#belligerent crockery

[honourablejester]

Homebrew Magic Item: The Troublesome Teapot

A completely random sentient homebrew Magic Item inspired entirely by the belligerent sugar bowl from the Higitus Figitus scene in Sword in the Stone.

As you look around, you hear muffled cursing and the strange sound of rattling crockery. Your attention is drawn to a small wooden box, the sort used in fancy houses to store cruet sets and other tableware. The box is rattling quite violently. A piece of parchment has been glued crookedly to the ornate lid of the box. On this parchment, in scrawled, nearly illegible writing, is the following note:

“The Troublesome Teapot. Or, no. It’s not actually a teapot, it’s a sugar bowl. Just. Alliteration, you know? You give these sorts of things fancy names, don’t you? And sugar bowl or teapot, whatever else it might be, it’s troublesome. I may have, perhaps, had a slight incident with the Animate Objects spell and a surge of wild magic? That’s neither here nor there. The point is, the very foul-mouthed thing you can hear in this box is what I’m calling the Troublesome Teapot. Or the Troublesome Sugar Bowl, if you’ve absolutely got to be accurate about it. It’s … I’m sure there’s got to be someone it’ll get on with? Maybe that’s you! I mean, not at first, it doesn’t get on with anything at first, but you could be the person it warms up to? After a small, absolutely TINY bit of injury and mayhem. Miniscule. I’m sure you can handle it. Or someone can handle it. Just. Well. I didn’t want to destroy it? I mean, it’s an angry, hitty little thing that’s likely of no use to anyone, but …

Well. It just felt wrong. It’s hardly its fault my magic did what my magic always does. And look, if you do hold on to it and just … let it hit you for a bit, it will at least not hit you any more? And if you keep it with you, it sometimes does hit things that are mean to you. Although, most often, just whatever’s biggest around you. Which can be useful! Sometimes. On occasion.

Regardless. If you don’t want to chance it, please leave it alone? Don’t destroy it. There will eventually be someone who’ll be the companion it deserves. Or at least, that’s the hope I’m holding on to. There’s someone out there for everyone, right? Even horrible little sugar bowls who like to hit things. Well. That’s the hope, at least. And … thank you.”

THE TROUBLESOME TEAPOT (/SUGAR BOWL)

Wonderous Item (Construct), requires attunement

The Troublesome Teapot is a squat, rather ugly little blue ceramic sugar bowl, with four stubby legs, two stubby little handles/arms, a badly chipped lid, and a rather indestructible pewter teaspoon that it is violently attached to. You can attune to the Troublesome Teapot by successfully holding onto with both hands for 1 minute while it attempts to attack you. During this time the Teapot will make 10 attempted attacks on you (+8 to hit, dealing 1 bludgeoning damage on a hit). If you successfully endure all 10 without letting go of the Teapot, you have successfully attuned to it, and the Teapot will stay grumbling but acquiescent in its box until you summon it.

While attuned to the Troublesome Teapot, you can use a bonus action on your turn to summon it to your side. If initiative has not yet been rolled, the Teapot immediately makes a surprise attack on one target of its choice from among the creatures within 50ft of it, and will keep attacking that target if allowed to do so. If initiative has been rolled, roll initiative for the Teapot, and place it in the initiative order accordingly. You can use a bonus action to return the Teapot to its box at any time.

While the Teapot is active, it acts on its own turn and initiative. The Teapot does not obey your commands. Instead, it always moves to attack the strongest, most intimidating or otherwise most attractive target to fight in its vicinity. The Teapot is a tiny construct, with an AC of 18, 20 hit points, a Strength of 4 and a Dexterity of 18. It has a walking speed of 50ft.

On its turn, the Teapot can move up to its speed and use an action to make one melee attack on a creature with its spoon. It has a +8 to hit and deals 1d4 + your main ability modifier in bludgeoning damage. The Teapot can use a bonus action on its turn to take the Dash, Disengage or Dodge actions.

If the Teapot is reduced to 0 hit points, it becomes inert and must either be repaired using the mending cantrip or by spending an hour of downtime activity and 5gp to painstakingly glue it back together. After being repaired, the Teapot must be allowed a full long rest of 8 hours in its box before it can be summoned again.

Sentience. The Troublesome Teapot is a sentient, chaotic neutral construct with an Intelligence of 10, a Wisdom of 14 and a Charisma of 6. It speaks and understands Common, and has blindsense and hearing to a range of 50ft.

Personality. The Troublesome Teapot is incredibly belligerent, foul-mouthed, and inclined to insult anything and everything in its vicinity. If allowed freedom to act, it will invariably attack whatever creature in its vicinity looks like it would be the best in a fight, spouting insults the entire time. Once attuned, it will not attack the person it is attuned to, although it may continue to insult them. It is possible, although never yet successfully achieved, that the Troublesome Teapot may warm up to the person it is attuned to, to the point where it will accept commands or suggestions from them. Or at least settle for a warmer sort of insult.

