Hell and High Water

by Charlotte E. English

  Hags curse me, I’d grown so used to my splendid isolation my immediate impulse was to shove the idea away. I don’t do we anymore. It isn’t worth what it costs.

  But another part of me absorbed the idea the way a parched plant takes in water, and relaxed. We had made a great team, once. We had made great friends.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Ah… are you sure we’re up to it?’

  I didn’t need to explain why I’d ask such a question. Tai looked at me, and the memory of Ravensbrück lay heavy between us.

  ‘We are,’ she said. ‘Of course we are. You think because we screwed up once, we’re toast? Fuck that.’

  I laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh; a damp, half-choked thing, more surprised than amused. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘What was I thinking.’

  ‘We’re up to it because Mea needs us to be,’ she said, more seriously. ‘We aren’t going to fuck up this time, Fi.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Right.’ She unfolded herself from my chair, and stood up. ‘Order of business.’ She retrieved a phone from a pocket in her jacket, and brandished it at me. ‘Exchange of contact details. Can’t work together if we can’t talk together.’

  A couple of minutes took care of that. ‘Great,’ she said, pocketing the phone again. ‘I’ve got irons in the fire, namely Phélan—’

  ‘Phélan?’ I interrupted. ‘Tai, you didn’t.’

  She shrugged. ‘I didn’t have a better idea.’

  ‘I was a better idea.’

  That earned me a measuring look. Internally, I winced. She had come to me — but she’d gone to Phélan first. What that meant, I didn’t want to think too closely about.

  ‘And what,’ said I, resigned, ‘did Phélan say?’

  ‘Hasn’t said anything yet. I expect him somewhere around 3am, because he wouldn’t be Phélan if he didn’t pick the most deliberately awkward time to appear.’

  I smirked. Not quite a smile, but vaguely close. ‘I’m awaiting word from Faerd,’ I said. ‘He’s one of the Thames asrai. He’ll bring news if anybody saw Narasel go into the water, or who it was that pushed her.’ I slipped off the desk, and straightened. ‘I was also about to question Jane. I don’t know who was the last person to see Narasel, before she left the show.’

  Tai nodded. ‘So she was last seen at the Walkie Talkie?’

  ‘As far as I know at the moment. I—’ I paused, frowning. ‘Wait. How did you know where my show was?’

  Tai looked vaguely shifty, and said nothing.

  ‘Were you there?’

  ‘Er. Yes, yes I was.’

  I raised my brows.

  ‘Fi. I’ve been to every damned show you’ve ever done,’ she said with a sigh.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Okay, no, not quite all. Once in a while I’m on tour and I can’t make it. But most of them.’

  My mouth opened, but my brain spun and spun. No appropriate response occurred to me.

  Tai’s eyes danced. ‘This is the perfect moment to tell me you’ve secretly attended a bunch of my shows. You see that, right?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘It’s okay. Don’t hurt yourself trying.’

  ‘Tai.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can we do this later?’

  ‘Do what? Go over the last seventy-five years of apparently total estrangement, discover we’ve been BFFs the whole time, and cry each other into a stupor?’

  ‘What—’

  ‘There can be alcohol. It’s a crutch, but that’s okay.’

  ‘Tai. Stop.’

  She stopped, and waited. I could read her well enough to detect a note of hope behind her words, but … now wasn’t the time. It really wasn’t. We had a more urgent problem on hand than the long-ago ruin of our friendship.

  ‘Later,’ I said, firmly.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Do you have any leads on Mearil?’

  ‘Not a fucking thing. If anyone saw her taken, I’ve no idea who, and I found no trace of her at Gatwick. By all appearances, she went up like a puff of smoke.’

  ‘Unfortunate.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s why I want to talk to Phélan. Fi, if somebody’s organising this kind of shit then you know he will have heard something.’

  I grimaced. ‘Probable. But can you be careful, please? For all we know, Phélan could be behind the whole thing, and in that case he won’t like you asking questions about it.’

  Tai waved the idea away. ‘Phélan’s bad, but he’s not bad-bad.’

  ‘He was a Nazi spy, how much more bad-bad does it get?’

