The Rook

by Daniel O'Malley

  “What else?”

  “Hmm?” she said, staring at my fingertips intently.

  “What else can you see?”

  “I can see that you need a manicure.”

  “No! What can you see in my future?”

  “I can see that you’ll need an evening gown. Fortunately I know just the man to make it for you.”

  As it turned out, the man she knew had died thirty-two years ago, but his granddaughter was also a dressmaker and she presented some sketches of a scarlet creation that I was too embarrassed to comment on. She also jotted down some measurements that were markedly different from the ones the other tailors had recorded. When I demurred, Lisa called over her elderly secretary and boy toy to ask what they thought. They were encouraged to visualize me wearing it, which meant that for several minutes my chest was ogled by two strangers.

  “You should be proud to show off your breasts, Myfanwy Thomas,” Lisa declared loudly in front of everyone.

  “Sorry?” Just kill me.

  “They’re fine! A little small, but with a lovely shape. You should be nursing babies! Giving suck!” She gestured elaborately.

  Kill me now.

  “You know how many babies have suckled at these breasts?” she asked. “Yes, and some grown men too!” she added, briskly slapping her boy toy on the bottom. He gave her an oily smile and then his eyes slid back to my chest.

  Finally, we got Lisa to the hotel and escorted her up to her suite. As I said good-bye at the door, she gripped my wrist, pulled me close, and whispered in my ear in a hoarse voice. Cigarette smoke and French perfume filled my nostrils, but that wasn’t what made my flesh crawl.

  “Myfanwy Thomas, bad things are headed your way. As bad as ever I have seen in my life. You will lose everything. You will end in the rain, and beyond that I cannot see. So enjoy yourself while you can.” Her eyes burned into mine, and I could see the age within her. Centuries and centuries, stretching back to an unimaginable beginning. And then she shut the door, leaving me shaking in the hallway.

  Ingrid and Anthony deposited me back home. And now I am sitting in the dark, alone except for my many, many shopping bags.

  30

  Razormouth’s breath stank of chemicals, and Myfanwy jerked her head away reflexively. Something about the odor brushed a memory far in the back of her mind. She had stopped dancing, and now she tensed in preparation. Her powers were primed, but she hesitated to use them in such a public setting. How am I going to explain this to Bronwyn? she thought frantically. Razormouth had made no move to hurt her, and she dared a quick glance at her sister, who was still dancing obliviously with her friends.

  The guy looked normal once he closed his lips over his teeth. Well, maybe not completely normal, but certainly more normal than a lot of the people Myfanwy worked with every day. Shaved head, pointed nose, pale lips drawn back in a tight smile. She was braced for any movement, but he simply stood there, swaying slightly. Myfanwy raised her eyebrows in a question, and he gestured toward a table that was a little away from the speakers and miraculously free of people. She hesitated, and he slowly lifted up one hand, holding a mobile phone. He discreetly offered it to her so that Bronwyn and her friends could not see it. Myfanwy sighed, took it gingerly from his fingers, and followed him to the table.

  “Hello?” she hazarded. An indistinct voice came through, drowned out by the music. “You’ll have to speak up, I’m in a nightclub and they’re playing some sort of, I don’t know, fornication music.” The voice spoke louder now but was still impossible to understand. Myfanwy looked at the man with the sharp smile and made a face that indicated that she couldn’t hear the person on the other end of the phone. He rolled his eyes and made a face that indicated this had not been his idea and that his protests had been ignored. He jerked a thumb forcefully over his shoulder toward the exit.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” she said loudly to him. He gestured again to the exit. She leaned close to his ear and spoke clearly. “My friends might think it strange if I leave with a man one minute after I meet him.” He looked at her blankly. “Clearly, you’re not familiar with the whole ‘girls going out as a group’ phenomenon, but unless you’re prepared to cause a scene, I’m not leaving.”

  “I am prepared to cause an exceptionally upsetting scene,” he whispered in her ear. He had an accent that she couldn’t quite place. European. Scandinavian?

