Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  I had met high ups before, Cloves’ old supervisor Servant Harrison, and the minister Alistair Rutheridge himself. Of course, one had ended up being shot in the head and the other had been a vampire-controlled ghoul, but still, in my experience they were all terrifying. Cool and aloof and stern. Coldwater was different. For a start she seemed warmly relieved to see us both as we descended the stairs. I don’t know about Cloves, but I was expecting scorpion whips and spittle-spattered incoherence. Instead, Coldwater held out a tray of Starbucks coffees, steam rising from the Styrofoam lids on the tray she held in gloved hands.

  “Servant Cloves, Doctor Harkness,” she said, giving us both a small polite smile. “Forgive me but I took the liberty of ordering for you both. I suspected you might be somewhat busy with the scene, as it were.”

  I took one of the coffees gratefully, Cloves the other. She looked tense.

  “This one is pumpkin spice,” Coldwater said, in a rather light, distracted tone, peering up the stairs. “I hear it’s quite the thing, you know. I’ve never tried it before though. Is that where it happened?” She nodded her head at the stairs.

  Cloves nodded, not missing a step. “Two boys dead, eviscerated, three other students missing, presumed kidnapped by the murderer at present.”

  “Eviscerated boys? I see. How frightful,” Coldwater frowned, sipping her drink. “Ooh, you know that is lovely, you should try it. Quite the winter warmer. Shame it’s spring really.”

  I blinked at her as she blew on the coffee.

  “Excellent to hear you are unharmed, Doctor,” she said to me. “We’re still looking into the bombing, of course. I have a dedicated team on all leads. But that you still doggedly made the meeting with the Tribals? That’s commitment I can commend, example to us all.”

  “Do we know anything more yet about the other victims of the car-bomb?” I asked.

  “What other victims?” she replied, smiling.

  “There were two, other than the driver, two people in the car, in the back,” I flicked my eyes at Cloves. “I did tell you.”

  “Yes, I know you did and I put it in my report,” Cloves told me. “But there weren’t. Not according to the feedback from the clean-up crew?” She looked to the director for confirmation, who nodded to me.

  “That’s right,” Coldwater said. “I oversaw it myself. The driver, poor man. His family has been informed. But he was the only casualty, I assure you, Doctor. You were lucky not to be another. I swear, from your file, you must have more lives than a cat.”

  I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times. I was so sure there had been others in the car. But then, I had been sure I had seen Allesandro too, and how could that be? Could I even trust my own eyes anymore?

  “The issue at hand,” Coldwater said, pointing up the stairs, “and I’m afraid it is rather a pressing one from the board’s perspective, is that we have more deaths than we can handle, and rather an overabundance of journalists outside, already whipped into a frenzy over the bombing incident this morning. It’s all quite a frightful mess. People want answers.”

  She looked to Cloves. “You know what happens to people who don’t get answers, Servant Cloves, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Director,” Cloves replied.

  “They start thinking they are being deceived,” Coldwater elaborated, sipping her coffee genially. “And then they stop trusting their guardians. Losing the trust of the good people of Oxford would be disastrous for Cabal, don’t you think?” She said it lightly, swilling her coffee in the cup.

  Cloves looked like she’d stopped breathing. “Well yes, I thought…I had to control the crime scene, and…”

  “Doctor Harkness can control the crime scene,” Coldwater said. “You control the people. It’s what you do, Servant Cloves. It’s what we pay you so very well for. And very well you do it too, I might add. When the people turn against the system which guides and protects them, it can get awfully messy. Especially in a confined space. Rioting in the streets and all that unpleasantness. I assume you’re familiar with the French Revolution?”

  “I’ll handle it,” Cloves said decisively. “At once, Director.”

  Coldwater looked delighted. “Jolly good. It’s important to keep calm in a crisis, isn’t it? No one wants to lose their head.”

  I decided that Director Coldwater, in her smiling, softly spoken way, unnerved me considerably more than Cloves, the bile-spitting Greek fury, did.

