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Chapter Text

I jumped as Molly appeared silently next to me, silver cloche in hand. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. She lifted the silver dome to reveal the phone. I took it with a resigned sigh, and watched her gliding back the way she came before answering the call. 

“Folly, DC Grant speaking.”

A harried sounding female voice on the other end turned out to be Sergeant Jesveen Singh from Charing Cross nick. 

“Hi Peter, I understand you are the chaps who do the, um… falcon* related stuff, correct?”

(*'Falcon’ being police code word for ‘weird magical bollocks.’)

“Yup, what have you got?”

“This is going to sound really weird.”

“That’s our remit all right.”

“I mean… really weird. But then Guleed did tell me about the whole haunted car thing so…”

“You got a haunted car?”

“Not a car, but it certainly shouldn’t be alive. Look, can you just come down and take a look for us?”

“Sure, I can pop down and do an IVA* for you.”

(*Initial Vestigia Assessment - checking for weird bollocks that might be magic-related.)

It was a quiet day and Sergeant Singh had just given me a reason for a trip out of the Folly. I reckoned it'd take me twenty minutes.  I managed it in eighteen.  At least I don’t have to get changed for work so I was ready to go. 

I’m not required to wear a uniform in my role, so rather than standing out as an obvious copper, I’m more likely to be mistaken for Barack Obama’s stunt double.  When I’m in a suit, at any rate. It also means that posh bastards get twitchy when I’m lurking in their area, at least until I flash the badge. It’s amusing to see their mental gears crash as they do an internal change of attitude…usually. 

“It’s through here,” Singh informed me on arrival, leading the way to the custody suite. I noted she said “it,” rather than "he" or "she" or “they”.  But apart from knowing it wasn’t a car, not just because she’d said as much over the phone, but also because even the most determined arresting officer would be hard put to get so much as a Reliant Robin into a holding cell, I guessed it was going to be something a bit smaller. 

And hopefully rather less deadly. 

Which turned out to be the case. At least unless you’re a dust bunny. 

I peered through the hatch. The cell appeared to be empty. I turned to Sergeant Singh with a questioning look. 

“Look up,” she said. “It’s probably on the ceiling again.”

I looked up. 

Through the rather narrow field of vision afforded by the viewing hatch, there appeared to be a chunky round black plastic disc trundling around on the ceiling with a quiet buzzing sound. 

“A Roomba?”

Singh nodded. “It’s not normal.”

“Well unless they’ve pioneered some new technology allowing them to vacuum the light fittings, I’d say that’s an accurate assessment.” I thought about it for a moment. “Has it injured anyone?”

“It’s kind of… threatened people, but hasn’t actually hurt anyone yet, no.”

“Threatened? What with?”

“I don’t know. It’s just… kind of angry?”

“How did you find it?”

“Some old blokes in a pub in Mayfair were feeding it crisps. They said it just wandered in. One of our PCSOs happened to be checking the premises for something, and thought some of the things it was doing were a little unusual, then when she picked it up, it just kind of, and I’m paraphrasing here… ‘poofed’ out of her hands. Onto the ceiling. She said it felt really weird when she was holding it too. I know you said some people can sense that stuff you chaps do, so we managed to catch it in a net and brought it in.”

So… a haunted vacuum cleaner? Or something else? Only one way to find out. I headed in. Singh stayed outside the cell, watching carefully. 

As soon as I entered, the Roomba stopped its circling of the ceiling, and I got a distinct impression that I was being watched.

“Um, hello,” I tried. The Roomba managed to look surprised, although I still couldn’t tell you exactly how. It just was. 

It blinked its LEDs at me, then beeped. 

“Would you like to come down here for a chat? I’m getting a bit of a crick in my neck staring at you up there.”

The Roomba revved its belts then stopped them with a sharp snapping noise, and suddenly it was on the floor, without apparently having moved through the intervening space. It didn’t fall, it just appeared to teleport from one surface to the other. It blinked LEDs at me again, and beeped. I sat down on the floor next to it. I didn’t see anything sharp. It mostly looked like a normal Roomba, except for the googly eyes that someone had stuck onto its lid. Although there were a couple of aftermarket pieces stuck here and there which looked like retrofitted mounting points for accessories, but what kind of accessories were anyone’s guess. 

I reached out to touch it, and it beeped warily and backed off slightly. 

“Oh sorry, I’m not going to hurt you. Do you mind if I just touch you for a second?”

It shrugged. 

I’m not kidding. The damn thing kind of dipped it’s running height up and down again in what was clearly a shrug gesture, and it inched forwards again and waited. 

I reached out to brush my fingertips across the plastic housing, feeling for vestigia - which is kind of an echo of sensations left behind by supernatural activity. Most people can sense them, but most people think it’s their own mind playing tricks. It takes practice to sort out what’s inside your head from what’s outside. The sensations that remain after a magical event can give clues as to the nature of what you’re dealing with, such as who caused it.

There were vestigia that I certainly hadn’t expected to encounter on an everyday household appliance. There was a visual snippet of a ouija board, but fuzzy, the taste of expensive whisky, the most startling sensation of fire, terrifying fire, the phrase ‘hellfire’ dropped into my mind for some reason. A faint whiff of sulphur, and lovely concrete. 

Why the hell would concrete be described as ‘lovely’? I had no idea. Had this thing been animated by some powerful practitioner?  Was it haunted? What did it want? Where was it from? So far it’s only attempts at communication had consisted of ‘beep’, flashing LEDs and weird body movements. I wasn’t even sure how to start interviewing such a thing. 

I leant back against the wall to consider my options. That’s when I realised that voices in the corridor outside were getting closer, and Jesveen Singh was talking to someone outside the door. 

“So you’re the owner?”

“Um, kind of yeah, can I see him?”

Leaving the Roomba to its own devices, I stood up and went to the door just as Sergeant Singh opened it from the outside, where the custody sergeant stood with a young man.

“This gentleman says he owns the Roomba.”

