I turned away, and there was Dead Boy, waiting for me, grinning all over his deathly pale face. I sighed inwardly. As if I didn’t have enough problems . . . Dead Boy had a tall glass of something dark and steaming in one hand, and a half-eaten dodo leg in the other. He dropped me a heavy wink.
“I knew it was you! I never mistake an aura. Don’t worry,” he said, in what he probably thought was a conspiratorial tone, “I’ve got your back.”
“Oh good,” I said. “I’m sure whoever you think I am is very grateful. Now will you please go away and ruin somebody else’s day?”
“That’s what I’m here for,” said Dead Boy.
He dropped me another heavy wink, with his heavily mascaraed eye, and swaggered away. Dead Boy didn’t care what I was doing here. He just thought it was funny. Being dead for so long has given him an odd sense of humour. I wasn’t sure whether having his support felt comforting or not. I watched him latch on to a waiter with a new tray of party snacks, and launch himself in hot pursuit. Dead Boy had the attention span of a goldfish swimming in a bowl of liquid LSD. I sighed quietly again, and wondered what else could go wrong. I was attracting far more attention than was good for me. In fact, I was starting to wonder whether I should just leave the Ballroom and start bullying hotel staff until one of them told me where the Lazarus Stone was.
And then I spotted a face I knew, deep in the milling crowd. A face I recognised immediately, that I had thought never to see again. My heart hammered painfully in my chest, and I had trouble getting my breath. A tall, distinguished figure in a formal tuxedo moved easily through the crowd. He looked exactly like my uncle James. My late uncle James, the legendary Grey Fox. I hadn’t seen him since he died right in front of me, in Drood Hall, all those years ago. He couldn’t be here. He died. I went to his funeral. Unless . . . somebody had already used the Lazarus Stone.
Unless someone had rewritten History, bringing James back from the dead. But if History had been changed, I wouldn’t still remember the way things used to be . . . would I? I had survived the destruction of the Sceneshifters . . . so I was the only person in the world who still remembered them . . . I plunged forward into the crowd, pushing people out of my way and ignoring their objections, but by the time I got to where I’d seen my uncle James, he wasn’t there any more. I looked quickly about me, while everyone else stuck their noses in the air and made pointed comments about my rudeness, but I couldn’t see Uncle James anywhere.
If he’d ever really been there.
I was seized with an awful sense of urgency, a need to do . . . something. If the Lady Faire, or anyone else, had started using the Lazarus Stone after all these years . . . we were all in real trouble. But deep down, I didn’t believe it. If James’ death had been undone, I wouldn’t still remember him dying. Hell, I probably wouldn’t still be standing here. So whoever it was I saw, it couldn’t have been the Grey Fox. Just someone trying to pass as him. Unless . . . Could Uncle James have pulled off the greatest trick and comeback of his career? Faked his own death, back then? I saw him die, but so had a great many people, down the years, and he’d always bounced back, smiling broadly, refusing to explain how he’d done it. All part of the legend of the Droods’ greatest field agent: the infamous Grey Fox.
But he wouldn’t have done that to me . . . would he?
Or could it be some shape-shifter or face-dancer, pretending to be him? Wearing James’ face to get into the Lady Faire’s Ball, to get to the Lazarus Stone? I smiled coldly behind my security mask. If someone here was hiding behind Uncle James’ reputation, I would have their balls.
I wished Molly was with me, so I could discuss this with her. She would have known what to say, what to do. She always was the professional one.
Then, quite suddenly, everything stopped. The noise broke off as everyone stopped talking. The music stopped and the singer fell silent. Everyone in the Ballroom stood very still. We were all looking at the Lady Faire, standing in the open doors at the far end of the Ballroom, come at last.
