The Rook

  “Absolutely. I can’t wait till you meet Jonathan! I’ll e-mail him. He gets back in two weeks. Unless, you want to write to him directly?” Bronwyn asked.

  “God, I wouldn’t know how to write a letter like that,” said Myfanwy helplessly. “Maybe it would be better if you wrote it.” Bronwyn nodded. “Now, if we don’t get downstairs, Val will kill me.”

  Morning, Rook Thomas.”

  “Morning, Bishop Petoskey,” said Myfanwy to Shantay as she walked into the reception area outside her office. “You’re here early. I’m guessing Ingrid has provided you with coffee and pastries?”

  “Yes, Rook Thomas,” said Ingrid, looking slightly frantic. Ingrid was notorious for being the first day-shift person in the building, but Myfanwy had heard from her driver that Shantay had arrived before her.

  “Our office sent the latest reports on that Grafter chick,” explained Shantay. “And the minibar in my hotel room was mysteriously emptied.”

  “By arcane forces beyond the understanding of normal human beings?” asked Myfanwy as she sifted through the in-box. It was the sort of question you learned to ask automatically when you worked with the Checquy.

  “No, it was me,” admitted Shantay without a shred of embarrassment.

  “Oh, okay. Ingrid, what do we have going on today?”

  “There are manifestations in Bath and Exeter,” Ingrid read from a list. “The city teams were dispatched as soon as they erupted and are taking care of it now. The Elephant and Castle plague team are hoping to present their final findings this afternoon. And the entire Court will be meeting with the Croatoan representatives this evening.”

  “Dinner?” asked Myfanwy.

  “Yes, indeed,” confirmed Ingrid. “The Apex House chefs are already working.”

  “Excellent. Well, then, Bishop Petoskey, won’t you come in?” said Myfanwy, concealing a smile.

  “Why, thank you, Rook Thomas, I would be delighted,” said Shantay, giving her a wink. Once the door was securely closed, Myfanwy burst out laughing.

  “What in God’s name are you doing here this early, Shantay? Aside from trying to break my secretary.”

  “I got bored” was Shantay’s casual response. “Bishop Morales is still sleeping and there was nothing to watch on the hotel TV. You said that you always get in early, and I wanted to hear how it went with your sister.”

  “All right, let’s go up to the residence,” suggested Myfanwy, opening the portrait.

  “You get your own apartment?” asked Shantay incredulously.

  “Well, I kind of have to share it with the Ghost of Pimping Past,” cautioned Myfanwy.

  So, she had no Grafterness in her?” asked Shantay after Myfanwy had described the entire evening with the sort of detail men believe women normally reserve for recounting dates. “Definitely her real face?”

  “The only surgery that girl has ever had is getting her wisdom teeth taken out,” said Myfanwy. “When we hugged, I knew her inside and out. She’s my sister—I could almost read her DNA. We connected like magnets.”

  “So, she has powers like yours?” asked Shantay, raising her eyebrows.

  “Nope, she’s totally normal. No weird enhancements, no supernatural powers.”

  “Well, that’s good. You must be thrilled.”

  “I am,” said Myfanwy, “but I’m also nervous. What if my brother and sister decide they don’t like me?”

  “They have to like you,” said Shantay. “That’s the good thing about having family.” They were sprawled on some furniture composed of leather, wire, and chrome, going over the reports from the States. Since Dr. Crisp had not yet arrived in America, they consisted primarily of physical descriptions of the Grafter agent and the details of how she got to Los Angeles. “And you still have to meet your brother?” asked Shantay, throwing aside the file and lazily sliding off her chair onto a bearskin rug that seemed to possess some alarming worn spots. Myfanwy would never have sprawled on it, but then, she knew who’d owned the apartment previously.

  “Yeah, and that’s going to be infinitely harder. Bronwyn was three when I left; she didn’t really remember me. But Jonathan was eleven and I guess we were pretty close. I have no idea what I’m going to tell him,” confessed Myfanwy. “I don’t remember much of my life before the Checquy. Do you have any ideas?”

