Emma called me at ten o'clock on a Friday morning, which was not, in itself, unusual. I work for Gorbentius and Co, which is a magical consultancy. She works for the Ministry and there can be a fair amount of work contact. One thing we have learned is that, when one is in a personal relationship which is also a professional relationship, one should be clear at all times as to which relationship one is in, especially at the beginning of telephone calls.
'Work or play?' I said, once we had established that neither of us had deteriorated in the twelve or so hours since we had last seen each other.
'Sort of both and neither,' she said. 'Work for you, I suppose, but not for me.'
'Okayy,' I said, sort of intrigued. 'Tell me your bit first and then tell me what I'm supposed to do.'
'It's something The Mother has asked me to do,' she said. 'It's for a friend of hers.'
'The Mother' was not her mother, but the leader of the coven she belonged to and in which she had been educated. The only thing I knew about The Mother was that she had been bitten by a werewolf while fighting, on our side, at The Battle.
'What does this friend want?' I said.
Emma hummed for a moment. A sign of embarrassment. 'Her friend has a little girl,' she said. 'Not so little, now. She's about twelve, I guess.'
'Still can't see where I fit in,' I said.
'Wait,' she said. 'All will become clear. Apparently, they were doing this LGBTQ awareness at school and this little girl has told her teachers that she identifies as a wolf.'
'Ah,' I said. 'I see. And you want me to go and check if she's a were or it's just a phase.'
'Exactly,' she said, sounding relieved.
'But why us?' I said. 'We charge, and The Ministry has a whole Department for this sort of thing who will do it free.'
'Have you met the bozos in the Department?' she said. 'They don't call them The Beast Police for nothing.'
'They do have a certain rep.'
'Just a bit. And she doesn't want to have to change her name unless she absolutely has to.'
Under the Treaty of Droylsden, anyone of a changeable nature must have an indicator that they can change, and that they can be dangerous. Vamps have to wear full evening dress at all times (only evening dress changes with them so if they were wearing jeans when they transformed, they would be stark naked when they transformed back) but most just have to change their name. Canny ones try to disguise it, but if you meet someone called Luke Antrobus, enquire, tactfully, whether he's lycanthrope.
'So I should run down and take a few tests and things?' I said.
'Yes, but quietly,' she said. 'I know you'll have to charge, but, you know?'
'Mate's rates?' I said. 'I'll have to check. We have a scale and I will need some authorisation from Mr Gorbentius if I want to bend the rules.'
'That would be wonderful,' she said. 'When can you do it? The Mother has been badgering me.'
Once we had established where the girl lived (somewhere in Dorset) and I would get on to it next week, conversation became general. But, just before she rang off, she reminded me again. It seemed to be preying in her mind.
I don't know what The Department for Magical Fauna, aka The Beast Police, do to investigate Second Natures, but calling our procedure a test is a bit grand: we have a pair of glasses that show up different shifters and quasi-humans in different colours that depend on their Second Nature. The glasses are incredibly rare and they cost an arm and a leg. This being magic, the expression is not a figure of speech. The trick, according to Mr Gorbentius, is to make sure that said arm and leg belong to someone else. He never said who.
There's a public fireway to a pub just outside Dorchester so I popped through it and phoned for a cab. I don't like flipping, for various reasons and anyway, it can be tricky flipping to somewhere you have never been before. The cab dropped me outside an innocuous bungalow and I rang the bell.
The woman who opened it was very tall, with a lined face and wild brown hair, the colour of autumn leaved, trussed up in what looked like a bird's nest. She narrowed her eyes at me for a moment, then her face relaxed.
'Mr Corner?' she said.
'Mike,' I said shaking her hand, which was rough as though she did a lot of laundry. 'When people call me Mr Corner I always think I must be in trouble.'
She paused a moment to think about this and then laughed. 'You're not in trouble, yet. Janet Oakley. Come on in. Willows just in here.'
