When I opened my eyes again, Aubrey’s father had gone.
“Alright. Alright,” Zac said to the people in the queue, who were leaning around, trying to see what was going on. “Enough gawking. Haven’t you ever seen a heart-warming family reunion before?”
“So, that was your dad,” Morgan said. “Interesting chap.”
“Don’t you start,” Aubrey said, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. “If it wasn’t for him, we’d never have known about how Frankie was manipulating your father.”
“Wait. Are you saying this woman threatened to hurt me in order to get to Father? That she threatened a Morgan? The very cheek!”
I caught Aubrey’s eye. “Are you OK?”
I mouthed. She nodded, smiling, the way she did after I’d kissed her. As if a weight had been lifted.
Once this mess was all over, she and her father could start to build a relationship again.
“OK, enough faffing,” I said. “Are you going to help us or not?” I asked Morgan.
“He might still be of some use,” Zac said, looking Richard up and down. “Even if he can’t Fix. He could, I don’t know, carry our bags.”
“What are you on about now, Black?”
“We’re going to stop the woman who did this. And we need help,” I said.
“Well, count me in,” Morgan said. “No one threatens a Morgan and gets away with it.”
“And that’s four,” I said.
“I’ve forgiven him, Rosalie. Just about. So you might as well.”
Inside the surprisingly empty club, Rosalie stood with her arms folded across her chest. “I’m not pissed at him,” she said, pointing at me. “It’s him!” She pointed at Zac.
“Hey, what did I do?” Zac said, holding up his hands.
“What did you do? You… you sell-out! All that bull you fed me about beating the system and then you go and get an approved licence and use your power to get rich!”
“It’s not the money, Rosie. It’s the love of the game,” Zac said.
“Don’t give me that. You always hated football.”
“OK, it’s all about the money. But come on, I’ve only a couple of years of this power left, I have to think about my future. We all should be making hay while the sun shines, guys.”
“You should see his house,” I said.
“Really? Is it that nice?” Rosalie said, softening a little.
“It’s a veritable haystack,” I said.
“Well, it’s still… wrong,” Rosalie said, although she didn’t sound quite so certain.
“You two can argue later. We need your help,” Aubrey said.
“What is it this time?” Rosalie said.
“The woman I told you about?” I said.
“The Forcer? What about her?”
“We need to stop her. She’s forcing kids to do bad things: killing people kind of things,” I said.
“Only we don’t have any actual proof,” Aubrey said.
“And how am I supposed to help? And why aren’t you on the door?” she added, noticing Morgan standing behind us.
“I… er…”
“I think you’re going to need to shut up shop for the night,” I said. “Because if you’re willing, we need you to get your best dress on and come with us.”
“My best dress? Why? I’m not going to seduce anyone for you. Those days are over.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “I just need you and Zac to crash a party and create a distraction.”
“What kind of distraction?” Rosalie said, her eyes tight.
“I thought you could start an argument?” I said.
“With him?” Rosalie said, pointing at Zac. “Can I throw things at his head?”
“If you feel you have to,” I said.
“Hang on–” But Zac didn’t get a chance to finish.
“OK, I’m in.”
“And that makes five,” I said.
“Six!” Jake said, appearing from behind the bar.
“Make that seven!” CP’s head appeared next to his. “You’re not going anywhere without us.”
“CP, what are you doing here?” I asked.
“Jake called me and said you needed help. So here I am.”
“No way. You’re staying here,” Rosalie said, striding over to the bar. “Back upstairs, both of you, now.”
“Come on, Sis. What’s the point in having a cool power if I never get to use it? You say the word and I Shift back into my bed like a good little boy.”
“Yeah, and we spend all day training and training. It’s about time we got to put it to some use,” CP added.
I looked at their two eager faces. “Well, we could use all the help we can get,” I said. “And I promise you, they won’t get hurt.”
“You said that last time,” Rosalie snapped.
“I only broke my arm. It would have been a broken back, if Scott hadn’t Shifted and saved me.”
“Don’t remind me!” Rosalie said, holding up her hand.
