Chapter Text
To give Molly her due, it was at least daylight when she rang me, and she wasn’t to know that I’d had a late night. A very pleasant late night it had been too, having been spent exclusively in the company of Beverley Brook, who was still snuggled up beside me where we had ended in her bed. Molly probably did know it was officially my day off, but the silence on the phone told me all I needed to know.
“I’ll be right over.”
Bev tried to protest as I got dressed, but she relented when I pointed out that Nightingale definitely knew it was my day off, and if it had just been to do with work he’d have rung me himself.
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” I said. Which was to say, not very, although I didn’t know that at the time. “Molly’s obviously worried about something.”
“All right,” agreed Beverley. “Go and see what it is, or you’ll only be wondering anyway.”
She was right, of course, but I’d have been wondering a long time before I’d have come up with what was bothering Molly on this occasion. I’d barely set foot in the Folly before she appeared out of nowhere, a look on her face I’d never quite seen before. It wasn’t simply fear, although she was clearly afraid of something.
“I came as fast as I could,” I told her, as she gestured impatiently at the stairs. “What’s happened?” She beckoned me upwards, in a way which indicated she thought some sort of urgency was required. “Where’s Nightingale?” She looked almost wild at that. Something had obviously gone wrong, presumably involving my boss, but before I could ask any more questions, she had opened the door of Nightingale’s room and given me a little shove through it when I hesitated. I didn’t get very far before I stopped dead in my tracks. Weird stuff abounds in my line of work, but I’d never seen anything like this before. There, perched on the edge of a brass bed similar to the one that was in my room at the Folly, was a wide-eyed little white boy with brown hair sticking up in all directions, and wearing exactly the sort of pyjamas you’d have expected him to wear if he’d been six foot, forty-odd, and in possession of impeccable but conservative dress sense.
“Hello, Peter,” said this horrifying vision in a very youthful RP accent. “I’m awfully afraid we’ve got a problem.”
I’d like to say I didn’t answer immediately, but I think I did, with a sort of strangulated squeak. In my defence, it’s difficult to think of an adequate response to your boss having lost three decades off his age overnight, especially on the spur of the moment. I knew Nightingale had some sort of backwards ageing thing going on, but this was taking it to extremes.
“Yeah, looks like it, doesn’t it?” I managed eventually. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, looking at me rather helplessly. “I was grown up when I went to bed.”
“Right.” I looked back at Molly, who was still watching as if she expected me to fix the problem immediately. “Did you call Dr Walid?” She hung her head in answer. “All right; I’ll do it. Maybe he’ll have an idea.” Hopefully, I thought, because I didn’t have a clue. “Do you feel all right?” I asked Nightingale. “I mean, apart from…” I gestured at his current appearance.
“Yes,” he assured me, rolling his cuffs back another turn so his hands remained visible. “I’m a bit thirsty, but Molly wouldn’t leave me until you got here.” He glanced over at where she still stood, hovering. “I’m all right, really,” he said earnestly. “Honestly.” She looked between the two of us, apparently unconvinced, but glided from the room, presumably to go and fetch her unexpectedly young charge a nice glass of milk.
“You’re sure you’re OK?”
Nightingale nodded, but he had that expression that little kids get when they’re about to share something outrageous in the most deadly serious manner. I waited.
“I wasn’t very well last night,” he admitted, “But I’m all right now.” He frowned up at me, his feet swinging over the edge of the bed. “Do you want to sit down?”
I sat next to him, trying to ignore the weirdness of the situation and concentrate on how it had arisen. Even then, I could look over Nightingale’s head without even trying, which was fairly disconcerting.
“You remember last night?” I asked, making an effort to look down. He nodded again. “So tell me what happened, then.”
“Well, nothing happened, really. Not happened.”
This is one of the reasons we have to have an appropriate adult present when we’re interviewing minors. Quite apart from all the safeguarding implications you get, it’s often useful to have someone who knows them well enough to interpret such cryptic utterances. I wondered wildly at that point whether Nightingale ought to have had one; for lack of any better idea, I asked him.
