“See you later, Cousin Eddie,” said Harry.
“Yes,” I said. “You will.”
The Armourer led the two of them away across the lawns and towards the Hall. Molly and I watched them go, while the gryphons wandered back to crouch beside us, snorting and growling unhappily. I patted a few heads and tugged a few ears, and they wandered off again, happily enough. It bothered me that they hadn’t been able to predict Harry and Roger’s arrival in advance. Made me wonder what else the hellspawn might be able to hide from us.
“And this was starting out to be such a good day,” I said finally. “Now Harry’s back, just itching for a chance to stick a knife in my back, and if that weren’t enough he’s brought a half-breed demon with him. I mean, I’m not prejudiced, but…dammit, he’s a thing from Hell!” I looked at Molly. “Did you really go out with him?”
“Not one more word out of you, Eddie,” she said coldly. “Or you will never see me naked again.”
We went back to my room in the Hall. I felt an urgent need for a little down time. When I decided I was going to have to move back into the Hall, so I could keep a proper eye on things, I had to decide where I was going to stay. My old room was long gone, given over to someone else in the family when I left to be a field agent. (Crying Free! Free at last! all the way.) And it wasn’t like I had any fond measures of the pokey little garret room. Too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, and every time the wind blew in the night, I had to get out of bed and jam a handkerchief into the gap between the window and the frame to stop it from rattling. (The family has never believed in central heating; makes you soft.)
Since I was running the family now, I could have just taken any room I fancied. I could have thrown the Matriarch out of her special suite, and no one would have stopped me. But I didn’t have the heart. It would have been cruel… to Alistair. You big softy, Molly said later, when I told her, but she was only partly right. Even then, I knew I didn’t want to make an enemy of Martha Drood because I might need her help…
In the end, I just chose one of the better situated rooms in the west wing and booted out the poor beggar who was living there. He in turn picked someone lower down on the food chain and evicted them, and moved into their room. And so it went, for several days, until you couldn’t move in the corridors for people hauling their belongings from one room to another. Presumably the poor bastard at the bottom of the pile ended up moving back into the communal dormitory with the children.
(There are no guest rooms in the Hall. Only family gets to live in the Hall.)
Even so, Molly wasn’t especially impressed when she saw where she’d be staying with me. She just couldn’t get her head around the fact that members of the most powerful family in the world only got one room to live in. But that’s what happens when a family’s numbers expand faster than we can build on new wings. Another generation or two and we’ll have to find or build a new home, but no one was ready to talk about that yet.
I let us into our room, and Molly immediately ran over to the bed and threw herself onto it. She sank half out of sight into the deep goose-feather mattress and sighed blissfully.
“Still don’t care much for the room, but I do love this bed. I feel like I could sink all the way down to China.”
“What’s wrong with the room?” I said patiently.
“Far too much like a hotel room,” Molly said firmly. “All very luxurious, I’m sure, but it has no character. It’s…cold, impersonal.”
I smiled at her. “When did you ever stay in hotels, oh wicked witch of the woods?”
She wriggled cosily on the bed. “Oh, I get around. You’d be surprised, some of the places I’ve been. And it’s not like I can take my forest everywhere with me… Still, I’ll say this for hotels… I love room service. You just pick up the phone and they bring you food, every hour of the day and night. I always pig out at hotels. Particularly because I never stick around to pay the bills…”
“There’s no room service to be had here,” I said sternly. “And you’re expected to clean up your own mess. There are no servants among the Droods, or at least, not as such. We’re all encouraged from an early age to look after ourselves… Builds character and self-reliance.”
“How very worthy,” said Molly. “Let it be clearly understood between us that I do not do worthy. Was this really the best room you could have chosen, out of all those available?”
“I chose this room because it used to be my parents’,” I said. “Back when I was a child. I can just about remember visiting them here… It’s hard to be sure. Memories from that age are never reliable. My mother and father weren’t often here, you see. As field agents they lived outside the Hall.”
“And you weren’t allowed to live with them?” said Molly, sitting up and propping her back against the wooden headboard.
“No. All Drood children are raised here, in the dormitories. So they can be properly trained and indoctrinated. Loyalty is to the family, not our parents.”
“Harry wasn’t raised here,” Molly said thoughtfully.
“No. Which gives you some idea of how much the Matriarch disapproved of Uncle James marrying without permission, to an unsuitable woman. Anyone else would have been declared rogue.”
“I like the furnishings and fittings,” said Molly, tactfully changing the subject. “Everything in here’s an antique, but in splendid condition. Hey, if there aren’t any servants here, who polishes all the wood and brass?”
“We take turns, when we’re young,” I said. “Character building, remember? I hated it. I can still remember my hands going numb from the cold as I cleaned the outside windows in the depths of winter, because the water in the bucket always went cold before you were finished. And don’t even get me started about trying to scrub brass with Duraglit when your fingers have all gone numb… Bugger character building. All it taught me was never to own anything made of brass, and be sure to tip my window cleaners very generously.”
“Feel free to vent, Eddie,” said Molly. “Don’t hold anything back.”
