Property of a Lady Faire: A Secret Histories Novel Read online

  Everyone had heard all kinds of things, but that didn’t necessarily make any of them true. There was a lot of gossip about what the Droods were up to—nearly all of it wrong, but worrying. Which was as it should be.

  There were certainly a hell of a lot of people in tonight. Packed together so tight you could hardly breathe. Some I knew, some I didn’t. Monkton Farley, the famous consulting detective, was propping up the bar not far from me. Tall and whipcord lean, with a hard-boned face and flashing eyes, dressed very smartly, as always, with a vulgarly large diamond tiepin and immaculate white spats. Holding forth, very much as usual, to a small crowd of his wide-eyed and devoted fans, all of them hanging on his every word as he related his latest triumph. There’s no denying he’s a really good detective, with a razor-sharp mind; but there’s also no denying he’s an arrogant, stuck-up little tit. A hard man to dislike—but worth the effort.

  Not too far away, ostentatiously ignoring Monkton Farley, was Ellen de Gustibus. She eats monsters. A pleasant enough sort, but it’s still hard to look at her without feeling a certain chill. She really does eat monsters. Some agents of the Good are scarier than others. A tall, statuesque blonde in a rose-red basque and fishnet stockings, Ellen also favoured a bulky black leather jacket and stiletto heels so high they could be used in close combat, and often had been. She wore a hell of a lot of makeup, under spiky blonde hair, and was always smiling and laughing. And nearly always ready to buy the next round. Her crowd of wide-eyed admirers was even bigger than Farley’s, and her stories were a lot more fun.

  No one ever bothers Ellen de Gustibus. If anyone even tries, she just takes out a toothpick and rolls it round her mouth in a meaningful sort of way. Apparently, she’d just got back from cleaning out a nest of vampires in Budapest.

  “How did you find them, Ellen?” asked a fan adoringly.

  “Tasty,” said Ellen.

  Also present, unfortunately for all, was the Painted Ghoul. The clown at midnight himself, dressed in a bloodstained clown’s costume composed of deliberately clashing colours. The Painted Ghoul’s face was daubed with distressing patterns, and when he smiled his big red smile, you could see he’d filed his teeth into sharp points. His overbright eyes were full of a malevolent glee. There’s nothing funny about a clown with an erection.

  I turned my back on him to look elsewhere, because he just lives for the attention, and nodded to Waterloo Lillian, a tall showgirl in a spangly outfit, with ostrich feathers in her piled-up hair and a bravely prominent Adam’s apple.

  “Have you heard anything about the Indigo Spirit?” I said, deliberately keeping it vague.

  “Oh, him,” said Lillian, sipping delicately from his champagne glass with an extended little finger. “He doesn’t come around here anymore. Not since he got his head handed to him by a Drood a while back. I hear he does his drinking in the Nightside now. Because he knows he can’t trust anyone here.”

  I felt bad about that, but I couldn’t say anything. I hadn’t meant to hurt him so badly. He just . . . got in the way.

  “How about Charlatan Joe?” I asked, as casually as I could.

  Waterloo Lillian sniffed loudly, the tall ostrich feathers shivering as he shook his head dismissively.

  “The club management banned him permanently, for being dumb enough to bring the wrath of the Droods down on us in the first place. I mean, yes, this is supposed to be a sanctuary for one and all, but there are limits. And it’s not like anyone misses Charlatan Joe, after all.”

  I moved away. I wasn’t prepared to feel any more guilty. I’d done my penance.

  Also present at the Wulfshead that night was Jumping Jack Flashman. Wearing a mind-blowingly colourful three-piece suit so bright and distinctive that blind people would have winced at it, complete with a black carnation in his buttonhole. He was looking even more smug than usual—which could only mean he’d just pulled off a really big score. Everyone knew he was a thief and a burglar, but we all felt safe when he was around. Partly because he was smart enough not to shit where he lived, but mostly because he stole only from the Very Rich and Prosperous. And no one who drinks in the Wulfshead makes enough money to qualify as one of Jumping Jack’s targets. Tall and gangling, and handsome enough in a weak sort of way, Jumping Jack had fey blue eyes, dark stringy hair, and a drooping porn star’s moustache.

