Ash had been nearly dead when he’d gone into the Thames and now I was reliably informed he was strolling around Chelsea and cutting a swath through the green wellies brigade. Something had repaired the gross tissue damage in his chest and if that was possible for him, then why not Leslie’s face? Maybe she had been right—what magic had done, magic could undo.

I heard a noise from the darkness behind Larry’s cabinet—a scrabbling sound that seemed too regular to be rats. I shone my torch in that direction, but all I caught was a tangle of shadows among the table legs. Larry’s eyes glistened at me—they didn’t look like glass.

I heard the scrabbling again.

I tried my airwave and asked Stephanopoulis whether she had an ETA on Nightingale or even the portable lights. Because it’s a digital system you don’t get the weird atmospherics of an analogue walkie-talkie. Instead, the person you’re talking to drops out at random intervals. I think Stephanopoulis told me that “something” was going to be ten minutes and I was to stay where I was.

Scrabbling.

I took the batteries out of the airwave, turned off my phone, and conjured a nice bright werelight, which I floated off into the foyer beyond Larry’s cabinet. Once you’ve mastered the impello form, you learn to guide whatever it is you’re moving about, but it’s tricky. A bit like operating a remote-controlled plane with your toes. As the werelight curved around the cabinet, I noticed that Larry’s eyes actually moved to follow it. I tried to bring it around in a circle to check, but all I managed was to slow it down and make it wobble. I actually had to close my eyes and concentrate to get the thing to stay. But when I opened them I had my first good look at the foyer.

More of the ubiquitous gold and red flocked wallpaper, and heavy red velvet drapes framing archways farther into the club. Dully gleaming stained pine doors with brass plates marked GENTLEMEN and LADIES on the right. The bar had a mirrored back wall, which meant I could see in the reflection that there was nothing lurking beneath the bar.

My dad had played in clubs that looked like this. I’d gone clubbing in clubs like this, which made me realize how suspiciously unrotten the curtains were—despite the smell of mildew. Then I saw, hanging from a light fitting, the familiar folded-up neon shape of a compact fluorescent low-energy lightbulb—definitely not commercially available in the 1970s. Somebody had been down here recently and often enough to think it worth shelling out for some new bulbs.