Willow. Oakley. If I wasn't mistaken there was a bit of a theme here.
Willow was sitting in their front room, looking nervous and still in her school uniform. She stood up to shake me by the hand, very gown-up, but her hand was shaking. She was very tall, like her mother, with the same brown hair, but it was much neater.
'Does this hurt?' she said. 'Do you take a blood sample?'
'Nothing as serious as that,' I assured her. I just have to take a swab of your skin and pass it through a machine.' I held up a black box with a clear plastic window in it. It looked very impressive but all it contained was a battery-operated mouse. It buzzed and vibrated when I pressed a button and Willow flinched at the sound.
The truth was that I only needed the glasses, but clients might become resentful if they had to pay to be looked at, so we have to put on a show. I swabbed her hand with a wet-wipe that had been enchanted to change colour. I put on the glasses and looked at the wet-wipe, which had turned blue.
'Hmmm,' I said sagely. 'We might need to take another swipe.' Then I looked at her.
Definitely a were of some sort. She had a very distinct nimbus around her, but it wasn't grey, which would indicate 'wolf', It was a sort of muted green. I glanced at her mother.
Woah! She was green. Seriously green. The tree theme came into sharp focus, and I wondered why she hadn't mentioned it. There was no point in being coy about it. Dryads weren't covered by Droylesden.
'Hmmm,' I said again. Less sagely this time. 'I assume you are aware of your own nature.
'Do I know I'm a dryad?' she said. 'Of course I'm bloody aware. Sorry, darling,' she said to Willow. 'If she had identified as a tree I wouldn't be calling you in, would I? Why do you think I called her 'Willow'?'
'But I'm not a tree,' said Willow. 'I'm a wolf.'
I looked at her again, wishing we had some more accurate, and real, means of testing. Her nimbus was strong, and was definitely green, but not nearly as strongly green as her mother. It was paler, and it rippled between green and something that could be grey, but it changed too quickly to be sure.
'Was your dad Mundane?' I asked as delicately as I could.
'She didn't have a father,' said Mrs Oakley. 'We don't always know who the father is.'
I looked at her skeptically, wondering why she called herself Mrs.
'Pollen,' she said. 'It depends which phase we were in when she was sired. If we are in tree phase, we wouldn't know who the pollen came from.'
I wished I knew more about the life cycles of Dryads. 'But I think I'm picking up something that isn't completely Dryad,' I said, remembering to point at the box.
Mrs Oakley shrugged, and I think she looked a bit pink.
'What about Uncle Rufus?' said Willow.
'What about him?' snapped her mother.
'Well, he's been very kind to us'
'So what?' said her mother, frowning at her. 'He's just a friend.'
''Who are we talking about?' I said, confused.
'Just a family friend,' said Mrs Oakley firmly
'Rufus Larkhamthorpe,' said Willow, at the same time.
'He is just a friend,' said her mother angrily.
That I didn't doubt. He was also a person with a name that sounded very like 'lycanthrope' being very kind to a family with a child with grey in her nimbus. Being prepared to pay for a private consultation also started to make horrible sense because the Ministry, our Ministry, took a very dim view of shifters mixing and matching. Their reasons were simple: you never knew what the offspring would be. Weres weren't great, but they were predictable. A werewolf would behave like a werewolf. A werefox would behave like a werefox, but who knew how a werewolf/Dryad combo would turn out.
And I was so far out of my depth that I could barely see the shore. I didn't think that Emma had known about Janet Oakley's nature, but I was willing to bet that The Mother knew and hadn't passed it on. I was also aware that I was standing in Ground Zero of a potential family melt down. I am so unqualified for dealing with family melt-downs, let alone anything else.
'Look,' I said, and they both stopped glaring at each other and glared at me instead. 'You've got a decision to make. I don't know this Rufus Larkhamthorpe, and I don't know what influence he has had on Willow, but I do know that she has some wolfishness about her.'
