Although I have inherited so much from her, I have fewer memories of my mother. She was a practical, briskly decisive woman, absent-mindedly affectionate, busy with her clients or in her laboratory, with its sharp chemical reek, scarred wooden bench and hand-blown glassware, stained porcelain crucibles, a furnace built of brick and firestones, and intricate diagrams drawn on one whitewashed wall in black chalk and haematite. She provided me with a good grounding in our family business, giving me formal lessons each morning of my childhood and, when I was older, allowing me to attend the sessions with her clients. I remember best her sharply intent gaze, and her shapely hands with their bitten fingernails, and nicks and burns and chemical stains.
My mother and my father were as different as chalk and cheese, but they loved each other more than I am able to describe. They collaborated in experiments to augment my mother’s natural ability; they died together when their last and most elaborate work released something feral and uncontrollably powerful. They had known of the danger and had taken the precaution of sending me away to help a client in St Andrews, and so my life was saved. I have dedicated it to their memory ever since.
I had just finished reshelving the fallen books when I heard a sound elsewhere in the house, a rap on the front door only a little louder than a mouse’s scratch. I drew my blade, picked up my candle and crept back downstairs where I unlocked the door and opened it a scant inch. Miranda stood there, her pale face set like stone under the bill of her baseball cap.
“I know who took it,” she said.
She gave up her story over a cup of hot chocolate in my kitchen. It was an assured performance, and even though I was certain that almost everything she told me was a lie, I had to admire her cool nerve, even though I could barely control my anger and anxiety. She told me that the night before she had hung around outside the cafe until I had left, and had followed me as I had walked homeward. She had seen the encounter with the Jaguar, and had managed to keep on my tail as I had walked a long widdershins spiral to shake off any pursuers.
“I am growing careless,” I said. “A few years ago I would have discovered you at once.”
Miranda shrugged. She sat at the scrubbed pine table in my basement kitchen, her baseball cap in her lap, her hood pulled back from her cropped blonde hair. There was a sprinkling of acne on her pale, sharp face, a faint moustache of chocolate foam on her upper lip. She was working on her third cigarette, stabbing it between her lips, blowing thin streams of smoke from the side of her mouth, tapping off the growing ash with her forefinger into the saucer I had provided.
“I’m good at following people,” she said flatly, as if stating her height or the colour of her eyes.
“And tonight you followed me again.”
I was angry and anxious, and I was also more than a little afraid of her. In the wrong hands, her raw talent could be very dangerous, and I was certain that she had already fallen into the wrong hands, that she was working for the man who wanted my book.
She shook her head. “I kept watch right here. I heard what that guy Halliwell said, so I thought I’d keep a lookout.”
“Halliwell? Is that the man in the Jaguar? How do you know his name?”
The little minx had her answer ready; she did not even blink. “Donny Halliwell used to be a well-known face in Islington,” she said, and mentioned a family that ran most of the protection rackets in the area.
“I presume that he is not working for them now.”
“I heard what he said about finding where you lived, so I thought I’d better keep an eye out. I was right, too.”
She looked at me when I laughed, and asked what was so funny.
“While you were here, keeping watch on my house, I was looking for you.”
“Yeah? Why’s that, then?”
“Many people have a touch of our ability, Miranda, but a few have something more than a touch. In most cases, they are either driven mad by it, or they do their best to deny it and allow it to wither, like an unused limb. But one or two, although untutored, find a use for their gift. Usually, they become charlatans, preying on the gullible and the grief-stricken, and any good that they do is by accident. Very rarely, they actively try to use their ability for the good of others. That is why I was looking for you.”
She shrugged.
“You wanted to help your friend last night. I believe that you have tried to help others. And you want to help me.”
“I want to find out what you were about. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”
“No, I don’t suppose you have.”
“And now I’ve seen where you live, I know you’re the kind of man who likes to keep himself to himself. You were looking for me because you were curious about me. You wanted to find out about me because you were worried about me — about what I was doing, about what I could do. But it’s not like you want to be friends or anything like that, is it? You’re not the kind of man who has friends.”
I was startled by how clearly she saw me.
“On the contrary. I have many friends.”
“You let ‘em come here? You hang out with them, chat with them about this and that over a drink? No, I thought not. You know people, but you don’t have what you’d call real friends. What were you planning to do, if you found me? Give me some advice about how to live my life, like you did at that cafe last night?”
“I can help you, Miranda, if you’ll let me.”
“I can look after myself. Don’t need no man telling me what to do. I was going to break into your house myself,” she said, with a look that dared me to contradict her. “I would’ve, too, if that guy hadn’t come along.”
“Forgive me, Miranda, but I don’t believe you. You were able to follow me without my knowledge, and that is no small achievement. But I don’t think you could have overcome the wards I left in place.”
“He managed it,” Miranda said.
Someone had, at any rate. I doubted that it had been Mr Donny Halliwell, of the glazed expression, the expensive, slept-in clothes, the sleepwalking menace. “If he did,” I said, “then I am guilty of having grievously underestimated him.”
“The way you talk. It’s like the way you dress.”
“You think that my clothes and my locution are affectations. I can assure you that they are not.”
“Locution? What’s that when it’s at home?”
“It’s the way I talk.”
“It’s a funny old word, is what it is. Old-fashioned. Like your clothes. Like this place. All this old furniture, and candles and such instead of proper lights.” Miranda lit her fourth cigarette with a quick snap of flame. “You don’t have a proper cooker, or a fridge… I bet you don’t even have a telly.”
“When you are a little older, Miranda, you’ll find that many people prefer the time in which they grew up to the time in which they find themselves.”
“Maybe. But you didn’t grow up in, like, Victorian times.”
“That’s quite true. When I first came to London, Queen Victoria had yet to ascend to the throne.”
She looked at me. She wanted to sneer, but in her heart she was beginning to believe me. I took it as a hopeful sign: a sign that she could yet be saved. And even if I could not save her, I thought, it was always best to keep your enemy close.
“Those of us who know something of the matter of the dead can be quite long-lived,” I said. “If you are more careful in how you use your talent, Miranda, you might discover the trick.”
“I could live a hundred years, could I? And not grow old?”
“Or you could step into the road tomorrow, and be run over by a bus.”