“I don’t think so,” he said seriously, after giving it some thought. “I don’t think it counts, because I’m still quite old, you know. And anyway, if I did have to have one, it would be you, wouldn’t it?” Strangely enough, that didn’t reassure me as I think he meant it to. “I can still remember everything about being grown up, anyway.”
“Everything?” I couldn’t help myself. This time, when he nodded, he wouldn’t look at me. He drew his knees up in front of him, an unconsciously childish movement.
“I wish I couldn’t,” he whispered.
Well, that was understandable. I doubted he’d even gone off to Casterbrook the last time he was the size he was now, although given that was some time before the First World War, maybe he was just smaller than you’d expect for his age nowadays. From the way he was talking and behaving, though, he hadn’t just physically aged backwards, so God knows what his mind was making of trying to process what he’d seen at Ettersburg, for one thing. Not being a qualified child psychologist, I decided it was best not to go into it.
“How about we concentrate on what you remember from last night?” I suggested. The nod he gave me this time was tentative, but I took it as a good sign. “No unusual magical occurrences? You weren’t suddenly struck with the urge to carry out weird experiments in the lab, and had something go wrong?”
He looked at me then. “No, Peter,” he said, with the exact intonation that you’d have expected from a little boy faced with the grown-ups asking stupid questions again. “If I wanted to do experiments, I’d make sure they didn’t go wrong.” That was me told. At least he had temporarily forgotten whatever horrors he was looking at inside his head. I carried on with the questions.
“Can you still remember how to do magic?”
Nightingale frowned again, but held his hand out and opened it uncertainly, then gave me a delighted grin as a werelight appeared.
“Yes!” He shut it off and tried again; this time it blazed up more confidently. It was a simple test, but it would do for now; he hadn’t entirely lost the ability, at any rate. It seemed to reassure him, too. He shuffled round to face me, his head cocked slightly as he waited for me to ask the next question.
“So you’re absolutely sure nothing unusual happened that might have caused…” I waved a hand in his direction again, “This?” While he was gravely considering his answer, I went on, “You said you felt ill last night; could that have had anything to do with it?”
“I think that was the sandwiches.”
Which sounded like a no, although given Nightingale’s public school education had clearly included being conditioned to eat whatever was put in front of him, they must have been spectacularly bad sandwiches.
“Has Molly been experimenting again?” I asked.
“Oh, no. It was the constable who was showing me the haunted flat.”
Apparently the junior edition of my boss was going to be as frustratingly vague as his previous incarnation could be.
“Tell me about the haunted flat,” I said, as patiently as I could. “They must have called that in after I’d left last night?”
“That’s why I went. It wasn’t haunted really. At least, there weren’t any ghosts when I got there. But the chap who’d called me in brought coffee and sandwiches while I was making sure there wasn’t anything else there, either, only they’d got those yellow stickers on them,” Nightingale glanced at me to check that I had recognised his description of the supermarket’s end-of-day leftovers, “And they’d gone sort of warm.”
“I think we can rule out food poisoning as a method of speeding you into your second childhood,” I said. “Although giving yourself it might well be a sign of impaired judgement.”
“I wasn’t sick,” he objected, then hesitated. “I don’t think I was. I didn’t feel very well… I had a headache, too.” He still looked pale to me; I suspected his use of the past tense was less accurate than he wanted me to think, and given the strength of the magic that must have been required for whatever had happened to him, I hoped it wasn’t the first signs of brain damage. Hyperthaumaturgical degradation, if you want the proper name for it - damage caused by over-use or exposure to too much magic. There was no way of finding out without an MRI scanner, so I reached for my phone to call Dr Walid and ask him to check for any signs of Nightingale’s brain having turned into a diseased cauliflower as a matter of extreme urgency.
“It couldn’t have been anything in the flat making you feel ill?” I pressed him.
“There wasn’t anything in the flat,” he answered, which later I realised should have been a clue. At the time, though, I was still pretty distracted by having to try and extract some sort of witness statement from an odd little boy who just happened to be my boss. “And afterwards I just came home and went to bed.” I was pretty sure nothing could have got through the Folly’s defences, but I asked the question anyway.