The guy appeared to be in his early twenties, short, black, with his afro styled into what I can only describe as a pair of bunny ears. He was wearing an entire Boots cosmetics counter of black eye make up, and false lashes that’d put any self-respecting drag queen to shame, but was dressed like the homeless guys who lurked outside Greggs hoping for a free sausage roll and cup of tea. 

“And you are…?”

“Eric.”

“Eric who?”

“Just Eric. Look, he’s not, like, properly mine, but I’m in charge of him, I’m just kind of looking after my boss’s flat while he’s on holiday, and Bob escaped.”

“Bob?”

“That’s his name.”

“Your boss?”

“No, the Roomba.”

“I see. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about it.”

“Him,” Eric corrected. “Why have you arrested him? What’s he done?”

And there we had it - why did they arrest a vacuum cleaner? Was he even arrested? He’s household equipment, evidence at best, not a suspect. But evidence of what? Suspected of what? Recklessly defying gravity in a public house? I’d be the first to admit we can usually come up with some crime for any situation to justify a tug, but simply being a weird little vacuum cleaner was stretching even my limits of improvisation. I turned to Singh. 

“Sergeant?”

She glared at me for putting her on the spot. But in my defence, it was her shout after all. She could have told the PCSO to leave it alone rather than make a big issue out of it, but she’d taken it on, and I realised that she hadn’t got a clue either.

“It was causing a breach of the peace,” she declared firmly. 

“How?” Eric challenged.  He’d looked like a scared little rabbit when he came in, but was obviously feeling a little bolder now. 

“He was on the ceiling in the pub.”

“And? He likes cleaning the ceiling sometimes. Did he break anything? I can pay for it.”

Singh admitted that no, the Roomba hadn’t broken anything, and despite me still wanting to get to the bottom of how, why and, more importantly, who had animated the bloody thing, I could feel the situation slipping out of hand. We had no grounds to impound the damn Roomba, and this Eric kid knew it. Was it him, or his alleged boss? Did his boss even exist? Was he a practitioner, or was his boss, or both of them? I needed a pretext to ask him some more questions, but suddenly he answered one of them for me, whilst leaving us all with even more. 

He raised his hand and snapped his fingers. Something went a little strange. 

I blinked, as did Singh and the custody sergeant. We were alone in the corridor. A rapid search of the cell showed that the Roomba had disappeared along with Eric. 

That was a new trick on me, but had just bumped Eric’s status as ‘person of interest’ to the top of my list. A peculiar aspect which bothered me, was that both sergeants’ mobile phones were still working. Usually a powerful enough blast of magic will fry the insides of any powered-on electrical equipment nearby, which is why I have a battery cut-off on my own. Any magic powerful enough to essentially teleport a grown man (and his Roomba) should have turned all the microprocessors nearby into nothing more than sand. 

But on reviewing the CCTV, it seemed he hadn’t teleported after all. Instead, the moment he snapped his fingers, all three of us froze. He then ran into the cell, grabbed the Roomba, and rushed out. When anyone challenged him, he just snapped his fingers, and they froze as well. After a few seconds, it wore off, and we all began moving again. 

I definitely needed to talk to Nightingale about this one. After we’d put the call out for everyone to be on the lookout for Eric, of course. At least he was more distinctive than most, especially with that bunny ear Afro. 

Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale is my boss, and probably the most powerful wizard in the country, at least as far as I’m aware. He glanced up from his afternoon tea. Molly had also supplied, for our delectation, a Victoria sponge, jam tarts (in strawberry, raspberry, lemon curd, and the fourth variety turned out to be chilli jam), biscuits, scones, and three varieties of tea. 

“A rumba?”

“No, a Roomba, it’s a vacuum cleaner, not a dance.”

“Moving about by itself?”

“Well, they kind of do that anyway, but not… not this intelligently. They’re robotic vacuum cleaners, but they’re not that clever, and they don’t yet teleport to dust the ceiling.”

“But this one does?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“He?”

“The lad who came and took him said the Roomba was named Bob, and belonged to his boss. I’m more bothered about how he managed to escape from under our noses than the bloody Roomba to be honest.”

“It does seem somewhat disconcerting,” Nightingale agreed, and sipped his tea thoughtfully. “But you say that no nearby electronics were affected?”

“Nope.”

“How peculiar.” He paused, then set his cup down and headed to the library. I followed, and watched as he performed an exhaustive search for something, evidently not finding it. 

“I could have sworn we had a copy…” he muttered, looking frustrated. 

Nightingale placed a phone call to Harold Postmartin (D.Phil, FRS; the Folly’s archivist and pet tame librarian, working out of the Bodleian Library up in Oxford).  

“Harold? Yes, I was wondering if you have a copy of  ‘ Arcanum, antiqui ritus et loquaces divini ordinis sancti Berylli’ ?”

I wasn’t even sure I could translate all of that one. 

He listened for a moment. 

“Oh, are you sure? I could have sworn we had one here at some point, I thought perhaps you’d borrowed it. There were some notes in the last chapter or two which may be useful to us. You’re sure? Right, well I’ll try the usual suspects and see if we can’t turn up a copy. Thank you.”

He hung up, seeming mildly irritated. 

“What were you looking for?” 

“Well, if it’s magic that’s not behaving like magic usually does, then there may be a distinction.  There is a book that had some notes in the back pertaining to the subject. I’ll write it down,” Nightingale said, taking his notepad from his pocket. “Pop on down to Sotheran’s on Sackville street and see if they have a copy.  It’s the kind of thing they occasionally get their hands on, and Oliver is rather good at letting me know when they get the more interesting texts in. Although if they have one, do check it for markings just in case it’s our own missing copy. It wouldn’t be the first time one of our volumes has turned up there.”

Sotheran’s turned out to be a fairly stereotypical old bookshop, although I did do a double-take at the owl, until I realised it was stuffed. Oliver was a dark haired young white guy with a moustache and glasses. While he’d heard of the book, and they’d had a copy at some point, it had long since sold. 

“Any suggestions as to where I could find it?”

“Well…” he thought for a moment. “The best place to try would be A. Z. Fell’s over in Soho.  He specialises in that kind of thing.”

Which would have been fine, if Fell’s had actually been open, which it wasn’t. All the blinds were closed and the lights off. 

