodded. A pale, skinny young woman in drab, dark clothing who faded into the background - that was the look of a fae in hiding. Fae dress according to their chosen vocation, he remembered, and he thought of Oberon’s uniform jacket, Molly’s dress, Foxglove’s coat with its myriad paint splatters and so many pockets for pencils and paintbrushes - for a split-second, he even thought of Thomas’s suits. A theatre fae, he pondered, would likely be in costume at all times, with the most sparkling, fluctuating, dramatic personality. He looked at Cora and thought, how sad.

“Do you want to know what else there is?” he asked.

“Will you two stop whispering back there?” Mr. Sheen snapped. “I’ll have Derrick gag you, you know!”

The janitor, hanging around by the curtain, shifted uneasily.

Mr. Sheen resumed pacing, the crystal ball tucked under one arm. He had lots of room for it on the empty stage. Periodically he would pause, pull out David’s phone and glare at it.

“Thomas hen-peck-types,” David said helpfully. “Whatever reply he’s going to make, it’s going to take a while.”

He grinned, the cheekiest grin he could muster, and hoped it masked the thoughts he had. He’s not coming. No one’s coming for me. No one wants me.

----

We parked the Jag around the corner from the theatre. As we got out of the car, we were joined by what looked like half the murder team stuffed into two plain cars of about the same quality as my old Asbo. Apparently the call I’d placed well out of Nightingale’s earshot as I’d presumably gone to grab my gear warranted Stephanopoulos showing up herself.

“What are we looking at?” she asked, strolling over to us, all business.

Nightingale gave her an irritated look, like he was having to remember what on earth she was here for. “Ah, Miriam,” he said. “So you received... Peter’s call for backup.” The glare he shot me promised consequences later. I almost imperceptibly lifted my shoulders. I’d take the stern talking-to over whatever would have occurred otherwise.

Stephanopoulos scrutinized the dark building. “Looks calm for now.”

Nightingale nodded. “We’re dealing with one man, armed, two hostages, the suspect in possession of one, well...”

With respect to Stephanopoulos’ sensibilities, it seemed he didn’t want to say ‘magical object’ quite yet. “Of Falcon-contaminated hazardous material,” I improvised.

Stephanopoulos’ eyebrows rose. “Like a biohazard?”

“Something like that, I suppose,” Nightingale said.

“How come this is the first time I’m hearing of anything like this existing?” Stephanopoulos asked. Behind her, I could see Guleed peeking out of the car in curiosity, craning her head out of the window to hear.

Nightingale went as far as to click his tongue in impatience. “Perhaps something to be considered at a later date,” he said, neatly smothering that burgeoning argument. “For now, while the threat is imminent to non-Falcon personnel, I consider it low enough at present to handle it myself. I suggest your team guard the entrances while I head inside.”

“You want to head in by yourself,” Stephanopoulos said. “And do what? Do you intend to play for an exchange?”

“I do not intend to humour that man for anything.” Eyes narrowing, Nightingale also scrutinized the building. “I’m of a mind to go in there and set him ablaze, to be frank. Hell, if I had a clear line of sight at him, perhaps from a window, I could blow up his head from here.”

Stephanopoulos took a sudden, sharp breath. “What the hell, Thomas?”

I was very glad I’d decided to call her in.

Nightingale didn’t look at any of us. He gripped his staff so hard his knuckles were starkly white. “My... David’s in there.”

“And who’s David?” Stephanopoulos asked. Apparently she’d been left out of the loop regarding the last week. Her eyes strayed quickly to the car where Carey, the David she was probably thinking of, sat safe and sound next to Guleed. “Anyhow, I’m not having you go in there and irreparably harm our suspect.”

“I am not,” Nightingale said through clenched teeth, “going to stand here and do things by the book while someone’s got David at gunpoint.” He whirled around suddenly, face to face with Stephanopoulos. “God dammit, Miriam, what would you do if it was your wife in there?”

“I still wouldn’t blow heads up.” Now Stephanopoulos, too, was exposing teeth. “Also, what the fuck, Thomas?”

“Look, I am getting him out. I’m prepared to face whatever consequences later.”

Stephanopoulos grabbed him by the arm. “Even if your consequences turn out two dead hostages? Our kidnapper has murdered someone once before, and there is clearly a hunting rifle in that picture.”