  “You could tell him that years of being on heavily addictive medication have fogged your memory,” suggested Shantay. “Or that when you entered the public service you were obliged to undergo intense sessions of brainwashing. Or that you were hit on the head with a cricket bat and suffered amnesia.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Myfanwy. “Amnesia, because that’s so likely. He’ll totally buy that—bravo!” She applauded sarcastically, and both women looked up in surprise as a section of the wall rotated to reveal a heavily stocked bar featuring lots of mirrors. “Huh. Clap-on, I guess.”

  “Anyway, you know what the really disturbing part of this is?” said Shantay.

  “What?”

  “You have apparently been pronouncing your own name incorrectly for decades.”

  “Thanks for that,” Myfanwy said dryly. “Regardless, I am not going to change—” The lights above flickered, and she looked up, startled. The phone trilled, and she picked it up. “What’s up, Ingrid?”

  “Rook Thomas” came the secretary’s voice. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but there’s an emergency situation in Bath. The manifestation I mentioned earlier has some unprecedented aspects. The local team is having problems, one of the Barghest teams has already been dispatched from here, and they need a Rook to be on-site.”

  “Oh-kay,” said Myfanwy slowly. The prospect of going to an actual manifestation failed to fill her with delight. She’d been reading some of the files and had learned that far more Checquy operatives died by being torn to pieces than from any other cause. The organization provided an amazing retirement plan, but hardly anyone ever got to use it. “Doesn’t Gestalt normally do these things?” she asked hopefully.

  “Rook Gestalt is concentrating on the Grafter investigation,” Ingrid reminded her.

  “Rook Gestalt has four bodies. Not one of them can go to Bath?”

  “The twins are in the north of Scotland, Robert is in Ireland, and Eliza is in York,” said Ingrid.

  “Fine,” said Myfanwy. “How am I getting there?”

  “A helicopter will be on the roof in a few minutes. You can take your private lift.”

  “Should I wear gum boots or anything? I can’t really recall doing this sort of thing before,” she said.

  “No, what you’re wearing will be fine,” Ingrid assured her. “After all, you’re only there to observe.”

  “Super,” said Myfanwy sourly as she got up off the couch. “Well, call me on my mobile if anything else happens.”

  “What’s up?” asked Shantay.

  “There’s a manifestation in Bath, and I have to go supervise.”

  “Oh, that sounds kind of interesting. Can I come?” asked Shantay.

  “I don’t see why not. Let’s roll,” she said. They then spent seven minutes looking for the private lift, which Myfanwy explained away by saying she’d never used it before. It turned out to be behind a door that Myfanwy had assumed was a closet.

  The helicopter was thwupping impatiently on the roof, and a man in purple held the door open for them. They settled back comfortably in the leather seats and stared out the windows as the city glided down and away from them, like a vast albatross that has seen an interesting sardine. Myfanwy answered her ringing phone.

  “Thomas.”

  “Rook Thomas, this is Ingrid. Background information has started to come into the Rookery regarding the manifestation you’re headed toward. I’m zapping it to your phone now.”

  “Thanks,” said Myfanwy. She opened the message attachment and started to read it intently.

  PHONE TRANSCRIPT FROM CITY OF BATH EMERGENCY SERVICES, 01:35–01:37

  OPERATOR: Emergency Services.
r />   CALLER: Yeah, hi. Look, I’m sorry to be calling so late, but it’s the house across the street. It’s what, one thirty in the morning? And they have all these funky purple lights flashing in their windows, without even closing their blinds, and there are people, like, moaning or chanting or yodeling or something, and I don’t really feel comfortable going over to complain. I mean, I can’t get to sleep and I have an exam tomorrow, and this whole thing is just so weird, you know?

  O: Yes, we’ll send a car over to take care of it, just as soon as you give me your name and the address of the house you’re complaining about.

  C: Oh, right. Um, I’m Rowena Lillywhite, I live in thirty-seven Bennett Street, and I’m complaining about the people in thirty-four Bennett Street.

  O: Okay, Miss Lillywhite, I’m sending a car around now.

  C: Thanks, I really appreciate it.

