Written For: opalmatrix in Worldbuilding 2023

AN: This story takes place in spring of 2014, a bit under a year after "What Abigail Did That Summer" and a few months before "The Furthest Station." Abigail is, Nicky and Brent are about 8.

The Golden Chip of Hanwell does indeed exist, but the Fisher family are fictional.

Birdylion was a great help with canon details

Lavender_threads went above and beyond the call of duty as a beta and helped me brainstorm things that really brought it all together. Thank you both.

Abigail stared at Peter. "So, what you're saying is, you want me to babysit your girlfriend's baby sisters."

It wasn't an offer she got often. She wasn't exactly the girl the mums round the estate thought of when they were trying to find someone to watch their kids. At least, not the ones who only knew her by reputation. And the ones who knew her family, who knew how much help she was with Paul, they didn't want to bother her. Or hire her on a night her mum might need her, which was just about any night.

"Not babysitting," Peter protested. "Bev'll be around, and available if anything happens."

"Then what does she need me for?" Abigail asked.

Peter sighed. "It's hard socializing goddesses, okay. They can glamour almost anyone they want outside their family. And if they're ever going to have friends—instead of minions—they need to know how to get along with ordinary people without putting the whammy on them."

"And they can't put the whammy on me," Abigail said. After the House by the Heath, there was very little that could influence her unless she let them. That had been a bit of a trial by fire, and more than a bit scarier than she'd been anticipating when she started that investigation, but she'd come out of it with an absolute knowledge of who she was and how to maintain that even when something powerful was trying to bend her to its will. She hadn't spent much time among the genius loci, but she couldn't imagine even Mama or Father Thames being more powerful at illusions than that stupid house was.

"And they can't put the whammy on you," Peter confirmed.

"But Bev doesn't trust that, which is why she'll be around," Abigail said.

"She doesn't know you as well as I do," Peter said. "But also, the girls have had a lot of authority figures telling them when and how they can use their powers and when and how they shouldn't, and it hasn't made much of a difference. If you're the babysitter, you're just another grownup telling them what to do. Bev wants to try a different approach."

"I'm fourteen," Abigail pointed out.

"To an eight year old, that's ancient," Peter said. "You're almost twice their age. But still young enough to be the cool older kid, hopefully. Bev thinks if they like you, and look up to you, they may think it's more important to behave in a manner you approve of."

Peter knew well the impact of Abigail's Determined Face, though she tried to use it on him sparingly. She'd found that it helped, sometimes, to save that up for when she really needed it. It had more impact when the target had had less time to build up immunity. Still, Abigail had a finely tuned meter for adult nonsense, and something about how he talked was lighting it up bigtime. "And?"

"And what?" Peter asked.

"And if that's all, you would have asked me last summer when you got back from Rushpool and found out what happened on the Heath," Abigail pointed out. "Why now?"

Peter sighed. "It's Nicole," he said. "The one who grew up with the fae. She's a bit of a bad influence, 'cos she has the glamour too, and all her life she's been taught that it's right and good to use it on mortals. And there's a limit to how much they can separate her from Brent and Nicky, given their lives revolve around Mama Thames' home, even though Fleet's the one who's fostering Nicole and all three of the girls spend lots of time with other Rivers so they're not all under the same roof at the same time."

"And right now, Nicole is the cool older kid," Abigail said. "You want me to replace her."

"It's worth a shot," Peter said.

"What's in it for me?" Abigail asked. She didn't mind kids, but she wasn't all gooey over them, either. The kind of thing Peter was talking about would take a serious amount of time, and she had other things she wanted to do more. There was a whole world of things to figure out in London.

"Money?" Peter said.

"Sure," Abigail said, "and what else?" Money was always nice, and a year ago it would have been enough. But now she'd been doing odd jobs for Simon's mum for eight months, and she had quite a bit of change socked away. She hadn't spent much of it—no need to be flashy and obvious—but the security of it was reassuring. She doubted Peter and Bev would be willing to match Simon's mum's rates, anyway.

"What do you want?" Peter asked.

Abigail considered this. The big thing she wanted was magic, which he'd already promised to teach her. Her Latin was at least as good as his, now, and while Peter might want to put things off as long as possible, Nightingale would do the gentlemanly thing and insist on fulfilling the promise as soon as she proved she'd fulfilled the spirit of the bargain. "I want introductions to more of the demi-monde," she said.

"What kind of introductions?" Peter asked.

"I've read the County Practitioner records, and a lot of the books in the Folly Library," Abigail said. "But the sort of nonsense a bunch of posh white men thought a hundred and fifty years ago doesn't tell me much about where to go to find people now. Honestly, it doesn't even tell me much about what things were like then. I want to meet people. I want to see what they're really like." There was a whole world out there that touched the world she'd grown up in, but wasn't quite the same, and Abigail wanted to know what it was like.

"I get veto on where we take you, and who you meet," Peter said.

"As long as you don't use it as an excuse to not take me to the cool places," Abigail said. "I get to veto any visit to something boring or something I already know about."

"Fair enough," Peter said.