Differently Morphous

by Yahtzee Croshaw

  There was also a double-barreled antique shotgun lying across the headrests of the back seat, which Mike Badger took up lovingly, resting it on one shoulder as he closed the boot with his free hand. He then headed up the street, straight toward the maisonette, not entirely to Alison’s surprise.

  She returned to her spot on the crates and watched him through the binoculars. This was certainly a development, but she couldn’t get her head around what it meant. Was Badger the tenant of the maisonette, the one who had uploaded the video? Excitement swelled in her chest. Had they identified the Fluidic Killer?

  It was an appealingly straightforward answer. After all, he was definitely a fluidic killer, or at least had been before first contact. But she was hardly in a position to march down, slap a hand on his shoulder, and declare him to be nicked. Besides, something felt off. She kept watching.

  She had no way of contacting Diablerie; he had told her that he refused to carry a phone, giving the oblique explanation that such a thing would be “too obvious.” All she could do was watch as Badger’s stubby, round-shouldered form reached the door, readied the gun, and knocked.

  That cast doubt on the theory that Badger was the one renting the room. As did parking so far down the street, on reflection. After waiting a token few seconds for a reply to his knock, Badger tried the handle, found it unlocked, and within seconds had vanished inside. A few moments later, the light in the first-floor window came on.

  Alison’s excitement was rising to the level of full-blown panic. There was no more avoiding the fact that she was going to have to go down there herself, either to break up or spy on whatever was going on in there. She lowered the binoculars.

  She caught the merest glimpse of an upward-staring face in the passenger window of Badger’s Range Rover before instinct took over and she flew to one side, pinning herself against the wall, heart in mouth.

  “Frequently accompanied by teenage son.” A line from Danvers’s email. He’d even underlined it. Why hadn’t she considered he’d be there? How long had she been half hanging out of the window, staring with slack jaw like a peeping Tom? Why didn’t she ever think?

  She slowly massaged her heart back into her chest with deep, calming breaths, then slowly leaned toward the window, inch by inch, until she could see the car through the corner of her eye. David Badger, if it was him, was now inspecting the smartphone in his lap.

  Maybe he hadn’t spotted her. Alison couldn’t be sure. What she could be sure of was that he would definitely spot her if she now left the pub to check on the maisonette.

  She spent what felt like a mere handful of seconds considering what course of action would present the smallest possibility of cock-up before she heard approaching footsteps and leaned out a little in time to see Mike Badger return, still holding his unfired shotgun.

  “Anything there?” asked David, with no apparent genuine interest, as Mike climbed back into the driver’s seat.

  “Nah,” he replied. “Hang about, just gonna call it in.” Alison couldn’t see him through the roof of his car, but she heard a sequence of grunts, sighs, and faint electronic boops. “Ay oop, Danvers,” said Badger. “Nah, nowt there. At the estate? Yep, got it. Six o’clock.”

  Alison crouched, but it did nothing to help her hear what the person on the other end of the phone was saying. All she could hear was a tinny gibber.

  “Doubt it,” said Badger in response. “Literally just looked at it now. Calling from the car. Hm? Yeah, I know, I had to pick up some stuff for me tea first.” The gibber took on a slightly offended tone. “Look, unless ye’re willing to run some pies over to the wife while I’m doing shite for yer, then stop complainin’.” He hung up unceremoniously and gunned the engine, which started after a couple of tired mechanical belches.

  Alison waited for the car to turn out of the street, in case any of the occupants had eyes on the rearview mirror, then bolted for the stairs. She pushed her way through a thin crowd of early evening drinkers and burst out into the street in a spray of scattered apologies.

  She was almost out of breath and seeing bright spots before her eyes by the time she reached the maisonette door and practically collapsed onto the handle. After she had fallen in a heap on the interior floor and nearly concussed herself on the stairs, it occurred to her that she should probably have made a quieter approach.