  (End of Transcript)

  Myfanwy searched through her memory for any references to purple light and weird yodeling/moaning/chanting. She’d spent a great deal of time reading through the purple binder and the Checquy records, but this didn’t ring any bells. She pushed down the first little niggling feelings that were swimming up into her mind. Feelings of chaos and panic.

  She snuck a look at Shantay to see if she’d noticed. Shantay was sitting calmly in her seat, checking messages on her phone. Myfanwy shook her head and breathed deeply. She could do this. She turned her attention back to the phone and scrolled down to the next message, which began with a note from Ingrid.

  Rook Thomas, this is the working summary that Mahesh Poppat, the head of the Bath Situation Response Team, has written up. It’s cobbled together from a variety of sources, but it should give you some idea of the situation.

  1:55 a.m.—Constables O’Hara and Parker arrived at 34 Bennett St. They knocked, found the door open, and entered.

  1:59 a.m.—Rowena Lillywhite called again, upset about the screams that had started issuing forth from her neighbor’s house. In the middle of her call, the screams stopped, and she told the dispatcher that the chanting had started up again.

  2:02 a.m.—Richard Drake, the emergency services supervisor on duty, notified Alexander Jefferson, the Bath chief of police, that there was something “bizarre” going on. As per long-standing instructions, Jefferson contacted our Bath office, and the local team was mobilized.

  So that’s how it all works, mused Myfanwy. I wonder if every manifestation is begun with something atrocious happening to someone. The next section appeared to be a hastily typed report by Mahesh Poppat. It was hard to be certain, but something about the report suggested a frantic concern that the Rook not be angry. He was probably expecting Gestalt, she thought. Given that the last time I saw Gestalt get angry he tried to strangle the help, it’s probably a reasonable concern.

  Poppat described the precautions they had taken, sealing off the street, setting up a perimeter. He made a great many references to “standard operating procedure,” probably in an effort to forestall administrative strangulation. Things had proceeded typically until the Pawns sent into the house failed to emerge. At least, they had failed to emerge in any recognizable form. After a flickering of the violet lights and many subsequent screams, a torrent of viscous, meaty fluid streamed out one of the windows. The fluid was currently being analyzed to see if it contained any of the personnel.

  Much to Myfanwy’s surprise, this had not automatically bumped the incident up to emergency status. Good old standard operating procedure made another appearance, and a second, larger team of Pawns was sent in, this time with cameras and a protocol of constant radio contact. The camera feed fizzled, radio contact cut out, screams set in, fluid emerged, and the chanting continued unabated. At this point, Poppat (following the manual rigorously and scrupulously, he assured the reader) contacted the Rookery. A special Barghest team was dispatched from there, and Rook Thomas was notified.

  And here I am, on the way to Bath, to observe the chanting house that eats people. A word in the précis had caught her eye, and she opened the purple binder and thumbed through until she came to the appropriate section.

  The Barghests

  In theory, every member of the Checquy is well versed in the art of kicking ass and could be mobilized as an effective soldier. An integral part of our education on the Estate is martial arts and weapons training—as central to the curriculum as algebra (which I was very good at) and music (I sucked; they made me play the French horn). But of course, not everybody is destined to be a fighter. Even those students who don’t have hang-ups about confrontation are sometimes just better suited to fulfill some other function within the organization.

  Still, an awful lot of Checquy members are soldiers, and they are very good. I want to make it clear that the average Checquy fighter would rank high in the echelons of international special forces. They are identified while still young, so the instructors are in a unique position to build them up as warriors. From a very early age, they embark on the same sort of training that adult career soldiers receive. They become proficient in numerous styles of fighting, are experts with hundreds of weapons, and learn survival, counterterrorism, and strategy skills. Plus, they possess superhuman abilities.

  They are equipped to go to war against the monstrous unknown.

  And the very best go on to be in the Barghests.

