“Was saying.” Tabitha’s pointed statement has grown claws. “Antimony. Used by Russians at Chernobyl. Catalyst metal. But we know Chernobyl doesn’t work. So: coincidence.”
“That seems a bit of an assumption,” Devon starts, still booming but with even less friendliness, “in my opinion that is, which, well I realize I’m still proving the usefulness of that, being the new person and all. No one wants to lick the new flavor of lollipop until a friend has tried it. Not that I want to be licked. Horrible image. Just making a metaphor. Licking always seemed a dirty habit to me, anyway. Always preferred a soft chewable candy myself. Why make food you can’t bite? Doesn’t make any sense.” She pushes her hair back from her eyes furiously. “Anyway, I was just saying that it just seems to me that making assumptions about coincidences without fully investigating all the angles may be a little shortsighted.” She blinks. “As I understand the situation.”
I’m not sure she knows what she’s talking about, but I am pretty sure that she doesn’t care.
Tabitha remains unfazed. “Coincidence because Russians know intradimensional magic doesn’t work. Which you’d know,” Tabitha sneers, “if you’d done any fucking research.”
Kayla makes an odd noise. A sort of click of the tongue.
Did she just tsk Tabitha?
For some reason Shaw doesn’t seem about to step in. But, because it feels like MTV’s Real Life: Supernatural Horrors is about to be unleashed in the conference room, I think someone has to. I open my mouth and say—
“Well, you can’t trust the bloody Russians to do anything right.”
Except I don’t say that. Someone else says it. And I don’t recognize the voice.
“Incompetent buggers, the Russians,” the new voice adds.
Every eye in the room turns and stares.
A tall, heavyset man stands in the doorway. He wears a brown tweed suit and a red tie that hangs awkwardly to where his waistline is losing its integrity. Ruddy brown hair is cropped close to the sides of his skull and a mustache the size of a seal pup balances on his upper lip.
“Oh God,” Felicity says. “Oh no.”
“Still,” the man says, apparently oblivious to the impact of his sudden presence, “can’t trust the sneaky bastards. Always up to something.” His voice booms as loud as Devon’s but is muddied by the sheer volume of his mustache. “You,” he points to me. “Tall, dark, and ugly. And you, the one with the Halloween mask.” The sausage finger points to Clyde. “Next to the weird chick.” I have to imagine he means Tabitha. “Off to the British Library, would you? We need the Chernobyl papers.”
“What the hell?” I manage through my confusion. I sure as shit don’t move.
“Come on,” the man snaps. “Ondelé, ondelé, or whatever it is those bullfighting nancies say. Chop-chop. Queen and country. Go, go, go. London. Library. Lots of books. Can’t miss it.” He squints at Clyde and I. “Spreken zee English?”
“George,” says Felicity, her voice like a knife’s blade. “What are you doing here?”
She knows him. The collective stare swivels to her. It registers. She swallows. “This is George Coleman,” she says to us. “He works for MI6.”
The man called George smiles. “Not any more actually. Bit of a promotion. Top brass seem to think brinksmanship with aliens isn’t the smartest of plays. Steadier hand at the tiller and all that.” He thumbs his own chest. “Co-director of MI37 as of about,” he checks his watch, “thirty minutes ago. And now,” he points to Clyde and I, “directing you two to London. Fucking yesterday already.”
“No.” I shake my head. It’s a denial aimed as much at the universe as it is this unpleasant stain of a human being. This seriously can’t be. We save the world and this guy is our reward? “Shaw is the director,” I say. I demand.
But, apparently, the universe is about as interested in my assertions as it usually is.
“Lippy bugger, are we?” Coleman shoves out his chest. “And evidently not at the top of the food chain when it comes to information dispersal. Maybe because you’ve forgotten this is military intelligence. There is a chain of command. Information and orders flow big man to little man. And you are a little man and you would do well to remember that.”
