Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  Oscar looked down at me. I’d never noticed before but he was a good few inches taller than me, even in my heels. “Guess he’s worried he made a deal with the devil,” he said.

  We were interrupted by a large, older lady in a scarlet gown and an elaborate row of pearls, who babbled at Oscar about his father’s work and the party in general. I slid into the background, completely ignored by her, and watched Oscar transform into a beaming socialite, making merry small talk. He reminded me of Cloves. I wish I had that skill.

  I looked around while he was otherwise engaged. The band had started up some lively swing music and many people were dancing. I couldn’t see Merriweather anymore, or Lucy for that matter. Just a sea of rich folk.

  Eventually, Oscar extricated himself from conversation with the persistent lady, saying something with a charming smile that made her titter in a way entirely inappropriate for a woman of her years, and stooping to kiss her hand like some modern day Prince Charming. As she melted back into the crowd, he linked my arm and led me deftly away around the edge of the room.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “Lady Horley, massive racist, odious creature really. Good friend of my father’s and still determined to be my stepmother, I think.” He made a face. “Or wife, who knows. I don’t think she’d mind either if it got her closer to my family’s money. I swear, Phoebe, these people are like vultures. And they call vampires predators.”

  “They can’t all be that bad surely?” I said diplomatically.

  “You’re not like them,” he said, leading me toward the buffet table. “I know you’re not full of crap like they are. You’re like me.”

  Oscar still had it in his head that I was a rabid Helsing. I think he thought of us as co-conspirators.

  “You seem to be able to deal with them well enough,” I pointed out. “You have that public schoolboy charm act down to a tee.”

  “I’m used to dealing with adversity,” he muttered. “Speaking of, how the hell are you? I heard about the terrorist attack on Cabal, of course. You were involved? Then I saw you on the news when those kids killed themselves at the college. You’ve been in the wars recently.”

  I waved a hand. “I’m fine,” I insisted. “I wasn’t hurt in the car bomb, and that other business, well, it wasn’t related. They just wanted my medical opinion.” I was finding it hard to keep up with the teen-suicide-pact spin Cloves was trying to put on the deaths of the two students at the Jenner.

  “I envy your life,” he sighed, reaching the buffet table and listlessly picking up a triangular finger sandwich. “At least you get some excitement.”

  Sure, I thought. Death, bombs, werewolves, serial killers and a bloodbath. What a riot. It must be hard dealing with gold-digging socialites and crying over your millions. I didn’t say this of course, I was doing my best to schmooze. Coldwater wanted me to find out what I could about Scott, and Oscar was my only contact. But it still made my skin crawl to play him.

  “The only excitement I get is when I can sneak out of this place and go down to St Giles. Get some vampire action, if you know what I mean.” He smirked at me in what I assume he meant to be a seductive and cheeky way.

  “So you’re still into the Helsing scene? Even after everything that happened?” I asked. “That might put people off.”

  Oscar shook his head. “Gio was a maniac,” he said with feeling. “I never should have let myself be taken in by him, granted. But you can’t paint them all with the same brush. Vampires are not the enemy, Phoebe. I mean, you know that; you know the Clan Master after all.”

  I bristled. “Actually, I haven’t seen Allesandro,” I said.

  Oscar seemed greatly pleased by this, and tried to hide it, failing badly. “Oh, really? I didn’t know. Well, that’s better for me, right. I get to see more of you. Like I said, it’s nice to have a friend in the room.”

  I took a sandwich, more to have something to hold than through any real desire to eat new Oxford’s dwindling resources of Parma ham.

  “You looked like you had a ‘friend’ a moment ago,” I said lightly. “Do you know all the waiters on your father’s staff?”

  Oscar smirked happily. “Oh, you mean Jonathan,” he said. “Yes indeed, easy on the eye that one and no mistake.” He shook his head. “No, he’s actually here because of me. We met a few weeks ago, down at Under Yellowmoon, you know the club in St Giles? Vamp place.” I nodded. I’d heard of it. “He’s a Helsing and a fun guy. Bit strapped for cash though, so I said I could get him this gig.” He shrugged. “Bit of extra cash, you know. Most of these waiters work two or more jobs. I offered to loan him some money. I mean it’s not like I haven’t got it spare, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Said he’d rather earn it if I could get him on the waiting staff rota here. One of these proud work ethic guys. I’ve never understood it myself.”

