The Man with the Golden Torc

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Gone Fishing, on Golden Pool

"I’ve made a decision," I said to Molly.

"Good for you," said Molly.

"I’ve decided I don’t want to meet any more rogues," I said.

"Not if they’re going to be like the ones I’ve already met. I mean, one crazy, one shut-in, and one moral cripple? Is that the kind of future I’ve got to look forward to if by some miracle I survive the next few days?"

"Probably," said Molly. "If you give up, like they did. They were all afraid to do anything that mattered. How about you?"

"I’m going home," I said. And just like that, I was certain. "It’s all that’s left to me. I’m going back to the Hall, and the library, and my backstabbing family. Because they’re the only ones I can be sure have the answers I need."

"Good for you!" said Molly. "I’m coming too!"

"No, you’re bloody not," I said. "This is going to be difficult enough without having to look after you as well."

"I do not need looking after," said Molly, her face clouding up dangerously.

"You could die in a hundred ways just trying to get onto the Hall’s grounds," I said, trying hard to sound reasonable. "My family is protected in ways even I don’t like to think about sometimes."

"If you think I’m going to miss out on an opportunity to stick it to the Droods where they live, you’ve got another think coming. I’ve dreamed of revenge like this! Usually after eating cheese. I’m going with you, and you can’t stop me!"

"Will you please keep the noise down?" growled Janissary Jane. She sat up slowly, wincing and groaning, and then peered blearily about her, taking in the unconscious Manifest Destiny soldiers piled up around her. "Must have been a hell of a party…Shaman? That you? Where the hell am I? And what have I been doing…? It feels like someone took a dump in my head."

"You were possessed by Archie Leech," I said, helping her to her feet.

"I drove his spirit out of your body, and then destroyed it. He won’t be coming back. Ever."

"Leech? That rat turd? He must have sneaked in while my defences were down. Hold everything; you destroyed him? No offence, Shaman—I mean, well done and thanks for everything and all that—but I never really saw you as being in Archie Leech’s league."

"Yeah, well, that’s because he isn’t Shaman Bond," said Molly. "He’s been fooling us all for years with that mild-mannered reporter shit."

"Molly? You’re here too?" Janissary Jane squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head slowly. It didn’t seem to help. "Well, if he isn’t Shaman Bond, who the hell is he?"

"There’s no easy way to say this," I said. "I’m a Drood, Jane. Eddie Drood, field agent, at your service. Only I’m not an agent for the family anymore. They made me rogue, so I’m on the run from everyone."

"I go to fight in the hell dimensions for one lousy month, and the whole world stops making sense while I’m gone." Janissary Jane studied me suspiciously. "You’re a Drood, Shaman? You? Bloody good disguise…Eddie. You two-faced little shit. Wait a minute; I’m still catching up here. You’re a rogue? What did you do?"

"I don’t know. But my family wants me dead. That’s why Archie came after me." I thought it best to keep the explanations simple for the moment. And I didn’t think I’d tell her that Archie had targeted her specifically just to get back at me. I could do that later. From a safe distance.

"At least you killed the bastard," Janissary Jane growled, running her hands over herself vaguely, as though checking for signs of recent interference. "I’ll bet you didn’t even take the time to torture him properly first, did you? No; I thought not. So, Eddie; why are we all here, who are all those sleeping beauties, and why are you hanging out with the infamous Molly Metcalf?"

"If I hear one more person use that word…" Molly said ominously.

"You mutilate a few cattle, abduct a few aliens, and you get a reputation…"

"Let us please not go there," I said quickly. "Jane, Molly and I are working together for the moment. On matters of mutual interest."

"Like what?" said Janissary Jane. "What could you two possibly have in common?"

"We’re going back to his old family home to take names and kick arse," Molly said happily. "And possibly burn the place to the ground while we’re at it."

"You’re not much of a one for keeping secrets, are you?" I said.

"You want to break into the Hall?" said Janissary Jane. "Better you than me. I’ve been to hell and back so many times they made me up a special visa, and I still wouldn’t go anywhere near the Hall. You couldn’t bust through their defences with a tactical nuke. The Chinese tried, in ’sixty-four."

"Nineteen sixty-five, actually," I said.

"Shut up, Eddie; I’m on a roll," said Janissary Jane. "The point is, the Hall has serious defences. A hundred different ways to kill your intruder, all of them quite spectacularly vicious and nasty."

