“I could have taken him,” Isabella said suddenly.
“We could have taken him,” said Molly.
“You want to go back in and try?” I said. “I’ll hold your coats.”
“Not right now,” said Isabella.
“Maybe later,” said Molly. “There were an awful lot of them, weren’t there?”
“I counted three Hands of Glory, several death charms and something that looked very like a monkey’s paw,” I said. “Drood armour’s good, but it does have its limits.”
“If we hadn’t been there,” Molly said slowly, “and if you hadn’t had to worry about us, would you have fought them anyway, and to hell with the consequences?”
“No,” I said. “The important thing was to get out of there alive with the information we gathered. My family doesn’t know anything about this, and they need to know. I’m more concerned about you now. They’ve seen your faces; they know who you are. They’ll never stop coming after you. I think you both need to come back to Drood Hall with me. You’ll be safe there. My family doesn’t take any shit from jumped-up Devil worshippers.”
“Put myself in the hands of the Droods?” said Isabella. “I don’t think so!”
“Then what will you do?” said Molly.
“I have my own leads to follow,” said Isabella. “This was my case, and my business, long before you stuck your noses in.”
“And if they do come after you?” I said.
Isabella smiled briefly. “I could always go spend some time with Louisa.”
She strode off down the street, head held high, not looking back. People moved quickly to get out of her way.
“Well,” said Molly. “That was . . . interesting. Whose great idea was this, anyway?”
“Yours,” I said.
“Why do you listen to me?” said Molly. “I wouldn’t.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Too Many Secrets for One Family
Back at Drood Hall, I walked into the Sanctity to find the ruling council already assembled and waiting for me. Somehow, I’m always the last to arrive. I’d like to take the credit and say I do it deliberately, so I can make a big entrance and be sure everybody’s attention is fixed on me . . . but the truth is that no matter how hard I try, they’re always there first. I sometimes think they must all get together secretly beforehand and agree to actually start the meeting ten minutes earlier, so they can all look at me disapprovingly for being late again. But, truth be told, I’m always late. For everything. It’s a gift.
And these days nobody glares at me too much when I walk in late with Molly Metcalf on my arm, because Molly glares right back at them. And it’s never a good idea to upset someone who can turn you into something small and squishy with warts on your warts by looking at you in a Certain Way. I, of course, do not have to worry about this happening to me, because I have learned the magic words, Yes, dear.
They were all there, sitting round the great table in the middle of the Sanctity. The ruling council of the Droods, self-appointed on the run after the Matriarch’s murder, because someone had to keep the wheels turning while the family got on with its job. Family politics come and go, but duty and responsibility go on forever. My uncle Jack, the Armourer, was sitting at the head of the table in his usual lab coat, fresh that day but already marked with scorch marks and chemical burns, over a grubby T-shirt bearing the legend, Give Me a Lever and a Place to Stand, and I’ll Beat the World into Submission. The Sarjeant-at-Arms sat stiffly in his chair, back straight and head erect, big and muscular in his black suit and spotless white shirt, like a bouncer who’d muscular in his black suit and spotless white shirt, like a bouncer who’d taken over the nightclub. A thug and a bully and proud of it, the Sarjeant was a very busy man who could still find the time to be disappointed in me.
William the Librarian sat slumped in his chair, wearing a battered dressing gown that must have had a pattern on it once upon a time, and a pair of sloppy bunny slippers. It was immediately clear that he wasn’t wearing anything under the dressing gown, and even before I reached the table, the Armourer had to tell the Librarian to keep the damn thing closed. There was something about the bunny slippers that disturbed me. They were white, and most bunny slippers are pink. In fact, I was pretty sure that the last time I’d seen them, they had been pink. But now they were white. Which felt like it should mean something . . . that I should remember something . . . but the memory remained elusive, so I let it go.
And finally there was cousin Harry, looking more like a defrocked accountant than ever in his neat grey suit and wire-rimmed spectacles. Quiet, clever, dangerous cousin Harry. And his partner, Roger Morningstar. Who, by long tradition, was not allowed to actually sit at the main table with the council. Because although he had much to contribute, he was only half Drood. And so, like my Molly, he could attend council meetings, but not sit at the table. The two of them had to sit on separate chairs a respectable distance away. Petty, I know, but that’s tradition for you. When a family’s been around as long as the Droods, you acquire a lot of traditions along the way, rather like barnacles on a ship. It’s the long-held traditions like this one that make me wonder whether we’re getting a bit too inbred.
Molly always got her own back by bringing a really massive bag of popcorn to every council meeting and crunching the stuff loudly during the boring bits. Roger sat loosely in his chair, calm and entirely at his ease, and we all did our best not to notice that his half-demonic presence was still potent enough to set fire to the chair he was sitting on. Little grey streams of smoke drifted up into the air, and I hoped someone had reminded Ethel to turn off the sprinklers.
Ethel, as our very own other-dimensional friend insisted we call it, manifested in the Sanctity as a pleasant rose red glow. Bathing in that ruddy glare was enough to calm the spirit and ease the heart. Didn’t stop us all from arguing, though.
I sat down in my assigned place at the far end of the table and immediately launched into my tale of what had gone down at Lightbringer House. Only to be as immediately stopped by the Sarjeant-at-Arms. Meetings have to have agendas, in his world, and that meant my late-arriving news would have to wait until we’d dealt with existing business first. All the others went along, because the Sarjeant was quite capable of outstubborning us all when it came to matters of precedence. So I sank down in my chair and sulked, with my arms folded tightly across my chest, while he worked his way through the business of the day. It wasn’t easy feeling sullen and thoroughly pissed off under Ethel’s soothing red glow, but then, I’ve had a lot of practice. When it comes to trying your patience, my family could make Mother Teresa drink vodka straight from the bottle while drop-kicking a leper.
“We have to decide what to do next, now that our Matriarch is dead,” the Armourer said heavily. “Grandmother’s been gone some time now, and we can’t keep putting this off. I’ve been carrying most of the load, with Harry’s help, staying on top of the day-to-day problems, because I’m most senior. . . . But I have my own work to be getting on with, in the Armoury! I never wanted to be in charge. I’m not good with people. When I’m faced with a problem, my first response has always been to hit it with something heavy. Which works fine with machines, but not so much with people.”
“Exactly,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “I’d hate to think you were encroaching on my territory.”
“Someone’s got to be in charge,” Harry said firmly. “We’ve lost direction. The family is undermanned and overextended. There’s no overall strategy, and no long-term policy. Someone’s got to be in a position to make the important decisions.”