I looked at Molly. “Do you have any better ideas?”
She frowned. “My younger sister, Louisa, could find Iz easily, but last I heard, she was off exploring the Martian Tombs.”
I had to blink. “Really?”
Molly did shrug. “With Louisa, who knows?”
“I’ve got it!” said the Armourer. “The Merlin Glass, Eddie! It can find anyplace you needed to get to, so technically there’s no reason why the Glass shouldn’t be able to locate any individual person you want to find and show you where they are! Try it!”
I reached into the dimensional pocket I store the Merlin Glass in, at least partly because the damned thing creeps the hell out of me, and held the hand mirror out before me. The image in the Glass quickly cleared to show Isabella Metcalf, her own bad self: a tall muscular woman in crimson biker leathers, with short-cropped black hair and an intense, sharp-featured face. She was lurking in a fairly ordinary-looking business office, leafing through papers on a desk in a way that suggested she didn’t have anyone’s permission to do so. She looked up, startled, to see Molly and me watching her through the Merlin Glass.
“Iz!” said Molly. “You’re all right!”
“Of course I’m all right! And keep your voice down,” Isabella said urgently. “No one’s supposed to know I’m here!”
“We’re coming through to join you,” said Molly.
“Don’t you dare!” said Isabella. “You’ll blow my cover!”
But I’d already shaken the Glass up to its full size, and Molly and I were stepping into the office with her.
“Eddie!” roared the Sarjeant-at-Arms behind me. “You can’t just rush off! You have responsibilities here!”
But Molly and I were already gone.
CHAPTER THREE
Hell Hath Fury
As offices went, this one hadn’t even made an effort. Just an ordinary, everyday business office with characterless furniture and all the personality of a brick wall. Not even a potted plant in the corner to cheer the place up. When Molly and I arrived, Isabella was busily thumbing through a thick sheaf of papers. She didn’t have the grace to look even a little bit guilty, and glared at Molly and me as though we were the ones who had no right to be there.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” she said, keeping her voice down.
“Oh, we happened to be passing,” I said easily. “Thought we’d drop in, say hello. . . .”
I busied myself shutting down the Merlin Glass and stowing it safely away while Molly advanced on her sister to give her a big hug. Isabella dropped the papers on the desk and stopped Molly in her tracks with an icy glare.
“What’s the matter with you? It’s not my birthday.”
Molly then launched into an impassioned account of what had been happening. She hit only the high points, but it still took a while. I used the time to take a good look round the office. It was all very neat, very tidy, and everything had that sheen of newness, as though everything had been moved only that day. The office felt . . . strange, incomplete, unfinished. As though someone had put everything in this room that they thought an office should have, but no one had actually moved in yet. The computer was the very latest model, the monitor was wide-screen and HD, and the keyboard didn’t have a speck of dust on it. I considered the computer thoughtfully, wondering whether it was safe to try cracking its systems open with my armour. Luther Drood, the Los Angeles field agent, had shown me a neat little trick using Drood armour that could make any computer roll over on its back, begging to have its belly rubbed. I reluctantly decided not to try anything just yet, on the grounds that Isabella would have already cracked the computer if it were that easy. The bad guys do love their booby traps. And if I set off an alarm while Molly was busy persuading her sister what a great guy I was, I’d never hear the end of it.
So I leafed quickly through the papers on the desk, looking for whatever had caught Isabella’s attention. Damned if I could see what she’d found so interesting. Pretty standard business correspondence: job openings and opportunities, accounts and invoices and memos covering the upcoming week’s meetings. But all very bland, very vague, almost too generic to be true. What was more interesting was what wasn’t on the desk: namely, not a single personal touch. No photographs, no coffee mug with an amusing saying on the side, not a mark out of place. Nothing on the walls, either: not a portrait or a print . . . or a window. Only a featureless box for someone to sit in and do . . . businesslike things. No, this wasn’t an office. It was something set up to look like an office, enough to fool an outsider.
Molly was rapidly approaching the end of her story, so I took the opportunity to quietly study her sister Isabella. The crimson biker leathers looked well lived in and hard used, like she’d done a lot of travelling in them, and she looked muscular enough to bench-press a Harley-Davidson without breaking a sweat. Even standing still she burned with vitality, as though she couldn’t wait to be out and about doing things. And, given that she was one of the infamous Metcalf sisters, probably wild and destructive things. She was handsome rather than pretty, had a hard-boned face stamped with character and determination, and wore surprisingly understated makeup. She had a certain dark glamour about her. A dangerous glamour, certainly, but there was something about Isabella that suggested she could be a whole lot of fun, if you could keep up with her.
She was the only woman I knew who had a worse reputation than my Molly. A supernatural terrorist, a twilight avenger, the Indiana Jones of the invisible world, been everywhere and done everyone. Isabella had given her life to the uncovering of mysteries and the pursuit of truth, and she didn’t give a damn whom she had to walk through or over to get where she was going. Always out in the darker places of the world, digging up secrets and things most people had enough sense to leave undisturbed. Just to ask questions of the things she dug up, and kick them in the head if they didn’t answer fast enough. She was looking for something, but I don’t think anyone knew what. Maybe not even her. I think she liked to know things. And if Molly was the wild free spirit of the Metcalf sisters, Isabella was by all accounts the tightly wrapped control freak who always had to be in charge.