"Indeed," I said. "Spot on, in fact."

"So what you need," said Janissary Jane, "is a skeleton key."

Molly and I looked at each other. "What?" I said.

"You need something to get you through the Hall’s defences without them kicking off on you. Something that’ll let you sneak through."

"No, hold everything," I said. "There’s no such thing. The whole point to my family’s many and varied protections is that there are no weak points, no possibilities for overrides. My family has spent generations designing and improving on their defences, including multiple redundancies and a quite appalling attention to increasingly nasty details. It has to be that way, or our enemies would have wiped us all out long ago. We have a lot of enemies."

And then I broke off as a new wave of pain shot through me. It stabbed through my shoulder as though I’d just been shot again, a pain so bad it made me cry out despite myself, and then it slammed down through the whole of my left side. It hurt so bad I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I staggered and would have fallen if Molly and Janissary Jane hadn’t been there to grab me from both sides.

"Shaman? What is it? Molly, what’s wrong with him?"

"Elf lord shot him with an arrow made of strange matter," said Molly.

"The stuff’s still in his system, poisoning him. Eddie, can you hear me? Eddie?"

"I’m all right," I said, or thought I said.

"Jesus, he looks bad," said Janissary Jane. "Should we get him to a healer? I know some good people, ask no questions…"

"It wouldn’t help," Molly said flatly.

"Oh," Janissary Jane said quietly. "Like that, is it?" And after a moment, she said, "Bloody elves. Vicious little turds. Okay, strange matter…Nasty stuff, yes; other dimensional…Really bad mojo, when you can get your hands on it, which mostly you can’t. Never dealt with the stuff myself, but I know a man who has. Word is, he can even supply it direct from the source on occasion."

I forced strength back into my legs until they straightened and could hold me up again, and then I forced my head up to look at Janissary Jane. "Who?" I said.

"I think you need to lie down, Shaman. I mean, Eddie."

"Haven’t got the time. I’ll lie down when I’m dead." I breathed deeply, fighting down the pain and pushing it away through sheer force of will. I gently eased my arms out of Molly’s and Janissary Jane’s grips, and they immediately stepped back to give me some room, keeping a watchful eye on me. I could feel cold sweat drying on my face, but my thoughts were clear again. "Jane, who do you know that knows about strange matter?"

"The Blue Fairy."

"What?" said Molly. "Him? The man’s a major-league piss artist! Never met a bottle of booze he didn’t like!"

"I saw him sober once," I said. "He looked awful."

Janissary Jane sighed loudly. "You of all people should know enough to look past the surface. You do know why he’s called the Blue Fairy, don’t you?"

"Well, yes," I said. "Because he’s gay."

"No! I mean, yes, he’s gay, but that’s not where the name originally came from. It’s because he’s half elf."

"Oh, come on!" said Molly. "Are we talking about the same guy? That useless little tit who’s always sponging drinks at the Wulfshead?"

"He can’t be half elf," I said. "Elves never breed outside their own kind. It’s their strongest taboo, utterly forbidden."

"There’s always a few who move to a different drummer," said Janissary Jane. "The elves have a special name for those who indulge outside the permitted gene pool. They call them perverts."

Molly smirked. "You mean they’re humosexuals?"

"Please," I said. "Let us not go there."

"The point," Janissary Jane said firmly, "is that the Blue Fairy has some elf abilities and even a few direct contacts within the Fae. I would be prepared to bet you good money that he was the one who supplied your elf lord with the strange matter to make his arrow. So he might be the man to go to for a cure. Certainly he knows more about strange matter than anyone else I know."

"All right," I said. I was feeling better, for the moment. "Any idea of where he’s hiding out at the moment? He left his old place after the unfortunate incident with the kobold in Leicester Square. Though what they ever saw in each other…"

"He moved around a lot after that," said Janissary Jane. "And he went downhill rapidly. He didn’t want any of his old friends to see what he’d been reduced to."

"Hell, we wouldn’t have cared," said Molly.

"No, you probably wouldn’t," said Janissary Jane. "But he did. The point is, I know where to find him. I throw him the odd commission, now and again, for old times’ sake. If you want, I can take you right to him."

"I want," I said. "But we can’t go gallivanting across London in plain sight, not while Manifest Destiny are after me. That’s who the sleeping beauties belong to, by the way."

