Ben Aaronovitch - Moon Over Soho

“Hello, Peter,” she said as I walked over. “Fancy running into you like this.” She touched her face, found the cream, grimaced, and tried to rub it off with her sleeve. Then she wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled my face down for a kiss.

“You must think me perfectly demented,” she said as we broke.

“Pretty demented,” I said.

She pulled my head down again and asked me in a whisper whether I was free that afternoon. “You left me alone all yesterday,” she said. “I think you owe me an afternoon of carnal pursuits at the very least.”

Given that it was that or several hours of door-to-door canvassing, I didn’t really have to work that hard. Simone laughed, slipped her arm through mine, and led me up the street. I waved a hand at the Patisserie Valerie. “What about your bill?” I asked.

“You mustn’t worry about the patisserie,” she said. “I have an account.”

IT STARTED raining sometime after lunch. I woke up in Simone’s big bed to find the room filled with gray light and rain drumming against the window. Simone was pressed warmly up against me, her cheek against my shoulder, one arm flung possessively across my chest. After some maneuvering I managed to check my watch and found that it was past two o’clock. Simone’s arm tightened around me, her eyes opened, and she gave me a sly look before kissing the hollow of my neck. I decided that it was too wet for doing door-to-door anyway, and that I would compensate by doing all that boring data entry as soon as I got back to the Folly. My schedule suitably modified, I rolled Simone over on her back and set to seeing how worked up I could get her without using my hands. She sighed as my lips found her nipple, which wasn’t the effect I was going for, and gently stroked my head.

“Come up here,” she said and tugged at my shoulders, pulling me up and between her legs so that I slipped in without even trying and then, when she had me arranged to her satisfaction, she held me there, a look of contentment on her face.

My hips twitched.

“Wait,” she said.

“I can’t help it,” I said.

“If you could just restrain yourself a moment,” she said. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

We stayed locked together. I felt a strange vibration in my chest and belly, which I realized was Simone humming deep in her diaphragm, or whatever it is singers use. I couldn’t quite make out the tune, but it made me think of smoky cafés and women in padded jackets and pillbox hats.

“Nobody makes me feel like you,” she said.

“I thought I was the first,” I said.

“Hypothetically,” she said. “If there had been others, none of them would have made me feel the way you do.”

I twitched again but this time she lifted her hips to meet me.

Afterward, we dozed again, sweaty and content and lying in each other’s arms. I would have stayed there forever if I hadn’t been driven out of bed by my bladder, and a guilty sense that there were things that I needed to be getting on with — important things.

Simone lay sprawled naked and inviting across the bed and watched me getting dressed under deliberately heavy-lidded eyes.

“Come back to bed,” she said and let her fingers drift idly around one erect nipple, then the other.

“I’m afraid the mighty army of justice that is the Metropolitan Police never sleeps,” I said.

“I don’t want the mighty army of justice to sleep,” she said. “On the contrary I expect it to be most diligent in its dealings with me. I’m a bad girl and I need to be held accountable for my actions.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“At least take me to your father’s concert,” she said.

I’d told her about Dad’s upcoming gig, but I hadn’t told her that Cyrus Wilkinson’s old band would be playing with him.

“I want to meet your mum and your dad and your friends,” she said. “I’ll be good.”

I knelt down by the bed and kissed her. She clutched at my arms and I thought, Sod it — they’re going to find out sooner or later. I told her she could come.

She finished our kiss and threw herself back on the bed.

“That is all I wanted,” she said and waved her hand in a regal fashion. “You may go about your duties, Constable, and I shall languish here until we meet again.”

The rain had slackened off to a light drizzle that, if you’re a Londoner, barely counts as rain at all. Even so, I splashed out on a black cab to take me back to the Folly where Molly served up steak-and-kidney pudding with roast potatoes, peas, and carrots.

“She always does this when I’m ill,” said Nightingale. “It’ll be black pudding for breakfast tomorrow. Thickens the blood.”

We were eating dinner in the so-called Private Dining Room, which adjoined the English library on the second floor. Since the main dining room could sit sixty, we never used it in case Molly got it into her head to lay all the tables. Nonetheless, Nightingale and I had dressed for dinner — we both have standards and one of us had been exerting himself that afternoon.

I knew from experience that you didn’t dive into one of Molly’s steak-and-kidney puddings until some of the superheated steam had had a chance to dissipate and the interiors had ceased to be hot enough to fire pottery.

Nightingale swallowed a couple of pills with some water and asked about the case.

“Which one?” I asked.

“The jazz musicians first,” he said.

I filled him in on the Café de Paris bombing and my search for Peggy and possibly Cherie.

“You think there’s more than one,” he paused. “What are you calling them?”

“Jazz vampires,” I said. “But I don’t think they’re feeding on the music. I think that’s just a side effect, like the sound a generator makes when it’s turned on.”

“Tactus disvitae,” said Nightingale. “Another species of vampire — Wolfe would be pleased.”

The pudding was cool enough for me to dig in. An afternoon with Simone had left me starving and, according to Nightingale, Molly made her puddings with ox’s liver. Which he said was the proper old-fashioned recipe.

“Why doesn’t Molly go out to buy stuff?” I asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because she’s different,” I said. “Like the jazz vampire and the Pale Lady. But, unlike them, we’ve had a chance to learn what makes her tick.”

Nightingale finished a mouthful and wiped his lips on his napkin.

“The Pale Lady?”

“That’s what Ash called her,” I said.

“Interesting name,” said Nightingale. “As to the food, as far as I know she has everything delivered.”

“She shops on the Internet?”

“Good God no,” said Nightingale. “There are still some establishments that do things the old-fashioned way, whose staff members are still capable of reading a handwritten note.”

“Could she leave if she wanted to?” I asked.

“She’s not a prisoner,” said Nightingale. “Or a slave if that’s what you’re alluding to.”

“So, she could just walk out the door tomorrow?”

“If she so desired,” said Nightingale.

“What’s stopping her?”

“Fear,” said Nightingale. “I believe she’s frightened of what’s out there.”

“What is out there?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Nightingale. “She won’t say.”

“You must have a theory,” I said.

Nightingale shrugged. “Other creatures like Molly,” he said.

“Creatures?”

“People, if you prefer,” said Nightingale. “People who, like Molly, are not the same as you or I or even the genii locorum . They were changed by magic, or they were born into lineages that have been changed. And as far as I know this leaves them — incomplete.”