Hunting rifle, hunting club, I pieced together. The director, then. At least one accomplice, seeing as pointing a rifle and taking a picture required more than two hands.

“And listen, if it were Pam in there? I wouldn’t rush into things and endanger her life.”

----

Most likely, David reflected, he was going to get shot here today.

He was going to get shot here today, and he didn’t feel the least bit... excited about it. What would he leave behind? A miserable little pile of notebooks, and no one who would mourn him, because no one wanted him in the first place. Thomas would go on with life as he had before David had woken from his long sleep. Peter would certainly not care overly much; they had barely gotten to know each other, and any sense of kinship between them had surely been a figment of David’s imagination. This was fine; this should have happened over seventy years ago.

But there was an innocent young lady here, a person whose life had only just begun, and she was also going to get shot here today unless someone did something. And that wasn’t right, and if David could prevent that somehow, he would.

But what were his options, really? He tried to fumble for the ties around his wrists, perhaps he could manage to loosen or undo them somehow. The unyielding plastic chafed at his skin, but he continued, hoping his efforts wouldn’t be noticed.

Magic was right out, unless he found a way to get the inhibitor cuffs off. The cuffs required Thomas’s word to open. They encircled his whole wrists. Having been forged by Thomas personally and imbued with Thomas’s magic, they would hold. Having also been forged in a hurry, they weren’t perfectly smooth. What with all his fidgeting at them for the past days, David was well familiar with every notch and ridge in the metal.

Perhaps, if he bent his wrist just right, he could get an edge of the metal to catch on the plastic of the zip-ties...

“What are you doing?” Cora hissed irritably. “Why are you squirming like that, do you need the bathroom?”

“No,” David whispered at her. “I’m trying something. Distract them, will you?”

He still wouldn’t have his magic. But he’d have both his hands free. There was a lot a man could do with both of his hands free, especially if said man had had experience on battlefields.

Cora glared at him. “Distract them how?”

“Well, you’re an actress, aren’t you? Make something up.”

“Make something...?” It must have been a wrong thing to say, judging by how mad she sounded. But she rolled her eyes and slumped in momentary defeat. “Ugh, I guess.”

“Howard?” Cora asked, leaning forward as far as her ties would allow, getting Mr. Sheen’s attention. “I know you’re not going through with this. You’re not killing your female lead a week before opening night. The understudy is a catastrophe and we both know it.”

This of all things got Mr. Sheen to pause. David shook his head to himself.

“Lindsay is a fine understudy. She knows her stuff.”

“She still keeps forgetting her lines.”

“Frankly, she brings a passion to the role that I often felt you... lacking, in rehearsal.”

“Passion?” Cora snarled and wrenched at the ties that bound her wrists to her own chair, back to back with David’s. “Bullshit! You really think you can kill me off and replace me with Lindsay Reilly because she has bigger tits than me?!”

As the theatre people argued, David stealthily flexed his fingers...

“Now, this simply won’t do,” Mr. Sheen said. “We’ve all wasted enough time here. Derrick, take another picture...”

----

Nightingale was still arguing with Stephanopoulos when his phone buzzed again.

It was a new picture, this time of the barrel of the rifle being pressed directly into the curls at David’s temple. If it weren’t so dramatic a situation, David’s facial expression, all disgruntled and annoyed at such dramatics, would have been deeply comedic.

“I’ve waited quite long enough,” said the voice in the recording that was sent along with the picture. “You know that Mr. Mellenby here is of the opinion that no one will come? He’s trying to mask it, but it’s at the forefront of his mind. He’s believing himself abandoned. Isn’t that sad? Anyway, I need a decision here, DCI Nightingale, and soon.”

Nightingale stood with his back to me. I was glad I couldn’t see his face. Suddenly, flame erupted from his closed fist, enveloping his phone in fire. The smell of burning plastic spread.

“Woah, sir,” I said.

Nightingale’s voice was low and quiet when he announced, “I’m going to light the fucker up.”

“Thomas,” Stephanopoulos said sharply, and I expected her to set him to rights, tell him he was being way out of line, but she added, in a kind of voice I’d never expected to hear out of her, “You’re scaring me.”

