by Violet Grace
He picks up my watch and tosses it to his partner. Weekes takes out what looks like a barcode scanner from his inside jacket pocket. The device casts a thin red laser light, which he runs over the face and buckle of my watch. The machine makes three short, sharp beeps.
‘It’s clean,’ Weekes says with a nod, tossing my watch back to Westerfield, who then returns it to the table as if nothing weird just happened.
‘Who are you?’ I say, trying to keep the nervousness from my voice. ‘You’re not police.’
Westerfield pulls a seat closer to my bed and sits down, crossing one spindly leg over the other.
‘Things have gone well past the point of this being a police matter,’ he says. ‘It’s time we had a little chat.’
I stiffen at his threatening tone and shuffle over to the very edge of my bed, putting as much distance between us as possible.
Weekes steps forward, his saggy face stretching out into a smile. ‘We just have a few questions about your whereabouts in the past twenty-four hours.’
It’s obvious they are good cop/bad copping me and I’m not stupid enough to fall for his fatherly tone.
‘Before you answer,’ Westerfield says, ‘I’d like to remind you that if you’re anything less than honest, you can kiss Second Chances goodbye.’
‘I’m sure it won’t come to that,’ says Weekes lightly. ‘We just need to know where you’ve been.’
‘I’d like to help,’ I begin, ‘but I honestly don’t know what happened. I was sitting in the cafe in the V&A and then, after that … it’s, well … a blank.’
My words hang in the air for a moment like a frozen computer screen right before the system crashes and you lose everything, and I know that I’ve miscalculated. Of course the truth was never an option, but I should have come up with a more convincing lie. I stare at both the officers, trying to gauge exactly how much trouble I’m in. Both return my look with suspicion.
Weekes sighs and shakes his head as if to say ‘There’s no helping some people’. He gives Westerfield a barely perceptible nod, which is akin to letting him off his leash.
‘I warned you not to lie to us,’ says Westerfield, his voice rising and his lip curling back with contempt.
I sit bolt upright, desperate to make this right. Sharp pain explodes in my head and shoots down my spine. They both flinch, drawing back as if they’re scared of me.
Weekes looks towards the door, then whispers, ‘We know you’ve been away with the fairies.’
My mouth drops open as Westerfield whips something out of his jacket and points it at my neck.
A shock of burning pain hits me and everything goes pitch black.
chapter 8
My head’s heavy and my cheek’s wet.
Drool. My drool. At least I hope it is.
I try to wipe it but I can’t. My hands are stuck fast to the table in front of me with metal clamps that are digging into my wrists. A plaster strip covers the place on the back of my hand where the drip was. The dull pain in my temple remains.
I look down, relieved to see that I’m fully clothed. I don’t want to think about who changed me out of my hospital gown, though. The two goons from the Home Office? Ugh.
Actually, I’m not fully dressed. My freezing-cold feet alert me to my missing boots. My belt’s gone too.
Metal. They’ve taken care to remove anything made of metal. Or anything that might contain metal. I think back to how skittish they were about my watch and the spoon. What is it they think I can do with metal?
I take in my surroundings. Nothing but a table and three chairs. The chair I’m seated in wasn’t built for comfort. The other two are tucked under the opposite side of the table I’m clamped to.
My neck stings where Westerfield shot me. Or whatever he did to me. A taser, is my guess. I have no idea how long I’ve been out. Or where I am. The one thing I am sure of is that I’m not in the hospital anymore.
I push my body into the back of the chair and angle my head under the table to see how securely my cuffs are attached, and find something more interesting. A micro listening device. Interesting – and possibly useful.
It’s planted just under the edge of the table. I crane my head further to read the serial number printed in little white letters on the top of the bug. I don’t recognise the sequence. Probably military issue. I commit the serial number to memory as I attempt to dislodge the bug with my knee, but stop when I catch my reflection in the blackened glass window in front of me.
An interrogation room. They’re probably watching me. Whoever ‘they’ are.
The door clicks behind me and I swing my head around. Westerfield and Weekes block the doorway so fully that I can’t see what’s behind them. Without a word, they each take a chair across from me.