'Told you,' said Willow smugly.
'Now, I get that you don't want the Ministry involved,' I said. 'But if something happens and they find out about Willow the hard way, they will definitely take her away.
There was a silence of two held breaths.
'You need to tell them,' I said.
'You're useless, then,' said Mrs Oakley. 'Why did we waste money getting you down here?'
'It's not a waste,' I said. 'If you had asked the Department they would almost certainly have taken her away. She would be in one of their vans right now.'
'Hey, I'm still here,' said Willow
Her mother waved her to silence. 'So what do I do?'
'What do we do?' said Willow.
'Contact the Ministry,' I said. 'Tell them your nature. Tell them that you are friends with a werewolf. Say that your daughter identifies as a wolf and that she may have picked up some of his nature.'
'That's ridiculous,' said Mrs Oakley. 'Why don't we just say that he's the father?'
'Thought so,' said Willow.
'You don't have to,' I said. 'I don't know how Dryad biology works but people do come into contact with weres and they acquire were characteristics, but they don't become weres. Remember that the Mother was actually bitten during the battle at the school and she's not a were.'
'That's true,' Mrs Oakley admitted.
'And you only have a trace of were about you,' I went on. 'Tell them. Play it down. Say you consulted me and I told you to be on the safe side. I can't guarantee anything and they may want to monitor you, but if something goes wrong and they find out that you had been hiding Willow's nature, they will take her in, and you will probably spend some time on The Rock.'
'What about you,' said Mrs Oakley. 'What are you going to do?'
A question I was hoping she wouldn't ask. 'I will have to report it,' I said reluctantly. 'If something went wrong and they knew I knew and hadn't reported it, I'd be on The Rock with you.'
'So we don't have a choice.'
'I won't say anything to the Department for a few days, so you can speak to them first. But I can't leave it for long, and I'll have to speak to my contact at The Ministry, the one the Mother spoke to. She won't pass it on if I tell her not to.'
'Are you sure?' said Mrs Oakley.
'Sure as I can be.'
There was a slightly tense silence, they we all jumped when my phone rang.
I looked at the call info. It was from Emma 'It's my contact,' I said. 'Hi,' I said to Emma.
'Mike. Are you done?' she said, sounding as tense as we were. 'Can you get here asap?'
'Sure,' I said. 'Where's here?'
'Go to The Cauldron,' she said. 'I'll meet you there.'
'What's going on?' I said, but the call had gone red. 'I'm sorry,' I said to Mrs Oakley. 'I've got to go. Something's come up. Drop me an email when you've spoken to the Departmnet but don't wait too long or they'll know we've colluded.'
She nodded, her lips tight.
'Good luck,' I said and stepped into nothingness.
I don't like flipping. An old girlfriend once lost a finger and I had to help her and clear up and do all sorts of horrible things as a result. Our break-up was an indirect result of it all and, as a result, I went off flipping altogether.
I still arrived at The Cauldron's landing circle in one piece but I didn't enjoy the experience much. I can't understand people who say they do it for fun.
Emma was waiting in the bar, with one of her colleagues who I had met before and was somewhat familiar.
'You remember Steve Muybridge,' she said
'I remember you from that meeting,' I said, shaking his hand. 'And I think we've met before.'
'You saved my life,' he said. 'Back in our first term at school.'1
A light dawned. 'So you never got your magic back,' I said.
He shook his head. 'I did okay, though. I was under the wing of Emma's coven. And I know about magic, which is how I ended up here.'
'I'm glad it worked out,' I said. 'And you didn't miss much.'
'I'm glad I did miss it,' he said. 'It sounded pretty bad. The problem is that what we've got now is also pretty bad.'
'Not on the same scale,' said Emma, 'but The Secretary has gone full Troll on us. We think the geas is taking her over.'
