Whispers Under Ground

cascaded expensively around her shoulders. Chelsea had a long neck, a narrower mouth than her sister and was sporting what I judged to be about thirty-six man-hours’ worth of twisted hair extensions. They were wearing identical hot pink knit mini-dresses that I know their mother wouldn’t have approved of – I kept my eyes on their faces.
    ‘You’d better have a really good reason for this,’ said Olympia, folding her arms.
    ‘Agent Reynolds, Sergeant Kumar, let me introduce the goddesses of Counter’s Creek and the River Westbourne,’ I said, and bowed for good measure. The girls shot me a poisonous look but I figured they owed me for that time they left me to sink or swim in the Thames.
    ‘You know we’re Olympia and Chelsea,’ said Chelsea.
    ‘Although,’ Olympia said to Kumar and Reynolds. ‘We are goddesses and expected to be treated as such.’
    ‘I could arrest you if you like,’ I said. ‘I mean, is there actually anyone down here who’s old enough to purchase alcohol?’
    Olympia pursed her lips. ‘Well, Lindsey’s boyfriend Steve is eighteen,’ she said. ‘Does that help?’ To be honest I was too knackered to banter. I checked whether they’d seen strange white guys in hoodies prowling around the tunnels but the sisters said they hadn’t. So I asked if they had somewhere we could wash up, and a working landline.
    Chelsea laughed. ‘Landline,’ she said. ‘We have wifi down here.’
    They also had a full-on locker room and shower last fitted out, judging by the brass taps and stainless steel fittings, sometime in the 1960s. I guessed it must be a leftover from Kumar’s secret government agency. The girls even managed to dig out a sweat shirt and tracksuit bottoms for Reynolds, who glared at me and Kumar until we remembered our manners and left. We found ourselves waiting in a storeroom filled with bottled water and catering boxes of fun-sized chocolate bars. We washed our faces with the water and had an argument about Mars Bars versus Milky Way and then more water after the taste test. When I judged that Kumar was all sugared up I asked him the difficult question.
    ‘Is it a total coincidence that you were assigned to this case?’
    ‘Meaning what?’ asked Kumar.
    ‘I magic up some lights and introduce you to a pair of river goddesses—’
    ‘Teenaged river goddesses,’ said Kumar. ‘And it’s not like either of them has done anything particularly religious.’
    ‘What about the lights?’ I asked.
    ‘Was that magic?’ he asked.
    I hesitated. ‘Yes,’ I said.
    ‘Really magic?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Fuck me!’
    ‘Now you’re reacting?’
    ‘Well I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of the American,’ said Kumar.
    ‘So you’re not from the BTP version of the Folly?’ I asked.
    Kumar laughed and said that British Transport Police had plenty of other demands on its budget.
    ‘But there is a certain amount of weird shit that goes on down here and people got into the habit of asking me to keep track of it,’ said Kumar.
    ‘Why was that?’
    ‘Watched too much X-Files growing up,’ he said. ‘Also I’m a bit of an urban explorer.’
    ‘So, not your first time in the sewers,’ I said. Urban explorers liked to climb into the secret and abandoned nooks and crannies of the city. That a lot of this involved illegal trespass merely added to the attraction.
    ‘It’s the first time I ever went surfing in one,’ he said. ‘I come from a family of engineers so I like poking my nose in and seeing how things work. I kept volunteering to do the weird stuff and in the end it became semi-official.’
    And thus another arrangement was born.
    ‘If you ever meet Lady Ty,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell her. That sort of things drives her berserk.’
    ‘Speaking of X-Files ,’ said Kumar, gesturing back towards the locker room. ‘Do you think Agent Reynolds—?’
    I shrugged. ‘What do I know?’ I said. I was thinking of making it my family motto.
    ‘Maybe we should ask her,’ said Kumar.
    ‘And destroy the mystique?’ I said.
    Kumar wanted to know how magic worked but I told him that I was supposed to keep it secret. ‘I’m already in a ton of shit for opening my mouth,’ I said.
    Despite that, he asked whether it was element based – fire, water, air and earth. I said I didn’t think so.
    ‘So no Earthbenders kicking rocks around,’ he said.
    ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Or Airbenders, or Waterbenders or He-Man or Captain Planet.’ Or any other character