I’d driven over in the Ford ASBO - a bright orange Focus ST. You’d think that something so offensive to the eyeballs wouldn’t make the best undercover police car, but that very fact meant no one ever suspected it as being one. A friend in another force says they even slap car owners’ club stickers on some of theirs as extra camouflage, and can hide in amongst boy racers when they want to. 

(Illustration: Peter Grant's obnoxiously orange Ford ASBO - a Focus ST, by GayDemonicDisaster. Can't see the image? Click here)  

There was no parking outside Fell’s - double yellow lines ran along both frontages of the corner property, so I had to park further along the street and walk back. There I found a traffic warden busy ticketing a Chelsea tractor parked on the double yellows. (Note for Americans - a Chelsea tractor is a nickname for a pointlessly big 4x4 or SUV, originally intended for agricultural work, which has been tarted up and used in an inner city, where the most “off road” thing it would ever encounter is a slightly leafy puddle.)

The bookshop was a handsome old two-storey-plus-cellars style built at the corner of a crossroads, opened in the 1800s. It had a glass cupola over the centre, to illuminate the middle of the shop, which I could just glimpse past the edge of the blinds, but no one appeared to be in. 

I nodded at the traffic warden. 

“Any idea when this place is open?”

“Oh, he’s got very strange opening times - you never know from one day to the next when he’ll be in - check the note on the door,” she replied with a grin. I consulted the note which I’d missed originally.  The “opening times” pinned to the door appeared to have been written with obfuscation in mind. It read:

‘I open the shop on most weekdays about 9:30 or perhaps 10am. While occasionally I open the shop as early as 8, I have been known not to open until 1, except on Tuesday. I tend to close about 5:30pm, or earlier if something needs tending to. However, I might occasionally keep the shop open until 8 or 9 at night; you never know when you might need some light reading. On days that I am not in, the shop will remain closed. On weekends, I will open the shop during normal hours unless I am elsewhere. Bank holidays will be treated in the usual fashion, with early closing on Wednesdays, or sometimes Fridays. (For Sundays, see Tuesdays.)’

I made a reminder to try again later. 

I had other lines of enquiry to work on for another case. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t have the resources to single-mindedly pursue one case to the exclusion of all others, so much of our job involves multitasking like hell, and making sure to keep notes separate depending on which case they relate to, so you don’t end up getting your wires crossed. 

As Abigail (my young cousin, and budding apprentice wizard, who had somehow charmed my boss into letting her study at the Folly occasionally), was lurking in the library, I’d taken advantage of her helpful habit of hyperfocussing on things.  I asked her to look up some stuff in the library for another case. She was still there when I got back, doing her Latin homework. The Folly’s library having a much better selection of textbooks than her own school did in that regard. 

Molly was nowhere to be seen, so I grabbed a drink for myself from the fridge, and got a can of pop for Abigail, then sat down to go over the notes she’d set aside for me earlier. Thinking she’d get a laugh out of the Roomba story, I told her about it. Her brief look of incredulity changed to that familiar expression she gets when you can almost see the cogs turning and connections being made about something. I paused, mid-flow. 

“What?”

She tapped her pen against her teeth thoughtfully for a moment. 

“I dunno yet. I’ve gotta go, need to talk to Indigo.  I’ll grab a bus to get home after, don’t worry, see ya!”

And with that, she was gone, grabbing her bag and disappearing like the determined little whirlwind she was, leaving me wondering what it was that had sparked her interest. No doubt she’d tell me once she had something useful. 

Abigail fished the emergency tupperware of Molly’s cheese puffs from her bag as she approached the park. She sat down, and crunched one loudly. It wouldn’t take long for the scent to do its work. Sure enough, after a few moments, there was a quiet whine from the bushes. A dog walker went past with a flat-faced pug, which made undignified snorting noises as it waddled past, struggling to breathe. Once they’d gone, the fox-shaped source of the whining emerged from the bush and sat down in front of her, tucked it’s fluffy ginger tail neatly around its toes, and looked up expectantly, drooling slightly. 

Abigail held up a cheese puff and examined it carefully. The whining continued. 

“So…” Abigail began. “The other day you mentioned a weird person being followed by a black circle.”

“Yeah, over in Green park,” Indigo replied. The fox spoke with a low, human-like voice. It was bigger than your average fox, and considerably more intelligent. 

“What did they look like?”

Indigo whined uncertainly. “They were tall, dressed in black, kind of smart.”

“Male or female?”

“Couldn’t ascertain that intel,” the fox replied, not taking her eyes off the cheese puff. 

“And this black circle you said was following them - what was that like?”

“Plastic, mechanical, but weird.”

“Was it a Roomba?”

“What’s a Roomba?”

“A small round black robotic vacuum cleaner.”

Indigo looked confused. 

“What’s a vacuum cleaner? Do they chase squirrels?”

“Squirrels?”

“Yeah. This one chased a squirrel up a tree.”

On one hand, that didn’t sound like a Roomba, but on the other hand, Peter had said the Roomba could stick to the ceiling, so anything was possible. 

“Maybe. How many times have you seen it?”

“I only saw it once for a few seconds.  We were working on another stakeout task at the time, but I think some of the others mentioned seeing it before. I’ll ask.”

“You do that.” Abigail tossed the cheese puff to the fox, who leapt into the air to catch it, and gobbled it down with much lip smacking and satisfied noises. 

The next day, after school had finished, Abigail flounced into the Folly library, dropped her school bag on the desk, and lounged back in a chair looking vaguely smug. 

“Penny for your thoughts,” I tried. 

“Make it enough to get McDonald’s on the way home, and you’re on,” she countered. “Inflation,” she reminded me. I nodded with a sigh. 

“I know where the Roomba hangs out.”

“Yeah?”

“Green park in Mayfair, with someone tall in smart black clothes.”

Eric wasn’t tall, and definitely couldn’t be called smartly attired by any stretch of the imagination. 

“How’d you find that out so fast?”

“Foxes,” Abigail replied with a shrug. “They mentioned something odd the other day, and it wasn’t until you mentioned the Roomba that it made sense. Indigo didn’t have that much intel at first, but she talked to some of the others and dropped by to fill me in earlier today - your best bet is around 5 o’clock apparently.”

