The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire) (15 page)

I started the Butler. “I hope you
all enjoy your tour,” I said loudly, convivially. “Do be careful and stay with your party.
London can be a dangerous city regardless of who or what you are, especially at this time of night.” I smiled at the man as I toed the kick stand out of the way, flashing a hint of fang. “You never know when the goblin queen might decide to go big-game hunting.” It was stupid, petulant and unapologetically cheesy, and I was pretty certain I wasn’t going to regret it any time soon.

I drove away.

Vex still hadn’t shown up by the time I returned home. Penny was in a green peignoir set with feathers around the neckline and cuffs. She’d removed her wig but not her make-up, and bare feet peeked out from beneath the hem of her gown. She looked adorable, with her mussed short hair and big eyes.

I apologised for leaving her alone. She waved it away as though it didn’t signify.

“Fancy a little something?” I asked.

Penny nodded. “I’m famished, but I didn’t want to poke about in your cupboards.”

“I’m not much of a chef, dearest, so you’d better get over that immediately.”

I made us a cup of tea in the kitchen and a couple of corned beef sandwiches with thick fresh bread. Thank God I hadn’t lost my love of food when my goblin genes fully kicked in. I had worried that all I would want was blood and meat. I did crave it, but real food still tasted grand. I suppose the gobs must
be able to eat other things as well, otherwise more humans would go missing in the city–and the goblins wouldn’t be so content to remain underside.

“Thanks for saving my arse tonight,” Penny said as I plopped a plate on the table in front of her.

“I’m glad you called.” I sat down with her. “And that I got there in time.”

“Did Special Branch give you a hard time?”

“That Maine’s got a bug up his arse,” I replied, picking up my sandwich. “But for now he’s no more annoyance than a pebble in my shoe.” That was a fairly succinct way of thinking of the little bastard. He could try to make my life as difficult as he wanted, but he didn’t have any r Vp> d er that eal evidence on me and he never would. He’d have to go into the goblin den and analyse the soil, test every piece of bone there. That was never going to happen.

I chewed and swallowed. “I hate to say it, Pen, but I don’t see how you can go back to work after this.”

She made a face. “I have to work, Xandra.”

I knew what this was about. Penny only took what she had to from her father. It was the law that aristocratic gentlemen had to pay for the care of their halvie children and provide an allowance. Vardan had bought us a house in the Wellington district and settled a sum upon each of us when we turned one and twenty. It was because of that money–and a sum from my mother’s family–that I was able to rent this building and live comfortably now that I was no longer a member of the Royal Guard. Penny’s father, however, had made it clear that while he would support his child and provide the necessaries, he would absolutely not pay for anything acquired for the continuation of her “lifestyle”.

Custom-made frocks and wigs cost a lot of money, as did the pride of being able to send a big “fuck you” in the direction of your small-minded papa.

“Call in sick tomorrow night,” I advised, poised to take another bite. “We’ll think of something.” Short of me spending eight hours following her every move, I had no idea what that might be. It would be the end of finding Val. Even if I put on a wig and coloured lenses in my eyes, I was still going to look and smell like me. The betties might not notice, but someone would. And they were already going to be cautious after tonight. They probably wouldn’t come back for a while, so Penny was safe for the time being.

I had killed one of their mates. I was going to be a target too. I was no help to Penny if I had to keep watching my own back.

I didn’t think the club management was in on what the betties were doing, or who they were doing it for. It just wasn’t good business sense. Plus I thought I’d heard the manager telling Maine tonight that she was willing to offer a reward for information on Val. Everyone wanted to help when it was a Special Branch agent and the son of a duke who’d gone missing.

I needed to get someone into the club who no one would think twice about being there, who could hang out and keep an eye on Penny for me. Ophelia might do it, but she’d been seen with me.

It was something to discuss with Vex when he came home.

Home?
I took another bite of sandwich to cover my shock. This wasn’t Vex’s home. It was my home. I was not ready to think…

Vex was right–there were a lot of things I wasn’t ready for.
I’ve never thought of myself as particularly weak, but I was starting to wonder. It didn’t matter if I was ready for it, I already thought of home as wherever Vex was. I had fallen for him in a bad way from the very start, which was stupid, because he was expected to marry another were and try his best to produce at least one fully plagued heir, and some halvies.

No man of mine was going to screw courtesans, even if it was for the greater good. And the only thing he’d produce with me was a goblin–if we were lucky. Who knew what my freaky genes might come up with?

That wasn’t something I needed to think about right now, and if I was good at anything, it was ignoring stuff I didn’t want to contemplate. An example of this was my refusal to wonder why Vex hadn’t shown up yet. Was he
that
angry at me for the scene at Freak Show?

Penny and I were watching a film on telly an hour or so later, sharing a huge bowl of crisps, when my rotary rang. I licked salt and oil from fingers before picking it up. “Hello?”

“It’s Ophelia.” Sirens and voices blared in my ear, almost drowning her out.

I didn’t like the sound of those shouts. “What’s wrong?”

The noise faded. She must have stepped into a building or a vehicle. “The alpha and I are both fine. There was an accident…”

Something wrapped around my heart and squeezed–hard. It didn’t matter that Vex hadn’t called or that he might be pissed off at me. Nothing mattered but his safety.

PleaseGodorAlbertoranyonelisteninglethimbeokay.

“What sort of accident?”

There was a slight hesitation on the other end of the connection. “We’ll explain when you get here.”

She’d better. “Where are you?”

“A pub called the Handsome Beggar, in Whitechapel.”

“I’m on my way.” And then a thought occurred to me. “Why didn’t he call me himself?”

