Phoebe Harkness Omnibus Page 7

  I was surprised. Mine? Why on earth would she do that? And why hadn’t I noticed?

  “We have been unable to retrieve these from your system this morning,” Servant Harrison sounded slightly embarrassed. “You have a rather … impressive set of personal firewalls set up, Dr Harkness. It does not suggest a trusting nature.”

  Good thing really, I thought, considering people had been trying to hack my system to hell while I was strolling to work.

  “We could break through eventually of course,” he assured me. “But as time is something of an issue here, it will be far easier for you to simply log on, find these files, and extract them. We want to know what’s on them.”

  *

  And so now here I was, driving away from the lab in Veronica Cloves’ funhouse-coloured Batmobile, with a DataStream stick of encrypted information my boss had hidden in my computer, and a worryingly slim file of intel on a vampire I barely knew. This was an odd Tuesday morning, all told.

  “Nice ride,” I commented. “Not very subtle for a secret agent though.”

  “Cabal doesn’t have secret agents,” Cloves snapped. “It’s important the population know that we have nothing to hide. Why do you think I spend so much time on the DataStream? People fear a shadowy, faceless government. Give it a friendly face, mine to be exact, and everyone’s happy. As far as New Oxford is concerned, Veronica Cloves is a sweet-natured and reassuring voice in the darkness. Cabal cares deeply about its people. That’s the message. I’m as visible as I can be.”

  “You were pretty visible in that purple suit at the lecture,” I nodded.

  “Where are we headed, Harkness?” Cloves glowered at me, not rising to my comment. Clearly she was still fuming that she and I were apparently Cabal’s version of Cagney and Lacey. Not that she would know who that was if I pointed it out. No one watches the classics except me.

  I needed more of a plan than I had currently formed. Ideally, I wanted to hole up in a Starbucks somewhere and read through the file on the vampire, but not with Cloves at my side. I didn’t like the woman, and certainly didn’t want her breathing down my neck all day. Part of me was still distracted by the fact that Cabal even had files on the vampire. Did they have similar files on every known and named GO? Did they have them on humans too? I pictured a vast warehouse filled with filing cabinets somewhere deep underground, and a dusty folder with my own name, containing everything from old diary pages to my hard-earned primary school swimming certificates.

  “Look, if you seriously want me to do this, we’re going to have to do it my way,” I said, sounding far more resolute than I felt. “You want me to schmooze vampires on behalf of Cabal, and you want me to do it under the radar. Well, I don’t think rocking up to the district with a high ranking and very public Cabal figurehead next to me is perhaps the most subtle way to do it.”

  Cloves glanced at me sidelong. “I’m hardly thrilled about this arrangement myself,” she said. “But it sounds awfully as though you are desperate to ditch me.”

  I bit my tongue. I would have called an exorcist if I thought it could get rid of her. “I just think we can save time if we divide our labours,” I said. “You work on decrypting the mystery files my boss thoughtfully dumped in my computer. Trust me, I would be absolutely no help at all with all that superspy stuff, anyway. I can’t even do Sudoku.”

  “And you?”

  “You can drop me at my place, Bartholomew Road, down in Iffley, east of the river. I have to read up on my vampire homework if I’m going to make contact with this guy from the presentation tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Cloves snapped. “Time is rather of the essence, Dr Harkness. We need to move on this as quickly as possible.”

  I sighed. This woman’s attitude was grating on me already. “I might not have had much interaction with the GOs, Servant Cloves, but I am fairly certain of only one fact, and that is that they are definitely night owls. There’s not much to do with them while the sun is up. Unless you want to play giant Jenga with a lot of coffins.”

  Cloves snorted down her nose most attractively and hung a left, heading the car into my neighbourhood. She had probably never even been to such a poor district before. From the look on her face, she didn’t have much interest in slumming.

  “So what is your plan for this evening then?”

  My mind went to the small business card which was now in my apartment, sitting on my bedside table. Sanctum, the vampire club.

  I raised my eyebrows, surprising myself with my own suggestion. “I’m going clubbing.”

  13

  Cloves had dumped me unceremoniously outside my tiny flat, giving the street and the coffee shop-cum-cyber café a disdainful once over as she did so.

  “You actually live here?” she asked, unable to keep scorn entirely out of her voice, if she was even trying to. “Above a café?”

  “Such is the glamorous life of a Blue Lab toxicologist,” I replied unapologetically as I finally got out of the car. “Maybe you can suggest a pay rise in my next review.”

