God Save the Queen (The Immortal Empire) (26 page)

“Every straight single bitch and halvie in the Kingdom is going to
despise
you.” Avery actually grinned as she said it.

“Brilliant.” I topped up her coffee and poured my own, then sat down at the table with my breakfast. “Lovely way to start a relationship.”

“Ooh,” Emma cooed as she joined us. “Relationship, is it?”

I rolled my eyes as she and Avery snickered. A few mouthfuls of heaven later I was no longer annoyed with either of them. “Move this woman into the house,” I demanded of my sister. “I want her to cook all the time.”

They laughed, but I caught the look that passed between them and felt a little stab of envy. There were times when I wanted someone with whom I could communicate with just a glance. Someone to snog and snuggle with. Halvie guys tended to avoid me, as my reputation as a scrapper preceded me. It wasn’t as though I was constantly getting into fights; it was just that I always won when I did. Things had changed a lot over the years, but men still tended to avoid women who could bosh them senseless.

I’d have to fight fairly hard to best Vex, I realised, then pushed the thought aside. Two dates didn’t make us soulmates. Wanting to trust him and naïvely wanting to believe he was on my side didn’t mean we were meant for each other.

We made small talk as we ate, the three of us avoiding the topics of Dede (thank God) and my love life (thank fuck). I had just finished my second cup of coffee and my third piece of bacon-flavoured bread when I heard my rotary ringing. I had left it on the tallboy in the foyer when I came in this morning.

I jogged out to answer it, my heart skipping a beat when I saw that the number slots on the front had Simon’s digits in them. I pressed the button to answer immediately. “Hullo?”

“What kind of shit joke are you trying to pull on me?”

I flinched at the volume and bitterness of Simon’s tone. “I don’t know what you’re going on about.”

“Don’t give me that bollocks. The blood you brought me.”

“What about it?” My heart was dancing an Irish reel. I wondered if perhaps my mother or Ophelia had tampered with the sample, but I’d seen them take it from my vein – had accepted the vial immediately with my own hands. They couldn’t have done anything to it.

“You’re going to make me say it? Drag my humiliation out a little longer?” He was really angry.

“Simon, I’m not having you on. Now please tell me what you found out so I can be as confounded as you are.”

He hesitated, wondering whether or not I was on the up and up, no doubt. “Are you certain this is your blood?”

I knew I should lie. “Yes. As certain as I can be.”

“Well, someone made a mistake somewhere, because I don’t see how it could possibly be your blood.”

My heart drummed hard. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s not halvie,” he replied sharply. “Love, if this is your blood you shouldn’t even exist.”

“What?” I demanded. “Of course I exist.”

Cold rage overcame the panic fluttering in my chest. Fucking Ophelia. She had done this. There was some kind of mistake.

“I’m coming over,” I told him.

“You’d better,” he agreed. “I want to draw a sample of my own.”

“Be there as soon as I can.” I pushed the button to end the call. Fang me. My hands were shaking.

My sister and her girlfriend looked up as I entered the kitchen. Avery’s pleasant expression faded almost immediately. “Everything all right, Xan? You look pale.”

I nodded – big fat liar that I was. “Dede’s landlord,” I lied. “Wanted to know what to do with Dede’s things. I told her I’d come by.”

The look on her face made me feel like shit. It also made me want to strangle Dede. She was the one who’d got me mixed up in this mess. What fucked-up reason did Ophelia have for swapping my blood?

“Do you want me to come with you?” The fact that she asked proved that she wasn’t up to the task.

“Nah, I can take care of it. I’ll donate what we don’t keep to charity.”

“She would like that,” Avery remarked quietly.

No, I wanted to say, she wouldn’t, which was exactly why I intended to do it.

I kissed Avery on the forehead and said see ya to them both, then I ran up to my room before heading out. In my bedroom, I opened the door to the large walk-in wardrobe and flicked the light switch.

There was a small box marked “MUM” that had a few toys in it, some children’s jewellery, a plastic barrette, photos and a couple of items of hers that I’d been given when she had been hauled off to Bedlam. I removed one of the photos – a shot of the two of us at the Courtesan House on Christmas Eve. I might have been five years old. My mother looked very much like she did now, which made me wonder if they did cosmetic surgery in Bedlam.

I put the photo back in the box and replaced the lid. No time for walking down memory lane, even if the box marked “RYE” tempted me like the proverbial snake in the garden. Instead I opened the one that read “ACADEMY: YEARS 10 & 11”. Inside were medals and ribbons I’d won, papers I’d written that had got good grades. A photograph of me and Churchill sparring – he’d beaten the crap out of me, of course. It was an exam and I got the highest mark in my age group. In any age group, actually. The only other person to come close had been Rye in his tenth year, beating me by two points. By the time I finished my final year I had set a new record – better than Rye’s. As far as I knew, no one had topped me yet.

But this photo and reminders of my failure to reach my full potential weren’t why I opened this box. I dug down through notes
from the few friends I’d had, more photos and programmes for school tournaments. I didn’t even stop to look at the card my father had given me upon graduation.

There at the bottom of the box was the object of my search. It was a small, nondescript box that looked like it could be a rotary or AC. In reality it was a displacer, and it would keep anyone who might be monitoring my whereabouts from seeing where I was.

