Winter’s Gifts

  Copyright © 2023 by Ben Aaronovitch.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover map image

  Copyright © 2023 by Stephen Walter.

  All rights reserved.

  Title lettering

  Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Knowles.

  All rights reserved.

  Interior design

  Copyright © 2023 by Desert Isle Design, LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN

  978-1-64524-186-7

  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  subterraneanpress.com

  For Sabrina and Andreas,

  for always being there when I needed them.

  Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris.

  It belongs to human nature to hate

  those you have injured.

  Publius Cornelius Tacitus

  1

  On the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, my mama called me at my dorm and begged me not to join the Marines. Up until that phone call I had, like most of my dorm mates, spent the day staring at the TV in stunned disbelief. But my mama was already thinking ahead to the war she was sure was coming, and she didn’t want my brother, who was a high school freshman at the time, getting it into his head to enlist.

  I tell myself that no doubt Mama recognized that I was too sensible to get myself killed in a foreign war, and sometimes I even believe it.

  She made me swear on my Bible, which I hadn’t even unpacked yet.

  I prayed to Jesus for guidance that night and he must have comforted me, because I fell asleep in the early hours and the next week I went back to classes. Once the shock had worn off, I, like most other folk, went back to my life as normal.

  I think it might surprise a lot of people that the majority of FBI agents don’t graduate high school, or even college, planning to join the Bureau. That’s because the FBI likes its recruits to be what in modern management-speak is called “self-directed”, or what my mama calls “grown-ups”. They want you to have an education and life experience first and, best of all, they want you to have skills they can put to use. Right now if you want to join the FBI, try working in STEM first. They’ll eat that up.

  I majored in Healthcare Administration but minored in Criminal Justice. I’d taken Theories of Criminal Behavior in my second semester because I’d wanted to know why a bunch of well-educated young men might want to fly a plane into the side of a building, and I guess that sparked my interest.

  I was recruited out of college by a health insurance company, which was my career plan, into their fraud investigation division, and from there, a hop, skip and a jump to running an investigation team for an agricultural insurance company. I had my own office and a reserved space in the company parking lot.

  But it all started to feel kind of petty.

  Also, my mama got it into her head that I was persecuting decent, honest hard-working folk on behalf of the liberal corporate elite. She hadn’t discovered the word “woke” yet, and I’m never going to forgive my brother for bringing it to her attention. I should have let him join the Air Force like he threatened to. Now he’s a minister in Mama’s church and can do no wrong.

  My decision to apply to be a special agent crept up on me some time between the case of the spontaneously exploding tractor and the cows that ate Paris, Arkansas.

  I told my mama that Jesus led me to join the FBI, and when she asked why I told her I didn’t think it was right to question the Lord. She gave me a funny look—never think people like my mama are stupid—but she also cooked me a peach cobbler that couldn’t be beat and gave me her blessing.

  Who knows, Jesus might have spoken in my heart, in which case London, magic, the talking bears and everything else were also part of his design. After all, ever since I was a little girl my mama has told me that God is constantly sending us messages, only sometimes we let the noise of our everyday lives get in the way of hearing them. She says that we have to let Jesus be the switchboard operator of our souls and always be ready to take his call.

  But I believe even Jesus would have his work cut out dealing with the thousands of unsolicited calls that arrive at the Bureau’s main switchboard every day. Of these, a small but significant number ask to be put through to The X-Files. All these calls are logged, recorded and reviewed, even the ones from people who believe that the federal government is being run by space lizards. Perhaps especially those ones. Just in case the caller is the kind of crazy who’s sitting on two tons of fertilizer-based IED and looking for an excuse to use it.

  Still, winnowing the wheat from the chaff takes time. And so it wasn’t until Monday morning that the message from former agent Patrick Henderson arrived as an email on the secure terminal in my cubicle at the Critical Incident Response Group. The email was from Jan—who was PA to my boss Lane Harris, assistant director CIRG—inviting me to a meeting in his office at 9:30. A transcript of the telephone message was added as an attachment for reference.

  Given that the meeting was in fifteen minutes, the transcript was mercifully short. Having reached a human operator, the caller immediately identified himself as Patrick Henderson, resident of Eloise, Wisconsin and a former FBI agent.

  OPERATOR: How can I help you, Mr. Henderson?

  CALLER: I need you to pass a message to whoever is running the basement and tell them that we have a potential X-RAY SIERRA INDIA developing. I’ll advise in person when they get here.

  OPERATOR: I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not sure—

  CALLER: You won’t understand what any of this means, ma’am. Just pass it up the chain until somebody does.

  Patrick Henderson then gives his home address, in Eloise, his landline and a cell number. Before he hangs up he says one more thing:

  CALLER: This is important, we need an assessment right away.

  I had enough time to confirm that Patrick Henderson was indeed a former agent who’d retired early at forty-two. Most agents start their FBI careers in their early thirties and retiring early means missing out on much of your pension. Digging deeper, I found that Henderson had retired due to ill health, although no details were given as to what the problem was. The files confirmed his address as Eloise, a small town in northern Wisconsin, population 521, famous for fishing, tourism and the winter ice road to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.