  He bellied up to the bar, grandly offering to buy drinks for one and all, and loudly announced he’d already set up his next challenge. A victim who would make everyone sit up and take notice. We all just laughed and nodded, because that was what he always said. No one doubted he could bring it off, though. No one did the short-range teleport burglary better than Jumping Jack Flashman.

  I looked around, carefully, but no one seemed to be paying undue attention. Even though you would have thought that was just the kind of secret information the people spying on the club would want to know.

  I moved unhurriedly on through the crowd, working the room with easy grace, chatting amiably with one and all, and just sort of casually bringing up the subject of secrets going missing. It seemed like everyone had heard something, though rarely the same something, but no one knew anything for sure. They weren’t even particularly on their guard, or watching what they were saying. This was the Wulfshead, after all. They still felt safe here, because they always had been.

  Monkton Farley bristled at the very thought, but he made a point of dismissing his faithful devotees so we could discuss the matter privately.

  “The whole point of drinking in an establishment like this,” he said, “is that you can feel free to speak openly. Share a confidence, in the certainty that it will remain an understanding between the persons concerned. If that is no longer true, I may have to take my custom elsewhere.”

  “And we should miss you so, Monkton,” said Ellen de Gustibus, easing in beside us and considering us solemnly over a very large drink. “But what secrets might you have, Monkton, that you’re so concerned about? You’re always saying your life is an open book.”

  “My professional life remains transparent to all,” said Farley with quiet dignity. “But damn it all, a chap’s private life should remain just that. The whole point of secrets is that they should stay secret.”

  “Two may keep a secret, if one of them is dead,” Ellen said wisely.

  The Painted Ghoul sniggered loudly as he forced his way into our group.

  “I have no secrets, because I wear my heart on my sleeve. Look! There it is!”

  We all looked, despite ourselves, and sure enough there was a human heart stitched to his billowing silk sleeve. It was still beating, slowly. The Painted Ghoul took a firm grip and wrenched the heart away. We all winced just a bit, as we heard the stitches tear. The Painted Ghoul offered the heart to each of us in turn, but we all declined. Even Ellen. Perhaps she was full, after Budapest. The clown shrugged and bit deeply into the heart. Blood dripped thickly from his chin, as he chewed happily.

  He didn’t care; but he loved it that we did.

  “Your loss,” he said indistinctly.

  “I wouldn’t touch anything you’d touched, clown,” said Ellen. “I have scruples.”

  “Really?” leered the Painted Ghoul.

  “Yes,” said Ellen. “Bags full of them.”

  The clown actually stopped chewing for a moment.

  “I think it’s the Droods,” Monkton Farley said abruptly. “They’re the ones behind all this.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Because it always is the Droods!” Farley answered.

  “Well, yes,” said Ellen. “Very nearly always. But I don’t think they’d go to all the trouble of listening in on our secrets just to give them away for free. The Droods use the secrets they acquire for leverage. Or blackmail. Or store them away for some future time, when they might come in handy.”

  “Nothing sells for a better price than a secret,” said the Painted Ghoul.

  “You should know,” said Farley.

  “You wound me,
sir!” said the clown, throwing what was left of the heart to the floor and wiping his bloody fingers on the front of his outfit. “I tell everyone everything, just to see the look on their faces.”

  “Whoever it is that’s listening in,” said Ellen, “they’re becoming a real nuisance. I come here to relax, far away from a judgemental world. Can’t you figure out what’s going on here, Monkton? Please? Pretty please?”

  She actually went so far as to flutter her eyelashes at him. Monkton Farley smiled, despite himself. He never could resist a pretty face.