I glanced at the clock, and made a decision. 

“TOBY! Walkies!”

There was a frantic sound of scrabbling claws on marble floors, and a small brown and white terrier barrelled down the hallway and in through the door, tail wiggling with excitement. I found his lead and clipped it on, before heading out on a Roomba hunt.

Chapter Text

Green Park was pretty crowded, so I grabbed a bench and let Toby go for a bit to explore, while keeping an eye on him. He seemed to be making friends with a couple of other dogs, and as there weren’t any cats in evidence, he seemed safe enough. Which is why I wasn’t paying attention to him when my phone buzzed with a text from Bev. 

Then Toby’s yap-o-meter went off. 

I looked up sharply to see him sniffing at the damn Roomba, then yapping at it furiously. 

(Illustration: Bob and Toby by Elwyst. Can't see the image? Click here.)

I scrambled to my feet just in time to see a tall, skinny IC1 guy with red hair and a stylishly cut black jacket and skin-tight black jeans making his way towards Toby and the Roomba. I would say walking, but honestly, the way he walked put me more in mind of slinking. Or perhaps… slithering. He had snakeskin boots and a snake tattoo in front of his right ear - he reminded me slightly of the ‘too much effort’ put in by the likes of Reynard to resemble what they hoped to portray, especially when I spotted the snakeskin belt as well. Definitely trying too hard. He was wearing shades, but nonetheless you could see he looked annoyed at Toby. 

I was hoping I could reach them first, but before I got close enough to make a collar, the guy in black straight-up hissed at Toby.  That was evidently something way off the top of the yap-o-meter, so he jumped up several gears and flipped straight into a startled yelp, then hurtled towards me in abject terror instead. 

Toby had no intention of stopping either, which meant either go for Mr. Hissy, go for the Roomba, or intercept Toby before he booked it and infiltrated Buckingham Palace, which I didn’t think would bode well for my already somewhat shaky reputation. Knocking on the Queen’s door and saying “please missus, can I have my dog back?” wasn’t the best tactic for advancing in the Met. 

So I dived sideways and grabbed his trailing leash just before he slipped out of range, falling face first onto a stretch of grass mercifully free of unpleasantness (bag it and bin it, folks), then rolled over to see where Mr. Hissy had got to.

He caught me looking and flung me a suspicious glance, but the Roomba was beeping at him urgently, which seemed to make his mind up.  He swooped down to pick it up, and legged it. I scrambled to my feet, and went to run after him, but Toby put the brakes on and whined pitifully. Tempting as it was to fling an impello spell after him to knock him over, there were far too many other people around to risk it. 

Still, I knew for a fact he’d now be on numerous CCTVs in the area, I had a solid description, and he apparently frequented the park, so presumably local. It gave me something I could work on. But why had he run? I mulled it over while I walked Toby back home to the Folly. 

Priorities. Yes, it was an annoying little case, like a pebble in my shoe, but on the other hand, despite the anonymous Mr. Hissy possibly being a practitioner, and also possibly being the person who’d enchanted a household electrical appliance, we didn’t yet have any evidence of him doing anything, let alone anything wrong. While I wanted to find him and ask a few pointed questions, there were more important cases on my desk that took priority.

So while it’d have been convenient to palm the CCTV hunting and identification off on someone else, there wasn’t a big case to attach this to and no one had any financial incentive to take it on. So it was left to me to knock on doors and gather what I could in between other jobs. If, in the meantime, I found any other activity that Mr. Hissy and/or his Roomba could reliably be linked to, then resources could be tacked onto that, but until then, I was on my own.

I now wish I’d mentioned Mr. Hissy’s description, or at least the nickname I’d given him, to Nightingale. It’d have saved a lot of time. But he was off visiting Postmartin regarding another case, and I was trying not to bother him. 

At least our mystery man seemed to be known in the area.  A few people also made mention of him driving some big old black and grey classic car, some thought it was a Bentley. I did briefly consider seeing if I could cross reference all Bentleys registered to owners in Mayfair, but then realised that with the main Bentley dealership being Jack Barclays off Berkeley Square, and the amount of millionaires hanging around the area, it wouldn’t narrow the pool down much.

Then again - if he had a Bentley, maybe he had it serviced there? It was worth a shot.

… Except it turned out that while all the staff knew of a nice old black and grey 1934 Bentley Derby Coupé in the area, they said they’d never serviced it. It didn’t matter though, as at least one of the service technicians had talked to the owner before, confirmed the description, said he was called Mr. Crowley and yes, he did indeed live locally. 

When I looked up the car’s registration number, curiously, for such an old vehicle - not a single traffic or parking offence could be found in the records for it. For a car to have not so much as a single parking ticket in London in all that time seemed strange, to say the least. Not so much as a congestion charging zone breach, and you can get one of those by accidentally turning down the wrong street.

The Bentley workshop staff had seen it most often parked outside a swanky new apartment building nearby. I knew the one, so headed on over, armed with a bit more information than earlier. The “Crowley” name didn’t bode well however. There’d been a somewhat… strange guy called Aleister Crowley back in the 1930s era, who had some distinctly singular ideas about magic. If this Crowley had named himself after that maniac, he might be a bit deluded himself. 

I arrived at the apartment building, and a quick flash of the warrant card at the concierge in the lobby had him co-operating at least. Some people in such positions can clam up and be less than helpful, so it made a refreshing change. I showed him some stills I’d got off the CCTV research, and asked if the person lived in the building. Trick question of course - I’d already checked on the Crowley name and it turned up not only linked to this address, but also linked to the 1934 Bentley, likewise registered to the address. The penthouse, specifically. 

The concierge said that yes, Mr. Crowley lived there, but there was no point buzzing up to the apartment, as he’d left a little while ago that afternoon. 

“Any idea where?”

“Well he and Mr. Fell were talking about the bookshop when they left earlier, so it’s possible they went there.  They often do.”

“Mr. Fell?”

“His partner - they both live here but Mr. Fell used to live at the bookshop over in Soho.  He still owns it as far as I know, and goes there most days.”

