The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire) (7 page)

I was never going to be free of him as it was. But it was done and there was no point poking at the wound any longer. I didn’t regret bringing on Church’s demise. I regretted losing the man I’d adored when I was growing up. That man never would have put a silver tetracycline bullet into Dede.

The memory of my sister coughing up blood as she died on the ground in front of Buckingham Palace was enough to wipe away my guilt. I held on to that memory just long enough for rage to pull my head out of my arse.

Vex must have interpreted my silence as something else, because he glanced at me again, concern etched in his rugged features. “My hands aren’t clean either. I’d be the last to judge you for doing what needed to be done.”

I smiled a little. “Thanks.” He was right, of course. The only thing I should regret about killing Church was that I hadn’t done it before he could shoot Dede. Then again, murdering my sister was what had pushed me over the edge.

I consoled myself by thinking that Dede was in a better place. This world was too cruel for my fragile sister.

Freak Show stood on the site of an old theatre from the Regency period. The outside had been remodelled to resemble a circus tent, complete with old-style sideshow posters featuring staff and performers. As usual, there was a queue to get inside, even though it was the middle of the week. Before all this shit I would have just flashed my RG badge and bypassed the line. I didn’t have that luxury any more. Fortunately, I had infamy and Vex, both of which were better than a laminated card with a bad photo on it.

The halvie at the door was dressed in a burlesque version of a ringmaster’s costume, with her white hair cascading down her back in a mass of ringlets. Her heavily lined and lashed eyes widened at the sight of the two of us. She bowed–morewaybowed to Vex than to me–and lifted the velvet rope so that we could go right in. I tried to ignore the murmurs of those waiting in the queue. I don’t think it was egomaniacal to think people were talking about me when they actually were.

The music that had been a muted thumping outside turned into a full-fledged audio assault inside. More show posters and art filled the dim interior. The furniture was a mix of Baroque and Georgian, with bar stools that resembled delicate French chairs.

The skeleton of Joseph Merrick stood by the bar, encased in a protective glass case fitted with tiny lights to accentuate the deformation of the bones. Poor bugger. It wasn’t the only
skeleton on display; there was also that of a giant named Black Angus, who in life had been almost eight feet tall and perfectly proportioned, plus a skeleton of conjoined female twins, along with a photograph of them in life, and the bones of a “mermaid” found off the coast of Scotland one hundred and thirty years ago. To me it looked like someone had attached fish bones to a woman’s torso, but that was part of the appeal, I reckoned.

On the centre stage of the club, surrounded by tables full of gawkers imbibing copious amounts of drink, a man and a woman performed amazing feats of body strength and control under the coloured lights. They seemed to entwine with one another with carefully controlled grace, supporting–in turn–their own weight and their partner’s as they continuously moved, held, moved. I stopped for a moment to watch. For one blissful moment I didn’t wonder if people were staring at me.

“Xandra!”

I winced. The cry had come at the end of the music, just before the audience could applaud for the duo on stage. At least fifty per cent of the heads in the club turned in my direction–including the contortionists. Fortunately, I was with Vex, and he always drew stares of his own.

I couldn’t resent the person who had shouted my name. It was Val’s maternal sibling Penelope, born Takeshi, otherwise known as Penny Dreadful, the most fabulous personage in all of London town. She was a tiny little thing, but in her outrageous heels she was my height, clad in a bright orange mini dress with an Elizabethan collar, purple fishnet stockings and a chartreuse beehive wig that framed her pretty face with garish ringlets. Only Penny could make such an ensemble work.

She hurried towards me with preternatural speed and grace. Penny was a halvie. She could have been a Royal Guard, but
she’d decided her talents were better suited elsewhere. Plus, even in these enlightened days, there were those who didn’t take well to girls trapped in boys’ bodies, or vice versa.

Huge false eyelashes lifted to reveal blue contacts, but there was nothing artificial about the worry in her expression. “Did Avery speak to you?” she asked, grabbing my hand in hers.

I nodded. That she didn’t flirt with Vex told me she was actually concerned. A flutter of anxiety tickled my stomach. Maybe Val really was in trouble. “Can you take a break?”

Penny grabbed the arm of a passing pink-haired boy dressed in jodhpurs, riding boots and a purple frock coat. I heard her ask him to cover for her for a few minutes. He cast a quick glance at me and Vex and nodded.

We followed her to the back of the club and up a set of stairs to the office, which looked exactly as it ought as the inner sanctum of a circus-style nightclub, with old posters pinned to the walls and bits of oddities scattered about. It smelled of coffee, with a faint trace of cigarette smoke. Penny closed the door, reducing the noise floating upora floati from downstairs.

Then she promptly burst into tears.

Vex and I turned to one another, wide-eyed. It was obvious he wasn’t going to be the one to comfort her, so the task fell to me. I put my arms around Penny and patted her narrow back. “It’s all right, love.”

Penny pushed out of my arms. Mascara ran down her cheeks, but no more tears sprang from her eyes. Her face was a mask of guilt and grief. “You don’t understand. Val was taken because of me.”

“Right,” I said a few minutes later, as Penny dabbed at her cheeks with the handkerchief Vex had given her. Who even knew that men still carried such things? “Why do you think Val’s been abducted? And how could it be your fault?”

She was perched on the desk, shapely legs crossed, looking dejected and lost. “Because it is. They never would have taken him if I hadn’t got him involved.”