  Oscar, as far as I knew, had never lifted a finger to do a day’s work in his entire life. No shit he didn’t understand it.

  “Well, he makes a charming waiter,” I smiled, wondering if there was more to it that Oscar was letting on. To be perfectly honest, it might be a relief if his attentions were diverted elsewhere, get me off the hook for a while. At least give my answerphone a chance to cool down.

  I nibbled at my sandwich. “Look Oscar, I know it’s terrible to mix business and pleasure and all that, but while I’ve got you, there was something I wondered if you might be able to help me with.”

  “Anything, of course.” He nodded, the eternal innocent.

  “Well, it’s kind of sensitive, not public knowledge yet, so it would have to be totally off the record,” I insisted. “As far as it goes, I’m only asking as a friend.”

  “Shoot,” he said, looking intrigued. “You know if I can help you out in any way, Phoebe, I will.” His face was earnest.

  Sometimes I worried about Oscar. He was so easy to exploit, and there were plenty of people in the world eager to do just that. Psychotic doomsday vampire cultists, gold-digging socialites….and me.

  “There have been a couple of missing persons,” I said tentatively. “And one of them I think used to work for your father, or was involved in one of his projects at least. Amanda Bishop?”

  He thought for a moment and shook his head. “Sorry, doesn’t ring a bell. I don’t meet a lot of dad’s staff really. Don’t think he trusts me with the family business. Can’t say I blame him.”

  Damn. “Maybe…she’d be on file somewhere?” I suggested helpfully. “Employee records or something, do you think?”

  Oscar finished his drink, and I watched him through his mask deciding whether to help me or not. It all basically came down to whether he would find it boring or fun. He was a simple creature.

  He placed his glass on the table. “Well, I could get in so much trouble with the old man burrowing into his stuff,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe what he’s like, paranoid. I mean like Howard Hughes level paranoid. But maybe I can access something from my own quarters?” He looked at me. “I have a personal datascreen in my rooms. It doesn’t give me access to everything here, dad’s not that stupid, but I know my way around it. Is she a…friend of yours, this Amanda?”

  I adjusted my mask a little, attempting to look both innocent and mysterious at the same time and fairly certain the end result was a twitchy squint. “I’m pretty concerned something has happened to her,” I said quietly, which at least wasn’t actually an all-out lie. Go me. Clinging to morality by my fingernails.

  “It would just put my mind at ease if I could track her movements, see what she was doing before she was…” Don’t say horribly slaughtered, don’t say horribly slaughtered. “…missing.”

  Oscar took my hand. “Let’s sneak off,” he said lowly. “Would you like to see my rooms?”

  The thought of being alone with Oscar in his inner sanctum filled me with a kind of low grade dread. I was imagining a rotating waterbed and clap-lights. But he looked so darned pleased that I needed his help I couldn’t help but smile. I don’t imagin
e he got to feel useful very often. It explained why he was such a rabid Helsing. Here in the human world, he was a mollycoddled man-child, not trusted with any real responsibility and only expected to be charming at parties and not touch anything while Daddy was working. At least amongst the vampires he was useful. They needed people like Oscar to survive. He was important to them. No wonder it was like a drug to him. I squeezed his hand through my glove.

  “You are an absolute gem, Oscar Scott.”

  He looked around furtively. “Now, we just need to get to the elevators without being kneecapped by one of these parasites,” he murmured. “God, I’d do anything for a smoke bomb.”

