A branch reached down, wrapped itself around my waist, and hoisted me off the ground. A hug from a tree, that was a new one. I wriggled, trying to pass through the tree’s limb, but it was imbued with some serious magic. I was held tight. Who was doing this? The Long Man had a way with trees; was it him?
‘Mister Fletcher, you’re a tricky one to pin down.’
I scanned my surroundings, trying to locate the source of the words, but it looked as if I was alone. Still, I recognised the voice well enough.
‘Your Majesty?’ I wheezed. It was her, all right: the Queen of the Unseelie Court. ‘Don’t suppose you could get your friend here to ease up a bit, could you?’
I stopped struggling as I spotted something, well, bizarre happening below me. Two bushes were slushing through the mud and heading in my direction. The bushes reared up like dogs begging for a treat, then their foliage began to stretch and weave together, knitting something new into reality. I squinted down and realised what the bushes were doing; they were creating a facsimile of the Queen. An avatar.
‘Now that is a bloody good trick. You should go on Britain’s Got Talent with that, you’d clean up.’
‘Silence,’ said the avatar. The face wasn’t a perfect likeness for the Queen but the menace was all there.
The branch girdling my waist gave me a quick squeeze, almost causing my eyes to pop out.
‘I have questions,’ said the Queen, her leaves bristling.
‘Me too: like, how did you find me for one thing?’
‘We fae have a connection to nature. It’s difficult to maintain that connection in this filthy, modern city, but look where we are…’
Yup. I’d walked smack-bang into a giant green oasis in the middle of a car-fume riddled armpit.
‘As soon as you entered this park, the natural world spoke to me. Whispered in my ear.’
‘So what you’re saying is, I got grassed up by grass?’
Not even a smile. Must have been a cultural thing.
I pressed on. ‘Look, there’s no need for the strong-arm tactics. I’m on the job.’
‘Why do I find that so hard to believe?’ she hissed back.
‘Trust me, I’m on your side,’ I said, trying to placate her. I wasn’t, obviously, but now didn’t seem the best time to bring that up.
‘If you’re truly loyal to the Unseelie Court, tell me, where is my son?’
I wasn’t loving being bossed around like this. I got into the P.I. game so I could pick and choose my clients, not get told what to do. Then again, what else could I expect from the fae: a bunch of snooty, stuck-up, baby-snatchers. Of course they’d think I’d do their bidding for nothing. They were used to having slaves.
‘I have leads,’ I said. ‘Many leads. Your boy’s going to be back with you, well, imminently. More than imminently. That’s a Jake Fletcher guarantee.’
‘Don’t think you can brush me aside, Detective. You’ve been given the honour of working for the Unseelie Court—’
‘And don’t think for a second I take that lightly,’ I cut in.
The Queen’s avatar face scrunched together in a look of extreme displeasure. ‘It would give me great joy to tear what’s left of you apart, Mister Fletcher. To render your spectral form nothing more than smoke on the wind. Perhaps I will, yet. Tell me why I should deny myself this pleasure.’
‘Frank! Frank, my partner, he’s out there right now shaking trees.’
A branch eyebrow raised.
‘He’s working an eye-witness lead. I was on my way to catch up with him when you… well, started shaking your own tree.’
‘Is this a joke to you, Detective?’
‘No. Honest to God, Your Majesty, we’re getting somewhere and we’re getting there fast. Now, if you want your son back, I suggest you put me down and let me do my job.’
That came out a little more forcefully than it perhaps should have, but I needed to sell this lie so I could get back on my feet and get the hell out of that park.
‘If I discover you’re lying to me… smoke on the wind.’
‘Absolutely. I get it.’
The tree branch withdrew, dropping me unceremoniously to the ground. Head spinning, I stumbled to my feet to find I was alone again. The avatar of the Queen was gone. She bought it. Well, at the very least she was giving me another crack of the whip before she killed me. Either way, it was time to get off the green and onto concrete.