I loved Penny as much as I was capable of loving another woman who wasn’t family, but I was precariously close to slapping her silly. Why couldn’t she just come out with it? “Involved in what?” I asked. My teeth were clenched. Vex nudged me with the toe of his boot, gave me a look that told me to take it down a notch. I sucked in a breath.

Penny sighed–rather exaggeratedly, I thought, but then I was hungry and peevish. And I was starting to worry about my big brother, who I had always thought of as somewhat invincible.

“Start from the beginning, love,” Vex encouraged gently, leaning against the desk so that they were shoulder to shoulder. His voice was low, yet it filled the room with rich warmth that sucked the bitterness right out of me.

He seemed to have the same effect on Penny’s inherent drama. She drew a breath, straightened her shoulders and looked me dead in the eye. She reminded me of Sayuri, her mother. “Do you remember after Dede disappeared I told you about other halvies who had gone missing from here?”

I did remember. “I was going to look into it, but I got… well, rather caught up in my own shit.” Fang me, today was turning out to be one of those days where I found it astounding I had any friends at all.

Penny nodded. “You do have a lot of shit, darling. Besides,
what could you do about it? I began keeping a list of people who disappeared, suspicious behaviour, all that kind of stuff you see on the box, right? Last week, this bloke I fancied asked me out for coffee after we closed. When I went outside to meet him, I saw him being hauled off by a couple of betties. I ran after them but they tossed him into a motor carriage and tore off.”

“Two bad you didn’t catch them.” I meant it. Penny was a bit of a stereotype when it came to Japanese heritage and martial arts. She and Val were both extremely skilled fighters. She once kicked the snot out of me at the Academy, my old boyfriend Rye as well. But then Rye went on to break her records and I broke his.

Now that I thought about it, my records at the Academy probably wouldn’t stand any more. After all, I wasn’t really a halvie. Bloody hell, that hurt more than being kicked out of the RG.

“I would have fucked them up,” Penny allowed. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I called Val. I figured he could look into it–you know, check the number on the carriage plate and all that. I told him about the others and gave him all my notes. He told me he was going to start an isizo startnvestigation. The other night he came by to talk to me about what he’d found. When I went to meet him, he was gone, but his rotary was on the bar. I knew they’d taken him as well.”

I cast a glance at Vex. He looked as worried as I felt. Val had been on a case. Whether or not it was official was another story. Had he gone willingly with those betties, or was he a prisoner? I found it hard to believe he’d let them take him without a fight. “Do you still have those notes?” I asked.

She nodded. Her wig bobbed. “I have copies at my flat.”

I ran a hand through my hair. “You’re taking the rest of the night off. The rest of the week maybe. And you’re going to come and stay with me.”

She looked horrified. “I can’t do that! I need to work.”

“Dearest, if your suspicions are correct, these people probably know exactly where Val got his information. I really don’t want them coming for you next.”

“I’ll stay with you, but I’m not going to stop working. If they come back, I want to be here.”

And do what, beat them into submission with her shoe? Penny was a scrapper, but she also dressed in clothing totally unsuited to fighting. Even I dressed for movement better than she did. Hell, Avery wore clothes more comfortable than Penny did.

“We’ll figure something out,” I allowed. “Come on. Go and tell your boss you’re not feeling well.” Her make-up was just enough of a mess that the manager would no doubt believe her.

“He’s downstairs,” she said, and reluctantly left the office to do as I instructed.

As we moved to follow, Vex stopped me. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Not a farking clue,” I replied. “But we need to see those notes, and if Penny’s right, she needs to be protected. If those betties grabbed a Yard chief inspector who just happens to be the son of a duke, they’ll have no qualms about taking a tranny whose father was a viscount.”

His jaw clenched. I knew what he was thinking. Years ago Vex had had a relationship with a human woman who became pregnant. She was also a plague carrier. Their son, Duncan, had looked like a normal half-blood but could actually transform into a wolf like a were. He’d been abducted, tortured and
killed in a brutal fashion. Vex never did find out who was behind it, though he suspected Church might have been involved.

I didn’t say anything. I had no idea what words could possibly make him feel any better. I had no idea what it was like to lose a child. Losing a sibling had been bad enough. It was still bad. I reached out and took his hand, and held it all the way downstairs while we waited for Penny.

My gaze drifted back to the stage where the couple from earlier had been replaced by an Amazonian burlesque dancer who made me feel like a poor example of womanhood. Fang me, but she was all boobs and bum, with a tiny waist and enough feathers for six ostriches.

I opened my mouth.

“No,” said Vex. It was nice to see genuine amusement in his face.

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”

“No, I don’t wish you were built like her, and no, you don’t need a pair of rhinestone pasties. However, I have no objection whatsoever to you doing a little fan dance for me sometime.”

I grinned. “Okay, so you do know what I was going to ed.as goinask.”

He chuckled, slipped an arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze and a kiss on the forehead. For a few moments there were no thoughts of his murdered son, or the trouble Val might be in, or the fact that I had landed on Queen Victoria’s shit list. That little bit of laughter made me think that everything just might be all right. Or at least it kept me from dwelling on the alternative.

Penny joined us a few moments later. She had a light cape and her handbag. “I’m ready.”

We walked out into the waning night. There were still a
handful of hours of darkness left, and I for one would be glad to see the arse end of them. I needed sleep–a few hours of blissful oblivion.

The valet brought Vex’s Swallow round. Penny climbed in the back seat and gave Vex directions to her flat. She lived in Soho, a neighbourhood friendly to halvies and humans alike, made up of predominantly artsy types who didn’t care who you slept with or what sex you were so long as you weren’t a bigot or boring.