“What are we about to do that we don’t want the Librarian to know about?” said Molly. “Crack open a book that’s been sealed for centuries and write rude comments in the margins? Steal something? What?”
“I’m going to use the Merlin Glass to transport us directly to the Wulfshead Club,” I said.
“Okay . . . And why do we need to be so secretive about that?”
“Because technically speaking, I’m not supposed to have it. On the family’s orders, I handed the Glass over to my uncle Jack shortly before his death, so he could examine it. But he didn’t have time. He left the Glass to me, unofficially. The Librarian knows, because Jack trusted him to give me the Glass. But the Matriarch probably still thinks it’s in the Armoury, somewhere. And I think I’ll feel just that little bit more secure, having an advantage the Matriarch doesn’t know about.”
Molly nodded slowly. “I don’t want to go to the club, Eddie. Not yet. There’s somewhere else I think we ought to try first. Isabella once told me about this very private medical establishment just off Harley Street. The Peter Paul Clinic. I really believe they can help you.”
I looked at her thoughtfully. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of the place. And Harley Street and its environs used to be part of my regular beat, back when I was a field agent for London. Is it new?”
“Sort of,” said Molly. “And very specialized.”
She met my gaze steadily as I thought that over. She’d never been good at lying to me, but she’d always been very good at misdirection.
“What kind of specialists are we talking about here, Molly?”
“Hopeless cases,” said Molly. “Lost causes. If I’m remembering correctly, they have a really good track record when it comes to saving people everyone else had given up on.”
“Why didn’t you mention them before?”
“Because it’s a long shot, all right? And quite definitely illegal; not something I want to be discussing in front of your high-and-mighty relatives. They wouldn’t approve.”
“Ah,” I said. “One of those establishments . . . Look, Molly, thanks for the thought, but I’m really not keen on wasting time on possible miracle cures. Not when my time’s so short.”
“You can’t just give up!” said Molly. “You can’t just assume you’re going to die! Please, Eddie; I really think they can help you. Listen to me. Let me help you. You have to let me help you.”
“All right,” I said. “For you, Molly.”
She was right. I had given up. I was going to die, just like all of Dr DOA’s victims. I’d come to terms with that. All I had left was one last chance for justice and revenge. But if it would keep Molly happy, to chase after some quack’s home-made remedy, then I’d go along. For now.
I reached into the pocket dimension I keep inside my trouser pocket, and brought out the Merlin Glass. Just a simple hand mirror, at first glance; an oval glass in a scrolled-silver back and handle. Nothing you’d look at twice in an antiques shop. I was always surprised at how light it felt in my hand, given how much historical weight it carried. But that’s often the way, in the hidden world. It’s always the most dangerous things that like to look most innocent. Mr Hyde, spying on the world through the eyes of Dr Jekyll. Molly looked dubiously at the Merlin Glass, not quite turning up her nose.
“You really believe we can trust that thing? Given how many times it’s let you down? It’s almost like the Glass has developed a mind of its own. Along with a really nasty sense of humour.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” I said. “Considering who made it. But we don’t have a choice. You’ve burned through a lot of magics today. A cross-country teleport spell would wipe you out; wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe,” said Molly, not giving way in the least. “I could still surprise you.”
“You always do,” I said generously. “But this is not the time for you to be left defenceless. Once word gets out that I’m . . . weakened, you can be sure vultures will start to gather. Like the Manichean Monk on the airship. If my family’s enemies smell blood in the water and come looking for me with trouble in mind . . . I’m going to need you strong enough to protect me. For when I can’t.”
“All right!” said Molly. “I get it! When did you get so damned pessimistic, Eddie?”
“Right after I found out I was dying,” I said.
“You’re not dead yet!”
“No, I’m not. I’m just being practical. So, we go with the Glass. Yes?”
“Even after everything the Librarian just said about it?”
“Nothing I didn’t already know,” I said. “And given how many times I’ve already used the Glass, I think if it was going to do something really nasty, it would have done it by now.”
“But what if it is guarding something?” said Molly. She looked at the Glass in my hand as if it were a snake that had just started hissing. “You’ve said before . . . there have been times when you were convinced there was another presence in the Glass.”
“As long as it doesn’t turn out to be a Victorian girl with long blonde hair, or an Oxford mathematics genius . . .”
“If it was up to me, I’d exorcise that Glass with a specially blessed mallet,” said Molly.
I held the hand mirror up before me. Molly looked over my shoulder, crowding in close. All I could see in the reflection were Molly and me. I looked tired and drawn; she looked . . . stretched thin. I made myself concentrate, studying every detail carefully and looking for something, anything, out of place. The angel had only confirmed what I’d suspected for some time now: When I looked at myself in the Glass, I wasn’t the only one looking back from the other side of the mirror. I didn’t say anything to Molly. I didn’t want her upset. Because the angel had been right, about death hovering over me . . .
In the end, what I thought or felt didn’t matter. We had to use the Merlin Glass to get around because we had a lot of ground to cover. And not much time to do it in.
Molly looked behind her several times, comparing the scene in the mirror with reality, and finally shrugged.