“Apologies, Miriam, but we cannot delay.” And, you know, Nightingale wasn’t wearing his combat boots this time - probably because he’d had no time to change into them - but he didn’t need to. He radiated the soldier so hard we all felt it.

“Sir,” I urged. “You know we can make a clean arrest of it. All we need to do is obtain the object that’s causing all of this. No one needs to be set on fire today.”

Nightingale half-turned and looked at me. It was horrible. I have already lost everything once, his eyes said, I might now lose everything again. That kind of look. The look of people who go dancing in the light of their blazing homes.

“Um,” I said. “Please?”

----

David was beginning to become seriously annoyed by Mr. Sheen’s, for lack of a better word, theatrics, plus the gun still pressed to his temple. It made thinking hard, getting up close and personal with the business end of a rifle like this. “Best take that away,” he suggested irritably. “You’re not going to shoot, and we both know it.”

“Oh, do we both know any such thing?” Mr. Sheen handed the rifle to the highly reluctant Derrick. That, in David’s book, was an improvement. Then Mr. Sheen took up the crystal ball again, gazing deep inside, probably meaning to intrude and scan David’s thoughts again.

David wasn’t going to make it easy for him. Out of spite, he thought hard of nazi corpses.

At first he thought it was that which made Mr. Sheen recoil and scrunch up his face in dismay, but then he turned to the janitor, back to the crystal ball in his hands, and then peered around the stage and asked, “What is... is someone else in this building with us?”

Mr. Johnson’s shoulders rose and fell. “I’ve locked up everywhere, there’s not... supposed to be anyone else here.”

“Then why is... what is this?” Mr. Sheen stared down at the crystal ball in confusion. “Whose... where do these thoughts come from? Are you two doing this in some way?” He pointed at the two hostages.

Truly, David hadn’t the faintest clue what was going on now. But any confusion was a good thing and was to be furthered. Perhaps his captor would slip up in some way... allowing him to take steps to escape or at least ensure Cora’s safety. “May I be of help, sir?”

“Why would--”

From somewhere behind the stage there was a sound, like something falling down, or a door falling shut. Mr. Sheen looked up, and suddenly there was fear in his eyes. “What the-- who is there?”

Derrick Johnson looked at him with a sliver of doubt on his face. “Um, something wrong?”

“Those images...” Mr. Sheen shook the crystal ball like a snowglobe, as if it would show different pictures then. “Whoever... whatever is making those images...” He looked around the empty stage, out at the empty auditorium, a slightly deranged look to him. “It shouldn’t be in the building with us. Derrick, hand me the... no... go search the backstage, will you?”

“Er...”

Another sound. Like footsteps? Footsteps on the creaking wood of the floor?

“I don’t know about this,” Mr. Johnson said. “Nah, you know what, fuck this.”

“Derrick...” Mr. Sheen said threateningly. “You want me to tell our friends from the police why this establishment is truly so chronically short of money...? Ah, of course you don’t. Now be a reasonable chap and go backstage.”

Johnson disappeared behind the curtain, rifle in his hands.

David, still with nary a clue what was happening, craned his neck to shoot a questioning glance at Cora. Are you doing whatever this is?

She shook her head. No.

Muffled and a ways off, they heard Mr. Johnson walk around, then, “Hello? Hello? Is someone... Oi!”

The curtain flew aside as Mr. Johnson was flung headfirst back onto the stage. David felt the impello-palma, so powerful it would punch through ten-inch sheet metal, and he knew that burst of magic. As familiar almost as his own.

Tears shot to his eyes, but they were of joy. He hadn’t believed it would happen...

Mr. Johnson went down hard and stayed down.

Then several things happened in quick succession.

With a gasp, Mr. Sheen ran forward, to help Mr. Johnson, David thought, but he disregarded his fallen accomplice and grabbed the rifle from him. As he scrambled back up to his feet, hands shaking as he attempted to cock the gun, Ms. Cora Watley suddenly flung herself against her ties, and unleashed the full force of her glamour.

Mr. Sheen stumbled, and even David reeled as he was overwhelmed; this was the stage, here were the actors, and the overhead lights sprang on and the fog machine whirred to life, and soon they were ankle-high in billowing mist, and an end of the curtain was lifted just ever-so-slightly by a delicate hand.