  ‘He was not! Or, no more so than he was an Allied spy, anyway, and I’m pretty sure he was selling misinformation in the first instance—’

  ‘So he spent the war playing both sides for enigmatic reasons and you’re seeing this as a defence of his character?’

  Tai grinned, the first time she’d done so since I’d walked in to find her waiting for me. I realised this because I caught a glimpse of something out of place: a dark tooth that sparkled slightly in the light. ‘I’ve missed you,’ said Tai simply.

  I had no time to respond to that leveller, because Tai lunged. I found myself swept up into a hug, the kind that makes your bones creak. This surprised me into silence, at least for a moment, and by the time I’d recovered my words — and my motor functions — she’d released me.

  It was too late to hug her back. ‘Nice tooth,’ I said.

  One of her brows went up at that. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and smiled again, affording me a clearer view of it.

  Awkward silence returned. I remember when she lost that tooth.

  ‘It’s not… diamond, is it?’ I said, at last.

  Her grin widened. She nodded. ‘And,’ she said, whipping off one of the thin fingerless gloves she was wearing. She displayed her balled fist for my inspection. Every one of her knuckles bore another such jewel embedded into the skin. Knowing Tai, they were embedded into the damned bone.

  ‘Nice,’ I said faintly.

  ‘Aren’t they?’ She flexed her fingers, admiring the jewels with patent satisfaction.

  ‘Must have hurt.’

  ‘Me, yes. Other people on occasion, definitely.’

  I winced in sympathy at that. Tai had always had a solid right hook. I didn’t want to imagine the effect those bejewelled knuckle dusters would have upon anyone who pissed her off.

  ‘Real diamonds?’ I enquired, and that might be said to be my professional interest taking over.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Of course not. That would be ridiculous.’

  ‘That would be ridiculous. Right.’

  She restored the glove to her hand, hiding the jewels. If they were synthetic, they were convincing. ‘I’ll leave you to interrogate the hapless Jane,’ said she. ‘I’ve got another errand.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She flexed her hands, a gesture I’ve seen her make when she’s thinking about hitting somebody. ‘If we’re going to be a we again,’ she said, unconsciously echoing my earlier thoughts, ‘then we’re missing something.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We’re missing a Daix.’

  ‘Ah…’ I may have paled a shade or two. ‘Is that really going to be necessary?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tai, decisively.

  ‘Why?’ I hoped the word didn’t sound as plaintive to her as it did to me.

  ‘Because nobody does details like Daix, and I’m really not interested in meticulous process of elimination. Are you?’

  ‘Fair point,’ I allowed.

  ‘Besides,’ said Tai, smiling rather grimly. ‘She’s our best friend.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, nodding. ‘I was forgetting that.’

  Chapter Six: Tai

  I left Fionn’s studio in a disoriented frame of mind.

  I felt… happy. Oddly so. Fionn hadn’t been friendly, by any means — she hadn’t been so chilly to me since the day we first met. But she hadn’t extracted my eyeballs with a dessert spoon, either. I eme
rged intact, entrails safely on the inside where they’re supposed to be, and Fionn hadn’t looked more than vaguely tempted to rectify that situation.

  In fact, for a moment or two here and there, we’d forgotten the weight of years and regrets and talked almost normally. The way we used to.

  And now I had her number, and a reason to sometimes call it.

  Mearil’s continued absence was a fist around my heart, slowly tightening, and Fionn’s news had made that much worse; but Fi herself… I stepped out of her building smiling.

  And stopped, brought up short by the belated realisation I had no idea what to do next. I had talked of finding Daix with a breezy confidence I had no way of acting upon (I know, so unlike me).

  Fi and I may not have talked in all these years, but I had always known what she was up to. I’d always had a way to find her, if I wanted.

  Daix, however, had walked out of our lives and — vanished. Completely. I had not the first idea what she had been doing, or where she was. She might be in Bali for all I knew, or Chisinau. Mumbai. Anywhere.

  I still recalled several of the aliases she used to use, but how did that help me? She wouldn’t be using the same names now.

