Oz pulled up on the yellow lines outside of Ess’ building.  He ratcheted the handbrake on and remained seated, staring out of the windscreen as though the street held a fascination invisible to mere mortals.
 
“Well?  Come on,” said Ess.  She unbuckled her seat belt but felt strangely reluctant to leave the car and face Shades alone.
 
“Other people’s domestics?  I’m not sure that’s in my purview.  Don’t you and lover boy want to kiss and make up first?”
 
“What happened to snapping Whitmarsh in two?  What was all that about not quitting?”
 
“Oh, I’m all for that, but I think you and your young man should have a little quality time first.  I don’t think I should interfere.”
 
“Really?”  Ess folded her arms and stared at Oz.  He had the good grace to look uncomfortable.
 
“What?” he asked at length.
 
“You hypocritical old fart.  You’ve been interfering since day one.”
 
“No.”  Oz so-soed with his hand.  “I may have given a little consultancy when less experienced youths were in need, but interfere?  That’s harsh.”
 
“I’ll bloody give you harsh if you start.  Get out this car.”  She shoved at his shoulder.  “Get out.  We need to figure this out, the three of us.  It’s more important than me and Shades, or your bloody cowardice.”  She shoved him again.  “Get your fat arse out of this death trap and into my flat.”
 
Oz mumbled something about cowardice in a voice too low for Ess to catch, but he struggled out of the car and followed her to the entrance hall.
 
“It’s not fat, either,” he said.  “It’s relaxed muscle.”
 
“It’s fat,” she said, slamming her key into the lock and yanking the door open.
 
“So, you admit to looking at my bum then?”
 
Ess ignored him and marched up the stairs to her flat door.  Before she could insert the key into the lock the door flew open and Shades glowered down on her, before stepping aside for her to enter.  The effect would have been intimidating save for the lilac towel around his waist and an old sweatshirt with ancient tomato stains on the front.
 
“Very fetching,” said Oz as he stepped in.  “Not a keen follower of fashion myself.  Style will always out, regardless of fashion.”
 
“Heckle and Jeckle took my clothes,” said Shades to Ess, pointedly ignoring Oz.  “Said they were going to burn them.  Contaminated.  If you’d let me keep just one change of clothes here…”
 
Ess whirled and squared up to Shades.  “Yeah, because it wouldn’t grow to two, then three, then a wardrobe full, would it, and I’m not doing your laundry.”
 
“I’ll just go make a cup of tea, shall I?” said Oz.  “Better still, I’ll nip out and get some of those fancy Italian coffees.”
 
Without interrupting her glare Ess held up a finger in Oz’s direction and commanded, “Stay!”  Oz stayed.  Ess took a deep breath, glanced at Oz then turned her back on the two men.  Oz and Shades exchanged a glance that spoke of shared comradery in the face of a common if unknowable enemy.  Eventually Ess pirouetted into a cross-legged seated position facing them, her eyes closed and her hands on her knees.
 
“Ess –“  Ess silenced Oz with a motion of her hand and breathed slowly.  Then she opened her eyes and looked at the two of them.
 
“Sit,” she said.  Her tone brooked no argument.  They sat on the couch.  Shades arranged the hem of the towel decorously.
 
“Shades, we have issues.  No one’s fault, or at least, both of ours.  Anyway, after all this I promise we will sit down and talk.  I don’t think either of us want to screw things up, but right now, we have other priorities.”
 
Oz beamed.  “Ah, young love.  That’s –“
 
“Shut it!  I love you, Oz, but now’s not the time to clown about.  We’re at war, and I need to know you’re in.  Because if you’re just going to fart about I shall kick you out this flat and out my life, understand?”  When Oz didn’t reply she repeated the question.  “Do you understand?”
 
“Understood, my captain.”
 
She gave him a long look that said that she had her doubts but would take that at face value for the moment.
 
“Then we’ve got to find Daisy, and I mean now.  Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to block us, and that means we’re not the only ones who think she’s missing.”
 
“Davenport,” said Shades.
 
Ess shook her head.  “No, he’s human.  Besides, he wasn’t lying, not just now and not earlier.  I think he doesn’t have a clue what’s happened to her.”
 
“His shadow, then.”
 
“Whitmarsh?  He’s greasy enough, but he’s human too.  I saw the auras of Daisy’s people, and they’re not the same as ours.  I’d have known if he was one of them.”
 
“Well, someone has been using fairy dust.”
 
“Not fairies, though,” said Oz.
 
“Excuse me?”  Ess turned her attention to Oz.
 
“Oh, excuse me, did I say that out loud?”
 
“What do you mean?”
 
“Well, I’m only a philosophy professor who dabbles with alternative religions.  I’m not James Bond or an aura reader, what do I know?  I just clown around, apparently.”
 
“Oz!”
 
