Lee fastened the gate after their visitors, and made his way slowly back across the garden. A massive heat still had a grip on the day. The eastern sky held a distant promise of relief, some of the hot gold shading into blue, but the sun was still blazing over Bern-an-Wra tor, and he couldn’t honestly tell from this distance whether the tower had its crowning rock in place or not.
He looked away. His plans for the evening included outdoor dinner with Gid in the orchard’s shade, and later, if their kid was still up for more hijinks, a weekend breaking of the bedtime rules and a stroll and a quick skinny-dip for all three of them in the millstream pond behind the hill. Bodmin winters could be harsh. Experienced moor-dwellers knew to make the best of summer days, and when the weather gods opened a box-of-jewels June like this on the gorse-starred heath, you seized every moment.
Bucca Gwidder, Bucca Dhu. Not figure-of-speech weather gods but two distinct personalities, the Lords of the year’s light and dark halves. The word bucca—meaning spirit, as Rufus Pendower had explained to him, actually stammering nervously over his Bs, the last time they’d been alone together—had become corrupted to pooka or Puck, a mischievous sprite. Out here, the ancient forces were restored. There just wasn’t room for the trappings and twists of civilisation. No room to hide, and no mercy. All the old demons could have sway.
Gideon was on the phone in the hallway when he pushed open the door. Dead-set determined not to hear anything else he shouldn’t today, Lee slipped past him and into the kitchen. He’d volunteered to fix Gid’s favourite casserole, and that required quite a lot of pan-rattling and banging of fridge and cupboard doors before he got stuck in.
Felt good, too. Slam of the chopping board onto the counter top. Slap of beef fillet onto the board, and he diced it as if he’d had a personal grudge with the cow.
Ridiculous. Tamsyn dealt with her emotions better than this. Gideon followed him into the kitchen, and he wiped his hands on a tea towel and turned to greet him with a sane, everyday expression on his face. “Thought that lot were gonna stay around for dinner. You getting hungry?”
“Ravenous. Could eat that raw.”
“I trust you mean the beef.”
“Read it however you want, gorgeous.”
It was a good attempt at their normal repartee. On any other night, it would have driven them back into each other’s arms to look after unfinished business. Instead Lee took a steadying hold of the counter top behind him and said, uneasily, “Do you think Flora Waite’s all right? She had Tamsie out of the cot before I could stop her, and she was kind of rubbing her face against the poor kid’s. For luck, she said, when I asked.”
“Oh, no. Did Tamsyn wake up?”
“Not really. She doesn’t seem to mind outbreaks of weirdness from her friends.”
“She wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if she did.” Gideon shifted awkwardly. He was flushed, Lee noticed, his handsome summer colour heightened from tan to fever. “I think something is amiss with Flora. We talked a bit about Dev Bowe, and she seemed stressed. Thanks for skipping balletically past me on the phone, but it was nothing you couldn’t know about—I just wanted to give Lamshear Hall a ring and check everything was all right.”
“Lamshear... Oh, right. That’s Dev’s long-term care facility.”
“Mm. Also pronounced bottomless looney bin, poor lad. I dunno—they said he was okay, but something sounded a bit hinky. I might pop over.”
“In your capacity as a police officer? What about poor Rhys?”
“No, just as Flora’s friend. Rhys can take care of Ross Jones.” He fell silent. The helpless, anxious scrape of Lee’s question hung in the air between them. He propped his hands on his hips, looked first out of the window and then at the rug at Lee’s feet. “All right. Speak.”
Lee couldn’t, not at first. His throat was tight with pent-up fear. He waited until he thought his voice would be calm. “I’ll head Ma off at the pass for you, if you like. On Monday.”
“Er... yeah. That would be good.”
“I could take her to Trebah gardens with Tamsyn. Ought to be irresistible, even against the prospect of getting beaten up by fascists at a Pride parade.”
“Bloody hell, Lee. You weren’t meant to know.”
“Is that the point? This isn’t like a pub fight or a few kids kicking off at Montol. It’s violence, hatred, right here on our streets in Cornwall, and... and you, right there in the middle of it. I don’t understand—why the hell hasn’t the march just been cancelled?”
