Stiletto

  “What’s to think?” he asked without looking up from his tablet computer.

  “Well, the view out the window is nice,” she said, taking two more pills.

  “It’s a very gray, cloudy kind of place,” said Alessio.

  “We’re right opposite Hyde Park, and I just saw one of those red double-decker buses go by. I expect we’ll get some time off from the negotiations. We can do London things. The Tate. Trafalgar Square. Harrods. And we could go to Buckingham Palace.” Her brother looked at her skeptically over his computer. “I’m not saying that I want to meet a prince or anything, but it would be cool to see the changing of the guard.” He shrugged. “And the hotel is very posh.”

  “Every room on this floor is probably bugged,” Alessio said grimly, a little frown line appearing between his eyebrows. “And everyone we meet is probably from the Checquy. That woman who just brought up the food was looking around like she thought we’d have entrails on the floor for her to tidy up along with the wastepaper bins.”

  “She was probably aghast that a twenty-three-year-old woman has to share a suite with her thirteen-year-old brother,” said Odette, swallowing another two pills.

  “I’m aghast at that as well,” said her brother. Odette made a little snorting sound as she looked at him thoughtfully. They both had the same heart-shaped face and the same dark brown hair, but Alessio’s hair was dead straight whereas hers had a tendency to go curly unless she was concentrating. Thankfully, she was still a good deal taller than him, but people in their family often went through a growth spurt late in their teens, and she had no doubt that he would eventually be the one resting drinks on her head.

  However, at the moment, he looked very vulnerable. There were still traces of puppy fat on his face, and in his little suit and carefully tied tie, he reminded her of a boy going to a funeral, forced to face adult things too soon.

  “I really am sorry about all this,” she said to him, and he looked up at her. “You shouldn’t have to be acting as a diplomatic representative, you should be . . .” She trailed off.

  “What?” he asked. “At home in Roeselare with my tutors, working on my surgical skills like a regular teenager?” He rolled his eyes. “Grootvader Ernst wanted me to come. He wanted both of us to come. He said it would help.”

  “Yes, but I’m actually going to be engaged in negotiations, albeit in some unspecified capacity,” said Odette, pausing a moment to swallow four more pills. “You’re going to be, what? Standing around looking harmless, showing them that we’re not all monsters that have been so heavily modified that we’re no longer human.”

  “Only because I’m not fifteen yet,” said her brother. “At least you have some weapons inside you.”

  “Not enough,” said Odette darkly. She popped three more pills in her mouth and slammed them down with the last of the coffee. “Now, how long do I have before the meeting to finalize the strategy for the cocktail party?”

  “Half an hour,” said her brother.

  “All right, I’m going to go do my injections and get ready.”

  In the bathroom, Odette eyed herself closely in the mirror. I need to look businesslike, professional, and normal, she thought. Not overly attractive or unusual. Not threatening in any way. She concentrated, and her lips flushed slightly. Good. Not too red, not too dark. Her eyelids darkened subtly, and she dilated her pupils a bit, flinching in the suddenly brighter light.

  “Going for the belladonna look?” said Alessio as he came into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

  “Well, we have to make a good impression, and people are attracted to dilated pupils,” Odette said defensively. But she constricted them a little. “You’re just lucky you don’t have to go to this thing tonight.”

  She watched in the mirror as Alessio carefully rolled up his sleeve, slid his arm into the slime-filled bathtub, and fished around. He finally located the plug and yanked it out. A little dimple appeared on the surface of the liquid, but the slime did not seem to be in any hurry to vanish down the plug hole. They both stared at it in chagrin.

  A couple hundred gallons of eldritch ooze probably aren’t going to make a very good impression, Odette thought. Even if it is nectarine-scented.

  “Try adding some hot water,” she suggested finally. “And the shampoo from the shower breaks it down a little.”

  “I may simply have to try flushing it down the toilet,” said Alessio. “I can use the rubbish bin as a bailer.” Odette could all too easily imagine something horrible happening to the toilet as a result. A bathtub of evil somehow seemed much less embarrassing than a toilet of evil. With a toilet, people might think the evil had come out of her.

  “Better not,” she said hastily. “I think we should just leave it. And since you think the maids are with the Checquy, they aren’t going to bat an eyelash at a slowly draining bathtub full of biochemical soup.”

  “Well, I’m not positive they’re with the Checquy,” said her brother, the little line appearing between his eyes again. “You could help me with this, you know.”

  “This thing I’m doing right here? It requires a fair amount of close attention,” said Odette. She pursed her lips in concentration and watched in satisfaction as her cheekbones shifted under her skin, moving up and out a little.

  3

  Five hours before her pied-à-tête with Joe and Petey, Felicity had been sitting in an office in the Hammerstrom Building, dressed in a suit and very definitely not covered in filth. The Hammerstrom Building, despite being the most boring-looking building in the City of London (it appeared to have been designed by a committee of depressive Puritans), was in fact one of the facilities belonging to the Checquy Group, the secret government department that employed the supernatural to protect the populace from the supernatural.