So we had circled back to A. Z. Fell’s again. Well that wasn't suspicious at all . This Mr. Fell not only might have a copy of the rare book Nightingale thought might help explain the escapee sentient  Roomba, he was also the partner of the owner of said Roomba. I wondered if he might be a practitioner. Or Mr. Crowley? Or both? How careful did I need to be?

“I can draw you a little map…” the concierge was saying, ever helpful. 

“No it’s alright, I know where it is, thank you.”

At least it was only a short walk away. I texted Nightingale to let him know I was heading to Fell’s again to follow up on suspicious activity, as his phone was off (not unusual for us), so he’d at least get the message when he turned it on again.

Sure enough, I found the Bentley parked right outside the bookshop. Which could give me reasonable excuse to be a bit of a bastard - given that I knew from my last visit that it was double yellow lines for “no parking” along that stretch of road. 

The same traffic warden was there again - there was no ticket on the Bentley yet, and she walked right on past it without pausing to give it one either. I caught her eye. 

“You missed one,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“The illegally parked Bentley.”

“Oh it’s not illegally parked.”

“It’s on double yellows.”

“No it’s not.” She looked confused. “I work this street all the time.”

“But I was here last week and you ticketed a Range Rover parked in the exact same spot.”

“That was on double yellows,” she replied, evidently not seeing the discrepancy here. 

“It was in the same place.”

She looked blank. 

“So the Bentley is parked illegally too,” I pressed. 

She shook her head. “It’s not on double yellows.”

Confused, I looked again. But on closer inspection, the double yellow lines abruptly stopped where they met the Bentley’s back wheels, leaving a precisely Bentley-sized gap, and resumed  after the front bumper. I looked up at the traffic warden again. 

“But last week the road markings were here, and you booked the Range Rover on them.”

“Yes.”

“And yet today they’re not.”

Somehow she didn’t seem concerned. 

“Does the Bentley park here often?”

“Oh yes,” she replied cheerfully. 

“But it’s never on double yellow lines, and yet the other cars are.”

“That’s right.”

“And nothing about that statement seems strange to you?”

Now something was beginning to get to her - she was looking confused, and clearly starting to doubt her own reality. Something about this situation had manipulated her, to make suspicion roll off the Bentley like water off… whatever it was water slides off. Ducks. That was it. Anyway. Something was fishy here. 

“Never mind, I got this,” I reassured her, not wanting to distress her any further, and with a little shake of her head, she walked off, but not before I’d made a note of her shoulder number to follow up with later, and get her an appointment with Dr. Walid. It was possible something had messed with her brain in a more damaging way in the long term. It was unlikely, if it was just a glamour of some sort, rather than someone practising magic themself, but I’d rather not run the risk. 

At least now I had an excuse to detain this Mr. Crowley for further questioning - an offence had been committed, to whit: ‘obliterating a traffic sign in contravention of section 131 of the Highways Act 1980’, and also section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971.  I could also throw in Section 22A of the Road Traffic Act for interfering (directly or indirectly), with traffic equipment, if I really wanted to be a jobsworth about it.

Traffic or parking offences are not usually our remit, but I was prepared to make an exception if it helped the case.

Which goes to show - if you’re determined enough, you can find a crime for almost anybody to have committed if you look hard enough. Sometimes they might be obscure, or occasionally repealed, but even in those cases, spouting a bit of suitably official-sounding legislation can be enough to gain a bit of psychological leverage when you need an excuse to get somebody talking.

I lightly stroked the paintwork of the Bentley, and got a sudden flash of vestigia . A burst of “I’m in love with my car” by Queen, the same whiff of sulphur I’d got from the Roomba, and flames. 

Definitely the right place, the right car, and the right owner then. I stepped back warily and eyed up the car - was it also sentient? It wasn’t doing anything else, but it paid to be cautious. A possessed Roomba was one thing, but I’d had run-ins with possessed cars before, and it was not an enjoyable experience. I wondered whether to call Thomas Debden and get him to clamp it just in case, but decided to focus on the shop first. 

This time the blinds were up and the place looked open. As I laid my hand on the door handle, another, unexpected, burst of vestigia hit me - many eyes, a flaming sword, wings, and again - flames. But no sulphur this time. Different flames - just the smoky scent of a building on fire. And yet there was no sign I could see to indicate it had ever been on fire - no smoky stains on the old brickwork or anything. It seemed entirely original - as if it hadn’t been touched or decorated since it was built. It later turned out that this was, indeed, the case. 

The little old-fashioned bell over the door jangled as I walked in. There was an IC1 gent who looked about fifty, with pale blonde hair and wearing a fussy, old-fashioned, mostly beige suit, sorting through a pile of books by the equally antiquated till. He didn’t bother to look up when I walked in. Customers were clearly an afterthought.

The building was a gloriously fusty old mess, a mass of wood and brass, and it was hard to see any books that were younger than sixty years old at first glance. There were literal scrolls on some shelves. But then, so did the library at the Folly. I wondered if Dr. Postmartin knew of the shop? If he didn’t I could only begin to imagine how excited he’d be to discover it. 

“Hi, DC Grant,” I flashed my warrant card. “Are you the proprietor of this establishment?”

The blonde haired chap behind the till looked up and gave me a bright smile. 

“That’s right, A. Z. Fell, how may I help you, officer?”

It was hard to tell whether the polite helpful tone was genuine or sarcastic. 

“I was wondering whether you know anything about the car parked outside,” I began, nodding out of the window to it. Fell gave a sigh, and called over his shoulder to someone around the corner behind him, in what looked like an office area, with an ancient roll-top desk just visible around a bookshelf. 

“Crowley, dear, there’s a policeman here who would like to talk to you.”

There was a disgruntled groan, and creaking as of a very elderly sofa that someone was levering themself up off, having just got comfy. Mr. Hissy materialised from behind the bookshelf and glared at me. He was still wearing his shades, despite the bookshop not being particularly well lit. 

“What?” he demanded, evidently not from the same school of courtesy as his partner. I identified myself again, and if he recognised me from the park, he didn’t show it, but that was likely on purpose. 

