There was a crunch in the snow behind him and Blake turned to see Allfrid smiling at him.

"This is only the beginning," he said. "But I wanted you to see the place I come to be at peace." He looked up to the mountain. "Your father and I climbed that peak as boys. Back then, he understood the power of the place. But he left and when you're far from nature, you lose touch with its strength."

Blake could hear his own heartbeat in the still of the glade. He could feel the pulse at his neck, his wrists, and he felt a connection to the earth here. He wanted to jump around in the snow, lie back in it and look up at the sky. It was far from the wild, dark places of the New Forest where he had grown up.

Allfrid cupped his hands around his mouth and called into the woods, a harsh sound, the words as raw as the land they stood in.

A few minutes later, faces appeared in the trees and figures crept through the wood, darting between the sheltered spaces. There were children amongst the group as well as older people and those Blake's own age.

One little girl peeked out from a tree close by, catching his eye. She giggled at him and Blake smiled back. He must look odd to them with his dark skin and city clothes. She took a step out into the snow, her hand held out to him in greeting.

As she came closer, Blake reached out to touch the girl's fingers.

A whoosh of cold wind swept snow into his face.

He gasped, opened his eyes, and he was back in the attic flat again. He grabbed the desk with both hands, trying to orient himself into the physical space again.

Allfrid laughed, shaking his head. "You need training, boy, if you're to use your gift properly."

"They could see me," Blake said, his voice shaky. "Those people, they could see me and touch me?"

"Our tribe live with closer ties to outer realms. What you see as a vision, others experience as part of their usual world. You differentiate but that's only because you haven't truly accepted that part of yourself. But every time you read, you take a step towards us. Each time you sink into memory, it also seeps into you. Beware of doing this without the proper training, boy. Come to us and I will show you."

Allfrid rose to his feet, the Galdrabók in his hands. "Now, I must go and I'm taking this." His head almost touched the ceiling in the tiny flat and he bent a little, the posture of a man who was always leaning over others. "The grimoire belongs with the family – but you are one of us."

He pulled a map from his pocket and handed it to Blake. It was marked by lines and runes, with a clear red X in a patch of green in northern Sweden. "The glade is marked. If you come to us, we can teach you of your gift and how to use the book." Allfrid looked out of the window, over the rooftops of London. "Or you can stay here, wearing those gloves to hold back the visions, using alcohol to deaden their power, wondering how you fit into the world." He looked down at Blake again. "It's your choice."

Allfrid turned and walked out of the flat without a backwards glance, leaving Blake sitting on a chair, shaken by the experience of the vision. He heard his uncle's footsteps tramp down the stairs and then the bang of the door onto the street.

Chapter 25

Jamie pushed open the door to her tiny office and picked up the mail from the mat, juggling her coffee cup in the other hand. She wanted this space to keep her work separate from her personal life but once again, the two were mingling. Perhaps work was life, she thought. For some people at least. The need to work certainly drove her, and she never wanted to stop. Retirement seemed an outmoded concept from a different time and the day her brain checked out was the day she would stop working. But it was more than the love of the job that kept her going today. After Polly's death, she had lost purpose but there was a glimmer of hope that she might find it again in this community.

The news from Magda this morning had made Jamie determined to dig into the ownership records of the buildings in the Southwark area. Who would stand to gain from the destruction of the studio apartments and who would want the Kitchen closed? Ed was in a stable condition in hospital, but it seemed like the community was being attacked on all fronts.

She opened her laptop and began to search the council databases that held the area's property records. There were layers of holding companies but the trail would be there, Jamie was sure of it. She knew how to investigate into the directors and shareholders of companies from her days in the police and it was only a matter of patience to sift through the levels down to the originators. She sipped her coffee as she searched, copying and pasting lists of names, cross-checking against the Companies database that held the legal records for each UK entity.

After a couple of hours lost in data, Jamie had a broad sense of how many companies were vying for the valuable property in Southwark. Many were registered overseas, but there were names that tied them together. There was a crossover of interest between projects as varied as the Shard construction to Guy's and St Thomas' hospital development and renovation of some of the older warehouses. One name kept coming up: Vera Causa Limited.

Jamie did a quick search and discovered that the Latin words meant True Cause. She began to delve into what she could find about the company, quickly discovering that the shareholding lay in bearer shares. These were physical stock certificates where the owner didn't have to be registered in any way and dividends were disbursed to whoever held the shares. The setup was designed to hide ownership and legislation was currently being debated that would make it illegal. But for now, the owner of these bearer shares could stay hidden. Jamie frowned, taking a last sip of the now-cold coffee.

A sudden commotion and banging from the outer offices broke her concentration.

Jamie emerged from her office to find one of the other tenants shouting at a man in the hallway. The official wore a pinstriped suit, standing with back straight as he taped a notice on the door.

"My contract clearly says that the lease is six months," the tenant exclaimed, waving paperwork at him.

The suit handed a document to the gesticulating man.

"You missed the clause for pest control," he said. "Everyone needs to be out of here within the next two hours and then fumigation will commence. You won't have access for at least a week, but you'll be contacted when the building is available again."

The tenant continued raging, his protestations useless against immoveable bureaucracy.

Jamie ducked back inside her tiny office, packing up what little paperwork she had started to accumulate into her backpack. There was a nagging doubt in her mind about the timing of the pests and no evidence of them that she could see.

Walking downstairs ten minutes later, she stopped to read the notice from the landlord on the way out. The company name at the bottom was one of those that she had tied back to Vera Causa.

The sun was out as she emerged onto the street. The units were away from the main tourist strip along the Thames, but close enough that she could be amongst people quickly. Jamie appreciated anonymity in the middle of a bustling city. Small communities might protect in some ways, but they also curtailed originality and punished nonconformity. The city allowed all to flourish and anyone could find their niche here, but could it be that Vera Causa was trying to make Southwark compliant in some way? A test case, with the rest of the city to follow.