Property of a Lady Faire (A Secret Histories Novel) (6 page)

“There had better not be anyone missing!” I said sternly. “Not even one. Or I will come and find you.”

Four more bodies came flying through the screens. Interestingly, I didn’t recognise any of them. But apparently someone thought they were important . . . I looked at Alan Diment.

“This was a really bad idea. Don’t ever try it again. Not here, or anywhere else.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Diment. “But someone else might.”

I looked at him thoughtfully. “Who was it, exactly, who pressured you into doing this?”

“The current Government has an awful lot of new people in it,” Diment said carefully. “Obsessed with secrets, and the power having those secrets would bring them . . .”

“Names,” I said.

“Sorry,” said Diment sadly. “You might kill me for not talking, but they definitely would, if I did.”

I nodded, turned him around, and booted him back through the nearest plasma screen. It swallowed him up in a moment, and then every screen in the club went blank, shut down from the other side. I had no doubt that by the time the club’s management had the screens up and running again, all ties to the other side would have been cut. Not a trace left behind, to point the finger at anyone.

People were getting to their feet now, and looking at each other and the blank plasma screens with equal confusion. Whatever they’d seen on the other side, and whatever had been done to them, they clearly didn’t remember. I discreetly made my golden hand disappear, and then moved through the crowd, checking that everyone was all right. Ellen de Gustibus was leaning heavily on Monkton Farley, exhausted. He comforted her as best he could. He understood all there was to know about people, except how to be one. I gave him bonus marks for trying. Jumping Jack Flashman left through the nearest exit, the moment someone discovered they were working again. And the Painted Ghoul . . . just brushed himself down, briskly. As though this kind of thing happened to him all the time. And for all I knew, it did.

“Light my cigarette, lover,” said Waterloo Lillian, and I did, though I had to hold his hand steady with my other hand while I did it.

“You all right?” I said.

“As close as I get,” he said, smiling briefly. “Do you understand what just happened here?”

“Me?” I said. “No, I’m just passing through.”

I spotted Harry Fabulous, slouching in the open doorway at the far end of the club, and excused myself. I wandered casually over, to have a quiet word. Harry half retreated into the shadows of the door, preferring not to be noticed or recognised by the clientele. He needn’t have worried; everyone else was far too concerned with their own problems.

“I have been authorised to thank you,” said Harry Fabulous. “The club’s management are . . . reasonably happy with the way things have turned out. They wish me to assure you that they can take things from here. And do whatever may be necessary to ensure this never happens again.”

“I’ll still be having a word with my family,” I said. “We’ll sort out whoever it is in the current Government who’s been getting ideas above their station. Can’t have politicians messing around with things that really matter. One of us will have a quiet word with the Prime Minister. It’s been a while since we made a PM cry, and wet himself.” I gave Harry a firm look. “Remind your masters they owe me a favour. A big one.”

“That was the agreement,” Harry said steadily.

“So,” I said, “can I take it I am no longer banned from the Wulfshead Club?”

“Shaman Bond never was,” Harry said carefully. “But Eddie Drood still is. Because a lot of the clientele here would rise up and do their level best to strike him down, first time they saw him.”

“I get that a lot,” I said.

CHAPTER TWO

Where There’s a Will,
There’s a Complication

H
arry Fabulous made a point of escorting me to a particular back door, which he assured me would open directly onto the grounds of my family home, Drood Hall. I let him do it, because I was intrigued to see if the Wulfshead management really could bring that off. My family has always taken its personal security very seriously (especially after the Chinese Communists tried to nuke the Hall, back in the sixties) and I’d always been assured it was impossible for anyone to teleport directly onto Drood property. Just by offering to do it, the Wulfshead management were making a point.
See how powerful we are,
they were saying.
See what we can do, that no one else can.

And sure enough, Harry opened an apparently unremarkable door at the very rear of the club, and bright sunlight spilled through the opening, pushing back the close, smoky air inside. I looked through the door, and there were the wide-open grounds leading up to Drood Hall. I looked the door over carefully, and then turned my gaze on Harry Fabulous, who did his best to bear up under it.

