by Alexis Hall
Julian grinned and began soaping me down, paying what I thought was an unnecessary amount of attention to certain regions.
“But actually,” I went on, pulling Julian’s head back out of the water, “what is going on? I kind of need to know.”
“You realise,” she sighed, “a lot of women would be overjoyed to have a girlfriend who doesn’t need to breathe.”
“Sorry, I’m just worried.”
“You don’t have to worry. The Council has it under control.”
“Is this the sort of under control where she bursts in through the window and has people’s eyes pecked out.”
“Caradoc will be fine.” Julian waved a hand dismissively, splashing soapy water all over the bedroom floor. “We heal fast.”
“Yes, but me and thirty thousand other people don’t.”
“Al-Rashid knows what he’s doing, and we’ll soon have elected a new Prince of Swords. We took her down before, and we can do it again.”
I caught her before she could dive back under. “How did you take her down before? Ashriel told me that Sebastian sold her out somehow.”
Julian really didn’t look like she wanted to talk about this, but she seemed to have accepted I wasn’t letting it go. “He spied for us. The Morrígan would have flayed him alive if she’d suspected, and by that time, she was completely unpredictable. Towards the end, she was killing everyone close to her. As far as we know, there were only two survivors, Sebastian and Halfdan the Shaper. It was a really bad time.”
“I don’t get it. Did she just wake up one morning and decide to go batshit crazy?”
“She’s old, Kate. Very old. The world she lives in is so different from the world she was born in, she can understand nothing except power and death. It happens to all of us if we survive long enough.” She swivelled round and slipped lower in the water as if she was cold.
I kissed the tip of her shoulder. “You’re doing okay.”
“I think so. But the problem is I won’t know when I’m not.” She shook herself, droplets flying off her hair. “Anyway, Sebastian told us who her followers were, who could be trusted and who couldn’t. He helped Thomas Pryce broker the deal with the Shaper that gave us the North. And he gave us the only thing that had power over her.”
“What’s that and can we get it again?”
She traced her fingers idly over my knee. “It was a clay beaker about three-feet tall. History isn’t really my speciality, sweeting, but according to Sebastian, the Morrígan’s people buried their dead with these jars full of, well, I have no idea. Bits of their lives, I assume. It was her last link to the world she came from, but it was broken when she rose as a vampire. Somehow, Sebastian put it back together piece by piece. It must have taken him centuries.”
“What? He managed to build something that had been buried, smashed, and lost five thousand years ago?”
“When Sebastian sets his mind to something, he does it. And he is a magician.”
“Yeah, but to go to all that effort just to take somebody down.”
“We all need a hobby, darling. And for a lot of us, it’s revenge.”
“So what happened next?” I asked.
“We destroyed her armies and her followers, which just left her, but she’d lived so long, she couldn’t be killed. Even by gold. Even in sunlight. Except when she learned we had the beaker, she surrendered. It was remarkably peaceful, actually. I think, by that stage, she was tired of fighting, tired of everything really. We kept four pieces of the pot as security and sealed her up underneath a priory on Magpie Lane. We had to move her to Highgate Cemetery in the nineteen hundreds when they rediscovered the crypts.”
“But why has she woken up now?”
Julian shrugged again. “She always had the power, but I don’t think she wanted to. I think she was sort of ready to die, or get as close to it as she could manage.”
Aeglica had said something like that before he died. “So, what, she just slept it off?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. She tried to take something out of Aeglica’s sword. That was one of the fragments, wasn’t it?”
“Probably. Aeglica always did like to keep things close.”
“Something must have changed. You’ve had these things for four hundred years. She wouldn’t just decide to come after them now.”
“Nothing can have changed.” Julian shifted impatiently against me. “She’s been locked up in a tomb.”
“Someone broke into the tomb. I went to investigate for Nimue, and the lock had been changed.”
Julian glanced back at me. “That’s impossible. The Morrígan wouldn’t tolerate trespassers. She was asleep, not dead.”
“It might be impossible, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. Someone went into the tomb, and now the Morrígan is up, awake, and angry. I think someone stole her beaker, and she’s trying to get it back, starting with the bits she knows you have.”
“I’m sorry to repeat myself, Kate, but that’s impossible.” Her fingers dug a little into my leg. “She’s five thousand years old. You can’t just sneak up on her and yoink her stuff. It would take extremely powerful magic and an extremely talented thief.”
Oh fuck. I had a feeling I knew where this was going.
“Look,” I said slowly, “I’m not promising anything, and I might be completely wrong on this, but I know the tomb was broken into, and I think I know who did it. I don’t know how or why but, if I can find her and I can get this thing back, will that help?”
Julian slow-blinked at me. “Yes, Kate, if you can give us the Morrígan’s one weakness, that will help us fight her. But, as much as I respect what you do, I’m not going to pin all my hopes on a hunch.”
“No, that’s fine. But, at least, it’s making sense.”
“Right, good. Now where were we?” She twisted round again and vanished below the waterline.
I dragged her up. “You know, the mages have a plan as well, right?”