"You’ve got them mad at you as well?" said Janissary Jane. "Good for you! You continue to rise in my estimation, Eddie. Can’t stand these amateur-night wannabe soldiers, in their pretty new uniforms. They give real mercenaries a bad name. Probably crap their pants and then run a mile if you dropped them into a real war zone, crying for their mommies all the way."

"Could we at least make an effort to stick to the subject?" I said just a little plaintively. "The point is, it’s not safe for Molly and me to travel openly across London, and she’s all out of spatial portals."

"Well, how did I get here?" Janissary Jane said reasonably. "How did the Manifest Destiny arseholes get here? They must have had transport, right?"

We all moved over to the shattered window and looked out. Down in the street below were three large black cars, parked in a row, that looked very familiar to me. I couldn’t help but grin.

"Perfect," said Molly. "Look, they even have tinted windows, so no one can see in! No one’s going to pay any attention to just another Manifest Destiny car out on patrol."

"All right," I said. "Let’s go and give the Blue Fairy his wake-up call."

Molly insisted we take a little time to leave a suitably insulting message for whoever came to retrieve the unconscious Manifest Destiny soldiers. So she and Janissary Jane pulled down all the soldiers’ trousers and underwear, commenting in loud and very unfair ways as they went along, and arranged the unconscious men in an erotic daisy chain. Then they stood back to admire their work and giggled a lot. Never let them give you to the women.

"I’d love to see them try to explain this to their superior officers when they turn up," Molly said happily, and Janissary Jane nodded solemnly.

While they were busy, I had my own ideas for a little useful mischief. I picked up Sebastian’s stylised Edwardian telephone and phoned home. As always, they picked up on the first ring, and a familiar voice answered. One I’d never expected to talk to again.

"Hello, Penny," I said. "Guess who?"

There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end, and then Penny’s well-trained professionalism quickly reasserted itself. "Hello, Eddie. Where are you calling from?"

"Trace the line," I said. "By the time you can get here, I’ll be long gone. But you’ll still find something interesting waiting for you here. Now put me through to the Matriarch."

"You know I can’t do that, Eddie. You’ve been officially declared rogue. I’m sure it’s all a terrible mistake. Tell me where you are, and I’ll send someone to pick you up."

"I want to talk to the Matriarch."

"She doesn’t want to talk to you, Eddie."

"Of course she does. That’s why she’s listening in right now. Talk to me, Grandmother, and I’ll tell you about Sebastian."

"I’m here, Edwin," said Martha Drood. I could hear the difference on the line as she went to secure mode. She knew we were about to discuss things that Penny wasn’t cleared to know. Even though Penny was officially cleared to know everything.

"Hello, Grandmother," I said, after a pause. We both sounded so very civilised, as though this was just a little family tiff, nothing that couldn’t be settled over a nice cup of tea. "How does it feel, Martha, to be talking to a dead man? How did it feel to order the death of your own grandson?"

"The family comes first, Edwin; you know that." The Matriarch’s voice was calm and even. "I will always do what is necessary to protect the family. All you had to do was die; and you couldn’t even get that right, could you?"

"I would have died for you, for the family," I said, holding the phone so tightly my hand hurt. "If you’d given me a good reason, if you’d just trusted me enough to explain. I love the family, in my own way. But not anymore. You made me rogue, so rogue I’ll be."

"Why did you call, Edwin? What do you want?"

"To tell you about Sebastian. Who is currently very unconscious in his flat. If you were to send some people here, they could collect him while he’s helpless. And then you wouldn’t have to worry about all those information parcels he’s been holding over your heads. You see, my war is with you, Grandmother. Not with the family."

"I am the family. I am the Matriarch."

"Not for much longer," I said. "I’ve been digging up all your nasty little secrets, and I’m really very angry with you, Grandmother. For what’s been done in the family name. I’m coming home, and not as the prodigal son. I’m coming home for the truth, even if I have to tear the family apart to get it. See you soon, Grandmother."

I hung up, and then just stood there for a moment. My hands were shaking. If I hadn’t already known I was dying, I’d probably have been scared. I looked around for Molly and Janissary Jane. They’d only just remembered to go through the pile of discarded trousers, looking for car keys.

"Time to get moving, ladies. The family will be here soon."

