Page 23 of Smoke & Ashes
“Oh, not you as well.” I slumped back in my chair hard enough that I was briefly worried I’d break it, but private hospitals had sturdy furniture. “Why is everybody trying to read my cards lately?”
Michelle flexed her fingers, making her knuckles crack. “Because you’re on a mystical vision quest to heal the witch-queen of London and stop the country sliding into waste and ruin?”
“Oh yeah. Right.” I looked at her. “So … know how I might go about doing that?”
“Find the castle, win the grail.”
This shit was getting a bit too real for me. “Can I make it extra specially clear that we’re talking about the same thing here? Because I’m a PI. I find cheating spouses, notthe actual Holy Grail.”
“You’ll do it, Kate. Nimue chose you for it.”
Okay, that was beginning to sound very slightly creepy. “What do you meanchose me?”
“This day was always coming, sooner or later.”
“If you say anything that soundsremotelylike ‘every step has led you here’ I am going to punch you so hard.”
Threats didn’t work on Michelle. Playing with fire was kind of her whole bag. “Do your job, Kate. You’re an investigator. Investigate.”
“And that’s it? You can’t even tell me where to begin?”
She held out her right hand and a thin pilum of fire flowed into existence between her encircled fingers. “Do I look like a seer?”
Fair point. But I knew somebody who did. “And I’m guessing this is important. Like drop-everything-make-this-your-first-priority-whatever-happens important?”
She nodded.
Well great. At least if I was lucky the Prince of Wands would kill me before I had to put too much work into figuring out what the hell was going on. I got up and took one last look at Nimue, hanging between life and death like—well you can pick your metaphor but between thema mystical queen on a descent to the underworldanda thirty-something woman in a comacovered all the bases.
I nodded what I hoped was an appropriately curt goodbye to Michelle, and left the hospital. Fishing my phone out of my pocket, I noticed I had another text from the enigmatic Dr Bright. It read:I would be free to consult with you tomorrow evening, if that is agreeable.
I fired back a quickWorks for methen followed it up with:Probably a weird question, but how much do you know about the Holy Grail?”
There was no immediate reply, not that I was expecting one. I had rather more success with pinging Sofia a text to say:Sorry about Patrick. I think I might need your help with something. Mind if I stop by sometime soon?
It turned out she was free that evening. Since she was now a proper student, I wasn’t sure if that meant she was too much of a slacker to be committed to studying or too sensible to be out partying. Probably it meant both, which also meant she was once again in a much healthier and more stable place than I was. She texted me her address, although I tormented her by persisting in calling it herdeets, and I set out for her place. It was, of course, fucking miles away, because London prices were awful. Still, I’d made the arrangement now, and I wasn’t shelling out for an hour-long cab ride when I only had one paying case on the go, so I braved the Central line to North Acton.
I was still hearing the dogs.
11
Wine & Prophecy
It turned out Sofia was living in a—well it was the sort of place you should probably experience living in for a couple of years in your twenties and then get the hell out of as soon as you develop a real income. I mean, my flat wasn’t great, but these days I generally tried to avoid living anywhere around a boarded up industrial lot or a set of vacant warehouses.
Not being entirely sure what Sofia’s flat number was, I texted her that I’d arrived, and she popped up at the door wearing a set of checked lounge pants, a baggy tee-shirt and a pair of fuzzy booties with pandas on them. Also her hair had gone pink. Well, I assumed she’d dyed it pink rather than waking up like that one day, but I still hadn’t quite been ready for the transformation. When I’d last had a proper sit-down with her she’d been finishing her A-Levels and this was almost like a completely different person.
“You haven’t had anything … pierced have you?”
She smiled at me in a way I didn’t want to think of as knowing. “Nothing you’d be able to see.” I must have looked too shocked to follow her inside, because she clarified slightly too hastily. “No. No I haven’t had anything pierced. It’s just the hair.”
“Oh. Well it looks very nice on you.” I was pretty sure I visibly relaxed.
We went upstairs to a much nicer than I was expecting flat on the third floor. I say nicer than I was expecting but Sofia was nevernotgoing to live somewhere at least reasonably well cared for. She had that trick of giving a fuck what her home looked like that I’d never managed to get the hang of. She took me through to a fairly spacious and not-too-tippified kitchen-diner-sitting-room-shared-space thing. There was another girl sitting at the dining table, and this one definitelydidhave piercings. She’d gone a similar brightly-coloured-hair route to Sofia, although she’d opted for blue rather than pink which made the two of them look a little bit like his ‘n’ hers toothbrushes. And she wore a flatteringly but distractingly tight tee-shirt withLove Will Tear Us Apartemblazoned on it, and while I appreciated the Joy Division shoutout it was a slightly unfortunate phrase to have scribed on your breasts.
“Flick, Kate, Kate, Flick.”
We gave slightly laconic waves at each other.
