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I woke to Toby’s tongue on my face. As soon as I opened my eyes, he stopped licking me and turned to pulling on my pant leg with his teeth instead. I had been trying to train him out of that, but we hadn’t had much time to work together these last few months. Work had been busy, even after we’d finished cleaning up the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau.
I grabbed my phone and groaned. It was a quarter to five, which meant the sun hadn’t even begun to think about gracing the morning sky with its presence—and that I’d only been asleep for about four hours. I glared at Toby, but he just hopped off the bed and growled low in the back of his throat.
“All right, all right,” I said, and swung my feet off the bed. We headed downstairs, the clack of his toenails on the steps echoing in the empty hall. His leash hung on a hook next to the front door at Molly’s insistence—perhaps because she was irritated that I kept hanging it over the banister—and I clipped it onto his collar.
“Come on, boy.”
Toby and I did a turn around the block. The street was almost completely deserted, and besides the streetlamps, I didn’t see a single light, not even a lamp in the kitchen window of some overzealous grandmother up before dawn to make coffee and wash the dinner dishes. It turned out that Toby’s eagerness to get me up was entirely so he could relieve himself and not at all a desire to be awake at this godforsaken hour, so we were back in the Folly in less than fifteen minutes.
Just inside the front door, I unclipped his leash, and he went skittering down the hall to one of the several dog beds arranged throughout the building. I admit, I had bought most of them, if only to encourage him to sleep places other than on my bed, where he took up far more space than he should mathematically be capable of. Such is the magic of small yappy dogs.
I was trying to decide whether I should go back to bed or stay up and get some practice in before breakfast. The fresh air had woken me up a surprising amount, so I headed towards the kitchen to see if Molly had started the coffee yet.
She hadn’t, but even though I’d gotten used to not cooking or cleaning for myself since I moved into the Folly, I wasn’t completely useless. I knew how to make coffee. With a steaming mug in my hands, I walked carefully through the halls towards the coach house. As I passed one of the many rooms I’d never even looked inside, I heard low voices. I stopped and quietly stepped closer to the door, carefully judging how close I could get while still giving myself a chance to hurry away if I heard someone coming.
“It’s not like that, Abdul.” The voice was definitely Nightingale’s. And Abdul would have to be—
“I know. But it’s not too far off either.” Dr. Walid’s Scottish accent rumbled through the heavy wooden door.
I knew I shouldn’t eavesdrop, but I told myself, just one more minute. Just to see why he’s here. It was odd to have Dr. Walid at the Folly at all, since Nightingale and I typically met him in his office at the hospital, but it was certainly worrisome that he was here at five o’clock in the morning. Had Nightingale's health started to decline again?
“I’m all right, really. I appreciate your concern, but I’ve been living with this for decades. This pain is nothing new.”
I winced at that. So it wasn’t about Nightingale’s injuries from the incident on Bow Street. Maybe he had some old bullet wound from the war that had been acting up, but I suspected it was a much less corporeal pain he was talking about.
“It’s been getting worse ever since you got back from Ambrose House. I know it, you know it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Peter’s noticed.”
“There’s nothing for him to notice,” Nightingale said sharply. “I’ve made sure of that.”
He was wrong, though. I had noticed. If we hadn’t lived at the same residence, I probably wouldn’t have had a clue, but when you share a breakfast room, you become attuned to someone’s little habits and routines. Nightingale was a man of such intrinsic formality and internal structure that when he was occasionally late for breakfast or, more and more frequently, lost the thread of conversation during training, I couldn’t help but wonder. I hadn’t asked him about it, though. There hadn’t been a good moment, and anyway, it didn’t seem appropriate to inquire into my governor’s mental health.
“You called me, Thomas. Remember that. I came down here before dawn because you asked me to, and because I’m worried about you. You can’t keep pretending like this doesn’t affect you.” Dr. Walid’s voice had the sort of soft, commanding presence that medical students dreamed of, and even I felt reassured by his solidity.
There was a long pause. I breathed slowly, glancing up and down the hall to make sure Molly wasn’t nearby.
“I know,” said Nightingale finally, and I heard him sigh. “I can’t seem to get two hours’ sleep without waking from some awful nightmare. There had been fewer and fewer over the years, but now they’re back with a vengeance, it seems.”
I thought of the nightmares I’d been having since Simone had died. Since I’d found her next to her sisters a mere twenty minutes after they’d all died by their own hands. I wondered if Nightingale would want to know he wasn’t alone in not sleeping well.
“I can prescribe you something to help the sleep,” Dr. Walid said, “but it won’t fix the real problem.”
“What am I to do, then, Abdul?” Nightingale’s voice was so quiet and sorrowful that I almost didn’t believe it was him. Calm, self-assured Inspector Nightingale who kept his own past as closed a book as he could, even as I learned more about the history of British wizardry. I knew the war had wrecked him, but it had always seemed he’d become hard as stone in response. Now, though, he sounded as thin and fragile as blown glass. “What am I to do?”
“I think you’ve got to tell Peter. Tell him everything, the whole story. Ettersberg and all.”
“I can’t. It’s not appropriate.”
“I don’t think you have a choice, Thomas. He’s going to have to know eventually, and even if he didn’t, you can’t keep this to yourself forever. Not without someone to carry the burden now and then.”
They fell silent again, and this time, I wondered if I could handle it. If I could, as Dr. Walid said, carry the burden for Nightingale now and then.
“All right,” said Nightingale. “I’ll think about it. Please, go home and sleep now. I’ll be fine.”
I heard the slight groan of a chair and bolted down the hall as quietly as I could. I had just snuck around a corner when I heard the door open and footsteps recede in the opposite direction. Still keeping my own footsteps as silent as possible, I took a roundabout series of halls and stairs to the breakfast room. I sat down in my usual chair with my no-longer-steaming mug of coffee and noticed that despite the early hour, Molly had already laid out eggs and sausage and toast. Freaky how she always seemed to know things ahead of time.
Fifteen minutes later, the door to the breakfast room opened, and I looked up to see Nightingale, well-dressed despite the hour and his emotions well-hidden save for the weariness in his eyes.
“Ah, Peter,” he said. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. It’s fine, I told myself. He doesn’t know I was listening.
“Nor could I. I see Molly shares our troubles.” He put two pieces of toast on a plate, grabbed his own mug of coffee, and sat down across from me. “Aren’t you eating?”
“Just finishing my coffee first,” I said, gesturing to my mug and regretting the lukewarm coffee I’d have to gulp down before I could get a refill.
“Of course.” He cut a corner off his toast and chewed on it slowly. “Well, eat quickly, we have much to do today.”
I didn’t mention that I hadn’t even planned to be awake this early because, well, I was awake, and Nightingale doesn’t believe in wasting time.
“More practice on the firing range?” I asked, taking a swig of my rapidly-cooling coffee.
“Not until the afternoon,” he said. “First, we’ve got to talk.”
“About what, sir?” I asked, trying not to reveal that I already knew the answer.
“About Ettersberg.”