What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch (most read books TXT) 📕

they calm down. Except for the ones that don’t – they get cuffed and thrown in the back of a van.

What he doesn’t say is that it’s a power move – the Feds’ way of making sure you know they’re in charge. No matter who you are, they could make you stand still, sit down and behave.

The world is rotating us away from the sun and the light is turning golden. Indigo and Simon are laughing at a black Labrador, George H-98, futilely chasing a duck on the other side of Number 1 Pond.

I manage to persuade Indigo out of her dog disguise before we leave the Heath, but when we get to Simon’s house I know I’m not coming in by the way his mum blocks the front door.

‘You,’ she says to Simon. ‘Go upstairs to your room.’

Simon slinks past her but gives me a cheeky wave from behind her back.

‘Where was he?’ she asks me.

I give her some flannel about finding him in Kenwood, which I don’t think she believes.

‘Well, he’s grounded now,’ she says. But then she hesitates before saying that if I want to visit tomorrow, I can. ‘As long as you don’t go out.’

I say I might and she closes the door.

‘Badger!’ says Indigo, which I can tell is totally a fox insult.

14

Because Power

Demi-monde – which is French for ‘half-world’ and an old euphemism, according to Miss Redmayne who teaches humanities, for any sexually active woman who failed to conform to the strict patriarchal gender norms that permeated French society in the dark days before Tinder. Meanwhile, back in the today, the demi-monde is the posh term used to talk about the society of the magical adjacent. This includes people who are naturally magical, what Peter and Nightingale call the fae, people who can do magic, like wizards and ting, and people that hang out with them because . . . reasons. At the top of the pile are the genii locorum, the tutelary spirits of place. Or what my dad might call river spirits.

Not that I’ve told my dad about them because . . . culture.

In London these are the daughters of Mama Thames and they look like your aunty, or your cousins or a social worker, but they’re not because . . . power.

Hampstead Heath lies in the arms of two branches of the River Fleet. She feeds the ponds and occasionally floods the basements of buildings from Kentish Town to Blackfriars. Peter took me to stand on the Holborn Viaduct once and pointed up Farringdon Road.

‘Look at the way it curves,’ he said. ‘Look at the way the land slopes down to meet it. They buried it two hundred years ago and it still shapes the city.’

So if anyone was going to know what was going on on Hampstead Heath, it was going to be the River Fleet. The trick is getting her to talk to you.

*

I’m standing on the opposite side of the Heath to Simon’s house, by the Highgate Number 1 Pond, which is the last in a string of ponds and the one that drains directly into the Fleet. It’s noon on another hot day and the paths are full of sweaty dogs and panting joggers. Although the dogs, at least, get to jump in the pond to cool down. I meant to be up here first thing, but my dad had one of his turns and decided that, since Mum was with Paul at the hospital, he was going to cook us dinner. My dad can cook exactly one thing, corned beef hash, which consists of corned beef, rice, spare vegetables and enough pepper to ensure spontaneous combustion if you’re foolish enough to eat too much. He’s really proud of it so I don’t like to disappoint him. So I had to wait for this morning to hit the Folly library, where I checked Meric Casaubon and Charles Kingsley on how to get the attention of a genius loci. I also learnt a new word. Propitiation.

Propitiation is when you sacrifice something valuable to your friendly neighbourhood deity – which is a fancy word for god – in order for them to either A: do you a favour or B: stop doing something peak10 like flooding your basement or spoiling milk. People have been flinging jewellery, swords and the occasional severed head into the rivers of London for thousands of years. The Romans liked to sacrifice animals and pour away wine, but I don’t like wine and I don’t think Indigo would regard it as much of an honour. And anyway, she can swim. Peter says you can’t go wrong with alcohol, either lager or spirits, providing it’s in quantity. I considered raiding my dad’s stash of Special Brew or the bottle of Gordon’s gin my mum keeps on the top shelf in the kitchen.

But Kingsley makes it clear – it has to be something valuable to you personally. Properly valuable, too, and I’ve only got two things that aren’t people that count. And I need my laptop for school.

So I pull my Samsung out of my pocket.

It was a hand-me-down from an aunty when she upgraded to a smartphone and an embarrassment at school, but it’s been pretty reliable and the battery life wasn’t bad.

There’s a film of green pond scum stretching out three metres from the shore, so I give it a good hard throw so that it lands in clear water. I’m tempted to shout something cheeky like ‘Oi, Fleet – how about a word?’, but that was my phone I just sacrificed and the chances that I’ll get it replaced are bare slim. In the end I don’t say nothing.

Quarter of an hour later and I’m wondering how long you’re supposed to wait – Kingsley and the rest never said – and maybe my phone wasn’t enough. I go and sit down with my back to the fence which divides off the flats. I’ve got a book, a tangerine, a KitKat, a bottle of Dr Pepper and, as soon as I