Stiletto

  “All right, then,” said Marie, and for the first time that Odette could recall, she sounded uncertain. “So we’ll activate the Chimerae and bring them here. But I’m still not convinced of the wisdom of this. Even with the soldiers, how will we find the Antagonists in London? This city is huge!”

  “But it’s a great deal smaller than Europe,” said the graaf in a very reasonable tone. “I have utter confidence in you. This problem must be taken care of without letting the Checquy know that it ever existed.” There were murmurs of subdued agreement around the table. “And if we are finished with this subject, then Alessio can come in, and we will go over the schedule for today.”

  Anabella scurried to open the door, revealing Odette’s brother waiting in his Estate uniform. It was, if anything, even more ghastly when placed on a human being. He walked in stiffly, as if trying to make as little contact with his clothing as possible. Odette kept her face carefully blank.

  “You look very nice,” said van Suchtlen warmly.

  “But you’re not wearing the hat,” said Odette in a helpful tone. Alessio shot her a look that promised retribution of the direst sort, and then, with absolutely no expression, he placed the boater on his head. The entire table clapped politely, Alessio closed his eyes in an effort to endure the agony, and Odette took the opportunity to snap some pictures with her phone.

  “What a fascinating outfit,” she said quietly when Alessio sat down next to her. “I’m sure it’s full of historical and cultural significance.”

  “I’m sure it’s so that I’ll make an easy target if they need to shoot me,” said Alessio.

  “Is that a teapot on the crest? Why would there be a teapot?” asked Odette.

  “To torture me,” said Alessio. “This uniform is probably revenge for my ancestors’ invading their country centuries ago and slaughtering their people.”

  In unison, they looked to the end of the table, where one of the ancestors in question was drinking a cup of tea and playing with his smartphone.

  “Well, you can take it up with him if you like,” said Odette. Alessio made a little moaning sound as he picked at his blazer. “It’s not that bad,” she said soothingly. “And Grootvader Ernst likes it.”

  “Grootvader Ernst was born in a time when men wore tights. And hats with feathers in them!” Great-Uncle Marcel shot them a look, and they both went quiet.

  The schedule for the day was quite straightforward. The entire delegation would travel to Apex House, the administrative headquarters of the Checquy. They would be scanned and registered by a security detail before Alessio went off with his school group and the rest of the delegation was formally welcomed to the negotiating table by half the Court (the Lord was obliged to meet with the Prime Minister every Wednesday morning, Rook Kelleher had the flu, Chevalier Whibley was on his way back from a journey overseas, and Bishop Alrich would apparently crumble into greasy ash if he appeared during normal business hours). After that, everyone would split up into work groups to address various issues.

  “And be polite at all times,” said van Suchtlen. “They are as wary of us as we are of them. Be professional, be normal. Endeavor not to do anything that will result in them obliterating us.”

  9

  Blackness. Blackness and cold, and a terrible weight pressing down on every part of her. That was all Felicity knew. It was everything. There was no room for any thought. All she could do was cling to the one warm thing that existed. She buried her face in its softness and felt arms closed tight around her. All around them, the cold darkness moved, surging, compressing, pushing them along. And it lasted for a long, long time.

  Light!

  It unfolded all around her. And it was not the terrifying green glare of Pawn Jennings’s power but a soft, gentle warmth that soaked pinkly through her eyelids and stroked her skin. There was heat against her front, and the chill on her back was not as bad as it had been. For a few seconds, she floated in the light.

  And then she fell, flailing, untangling, for perhaps a meter before she flopped down onto a softish, yielding surface. The smell of plastic and nylon was familiar. Crash mat, her brain supplied vaguely. Like in gymnastics at school. She tried to open her eyes, but they were sticky, and she had to rub at them before she could see. On her hands, she could see little crystals that melted away into water. Frost.

  Felicity was exhausted, but she managed to lift herself up on her elbows and look around. She was sprawled on a blue Olympic-style crash mat in a white room with windows that looked out onto a gray sky. The crash mat appeared to be the only furniture. The whole place felt delightfully warm.