  As a compromise, she closed the front door as quietly as possible to minimize the clicking of the latch, then crept up the stairs, wincing with every creak.

  The space above the takeaway shop was a single empty room with bare floorboards. Other than the one she had entered, there was only one door, which hung open to reveal a poky toilet roughly the size of a telephone booth.

  The room was undoubtedly the one in which the Fluidic Killer video had been filmed. She recognized the unique pattern of marks and stains on the wall opposite the entrance. The final, clinching giveaway was the crumpled paper wizard mask lying in the corner. Besides that, the room appeared to be completely empty.

  She slowly turned 360 degrees, taking in every detail of the whitewashed walls and splintery floor. No doubt about it, there was nothing and nobody here. Baffled, she turned back towards the stairs.

  Diablerie was directly behind her. Her feet left the ground for a moment and she gave a little yelp.

  “You were instructed to remain where you were,” he said accusingly.

  “Sorry!” squeaked Alison automatically. “But I saw him. I saw Badger. He came in here. Didn’t he?”

  “Indeed!” Diablerie finally dropped his contemptful stare and began to stalk about the room, idly inspecting its limited features. “That foul northern dwarf came to this place. Did nothing but glance around, make truly despicable use of the water closet, then depart.”

  Alison glanced from the toilet to the entrance door. “So what did you do?”

  He gave her a condescending look. “I hid.”

  Under the circumstances, thought Alison, this was the least of all relevant matters. “Doctor, this is the room,” she announced. “This is where they shot the Fluidic Killer video.”

  Diablerie glanced around, then tried to look convincingly all knowing. “Is that just now penetrating the walls of the hollow bank vault you call a brain? It seems our friend Michael Badger is confirmed to be a person of interest, if such a phrase applies to this tedious investigation.” He stroked his mustache. “Now, we must determine where he plans to go next.”

  “I know that!” blurted out Alison excitedly, as powerless to stop the words as she would have been to stop a surge of vomit. “I overheard them talking!” She breathlessly recounted the half of a phone conversation she had witnessed.

  Diablerie’s expression shifted gradually from bored skepticism to genuine concern. When she had finished and was eagerly looking to him for a response, he hastily shifted back to bored skepticism. “And what relevance does this furtive little eavesdrop of yours have, girl?”

  Alison, whose hands were still out in the “tada” gesture she had used to punctuate her story, frowned. “He’s going to meet the person he was talking to.”

  “And we know not where!”

  “He called him Danvers,” insisted Alison. “And he mentioned an estate. I think he might have meant Mr. Danvers’s father? The one who used to be on the Hand of Merlin? Don’t they have, like, a family estate in the country?”

  Diablerie folded his arms tightly and made a short, braying laugh that came out more like a squawk. “Phaw! What ridiculous fancies play about thy mind like plump ponies in a daisy patch? Think you that the Hand of Merlin could have re-formed into some renegade demon-hunting operation?”

  “Well, I didn’t say that,” said Alison, scratching her head. “But, actually, the video did say something about a New Hand . . .”

  “Pish, tosh!” barked Diablerie, tossing his head back and forth with each word like a clucking hen. “The Hand of Merlin are no more. Its members are but ineffectual babes. Clearly this trail has gone cold. We
should report back to that miserable slab of concrete we must now call headquarters.”

  Alison’s bafflement was transmuting comfortably into suspicion. “So you want to . . . abandon the mission?”

  “Are you questioning me?”

  “It’s just that Ms. Lawrence said you had a one hundred percent success rate for missions up to now.”

  Diablerie’s eyes swiveled to the side as he digested this. Then he reaffirmed himself, bobbing shallowly on his heels. “Yes, well? A streak must end sometime. The truly wise, among whom Diablerie is assuredly counted, must know when they are defeated.”

  “So we’ll go back to London?”

  “Without delay!”

  “And report in to Ms. Lawrence, and to Mr. Danvers.”

  Diablerie stiffened a little. “As our profession demands.”

