Live and Let Drood: A Secret Histories Novel (21 page)

“He couldn’t stand the pace,” said Molly. She smiled at me. “This one can.”

“Nicest thing you’ve ever said about me,” I said.

Madame Osiris was still giving me the once-over, in a considering sort of way that was probably designed to make me feel uncomfortable. So when in doubt, attack. I struck a deliberately casual pose and gave her my best intimidating smile.

“We’re not here to have our futures told. We have questions we want answered.”

“You and the whole world, dearie. Oh, sit down, sit down. You make the place look untidy.”

I glanced at Molly, who nodded to the only empty chair. I sat down facing Madame Osiris, and she smiled briefly like she’d just won a point. Molly made a point of standing beside me with her arms folded impatiently.

“Cross my palm with silver, dearie,” Madame Osiris said briskly, “and I shall reveal all.”

“You’ll catch your death in this weather,” said Molly.

“How about I cross your palm with gold?” I said. I sent my armour shooting down my arm to cover my hand in a golden gauntlet and slammed it down on the table. Madame Osiris didn’t even jump. Just looked at it like I’d dropped a fresh turd on the table before her.

“Stone me, it’s a Drood.” She looked at my throat. “Yes, there it is: the golden dog collar. Should have spotted it the moment you walked in…I must be getting old. Looks a bit odd, though; a bit off-colour…” She raised an eyebrow, but I just smiled and said nothing, and pulled the armour back off my hand. Madame Osiris shrugged briefly. “None of my business, dearie. See if I care.” She looked reproachfully at Molly. “Dating a Drood? That really the best you can do? I thought you had better taste. All right. What do you want to know? And, no, I don’t do lottery numbers.”

“Where can we find the Regent of Shadows?” I said.

She surprised me then by laughing in my face. “Don’t need a crystal ball for that one, dearie. You don’t find him. He finds you.”

“Forget the clever dialogue,” I said. “I’m not a tourist. Where, exactly?”

“You need the Department of the Uncanny, in London,” Madame Osiris said resignedly. “Go to Big Ben and then ask again. And, no, I’m not even a little bit kidding. Word is the Regent’s going up in the world. Probably because he knows all kinds of things he isn’t supposed to…He’s been making a lot of people nervous. Anything else you want from me before I invite you to go to hell by the express route? The last thing I need around here is your kind, lowering the tone and attracting the kind of attention I can well do without. You’re bad news, Molly Metcalf, and you always were.”

“How can you say that, Madame O, after all we’ve been through together?” said Molly.

Madame Osiris glared at me. “Run, boy, while you still can. She’ll get you killed. Just like everyone else who gets close to her. The Metcalf sisters have never cared for anyone but themselves. There’s a reason why they’re still alive and the rest of their family isn’t.”

“Never meet up again with old friends,” Molly said to me. “They’ll always let you down.”

“And I can’t believe you’re stepping out with a Drood!” snapped Madame Osiris. “You have better reason than most to know what they really are! But then, you never did listen to me. I could have made you big!”

“This from someone hiding out in a fortune-teller’s stall on Brighton Pier,” said Molly. “How have the mighty fallen…”

“You little cow…”

“That’s enough!” I said. “I didn’t come here for this!”

And something in my voice snapped both their heads round to look at me. Madame Osiris actually looked startled for a moment, and Molly looked at me as though she didn’t know me at all. And then they looked at each other.

“Is he… ?” said Madame Osiris.

“Just a bit,” said Molly.

“You always did know how to pick them, dearie. Whatever happened to Roger Morningstar?”

“Dead, finally,” said Molly.

“Then we can all sleep a little more safely in our beds, at last. Are you in trouble, Molly?”

“Perhaps a little more than usual.”

“I always did have a soft spot for you, much against my better judgement. Like the daughter I never wanted. Lose the Drood, Molly, while you still can.”

“I can’t,” said Molly. “He’s the only one who ever really mattered to me.”

Madame Osiris sighed. “And love makes fools of us all. One more question, dearie, on the house, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Where are my sisters?” said Molly. “Right now.”

Madame Osiris raised a heavily painted eyebrow. “Don’t you know?”

“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be asking! They’ve got their auras turned off, and that isn’t like them. So where are they?”

