“But my lunch is at-”
“Then change it. Goodbye.”
And he hurried off before Melissande could try arguing with him. Because she would, he just knew it. He was convinced the first word she ever spoke was “but.”
He spent the next two and half hours trying not to speculate on the reason for Melissande’s presence at Wycliffe’s, and collecting test result sheets from the other labs and the wizards working on various projects at their benches, and filing them. Well, surreptitiously reading them and then filing them, making mental notes of anything that might even remotely have to do with his reason for being undercover at Wycliffe’s in the first place.
He paid particular attention to Errol’s results. Errol, who’d joined Wycliffe’s not quite a month after the Stuttley’s debacle. Who’d taken one look at him, his first day at the firm, and simply… erased him from the landscape. It had actually been a little frightening: the contempt. The desire for him to disappear. To not exist. Today had been the first time Errol had acknowledged his presence.
Which is fine. It’s quite suited me, really, all things considered. Only-why did his bloody staff have to explode?
Monaghan and another Second Grader-Phipps-were cleaning out the Pit now, decontaminating it and neutralising the overcharged thaumic particles. He sighed. It was a shame he’d not get the chance to inspect what was left of Errol’s staff, or the stricken experimental Ambrose Mark VI. He’d rather like to know why the prototype engine had exploded. From what he could tell it was sound… and ingenious. No two ways about it, Errol had a definite flair. And then the clock struck one and he stopped filing. He’d have to think some more about that later. Now it was time to meet Melissande for lunch.
Doing his best to appear nonchalant, he entered the employee garden and found an empty bench to sit on, located a convenient distance from the other dozen or so staff who’d been allotted a one o’clock lunch. Luckily there was a goodly amount of conversation going on that would cover nicely anything he and Melissande had to say to each other. Pretending interest in his packed lunch of fish-paste sandwich, iced cupcake and an apple, he kept a sideways eye out for her arrival.
And there she was, tit-tupping along in that dreadful long black skirt- lord, that was a hideous outfit! — looking so regal, so self-possessed, so Melissande, it brought a lump to his throat. Six months and more since he’d seen her? It felt like six years… and at the same time, six minutes. She was Monk Markham’s young lady and, after the events of New Ottosland, the next-best thing he had to a sister.
Disdainfully she wandered by him, ever-so-artfully letting the book she was carrying with her lunchbox slip to the grass. He dived for it and held it up.
“Excuse me, Miss! Oh, Miss? I think you dropped this.”
Turning, she looked over her glasses-rims and down her nose at him. Just the way she’d looked when he stepped out of the portal in her brother’s palace. It was all he could do not to smile like a loon.
“I beg your pardon?” she said, deliciously snooty. “Did you address me, sir?”
He stood. “Yes. Yes. Gerald Dunwoody at your service, Miss. You dropped this,” he said, thrusting the book towards her.
As she reached out to take it from him he heard a soft, muffled thud close by. And then one of Permelia Wycliffe’s other gels shrieked and pointed.
“Oh! Oh! How awful! A bird just dropped dead, right out of that tree!”
Melissande whipped round, book in hand, and stiffened. “Oh, blimey,” she muttered. “Don’t look now, but Reg just fainted.”
Reg? Reg was here? He turned and yes, there she was, his very own Reg, toes turned up on the mulched garden bed beneath an ornamental fig-tree.
Reg.
“Don’t worry, Miss!” he said to the horrified gel, now being supported by two of her equally horrified friends. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t you distress yourself, or come any closer. For all we know it could be diseased.”
“ Gerald — ”
He pulled a hush-up face at Melissande and rushed over to the garden bed where Reg lay unmoving. Heart thudding so hard he felt sick, he dropped to his knees beside her and stroked a fingertip down her limp wing.
A cold cave. A dead bird. A cruel hoax that he’d believed.
“Reg,” he whispered, trying not to move his lips. “Reg, can you hear me? Reg, it’s me. Gerald. Come on, Reg, please, open your eyes.”
Two of her toes twitched. Then she coughed, faintly, and half-raised her closed eyelids. “Gerald? Gerald, is that really you?”
He choked down a laugh, relieved almost to tears. “Yes, it’s really me.”
Both of her eyes popped wide open. “ Gerald Dun-woody!” she said, out of the side of her beak. “How long have you been back in town? And what do you mean, not coming to see me? I’ve been worried sick about you, sunshine. I’m going to have your guts for garters, I’m going to hang your silver eyeball as a New Year’s decoration, I’m going to-”
He snatched her up and kissed the top of her head. “I’m fine,” he whispered. “I miss you. Fly home. We’ll talk properly when this job’s done, I promise.” Standing, he tossed her high into the air. Watched her scramble her wings into action and flap away squawking her outrage like a fishwife.
“Oh!” cried Permelia Wycliffe’s gel. “I thought it was dead.”
“No, Miss,” he said politely, offering her a bow. “Merely a slight case of sunstroke. No harm done.”
The gel and her companions returned to their seat, and Gerald rejoined Melissande. “How very gallant of you, Mister Dunwoody,” she said, still haughty. Behind the prim glasses her eyes were sparkling.
“Not at all, Miss-ah-”
“Carstairs. Molly Carstairs.”
Really? “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Carstairs. Perhaps you’d care to join me for lunch?”
“That would be very pleasant,” said Melissande, dropping to the bench. “Reg is all right?” she added softly.
“She’s fine. Cross as two sticks, but fine,” he replied, equally softly. “Melissande… what are you doing here?”
“ Molly. And I was about to ask you the same question.”
“I’m on an assignment for the Department.”
She smiled, a very chilly curve of her lips, just in case they were being watched. “Fancy that. I’m on an assignment for the agency.”
He stared. “Who hired you?”
“Permelia Wycliffe. Who hired you?”
“Nobody.” In case anyone was watching, he pulled his fish-paste sandwich out of his lunch sack and took a bite. “I can’t talk about it.”
“You can’t talk about it here,” she said, opening her lunch box and taking out her own sandwich. It was ham and tomato, and looked singularly unappetising. The tomato had turned the bread all pink and soggy. “But you are going to talk about it, Gerald. There’s a very good chance you and I could help each other.”
“I doubt it,” he replied, and laughed as though she’d just said something amusing. “In fact, I think you should forget all about your job for the agency. Things around here might get a little… tricky… soon.”
“You mean you might try and blow something up?” she replied, and put her soggy sandwich back in the lunch box with a refined shudder. “That would have all the charm of novelty.”
He turned his shoulder to the rest of the garden and squinted his blind eye meaningfully. “I’m not joking, Melissande. You’ve no idea what’s brewing around this place.”
“Not right now, no,” she agreed. “But I will as soon as you tell me. And Reg, and Bibbie. Tonight. At Monk’s new establishment. Nine o’clock sharp. Don’t be late.”
What? “Monk’s what? What are you talking about?”
She reached into his lunch sack and took out the cupcake. The icing was luridly green: it had been the only one left in the baker’s that morning. “You haven’t heard? Great-uncle Throgmorton died and left him two houses,” she said around a mouthful. “He’s living behind the Old Barracks in Central Ott. Twenty-four Chatterly Crescent.” She finished the cupcake, pulled a napkin from her lunchbox and daintily dabbed her lips clean. “You know where that is?”