The Spy Who Haunted Me
There were other insects too, and lots of flies, but none of them ever bothered us. When I asked Molly why, she just said, They wouldn’t dare.
She came running to greet me as I stepped through the Merlin Glass and into her world. My Molly Metcalf, the wild witch, the laughter in the woods, glorious and free. A gorgeous, wonderful woman just a few years younger than me, with pale skin and jet black hair, like a delicate china doll with big bosoms. She had eyes deep enough to drown in, more dark eyeliner than a panda on the pull, and a bright red rosebud mouth made for sin and laughter. She was wearing a long pastel green gown with a golden belt and half a dozen flowers pushed haphazardly into her hair. She threw herself at me, almost knocking me off my feet, and I held her like I’d never let her go.
Love came to me late in life, and unexpected. The Droods believe in marriage rather than love. Marriage binds you to the family; love just gets in the way. The family never wants anything in your life more important than your duty to the family. Everyone has to know their place. Molly, bless her contrary heart, has never known her place, and that’s just one of the reasons I love her so much.
She ground her breasts against my chest as we kissed. She knows I like that. Butterflies fluttered joyously all about us as we ripped the clothes off each other.
Some time later, we lay side by side on a grassy bank, the sweat slowly drying on our cooling bodies, snuggled happily together. I’d brought Molly up to date on my latest mission, and now she was sulking just a bit because she couldn’t go with me.
“You know we work best as a team, Eddie. Who’s going to watch your back if I’m not there?”
“I did survive as a Drood field agent for years, before we became an item,” I said, amused.
“It’s a constant wonder to me you lasted even one year. You’re far too trusting.”
“The invitation from the Independent Agent is for me alone,” I said patiently. “It’s his game, so he gets to set the rules.”
“Why choose you anyway? I mean, I’m sorry, sweetie, no offence and all that, but why you, out of all the Droods? Why not someone with more experience and closer to his generation, like your uncle Jack, perhaps?”
“Because I saved the world from the Hungry Gods, apparently. You do remember that, don’t you? I mean, you were there. Helping.”
“Don’t pout, Eddie; it doesn’t become you. Of course you deserve this honour; I just can’t help wondering if this is all some kind of trick or trap. Not necessarily just aimed at you. What if . . . What if this is all just an opportunity to get the six best spies in the world together in one place, and then kill them all off? One final coup for the Independent Agent: to prove he’s still the best, after all these years.”
“What a wonderfully suspicious mind you have,” I said fondly. “You’re quite right, of course. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if this turned out to be some kind of devious plot or scheme. But I still have to go. The price he’s offering is worth the risk.”
“Is it?” Molly rose up on one elbow to consider me, frowning worriedly. “I mean, what information could this man have that the amazing Drood family doesn’t already have? Secrets don’t stay secrets long.”
“Some do,” I said. “And Alexander King has been around . . . He might not have made history, but he certainly helped shape it from behind the scenes. There’s no telling what a man like that might know. In the hidden world of spies, there are often secrets within secrets. If anyone might know what we don’t, it would be Alexander King.”
“So, you have to go.” Molly sat upright, hugging her knees to her bare chest, deliberately looking straight ahead so she wouldn’t have to look at me. “All right; I get it. Duty calls, even after all you’ve done for your family, and all it’s done to you. You always were far too loyal for your own good.” She turned abruptly to fix me with her huge dark eyes, and then reached out and tweaked my left nipple hard, to make sure she had my full attention. “You stay sharp, Eddie, and do whatever you have to to win this bloody game. Meanwhile, I’ll talk to some of my friends and allies. People who wouldn’t talk to the infamous Droods. See what they have to say about Alexander bloody King.”
“Of course, Molly. You can let go of my nipple now. Please.”
She let go and looked away again. “I may be out of touch for a while. I have some family business to take care of.”
“It’s not your uncle Harvey again, is it?” I said. “The one who thinks he’s a giant rabbit?”
“No, it’s my sister, Isabella. She says she has news. She says she might, just might, have a lead on why my parents were killed by your family. The real reason, not the rubbish they fobbed you off with.”
“I have been trying to get at the truth,” I said.
“I know you have, sweetie.”
“In a family business the size of the Droods’, there’s often a lot of stuff going on where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Things are done because they need to be done and are only officially authorised afterwards. If at all. A lot of the records from that period are a mess, thanks to interference by the Zero Tolerance faction.”
“There’s more,” said Molly. Her voice was very serious. She still didn’t look at me. “Isabella says the death of my parents is linked to the death of your parents. That they were killed for the same reason: because of something they both knew.”
I didn’t know what to say. My parents were Drood field agents, killed in action in the Basque area, largely due to insufficient advance planning and unreliable intelligence. Or that was what my family told me. But like so many other things where my family was concerned, that might or might not be true.
“You be careful,” I said to Molly finally. “If my family finds out that you’re digging into Drood history, into secrets so awful they’re still hiding them from me . . . You be really careful, Molly. You have no idea what my family is capable of when it comes to protecting itself. What makes your sister so sure about this? Who’s she been talking to?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” said Molly. “You wouldn’t approve.”