Gideon took a step towards him, dismay dawning in his eyes. Lee turned to the sink and blindly ran water into the washing-up bowl. He couldn’t let Gideon get a close-up view of him now, on the edge of stupid tears. It’s not that you’d have gone off and done it, although that thought freezes the marrow in my bones. You’d have done it without letting me know. And here I am, locked up like some sea-widow at home, staring off over the water, knowing the damn ship’s gone down.
Gideon’s arms closed round his waist. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said, his mouth like hot velvet against Lee’s ear. “We don’t know if it’s fascists, or some nutter acting alone, or even if anything’s going to happen at all. Oh, my God, sweetheart—don’t cry.”
“I’m not.” Lee wiped the heel of one wet hand over his eyes. “I’m fine, okay? I’m really sorry.”
“What for?”
“Eavesdropping. Getting in your way. Making things harder for you.”
“You don’t do any of those things.” Gideon rocked him. “Listen—I know this new work’s been tough as fuck on both of us. It’s just... very different, that’s all. I don’t go out and get into the middle of things anymore.”
“That must be killing you.”
“A bit. But I’ll get used to it. As for cancelling, we don’t have nearly enough information to justify that, although...”
He fell into a reverberant silence. Lee, who could read his body as well as his mind, and who knew the village bobby of Dark would have cancelled this march at the breath of a threat to its participants, listened to the tensions in the warm body pressed against his. “Gid, tell me what’s wrong.”
“I saw something. In the orchard.”
Lee’s spine chilled. Was this how it felt to other people, when one of his own visions fell from him unannounced? I can see something. Not a stray dog or one of their distant neighbours’ sheep on the loose—something eerie, not to be contained by earthly walls or defences. “What?”
“Not sure. It went round the front. You stay there.”
He set off at a run. It went without saying that Lee would never obey an order of that kind, and he followed on, securing the porch door behind them. God help any serious intruders, encountering Detective Sergeant Frayne in the garden! If it was Daz or any of his feckless mates, he’d rumble at them like a volcano but send them about their business with startling gentleness. Only once had Lee seen him on the edge of unleashed violence: when Elowen had decided she wanted the baby back, and Zeke and Michel had made the mistake of trying to block his response. Still he’d let Lee bear him down to his knees on the clifftop path. All that power, shuddering and restrained in his arms... “Gideon, hold up. I don’t see anyone.”
“No. Me neither, now.” He came to a halt by the gate. “Hang on—over there. Look.”
He was pointing to the thicket of gorse on the far side of the lane. Lee saw the yellow blossoms quiver, as if something had passed briskly behind them, but then the heavy stillness of the evening returned.
He could have reached out a tendril of awareness to make sure. But his tendrils had done enough bloody damage for one day. “Looks clear to me. You need to stop running around, love—you’re limping again. I’ll go and check if you want.”
“No, don’t. I... I think I’m bloody seeing things.”
“Such as?”
“Ray Tregear. At least... some joker with a horse’s skull instead of a head.”
Lee caught hold of his shoulder. He reached up and pressed a hand to his brow. “Oh, that’s it for you for today, my fine hero. You’re burning up.”
“I’m fine. Look, I know what I saw, and it might make sense. Darren said something about looking out for Old Penglas, and Jenny Salthouse has seen him too. If he has tumbled off his wagon with bloody Ross Jones, I suppose he might be pratting around up here.”
“Who, Cosmic Ray? I really don’t think he’s the one you need to worry about.”
Gideon focussed on him urgently. Heat was coming off him in waves, his shirt beginning to cling to him with sweat. “You know I’d never ask you to dig in the dirt for me. And I wish to God I hadn’t let the cat out of the bag about Kerdrolla, but... if not Ray Tregear, is there someone I need to worry about? Do you know?”
“Come with me.” Lee put an arm around his waist, relieved when he accepted the embrace and began to walk at his side. Nobody shifted Gideon without his own volition. “All right, I saw your cat. It wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t mine—cats are just like that sometimes.”
“But you’re freaked out about something. I can almost feel it through your skin—that sense of something coming.”
“Ah, Gid, if I knew anything for sure—”
“You’d tell me. I know.”
“All I mean is that Cosmic Ray really seems to have his big hippy head together, and there’s no way he’d screw up now that he’s got his kids and Kitto living with him. The only person I’m really worried about right now is you.”
“Why? It’s just a touch of summer cold.”
“Okay. In that case you’ll come up to bed, sleep it off, and be ready to take on all your tigers again tomorrow. Won’t you?”
