Chapter Text
It started with a dead body in Camden, because of course it did. Camden’s the kind of place where you expect to find trouble. Half the time it’s wearing skinny jeans and a bad attitude, the other half it’s something older, weirder, and a lot less likely to respect a warrant card. This particular body was in the latter category.
I’m Peter Grant, Detective Constable and apprentice wizard with the Metropolitan Police’s Special Assessment Unit, which is what we call the department that deals with things that go bump in the night, or in this case, things that go crunch in the early morning.
My job was the explanation for why I was up and out at 6:47 a.m. on a damp July morning. Likewise why I was staring at the remains of an elderly man who’d been found behind a kebab shop off Camden High Street. Sadly that was about the only thing that had an explanation. The body was sprawled in a way that suggested less accidental fall and more someone rearranged his internal organs with extreme prejudice.
“Definitely our problem,” I said, crouching beside the corpse. I could feel a finger-tingling sort of shimmer in the air, like the aftershock of a spell. The vestiga scent was burnt ozone mixed with something earthier. Wet moss, maybe, or old stone. Whatever the source, it was strong enough to make my teeth ache.
“Indeed,” said Thomas Nightingale, my governor and the last officially sanctioned wizard in Britain, give or take a few Oxford Reptiles and my cousin. He stood over me, looking like he’d just stepped out of a 1940s newsreel. Unlike my puffer-jacket-and-slacks combo he was the sort to think crime scenes required a three-piece suit, silver-topped cane, and an expression that said he’d seen worse but wasn’t thrilled about it. Annoying was what it was.
“The question is, why?” I stood up, brushing damp gravel off my knees. “Beyond maybe just not liking pensioners generally.” Which, hey, anyone could hate anyone but he didn’t seem like the usual anti-social target.
Because here’s the thing. The victim was old. Seriously old. I put my guess at late eighties, maybe early nineties. IC1 with white hair, liver-spotted hands, and a face that looked like it had seen too many winters. His eyes were open, staring at nothing, and there was a faint burn mark across his chest like someone had drawn a line with a blowtorch.
And yes, I know. We’d had more than our share of gammon and codgers lately, but that didn’t make it a demographic.
Nightingale crouched now, his gloved fingers hovering over the burn. “Lux flamen, perhaps, or a derivative. Sloppy, though. The signare is muddled.”
Signare being the magical equivalent of a fingerprint, unique to each practitioner. Nightingale’s got a knack for reading them, like a wine connoisseur sniffing out a vintage. Me, I’m still at the “is it red or white?” stage.
“Any chance it’s just a random magical mugging?” I asked, though I didn’t believe it. Random magical anything doesn’t really happen in London. Not saying there couldn’t be magical muggers. Every bunch has its bums and chavs. Just not… randomly. The city’s too old, too layered with history and grudges, for anything to be truly random.
Nightingale gave me one of his looks. He has this one that says I’m being optimistic to the point of stupidity. “Unlikely. This man was targeted. The question is why.”
I fished the ID from the victim’s pocket: Karl Muller, 89, German national, resident of a care home in Kentish Town. No criminal record, no obvious reason anyone would want him dead, unless you count being old enough to remember the Blitz as a motive. Which? Maybe at one time, but anyone who remembered enough to be angry would be old enough to be in care themselves. Plus none of them would be Folly. But the vestigia screamed magic, and that meant this was our case.
“Time to call in the murder team,” I said, pulling out my phone. The Special Assessment Unit (aka the Folly, aka the only place in the Met where you can expense a spellbook) had picked up allies since I joined. I texted DS Sahra Guleed, my sometime partner and the only person I know who can keep up with Nightingale’s paperwork and my bad ideas.
“Guleed’s on her way,” I said. “Shall we secure the scene?”
Nightingale nodded, already sketching a containment forma in the air with his cane. It glowed faintly, a lattice of light that would keep any lingering magic from leaking out and causing trouble. “And Peter,” he added, “do try not to step in the evidence this time.”
“That was one time,” I muttered. I double-checked my footing anyway.