Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel

  “You can’t ask the Carnacki Institute for help without revealing who you are,” said Molly. “And the same with the Department of the Uncanny and the Regent of Shadows…”

  “One thing secret organisations are good at,” I said, “is keeping secrets. Especially from each other. Because you never know how valuable such information might become. And then you can trade it.…”

  Molly started to snap her fingers, and then stopped. “Damn. I don’t even have enough power left to magic up a Disabled sticker.”

  “This is London,” I said. “They’re not so easily impressed here. I think I’ll put my faith in the Armourer’s security measures. This car can look after itself. If anyone does try messing with it, they’ll wake up somewhen next year.”

  But Molly had already gone back to studying Buckingham Palace. “Why is the Carnacki Institute based here, of all places? I mean, I know they’re part of the Establishment, but…Is the queen an honorary ghostbuster? Is Prince Philip bothered by poltergeists?”

  “Not officially. It’s because the Institute is a royal charter, not a political department, like Uncanny. Apparently Elizabeth I wanted the Institute where she could keep an eye on it, and subsequent monarchs continued the tradition. It does mean that Catherine Latimer’s private office is protected not only by its own shields, but also by the palace’s. Of course, the Merlin Glass should be able to punch right through them.…”

  “Should?” said Molly, immediately. “I really don’t like that word in this context, Eddie. What if it can’t?”

  “Bugs on a windshield,” I said. “Raise your Sight, Molly. Take a good look at the palace, and See what I’m Seeing.”

  With the Drood torc at my throat, I can See the world as it really is and not as most people think it is. Though mostly I choose not to, for my own peace of mind. With the Sight, Buckingham Palace and its immediate surroundings all but disappeared under layer upon layer of powerful protections: overlapping screens and shields and deadly defences laid down over centuries.

  “Okay,” said Molly, after a while. “Those…are serious protections. How the hell did that burglar get in? You know, the one who just wandered around till he ended up in the queen’s bedroom and she had to call for help?”

  “Simple answer: He didn’t,” I said. “They let him in. To make the rest of the world think they only had standard protections. Anyone who tried to follow in that guy’s footsteps got flash-fried into free-floating atoms for some time afterwards.”

  Molly gave me a stern look. “And the Merlin Glass should get us past all that?”

  “Oh, almost certainly,” I said cheerfully. “If I understand how the Glass works, and I’m perfectly ready to be told I don’t, I think it opens a door on this side of the shields and another door on the other side. And then we step through without bothering the shields at all. They don’t even know anything’s happened.”

  “But if they do detect us?”

  “It’s been fun knowing you, Molly.”

  “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “If there was somewhere else, I’d be there,” I said. “But we need access to the Regent of Shadows, and Catherine Latimer is the only one I know who can get us there. And as long as Crow Lee is on our trail, the clock is ticking. He can’t let even one Drood live, for fear I’ll find a way to bring the rest back. And then everything he’s risked will have been for nothing. Now grit your teeth and be a brave little witch, and there shall be dark chocolate Jaffa Cakes for tea.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Molly. “We’re dropping in on the very dangerous boss herself, in her very own private and heavily defended office? Because you’ve been there once before? Colour me officially uneasy, Eddie. Not many get in there and get out again with all their favourite parts still attached.”

  “I did her a favour once on a case I still don’t care to talk about. She wasn’t exactly happy with the way I handled it, because the Droods got more out of it than the Institute did, but we still parted on…pretty good terms.”

  “So she isn’t necessarily going to be pleased to see you?”

  “Is anyone?”

  “What if she point-blank refuses to help you,” said Molly, “now that the rest of your family isn’t around to intimidate her into playing nice?”

  “She doesn’t get to say no,” I said. “I’m a Drood.”

  “My tough guy,” Molly said admiringly. “Still, weren’t we worried that using something as powerful as the Merlin Glass might attract all the wrong kinds of attention?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “But not until it’s far too late. I’m not planning on sticking around here that long.”

