by Tom Holt
Not good; not by any stretch of the imagination. She was supposed to be safely sealed away and under armed guard at Jill’s headquarters, not snuggling up to his windscreen. Chris remembered what Jill had told him, about how they fixated on you and stalked you relentlessly, until they struck. Had it been she who’d suborned Honest John, and was she here to make sure her orders had been carried out, or to do the job properly herself? Buggered if he was going to hang around to find out. He yanked at the door handle, which broke off in his hand, just as the car pulled smoothly away from the kerb and joined the stream of traffic.
Maybe because he spent all his working life behind the wheel, Chris was a nervous passenger at the best of times. Being driven by Angela had been bad enough. Being driven by his car was rather more than he felt he deserved, for all his many and serious character defects. He grabbed the wheel, but it was like arm-wrestling a bodybuilder. The brake was frozen solid. He tried turning off the engine, but all he succeeded in doing was snapping the key off in the lock.
Been here before, he thought, as he stabbed in vain at the seat-belt release button. They were quite a long way from the Ettingate Retail Park; maybe the demons had another, handier portal. He tried screaming, but needless to say nobody could hear him. Calm down, he ordered himself; you got out alive last time, maybe you’ll be lucky twice. Somehow, though, he wasn’t convinced. Last time—last time, it hadn’t been SatNav who kidnapped him; she’d come bursting in just as the demon was about to murder him, but it was the demon who’d done all the tedious groundwork, and the whole car thing was presumably the demon’s MO of choice, not SatNav’s. Well, he thought, maybe she’s a copycat as well as everything else. Since there was absolutely nothing he could do about anything, it really didn’t matter all that much.
The car swung out to overtake a school bus; Chris tried waving to attract their attention, his hands demonstrably not on the wheel, but the kids in the bus just waved back and made faces at him. He couldn’t help wincing as the car zoomed past a speed camera. Seventeen years without so much as a speeding ticket, and now he’d die with four posthumous points on his licence.
The indicator stalk dipped and he heard the ticking. That made no sense. He knew this road, and there wasn’t a turning for at least three miles. Only now there was, and they were leaving the dual carriageway, swirling round a loop, then back across the dual carriageway over a bridge that most definitely hadn’t been there when he came this way a few hours ago. He tried to recall the local geography. There couldn’t possibly be a road here, he told himself, because there was a town in the way, whereas the car was driving down a narrow lane with high hedges on either side. Nice, remote spot, he thought hysterically, where nobody’ll hear me scream. Oh God—
And then: Hang on, though. Still got the pantacopt Chris didn’t fancy any of the available options: either cut a hole he could jump through, or try and hack through a fuel line, maybe even the front axle. All very well in theory, but a bit too Indiana Jones for someone whose idea of vigorous exercise was getting up to change channels instead of using the remote. Cut a hole in what, for crying out loud? Door? Yes, fine, and then he’d roll out and smash his skull on the tarmac as he landed. Roof? Don’t be ridiculous. And it was all very well thinking vaguely about fuel lines, but wouldn’t that make the car blow up? Fine if you knew what you were doing, but definitely in the don’t-try-this-at-home category for the absolute beginner.
There was a third option, of course: wait till we stop and the enemy comes to get you, and—well, he’d defeated Honest John, an immortal and quite possibly the Norse god of war—by accident, yes, fine, but if he could cause mayhem like that through mere clumsiness, what could he achieve if he was really trying? Cut his own leg off, probably.
The car was slowing down. Also, it was getting distinctly murky outside the window—impossible, since his watch said it was still only half past one. But the car turned on its headlamps, twin light sabres slitting open the darkness. Conclusively, not in Staffordshire any more.
Oh well, Chris thought, there’s always the fourth option: keep still, yowl unsuccessfully for mercy and, at some point, die. It had the advantage of simplicity and relative ease; no prior experience necessary. But it wouldn’t come to that. Jill’s people would turn up just in time and save him. They’d have been alerted by the snapshot taken by the speed camera. Number-plate recognition technology would pass the word down the wire to their central computer, they’d look at the photo, see that he wasn’t driving the car as it shot past the camera at ninety miles an hour, and then, of course, they’d realise that something was wrong and scramble the black Hueys. They’d start from his last known location, split up, search in grid patterns using heat-sensitive detectors to track the car’s exhaust trail, right up to the point where the car had left the main road and taken a turning that didn’t actually exist, down a lane that wasn’t really there—
So, no last-minute escape this time; no fluke swordstroke cutting him free instead of open, no load-bearing hummingbird to carry him away. The incompetence of the forces of darkness in the matter of disposing of their victims might be a staple of fiction, but it wasn’t something you could rely on indefinitely. Sooner or later, by the law of averages, even dark lords and evil geniuses must occasionally luck out and kill someone—
The hummingbird. It was a sad commentary on how Chris’s life had been lately that he hadn’t given it a thought. Falling to his death, he’d landed on a hummingbird; well, doesn’t everybody? Now he stopped to think about it, of course, it was weird, bizarre and extraordinary; it might also be taken as an indication that somebody up there was looking out for him, somebody who knew where he was and what kind of danger he’d be likely to find himself up against. Fine; he had absolutely no quarrel with that. But—again the depressing intrusion of weirdness into the normal everyday interplay of hope and despair—what sort of guardian angel, protecting you in your hour of need, sends you a two-inch bird, rather than a helicopter, say, or a winged horse, or a special-forces assault team? At the very least, a guardian angel for whom whimsy counted for more than efficiency or getting the job done. Just my luck, Chris thought bitterly. I have to get the comedian.
