Property of a Lady Faire (A Secret Histories Novel) (39 page)

I called the security people back to the Ballroom, and they quickly surrounded the Living Shroud. There was a tense moment, and then the Shroud allowed itself to be escorted out. Leaving a trail of dark smudges on the floor behind it. Some of the guests actually got down on their hands and knees to pick up charred bits of rag, for souvenirs. I glared at Jimmy Thunder, who just shrugged. He’d been glared at by far worse than me. He went back to join Ms. Fate, who gave him a stiff talking-to, on the grounds that she operated as a costumed adventurer in the Nightside, and thus could be considered quite capable of looking after herself.

I nodded to Molly. “Thank you. That was very helpful. You can return to your duties now.”

She bobbed an almost convincing curtsey. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

She moved quickly away. I was still getting my breath back, when I found myself suddenly confronted by the Last of Leng. It crouched before me, giving the distinct impression it was glaring up at me from under its lowered hood. Up close, the poison green robes and tatters smelled strongly of rotting flesh and ordure. My torc burned at my throat, trying to protect me against something.

“Where is the Lady Faire?” said the Last of Leng in a harsh, grating voice.

“I’m sure she’ll be here, when she’s ready,” I said smoothly.

“Not good enough. Go. Tell the Lady Faire I am here. Tell her to come. Now.”

“I am Head of Security,” I said, careful to keep my voice calm and polite. “I have duties and responsibilities here. I’m sure the Lady Faire will appear, in good time.”

“I gave you an order!”

“So you did. And this is me, ignoring it, because I don’t work for you. Now be a good little last survivor of an appalling civilisation, and piss off. Before I throw an entire security force at you.”

I shouldn’t have lost my temper, but after all, this was the Last of Leng. There are limits.

“You dare!” shrieked the Last of Leng.

“Frequently,” I said. “Famous for it. One more word out of you, and I’ll have you thrown out into Ultima Thule, and you can spend the long journey home knocking icicles off your wrappings. Except you can’t go home, because some sensible and public-spirited person blew it up. So beat it, you bum.”

The Last of Leng started to say something, and then turned abruptly and strode away. Several guests nodded approvingly. They would have liked to applaud, but it was the Last of Leng, after all, and they weren’t as brave as me.

I turned away, and there was Dead Boy, waiting for me, grinning all over his deathly pale face. I sighed inwardly. As if I didn’t have enough problems . . . Dead Boy had a tall glass of something dark and steaming in one hand, and a half-eaten dodo leg in the other. He dropped me a heavy wink.

“I knew it was you! I never mistake an aura. Don’t worry,” he said, in what he probably thought was a conspiratorial tone, “I’ve got your back.”

“Oh good,” I said. “I’m sure whoever you think I am is very grateful. Now will you please
go away
and ruin somebody else’s day?”

“That’s what I’m here for,” said Dead Boy.

He dropped me another heavy wink, with his heavily mascaraed eye, and swaggered away. Dead Boy didn’t care what I was doing here. He just thought it was funny. Being dead for so long has given him an odd sense of humour. I wasn’t sure whether having his support felt comforting or not. I watched him latch on to a waiter with a new tray of party snacks, and launch himself in hot pursuit. Dead Boy had the attention span of a goldfish swimming in a bowl of liquid LSD. I sighed quietly again, and wondered what else could go wrong. I was attracting far more attention than was good for me. In fact, I was starting to wonder whether I should just leave the Ballroom and start bullying hotel staff until one of them told me where the Lazarus Stone was.

And then I spotted a face I knew, deep in the milling crowd. A face I recognised immediately, that I had thought never to see again. My heart hammered painfully in my chest, and I had trouble getting my breath. A tall, distinguished figure in a formal tuxedo moved easily through the crowd. He looked exactly like my uncle James. My
late
uncle James, the legendary Grey Fox. I hadn’t seen him since he died right in front of me, in Drood Hall, all those years ago. He couldn’t be here. He died. I went to his funeral. Unless . . . somebody had already used the Lazarus Stone.