(Optional) Waning Magic. The more often the Troublesome Teapot is damaged, the less it holds on to its magic. If the Teapot is reduced to 0 HP and repaired more than five times, it begins to get noticeably more listless and less lively. Its insults become more lackluster and less enthusiastic, and it begins to slow down in combat, reducing its movement speed to 30ft. After the eighth time it is destroyed and repaired, it can no long use bonus actions in combat. After the tenth time, it can no longer be summoned at all, and can only rattle sadly in its box. Once the Teapot has reached this stage, it has 2d20 days before it loses its magic entirely and ‘dies’/becomes nonmagical. The Teapot will be aware of and may understand what is happening to it. At the DMs discretion, it may be possible to stop and reverse this decline, perhaps by casting a spell such as Greater Restoration on the Troublesome Teapot, or by some other means, such as bringing the Teapot to a temple of a deity of craft, knowledge or arcana and asking for their intercession.

[jomiddlemarch]

A man goes far to find out what he is—

It wasn’t an interrogation, because the tracker had demanded the meeting, and because Aleksander felt the shadows within him at ease. The silver ring on his finger was only that, a weight he hardly registered, powerless in the face of the powerlessness of the brash otkazat’sya with his chin thrust out in something approaching belligerence. For all that Oretsev was half-Shu like Alina, they looked little alike, though Aleksander hadn’t made a study of the man as he had done with Alina, whose delicate profile he could draw in a ribbon of darkness cast against the hearth-light.

And now he was speaking, Malyen Oretsev of the First Army and Keramzin, making his attack with all the clumsy vigor of youth, with the confidence of a man who only knew one kind of force.

“I’d do anything for Alina and you have to—”

“No,” Aleksander said quietly, his brief, uninflected interruption startling Oretsev more than any shout or curse. “You wouldn’t do anything for her and I don’t answer to you.”

“But—”

“I see you require an explanation,” Aleksander said. His mother would simply have struck the man with her stick, but he followed her example as little as he might.

“Not an explanation—you’re wrong, you don’t know how it was. You haven’t known her as long as I have, ever since—”

“Ever since you were children in the Duke’s orphanage, tended, if you want to call it that, by a bigoted, tight-fisted widow named Ana Kuya, who fed you last and birched you first for any infraction,” Aleksander said, recalling how matter-of-fact Alina had been in her recollection, how he had taken the anger that rose in him and used it to refill her tea-cup and offer her another of the cheese-filled pastries she favored, only soothed when she had licked the gloss of butter from her lower lip. “You think I haven’t spoken to Alina? That she hasn’t told me how it was?”

Oretsev ducked his head uncertainly, the gesture the cousin to a nod, all he could muster it seemed.

“I know. I know that she followed you and watched for you, that she shared whatever she had with you, a biscuit, an apple, a scrap of blanket, if she did not give it to you entirely and I know you took it, because she smiled when she told me. I know she was so desperate to be near you that she drew her own blood to fail the examination of my Grisha, willing to sacrifice warmth and plenty, a community, an education, willing to sacrifice even the chance of it, to be with you, though you did not do the same for her. I know the shape of the scar left on her palm. I know she wrote to you when you enlisted and you didn’t write back and spare me your excuses about distance and your meager pay and what is expected of a First Army soldier, because I have sent notes from the battle-front, from siege to those closest, dearest to me across the country, across the world, I’ve begged strangers to carry back the merest scrap though it might have been my destruction to be discovered. I know how you treated her when she joined up, however it was she managed to convince them to let her in, half-dead with wasting sickness—”

“She’d always been kind of frail. She didn’t look that sick,” Oretsev said.

“Then you’re a fool or you’ve never seen her well, not even as a small child,” Aleksander said. “I know how you were when she joined up, how little attention you paid to her, how often you left her to go off with your friends, what pittance you gave her when she gave you everything, risking her life to cross with you, courting her own death to protect you. You stole a plate of grapes from Miss Nazyalensky, I believe, and then left Alina to return to crockery as if she were a scullery maid.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Oretsev protested.

“No? She didn’t describe it that way either, I had to ask the most careful questions. She defended your actions at every turn, it took a great deal of time and effort to get the truth from her, in such a way that the wicked blade of it would not wound her. I would not wound her,” Aleksander said. “And yet, it’s clear to me how little she meant to you, how little you thought of her, how greatly she altered herself to seek your approval. You’d do anything for her? You’ve done nothing for her, or worse than nothing, some embarrassingly scant degree of care that cannot be faulted in a child but must be decried in a man, you convinced her she might someday win your favor if she simply waited for you to exhaust every other pleasure in the world.”

“You believe you are better for her?” Oretsev asked. Any subtle skill he had tracking animals or stealthy Fjerdans was entirely absent in the crude feint. If Ivan had been present, Oretsev would have been slain with a glance. “Because you are General of the Second Army, Lord of the Grisha?”