“Molly . . .”
“Eddie, trust me; you don’t want to know. Now leave this to me. You concentrate on the Independent Agent and winning his stupid game. When it’s all over, come back here to me, and I’ll tell you what I’ve found out. And then we’ll decide together what to do. To avenge the murder of our parents.”
“Yes,” I said. “We will do that. The guilty will be punished. Whoever they turn out to be.”
We lay back down on the green grass, side by side. The birds were singing, and a pleasant cool breeze gusted across our naked bodies. The air was rich with the scents of grass and earth and living things. I stared up at the sky and thought of many things.
“If, by some foul treachery, you don’t win,” said Molly Metcalf. “If you don’t come back . . . I will kill Alexander King for you.”
“Yes,” I said. “You do that.”
CHAPTER THREE
In the Court of the Cryptic King
Fog, fog, everywhere, and not a bit of it real. When I stepped through the Merlin Glass, the world disappeared, replaced by thick gray walls of slowly swirling mists. Endless shades of gray, cold and damp, diffusing the light and deadening all the sounds. I glanced behind me, but the Glass had already shut itself down back in the Hall. I was on my own.
I could feel a hard surface beneath my feet and the bitter cold searing my bare skin. The air was thin but bracing, so it seemed I was probably in the right place at least, somewhere deep in the Swiss Alps. I couldn’t see a damned thing. The fog churned around me, thick and deep, like water at the bottom of a great gray ocean, and I had a strong feeling there was something else there in the fog with me. It wasn’t real fog; I could tell by the way it glowed. This was flux fog: the pearly shades that mark where the barriers of the world have grown thin and possibilities are everything.
I definitely wasn’t alone. There were dim, dark shapes moving in the mists aro
und me, circling unhurriedly like sharks hoping for the taste of blood in the water. There were faraway voices, like the echoes of old friends and enemies talking in forgotten rooms, and a constant sense of something important about to happen. I stood still, refusing to be tempted or intimidated into unwise action, while slow heavy footsteps sounded all around me and dark shapes drifted in and out of focus as though struggling to become firm and fixed. In a flux fog, the harsh and solid places of the world become soft and malleable, and all kinds of things become possible. I stood my ground, holding my calm before me like a shield. Make a sudden move in a flux fog, and you could end up someone else before you knew it.
Besides, I still wasn’t entirely sure where I’d arrived. I’d given the Merlin Glass the exact coordinates for Alexander King’s retreat at Place Gloria, but all I knew for certain was that it was somewhere in the Swiss mountains. For all I knew, there could be one hell of a long drop in any direction.
And then a great wind blew up out of nowhere, a soundless blast of bitter cold air that blew all the fog away in a moment, and just like that I was standing on a deserted helicopter landing pad on the top of an artificially levelled-off mountain. The pale yellow marking lines were faded and broken, and the slumping half-rotten control tower clearly hadn’t been used in years. There were five other people on the landing pad with me, as far away as they could get and not actually fall off the mountain. None of them appeared immediately dangerous, so I struck a nonchalant pose and looked around me, taking in the view.
I was high enough up to take my breath away in more ways than one. Place Gloria was set right in the heart of the Swiss Alps, and the long broken-backed range of mountain ridges stretched away in every direction. Snow-covered peaks lay below me to every side, each with their own collars of drifting clouds under a sky so blue and pure it almost hurt to look at. The air was thin and bitter cold, burning in my lungs as I tried for deeper breaths.
I was standing on top of the world, a long way from anywhere at all.
The sound of approaching footsteps turned my head around, and I growled deep in my throat as I recognised who it was. He must have seen the cold rage in my face, but he didn’t slow his approach. The Blue Fairy might have been many things, but he never lacked for balls. He stopped a polite and safe distance away and waited to see what I would do. He looked . . . watchful but not especially worried. I did consider killing him, right there, on general principles, but it seemed likely we were both here as guests of Alexander King, personally selected for his great game, and I couldn’t afford to upset the legendary Independent Agent. Besides, it wouldn’t look good, to be seen to lose control so easily, so early on in the proceedings. There would be other times. I fixed the Blue Fairy with a cold stare and bowed my head to him very slightly.
“That’s better,” said the Blue Fairy in an infuriatingly calm and drawling voice. “Let us all play at being civilised, for the time being at least. No squabbling, no accusing, no fighting in the playground. This contest is too important to all of us to risk being thrown out for bad behaviour.”
“You’d know all about bad behaviour,” I said, and there was something in my voice that made him flinch and actually fall back a step. “You betrayed my trust. Stole a torc. Spat in the face of my family. There will be a reckoning, Blue. But . . . not yet. There will be time for many things, once I’ve kicked your nasty arse right out of the game.”