  Wanted, ran the ad unfurling in my mind. One imp, under five feet high. Known as Daix de Montfort, and sundry other monikers. Evil incarnate, approach with extreme caution.

  Sure, that’d work.

  As I stood there, dithering, something caught my eye: some lightweight thing, wafting down from above, turning airily upon a stray breeze.

  It fell neatly to the floor at my feet, and lay there. Waiting.

  A card. An innocent, rectangular snippet of paper, with somebody’s name printed on it in black Garamond.

  My eyes narrowed. I looked up at the clouded skies, but saw nothing that might explain the card’s appearance. No faces at the windows of Fionn’s building, towering behind me.

  I sighed, and stooped to pick the thing up.

  Daix de Montfort, read the name.

  I turned the card over. On the back, naught appeared save a string of numbers; meaningless, until I realised I was looking at a set of map co-ordinates.

  I resisted the temptation to screw the card up and hurl it at something. At Daix, by preference, but that could wait for later. I settled for making a rude gesture at nothing in particular, satisfied that this would, by whatever method, relay itself to the lady in question, and shoved the card into a jacket pocket.

  ‘Fine,’ I sighed. ‘We’ll do it your way.’

  Somewhere, Daix was smiling.

  Of all places I might have expected to find Daix, a library wouldn’t have ranked high among them.

  Not just any library, either. The Maughan Library, Chancery Lane. Frighteningly close to my house, in point of fact. Even closer to Fi’s studio.

  And incidentally, a research library associated with King’s College, London. Mystified, I prepared myself for a surprise — knowing Daix, it would be of a highly unpleasant nature — and went there at once.

  The building’s spectacular, I’ll give it that. It’s ancient, it’s elegant. Façade a mass of mullioned windows crowned with balustrades, miniature turrets — the lot. It wouldn’t have disgraced a palace. But the whole picture left me cold as I approached, for somewhere under that classic roof was Daix, and what mischief she might be getting up to here proved an… occupying question.

  Inside, I trekked through room after room, passing, no doubt, hundreds of thousands of books, and found no sign of her. Students aplenty bent over desks, charmingly illuminated by bright reading lights and working away furiously at who-knew-what; but no Daix. Endless, towering bookshelves crammed with every conceivable scrap of knowledge; but no Daix.

  I was beginning to imagine myself sent on a goose chase, and visions of the exquisitely painful things I would do to Daix in consequence — whenever I finally found myself face-to-face with her — were floating, pleasantly, through my mind, when I tripped over her.

  Quite literally.

  As I endeavoured to halt my downward progress with a catch at the nearest desk, there came Daix’s low, rather smoky voice, faintly accented with French. Or I suppose I mean, Frankish. ‘Thetai Sarra Antha. You’re eighty years late.’

  I gripped the desk hard enough to produce a creak of protest from the abused wood, gritting my teeth. ‘Only seventy-five, and I wasn’t counting. Hello, Daix.’

  ‘Hi!’

  I straightened. There she sat, tucked into a corner wherein, somehow, the shadows roiled more deeply than they ought. I hadn’t seen her, skulking there like an overgrown spider; I hadn’t been meant to see her.

  She had announced her presence by sticking out her foot to trip me. She made no attempt to disguise the fact, either, for her leg was still outstretched, dainty little foot clad in a polished burgundy boot.

  The rest of her was clothed to match, all wine-red, but she was wearing some kind of suit, and that didn’t look like the Daix I knew at all. She wore her hair — white-blonde today — swept up into a respectable-looking bun, and a pair of silver-framed glasses sat poised upon her nose.

  If she was still wearing her horns, I couldn’t see them.

  ‘And if I’m late, so are you,’ I said, glowering at her.

  She sat back, shrugging. Her face disappeared into shadow again; I couldn’t see her expression. ‘I’ve been here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Around. Perfectly accessible, if either of you ever thought to ask.’

  ‘I had only to say the name, and Mary Poppins would appear.’

  Daix’s gesture was one of approval at the comparison. ‘Lady has style,’ she nodded. ‘Knows how to make an entrance.’

  ‘Uh huh. And you’ve had us under surveillance why?’

