“I believe it is time to officially introduce you into the ranks of the Masters of the Fellowship of the Wise,” Nightingale said one day.
We were in one of the teaching labs, although truth be told, what we did there could rarely be considered teaching these days. I had just finished an experiment that finally demonstrated that it was indeed possible to measure magic output energy. Abigail was going to be pleased when she got back from her research stay at CERN. For now, Nightingale was my only witness, and I tried hard to ignore the warm glow in my gut as he smiled at me.
Then my brain caught up to his words. They caught me by surprise – life had been busy, and a couple of years ago, right when the girls had started reception, Nightingale had officially retired from the police force and left me in command in all operational, organisational, and, much to my chagrin, financial matters of the Folly as a police unit. I blamed at least one of my two grey hairs on the latter.
Between my family and my new professional responsibilities, there hadn’t been as much time for the practice of magic as I’d liked. At this pace, I often joked when yet another practice session was interrupted because my attention was needed elsewhere, Abigail was going to become a master wizard before I did. She was well on the way, having started training seven years ago. For lack of murders to solve or murderous psychopaths on her heels, she did it with much less diversions, too.
Meanwhile, I tried to cram my training in between my many other obligations, among which was to look out for possible new apprentices among the people who came to our vestigia awareness courses. While it was now possible to become an apprentice without joining the Met – see Abigail – being a police officer was still encouraged, and the number of unlucky bastards who decided that doing the weird shit course wasn’t enough and what they really wanted was a true career killer of a professional re-orientation was indeed greater than zero. So far, we had Danni Wickford and five others, although most of them didn’t live in the Folly full-time.
I kept my old room, if only to have a place to story my spare suits in case the one I was wearing got dirty at work, which happens much less often if you’re a DCI and others are doing the running about for you. I was starting to understand Nightingale’s appreciation for fine suits, not that that was ever going to be my style.
Ever since the twins’ birth, I hadn’t spent a single night at the Folly. Beverley sometimes chides me for my lack of work-life-balance, but she’s one to talk, and also I like to think that I’m actually a lot better with that than I used to be. I certainly never missed a single evening with my daughters.
Anyway, there was a lot to do, and when I had the time to practice, I mostly did experiments rather than learning new spells.
I was DCI Peter Grant, son to Mamusu and Richard Grant, husband to Beverley Brook-Thames, father to Taiwo and Kehinde Thames-Grant, and apprentice to Thomas Nightingale.
It was a fact of life that I hadn’t expected to change anytime soon. I especially hadn’t expected the affection and pride in Nightingale’s voice when he suggested it.
“Thank you,” I said and swallowed the ‘Sir’ that was on my tongue. He wasn’t my boss anymore, just my teacher. I’d never called him Master or any such thing, but then, just calling him ‘Nightingale’ felt too chummy, so I mostly just avoided calling him anything at all.
Something must have shown on my face because his smile deepened in the way that tole me he was very pleased and perhaps a tad amused, but mostly just deeply fond of whoever he was looking at. I’ve seen it directed at Molly, at Abdul, at both of my parents, at Abigail, Guleed … the list was long, and I was part of it.
“Truly, Peter,” he said and I realised with a certain degree of mortification that he wasn’t going to let it go that easily, “you’ve quite certainly earned your staff. You exceeded all my expectations and then some, and continue to impress me. It’s time to make it official.”
I cleared my throat, but something in his gaze held me captive and I couldn’t look away.
For a short moment, his arms twitched as if to hug me, but he didn’t. He’s never been a very tactile person, so I must have imagined it.
We finished up soon, and I set to preparing for the Impello lesson I was going to give the newest apprentices.
Bev and I had that evening to ourselves. The girls were spending the night at my parents’ place, a frequent enough occurrence that I knew not to worry. I probably missed them more than they missed us.
Beverley made it her objective to distract me thoroughly, first by telling me all the news about her PhD research – which even Mama Thames was very pleased about, despite being in the wrong specialty – and then by the activity most beloved by a husband and wife. No, not sleeping; by now we had the good fortune that our children were old enough that the times of severe sleep deprivation were long over. Plus, with our combined parents, Bev’s sisters, and even Alexander and Nightingale at times, we had enough babysitters that this had never been a huge problem to begin with.
