It was only a fountain pen, but Jamie recognized it as belonging to Dale Cameron. Its distinctive silver fox-head cap was rare and she remembered him using it to sign paperwork back when she was in the police. It had also been in his top pocket when the news of the Mayoralty was announced. Now, the pen lay on the desk, perpendicular to a clean A4 pad of paper.

With her sleeve over her hand, Jamie picked up the pen, wrapped it in a sheet of paper and put it in her jacket pocket. The pen was useless to her, but perhaps Blake would be able to read something from it that would help.

Jamie walked quickly back up to the attic and climbed out of the skylight, making sure to leave it at the same angle it had been when she'd entered. She slipped down the roof tiles onto the fire escape and then quietly walked away from the office building. The pen seemed to burn in her pocket and she saw Dale Cameron's face in her mind. Like a puppet master, he controlled so much behind the scenes, and she wondered how far his influence stretched. How much further he could go as Mayor.

She roared away on the bike, heading towards Bloomsbury.

***

Blake stood in the kitchen holding an empty tequila bottle. It was the last of the batch and there was no other alcohol in the flat.

Perhaps he would go to the corner store and get a small bottle of vodka. That's all he needed to take the edge off. Or he could go down to Bar-Barian and buy his way into oblivion. In many ways that would be preferable, because right now he didn't know what else to do.

The choice his uncle had offered was a gold chalice laced with poison. He wanted to know about his gift, he wanted to meet his extended family, yet he had seen what they did in the forests of the north in a vision of blood and madness. He should forget the Galdrabók and embrace his life here.

But what life? he thought.

He and Jamie skirted the edges of something but were they both too damaged to take it any further? Without her, there was only casual sex, and with his job under threat, would he even have the choice to stay?

Blake clenched the bottle in his hand, knuckles white. Perhaps he shouldn't fight the addiction anymore. Perhaps it was time to just let it play out. He put the bottle next to the bin, picked up his keys, and grabbed his jacket.

The doorbell rang.

Blake frowned. He wasn't expecting anyone, certainly not this late. He clicked the intercom button.

"Hello," he said.

"It's Jamie." Her voice was soft. Blake's heart leapt in his chest. He put down his jacket and pressed the open button.

"Come up," he said.

Blake pulled open the door, listening to her footsteps climb the stairs, and then she was there, looking up at him from the stairwell. Her dark hair was tied back and there were shadows under her eyes.

"I'm sorry for coming this late," she said.

"It's fine." Blake smiled. "Are you OK?"

Jamie walked up the last few stairs. "It's been a hell of a day, to be honest."

Blake saw the vulnerability in her eyes and pulled her into his arms, hugging her close. She was stiff for a second and then she relaxed, exhaling as she returned his embrace.

She explained what had happened at Cross Bones, about O, the Kitchen, her eviction and the threat to the community.

"That really is a hell of a day," Blake said. "Coffee?"

She stepped away. "Yes please, and then I need your help with something."

He saw the question in her eyes.

"No, I haven't been drinking." He smiled again, this time with an edge of embarrassment. "Although if you'd come ten minutes later, things might have been different."

He wanted to tell her of his uncle's visit, of the possibilities of his gift. But she needed his focus on her now, not on his own dilemma.

Blake put the kettle on and made fresh coffee, carrying the mugs back into the main room. Jamie stood at his window looking out over the rooftops, her eyes fixed on the horizon like she wanted to fly out into the night.

She turned and placed a silver fountain pen wrapped in a piece of paper on his desk.

"I need you to read this," she said. "I don't know what else to do. I'm hoping that you'll see something that could help."

Blake considered his uncle's words, how every time he read strengthened the link between him and his kin. How he opened his mind to the other realm each time and that the drip drip drip of darkness would inch into him. He shouldn't do it. But this was for Jamie.

"OK," he said. "But you know I can't promise anything."

She nodded. "Please try anyway."

Blake sat down and took his gloves off. He placed both hands over the pen and lowered his fingertips to the silver, letting the cool metal connect with his skin. He closed his eyes and let the swirling mists rise up in his mind.

He felt an initial resistance, but then he gave into the sensation and dipped through the veil.

The pen was dense with memory, the emotions imprinted upon it holding fast to the metal. Colors swirled about him as Blake began to assume the mantle of the man who owned it. He picked a thread and opened his eyes within the vision.

He looked out at a sea of cameras, of smiling faces, a moment of triumph captured against a backdrop of the City of London. It was the pinnacle of the man's life so far. Blake felt a surge of power, the man's heart pounding as he accepted the position of Mayor. But behind the triumph, there was something darker, a pulse of rotten black that Blake saw as a visible stain. The man gloated over those he looked down upon, for they didn't know his true face.

Blake plucked the darker strings, following them down into a hidden place, closing his eyes again.

He had rarely followed these deeper emotions, preferring to skim on the surface of vision. But this man – Blake's breath caught as he glimpsed a corrupt core under the gleaming surface. The power he wielded was greater than the police, greater than the Mayoralty. He believed he had the power of life and death, who would rise and who would fall in his city. The sense of arousal was strong and as much as he didn't want to, Blake followed that thread.

He opened his eyes within the vision again and saw the chains and hooks of the abattoir above him.

He smelled the metallic hint of blood and machinery.

His hands felt sticky.

Blake looked down through the eyes of the man to see a body that lay on the slab before him, the skinning knife in his hand. A dragon in shades of purple flew across the man's back but there was no life in him left, only his skin would outlast his mortality. The knife hand hovered above the body. For an instant, Blake wanted to pull away in revulsion and drop out of the vision. He stopped himself, controlling the nausea, testing his own limits to stay within.

The man began to cut around the edge of the tattoo, dipping down into the layers of flesh. There was precision in his work and Blake experienced deep concentration and pride. The compartments in the man's mind enabled him to separate his public and private selves. We all have these two sides, Blake thought, but some are more deeply separated than others. There was no sense that the man saw the body in front of him as a person, only as an artwork in progress. And a way to exercise power against those who cluttered the streets.

But none of this would help Jamie. They needed proof, a way to stop the man.

He let the veil close over the scene and reached lower into the man's emotions. There was a rich vein deeper still in consciousness, a hidden box within the layers the man cloaked his life with. Blake let himself sink into it, and opened his eyes again.