  We all have our skills, and thanks to Oscar’s years of experience in the glitterati limelight, we managed to navigate the vast Lens ballroom almost unseen, only having to stop and make polite small talk a mere eleven or twelve times with random guests whom I found completely interchangeable. I hung on his arm as we weaved our way laboriously through these engagements, playing my part as the elegant and enigmatic masked companion of the billionaire bachelor. Smiling and nodding in what I hoped were all the right places, although no one really talked to me. To be honest, no one really saw me. I suppose the men and women on Oscar’s arm were interchangeable. I know every time I saw him on the DataStream or in some celebrity magazine he seemed to have a new hanger-on draped across him.

  We made it to the elevators, and although I felt guilty about abandoning Lucy as we slipped inside, I was more relieved that the sharp-eyed reporter Merriweather hadn’t seen us. I’m sure she could make a good headline about my sneaking off with Oscar in the middle of the party for some ‘private time’. Everyone loves gossip.

  There was no one else in the elevator with us, for which I was eternally grateful. To the left of the usual floor buttons was an ornate numerical pad. Oscar tapped in a seven digit code with studied practise too fast for me to follow, and the lift began to descend smoothly.

  “Like getting into a treasury, my place,” he said, pushing his mask up on top of his head like a helmet visor. “Dad’s big on security. You need the passcode for the living quarters, plus either a fingerprint scan when we get there or my personal key card.” He fumbled in his jacket pocket for a second, looking confused. I reached behind my head and undid the ribbon of my mask, taking it off and blinking. I had that odd sensation one gets when removing a hat, when you can still feel it on your head for a while, a ghost of itself.

  “Huh, that’s odd,” he muttered. “Must have come out without it.” He smirked, looking over at me. “No keycard. Good job we have my fingers then, eh?” He waggled them at me alarmingly. “I had the card made in case I needed to let anyone else in, but dad got wind and hit the roof.”

  I could understand Scott the elder, in all his paranoia, not really wanting Oscar having mystery midnight callers. I wondered what happened if he fancied ordering a pizza? Did the box have to be left at the ground floor doors and then pass through several levels of security, chemical testing and a controlled explosion before it reached the boy?

  The lift emptied us into a plush corridor a couple of floors below. There were no lower buttons. Apparently this elevator went only from the family quarters back up to the lens. The wide corridor was silent and deserted. I didn’t know what the interior of the building looked like originally, but since its relocation, the Scott’s had remodelled extensively. It was like a decadent Venetian palazzo. Lots of pale marble, soft lighting and carved stonework.

  Oscar led me along the corridor like a naughty child sneaking a pal into his room, which in essence he was. We passed a lot of expensive-looking, and by that I mean impenetrable, artwork adorning the walls.

  “Dad saved what he could from the old world,” he told me as we walked. “He’s always liked the best of everything. So much art and history lost otherwise, when the wars came, and the Pale nearly killed us all. I think he felt he had a responsibility to use his wealth to preserve what he could from the old civilisation. Those that can, do, right?”

  I nodded appreciatively, fairly certain Oscar was enjoying showing off to me. In truth though, I think Scott did indeed have a responsibility. He was after all, one of the small team who had developed the Pale in the first place, using his own genetics to create the sentinels, guardians of humanity whose devolution and descent into rabid killing monsters almost doomed us all.

  Yes, anyone who had a hand personally in the apocalypse had ‘a responsibility’ to save what they could of it.

  Not that I could talk. My own father had been on the same top-secret team. Had worked closely with Oscar’s father on the sentinel project. My DNA, and Oscar’s, ran through the bodies of every one of the countless hordes outside our walls. Sins of the fathers, eh?

  I think the boy was a little misty-eyed about his dad’s good intentions, however. These ‘saved’ pieces weren’t in a gallery, accessible to all. They were locked away in Scott Towers. It would have been easier to see them in a bank vault. This wasn’t conservation as far as I was concerned, it was bloody-minded looting.

  We stopped at a large pair of highly polished wooden doors.

  “Here we are,” he said. “Welcome to my parlour.”

  In lieu of his missing swipe card, he held his thumb to the silvery plate beside the door, and I watched as a band of thin green light scanned over him.