She held an effortlessly aristocratic pose, smiling on her gathered guests. Someone started applauding, and everyone joined in. I did too. Just couldn’t help myself. People started cheering, and shouting happily. Some wept, quite openly. The great ice cavern filled with a joyous sound, overwhelming and overpowering. A spontaneous outbreak of good cheer and affectionate tribute. The Lady Faire was here at last, and everyone wanted to show how much they still cared for her. Perhaps the one great affair, or even love, of their troubled lives. The only person who had ever really mattered to them. The Lady Faire smiled graciously about her, accepting it all as her right. Her right of conquest, perhaps.
Everyone was looking at her in the same way, or at the very least, in varieties of the same way. Looks of love and hunger and lust, but more than that . . . They were the looks of a subjugated people, of those who had been touched by the Lady Faire and loved it. Or had been made to love it, by the perfect honey trap. The Baron Frankenstein had done his work well. The Lady Faire was so much more than an ex-lover to these people. She was a living goddess. Male and female and everything in between; they had loved her once and they loved her now, despite themselves. And having finally seen her, I could understand why.
The Lady Faire, that most infamous omnisexual and ladything, the most successful seductress in the history of espionage, the Ice Queen herself . . . was tall and stately and wore a perfectly fitted white tuxedo. Her hair had been shaped and dyed into a perfect re-creation of Jean Harlow’s platinum bombshell. Her face was handsome and striking and beautiful, all at once, with a strong bone structure. She had golden-pupiled eyes, a pointed nose, and pink rosebud lips. Her smile was a practised thing, but charming as all hell. More a man’s smile than a woman’s . . . Shapes and movements inside the white tuxedo suggested a woman’s body, and then a man’s, both and neither and more.
There was no point in even trying to guess her age. She looked perfectly youthful, no more than her twenties. But there was a suggestion of age, of long experience, in her eyes and her smile, in every small movement, and in the grace and elegance that hung about her like a well-worn cloak. Much used, and invisibly mended. You could tell that here was someone who had been around. Who had seen things and done things, some of them awful. Not that she cared, and nothing she would ever apologise for. You just knew, from looking at her. She had a feminine glamour, and a masculine presence. There was nothing androgynous about her. She was quite definitely female. And male. And so much more.
The Lady Faire took your breath away, sweet as cyanide.
She certainly made one hell of a first impression. My torc was burning fiercely at my throat, or I might have fallen under her spell too. She—it was easier to think of her that way, less complicated—was overpoweringly sexual, seductively alluring, without even trying. I could feel the attraction burning off her, like the light that calls moths to throw themselves into the flame and perish. Looking at her was like staring into a spotlight aimed personally at you. And yet . . . there was something else there too. Like a maggot squirming deep in an apple. An almost arachnid revulsion, a bone-deep, soul-deep aversion to something that just shouldn’t exist in the natural world.
Or maybe that was just me. After all, I’ve been around a bit myself.
I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t. I felt the same need, the same hunger, that drew everyone else to the Lady Faire. I fought it, drawing on the strength of my torc, and my armour, and my Drood training. To always be in control, and never the one controlled. I was half tempted to armour up, just so I could hide behind it. I thought of Molly, and all she had come to mean to me, and that helped. What was a living goddess in the face of the wild witch of the woods? There was no room left in my heart for the Lady Faire. But still, I couldn’t look away. I knew the Lady Faire was a honey trap, and a danger to everything I cared about . . . but I was finding it hard to care.
She was just like the legendary Ice Queen. You looked at her, a sliver of her ice entered
your eye, and you were hers forever.
Except I was a Drood. A field agent trained to never give in to outside influences. Trained from an early age to be loyal only to Droods. Anything, for the family. I concentrated on my torc, and immediately a tendril of golden armour shot up my neck to form a mask under my security mask. And just like that, I could See the Lady Faire so much more clearly.
No one else could tell, but I could See her pumping out pheromones on an industrial scale. Musk, mating signals, bypassing the conscious mind to appeal directly to the unconscious, affecting people on the most basic, fundamental level. No wonder I’d been having so much trouble thinking clearly. I breathed deeply through my hidden golden mask, and felt my head clear as though a cold wind was rushing through it.
