Mike Shevdon: Sixty-One Nails

"Niall? Niall, for God's sake, what have you fallen into?"

"I don't know and I don't want either of you involved. Take your mobile with you and I'll call you in a few days." A thought occurred to me. "When I call, I'll ask about the dog, understand?"

"We don't have a dog."

"I know. If I don't ask about the dog, don't say anything. Especially, don't say where you are or what you're doing. In fact, just hang up. And if you see me, make sure it's me, understand?"

"What do you mean, make sure it's you?"

"I mean these people, they can make themselves look like other people." I was sounding a bit strange now, even to myself. "Look, just get me to remember something only we would know, to make sure I am who you think I am."

"Who I think you are?" She was starting to sound sceptical again.

"Just do it for me, OK?"

"Niall? What are you going to do?"

A little part of me was glad she still cared enough to worry what happened to me.

"I'll be all right. I'll have it sorted out in a few days. I'll call you on the mobile when the coast is clear. OK?"

"OK."

"And if I don't call, don't come looking for me. Understand?"

"If you don't call me, I'm going to the police."

There was an edge of determination to her voice that made me feel momentarily proud of her. "OK. You do that." Maybe it would do some good.

"Niall…?" Everything that remained between us, despite all the harsh words and hurtful silences, hung in the pause after that word.

"I know, Kath. You take care of each other."

"Bye."

"Bye."

The connection closed, leaving me standing alone and apart.

I walked back across the paving to the table where Blackbird waited. She looked up as I approached.

"All settled?"

"Yes. She's going to take her away for the weekend."

"That would probably be for the best, Rabbit. Are you ready?"

"What for?"

"A little walk, and then perhaps an introduction or two. It is about time you met some of your new brethren." She stood up, tucking the chair neatly back under the table and leaving the paper cups at one side where they could easily be collected.

"Is this the person you said could help me?"

"Perhaps. They will at least be able to offer you guidance. Whether you act on that guidance is up to you."

"Another one of your choices?"

"Life is choices, Rabbit. We are defined by the choices we make."

I stood up and followed her to the edge of Trafalgar Square and then back up St Martin's Lane.

"So what does one do when one is introduced to one of the Feyre? Shake hands?"

"Touch is an intimate thing amongst the Feyre. You don't touch another Fey unless you're invited."

"But you touched me." It wasn't meant as a criticism, but she gave me a hard look.

"The other circumstance when one touches another Fey is when one is using power, Rabbit, or when fighting or killing. That is why it is considered discourteous."

"So you touch someone to do magic on them… to them?"

"Some of our gifts require touch, and touch can enhance other gifts, making them stronger. Some of it works without touch, or even presence."

"You can use power over a distance?"

"Some can. The spell that binds each Fey to their court works regardless of distance, or even presence. A Fey who broke that spell would risk their life, even if they were a world away, like the Untainted."

We continued along our route through the back lanes and side alleys of Covent Garden. There would appear to be a dead end then we would turn a corner and find a gate or the way through a fire escape. People didn't leave their back entrances open in central London because they didn't want drunks or druggies hanging around the fire escape, yet all of these opened to her hand.

"Are you using magic to open these gates?" I asked her.

"Stick to the path, Rabbit. That way is safer." She hadn't answered my question.

We wound our way in a loose spiral around Covent Garden, with me catching occasional glimpses of landmarks I knew and several times finding myself walking in the opposite direction to the one I thought we were going in.

"Do we have to come this way?"

"The straightest path is not the shortest," she said.

"What does that mean? Are we talking some mystical geometry here? Surely the shortest path between two points is a straight line?"

"That depends on what is between you and your destination."

"So what would be between us and our destination?"

"This way is safer," she said. "Believe me."

She squeezed her way past a fence post and around the back of a huge wheelie-bin into the rear courtyard of an office block. Two curious smokers, ostracised to the outside, watched us thread our way through and then along the back of the building and through a hole in the fence to the next.

"Now they've seen us, the hole won't be there next time."

"Yes, it will. They won't remember seeing us."

"Why? Did you do something to their memories?"

My voice fell to a hush as she approached the corner of the building more stealthily. Two pigeons were strutting around each other in a doorway, but there didn't appear to be any other hazard to be wary of.

"I didn't do anything to their memory. I used my glamour, the part of my magic that affects my appearance, to make us unremarkable. By the time they've finished their cigarettes, the conversation will have moved on to something else and they won't think enough about us to mention it to anyone. "

"So are you using your… glamour to affect my appearance too?" She was walking slowly up behind the pigeons.

"Glamour is the least of Fey magic. It allows us to alter our appearance to suit our surroundings or our circumstances. It's all a matter of knowing how you look and willing it to be so. It's a bit like driving, it takes practice, but once you know how, you don't even think about it. As far as they are concerned you are standing in my shadow, in a manner of speaking. The impression it leaves can spill over."

She took a soft brown sack from her bag, then reached down and lifted one of the pigeons off the pavement. The other looked bemused, as if its playmate had vanished. After a moment it flew upwards towards the strip of sky overhead. Blackbird eased the docile pigeon into the sack.

"Why are we catching pigeons?"

"It's a gift."

"Do you mean the catching of them, or that the pigeon itself is a gift?"

"It's bad manners to turn up on someone's doorstep when you haven't seen them for months and not have something to offer." She opened the door, stepping out onto the edge of Covent Garden Piazza. "Which reminds me, you need to do a little shopping."

"I do?"

She opened the alleyway door and strolled out into the open square as if we hadn't just been furtively sidling around the back of offices. I followed and the door slammed shut behind us, an anonymous doorway in a row of Georgian houses.

"Oh, I've missed this. It's one of the old places." Her mood lightened as she crossed onto the cobble stoned plaza.

I corrected her. "It's not as old as people think, actually. The flower market is only late nineteenth century."

"And why do you think they built a flower market here?"

"Well, I guess it was part of the original settlement. Maybe there were market gardens here once?"

"Oh, there were gardens here, convent gardens actually, and there was a market here long before Christianity and for much more than flowers. Herbs and potions, talismans and wardings, you could buy anything here, once." She stepped up onto the paving around the covered market and breathed in as if inhaling a heady scent.

"Blackbird, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you, exactly?"

"Didn't I tell you it was rude to ask someone's age?" She arched an eyebrow at me, but I was prepared for her evasion this time.