“Is that your Bentley outside, sir?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you aware that it is currently in contravention of section 131 of the Highways Act 1980, section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971, and Section 22A of the Road Traffic Act 1988?”

“No it isn’t.”

I could feel it: the suggestion to my subconscious made by the glamour he was projecting: ‘nothing to see here, nothing wrong, you can leave.’  

Except when your girlfriend and all her family are literal river goddesses, you learn to resist such things. I shrugged it off as I always do. I’ve had practice. When Bev asks me for a foot rub, it’s just me being smitten with her that makes me do it, not manipulation.

“Are you sure about that, sir?”

Crowley looked momentarily confused that his tactic hadn’t worked.

There was a whirring noise, and the Roomba emerged from between the stacks of shelves, stick-on googly eyes wobbling comically. He stopped as soon as he saw me, and gave a surprised beep. 

“I’d also like to talk to you about that,” I added, nodding towards the Roomba. 

“That’s just a vacuum cleaner.”

The Roomba beeped in annoyance, surged forward and ran over his toes. Crowley yelped and clutched at his boot. 

“Damnit, Bob you little shit! You’re supposed to be incognito!”

“BEEP!” Bob replied indignantly. No, I still don’t know how he managed to sound indignant, but he definitely did. 

“Robert J. Crowley, you apologise to your father this instant!”  Fell snapped in a scolding tone. The little Roomba beeped again and made to zoom off under the desk. Fell grabbed him and held him up to face height, looking stern. 

“Now look here, you little fiend, if you don’t apologise to Crowley immediately, AND to this nice gentleman for whatever mischief it is that you’ve perpetrated to warrant his interest in you, you shall be going to bed without any biscuit crumbs, do I make myself quite clear?”

Bob beeped sadly, and twirled his little spinning whisker brushes as if twiddling non existent thumbs.

“Thank you.” Fell put him back on the floor, and he scooted up to Crowley with an apologetic beep. 

“ And DC Grant,” Fell reminded him firmly. Bob spun around and sheepishly approached me, and beeped what I assume was some form of apology. At least Fell looked satisfied with it, so I nodded weakly and smiled. 

“Um, thanks. Er…”

It had kind of taken the wind out of my sails. Fell at least appeared to take pity on me. 

“Would you like a sit down and a nice cup of tea perhaps?”

“Er…”

Now, it’s habit amongst the demi-monde, or those among the more esoteric community, to never offer refreshment unless one also makes the reassurance that it is offered without obligation, that it isn’t, for example, some underhanded tactic to enchant one into lifelong servitude to a minor deity.. 

Despite me having serious concerns about the magical status of Crowley, and now Fell to some degree as well, I had expected such an offer to be made, but instead Crowley just stood there scowling in general, whilst Fell maintained an expression of polite patience. 

“Provided it’s offered without any obligation,” I prompted.

Crowley suddenly snorted out laughter, whilst Fell got that look of faint bafflement, which shifted into indulgent amusement. He flapped his hand towards his partner impatiently, Crowley was still cackling to himself.

“Crowley, go and put the kettle on.  Don’t make fun of the poor chap. And Detective Constable Grant, any nourishment offered by myself or my fiancé, is given without any obligation of any sort - not that it ever would be. That’s not how we operate, dear boy.”

“Fiancé? Congratulations.”

“Oh thank you,” Fell said, beaming proudly, and ushering me towards the office area where a large, ancient and comfy looking sofa lurked, indicating I should take a seat.  “We only just got back from a most delightful holiday in Rome, and Crowley rather surprised me with the proposal.” He settled himself down in the chair by the roll top desk, and faced me. 

“Now, am I to assume that you are no ordinary police officer, but something to do with Inspector Nightingale and that delightful place you have over on Russell Square?”

“That’s right - you know Nightingale?”

“Why of course, we go back a long time. I take it he’s never mentioned us then?”

I shook my head, as Crowley returned, and passed first Fell, and then me, a mug of tea. Bob the Roomba trundled after him, a round tray placed carefully on his back, on which stood a small china milk jug, sugar bowl, and small plate of biscuits. Crowley picked this up and placed it on the coffee table, before fetching another chair from somewhere else in the shop, then proceeded to sit on it as if he’d never heard of furniture before. Limbs dangled at odd angles, and he slouched down into something he evidently found comfortable, although I had serious doubts as to whether human anatomy was supposed to be capable of containing that many joints in a single spinal column. 

“Well, are you practitioners then?” I asked outright, as they clearly knew something . 

“Practitioners of what, precisely?” Fell asked, and sipped his own tea.

By way of answer, I reached out my free hand, and conjured a small werelight, which hovered above my palm. Not an eyebrow was raised. Instead Crowley snorted, and snapped his fingers, summoning a tiny flame to one fingertip, then flicking his wrist to extinguish it again. There were no vestigia . Nothing. Whatever he’d just done, it hadn’t been magic. 

Fell smiled, and snapped his own fingers. Rather than a ball of light, the entire room simply lit up as if illuminated by an unseen floodlight with no obvious source - a bit like turning the brightness up on a screen all at once. I blinked; he snapped and put it out. Again - no vestigia at all. 

“That wasn’t magic I’m familiar with,” I confessed. 

“That’s because it wasn’t magic,” Crowley snorted. “That was a miracle. Please, don’t ask him to do magic, I’m begging you. He’ll only go and get his top hat, cards and dove out and start being embarrassing again.”

Fell shot him a look. Crowley shrugged back. “Last time you did your little magic show, you ended up covered in birthday cake and jelly, and we created a zombie dove. If you do it again he might arrest you for crimes against good taste.” He turned to me. “Never work with children or animals,” he advised. 

“What about electronic appliances?” I returned, nodding towards the Roomba. “Care to explain that?”

“That’s Bob,” Crowley replied. “He’s demonic.”

“You’re demons?”

This time it was Fell’s turn to laugh. 

“Not all of us.  I’m an angel.  Crowley was once too.” At that, Crowley dipped his shades at me with a grin, revealing a glimpse of abnormal yellow snake-like eyes with vertical slitted pupils. No wonder he kept them hidden. He winked and pushed his shades up again.

