Rivers of London (Rivers of London #1)(37)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we deal with vampires in old London Town.

*

It’s hard to describe what success felt like. Even before I managed to produce my first spell I slowly became aware that I was getting closer. Like a car engine turning over on a cold morning, I could sense something catching on my thoughts. An hour into my practice I stopped, took a deep breath and opened my hand.

There it was, the size of a golf ball and as brilliant as the morning sun: a globe of light.

That’s when I found out why Nightingale insisted I keep a sink filled with water nearby while I did the exercise. Unlike his globe of light, mine was yellow and was giving off heat, loads of heat. I yelled as my palm burned, and stuck my hand in the sink. The globe sputtered and went out.

‘You burned your hand, didn’t you?’ said Nightingale. I hadn’t heard him come in.

I pulled my hand out of the water and had a look. There was a pinkish patch on my palm but it didn’t look that serious.

‘I did it,’ I said. I couldn’t believe it; I’d done real magic. It wasn’t some stage trick by Nightingale.

‘Do it again,’ he said.

This time I held my hand directly over the sink, formed the key in my mind and opened my hand.

Nothing happened.

‘Don’t think about the pain,’ said Nightingale. ‘Find the key, do it again.’

I looked for the key, felt the engine turn over and opened my hand to release the clutch.

It burned me again, but it definitely wasn’t as hot and my hand was much closer to the water. Still, I checked my palm – this time it was going to blister for sure.

‘And again,’ said Nightingale. ‘Reduce the heat, keep the light.’

I was surprised how easy I found it to obey. Key, power, release – more light, less heat. Warmth this time, not heat, and a yellow tone like an old 40-watt bulb.

Nightingale didn’t have to tell me again.

I opened my palm and produced a perfect globe of light.

‘Now hold it,’ said Nightingale.

It was like balancing a rake on your palm: the theory is simple but the practice lasts five seconds, tops. My beautiful globe popped like a soap bubble.

‘Good,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m going to give you a word and I want you to say this word every time you do the spell. But it’s very important that the spell’s effect is consistent.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I’ll explain why in a minute,’ said Nightingale. ‘The word is lux.’

I did the spell again: key, motor. I spoke the word on the release. The globe sustained for longer – it was definitely getting easier.

‘I want you to practise this spell,’ said Nightingale, ‘and just this spell for at least another week. You’ll have the urge to experiment, to make it brighter, to move it around …’

‘You can move it around?’

Nightingale sighed. ‘Not for the next week. You practise until the word becomes the spell and the spell becomes the word. So that to say “lux” is to make light.’

‘Lux?’ I said. ‘What language is that?’

Nightingale looked at me in surprise.

‘It’s Latin for light,’ he said. ‘They don’t teach Latin in secondary moderns any more?’

‘Not at my school they didn’t.’

‘Not to worry,’ said Nightingale. ‘I can tutor you in that as well.’

Lucky me, I thought.

‘Why use Latin?’ I asked. ‘Why not use English, or make up your own words?’

‘Lux, the spell you just did, is what we call a form,’ said Nightingale. ‘Each of the basic forms you learn has a name: Lux, Impello, Scindere – others. Once these become ingrained, you can combine the forms to create complex spells the way you combine words to create a sentence.’

‘Like musical notation?’ I asked.

Nightingale grinned. ‘Exactly like musical notation,’ he said.

‘So why not use musical notation?’

‘Because in the main library there are thousands of books detailing how to do magic, and all of them use the standard Latin forms,’ said Nightingale.

‘Presumably all this was invented by Sir Isaac?’ I asked.

‘The original forms are in the Principia Artes Magicis,’ said Nightingale. ‘There have been changes over the years.’

‘Who made the changes?’

‘People who can’t resist fiddling with things,’ said Nightingale. ‘People like you, Peter.’

So Newton, like all good seventeenth-century intellectuals, wrote in Latin because that was the international language of science, philosophy and, I found out later, upmarket pornography. I wondered if there was a translation.

‘Not of the Artes Magicis,’ said Nightingale.

‘Wouldn’t want the hoi polloi learning magic, would we?’

‘Quite,’ said Nightingale.

‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘In the other books, it’s not just the forms. Everything is written in Latin.’

‘Except for the stuff that’s in Greek and Arabic,’ said Nightingale.

‘How long does it take to learn all the forms?’ I asked.

‘Ten years,’ said Nightingale. ‘If you work at it.’