“Is he all right?” I said.
“Oh, he’s fine. But the hotel will never be the same again.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds like Eddie.”
“What about the Immortals?” said Isabella.
“It’s not easy to talk about them,” said the Waking Beauty. “They’re powerful, they’re vicious, and they’re everywhere . . . and no one knows who they really are. They can be anyone, anywhere, hiding behind faces you’ve trusted all your life. But if you want to know what I know, you’re going to have to pay my price.”
Isabella nodded slowly. “I know. You want an end to your bargain, to your curse. You want to be able to sleep again.”
“Okay, you’ve left me behind now,” I said. “Bring me up to speed. How do you know what she needs, Is?”
“Because I did my homework before we came here,” she said. “I don’t just go rushing into things. Like you.”
I ignored her, giving all my attention to the Waking Beauty. “If you break your bargain, you’ll die. Won’t you?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. But I’m ready to find out.”
“So, who did you make your deal with?” I said. “The Devil?”
Carys Galloway snorted loudly. “Please, I’m older than Christianity, and your limited concept of the Enemy. I made my deal with Queen Mab, original leader of the Faerie. Humanity, as such, hadn’t been around long then, and Mab saw us as no threat to her people. But still, we had something they didn’t have, something Mab wanted for herself. The Fae don’t sleep, don’t dream, and that limits their imagination, their creativity. Faeries are always curious, always wanting what they don’t have . . . So Mab chose me. I don’t know why. And we made a deal; my ability to sleep and dream, in return for immortality. I had no idea what I was giving up, and she had no idea what she was getting. Mab slept, and dreamed, and was never the same afterwards. She dreamed marvellous new cities, and weapons, and customs, and woke to make them real. She made the elves mighty. But she also became a little less Fae, and a little more human. Perhaps that’s why Oberon and Titania were able to end her reign, replace her, and throw her down into Hell. I like to think so.”
“Mab is back,” I said. “She rules the Fae again, in the Sundered Lands.”
“I know,” said Isabella. “I met with her, some time back.” Again, this was all news to me, but Isabella silenced me with a hard glare before I could ask any more questions. She’d tell me what she thought I needed to know, on her own time. She always was the bossy one.
“I also made a deal with Mab,” said Isabella. “I took her humanity from her, so that she could be pure elf again, and retake the Ivory Throne. I took back her ability to sleep and dream. And I have it right here, with me.”
She placed a small plastic snow globe on the table, between us and the Waking Beauty. It looked like a cheap toy, until you looked at it closely, and then wished you hadn’t. Behind the continually falling snow, something looked back . . .
“All you have to do is break this, and sleep and dreams will be yours again,” said Isabella. “Whether you’ll still be immortal or not . . . is probably up you. You’re not losing anything, after all, just getting something back.”
The Waking Beauty cupped her large hands around the snow globe, staring unblinkingly into its unknown depths. “You have no idea how tired you can get, when you haven’t been able to sleep for thousands of years. Never any rest, never any ease, never any break from the sheer effort of living, and thinking . . . You can have too much of a good thing.”
“You’ve got what you wanted,” said Isabella. “Now tell me about the Immortals.”
“I’m the only one who can tell you about them, because I was there before them,” said Carys Galloway. “I am the only living human being older than both the Droods and the Immortals. I was already centuries old when the other-dimensional entity known as the Heart crash-landed in ancient Britain. When the Heart materialised, its emanations affected the genetic material of every living thing for miles around. Most died, some mutated, and a few survived by making deals with the Heart. The Druid ancestors of the Droods were granted the armour they requested, so they could be shamans for the human tribe.