Up above their heads, the huge stage light rotated on its axis by itself, and the beam of a spotlight fingered across the auditorium, the stage, and came to rest on the new arrival. A grand entrance.

“Evening, all,” said Thomas.

“Yes!” Ms. Watley hissed in triumph. “Enter stage left! Love it!”

Thomas grinned - not in response to Ms. Watley, he was wearing the sort of grin that David usually knew exclusively from battlefields. The sort of grin that used to say, All you Jerries are about to die.

----

I entered the building and therefore the stage on Nightingale’s heels, but just this once, no one was paying attention to me.

I was right behind him when he sucker-punched the janitor, using his impello palma like brass knuckles, nevermind that the guy had a gun. He didn’t hesitate for a second, just flung the fellow out through the curtain. It was just on sight. Now, I’ve seen Nightingale attempt to rugby-tackle suspects before, in the heat of the moment and all. The pure, vicious force of that punch still blew me away. I took a second, I know not why, to actually tug at his sleeve, and he gave me one of these looks he sometimes gets that signifies he’s not fully here right now but trying very hard to be.

“Let’s proceed,” he said, rubbing some life back into his hand. So we proceeded, stage left.

What I now recognized as Ms. Watley’s glamour permeated the stage. The fog was swirling, the spotlights were bright upon us, and, brushing past the curtain, I felt the excitement and the trepidation again: an actor readying for the great entrance. But I was happy to cede the stage to Nightingale.

The director was stood blocking the hostages, and he’d picked up the rifle. Now he was holding it in shaky hands. “I’m warning you! Don’t come any further!”

Nightingale chuckled. It sent a dart of cold, primal fear down my spine. Of course he already had his shield up. Very courteously, it also covered me. “Oh, do try and shoot me, I beg of you.”

Even his voice was different.

Fuck, this was bad.

“How about this, then?” His movements almost erratic, Mr. Sheen spun around and pointed the rifle at David. David, for his part, only raised an eyebrow.

“You fucking moron,” someone said. With a start, I realized it was me.

Nightingale raised his hand. I could feel a forma coming, and I didn’t know what it might be, and I was afraid.

I gripped his wrist. Again, I don’t know what fucking compelled me, my arm just shot forward and grabbed his wrist.

“Sir.”

He gave me an indecipherable look again. His magic kept ticking away as he turned back towards the little tableau in front of him.

“Please don’t hurt anybody unduly,” he said.

“That’s a mighty lot of you to ask,” Mr. Sheen replied, mad triumph making its home in his face - prematurely, it would turn out.

“Mr. Sheen,” Nightingale said aloofly, and released his forma into the world, “I was not talking to you.”

At first, I’d thought the spell had done nothing.

Then I heard two tiny plinks of metal, like, well, like the clasps of two wristlets opening.

David got up, the zip-ties and inhibitor cuffs falling away. Before Mr. Sheen could even turn around again, David waved his hand and subdued him, all his extremities suddenly locking into place and sending him tumbling to the floor. Another wave, and a length of cord unspooled, came loose from one of the curtains and wound tightly around Mr. Sheen’s arms and legs.

David looked at me, a glint in his eye. “What do you say? ‘You’re nicked, chum’?”

Well, someone’s getting quite into thief-taking, I thought, and for a split-second I wondered what David’s future within the Folly and therefore the Met might entail. But still, as the great Blackboard Monitor Sir Samuel Vimes once said, it’s so embarrassing to hear civilians try to speak policeman, so I shook my head.

“No,” I said, “You don’t say ‘you’re nicked’. You say, Howard Sheen, you’re under arrest for the murder of Deirdre Maxwell and the abduction of Cora Watley and David Mellenby. You have the right to remain silent...”

The teachable moment didn’t last long, because by the time I got to ‘right to an attorney’, David was looking at Nightingale, who was in turn looking at David.

“I’m sorry for causing you such inconvenience,” David said quietly. He picked up the crystal ball, which had been discarded in all the confusion, and held it out to Nightingale. “Here. This should probably be stored in the Folly.”

Nightingale was across the stage in three long strides. His hands found David’s shoulders, his face, his hair, roving unsteadily, as if committing the shape of David to memory, as if searching for something, as if having to make sure David was really there.

