“Perhaps you should tell him that,” said Valentin. “That you understand he doesn’t need you. Offer him a friend, rather than a protector.”
“I don’t know,” repeated Frankenstein. “The prudent thing to do is leave him alone. There are bigger things at stake than hurt feelings.”
“Honourable,” said Valentin, and smiled thinly. “Stupid, but honourable. If the world ends, what will prudence have mattered? All it will have gained you is months of uncertainty and unhappiness.”
Frankenstein grimaced. “You’ve made your point,” he said. “And I really don’t want to talk about this any more. You’re never going to tell anyone where Larissa is, are you?”
Valentin shook his head. “She asked me not to. And I won’t betray her, not after France. She could have let me die, but she didn’t.”
The monster smiled. “Of course, we only have your word for what she said that night,” he said. “For all we know, she specifically asked you to tell everyone where she went.”
“True,” said the vampire. “Is that what you think she said?”
Frankenstein shook his head. “No,” he said. “I think she wanted to disappear, I think she asked for your help, and I don’t think you agreed because you were grateful for France. I think you agreed because you knew it would cause trouble. Although I suppose I can’t prove that either, can I?”
“If that was the case,” said Valentin, “the person I would have known it would cause the most trouble for, the person it would upset the most, is Jamie Carpenter, whom I rather like. In the scenario you describe, my options would have been to either refuse to help someone to whom I owed my life, or do something that would cause pain to someone I respect. Can I assume that even you might find such a decision unpleasant?”
“You did cause Jamie pain,” said Frankenstein. “Just as you caused it to yourself.”
“How so?” asked Valentin, his eyes narrowing.
“When was the last time Jamie came down here to seek your counsel?” he asked. “It seems that I’m not the only person he’s withdrawn from.”
A smile rose on to Valentin’s narrow face. “Clever, my friend,” he said. “And you are quite right, he does seem to have rather tired of my company. I imagine that makes you feel delightfully warm and happy?”
“No,” said Frankenstein, his voice low. “It doesn’t. I would rather he was talking to you than not talking to anyone.”
“How flattering to be considered better than nothing,” said Valentin.
“Tell me something,” said Frankenstein, ignoring the vampire’s rebuke. “Do you think Larissa is ever coming back?”
Valentin shrugged. “I honestly have no idea,” he said. “But I’ll ask you a question in return. Would you voluntarily throw yourself into this maelstrom?”
“I did,” said the monster, a crooked smile on his face. “So did you.”
“Correct,” said the vampire. “And look where it got us.”
“In which case, let me ask you something else,” said Frankenstein. “How do you think all this is going to end?”
Valentin smiled widely. “Badly,” he said. “More tea?”
Jamie watched Kate walk into the officers’ mess and smiled as she stopped to talk to a table full of Operators near the door. It had only been thirty-six hours since he had sat beside her in the Zero Hour briefing, but he was genuinely struggling to remember when they had last spent time in each other’s company, for no other reason than that they wanted to.
On the other side of the room, Kate laughed loudly at something, and was joined by the men and women sitting at the table. Jamie recognised Mark Schneider and Carrie Burgess, two of the NS9 Operators who had been brought to the Loop by Larissa, what now seemed an impossibly long time ago, and his smile widened. It was good to see Kate chatting happily with her colleagues; there had been a time, barely six months earlier, when she would have struggled to find more than a handful of people in the entire Loop who were willing to speak to her – Kate’s involvement in the ISAT investigation and her widely perceived status as Paul Turner’s favourite had alienated much of the Department. Now, with Turner promoted and Kate reporting to Angela, Jamie assumed things were getting easier for her, and was glad.
“Hey,” she said, arriving at his table and smiling at him. “How’s it going, Jamie?”
“All right,” he said, and gestured at the empty seat opposite him. “Aren’t you sitting down?”
“Not till I’ve been to the bar,” said Kate. “I need a beer. Urgently. You?”
“Sure. Cheers.”
Kate nodded and set off towards the bar that ran along one side of the wide room. The Loop, in its current form, was barely thirty years old; it had been almost entirely rebuilt after a research trip Jamie’s father had made to Nevada in the 1980s, borrowing heavily from the American designs. The officers’ mess, however, had been transplanted intact from the first building it had occupied, one of the cluster of wooden huts and bunkhouses that had been erected under the watchful eyes of the Blacklight founders. The ceilings and walls were panelled with dark wood, the floor was hidden beneath an ancient purple carpet that was now noticeably threadbare, and the furniture that filled the room had been acquired over the course of more than a hundred and twenty years; there were leather sofas and armchairs, like the one that Jamie was now sitting in, alongside wooden benches and velvet chaises longues and clusters of plastic chairs that looked like they had been smuggled out of the Ops Room. Nothing matched, and there was no discernible pattern to anything, giving the place a chaotic charm.
Kate returned and placed four bottles of beer on the table between them.
“Thirsty?” asked Jamie.
Kate shrugged. “No sense in getting up more often than necessary.”
“The motto of alcoholics everywhere,” said Jamie.
Kate flipped him a lightning-fast V-sign. Jamie grinned, and picked up one of the bottles; she did the same, and clinked hers against his.
“Cheers,” he said.
“Cheers.”
Jamie took a long swig and set the bottle down.
“How was last night?” asked Kate. “Patrol Respond, right?”
“Bit of a strange one,” said Jamie. “I submitted a report.”
“I haven’t seen it,” said Kate. “What happened?”
Jamie took another drink, and launched into the story of his encounter with the Night Stalkers. His friend listened in silence, sipping steadily from her beer, her expression shifting from professional curiosity to genuine intrigue as the tale progressed.
“Jesus,” she said, when he was finished. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” said Jamie. “Two litres of blood healed the bullet holes.”
“Don’t try and be all cool about it,” said Kate. “You got shot. I don’t care if you’re a vampire or not, it’s still a big deal.”
“I know that,” he said. “I do.”
“I hope so,” said Kate. “I worry enough without you starting to think you’re invulnerable.”
“You worry about me?”
Kate frowned. “Obviously. Why wouldn’t I?”
“You don’t have to,” said Jamie. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I can look after myself.”
“Right,” said Kate. “The Fallen Gallery is full of people who thought exactly the same thing.”
For several minutes, they drank in silence. Jamie was slightly surprised to see that his bottle was almost empty; he could feel faint, fuzzy warmth in the pit of his stomach.
“Do you ever think about after?” he said, eventually.
Kate picked up her second bottle. “After what?”
Jamie looked around the mess. “This,” he said. “After all this. Assuming we win, and that we don’t die in the process, do you ever think about what you’ll do afterwards?”
Kate smiled. “You’re assuming I don’t see myself as career Operator.”