  If this is the afterlife, then everyone has been extremely wrong about it.

  Next to her was the curved brown back of a naked man. Great, another one, she thought weakly. At least this one seems to be a little more standard-issue. This naked man had a nice back, from what she could tell, but he did not seem to be doing well. All she could see of him was covered in a rime of frost, and he was shaking. The muscles in his shoulders and arms twitched violently. Well, that’s not good, she thought. I’d better do . . . something. It took all her strength, but she sat up. She could feel her head wobbling on her neck like a baby’s.

  It was at that point that Felicity realized that she, too, was naked. Her armor and coveralls had vanished. There was no sign of her gun or her wristwatch. Even the smears of rubbish-based visual and olfactory camouflage were gone. All she was wearing was a thin, swiftly melting coat of ice and frost. She gave a moment’s thought to spreading her Sight out beyond the room, but even the idea left her exhausted. I think it’ll be easier just to stand up and open the door.

  There was a door, and somewhere beyond it, a bell was ringing. She was just getting to her knees when the door opened and a woman in a nurse’s uniform bustled in. She was black and in her late fifties or early sixties. The nurse’s eyes widened when she saw the two naked people on the mat.

  “Oh Lord,” she said in surprise. “He’s brought another with him!” she shouted back through the doorway. She spoke with a strong Caribbean accent. “You all right?” she asked Felicity, who nodded. The nurse cast a quick diagnostic eye over her and then descended on the naked, twitching man and hurriedly gave him an injection. His shuddering eased, then stopped completely, and the nurse carefully rolled him onto his back. It was Pawn Chopra. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was settling into an easy rhythm.

  The nurse briskly toweled Chopra dry, spread a blanket over him, and kissed him on the forehead. Then she took a pair of glasses out of her pocket and put them on the mat by his head.

  “His contact lenses will have been lost in the journey,” she explained to Felicity. “And he always likes to wake up and find his glasses waiting for him. Now, let’s dry you off and get you a robe.”

  “But I’ve got to let them know we’re still alive!” exclaimed Felicity. “They’ll think we all died in the fire. And the naked Homeowner in the OOM!” She stopped under the nurse’s politely uncomprehending gaze. “Are—you are with the—” began Felicity, but the nurse held up her hand.

  “I’m not with your little group,” she said.

  “You’re a civilian?” squeaked Felicity, aghast. She was aware that not only had she mentioned highly classified matters to an outsider, but she also probably sounded insane.

  “I’m just a nurse in the hospital, but don’t worry, we called your people as soon as you came through. I’m Cedella. Please don’t tell me your name, I don’t need to know it, and I really prefer to keep my knowledge of you people to a minimum.”

  “I—yeah, okay,” said Felicity, still slightly taken aback. “Um, you said this is a hospital? What hospital? Where are we?”

  “This is the William Harvey Hospital,” said Cedella. “In Ashford.”

  “Ashford?” repeated Felicity in bewilderment.

  “In Kent,” said the nurse helpfully.

  “Kent. Why—how are we in Kent?”

  “Him,” said Cedella, p
atting Pawn Chopra gently. “This is the room that Sanjay was born in. I was here twenty-one years ago when he came into the world. And now, periodically, he comes back.” Felicity stared at her.

  “It was about four times the first year, and don’t even ask me how much fuss that caused when he started popping up in the hospital bed with no explanation. For a while, people thought he was being kidnapped.” She draped a tactful towel over Felicity’s lap, and then started rubbing her shoulders and back dry. “Although I don’t know what kind of kidnapper would keep delivering a child back to the one place,” the nurse sniffed. “Especially since no one ever saw him being brought into the building. One patient woke up to find the baby crying in her lap.

  “But then I saw him arrive here. He just appeared back in the bed where he was born, wriggling out of nowhere.” She smiled and shook her head. “I didn’t know what to do—no one was going to believe me. They might even think I was the kidnapper. The police had already asked me some questions because I kept finding him. Thank the good Lord another girl once found him when I was away on holiday.” She draped another towel around Felicity’s shoulders, then undid her braids and began vigorously toweling her hair. Felicity was reminded of being a child and having her hair dried by an Estate nurse after a bath. It was that same brisk, comforting intimacy.