  ‘You don’t think I’d leave you two loose in London without someone to keep an eye on you?’

  ‘An eye?’

  ‘An eye, a camera…’ Daix grinned. I saw the flash of white teeth, sharper than they ought to be.

  ‘A whole legion of the latter, unless I miss my guess.’

  ‘There are dangers everywhere,’ said Daix gravely.

  ‘What dangers?’

  ‘You have no idea.’ Daix picked up a stack of papers from the study-table at her elbow, and prissily tidied them. ‘Which is the whole problem.’

  ‘What.’

  ‘You can thank me later.’

  ‘Thank you? For spying on us?’

  ‘Someone had to.’

  I took a deep breath, meant to be calming, but ineffectual. ‘All right, why did someone have to?’

  ‘The very pair of you! Swanning around London with your heads full of clouds; faffing around with artsy nonsense — I tell you, you’d have been dead in a week if someone hadn’t stepped in.’

  ‘Artsy nonsense.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re doing what, exactly?’

  ‘Research fellowship.’

  ‘Seriously.’

  Daix set the papers down again. ‘Forensic Science is the field, not that you asked. You don’t want to hear about the dead-in-a-week thing?’

  ‘I ignored that, with supreme grace and near total indifference.’

  ‘Then you’ve got a death-wish,’ said Daix, nodding wisely. ‘It happens in beings of advanced age.’

  ‘You’re far older than I am.’

  Daix leaned forward, her enchanting face emerging from shadow. She looked deep, deep into my eyes, her own glinting green, and said: ‘Or am I?’

  ‘Okay, do we have to play games? Because one or two things are a bit more urgent right now.’

  ‘All is not well with the selkies,’ Daix nodded, releasing me from what was probably supposed to be a hypnotic stare.

  ‘So you know about that?’

  ‘Surveillance, remember?’

  ‘Tell me you didn’t hear every word of my conversation with Fionn.’

  Daix carefully lined up the books on her table. ‘Lying isn’t an attractive quality,
especially among friends.’

  ‘Neither is covert surveillance.’

  ‘Fine, I’m sorry about the spying thing.’

  ‘Lying isn’t an attractive quality, especially among friends.’ I folded my arms.

  ‘Okay, I’m not sorry. Is that better, or worse? You’re confusing me.’

  ‘How about we go someplace else, and you tell me how you’re planning to help.’

  Daix brightened at once. ‘I do have some ideas—’

  ‘Great,’ I said, cutting her off. ‘Because I’ve a small ocean of dull, detail-oriented paper-pushing with your name on it.’

  Daix’s fingers strayed towards the papers she’d already tidied once, and clutched possessively at them. ‘You always did know how to make my day.’

  ‘Yeah, I missed you too. Come on.’

  ‘What was with the card?’ I asked her a little later, having exited the Maughan Library. Daix had plunged immediately into the throngs of people abroad in the city, walking rapidly, and with an air of bustle; I found it oddly difficult to keep up, despite my superior height.

  ‘What about the card?’ said Daix without looking at me.

  ‘Why’d you help? You could have let me flounder for days without finding you.’

  ‘That would have been more like me, wouldn’t it?’ Daix agreed, a dimple appearing in one cheek.

  ‘You could’ve sat back and watched the show,’ I continued. ‘Taken an inordinate and sadistic pleasure in my total failure to locate you. Tormented me about it mercilessly for years to come.’

  Daix sighed, a wistful sound. ‘Stop it. You’re making me sad.’

  ‘Heartbroken for what, now, can never be?’

  Daix nodded, mournful. ‘The thing with the card was, I was interested.’

  ‘In me?’ I said, in some surprise.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I was interested in the case. I haven’t encountered so fair a prospect in decades.’

  ‘Kidnapping, theft, murder,’ I agreed. ‘Possible enslavement. No selkie is safe, and who knows when the rest of us will be at risk of evisceration or dismemberment? Nothing could be better.’

  ‘You’re unduly preoccupied with evisceration,’ said Daix. ‘Might want to work on that.’

  ‘Dismemberment, though, is always in style.’