“No, because the first person who tried to hurt her I took apart before he could scream for mercy. Before his second breath could touch her face,” Aleksander said. “The ravens would not even make a meal of him. Though your reasons are valid, I admit. I am not better for her. I recognize her. I understand her—and when I do not, I ask her questions and I listen to what she tells me and how, what her voice sounds like and whether she bites her lip or brushes back the hair above her right ear. I have waited for her for longer than you could ever imagine, I waited for her when I could hardly believe she would ever be real—”

“You mean because she is the Sun Summoner,” Oretsev said, with all the derision of an otkazat’sya unable to grasp the power a Grisha would wield.

“Because she is Alina,” Aleksander said. “Because it is her face I see when I close my eyes, which I have seen in the making at the heart of the world, because she is steadfast and loyal, to you who cannot deserve even the ass’s portion of her devotion, which is why you are alive now, before me, insolent and hale.”

“She asked you to let me talk to you? That’s why I’m here?”

“She wants you to be happy. That’s why you have been allowed to make demands and that’s why you’ll be allowed to live,” Aleksander said. “To return to the First Army or—”

“Or what?” Oretsev broke in.

“Or you might do something for Alina, as you profess has always been your intention, though there is a remarkable lack of evidence supporting your assertion,” Aleksander said. “It would mean you take orders from me, orders which cannot be argued with, and if you agree, you leave only with my permission or in your shroud. I can assure you, I would not let Alina sew it.”

“You want something from me, that’s what’s this has been about the whole time,” Oretsev said. “You want me to find something, don’t you? This has nothing to do with Alina, you don’t really care about her—”

Aleksander reached out then, grasped the Oretsev’s wrist in his hand, and let the otkazat’sya feel the strength of his flesh, the sudden, breath-taking ache of the shadow, and then Aleksander paused, because something in the man answered, dimmer than Aleksander’s own power but still present, errant within the blood, hidden in the marrow.

“I care,” he said. “Beyond any proof, any protestation, beyond the darkness, the sea—if ever the blow landed that might fell me, I should rise again to seek her, unshackled by death. And now I find however little you gave her, it was less than it could have been, if only you’d been willing to take her by the hand.”

“Take her by the hand?” Oretsev was finally only confused, the cowed expression Aleksander’s last rejoinder had drawn from him replaced with a blankness.

“You are not Grisha, but you have within you the ability to stoke a Grisha’s power, to let it flare like a bonfire or to bring back the strength to a dying coal with a breath,” Aleksander said.

“An amplifier,” Oretsev said. Aleksander raised an eyebrow in inquiry. “Zoya wears a bracelet with the teeth of a tiger set within the silver cuff like a braid. She told me what it was, why she wouldn’t take it off when we were…together.”

“So you are not as ignorant as I anticipated if twice as caddish,” Aleksander said. “I had thought Alina was deluded when she spoke of your acuity but perhaps she only exaggerated. She is very generous with those she loves.”

“She deserves better than you,” Oretsev said. Aleksander laughed. Had he ever been as young as young Malyen Oretsev? It was impossible to believe and there was no one left he could ask.

“Of course she does. She deserves better than both of us, than this wicked, worn-out world, but she won’t listen to me when I tell her so and I can’t believe she’d ever agree with either one of us. You want to give her what she deserves? You want to begin to be the man she believes you are? Then shut up and do what I tell you.”

“And if I do, then you’ll let her come to me?” Oretsev asked.

“To your farm, to muck out stalls and chop enough wood to keep the oven hot through the long winter, to stir endless pots of stew instead of Summoning? Certainly not,” Aleksander said.

“You’ll keep her in this Little Palace then. Lock her up in a gilded cage like a pet.” Oretsev tried to spit out the words most bitterly, but his remarks were too trite to support the tone. Aleksander let himself imagine Alina, parrying a blow from Master Botkin or holding her arms out, palms cradling sfera, the expression of delight on her face when he offered her something she hadn’t known she wanted or hadn’t believed anyone would think could be hers, the look on her face when he held her, one hand at the back of her head, her black hair finer than Shu silk, the cool golden filet, the way she’d drop her gaze to his lips, the rich color that rose in her cheeks before he kissed her.

“I’ll let her do what she wants, go to Ketterdarm, visit the University and the Library and the galleries along the Saffier Kanaal and look at the sea as the sun sets, the water turned to diamonds,” Aleksander said. “I will give her whatever she longs for—liberty and knowledge, warmth, music—”

“And you,” Oretsev said.

“If she wants me,” Aleksander said. “Only if she wants me, however she does. She possesses me, but she belongs only to herself.”

“You expect me to believe you consider yourself her inferior? That the great General Kirigan would be ruled by a slip of a girl, a nobody from nowhere?” Oretsev said.

“I don’t expect you to believe anything. I frankly couldn’t care less about your beliefs, assumptions, conclusions or conjectures,” Aleksander said. “Alina knows who she is now and she knows what she means to me. To all the Grisha. You may serve her and finally earn the affection she has given you so freely all these years or leave my sight. But I warn you, Oretsev, if you leave, you will not return. There are no second chances with me.”