“… Now we’re on our own side,” Fell continued. “Bob was a bit of an accident, though, wasn’t he, dear?”

Crowley nodded morosely. 

“In my defence, I was drunk at the time.”

Perhaps that explained the vestigia of good whisky I’d got when I touched the Roomba’s plastic housing. It certainly explained the sulphur and hellfire.

“So… can a drunken demon grant sentience to an inanimate object?” I asked.

“Turns out I can, yeah.”

“...Why?”

Crowley shrugged. “It’s a long story involving a ouija board rug, a million-to-one-chance accidental summoning, and me being trapped in some random person’s living room, unable to leave until I’d granted the summoner’s wish. Except inanimate objects are notoriously bad at telling you what they wish for.”

“So you…?”

“Made him sentient so he could tell me and let me go.”

“What was it?”

“Well long story short, he wanted to come home with me.”

“And the Bentley?”

“Nah, I just rubbed off on her a bit after a few decades.  She picked things up here and there, like the parking thing. That was her, not me. She doesn’t let people notice her for offences usually.” 

That explained the lack of tickets and the confused warden as well then.

The bell above the shop door jangled abruptly.  I craned my neck and saw Nightingale striding in confidently with a breezy smile. 

“Afternoon, chaps. My apologies, Peter. My phone was off and I neglected to switch it back on again before I drove home.  Does Aziraphale have the book we need?”

I’d forgotten about the book. Aziraphale must be A. Z. Fell’s first name then or, presumably, his true angelic name. He welcomed my boss like an old friend.

“Ah, Inspector Nightingale, a pleasure to see you again. Crowley, go and fetch the Inspector a cup of tea as well, will you dear?” Nightingale took a seat on the sofa next to me, then he must have noticed the gleam of gold on Fell’s left ring finger. The angel noticed him noticing in turn, and held it up proudly.

“I take it that congratulations are in order?” Nightingale enquired.

“Yes, Crowley whisked me off on a romantic getaway to Rome. We had oysters again,” he said wistfully.

“Congratulations.  It’s only taken him, what? Six thousand years?” 

Fell blushed. Nightingale accepted a cup of tea from Crowley, and turned to me.

“So, everything alright, Peter?”

“You knew about these two?”

“Well of course, I know a lot of people, but London is a large place and I can’t be expected to introduce you to everyone at once. Your text said something about this being related to a case?”

I indicated Bob. 

“That,” I replied. 

“What’s that?”

“I was telling you what a Roomba was - that’s a Roomba, that’s the Roomba. So question answered, I suppose.”

Nightingale seemed fascinated and leaned forward to inspect Bob more closely. Bob seemed a little wary. Fell passed over some biscuit crumbs to Nightingale. 

“Here, scatter these on the floor.  He’ll take a shine to you if you give him a treat.”

He did, and the little appliance rolled over them with a happy beep. Nightingale was delighted. He gave Bob a pat, and from his expression I could see that he’d picked up on the vestigia as well.

“So what about this chap with the unusual hairstyle that Peter was telling me about, Aziraphale?” Nightingale asked.

“Oh that sounds like Eric - he appliance-sits for us sometimes.”

“What is he?” I asked.

“Disposable demon,” Crowley supplied.

“Disposable?” I asked, slightly alarmed. 

“It’s complicated. He can kind of replicate himself if he needs to, but they’re all still him. Humans find it a bit difficult to comprehend though.”

“Well he used a miracle to immobilise myself and several other police officers recently.” 

“Demonic miracle,” Crowley corrected.

“What’s the difference?”

“Angelic miracles you draw the power down from above, for demonic ones, you draw it up from below,” he explained. “Speaking of which, Eric doesn’t get topside much, so he’s not used to interacting with humans. I’ll have a word with him, and let him know he’s not to do that kind of thing.”

“I’d like to do that myself,” I countered.

“Feel free. If you want to take a walk down to Hell to find him, you go for it,” Crowley grinned. “But I wouldn’t advise it.”

“I think perhaps, I’m content to leave that one to you,” Nightingale commented. “Are there disciplinary procedures in place for such transgressions?”

“You’d better believe it,” Crowley replied. “But I’m not going to grass him up officially, I’m not that much of a bastard. I’ll give him a good talking-to.  The kid doesn’t deserve that kind of punishment. Why did he freeze the coppers though?”

I explained about the Roomba. Angel and demon both frowned and turned to glare at Bob, who hid under the desk in apparent shame. 

“Eric just said he’d found him down the pub being fed crisps by the regulars,” Fell supplied. “I see he was being less than completely truthful.”

“Of course he was,” Crowley pointed out. “Poor kid was terrified of the trouble he’d get in otherwise. But there wasn’t any lasting harm done, was there? I’ll make sure he knows not to do it again.”

Nightingale nodded. 

“I haven’t asked about the book yet,” I apologised. 

“Oh, which book were you looking for?” Fell enquired politely. 

“Arcanum, antiqui ritus et loquaces divini ordinis sancti Berylli. ” Nightingale replied. “Although now that Peter has his explanation, I believe it’s no longer necessary.”

Crowley snorted “The secret, ancient and loquacious rites of the divine order of St Beryl? What have those interfering gossips got that you want?”

“There was a comment about distinguishing magic from angelic or demonic miracles in the notes at the back,” Nightingale replied. “But I see you’ve educated Peter on that point already. Nonetheless, the Folly would be interested in replacing our lost copy for the library. I’m not sure where ours ended up.”

Crowley was looking decidedly shifty at this point, and Fell shot him a suspicious look. 

“It’s on the shelf up there behind you, dear, do fetch it down for me, won’t you?” he asked in the steady, acid-dripping tone of someone who now knows damn well that their partner got up to something they shouldn’t, and has just found out. Crowley pulled a face, but stood and grabbed the book, passing it over, then made to slink off. 

“Sit down,” Fell said firmly, without looking up from the book. Crowley sat with the air of one who knew that a bollocking was imminent. 

Fell leafed through the book briefly, then handed it over to Nightingale. 