"Okay," said Molly. "I think we’ve done about as much damage here as we can."

Janissary Jane drove the big black car through the streets of London because she knew the way, and because she had the car keys and refused to give them up. Molly sat in the backseat with me, arms tightly folded, sulking. She was never comfortable unless she was in charge. Janissary Jane drove far too fast and manoeuvred aggressively at all times, to keep our cover, she said, but finally we arrived at Wimbledon, still in one piece. Most people associate the name only with tennis, but these days the area is eighty percent immigrant population and a thriving small-business community. Brightly coloured posters in the shop windows advertised unusual goods in Hindi and Urdu, and here and there blue-skinned nautch dancers gyrated down the street to electric sitar music. Our black car with its impenetrable tinted windows drew many cool and thoughtful glances as we glided smoothly through the narrow streets. Eventually Janissary Jane drew up outside a hole-in-the-wall liquor store, the kind of place that’s always open, twenty-four hours a day, and there’s always a sale going on. We got out of the car, and Molly and I looked inquiringly at Janissary Jane.

"The Blue Fairy has a studio apartment here, above the store," she said. "Brace yourselves. He’s not very house proud these days. And we’ll have to go through the shop to get to the flat, so remember, we’re here to see Mr. Blue."

"Why…here?" I said.

"Would you look for him here?" said Janissary Jane, and I had to nod. She had a point.

Janissary Jane led the way into the liquor store. The walls were stacked from floor to ceiling with every kind of booze under the sun, many of them boasting labels I didn’t even recognise. The middle-aged Pakistani behind the counter greeted us cheerfully, nodding quickly when he heard we were here to see Mr. Blue.

"Of course, indeed. Hello again, Miss Jane; it is very good to see you again. Mr. Blue is indeed upstairs and at home; you go right up. He is resting, I believe, and a bit under the weather. I am sure it will do him good to have some friendly company."

He showed us through to the back, still smiling. We ascended some dimly lit stairs to the next floor and found a door with the right name next to a bell push. The door was standing slightly ajar. Not a good sign. I drew my Colt Repeater, Janissary Jane drew her two punch daggers, and Molly made her witch knife appear out of nowhere. I gestured for Janissary Jane and Molly to stick behind me. They ignored me, pressing silently forward, and I sighed inwardly. Janissary Jane pushed the door slowly open. It didn’t make a sound. The room beyond was dark and shadowy, even though it was still afternoon. We slipped inside one at a time, prepared for the worst, but nothing could have prepared us for what we encountered.

The room was a mess. A real mess. The kind of mess you have to work at. My first thought was that the sitting room had been turned over by professionals looking for something, but it quickly became clear that no self-respecting professional agent would sully his hands on the general filth of this place. Grime and slime fought it out for most of the surfaces, what could be seen of the carpet was stained a dozen colours, and junk and debris formed a layer on the floor so thick we had to kick our way through it. Old clothes had piled up in the corner, perhaps for washing but more likely for burning, and takeaway food cartons clung stickily to each other. Something crunched wetly under my foot, and I really hoped it was just a cockroach. The curtains weren’t drawn, but the window glass was so thickly smeared with filth that the afternoon light had to fight its way through.

Empty bottles stood on every surface, mostly of India Pale Ale and Bombay Gin. There were pill bottles, and not the kind you get on prescription. Crinkled tinfoil, for chasing the dragon. And half a dozen syringes, with a cigarette lighter standing by to sterilize the needles. The only thing left after this was drinking mentholated spirits straight from the bottle in a cardboard box on the Charing Cross Embankment. Assuming the Blue Fairy lived that long.

We moved around the room as quietly as we could. No sign of any bad guys, and I was beginning to wonder if we were looking for a corpse rather than a person. I pushed open the bedroom door, and there was the Blue Fairy, lying facedown on his bed. Snoring gently and making mouth noises in his sleep. We all relaxed a little and put away our weapons. The Blue Fairy was wearing nothing but a pair of boxers well past their sell-by date and a charm bracelet around his left ankle. Janissary Jane and Molly and I had a brief but animated discussion over who was going to have to actually touch him long enough to turn him over. We played a few quick games of paper scissors rock, and I lost. I still think they cheated somehow. I took a firm hold on the Blue Fairy’s surprisingly hairy shoulder, turned him over, and yelled his name right into his face. I then backed quickly away as he sat bolt upright in bed, hacking and coughing.

