to my office—it had been one of the things that appealed when I’d first been looking at it—and so I managed to get in without having to risk the Tube. I’d been down there once without incident but there was no sense in pushing it, especially since this whole vision quest seemed about to go full descent-into-the-underworld. I arrived with a whole eight minutes to spare, pleased to discover that the door-fixing-person had been in my absence, and used the time productively getting the worst of the mess cleaned up, hiding the more obvious stashes of empty bottles, and making sure I definitely had the fucking book that I was supposed to be showing her.
I fired off a brief text to Eve. Professor coming to office, if you’ve found anything out about her, now would be a good time to tell me. She’d been curious about the mysterious Professor Bright ever since I’d mentioned her during my last check in.
It came as precisely zero surprise to me when the professor emeritus arrived bang on half one. People who put the word circa in their texts were far too anal to ever be circa about anything.
She looked younger than I expected given her title, I’d have put her as fifties rather than sixties, and well-preserved fifties at that, her hair barely greying and her eyes carrying a kind of wicked brightness that I’d fallen for way too many times from way too many women. There was something about her that weirdly reminded me of Corin Black, the doe-eyed femme fatale who’d killed Archer and come close to killing me on multiple occasions. Assuming, of couse, she managed to make it to that age which, honestly, I thought she probably would—Corin lived a dangerous life, but it was mostly dangerous for other people.
“Nicola Bright,” she said, extending a hand.
I shook it. “Kate Kane. You’re here about the book?”
“That’s right. Look, I know it’s not exactly the done thing anymore but do you mind if I smoke?”
I thought it might technically have been illegal but since I now had zero employees I doubted how much that mattered. “Sure.”
She drew a packet of filterless cigarettes from the pocket of her tastefully selected jacket. “Want one?”
“Sure.”
Before I knew what was going on she was lighting it for me, making the type of eye contact that usually meant trouble. I could see two tiny little flames dancing in her pupils. Oh come on a little voice seemed to be saying in the back of my mind. You’ve been good for two whole days, if you get a chance with this one you should definitely go for it.
“So how did you come by it?” she asked. “The book, I mean.”
“Long story.”
“And not one you’d care to go into?” She blew out an actual smoke ring. I knew it killed you, I knew it smelled awful, but I defied anybody to sit for five minutes in a room with Nicola Bright and not admit that, when you got right down to it, smoking was cool.
“If that’s okay.”
She shrugged. “It’s the text that interests me, not how you acquired it. Of course it will need to be authenticated to make sure it’s a genuine historical artefact but I’m not about to ask you for proof of purchase.”
“Authenticated?”
“Oh, you know. Paper analysed, ink spectographed, language checked over for modernisms. You’d be amazed how many forged copies of ancient quasi-magical tomes I look at.”
I wasn’t completely sure I would. “And you’re a theologian?”
“Theologian and folklorist. Isn’t it all mythology, when everything’s said and done?” She flashed me a conspiratorial smile. “But don’t tell my colleagues I said that. Theology as a discipline has a tendency to attract true believers. Although admittedly it tends to make atheists out of a reasonable number of them.”
“You’re not religious, then?” I had to admit, she didn’t look the type.
There was a short silence while she took another drag on her cigarette, the tip flaring a dazzling red. “Not anymore. Strictly entre nous, I used to be something of a god-botherer, but I soon saw the error of my ways. You?”
“I think”—this was going to be a tricky one to answer honestly—“I think there’s a lot of stuff out there that’s hard to explain if there isn’t something.”
“Not an unreasonable position.” She had a contemplative look in her eyes. “Anyway, I know why I’m interested in the book—it’s a unique historical artefact and I’d be utterly remiss if I passed up the opportunity to examine it.