“All right, Eddie. Let’s do it. Maybe we are worrying about nothing . . .”
“That would make a nice change,” I said.
I shook the Glass out to the size of a Door, and instructed it to show us Harley Street. Our reflection was gone in a moment, replaced by a view I recognised immediately; it was the scene half-way down one of the most exclusive, not to mention expensive, streets in London. Where you could find all kinds of doctors and surgeons, alternative therapies and outright quackeries; science and magic and more weird shit than you could shake a caduceus at. Remedies from the Past and the Future, presented by highly qualified men and women with arcane areas of knowledge, professional smiles, and the souls of accountants. Medicine without limits, if you could afford it. Given some of the more outré establishments I remembered from Harley Street, it was just possible someone there might be able to help me.
I felt the first faint twinge of hope, like sensation returning to a numbed extremity. Painful, but encouraging.
People hurried up and down the crowded pavements with stressed and preoccupied faces, intent on their own business and unaware of the opening the Merlin Glass had made. It’s always been good at covering its tracks. I stepped through into Harley Street with Molly treading on my heels.
London, in the evening. Amber street lights under a darkening sky already speckled with stars, and the thin sliver of a new moon. The fresh chilly air was a relief after the close atmosphere of the Old Library. No one in the street saw us arrive—one of the more useful side effects of the Glass. If they noticed us at all, they just assumed we must have arrived the same way they did, quietly and surreptitiously. Because no one comes to Harley Street for trivial matters, or the kind of problem one wishes to discuss with family and friends. I shook the Glass back down to hand-mirror size, and slipped it into
my pocket.
There wasn’t a lot of traffic around; it was mostly black taxicabs dropping off important people. Who stared straight ahead as they headed for their destination by the shortest possible route. And if by some unfortunate chance they should happen to bump into someone they knew, both parties would have the good manners not to acknowledge each other.
An ambulance raced down the road, lights and sirens going. The taxis pulled aside to let it pass. Everyone paused to watch the ambulance go by like it was an albatross, a harbinger of doom. They watched till it was out of sight, and only then started moving again. Breathing a little more easily because the shadow of death had passed them by. Another soldier had stopped the bullet.
“I prefer the ambulances you see in old movies,” I said. “When they had ringing bells, instead of sirens. A far more pleasant sound.”
“People don’t tend to get out of the way of pleasant sounds,” said Molly.
“You’re so practical,” I said.
“One of us has to be,” said Molly.
I looked around. “So, where is this Peter Paul Clinic?”
“Not far.”
“Walking distance?”
“Of course!” said Molly.
“Then let’s get a move on,” I said. “We have things to be about.”
Molly looked at me. “More important than this?”
“Probably,” I said.
“Don’t you have any faith in me?” said Molly.
“In you,” I said.
We set off. Harley Street is basically two long rows of Georgian terraces, tall, narrow establishments crowded together, with astronomically high rents to keep out the riff-raff. Carefully anonymous facades hide all kinds of security measures, to protect patients’ privacy. Lots of doors, but hardly any nameplates. Either you knew who and what you were looking for, or you were probably in the wrong place. Most of the heavy, secretly reinforced doors would only open to buzzers after you’d murmured the right passWords. And even then, you had to get past the heavily armed receptionist.
I looked around, taking it all in. Being in Harley Street again brought back memories.
“All right,” said Molly. “Why are you smiling like that?”
“Just thinking of the last time I was here,” I said. “I’d been sent to track down an important politician who’d made the mistake of going walkabout in the darker backstreets of Bangkok. Where he had a very close encounter with a lady thing. As a result of which he’d ended up pregnant, with the exact opposite of a love child. My family had seen Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen, so I was sent here to terminate the pregnancy with extreme prejudice.”
“Eddie!” said Molly. “You didn’t . . .”
“No, of course I didn’t,” I said. “Just shot him with an ice needle made from holy water. That did the trick. My life was so much simpler then.”
I raised my Sight to check what was really going on around me in the hidden world. If Humanity could see who and what it shares this world with every day . . . Humanity would crap itself. Though it has to be said, Harley Street was a special case. With so much Life and Death around, and so many unnatural procedures constantly being practised, the balance between the two states has been seriously disturbed. All kinds of weird shit tend to congregate in Harley Street, and even weirder people.
Ghosts walked in and out of buildings, some of which weren’t there any more. Images trapped in loops of repeating Time, like insects in amber. A group of teenage girl vampires, in heavy caked makeup to hide their industrial-strength sunblock, came trotting down the street in dark goth outfits, hiding in plain sight. An alien Grey walked hand in hand with a Reptiloid—Romeo and Juliet from outer space. Moments like that give me hope. A demonic half-breed in a Savile Row suit and an Old School Tie smiled at me as he recognised my torc. Hellfire burned briefly in his eyes. It looked like he was about to say something, but then he caught Molly’s gaze and thought better of it. The hellspawn bowed politely, and moved on, its shadow hurrying to catch up.
Everybody comes to Harley Street.
I looked at Molly. “That demon knew you.”
