As they moved on, Pax’s eyes ran to Letty. They hadn’t noticed her at all, stood right there on the bike. Even if they’d thought she was a toy, wasn’t that curious?
“Okay,” Pax whispered. “What the fuck?”
“They’re talking about McDonald’s,” Letty said.
“Huh?”
“Cheated out of a 20p burger saving or whatever. Dumb fucking humans.”
“How does it work?” Pax asked.
“The bitching or the neediness?”
“Them not seeing you.”
“Dust.” Letty shrugged, like it was nothing. The fairies’ mysterious drug of choice.
Pax said, “I see you perfectly. I saw your men when they came to attack us – Holly and Grace saw them too.”
“Dust gives you energy,” Letty said, and lifted off towards Pax’s shoulder with her auxiliary wing whirring. “You can use it to power a fake wing or go wild in a fight. Same energy creates a haze like heat-shimmers, making mirages.”
“But I see you perfectly!” Pax protested. “They went right past.”
“Something their brain can’t comprehend, they don’t see it. Know what I mean?”
Denial was something Pax understood well, but it still didn’t make sense. How did taking a drug affect other people? As if she didn’t have enough questions already.
“Come on,” Letty said, “what are we doing here?”
Pax pointed and started walking to the side of the laundromat. “If there’s a blue screen here, I grill it, we go home with questions answered.” There was the wall Barton had described, a five-foot structure enclosing the three shops’ commercial bins. Pax checked the empty road, then used the scooter’s ancient key to scratch the brickwork: You here?
She backed off and watched the wall carefully, studying the greying bricks.
With nothing happening, she looked at Letty.
The Fae wasn’t just a tiny person, she was conspicuous in her grungy style, too. Frayed vest and shorts, messily coloured hair, a chunky holstered pistol; even the bulky, metallic strap of her artificial wing crossed her chest like a punk fashion accessory. Maybe her extreme appearance made her harder to believe. Pax said, “I knew a guy, Georgie Weyland, doorman in the West End. One game, he went to take a big pot after I showed a winning flush. I laughed, before I saw he was serious. Big George was glaring at me like I was mad. I said, ‘Look at the cards. Take another look at the cards.’ I kept saying it, over and over, before he got it. Then he went quiet as a mouse, finally seeing the hearts. Left the game shortly after, barely showed his face around me again.”
“Sounds about right,” Letty said.
The bricks weren’t changing. No blue anywhere. Pax’s scratched words stood out plainly, permanently. She said, “What’d happen if a human took your dust?”
“Want to try?”
“Would I be the first?”
“Maybe.” Letty hovered up, scanning the wall closer. “There’s nothing here, Pax. Or it doesn’t want to be seen. Big surprise.”
She was right, but Pax kept waiting. “What’s the connection between dust and glo? Dr Rimes said their drink has an energy they couldn’t explain, too.”
“No connection I know of,” Letty said. “Ours has a number of highly beneficial properties, theirs is basically psychedelic booze.”
“Where’s dust come from?”
“State-controlled production. Val’s people have run it since long before she took charge. Her people own these big vats on the edge of town. Sealed off in ugly square buildings. You can hear the machines through the night from two blocks away.”
“Humans don’t hear that?”
“FTC blocks, idiot. All within the confines of the FTC. To you, I guess it’d seem small.” Letty made it sound like an insult.
“And these vats and machines do what, exactly?”
Letty scoffed. “Something hidden. Ancient family recipes and state secrets and that shit.”
Pax scratched a nail over the marks on the brick, picking out the reddish-grey dust. “So. A mystery substance that messes with people’s heads.”
“Don’t fucking go there,” Letty warned. “The secrecy in dust is deliberate. Mystery adds class. Exclusivity. That’s all.”
“It stops people asking questions. You’re honestly telling me that’s all the public knows? Vats and state workers doing what?”
Letty grunted. “Well, there’s the stories you’re told as a kid. Starts with peepy-tales about ground-up animal bones, or beans gifted down by giants, that kind of shit.”
“Peepy-tales?”