  The Hammerstrom Building was the headquarters for all domestic operations of the Checquy, overseen by two executives known as the Rooks. As a result, it was affectionately referred to as the Rookery. It was where government strategists made the arrangements to acquire every child born in the British Isles with unexplainable abilities. It was where the course of those children’s lives, including their rigorous education at the remote and heavily fortified boarding school known as the Estate, was planned. It was where the super-naturally gifted operatives, once grown up—the Pawns—received their assignments to stations across the country. It was the place to which intelligence was funneled from a thousand different sources. It was the place from whence elite soldiers sallied forth to combat the unnatural.

  It was also where Felicity had arrived early that morning in an effort to catch up on paperwork. She had been sipping an inferior coffee and waiting for her computer to boot up when a courier trotted over and handed her the envelope containing the summons. The last part of the official message—the caution about the urine—had given Felicity a moment’s pause, but then she’d shrugged. Service in the Checquy called for all sorts of unorthodox duties. Those duties tended to be especially unorthodox when one was a member of an urban assault team.

  And if you want to climb higher, she told herself, you don’t ever complain. You just show that you’re ready and eager for any challenge.

  The location to which she had been commanded turned out to be a house. It was not a particularly pleasant house, being both abandoned and in disrepair, but as a result it blended in perfectly with the surrounding area. It was in Northam, the least convenient district of the Greater London conurbation, too far from the city’s center or any public transport for even the most optimistic of gentrificators, and too far from the edge of the metropolis for people to delude themselves that they were enjoying country living. Evelyn Waugh had once described it as “the perineum of the Empire.”

  Felicity had found the chief of her team, Pawn Millicent Odgers, tucked away in the kitchen at the back of the house sifting through the contents of some hard plastic cases. A plump woman in her midsixties, Odgers spoke with a pure Glaswegian accent. From the shoulders up, with her g
ray hair in a tight bun and her glasses on a chain around her neck, she looked as if she should be checking out books in a country library. However, the rest of her was swathed in a formidable coverall of dense black material that appeared to be several sizes too large for her. She was shod in boots that looked as though they could kick in a door or a rib cage with equal facility.

  “Good morning, Chief.”

  “Morning, Clements. Did you bring the biscuits and the milk?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Felicity, holding up her shopping bag.

  “Good. Buchanan is bringing the thermoses with coffee and tea.”

  “So where’s the rest of the team?”

  “They’ll be trickling in. The sudden arrival of a horde of healthy people will draw attention in this neighborhood. Hopefully, they’ve all shown the same sense you have and dressed down a bit.” Felicity, having noted the tenor of the area, had taken the precaution of changing out of her suit and into a pair of jeans and a rather grubby fleece. “Meanwhile, are you ready for work?”

  “Always, sir.”

  “Grand to hear. I’ll brief you after you’ve put on the clothes in that bag over there.”

  Felicity cautiously opened the bag and saw that it was filled with garments for which the most charitable description was “vagrant camouflage.” She sighed. It wasn’t the worst ensemble she’d ever been compelled to wear in the name of duty (one mission had called for her to put on a gillie suit composed entirely of well-manured poison ivy), but the clothes were all covered in filth and grease, and there was a pungent odor coming off them.

  Gritting her teeth and controlling her gag reflex, she changed into the vestments of the damned. The shirt had several collars sewn in, so it looked like she was wearing multiple layers of old T-shirts and rugby jumpers. The jeans adhered to her legs in various places. She took a seat.

  “Are you sitting comfortably?” asked Odgers.

  “Are there lice in these clothes? Because—yes.”

  “Then I’ll begin.” Odgers took up a file and settled her glasses on her nose. “In the past three weeks, there have been a series of mysterious disappearances throughout London. Now, at first glance, they seem unrelated. All the subjects went missing on different days; they’re of different races, different ages, different socioeconomic backgrounds. However, Checquy statisticians have identified a pattern. All the missing people have B-positive blood type.”

  “Any possibility it’s a coincidence?” asked Felicity as she very deliberately did not scratch herself.

  “I thought of that too,” said Odgers. “However, in addition to being B-positive, they had all received organ transplants. Something like four people with new hearts, several with new kidneys, a skin graft. Pancreases, corneas, what have you. And all done in London hospitals.”

  “How on earth did they figure that out?” asked Felicity, impressed.

  “Oh, you know the statisticians,” said Odgers. “They’re always trawling through all the information they can get. I think they identified this trend after the eleventh disappearance.”

  “What’s the Checquy bait, though? Do we have any sign that this is something supernatural and not just, I don’t know, an extremely specific and well-informed serial killer?”

  “All of the missing people vanished from their homes in the middle of the night,” said Odgers. “In most cases, it looks as if they went to bed and then, after a few hours’ sleep, got up and walked out the front door. There were no signs of forced entry or violence. They just left.”

  “Did they all live alone?”

  “No,” said Odgers. “There were two teenagers who were living at home, and seven of the victims were married or living with a partner, but none of the parents or partners reported anything strange happening. One woman vaguely recalled her husband getting out of bed, but she assumed he was going to the loo. She just went back to sleep and didn’t realize anything was wrong until she came down in the morning and found the front door open.”

  “They didn’t take anything with them?”