“Could anything have happened to you here?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So you just woke up this morning like that?”
“Yes,” Nightingale agreed, but he had that hesitant look again. “I woke up in the night, too, but I don’t know how old I was then. I… I was dreaming.” He stopped, and looked away.
“Bad dreams?” I tried to sound sympathetic, but only managed awkward. I couldn’t quite get over who I was talking to, even if he did just look like a miserable little kid who wished his mum would turn up. He didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself. “You didn’t try to put the light on, or anything, then?”
“I couldn’t find it.” There was a lamp on the bedside table which looked as if it hadn’t moved in decades, but I supposed it might well have felt as if it had done, if he’d woken up scared and disorientated and half a metre shorter than usual. “It was too hot, and the room kept moving.”
“What do you mean, it kept moving?” I’d seen my boss rip walls apart before, but making one room in a building move was a new one.
“When I tried to sit up. It kept going round and round, and I really didn’t feel well then,” elaborated Nightingale, who was clearly trying to provide any details that might help, or he would never have admitted to that, I was sure, even in his current state.
And you didn’t think to, I dunno, call Molly or something at that point?” I suggested.
“Molly fusses,” he said, with definite small-boy scorn for the idea that I might even think it had been necessary. Personally, I thought she might have had some justification for fussing in those particular circumstances, but I decided not to argue about it, especially as Molly herself chose that moment to appear silently in the doorway. I jumped; Nightingale giggled. There was no other word for it. Molly hissed, too, but she was clearly too worried about Nightingale for her amusement to last long. She had brought him not just a drink but a whole tray of breakfast, and she glared at me warningly when I moved my hand very slightly in the direction of the toast. I’d had nothing myself yet, but it was enough to put me off the idea of helping out with the mountain she had produced.
“Well, I’m phoning Dr Walid, now,” I warned Nightingale instead. “He’ll have a better idea of whether you’re all right than either of us.”
“I’m fine,” he said crossly.
“And think how thrilled he’ll be to have you for research,” I added.
“I don’t need to go to hospital.” I gave him a look which I hoped indicated I could pick him up and carry him there if need be; he ignored it. “And even if I did, I can’t go like this, can I?” He flapped an overly long sleeve at me pointedly. “I’ll think about it,” he said, “If you find me some clothes.”
In the end, I found myself down the King’s Road while Molly hovered over Nightingale, waiting for Dr Walid to come round to the Folly. There had been one awful moment where, considering my boss’s dress sense, I had wondered where the hell I was going to dig up the sort of thing he’d have been used to wearing as a child - if there’d been anything small enough in the Folly’s attics I’m sure Molly would have got it out before I’d even thought about it - but luckily I remembered the existence of shops catering to the modern-day posh weirdos who still want to dress their offspring like they’re off for tea at the Palace, just before I set off to hunt through the National Theatre’s costume stores. They weren’t quite up to Edwardian standards of itchy tweed and starched collars, but it was a step closer than M&S. The assistants were all well enough trained to ignore the fact that I wasn’t their usual clientele, although you couldn’t say the same about a lot of their customers. I had a list of measurements, since Molly had produced a tape measure before I left, so I approached the sale rails hopefully - I didn’t hold out much hope of being able to put this particular shopping trip on expenses, even through the Folly’s budget. Most of it looked a bit casual for Nightingale, to be honest, but he was going to have to make do. I wasn’t brave enough to buy him a tie on elastic, though. I could imagine his response if I did.
Shopping trip over, I returned to the Folly, only to find that Dr Walid had somehow persuaded Nightingale to accompany him to UCH. ‘Persuaded’ might have been the wrong word, going by Molly’s explanation, but whatever he had pulled, it had worked. Following them over there, I found Nightingale first; he was in a side room of his own, weirdly engrossed in a Lego set someone must have jacked from the children’s ward for him. He waved a brick to get my attention.
