Rivers of London (Rivers of London #1)(58)

It had become the same with vestigia. When I put my hand on the limestone blocks that made up the portico, the sensations, the cold, vague sense of presence, an odour in the nostrils that might be sandalwood, were the same – only now, like a copper reading a street, I had some inkling of what they meant. I also expected them to be much stronger. I tried to think back to the last time I’d touched the stones. Had the impressions been the same?

I checked to make sure nobody was watching. ‘Nicholas,’ I said to the wall. ‘Are you in there?’

I felt something through my palm, a vibration, I thought, like a distant tube train. Toby whined and scrambled backwards, claws skittering on the cobbles. Before I could take my own step backwards Nicholas’s face, white and transparent, appeared in front of me.

‘Help me,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘He’s eating me,’ said Nicholas, and then his face was sucked backwards into the wall. For a moment I felt a strange tugging sensation on the back of my head and threw myself backwards. Toby barked once, and then turned and shot off in the direction of Russell Square. I landed heavily on my back, which hurt, so I lay there feeling stupid for a moment and then got back on my feet. Cautiously, I approached the church and gingerly laid my palm on the stone again.

It felt cold and rough, and there was nothing else. It was if the vestigia had been sucked out of the stones the same way it had been back at the vampire house. I snatched my hand away and backed off. The Piazza was dark and quiet. I turned and strode into the night, looking out for Toby as I went.

He’d run all the way back to the Folly. I found him in the kitchen curled up in Molly’s lap. She comforted the dog and gave me a stern look.

‘He’s supposed to face danger,’ I said. ‘If he stays, he works.’


Just because I had an active case didn’t mean I was excused practice. I’d persuaded Nightingale to show me the fireball spell, which was, not surprisingly, a variation on Lux, with Iactus to move it about. Once Nightingale was convinced I could do the first part without burning my hand off, we went down to the firing range in the basement to practise. Not that I had known we had a firing range until then. At the bottom of the back stairs you turned left instead of right, through a set of reinforced doors that I’d always assumed was a coal store, and into a room fifty metres long with a wall of sandbags at one end and a line of metal lockers at the other. A row of vintage Brodie helmets hung from pegs above a line of khaki gasmask cases. There was a poster, white lettering on a blood-red background, that said: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, which I thought was good advice. There was a stack of cardboard silhouettes at the target end, brittle with age but still discernible as German soldiers with coal-scuttle helmets and fixed bayonets. Under Nightingale’s direction I set up a row of them against the sandbags and trotted back to the firing line. Before we started, I checked to make sure I wasn’t carrying my brand new mobile phone.

‘Watch carefully,’ said Nightingale. Then he flung out his hand, there was a flash, a sound like a sheet being ripped in half, and the target on the extreme left-hand side was blown into flaming fragments.

I turned at the sound of excited clapping, and found Molly hissing with delight and standing on tiptoe like a small child at the circus.

‘You didn’t say the Latin,’ I pointed out.

‘You practise this in silence,’ he said, ‘from the outset. This spell is a weapon. It has a single purpose and that is to kill. Once you’ve mastered it you are under the same obligations as any other armed constable, so I suggest you familiarise yourself with the current guidelines on firearms use.’

Molly yawned, covering her mouth to hide how wide it opened. Nightingale gave her a bland look. ‘He has to live in the world of men,’ he said.

Molly shrugged as if to say, Whatever.

Nightingale demonstrated again at a quarter of the speed, and I attempted to follow suit. The fireball I had already practised, but when it came to apply Iactus it felt slippery as if, unlike the apples, there was nothing to get a purchase on. When I flung out my arm in the approved dramatic fashion my fireball drifted gently down the length of the firing range, burned a small hole in the target and embedded itself in the sandbags behind.

‘You have to release it, Peter,’ said Nightingale, ‘or it won’t go off.’

I released the fireball and there was a muffled thump from behind the target. A wisp of smoke curled up towards the ceiling. Behind me Molly sniggered.

We did an hour of practice, at the end of which I was capable of flinging a fireball down the range at the dizzying speed of a bumblebee who’d met his pollen quota and was taking a moment to enjoy the view.

We broke for morning tea, and I broached my idea for recovering Nicholas – assuming that enough of the ghost remained, after ‘something’ had ‘eaten’ him, to be recovered.

‘Polidori refers to a spell that can summon ghosts,’ I said. ‘Does it work?’

‘It’s more of a ritual than a spell,’ said Nightingale. In an attempt to stop Molly from overwhelming us with food we’d taken to having tea in the kitchen, the thinking being that if she didn’t have to lay six tables in the breakfast room we might only get two portions. It worked, but they were big portions.

‘What’s the difference?’