There had been times when, after a wakeful night, Nightingale had taken one look at me during what was supposed to be a practice session in our back garden, and decided that I could make better use of my time by sleeping, and that he would take care of the girls in the meantime. He’d proven to be surprisingly good at that, and once we’d established that yes, he was very welcome to help, he’d started to come over more often. We’d since kept up the habit to have him over at least once a week for dinner.
I was still thinking about that maybe-almost-hug when I held Beverley in my arms afterwards. My hand was tracing idle circles on her naked back, and she had hers slung around my torso. I felt her chin on my shoulder, and it was as comfy as I could imagine.
Maybe, I would have liked to hug Nightingale.
The thought came unbidden, but not all too surprising. I knew he was important to me. I’d long since accepted my low-key attraction to him as just another fact of life. We all have crushes on some of our teachers, right? It didn’t have to mean anything.
“I almost hugged Nightingale today,” I said out loud.
Bev snorted. “When did you stop being English?” She tightened her arm around me, and I started moving my fingers on her back again, which I just now realised had stopped.
“For real though,” I said because it was strange enough that I didn’t want to pass over it. I’ve gotten much better at saying important stuff out loud.
“So why didn’t you?” Bev sounded genuinely curious.
I shrugged, as much as I could in this position. “I didn’t get the impression that he wanted it. Like, ever.”
“But did you ask?”
I groaned. Okay, so I may have gotten a bit better at saying important stuff out loud – with Bev. “It surprised me,” I said, “that I wanted to. I mean, he’s not the only person in our lives who matters.”
“You touch me all the time. And don’t pretend you don’t like it when Kehinde climbs all over you, even now.”
Yeah, but Bev was my wife, and Kehinde my daughter. I said as much.
“And you’ve spent a lot of time with him over the last ten years. More time than with anyone else, really.” She still didn’t sound jealous or anything. She’d once jokingly called him my work husband, and I could still recall the indulgent yet bewildered look he’d given her in reaction.
I let it be, and we made better use of the rest of that night.
It could have been a simple matter of updating the books to put my ascension to fully trained wizard on the record. In this brave new world of community engagement and renewed agreements, it was a different procedure altogether.
In the old times, I would have sworn on the copy of the Principia in the atrium which was surprisingly still in good condition. Some six years ago, half the ceiling of the atrium had dropped on the display case, but as if by magic, the book itself had survived intact. Another thing made having the ceremony in the atrium impossible, and that was the fact that most of the attendants couldn’t have come.
So we’d improvised, brought the Principia out into the courtyard, and invited our friends and a selected few dozen individuals of the demi-monde – as many as the courtyard could hold – as witnesses.
Beverley, of course, was in the front row, Taiwo and Kehinde on her left and right side, my parents next to her. Tyburn was there as Mama Thames’ official representative, and Father Thames had sent Oxley and Isis, and they were all accompagnied by some of their others brothers and sisters. I saw Abdul somewhere in the middle, sitting next to Caroline Linden-Limmer, and I half-wondered which topics they might find to talk about. Grace Yutani, of course, was part of the ceremony, having made the staff I was about to get. Even Dominic had made the way from Herefordshire, together with little Lug, who seemed to be about eight to ten years old by now, and one of the Severn girls, Lilly, I thought. Harold Postmartin was sat in his wheelchair in the front row, looking tired as he always did these days, but beaming brightly. “Nightingale’s starling,” I heard him animatedly say to the person next to him – Tobi Winter, the German guy, I recognised, next to Kimberley – “I knew him when he was just starting out, and look at him now, you’ll see.” Seeing Guleed, Miriam, her wife Pam and their little daughter among the guests wasn’t a surprise, and even Alexander was showing up. Seeing him here as a show of support meant a lot.