“But one man got to the Heart before them, and he asked to be made immortal. Him, and his wife and children. Apparently this amused the Heart, and it agreed. The first Immortal went back to his family, and passed his blessing on to them, and so were born the Immortals. They can be killed, if you try really hard, but otherwise they just go on, and on and on and on. Fortunately they breed only rarely, and never with each other. Their children are half-breeds, incredibly long-lived but not immortal. They serve the Elders in the family. Down the centuries, the Immortals have learned the art of flesh dancing, of shape-changing. They can take on the appearance of anyone, be anyone, infiltrate any organisation, or family, so that they can shape the world as they wish, for their benefit. They are always on both sides of every conflict, whipping up the flames, growing rich and powerful on the proceeds of war. We’re just mayflies, to them. We don’t matter. Only family matters, to the Immortals. Remind you of anyone?
“And like the Droods, the Immortals take the long view. They deal in small, subtle changes, designed to bear useful fruit in three or even four generations time. No wonder no one ever detects the truth, of their slow and remorseless influence; not even the shadowy agencies who like to think they guard the world. The Immortals have been shaping and manipulating history for fifteen hundred years, right under the Droods’ noses.
“Anyone can be an Immortal. Even a Drood. They’ve all had many names and identities, down the years. Some of them you’d know. Some of them Eddie would recognise. How can you fight an enemy who can be anyone?”
“How does all of this tie in with the death of our parents?” I said, unable to hold back any longer.
“I have had dealings with the Droods, down the centuries,” said the Waking Beauty. “Perhaps mostly because they’re almost as old as I am. It’s good to have someone to talk to . . . But I never worked for the Immortals. At least, not knowingly. They use people, that’s all. But you can’t live as long as I have, and not hear things . . . And one of the things I’ve heard is that your parents and Eddie’s parents knew each other. They met in battle, and ended up as allies. Very secret allies. They found out something, you see, discovered something they couldn’t be allowed to tell anyone else. So a decision was made, to kill them and make it look like unfortunate accidents. The Immortals decided this, but the orders came from inside the Droods.
“The Immortals infiltrated the Droods long ago, and they’ve been steering policy, sabotaging missions, and leading them around by the nose for their own purposes, for centuries. So, go back to the Droods. Find the hidden traitors, and make them tell you what you need to know. And tell Eddie . . . to watch his back. Now go. I’m tired . . .”
We left her, sitting alone, staring into the depths of the snow globe.
I held Molly close to me, trying to make sense of everything she’d told me. Traitors, inside the Droods? Inside the Hall? People in my family, who weren’t family? Malevolent eyes watching me from behind trusted faces? And . . . if the Apocalypse Door was everything Molly said it was, then Doctor Delirium really was a Major Player at last, and a clear and present danger to the whole world.
“I shouldn’t have blown up at the Matriarch like that,” said Molly, cuddling up against me. “It’s hard being angry all the time. Sometimes, I just want to hold and be held. I’m glad you’re here, Eddie.”
“Hush,” I said. “Sleep. Everything will seem clearer, in the morning.”
It seemed only moments later when we were both awakened by a thunderous knocking on my bedroom door. The room was dark. I looked at the glowing face of the clock beside the bed; it was a little short of four in the morning. Someone was still pounding on my door, and yelling my name. I turned on the light, pulled a dressing gown around me, and went to the door. It wasn’t locked, but even in
an emergency a Drood’s room and privacy were sacrosanct. I pulled the door open, and there was Howard, Head of Operations. His face was grey with shock, and his eyes were wide. He looked like he’d been hit.
“What is it?” I said.
“You have to come with me, Eddie, you have to come now!” he said. “The Matriarch’s been murdered.”
CHAPTER THREE
Sudden Death at Drood Hall
Molly and I threw on some clothes while Howard waited impatiently outside in the corridor. I could hear him shuffling heavily from foot to foot. And all the time I was thinking, He has to be wrong. It has to be some kind of mistake. She can’t be dead. Not her. I reached out to Ethel with my mind.
“Ethel, what the hell is going on? Is the Matriarch really dead? Has she been murdered?”