“Would you check for your library marks, please?”

He did. He found them. 

Fell shot a sharp look at Crowley. 

“Much as I appreciate your devotion when it comes to finding rare and unusual books as spontaneous gifts, darling, I had rather hoped that they were sourced somewhat more ethically, for example from auctions, rather than obtained through theft.”

“I didn’t steal it! I bought it!”

Fell treated him to a silent, piercing glare, and waited expectantly. His partner finally folded. 

“Fine. I tempted the guy into selling it to me to cover a bet.”

“Which gentleman would this be?”

“He was part of the Folly.  It was back in about 1930 I think. He was one of their lot,” he nodded at us, “and he had gambling debts…” (Here, Nightingale nodded and sighed, perhaps suspecting who it had been.) “So I was behind on my temptation quota and he was an easy mark. Plus I wanted a present for you. I knew the book was a rare one, and he had access to it. So I gave him what he thought, from his perspective, would be a win-win situation.”

“And what was the bet?”

“We’d met down by the docks and I was thinking on my feet.   I had to get my temptation stats back to Beelzebub by midnight and I just needed one more good one, so no time to set up something complicated. There were empty crates and stuff lying around - including a tea chest with a small hole in the top.  I bet him that if he shut me in the crate, I could escape from it without using my hands, or breaking the box. The hole was only about big enough to get your forearm through, nothing else.”

“So if he won?”

“If he won, I’d give him a couple of hundred quid - I can’t recall how much it was. If he lost,   then he’d still get some money, not quite as much, because he’d have to sell me the book. It wasn’t his to sell, strictly speaking - but he was the one who’d be stealing it, not me. I’d just be buying it. He took the relatively small risk of his bosses discovering he’d taken the book, which I guess they didn’t - at least until today - in the knowledge that either way he got money. Whilst also tempting him into gambling to obtain it.”

“And what happened next?” I asked. 

“Well I got in the crate, got him to nail down the lid with me inside it, just leaving that little hole on the top. Thing is, while he knew I was a demon, he didn’t know which demon, or what I can do.”

“And what can you do?” I asked.

Nightingale smiled at me.  I suppose he’d guessed already, especially as he simply sat back with a cheerful smile to sip his tea.

“D’you want an explanation or a demonstration?” Crowley asked with a grin. 

“Oh I think Peter would like to see the demonstration,” Nightingale encouraged, and waited expectantly.

“You got any empty cardboard boxes in the cellars, Angel?” Crowley asked. 

“Oh, yes, lots. In the old scullery.”

“Thanks.” Rather than bothering to get up and fetch one however, Crowley simply snapped his fingers and apparently summoned one up from downstairs. He punched a hole in the top with his fist, then lifted the lid and climbed inside like a contortionist. Fell closed the lid, then returned to his seat and ate a biscuit. 

I felt like Nightingale was trying not to laugh. 

A second later, a snake’s head poked out of the hole on top of the box. It was black with red scales on its belly, with yellow slitted eyes, and HUGE. I couldn’t help it - I jumped onto the back of the sofa. 

Now I was born and raised in England, and here we’ve only got two species of snake - harmless grass snakes, and venomous adders, which are rare as rocking horse shit - even more so in London, as they only really live in remote wooded areas. My life had been blissfully snake-free up to this point, and I’d have preferred to keep it that way. 

My mum, on the other hand, and half of my family, comes from Sierra Leone, where they enjoy the dubious delights of such venomous serpents as gaboon vipers, Western green mambas, and spitting cobras. Growing up I’d been told tales of unpleasant surprises when friends and family had encountered these reptiles, and how great uncle so-and-so had been whisked off to hospital only to find that they’d run out of antivenom.

Those kind of stories can really leave an impact on a growing child. And while I didn’t know what kind of snake this was, I knew for sure it wasn’t one that generally lived in England. Something in my instincts simply went “TRY NOT TO BE IN THE PROXIMITY OF UNCERTAIN DEATH.” 

The snake finished slithering it’s terrifying length out of the box, then morphed back into the shape of a somewhat less terrifying demon in human form. Dressed in black of course, with occasional red highlights, and those vivid yellow eyes. He snapped his fingers to summon his shades from wherever they’d been, and put them on to hide his eyes once more, before slouching into his seat again. I breathed a sigh of relief, and tried not to look too much of a prat as I climbed back down off the back of the sofa. 

Nightingale was smiling behind his teacup. 

“So you won the bet, and bought our book that he’d stolen from the library at the Folly,” he said, once he’d composed himself. 

“And then you gifted it to me,” Fell said accusingly. “Stolen goods, Crowley!”

“I didn’t steal it,” he protested, but he could see he was fighting a losing battle. 

“We’ll talk about it later,” Fell told him in a stern voice, and then, to Nightingale: “Apologies, now you can return it to its rightful place in your library. As a matter of interest, the order of satanic nuns who wrote the book in the first place have now disbanded.  I wasn’t sure if you were aware. There was a fire some years ago, and the convent has been repurposed as one of those… what do you call it, dear?”

“Executive retreat,” Crowley replied. “One of those places where businesses send their office employees so  they can muck about with paintball guns and call it a ‘team building exercise’, when all they really want to do is find out if it’s possible to burst their supervisor’s ear drum with a carefully aimed paintball.” 

Nightingale perked up at that. 

“Wasn’t that the place over in Tadfield where the armed response unit were called in a few years back when it turned out that somehow they’d got their hands on real firearms?”

Crowley coughed in what was definitely a guilty fashion, and earned another accusing look from Fell. 

“Not a clue,” he lied.

Just then a low rumbling sound began from somewhere back in the stacks of bookshelves at the rear of the shop. Neither angel, demon, nor Roomba seemed to take any notice, and after a moment, a bright orange Husqvarna robot lawn mower trundled into the office area to join us. It also had googly eyes stuck to the plastic housing, and Bob scooted out to greet it with a beep. 

I stared at the robo mower in mounting disbelief.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got a demonic lawnmower as well!?”

“Of course not,” Fell replied. “How preposterous.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“… Lydia is angelic,” he finished proudly, beaming down at the bright orange appliance.