“God, Davey,” he said, in a voice that was soft and wounded and seemed to belong to an entirely different person than the Nightingale I’d known for the past three years, “Don’t ever - ever - do that to me again.”

By chance, his hand brushed the crystal ball that David was still holding, and for a moment they both stood very still.

“Oh... Thomas,” David then said, shivering. “You... genuinely, still? After all I’ve done?”

“And you really believed I wouldn’t come? That nobody wanted you?” Abruptly, Nightingale pulled David closer and, abandoning all his usual restraint, stooped down to bury his face in David’s sweater, and then he just stood breathing for a minute. I felt like I was witnessing something secret and forbidden, something highly private happening, jarringly, in semi-public, something most definitely not intended for my eyes. So I went and checked if both our perps were secured, and then I untied Cora Watley, who gave me a grin.

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” she said, “But hell yeah, love wins.”

“It does at that, huh,” I said and helped her to her feet.

“I’m so sorry, Tommy,” David was saying, one hand cradling the crystal ball, the other one resting on the back of Nightingale’s neck. It might have been the first time I’d ever seen anyone touch Nightingale like this. “None of this was supposed to happen.”

I could feel something strange and magical happening between them, in the literal sense; I could feel things being poured into the receptacle between them, perhaps seventy years’ worth of things.

“I cannot lose you again, David,” Nightingale murmured, one hand resting on the crystal ball, the other one cupping David’s cheek as they leaned in for the kiss to end all kisses. “You’re my... you’re my sweetest thing.”

I must’ve been thinking something too, something to the tune of Well, what am I, chopped liver? (for NO reason, I assure you, I guarantee you) because suddenly I had two pairs of eyes on me. I saw as Nightingale and David exchanged a long and silent look.

“We... should probably put this thing down for now,” David said, his voice straining to feign lightness.

“Aha, yes,” Nightingale agreed. He still had his spare arm around David, and a bit of that rattled look about him that I suppose people have when their loved ones have just come out of being kidnapped. “Here, Peter, why don’t you hold on to it?”

I took the accursed object from them, tucked it under my arm, and then I left them to it, switched my phone back on and called Stephanopoulos, informing her that it was okay for her team to head in now.

----

I spotted the former abductees sitting out front later, having been dispensed a shock blanket each, David primly sipping his conciliatory cup of tea and chatting to Ms. Watley about what types of fae there were. I heard him offer to take her ‘round to some demi-monde pubs, if they still existed, which in all left her almost more grateful than saving her from the kidnapping. Disenfranchised fae, I thought, and wondered how many there might be out there. People with no connection to the demi-monde as such, people on their own wondering why the fuck they were so much weirder than everyone around them. I decided to bring that up with Beverley, who had a heart for stuff like that.

Not at all deterrent to the raised spirits was the presence of Nightingale, who hung about with David’s hand tucked into his and most reluctant to leave his side for anything, even when Stephanopoulos stepped up and demanded he head back with her for signing off on the arrest we’d made.

“No,” he said and it jolted me. Nightingale didn’t, I knew that, always love the Job, but he’d always unswervingly done it nonetheless.

Apparently it jolted Stephanopoulos too, because she said, “What?”

“No,” Nightingale repeated. “I’d rather be staying right here, if you don’t mind.”

“I get it, I do,” Stephanopoulos said. “But I sort of have to mind. Paperwork won’t do itself.”

“There will be time for that.” Nightingale picked up David’s hand in both his own and held it against his chest.

“Thomas...” Stephanopoulos shook her head and sighed. “Don’t make me dial Alexander.”

David had watched the exchange attentively. Now he gave Nightingale a light nudge. “Go do your duty, Tom. I’ll be fine here. And later on you can come by and slip under my shock blanket.”

Nightingale went as far as to lean against him again. “David, you’ve been abducted.”

“And? I’m about four weeks shy of a war zone, I didn’t overly mind a botched abduction.” David took another sip of his complimentary tea, looking truly unbothered. He then passed the cup to Nightingale. “Here. You seem to have some need of it.”

Nightingale did go then, but he also took the tea.

I saw them together again later, not actually sharing the shock blanket, but passing a cigarette back and forth. They were touching shoulders, supporting each other. I didn’t approach them. This was not a moment for me to take part in.

...Which was alright.