Kai was still over by the caviar, but he was watching her with narrowed eyes, as sharp as a snake. She shook her head minutely, warning him to keep away. Vale looked bored and was talking on the other side of the room to a hunched man with a brass-rimmed monocle screwed into his right eye.
The room itself was large enough to hold about a hundred and fifty people comfortably, with buffet tables around the edges and waiters circulating silently. Improbable swords and lances hung along the walls in glittering decoration, with Liechtenstein banners positioned above. A string quartet in the corner picked through something light and unobtrusive. The whole room had an unwholesome feel to it, a hothouse sort of closeness and oppression, even though the temperature was perfectly normal. Irene wondered whether everyone present was hiding secrets, something that affected their every word and action.
Even me, she thought with more than a touch of irony.
Silver squeezed her shoulder again. “I’ll be back,” he said smoothly. “Don’t go away.”
Between one blink and the next, he was gone.
Irene put her glass down before she was tempted to drink even more wine. There had to be some way to lure out Belphegor, or whoever had killed the vampire and taken the book. And if this ball was as packed with key society suspects as she expected, here would be the perfect place to gather information.
Several conversations and about fifteen minutes later, she’d reached the Yoruban ambassador—a kindly looking man a full head taller than her. He was sporting some sort of ceremonial outfit with gold bracelets that weighed more than her entire gown. She wondered how Silver had got him to visit. “So, you see,” she lied with the utmost sincerity, “I’m writing an article on important figures in the literary world. I was going to interview Lord Wyndham, but his tragic death . . .” She let her voice trail away artistically.
“I never knew that Lord Wyndham was a literary figure,” the ambassador commented.
“Well, not as such. But he does seem to have been very au fait with up-and-coming novelists. I’d heard that he acted as patron to some.”
“Ah,” the ambassador said comprehendingly. “I only knew about his collection.”
Since Irene had entirely invented the bit about Wyndham’s patronage of new writers, she wasn’t surprised. “It was a fine one,” she agreed. “And he was always so good about making books available to other experts in the field. Not like some bibliophiles who hoard everything and then just gloat about it privately.”
The ambassador looked slightly furtive, then loomed forward. “One hesitates to speak ill of the dead,” he said in lowered tones, “but I think that is giving the gentleman a little too much credit. He was inclined to boast. His nature, you know. Vampires. They just can’t resist it. I’ve known some very pleasant ones, of course,” he added hastily.
“Oh, of course,” Irene agreed quickly and meaninglessly. “But I do think that you’re right, Your Excellency. They are so very proud of their advantages.”
“Exactly,” the ambassador said approvingly. “I am glad that our host hasn’t brought any here tonight. They always demand to be catered for in such an obtrusive manner—the blood, the open veins, all that manner of thing. It does get in the way of a simple conversation.”
Irene nodded, suppressing annoyance that Silver hadn’t invited any. She’d have liked the chance to question a few. In fact, why hadn’t Silver invited them, if he enjoyed their company? Or even if he was feuding with them? From what Silver had said about the guest list, inviting half a dozen antagonistic vampires seemed like just the sort of thing he’d do. “It does make matters simpler for everyone else,” she agreed.
“And we’re spared the anti-blood-sports protestors.” The ambassador collected a fresh glass of wine from a passing waiter. “But if you’re a reporter, you’ve probably interviewed a few of them already!” He rumbled a deep laugh.
“I like to think there’s something to be said on both sides,” Irene temporized. “But about Lord Wyndham’s boasts . . . oh, I beg your pardon.” Vale was walking towards them, a slight urgency to his movement. “If you will excuse me a moment, Your Excellency . . .”
“Of course,” the ambassador said. “About that interview later—”
“I will contact your embassy staff, sir,” Irene said, and retreated with another polite curtsey.