  “No. They didn’t even change out of their nightclothes,” said Odgers. “Didn’t put on shoes or slippers or a coat. One man apparently left wearing just a T-shirt. It was like they were sleepwalking.”

  “And no sign of them afterwards?” said Felicity. “No witnesses?”

  “Actually, the police managed to find a couple of witnesses,” said Odgers. “In Green Park at three in the morning, two homeless gentlemen saw one of the victims walking across the grass. They said he was in his pajamas and staring straight ahead. He didn’t respond when they called out to him.”

  “So something is summoning them?” Felicity asked. She shuddered a little at the thought.

  “We don’t know what’s going on,” said Odgers. “After our analysts identified the trend, they checked for connections between the missing people, but they haven’t found any.

  “The most recent disappearance happened last night. A man called the police right away when he found his girlfriend gone. We got a team to the flat immediately, and one of the Pawns managed to track her scent twelve miles to a house near here. He caught traces of the scents of two of the other victims. We’re assuming that all of them are there but that the traces of the others have dissipated or been washed away since they arrived. You’re going to be scouting the house for us.”

  “So the reason that I look and smell like the inside of a dumpster is . . . ?”

  “You’re going to be homeless,” said Odgers, her eyes intent on the files.

  “I see. I take it that a homeless woman is not going to get a lot of attention in this neighborhood?”

  “We’re less concerned about the neighbors and more about spooking the kidnapper, or the summoner, or whatever it is. The house you’re scouting is supposed to be abandoned. In fact, all of the houses in the row are. But if there is something or someone malevolent in there, and you’re spotted, you might get attacked. Or it might lure you in. Andrea Cheng will be providing backup, but obviously we’d prefer you to conduct your reconnaissance and withdraw without any incidents.”

  “Understood,” said Felicity. “How long do I have?”

  “I’ll trust your judgment. I want the standard information—layout, traps, presence of any living entities, anything unusual. All right, I’m going to do your face now.” She smeared some mentholated ointment under Felicity’s nose and then under her own. “This will help you not throw up on yourself. It isn’t really a smell you get used to.” She briskly applied some specially blended military-grade filth to Felicity’s face and blotted off the excess with a tissue.

  When it came time for the promised application of the urine, it was something of a relief to find that she wasn’t to be sprayed so much as lightly misted. It wasn’t a huge relief, though, and there was another startling, somewhat unwelcome revelation.

  “It’s my urine?” Felicity said incredulously.

  “Don’t think of it as urine,” Pawn Odgers advised her. “Try to think of it as an olfactory disguise.” Felicity tried and was not measurably comforted.

  “But where did you get my urine?” she asked.

  “The Checquy has samples of everyone’s everything,” said Odgers cheerfully. “Remember, during your time at the Estate, they kept taking specimens of your every fluid and solid?”

  “That was for scientific research!” exclaimed Felicity. “And it was years ago!”

  “Would someone else’s fresh urine be better?”

  Felicity could think of no dignified response as she tugged her greasy forelock (Odgers had combed something like vegetable oil into her hair). She wiped her hand on her jeans, cringed at the result, and then left through the back door.

  And now she was returning through the back door with Pawn Cheng. She noted that while the past four hours had left her looking even more disheveled (if such a thing were possible), the kitchen had been transformed into a cramped little command center. The cooker had been manhandled out of the room, and there
were floor plans tacked up on the walls. Laptop computers glowed on the counter and the kitchen table. A flat-screen TV sat precariously by the sink showing camera feeds from around the outside of the house.

  The main difference, however, was that there were now people bustling around. Some were examining the plans on the walls, some were perched on whatever surface they could find, staring at screens, and others were bent over plastic cases, checking the guns that glinted in their little foam beds. Felicity scanned them all, automatically noting their locations, but she was really looking for six specific people. It wasn’t hard to identify them: four men, two women, all dressed in the menacing black coveralls that Odgers had been wearing, although theirs fit. They were all possessed of excellent posture and spoke in quiet tones. One of the men was in a corner doing the splits with his ankles raised up on stacks of phone books.

  Everyone looked up as Felicity entered the room. There was a moment of appalled silence, and then a wave of laughter and hooting filled the kitchen. She ducked her head, blushing under her grime.

  “Clements, you look fab!” one of the women called. “Are you coming from a date or going to one?” Grinning, Felicity raised a brisk two fingers in reply.

  “You’ll never make it to the Barghests if you show up to work looking like that,” a large man tsked.

  “Jennings, don’t be hard on Fliss,” said one of the men, “just ’cause she looks like she raided your wardrobe.”

  “Ah, he’s just doing his best to flirt,” said Felicity. “After all, this”— and she gestured at herself—“ticks all his fantasy boxes, doesn’t it? We all know he’s into that hobo porn.” She paused as a short redheaded woman came over and stood in front of her.

  “Pawn Clements, I note no difference in your appearance or smell from that of any other day,” said the woman flatly.

  “Nice one, Cordingley, that was an amusing remark,” said Felicity. The woman nodded. She’s been working on her humor, Felicity thought fondly. Someone pressed a cup of tea into her hands, and the team members continued to chaff her and one another as she moved into the room.