  Before I left for the meeting, I searched for X-RAY SIERRA INDIA and found no references internally and nothing on Google.

  The “basement” reference I already knew about. It was the unofficial name used inside the Bureau to refer to my “department”. It was a throwback to the aforementioned TV show The X-Files, where the heroes worked out of a basement in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, combating aliens, supernatural creatures and monsters.

  In truth, I work for the IOSS, the Investigative and Operations Support Section of the Critical Incident Response Group. One of many special assistants to the assistant director who runs the section.

  Still, Patrick Henderson’s reference to “the basement” intrigued me. He’d retired in 1999, which implied that someone had been doing my job almost a decade before I’d joined the FBI. I wondered where their files were being stored, because I’d never seen them.

  Since my cubicle was down the hall from the assistant director’s office, there was no excuse to be late, and so I made sure I presented myself outside his door at 9:29.

  Jan looked up from their terminal and, after eyeing me curiously over their horn-rimmed glasses for a moment, waved me into the office. They didn’t follow me in, which was unusual. Usually, Jan takes notes even at routine meetings.

  Assistant Director Lane Harris looked like a well-dressed accountant in his mid-fifties. His hairline had long receded all the way back to the nape of his neck, leaving two wings of greying brown hair, cut short, on either side. They gave him somewhat the appearance of a cartoon owl. He had a straight nose, small blue eyes, thin lips, and looked like he should be wearing little round-framed glasses but wasn’t. His office had that half-furnished utilitarian look that most senior managers’ offices at Quantico have, with standard institutional coffee-colored carpeting, wood paneling on two of the walls, and sturdy wooden bookcases lining the rest. He had a window overlooking the parking lot but I noticed that the baffle curtains, designed to stop anyone eavesdropping with a laser microphone, had been pulled across to cover the window.

  He was standing behind his metal-framed desk when I entered.

  “Kimberley,” he said. “Have a seat.”

  As we sat down opposite each other, he leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers across his belly.

  “What’s your first question?” he asked.

  “What does ‘X-Ray Sierra India’ indicate?”

  Harris nodded—obviously this was the right question.

  “It’s an old case designation that dates back to the 1990s,” he said. “I’ve never encountered it myself, but it’s fairly well known—or was. It indicates that the agent compiling the file believes that the case might have some unusual characteristics.”

  “Unusual characteristics”, or UC, was the Bureau’s euphemism for the weird, the supernatural and the genuine occult. Unusual characteristics was my current assignment and, I was beginning to fear, a forecast for my future career.

  “What does it stand for?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” said Harris. “But it’s only supposed to be used for serious situations. You’ve had a look a
t Patrick Henderson’s file. Do you think he’s credible?”

  I said that I would have preferred to know how he came to be medically retired, but from what I’d read he’d had an unremarkable though solid career in the Bureau. And there was no record of him making frivolous calls to us in the past, so I was tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “That was my assessment, too,” said Harris.

  “I think we should at least find out what he’s got to say,” I said.

  Harris nodded. We were both aware that there were worrying gaps in the files where they related to “unusual characteristics”. The FBI was in the information business, and the idea that cases had been removed did not sit well with either of us.

  “He seems to expect us to send someone up,” said Harris.

  Important, Henderson had said. We need an assessment right away.

  “If we’re going to take him seriously,” I said, “then let’s take him seriously. I could fly up tomorrow—make an ‘assessment’. If there is an ongoing UC then I’ll be on the ground to make further recommendations.”

  Harris nodded.

  “At the very least,” he said. “Since our records are regrettably incomplete, it would be useful to have a source with ‘basement’ experience to help fill in the blanks.”

  Sources are important. The FBI prides itself on being an intelligence-led organization. Agents are evaluated as much on the quantity and quality of their key sources as they are on their criminal case files. Harris has been pitching for more resources, but until senior management starts to take the supernatural seriously we go with what we can get.

  Fortunately, Washington is as much a magnet for weirdos as Los Angeles. I’d found some useful intelligence assets since being assigned to what my mama calls “the nation’s cesspit”. Mama is not a fan of the federal government, although she makes an exception for the military, the post office and, more recently, Medicare.

  Cymbeline Moonglum—that’s the name on her birth certificate, by the way, I looked it up—shared my mama’s suspicion of the Feds, but for diametrically opposed political reasons. She worked for an environmental advocacy group near McPherson Square, and I call her an intelligence asset because the Bureau doesn’t approve of agents putting inveterate gossip on their expenses claims. She also used to be a witch—a real one—so as soon as I got back to my desk, I called her and arranged to have lunch.

  If I’d known the FBI was paying,” said Cymbeline, “I’d have chosen a swankier spot.”