“And he saved my life. I owe him,” CP said, vaulting over the bar and landing perfectly on her feet. Jake scrambled after her, looking slightly less graceful.
“Besides, you can’t leave a couple of kids on their own. In a bar. Who knows what could happen?” Jake grinned his cheeky grin.
Rosalie took in an angry lungful of air. Then let it out with a long sigh. “OK, you can come. But…” She silenced Jake and CP’s victory cheer with a raised finger. “But if there’s a sniff of trouble, CP, I’m trusting you to Shift and get the three of us out of there, understood? I can’t one hundred percent rely on my power any more. And I certainly can’t rely on Jake to make the right decision.”
“Hey!” Jake said in protest.
I shook my head at him. “Rosalie is right. What we’re about to do is dangerous, maybe really dangerous, and I wouldn’t even consider it if I didn’t know that she was looking out for you. So, this is the decision, right here and now, you all focus on. Really think about it, so that if the time comes you won’t have a problem undoing it.” I looked around at the group, glad to see they were taking my words seriously. Their heads were bowed and some had their eyes closed. Morgan looked up at the ceiling, whistling. Only Aubrey stared straight at me.
“And you won’t stop us?” Rosalie said.
“I’ll be honest, Rose, I can’t stop you.”
“And neither can I,” Morgan said.
“What do you mean? You can’t Fix?” Rosalie asked him.
Morgan shook his head.
“Then what good are you to me? Because you suck as a doorman.”
“I guess I’ll have to hand in my jacket.” Morgan stroked the arm of his black bomber jacket, as if it was a pet.
“You’ll do no such thing. As soon as this mess is sorted, you’ll get your arse behind the bar and serve drinks,” Rosalie said.
“Not in a clown outfit?” he said, his eyebrows knitting together.
“Dressed as a monkey, if I say so. Now, I have a dress to pick out and a bar to shut up. So if you don’t mind…” She strode off through the door to their flat.
“So, where’s this party going to be?” Jake asked, excited.
“The Pyramid,” I said. “And there will be security all over that place. We’ll need help getting in.”
“I can try and hack their systems, but there’s only so much I can do with the crappy computer I have here,” Jake said, gesturing upstairs. “I asked Rosalie to get me a better system, but she says I have to pay for it myself.”
“So, we ask Carl,” Aubrey said.
“Yeah, only one problem with that,” I said and they turned to look at me. “I’m not a part of ARES anymore.”
“True,” said Aubrey reaching into the large bag she’d brought with her. She pulled out a crumpled jacket and shrugged her arms into it. She pulled her Bluecoat straight and dusted off the shoulders. “But I still am.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I had expected some comments from the Regulators, as Aubrey and I stepped out onto their floor. Some snide jeering or a “look what the cat dragged in” at the very least. But it was just business as usual: all shouting TV screens, bleeping machinery and angry, serious-looking older teens who just ignored me as I walked past. Great to know what an impact I’d had on this place.
We were going to meet the others at the bottom of Tower Bridge in an hour. Which didn’t give us much time to get the information we needed.
The loud rock music pouring from Carl’s office grew louder as Aubrey pushed the door open. Carl was standing with one foot up on his chair, knee bent, cradling an invisible guitar. He thrashed his head back and forth in time to the wailing chords, the little that was left of his hair flailing about.
“Excuse me!” I said, trying to be heard above the screeching guitar.
Carl continued to rock out, playing air drums now, flecks of sweat splattering over his many computer screens. I turned my head away and tried not to laugh.
Aubrey placed two fingers in her mouth and whistled louder than I’ve ever heard anyone whistle in my life. The shrill note cut over even the energetic drum solo.
Carl stopped and spun around. The pink flush in his cheeks from his stadium performance turned to a scarlet red from embarrassment. He fumbled around, trying to stop the music, only managing to turn the volume up even more before finally silencing it. My ears rang in the sudden quiet.
“Aubrey, I…” Carl started.
Aubrey waved away his shame. “Hey, Zeppelin rock, right?” she said smiling.
Carl sunk back into his chair, a stupidly huge grin on his face. “So, what can I do you for? I mean, what can I do for you?” He stroked his forehead.