“At least I talk about my past,” I said pointedly.
“Oh look,” said Molly. “I’m changing the subject again. I like the television. That is one seriously big fuckoff widescreen television. And five speakers, for surround sound…Cool.”
“Only the best for the family,” I said. “But I wouldn’t have thought you watched much television, in the woods.”
“I’m a witch, not a barbarian. I like the cooking shows… Love Masterchef. I suppose you watch the sci-fi channels?”
“No,” I said. “I like to leave my work behind when I relax. I prefer the comedy channels.”
Molly hugged her knees to her chest and looked at me thoughtfully.
“What are we doing here, Eddie? Why are we hiding out in your room?”
“Not hiding,” I said. “It’s just…sometimes it all gets a bit too much for me, and then I need to get away from it all. I took on running this family because I had to. But… I don’t know what I’m doing. I lived alone for ten years, and never had to worry about anyone but myself. Now I have all these people depending on me, and looking to me for answers and decisions that will shape the rest of their lives … I don’t want to let them down.”
“They let you down,” said Molly.
“They’re still keeping secrets from me,” I said. “Harry’s only the latest. And he’s all I needed; a rival pretender for the throne.”
“He hates you because he believes you killed his father,” said Molly. “He doesn’t know I killed James Drood.”
“No one can ever know that! It’s one thing for me to kill him in a duel. I’m family. But you’re an outsider; they’d kill you on the spot if they even suspected. And me too, for hiding the truth, and daring to care more about you than the family.”
Molly smiled at me. “Every now and again, you remind me of why I fell for you so hard. Come over here and sit down beside me.”
I sat down on the bed, by her side, an
d we put our arms around each other and snuggled close, and for a long time we didn’t want to say anything.
“You are allowed to hold me when you’re feeling down, you know,” said Molly. “It’s allowed, when you’re in a relationship.”
“So we are definitely in one of those relationship things, are we?” I said.
“Yeah. It sneaked up on me when I wasn’t looking. You can squeeze my boobies, if you like.”
“Good to know.”
“Roger and I were never close,” she said, not looking at me. “And we weren’t together long. I was just at the time in a girl’s life when she really feels like being mistreated by someone big and rough. Even though you know it’s bound to end in tears.”
“And did it?”
“Oh, yes. I caught him in bed with my best friend. And her brother. Something of an eye-opener … I set the bed on fire while they were all still in it, and walked out on him. I’m pretty sure I never really loved him. It was just…one of those things, you know?”
“I once had a brief relationship with a sex android from the twenty-third century,” I said. “Damn, but we’ve known some interesting times, haven’t we?”
We laughed together quietly. Our bodies moved easily against each other. I never really felt at home the way I did in Molly’s arms. Like I’d finally found out where I was supposed to be.
“Never leave me,” I said suddenly.
“Where did that come from?” said Molly.
“I don’t know. I just need to hear you say it. Say it for me, Molly.”
“I will never leave you, Eddie. I’ll always be with you, forever and ever and ever. Now you say it.”
“I will love you every day of my life, Molly Metcalf, and after I die, if you’re not there in Heaven with me, I will go down to Hell to join you. Because Heaven wouldn’t be Heaven without you.”
“You smooth-talking devil, Eddie Drood.”
Some time later, when I’d got my second wind, I got dressed again and opened the bag I’d brought back from my London flat. I set about distributing my few possessions around the room. It didn’t take long. A row of CDs on one shelf, my favourite books lined up on another. In alphabetical order, of course. I’m very strict about things like that. And some favourite clothes that didn’t even come close to filling the massive mahogany wardrobe. I looked at Molly, who was attacking her tousled hair in the mirror.
“Don’t you have any clothes you want to hang up? Women always have clothes. And shoes…and things.”
She shrugged easily. “Whenever I get bored, I just magic up a new outfit. I only have to see something I like, and I can duplicate it with a thought. I never paid for a new outfit in my life, and they always fit perfectly. I’ve been recycling the same material for years.”
I hope you take time out to wash it now and again, I thought, but had enough sense not to say out loud.
I stepped back and looked at my possessions scattered around the room. They looked…sort of lost. They were present-day, transitory things, in a room that had been here before I was born and would still be here after I was gone. There weren’t any of my parents’ old possessions still here. They would have been thrown out or redistributed long ago, when the next occupant moved in. The family has never encouraged sentiment. We aren’t supposed to care about possessions, because only the family is important. Look forward, never back. And never get too attached to anything or anyone, because the enemy will use that against you.
They don’t tell you the enemy sometimes includes the family.
“Don’t you want to bring anything here from your old place?” I said to Molly.
She shrugged lazily. “I have my magical iPod, full of my favourite music. Endless capacity, no batteries to run down, and it can pick up any tune from any period. It can even sing harmonies with me on karaoke nights. But that’s it, really. I’ve never cared much about things… You can always get more things… With my magic I’ve raised beg, borrow, and steal to an art form.”
“So,” I said. “What do you think of the infamous Drood family home, now you’ve been here for a while? Is it everything you thought it would be?”