A few months back, Emma and I discovered that The Secretary, who was a mega-senior figure in the Mundane government, has acquired a geas. It was a sort of compulsion that made people do what she wanted. Some other-natured folk have them – vampires, fae and trolls, for example – but they can be traded, and she had got one from a very old and powerful troll called Grendel. He had used it to capture people for eating. She had used it to further her career in politics. It had been very effective but if it was making her become a troll, this was bad news.2
'What has she done?' I said, imagining the worst. 'I know she wanted to take the homeless people's tents away.
'That was the public version,' said Steve. 'What she actually wanted to do was eat them.'
'And she told a bunch of Yank think-tankers that the experiment of having magical and non-magical people living side by side had failed,' added Emma. 'Though it's not clear what she was proposing to do about it.'
'Who did she think should stop tolerating whom?' I said. 'I mean, was she speaking as a troll not tolerating Mundanes, or Mundanes not tolerating magical people?'
'We don't know,' said Emma, 'and the Ministry don't want to ask because they don't want to know the answer.'
'It could be a return to the Bad Year,' I whispered, and my joints started to ache as the Cruciatus, still dormant in me, started to stir.
'Or the days before that, and the Statute of Secrecy,' said Steve.
'Not good either way,' I said. 'We have to track down Grendel and get him to take it back, I think.'
'Will he co-operate?' said Emma. 'I thought he wasn't very keen on you.'
I shrugged. 'We parted on reasonable terms,' I said. 'It's more a question of finding him and persuading him to co-operate. He thinks she's the bee's knees.'
In the event, tracking him down was easy. We took an Uber to Battersea Bridge and I called him. There was no reply and I thought he must still be squatting in Physic Alley. Then a large figure, with no hair, a stylish leisure suit (XXXL) and what looked like terrible acne, appeared from the group of houseboats moored nearby.
'Are you looking for Grendel?' he said in a beautifully modulated voice, with just a hint of gravel. 'Hang on. You're the Corner boy aren't you. He was talking about you just the other day.'
'Blessings on your Bridge,' I said politely, but he waved it away.
'Oh, we don't bother with that ritual palaver, these days,' he said, 'though we do appreciate it. He's down the other end. Down the steps on the east side. Bang three times on the railings and say his name.'
Thank you very much,' I said. 'Mr…?'
'Carterhaugh,' he said. 'Sidney Carterhaugh. And you are?' he said to Emma.
'Emma Daines,' she said. 'From the Mundane Home Office.'
'Oooh! You'll have a job deporting Grendel!'
'We're not planning to deport him,' I said. 'We just think he might have some information we need. He's been around a long time.'
'So have I, dear boy,' said Carterhaugh. 'So have I, and I have no information at all.' He grinned a disconcertingly tooth-filled grin and disappeared off down the steps to the river.
'That was a troll?' whispered Emma when we were off the bridge on the other side. 'A modern troll?'
'A Chelsea troll,' I said. 'I bet he had to have that leisure suit made up for him.'
I tapped three times on the railings. 'Grendel?'
A door opened in the solid stonework, half way down the steps to the river.
'Hi Mike. Hi Emma. How you doin'?' said Grendel, stepping out and closing the door behind him. 'Sorry I can't invite you in but I've got the decorators in.'
'No worries,' I said. 'We're here in a sort of business capacity so we can't stop.'
'I fort you might be,' he said coming up the steps to shake us by the hand. It was disconcerting shaking hands with someone who could, if legend were true, eat us both in about five seconds (and I believed it). On the other hand, if we had been greeted formally, this meant that we probably would not be eaten (probably). 'Is dis about the geas?'
'How did you guess?' asked Emma with a frown.
'Yeah. A geas ain't made for humans,' he said. 'Dey don't always work like you expect them to work. Dey can go sour after a while, if you ain't careful.'
'Is she turning int a troll?' I asked.
'I don't fink so,' he said. 'But I don't really know. No-one knows, like. You're mixing two sorts of folk and you can never tell when that happens.'