“Look, it sticks without even using a treaclefoot!” He was clearly delighted by the idea. He put it to one side at the sight of my bags, though, eyeing the prospect of exchanging his hospital gown for proper clothes with undisguised enthusiasm. I wandered out into the corridor to wait while he got dressed, which was when Dr Walid joined us.
“Peter, you’re here. Good.” He glanced at the side room, noticing the curtains had been drawn round the bed.
“I brought him some clothes,” I explained.
“He’ll be pleased about that. He was not impressed when I wouldn’t let him wait for you before I brought him over here,” said Dr Walid seriously. “I wanted to get him checked over sooner rather than later.”
“And?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
“Well, there’s no sign of hyperthaumaturgical damage, for a start. In fact, there’s no sign of anything unusual at all. Physically, he’s a perfectly normal child. Psychologically…” He frowned. “Who can say, at this point.”
Which meant he shared the same reservations I had, but before I could ask him any more about that, we were interrupted by an outraged shout from behind the curtain.
“Peter!” Nightingale emerged with such an expression of injured dignity that at any other time it would have been funny. “I can tie my shoelaces!” I sighed; I had half expected it, but it wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried. Everyone assumes kids want the easy option these days, especially when they’ve got feet the size Nightingale’s were.
“I could have got you sweet red sandals with buckles instead,” I offered. He stared at me as if he was trying to work out if I was joking or not. “Seriously, it was Velcro or nothing.”
He still looked annoyed, but he put them on, flexing his feet experimentally and then giving a vigorous bounce for good measure. What with the new shoes, a navy linen suit I had been assured was washable, and a Liberty print shirt, he looked more like a page boy at a wedding than the Folly’s only DCI and the last remaining representative of the Society of the Wise, but it was the best I could do at short notice.
“Can we go home now?” he asked. I looked at Dr Walid, who first told Nightingale he needed to wait, and then beckoned me back outside.
“We don’t know what’s caused this,” he said to me. “At least, I can’t find any medical reason. We know ageing doesn’t quite seem to work in the usual way where Thomas is concerned, but there was nothing to suggest this would happen, and neither of us can think of any magical exposure that might be to blame, either.”
“Neither can I.”
“So if I let him go, someone will have to keep a close eye on him.” That someone being me, I could tell. “And even if we assume nothing further untoward will happen as far as the ageing process goes, he’s going to need help when the full implications of this sink in. At the minute, he’s hardly thought about it; when he does, he’ll probably have trouble processing it anyway.”
“He’s not the only one,” I remarked.
“I mean it, Peter. And it’s not just that. Think of what that man can remember, and then think of showing that to a child the age he is now.”
I had already thought of that, and I didn’t like it any better thinking about it again, so I asked instead,
“How old do you think he is?”
“Ten or so? And intelligent with it. You’ll have your hands full once the shock wears off, I don’t doubt,” said Dr Walid.
I could imagine that, somehow. Nightingale had once said himself that his parents had probably been glad to have a rest from his incessant questioning when he went off to school. I can’t say the prospect thrilled me, but as a two-man operation, the Folly was distinctly short on options for appointing a guardian when one of those two suddenly shrank. My planned day off with Beverley was going to have to wait, I realised, and explaining why wasn’t going to be easy. I wasn’t sure letting Mama Thames - or worse, Lady Ty - in on the fact that Nightingale was due for a return to primary school was a great idea.
“I’m sure I’ll cope,” I said. Dr Walid didn’t look entirely convinced, but as the only other option was keeping Nightingale at the hospital with him, he let it go.
“I suppose there’s no reason I can find that he shouldn’t be allowed home; but if there’s any change, I expect you to notify me immediately.”
Well, I wasn’t going to argue with that. We went back in. Nightingale had returned to his Lego, but he dropped it again as soon as he saw us.
“Now can we go home?”
