The Nightmare Stacks: A Laundry Files novel (24 page)

After a couple of fruitless hours spent trying to second-guess Alex’s occult and powerful parents, Agent First had a clever idea. She went out to Golden Acre Park to repossess her semi-charged mace of power, then she used what
mana
she could spare from it to implant in some of her more suggestible classmates the idea that they’re going to dress up as fantastic, mythical beings and go clubbing later that evening.

So today she is wearing her traveling outfit, which she dry-cleaned after her arrival and stored in a dress carrier in the back of Cassie’s battered wardrobe. Her closely tailored jacket and leggings are of emerald and black velvet trimmed with lace; gaudy glowing gemstones shine from the rings she wears on every gloved finger and the choker clasped around her throat. A jeweled mace dangles from one side of her belt, opposite a long dagger of questionable legality. It’s the perfect disguise, for it gives her an excuse to drop the glamour she normally uses to conceal her unusual features – there is no telling how perceptive Alex’s mother and father might be, if they are sorcerers of sufficient power to have spawned this one. So she will allow them to see her as she truly is: her high cheekbones, slightly slanted eyelids, hair worn in a glossy black braid falling almost to her waist, and the tall, expressively mobile ears of her kind.

Alex cocks his head in thought for a moment. He manages to simultaneously look disconcerted and poleaxed by her beauty. Finally he mumbles, weakly: “If I’d known we were going to a party afterwards I’d have come as Dracula!”

“Oh, there’s still time for you to change if you want to!” she tells him airily. “I took the keys to the wardrobe room and borrowed the most dashing silk-lined opera cape and tailcoat for you! They’re upstairs. But first, I want to meet your parents.”

It is nearly seven o’clock. Thanks to his test-drive around the park, Alex is running late. So he leads Cassie around the corner to where Ilsa the Kettenkrad sits parked, helps her get settled on the backward-facing bench seat, then hits the road.

It’s only about four or five miles to Alex’s parents, but they include a nerve-racking drive up a busy dual carriageway, followed by circumnavigating the big roundabout at the intersection with Leeds’s outer ring road. Halfway around the roundabout Alex’s phone vibrates, the family SOS ringtone translating into an angry buzzing that’s barely audible over the rumble of rubber-shod tank tracks on asphalt. He ignores it because he’s busy maneuvering a slow, unwieldy vehicle across four lanes of high-speed traffic, trying not to throw Cassie off the back of the half-track as he dodges BMWs and minicabs that seem to see him as an agile motorbike. Ilsa’s engine roars like an injured she-wolf, vibrating so much that his vision blurs. A minute later his phone rings again, but there seems little point in answering because now that he’s passed the junction of doom it’s a simple five-minute run to his parents’ front door.

Alex recovers from the gut-watering terror of driving a half-track around a roundabout just in time to recognize a familiar suburban close. He drives slowly between rows of densely packed semi-detached houses, each fronted by a neatly groomed lawn and (in most cases) one or more parked cars. He has to make an effort not to let his overeager enumeration cantrip predigest the house numbers.
Number twenty, number twenty-two
…
twenty six.
He gingerly noses in alongside the pavement, sets the handbrake, then kills the engine. He sits for a moment and stares at his hands, which are shaking. In the sudden silence, he hears a whoop from behind: “That was fun! Do it again! YesYes!”

Oh God,
he thinks. He removes his helmet, clambers over the side of the bathtub-shaped carrier, and walks round the back to offer Cassie his hand. She steps down daintily, unstrapping her own helmet and dumping it on the bench seat. “Are you sure you want another lift?” he asks doubtfully: “I was afraid you were going to fall off…”

“No, it was wonderful! I haven’t had that much fun since I borrowed one of Daddy’s sparkle ponies for a joy ride!” Her face is such a picture of innocent joy that Alex can’t bear to tell her how scary the hell-ride across the roundabout had been. “I must take you to meet my father soon, YesYes?”

“Of course,” Alex agrees.

“Promise?” she persists. “A third date, third time lucky?”

“I promise.” He pats her wrist, and she smiles triumphantly.

“Is this it?” she asks, looking around.