Vale shepherded her back over to the buffet table (was she ever going to get away from it?) and made an obvious show of getting her some canapés. “Miss Winters, we need to be careful,” he muttered. “One of my contacts tells me that there’s going to be a strike here, at the Liechtenstein Embassy, this evening.”
Irene suppressed a groan. How many factions were involved in this thing? How was she supposed to conduct a rational investigation with this sort of interference? “Who’s doing the striking?” she demanded in a murmur. “And can we use it as a diversion to search the embassy?”
Vale regarded her from under lowered eyebrows. “Miss Winters, that’s a very felonious suggestion.”
“But it’s a very practical one,” she said, reminding herself that he was a private detective. Though he didn’t seem to be particularly disapproving. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d suggested it, rather than him, that had forced him to condemn it.
“Hmph.” He shovelled more salmon onto her plate. At this rate she’d have indigestion. “In answer to your first question, the protestors are the Iron Brotherhood. They are notoriously anti-Fae, so it wouldn’t be out of character for them.”
“Do you think it would be worth notifying the embassy staff?” she asked.
Vale shook his head. “They’ll already be expecting something like this. I checked earlier, and they have all the usual precautions—anti-zeppelin guns, glamours, whatever. But do be careful, Miss Winters. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to speak to that lady who just came in.”
The lady in question was currently invisible behind a squadron of male admirers, so Irene watched Vale edge across the ballroom and tried to hide her overstuffed plate behind a bowl of soup.
“There’s something going on,” Kai said from behind her shoulder.
Irene very nearly spilled the soup. “Really,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Absolutely,” Kai said. “Let me get you some of those blinis.” He picked up a new plate and started depositing more food on it. “You need to eat more: it’ll help the healing process.”
“I also need to be able to walk without falling over,” Irene said, watching with growing unease as he ladled on something involving crab meat. “Or dance.”
Kai edged a little closer. “Have you found out anything yet?” he muttered.
Irene considered the facts she’d picked up so far. “I think Silver’s waiting for something. Or someone. He seemed on edge. But he’s being distracted by the glitterati.” She could see him at the other side of the ballroom, talking to a voluptuous pair of women in black who hung on each other’s shoulders, clearly already half-drunk. “I’ve been talking to a couple of other people. Apparently it’s odd that Silver hasn’t invited any other vampires tonight. I’m wondering if Wyndham’s attack might have been anti-vampire rather than anti-Fae, and I’d like to ask Vale a few more questions about his family and if they have any links to vampires. Oh, and Vale thinks there’s going to be an attack on the Liechtenstein Embassy by an anti-Fae society called the Iron Brotherhood, and—oh, Kai, please not the sour cream.”
“You need it for a proper contrast with the blinis,” Kai said firmly.
“Have you found out anything?” Irene asked.
“Nothing definite,” Kai said slowly. “And—well, I haven’t actually been trying to talk to any of the other Fae here. I don’t think they’d tell us anything useful.”
“Uh-huh,” Irene agreed neutrally. “But have you found out anything from anyone else?”
“That lady in the corner.�
�� Kai flicked a glance to their left.
The woman in question was elderly, rouged, half-buried under a vast white wig, and dressed in a construction of black-and-white striped satin that was viciously corseted and heavily underwired. “She’s very well-informed. And she actually is part of the literary world, not just a poseur like Wyndham was.”
“What’s her name?” Irene asked.
“Miss Olga Retrograde,” Kai said. “The elder Miss Olga Retrograde. She said so several times.”
Irene wondered what the younger Miss Retrograde looked like, as she moved towards her. “You’d better introduce us. What is she?”
“A retired lady of pleasure,” Kai said, rather flatly.
“Well, at least she won’t assume I’m looking for a job,” Irene said cheerfully. “Oh, Kai, don’t look at me like that—” The crowd drifted apart, and Irene could finally see who had just entered the room.
It was Bradamant.
She was as perfect as a black-and-white photograph, her slender neck rising out of the deep grey silk folds of her bodice like a swan, the train of her dress undulating in smooth liquid elegance.