“If you promise to tell Peter at once if you feel any different, yes,” agreed Dr Walid. Nightingale nodded vigorously. “I mean it, Thomas. No telling everyone you’re fine and hoping it goes away, do you understand?” Another nod, although he had the grace to look a bit embarrassed this time. Dr Walid handed me a bottle of Calpol from the bedside cabinet. At least it was the six-plus version, so things could have been worse, although that instantly made me think that there was still time for them to get worse. I mentally blocked that thought in a hurry. “He had a slight fever when I brought him in. The next dose is due in a couple of hours, whether he tells you he doesn’t need it or not.” I nodded, and carefully didn’t ask for any further details. Judging by Nightingale’s suspiciously guilty expression, there was an explanation behind the warning that he would prefer I didn’t hear. I could always find out later. I gathered together the carrier bags I had brought in, reflecting that there was at least a bit less to carry now, and inquired whether he was ready to go. Dr Walid walked us to the door, which was unusual, so I think he was still a bit worried about letting us go. Nightingale waved at him as we left, an oddly little-boy gesture.
We walked back to the Folly. Nightingale didn’t have a Zip card yet. He was silent for almost the whole way, and bearing in mind the talk I’d had with Dr Walid, I didn’t try pressing him. When we were nearly there, though, he suddenly said my name, tugging at my sleeve as if he had an urgent question.
“What is it?” I turned to look.
He indicated a boy about the same size as himself, who was kicking a ball about in the Square gardens.
“Why don’t my shoes light up like his do?”
As far as questions went, I had expected to have to field worse. Having explained the concept of light-up trainers to him, I shepherded him back into the Folly, and once Molly had been assured he wasn’t in imminent danger, did what my mum would have done with me when I was a kid home sick from school, namely dumped him on the sofa in front of the telly while I got on with some work. This meant both of us hanging out in the Tech Cave over in the coach house. I knew he sometimes sneaked in to watch the rugby when I wasn’t around, but I wasn’t used to having company. I left him fiddling with the remote and went outside to call Beverley and warn her I wouldn’t be back any time soon.
“Nightingale’s ill,” I told her, “So I’m on duty after all.” It had the advantage of being the truth, if not a very detailed version of it. She sounded disappointed, but she couldn’t really argue.
“Will you be back tonight, at least?” she asked me.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to come over for a bit,” I hedged. To be honest, I hadn’t got past thinking about the present moment, but somehow it didn’t seem likely that I’d be able to leave my boss unsupervised any time soon. Although no doubt Molly would be happy to keep an eye on him during the day. Whether he would stand for it was another matter.
“What’s the matter with him?” I really wished she hadn’t asked that. “It can’t be that bad, surely?”
“Maybe I’m just being pessimistic,” I answered evasively. “I can’t come today, though. Sorry.” I wondered if Nightingale would really mind if I told her, but it only seemed fair to ask him first. It was bound to get out sooner or later, though. There’s only so much you can do to disguise the fact that your boss has turned into a ten-year-old. What we would do then, I didn’t even want to consider. It would be a bureaucratic nightmare, and I could guess who would be expected to fill in most of the paperwork. Beverley sounded a bit put out, as if she could tell I wasn’t being entirely straight with her, so I wasn’t exactly in the best of moods when I went back in. Nightingale looked pretty miserable, as well. He hadn’t been able to find any rugby on the telly, so he had the cricket on instead, but I’m not sure he was really watching it. “You all right there?” I asked. He nodded, so I let him get on with not watching the cricket and turned the HOLMES2 terminal on. There had been a spate of burglaries recently that we suspected had been carried out by someone using spells for breaking and entering, and I was trying to link the evidence together in the hope of narrowing down the likely culprit. Since my day off was obviously cancelled, I might as well get on with it.
Molly appeared before we’d got too settled, thoughtfully bringing hot chocolate and biscuits. I suspected the thought hadn’t really been on my behalf, but I thanked her anyway, as did Nightingale. She looked from me to him and back again.
“He’s all right,” I said. “I’m keeping an eye on him.” She didn’t look convinced. Nightingale didn't exactly leap to my defence, either, but then he was currently engaged in sharing a biscuit with Toby, who had trotted in behind Molly and was doing his usual impression of a starved and neglected dog. His stubby tail wagged frantically at this sign of favour; Molly didn’t look entirely impressed by such cavalier treatment of her baking, but she left us to it. Toby stayed. There were still more biscuits. I took a couple myself and went back to the files on the computer; Toby basely ignored me in favour of Nightingale, who I noticed was apparently quite acceptable in his new form. No magic that Toby could sense on him, then, or at least none that was disturbing enough to override the possibility of food.