It doesn’t happen with any degree of regularity, but I think I am about to lose my temper. I open my mouth—
“George, please.” Shaw, the placatory voice of reason, trying to find the balance point in the room. Sensible. Rational.
“Yes,” I say. “Please piss off.”
Felicity turns to me. She has a pained expression. “Arthur,” she says. Something between an order and a request.
And this is one of those moments she talked about last night, where I don’t like her lead.
But I’m not willing to break my promises this early. I’d like to wait at least six hours before I kick out one of the foundations we’re building this relationship on.
I bite back my bile.
“Come on, George,” Felicity says. “We can do this without the territorial pissing match.” She forces a smile out. “This news is a bit of a shock to everyone, that’s all. I’m sure we can all find it in ourselves to act like mature adults.”
Coleman finally retracts his chest, apparently mollified.
“Now,” Shaw says, “perhaps we can have a brief word in private.”
Coleman’s mustache quivers like an enormous electrocuted caterpillar, then he turns on his heel and stomps out of the room.
Felicity hesitates for a moment, her professional mask flickers. A glimpse of a woman worried and worn. I want to reach out to her as a colleague, a friend, a boyfriend.
Except there’s rather a large audience for that.
“You shouldn’t take this,” I say, restraining myself from stepping toward her. “This isn’t right.”
Her lips twitch in the imitation of a smile. But she doesn’t answer me. She just slips out the door after Coleman.
“This isn’t right,” I inform the room in general. Not that anyone seems to care. They’re all too busy shooting daggers at each other.
And that’s not right either. Something just happened that’s bigger than personal battles. Some ground shift.
Of course getting anyone to see it is going to involve stepping into the middle of the Tabitha-Devon divide. And to be honest I think I’d rather face another zombie T-Rex.
Screw it. I’m field lead. In the office, I’m not touching this crap with a ten-foot barge pole. “I’m getting a cup of tea,” I say as I head toward the door. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
For a moment I think I’m going to get away clean but then Devon says, “I’ll come too.” I can feel Tabitha’s scowl scouring the back of my neck even as the door swings closed.
The MI37 kitchen is a small nook of one corridor with an electric kettle balanced on top of a microwave, balanced on top of a mini-fridge. A few mugs, a box of tea bags and a jar of instant coffee sit in a sink waiting for everything to fall apart.
I shove a bag into a cup. Everything seems to be speeding up just when I’d like it to slow down. Just a few days to wrap my head around my new reality. To get to grips with this relationship thing. Except now there are Russians, and bombs. And it’s not just my relationship that needs to be adjusted to. And on top of it all, this Coleman prick. He has to be someone’s idea of a joke. A very, very, very bad joke.
I stare at the teabag. Just five minutes to get my head together.
“Did you know?”
Devon, it seems, has no intention of letting that happen.
But… God, I can’t send misplaced aggression her way. It’s Coleman who really has me on edge, not her. She doesn’t even sound like herself. She’s being quiet.
I flick on the kettle. Take a moment to brace for the admission.
“Yes.”
It’s an awful thing to say. A terrible acknowledgment of complicity.
“Does he… Does he…” There’s more swallowing. “Do you think he lo
ves her?”
I grab two sugar packets, tear them open. I suspect I’m going to need to switch to artificial sweetener, though, if I want to get over the bitter taste of this one.
“I…” I hesitate. Would a lie be better? Would that be the right thing?
“Please. I just want to know the truth.” Devon is turned away from me, hiding her face.
“I think so,” I say.
The water in the kettle starts to work itself into a froth. I reach out to turn it off.
“I don’t know why I came here,” Devon says, freezing me. “It was a really stupid thing to do. And now I’m trapped here. Looking at him. At what he’s become. At her. I’m caught and it’s awful and I don’t feel like me. I feel like some mean terrible person who wants to do terrible things. And I’ve never done a terrible thing. I’m a good person, Arthur. And that sounds like an awfully conceited thing to say, but, well, maybe now is the time to be conceited, just a little bit, if it helps. But I try. I really try to be a good person. I try to be happy. I was happy. And I’m not. He’s taken it. She’s taken it. She’s taken my happiness. And… And…”
She’s crying now. Really crying. I step so I can see her, so she can see me. And screw the politics of it, she needs to see she has a friend here.