“He’s a bit… busy at the moment, but he didn’t want you to hear it from someone else. See you in a bit.” The connection was broken before I could ask anything more.

“What’s wrong?” Penny asked when I set the phone on the table.

“Not sure,” I replied. I didn’t want to worry her–either of us–any more than I had to. “I have to go and fetch Vex. Will you be all right by yourself for a bit?”

“I doubt anyone’s going to come looking for me at the house of the goblin queen.” She actually smiled, which was nice to see. “I’m going to take a soak in the bath. Relax.”

“An excellent notion.” I kissed her forehead. “Be back in a jiff.”

I had a vague idea of where the Handsome Beggar was located. I’d never been there, but the pub had gained infamy back in the early thirties as a hangout for Insurrectionists. I didn’t know what it was now, but if Vex was there it had to be reasonably safe for our kind.

The wind ran cool, damp fingers through my hair as I drove the Butler hard towards Whitechapel. This summer had been so strangely hot, it was nice to feel a little chill, however slight, in the air.

As I neared the pub, a sense of unease began to unfurl in my stomach, quickly turning to full-on fear. There were several fire engines, police carriages and ambulances just a little further down the street. Thick black smoke rose up into the sky as the firefighters battled a blaze that encompassed an entire
building. Several motor carriages parked in front of the building were burning as well.

One of them was Vex’s Sparrow.

I parked illegally in front of the pub. Let them give me a fucking ticket. I had barely kicked out the parking stand before I jumped off the Butler and pushed through the small crowd gathered to watch the entertainment down the street. I shoved the door opened and stepped into a practically empty interior. Those few heads lifted as I crossed the threshold. I didn’t care if the humans stared. My only concern was the gorgeous wolf sitting at the bar. He had turned to face the door before I even entered.

He was sooty and singed, and I could see traces of blood on his face and hands. He smelled of smoke [lle however s–not the clean kind that came from wood, but the kind that reeked of burnt rubber and scorched metal.

I might have thrown myself at him if not for the people watching. Instead, I walked up to him and brushed some of the black from his face. “You all right?”

He nodded, a wry smile on his lips. “The Human League’s bombs are as rubbish as they were a century ago.”

The Human League? Again? They were really upping their profile as of late. They’d started small in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, and then grew until there were cells all across Europe–wherever there was plague. I’m not sure how much of the religious belief that all those of plagued blood were evil creatures in the service of Satan continued today, but the hate was still going strong.

“What were you doing over here?”

He cast a glance over his shoulder at the rest of the pub. No one seemed to be paying us much attention now. The real
excitement was outside. “Ophelia and I came by to follow up on a lead I’d got about Duncan’s death.”

Duncan was his son who had been murdered. I looked around for my sister. “Where’s Fee?”

“A friend came and got her a few moments ago. She’s fine.” Judging from what I’
d seen of the car, and where it was parked, the driver’s side would have taken the worst of the blast.

“And you say I have a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I teased. I was just so damned relieved that he and Ophelia were unhurt. “Next time park in a car park, not next to a building targeted by fanatics.”

His lips twisted as he took one of my hands in his. “A car park wouldn’t have done any good, love. It wasn’t the building they bombed. It was my motor carriage.”

“Did they bomb you because of me?” I finally asked once we were home. Vex was taking a bath in the claw-foot tub in my bathroom, and I was perched on the toilet lid. Normally I’d be in the tub with him, but not with the amount of ash that he’d scrubbed off.

“Not everything’s about you, sweetheart,” he reminded me without a hint of snark as he leaned his head back against the tub. “Being alpha’s sometimes just as dangerous as being goblin queen. We’re all the enemy to the League.”

Forget that we’d never have a future because of genetics; neither one of us was going to have a future, period. “Was it just a trap? Or do you think there really was new information on Duncan?”

He shook his head, damp hair curling around his ears. “It was dodgy to begin with, but I followed up on it because there was no way I couldn’t.”

I understood. I would have done the same thing if someone
had contacted me saying they had news on Val. “The League’s been making itself a bit vocal lately.” There’d been an incident not long after Dede’s death. Someone had taken shots at the guards outside Buckingham Palace. Every once in a while the League had to re-establish themselves. I’d once taken a knife in the leg because of one of the bastards.

“Mm. They usually do around momentous occasions. The jubilee in June, you being a goblin–it’s a ^lle h he remll the sort of news that makes certain humans jittery.”

“So this
is
my fault.”

He opened one eye. “Shall I fetch you a cross for you to nail yourself upon?”

When he put it like that, I felt like a total knob. “Fine, they have it in for all of us–I’m just a nice shiny target at present.” I wasn’t overly afraid, but I’d be a fool not to be wary. “Who’s next? The Prince of Wales?”

Vex ran a hand through his hair. “Who knows? They could just as easily go for a church, or a human business they think caters too much to aristos.”

“The Archbishop of Canterbury,” I muttered.

“We haven’t had one of those since—”

“Nineteen thirty-six. I know. Is it true Victoria ate him?” His death had really got the League riled up, but it had been just a few years after the Insurrection, and anyone even suspected of League/Insurrectionist sympathies was rounded up and jailed.

Vex’s smile was wry. “He deserved it, the pompous wanker.” Then he sat up and pulled out the plug. The water level in the tub immediately dropped. He rose to his feet, dripping. He was truly impressive naked–all long limbs and strong muscles. He wasn’t naturally pale like so many aristos; he had a bit of a
honeyed tone to his skin that wasn’t the result of time in the sun, regardless that weres could walk around in the daytime easier than vamps. Feeding could buy a bit of UV exposure, but not a lot.