Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (41 page)

"Hello, Grandmother," I said, after a pause. We both sounded so
very civilised, as though this was just a little family tiff, nothing that
couldn’t be settled over a nice cup of tea. "How does it feel, Martha, to be
talking to a dead man? How did it feel to order the death of your own grandson?"

"The family comes first, Edwin; you know that." The Matriarch’s
voice was calm and even. "I will always do what is necessary to protect the
family. All you had to do was die; and you couldn’t even get that right, could
you?"

"I would have died for you, for the family," I said, holding the
phone so tightly my hand hurt. "If you’d given me a good reason, if you’d just
trusted me enough to explain. I love the family, in my own way. But not anymore.
You made me rogue, so rogue I’ll be."

"Why did you call, Edwin? What do you want?"

"To tell you about Sebastian. Who is currently very unconscious
in his flat. If you were to send some people here, they could collect him while
he’s helpless. And then you wouldn’t have to worry about all those information
parcels he’s been holding over your heads. You see, my war is with you,
Grandmother. Not with the family."

"I am the family. I am the Matriarch."

"Not for much longer," I said. "I’ve been digging up all your
nasty little secrets, and I’m really very angry with you, Grandmother. For
what’s been done in the family name. I’m coming home, and not as the prodigal
son. I’m coming home for the truth, even if I have to tear the family apart to
get it. See you soon, Grandmother."

I hung up, and then just stood there for a moment. My hands were
shaking. If I hadn’t already known I was dying, I’d probably have been scared. I
looked around for Molly and Janissary Jane. They’d only just remembered to go
through the pile of discarded trousers, looking for car keys.

"Time to get moving, ladies. The family will be here soon."

"Okay," said Molly. "I think we’ve done about as much damage
here as we can."

Janissary Jane drove the big black car through the streets of
London because she knew the way, and because she had the car keys and refused to
give them up. Molly sat in the backseat with me, arms tightly folded, sulking.
She was never comfortable unless she was in charge. Janissary Jane drove far too
fast and manoeuvred aggressively at all times, to keep our cover, she said, but
finally we arrived at Wimbledon, still in one piece. Most people associate the
name only with tennis, but these days the area is eighty percent immigrant
population and a thriving small-business community. Brightly coloured posters in
the shop windows advertised unusual goods in Hindi and Urdu, and here and there
blue-skinned nautch dancers gyrated down the street to electric sitar music. Our
black car with its impenetrable tinted windows drew many cool and thoughtful
glances as we glided smoothly through the narrow streets. Eventually Janissary
Jane drew up outside a hole-in-the-wall liquor store, the kind of place that’s
always open, twenty-four hours a day, and there’s always a sale going on. We got
out of the car, and Molly and I looked inquiringly at Janissary Jane.

"The Blue Fairy has a studio apartment here, above the store,"
she said. "Brace yourselves. He’s not very house proud these days. And we’ll
have to go through the shop to get to the flat, so remember, we’re here to see
Mr. Blue."

"Why…here?" I said.

"Would you look for him here?" said Janissary Jane, and I had to
nod. She had a point.

Janissary Jane led the way into the liquor store. The walls were
stacked from floor to ceiling with every kind of booze under the sun, many of
them boasting labels I didn’t even recognise. The middle-aged Pakistani behind
the counter greeted us cheerfully, nodding quickly when he heard we were here to
see Mr. Blue.

"Of course, indeed. Hello again, Miss Jane; it is very good to
see you again. Mr. Blue is indeed upstairs and at home; you go right up. He is
resting, I believe, and a bit under the weather. I am sure it will do him good
to have some friendly company."

He showed us through to the back, still smiling. We ascended
some dimly lit stairs to the next floor and found a door with the right name
next to a bell push. The door was standing slightly ajar. Not a good sign. I
drew my Colt Repeater, Janissary Jane drew her two punch daggers, and Molly made
her witch knife appear out of nowhere. I gestured for Janissary Jane and Molly
to stick behind me. They ignored me, pressing silently forward, and I sighed
inwardly. Janissary Jane pushed the door slowly open. It didn’t make a sound.
The room beyond was dark and shadowy, even though it was still afternoon. We
slipped inside one at a time, prepared for the worst, but nothing could have
prepared us for what we encountered.