Really, if Ophelia had been smart she wouldn’t have told me how she found me last night. But then if I’d been smart I would have realised she was up to no good. I didn’t want her – or Church – knowing where I was.

I put the box back, gathered clothes and headed to the shower. A little while later I was dressed in snug black trousers, camisole, tall boots and black corset jacket that flared out and fell almost to my knees in the back. The device went into a pocket of my trousers, while the others ended up housing my rotary and watch. I tucked a few pound notes in with the displacer and slipped the lonsdaelite dagger inside a sheath in my right boot. I left the Bulldog behind.

Despite my frantic hurrying I’d lost an hour searching for the displacer and getting ready. It was that time of day when the streets and motorways teemed with humans coming home from their tedious jobs – whatever they were – and most halvies were getting ready for theirs. We were outnumbered by the humans, and it occurred to me then that I should know more about them. They kept the city running – electricity, plumbing, trains … And we simply assumed they were controlled. Cowed. Some even assumed the humans liked their situation.

I knew differently now. There was rebellion brewing. The barest stirrings of it could lead to war. Was the aristocracy any more prepared to take on the humans than they had been in ’32?

Fang me, but that was a fight I wanted to be part of. My entire
life I’d been taught that humans were the enemy, that every last one of them wanted to see aristos and halvies wiped off the face of the earth. How could Dede and Ophelia be so certain that when the day came their human comrades wouldn’t turn on them? After all, we were just dirty half-bloods, right? My hands tightened on the steering bars.

It took me twenty minutes longer than it should have to get to Simon’s office at the hospital, even with the advantage of being able to weave in and out through the mass of cars and carriages, buses and trolleys.

I parked the Butler in the first available spot I found and practically ran through the front doors. I hurried to the lift and punched the button for the lab, which was one floor down. The doors slid open to reveal a corridor much more sterile than the prettily painted lobby and waiting area I’d run through upstairs. Here the overhead lights cast a slightly greenish tint along the whitewashed walls and tiled floor. They flickered above me as I walked.

It was quiet down here. The thick soles of my boots were silent on the polished floor, making nary a squeak as I set out at a brisk clip to the left. Simon’s office was a small space just outside the lab that used to be a storeroom. I knocked on the door and turned the knob, not bothering to wait for permission.

The door swung open. Simon wasn’t there.

But he had been.

I entered cautiously, wishing I’d brought the Bulldog regardless. A quick assessment of the room and I didn’t bother pulling a weapon – I knew I was alone. I couldn’t smell, hear or sense another body nearby. The heavy smell of smoke lingered on the air, as did the aroma of coffee. A cup on the desk had been knocked over, spilling latte all over the papers there. The chair lay overturned on the floor, Simon’s jacket still draped over the back of it.

A cigarillo burned in a crystal dish – the kind old grannies put barley sugar and peppermints in. It had been deliberately left to drown out all other scents, reinforcing the fact that Simon hadn’t left voluntarily. I knew that just as certainly as I knew I wouldn’t find any trace of my blood in the lab. I knew these things because there was a smear of blood on the wall behind the desk. I also knew without touching or tasting it that it was still warm.

And that it was Simon’s.

I did look for any information that might pertain to me – in both Simon’s office and the lab itself. Once I told the techies that Simon wasn’t in his office and that there was blood on the wall, they’d filed out to investigate for themselves and call the authorities. That left me with just a few minutes on my own, but that was all I needed.

There was no trace of me in the lab, and the smoke obliterated anything that might have been left behind in the office – everything but that awful smear on the wall.

Simon could have fallen and hit his head. At this very moment he might be upstairs getting stitched up. But I knew that wasn’t so because others in the lab would know about it. If the blood on the wall had been thicker I might suspect that he’d been shot, but I hadn’t smelled gunshot residue – the smoke couldn’t conceal that – and there wasn’t any splatter. I called his rotary to see if he answered.

He didn’t. No surprise there. Was it a coincidence that he had disappeared – violently – after contacting me? I didn’t think so, which meant that one – if not both – of us had some kind of surveillance on our line.

Fang me, could Simon have truly been taken because of me? My blood? Why? It made no sense.

Unless I was an experiment, like Ophelia had suggested at Bedlam. The thought sent my heart pounding. This was not the time to go full-on hatters.

How was I going to find out the truth about me now? An awful, selfish question given the circumstances, but I thought it regardless. More importantly, what was it that people were taking such extreme measures to keep me from finding out?

My search for answers was yielding nothing but more questions, the most important of which was where was my friend? There was a chance Simon’s disappearance had nothing to do with me at all, but in that case I’d expect to find the results of his tests in his office, or on his computer, and there hadn’t been anything at all. The Yard didn’t find anything either – nothing that they cared to share, and usually they did share with RGs.

They wanted to talk to me – officially. While I waited, itching and squirming in my own skin, I took a walk down the corridor, sniffing for traces of Simon. If the peelers hadn’t found anything it was unlikely I would, although at the exit I thought I caught a whiff of myself, which is an unsettling sensation when you’re not expecting it.

There was a drop of blood on the floor. This had to be where they’d taken Simon out of the building. I pushed the door open and walked through, careful to avoid the blood.

Outside in the back lot the smell disappeared. Plague it all. Why couldn’t I catch one bloody break?