  “So, a hospital administrator sat me down, asked me what happened, and I was so tired of being interrogated that I told him the truth about what I’d seen,” said the nurse. “A couple of days later, I heard that the little baby had died. And word came down that room four was not going to be used anymore.

  “Then I was called up to the office of the chief of the hospital. He welcomed me and then he left the room. Two ladies came in, dressed very smart. They explained that the baby was not dead, that he was in the care of the government, and that there would be some more duties for me here at the hospital. If I took on those duties and kept it all secret, then I would receive a good deal of money and the gratitude of the nation. If I didn’t—well, they never actually said what would happen. But I understood it wouldn’t be nearly as nice.”

  “So you agreed,” said Felicity, fascinated. The children of the Estate were rarely told how they had come to the Checquy. “And you . . . never talked to the parents about it?”

  “No, that would have led to the ingratitude of the nation,” said the nurse flatly. “Anyway, that night, men moved the furniture out of room four and put in a sports mat and the electrical eyes.” Felicity looked around and saw the little red blinking lights in the corners of the room. “Those let us know when he’s arrived. Otherwise, this room is kept empty. And you wouldn’t believe how inconvenient that is—it’s right in the middle of the hallway.

  “Still, it’s added something interesting to the job,” Cedella said. “For the first few years they’d call us when he’d be coming through. I expect they found him missing and knew he was on his way. Me or one of the other girls would go in with a blanket and a bottle of hot milk for the baby and wait for him. He’d arrive, we’d warm him up and care for him for a bit, and then someone would come along and take him off in a car.

  “Then, when he got a little older and could talk, they’d send us schedules for when he’d be coming. It was clear they were training him to do it on command. The little lad would pop in a couple of times a week, we’d put some pajamas on him, make a note of his vitals, and they’d come and get him.

  “Sometimes he’d appear without any warning,” she remembered. “I think he’d come if he got in trouble or wanted some company. Middle of the night, the bell would ring, and I’d go in to see him sitting there, shivering, wiping the ice off his arms. I’d call them, let them know we had him, and he and I would have a chat. I’d give him a bit of advice about school, or girls, or whatever was bothering him.

  “Now that he’s grown, he doesn’t show up as much. And it’s never easy when he does. He’ll come through with wounds, and that makes it much worse. We’ve had to defibrillate him a couple of times. And the journey here isn’t good for injuries either. But he’s never brought anyone else through with him.”

  “The journey,” said Felicity, trying to remember. “We were . . . somewhere else. He took us away from the fire, and there was a place.” It all seemed like a dream that was fading away even as she thought about it. “A dark place. And cold.”

  “Sounds like it,” the nurse said with a shrug. “Never been there myself and certainly don’t want to go. He always comes out of there freezing cold and stripped of everything that isn’t him. Clothes, deodorant, dirt, it’s all gone.” She finished drying Felicity. “On the bright side, though, your hair will never be cleaner.”

  Well, that’s something, thought Felicity. She hadn’t been looking forward to trying to get all the refuse-based camouflage out of her hair.

  “What time did you go in there?” asked the nurse. “They like us to keep records.”

  “About four o’clock?” hazarded Felicity. She’d lost track of time, but she vaguely recalled they’d entered the house late in the day.

  “In the morning?”

  “No, the afternoon.”

  “Oh, my,” said the nurse. “Eighteen hours. That’s his longest journey ever. Poor boy.” She patted the sleeping Pawn Chopra gently.

  “Eighteen hours?” repeated Felicity incredulously. “You mean it’s Wednesday?”

  The nurse nodded. “Wednesday morning,” she said, fetching Felicity a soft robe. “Now, do you fancy a cup of tea?”

  And so, Rook Thomas, it appears that the man was strangled to death by his own beard.”

  “By or with?” asked Myfanwy, frowning.