Clearly he’d only heard the first part. He broke into a broad grin, mask of anxiety dissolving. “You up for more? They don’t call you Mr Tiger for nothing, do they?”
Whatever would get him safely indoors. And he was beautiful like this, edgy and volatile, his shields down. They could finish what they’d started on the kitchen table, and Lee knew his man: a second round would knock him unresisting into sleep. “Attaboy. Everything will be okay. It’s nearly summer solstice, remember? Things always get a little weird for us around now.”
“I thought it was only the winter ones that gave us trouble.”
“Are you kidding? You were almost a human sacrifice at Kelyndar three years back.”
“That’s true. I’ll try to keep perspective. Come on, lover—Tamsyn’s home alone. She’s probably running with scissors by now.”
“Right. Or levitating the dog.”
***
At six o’clock on a cool moorland morning, Gideon sat up, as thoroughly awake as if he’d never closed his eyes. He felt terrible. His eyes were gritty, his throat sore, his skull half a size too small. When he tried for a deep breath, a foul smell clogged his sinuses, a cross between rotting flesh and sulphur. “Jesus, Isolde,” he croaked, but the dog was nowhere to be seen, and his beautiful husband was lying blamelessly in the peace of his morning dreams, mouth curving into a smile.
Not you either, then. Carefully Gideon got out of bed. Something rustled under the pillow as he moved. He lifted it, and the stench increased. There on the undersheet lay three long stems of indigo flowers. Getting his gag reflex under control, he picked them up and took them to the window. He had to lay them on the sill while he lifted the old sash frame. It was stiff on its ropes, and by the time he’d got it open, tears were streaming down his face. As far as he knew, he had no allergies, riding out with impunity the hayfever season which reduced poor Rufus Pendower to a sneezing heap of misery. He gasped with relief as the flowers dropped onto the lawn, taking their stink with them.
Sweet air drifted in to replace it. Gideon knelt on the linen chest that served as a window seat and rested his elbows on the sill. He let the deep dawn freshness—not even a breeze, just a slow, massive shift of the day’s tide, the moor’s first exhalation—drift over his naked skin. Wraiths of mist were still caught in the uppermost branches of the orchard trees. Gradually his head cleared. Lee had taken over the house with unstoppable efficiency last night, bathing and playing with Tamsyn while the casserole cooked, bringing Gideon’s upstairs for him on a tray and watching in concern while he’d tried and failed to eat. No second round between the sheets, either. Gideon’s designs on that lovely body had morphed into ciphers and hieroglyphs, floating signs on the bedroom ceiling. His last memory was of Lee’s hand on his brow, directing his dreams away from falling rocks and ancient horses’ skulls.
If he did have flu, it was some strange strain that came and went like clouds. Already he was feeling better. He supposed it was possible that his daughter, determined to give him his flowers at any cost, had made her way into the garden and back upstairs without being noticed. A long shot, given Lee’s vigilance...
The mystery faded off as his daily concerns came into focus. It might’ve been nice, for once, to hide away under the duvet and let events wash by, but strength was returning to his limbs. Out in the garden, the grasses stirred, and a long-legged hare loped out into the middle of the lawn, sat back on her haunches and regarded him with sea-bronze eyes. She was a model of grace and beauty, but still there was something comical about her pose, as if she and Gideon had met before, and she couldn’t quite believe his stupidity in failing to know her.
A sense of reassurance washed through him. In some nameless way, she was the antidote to the vision of the horse-skull intruder in the garden last night, which he now half-believed had been a trick of the light on the gorse. Were hares in the garden a blessing of some kind, a message of good fortune? He’d have to ask Pendower about that, the next time he had an hour or so to listen to his reply. Feeling foolish, he raised one hand and gave the creature a small wave of greeting.
Something must have tickled her nose. One golden eye closed in a perfect semblance of a wink. In the nursery down the hall, Tamsyn began to chuckle and shout as if in response, and Gideon went to see to her before she could wake Lee.
By the time he’d got her up, washed and dressed, he felt fine. He was going to have to get a wiggle on if he wanted to make his early morning meeting. He set her on the chest of drawers in the spare room while he chose a shirt and brushed his hair, avoiding a glance at his beat-bobby’s uniform spares which hung like discarded skins in the wardrobe. There was nothing to miss about being buttoned up in black all year round, was there? The cap had used to itch and make him hot.