“I have never known anyone fight so hard to stop me from going down on them.” She sighed. “Yes, I know the mages have a plan. Acton told us at the meeting. Sebastian is going to get out of town, and the Witch Queen can do what she likes. We’ll be more than happy to let her do our job for us, but again, I’m not pinning my hopes on a ragtag group of mortals with spell books. Now, is there anything else you want to ask, discuss, or talk about?”
“I’m done.”
“Are you absolutely certain?”
“Yes, I’m certain.”
“And you’re sure you want this oral sex? You wouldn’t prefer to discuss ancient history, formulate disaster survival plans, or watch paint dry?”
“No, I’m good.”
Julian kissed me with damp lips and slithered down my body back into the water.
Chapter Fifteen
Trains & Tupperware
Julian whispered good-bye just before dawn and was gone in a swirl of smoke and shadows. I rolled over to her side of the bed, claimed all the duvet, and went back to sleep. I woke up again at nine. Technically I didn’t have a boss to complain about me being late for work, but I do sometimes pretend to be a professional. And I’m a bit old to get away with fucking all night and sleeping ’til two. I texted Elise to tell her I’d be late in again and went to use Julian’s hard-core power shower. Then I remembered I’d trashed my clothes.
I dripped into the kitchen, salvaged my trousers and my pants from the soggy mess on the floor, and clambered into them. I’d have to go to work smelling of stale booze and sex, but it wouldn’t be the first time. My shirt and jacket were past saving, so I raided Julian’s wardrobe. It turns out borrowing your girlfriend’s clothes is really difficult if she’s half your size and dresses like Adam Ant. I managed to squeeze myself into one of her ridiculous ruffly shirts, bunching the sleeves up s
o I didn’t look like a kid who was outgrowing her school uniform. I couldn’t find any jackets to fit and had to settle on something heavy and brocade-y that might have been a dressing gown.
And so, disguised as a complete bellend, I grabbed a box of chocolates, put my hat back on, and went to work. I just hoped I wouldn’t get any walk-ins. I rocked up at about eleven to find Elise diligently compiling newspaper reports.
“Good morning, Miss Kane,” she said. “Did you have a pleasant evening?”
One of the unsettling things about Elise is that her face only moves when she wants it to, so you don’t get the usual visual clues. Most people can’t help smirking if you show up looking like the world’s most confused drag king. Elise didn’t even twitch. “Got put on trial, got in a fight, got laid. I had a blast.”
“I hope you were not harmed.”
“Julian doesn’t like it that rough.”
“I was, of course, referring to the fight, but I see you have wilfully misinterpreted me for comic effect. I am quite entertained.”
I poured myself a coffee and slumped behind my desk. “How’s it going?”
“I believe I have uncovered some promising leads.”
“Hit me.”
Elise tapped a few commands into her keyboard. “There was a break-in at Christie’s, a Professor Fox at All Souls College reported several items missing from his personal collection, and there was a recent robbery at a gallery on Brick Lane, but the nature of the theft has yet to be disclosed.”
“Okay, when did these things happen?”
“The twelfth, nineteenth, and twenty-fifth of November, respectively.”
“Can you find out when Corin got out?”
“The tenth, Miss Kane. I had already taken the liberty.”
I went to look at one of Elise’s beautifully constructed and cross-referenced spreadsheets. “Okay, scratch Christie’s. She doesn’t usually go for big targets, and not even Corin could pull off a job like that two days after getting out of prison. So that leaves the gallery and the professor. Is there any more you can tell me?”
Elise flicked up a web browser with several open tabs. “The gallery is owned by a woman who goes by the name of Isis Fortuna.”
“Which means she’s either a mage or a hipster or a hipster mage.”
“I bow to your superior experience. The other gentleman is a professor of anthropology with a large collection of mystical and religious artefacts. He has reported the theft of a candle in the shape of a human hand dating from the seventeenth century and an ornately decorated skull dating from the fourteenth.”
“This candle,” I asked, “it wasn’t a left hand, was it?”
“I am afraid that information was not made available to me.”
I went and flopped back down behind my desk. “Well, fuck. If Corin’s managed to nick a Hand of Glory, she could be basically anywhere.”
“I am sorry, Miss Kane, that term is unfamiliar to me.”
“It’s a magic doodad that makes you invisible or puts people to sleep or opens locks or something. They’re really useful for getting places you shouldn’t. They’ve gone pretty rare since we stopped hanging people. Probably wouldn’t get you past an ancient killer vampire queen, though.”
“Do you have any theories about the skull?”
“That could be anything. A malicious familiar spirit, an ancient death curse, a really macabre potpourri holder.”
“Those unfortunately seemed the only likely candidates.”
“Come on then.” I drained my coffee and unflopped. “We’ve got some legwork to do.”
“Are we going to kick arse and take names, Miss Kane?”
“I was thinking we’d maybe just ask them some questions. Politely.”
“That would also be appropriate.”
We hopped on the Tube and headed straight for Liverpool Street. I don’t normally come to this part of town, because I don’t often find myself needing vintage clothing, vinyl LPs, or bespoke Italian office furniture.