I thought of young Willow, and the prospect of The Beast Police arresting the Secretary for being part troll was rather alarming.
'Can we stop it happening?' said Emma.
'You gotta feed it,' he said. 'So I tol' her. 'You gotta feed it'. But she was like 'Yeah, yeah' and I knew she weren't listening.'
'What do you feed it on?' I said.
'Like, you know? Food,' he said, though he looked shifty.
'But she eats,' I said. 'Doesn't she?' I asked Emma.
'Yeah, but you gotta eat for your own self and eat for the geas,' said Grendel. 'It's like a separate part of you. I bet she don't eat for the geas.'
'Can you get her to eat more?' I asked Emma.
'I doubt it,' she said. 'And you're right. She doesn't eat a huge amount.'
'Can you get it off her?' I asked him. 'Without her consent.'
'Simplest way'd be for me to eat 'er,' he said.
'I don't think that would work,' said Emma. 'Someone would be bound to notice if she disappeared.'
'What did she buy it with?' I said. 'I mean what did she give you in exchange?'
'I'd rarver not say,' he said.
'Not money, then?'
'You can exchange it for gold,' he said. 'But I don't need no gold.'
I thought about Carterhaugh and his Chelsea accent but trollish appearance.
'Did she give you lessons in blending in?' I said.
'Nah. But you're getting warm.'
'Was it an actual thing?' I said.
'This is beginning to sound like Animal, Vegetable, Mineral,' said Emma.
'I'm not a fecking animal,' said Grendel.
'No, no! It's not you. It's a guessing game,' I said, frowning Emma down. 'You have to guess what a physical object is by asking questions and you have to start by asking whether is animal, vegetable or mineral.'
'If dat's what you do to entertain yourselves,' he said, though he sounded a bit mollified.
'So was it a physical thing?' said Emma, 'or was it something like information.' He sighed, and looked around as though looking for an escape route. 'It was 'er 'umanity,' he said. 'Or some of it anyway. I gave 'er a bit of my trollishness and she gave me a bit of 'er 'umanness.'
'Is what she gave you taking over?' asked Emma. 'Making you more human?'
'Nah. 'Cos I know to feed it,' he said. 'All it does is make me blend in.'
'Whereas it's making her more troll-like,' I said, the image making me very uncomfortable.
'As it 'appens, I'd quite like it back,' he said. 'I'm a big bugger, and usually peeps don't need much persuading, but sometimes there's those who want to have a go.'
'Is that a problem?' I asked. I knew he worked as Security at nightclubs.
'Not for me,' he said. 'But the management don't like 'having to clear up the mess.'
'How close do you have to be to reverse the swap?' I said. 'Could you do it from here?'
'Nah. Touching,' he said. 'Skin to skin. I reckon it'd take a good handshake, same as it was before.'
'So if I got you in the same room as her for a moment or two, you could swap them back?' I said, and, suddenly, I had a plan.
'A sound idea, but I don't think you have given enough thought about the details,' said Mr Gorbentius. This was Gorbentius-speak for 'Your plan sucks. Go away and start again.'
'Actually, I think it's pretty well thought out,' said Boot. 'If she's not aware that it's gone until she tries to use it, we just need to make her think it's working until she's away from us.'
'She's part troll,' said Mr Gorbentius. 'She'll be paranoid about it. She won't fall for it.'
'She's only got the geas part,' said Boot. 'If anything, it's making her the opposite of paranoid.
'But she'll remember that she met Grendel in our offices, surely she'll connect meeting him with losing the geas.
'Possibly,' I said, 'but who can she tell? How can she blame us for losing something that she shouldn't have had and couldn't admit to having in the first place?'
He didn't look convinced. 'I don't want any comeback to this company,' he said.
'If the worst comes to the worst, we can always blame the PortalBooth,' said Boot. She knows it's temperamental.'