“Er, yeah. Yes.” His parents’ house sits precisely twenty pre-metric feet back from the pavement, slightly downhill, behind a cement footpath and a lawn as carefully manicured as AstroTurf. The house itself is faced in red brick, with cellular double glazing and about as much character as one of the night shift zombies. Alex leads her to the porch and is about to push the buzzer beside the fiberglass-paneled front door when his phone vibrates again.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times means a family crisis. He glances at the screen: it’s Sarah. “Yes? I’m on the front step right now —”

“You’re late!” Her voice is odd, as if she’s trying not to be overheard. “Help! Mum’s having a seizure or something and Dad’s trying to drink himself to death —”

Alex goes cold. “Have you called an ambulance?” He stares at the door. “Let me in, I’ve got some first-aid training —”

“Not that kind of seizure, I think the penny dropped – she’s just met Mack.” There’s a click as the door unlatches from the inside. It swings open just as Sarah says, “Bye,” and drops her phone. It clatters noisily on the front step, unnoticed.

“Hello?” Cassie says from behind Alex’s shoulder. She waves her left hand hesitantly. Sarah stares at her wide-eyed and open-mouthed for long seconds, until Alex remembers he’s supposed to do something other than wait for the doorstep to grow teeth and a digestive tract beneath his shoes and swallow him whole.

“Uh, Sarah?” he says carefully. “This is Cassie. Cassie, this is Sarah, my sister. Sarah, Cassie’s my, uh, my —”

“Consort,” Cassie volunteers helpfully just as Alex manages to force the word “date” past his suddenly too-large tongue.

Sarah’s eyes roll up in her head. “Saved,” she says fervently, “we’re saved!” She takes a step back, blinking dizzily. “Come on in, you can help with damage control.”

The front room of the house is a combined living room and dining room. At one side, the TV is blatting a content-free soap opera in the direction of the three-piece suite. (Probably
EastEnders
, Alex guesses. It’s his family’s favorite window into a world of excitement and glamor.) At the other side, the over-polished dinner table
*
is laid with settings for six.

Dad is sprawled on the sofa. His eyeballs are pointed at the screen as if blind to the world around him. He’s wearing his usual work suit, minus jacket and tie, plus gray wool cardigan and tartan slippers. A half-drained tumbler of gin and tonic dangles precariously from his left hand.

“Where’s Mum?” Alex quietly asks Sarah.

“In the kitchen, hiding.”

“And your…?”
Mick? Mack?

“In the bathroom, hiding.”

Oh God,
he thinks again, just as Cassie skips into the living room like Zelda on crystal meth, all cloak and boots and pointy ears. As she registers the presence of his father her manner suddenly shifts toward uncharacteristic diffidence: it’s almost as if she’s nervous about something. “Uh, Cassie, this is Dad —”

He points helplessly. Then Dad, hearing his son’s voice, opens his eyes.

“Hello?” Cassie says quietly.

Dad flails and sits bolt-upright, drops his G&T, and shouts,
“What now?”

“Dad!” Alex winces. “This is Cassie, my” – he swallows – “girlfriend.”

Dad sits up unsteadily and looks at Cassie. “Oh good,” he slurs, “this one’s
normal
.”

Cassie shoves her cloak back, endangering the table setting in the process, and delivers a sweeping bow: “I am at your service, oh liege and master,” she declares. “Life, power, and the blood of your enemies poured on the altar of your gods!” She finishes with a salute, her gloved left fist clenched before her beating heart.

“We’re going to a fancy-dress party later,” Alex announces to the disbelieving silence, his heart speeding. “She’s an elven princess —” His tongue stumbles into shocked silence as he recognizes what’s been under his nose all along.
Those ears,
he thinks, still enchanted despite the shiny new protective ward hanging against his breastbone,
they’re not falsies.
“And I’m a vampire,” he adds, unsure whether he’s courageously outing himself or merely supporting Cassie’s conceit.

Dad raises a hand. “Son, get me another drink? This one’s broken.”

Sarah looks at Alex in mute appeal. He takes a deep breath and shrugs, then looks back at her helplessly. She’s about one-sixty centimeters tall, with short, mousy hair and mild brown eyes. Right now she’s filling a pair of jeans with torn knees and a checked lumberjack shirt. Her DMs are adorned with tiny multicolored daisies. Another penny drops. He’s lived in the big city long enough that despite his sheltered upbringing he’s learned what this particular dress code means. He nods, minutely: “I’ll get it,” he says.

“Do you think that’s wise —” Sarah begins, then notices Cassie. “Make it a double. You’d better get me one, too, and a Coke for Mack. She doesn’t drink alcohol.”

