“Never get attached to possessions,” Molly said briskly. “They’re just things, and you can always get more things.”
“You don’t have a sentimental bone in your body, do you?”
“If I did, I’d have it surgically removed. I’m always moving on, and I never look back.”
“Well, yes,” I said. “But you live in a forest. What would you take back to the Hall? Your favourite tree?”
“You forget, Eddie, I’m a witch. I might decide to bring the whole forest with me.”
I decided to change the subject, before she set her heart on the idea. You never can tell with witches.
“So,” I said, as casually as I could manage. “How are you getting on with the family? Everyone treating you all right? What do you think of the mighty and mystical Droods, now that you’ve had a chance to see us up close and personal?”
“Hard to tell,” said Molly. The music had stopped, I’d slowed the car, and it suddenly seemed very quiet in the Bentley. Molly produced a small silver snuffbox out of midair, snorted a pinch of something green and glowing, sneezed messily, and made the box disappear again. “Most of your family aren’t talking to me. Either because they think I led you astray, or because I’ve thwarted so many of your family’s plans in the past…It’s not like I killed that many of your people…They need to get over it, and move on. That was then, this is now. All right, so I used to practice the black arts, spread insurrection, mutilate aliens, and abduct cattle; I was young! I needed to get things out of my system! That’s no reason to run screaming when I just try to talk to people.”
“They don’t know you like I do,” I said reassuringly. “Haven’t you made any friends?”
“Your uncle Jack’s okay,” Molly said reluctantly. “But he’s always busy in the Armoury. And Jacob’s good company. For a ghost. And a dirty old man. But apart from them, it’s all been cold shoulders and nasty, pointed comments just in range of my hearing. A few were really quite unpleasant.”
I took my eyes off the road just long enough to give her a really serious stare. “Please tell me you didn’t kill them.”
“Of course not! I turned them into things.”
“What sort of… things?”
Molly smiled sweetly. “Remember those pheasants we had last week, that you noted were out of season?”
I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles went white. “Oh my God. You didn’t…”
“Of course I didn’t! Lighten up, Eddie! You can be so gullible sometimes. I just turned them all into toads and dumped them in the rock gardens for a while, to let them think things over. They’re fine now. Except for a slight tendency to snap at passing flies.”
I sighed heavily. It seemed to me that I’d been doing that a lot more since Molly came into my life.
“If it helps, most of the family haven’t exactly warmed to me, either,” I admitted.
“They respect you,” said Molly.
“Only because they’re afraid of me. I destroyed their precious Heart, source of their wonderful golden armour. The one thing that made them better than everyone else. I proved the Heart was evil and the armour was an abomination, but they hate me even more for making them face the truth. That we’re not the good guys, and haven’t been for centuries. On top of which, they’re all feeling helpless and vulnerable without their armour, defenceless in the face of the family’s many enemies.”
“You promised them new silver torcs, new armour. Everyone applauded, and cheered you! They did. I was there.”
“The enthusiasm of the moment…No, if I’m going to lead the family, I have to do it from the front. I have to inspire them to be great again. Have to prove myself with action, not just words and good intentions. Prove myself worthy to lead the family.”
“Prove it to your family?” said Molly. “Or to yourself?”
My nice little flat was in Knightsbridge, a very calm and quiet and civilised area, where no one knew who I was, or what I did. They only knew me as Shaman Bond, a man of independent means who kept himself to himself, was never any trouble, and always remembered to put his garbage out on the proper day. So as I drew nearer to my quiet and secluded residential area, it came as something of a surprise to me to see so many people out and about in the streets who didn’t belong there. I spotted spies and agents from a dozen different countries and organisations, all busily pretending to be perfectly ordinary people going about their perfectly ordinary business. But you can’t fool a Drood.
I slowed the car and took a closer look. The signs were not good. Every approach to my flat had been covered by people who shouldn’t even have known where it was. Word does get around fast in the intelligence community. So I couldn’t just drive up to my flat and park. All kinds of unpleasantness might ensue. I needed to be able to slip into my old place, gather up a few belongings, and get the hell out again, without anyone even knowing I’d ever been there.
I pulled the car to the side of the road, some distance short of my flat, and stopped. Molly looked at me inquiringly. I quietly pointed out several of the enemy, prevented her from launching an immediate preemptive strike, and persuaded her to sit quietly while I examined the scene more fully, using the Sight. Just like my old collar, my new silver torc allowed me to See much more of the world as it really was, rather than through humanity’s limited senses. The world is a much bigger place than most people realise, full of the strange and the terrible, walking unseen and unsuspected alongside us.
There were a couple of elves, tall and proud and haughty. They live somewhere else now, and only ever turn up in our world when there’s a good chance to screw us over or kick us when we’re down. It’s all they’ve got left, these days. There were aliens; grays and lizardoids and a few things whose shapes made no sense at all. They really do walk among us. Tourists, mostly. If they look like getting out of hand, the family usually just spanks them and sends them home. Ghosts drifted here and there, trapped in repeating loops of time. And there were things walking through walls, or scrambling up them, or hovering in the skies overhead. Far too many of them for it all to be just a coincidence. Word does get around fast in the unnatural community.
I shut down my Sight. You can’t See the world as it really is for too long; the human mind just isn’t equipped to cope. Luckily, none of them could See me, as long as I wore the torc. They had to wait for me to reveal myself… I grinned. It was time to use one of the Bentley’s really special features.
“Eddie, what are you planning?” said Molly.
I smiled at her beatifically. “Brace yourself, sweetie. I’m taking this car up to eleven!”
I pushed the pedal to the floor, let go the clutch, and the Bentley surged forward, its engine howling like a wolf on the hunt. We shot past the hundred mark in a few seconds as I slammed through the gears, and then I hit the hidden switch and threw her into Overdrive. Molly and I were forced back into our seats by the terrible acceleration, and the world blurred around us as we left it behind. The Bentley punched through the walls of the world, and just like that we were somewhere else.
Freed from the everyday restrictions of time and space, the Bentley tore through the dimensions, day and night flickering on and off like a stroboscope. Stars blazed in somewhere else’s night skies, in constellations never seen from Earth. There were strange sounds and incandescent lights, and a city singing in a million inhuman voices. Visions and vistas flickered on and off as we shot through them like a bullet, intangible and unsubstantial, though whether they were the ghosts or we were is probably just a matter of opinion. Molly shrieked and howled with delight, and only the need to concentrate on the steering kept me from joining in. Drunk on speed, crazed on velocity, we hammered through the dimensions until I saw the sign I was looking for and took a sharp right turn back into our reality.