“Dada.”
He turned, smiling. Tamsyn was watching him earnestly. This morning she’d submitted to her daisy-patterned dungarees without objection, and she looked like a small, worried daisy herself. A pang of love for her went through Gideon’s chest. He scooped her up and settled her on his hip. “What’s up, sweetheart?”
“Tinky flahs.”
“Oh.” He jounced her gently. “Stinky flowers, eh? I don’t suppose you know anything about the ones I found under my pillow this morning.”
He’d expected a stout denial, but she nodded, head drooping. “Sorry, Dada.”
“So you ought to be. They give Dada a headache, and you know what we said about not picking flowers that could hurt you.” He thought about asking how she’d got them indoors, then decided he didn’t want to know. The image of her climbing the stairs by herself was bad enough. What if she’d decided not to bother? That left him with floating stems of wolfsbane, or whatever Lee had called them, making their own eerie way through the house. “Absolutely no more of those. Okay?”
She wouldn’t look at him. He’d seen enough of his friends’ kids by now to know that he and Lee had really lucked out with Tamsyn in terms of behaviour: that she was, to all intents and purposes, just as angelic as Sarah Kemp and Kate Salthouse thought. Maybe the terrible twos were kicking in at last. He doubted many parents met them in the form of psychokinesis and a love for toxic plants. Trying for a tone of severity, he put one finger under her little eggshell of a chin and lifted. “Hoi, missy. You need to tell me that you understand.”
“Eee,” she said piteously, one big tear splashing down.
Gideon cracked like a stick of celery. She’d reverted to her old way of saying her other dad’s name, and she never cried without good reason. Clearly he was a brute, unfit to be in charge of children. Distraught, he bore her across the hallway. Lee was sitting up in bed, as rumpled and gorgeous a morning sight as any husband could wish. “What on earth is the matter?” he demanded sleepily, as Gideon deposited her into his arms. “What’ve you been doing to your father, Tamsyn Elizabeth Tyack-Frayne?”
“She doesn’t get it about those flowers. I found some under my pillow this morning.”
“You what?”
“Seriously.” Gideon said, plonking down beside him. “And she straight-up confessed when I asked her. So I tried just... parenting her, like you said, even if telling a two-year-old off for gathering toxins seems bloody weird to me, and now she’s upset.”
“And you can’t cope.” Lee tucked his daughter into one arm and wrapped the other around Gideon’s neck. “You are such a softie, Gid. One day she’ll come home with some drug-fiend rock star on her arm, and you’ll say no, and she’ll shed one crystal tear at you, and—”
“I’ll give the happy pair my blessing. All right, all right.” Gideon buried his face in Lee’s hair, grateful for the earthy morning scent of him. “What am I meant to do, though?”
“Keep kicking her tiny butt for her if she needs it, and I’ll kiss you both better when she cries.” Lee made good on the offer straight away, dropping a smacker on the top of Tamsyn’s head then lifting his mouth to Gideon’s. “I don’t have a client until ten. I’ll put Charlie Dimmock here into the pushchair and take her and Isolde up to collect the car, and I’ll walk them both over the moors and give her a botany lesson. Okay?”
“You’re good as gold.”
“You’re not so bad yourself, Lazarus. I thought the general public of Cornwall was going to have to look after itself today.”
“So did I. But I’m fine now, honest.”
Shadows passed through the just-woken silver in Lee’s eyes. “That’s good. Gid, if I ever said to you that you ought to stay home—would you do it?”
“Because you thought I wasn’t well, or...”
“No. Not that.”
Gideon looked out at the morning sky. He knew what Lee meant. In a world of masked monsters, horse-skulls and moorland mystery, a day might come when a plainer signal might reach him: a flash-flood, a junkie with a knife. Worse, if he was this clouded by the possibility... You have to understand—that’s the day when the general public of Cornwall will need me the most. The day when I really can’t stay home.
Why couldn’t he simply tell him? Lee was strong enough, well enough versed in the rules of living with a copper, to take such a reminder on the chin. Instead Gideon pulled him closer. “I thought you weren’t seeing the future anymore, love.”
“Not by choice. You haven’t answered my question.”
“Yes. I’d stay at home, okay? I’d stay.”