Alex potters over to the sideboard, where he finds a half-empty bottle of Gordon’s and a couple of bottles of Schweppes sitting beside a bowl with half a lemon in it, neatly pre-sliced. Cassie is kneeling at his father’s feet, as if she’s about to perform an elaborate ritual prostration.
Okay, deep breaths,
he tells himself.
The worst is over. Dad’s drunk and Mum’s in hysterics because Sarah’s
girlfriend
is hiding in the bathroom.
Mum and Dad aren’t narrow-minded, but they lack imagination… when it comes to their children they have curiously rigid ideas. Coming right after their daughter coming out, breaking the news to them that their son is a vampire and he’s dating a self-identified elven princess should be a walk in the park.
Just don’t mention the pay cut,
some residual sense of self-preservation prompts him.

He lines up a row of four tumblers, divides the remains of the gin bottle evenly between them, throws in a curl of lemon and a couple of ice cubes, then tops them up with a drop of tonic water. Then he picks one up and nods at Sarah: “Is Mum still in the kitchen?”

Sarah nods and clutches her drink like it’s the last one in the world. So he turns and goes in search of his mother.

Mum is fussing around the kitchen, multitasking between a hot oven and a variety of serving dishes with vegetables keeping warm on the hob. She’s in twinset and pearl necklace, evidently having felt the need to raise her game to tax audit levels in preparation for meeting both her children’s partners simultaneously. Her movements are fussily precise and over-controlled.

“Mum.” He puts the tumbler down on the butcher’s block with a deliberate thump, to telegraph its presence despite the risk of sloshing the contents. “Mum?”

“Alex?” She turns to him with a sniff, eyes wide. She opens her arms. “Come here! How you’ve grown.”

He hugs her. She seems to have shrunk, or he’s taller, or something: he can almost rest his chin on her head. She’s vibrating with nervous energy. “It’s all right, Mum. I brought you a drink.”

“Oh, you good boy! Have one —” She pauses doubtfully. “Are you driving?”

“Yes, Mum. Is there a Coke? And a Diet Coke for me?” There are always a couple of cans in the recesses of the family fridge, pining for company.

“Of course!” She lets go and looks at him. “You bought a car? Did they pay you a bonus?”

“Not exactly.” It’s now or never. He resolves to tell the truth this evening, or as much of it as his oath of office will permit: it’s a huge weight off his conscience. “Uh, Mum, the bank – they, uh, they downsized my unit.”

“They what? But they can’t do that! There must be some mistake.” She looks bewildered, all the certainties of her carefully curated family picture thrown askew.

“It’s all right, Mum,” he says wearily. He’s rehearsed this in his own head so many times that now he’s got his back to the dishwasher it’s almost a relief to get the prerecorded spiel off his chest. “They could and they did, but I got a good job with the Civil Service. It’s in the defense sector and it’s technical so I can’t talk about it, but it’s much more secure than the bank. You win some, you lose some. They’re threatening to relocate me up here.”

“Oh.” She sniffs again, then takes a deep breath and sighs. “Be a dear and pass me that drink, will you? This seems to be the day for disappointments.” He hands her the tumbler, silently angry on Sarah’s behalf. “I suppose next you’ll be telling me that your Cassie is an imaginary friend like
Gregory’s Girl
, and you just made her up to get me off your back.”

Alex shrugs uncomfortably. “I wouldn’t do that, Mum.”

“Oh, you know your father and I just wanted you both to do well. So perhaps we leaned on you a bit too hard with our own ideas of what would be a success story. But really, it doesn’t matter. Why did the bank fire you?”

“They fired my entire
team
, Mum, it wasn’t just me. There was a scandal. Our manager Oscar was, uh, he had something over the chief executive. It all fell apart after Sir David killed himself – I’m sorry, it went that high – the rest of us were collateral damage. An institutional embarrassment to be swept under the rug.” He gets creative: “I’m probably blacklisted for life from the entire investment banking sector. But I guess I got lucky because I was unemployed for less than a week when I got an offer.”

His mother’s expression turns mulish. He knows that look. It has been known to make headmasters and company secretaries wet themselves. “You got an offer within a week?
Really?
”

“There was —” He swallows. “Listen, we were doing cutting-edge mathematical research. It came to the attention of certain people and they made us an offer. It seemed like a good idea to take it at the time.”