  “And they’ll agree with you that this wasn’t worth investigating.”

  His eyes spun in three complete circles as he considered this, then he turned on his heel and swatted at nothing in particular with his cane. “Well, Diablerie sees that this fanciful notion of yours has embedded itself so deeply into your swamp-like mind that he is helpless to dissuade you. Very well. We shall repair to the Danvers estate. But Diablerie states now that this journey shall end only with disappointment. The Hand of Merlin’s influence is gone from this world, and Diablerie certainly knows of no secret information to the contrary.” He took a gold pocket watch out of his waistcoat, which Alison was completely unsurprised to see that he owned. “Six o’clock, you heard him say. The hour is past that. Behold now the uncanny deductive powers of Diablerie. They must have meant six o’clock of a different day.”

  “Right.”

  He threw up a pointed finger like it was a conductor’s baton. “Go, bring hither the car. We will find a place of repast and make for the Danvers manor come six o’clock tomorrow evening.”

  “They could have meant six in the morning,” offered Alison, wanting to contribute.

  Diablerie glared. “Nobody arranges a meeting for six in the morning, girl, unless they’re dueling to the death.”

  42

  Three steps from the maisonette door, Alison was stopped in her tracks by the buzzing of a phone in her back pocket. It was the outdated one that Elizabeth had given her, and which she had apparently forgotten about. She dug it out and squinted at the words on the dim little LED screen.

  “DIABL. IS FLUIDIC KILLER SUSPECT,” they read. “vC + AH EN ROUTE TO APPREHEND. ACT NATURAL BUT DO NOT LEAVE ALONE. —EL”

  Alison looked up at the maisonette window, swallowing back anxious nausea. It was still lit, but there was no sign of movement. She had not only left Diablerie alone—she had left him alone in what was very indirectly the scene of a crime he may have been involved in.

  Then again, she was also under orders to “act natural.” And coming straight back up without fetching the car and sticking to Diablerie like a limpet would not be the best way to do that. On the basis that “act natural” had come first in the list of orders, she decided to compromise by fetching the car slightly faster than she had been.

  As she lowered the phone, she glimpsed a flurry of movement at her feet and saw a gray squirrel darting away into the encroaching evening twilight. It reappeared beneath a streetlight on the opposite pavement, where a number of other squirrels appeared to be waiting.

  There must have been at least ten in the ring of orange light, and they were swiftly joined by another ten, then another, gathering from the surrounding shadows. Alison’s pace slowed as she drew opposite the growing parliament of squirrels.

  They weren’t wildly squirming around each other as she would have expected. They were all standing perfectly still, except for their bushy tails, which swayed gently in the breeze like a miniature cornfield.

  She couldn’t see any pile of discarded nuts or an attractive lady squirrel that might have explained it. If anything, they were watching the one squirrel that Alison had nearly stepped on, which was standing slightly apart from the others.

  Alison’s pace slowed to a complete halt as she realized that the lead squirrel was staring directly at her, curling its tail like the cocked hammer of a gun. Its little eyes were eerie pinpoints of yellow light. The rest of the squirrel parliament followed its gaze, and a hundred more pairs of yellow dots appeared like a heap of Christmas lights.

  She could definitely sense magic in the air. She wondered if some of Adam’s ability had rubbed off during one of his bouts of hover handing. She slowly took a step back towards the maisonette, keeping her hands on display and maintaining eye contact with as many squirrels as possible.

  The lead squirrel burst into life and dashed toward Alison in a manic frenzy. Before she had even processed this, it had closed the distance and leapt onto her leg. She felt the soft digs of its little claws all the way up her jeans, her coat, and down her right arm before the squirrel clamped all four of its limbs around her wrist.

  She shook her arm, but the squirrel only hugged tighter. It closed its eyes and rubbed its head against the back of her hand adorably. There was no pain—it wasn’t digging its claws in, but it threatened to cut the circulation off to her hand if it cuddled any harder.