I don’t know! said Ethel. I can’t tell! I can’t tell anything! The entire Hall is awake, thousands of minds, all of them yelling at once!
“Are we under attack? Has someone broken into the Hall?”
No, Ethel said immediately. All defences are in place, all protections are in order. We’re the only ones here.
By now, Molly and I were dressed and out the door, following Howard down the corridor to the Matriarch’s suite. The corridor looked dim and unfamiliar in this early hour of the morning, and my head was still half full of sleep. I kept throwing questions at Howard, and he kept trying to answer, but couldn’t, because he was fighting back tears. All I could get out of him was that the Sarjeant-at-Arms had told him the Matriarch was dead, murdered, and that he should come and get me. ˚ I was still having trouble believing it. My grandmother couldn’t be dead. How could someone as important, as powerful as her, be dead? Martha was the longest serving and surviving Matriarch the family had ever known. Most living Droods had never known another. To so many of us, she was the family.
I was still too numb, too confused, to feel anything. She tried to have me killed, and then supported me when I led the family against the Hungry Gods. She was always the authority figure I hated, with good reason, and the grandmother I loved, for no good reason. She’d always been there, my whole life, for good and bad. I could always depend on her . . . to be her. I couldn’t imagine life without her. Molly moved silently along beside me, clinging tightly to my arm, trying to support and comfort me with her presence.
When we finally got to the Matriarch’s suite, the door was standing open. That was enough to make me stumble to a halt. The Matriarch’s door was never open. You always had to knock, politely, and then wait to be summoned in. The open door was a slap in the face—a sign that things would never be the same again. Howard stopped in the doorway, looking back at me inquiringly. So I took a deep breath and went in, Molly pressed close at my side. We passed through the antechamber into her bedroom, and there was the Sarjeant-at-Arms, standing at the foot of the bed, scowling fiercely, looking at nothing, his arms folded tightly across his chest as though to keep him from flying apart. The Armourer was sitting on a chair pulled up to the side of the bed, holding one of the Matriarch’s hands in his. He looked old and tired, and broken.
Martha Drood lay in bed, on her back, her nightdress and the sheets around her soaked in blood. She was utterly still. Her eyes stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. Her long blond hair, of which she was always secretly proud, stretched shapelessly across the pillows, in a state she would never have allowed herself to be seen, in life. And then, finally, I believed it.
“About time, Edwin,” said the Sarjeant. His voice was unusu ally harsh, even for him, but somehow unfocused. “Our Matriarch has been murdered.” He looked at Molly. “What is the witch doing here? She’s not family.”
“Not now, Sarjeant,” I said. I made myself walk past him, to the side of the bed. Made myself look closely at the body. “What happened here? How was she . . . murdered?”
“Stabbed,” said the Sarjeant. “A single thrust, from the front, through the heart. I knew it, the moment it happened. One of the little secrets of my position—I’m linked to the Hall, and everyone in it. It is necessary for me to know exactly where everyone in the family is, so that they can always be found, and disciplined. So I always know, when one of us dies. The Matriarch’s sudden death brought me right up out of a deep sleep. For a moment, I tried to tell myself it was just a bad dream, but I knew it wasn’t. So I came straight here, found the door open . . . and found her dead in her bed.”
“Ethel’s quite positive the Hall is still secure,” I said. “No one’s broken in, or out. No intruders means . . . this wasn’t the work of any of our enemies. This was an inside job. The killer is one of us.”
“One of the family?” said Howard, still just inside the doorway. He couldn’t look at the body. “How could one of us do something like this? It’s not possible! She’s . . . she’s the Matriarch!”
But I was looking at Molly, and we were remembering what she had said to me earlier about Immortals infiltrating the family. Our deadliest enemies, hidden behind familiar faces. And I suddenly had to wonder about the timing of the Matriarch’s death. Could we have been overheard? Had the Matriarch been killed just to send me a message? Was this my fault? Molly started to say something, and I stopped her with a quick gesture. We couldn’t talk here. Not when there was no telling who might be listening.