The room was a mess. A real mess. The kind of mess you have to
work at. My first thought was that the sitting room had been turned over by
professionals looking for something, but it quickly became clear that no
self-respecting professional agent would sully his hands on the general filth of
this place. Grime and slime fought it out for most of the surfaces, what could
be seen of the carpet was stained a dozen colours, and junk and debris formed a
layer on the floor so thick we had to kick our way through it. Old clothes had
piled up in the corner, perhaps for washing but more likely for burning, and
takeaway food cartons clung stickily to each other. Something crunched wetly
under my foot, and I really hoped it was just a cockroach. The curtains weren’t
drawn, but the window glass was so thickly smeared with filth that the afternoon
light had to fight its way through.

Empty bottles stood on every surface, mostly of India Pale Ale
and Bombay Gin. There were pill bottles, and not the kind you get on
prescription. Crinkled tinfoil, for chasing the dragon. And half a dozen
syringes, with a cigarette lighter standing by to sterilize the needles. The
only thing left after this was drinking mentholated spirits straight from the
bottle in a cardboard box on the Charing Cross Embankment. Assuming the Blue
Fairy lived that long.

We moved around the room as quietly as we could. No sign of any
bad guys, and I was beginning to wonder if we were looking for a corpse rather
than a person. I pushed open the bedroom door, and there was the Blue Fairy,
lying facedown on his bed. Snoring gently and making mouth noises in his sleep.
We all relaxed a little and put away our weapons. The Blue Fairy was wearing
nothing but a pair of boxers well past their sell-by date and a charm bracelet
around his left ankle. Janissary Jane and Molly and I had a brief but animated
discussion over who was going to have to actually touch him long enough to turn
him over. We played a few quick games of paper scissors rock, and I lost. I
still think they cheated somehow. I took a firm hold on the Blue Fairy’s
surprisingly hairy shoulder, turned him over, and yelled his name right into his
face. I then backed quickly away as he sat bolt upright in bed, hacking and
coughing.

"All right, all right, I’m awake! Lay off the rough stuff; I’m
delicate. Especially first thing in the morning."

"It’s afternoon," I said.

"To you, maybe. For me it’s the beginning of a new day and I
really wish it wasn’t. You’ll have to excuse me. The old gray matter is never at
its best first thing, at least until I’ve had a few cups of coffee and a ciggie.
Now, who are you, what are you, and why are you persecuting a poor fairy at this
ungodly hour? I didn’t order out again, did I? I could have sworn the escort
agency said my credit wasn’t any good any more, the bastards."

He squeezed his eyes shut, coughed up half a lung, and then
stared at me blearily. His eyes widened as he finally got a good look at me, and
then he scooted back across the crumpled bedsheets, holding up his hands
defensively, until he crashed into the headboard and couldn’t go any farther. He
tried to smile but couldn’t pull it off convincingly.

"Eddie! It’s you! If I’d known you were coming, I’d have tidied
up a bit, made a bit of an effort…Help yourself to anything you like, make
yourself at home…Oh, God, Eddie, don’t kill me, please! I’m no threat to you!"

"Interesting," I said. "You should only know me as Shaman Bond.
But you know my real name. How is that, Blue?"

"I can see your torc," he said, blinking rapidly. "I’m half elf,
you know. Of course you know. You Droods know everything. And I have been known
to do the odd job for your family, on occasion. I have to. They give me money.
Don’t kill me, Eddie, please. They made me do it!"

"All right, Eddie, lay off him," said Janissary Jane, moving
forward to stand beside me. "Hello, Blue. It’s me, Jane. You’ve got yourself
into some real trouble this time, haven’t you? Even I may not be able to get you
out of this one. What exactly did you do for the Droods that you’re so ashamed
of?"

"Ah, Jane," said the Blue Fairy, calming down a little. "And
Molly too. How nice. Welcome to my humble abode. Excuse the mess, but I live
here. And I just can’t seem to work up the enthusiasm to give a damn anymore.
Terribly lax of me, I know, but that’s life these days. My life, anyway. Still,
I’m glad you’re here. If one is about to die horribly, it is marginally better
to do it in the company of one’s friends. Could you perhaps persuade your friend
the assassin to let me put some clothes on? I really would prefer not to meet my
maker wearing just my underwear."

