Broken Homes

and Beverley Brook. Disappointingly, however, Beverley was wearing all her clothes.
    Toby was sitting up at the edge of the blanket and doing his best small dog on the edge of starvation impression while Effra teased him with an M&S partysized sausage roll. When she saw me she smiled and flicked the roll at Toby, who caught it in midair.
    Oberon gestured grandly at a space on the blanket and I joined them.
    Effra offered me a glass of white wine. Her nails added at least two centimetres to the length of her fingers and were painted with intricate designs in black, gold and red. I accepted the wine, it was a bit early in the day for me but that’s not why I hesitated before drinking.
    ‘Take this as a gift freely given,’ said Effra. ‘Drink with no obligations.’
    I drank. But if it was a fine vintage, it was totally wasted on me.
    ‘So what brings you south of the river?’ asked Beverley. She was wearing a bright blue jumper with a loose enough neck to show the bare brown curve of her shoulder. ‘Business or pleasure?’
    ‘Just work,’ I said.
    ‘Is there anything we can help with?’ asked Oberon.
    I caught a flash of green and yellow in the corner of my eye. But by the time I’d turned my head all I saw was Nicky in laughing pursuit of the vanished young woman.
    ‘You can tell me who that is,’ I said.
    ‘You could call her Sky,’ said Effra, which caused Beverley to choke on her wine.
    ‘No?’ I asked Beverley.
    ‘Sky for short,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’
    ‘And what is she?’ I asked. ‘And don’t give me any of that stuff about reductionism and the dangers of labelling things you don’t understand. I get enough of that from Nightingale and Dr Walid.’
    ‘I suppose you’d call her a dryad,’ said Effra and then looked at Oberon for confirmation. ‘Yes?’
    ‘ Drys , in all truth refers to the oak tree,’ said Oberon which caused Beverley to roll her eyes. ‘Tree nymph would be more accurate, although I doubt the ancients had the London Plane in mind when they named them.’
    ‘Didn’t you do this at uni?’ I asked Effra, who had a history of art degree.
    ‘I avoided the Pre-Raphaelites,’ she said. ‘All those virgins in the water. It was too much like my home life.’
    ‘Can I talk to her?’ I asked.
    Effra frowned. ‘I think I’d have to ask why first.’
    So I told them that there had been suspicious activity around the tower recently and that we were just checking it. Lesley would have been pissed off, had she found out. She thinks that however polite we’re being, the police should never concede anything to anyone short of a full public inquiry. And even then we should lie like fuck on general principles, Lesley being part of the ‘you can’t handle the truth’ school of policing.
    I, being a sophisticated modern police officer – given the specialist field I was working in – preferred to actively promote police/magic community stakeholder engagement in order to facilitate intelligence gathering. Besides, I knew better than to mess Effra about.
    Effra nodded and called Nicky’s name in a tone of voice that actually caused me to flinch guiltily. Oberon noticed my reaction and raised his glass in salute.
    Nicky rushed in from the trees and flung herself on my back, little arms half strangling me, her cheek pressed against mine – I could feel her grinning. Sky, the possibly tree-nymph, despite being the size of a fully grown adult, jumped on Oberon’s back. He didn’t even grunt under the impact – the flash git. Sky leaned over his head and grabbed a bottle of Highland Spring off the picnic blanket, but the cap defeated her. Effra took the bottle from her hand, twisted the top offand handed it back.
    ‘Peter here would like to ask you a few questions,’ she said. ‘But you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.’
    ‘Hello, Sky,’ I said.
    ‘Lo,’ said Sky, fidgeting her Highland Spring bottle from side to side.
    ‘Do you live down here all the time?’
    ‘I’ve got a tree,’ she said proudly.
    ‘That’s nice,’ I said. ‘Do you live with your tree?’
    Sky gave me a strange look, and then lowered her head to whisper something in Oberon’s ear.
    ‘No, he lives in a big house on the other side of the river,’ he said.
    ‘It’s the prettiest tree in the world,’ said Sky, answering my question.
    ‘I’m sure it is,’ I said and Sky beamed at me. ‘All I want to know is if you’ve seen anything strange happening near the