  Cloves glanced at me, conveying in one stern, dagger-like flit of the eyes that we would Talk Later, with capital letters, as she headed outside. Her face slid effortlessly into a warm, reassuring smile as she went to calm the press. It was like watching a race driver expertly shift gears.

  Coldwater looked at me once Cloves had gone. “Well,” she said breathlessly after a moment. “We have had a busy day so far, haven’t we, Doctor Harkness? You must tell me later how you got on with the Tribals. I’m most interested to hear what came of that meeting. But right now, I think it’s probably rather important to let me know what the bloody hell has gone on upstairs.”

  “Would you like to see the crime scene?” I asked, already half-making for the stairs.

  “Oh God, no,” she said, stopping me in my tracks. I turned to look at her, surprised. The hand not holding her coffee had fluttered to her chest, a brown suede butterfly. “I have no wish to see dead children.” She smiled weakly. “I don’t have much of a stomach for blood, I’m afraid. You must be used to it of course, being a doctor. I imagine you see all manner of things.”

  Not like this, I thought, unable to keep the image of the boy’s mangled face out of my mind, his one perfect blue eye staring terrified from the mincemeat of his skull. Nevertheless, I nodded in agreement to her. I seemed to be in her good books at the moment, and for some reason, I didn’t want to disappoint her with weakness. Maybe that was her secret Cabal superpower.

  “I’m afraid I mainly move paper around and tell other people what to do. Very little hands-on involvement. Perhaps the odd paper cut.”

  She sipped her coffee. “Just bring me up to speed please.”

  I did, as succinctly as possible, leaving out only the fact that one of the missing students was a Tribal and that her alpha father was standing upstairs getting compromising footprints in the blood. Admittedly, these were quite large facts to leave out, but I wasn’t sure yet myself what I was dealing with.

  I told her about the corpses, the possible link with these students and Amanda Bishop, and the strange and enigmatic message.

  “Crescent Moon?” She looked rather lost, shaking her blonde hair in bafflement. “Gibberish to me, I’m afraid. What are we thinking? Ramblings of a madman? Doomsday cultist?”

  “It could be something significant, Director,” I said. “I don’t think we should discount it yet.”

  She looked thoughtful. “Mmmm… Could even have been scrawled there by the murderer/kidnappers themselves, to lead us astray perhaps.”

  Something seemed to occur to her. “Wait a moment,” she said. “The Botanical settlement. Don’t the Tribals have some rather quaint names for the entranceways? I’m sure one of them is…”

  “Crescent Gate,” I supplied. “Used to be the Danby gateway, I was there earlier. Yes, I thought of that too.”

  “Pointing us to the Tribals again,” she mused. “Werewolves do rather follow the moon, don’t they? Still, it’s rather oblique at best.”

  “Director, I think there might be another source we could follow up,” I said hesitantly.

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “Scott,” I said. “He’s a common factor. The Tribals have issues with him at the moment over the power plant, and the only one of the murder victims whom we know anything about is Amanda Bishop. She was a biology student, genetics, and she was headhunted by Scott Enterprises, according to the files. She had turned them down for the time being, putting them off while she continued teaching, and now she’s dead. We’ve just discovered most of her students are dead
too. If we could approach Scott….”

  Coldwater looked doubtful.

  “It’s a good angle, yes, but unfortunately one is more likely to get a private audience with the Queen of England than with Marlon Scott, and as we all know, she’s as dead as the rest of the Royal Family. If there was another way into him, perhaps.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well…his son has been chasing me for a date for a couple of weeks,” I joked. I had meant it as a sarcastic aside, but to my horror, Coldwater’s eyes lit up.

  “Really?” she said, a broad smile spreading happily across her face. She looked like a child who had just realised it was Christmas day.

  “Well, that is just bloody excellent,” she said chirpily, grabbing my forearm with her free hand. “Inspired idea, Doctor. Imagine what we might learn from inside the Scott Camp. We must accept this date at once.” She looked gleeful, looking me over appraisingly. She gave a small shake of her perfectly coiffed head. “More and more, I am certain I made the right choice with you as our ambassador. You have connections everywhere it seems, Doctor. I must remember not to underestimate you.”

  My heart sank.

  13.