Oz sighed.  “Stuff the tea, have you got anything stronger?  A single malt perhaps.”
 
Ess glared at him, but finally rose, stamped to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Chardonnay and three glasses.  She slammed them on the coffee table and resumed her cross-legged pose on the floor.
 
“I’ll be mother, shall I?”  Oz unscrewed the cap and poured the wine into the glasses.  He took a generous gulp then grimaced.
 
“As I say, it’s not fairies.  It doesn’t fit the M.O.  Did I use that in the right context?  M.O?  Odd that PC Flatfoot would use Latin, grammar school oiks the lot of them.”
 
“Oz.”
 
Oz took another gulp and smiled at Ess.  “Well, it stands to reason.  Look at what happened when we went to Regents Park.  Was there dust?”
 
“Everywhere.”
 
“Indeed.  But there was more.  Spells and incantations.  Probably.  You know more about that than me.  I was away with the fairies, so to speak.  Touched.  And you, you were different afterwards.  You’re terrible at hiding secrets, you know that?  Oh, very endearing, but something you need to work on if this is to be your career.  You’ve been hiding something ever since.”
 
“The k-king.”  Ess fought the nausea.  “He… said something.”
 
“A spell?”
 
“Sort of.”
 
“There you go.  And when the fairy heavies came round for a visit, didn’t you say they whispered in James Bond’s earhole?”
 
Ess nodded.
 
“Can we assume then that the gentle folk use dust to augment their spells, to put us mortals into a more receptive state?  And yet, judging by what you’ve said, no spell was used the last time.  You were merely tripping into a more suggestable state of mind.  Which suggests to me that someone quite unfairylike is using the stuff.  Perhaps there’s an illicit market in it.  I can think of quite a few uses for something like that.  Oh, not for me, because I am naturally gorgeous, but it could put GHB out of business.”
 
”Whitmarsh?”  Ess frowned.
 
“Excuse me.”  Shades rose and made for the bedroom, picking his phone up from the table as he did so.
 
“I suppose he could be responsible,” said Ess.  “I mean, I’ve not searched his aura when he’s been talking to me, but I suppose it could make sense.  But why would he want to put us off finding Daisy?”  Even as she said it, it started to make sense.  Right from the start he’d been trying to hinder her investigations.  That first evening at the art gallery he’d steered Davenport away at the first mention of Daisy’s disappearance, and there was that file he’d shown her to imply she was flaky and probably off gallivanting somewhere.
 
“Perhaps Daisy is his supplier.  Even fairies need money that doesn’t evaporate when the sun rises, I suspect,” said Oz.
 
“Daisy?  A pusher?  No.”
 
“You’re far too naïve, you know that?  Just because she’s pretty and nice, and not some unshaven scallywag lurking in dark alleyways, doesn’t mean she can’t be running an illegitimate enterprise, especially as fairy morality is a far cry from ours.”
 
“So you think Daisy is selling drugs, well, not drugs, you know what I mean.  Daisy?  But why would she disappear?  Why would she leave her boyfriend?  That doesn’t make sense.”
 
“We’re not talking about people here, remember.  Does it make sense to live in Regents Park?  What’s nonsense to us might not be to her.”
 
“But her father doesn’t know what’s happened to her.  Her brothers too.  No, she’s missing, and not just because she’s on the lam with a haul of drugs.”
 
Oz chuckled.  “I’m pretty sure no one has been on the lam since Phillip Marlowe retired.”
 
Shades re-entered the room, flipping his phone closed.
 
“It’s Whitmarsh and Davenport,” he said.
 
“What is?  Who?  Why?”  Ess shook her head.  “I mean, why do you think it’s them?”
 
“I spoke to a friend.  You know why James Bond is bollocks?”  He raised his eyebrows at Oz, then counted on his fingers.  “First, he’s not a spy, he’s just an assassin.  When has he ever gathered intelligence?  Second, everyone knows who he is.  How can you operate like that?  But mostly, he’s always swanning about the world.  Most of UK intelligence is gathered domestically.  Especially around Westminster.  No MP can smuggle in a rent boy or make a bid for a committee chair without some spook reporting it up the chain.  So I’ve got a friend who owed me.  Davenport came out of left field.  Not a whisper of anything in his file till a few weeks ago.  Round about when Daisy disappeared.  Then suddenly everyone thinks he’s golden balls.  Nobody does that, not out of the blue.”
 
“Not unless – Dust?“  It made sense to Ess, at least as far as Davenport and the dust.  But where did Daisy fit in the picture?
 
“That must have been a big debt he owed you,” said Oz.
 
“The kind that costs you an arm and a leg, literally.  So I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t keep calling me James Bond.  I don’t take lives.”
 
“Fair enough, old boy.  So, what’s the plan of action?”
 
“First thing,” said Shades, tightening the towel, “is to get me some clothes.”