"All right, all right, I’m awake! Lay off the rough stuff; I’m delicate. Especially first thing in the morning."

"It’s afternoon," I said.

"To you, maybe. For me it’s the beginning of a new day and I really wish it wasn’t. You’ll have to excuse me. The old gray matter is never at its best first thing, at least until I’ve had a few cups of coffee and a ciggie. Now, who are you, what are you, and why are you persecuting a poor fairy at this ungodly hour? I didn’t order out again, did I? I could have sworn the escort agency said my credit wasn’t any good any more, the bastards."

He squeezed his eyes shut, coughed up half a lung, and then stared at me blearily. His eyes widened as he finally got a good look at me, and then he scooted back across the crumpled bedsheets, holding up his hands defensively, until he crashed into the headboard and couldn’t go any farther. He tried to smile but couldn’t pull it off convincingly.

"Eddie! It’s you! If I’d known you were coming, I’d have tidied up a bit, made a bit of an effort…Help yourself to anything you like, make yourself at home…Oh, God, Eddie, don’t kill me, please! I’m no threat to you!"

"Interesting," I said. "You should only know me as Shaman Bond. But you know my real name. How is that, Blue?"

"I can see your torc," he said, blinking rapidly. "I’m half elf, you know. Of course you know. You Droods know everything. And I have been known to do the odd job for your family, on occasion. I have to. They give me money. Don’t kill me, Eddie, please. They made me do it!"

"All right, Eddie, lay off him," said Janissary Jane, moving forward to stand beside me. "Hello, Blue. It’s me, Jane. You’ve got yourself into some real trouble this time, haven’t you? Even I may not be able to get you out of this one. What exactly did you do for the Droods that you’re so ashamed of?"

"Ah, Jane," said the Blue Fairy, calming down a little. "And Molly too. How nice. Welcome to my humble abode. Excuse the mess, but I live here. And I just can’t seem to work up the enthusiasm to give a damn anymore. Terribly lax of me, I know, but that’s life these days. My life, anyway. Still, I’m glad you’re here. If one is about to die horribly, it is marginally better to do it in the company of one’s friends. Could you perhaps persuade your friend the assassin to let me put some clothes on? I really would prefer not to meet my maker wearing just my underwear."

"Get dressed," I said, amused despite myself. "I’m not here to kill you, Blue. Just ask you some questions."

"Wait till you hear the answers," said the Blue Fairy.

We all backed away from the bed, and he levered himself up off the slumping mattress and pulled on a battered old silk wrap. He ran his hands through his thinning hair, took a cigarette from the pack by the bed, lit it with a fingertip, and took a deep drag. He then had another long coughing fit, accompanied by really horrible noises, and sat down on the bed again, his face gray and sweaty. He was carrying too much weight, pronounced in the jowls and puffy cheeks. His face had an unhealthy sheen, and his eyes were seriously bloodshot. The word was, he’d been quite a dandy in his time, back in the heady days of glam rock, but he hadn’t aged well. The Blue Fairy had lived not wisely but too well, and it showed. He might have been a personage to be reckoned with once, but that was long ago. Still, if he really had done half the things he was supposed to have done, in and out of bed, it was a wonder he was still here at all. Presumably even half elves are very hard to kill.

"God, you’re a mess, Blue," said Janissary Jane. "You look worse than your room, and that’s saying something."

"I know, I know," said Blue, drawing on his cigarette again and stifling another coughing fit through sheer effort of will. "Think of me as a work in progress. I keep hoping that if I drink enough, or ingest enough things that are bad for me, I won’t have to wake up again to this awful room, this awful life. This hole that I dug for myself, this burrow I have crawled into…But I always do. It’s hard to kill an elf, even when he’s cooperating as hard as he can. Even a half elf. Bless dear old Daddy and his rampant gonads."

"For someone so determined to die, you seemed very concerned about me being here to kill you," I said.

"I would prefer to go with some dignity," said the Blue Fairy. "Not kicking and screaming all the way, as you reduce me to small bloody pieces. I know how you Droods operate."

"But why do you want to die at all?" said Molly. "If you don’t like your life, change it, turn it around. There’s still time."