  “They might try to stop us leaving.”

  “Like to see them try.”

  “Okay,” said Molly. “We have now officially crossed the line from tough guy into cocky and downright arrogant. That’s not like you, Eddie.”

  “I’m the Last Drood,” I said. “I can’t afford to be stopped by anything or anyone. Not even myself. Not when my whole family is depending on me.”

  “You can’t help them if you’re dead or stripped of your torc in some underground prison!”

  “Well, then,” I said. “I’d better not let that happen. Had I?”

  “Cocky and arrogant,” Molly said sadly. “I am a bad influence on you, Eddie.” She looked dubiously at the Merlin Glass as I held it up before us. “Was the Glass we knew ever this powerful? I’m not sure I would have trusted the old Glass in this situation.”

  “It got you into the Timeless Moment to rescue me from Castle Shreck,” I said. “But it doesn’t really matter. Needs must, when the Devil is breathing heavily down the back of your neck. One thing on our side: once we’re in the boss’s office, her shields should be more than enough to hide us from our enemies.”

  “Including Crow Lee?”

  “Let us both fervently hope so.”

  I concentrated on the Merlin Glass through my torc, visualising the exact coordinates for Catherine Latimer’s very private office, and the Glass just sat there in my hand and refused to budge. I kept telling it where to go, and it just kept refusing. The shields around the office were so powerful the Glass couldn’t find anything to lock on to. Buckingham Palace’s shields weren’t the problem, just the office’s. Which told me rather more about the nature of the Carnacki Institute’s shields than I was comfortable knowing. I looked reluctantly at Molly.

  “Problem…We can’t go straight to the boss after all. She’s protected by something so powerful it even spooks the Merlin Glass. You know…it might actually be safer if you were to stay here, Molly. In the car. Uncle Jack’s protections will look after you, and you can always do a runner if necessary.”

  “No way in hell,” Molly said flatly. “You’re not going anywhere without me. Not while you’re still pretending to be all cocky and arrogant to hide the fact that you’re still grieving for your family. Someone’s got to be there with you, to be reasonable on your behalf. And, yes, I do know that by volunteering myself in that department I am indulging in cosmic levels of irony, but…How about this: If you can’t go directly to the boss, can you get to her indirectly?”

  “Of course! Yes! Molly, you’re a genius. I had to wait in the secretary’s office before I got to see Catherine Latimer, her own bad self, last time I was there.” I concentrated on the Glass again, and it locked onto the secretary’s office immediately. “There you go! A definite weak spot in the Institute’s security, Molly, which I shall be quite sure not to mention to the boss. In case I need to use it again.”

  “You see?” said Molly. “You’re getting smarter all the time just from being around me. Come on, let’s do this. Before we have a rush of common sense to the brain. I’m just in the mood to bully a functionary.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Clearly you have never heard of the boss’s secretary. Heather does not just type and file; she is also the boss’s last line of defence. In that you have to get past Heather to get to the boss. Heather is
the most heavily armed person in the whole place. She’s not just there to smile politely at visitors; she’s there to be very, very dangerous. So be prepared.…”

  “Oh, I am,” said Molly. “Really. You have no idea.”

  “Cocky, and arrogant with it,” I said.

  “You know you love it.”

  I armoured up. The golden metal swept over me in a moment, sealing me off from the world. The bitter cold was still there, but I was getting used to that. Which would have worried me if I’d had the time to be worried. Molly looked at me dubiously.

  “Is that really necessary? Just for a quick drop-in and a chat?”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “Really. You have no idea.”

  “Shut up and get on with it.”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  I shook the hand mirror out to door size, and immediately I could see Heather’s office through it. I stepped quickly through, Molly all but treading on my heels in her eagerness, and the Merlin Glass immediately slammed itself shut behind me, pushed through my armoured side, and hid in my secret pocket. Out of harm’s way. It occurred to me that if the Glass was that scared, then I ought to be, too. But I just didn’t have the time.