“This seems a most vibrant area, Miss Kane,” said Elise, as we wove through a thinnish crowd of quirkily dressed shoppers, past walls covered in the respectable sort of graffiti, and places with self-consciously meta names like This Shop Rocks, Pictures on Walls, and Beyond Retro.
“Yeah, it’s been tarted up a bit since the Ripper murders.”
“Which murders?”
I sometimes forgot that Elise was less than a year old and there was quite a lot of stuff she just plain didn’t know. Her creator had built her for a very specific purpose, so he’d prioritised handjobs and personal grooming, and skimped a bit on general knowledge. “Five dead women in the eighteen eighties. Never solved. Source of a million conspiracy theories. Archer was kind of into the case. He liked the mystery of it, but I always found it a bit skeevy.”
“Perhaps I shall Google it.”
“Oh, Eve had this massive comic about it if you’re interested.”
“I believe the preferred term is graphic novel. My creator was quite insistent upon it.”
We found the place nestled between yet another vintage shop called Yet Another Vintage Shop and a restaurant that appeared to be named “?”. Isis Fortuna turned out to be a gallery/hair salon. The window displayed a mixture of arty pictures of crows in flight and photographs of models with outrageous hairstyles.
Elise sighed. “Sometimes I think I would like to have my hair cut.”
“Well, why don’t you?”
“Sadly, my hair, like the rest of me, is impervious to physical damage.”
Her hair was long, dark, and slightly wavy, the sort of hair I’d have been really jealous of when I was about twelve. It didn’t look or feel like it was made of stone. “Uh, it’s nice the way it is.”
“Perhaps it could be styled. That had not occurred to me previously.”
We went inside. The door had one of those old-fashioned bells that jingle when you open them. The place was all exposed brickwork, overpriced art, hair dressing stations, and sofas. A young man with very thick glasses and an immaculate quiff got up from where he was perched on the arm of one of the sofas. “Hi, welcome to Isis Fortuna. Are you here for the static art or the hair art?”
He didn’t seem bothered by my outfit, which either meant he was a consummate professional or just had no taste.
“I’m here about the break-in.”
He gave me a bit of a wary look. “The police have already been.”
“I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for someone. I think they might have been responsible. Can I talk to the owner?”
After a moment, he nodded. “Give me a moment, and I’ll see if she’s available.”
He disappeared into a back room, leaving us with the static art.
I took the opportunity to have a quick snoop, but there wasn’t much worth snooping at. If Isis Fortuna was a mage, she was either relatively weak or powerful enough to hide it really well.
Elise had gone to look at the static art. “This is most interesting, Miss Kane. The eclectic juxtaposition of disparate elements and styles creates a very satisfying effect.”
I stared blankly. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Perhaps we should purchase some for the flat? I am very fond of the instructional poster on the subject of surviving a zombie apocalypse, but I feel it lacks emotional resonance.”
It had quite a lot of emotional resonance for me. Eve had bought it as a souvenir after our third anniversary. “Hey, I like that poster.”
“As you wish.”
There was a short silence while we looked around the salon-slash-gallery.
“Miss Kane,” said Elise. “Do you believe this bare shelf is an ironic comment on the quintessential emptiness of human endeavour, or do you believe something has been, as we say in the detective business, nicked?”
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I went over and had what we in the detective business call a look. There was a small shelf with a slightly faded card Blu-Tacked to the wall. Not for sale.
“I’m not going to rule out the possibility it’s some kind of arty joke, but it definitely looks like something was kept here, probably something not very valuable or else it would have been under glass or, at the very least, fixed to the shelf.”
“I am no expert, Miss Kane, but it seems contrary to the principles of thievery to take the one thing in the building that has no monetary value.”
“So either we were wrong and there was nothing on the shelf to begin with, or Miss Fortuna didn’t know what she had.” I ran a finger across the shelf to see if there was a convenient layer of dust with a telltale gap in a helpfully recognisable shape. There wasn’t.
Then I heard the faint rustle of a beaded curtain, and Isis Fortuna herself swept into the room. She was the kind of girl I would have gone for about eight years ago. She had a haphazard punky look, long green hair, shaved on one side and braided on the other. Her exposed ear was a cutlery drawer of piercings, and a peacock feather hung from the other. She was wearing a studded leather jacket over a fishnet vest, through which her neon-orange bra was clearly visible.
“You can tell Nimue to go fuck herself,” she said.
So definitely a mage then.
I held up my hands. “Whoa. Easy tiger. I’m here strictly on my own time.”
“The hell you are. You work for the Witch Queen and everyone knows it.”
“I work for myself.” I had technically sworn an oath of fealty to Nimue, but that didn’t mean I was on anyone’s leash. “I’m here about the robbery.”
She folded her arms, her weight resting on one hip. “Fuck off.”
“Wow, I thought hairdressers were supposed to be good with people.”
“I’m good with customers, not thugs who bust into my place and try to strong-arm me.”
I really wasn’t in the mood for this. “Is that what you think I’m doing here?”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“If I was, you’d know.”
“I believe there has been a miscommunication.” Elise stepped neatly forwards. “Miss Kane and I are not here on Court business. We are looking for someone, and we believe she may have been responsible for the break-in at your establishment.”