  There was a double click, and the doors opened, letting us inside. It must be strange, I thought as we entered, living in a vault. I hadn’t seen a single porthole to the outside world since we got off the elevator. The tower seemed impregnable. How did he stand it?

  Oscar’s suite was a series of several large rooms, all very tastefully appointed. Open fires, antique furniture, state of the art wall screens and sound systems blending perfectly into the dark walls. I felt guilty for expecting something childish, like stuffed animals or rugby posters blu-tacked to walls.

  “Just through here.” He led me through a large archway, sensored lights coming on automatically. “Can I get you a drink, maybe?”

  I’d had enough champagne to feel slightly bubbly, in a pleasant way. It probably wasn’t a good idea. I just wanted access to the files, and wondered if I’d be able to get out of here without him putting some Barry White on the stereo.

  “Maybe in a while.”

  He grinned over his shoulder at me. “Sure, we have as much time as you like. No one’s going to disturb us here. Even the servants aren’t allowed in my place without permission.” He loosened his voluminous white cravat, revealing his permanently bitten neck, neat rows of healed teeth marks. I couldn’t help think of Cloves, who had shown me her own throat once, and the reason she wore her habitual black choker. It was a mass of scar tissue. One of the vampires, the beings Oscar idolised, had tried to tear her windpipe out. Vampires were dangerous. Very dangerous. But they had a charming way of making you forget that until it was too late. Cloves had learned the hard way.

  I genuinely believed Oscar had no idea how often he swam with sharks instead of dolphins. One of these days he was going to offer his neck to the wrong vampire.

  I followed him into the next room, a large and lush bedroom, with some mild trepidation. He was leading me to a vast presidential desk, atop of which stood several datascreens. This was where I was hoping to get a handle on one of our murders, and maybe the others.

  Unfortunately, someone else had the same idea.

  “What the hell?” Oscar spluttered.

  Sitting at the desk, his dinner jacket tossed casually on the bed, was a young man. He glanced up at us with surprise, but not concern. His face reflected pale in the backwash of light from the datascreens.

  It was my waiter.

  “Jonathan?” Oscar said dumbfounded. “What the hell? Why are you…how did you even…”

  The waiter rolled back the chair and stood up, his head cocked to one side as he eyed us both carefully.

  “Well,” he said. “This is certainly awkward. Wasn’t expecting you two in here anytime
soon.” He smiled at me. “You work fast don’t you, Doctor? Knew I was right about you and him.” He raised his eyebrows at Oscar. “And I thought you only had eyes for me? Ah well. All’s fair in love and war.”

  Oscar was still gobsmacked but rising in anger. “How did you get in here? I’m calling security.”

  “No need, sweetheart,” Jonathan the waiter said, unconcerned. He glanced back at the screens and deftly reached out, extracting a data-stick. He waved it at us across the room with a smirk. “Got what I came for.” With his other hand, he threw something casually across the room to Oscar. The missing swipe card.

  I realised he must have lifted it from his pocket up at the party, when I had seen the two of them standing so close together. Who the hell was this guy?

  “See you around the vampire district,” the waiter said. “And for the record, I despise Helsings. Vampire-loving scum, every one of you.”

  Before Oscar could straighten up properly, still fumbling the swipe card in his fingers, the thief swept his jacket off the bed, pulling a slim dart gun from inside. He levelled it at Oscar and fired.

  Oscar crumpled onto the bed, a red-feathered dart sticking obscenely from his shoulder. I barely had time to react as the thief flew around the desk and across the room towards me.

  “Love to stay and chat, but I don’t really have time to reload this.” He brought the butt of the dart gun down on my head as he rammed past, knocking me to the floor. I managed to turn at the last second, so only caught a glancing, but very painful, blow. If he’d hit me in the temple, as intended, I’d be unconscious.

  As it was, against all common sense, I scrambled to my feet, blood pounding in my skull. Oscar lay motionless, knocked out cold by whatever sedative had been in the dart gun. After checking his chest…still breathing…I gave chase.

  The thief was faster that I would have thought possible, already out of Oscar’s chambers and sprinting full pelt along the corridor back to the elevator.