Kai frowned as Irene broke off mid-sentence, then followed her gaze. “What?” he demanded under his breath. “Her? Here? How?”
“Four very good questions,” Irene said through gritted teeth. “My god, she’s wearing a Worth gown. That has to be a Worth gown.”
Kai turned to stare at Irene. “What’s the gown got to do with it?” he asked. “Is it particularly effective in concealing weapons or something?”
“No,” Irene spat. “It’s just one of the best dresses from one of the best dressmakers of the period, or whatever the equivalent is in this alternate. Dear heavens, not only does she come in here to try to steal my mission from under me, she has the nerve to do it while wearing something which screams, Here I am, everyone—look at me. I mean, do I go round collecting outfits from alternates just so I can be the bestdressed person at a party?”
“Irene,” Kai said, “you’re holding my arm a bit tightly.”
Irene had to stop herself from grinding her teeth. “A Librarian is supposed to be about subtlety,” she muttered. “Getting the job done. Not being noticed—oh, sorry.” She removed her hand from Kai’s forearm and watched Kai affrontedly smooth out the wrinkles on his jacket sleeve. “Um.” She could feel herself flushing. “I apologize.” What she wanted to do was scream, How dare she! until the chandelier crystals tinkled. But she couldn’t.
“Perhaps she has important information and wants to talk to you,” Kai said.
“But how would she know we were here? Or—wait.” Irene frowned. “Dominic Aubrey could have told her—did she enter this alternate before he died?”
“Or did she have something to do with it?” Kai said slowly, completing Irene’s own thought.
Irene was silent for a long moment, turning possibilities over in her head. “Unthinkable,” she finally said. “I won’t believe that of her.”
At that moment the crowd shifted again, and Bradamant turned her head. She looked across the ballroom, and for a moment their eyes met. And in that moment, Irene saw something in Bradamant’s face that she hadn’t expected to see. Shock.
“She didn’t expect us to be here,” she murmured.
Bradamant recovered almost instantaneously and turned away with a contemptuous little twitch of her shoulder to bestow her attention on the man next to her, a skinny white-haired man in his eighties with his chest so encrusted with military medals and orders that it was a wonder he didn’t fall over.
“Why don’t you introduce me to Miss Olga Retrograde,” Irene said to Kai, composing her face into what would with any luck be a pleasant smile. She’d work out what was going on. And this time she wasn’t going to be Bradamant’s stalking-horse, decoy, or tool.
Not this time. Not again.
“Very well,” Kai said, glancing at Bradamant over Irene’s shoulder. “But what is she doing here? I know she said she wanted the mission . . .” His face lightened as a thought obviously occurred to him. “If she’s your senior, then maybe she has clearance now for you to cooperate on the mission. That would make things simpler, with the chaos contamination.”
“Such a thing is possible,” Irene said slowly, to give herself time to think and to find an answer why this could not, would not be the case. She wasn’t sure that she would be able to physically obey if it was. Her loathing of the other woman was too bone deep for that. “But if it were the case”—how careful, how conditional—“then she would have some sort of token from the Library, and she’d show it to me. She hasn’t even tried to find me yet. So I’m dubious.”
“I trust you,” Kai said. He touched her hand briefly, reassuringly. “I do trust you, Irene. I wish that you could tell me why you don’t trust her.”
She could have said, It’s private, but something in her felt that he deserved better than that from her. Instead she said, “It’s personal, and if you really do want to know, I’ll tell you later. It doesn’t make her any the worse as a Librarian. Just as a person, to me. But later. All right?”
Kai nodded, and then they were there. “Miss Retrograde?” he said. “May I introduce my friend Miss Winters?”
Irene gave a small curtsey. “Miss Retrograde. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“And you, my dear,” the elderly woman said. Close up, her face was all rouge, white paint, and beauty patches. She deserved an award for thoroughness in concealing wrinkles, if not for artistry in doing so. Her dress might be heavily corseted and old-fashioned, but the fabric was high-quality, and the diamonds on her fingers looked genuine. “I understand that you’re not from these parts.”