I knew we weren’t going to get on. But she was Molly’s sister, so . . .
Having finally understood why Molly was so pleased to see her alive and well, Isabella grudgingly allowed Molly to hug her, but only briefly.
“So,” she said coldly, fixing me with an implacable gaze, “someone impersonated me? Someone actually dared? My reputation must be slipping. I did hear there was a rumour going around that I might have mellowed, and I can’t have people saying things like that about me. I can see I’m going to have to go out and do something appalling. Even more appalling than usual, I mean. Can’t have people thinking I’ve got soft; they’ll take liberties.”
“Trust me, Iz,” said Molly, “no one thinks you’ve got soft. There are still religions in some parts of the world where they curse your name as part of their regular rituals.”
“Well,” said Isabella, “that’s something. You have to keep the competition on their toes in this game. There’s never any cooperation when it comes to digging up graves, despoiling tombs and desecrating churches. It’s every girl for herself, and dog-eat-dog. Or perhaps that should be god-eat-god. . . . It’s all based on fear and loathing and a complete willingness to take risks no sane person would even contemplate. You still haven’t explained what you’re doing here, interrupting my work.”
“I thought you’d want to know that the Droods now know you know how to get past their defences,” said Molly. “I hate sentences like that; they’re always trying to get away from you. I had to tell them, Iz; they wanted to know how your duplicate was able to penetrate Drood security so easily. I had to tell them that to avoid telling them other things.”
“Other things?” I said suspiciously. “What kind of other things?”
“Later, sweetie,” said Molly.
Isabella looked at me, and then shrugged bri
skly. “Don’t take it personally, Drood. I don’t give a damn about you or your family; I wanted access to your Old Library. I did ask nicely, but when that snotty, stuck-up, dog-in-the-manger family of yours turned me down, I had no choice but to find my own way in. Partly because no one tells me to get lost and gets away with it, but mostly because I wanted to read some of the wonderful old books you’re supposed to have. You Droods sit on all kinds of information that would make my job a lot easier—because you can.”
“You’ve been strolling around the Old Library?” I said.
There must have been something in my voice or my face, because Isabella actually looked away for a moment.
“Well, I haven’t personally been in there, as such. Not yet. But I’m working on it!”
“You’re welcome to try,” I said. “But once you’re in there, watch your back. There’s something living in the Old Library: something very powerful and very scary. It almost killed an Immortal who was masquerading as our assistant Librarian.”
“You see!” said Isabella. “That’s the kind of secret I want to know about!”
“Let us change the subject,” I said, “on the grounds that I have been here for what seems like ages, and I still don’t know why. What are you doing here, Isabella? And where is here, anyway?”
“Can we please all try to keep our voices down?” said Isabella. “This really isn’t the kind of place where you want to attract attention to yourself. This is Lightbringer House, deep in the financial area of Bristol. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Lightbringer House is only another ugly, anonymous office building, where businesspeople do business things. Except they don’t. This whole building is a front, a place for people to come and do things in private that would get them hanged from the nearest lamppost if they even mentioned them in public. This office, and all the others, are for show, something for people in authority to see if they have to be given the grand tour. Everyone here works on the same thing: a purpose so secret even I haven’t been able to scare up a whisper of what it might be.”
“Yes,” I said patiently. “But what are you doing here? Who are these people? What makes them so important?”
Isabella looked at Molly. “Just once, I wish you’d go out with someone who doesn’t need everything spoon-fed to him.” She looked back at me. “I’ve spent over a year now investigating a secret underground Satanist conspiracy. And don’t look at me like that, Drood! There are still such things. I’m talking about a worldwide, highly organised cabal involving very highly placed people from all walks of life. All of them worshipping the Devil, and dedicated to the destruction of civilisation as we know it.”
“I thought that kind of stuff was an urban legend,” I said. “Something for the tabloids to get excited about on slow news days.”
Isabella smiled smugly. “That’s what they want you to think. And who do you suppose owns most of the tabloids these days? If people could see the birthmark on the back on Rupert Murdoch’s head, they’d shit themselves. All right, I can see you’re not convinced. Quick history lesson. Pay attention and don’t make me repeat myself, or I will slap you a good one, and it will hurt.”
“She will, too,” said Molly. “I’d stay out of reach, if I were you.”
I sat down on the edge of the desk, conspicuously within reach of Isabella, and smiled politely. “Go ahead. I love being lectured by strict women wearing leathers.”
“Oh, Eddie,” said Molly. “You never said. . . .”
“Later, sweetie,” I said.
“Young love,” said Isabella. “The horror, the horror. Anyway, the last really big Satanic conspiracy took place during the nineteen twenties and thirties, back when all those bright young things were looking for something new to believe in. Most of them had the good taste to become Communists or sexual deviants; the rest sold their souls to the Devil because they were bored. . . . The whole thing crashed to a halt when they backed Hitler and the Nazis, and everybody else backed the Allies. After the war, people had too much else to think about. There were some brief surges in the sixties, but it’s hard to get people excited about sin when nothing’s a sin anymore.”