  “I’m willing to bet I can cause an even more upsetting one,” Myfanwy whispered back. “Unless you can out-awful the idea of you plucking out your own eyes with your thumbnails.” He stepped back warily. Myfanwy raised an eyebrow at him and froze his joints. Instead of being alarmed, however, he smiled his razor smile and looked suggestively toward Bronwyn and her friends.

  “You wouldn’t dare!” she spat, and tightened her mental grasp on him, clenching her mind around his lungs. He tensed, his eyes widening, but didn’t lose his smile. Instead, he gestured with his chin back toward the girls. She turned around and saw that the girls were fine, dancing unconcernedly. Bronwyn caught her eye and waved, her eyebrows rising to ask if everything was okay. Myfanwy forced a smile and nodded. Bronwyn took another quick look at the man with the teeth (currently concealed by his lips) and made a face indicating that he was kind of cute.

  Then Myfanwy noticed with a growing sense of unease that the girls were surrounded by particularly bad dancers. Several of them were wearing clothes better suited to committing grievous bodily harm than picking up girls. Hesitantly, she cast out her awareness, trying to bind the dancers. No good, she admitted to herself. The girls are in the way and everyone is moving, and I just had a beverage that had six kinds of vodka in it. Defeated, Myfanwy turned her attention back to the man with the dangerous teeth.

  “You know, I really hate being coerced by means of a cliché,” she said. He looked at her without comprehension. “Come with us or we’ll kill your friends? Man, you might as well have just jammed a gun in my ribs during the strobe.”

  “Would that have worked?” he asked.

  “I doubt it,” said Myfanwy. “Now, if we’re not going to make a scene, what am I going to tell my friends about why I’m leaving?” He blinked nervously. This is clearly a person experienced in the realms of supernatural warfare but who has had practically nothing to do with normal people. Especially girls.

  “That you would like to see my car?” he asked. She restrained the urge to laugh in his face.

  “Does that mean that I will be coming back?” she asked.

  “I don’t really know,” he fumbled. Despite the seriousness of the situation, she was beginning to feel a little sorry for him.

  “I am not telling them that I want to see your car. I am not sixteen, and we are not in the musical Grease. I’ll tell you what. You leave. I will go back and dance for five minutes, and your goons can keep an eye on me. Then I’ll pretend to receive an urgent message from work and I’ll step out to talk to your friend.” Razormouth considered the matter and then nodded and left. His friends kept dancing badly.

  Five minutes later, Myfanwy left the club. She’d shrugged off her conversation with the toothsome bald guy and, seized with a sudden reckless fatalism, had danced briefly with one of the goons. Now outside, she looked around and saw neon light glinting off a shaved head.

  “Rook Thomas,” he said, smiling his smile.

  “Nameless Irritating Man with Aggressive Teeth,” she said, smiling hers. “So, where’s your friend?”

  “Just across the street, if you’ll follow me.” He offered her his hand, and bowed slightly in a manner that would have been normal in the Rookery but which drew whistles and cheers from the line of people waiting to go into the club.

  “Go for it, luv!” shrieked one girl. Similar (if more specific) words of encouragement filled the air, and Myfanwy felt herself blushing. They walked hurriedly across the street, and he opened the door of his car for her.

  “You’ve got a pretty shit job with this, you know,” she pointed out t
o him. He flushed uncomfortably, and nodded. “Still, you were very polite. Are you Belgian, by any chance?” He nodded awkwardly. “Thought so.” And she got into the car.

  Myfanwy settled back into her seat and took great care to compose herself before she raised her eyes to look at her host. That will impress them, she thought with satisfaction. I am calm, cool, collected, and I have already mollified their flunky. Then she saw what was occupying the rest of the limo.

  I am not going to scream, she thought desperately. I am not going to throw up. I am not going to faint. Even though these would all be exceptionally reasonable reactions to what is lounging in a tank of slime in front of me.