Kai must have given her the Canadian cover story. “Oh no,” Irene agreed. “But I’m working as a freelance reporter at the moment—”
“Oh no, you’re not,” Miss Retrograde cut in.
Irene shut her mouth before it could gape open too wide. “I beg your pardon?” she hastily said.
“My dear,” Miss Retrograde said, “I make it my business to know all the members of the fourth estate in London. I wouldn’t have missed an intelligent-looking girl like yourself.”
Irene would have given Kai a venomous look, along the lines of What have you got me into and why didn’t you tell me more about this? but it would have been too obvious a betrayal. “I’m very new on the scene,” she said quickly.
“I’ve been watching Silver,” Miss Retrograde said. She leaned forward with a creak of whalebone. Her beady eyes focused in their heavily shadowed sockets. “He spoke to you. I’d like to know why.”
Irene suspected that playing the innocent wasn’t going to work here. She could feel Kai’s arm tense under her hand, waiting (hopefully) for her to tell him which way to jump.
“I’m afraid that would depend on why you want to know,” she finally said, letting the humour drain out of her face.
“I could make it worth your while,” Miss Retrograde said, rubbing the ball of her thumb against one of her diamond rings suggestively.
Irene tilted an eyebrow. There was some sort of noise in the corridor outside, thumping and crashes, but she didn’t take her eyes off the older woman. If the Iron Brotherhood, or whoever, was attacking, then hopefully someone else would deal with it.
“Oh, very well,” the woman said pettishly. “That was crass, I admit it. Let’s get down to business. Take a seat, young woman. Have your bodyguard—I’m not stupid, young man—have your bodyguard fetch us both some more wine. Then we can discuss matters—”
And at that moment the alligators burst into the room.
CHAPTER 11
Irene had only ever seen alligators at the zoo before. She remembered them as being lazy, log-like objects, draped over cement “rock formations” or dozing in muddy pools.
The creatures invading the room moved with disturbin
g speed. If they were logs, then they were logs on a river in full flood. Some of them were fifteen feet or so long. Their mouths opened and closed as they scuttled forward. One of them clamped its jaws on the leg of a waiter and rolled sideways; the man screamed and went down. His leg came off in the alligator’s jaws, wrenched off like a chicken wing, spraying blood across the polished floor. Through the mêlée, Irene spotted metal contraptions bolted onto their skulls and metal screwed onto their claws, before the press of the crowd became too great.
Guests and waiters were screaming and running for the other doors, as alligators continued to spill through the main entrance. A few of the guests were firing previously concealed weapons, a mixture of pistols and ray guns, but most were simply trying to escape. The smell of blood was sharp and coppery on the air, rising above the blend of perfume and food.
“Have no fear!” Silver shouted, leaping onto a convenient table, bestriding a centrepiece of oysters. “The powers of my kind shall scourge these creatures back to the slime from which they crawled—”
Amazing grammar in a crisis, Irene couldn’t help noticing.
“Behold!” Silver raised his hand. Fire flared round his fingers dramatically, then leapt to strike the alligators in burning orange whips.
It fizzled. There was no other word for it. The flames drooped and went out as if they’d been doused with cold water, leaving the alligators to rumble forward undeterred.
“Damnation!” Silver swore. “They have been armoured in cold iron! Johnson! My elephant gun!”
Much as Irene would have enjoyed watching whatever happened next, fleeing the room before she was trampled by the crowd or eaten by alligators seemed a better idea.
“Quick!” she snapped at Kai. “Help Miss Retrograde—”
“The elder Miss Retrograde, if you please, young lady,” the older woman said, rising to her feet. “I knew I should have brought my pistol with me.” They were jostled and bumped, but there was still just enough space to move freely as long as they kept next to the walls.
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