'If the worst comes to the worst I will blame you,' said Mr Gorbentius. 'And sack you.'
It was at moments like this that you realised that Mr Gorbentius wasn't human himself.
'Let's do it, then,' said Boot, but Mr Gorbentius hadn't been looking at him when he said it.
First the phone call to Emma.
'Work call, I'm afraid,' I said. 'Can you tell the Secretary that we have found a way of getting her into the Alleys?'
'Have you?' she said in some surprise. I hadn't told her about the Plan.
'I think so,' I said. 'We know what the problem was and we think we have found a way to sort it.'
'Safely?' she said. 'Is this …?'
'Quite safely,' I interrupted. 'If she would like to come to our offices, we can take her there.'
'I'm sure she's like to see,' she said. 'Now this Ruanda plan looks as though it's going to fall apart. She's starting to worry some people.'
'I read her article about the police treating people equally, irrespective of whether they were throwing Molotov cocktails or waving peace banners.
'You don't know the half of it,' she said. 'That was the version we managed to get out. What she actually wanted was for the police to eat them. She said if they ate them equally on both sides, no-one would notice. Steve managed to sneak the 'tr..'. in when she wasn't looking. She hasn't noticed yet.'
'Eating them sounds unhinged,' I said. 'Besides, I didn't think there were any trolls in the Met these days.'
'They were all weeded out in the nineties,' she said. 'Some may have sneaked back in, but these days, I think they'd be spotted.'
'We'd better sort it out as soon as poss, then. In the meantime, talk to her office and fix up a visit as soon as you can.'
She phoned back in ten minutes. 'Tomorrow afternoon,' she said. 'Three thirty.'
'That was quick,' I said. 'What about the wheels of government grinding exceeding slow?'
'She was very keen,' said Emma. 'And she happened to have a free spot tomorrow.'
'You coming?'
'Probably,' she said gloomily.
That was mildly inconvenient, because I ought to tell her what we were planning to do if she was going to be there. 'Drink after work?' I said.
'I can't, I'm afraid, she said. 'We have a policy up for debate and I need to be on hand.'
Next a call to Grendel, who was happy to come into the office at three-thirty tomorrow.
And, for once, the plan worked smoothly. Grendel walked in just as the Secretary arrived with her entourage. He greeted her warmly and shook her by the hand. She, Emma and her security detail were ushered into the PortalBooth room and I was able to check that she no longer had a geas. Followed them into Physic Alley, where she poked around a bit, but I had no idea what she was looking for. Neither, I suspect, did she.
'I'm afraid we can only be here for a couple of minutes,' I told her.
'I will stay here as long as I like,' she said. 'Show me a typical house.'
'Yes, Secretary,' I said, trying to act subservient, but secretly saying 'Yessss!'
At four fifteen they piled back into their cars and twenty minutes later, Emma called me.
'You bastard,' she said. 'You should have warned me.'
'I was going to,' I said, 'but I didn't want to do it over the phone.'
'Are your phone's compromised?'
'Pretty sure not,' I said. 'But yours might be, and we only had one realistic chance.'
She grumphed. 'Well, it doesn't seem to have stopped her,' she said. 'She's going to see the PM to tell him to resign.'
I wonder whether, when he didn't resign and sacked her instead, that was the first inkling the Secretary had that she no longer had the geas.
I also wonder whether she has connected losing the geas with meeting Grendel in our office. Even if she does, I don't think there's a lot she can do about it.
When the sacking became news and with it her lists of demands she had made before he appointed her, people were wondering why he had agreed to them, but it set me to wondering how the PM got the job.
I've never met him, but I wonder whether he has a geas too, just not as strong as hers. If he does have one, where did he get it from?
Or from whom? And I wonder whether there is another troll who has signs of humanity. Sidney Carterhaugh springs to mind.
1 See Michael Corner and The New School Rule
2 See Michael Corner and The Nice Green Jacket