“Not when it comes to Alina?”

“Not ever,” Aleksander said. “I learned long ago not to be made a fool of. It will not do for me and it will not ever do for Alina. I won’t let you hurt her ever again.”

For @vesperass-anuna​ who wanted an argument between Aleksander and Mal with Aleksander besting Mal in no uncertain terms!

[agapaic]

tianshan drabble. 💞 on behalf of an anonymous donation to the BLMUK organisation, this was created (with permission) for Eylül @eed752. if you would like to donate to an organisation supporting black lives in return for a drabble, please see here for more information. 🌸

tags: chef!guan shan, media exec! he tian, reality TV. tw: non-consensual kissing

///

‘I don’t need your fuckin’ help,’ Guan Shan says, teeth gritted. ‘I didn’t ask for it.’

On the other side of the resaurant’s foyer, Zhengxi lowers the camera. He’s familiar with Guan Shan’s belligerence, and he knows when to stop rolling without waiting for anyone’s call. He turns to He Tian, who’s already making his way over to Guan Shan while he rolls up the cuffs on his shirt sleeves. His smile is tight.

‘Do you want to say that off camera, hm?’ he says quietly, when he’s only a few feet away. There’s something sharp beneath his words that makes Guan Shan’s spine straighten. ‘Stop being a prima donna because you don’t want to follow my suggestions. You and I both know you couldn’t do this without the show.’

Guan Shan looks away. This. His father’s old restaurant had been an empty husk until he bought it, the inside like walking into a warzone. There was graffitti on the walls, smashed crockery covering the floor, burst pipes in the bathrooms and kitchen, some scene from an apocalypse movie. 

The PAP had done nothing with it since they seized the property fifteen years ago; when it came to auction, Guan Shan bought it without thinking, emptying the savings he’d been stockpiling from his job as a waiter. He’d planned to give half to his mom and pay off her mortgage.

He doesn’t have the money to rennovate now, or to repair. He barely has the strength not to revisit the memory of the raid each time he walks through the restaurant doors, bile burning his throat, nausea rolling through him as if he’s at sea. Sometimes, it feels like it, the earth unsteady beneath his feet, his surroundings beginning to spin, a high-pitched ringing starting to keen in his ears—

‘Hey,’ He Tian says, brows drawn in. ‘Hey, did you hear me?’

Guan Shan mumbles something, and his expression must throw He Tian enough because he calls out for a break in the shooting. The crew lower their cameras and mic booms—Take five! someone shouts—and a caterers rolls out a trolley with cans of soft drinks and snacks. 

Guan Shan doesn’t go to it; nor does he collapse into the fold-up chair that has his name printed across the back. Instead, He Tian grips him by the elbow and steers him, not ungently, out of the main restaurant and towards the kitchen.

It’s a building site still, most everything covered in sheets of plastic and a dusty layer of concrete residue. They’ll start filming this part of the show in a couple of weeks, and use a demo kitchen for now while they work on the recipes for the menu. It’s the nature of the show—Overhaul, it’s called, building someone’s business quite literally from the ground up. 

You couldn’t do this without the show, He Tian had said. He’s right. Guan Shan couldn’t have afforded anything on the scale that He Tian is giving him. That’s the whole point of this fucking venture. The furniture, the esteemed clientelle, a Shanghai-based HR agency to find the staff. Some chef from SHIC will help him with the menu, and his contract promises the review of a Black Pearl critic who will visit a year after opening. The restaurant will be a success, by default of He Tian’s purview. He’ll allow nothing else to damage his name.

When the kitchen doors swing to a close behind them, He Tian releases Guan Shan and leans against an old counter with his arms folded. He’s frowning. In here, with the dust and the absence of windows, Guan Shan finds it difficult to breathe. He rubs at his chest, easing a pressure that refuses to dissipate. He’s trying to imagine himself running this place one day, cooking in here, where his father used to—and he fails. 

‘You asked for my help,’ says He Tian, slowly. ‘You went to Jian Yi, who came to me. You signed the contract. You agreed to this.’

‘I know what I fuckin’ agreed to,’ Guan Shan mutters.

He Tian is unimpressed, and Guan Shan realises he hasn’t brought him away from the eyes of the crew because he pities him. He’s just making an attempt not to air any dirty laundry. He’s being professional. 

He says, ‘Then you can stop with the chip on your shoulder and stop being a bitch to the rest of the crew. They’re not your enemy. Neither am I.’

‘I’m not—’

‘If you want sympathy, then play it up. Start crying. I don’t give a damn—the audience will love it.’ He Tian stares at him flatly. ‘Maybe at the end we can have a father-son reunion—’

‘Don’t you fuckin’ dare,’ Guan Shan growls. The thought sickens him. Already, he knows that his father might see this in the papers, or have access to the show on the prison’s communal TV’s. Guan Shan hasn’t told him. He hasn’t visited in over a year. By the time the show airs, He Tian’s name will be emblazoned in lights; it wasn’t written in the contract, but the restaurant will become He Tian’s has much as it has ever belonged to the Mos. 