  The thing in front of her looked as if it had been flayed right before she got in the car. It was shiny with fluids that usually flowed exclusively beneath several layers of skin. The eyes were mismatched, one of them glinting a bright Teutonic blue that would have done Hitler proud, and the other so bloodshot that it was a stomach-turning orange.

  Chitin plates trailed delicately through the angry flesh, seemingly placed with calligraphic care. Rangy cords of muscles wrapped around limbs with alarmingly irregular ridges and spurs.

  In the mouth, there were white nubs of teeth that, although technically perfect in themselves, were just wrong. They jutted out, twisted in their sockets, and sometimes seemed to be in the process of migrating around the mouth. Shiny white canines snarled where incisors normally grew; a molar had been replaced with a bicuspid. The front teeth were missing, but as Myfanwy watched in horrified fascination, little white edges slid out of the gums. When the thing peeled back its lips in a horrible smile, the whole effect was jarring.

  But more than anything, it was the biological presence of the thing that turned Myfanwy’s stomach. She had not sought to probe it with her powers, but her senses spread out from her unconsciously and then recoiled violently when they touched the thing in the tank. In this creature, the connections that lay within every human being were marred, hideously twisted. Nerves had been rerouted, arteries and muscles torn out and fused to places they should not have been. It was a deliberate perversion of biology. Myfanwy could no more touch that thing with her mind than she could deliberately drink sewage.

  The creature reclined, partially submerged in a waist-high tank that had replaced a row of seats in the limo. The tank was filled with a viscous fluid that shimmered with oily rainbows. The skinned thing rested its arms on the rim of the tank and laid its chin on the back of its hand. As she watched, a canine twisted itself into place with an audible click. She winced slightly.

  “Good evening, Rook Thomas,” it said. She nodded and smiled politely, pressing her lips together so hard that the blood rushed away. Her powers were tightly wound back into her center, cringing away from everything in front of her.

  “I am Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen of the Wetenschappelijk Broederschap van Natuurkundigen,” it said to her. “I apologize for my current appearance. A new skin is being grown for me, but I did not want to wait. Once we heard that you were unattended, I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to meet with you.”

  Myfanwy nodded sharply, not trusting herself to speak.

  “Let me begin by stating that, regardless of our discussion’s outcome, neither I nor any of my people will touch you this night. Nor will we hurt your friends. I am letting you know this without offering any conditions. This is a courtesy I am extending to you because you have something I want. And because I have been told you have power.”

  Well, that was a well-constructed introduction, thought Myfanwy. She made a mental note that the Grafters didn’t know who Bronwyn was.

  “They are civilians,” said Myfanwy. “Touching them, following them, or investigating them would be extremely undiplomatic. I would find it difficult to have a productive meeting if I thought they were going to be harmed, this night or any other night.” She watched the blood flush through the cheeks of the thing in front of her. Or at least, through the capillaries that lay where the cheeks would be.

  “You do not make demands of me,” it said shortly.

  “I wouldn’t think of making any demands,” said Myfanwy. “But let’s change the subject. I gather that I have something you want.” Whatever it is. The thing’s muscles jerked in vexation along its neck, and tendons tightened in its fingers. She gritted her teeth as tiny platelets of chitin scraped along the metal rim of the tank. She watched in nervous fascination as it controlled its rage.

  “Very well,” it said through clenched teeth. “Now we will talk.”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “I do not like being in this country,” it said peevishly.

  Myfanwy waited expectantly. She was guessing that what it wanted was not a Eurostar ticket out of the United Kingdom.

  “I would still be in België, but unfortunately circumstances have dragged me here.”

  “That must be trying,” said Myfanwy with as much false sympathy as she could muster. How tiresome, to have to come and invade a country, she thought. She was beginning to lose her patience. The skinned man in the tank looked at her with his head cocked to one side.