The Lady Faire still looked just as impressive, but also . . . beautiful and horrible. Human and inhuman. As though two sets of impressions were at war with each other. She was still strikingly attractive, but no longer seductive. The brute force of her chemical appeal made her seem more like an Insect Queen than an Ice Queen. I could See cracks in her perfect face, in her practised composure. Age had taken its toll, after all, and she was no longer the great creation she had been.
And just like that, I could remember everything Molly meant to me. I could see her face and hear her voice, and there was no one else in the world I wanted as much as I wanted her.
It was a shock to the soul, to step back from the precipice I’d been ready to leap over. To realise how close I’d come to jumping off that cliff edge along with all the other lemmings. Molly was back, like she’d never been away. I didn’t think I would ever mention this to her. How I’d felt, for those few delirious moments. I felt a certain sense of relief, now that I understood what had been happening to me. It wasn’t all down to the pheromones, to the chemical impulses, but they had definitely got to me. The Baron had put a lot of thought into his creation. The bastard.
The Lady Faire finally got bored just standing there, and strode regally forward into the Ballroom. Her ex-lovers were all still cheering and applauding, trying to outdo one another and catch the Lady Faire’s eye. She moved easily among her conquests, stopping here and there to favour this one and that, by remembering their name. And then she would remember a place or a time or a moment, and everyone hung on her every word and smile and gesture. Great men and women fawned over her openly, competed shamelessly for every glance, and debased themselves just for the chance of a smile. Sometimes she would lay a hand briefly on a shoulder, or caress a face with her fingertips, and the guests so favoured all but swooned.
But the Lady Faire never paused for long, always moving on, leaving a trail of broken hearts behind her. All over again.
No one made any move to touch the Lady Faire. Not, it seemed to me, because it was forbidden; they just didn’t dare. Even with the maddening pheromones hitting these people full blast, she still had complete control over them. I looked carefully around the milling crowd, and even at the farthest edges of the Ballroom, where logic suggested the pheromones wouldn’t even have reached yet, everyone still seemed perfectly dazzled and bewitched. Even so, a phalanx of uniformed security people followed close behind the Lady Faire, keeping an eye on things, clearly ready to slap down anyone who even looked like they were getting out of hand.
I was still thinking on how best to separate her out from her audience so I could grill her on the Lazarus Stone, when the Bride took advantage of the general chaos to come over and join me for a quiet word. While everyone else had all their attention fixed on our hostess. The Bride nodded easily to me, while Springheel Jack hung back a little, ready to see off anyone who looked like they were trying to listen in.
“So,” the Bride said quietly, “do I have the honour of addressing Shaman Bond, or Eddie Drood?”
“Neither,” I said just as quietly. “I’m currently passing as the Winter Palace’s Head of Security. Hence the uniform and mask. Try to look impressed.”
“I thought it must be something like that,” said the Bride. “You do have a tendency to show up at all the most interesting events, whoever you’re being. I didn’t think the Lady Faire was one of your past indiscretions . . .”
“I didn’t think she’d be one of yours,” I said. “Or is it Jack who’s taken a stroll up that very well-worn path?”
“I’ll never tell,” said the Bride. “Not that I have any time for the Lady Faire, you understand. I don’t think anyone outside her enchanted circle has, really. You don’t love the Lady Faire; that’s not what she’s for. Everyone here likes to refer to themselves as ex-lovers, but it’s really just another term for something far more basic. She and I are both creations of the Baron, but she thinks she’s so much more. So much better than the rest of the Spawn of Frankenstein. She never turns up at any of the reunions.”
“Then why are you here?” I said bluntly.
The Bride grinned. “She does throw the very best parties, darling. Wait till we play Twister later.” She leaned in close, to kiss me chastely on the forehead. “Thank you, for all you’ve done for the Frankenstein family. We do not forget our debts.”