“I think my family will take this intrusion very seriously,” I said. “This is simply not allowed, Harry. Tell the club management to rip this door out and destroy it.”

Harry shrugged helplessly. “I’ll tell them, Eddie, but they won’t listen to me. You know that.”

“They won’t be listening to you, Harry. They’ll be listening to me. I don’t mind helping them out, in an emergency, but putting my family’s security at risk is something else. You tell them either they shut this door permanently, or I will come back here with some of the more unpleasant members of my family, and we will shut down the Wulfshead Club, permanently. Suddenly and violently and with extreme prejudice.”

“They didn’t have to tell you about the door,” Harry said carefully. “This isn’t a threat; it’s a peace offering. You should consider where they got the door from and who else might have one just like it. And no, I don’t know, so there’s absolutely no point in threatening me.”

I considered the point, nodded, and stepped through the door. Immediately, I was back home, in the middle of the family grounds, brilliant green lawns stretching away in every direction, under a blazing blue sky. I heard the club door shut firmly behind me, and when I glanced back over my shoulder, it was gone. Not a trace left to show it had ever been there. Very well, Wulfshead management; message received and understood.

I strolled on through the grounds, taking my time, enjoying the scenery. Everywhere I looked, perfectly cut and professionally maintained lawns stretched away before me, big enough to land a whole fleet of planes on. Sprinklers filled the air with a moist haze, and stepping through them allowed me to enjoy a cool and refreshing moment in the blazing summer heat. The old hedge maze was still there, its spiky green walls towering over me as I passed. Of course, the old monster it had been constructed to imprison was long gone now, safely dumped and abandoned in another dimension. But I was sure we could find something equally bad and dangerous that deserved trapping inside the maze. Though I didn’t think I’d raise the idea with my family. Given our track record, they’d probably try to throw me in.

A little further on, I paused to enjoy the massive flower gardens, laid out in intricate shapes and mosaics and boasting more than a few multicoloured blooms not at all native to this world, or even this reality. Some of them still moved to follow an entirely different sun than ours. A wide circle of red, white, and blue roses had been planted to resemble a great eye that winked slowly at me as I passed. I didn’t wink back. It’s best not to encourage them.

A whole crowd of peacocks paraded proudly by, filling the air with their loud, discordant cries. All part of our early-warning system. High-tech and magical systems are all very well, but you can’t beat a natural response. Machines and magics can be overcome, or even sabotaged, but the only way to shut the peacocks up would be to shoot them all in the head. And I think we’d notice that. The gryphons were out on patrol too, waddling importantly back and forth. They can see a short way into the future, which makes them ideal for spotting potential attacks and attackers, and being there waiting for the poor sods when they arrive. They’re friendly enough creatures to the family, but they do like to track down dead things and then have a really good roll in them. Which is why they are never allowed inside the Hall. I waved at them, and kept moving.

I knew I was just putting off the moment when I would have to go inside, and make my report to the ruling Council. Not that I had anything to worry about; the mission had gone well, or at least well enough. But I just knew they’d find something to complain about. They always did. I hate debriefings. It’s hard enough explaining why you did something, without having to explain why you didn’t do something else that they thought you should have done.

And they always make such a fuss over my expenses.

Drood Hall rose up before me; huge and imposing, it dominated the grounds it was set in without even trying. My old family home. Very old. The centre structure was a great sprawling manor house, with ivy swarming all over the walls. It dated originally from Tudor times, and had been much added to down through the centuries. It still boasted the traditional black-and-white boarded frontage and heavy leaded-glass windows, all under a jutting gabled roof. Four great wings came later, massive and solid in the old Regency style, containing fifteen hundred rooms and a hell of a lot more Droods. We’re a big family, and getting bigger. Soon enough we’ll be packed to overflowing, and then it will be time to move on again. Floors and floors above me, the great roof rose and fell like a grey-tiled sea, complete with gargoyles, ornamental guttering, observatories and aeries, sprawling nests of antennae, and a series of landing pads for everything from autogyros to winged unicorns. Along with a hell of a lot of gun emplacements. I did mention that we take our security seriously, didn’t I?