‘Where am I? Who are you?’ I demand. I figure I’ve got nothing to lose.
Westerfield and Weekes look at one another for a moment, silently conferring.
Weekes sighs. ‘We’re from the Agency.’
‘What agency?’ I say, feeling a fresh batch of anxiety well inside me. ‘I thought you were Home Office.’
‘Its official name is the Council for Inter-Realm Affairs,’ Weekes continues. ‘Don’t bother googling us; you’ll find nothing. Most of us just tell family and friends we work for this or that government agency. Hence ‘the Agency’. Her Majesty’s government has decided that we should reside within the Home Office.’
‘But what do you do? And what has any of it got to do with me?’
‘We’ll ask the questions,’ snarls Westerfield.
Weekes raises his hand, his basset hound jowls wobbling into a smile that I’m not prepared to believe is genuine.
‘No, no, my friend,’ he says to Westerfield. ‘She has a right to know.’
Turning back to me, Weekes offers up his doggy smile again and says, ‘The Agency was instituted under King James in the 1600s after he signed the Treaty between humans and the Fae.’
‘Our job is to control you lot,’ Westerfield jumps in. ‘Fairies and unicorns, and the rest of you who haven’t had the good grace to die out. Yet.’
I stare at his bulging eyes and the spit leaking out the corner of his mouth. He seriously looks insane. I’m having trouble getting my head around a whole department full of government officials who actually believe in fairies and unicorns and whatever else. I think back to Marshall’s comments about fairies at the V&A. Maybe he’s not so bonkers after all. He knew something, even if he didn’t quite know the full extent of it. He wanted me to talk, I’m sure of that. With any luck he’ll find out that I’m being held, and where. If anyone has the recourses and contacts to find me, it’s Marshall.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Having been where you’ve been and seen what you’ve seen.’
The sentence lingers in a way that implies that not only do they know all about my little trip into Iridesca, they also have knowledge of that world far beyond anything I could possibly tell them. But if they know all this already, then what do they want with me?
‘Assuming what you say is true,’ I say, ‘why haven’t I ever heard of fairies – outside storybooks, that is? Where are the serious history or science books about all your magical creatures? And your inter-realm thingy? You don’t expect me to believe that you’ve been around for 400 years and no one’s let slip that there are fairies and unicorns all over the place. Ever heard of WikiLeaks?’
‘Oh, but they have.’ Weekes smiles conspiratorially. ‘You just said so yourself. We’ve all heard of fairytales. Every known language and culture has them. They’re in all the earliest stories we tell our children. Why do you think that might be? Hmm?’
‘But they’re just stories,’ I say, wondering who I’m trying to convince – them or myself.
‘Only because we’ve done a sterling job discrediting them,’ he says with wounded pride. ‘We’ve singlehandedly convinced pretty much everyone that enchanted creatures are harmless, cute wee people
who collect teeth and grant wishes to little girls. Anyone who says different outs themselves as mentally unstable.’
‘Come on,’ I scoff. ‘You expect me to believe that you’ve fooled the whole world through Enid Blyton and Disney propaganda?’
‘Have you ever wondered why there are unicorns all over this city?’ Weekes says. ‘Look closely, and everywhere you turn you’ll see statues and images of unicorns. Royal palaces. The Houses of Westminster. Even the coat of arms. They probably told you in school that the unicorn on the coat of arms represents Scotland.’
If one of my history teachers did mention it, then I’ve forgotten – or else I skipped class that day.
‘As if that would have appeased the Scots,’ Westerfield mutters.
‘Quite,’ Weekes replies. ‘Unicorns have nothing to do with Scotland. The unicorn was added to the coat of arms after the Treaty was signed, as a gesture of goodwill. Hiding in plain sight.’
‘What treaty?’ I ask.
But Weekes is on a roll. ‘In fairytales, fairies and unicorns are mostly good,’ he says, undeterred.
