After starting at the pub, Susan didn’t have much time to think about what had happened in Highgate Wood, or to do much else. Her shift was from eleven in the morning to half past eleven or midnight, depending on the clean-up time after last drinks at ten thirty. The pub was closed between three and half past four, but there was always work to do, cleaning or sorting or helping Mr. Paul in the kitchen.
But after a week at the Twice-Crowned Swan, Susan had her day off coming, and her subconscious took advantage of this approaching treat by deciding to process what had happened at Highgate Wood. As this resulted in waking up terrified at four a.m. from a dream about the black fog streaming in through her windows and the Shuck coming up the stairs, she was grateful work had kept her occupied or exhausted for so long. If she’d had the dream on her first night, she would have woken screaming, rather than only choking in panic.
Even so, she got up and turned the light on, and checked her door and window. Both were shut and locked. No one was in the street or the square’s garden. The moon wasn’t up, the sky was clouded, the only light came from the streetlamps at the front.
At first it seemed nothing in particular had triggered the dream.
Then she looked out the smaller rear window of her room, which provided a view onto the very long, narrow garden at the back of the house. Most of it was laid down to lawn, with a vegetable patch on the right side, and there was a wooden shed with a shingled roof right at the back, by the fence.
Something was on the roof of the hut.
A lump of darkness and shadow, with shining green-blue eyes.
An urban fox, Susan told herself. Or Mister Nimbus, the landlady’s cat.
But it was much bigger than a cat or a fox, and the eyes weren’t reflecting light from the house because there weren’t any lights on out the back. They were lit within, by some banked-down fire of intense turquoise. . . .
Suddenly, the eyes and the shadowy body disappeared. Not sliding away like a fox, or a cat.
It was gone. Vanished.
Susan checked the window. It had a solid bolt as well as the latch on the sash. Both were locked shut.
Nothing could get in. Or not easily, anyway. Not without breaking the window entirely.
Somehow, this did not fill Susan with confidence. She got dressed, in her well-worn Clash T-shirt and faded black overalls, hesitated over bothering with shoes but decided she should put on her Doc Martens before going downstairs to the kitchen to borrow Mrs. London’s rolling pin. An old one, a cylinder of solid, iron-hard wood, tapered at each end. Then she sat in her single armchair where she could watch the door to her room, the big street-side window, and most important the smaller one at the back, and stayed up the remainder of the night.
In the morning, she ate her full English breakfast, without black pudding—which Mrs. London now knew to leave off her serving—and thought about going back to bed. The other lodgers disappeared to their work or study or whatever they did, with Mrs. London offering her usual incomprehensible Glaswegian farewell that probably meant “Have a nice day” as everyone left the breakfast table.
Susan had thought about starting her search for her father, but the shadow on the shed in the night had changed her mind. She had to talk to Merlin, and that meant finding one of the bookshops Inspector Greene had mentioned.
Half an hour after breakfast, she left the house. She had just shut the door when she realized someone was on the steps: a glamorous young blond woman in a white cowboy hat, a leather biker’s jacket over a blue cotton sundress, and Docs very similar to Susan’s, though black. This ensemble was completed by a tie-dyed yak-hair shoulder bag, at which point Susan did a double take and stared.
“Merlin?”
“Susan!” said Merlin with a ravishing smile. He . . . she . . . came up the steps and delivered a sort of half bow, half curtsy salutation.
“Um, have you changed?” asked Susan doubtfully. “Into a woman, I mean.”
“No,” said Merlin. “That kind of shape-shifting takes some time, and we have to go to Silv . . . go somewhere special to do it. But I like to wear a nice dress from time to time anyway.”
“I was going to look for your bookshop today, to try and find you,” said Susan. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” said Merlin. “I only got off the sick list this morning, and the first thing I’m told by the powers that be is to fetch you in for a bit of a chat.”
“Uh, when you say ‘powers that be,’ do you mean, like, actual power—”
“No, I mean my great-uncle Thurston and probably great-aunt Merrihew as well,” replied Merlin. “Why were you coming to see me?”
“I . . . I saw something last night,” said Susan. “I mean, early this morning. In the garden, watching my window. Sort of like a fox, but bigger, with glowing eyes.”
“What color?”
“Sort of green-blue. Turquoise. And it disappeared. I mean, I was looking straight at it and then it wasn’t there. It didn’t move, or jump away.”
Merlin raised an eyebrow.
“This was in your garden? Here, behind the house?”
“Well, on the roof of the garden shed. What was it?”
“I’d better have a look.”
Susan still had her latchkey in her hand. She opened the door and saw Mrs. London standing in the hall, looking slightly flustered, only a few steps back as if she’d suddenly retreated when the key clicked in the lock. Merlin, who was close behind Susan, called out a cheery greeting and waved his white-cotton-gloved left hand.
“Good morning, Mrs. L! How are you?”
“None the better for your asking,” sniffed Mrs. London. “Which one are you? Only I have to write it in the book.”
“Which one . . . which . . . I am heartbroken, Mrs. L. Merlin, of course.”
“Thought you were your sister. You and your shenanigans.”
“It’s easy to tell us apart now, Mrs. L,” replied Merlin easily. “She’s gone right-handed.”
“What do you mean you have to write in a book?” asked Susan. “You mean for the police?”
“For the inspector,” said Mrs. London dourly. “Not quite the same thing.”
She looked at Merlin suspiciously.
“What do you want anyway? Inspector said Susan should be done with your lot.”
“Sadly, it seems otherwise,” replied Merlin. “I need to take a look in your garden, Mrs. L. Something was there last night. On the shed, at least.”
“I wondered why Mister Nimbus was sniffing about the shed this morning,” said Mrs. L. “Go on, then.”
“Thank you!” beamed Merlin, proceeding past the landlady at speed, with Susan close behind. Once through the kitchen and out the back door, he leaned in close and whispered.
“Who’s Mister Nimbus?”
“Her cat,” replied Susan.
“Really? He’s new. . . . I wonder what happened to Terpsichore, her old cat. Useful types, cats. You know what they say: ‘The cats and the owls and the better type of raven, know more of what is doing than any human maven.’”
“Who says that?”
“I read it somewhere,” said Merlin. He proceeded along the edge of the lawn, bending over to look at the bricks laid along the edge. “Do you like this dress, by the way?”