Unless someone had rewritten History, bringing James back from the dead. But if History had been changed, I wouldn’t still remember the way things used to be . . . would I? I had survived the destruction of the Sceneshifters . . . so I was the only person in the world who still remembered them . . . I plunged forward into the crowd, pushing people out of my way and ignoring their objections, but by the time I got to where I’d seen my uncle James, he wasn’t there any more. I looked quickly about me, while everyone else stuck their noses in the air and made pointed comments about my rudeness, but I couldn’t see Uncle James anywhere.

If he’d ever really been there.

I was seized with an awful sense of urgency, a need to do . . . something. If the Lady Faire, or anyone else, had started using the Lazarus Stone after all these years . . . we were all in real trouble. But deep down, I didn’t believe it. If James’ death had been undone, I wouldn’t still remember him dying. Hell, I probably wouldn’t still be standing here. So whoever it was I saw, it couldn’t have been the Grey Fox. Just someone trying to pass as him. Unless . . . Could Uncle James have pulled off the greatest trick and comeback of his career? Faked his own death, back then? I saw him die, but so had a great many people, down the years, and he’d always bounced back, smiling broadly, refusing to explain how he’d done it. All part of the legend of the Droods’ greatest field agent: the infamous Grey Fox.

But he wouldn’t have done that to me . . . would he?

Or could it be some shape-shifter or face-dancer, pretending to be him? Wearing James’ face to get into the Lady Faire’s Ball, to get to the Lazarus Stone? I smiled coldly behind my security mask. If someone here was hiding behind Uncle James’ reputation, I would have their balls.

I wished Molly was with me, so I could discuss this with her. She would have known what to say, what to do. She always was the professional one.

Then, quite suddenly, everything stopped. The noise broke off as everyone stopped talking. The music stopped and the singer fell silent. Everyone in the Ballroom stood very still. We were all looking at the Lady Faire, standing in the open doors at the far end of the Ballroom, come at last.

She held an effortlessly aristocratic pose, smiling on her gathered guests. Someone started applauding, and everyone joined in. I did too. Just couldn’t help myself. People started cheering, and shouting happily. Some wept, quite openly. The great ice cavern filled with a joyous sound, overwhelming and overpowering. A spontaneous outbreak of good cheer and affectionate tribute. The Lady Faire was here at last, and everyone wanted to show how much they still cared for her. Perhaps the one great affair, or even love, of their troubled lives. The only person who had ever really mattered to them. The Lady Faire smiled graciously about her, accepting it all as her right. Her right of conquest, perhaps.

Everyone was looking at her in the same way, or at the very least, in varieties of the same way. Looks of love and hunger and lust, but more than that . . . They were the looks of a subjugated people, of those who had been touched by the Lady Faire and loved it. Or had been made to love it, by the perfect honey trap. The Baron Frankenstein had done his work well. The Lady Faire was so much more than an ex-lover to these people. She was a living goddess. Male and female and everything in between; they had loved her once and they loved her now, despite themselves. And having finally seen her, I could understand why.

The Lady Faire, that most infamous omnisexual and ladything, the most successful seductress in the history of espionage, the Ice Queen herself . . . was tall and stately and wore a perfectly fitted white tuxedo. Her hair had been shaped and dyed into a perfect re-creation of Jean Harlow’s platinum bombshell. Her face was handsome and striking and beautiful, all at once, with a strong bone structure. She had golden-pupiled eyes, a pointed nose, and pink rosebud lips. Her smile was a practised thing, but charming as all hell. More a man’s smile than a woman’s . . . Shapes and movements inside the white tuxedo suggested a woman’s body, and then a man’s, both and neither and more.

There was no point in even trying to guess her age. She looked perfectly youthful, no more than her twenties. But there was a suggestion of age, of long experience, in her eyes and her smile, in every small movement, and in the grace and elegance that hung about her like a well-worn cloak. Much used, and invisibly mended. You could tell that here was someone who had been around. Who had seen things and done things, some of them awful. Not that she cared, and nothing she would ever apologise for. You just knew, from looking at her. She had a feminine glamour, and a masculine presence. There was nothing androgynous about her. She was quite definitely female. And male. And so much more.

The Lady Faire took your breath away, sweet as cyanide.