  We were in a coffee shop on 14th Street, having just managed to grab one of the stripped pine tables for ourselves, despite the lunchtime crowd that steamed up the windows. It was the kind of place that served avocado toast, and your coffee arrived in its own press with a little card describing the country of origin and how it was ethically sourced. They did manage to serve a good quarter-pounder without adding either kale or quinoa—but you could tell they really wanted to.

  And it was plenty expensive enough by my standards, thank you very much.

  “This comes out of my pocket first,” I said.

  Cymbeline Moonglum was in her late thirties, tall, and ridiculously thin given how she was scarfing her cheeseburger and fries. She was dressed like any other Washington lifer in a navy-blue skirt suit and pink blouse, except for the Celtic knot pendant she wore on a silver chain. Power clung to that pendant. I know because I’ve been taught to sense what those in the know call vestigia—the traces that are left behind by magic.

  Cymbeline hovered her hand over my fries.

  “May I?” she asked.

  “Help yourself,” I said. She helped herself. “What do you know about Wisconsin?”

  “Terrible problem with water contamination,” she said. “Particularly PFOS from landfill run-off. Persistent, toxic, and it bioaccumulates—don’t go swimming in any lakes.”

  “What else?” I asked.

  “More cougar sightings,” she said. “Which is encouraging.”

  We played this game every single time we met. I don’t know why, except Cymbeline seemed to get some weird satisfaction from making me wait. Which I was content to do, seeing as I knew she was as desperate to tell me the latest gossip as I was to hear it.

  “More to the point, it might be interesting to you,” said Cymbeline. “There have been rumors that the animal spirits are returning.”

  “Like these cougars?” I said, and pulled my fries away from her minatory fingers.

  “Probably not the cougars,” she said. “But an old friend of mine in New Hampshire…” The stress she put on the words “old friend” indicated that she was talking about a fellow witch. “They said that there were indications that some of the bears there might be manifestations.”

  Manifestations was Cymbeline-speak for the spirit or god of a locality. What my British colleague Peter Grant would call a genius loci—which is just a fancy way of saying “local spirit”.

  “She says that there are clear indications that other bears defer to them,” she said. “Perhaps even some of the local people, too. They leave out offerings and in return their crops and animals prosper.” According to Cymbeline, similar spirits were popping up all across North America. “Wherever the population density is low. And trust me, you don’t want to fucking mess with them.”

  I must have winced or something, because Cymbeline laughed.

  “I can’t believe you work for the FBI,” she said. “Or don’t the bad guys say ‘fuck’ anymore?”

  “I just don’t like cursing, okay,” I said. “It’s unnecessary.”

  “How about blaspheming?”

  But I’ve had that particular argument—about paganism, Christianity and what Cymbeline calls my outrageous double standards—before, so I steered her back to genii locorum and manifestations.

  “Anything specific to Wisconsin?” I asked.

  “Apart from the cougars?”

  “Apart from the talking animals.”

  “Who said they were talking?”

  I pushed my fries back toward Cymbeline, who smiled and took them.

  “Why, Agent Reynolds, do you really think you can bribe me with your leftover deep-fried potato snacks?” she said.

  “Wisconsin,” I said.

  “Nothing recently,” said Cymbeline as she finished the fries. “I’ve heard stories from the old days, you know, when it was the frontier.”

  There were stories of clashes between British magical practitioners and Native American medicine men during the War of 1812, although Cymbeline was hazy both about who was fighting who and just when Wisconsin became a state. I have to admit that I’d had to spend half an hour on the internet reading up on the history myself. What was part of the Northwest Territory became in sequence, in the space of half a century, part of the Indiana, Illinois and Michigan territories before becoming its own territory in 1836 and a state in 1848. The town of Eloise wasn’t officially founded until the 1850s, sandwiched between Bayfield to the south and the Red Cliff Reservation to the north.

  “There’s rumors that an expedition by the Virgins went missing up there,” said Cymbeline. “I can’t remember when that was supposed to be. Would you like me to ask around?”

  “If you could,” I said.

  “The Virgins” was witchspeak for the Virginia Gentlemen’s Company, which had been founded by none other than Thomas Jefferson himself. Just like the Pinkertons had served as an unofficial intelligence and national police force, the VGC had served as the magical arm of the US government.

  “I heard the Virgins got their asses handed to them in London,” said Cymbeline.

  “That’s what I heard,” I said, shading the truth.

  Actually, I’d been sent over to repatriate their sorry asses back to Virginia. I’d been hoping the Brits would prosecute them, but they, in the form of Peter Grant, said they couldn’t be bothered.

  More likely, they didn’t want to admit that full-scale magical warfare had broken out on the streets of London.

  “They used to be real wizards,” said Cymbeline. “Now they’re just corporate.”

  The malign influence of creeping corporatization was one of Cymbeline’s hobby horses and, to head her off, I asked whether she knew any details about the Virginians’ missing expedition.

  “I know it was on Lake Superior because they traveled up by boat,” she said. “They set out from Sault Ste Marie—wait, I’ve remembered it was definitely eighteen forty-something, if that helps—and never came back.”