‘You’re in the entertainment business, Mo Guan Shan,’ He Tian reminds him coldly. ‘You should take what you can get and don’t stop.’

‘Is that what you’ve done?’ Guan Shan sneers.

‘Isn’t it obvious? Look at me.’

Guan Shan is looking. He’s spent two months looking, and he could spend even longer doing so, if only for the fact that he doesn’t want to. His preocuppation with the looks of a pretentious media executive worth millions is really fucking unfortunate. He hates himself for it. 

Granted, sometimes things are good. Sometimes they joke with each other and have moments off-camera that make Guan Shan’s spine tingle. Sometimes he thinks He Tian’s hand touches him when it shouldn’t, and sometimes Guan Shan’s eyes linger longer when they shouldn’t, too. There have been no sordid, insidious rumours staining He Tian’s name as with other media execs in the industry, but that means nothing. He Tian has the money and charm to keep it quiet. Probably, He Tian plays this game with all his entreupeneurs. Probably, Guan Shan is being fucking stupid. He hates himself for that, too.

‘I don’t wanna be like you,’ Guan Shan tells him eventually. ‘You look at people like they’re ratings.’

‘Spare me,’ He Tian remarks dryly. ‘If you had enough of a moral backbone you wouldn’t be using me at all for this. You would’ve worked and worked until you had what it took to make this place work.’ He smiles, almost tenderly. ‘And even then it wouldn’t be enough.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘No, fuck you, Mo Guan Shan. You’re going to be whatever the camera makes tries to make you.’

‘You mean what you make—’

‘Shut up. Do you want to be the arrogant, angry chef with an overruling passion for food? The kid from a broken home with too-high dreams of running a business? Is this all some grand venture to repair your paternal relationship? Or maybe something else entirely. You have the opportunity of a life time. If I were you, I’d think about taking it.’

Guan Shan opens his mouth to argue, and He Tian swears—in frustration, in anger, in bemused disbelief that Guan Shan still won’t back down from the fight when he knows he’s lost. The outcome was pre-determined, and Guan Shan’s still wincing at new bruises and spitting blood onto the tarpaulin of the derelict kitchen. 

He can only stare as He Tian marches forward, and he only thinks to take a step back when He Tian is a few feet from him— In front of him now—  Grabbing his shoulders with two hands—

He Tian’s kissing him. 

He Tian doesn’t wait for Guan Shan’s too-slow reaction. He takes what he wants, pillaging the intimacy, tongue forcing itself between Guan Shan’s lips—and lets him go. Immediately after, He Tian staggers back slightly, narrowly avoiding the fist that swings in his direction. 

Guan Shan heaves. He doesn’t have the energy to try a second time. ‘You—’

‘There,’ He Tian says thickly. ‘File for harrassment. Put my name down in the mud and rebuild yourself from the ashes.’

‘You fuckin’... You...’ Words fail him. His head is reeling.

He Tian lifts his hand as if to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, but his fingertips linger on his lips. His face is slightly flushed. 

‘I’m giving you power over me.’ 

He says it like an apology.

‘I’d never win,’ Guan Shan chokes out. ‘Me against you in court? I’m nothin’.’

‘I’d agree with your story. If nothing else, I’ll pay out a settlement fee and you can do this whole thing yourself.’

Guan Shan shakes his head. His mouth feels bruised. The worst part is that he’d imagined this before. Different. Better. He’d wanted it. No, the worst part is that he wants it still.

‘Still dirty money,’ he whispers.

‘It doesn’t have to be,’ says He Tian. Guan Shan realises he sounds a little shocked—as if he hadn’t had control over his actions. As if he hadn’t expected its consequences. Guan Shan realises: He Tian hadn’t done this with the others. ‘Make your choice, Mo Guan Shan. You can quit, you can file a claim—or we can carry on and get this thing finished.’

‘Shit,’ Guan Shan breathes, dragging a shaking hand over his face. ‘How the fuck am I gonna just... carry on after you...’

He looks to He Tian, expecting some cool answer, something stemmed from exploitative experience, but He Tian only grimaces and says, ‘The same way I’ll have to.’

///

🌸 in the footsteps of @nightfayre’s wonderful initiative, i’m filling any drabble requests following a donation to causes in support of black lives. please read here if you would like more information! ✨

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

Whispers Under Ground - The Domestic

It has been brought to my attention (by the lovely @sixth-light​) that I am the only member of the tiny fandom in possession of a copy of Whispers Under Ground with the Waterstones’ short story The Domestic. And since this is probably my favourite of all the ROL shorts I think it’s a crying shame that the rest of the tiny fandom hasn’t read it. so here, for your reading pleasure:

The Domestic by Ben Aaronovitch

The tricky thing about architectural fashion is that it’s never as demarcated as the textbooks make out. The terrace mid-way up Prince of Wales Road was doing its best to pretend it was Regency, but the sash windows, slapdash stucco and half basement all said mid-Victorian at the earliest. I gave it the once over. The paint was grubby rather than dirty and the iron railings had been maintained free of rust. First wave right-to-buy property owner, I thought, from back in the days when Camden Council still had terrace flat conversions on its books.