We sat essentially in silence, apart from the cricket commentary, for quite a while, but I didn’t get much work done. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but I kept having to look round to check on Nightingale, and every time I saw him it threw me. I’d occasionally thought I had an idea of what he must have been like when he was younger, but it was still weird seeing it for real - or close enough. I doubted he’d been as subdued, somehow, but maybe that was the fact that he was trying to retain some sort of dignity in the current circumstances, or simply that he was feeling pretty rough. It was difficult to tell. It was fairly obvious when the Calpol began to wear off, though; he went worryingly pale and droopy, and then waited long enough to tell me he was going to be sick that I only just managed to put the bin in front of him in time.
“I see you’re still fine, then,” I said as I handed him the box of tissues.
“Don’t tell Molly,” he said anxiously, as if he hadn’t heard me.
“I wouldn’t dare.” Toby, who had retreated from the danger zone when I came flying across the room with the bin, watched us suspiciously from a safe distance. “Don’t you tell her, either,” I warned him, which at least raised a smile from Nightingale before he was sick again. He looked even paler and droopier when he’d finished, and there was no hint of protest when I got the Calpol bottle out. I called Dr Walid to be on the safe side, but he shared my boss’s opinion that the problem in this case was the declining standard of sandwiches on late night ghost-hunting trips, rather than anything magical, and said he’d come over later to check in on the patient. In the meantime, I was to carry on watching him carefully. Given he was a gastroenterologist when he wasn’t doing work for us, I decided to trust his judgement.
“I didn’t even finish it,” said Nightingale, as if he somehow thought that should have made a difference. Possibly he did. His scientific knowledge could be astounding at times, and not in a good way. He didn’t argue, though, when I offered him another dose of the sticky colourless liquid from the bottle. He slumped dejectedly against the arm of the sofa once he’d taken it, shivering a little and definitely not watching the cricket.
“You could just go to bed, you know,” I suggested. He ignored that. He was, after all, still Nightingale.
“Do you think Varvara Sidorovna suddenly got younger last night too?” he asked me drowsily.
“What, you mean…” I wasn’t sure I could handle the image of the last of the Night Witches in a smocked dress and pigtails, although to be fair to her she probably wouldn’t go shopping for clothes in the same places I’d ended up in that morning. “You’ve got a track on her, haven’t you?” It would be one indication that the magic, whatever it was, had gone haywire. “We could find out.”
“I can do it.”
“Not right now,” I said. I didn’t know exactly what my boss had set up, but it was probably complicated, and given the state he was in it seemed safer not to risk triggering anything untoward. “It can wait.” Especially given the sudden suspicion I had forming, I thought. “And if she has gone backwards, I hope you’re not expecting me to babysit her too.”
Nightingale was clearly feeling terrible, but not so terrible that he didn’t pick up on what I’d just said, unfortunately. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut before the look had finished forming in his eye.
“You are not babysitting me,” he stated firmly, bristling in that way that only little kids can manage. “I’m not that small, and even if I was, I’m still not.” He really wasn’t helping his cause, phrasing it like that, but I had the sense not to say so.
“I didn’t mean…”
“Yes, you did.” He looked hurt rather than offended, which made me feel even worse. I tried to apologise, but he just wriggled off the sofa without even looking at me, and walked out of the coach house. It would have only made it worse again if I’d chased after him, so I collected the plate and mugs Molly had brought over - Nightingale’s still mostly full of hot chocolate, I noticed - and used returning them as my excuse to go back over to the Folly. There was no sign of Nightingale, or of Molly, either. Toby trotted along at my heels, just in case he’d missed any crumbs on the plate, but abandoned me when he realised he hadn’t. It looked like I was on my own with this particular mystery, quite literally.