I always have mixed feelings every time I come back to stand before Drood Hall. The family made my life hell, all the time I was growing up, and I ran away to London to be a field agent first chance I got. But the Hall is still my home.

Suddenly Molly Metcalf, my love and my delight, was running towards me, emerging from a door in mid-air that hadn’t been there just a moment before. Molly was allowed to open a door onto the Drood grounds from her personal forest, because she was my girlfriend and because there was absolutely no way of stopping her. The wild witch of the woods walked her own path, and woe betide anyone who got in her way. So the family made a special dispensation in her case, rather than have her do it anyway and just laugh in their faces when they got upset about it. I could see the massive ancient trees of her private forest through the door, stretching away forever—trees too big, too primal, to be part of today’s world. Someday I was going to have to find out just where, or more likely when, her wood was situated.

Molly came running from the opening she’d made in the world, smiling broadly at me, arms stretched out wide. The door behind her disappeared as she sprinted across the lawns to greet me. Sweet, petite, and overwhelmingly feminine, Molly always reminded me of a delicate china doll with big bosoms. She had bobbed black hair, huge dark eyes, and a rosebud mouth red as sin itself. She was wearing a long, billowing dress of ruffled white silk, possibly chosen to lend a touch of colour to her pale skin. For someone who preferred to spend most of her time out of doors, Molly never took even a touch of tan.

My Molly, my love. There are an awful lot of strange and disturbing stories about the wild witch Molly Metcalf, and every single one of them is true. I know; I was there at the time, for most of them.

She crossed the open space between us at incredible speed, her bare feet barely disturbing the thick green grass, and then she slammed right into me, throwing her arms around me as she bowled me over and sent me flying backwards. I was braced for the impact, and it still knocked the breath out of me for a moment. Molly ended up lying on top of me, laughing breathlessly into my face as I lay flat on my back on the thick green grass. I held her in my arms, grinning back at her. I always enjoy having Molly lie on top of me; it’s like her whole body from head to toe is saying,
Hello! I’m here!

“All right,” I said finally, “how did you know to find me here?”

She kissed me several times, and ran her fingers through my hair. “I always know where you are, sweetie. I keep track. How else can I look after you? How was the Vatican?”

I looked at her sternly. “That’s family business. You weren’t even supposed to know I was there.”

“I refer you to my previous answer,” said Molly, in her most sultry voice. “And you haven’t answered my question. Any problems?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” I said.

“Showoff . . .”

I kissed her, to shut her up, and then we both lay there together, on the grass, in each other’s arms. She rested her head on my chest, riding my breathing.

“I haven’t paid the Vatican a visit in years,” she said finally. “It’s well past time I dropped in again, just to annoy them.”

“Please don’t,” I said. “I’m pretty sure they’re still getting over the last time you were there. When you transformed all the statues of the Saints into female versions.”

“I was making a point!” said Molly. “I changed them all back again, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” I said. “Eventually . . .”

Molly suddenly scowled at me, glaring right into my face from only a few inches away. “Why are we here, Eddie?”

“Why are any of us here?” I said, reasonably. “I can make a few informed guesses, if you like . . .”

She prodded me hard in the chest with one long, bony finger. “I mean, why are we here at Drood Hall when we should be smashing our way into the Department of Uncanny, roughing up the hired help and intimidating the security guards, before pinning the Regent of Shadows to his office wall and getting some answers out of him? Very definitely including why did he murder my parents?”

She didn’t give me time to answer. Just got up off me, scrambled to her feet, and turned her back on me, glaring at Drood Hall with her arms tightly folded. I sighed, inwardly, and took my time getting to my feet. Giving myself time to work out exactly what I was going to say. It wasn’t going to be easy, because there was no right thing to say, but it was important to me that we understood each other. I brushed crushed grass off my clothes, to let her know I was approaching, and then moved carefully in beside her. I had enough sense not to touch her.