I hoofed the ground, sending a clod of wet turf spiralling through the air—the same turf that had snitched on me to the Unseelie Court.
‘Talk about your call of nature,’ I said, giving the clod another punt as I went hustling for the nearest exit.
Call of nature.
I really do crack myself up sometimes.
Chapter Forty-Eight: Meat for Prowling Beasts
The rain was still hammering down when I made it back to Camden. Being a ghost, I couldn’t actually feel the weather, but it had become so oppressive by this point that even I wanted to take cover from it. It was with some relief that I phased through the front door of Fletcher & Fletcher and made my way to the sanctuary of the office. Sadly, that relief was not to last.
‘Hi, honey, I’m hom—’ was as far as I got before I realised the reunion I had in my head was not to be.
I found Frank tied to the office’s cast iron radiator by a length of steel wire, his wrists bound so tightly that his hands would have turned blue if they weren’t already that way.
Lying in the middle of the Persian rug was the half-conscious fae, badly beaten but still breathing.
Erin Banks sat languidly in my swivel chair, feet on the communal desk, cleaning crud from her fingernails with the tip of her ivory-bladed knife.
‘Well, look who it is: Jake Fletcher, the little engine that couldn’t.’
I assumed a relaxed stance, arms wide and unthreatening. ‘Let the Arcadian go. He doesn’t deserve this.’
She dug a flake of Other London from beneath the nail of her swearing finger and flicked it across the room. ‘Sure. I should trust the word of a man who turned my heart into a fucking stress toy.’
‘If you really want to kill him, why isn’t he dead already?’
Erin formed an impish smile. ‘Because I want you to see me do it, that’s why.’
‘Seems a bit mean-spirited.’
‘And what was dropping the front of a house on my head? Because that definitely felt a tad nasty. You know, from where I was standing.’
‘I’m sorry about that.’
In truth, I wish I’d carried on hammering until there was nothing left of her but stink, but that probably wasn’t going to advance my case, so I kept it to myself.
‘The situation’s changed, Erin. Take a look around. Your client—my client, too—she’s gone. She’s fled the scene and she ain’t coming back. This job of yours, it doesn’t exist anymore.’
Frank nodded in agreement. ‘Jobbbb gooone.’
Erin dislodged another piece of dirt from her nail bed and smeared it jaggedly across the surface of the desk. ‘The fae dies and so does anyone who gets in my way.’
She swung her feet from the desk and stood upright.
‘Can we at least talk about this? I’ve got money.’
‘Sorry, Casper, but if I gave in to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who tried making me a knifepoint deal, my rep would be in tatters.’
Frank strained at his bonds. The kid drooled into the carpet. Erin came at me with her knife.
‘What the bloody hell’s going on in here?’
Heads whipped around to discover the identity of the party crasher. It was DCI Kat Stronge.
‘You!’ she said, aiming a stiff finger at the woman who brained her outside the Tate.
The distraction lasted just long enough for Frank to break free of the steel wire fixing him to the rad and clout Erin across the back of the head. The blow should have caved in her skull, but it only put her in a mood.
‘You know, I really don’t like cop
pers,’ she said, nursing her crown.
The tattoos on her arms pulsed with living darkness, throwing off flickers of demonic energy and making the room thrum. A sudden wind whipped about the office, creating a howling eddy that hauled an assortment of loose papers around in mad loops. As the wind picked up, it dragged a table lamp from the desk and hurled it against a wall, showering the floor in green glass. The vintage phone with its built-in answering machine was sent flying, too, dispatched through the office door, shattering its frosted glass window.
‘Careful,’ I screamed over the din. ‘We just had the place fixed up.’
It was bad enough that the Vengari had already given the place an aggressive redecorating when they went looking for the Arcadian—now this? I was going to have to live with it, though. The maniacal look in Erin’s eyes made it clear that preserving the decor was not the uppermost thing on her mind.