“All that and more,” said Molly. “It’s certainly…impressive.”
“You don’t like it,” I said, and was surprised at how disappointed I sounded.
“Don’t be upset, sweetie,” said Molly. She came over and slipped an arm around my waist. “It just isn’t me, that’s all. I feel…shut in, oppressed, all the time I’m inside. I’m the spirit of the wild woods, remember? I need…nature, and open space, and room to breathe! Not all this dead wood and cold stone…”
“You don’t mind hotels…”
“Only because I know I can walk out of them whenever I feel like it. I’m stuck here, with you. Not that I don’t want to be with you, I do, I do, but…”
“We do have extensive grounds,” I said. “You could walk in them all day and all night, and still not see everything there is to see. And you know I wouldn’t want to keep you here if you were unhappy.”
“Of course I know that, Eddie!” She kissed me quickly. “This is coming out all wrong … I want to be with you, and you have to be here. I know that.”
“We won’t always have to be here. As soon as the new Council’s ready to take over running things, I will demote myself to field agent and be out of here so fast that anyone watching will end up with whiplash.”
“But how long will that take, Eddie?”
“I don’t know. It’ll take … as long as it takes. Molly…”
“Hush. It’s all right. We’ll work something out.”
“Yes,” I said. “We will.”
And all the time I was holding her, I was thinking, If she couldn’t stay here…If she left, would I go with her? And leave my family to tear itself apart? Risk the whole future of humanity, because I left my job unfinished? Would I damn the world, to be with her? Would I do that? Could I do that?
In the end, she let go first and went to check the state of her makeup in the bedside hand mirror.
“So,” she said brightly. “What’s the story with the Time Train?”
“I was hoping you’d forgotten about that,” I said.
“Is it really a time machine?”
“Oh yes. Well, sort of. It started out as someone’s pet project. Sooner or later every Armourer gets a bee in his bonnet about something…some favourite theory, some great idea they’re convinced will make their name immortal within the family. If they can just convince their Matriarch to fund it. One guy was convinced he could build a bomb powerful enough to blow up the whole world.”
“What happened?” said Molly, fascinated.
“When the Matriarch couldn’t make him see what a really bad idea that was, she had him put in suspended animation.”
“Why not just kill him?”
“Because someday we might need a bomb powerful enough to destroy the whole world.”
Molly shuddered. “Your family can be downright scary sometimes, Eddie. So the Time Train is one of these obsessions, is it?”
“Pretty much. I don’t think we’ve used the thing a dozen times in the two centuries since it was constructed.”
“Why not?” said Molly. “I mean, I can think of a dozen really good uses for a time machine, any one of which could make us impossibly rich…”
“Thought you didn’t care about things?”
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
“It’s not that simple,” I said. “The possibilities for really appalling cock-ups, disasters, tragedies, and paradoxes are enough to give anyone nightmares. Don’t even ask me how the Time Train works, or I’ll start to whimper. Time travel, theory and practice, makes my head hurt. Do me a favour, Molly, and change the subject again.”
“All right…Let’s talk about the people we suggested bringing in as tutors. And don’t pull a face like that, Eddie Drood. The wind might change and then you’d be stuck that way. You know we have to discuss this.”
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br /> “Only because my choices were sane and practical, and you chose two monsters!”
“They are not monsters! Or at least, not all the time…And really, Eddie, sane and practical? Yeah, right…Janissary Jane has a good reputation as a fighter, especially when she’s got a few drinks in her, but let’s be real about this; she is way past her prime.”
“She’s a veteran demon fighter,” I said. “Do you have any idea how rare that is? She’s been killing demons for longer than most demon fighters live. There’s a lot she could teach us, if we can persuade her to come here.”
“All right, what about the Blue Fairy?” Molly pulled a sour face. “He’s weak, Eddie, and always will be. And he’s a risk. He’s half elf, and you can never trust an elf. They always have a hidden agenda. Trust me, I know.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you about to tell me of another old boyfriend?”
“An elf? Please!” Molly shuddered theatrically. “I’d sew it up first.”
“Pushing that unexpected mental image firmly to one side,” I said, “my choices are defendable. Yours are completely unacceptable. I mean, come on … a psycho killer and a luck vampire?”
“They’ve been good friends to me,” Molly said firmly. “And they can tell your family about a world they know nothing of. Weren’t you the one who said that there was more to this world than just good guys and bad guys? Subway Sue and Mr. Stab can open your family’s eyes to a whole new way of looking at things…That is what you wanted, isn’t it? To break wide open the Droods’ narrow worldview, and teach them new ways of thinking? Like I did with you?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“No buts. They’ll make excellent tutors. As long as they’re watched carefully. And maybe even excellent warriors in our upcoming war against the demons.”
“If Mr. Stab even looks at a girl in a way I don’t like, I will kill him,” I said.
“You can try,” said Molly. “And trust me, I’ll kill that Roger bloody Morningstar first chance I get. You should never have allowed him inside your home. I don’t care what he says, or who vouches for him; his first allegiance will always be to Hell.”
Daemons Are Forever sh-2 Page 10