  “Yes,” he said dubiously. “It displeases me that I am obliged to speak with a member of the Checquy. I have not forgotten the Isle of Wight.” Myfanwy gaped as she realized what this man was saying. He had been there when the Grafters invaded. The thing in front of her was over three hundred years old. In her shock, her defenses wavered, and she began to gag. I can’t stay near this thing for too much longer or I’m going to be sick all over him. We need to wrap this up, she thought. With an effort, she fought back the nausea and attempted a smile. It was more of a rictus, but it served.

  “I can understand how vexing it must be for you, but I don’t believe that the first official communication between you people and the Checquy since the War of Wight is that you want them to know you’re angry about being here. So, let us talk plainly. What do you want?”

  “You do not talk to me like this!” he shouted, and he spasmed in his tank, sending fluids splashing. “And you do not play games with me!” His eyes were burning with rage as he leaned forward out of the tank toward her.

  “I am not playing games!” she shouted back at him, all thoughts of diplomacy vanishing. He jerked in surprise, but did not move. “What do you want?”

  “You know what I want!” he screamed. Yellowy foam sprayed from his lips onto her cheeks, and she flinched. Aghast, she scrubbed at her face.

  “What the hell—look, I have no idea what the fuck you want, but you better talk now or I’m getting out of this car.”

  “I want my deelhebber! I want Ernst von Suchtlen!” he snarled.

  Genuinely bewildered, Myfanwy blinked. “What?” she asked.

  “What what?” he spat.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What?” he yelled.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, trying to calm him down. “What is it that you want?”

  “I want you to produce Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen!”

  “Who?”

  “The other leader of the Wetenschappelijk Broederschap van Natuurkundigen,” he said through teeth that would have been clenched if they’d lined up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said carefully. “But we don’t have this person.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” he said, sneering. “He vanished from our fabriek months ago, leaving instructions for the continuance of our strategy here and for the concealment of his absence. From me.” He clenched his fingers on the rim of the tank. “Both worked so well that I was not aware of his disappearance until a few weeks ago.”

  “He’s been gone for months, and you didn’t realize?” asked Myfanwy.

  “Time passes differently for us than for you,” he said with contempt. “Once I discovered he was missing, I tracked him. We found a record of a piece of mail sent to Myfanwy Thomas, who is a Rook of the Checquy. Our mortal enemies. It is the only thing that indicates where he has gone. I sent my personal agent t
o find him, and you promptly took him and tortured him! Now”—and here he took a deep, controlling breath—“where is Ernst?”

  “I’m sorry, but I have no idea,” said Myfanwy. Hell, she thought. Thomas didn’t even know the Grafters were active. If some Grafter guy had turned up on her doorstep, that would have been the first thing mentioned in her first letter.

  “If you fuck with me, I will start killing right now!” he yelled. “Do you want murder in your streets?” He was thrashing in his tank, sending waves of the goop sloshing everywhere. In horror, Myfanwy watched as her jeans from the knee down became soaked. Is he having a seizure? she wondered. The windows were splattered, and when he swept his arms in her direction, gobbets were flung onto her face and her top.

  “Listen to me, you flayed fuck,” she shouted in his face. “I have no idea what you are talking about, but you need to calm down.”

  “If you do not produce him in three days, I will release a wave of horror upon your people that will blight your country!” he screamed. The tank tore under his fingers, and the remaining fluid began to pour out onto the floor. “I will drown this city in bile and blood!” In his flailing, he was actually doing himself damage. She saw minute tears open up on parts of him, and trickles of red. “Now out, Rook! You have only the time I give you!” He was still raving as Myfanwy opened the door and a wave of his fluids poured out onto the sidewalk. She stumbled getting out, dropping her purse and spilling its contents into the goop. Great, just great, she thought as her cell phone emitted a piercing squeal and died in the slime. The bald man was standing by the door, looking anxious. When he heard the shouting from within the car, he paled.

  “Get him out of here,” said Myfanwy shortly.

  “Did you do what he wanted?” said the man frantically, as he got into the front seat.

  “Does it sound like it?” she asked. He cringed, shut the door, and the limousine peeled away, leaving her covered in a pungent slime, standing across the street from the club and a crowd of gawkers.