  “I am a detective, and the current situation does . . . intrigue me. I know for a fact that the Wulfshead Security people have turned the whole bar inside out, and failed to discover even a hint of a scientific or supernatural eavesdropping device. There’s nothing here that isn’t supposed to be here. Which suggests to me that this has to be some kind of inside job. And whoever is behind all this . . . would have to be pretty damned powerful in their own right, not to be scared of what the Wulfshead management might do, if they ever find out.”

  We all looked at each other. We were all thinking of the Roaring Boys, but none of us wanted to say their name out loud, in case that was enough to make them appear. The last time the club management unleashed them, after that unfortunate business at last year’s New Year’s Eve celebrations, the police were fishing bodies and bits of bodies out of the Thames for more than three weeks. And the media never said a word. Funny, that . . .

  “Who do you think it is, Shaman?” said Ellen. “You’ve usually got your ear closer to the ground than anyone else.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I’ve been away. It does seem to me, though, that we’re all missing the obvious question. Who profits? Who stands to make the most, out of all our secrets being made public? Or . . . if they’re not doing it for the money, what are they getting out of it? I mean, just setting up an operation like this can’t have been cheap . . .”

  “Good point, Shaman,” said Farley, frowning heavily. “If it’s not about the money, it must be about the secrets themselves. Who wants to know?”

  Jumping Jack Flashman just happened to be passing by at that moment, heading to the bar for a refill. He smiled charmingly on us all.

  “Don’t look at me; I only steal proper valuables. Secrets and information are just too hard to sell. You need brokers, and middlemen, and binding agreements . . . I prefer to keep things simple. Nobody really cares if you just steal their valuables. Everybody’s insured these days.”

  I went with him to the bar and ordered myself another bottle of Beck’s. Talking is thirsty work. The barman who served me might have been the same one as before, or he might not. It didn’t matter; they all had the same colourless professional personality. Though this particular clone must not have known me as well as some of the others, because he tried to interest me in some of the evening’s special offers.

  “Could I interest you in our special Dirty Pink Champagne, sir? Tinted, or perhaps more properly tainted, with a delicate diffusion of demon’s blood? Atlantean ale? Lemurian lager? Ponce de Leon Sparkling Water, takes years off you. Or there’s our new Cannibal Cognac—comes complete with a human finger at the bottom of every bottle. For when eating the worm just isn’t enough . . .”

  I looked at the bartender, and he decided he was urgently needed somewhere else. I put my back to the bar again, and looked up and down the length of the club. The place was packed, everybody talking at the tops of their voices, and men and women and certain others were huddling together in corners, doing things that would have been illegal if only the Government had known about them. That said, everyone was playing nice, because the club had raised its security levels. There were golem bouncers at every exit, standing unnaturally still in their oversized formal tuxedos. Their eyes burned fiercely, the yellow flames jumping slightly with every movement in the air. The golems were on guard, and they missed nothing.

  And then I heard Ellen de Gustibus say, “Hey! Where did the Painted Ghoul go? He was standing right beside me just a moment ago!”

  We all looked around quickly, but there was no sign of the clown at midnight anywhere. Which was . . . more than odd. He wasn’t the sort to just leave without making a big production out of it and upsetting as many people as possible . . . And given the sheer press of the crowd, there was no way he could have gone far in just a few moments. Even as I looked around, there were more raised voices up and down the length of the club as people suddenly noticed that people they’d been talking to only a moment before just weren’t there any longer. More and more names were shouted of people who’d disappeared. The music shut down abruptly as someone behind the bar realised something was seriously wrong. Panicking voices rose up throughout the club, demanding to know what the hell was going on.

  It was only then that I realised how much the crowd had thinned out in the last few moments. The club was nowhere near as packed as it had been. Other people had already realised that, and were making a mad dash for the exits. Only to find that the doors wouldn’t open. And I was pretty sure that wasn’t down to the club management. We were being held where we were, like rats in a trap. People surged desperately this way and that, looking around for an enemy—or just someone handy to strike out at.

  People at the sealed doors were yelling at the golems, demanding that they do something, but the tall, hulking figures didn’t speak or move. Their grey stone faces remained utterly impassive, and the fire had gone out of their eyes, as though someone had turned them off. And the more I looked around, the more it seemed to me that there were even fewer people in the club than before. As though they were being taken when I wasn’t looking. Just snatched away.