Madame Osiris sat thoughtfully for a long moment, her dark eyes staring off into the distance…and then she sat up straight and shrugged quickly. “Sorry, dearie. Outside my range. But then, they always were. Come on, Molly. You know as well as I do that no one finds Isabella and Louisa if they don’t want to be found. And wherever they are right now, they clearly don’t want anyone else knowing.”

“But I’m not anyone else! I’m their sister!”

“Then the question you should be asking yourself,” said Madame Osiris, “is, What could they be up to that they know you wouldn’t approve of? Maybe you should go talk to the Regent of Shadows. He knows everything about everyone. That’s his job description. In fact, it’s probably engraved on his business cards.”

Molly nodded brusquely and turned to leave. “You do know Osiris is a man’s name, right?”

Madame O laughed in a good-natured way. “It’s all Egyptian to me, dearie.”

Molly and I made our way back down the Pier. Neither of us was in a hurry to get anywhere. We both had a lot to think about.

“Well,” I said finally. “That…was pretty much a waste of time.”

“Did you know the Regent of Shadows was now in charge of the Department of the Uncanny?”

“I’d heard rumours.…”

“Did you know he was hiding out at Big Ben?”

“Nice to have the rumours confirmed, I suppose,” I said. “Your Madame O gave me the impression of being just a bit rattled by our sudden appearance. She wasn’t pleased to see you, and she definitely didn’t like having me around.”

“Of course not,” said Molly, smiling briefly. “You’re a Drood.”

“The point I’m making is, Do you think someone else might have
got to her first? Crossed her palm with a hell of a lot of silver to point us in the wrong direction?”

“She didn’t know we were coming to see her,” said Molly. “She couldn’t. Hell, we didn’t know until I made the decision just a few hours ago.”

“But if she can see the Future…”

“Grow up, Eddie. Of course she can’t! You are so gullible sometimes. That whole Madame Osiris thing is just for show! Just another con for the unwary…It takes a hell of a lot of power to look into all the future timetracks ahead of us.”

“Someone with real power…like Crow Lee?” I said. “My old tutors always said no one understood the Theory of Magick like Unholy Crow Lee. Molly, is it just me, or is it getting dark in a hurry?”

We both stopped and looked around us and then up at the sky. Grim, overbearing clouds were forming out over the ocean, filling the sky and cutting off the sunshine. The temperature dropped perceptibly as something leached all the summer’s warmth out of the day. A great grim fog was forming, rising up off the sea and heading straight for the Pier.

“Okay,” said Molly. “That…is not natural.”

The fog surged forward, racing across the ocean, and fell upon the end of the Pier like a beast on its prey. It consumed the whole end of the Pier in a moment and then moved slowly, purposefully forward, enveloping the Pier foot by foot. I lost sight of the huge rides and then everything else at the rear of the Pier, unable to see more than a few feet into the thick pearlescent fog. Molly was right: There was nothing natural about this. We both backed carefully away from the fog, sticking close together. We couldn’t risk being separated.

People farther down the Pier began to cry out as even the everyday tourists sensed something was wrong. Panic moved quickly through the crowds as they felt what Molly and I already knew: that there was something in the fog. Something bad. In ones and twos and then in groups, they headed for the exit. Walking quickly and then hurrying, and finally breaking into an undignified run as the fog struck a chill into their hearts. Young lovers held on to each other tightly, running hard
and not looking back, while parents dragged screaming and protesting children along with them by brute force. The retired senior citizens abandoned their deck chairs, and hurried after the departing crowds as best they could. White-faced staff abandoned the stalls and shops and the games arcade, and ran for their lives. Even the fake ghosts came running out of the fake haunted house, throwing aside their sheets and costumes so they could run faster.

None of them wanted any part of the advancing fog and what was moving inside it.

I looked round just in time to see Madame Osiris’s tent disappear abruptly, just before the fog reached it. She may not have seen the fog coming, but she knew enough to get the hell out of Dodge. Molly and I looked at each other and smiled briefly. It would take a lot more than some sudden bad-tempered weather to scare us. We stood our ground, facing the fog as it crept towards us. I peered into the thick fog as it ate up foot after foot of the Pier, but though I could sense something moving along with it, I still couldn’t see a damned thing. And suddenly I had a very bad feeling about this fog.