“Peepy-tales, yeah,” Letty said. “You know, the peeps, fantastic stories about magic and heroes and giants and nonsense like that. Tansel and Gretel, the House of the Human, all that.”
Pax tripped on the interplay of the familiar and random. “And when you get over the...peepy-tales?”
“You realise the stories hide the boring truth about them fermenting some kind of fungus. It first came over from a Fae colony in France or something. Up in the Alps. Our people don’t travel much, so who’d check?”
“A mystery fungus, then. Even if it’s not the same as glo, you don’t see a parallel?”
“I see you trying to shit on a world you know nothing about. Dust has been a part of Fae society forever. Your monsters and conspiracies have only plagued Ordshaw for fifty, a hundred years max? Spin on it.”
Pax went quiet, seeing that she was only making Letty defensive. She’d put it out there, anyway. The fairy could stew on the idea.
Letty pointed at the wall and angrily said, “How long you gonna stare at this?”
“Barton said it’d be practically instant,” Pax sighed. “Or nothing.”
“Could’ve told you it’d be a bust,” Letty snorted. “And don’t expect anything better from the chapel. This way.” She flew ahead, and Pax followed, with one last glance to the wall. It’d been a long shot, but there was definitely nothing there now.
They continued down the side street, around a turning and past another row of near-identical houses. Letty floated closer to Pax, saying, “Apothel suggested it once, trying dust. He stabbed me in the back before he got round to it. Don’t know of any other human that’s thought it’d be a good idea. You’ve got a lot in common, you and that lummox.”
“That makes my day,” Pax said.
“When we’re done with all this, we could give it a go.”
Letty drifted ahead to a squat single-storey building with a peaked roof. The windows were boarded up and the entrance hidden behind a chunky steel panel and door. A wooden sign hung over the entrance, most of the letter’s gone: St. J...n’s...ion...F..t.
Pax suggested, “St Julian’s Zion Fart?”
Letty snorted a little laugh. “Pretty sure whatever this was wasn’t religious. Else someone would’ve cared about it.”
The steel seal bolted over the entrance was smooth despite its evident age, with wires of weeds rising up one side and rooted into the brickwork above. Pax pushed the metal door. It didn’t even move on its hinges. When they sealed the place, the Ministry had made sure no one could squat there again. She patted her coat pockets, looking for her lock picks. All gone? “How do we get in?”
“Easiest way?” Letty flew higher, up past the sign. “There’s a hole in the roof.”
“You gonna carry me up there? Tell me you have ant-like super-strength.”
“Comparing me to a fucking ant, now, you want your jaw broken?”
“It’s a positive comparison. You prefer a rhino beetle?”
“I’d prefer you shove it,” Letty drifted back down. “I’m Fae, not an insect. And even my one shitty wing could lift a lot more than you’d think. Just not your fat arse. There’s a bin out back. Can you climb? You people are like monkeys, right?”
Pax rolled her eyes at the attempted retort. As she followed Letty down to where an alley cut between two townhouses, though, she wasn’t sure she actually could climb. When was the last ti
me? She’d broken the low branches of a tree in her childhood garden, once. Climbed on top of a wall when she was drunk at university?
She found herself at the end of the alley, before a walled gate.
“Boost yourself over here,” Letty said.
“Wait.” Pax looked back down the alley, “this is someone’s home.”
“And? Coming here was your idea.”
Pax gave her a wary look, then pulled her hood up. Great. Add suspicion of burglary to whatever else the MEE might pin on her. She dug the tip of a boot into the brickwork, got a foot onto the gate handle and hoisted herself. She just about had the strength to pull herself up, but her chest landed heavily on top of the narrow wall. Flopping like a beached whale, she looked into the overgrown dirt patch to one side. Half a dozen rusty gardening tools were piled against the far wall.
“You stuck?” Letty asked, buzzing near her ear. Barely keeping the laughter from her voice. Pax flapped a hand her way but realised the effort had left her breathless.
“I’ve got some good news,” Letty said. “You won’t need the bin.”