The Blue Fairy smiled fondly at her. "Ah, there speaks the innocence and optimism of youth. When life still seems full of promise and possibilities. But no one loves a fairy when he’s fifty. They want their magic from a younger bit of stuff. And my magic, sad to say, is not what it was. It faded, along with my good looks…which were magnificent, once upon a time. I was invited to all the very best parties, you know. Mixed with all the celebs, had my face in the glossies every week…But alas, we half elves bloom early and fade fast. Daddy dearest’s energies were never meant to be contained in a mostly human form. The candle that burns twice as fast…turns out not to be much of a bargain, in the end.

"Now I’m no longer good-looking enough to hang on to all the pretty boys and pretty things that alone make life worth living. Sweet young things do still turn up in my bed, but only when I pay them. And the fortunes I once had, that I thought would last forever, are gone, long gone. On this…and that. I never worried about money until I didn’t have it any more. Which is why I have to take whatever work I can get these days. Even the jobs I know will come back to haunt me afterwards."

"What have you done, Blue?" I said.

He looked at me pleadingly. "I didn’t have any choice. One of your people turned up here quite unexpectedly. I didn’t think the Droods even knew I existed anymore, let alone where to find me. But he had work for me, and the money was good. Very good. And the threat behind it was very real. You don’t say no to a Drood. And since all he wanted was a little strange matter…I didn’t see the harm. Acquiring unusual objects from other dimensions is one of the few things I’m still good at. It’s in the genes, you see. I got some strange matter for your family’s Armourer once, some years back, and it must have been on file somewhere, because when they wanted some more they came to me."

"Who did they send?" I said.

"Matthew," said the Blue Fairy. "They always send Matthew when they’re not prepared to take ‘Go to hell’ for an answer."

"Of course," I said. "It would have to be Matthew. He’d do anything for the family. Go on, Blue."

The Blue Fairy blinked nervously at me, picking up on the coldness in my voice. He stubbed out the last inch of his cigarette on the bedside table and tried to sit up straight, clasping his hands together in his lap so they wouldn’t shake.

"Well," he said, "I went fishing. That’s what I do. Drop a line into the other realms and see what I can hook. Strange matter isn’t easy to find. I call it that because I haven’t a clue what it is, or what it’s for. It’s organic…maybe alive, maybe not, and it has some…quite unique properties. Fishing the dimensions can be very dangerous, you know. You never can tell when you’ll hook something big and nasty by mistake, and then up it comes through the planes, mad as hell and looking for revenge…But I got Matthew what he wanted, and he paid me in cash right there on the spot. Good money. Far too much, for someone in my reduced circumstances. That was when I started to get suspicious. But I didn’t do anything. I had new booze to drink and new drugs to take, and…he was a Drood, after all. You don’t mess with the Droods. Then I heard you’d been ambushed by an elf lord with an arrow made of strange matter and hired by the Droods…and I knew. I felt bad, Eddie; really I did. I’ve always known you were a Drood; you can’t hide a torc from elf eyes. And we’d had some good times together, in the old Wulfshead…You bought me drinks and listened to me talk, and you never laughed at me. So after I heard…what had happened…I waited for you to come looking for me. And here you are. But you’re not here to kill me, are you? You want something."

"The strange matter’s still in my body," I said. "And it’s killing me. Can you get me a cure?"

"No," said the Blue Fairy, meeting my eyes steadily. "It doesn’t work that way. I need to know exactly what I’m looking for when I go fishing, or I can’t find it. And I don’t know nearly enough about strange matter to have any idea of what its counterpart might be. I’m sorry, Eddie; really I am. I didn’t know what they were going to do!"

"Would it have made any difference if you had?" I said.

"Probably not," he admitted. "It was very good money."

"How would you like a chance to redeem yourself?" said Molly. "How would you like to go fishing for something for us?"

"What did you have in mind?" said the Blue Fairy.

"We need a skeleton key, to get us past the Hall’s defences," I said.

"Is there such a thing?"

He smiled suddenly. "Oh, yes. There is…I’ve waited years for someone to come and ask me. It’s really very simple. Quite elegant, actually. But are you sure you want to do this, Eddie? Once word gets out that the Drood’s defences have been breached…"

"Let it," I said. "Let the whole family crash and burn, if that’s what it takes to get to the truth."