“Starting here sucks,” I tell her. “But I promise it gets better.”
Another wracking sob from Devon. Then she lunges forward and clamps me in a bear hug. All the oxygen exits my lungs. I gasp like a fish flipped to shore.
“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you.”
My ribs creak.
“Ahem.” Behind us, someone clears their throat. I twist my head as the corners of my vision go dark. Kayla stands there.
“Oh,” Devon says, and releases me. I stagger back, gasping.
Kayla points to Devon’s face. “Your makeup,” she says, a little gruffly. “Should fix that. I’ll show you the bathrooms.”
“Oh!” Devon says again, clapping hands to her cheeks. “Oh gosh, I must look terrible. Really silly of me. I mean, well, this is an emotional time, of course. But still, a tighter rein might be necessary. Keep myself in check. There’s acting the fool and then looking like one afterward. Compounding the problem. You are very sweet to point it out. I’m Devon by the way.” She sticks out her hand. Then her brows crumple. “You know that.” Her lip starts to tremble. “Silly of me.”
“Bathroom,” Kayla commands. And the two of them walk away, leaving me with a screeching kettle and the sense that no one is really who I thought they were.
Back in the conference room
In the absence of other targets, Tabitha is staring daggers at me now.
“Look,” I say, “I know being hideously insensitive to everybody is kind of your ‘thing’,” I even give her the air quotes, “but if you could lay off the woman whose boyfriend you stole that’d be just lovely, all right?” It’s not the most diplomatic way to handle it, but I’m really not in the mood.
To my shock it’s not Tabitha who responds.
“Hey,” Clyde says. Then, uncharacteristically, he seems to run out of things to add.
Tabitha rolls her eyes at him too.
I close my eyes. I don’t want fights. I want to be happy and in a new relationship and my only concern to be a Russian that wants to blow me into very small pieces.
“If we could all just… act like we’re adults, and not stare venomously at Devon, and not avoid her eye with our heads on the table, then maybe this might be easier, that’s all I’m saying.”
The daggers continue from Tabitha. Whether it’s in spite of or because of what I’ve said, I’m not sure.
I’m about to try a new tack when the door opens and Felicity pops her head back in. My heart does a little leap. Hopefully this is to announce Coleman has been sent back to whatever circle of hell he had the temerity to crawl out from.
But instead she says, “Clyde. Arthur. If you could pop down to London and pull papers on the Chernobyl incident that would be very convenient.”
She sounds like she’s asking. It’s very unlike her.
“Are you sure?” I say. Something else feels wrong now.
“Please.” She nods.
OK, something else is definitely wrong.
“Do you need us to—” I start.
“Just go to London,” she says. “It’ll be fine.”
But as Clyde and I stand, I know she’s lying. Something is shifting. And it’s not some towering monster, not something from outer space or out of our reality, it’s something small and mundane. And I know for certain, all of a sudden, that when we put the world back together, we did it wrong.
TWELVE
Clyde and I manage to maintain silence for at least two corridors. Then he turns and looks at me.
“Did you know?” he asks me.
Here we go again.
“About Devon?” I ask, just to confirm this is going to be as uncomfortable as possible.
“Shaw told you?” He’s working his long piano-player fingers against and between each other.
“I…” I start, then fail to think of a way to change the subject mid-question. “She told me last night.”
“You could have called me.”
He’s right, of course. I should have. It was cruel to let him walk into that this morning. But I was… otherwise engaged last night.
“It was late,” I say rather than get into the sticky details of it all.
Clyde taps the mask that is not his face with a finger that is not his. “I don’t seem to really sleep any more. Little bit shy on the old zees. With this.” He doesn’t sound overjoyed about it.
“You OK?” I ask.