The car stopped. He looked up, and a flicker of light caught his eye. SatNav’s screen was glowing its distinctive shade of sky blue. A sudden surge of anger filled him, and before he knew what he was doing he’d hauled the tape-measure out of his pocket and pulled out eighteen inches of blade. Cuts through anything, the Book had said; did that include malign entities in plastic boxes? Well, if it could slice up Norse gods, he didn’t see why not.
“You have arrived,” said her voice, “at your destination.”
Why that should have been the last straw he couldn’t have explained, but it was. With a growling noise he couldn’t have reproduced in cold blood, he lashed out with the tape-measure.
Chris felt no resistance as the blade passed through the plastic; might as well have been waving it in the air, but the casing was suddenly in two halves, sagging desolately off the rubber sucker. He froze, wondering what the hell he’d just done. Had he killed it? As far as he could see, the box was empty: no wires, batteries, chips, circuit boards, just a vacant shell. No blood, either. He looked round, but nothing had changed. He was still in the car, in the dark, on a road where no road should have been. The only difference was, he’d just committed plasticide.
“Hello?” he said, his voice shaking. It had never occurred to him that he’d ever actually try and kill anybody, or even anything, no matter what the circumstances. He’d just wanted to teach the box a lesson, like bashing a recalcitrant photocopier. He wasn’t the killing sort. He’d been known to feel searing pangs of guilt about throwing out the rubbish, haunted by the mental image of terrified milk cartons and pizza boxes chomped up in the dustcart’s insatiable jaws. And SatNav—well, he knew all about her now, how she’d preyed on him and stalked him all that time, when he’d thought they were friends. But that didn’t make it righ
t—
Turn the radio on.
Her voice, in his head. A voice he’d know anywhere; a voice that told him what to do, and he did it—turn right, turn left, follow the course of the road; a voice he’d come to rely on, trust. Looked at another way, yet another bloody woman ordering him about, but this one had never lied to him, argued with him, made him feel about two inches tall, demanded that they talk about their relationship. All she’d ever done (apart from stalking him and abducting him in his own car) was see him right, through the very worst the Midlands road network could throw at him.
Turn the radio on. Please.
Ah, he thought. The magic word. Never could resist that.
Chris reached forward and hit the button, and it was as if someone or something gently deflected his fingertip away from the radio and towards the CD player. He felt the spring-loaded plunger engage, completing the circuit, and the radio’s little screen lit up. Now playing: Now That’s What I Call Really Bad Music 56; Shake It Loose, by the Lizard-Headed Women.
The intro alone showed that the track richly deserved its place in mat particular compilation. You really want to listen to that? he thought, and her voice in his head replied, .yes.
“Really?” he said aloud.
You don’t like it?
“Well, it’s—” He tried to think of something nice to say, like when Karen put her music on, back at the flat. He’d got quite good at it over the years, but this time his talent failed him. “It’s awful,” he said.
Yes. I think so too.
“Right,” Chris said. “In that case, why do you—?”
He broke off. Her last words had been inside his head, but outside it too. He couldn’t bring himself to turn his head, but he glanced up at the rear-view mirror. There was someone sitting in the passenger seat beside him. A girl, a beautiful girl with long dark hair, high cheekbones and pale green eyes. Practically the girl of his dreams.
“Hello,” she said, and smiled. “Pleased to meet you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Hello,” Chris replied.
“Thanks for driving me home,” she said. “Would you like to come in for a coffee?”
Said the spider to the fly. He was still holding the tape-measure.
“Sorry about the music” she said. “It’s probably the worst song ever released, even including James Blunt. That’s why I chose it, of course.”
Not making a great deal of sense, he thought, though he couldn’t fault her taste in music. “Who the hell are you?” he said, still not looking round.
“I’m SatNav,” she replied. “As you know perfectiy well. Look, if you’re upset about me driving us here—”
Upset. Marvellous choice of words. “Yes,” he said. “And stay away from me.”
“You don’t know where I’ve been?” It was the voice that did it, of course; either because it was pitched exactly right to dig down deep into the male libido, or because he was conditioned to do what it told him. Both. Whatever. He turned his head and looked at her.
“Do you trust me?” she said.
At last, a question he could answer. “Yes,” he replied. “But only as far as I could throw you.”
She smiled. “That’s far enough,” she said. “Come on, I won’t eat you.”
Or, Chris thought, I could try and make a fight of it. With this exceptionally powerful magical weapon, so powerful it’s illegal, so sharp it cut Honest John’s head off with one fumble. Even a novice like himself could probably put up a pretty good fight With a weapon like that, maybe chop off her arms or cut her in two right down the middle. Or he could put it away, now, before he did any more damage with it.