“We need information about a target. Francesca Anderson, nee Kingly, now Francesca Goodwin. Also known as Frank and Frankie. She’s the head of Pandora Worldwide.”
Carl started typing before Aubrey had finished speaking and within seconds Frankie’s face was filling the largest screen.
“You carried out an eval on her a couple of days ago, right?” Carl said, fingers dancing across his ergonomic keyboard.
Aubrey gave me her Look, and I felt my heart leap a little inside. I’d missed that look so much – the way her eyebrows disappeared beneath her long fringe and her chin tilted forward. I knew it was supposed to make me feel small and stupid. But right now, it made me feel great. Almost felt like things were getting back to normal.
“Well, numptie here did the eval and missed a few things,” Aubrey said, gesturing at me with her thumb. My swelling heart shrunk right back into place. “That’s why we need to work out where she is.”
“Oh, you,” Carl said, noticing me for the first time. “I thought you’d quit? I was just about to remove your name from the system and block your access.”
“Sir Richard and I had a little misunderstanding, is all. Don’t worry about it. Just focus on Frankie.”
Carl tied back his lank, thinning hair, and returned to the screens. “Well, she’s high profile. UN advisor and spokesperson. The Angel of England, the press like to call her. Runs an orphanage for messed up Shifters.”
“Anything we don’t already know, Carl? Anything unusual?” I said.
He punched a few other buttons and we watched as higher security files were crosschecked. “She was a Project Ganymede volunteer?” Carl, said looking at us. “Isn’t that the mess you guys got into over summer?”
“Anything else?” Aubrey said.
“No, that’s it. She’s clean. In fact, she’s cleaner than clean. She’s got clearance on the highest level, which I’ve never actually seen before. Higher than anyone at ARES. Straight from the Prime Minister. She must have done something pretty impressive to get that.”
“She helped him get into power,” I said.
“That would do it. What do you want with her anyway?”
“We want to arrest her for murder,” I said.
“Well, not exactly. It’s not like we have anything to actually charge her with,” Aubrey chipped in.
“You still don’t believe me?”
“No, it’s just that almost everyone who you say she killed is alive now. So, she’s not really responsible for their deaths, is she?” Aubrey said, combing her fringe out of her eyes.
“Not in this reality,” I said.
“Or in any reality, Scott. There is only one reality, remember?”
“Not for me.”
“Whatever!” Aubrey threw her hands up, her voice getting higher pitched as she became increasingly irritated. “What exactly are we going to charge her with? Killing people in an alternative reality? What court is going to listen to that?”
“Then why are you even here?” I said, exasperated. I thought we’d been through all of this last night at Zac’s place.
“To get you back!” Aubrey snapped. And then looked down at her shoes. “I mean, to get you back to normal. To make her undo what she did to you.”
Carl’s head had been moving back and forth between Aubrey and me as if he was watching a tennis match.
“Oh, right,” I said, my shoes also suddenly becoming really interesting.
Carl coughed. “Er, hello! I am still here, you know?”
“Yes, sorry. Right, where were we?” I said.
“Well, I was falling in love,” Carl said, gazing up at a headshot of Frankie looking into the middle distance.
“She’s not all that,” said Aubrey, her nose crinkling. “She has weird lips. They’re too big.”
“Hmm,” Carl said, flicking through more photos of Frankie with a dumb smile on his face. “Why don’t you just go back to her place in Sussex and speak to her there?” Carl said, scanning our evaluation visit order. “And if you do, can I come?”
“She’s leaving for America tonight. So we’re going to a party at the Pyramid to stop her. Which is why we need you.”
“The G28 thing?” Carl said, still gazing at Frankie’s pictures.
“Er, I don’t know. It just says Party at the Pyramid,” I said.
“Sure, it’s the launch of this big conference about alternative energy and saving the future. You know the kind of thing. Lots of talk, not much action. Anyone who’s anyone’s going to be at that. Including your Ms Goodwin, by the looks of it. You know I have an idea for an alternative fuel engine. Maybe she would be interested. It runs on–”
“Yes, that’s the thing,” I said, cutting Carl off.