  “By.”

  “Well, that definitely sounds worthy of some attention,” she said, jotting down a note to get her hair cut. “Initiate a short investigation, and if anything serious emerges, we can up the priority.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The voice came from a speakerphone in the middle of the boardroom table.

  “If that’s all you need at the moment, then I’ll hang up,” she said. “I’ll be here at Apex House for the rest of the morning, and then, once we’ve finished the formal greetings, I’ll come back to the Rookery. Call me or Mrs. Woodhouse if anything comes up.” A chorus of agreement came out of the speaker, and then the call finished. “Ingrid, can you book me in for a haircut, please?”

  “Certainly, Rook Thomas. And a coffee?”

  “Only if you want to live out the hour,” said Myfanwy. The previous night had gone far later than she had expected, and she’d had to be up early in order to reach the Apex before the morning traffic congealed. Now she was ensconced in the boardroom with a stack of papers, a pen, and a firm intention to get some work done.

  She opened the folder that contained the overnight notifications. As always, she was amazed at the things that happened in the world. Every day, every hour, stories of the bizarre flowed into the Checquy. Reports came from a variety of sources—law enforcement, medical bodies, religious institutions, government departments, universities. All through the British Isles, people in authority were constantly confronted with unusual situations. Sometimes they saw things they couldn’t explain, things that made no sense. Or a subordinate would go to the boss, confused or frightened by an occurrence he could describe only as “unnatural.” At that point, the superior would remember the vague but disturbing briefings from the government and would dial the number officials had given out—a number that connected to the Rookery.

  These reports were received by Checquy operatives who had special training in sounding sympathetic and not at all skeptical. The notifications were dutifully transcribed, checked, analyzed, reviewed, and passed on up the line. Many were identified as false reports or duplicates, but some continued to ascend through the ranks of influence until they were given the tick of approval and an official response was authorized. It wasn’t Myfanwy’s responsibility to approve anything other than the most exorbitantly expensive of activities, but at the openi
ng and closing of every day, she received a summary of recent events, a distillation of the supernatural in the United Kingdom.

  The reports before her included the previous night’s fatalities at the Italian restaurant. The corpses had been carefully moved to the morgue in the Apex, although one more had torn open during its trip down the stairs, with horrible results. The scientists were not clear on the nature of that black liquid and hadn’t yet determined whether it was dangerous, but it was unlikely that the restaurant would be reopening anytime soon. However, that massacre was not the only event that had occurred since the end of business yesterday.

  There was a boy in Cornwall whose eyes had changed color overnight.

  Salvage divers had examined a cargo ship that sank two weeks previously near the Port of Immingham and found tears in the hull that appeared to have been made by huge teeth.

  All the reptiles in the Edinburgh Zoo had begun molting at the same time, and their shed skin was evaporating off the ground.

  Two VW Beetles that had been reported stolen in Thetford had been found in a field outside town after nearby residents heard loud, increasingly frantic horn-beeping and the sounds of grinding metal. The police observed that one of the vehicles appeared to have mounted the other.

  And there, at the bottom of the list, in red ink, was the one she’d been dreading. Another one, she thought. Damn it. And unlike the mating cars, which could just be a student prank, there’s no doubt that this is genuine. She flipped through the photos.

  Just like the others, it had occurred in one room of a house, this one a bedroom in the town of Wellingborough. It was a normal-looking room—double bed, framed Monet prints, a vase of dried flowers on the chest of drawers—except for the score of large crystals that had erupted from the walls, ceiling, and floor. They were meters long, razor sharp, and all projected out to the same spot in the room, in front of the chest of drawers, where they had transfixed the seventy-four-year-old Miss Audrey Dudgeon, owner and resident of the house. In the photos, wearing a nightgown and a bathrobe, she was slumped over but held in place by the shining blades. The crystals were murkily transparent except near her body, where they were stained red on the inside. No autopsy had yet taken place, but Myfanwy knew that Miss Dudgeon’s blood would be found to have crystallized inside her body. Just like all the others’.