“Thanks for getting me out of there,” she said. “You’ve got no idea what it’s been like, cooped up in that thing.”
“Got you out,” he repeated; and then he remembered what Jill had told him, about the containment spells, and how the casing was a prison, absolutely secure, that nothing could break out of or into. Except, of course, a pantacopt.
“Oh,” he said. “I see.”
“Come and have a coffee,” she said, with a smile he could really have done without. “And I’ll explain.”
The other magic word. Well, he thought. At the back of his mind was some fairy tale or other, where the wicked witch could only get you into her lair if you agreed to go; maybe she couldn’t kill him if he stayed in the car, something like that. Supernatural rules of engagement were profoundly weird, so he understood, and as complex and Byzantine as tax statutes or EU directives. And Jill had warned him about her, and he trusted her—
“I sent the hummingbird,” she said. “Does that make any difference?”
It was no good, he had to ask. “Why a hum—?”
“I said I’d explain,” she replied. “If you come with me. Milk, no sugar, right?”
There were lots of fairy stories and folk tales about gullible men who met unscheduled beautiful girls, of course; men who went to sleep in enchanted castles and woke up twenty years later on cold hillsides, or who were never seen again, always something nasty, never anything nice. On the other hand, real life had its moments too. There aren’t any fairy tales where the handsome prince marries a girl he believes is a fairy princess, but she turns out to have a turn of phrase like a drill, an insatiable desire for soft furnishings and a constant need to talk about Us; and twenty years later, the prince is woken up by the alarm at six in the morning in a Sandersons-catalogue bedroom to go to a lousy boring job to pay the awesomely vast mortgage on the enchanted castle, and maybe, just maybe, it all comes down to the same thing in the end.
“You’ll explain?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Actually, it’s milk and one sugar,” Chris said. “And have you got any biscuits? I missed lunch.”
Yes, but it actually was a castle.
It loomed at him out of the darkness as he closed the car door: a gatehouse with towers jutting out of a high wall, with a drawbridge and a portcullis and everything. It was like—he stopped dead in his tracks halfway across the drawbridge when he realised what it reminded him of—it was like the plastic castle he’d had when he was a kid, the one that had come in the boxed set with the knights on horseback, with the holes in their hands you could clip little plastic swords and lances into, until you lost them. Exactly like it, apart from being bigger and built, presumably, of stone. Or did all castles look the same? He hadn’t paid attention in history, so he didn’t know; maybe they were all built the same, like houses on an estate.
“This way,” she said.
I know, Chris thought, as they passed under the gatehouse arch; and it was silly, but he couldn’t help looking up, just in case it was there, though of course it wouldn’t be. But it was; in huge letters carved into the stone, weathered by centuries of frost and rain, partly obscured by moss and creeper, but so big it was still perfectly legible:
MADE IN HONG KONG
Ah, he thought, and he reached out to touch the wall, solid, cold and damp. Silly buggers, he thought.
The door was oak, studded, with nail-heads the size of apples. It creaked as she pushed it open with a gentle shove. “Make yourself at home,” she said. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
The door slammed shut behind him, and he knew without trying it that it wasn’t going to open for him. Pity.
Make himself at home. Right. No need. It looked exactly as it had done when he’d left it that morning, right down to the cup he’d left on the table and the TV listings magazine on the floor next to the sofa. Which meant that either she’d lifted it straight out of his head or else she’d been there; neither of them exactly comfortable thoughts.
“I get it,” Chris said. “An Englishman’s home is his—”
She sighed. “Don’t tell me,” she said, “it’s one of those things that aren’t supposed to be taken literally. Metaphors?”
He nodded. “I imagine they’re buggers if you’re not used to them.”
“Quite. Where I come from, we
say what we mean.”
He sat down; not in the armchair, where he usually sat. “And where would that be?” he asked.
She perched on the edge of the table; slim, elegant, a vision. “You don’t know,” she said. “I’d have thought she’d have told you. Your friend.”
“She said you were a—” Stupid word had slipped his mind. “Sort of an elf who lives in trees.”
“Did she now.” Those perfect lips compressed into a line as thin as the blade of the tape-measure. “Fancy that.”
“It’s not true, then? You’re not a—”
“Dryad,” she replied, pulling a face, as though she was anxious to get the word out of her mouth as quickly as possible.
“Well, you aren’t to know, I suppose. But for your information, dryads are six inches long and covered in knobbly grey bark, though not all of them have beards. No, I’m not one of them, thank you very much. I,” she said—very slight pause; melodrama—”am a princess of the Fey.”
Not fair; just because he hadn’t been to Loughborough. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Oh.” Her eyes opened wide. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, right. Well, in that case—” She broke off. “Stay there. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What’s the matter?”
“The kettle just boiled.”
Whoever the Fey were, they made good coffee. He said so, and she grinned.
“Beginner’s luck, then,” she said. “We don’t use the stuff. In fact, we’re allergic to it.”
“What, even decaf?”
She shook her head. “What does coffee do? I mean, its most notable side effect?”
He had to think. “Keeps you awake?”
