Bessie sets up a walking stick with an end that can burn for a while, with pitch and cloth; Lin Tan practices with it.

When Milly gets home, she finds an envelope containing a card for the Frank G. Bowen auction house, on the fringe of the City of London near Spitalfields; a hand-written addendum mentions “Thursday 10 July”.

Milly and Gertrude visit Matthew Kidlington in Shoreditch; the landlady seems faintly concerned about him. He has an attic flat with a bodged-in north-facing window, and it’s full of canvases; his artistic style seems to be an offshoot of the Cubist, and neither Milly nor Gertrude has the background to appreciate them. He looks as if he hasn’t eaten or slept much recently, and he carries on painting while they talk with him. He’s surprised to see anyone but doesn’t seem to object; he regards the dreams as a good thing, since he hasn’t been this productive for years, and he’s not in favour of stopping them. (He’s fairly sure he had breakfast. Probably on Sunday.) Gertrude gets him to agree to be observed that evening. His landlady has been taking up meals, which isn’t the house rule, but he hasn’t been eating them.

The pair goes on to Bermondsey, and finds that Graham Talbot is “out at the workshop”, which turns out to be a light engineering firm; he’s busy at an angle-grinder but happy to talk briefly to the pair . He gets off work at six, and is willing to talk more later; he doesn’t seem too badly affected by what’s going on.

Audrey conducts research; St John seems to have been collecting a very specific subset of magical lore, something that occultism in general would regard as something of a blind alley, though it’s popped up occasionally back to about the 1600s (and may well be earlier than that in oral tradition).

Milly and Gertrude meet Talbot as he leaves work; he doesn’t seem to regard them as a threat in spite of their wild talk, and is happy for them to observe him in the evening.

In Soho, Bessie and Lin Tan watch a bevy of Marias haranguing a passer-by, who doesn’t seem to notice. Lin Tan tries to sneak up on them, but they spot her and scatter; she chases one, and fixates on it to the point that she runs into a wall.

Gertrude observes Talbot, and Milly observes Kidlington (who falls over in the middle of painting); the minor strands point into Soho as before, while the major ones also lead roughly south-east. Gertrude takes compass readings; Milly chalks marks for later checking.

Bessie and Lin Tan attempt to sneak up on a group of golems; Bessie distracts them while Lin Tan gets in closer. When Lin Tan realises she’s being lured into an ambush, she spins to take on one of the two sneaking up on her, igniting it; Bessie realises that she’s lost sight of one of them, so it’s probably behind her, and turns to attack it as it strangles her with freezing hands. They all go up (and some of Talbot’s small tethers start to burn), but Bessie’s injured.

Gertrude leaves Talbot and heads over to Shoreditch to taje compass readings there.

Everyone meets at Audrey’s, and Gertrude plots the three rough bearings, starting with Audrey’s large map of London but soon realising she’ll need to go further. The bearings encompass a narrow strip of land starting somewhere around Eltham, crossing south-eastwards through Kent covering Maidstone, Ashford and Hythe, then passing onwards through parts of France, Italy, Greece, Egypt and British Somaliland without reconverging. Assuming that whatever this is – the most likely candidate seems to be St John – is still in England, getting a cross-bearing seems like a plausible next step.