Molly, Nightingale and I were standing in the back entry to the Folly, door open enough to have a peek, but not enough to be fully visible. If we were going to do this as a semi-public ceremony, we would give them something to watch. Nightingale had brought out his official robes as Master of the Folly, and I wore the apprentices’ garb that made finally sense of the oath I’d taken all those years ago.
Nightingale saw me looking and a wry smile came on his face. “I believe this is the first time we’re having such a diverse range of guests for this ceremony. In my time, it used to be a graduation celebration for the entire year at Casterbrook, so the attendants were mostly us pupils, the masters, and our families.”
Molly indicated that this was maybe not so different.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. My family was here, in the literal as well as figurative sense, as were my friends, the other apprentices, my teacher and everyone who had an interest in the world we were building here.
Molly pressed a firm hand on my shoulder, then patted me on the head and glided outside, to form a guard of honor with Foxglove and with the other apprentices.
I glanced at Nightingale, suddenly feeling a bit nervous. This was it, I realised. When this was over, Nightingale wasn’t going to be my teacher anymore. I was to become his colleague, as a wizard as well as a policeman.
He started to follow Molly out the door.
“I,” I began, not knowing where I wanted to go with that.
Nightingale turned to look at me, a curious expression on his face.
“Thank you,” I said quickly. “For everything.” For taking me on when I thought my career was over before it had begun. For teaching me magic. For saving me countless times. For letting me teach him, for letting me bring the Folly to the standards I believed were necessary. For changing my life in quite fundamental ways – I couldn’t say for sure, of course, but without this first meeting in Covent Garden, I may never have met Beverley, may never experienced the joy of seeing my daughters grow into the wonderful girls they were, and … everything, really, that made my life what it was today.
I couldn’t find the words to say that, so I just put my hand to my heard, and then reached out to touch his chest.
I don’t know what I was thinking.
At my touch, he flinched away as if I’d electrocuted him, and a pained expression crossed his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking suddenly helpless in a way I’ve never seen him and couldn’t bear right now, not when I’d been the one to touch him when he clearly didn’t want it, when I didn’t know what he even was apologizing for.
“No, I’m –”
Then, the first notes of my father’s trumpet solo were playing outside, and that was Nightingale’s cue to go. He jerked towards the door, then halted, looked at me again, a conflicted crease between his brows, and then left me behind.
Fuck me, I thought, I fucked up big time.
The ceremony passed in a blurry after that. My dad played music, and Foxglove had decorated the whole courtyard, and as a surprise for me, Taiwo and Kehinde were the cutest flower girls one could ever imagine, with the elegant flow of a river and the sparkling energy of a spring in their steps. I’m sure the original ceremony didn’t have flowers, but I’d seen Nightingale and Beverley conspire, and if this was the result, it made me happier than anything I could have imagined.
Several people held speeches: Tyburn, Postmartin, and Abigail, whose Physics and Philosophy M.Sci at King’s College was shining through in the way she spoke with ease and a rhetoric you usually didn’t expect in a science student. I’d have to ask her to give me the transcript later, since I didn’t get more than the general gist of it. She somehow managed to work quantum into it without making it sound as pretentious as it should have considering the content, and under normal circumstances, I’m sure I’d appreciated it much more.
Whenever I could, I looked at Beverley. Her face told me that she’d clocked that something was wrong, but of course, she couldn’t ask and I couldn’t tell. She just looked at me reassuringly, steadily, and I held onto her gaze.
Then, the big moment came. There was no hesitance in the way Nightingale looked at me and proclaimed me, in Latin and English, a Fellow of the Society of the Wise. He said the words with conviction and gravitas, and you wouldn’t have known that it was the first time he said them at all. I was, after all, the first apprentice, and the first new fully trained wizard, since the war.
When he gave me the staff, I felt a jolt going through my entire body. I knew how it feld to wield a WWII battle staff, but this was entirely different. Metal stores magic well, but even a good staff would lose magic over the course of decades, it seemed. Grace Yutani’s work was new, and it brimmed with power and potential and the need to be used, not for combat and destruction, but to build.