She drifted away, accompanied by her faithful Springheel Jack, and they disappeared back into the crowd. I had to grin. Twister . . . a game that should only be played by adults, while drunk. Naked. Greased. And then my smile disappeared as I spotted someone in the crowd who shouldn’t have been there. There was just no way on this earth that the Lady Faire would have lowered herself to sleep with Jumping Jack Flashman. That renowned short-range teleporter, infamous thief, and well-known scumbag. Jumping Jack would have boasted to everyone in the world about it if he’d ever got that lucky.
No, he hadn’t been invited to the Ball. Odds were he was here for the same reason I was: to get his hands on the Lazarus Stone.
He wasn’t exactly in disguise, but he certainly wasn’t looking himself. He’d spent some serious money on some serious clothes, and had dyed his hair bright red. Presumably as a distraction. He was behaving himself for the moment, not picking anyone’s pocket or lifting their jewellery. But I still couldn’t have him here, running loose. Let the Lady Faire realise she had one uninvited guest, and she’d be bound to start looking for others. And once she knew there was a thief in the fold, who knew what kind of security measures she might place around the Lazarus Stone. No, I had to shut Jumping Jack Flashman down fast.
I went back on Tallman’s comm channel, and told his people to very quietly bring all the anti-teleport systems online and isolate the Ballroom. No one in or out until I said otherwise. A brief rush of voices through my earpiece assured me that this was being done. I sent out more instructions, to the security people inside the Ballroom, telling them who to look for. I only needed to mention Jumping Jack Flashman, and immediately men and women in white uniforms locked onto him and started closing in. No one wanted to take any chances with this particular slippery little devil.
The guests realised something was up, and fell back to give the security people room to work. Interestingly, none of the guests looked guilty, or evasive, as though they had something to hide. They all just immediately assumed the security staff must be after someone else. Jumping Jack’s head came up sharply as he spotted the first few security people closing in on him. He sneered at them and tried to teleport out.
The look of shock on his face when he discovered he couldn’t get out of the Ballroom was priceless. His eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and his whole body radiated panic. He flickered in place several times as he tried to force his way past the Ballroom’s shields, but he didn’t go anywhere.
He tried again and again, flickering on and off like an angry light bulb, and then he lost it big time as the security staff closed in. He went jumping back and forth around the Ballroom in a series of short-range teleports, appearing here and there among the guests, who all thought it was great fun. They laughed happily as he appeared and disappeared among them, and yelled his location to the security staff. Of course, by the time a
ny of them got there, he was gone again. Shouts and cries went up everywhere, as Jumping Jack tried to find an exit that hadn’t been blocked off, and the security staff ran themselves ragged trying to keep up.
Once the guests realised they were in no danger from Jumping Jack, they decided it was all just a game and started rooting for the underdog. They cheered Jumping Jack on, and took open delight in not quite getting in the way of the pursuing security people. I looked to the Lady Faire and saw immediately that she wasn’t in the least pleased about what was happening. Her own security people had her pinned up against a wall, so they could surround her. Just in case. Her face and eyes had gone quite cold. If only because Jumping Jack’s appearance had stolen her thunder, and no one was admiring her any more.
I decided I’d better do something before she started looking around for the Head of Security and demand that he Do Something. I still had my armour in place under my white security mask, and I used the strange matter covering my eyes to slow down the passing of Time, so I could follow the teleporting more easily. Slowed right down, a pattern in the jumps quickly became obvious, and it was easy enough for me to figure out where Jumping Jack was going to appear next. He was following a familiar, well-rehearsed pattern, not nearly as random as it seemed. So I just needed to position myself carefully for his next appearance.
I eased my way through the crowd, and no one paid me any attention. They were all having far too much fun watching the security staff race back and forth. And laying down bets on where the teleporter would appear next. Jumping Jack materialised right where I’d calculated, and in the moment after his arrival, while he was still getting his bearings, I grabbed the back of his neck in a nerve pinch and he went out like a light. I caught him before he hit the floor, and looked reproachfully at the dozen or so security staff as they came panting and lurching through the crowd to join me. I handed the unconscious body over to them, and they hauled him away.
Property of a Lady Faire: A Secret Histories Novel Page 31