  My research has indicated that the Barghests are what the Checquy grew out of. An elite squad of supernatural soldiers sent in to fight the worst of the nightmares. There’s not a person among the Checquy today who would not, were the call given, put down her pen, take up a weapon, and march into the darkness. When we offered our services to Cromwell, we were only fighters. In the centuries since, the Checquy grew into the organization that it is now. Nevertheless, the Barghests stand as the epitome of what we are. They do not exist for research, administration, or record keeping. They are not bodyguards. They are not police. They are warriors.

  There are ten teams of Barghests; six are scattered around the globe, and four are based in the United Kingdom. The six international teams are under the command of the Chevaliers: two teams in Canada, one in New Zealand, two in India, and one in Australia. The four UK teams are under the control of the Rooks and are generally used as heavy backup. When bad shit goes down in the Isles and the local forces can’t handle it, they call in the Barghests.

  But while in theory I possess authority over them, Gestalt is the one who does the on-site commanding, so I don’t know them that well. Every three months I have to do one of those reviewing-of-the-troops things, and they’re all lined up in their killing uniforms. Gestalt and I walk authoritatively down the line, and it’s just so uncomfortable. I’m always aware of how much they do, and they exude this sense of extreme capability, with their eyes straight ahead and every muscle clenched. To be honest, I’m kind of intimidated.

  Not to mention that my incompetence in all things martial and physical is a fact of general knowledge in the Checquy. It’s a small community, and there are people in the Barghests with whom I was at the Estate. I can’t help but feel ridiculous in front of them. I have never dared to stop and stare pointedly at a Barghest’s uniform and claim that he is mussed or rumpled or has in some way failed to be the perfect soldier.

  Still, I’m the one who approves their entry into the ranks, reviews their files, and takes care of their maintenance. Considering all the training they receive and the enormous amount of money we spend on them, I think it’s safe to assume that they should be able to handle anything that comes up.

  When Shantay and Myfanwy arrived at the airport, there was a car waiting for them, and they were whisked through the city by a diffident purple-clad driver.

  “We’ll have to take the waters,” said Shantay, who was leafing through a guidebook that had been left in the car.

  “Hmm?” asked Myfanwy, who had moved on to the purple binder’s section on Bath. According to Thomas, the city had once been a veritable hotbed of manifestations, with every sorcer
er, bunyip, golem, goblin, pict, pixie, demon, thylacine, gorgon, moron, cult, scum, mummy, rummy, groke, sphinx, minx, muse, flagellant, diva, reaver, weaver, reaper, scabbarder, scabmettler, dwarf, midget, little person, leprechaun, marshwiggle, totem, soothsayer, truthsayer, hatter, hattifattener, imp, panwere, mothman, shaman, flukeman, warlock, morlock, poltergeist, zeitgeist, elemental, banshee, manshee, lycanthrope, lichenthrope, sprite, wight, aufwader, harpy, silkie, kelpie, klepto, specter, mutant, cyborg, balrog, troll, ogre, cat in shoes, dog in a hat, psychic, and psychotic seemingly having decided that this was the hot spot to visit.

  In fact, Thomas had found evidence suggesting that Bath was the place where the Checquy had been founded, a reaction to the continuous torrent of bizarre happenings. According to old reports, it had been practically impossible to wander down a dark alley in Bath without tripping over something that had more limbs than it was supposed to. For centuries, Bath was the greatest source of Checquy operatives in the country. Then, about twenty-two years ago, the incidence of weirdness began to diminish noticeably. The local office, which was the largest in the United Kingdom other than the London installations, shrank until it maintained only a token force. It was now the place where new Pawns were sent to get used to things, and where the unsuccessful remained.

  So, this manifestation was remarkably remarkable.

  “We’ll have to take the waters,” repeated Shantay.

  “Is this some American thing I missed when I was watching sitcoms?” asked Myfanwy distractedly. “Or just a weird euphemism?”

  “No, apparently it’s an English thing,” said Shantay. “After this manifestation gets taken care of, we should go have high tea and take the waters. There are these natural springs that have been fashionable for centuries.”

  “Sounds delightful. You’re really being a tourist.”

  “Well, I want to have the whole English experience. High tea, supervising manifestations, taking the waters, going to Harrods, discussing possible international conspiracies.”