There was a confused fight amongst the tables as Danni and Guleed tried to drag Spencer-Talbot out, while Lesley tried to grab the ring from around the poor woman’s neck. Spencer-Talbot was struggling and yelling something incoherent about letting God help.
He certainly wasn’t helping me as Francisca smacked her head back against my face, once, twice. I felt my grip around her body weakening.
‘Peter, let go!’ shouted Nightingale from the other side of the room.
I released Francisca and she was dragged feet first off my body and up towards the high ceiling. I caught a sense of the spell – there was the aer forma, which gives you a grip on bits of air, plus a complex mass of other formae, all swirling around too fast for me to clock.
I rolled over and came up on one knee. In front of me, Francisca was hoisted and wrapped in bands of what I learnt later were thickened air – visible only in the way the light refracted through them. She looked at the time like a Barbie doll trussed with Sellotape.
‘Now!’ shouted Nightingale.
I tried the sīphōnem variant again and this time it went smoothly, almost naturally, and I could feel it working. I felt the edges of the spell catch at something that was simultaneously both around and inside Francisca’s body. I think she felt it, too, because she began to thrash, wriggling like a snake shedding its skin. I saw the barely visible bands that bound her suddenly shatter.
There was nothing I could do to speed things up – the spell was going at the speed it was going.
But I was almost there.
Francisca flipped like a cat and landed on her feet. With an angry snarl, she flung out an arm in Nightingale’s direction and he disappeared in a blizzard of bits of table, plant pots, chairs and jangling stainless steel cutlery. A chalk menu board flew across the canteen and smacked into the far wall with a bang and a small cloud of chalk dust.
I was sure I had her – even as she turned her gaze on me and raised her spear.
I had the connection; the power was beginning to siphon out … although something was pulling me into the boundary. I had the weirdest idea that I had to let go and allow myself to be sucked inside, as if an exchange was necessary for the spell to work.
That’s the trouble with magic – it’s unpredictable, and you never know what’s going to happen until you try it.
Francisca reared up above me, wings spread, spear poised.
For a moment Francisca was framed in a peacock’s tail of blue and green – like a stained glass window in full sunlight. And through it I felt the warmth of summer stone and the sound of running water.
I could feel a connection, as if part of Francisca stretched back into the unknown.
If I could just follow that thread …
Then something grabbed hold of the back of my belt and yanked me backwards.
The spear came down and the cement floor exploded as I skidded backwards. I heard Lesley shout, ‘For fuck’s sake, Peter! Get out of the fucking way!’
I slammed into an overturned table and before I could move, the spear came darting for my chest again. One thing was for certain. Francisca definitely had a thing about hearts.
A shield formed in front of me, a shimmer in the air with a tinge of blue. The spear struck it and slid upwards, so I went sideways. As I scrambled for safety I felt, rather than saw, Nightingale try the binding spell again.
Third time lucky, I thought, and tried to clear my mind.
But before I could line up the spell, Francisca screamed. There was a brilliant light and she vanished. Then there was one of those pauses that happen just before a disaster, and are just long enough for your realisation and too short for useful action.
I’d barely got to my knees when a concussion blew me over, tables and chairs splintered, and a nearby pillar cracked from one side to the other.
Not a real explosion, I thought as I got to my feet.
My ears were ringing, but they didn’t hurt. But powerful enough to fill the air with cement dust and leaves and petals ripped off the plants of the indoor garden, as though by a gale.
There was a smell of burning grease coming from the kitchen.
I couldn’t see Nightingale, Danni or Guleed.
But I could see Lesley standing nearby and calmly tying her hair back with a yellow scrunchie. The clothes she’d been wearing as a disguise were hanging in shreds to reveal a skintight blue and white lycra top. She must have heard me, because she looked over and smiled.
‘That could have gone better,’ she said, and bolted.
She went out through the back door, which was hanging off its hinges.
I hesitated – thinking that maybe I should check on the others first. But this was probably the best chance I was getting to get to nick Lesley, so I went after her instead.
The fire door at the end of the short corridor was still swinging closed as I shouldered through it. With the amount of magic we’d been flinging around, any operating phone or Airwave would have been dusted and I didn’t have time to fish out my backup.
I’d just have to hope that Seawoll’s perimeter would call it in for me.
There were a couple of members of that perimeter lying on their backs just outside the back door. I slowed, but the two TSG officers, in full protective gear including helmets, were swearing and clutching their knees.
‘Left, left, left!’ shouted one of them. ‘She went left – over the wall!’
It was a courtyard surrounded on three sides by high Victorian red-brick walls. There was a closed double gate at the far end and stacks of pallets, industrial-sized silver bins and other catering cast-offs against the right-hand wall. The only thing on the left was a big chest freezer pushed up against the wall. I jumped up on it and, because this was Lesley we were talking about, cautiously looked over the top of the wall.
As a cheap alternative to barbed wire, broken bottles had been cemented along the top. A metre-wide gap had been blown to smithereens, leaving pulverised glass and cement dust behind. Beyond was the 521 bus depot, with ranks of single-deck buses lined up ready for use. I caught a flash of blue to the right and spotted Lesley sliding into the narrow gap between two buses.
‘In the bus depot!’ I shouted, in the hope that backup was just behind me, and I vaulted the wall.
It was a longer drop than I expected, and the shock jarred my ankles when I landed. I stumbled, and when I looked up Lesley was gone, but I’d marked her route.
It’s always the same problem when chasing an armed suspect. Not only can they run flat out while you check round every corner first, but you’ve got to avoid bottling them up with unsuspecting members of the public. Still, I didn’t think Lesley was going to start indiscriminately flinging magic around in a populated area, or blow my head off if I stuck it out.
Do something unpleasant, maybe. But not kill me.
And while she paused to do that, Nightingale would have time to catch up.
So I ran quickly down the narrow red canyon between the buses and didn’t pause as I emerged out into the access road beyond.
Ahead, I felt the sudden ticking of a clock and the long scrape of a straight razor sliding down its strop. Lesley’s signare again. And then a real-world sound like guitar strings snapping. Ahead of me was a line of double-deckers parked parallel to the access road. I ran through the short gap between two of the buses and ran into a brick wall. It was chest-high and topped with another two metres of chain-link fence. The buses were parked just far enough away from the wall to allow me to slide along to where a large hole had been melted in the fence. When I brushed my hand against the twisted ends of the wires, they were warm to the touch and resonated with the cry of a seagull.