  I like to think I know myself pretty well, better than other people anyway. I know my own comfort zone. In the lab, with my rats, working with toxins, handling viruses. This is all green light stuff. Even better if I’m on my own. Presenting the quarterly R and D lab reports to the board or liaising with my peers? Meh, maybe an amber. Slight sweaty palm situation and constant low-grade paranoia perhaps, but still, it’s my arena. It’s work, and I know my shit. In the rainforest of science, I am the amazon queen.

  Dealing with GOs first hand, be it vampires, Tribals, Bonewalkers or any faceless corpse you care to mention? It’s not something I’d choose, but despite myself, I think I’m getting better at it. Still amber, but maybe deepening into a slightly more russet hue.

  What actually tilts my inner traffic light to bright, screaming red, however, is social gatherings. Parties, places where I am expected to mingle, make charming and witty small talk, schmooze and network, and above all to be seen and heard. Seriously, I would rather take the corpses.

  So you can imagine my good humour, when just over twenty four hours after leaving the murder/kidnap scene at the Old Campus, I found myself sitting in the back of a stretch limousine, wearing a full-blown red-carpet gown, shoulderless, backless and tastefully rendered in pale gold, with about five times my annual salary’s worth of jewellery around my neck.

  I was on my way to Scott Towers, and I was not happy about it. I don’t do parties. I especially don’t do parties where I am going to know absolutely no one. And I really, especially extra don’t do parties full of extremely rich bluebloods. I glowered out of the window. Dusk had fallen and a light rain had set in, making dazzling jewels on the windowpane as the streetlights flashed by. The most exclusive area of Portmeadow was rolling along outside the car. I gave it a damn good glowering.

  “You look like you’re going to your execution,” Lucy said, in a worried tone.

  I hadn’t been able to wriggle out of attending this particular soiree. Both Cloves and the mighty Coldwater had insisted it may prove useful, you can’t really argue with Cloves, she always gets her way in the end. And as for Coldwater, I can’t imagine anyone actually trying to argue with her…ever.

  But I had agreed to this horrific scenario only on certain terms. Bringing a wingman with me was one of them, and Lucy, my effervescent lab assistant was my choice. Partly because she was effortlessly good at this sort of thing and I needed a guide in strange and uncharted waters, and rather more pathetically because, well, I didn’t really know anyone else. I couldn’t bring Griff, it would have seemed like a date, and considering I was going to see Oscar Scott, my own personal stalker, I think it might have complicated the situation.

  So Lucy it was. She had jumped at the chance. Actually jumped, like a small cartoon character.

  “Just…try to relax,” Lucy said, leaning across the spacious limo interior. She passed me a flute of champagne. It had been waiting for us in the car which Oscar had sent to pick us up. “And less, you know, grimacey,” she said encouragingly, drawing a smile on her own face in mime with her fingertips. “You look really pretty. Like a film star or something.”

  “I look ridiculous,” I replied, but I tried to rearrange my face into a less scowly expression and took the champagne from her gratefully. “Thanks for coming with me tonight.”

  Lucy looked at me with wide eyes. “Yes Doc, because you know, it’s such a hardship, being forced to attend the social event of the season. Do you have any idea what you have to do to get an invitation to one of these things? Who you have to be? I almost bit your hand off.”

  I downed my drink in one. It helped a little. “I feel far too overdressed,” I said, pawing absently at my gown. It was stunning, and clingy, and rather shimmerier than anything I would usually wear. “Or underdressed. I can’t decide. This isn’t my style at all. I look like I’m going to the Oscars or something.” My hair was up in a French twist, leaving my neck bare. In a city full of vampires, it made me feel a little exposed. I was told it looked elegant though. Cloves had insisted I wear earrings, little dangly things she had provided. They looked like diamonds to me. “They’ll draw attention away from that jaw of yours,” she had said critically, eyeing me over in the middle of the lab. “Soften it.”

  I had resisted the urge to soften hers there and then. I begrudged taking fashion advice from a woman who had been known to wear a hound’s-tooth pantsuit with knee high leather boots and consider it work-wear. Luckily, I had dosed on Epsilon shortly before she’d arrived with my sparkly gifts and therefore had been able to contain my rising bloodlust, albeit barely.