My domestic lived down a flight of external stairs, in the basement flat. The front door was trapped in an alcove under the steps to what would have originally been the main entrance before the house was sub-divided - the better for the unspeakably common tradesman to come and go as unobtrusively as possible. The doorbell chimed when I pressed it and habit made me step out if the confined alcove while I waited for it to open. It’s always good to have some space to manoeuvre when the door opens - just in case.

When it did open, a little old white woman stuck her head round the doorjamb and peered at me suspiciously.

“Yes,” she said. “Can I help you?”

“Mrs Eugenia Fellaman?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“My name’s Peter Grant. I’m a police officer and I wondered if I might come in and have a quick word.” I showed her my warrant card - she wasn’t impressed.

“I’ve already spoken to the other one,” she said.

“Yes Ma’am, I know,” I said. The ‘other one’ being Sergreant Bill Crosslake who had called me in.

“He asked me to talk to you. He thought I might be able to help.”

She stepped out of her front door the better to chase me back up to street level.

“Well he thought wrong,” she said, and as she came into the daylight I saw the faded purple of a bruise on her left cheek.

“Can I ask how you got that bruise?”

I watched as she carefully didn’t lift her hand to her face.

“I walked into the door didn’t I?” she said. “You get like that when you’re a bit older.”

“We both know that’s not true,” I said.

She folded her arms. She was wearing a green woollen loose-knit jumper, clean but with frayed cuffs. Her hair was grey, thinning and gathered back into a pony tail. There was a pair of red framed reading glasses hung around her neck on a black beaded cord. She had grey eyes and a good line in belligerent defiance.

“It was them upstairs that called you in,” she said. “Wasn’t it?”

Actually it had been the couple upstairs, but also the Romanian students next door and a member of the public who’d happened to be walking his dog outside. All had dialled 999 within five minutes of each other, which had prompted an India-Grade response from the area car, which arrived within three minutes. When the responding officers talked their way inside the flat, they found Mrs Fellaman and definite signs of a struggle, but no trace of another person or persons on the premises.

Mrs Fellaman claimed that she was completely alone and that she’d merely fallen against the chair, which had broken, causing her to reach out in an involuntary fashion and pull down a row of ceramic elephants and an antique ormolu clock.

Violent crime, like charity, begins at home. Twenty percent of all murders occur in the home and forty percent of all female murder victims are killed by their partner. Which is why the responding officers gently, but firmly, insisted on searching the flat. They found nobody, and Mrs Fellaman, with a certain amount of satisfaction, sent them on their way.

“We’re concerned about your safety,” I said.

“That’s nice,” she said. “But it’s my patience you should be worried about. That other one, the big one, has been round here two times already and he never found nothing either.”

The Camden response team had passed the details onto the local neighbourhood safety team which was headed by Sergeant Crosslake. He’d talked to the neighbours and confirmed their stories, made a follow up visit to Mrs Fellaman, found nothing, and in frustration sat outside, in his own car, on his own time, the next evening until he heard the argument for himself.

“There was proper rowing,” he’d told me. “And there were definitely two voices.”

But again, when he’d talked himself inside, there was just Mrs Fellaman entirely on her own.

“And there was something else,” Crosslake had said. “There was something off about the flat.”

“Third time lucky,” I told Mrs Fellaman.

“With all this crime around,” she said, “I don’t know why you bother.”

Because when we’re not ticking boxes and achieving performance targets, we actually try to prevent the occasional crime. Not to mention ‘Granny beaten to death after police visit three times - shocker!’ is not the sort of headline you want hanging over your conscience, let alone your career.

“It’s no bother,” I said.

“It is to me,” she said. “And I’m sick and tired of it. Have you got a warrant?”

I admitted that I had not.

“Then you can piss off,” she said, and locked herself back inside.

Crosslake had said there was something off about the flat.

“Your kind of weird bollocks,” he’d told me. “That’s why I called you in.”

Crosslake was career uniform and had been doing neighbourhood policing since back in the days when it was just called ‘policing’. He didn’t have ‘instincts’, he had thirty years of experience - which was much more reliable.

There was no way I was going to get a warrant because part of the Folly’s arrangement with the rest of the criminal justice system is that we don’t bother them with the weird shit and in return they occasionally look the other way when the weird shit happens. But if I was going to barge into Mrs Fellaman’s flat then I’d better make sure that there was actually some weird shit going on so that they could ignore it.

This was a job for Toby the Wonder Dog.

*

I don’t know whether it was because he was exposed to magic during the Punchinello case or whether all dogs, particularly small yappy ones, have an instinct for the uncanny, but I’ve always found Toby a pretty reliable magic detector. I’ve actually done controlled laboratory experiments that indicate he can detect magical activity up to ten metres away, although false positives can be generated by cats, other dogs and the remote possibility of a sausage.

