I remembered Brandon Coopertown’s shrunken cauliflower brain, and Dr Walid saying, This is your brain on magic.
‘Thank you for the safety tip,’ I said.
‘Two hours,’ said Nightingale from the doorway. ‘Then meet in the study for your Latin lesson.’
I waited until he had gone before opening my hand and whispering, ‘Lux!’
This time the globe gave off a soft white light and no more heat than a sunny day.
Fuck me, I thought. I can do magic.
The Coach House
During the day, if I wasn’t in the lab or studying, or out, it was my job to listen for the bell and answer the front door when it rang. This happened so infrequently that the first time it occurred it took me a minute to work out what the noise was.
It turned out to be Beverley Brook in an electric-blue quilted jacket with the hood up.
‘You took your time,’ she said. ‘It’s freezing out here.’
I said she should come in but she looked shifty and said she couldn’t.
‘Mum says I’m not to, she says that it’s inimical to the likes of us.’
‘Inimical?’
‘There’s, like, magic force fields and stuff,’ said Beverley.
That would make sense, I thought. It would certainly explain why Nightingale was so relaxed about security.
‘Why are you here, then?’
‘Well,’ said Beverley, ‘when a mummy river and a daddy river love each other very much …’
‘Funny.’
‘Mum says there’s some weird stuff at the UCH you should check out.’
‘What kind of weird stuff?’
‘She said it was on the news.’
‘We don’t have a TV,’ I said.
‘Not even Freeview?’
‘No kind of TV at all,’ I said.
‘Brutal,’ said Beverley. ‘You coming out, or what?’
‘I’ll go see what the Inspector says,’ I said.
I found Nightingale in the library making notes on what I strongly suspected was tomorrow’s Latin homework. I explained about Beverley, and he told me to check it out. By the time I got back to the lobby Beverley had risked coming just inside the door, although she stood as close to the threshold as she could get. Surprisingly Molly was standing beside her, their heads close together as if exchanging confidences. When they heard me coming they separated with suspicious speed – I felt my ears burning. Molly scurried past me and vanished into the depths of the Folly.
‘Are we taking the Jag?’ asked Beverley as I put my coat on.
‘Why, are you coming with me?’ I asked.
‘I have to,’ said Beverley. ‘Mum told me to facilitate.’
‘Facilitate what?’
‘The woman that called it in is an acolyte,’ said Beverley. ‘She won’t talk to you without me there.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Are we taking the Jag?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘UCH is walking distance.’
‘Aw,’ said Beverley. ‘I wanted to take the Jag.’
So we took the Jag and got caught in a traffic jam on the Euston Road, and then spent another twenty minutes looking for a parking space. It took us, I estimated, twice as long to drive as it would have to walk.
University College Hospital takes up two whole blocks between Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street. Founded in the nineteenth century, its main claim to fame was as the teaching hospital for the University College of London and the birthplace of one Peter Grant, apprentice wizard. Since that momentous day in the mid-1980s, half the site had been redeveloped into a gleaming blue and white tower that looked as if a bit of Brasilia had crash-landed in the middle of Victorian London.
The lobby was a wide, clean space with lots of glass and white paint marred only by the large numbers of sick people shuffling around. Police officers spend a lot of time in A&E, since you’re either asking people where they got their knife wounds, dealing with the violently drunk or being stitched up yourself. It’s one of the reasons so many coppers marry nurses – that, and the fact that nurses understand about unreasonable shift systems.
Beverley’s acolyte was a nurse, a pale skinny one with purple hair and an Australian accent. She stared at me suspiciously.
‘Who’s this?’ she asked Beverley.
‘This is a friend,’ Beverley said and put her hand on the woman’s arm. ‘We tell him everything.’
The woman relaxed and gave me a smile full of hope. She looked like one of the Pentecostal teenagers from my mum’s second-from-last church. ‘Isn’t it wonderful to be part of something real?’ she said.