“Me?” He cocks his head again. Shrugs. “Been better, yes. But I’ve been worse. Been dead actually. Albeit briefly. So, you know, on the scale of things, pretty much always going to be able to say things have been worse. But you know, reincarnation and all that, so things can pick up. Sleeping in the bed I made. And it’s Tabitha’s bed, so…” He trails off, hangs his head. “I feel like a bit of a shit, Arthur.”
And he should. But that’s not the sort of thing you say to a friend. “You followed your heart,” I say instead. I try and make it sound like an excuse.
Clyde nods. “Not the smartest organ out there is it?”
“Not the stupidest organ I’ve ever been accused of thinking with.” I twist my mouth into a smile for Clyde.
Clyde chuckles, then he laughs. And he shrugs, and a little of the morning tension sloughs away.
“What do you reckon’s going to happen about this Coleman bloke?” I ask. Not that either of us really know. But a problem shared… well, it’s not halved, but maybe it’s… well it’s someone to talk to about it.
“I’m sure Shaw will sort it out,” Clyde says.
In Shaw we trust. And I have to trust her. Except I already have misgivings about how she’s handling it.
“Come on,” Clyde says. “Let’s get off to London. See the sights. Revel in the sense of history. Maybe buy a T-shirt. Or look for hoodies without skulls on them. One of the two. Whatever takes your fancy.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I nod.
“There’s just one thing we need to pick up along the way.”
Outside the Bodleian Library
Clyde’s Mini is parked, engine running, in an empty back street near the massive copyright library. I watch Clyde staggering under the weight of an enormous cardboard box as he exits. He sets it down by the car with a grunt. A large and rather eclectic collection of books. I look at Clyde confused. His mask is—obviously, I suppose—unreadable.
He goes to the trunk, pulls out two jump leads and passes them to me.
Ah, the regalia of the supernatural. Screw cauldrons and smoking test-tubes.
“If it’s not too much of an imposition,” Clyde starts, proving he’s the only man who can use those words and not make it sound like it’s the beginning of an insult, “would you pop the hood, and then on the word ‘Arc
um’ slam these down on the car battery?” He takes a firm hold of the metal clamps on his end.
How exactly I managed to kill Clyde before he did it to himself, I’ll never know.
“Any chance of you telling me what’s going to happen when you say that?” I get nervous whenever Clyde works magic. It always seems far too closely associated with someone trying to tear off parts of my body.
“He’s good with books,” is all Clyde says, and then he’s off muttering to himself. “Entok um jessun. Lom niem mor cal anum. Eltoth mok morinum.”
And because I’ve seen what happens when magic isn’t powered by electricity, I pop the hood and jump out of the car.
Violently exothermic, Clyde called it. Magicians getting turned into bloody smears on the ground seems a little closer to the mark.
“Cathmartum mal ellum. Etok mol asok.” Clyde intones nonsense syllables, a voice that is not quite his own issuing from behind a mask that… that is him.
What if I took it off the body? What would be left? Some mindless fellow? A vegetable? So much human meat?
“Melkor al malkor. Mor tior. Arcum—”
And then there’s no time to think. At the requisite word I slam the contacts on the battery.
“—locium met morum um satum Winston.”
Wait. Winston?
Sparks fly. The world darkens, blue light spitting from the battery, crawling up the wires towards Clyde. He keeps chanting as it racks him, working its hissing, burning way over his body.
Clyde convulses. His gut heaves. I worry about him dropping the clamps. About violently exothermic results that blow me halfway to China.
Then Clyde hawks out a great white gob of lightning. His throat bulges with it. His face behind the mask distorts, distends. I can see his cheeks bulging. Then it flies out and under the mask as he gags. It smashes into the box. Books explode out, scatter. They fly through the air, slap into the walls. But they don’t fall. They just spin. Faster. Faster.
Clyde chokes up another lightning ball. He spits and gags. His body doubles over. Another. Faster.
The books slam round the corridor. All in the air. All caught in the maelstrom of detonations.
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