Pax pivoted on the wall gracelessly. Unfit. Not recovered from the Sunken City. Shouldn’t be climbing walls. She followed the fairy’s gesture. In the other direction, a narrow ledge ran behind the next house, to where the roof of Apothel’s chapel banked down to only a few feet higher. With a little more scrambling she’d be able to get up there. In the middle of the slanted roof was a hole, just as Letty had promised. Boarded up like the windows out front.
“You know how high that is?” Pax said, rising unsteadily. “If I can even get in, how am I supposed to drop down? How am I supposed to get back out?”
“All your thinking is exhausting,” Letty said. “No wonder you’re puffing over a little wall.”
“I’m not enjoying this,” Pax said. “Not one bit.”
11
“Proximity alert,” Landon said, studying one of his various electronic devices. Phone clamped to her ear, Sam frowned at him to be quiet. He ignored her. “A site in Ripton. Motion sensors say there’s been disturbances at the door and the roof. AGe, number 218. I should go.”
“What’s he saying?” Mathers asked, on the other end of the phone line.
“Nothing, sir,” Sam replied, trying to keep his focus. So far, Mathers had shown little interest in her account of Casaria’s disappearance. “Should we wait for a forensics team? There were signs of a struggle.”
“Outside the building? On a street used by hundreds every day?”
“His apartment’s been searched – I think –”
“He might have been bleeding, you know?”
Sam paused. “Isn’t that the point, sir?”
“His existing injuries might have come unstuck. There are perfectly logical explanations we might look to before diverting attention from the very real problem of managing this morning’s crisis, Ward.”
“What logically explains Casaria tossing through everything he owned and disappearing?” Sam said, before she could filter that one. She cringed into her boss’s unimpressed breathing, as Landon gave her a surprised look.
“Alright,” Mathers said, and Sam closed her eyes with relief. “When Dr Hertz is done in New Thornton, perhaps he can swing by with the police.” Perhaps was no good. Dr Hertz might be no good either; the Ministry’s catch-all member of medical staff could analyse Sunken City samples and treat wounds, but she doubted his talents stretched to forensic science. “Time you came back. I believe your team have drafted some correspondence for you to check over.”
“But sir,” Sam started, without knowing what to say. Going back would mean getting bogged down in paperwork. Sidelined. To say nothing of the fact that Casaria was actually missing. As Mathers waited, Sam clicked her fingers at Landon. “There’s something we need to follow up.” She mouthed at the agent: Where is it? “Agent Landon has an alert.”
“Yes?” Mathers replied warily.
Landon gave Sam an uncertain look. He said, “AGe. Site 218.”
The designation for a civilian location, above ground. Most likely a cat rubbing up against a shop the Ministry had closed. Sam told Mathers, “It’s a site breach near here, while we’re in the field. An AGe alert. Operations are all occupied, aren’t they?”
Mathers’ slow breathing betrayed that once again he felt agitated about Sam making her own plans. “Landon can go alone, you can walk in.”
“Sir, he just lost his partner...” Sam said, trying to sound caring.
Another pause. Mathers conceded, dryly. “Be back within the hour.” He hung up before she could respond, and Sam found Landon staring at her, unconvinced.
“Proximity alerts are serious,” he said. “We are going there.”
Sam expected as much. At least it’d give her a chance to think. She might even work on this drone, get him to open up. She asked, “So where’s the car?”
It took a lot of shoving and ungainly levering, but the ragged planks over the hole in the roof finally snapped and fell into Apothel’s Chapel. Pax scooted back from the hole and the tiles creaked dangerously underneath her. Sliding onto her belly, spreading out her weight, Pax peered over the lip. It was dark inside, bar the empty pillar of daylight she’d created. The floor was maybe fifteen feet down, with nothing near the hole to climb onto.
Letty stood on the far side of the hole, hands on her hips. “Rather you than me.”
“I can’t get down there,” Pax said.
“Don’t be hard on yourself, you’ll fit.”
Pax narrowed her eyes. “I don’t have wings.”