The Sarjeant-at-Arms saw the look, and the gesture. He started to say something, so I cut quickly across him.
“Stabbed right through the heart,” I said, bending over the body and examining the wound closely. “A practised, professional blow. And no defensive wounds on the arms . . . No signs of any struggle, the bedclothes are hardly disturbed. All of which suggests the attacker was someone she knew, and trusted, right up to the last moment. He must have just knocked on the door, and been invited in. She sat up in bed, he walked up to her, and . . . He must have been quick. She was a teacher of unarmed combat for thirty years. No one could have overpowered her, if she felt threatened. She could have held off even the most determined assassin long enough to summon up her armour. But a face she trusted, with a knife she never saw until it was far too late . . .”
“But how could the killer just walk in here?” said Molly. “Didn’t she have any guards outside her door?”
“Inside the Hall?” said Howard, shocked. “We don’t have guards here. We’re safe, here. Danger always comes from outside.”
“There are . . . protections in place, to prevent any outsider from doing harm inside the Hall,” said the Sarjeant. “But they wouldn’t affect any member of the family, or a really powerful magic-user . . .”
I didn’t like the way he was looking at Molly. “Now wait just a minute . . .” I said.
“You threatened to kill the Matriarch,” the Sarjeant said to Molly. “To her face, in front of the Advisory Council.”
“I was angry!” said Molly. “But I’m not stupid enough to kill her here, surrounded by her family. And I’m certainly not stupid enough to stick around afterwards. Besides, I wouldn’t just stab someone! I’m the wild witch of the woods! I’d use some really subtle magic, make it look like natural causes. Or, if I wanted you to know it was me, I’d do something really vile and horrible, and then disappear while you were all still throwing up. I don’t do stabbings.”
“What better way to disguise your involvement, than a crude attack with an anonymous blade?” said the Sarjeant.
“Stop this,” I said. “Stop it right now. Molly had nothing to do with this. She’s been with me ever since we left the Sanctity. It couldn’t be her.”
“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” said the Sarjeant. “But even if it were true, you had to sleep sometime. She could have left your side, done the deed and returned while you were still sleeping. Couldn’t she?”
“No,” I said. “No.” I looked at the Armourer. He was still holding the Matriarch’s dead hand, his head bowed over it. “Uncle Jack? You don’t believe it was Molly, do you?”
“Hush, Eddie,” he said, not looking round. ?
??My mother is dead.”
A thought struck me, and I looked back at the Sarjeant. “Does Alistair know? Has anyone told him?”
“The Matriarch’s consort doesn’t know anything anymore,” said Howard. “It’s a miracle he’s still alive. After what you did to him.”
“He threatened to kill Molly, and me,” I said.
“He’s still in a coma,” said Howard. “Hooked up to a whole bunch of life support, down in the hospital ward. He hasn’t said anything in months. Why disturb him now?”
I leaned forward over the bed, and studied the Matriarch’s face. Dead bodies were nothing new to me, but it’s always different when it’s someone you know. There was nothing in her face—no shock, no outrage, no fear or pain. It was just . . . empty. She seemed smaller, as though the most important part of her was gone, and this was just something she had left behind. I took her free hand in mine, and then dropped it again because just like that she was standing beside the bed, staring at me. A tall regal figure in her best tweeds and pearls, looking very much alive. I looked back at the bed, but the body was still there. I looked at the others, and it was clear they could see the vision of my grandmother as well. It couldn’t be her ghost; Martha had always been very firm that ghosts had no place in the Hall. The family always looks forward, never back. So this must be a vision; a recording made earlier, and activated by the touch of my hand. I felt obscurely affected, that she had chosen me as the trigger for her message. The Matriarch started speaking, and I gave her my full attention. Her ˚ face was calm and unmoved, as though this message from beyond was just another necessary task.