He tried to smile haughtily, but his heart wasn’t in it. I looked him over. The Blue Fairy looked a lot better than the last few times I’d seen him. He looked healthier, even younger, and while he still looked every one of his years, he carried them more easily. He’d lost some weight, his back was straight, and there was a new confidence about him. He was dressed in the height of Elizabethan fashion, all tights and padded jerkin and silk ruff. The ruff had been pulled low, to show off the stolen torc around his throat. The new style presumably came from his time at the Fae Court. The elves still affected the fashions of old England from when they’d last walked our earth. Partly because they’re stubborn, partly because they like to pretend humanity hadn’t changed since those days. Made it easier for them to look down on us. The Blue Fairy also wore a ceremonial breastplate of silver and brass, chased and pointed and curlicued to within an inch of its life and no doubt crawling with defensive magics and protections. I had to smile. Blue might think he was protected, but his armour was no match for mine.
Still, he looked . . . proud, arrogant, aristocratic. Very . . . elven.
“Being a thief and a traitor seems to agree with you,” I said finally. “You’re looking well, Blue. I’m pleased. Really. After all, where’s the fun in kicking the crap out of a sick old man?”
“How unkind,” said the Blue Fairy, fixing me with his best supercilious stare. “And I’m not a man; not anymore. I have put aside my humanity and embraced my elven heritage. It’s taken me many years to realise, but I was never cut out to be a man. To be just a man. I feel much more . . . me, as an elf.”
“We took you in,” I said. “Made you our guest in the Hall. Gave you a place among us, gave you a home and a purpose, respect and friends. And right in the middle of our war against the Hungry Gods, with the fate of the whole world in the balance . . . you stole a torc from us and ran away.”
“If you’re going to be an elf,” the Blue Fairy said easily, “go all the way. Or what’s the point?” He raised his left hand and ran the fingertips caressingly along the golden torc around his throat. “You should have told me, Eddie. You should have told me how the torc can make you feel . . . I never felt so alive. Like there’s nothing I can’t do.”
“You always were a sucker for a new drug, a new addiction,” I said. “Enjoy it while you can, Blue. I’ll take it back when I’m ready.” I considered him thoughtfully for a long moment, and he stirred uncomfortably under my gaze. I smiled. “What secrets did Alexander King offer you to sucker you into his game? Something you could use to protect you from the fury of the Droods?”
“I’m not alone anymore,” the Blue Fairy said defiantly. “I don’t need protecting. I have allies, support, and backing you wouldn’t believe.”
“Oh, please,” I said. “You really think the Fae Court will stand up for a taboo half-breed like you if the Drood family says, It’s him, or you?”
Give him credit, he actually managed a smile. “I’m not here to represent the Fae Court,” he said. “My allies are older and more powerful. I do not bend the knee to Titania and Oberon. I serve Queen Mab.”
I shuddered then, and it had nothing to do with the chill wind sweeping across the abandoned helicopter pad. Mab was an old name, and not a good one. If the long-exiled original Queen of Faerie was back, there would be fire and blood, death and destruction, and perhaps more than one world would be thrown down into horror and despair . . .
“You poor damned fool,” I said to the Blue Fairy, meaning it. “You never could resist backing an outsider, could you?”
He sneered at me, his face cold and inhuman. “Be afraid, Drood. Be very afraid. Now that Queen Mab has taken back the Ivory Throne from Titania and Oberon, she will lead the elves to a new destiny. We’re coming home, Eddie. All of us, all the elves that ever were, returning in power and glory to save the world from the savages who’ve ruined and spoiled it. We will trample humanity underfoot and stamp them back into the dirt they crawled out of.” He smiled suddenly, and it was not a human smile. “And just maybe, when we come, we’ll all be wearing torcs.”
This time, there was something in his voice that stopped me cold. But never let them know they’ve got you on the ropes. So I just stared calmly back at him and changed the subject.
“This is supposed to be a contest to find the greatest spy in the world,” I said. “Featuring the six greatest field agents operating today. So—and don’t take this the wrong way, Blue—what the hell are you doing here?”
“The young always forget that the old were young once,” said the Blue Fairy. “You only eve
r knew me as a broken old man, brought low by his own weaknesses, so you just assumed I’d always been like that. But back when I was your age, Eddie, I was a name to be reckoned with. I worked for anyone, for any cause, took on all the major players of the day with just my wits and a few craftily purloined weapons, and made them all cry like babies.”
“So what happened?” I said.
“What always happens. I got old, and I got slow,” said the Blue Fairy. His voice was dispassionate; he might have been talking about someone else. “I lost more cases than I won. I started leaning on the booze and the drugs to keep me sharp, to make me feel like I used to feel . . . It’s easy to fall off the edge, you know. All it takes is one really bad day and a disaster so bad you can’t lie to yourself anymore.” He looked at me almost pityingly. “I was just like you, Eddie. At the top of my game, convinced I had the world by the throat. It’s a long way to fall, and you wouldn’t believe how much it hurts when you hit the bottom. That’s your future, Eddie. That’s what you’ve got to look forward to.” He smiled suddenly. “But I have been given a second chance. The torc has made me young and sharp and alive again. I’m the player I used to be, the greatest field agent of my time.
“And what use is your youthful confidence in the face of all my years of experience? I’m back, Eddie, and I’m going to run circles around all of you.”
“That’s the torc speaking,” I said. But I wasn’t entirely sure.