We went out into the next room. The Blue Fairy dug through a pile of debris and came up with a very ordinary-looking fishing rod and reel. The kind of thing people use when they go fishing for recreation rather than competitive sport. The Blue Fairy then produced a knife out of nowhere, pulled up the left sleeve of his dressing gown, and made a shallow incision just above the wrist. I could see a whole series of scars reaching up his arm to the elbow, some old and some not, from where he’d done this before. Golden blood welled up from the cut, and he held his arm out over the space he’d cleared on the floor before him. The blood dripped down to form a golden pool. When it was about three or four inches in diameter, the Blue Fairy pressed his fingers against the cut and muttered under his breath, and the wound healed over immediately, leaving just another scar on his arm.

The Blue Fairy pulled his sleeve down again, not looking at the three of us watching, and snapped out half a dozen words in Old Elvish. I caught some of it, but his accent was unfamiliar. The pool on the floor blazed suddenly with a golden light and spread out on the floor until it was almost a yard in diameter. It didn’t look like a pool of liquid anymore. Looking into it was like staring into a deep well that just kept getting deeper the longer you looked. I felt like I was off balance and might fall. I grabbed Molly’s arm for support just as she grabbed mine. We both smiled at each other a little shamefacedly. Janissary Jane didn’t look into the pool. She kept all her attention on the Blue Fairy. And she had both her punch daggers at the ready.

The Blue Fairy took up his fishing rod, checked the hook was secure and the line was running smoothly, and then dropped his line into the glowing golden pool. The hook disappeared, followed by more and more line as the Blue Fairy kept feeding it in.

"How far down does it go?" said Molly.

"All the way," said the Blue Fairy.

"Some questions, you just know you’re not going to get an answer that helps," said Molly.

"Elf blood has many useful properties," the Blue Fairy said calmly.

"Even diluted, degraded blood like mine. All elves have an built-in talent for travelling. They can walk sideways from the sun, access other planes of existence, enter dimensions you and even I couldn’t even conceive, let alone operate in. But the blood itself is enough to open doors and allow me to go fishing. Sometimes just for the fun of it, fishing at random for whatever’s there…sometimes to order, for a price. If I concentrate hard enough, I can find pretty much anything…and what you need, Eddie, is a Confusulum."

"A what?" I said.

"A Confusulum," the Blue Fairy said patiently. "Don’t ask me what it is is, because I’ve no idea. That’s the point. It doesn’t actually change anything, just confuses the hell out of everyone. It works on the uncertainty principle that nothing is necessarily what or where it seems to be. I found the first one years ago, quite by accident, and it scared the crap out of me. Everyone needs some certainties in their life. I threw it back in, but something about it stuck in my mind. The Droods’ family defences are based around certainties: friend or foe, permitted entry or not, that sort of thing. But the Confusulum will take all those certainties out of the equation. The Hall’s defences will be so confused they won’t know whether they’re operating or not, whether you’re permitted entry or not, even whether you’re actually there or not. They’ll be so confused you’ll be able to walk right through them while they’re still struggling to make up their minds. By the time anyone at the Hall notices that their defences have just had a major nervous breakdown, you’ll be in.

"The Confusulum isn’t one hundred percent guaranteed; its uncertainty even applies to its own nature. So there’s no telling exactly what its effects will be or how long they’ll last. But since I’m the only one ever to encounter a Confusulum, you can be sure your family have no specific defences against it."

He fished randomly for a while, just getting himself in the mood, and Molly and Jane and I sat more or less patiently around the golden pool, watching. I was having trouble getting used to the idea that I could be going home so soon, and that my family’s notorious protections could be brushed aside so easily. And all because of a little man nursing a grudge and just waiting to be asked.

The first thing he pulled out of the pool was a seven-league boot with a hole in its soul, followed by a small black lacquered puzzle box, a stuffed moomintroll, and a statue of a black bird. The Blue Fairy threw them all back, and then stared into the pool with a look of fierce concentration on his face. His eyes bulged, and his lips drew back from his gritted teeth in a fixed snarl. Beads of sweat popped out all over his straining face. His line jerked suddenly, sending slow ripples across the surface of the glowing pool. The Blue Fairy let out a long breath and began to slowly reel his line back in. He took his time, keeping a light but constant pressure on the line, staring so intently he wasn’t even breathing anymore. And finally he brought something up out of the golden pool.