That’s why I fed him a sausage before we started the stakeout, although that did mean I had to keep the car window open. I parked outside the flat at seven in the evening and settled in. Toby curled up on the passenger seat with his feet twitching, intermittently nudging me in the thigh, and presumably dreaming of squirrels, while I cracked open Juvenal and laboured through the last part of Book III: Flattering Your Patron Is Hard Work. It had been my set text for months and had led me to think of the Romans as a bunch of Bernard Manning wannabes with an empire. At nine fifteen Toby woke up with a start and stared about suspiciously - I put down my Latin homework. Was it going to be police work or sausage?

Toby’s head stopped swinging with his nose pointed directly at Mrs Fellaman’s flat and he started to bark, the proper watchdog bark which was what got those original wolves invited to share the fire in the first place. Not a sausage then.

I left Toby in the car and slipped down the iron stairs to the basement. I stopped at the door and listened. A raised voice, definitely Mrs Fellaman’s although I couldn’t make out the words. Then a response, younger, deeper, male. Then a crash of breaking crockery.

I banged on the door and called Mrs Fellaman’s name.

“It’s the police,” I shouted. “Open up.”

It went silent inside.

“You might as well let me in, Mrs Fellaman,” I called. “I know you’ve got a ghost in there.”

Toby stopped barking. The door opened.

“What do you know about it?” asked Mrs Fellaman.

“I have reason to believe that you are consorting with a spirit in contravention of the Act against Conjuration, Witchcraft and Dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits 1604,” I said. The Witchcraft Act had actually been superseded in 1736 but I find quoting it helps break the ice on the doorstep.

“No I ain’t,” said Mrs Fellaman. “And in any case he ain’t wicked, he’s my husband.”

I waited until she’d figured out what she’d just said.

“Bugger,” she said, and sighed. “You;d better come in.”

I followed her into a mean little corridor which opened into a mean little living room/kitchen combination. She’d done her best, but the whole terrace had been built cheaply, and the basement had been where the Victorians had stuck the kitchen, the servants and the coal bunker. Nothing could disguise the low ceiling and permanently moist walls. I doubted it got a lot of sunshine either.

“I’d offer you a cup of tea,” said Mrs Fellaman. “But I don’t think I’ve got any cups left.”

There was a scatter of broken pottery spread across the floor.

I suggested that we sit down at the kitchen table, but she insisted that she wanted to sweep up first. I sat down and let her bustle about - I wanted her relaxed and talkative. From under the sink she produced a white enamel camping mug and the kind of plastic cup that comes as the top bit of a thermos. So she made tea after all and, even better, offered me a custard cream. It’s hard for even the most hardened criminal to maintain a belligerent tone with someone who’s eating a custard cream biscuit. Although I suppose a chocolate digestive might do in a pinch.

Once she had a cup of tea in her own hand I asked whether she was sure the ghost was her husband.

“Of course I am,” she said. “I knew him as soon as he appeared.”

“And when did he appear?” I asked.

“About three months ago,” she told me vaguely, but I pinned her down to a specific date and made a note. You never know when precise information will come in handy.

“So the ghost of your husband appears,” I said. “And you decide to have an argument with him.”

“I didn’t decide,” she said. “We always used to fight, you know, some people you just row with - I suppose that him being passed on couldn’t change that.”

“Did he hit you?”

“Don’t be stupid. How could he hit me?” asked Mrs Fellaman. “He’s a ghost.”

“So how did you get the bruise then?”

“I was a clot and ran into the wall,” she said.

“How did you manage to do that?”

Mrs Fellaman looked sheepish. “I forgot he was a ghost and he made me so angry -” She made punching motions with her right hand. “I ran right through him. Hit the wall, fell over. You know how it is, you grab the nearest thing and that was the cupboard, and that fell over and the next thing I know I’ve got the Old Bill knocking on my door.”

“And what happened tonight,” I pointed at the smashed cups with my pen.

“I was throwing them at him,” said Mrs Fellaman. “Well he makes me so cross, he always did. It was his fault, he was always so stubborn.” She gave me a defiant look.

I decided to see if we could have a word with ‘Mr Fellaman’.

“What was your husband’s name Mrs Fellaman?” I asked even though I already knew.

“His name was Victor,” she said. “His parents were a bit la-di-dah.”

“Can you summon him for me?”

“You’re joking,” she said. “He comes and goes when he wants - always did.”

I knew how to get a ghost’s attention, although I’d been hoping to get through the case without doing anything too overt. Still, Mrs Fellaman had been consorting with a ghost for at least three months so I doubted I could shock her any further.

I conjured a werelight and stuck it to the centre of the kitchen table.

Mrs Fellaman’s were round. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Ghost-nip,” I said. “This should bring your husband out.”

Normally when you feed a ghost they drain the magic quite gently and the werelight dims slowly, but this time the ball of light darkened to a dim crimson almost instantly. I looked around quickly and found the ghost, standing by the side wall staring at me in apparent amazement.