“We could…depart,” I said carefully to Molly. “If you like. To a better position…I’m just mentioning the possibility.”

“No,” said Molly, just as carefully. “We don’t back down, ever. Might give other people ideas…Besides, aren’t you curious to see what’s inside it?”

“Well, yes and no,” I said. “There’s curious, and then there’s…curious.”

The temperature plummeted. My breath was suddenly steaming on the air before me, along with Molly’s. All the hairs were standing up on my arms and the back of my neck. I shuddered briefly despite myself, and it wasn’t because of the cold. I had a sudden sharp feeling of my own mortality. The fog advanced deliberately towards us, thick and swirling and pearly grey, with strange lights coming and going deep within it…and something that might have been shadowy shapes deep in the heart of it. The air was damp, beading on my face, and I could taste sea salt on my lips.

“What is this cold I’m feeling?” I said to Molly. “The cold of the grave?”

“I don’t think so,” said Molly. She wouldn’t take her gaze off the fog for a moment, even to glance at me. “More like the cold of the sea. The kind of cold you only feel in the deepest, darkest part of the ocean. At the very bottom of the sea, where everything falls when it’s dead. There’s something in the fog and it’s coming for us, Eddie. I can feel it.”

I nodded quickly. I could feel it, too. A growing sense of presence, of something else here on the Pier with us. Even though the crowds and the tourists were long gone. Something new, or perhaps something very old, had come to Brighton Pier, in the fog, out of the sea. Looking for me and Molly.

“My fingers are tingling,” I said. “And not in a good way.”

“That’s nothing,” said Molly. “My nipples are hard as rocks.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “Distract me. That’s all I need.”

Molly laughed. “Not everything is about you, Eddie.”

“This time, I think it is,” I said. “I think this is all about me. About getting rid of the Last Drood.”

“I can see things moving in the fog,” said Molly. “Human shapes heading straight for us.”

“You’ve got better eyes than me,” I said, glaring helplessly into the grey fog churning before me. Close, now. Just a few more feet and I’d be able to reach out and touch it.

“Madame O sold us out,” Molly said flatly. “She told someone we were here. I shall have words with her later.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “I told you we were being watched. Crow Lee is a power in his own right, as well as being the Most Evil, et cetera, and this is well within his capabilities. He wants to stop me from rescuing my family. He wants to take me down while I’m vulnerable.” I smiled, and somehow I just knew it wasn’t a very nice smile. “Poor old Crow Lee. He thinks I’m naked. He doesn’t know about my new armour.”

“Right,” said Molly. “We’ll show him.”

“We could still run,” I said.

“Too late,” said Molly.

The fog swelled towards us like the waves of a silent pearl grey sea. The whole end of the Pier was gone now, swallowed up by the fog. I could just make out the dark shape of the fake haunted house to my right. New lights were showing in the windows: dark green glows, like the phosphorescent light you find on shipwrecks at the bottom of the sea. Dark silhouettes, distorted human shapes, moved slowly past the windows. Something bad peered at me from the illuminated doorway.

Dark shadows, slow-moving human forms, stumbling forward on dragging feet, scraping across the wooden floorboards, appeared in the fog before Molly and me. They were almost upon us now. Not ghosts, not any form of projected image or any kind of illusion. These were solid, physical things. Dead men emerging slowly out of the fog. Dead men walking.

Once I got a good look at them, I knew immediately what they were. Not ghosts or even zombies, but spirits of the dead called up out of the sea and given their old shape and form to do their master’s will. Or what was left of them after so long in the depths. Disturbed from their rest and animated by some terrible outside will. Crow Lee. Had to be. There were dozens of the things, maybe hundreds, shuffling and stumbling forward to confront Molly and me. Grey and bloated, flesh eaten away by fishes and all the other things that live at the bottom of the sea that we don’t like to think about. Some bodies had clearly been down there longer than others; just bare bones, held together with strips of ancient flesh and tatters of decayed clothing. The faces were the worst: rotten, eaten away, eyes and ears and nose and lips just gone…but they could still see Molly and me. Every dead body oriented on us as they pressed forward. They could see us. They knew where we were.

“Can you tell what they want?” I said to Molly.