‘Hmmph,’ mutters Westerfield. ‘Steal our young, kill our livestock and generally wreak havoc wherever they go. Interesting definition of “good” you’ve got there. Vindictive little bastards, that’s what you are.’ His face gets redder and redder as his rant continues. ‘You lot haven’t an ounce of morality. None of you gives a damn about the consequences of your actions. Not a care for anyone or anything but yourselves.’
I’d like to believe that he’s railing against fairies because he’s unhinged. But since I have no other explanation for the war-ravaged London I saw, or First Officer Jules, or the Chancellor, I don’t think I can dismiss all of it as the ravings of a madman.
Weekes clears his throat, signalling for Westerfield to get himself under control. I wonder if they are still playing good cop/bad cop or if Westerfield just can’t help himself.
Westerfield ignores the warning. ‘The church had the right idea, burning you lot at the stake. That’s something else you won’t read about in your history books. It wasn’t witches. It was Fae. Rounded up in their hundreds and burned alive —’
‘That’s quite enough history for now,’ Weekes jumps in. ‘After all, we don’t want to detain Your Highness longer than we have to, do we?’
My eyes widen. Whatever rabbit hole I’ve fallen down, it seems I still have a way to go before I hit the bottom. I’m still royalty. But the venom in his partner’s voice tells me that my regal status isn’t going to do me any favours here. No one’s going to obey me without question this time.
A sickening realisation dawns on me. Westerfield hates fairies, and he thinks I’m one. This can only end one way: badly. I shiver, suddenly cold all over.
‘Can I have my shoes back, please?’
Weekes shakes his head sympathetically. ‘Rules are rules. We are, of course, allies, but I’m sure you understand that we do have to take precautions.’
‘Allies? Precautions for what?’
He looks at me quizzically. ‘Magic, of course.’
I roll my eyes. How could they have got this so wrong? Even if I could do magic, what does that have to do with shoes?
Of course, when I was a kid I did try to do magic. But what kid doesn’t? There was only that one time when I thought it actually worked. I had stared at Larry and willed him not to take another sip of his drink. When Larry got drunk, I inevitably suffered. I stood in the hallway, out of sight, and focused on his bottle of bourbon. Larry was slumped on the couch in his underwear, watching football on TV. The neck of the bottle was resting in one of his rough and callused hands, the other hand was tucked into the elastic of his Y-fronts. In my head I chanted over and over:
Do not drink, not another sip.
Don’t raise that bottle to your lip.
After several minutes of chanting and focusing and hoping, the bottle exploded into shards of glass. Larry screamed and swore as the brown liquor mixed with the bloody glass cuts on his hand and leg. I was so freaked out by what I thought I had done I got a splitting headache and then passed out from the pain.
He didn’t touch me that night, or for the next couple of weeks. His heavily bandaged hand saved me for a short while. I stupidly thought that I’d made that bottle explode through the sheer force of my will. But over time I became certain that it was a coincidence. I soon discovered that putting Sue’s pills in Larry’s bottles was a more effective and reliable way of stopping his drunken rampages anyway.
‘Sorry to disappoint,’ I say, ‘but the only magic I know how to do is to get around Musgrave Industries’ end-to-end multifactor encryption security. And look how well that worked out.’ I gesture at the manacles bolting my hands to the table.
‘For all of our sakes, I’m going to assume you’re lying,’ says Westerfield coolly. ‘There’s a war coming that could destroy both our worlds and, as much as it pains me to say it, you’re the key to preventing it.’
I’m about to laugh. This is over-the-top dramatic and paranoid, even for Westerfield.
‘People think that the biggest threat to humanity is terrorism or environmental disaster,’ he goes on. ‘They’re wrong. There’s no greater threat to our existence than your uncle, Damius.’
I sit up straighter in my chair. I don’t have an uncle. And if I’d ever met anyone with a name like that I’m pretty sure I’d remember. This is just one more reason why I can’t possibly be who they think I am.
‘Our analysis shows your uncle has already amassed a level of power that could prove devastating,’ Weekes says. ‘That’s why you must not give him any more – either intentionally or otherwise.’
‘Huh?’