Black ribbons snaked out of her tattoos and came slithering our way like serpents slinking from their holes. Stronge reached for her stun gun, but before she could unclip it from its rapid release holster, I made a hand corporeal and seized her by the wrist.
‘Not going to happen,’ I said, and yanked her across the room.
Frank was quick to follow, scooping up the Arcadian and hobbling after us as fast as his legs could manage. We darted across the lobby, making for the front door, but a cluster of black ribbons fired over our heads along with the office desk, which landed across the exit with a thunderous crash.
Thinking fast, I cried, ‘This way,’ and steered us through a side door. It led down a hallway and into an extension bolted to the side of the building: a double-wide garage.
Frank set the semi-conscious Arcadian down on a pile of old newspapers and got to work barricading the door. He did this using a step ladder snatched from the rafters, which he propped against a sturdy workbench before wedging its other end under the door handle. The door came under siege immediately and the lump of wood separating us from the murderous assassin rocked and shook, causing tools piled upon the bench to shiver in response. It stayed solid, though. Unless Erin had a steamroller handy, she wasn’t getting through that way.
The battering against the door behind us ceased abruptly.
‘She must be looking for another way in,’ said Stronge, and soon spotted the most obvious choice.
The exit from the garage was the old-fashioned kind: two doors held together by chain and a padlock. Thankfully, they were also built the old-fashioned way: made from solid oak and reinforced with thick iron braces. Would they stand up to an onslaught from Erin Banks, though? Not for long.
‘Whaaaat nowww?’ asked Frank.
I took in the room. It was dank and musty and contained mostly junk: old pots of paint, rusted tins of motor oil, a perished garden hose. But there was one item of interest, namely the vehicle parked in its centre and covered by a vast grey dust sheet.
‘You’ve got a car?’ said Stronge.
‘Belonged to the previous owner.’
I whipped the dust cover off to reveal an aging hearse. The antique motor was old enough to draw a pension and had windows that were either made from smoked glass or turned opaque by grime. But for all its faults, it had four inflated tyres and stood up in one piece, so might yet have its uses.
‘Get in.’
The hearse was our way out of this mess. I ushered Stronge into the passenger side, got Frank to lob the Arcadian in the back, then combined with my partner to take the driver’s seat.
‘You really think this knackered old thing is going to run?’ asked Stronge.
There was only one way to find out.
Chapter Forty-Nine: Death Drive
This wasn’t my first time scrumping for cars. I had a bit of a wild youth—enough that I knew how to hotwire certain older models, and this one was a prime candidate, ripe for the picking.
Since I didn’t have a screwdriver to pop the cover off the steering column, I used Frank's brawn to muscle it open. I fumbled with the roils of wiring that plopped out and freed a bundle from its harness.
With a hair-raising thump, the garage doors flew inwards but held firm, kept together by the length of chain looped through their handles. The wolf was at the door.
‘Hurry up,’ Stronge urged, shaking my shoulder.
‘Not helping,’ I said, digging the nails of Frank’s thumb and forefinger into the end of a wire and stripping away a short length of rubber tube.
There was another thump as the garage doors flexed and rattled, splits appearing in the wood now.
‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down,’ Erin yelled from outside.
I deprived a second wire of some insulation and twisted its copper end around the one I’d already stripped. As the two wires came together the dash lit up and the car’s radio came to life. Whoever was in the driver’s seat last had tuned the wireless to a classic rock station and set the volume high, leading to a spirited chorus of—I shit thee not—Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell.
‘Come on!’ said Stronge, shouting to be heard over the thundering din of the tubby rocker’s seminal masterpiece. ‘What are you waiting for? Are you checking the fluids?’
So far I’d only succeeded in powering the ignition switch. To get the engine running I still had to spark the starter wire.
The garage doors splintered and buckled as Erin laid on another punishing welter of blows. With some difficulty I fished out the starter wire, tore a nub of rubber from its tip, and rubbed the exposed copper against the tied-off battery wire.
A spark. I buried the accelerator with Frank’s foot and revved the engine, pleased to discover that there was still petrol left in the tank.
