Whispers Under Ground

you see that bum?’
    ‘Do you want me to smack you?’
    ‘Hey,’ said Zach taking a step back. ‘Just say you’re interested and I won’t give her another thought. Maybe a couple of other thoughts, difficult not to, given the circumstances. Come on, even you can’t be that blind.’
    ‘It’s none of your business,’ I said.
    ‘I’m giving you a week on account of the inalienable laws of hospitality,’ he said. ‘Then I’m going to consider it an open field – okay?’
    It seemed a safe bet that something else would have caught Zach’s attention by then. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Whatever.’
    Zach slapped his six-pack and looked around. ‘Now that we’re up,’ he said. ‘What do we do about breakfast?’
    ‘In this establishment,’ I said. ‘We dress for breakfast.’
    Nightingale certainly did, his only concession to informality being that he left the top button of his shirt undone and draped his blazer over the back of his chair. He was addressing his toast and marmalade when I showed Zach, currently sweet-smelling and freshly laundered thanks to Molly, into the breakfast room. Nightingale gave me a quizzical look as Zach fell upon the line of silver salvers with cries of glee and started piling up his plate with kippers, scrambled egg, kedgeree, mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread and devilled kidneys. I sat down and started pouring coffee.
    ‘Zachary Palmer,’ I said.
    ‘The late James Gallagher’s lodger,’ said Nightingale. ‘Lesley filled me in with the case history last night during the rugby.’
    ‘He has a secret or so he says,’ I said.
    ‘Let me guess,’ said Nightingale. ‘Demi-fae?’
    ‘If that means half fairy – then yeah,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’
    Nightingale paused for a bite of toast. ‘I think I knew his father,’ he said. ‘Or possibly his grandfather – it’s never easy to tell with fae.’
    ‘You haven’t taught me about fae yet,’ I said. ‘What are they exactly?’
    ‘They’re not anything exactly ,’ said Nightingale. ‘Fae is just a term like foreigner or barbarian, it basically means people that are not entirely human.’
    I glanced over at where Zach had given up trying to pile everything on one plate and had resorted to using two. Toby had sidled up to sit within easy sausage-catching range, just in case.
    ‘Like the Rivers?’ I asked.
    ‘Less powerful,’ said Nightingale. ‘But more independent. Father Thames could probably flood Oxford if he wanted to, but it would never occur to him to interfere with the natural order to that extent. Fae are capricious, mischievous but no more dangerous than a common cutpurse.’ That last sounded suspiciously like a quote. ‘They’re more frequent in the country than the city.’
    Zach brought his two plates to the table and, after a brief introduction to Nightingale, began to plough through the heaps of food. To eat as much as he did and stay skinny he must burn calories like a racehorse. Was it a fairy thing or within the normal range of human metabolism? I wondered if I could persuade Zach to spend a day being tested by Dr Walid. I was willing to bet he’d never had a demi-fae to experiment on. It would be nice to know whether there was a demonstrable genetic difference, but Dr Walid said that normal human variations were wide enough that you’d need samples from hundreds of subjects to establish that. Thousands if you wanted a statistically significant answer.
    Low sample size – one of the reasons why magic and science are hard to reconcile.
    Zach kept his attention on his food while I told Nightingale about James Gallagher’s visit to Powis Square and the vestigium I’d sensed there.
    ‘Sounds like a floating market,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘A nazareth?’ I asked.
    ‘Like a nazareth only for those that live in our world, rather than your average criminal,’ said Nightingale. ‘We used to call them goblin markets.’ He turned to Zach. ‘Do you know where it is?’
    ‘Not me, guv,’ said Zach. ‘I’m strictly persona non grata amongst them kind of people.’
    ‘Could you find it, though?’
    ‘Maybe,’ said Zach. ‘What’s it worth?’
    Nightingale leaned forward and, whip-fast, grabbed Zach’s wrist and twisted it palm up so that Zach had to half rise out of his chair to avoid breaking it.
    ‘You’re in my house, Zachary Palmer, eating at my table, and I don’t care how modern you think you are, I know you know that’s an obligation you can’t avoid.’ He