I couldn’t tell you what it was, exactly. It clung to the hook, writhing and twisting like a living thing, even though I knew on some deep instinctive level that it wasn’t alive and never could be. It changed size and colour, shape and texture, from moment to moment, its dimensions snapping in and out and back and forth. It looked like all the things you see out of the corners of your eyes when you’ve just woken up and you’re still half asleep.

"Quick!" said the Blue Fairy, his face contorted with concentration.

"I brought it here for you, Eddie, so it’s up to you to give it a shape in this dimension. Impose a single nature on it, so it can survive here. The link you make will mean it will serve you and only you. But do it quickly, before it becomes something we can’t bear to see with only human eyes."

I concentrated on the first image that came to me. It just popped into my mind: a simple circular badge I’d seen in an old head shop in Denmark Street years ago, a white badge bearing the legend Go Lemmings Go. And just like that, the twisting unnerving thing on the hook was gone and the badge was resting on the palm of my hand. It looked and felt perfectly normal, perfectly innocent. I pinned it carefully on the lapel of my jacket.

"All the things you could have chosen," said Molly. "Everything from Excalibur to the Holy Hand Grenade of Saint Antioch, and you had to choose that. The workings of your mind remain a complete mystery to me, Eddie."

"That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me," I said, and we both smiled.

"By any chance, are the two of you an item?" Janissary Jane said suddenly.

"We haven’t decided yet," I said.

"We’re still working on it," said Molly.

"We’re…partners, on this particular enterprise."

"Partners in crime."

"Or possibly a suicide pact."

"You two deserve each other," said Janissary Jane, shaking her head.

None of us had noticed that the Blue Fairy had inadvertently allowed his line to drop back into the glowing pool. He cried out abruptly as something below grabbed the hook and tugged hard on the line. The Blue Fairy was almost pulled forward, and the line whirred through the reel until it ran all the way. The Blue Fairy was jerked forward again but hung on grimly.

"What have you got?" I said. "What were you concentrating on?"

"I wasn’t thinking about anything! I didn’t catch this; it caught me!"

I hit the button on my reverse watch, and nothing happened. I hit the button again, and still nothing. I shook my wrist vigorously.

"Oh, shit," I said.

"It sounds so much more helpless when he says it," said Janissary Jane.

"He’s had a lot of practice recently," said Molly. "What’s wrong, Eddie?"

"I appear to have broken the reverse watch," I said. "Or exhausted its batteries, or whatever the hell the damn thing runs on. I think I asked too much of it when I forced it to save you."

"So it’s my fault?" said Molly.

"Always," I said, smiling.

We all looked on as the Blue Fairy wrestled with the fishing rod, the taut line jerking back and forth across the pool. It snapped abruptly, and the Blue Fairy stumbled back. And something huge and long and inhumanly strong burst up out of the golden pool, reaching for him. It was a single tentacle, dark purple in colour and lined with rows of suckers full of grinding teeth. More and more of it burst up out of the pool, snapping back and forth.

"Get out of here!" yelled the Blue Fairy. "I’ll handle this!"

"Don’t be a damned fool!" Janissary Jane yelled back at him. "You can’t handle this on your own!"

"It came through my blood," the Blue Fairy said grimly. "So only I can put it back down. Go. You’ve got things to do. Things that matter. This…is my business. No damned thing from the vasty deeps is going to get the better of me in my own home! Will you all please get the hell out of here, so I can concentrate? And Eddie, make your family pay! For what they did to you, and what they did to me."

More and more of the tentacle was forcing its way into the room, yards and yards of it, straining against the edges of the pool that contained it. The Blue Fairy threw his fishing rod aside and sketched ancient signs and sigils on the air with dancing hands, leaving bright incandescent trails on the air. He was chanting in Elvish in a form so old I couldn’t follow one word in ten. Magic spat and crackled all around him, and for the first time, he was smiling. A cold, inhuman smile.

Molly and Janissary Jane and I left him there, standing on the edge of the golden pool, defying the monstrous thing that had come fishing for him. I left him there, because I had important things to do, and because…it was the only gift I could give him, for his help. A chance to stand alone against a fearsome foe and either win back his pride…or gain the good death he craved. I looked back at him, one last time, before I closed the door. He stood tall and proud and powerful in his magic; and for the first time it wasn’t difficult at all to see the elf in him.