DCI Thomas Nightingale

Nightingale awakens early from jumbled dreams of bombs and fire; not unusual, in truth, but this morning the sensations linger. He dresses mechanically, taut and vibrating like a just-plucked bow string, seeing danger from the corners of his eyes. The entrance hall is quiet when he reaches it, almost greyscale in the dawn's weak light, and Nightingale finds himself oddly hesitant to open the front door. There's a growing flutter of apprehension deep in his gut; he almost gives up on the day altogether and retires back to bed with a pot of tea and a book, but there is work waiting for him in his summer house and so he grits his teeth and presses onwards.

It's with an air of uneasy inevitability that he steps into the dining room of the Folly, the door slamming shut behind him before swinging open onto the Folly's familiar hallways. It's morning here too, he thinks, just after breakfast. The room is empty aside from Toby, snout-deep in a tray of leftover sausages and tail thumping wildly from side to side. Nightingale isn't quite sure what noise he makes but Toby's response is gratifying, a rising crescendo of joyful barking as the little dog turns himself around and around in circles until he falls off the table and rolls around ecstatically at Nightingale's feet. He drops to his knees, wanting to make a fuss of the little fellow, but finds his hands unable to gain purchase, pushing through fur and flesh with a tingling shiver. Looking down at his own body, Nightingale is grimly unsurprised to find himself transparent.

"I suppose I'm lucky that you're an accomplished ghost hunter," he tells Toby, who bursts into another flurry of yips in response. A sudden ominous presence at Nightingale's back informs him that Molly has entered the room. He rises to meet her just as she glides right through him, her black eyes narrowed at the mess Toby has made of the breakfast remnants. "Molly?" he tries, hesitant, and her head tilts as though searching for the source of a distant whisper. Toby bows before her in an extravagant show of repentance, chin resting on his front paws, and she makes the odd hissing sound that passes for her laughter, sharp teeth bared. "Molly, can you hear me?" Nightingale asks, but her only response is a mild frown of confusion as she picks up the little terrier and deposits him right back into his tray of sausages.

"He's supposed to be on a diet." Nightingale's heart does something complicated in his chest at the sound of Peter's voice, warm with affection and blessedly, blessedly alive. He looks well, a scar healing high up on his jaw and his hair grown out enough to hint at irrepressible curls. His gaze passes through Nightingale too. "I can't have him farting himself silly in the car all day, Molly, it's cruel and unusual." Molly shrugs and hisses softly, patting Toby's head. Peter sighs. "I can't leave him here either. He could be useful in the search." Her expression doesn't change but Peter's feet shuffle awkwardly in response. "I'm gonna find him, Molly. Me and Bev are on the case." Molly snorts inelegantly, one jet-black eyebrow arching. Nightingale looks to Peter, bewildered, as a blush works hard to rise on his dark skin. Ah. So that little crush has been consummated. Well, good for Peter. He's alive and in love.

He finds he doesn't want to be in the room with them anymore, there and yet not, Toby aware of his presence but distracted by food. He's spent every day of the last few months desperate to see their faces but this is, well. To steal Peter's phrasing, this is cruel and unusual. And so Nightingale drifts from room to room, checking that everything is in order. His bedroom lies exactly as he left it. Lesley's has been stripped bare. Peter's is mostly the same, though a neon yellow bra kicked half under the bed speaks of Beverley Brook's recent presence. In the basement, the Black Library remains strongly warded and under physical lock and key. Some notes strewn across a table inform him that Varvara Sidorovna made her escape immediately after his disappearance from the Folly and has not been heard from since. Of Lesley and the Faceless Man, he finds nothing.

Eventually, Nightingale finds himself in the lobby. Molly has swept past him a dozen times during his tour, clearing away breakfast and beginning the day's cleaning. She stared suspiciously in his direction a handful of times but nothing more. He felt worse with every failure, separated by metres and eons at once. As he stands aimlessly in front of the bust of Newton, a sharp series of knocks rattles the front door.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Peter grumbles, shrugging into his jacket with a ring of keys jangling in his mouth and arms full of inexplicable electronics. At Nightingale's feet, Toby pauses and stares up at him soulfully, tongue flopped out and flapping.

"Look after him," Nightingale tells the dog softly, smiling a little at the bounce and bark he gets in answer. As he suspected, Beverley is on the other side of the door. Toby shoots outside to greet her as she rises on tiptoes to kiss Peter hello. The last thing he sees before the scene begins to fade around him is her face over Peter's shoulder, eyes wide with shock and recognition.

"Wait!" she says. "Wait, Nightingale!" It's too late. Nightingale is standing in his mansion bedroom, unsure what to make of what just happened. He's still and silent for a long time before straightening his cuffs and going in search of a drink.

As the last of the zombies disperse, dust fading in the chill air, so too does Thomas' mood, the manic good humour that had kept him going all day. Every part of his body hurts, the solid ache of extended exertion, and he knows that he must look as awful as he feels. A mirror reveals the grim reflection of a past age; Captain Nightingale, awash with blood and mud, clothes torn to rags and skin caked with grime.

He strips without thinking much of it, dives into the freezing shock of the lake's still depths, and swims until his aches turn into leaden exhaustion. A part of him, as always when near open water, reaches out in search of its spirit but encounters only dank emptiness. Usually this would bother him, but tonight it feels right, apt.

There's a towel on the shore when he emerges, one he didn't leave there, and he wonders at the mansion all over again. Hordes of undead by day, the comfort of a fresh and fluffy towel at night. His lakeside office glows with warm light and the promise of fresh tea. He trudges towards it without conscious thought, mind half a century away.

Not primarily an open post, but he'll talk if anyone turns up.