  The office itself was small and cramped and drab; just a close, windowless room with Heather the secretary sitting quietly at her desk, leafing through some paperwork. She looked up, startled, as Molly and I appeared out of nowhere, right in front of her, and she actually gaped for just a moment at the sight of a Drood in his armour. Which is one of the helpful things Drood armour is psychologically designed to do.

  Heather herself was a calm, professional-looking sort, pretty in a pleasantly blond, curly-haired sort of way. She wore a white blouse over a navy skirt and had a really big silver ankh hanging round her neck. Anyone else would have seen her as sweet and harmless, just another secretary. Which was, of course, the point. I knew better, but I was still caught off guard when Heather threw off her surprise in a moment, pulled a really big gun out of nowhere and opened fire on me. The damned thing—some kind of energy weapon I didn’t even recognise—was so big she needed both hands to aim it. She just blasted away without even saying a word to me or Molly, and the energy blast hit me right in the centre of my golden chest. The impact was enough to send me staggering back a step. I dug in my heels, regained my balance, while Heather fired at me again and again, the energy beams vividly bright in the enclosed space, leaving shimmering trails of Cherenkov radiation hanging on the air behind them. I leaned forward into the energy fire and advanced slowly and deliberately into the concussion blasts. My armour soaked up the deadly energies and the impacts with increasing ease. It was like wading forward against a strong chest-high tide, but it took me only a few steps to reach the desk, sweep it out of my way with one blow and then snatch the energy gun right out of Heather’s hands. I crumpled it easily in my golden gauntlets, and all the little lights flashing on the weapon went out. I dropped the scrunched-up mess to the floor, and it dented the floor when it hit.

  Out of nowhere Heather produced an aboriginal pointing bone. Molly slapped it out of her hand. The bone flew away across the office. Heather grabbed Molly’s wrist and flipped her right over with a swift judo move. Molly barely had time to get out a surprised obscenity before she was flying through the air, upside down, and heading for the nearest wall. She managed to turn enough to take most of the impact on her shoulder, but the impact was still hard enough to knock all the breath out of her. She slid slowly down the wall, her eyes half-closed and her mouth slack.

  I advanced on Heather. She snapped her fingers and the pointing bone reappeared in her hand. The bone was old cold brown, steeped in time and accumulated power. She stabbed the nasty thing at me, and the whole front of my golden armour reverberated like a struck gong, and I slammed to a halt as though I’d just been hit in the chest by an invisible battering ram. To my utter astonishment, circular fingernail cracks radiated across my golden chest, a whole series of widening rings like ripples on a pond. I froze for a moment and then the cracks healed themselves, vanishing away as the golden metal re-formed. Heather froze when she saw that, and that was all the time I needed to surge forward and snatch the pointing bone out of her hand. I must have hurt Heather’s fingers when I did, but she didn’t make a sound. I crushed the bone in my armoured grasp. The bone cracked loudly and then collapsed in on itself. I opened my golden hand, and only dust and a few very small bone fragments fell out.

  While I was busy showing off, Heather turned away and retrieved something else from her overturned desk. It turned out to be a shillelagh, a huge gnarled club made from black oak and decorated with all kinds of carved runes and sigils. Given the size and weight of the thing, I was frankly astonished Heather could even heft it. She came straight at me, and when I went to take the club from her, she avoided me expertly and hit me really hard around the head and shoulders. My armour made loud booming noises of distress with every hit, and while I couldn’t feel the impact, the sheer ferocity of her attack drove me back several steps.