‘Yes!’
Only one thing left to do now. I cranked the wheel like I was trying to snap the thing’s neck and broke the steering lock. The hearse was ours.
Another wallop against the garage doors. The wood resembled Swiss cheese now. Erin was seconds away from forcing her way inside.
Whaaat nowww? drawled the voice in my head.
Frank had a point. We’d already dropped a tonne of masonry on Erin’s nut, not to mention stopping her heart, so what use was running her down going to be? So long as she had her demonic powers, chances were the only thing coming away from this inevitable collision with any real damage was the car.
Erin’s fist exploded through the door, fingers reaching in like a fox trying to claw its way through a chicken coop.
I dialled down the volume on the radio and turned to Stronge. ‘Gimme your phone.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Just give it here!’
She handed it over and I frantically punched in a number. The person on the other end picked up. Well, not a person exactly: a demon.
‘Who is this?’ growled the Long Man.
‘All right, chief? It’s your old pal, Jake Fletcher.’
A beat. ‘Is this your device I am holding?’
I imagined the Long Man clutching my tiny phone in his massive claws and chuckled. ‘Yup. Listen, can you do me a favour—I think I left something else behind, too.’
‘What?’
Crunch.
Erin had her arm in up to the shoulder. The chain holding the doors shut was ready to rupture. Any second now a link would give in and the fox would have her feast.
‘I think I left it in one of your trees,’ I told the Long Man. ‘In the knothole of the one that used to be Vic Lords. Could you have a look for us?’
I heard shuffling on the other end of the line as the Long Man went in search of the mystery item. Stronge was looking at me like I’d lost my tiny mind. Frank was giving me all kinds of verbal. Sunlight exploded into the garage as Erin dealt the doors the coup de grâce. She stood before us like some evil goalkeeper, a silhouette wreathed in exhaust fumes, a shadow wearing a smile.
On the other end of the line I heard the bright golden tones of clockwork music.
‘What is this infernal racket?’ growled t
he demon as the tune plinked and plunked in the background.
It was the music box Jazz equipped me with: the one I was meant to use against the Arcadian before we got all chummy. I’d taken it with me to the Long Man’s realm and planted it in Vic’s knothole while the demon was looking the other way, key wound and wedged in such a manner that it would stay in place until the box was disturbed. Now it had been, and the device was playing its little tune—the one that delivered a pulse of magic-dampening energy, a counterspell that revoked the demon’s magic and cut off Erin’s power at the source.
‘Till next time, you big dumb bastard,’ I cackled, and hung up the phone.
What? Did you really think I dimension-hopped to a demonic plane without a double-cross in my back pocket? I needed to sever the Long Man’s connection to Erin, but I knew my soul was no good to him, and that no amount of verbal judo was going to convince him otherwise. So I came up with a plan and held it back for dramatic reasons. While the Long Man was busy getting his jollies to the sound of Vic’s tormented scream, I used some sleight of hand to squirrel away the music box. After that, it was just a case of leaving my interdimensional phone where the demon would hear it ringing. Think of it as a kind of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? lifeline, only with actual lives on the line.
But enough of my gabbing...
‘Go, go, go!’ yelled Stronge, as if I had something else planned.
It was time to get this wagon rolling. I engaged the clutch, shifted into first gear, and popped the handbrake. Before Erin could take another step, I punched the accelerator and the hearse lurched forward, wheels burning hot enough to blister tarmac. Out of the garage we burst, A-Team style, folding Erin in half and sucking her under the wheels. The car bounced twice as she passed beneath its axles, and then we were off.
‘Heal that, you dozy bint!’
We jetted up the driveway and traded paint with a passing car as we peeled out into Eversholt Street.
‘Yeah!’
I turned up the radio and punched the roof of the hearse. We did it. We beat the super-charged assassin.
Deadly Departed: A Supernatural Thriller (Fletcher & Fletcher, Paranormal Investigators Book 2) Page 28