He was young, early twenties, wearing a rather nice suit and a slim shirt with a button down collar. In the 1950s it was called the City Gent look, and my dad probably had a suit like that - at least up until my Mum got the keys to his wardrobe. That was a Mod suit.

“He’s a bit young isn’t he?” I said.

“He looks just like he did when I met him,” she said. “There’s no reason for him to look old, is there?”

Except, generally speaking, all the ghosts I’d met looked the age they did when they died. Lesley says to always check the shoes, so I did - they were old, worn, too big for his feet and an unpleasant brown colour. No Mod would have been seen dead in those shoes.

“Hello Victor,” I said. The ghost looked at me blankly.

“Talk to him, Victor,” hissed Mrs Fellaman. “He’s a policeman.”

“What do you want?” asked the ghost. His accent was wrong too, not sixties cockney but older - I recognised it. He wasn’t what he seemed, and I didn’t want to prolong the conversation and feed him magic for much longer.

“What’s your mum’s name?” I asked.

The ghost hesitated. “What do you want to know that for?”

“No reason,” I said. The hesitation had told me all I needed to know. I shut down the werelight and the ghost suddenly went transparent.

“Martha,” said the ghost in a whisper and then he was gone.

“Bring him back,” said Mrs Fellaman.

“Was Martha the name of his mother?” I asked.

Mrs Fellaman shook her head.

“He didn’t know the answer did he?”

“Well he’s dead,” she said. “You’re bound to forget stuff once you’re dead.”

“That’s true,” I said, and it was. Most of the ghosts I’ve met always give the impression that they aren’t all there mentally. My theory is that they are echoes, near-sentient imprints in the stone and concrete around them. But that’s just a theory.

“See,” she said.

“But the thing is, Eugenia,” I said, “before I knocked on the door I requested what’s known as an ‘intelligence package’ on you, and it turns out your husband left you thirty years ago and is currently living in Prestatyn, Wales, with a woman called Blodwyn.”

“I knew that,” said Mrs Fellaman. “I’d just assumed that he’d died recently, left the Welsh bint to her own devices and come back home where he belonged.”

“I had the local police call round,” I said. “He’s alive and well.”

“Pity,” she said, and slumped in her chair.

I told her to stay put while I fetched some more equipment from my car, but she barely acknowledged me. Toby was pleased to see me and I gave him the requisite amount of encouragement for being a good boy. I grabbed the little and the big hammers from the boot and went back down to see how Mrs Fellaman was doing.

She was still slumped in her chair.

“So who was I talking to?” she asked.

“Definitely a ghost,” I said. “Just not your husband.” Victorian terraces were pretty much all built with similar design features, and if you know any architectural history at all it’s fairly easy to spot when something is missing. Like the pantry alcove that should have been to the left of the bricked-up fireplace. Very close to where the ghost had materialised - I did not think that was a coincidence.

Mrs Fellaman sighed. “He did look like my Victor.”

“I believe you,” I said. “He must have changed his appearance to suit you.”

“How would he know?”

“Good question,” I said and banged the small hammer on the wall until I got a hollow noise. I swapped for the big hammer. “I’m afraid I’m about to make a bit of a mess,” I said, and got a good two-handed grip on the long shaft.

“Wait a minute,” said Mrs Fellaman, too late.

It was an awkward swing, what with the low ceiling, but the iron head of the hammer went through on the first blow. I knocked out the loose plaster around the edges, got out my key-ring torch and had a look. As I did I got a strong flash of carbolic soap and fish guts, the smell of sweat and a blast of cold that made my fingers numb. The vestigia pretty much confirmed my suspicions and so I wasn’t nearly so surprised as I might have been when the beam of the key-ring torch fell upon the empty socket of a skull. I swept the light around and thought I could make out the rest of a skeleton collapsed at the bottom of the void.

I told Mrs Fellaman that she would need to find somewhere to stay for the next couple of days.

“Whatever for?” she asked.

“Because I’m about to tell my colleagues at the Major Investigation Team that I’ve found a body and they’re going to be round here mob handed to investigate,” I said.

“What kind of body?” asked Mrs Fellaman.

One that I suspect was walled up, judging from the shoes, in the late 19th Century. Some domestic worker whose employer got a bit heavy handed one day - one of those little Victorian stories that didn’t get talked about. I looked at Mrs Fellaman who was staring morosely around her kitchen/living room area. Or perhaps there had been somebody after the first Mr Fellaman decamped to the Welsh seaside. She obviously had a temper did our Eugenia. As I said - crime often begins at home.

Fortunately that question was not my responsibility. Nine times out of ten, once the bones were gone, so was the ghost. Although I might take Toby for walkies past the house for the next couple of weeks - just to be on the safe side. I turned on my phone and keyed up Belgravia.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider leaving him in place would you?” asked Mrs Fellaman.

“What for?”

“I rather liked the company,” she said.

THE END