  “We are going to Oscar’s,” Lucy said, looking confused.

  I blinked over at her in the car, then realised what I had just said a moment ago. “No, I…That’s not what I meant,” I said. “There used to be this award show, I’ve watched some recordings…” She was gazing at my vacantly, her pretty green eyes lost in a sea of glittery kohl. “…Never mind,” I trailed off.

  “You don’t really have a style though, do you?” she said happily. “I mean, an evening style,” she amended hastily.

  Lucy herself looking effortlessly stunning, in a galling way, in a Gatsby-style flapper dress, all black and deep fir-tree-green with silvery tassels. Where did she even find these outfits?

  “What I mean to say, is that you’re always so busy working away. It’s business business business with you, boss. It does good to let your hair down once in a while.”

  I almost pointed out that my hair was usually down, in a nice braid down my back and out of my way, unlike now, when it was piled artfully on my head and held in place by a large amount of spray, but she had a point. My evening style was typically fluffy PJ’s in my blissfully quiet flat. Who was I to criticise those who would tell me how not to look like a moron in ‘society’? They had done a better job scrubbing me up that I could have done myself.

  “Trust me,” she said. “I don’t think you’re going to be underdressed at a Scott party. I still can’t believe he invited you.” She held her hands up. “Not that you’re not…I mean…it’s just awesome I guess…is what I’m saying,” she backpedalled. “You must really have caught his eye, Doc, you dark horse.” She bit her lip in what she probably imagined was a scandalous way. She looked a little demented, but adorably so.

  “I saved his life,” I said. “Kind of. I had help, but we were both going to be killed by the Black Sacrament at the time. I think he has a silly crush because of it.”

  It didn’t help that I first met Oscar Scott in the deepest part of the vampire district. He was a certified Helsing, just like my own dear Lucy. He was convinced that I was too, no matter what I said about it. I found it a little surprising that being kidnapped by vampires, having his teeth ripped out, and almost being slaughtered, hadn’t dimmed his view of them. Some people are be
yond help, I suppose. What was previously obsession had become Stockholm Syndrome with Oscar. They say you always want what you can’t have, right? That forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest? Well, Oscar was rich enough to have almost anything he wanted, and the only forbidden thing in his world – the world of his father, the omnipotent magnate Marlin Scott, staunch supporter of the anti-GO Mankind Movement – was vampires. Hence, in my hedge-Freud opinion, the attraction.

  “You should try to enjoy yourself,” Lucy said. “I know I will…Canapés! Yay!” She waved her empty champagne glass at me. “And I might meet someone really, really rich who falls in love with me. Someone really, really rich and really, really old and with a weak heart and a habit of making really hasty wills.”

  I couldn’t help but smirk at her. “You’re terrible,” I said. “Never would have taken you for a gold digger, Lucy.”

  “Living on my wage?” She raised her eyebrows at me. “Doc…pass…the…spade.”

  I might not be wholly socially comfortable with being forced to take Oscar up on his invitation, but I wasn’t just being a party pooper for the heck of it.

  The fact was, we had deaths everywhere, corpses pilling up, missing students, and not to mention some diseased faceless corpse sitting on ice in my lab. And since yesterday, I hadn’t been allowed near any of it. I had been pigeonholed into a social networking role.

  Cloves had taken over the scene at the Old Campus, directing the media, the press, the police, and forensics like a master conductor. Griff had been sent back to Blue Lab to oversee the test results from our nameless guest. And Kane…well, Kane had left shortly after I escaped from Coldwater, led through the internal maze of the Jenner Institute by Griff, and thankfully able to avoid the press mob at the main doors. He’d made a call and Sofia, the charmless redhead had swung by in possibly the world’s most battered Jeep. I wondered if Tribals had driver’s licences. Kane had stopped only to tell me in no uncertain terms that he was going to find his daughter, and I could either help him or not. Either seemed to be fine with him, as long as I didn’t get in his way. That would be a problem. And it would be a genuine shame, he intimated, if I was to become a problem to him.