Westerfield’s phone rings and he leaves the room. Weekes scrunches up his face into a smile that could even be heartfelt.
‘You’ll have to excuse my colleague. Our agents aren’t hired for their people skills.’
‘If he wants my help, you’d think he’d be a little more polite.’
‘War – even the threat of war – can bring out the worst in people. And the best.’ Weekes leans forward in his chair and says in an almost fatherly voice, ‘We need you, Chess. We need you to make the right choice to save us all.’
I know that Weekes is trying to manipulate me but I want to believe him. I want to feel like I matter, that I’m not a nobody anymore. I’m not going to lie – even though I have no idea what choice he’s talking about, the idea of being needed is incredibly seductive.
There’s just one problem. They’ve got the wrong girl. There’s nothing special or exceptional about me. The best I’ve ever hoped for is to be ordinary. And most of the time I have fallen way short of even that.
‘I wish I could help,’ I say. ‘But I wasn’t lying before. I’m not a princess and I’m certainly not magical.’
Behind me, the door bursts open with such force that both Weekes and I jolt in fright. Westerfield is standing in the door with two mean-looking security guards on either side of him.
‘Change of plan,’ he says. ‘Orders from above.’ He looks triumphant, as if he’s just been granted permission to burn me at the stake along with all the witches he delighted in telling me about. Weekes, by contrast, looks scared. For me.
Westerfield turns to the guards and says with a smirk, ‘Bring her.’
chapter 9
The cuffs click open and I take my chance.
I rock back on my chair and kick the table forward with all my weight.
The table flips, sending the chairs hurtling across the room, clattering against the wall and door. It’s all the diversion I need. With Weekes and Westerfield momentarily distracted, I leap forward and bodyslam down onto the upturned table.
And that’s as far as I get. But it’s enough. I managed to get what I was after.
Rough hands clamp around the back of my neck and drag me to my feet.
Westerfield is laughing. ‘Well, that was all rather pointless, wasn’t it?’ he mocks as
he surveys the scattered furniture. ‘You don’t get to leave here until we say so.’
‘Where are you taking me?’ I demand.
One guard yanks my arms behind my back with unnecessary force while the other slaps metal handcuffs around my wrists.
‘You’ll find out when we get there,’ says Westerfield, exchanging a dark look with Weekes.
‘This is not what was agreed,’ Weekes says under his breath. The unease in his voice makes my hands clammy and the nauseous feeling rushes back.
‘She terminated our orders and decided on a different course of action,’ Westerfield replies.
She? Who is she? What course of action?
‘Harming her risks provoking retaliation,’ Weekes says.
Westerfield just shrugs.
I start to sway. I’m not sure if it’s the low blood pressure or the terror of imagining all the things they might do to me. Or both. One of the guards clamps his hand on my shoulder and pushes me from the room.
We walk along a windowless corridor that seems to go forever. Our footfalls echo off featureless concrete. The walls, ceiling and floor are a joyless, gun-metal grey.
Weekes and Westerfield shadow me, flanked by the two guards dressed in black paramilitary uniforms. It seems like overkill, given I’m restrained, untrained and should still be in a hospital bed. What are they going to do to me that requires four men?
No one says anything. Their shoes slap in time on the concrete, like a clock ticking down to my impending doom. The look of pity on Weekes’s face has me peaking towards a full-blown anxiety attack, the sort where you actually can’t breathe and fear you’re going to suffocate and die. And I know there is no chance that one of these brutes would help me the way the intense and exasperating doctor, or whoever he was, did in the hospital.
One of the guards eyes me tentatively, and a realisation pulls me back from the precipice. The stiff posture. The twitching hand hovering above his weapon. The uneasy glances.
He’s scared of me. They’re all scared of me.
They’re waiting for me to strike. Despite the handcuffs and the difference in our body sizes, all four of my captors seem just as terrified of me as I am of them. I can’t imagine what they think I’m going to do, but their reticence calms me a little. Reality is often overrated. What matters more is perception. And the perception that I’m a threat may be something I can work with, even though it makes no sense.