She certainly made one hell of a first impression. My torc was burning fiercely at my throat, or I might have fallen under her spell too. She—it was easier to think of her that way, less complicated—was overpoweringly sexual, seductively alluring, without even trying. I could feel the attraction burning off her, like the light that calls moths to throw themselves into the flame and perish. Looking at her was like staring into a spotlight aimed personally at you. And yet . . . there was something else there too. Like a maggot squirming deep in an apple. An almost arachnid revulsion, a bone-deep, soul-deep aversion to something that just shouldn’t exist in the natural world.

Or maybe that was just me. After all, I’ve been around a bit myself.

I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t. I felt the same need, the same hunger, that drew everyone else to the Lady Faire. I fought it, drawing on the strength of my torc, and my armour, and my Drood training. To always be in control, and never the one controlled. I was half tempted to armour up, just so I could hide behind it. I thought of Molly, and all she had come to mean to me, and that helped. What was a living goddess in the face of the wild witch of the woods? There was no room left in my heart for the Lady Faire. But still, I couldn’t look away. I knew the Lady Faire was a honey trap, and a danger to everything I cared about . . . but I was finding it hard to care.

She was just like the legendary Ice Queen. You looked at her, a sliver of her ice entered your eye, and you were hers forever.

Except I was a Drood. A field agent trained to never give in to outside influences. Trained from an early age to be loyal only to Droods.
Anything, for the family.
I concentrated on my torc, and immediately a tendril of golden armour shot up my neck to form a mask under my security mask. And just like that, I could See the Lady Faire so much more clearly.

No one else could tell, but I could See her pumping out pheromones on an industrial scale. Musk, mating signals, bypassing the conscious mind to appeal directly to the unconscious, affecting people on the most basic, fundamental level. No wonder I’d been having so much trouble thinking clearly. I breathed deeply through my hidden golden mask, and felt my head clear as though a cold wind was rushing through it.

The Lady Faire still looked just as impressive, but also . . . beautiful and horrible. Human and inhuman. As though two sets of impressions were at war with each other. She was still strikingly attractive, but no longer seductive. The brute force of her chemical appeal made her seem more like an Insect Queen than an Ice Queen. I could See cracks in her perfect face, in her practised composure. Age had taken its toll, after all, and she was no longer the great creation she had been.

And just like that, I could remember everything Molly meant to me. I could see her face and hear her voice, and there was no one else in the world I wanted as much as I wanted her.

It was a shock to the soul, to step back from the precipice I’d been ready to leap over. To realise how close I’d come to jumping off that cliff edge along with all the other lemmings. Molly was back, like she’d never been away. I didn’t think I would ever mention this to her. How I’d felt, for those few delirious moments. I felt a certain sense of relief, now that I understood what had been happening to me. It wasn’t all down to the pheromones, to the chemical impulses, but they had definitely got to me. The Baron had put a lot of thought into his creation. The bastard.

The Lady Faire finally got bored just standing there, and strode regally forward into the Ballroom. Her ex-lovers were all still cheering and applauding, trying to outdo one another and catch the Lady Faire’s eye. She moved easily among her conquests, stopping here and there to favour this one and that, by remembering their name. And then she would remember a place or a time or a moment, and everyone hung on her every word and smile and gesture. Great men and women fawned over her openly, competed shamelessly for every glance, and debased themselves just for the chance of a smile. Sometimes she would lay a hand briefly on a shoulder, or caress a face with her fingertips, and the guests so favoured all but swooned.

But the Lady Faire never paused for long, always moving on, leaving a trail of broken hearts behind her. All over again.

No one made any move to touch the Lady Faire. Not, it seemed to me, because it was forbidden; they just didn’t dare. Even with the maddening pheromones hitting these people full blast, she still had complete control over them. I looked carefully around the milling crowd, and even at the farthest edges of the Ballroom, where logic suggested the pheromones wouldn’t even have reached yet, everyone still seemed perfectly dazzled and bewitched. Even so, a phalanx of uniformed security people followed close behind the Lady Faire, keeping an eye on things, clearly ready to slap down anyone who even looked like they were getting out of hand.