I bowed before Grace, and proclaimed my gratefulness for such a great gift. And that it was indeed, from the once estranged Sons and Daughters of Wayland – a gift and a promise, one I indended to mirror and to honour.
And then, the one part came that I’d quite consciously kept as a surprise: One spell that was going to show the world that I was now a true, fully trained wizard.
I hadn’t been sure about the spell to begin with, and was much less so now, with everything that had happened … but I thought, why not? It couldn’t get any worse, so I grinned, and I think Nightingale saw something in my eyes, because he raised his eyebrow in question. I muttered the spell.
The first giggle came from Taiwo, who, I think, smelled the rain before it came. Then I head a few nervous chuckles, as if the guests didn’t know what to make of it.
Nightingale looked up just in time as the raincloud that had formed over his head started to shed its drops. He just held his face into the rain, and was that a smile on his face?
For a moment, I just looked at him in wonder, then I saw his smile turn devilish, and thought, oh no.
Nightingale took a step towards me.
“Congratulations,” he said, as the first raindrops started to land on me, too. He was now grinning with a joy I’d rarely seen on him.
And then he reached out to shake my hand. Quite naturally, I took it, and we stood there for a moment, grinning from ear to ear, as rain poured down on us.
That was, of course, the moment someone took a picture.
The girls were sleeping soundly in their room in the Folly, with Foxglove as their warden. I had so many paintings of my sleeping dauthers at various ages – Foxglove was enamored with them, another frequent and voluntary babysitter.
The celebration in the courtyard was slowly dwindling down, most guests already gone. Just Guleed, Abigail, and Beverley were still there, and were currently making themselves at home in the attic of the coach house, while I brought the children to bed.
Molly had made pizza. I didn’t know where she’d gotten the receipe, but it smelled fantastic, so I made a detour to the kitchens to see if she needed help bringing it over. I was almost there when I met Nightingale.
He wore dark green linen slacks and a buttoned shirts with a paisley print and the button on his neck open. That was as casual as he was going to get, and I wondered what he’d planned for the evening.
“Peter,” he said, a sparkle still in his eyes, but also weirdly stiff. “That spell was quite the demonstration.”
I eyed him thoughtfully. “Did you enjoy it?”
There was this light in his eyes again. “Oh, immensely.”
“Good.” It was an insider, a joke, a reminder, and I was very glad to see that I hadn’t miscalculated with that.
“And I believe,” Nightingale said, “I owe you an explanation for what I fear might become a quite unfortunate misunderstanding.”
“Not necessary,” I said in a chipper tone.
But the pained expression that crossed his face told me otherwise.
“Okay,” I said. “What happened?”
“I want to tell you that while I appreciate your gratitude, it is me who should express it towards you. For everything,” he echoed my words from before.
He lifted his hand, and touched his chest above his heart.
My own was suddenly beating with ferocity as I realised what was going to happen.
With what seemed like an almost insurmountable conscious effort, Nightingale brought his hand up to my chest and touched his fingers to my heart for a short moment, before taking his hand back.
My throat was dry, and I head to clear it twice. “Thank you,” I said.
The urge to hug him was at once very present again, but I still wasn’t sure if I was allowed. Slowly, as to avoid scaring him, I put my hands to his shoulders.
He didn’t flinch, but he also didn’t react, except by closing his eyes. He still stood rigid as a rod in the hallway. And then he exhaled, and I felt his shoulders relax under my hands.
Oh, I thought. “Tell me if this isn’t okay,” I said as I stepped closer and put my arms around him.
He made a stifled sound and then, slow as if under a spell, if there was any spell that could get him, put his arms around me.
I felt him relax in my arms, and then hug back. We stood there for a moment, just breathing together. We’d made it. For ten troublesome years, he’d been my boss, my teacher. Now, I was his colleague, his equal, if not in skill then at least in rank and in mutual respect. Above all, we were something like friends.
“We’re having pizza and beer in the coachhouse, sir” I said. “There’s even some rugby on the TV. Do you want to come?”
“Please,” he said, loosened the hug and looked at me with a small smile, “call me Thomas.”
And I did.