  Whatever this was about, only one course of action sprang to mind: Diablerie needed to see it. She made to head back.

  A second squirrel launched itself at Alison and found purchase on her left arm, taking up the same position as its fellow on her right and giving her a matching pair of squirrel bracelets. She inspected them, confused.

  Then she looked up and saw the entire squirrel horde streaming across the road towards her in a shimmering streak of gray fur. If a car had driven past, it would have massacred about thirty of them at once.

  Alison made the initial uncertain skips of someone about to break into a sprint, but was arrested when four or five squirrels jumped onto her leading leg at once, pulling her foot back down to the ground with their combined weight. Another load swarmed onto her other leg and locked that into place, as the next wave clambered over them to reach her arms.

  With military precision the squirrels arranged themselves around her limbs. The bracelets grew and grew until they became sleeves, then an entire furry sweater, clamping her elbows and shoulders into place with clusters of tiny bodies. They locked their tails together to solidify their mass.

  Alison tried to move her arms, but the squirrels strategically shifted their weight in unison, with the air of sleepers unconsciously pulling the blankets back over themselves, holding her still. By then, her legs had both been encased in warm gray fur from ankle to hip. She stood, paralyzed by squirrels, limbs held out in what looked like an aborted star jump.

  She could still rotate her neck, so she directed her mouth at the window of the maisonette above. “Doctor!” she yelled. “Doc—”

  Her words scattered as all the squirrels on the front of her body suddenly pulled, and all the ones on her back simultaneously pushed. She staggered a few steps into the road, before the squirrels smartly reversed their action and she came to a halt behind a parked white van.

  Alison heard engines and saw the headlights of an oncoming car. The driver couldn’t see her. She quickly formulated a horrible theory as to the squirrels’ intentions, and was just as quickly proved correct. When the car was less than ten meters away, the squirrels thrust their bodies in unison again and made Alison stumble into its path.

  She screwed her eyes shut, and a little involuntary squeal came out of her mouth as a horn blared, but the squirrels yanked her back at the last moment. She felt the breeze of the car thundering past, and the wing mirror hit the squirrel on her left elbow, flinging it off into the night with a squeal of despair.

  She was pulled back into place behind the van, wobbling back and forth as the squirrels waited for another car. “DOCTOR!!” she screamed. “HELP!!”

  The window above the maisonette swung open and Diablerie appeared, leaning his entire head and shoulders out of the building
. “By the spurting outgrowths of the Ancients,” he remarked. “Can you not resist your instincts for a single moment, girl?”

  “What?!”

  Diablerie thrust out a pointed finger. “Begone! Return that coat to the insane elderly woman from whom thou stole it!”

  “It’s not a coat! It’s—” She squeaked again as she was pushed into the path of a young couple on matching bicycles. “They’re trying to kill me!”

  “Then you should not have made a coat from them! Must you bother Diablerie with all your bad decisions?”

  She was shoved towards one cyclist, then the other, a split second too late to connect both times. The riders rang their bells in angry bemusement. “Doctor, please!!”

  “Oh, very well. Bring them under the window.”

  “I can’t . . .” began Alison, but Diablerie had already disappeared into the building. She planted her feet and tried to lunge her entire upper body towards the pavement, but the squirrels patiently held her back with equal force. A particularly large set of headlights appeared at the far end of the road, accompanied by the roar of a heavy-goods vehicle. The squirrels began to sway her left and right in preparation for another shove.

  Alison was streaming tears and mucus from every available hole in her face, but some tiny survival instinct managed to get hold of her. She shoved herself at the road before the squirrels could. Confused, they tried to pull her back.

  She quickly switched direction and threw herself toward the maisonette with full force, so that she and the squirrels were momentarily working together. It was enough to send her staggering back onto the pavement, spinning gently like an unbalanced shopping trolley. The truck sped past, splattering nobody.