  She flailed away at me as though the shillelagh was weightless to her, hitting me from this side and from that until finally I was sure my armour could take it. And then I snapped a golden hand forward into just the right place to stop the shillelagh in midblow. I held it firmly, and Heather’s hands skidded off her end of the club. That must have hurt her, too. She looked at me with something like shock as I hefted the shillelagh easily in one golden hand and then tossed it across the room to Molly, who was already back on her feet. She caught the club easily, hefted it appraisingly and then advanced on Heather with the light of battle in her eyes. Heather looked at her and then at me, and then headed for her desk again. Molly got there first and held the shillelagh threateningly over Heather’s work computer.

  “Hold it right there! Or I’ll kill your files!”

  Heather glared at her. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Trust me,” I said. “She will. This is Molly Metcalf.”

  “Oh, poot,” said Heather.

  Things then took a turn for the weird. All four walls of the enclosed office were covered in portraits: professionally painted and photographed faces of old Carnacki Institute agents who had fallen in the field. There were an awful lot of them, men and women who had covered themselves in glory, if not renown. I had heard them referred to as the Honoured Members. It reminded me of the long gallery of Drood portraits back at the Hall. All of them gone now, of course.

  All the faces on the office walls suddenly came alive in their frames, and one by one opened their mouths to roar and howl in fury, sounding the alarm at our intrusion. The sound was deafening, overpowering. Even Heather flinched, and she had to be protected. My armour took most of the brunt, but the sound was still so loud and so harsh I couldn’t hear myself think. Molly’s face screwed up with pain, but she still managed to stride right up to the nearest wall and glare right into the howling faces.

  “Shut the hell up! Or I will make your paint run and your colours fade!”

  And just like that the sound shut off and all the faces went back to being portraits and photos again. They must have been listening when I said Molly’s name. Of course, they wouldn’t know her power levels were at an all-time low.…Molly smiled brilliantly, stepped back and shouldered her shillelagh. I armoured down and smiled at Heather.

  “Dear God! It’s you, Eddie!” Heather actually relaxed a little, and sank back onto her chair. “I should have known; if anyone could survive the complete destruction of Drood Hall, it would be you. We all thought the Droods were gone forever! I’m so glad you’re all right!” She broke off to run one hand quickly through her dishevelled hair, took a deep breath and then fixed me with her best professional smile. “So, Eddie. Do you have an appointment?”

  “Guess,” I said.

  “Catherine Latimer doesn’t see anyone without an appointment.…”

  “She’ll see us,” said Molly.

  Heather’s gaze flickered from me to Molly a
nd then back again. She was still smiling, but I could sense the effort.

  “We have to see the boss, Heather,” I said. “And I mean right now. If you’ve heard what’s happened to my family, you know how urgent this is. And how upset I am.”

  “I really thought you were dead,” said Heather. “When you just appeared here, I thought your enemies must have taken the armour for themselves.…Why didn’t you use the main entrance and the proper protocols?”

  “Too many eyes and ears,” I said. “I’m the Last Drood, but I don’t want just anyone knowing that.”

  “The boss has already arranged for formal wreaths from the Institute,” said Heather. “To show our respect. Not that we could send them anywhere, of course, but we will find somewhere suitable to put them. Is this really the infamous Molly Metcalf? I always thought she’d be taller. Please ask her not to kill my computer; I have a lot of vitally important typing to finish before the day’s over.”

  I looked at Molly and she sniffed loudly, in an I’m-making-no-promises sort of way.

  “I am keeping this shillelagh!” she said loudly. “I like it and it’s mine now. Just in case anyone starts getting snotty. Always wanted one…”

  “Let her have it,” I said to Heather. “She’ll only make a fuss.”

  “I can always get another one from the armoury,” said Heather. “One of our janitors hand carves them on his own time. You still can’t see the boss without making an appointment. Even if you do trash my office and murder my filing system.”

  I looked thoughtfully at the door behind her desk. The very heavily reinforced steel door with no handle or electronic lock on this side that led into the boss’s office. I didn’t have to raise my Sight to know it was crawling with powerful protections. I grinned at Heather.

  “Get out your camera phone. I think I’m about to make history.”