“What about the eighties?” I said.
“No,” said Molly. “The Satanists weren’t behind that. It only seemed that way.”
“Right,” said Isabella. “Back then, people were throwing their souls away every day, of their own free will. The Devil didn’t have to do a thing.”
“I’m not always sure I believe in the Devil, as such,” I said.
“You’d better,” said Isabella. “He believes in you. Where was I? Oh, yes, the Satanists are back now, and organising with a vengeance. They see the Droods as dithering, without real leadership, and preoccupied with other things. Like the Loathly Ones and the Immortals. So the Satanists have quietly launched a major comeback, while you’re too busy to notice.”
“Pardon me if I’m not too impressed,” I said. “I can’t help seeing Satanists as so . . . old-fashioned. And what are they doing here? Planning bad business practices? Plotting better ways to avoid paying taxes?”
“It’s a really good cover,” said Isabella. “But it’s still just a cover.”
“What brought you here?” said Molly, attacking the question from another front.
“You know me,” said Isabella. I need to know things. Secret things. Especially when someone else doesn’t want me to know them. I was looking for something and found something else, which is always the way. I was investigating a local legend of a town where everyone was a werewolf, in Avignon, France, which led me to the abandoned Danse Academie in Germany’s Black Forest that had been a feeding ground for one of the Old Mothers; and that in turn brought me to an outbreak of ancient forces around a circle of standing stones in darkest Wales. But in each case, by the time I got there, someone else had already been there and put a lot of effort and a lot of money into cleaning it all up so that not one trace remained of what had happened there. Everyone I talked to smiled and shook their heads and lied right to my face. Someone had spread some serious money around in a major cover-up that would probably have fooled anyone else.
I didn’t know who these people were, or what they’d wanted in these places, and I hate not knowing things, so I started digging. I went underground, into the city subcultures, showing my face in the kinds of places the powers that be like to pretend don’t exist, because people aren’t supposed to want such things. . . . And there I asked a whole bunch of awkward questions, stirring up the mud to see what was underneath. A word here and a name there put me on the trail of something unusually big and organised, and after that it was a case of ‘follow the money. . . .’ I followed the bribes through the corrupt officials and the compromised authorities, rising higher and higher, until it led me here, to an office building that had nothing to do with business. Lightbringer House may be only the tip of the iceberg, but this is where the Satanists come to get their orders. This is where things are decided and things are sworn in Satan’s name.
“One interesting side note: According to the official records, all the businesses in this building are subsidiaries of Lightbringer Incorporated. Which, if you look back far enough, was once known as Fallen Star Associates. The main front for the nineteen thirties Satanist conspiracy. These people are back, and this time they mean business. They have a plan, and I want to know what it is.”
“Okay,” I said. “All very interesting, and possibly convincing, but I don’t see anything in this office to back it up. The papers on the desk are boring to the point of bland, and it’s not like there’s a knitted sampler on the wall reading, ‘I Love Lucifer.’ Are you sure this isn’t paranoia and scaremongering? We see a lot of that in the Droods. In fact, it’s pretty much business as usual.”
“If Iz says there’s evil here, there is evil here,” Molly said firmly. “No one knows evil better than Iz. She’s never wrong about things like this. Except when she’s wrong.”
“Molly, do me a favour,”
said Isabella. “Stop trying to help. Look, the evidence is here somewhere! I just haven’t found it yet. They’d hardly leave it lying around, would they? The trail I followed led me to this floor, and this office. Orders come from here, and payments, and even a few not very discreet threats.”
“If this really is as big a conspiracy as you believe,” I said, “I don’t think we should do anything to let them know we know. I think we should all return to Drood Hall and discuss a more . . . organised response.”
“Put myself in the hands of the Droods?” said Isabella. “Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen! Never trust a Drood!”
“Why not?” I said, genuinely taken aback by the anger in her face and the venom in her voice.
“Your family killed our parents, remember?” said Molly. “Isabella isn’t as forgiving as I am.”
“I still don’t know what you’re doing with this one,” said Isabella. “I mean really, Molly, a Drood?”
“He’s different,” Molly said stubbornly. “He’s . . . special.”
“You always say that,” said Isabella. “And you always end up sleeping on my couch, crying your eyes out. You have the worst taste in men. . . .”
“Molly and I have something in common,” I said. “It’s possible that my family was responsible for the death of my parents, too.”
Isabella looked at me sharply and then shook her head. “None of this is important. The truth is here, and I will find it, even if I have to tear this whole office apart.”
“Oh, not again . . .” said Molly.
Isabella glared at both of us. “Get out of here. Both of you. Go back to your precious Drood Hall. I don’t need your help, and I don’t want you here.”
“Too late,” I said cheerfully. “I’m intrigued now. The return of the Satanists! It’s all so very Dennis Wheatley. . . . Molly, my dear, do you think you could keep a lid on any booby traps I might set off by persuading this computer to talk nicely to me?”
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