"Get dressed," I said, amused despite myself. "I’m not here to
kill you, Blue. Just ask you some questions."

"Wait till you hear the answers," said the Blue Fairy.

We all backed away from the bed, and he levered himself up off
the slumping mattress and pulled on a battered old silk wrap. He ran his hands
through his thinning hair, took a cigarette from the pack by the bed, lit it
with a fingertip, and took a deep drag. He then had another long coughing fit,
accompanied by really horrible noises, and sat down on the bed again, his face
gray and sweaty. He was carrying too much weight, pronounced in the jowls and
puffy cheeks. His face had an unhealthy sheen, and his eyes were seriously
bloodshot. The word was, he’d been quite a dandy in his time, back in the heady
days of glam rock, but he hadn’t aged well. The Blue Fairy had lived not wisely
but too well, and it showed. He might have been a personage to be reckoned with
once, but that was long ago. Still, if he really had done half the things he was
supposed to have done, in and out of bed, it was a wonder he was still here at
all. Presumably even half elves are very hard to kill.

"God, you’re a mess, Blue," said Janissary Jane. "You look worse
than your room, and that’s saying something."

"I know, I know," said Blue, drawing on his cigarette again and
stifling another coughing fit through sheer effort of will. "Think of me as a
work in progress. I keep hoping that if I drink enough, or ingest enough things
that are bad for me, I won’t have to wake up again to this awful room, this
awful life. This hole that I dug for myself, this burrow I have crawled into…But
I always do. It’s hard to kill an elf, even when he’s cooperating as hard as he
can. Even a half elf. Bless dear old Daddy and his rampant gonads."

"For someone so determined to die, you seemed very concerned
about me being here to kill you," I said.

"I would prefer to go with some dignity," said the Blue Fairy.
"Not kicking and screaming all the way, as you reduce me to small bloody pieces.
I know how you Droods operate."

"But why do you want to die at all?" said Molly. "If you don’t
like your life, change it, turn it around. There’s still time."

The Blue Fairy smiled fondly at her. "Ah, there speaks the
innocence and optimism of youth. When life still seems full of promise and
possibilities. But no one loves a fairy when he’s fifty. They want their magic
from a younger bit of stuff. And my magic, sad to say, is not what it was. It
faded, along with my good looks…which were magnificent, once upon a time. I was
invited to all the very best parties, you know. Mixed with all the celebs, had
my face in the glossies every week…But alas, we half elves bloom early and fade
fast. Daddy dearest’s energies were never meant to be contained in a mostly
human form. The candle that burns twice as fast…turns out not to be much of a
bargain, in the end.

"Now I’m no longer good-looking enough to hang on to all the
pretty boys and pretty things that alone make life worth living. Sweet young
things do still turn up in my bed, but only when I pay them. And the fortunes I
once had, that I thought would last forever, are gone, long gone. On this…and
that. I never worried about money until I didn’t have it any more. Which is why
I have to take whatever work I can get these days. Even the jobs I know will
come back to haunt me afterwards."

"What have you done, Blue?" I said.

He looked at me pleadingly. "I didn’t have any choice. One of
your people turned up here quite unexpectedly. I didn’t think the Droods even
knew I existed anymore, let alone where to find me. But he had work for me, and
the money was good. Very good. And the threat behind it was very real. You don’t
say no to a Drood. And since all he wanted was a little strange matter…I didn’t
see the harm. Acquiring unusual objects from other dimensions is one of the few
things I’m still good at. It’s in the genes, you see. I got some strange matter
for your family’s Armourer once, some years back, and it must have been on file
somewhere, because when they wanted some more they came to me."

"Who did they send?" I said.

"Matthew," said the Blue Fairy. "They always send Matthew when
they’re not prepared to take ‘Go to hell’ for an answer."

"Of course," I said. "It would have to be Matthew. He’d do
anything for the family. Go on, Blue."

The Blue Fairy blinked nervously at me, picking up on the
coldness in my voice. He stubbed out the last inch of his cigarette on the
bedside table and tried to sit up straight, clasping his hands together in his
lap so they wouldn’t shake.