“Probably.”
“And?”
“Best not to ask.”
“That covers so much of your life,” I said.
Looking up and down the street, I was pleased to see many of the old familiar establishments were still doing business. Even though it had been . . . what? Ten years since I was last here? Where does the time go . . . Saint Baphomet’s Hospital still had the same brutally ugly exterior, because it wasn’t there for the nice things in life. It specialized in treating the more unpleasant supernatural illnesses and unnatural conditions. Where the cure was often not only worse than the illness, but a damned sight more expensive. Right next door was Dr Dee & Sons & Sons. The old firm. There to deal with the more extreme forms of exorcism. Its unofficial motto, We get the Hell out. They guaranteed to save your soul but not necessarily your mind. A little farther down stood the VooDoo Lounge, for those who needed to consult the Loa Courts. People forget that voodoo isn’t just a system of magic; it’s also a religion practised all across the world, with a huge pantheon of gods. Most of whom are in dispute with one another at any given time. And since a large part of voodoo worship is based on possession of the living by the loa, things are bound to get a bit argumentative on occasion. You need a really good advocate if you’re arguing a case in the Loa Courts.
Molly led the way, striding it out, and everyone hurried to get out of her way. Some people clearly recognised her, some just as clearly didn’t, but they all knew trouble on two legs when they saw it. Molly was in no mood to be messed with. Though to be honest, I would be hard-pressed to name a time when she was. I had to hurry to keep up.
“An angel this morning, and now a demon,” I said. “It’s like the afterlife is rubbing my nose in it; just to remind me how close it’s getting. Or maybe it’s because the afterlife is drawing nearer that I’m seeing its denizens more clearly.” I looked thoughtfully at Molly. “What do you know about the afterlife, Molly? I mean, really know? You’re always saying you’ve been to Heaven and Hell and everywhere in between . . . but you never talk about what you found there. Or at least, not to me.”
“No,” said Molly, not looking at me. “I never talk about that to anyone.”
“I spent some time in Limbo,” I said. “In the Winter Hall. Whatever that was . . .”
“Think of it as a waiting room,” said Molly. “Or a holding cell.”
I could tell she really didn’t want to talk about it, but that just made me all the more determined to press the point.
“Talk to me, Molly,” I said. “I need to know what you know.”
“There’s nothing I can tell you!” said Molly. She finally turned her head to meet my gaze, but instead of the stubbornness I was expecting, her face was full of helpless concern. Like someone had asked her for a lifeline, and all she had was empty hands. “I don’t remember anything of what I saw or experienced in the Other Realms, because I’m not allowed to. Mortals can’t know such things, because it would interfere with our experience of this world.”
“Come on, we’ve spent our whole careers interacting with angels and demons, and all manner of agents from Above and Below! We’ve known any number of people who’ve slept with demons or channelled angels . . .”
“I know!” said Molly. “And if you think about it for a moment, you’ll remember none of them have ever said anything useful. Or in any way illuminating. And it’s not because some of them didn’t want to. You know hellspawn love to mess with our minds. But anything that enters our world, from Above or Below, has restraints placed upon it. As a condition of entry.”
“Who decides that?” I said. “Who enforces that?”
“Who do you think?” said Molly. “These things are decided where all the things that matter are decided—in the
Courts of the Holy, and the Houses of Pain. And keep your voice down, Eddie! You never know who might be listening, especially in a place like this. Yes, we’ve met angels and demons, but they might not have been what they seemed, or what they claimed to be. They could have been lying, or playing games with us, or any number of equally worrying things. I know what you want, Eddie. You want me to tell you what’s going to happen to you after you die. But I don’t know.”
“Does anybody?” I said.
“No one whose answer I’d trust,” said Molly. “Beyond a certain point, the maps just end. Usually in large open spaces marked Here Be Mysteries. Everything we know, or think we know, about the afterlife . . . can only usefully be discussed through metaphors. Simpler truths, to allow us to contemplate a far more complicated situation. There are some things human beings really aren’t meant to know. And believe me, my sisters and I have tried very hard to find out. Often in disturbing and subversive ways.”
“Doesn’t surprise me for a moment,” I said dryly. “Who have you talked to about this?”
“Zombies and vampires, ghosts and ghouls, death-walkers and necronauts,” Molly said in an entirely matter-of-fact way. “And we couldn’t get a straight answer out of any of them. Or at least, nothing that wasn’t immediately contradicted by the next person we talked to. The only thing they would agree on . . . is that you can’t trust anything the dead tell you. Because the dead always have their own agenda.”
“It seems to me I might have heard that before,” I said. “Did you try the Ghost Finders?”
Molly sniffed loudly. “Amateur night.”
“Snob,” I said, not unkindly.
Molly looked at me with real pain in her eyes. “I wish I could be more of a comfort to you. But I don’t know, and anyone who says they do is either lying, or has a vested interest in making you believe them. Would you rather I lied to you?”
“Maybe later,” I said. “You know, it occurs to me that we’ve been walking for quite some time. Are you sure you know where you’re going? Should we stop someone, and beat directions out of them?”