  Suddenly the Wulfshead looked barely half full.

  Men and women, friends and enemies, moved quickly to stand back to back so they could watch every direction at once and defend themselves against whatever was coming. Some threw accusations at one another, but most had already realised this had to be a threat from Outside. The shouting and screaming died quickly away, as people prepared to fight their corner. Weapons were appearing in everyone’s hands. I turned and gestured urgently to the nearest barman.

  “Why aren’t the security measures kicking in?” I said loudly. “I thought they were supposed to defend us automatically, if the club ever came under attack from Outside?”

  The barman looked back at me, confused. “I don’t understand it! If there’s a problem, any problem, the club should protect itself! If Security can’t react, for fear of injuring the patrons, then all the doors should open automatically! And if that fails, then the Roaring Boys should appear, to sort things out. But nothing’s activating! The computers back here are telling me they haven’t been interfered with, or sabotaged, or even bypassed . . . They’re just not activating. As though as far as they’re concerned, nothing is wrong!”

  I turned away from the barman as Monkton Farley grabbed me by the arm. His face was full of a sudden insight.

  “Shaman! Have you noticed only people on the edges of the crowd have been disappearing! The people in the middle haven’t been touched!”

  “So whatever’s grabbing people is only able to get at those people nearest the walls!” I said.

  Farley fought his way into the crowd, yelling for everyone to stand together in the middle of the club and stay well away from the walls. Nobody argued. They were happy to go along with anything that might make them feel a little safer. They huddled together, back to back and shoulder to shoulder, glaring about them, defying any outsider to come too near. They all had some kind of weapon at the ready now. Everything from machine pistols to energy guns, enchanted knuckle-dusters to aboriginal pointing bones. We’re an eclectic bunch at the Wulfshead.

  There were even a few pieces of alien tech being brandished, dangerous enough to make me feel distinctly nervous. On the grounds that they looked powerful enough to destroy the whole club and everyone in it. I just hoped no one started shooting at shadows, because the moment one s
tarted, everyone else would be bound to join in.

  I wanted very much to call on my armour so I could protect the crowd, as much as myself. But if I did that, everyone would know Shaman Bond was really a Drood. My cover identity would be lost forever. And I liked being Shaman Bond. I wasn’t ready to give him up just yet. I put my right hand to my forehead, subvocalised the activating Words, and allowed just a trickle of strange matter to run down my neck from my torc, and then streak along my arm to my raised hand, until it could jump onto my face and form a pair of golden sunglasses. With so much going on around me, I was pretty sure no one would notice anything. And with the golden sunglasses in place, I could suddenly See the whole situation a great deal more clearly. I could See everything that was there, including the things I wasn’t supposed to see.

  The problem was the club’s plasma screens. The huge screens covering the walls. Someone had tapped into them from Outside, and was watching everything that was going on inside the club from the other side of the screens. I could See them, dark figures sitting and listening on the far side of every screen—though they were almost certainly some distance away in reality.

  This was how the secrets had been getting out. And no one had noticed because the screens were part of the club. Just taken for granted. They probably hadn’t been physically altered, nothing to give away their new nature; they just had their signals piggybacked, so that the sound and vision went both ways.

  I jumped up onto the bar and shouted at the crowd. Every eye and every weapon were immediately turned on me.

  “It’s the plasma screens!” I said. “Someone’s made them two-way! Someone’s looking in from Outside, so they can see and hear everything that happens here! And now they must be reaching through the screens to take people!”

  I really shouldn’t have been surprised when everyone present immediately opened fire on every plasma screen at once. I jumped down just in time and huddled up against the bar as all kinds of firepower were unleashed. The din was almost unbearable in the confined space. But when the shooting died raggedly away, and I looked up again, I saw that not a single screen had been so much as cracked. Whoever had tapped into them had clearly also reinforced them with all kinds of protections.