“A little drop like that? Come on. They’re gonna know someone’s here, we don’t have all day.”
Pax dipped her head over the edge. A fog of dust partly concealed the open space, but as it turned and settled she saw there was nothing to conceal. Her eyes adjusted to the low light and she saw the shadowed corners; the hall was completely empty. Except...no, there was a radiator against one wall.
“You said there’s a cellar?” Pax asked.
“At the back. A side-room and a little kitchen unit, too, all empty. You think the Ministry were gonna leave stuff behind for any muppet to find?”
“I can’t see the walls. Are his markings still there, at least?”
“Here.” Letty rifled through her backpack. She pulled out a tiny cylinder and twisted it. It flared at one end like a Roman candle. Letty tossed it through the hole and it fell slowly down, burning brighter as it went. The flickering light revealed the far walls in white flashes. A network of scratches ran over the surfaces as if a ferocious beast had been caged there, clawing to get out. The marks were random, nothing like the coded symbols of Apothel’s book. They ran in deranged lines to impossible heights, scratched deep from the skirting up to the ceiling.
“Jesus Christ,” Pax said, imagining Apothel hacking at this mad mess while perched on a ladder. She leant further in as the roof flexed under her. Everywhere she looked was the same. “This isn’t like the video.”
“Guess he revised his notes,” Letty said. “To reflect his idiotic state of mind at the end. Seems representative of what was going on in his head.”
“You came here after he died, you knew it was like this?” Pax asked.
Letty shrugged. “Yeah. I said it was all scratched out.”
Pax let out a deep breath. Was it her fault for not listening properly, or the fairy’s for failing to communicate it? She’d assumed Letty couldn’t interpret it, not that the writing was gone. “There must be something...”
“Sure, insist hard enough, that’ll make it real.”
Pax ducked down again. There had to be something. She was tingling again. The heat in her chest was tickling her ribs, and something told her this was the right place. Had it been in the dream? The claw marks on the walls? There was something in this she couldn’t rationally explain, but she didn’t need to. The same way you knew when you’d sussed your opponent’s cards. You had to trust your instincts. She slid a
round the hole as the flare dimmed. In the final splutters of light, she saw letters.
A single word. Spread sideways, near a rear door.
The light went out.
“There’s something there,” Pax said. “You got another flare?”
“Not worth it.”
“You need to go down there, check it out.”
“You go down there.”
Pax glared at the fairy, but Letty had her arms folded, resolute. “By the far door, there’s something written. Anything that survived this vandalism has got to be useful.”
“If there’s anything to be done, which there isn’t, it’s on you.”
“Why’d you even come?” Pax said, struggling to keep cool.
“To keep an eye on you. The Ministry has defences specifically designed to screw with the Fae. Remember how we met? Fuck off, me going in there.”
Pax hesitated. She remembered well enough, finding the tiny woman unconscious on the floor. Knocked out by a Ministry trap that released a Fae-paralysing gas. “I’ll keep a hold of you, how’s that?”
“How’s that?” Letty echoed with alarm.
“You can get closer, and I can pull you out if anything happens, Ministry defences or whatever you’re scared of.”
“Are you fucking –”
Before Pax could overthink it, she closed a hand on the fairy. Letty started roaring curses as Pax quickly shifted forwards and hung her hand into the room. “I’m sorry – I’m sorry – but just have a look – see if there’s any other way down and I’ll go!”
Letty swore at the top of her voice, twisting in Pax’s grip. Definitely couldn’t let go of her now, she’d be liable to murder.
“You’re in already, no use –” Pax said.
“I’m gonna tear you apart!” Letty snarled.
“After you’ve had a look!” Pax insisted.
Letty thrashed a moment longer but started to calm.
“There’s nothing, is there? No Fae defences? You’re alright?”
“I’m gonna gut you.”
“After you have a look.”
Letty snarled, but Pax felt her relaxing slightly in her grip. The fairy twisted around. “I can’t see shit, not any better than you. Gonna get yourself killed over nothing.”
The Sunken City Trilogy Page 39