  Cloves’ face did not crack. “Listen to me, Harkness,” she growled. “I want you to check in with me tonight, as soon as you’ve done whatever it is you plan on doing. You’re on my payroll now. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  For a moment I thought she was concerned for my safety, but then realised her own ass was on the line as my babysitter. Cloves seemed to be a woman used to getting results, and definitely used to being obeyed by her Cabal underlings.

  “And there I thought it was you who were at my disposal,” I said lightly. “I’ll call you from the club if I need a ride.” I slammed the door before she could reply, and she peeled away with a squeal of furious tyres.

  *

  Later, I sat nestled in the battered old armchair in my lounge, a cup of much needed hot chocolate in my lap. I have few pleasures in life, but imported cocoa, hard to come by in our day and age, is one of my guilty luxuries. I took a deep breath and flipped open the manila file.

  There was a photograph attached to the inside cover with a paperclip. A covert-looking shot of Allesandro, evidently taken at the R&D presentation the night before. I studied the photo. He was certainly a striking figure. I studied it some more, for the sake of thoroughness. People tend to avoid outright detailed inspection of others when actually face-to-face. It’s a bit rude and tends to make one look like a nutter. Thankfully though, technology has saved the voyeuristic day, and now you can stalk whomever you like with relative impunity. With this in mind, I flicked through to see if there were any other photos. Nada. It didn’t give me enormous faith in the spying potential of Cabal if the only photograph they had of this GO was from the same function where I had met him. I had been expecting years’ worth of impressive surveillance. A full dossier on his every movement. No such luck. It was evident with every passing moment that I would be flying blind.

  Subject 142531

  Designation GO anima-mortis.

  Colloq: Vampire

  Age: undetermined

  Origin: undetermined. (Suggested Italian/Caecilian/Hispanic origin?– tbc)

  Known associates:

  Subject 476421

  Subject 343465

  Subject 763541

  Subject 244356

  Subject 432126

  Subject 145552

  Current loc: New Oxford, Saint Giles, Neo-Vampire-District

  Other known/suspected Pre-wars loc: Geneva/London/Florence

  The genetic other known as Allesandro (no known surname) currently resident and working under the GO Registration Act 2017 in New Oxford, west of the reclaimed Cambridge Campus site. Believed to be employed under subject 145552 in the GO entertainment industry. Currently resident at sanctum /e&c. No known undesirable activity. No criminal record post wars. Identifying marks, none.

  There was nothing else.

  I flipped the page, just to check the back sheet was indeed blank. It was.

  Seriously? This was intel? About as useful as a thumbnail sketc
h. For a start, I had no idea who the other ‘subjects’ were. I assumed this meant there were other manila folders somewhere in Cabal’s archives, but without access to them these numbers it was all meaningless to me. Other GOs perhaps?

  They knew where he worked, of course. Every GO residing in New Oxford and every one of the other free towns was required to register and be on record, but this was hardly rocket science. The man had given me his business card, for God’s sake; he clearly wasn’t in hiding.

  No rap sheet. He seemed to have stayed off the law’s radar. Undesirable activity, as far as vampires were concerned, was human attack. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, the GOs generally dealt with it internally, swiftly and sternly. It was bad PR for both sides, considering they were picketing for equal rights. A rogue human attack could set things back years, and the great and good of the GO cause had little patience for any of their own kind who were unable to keep their fangs behind their lips.

  No tattoos either. This didn’t shed any light on anything either, although I admit part of me was oddly disappointed with the news.

  Don’t judge me. I never said I was Snow White.

  I flipped the useless file closed irritably and finished my hot chocolate in as angry a manner as is possible when slurping hot molten goodness. I burned the roof of my mouth, which only made my mood worse.

  Truth be told, I was shook up. Scared and well out of my depth. It wasn’t just the fact of what had happened to my supervisor, which was horrific in itself, or the fact that my bosses were trying to hush the whole thing up. It wasn’t even that I had been press-ganged into this unwanted new ‘promotion’ of unofficial Blue Lab Snoop. It was that I was having to lie by omission to my team. It was that I was well and truly out of my – admittedly narrow – comfort zone. Perhaps most of all, it was that despite Cabal’s seeming faith in me to be a team player, the very private conversation I had held with the vampire Allesandro at the lecture put me in a very difficult position.

  He had told me bad things were coming. That they would need someone on our side of things. I had apparently been hand-picked by the other side as well.

  Gosh, I was popular all of a sudden. Go me!

  I hadn’t revealed the details of this exchange to Harrison, Cloves or their senior, of course. I did retain some small sense of self-preservation, after all, but what did this make me? An unwitting vampire conspirator? Some kind of double agent, a go-between for two very suspicious and unfriendly teams. I wasn’t sure quite what I had done to get myself dragged into this odd mess, but I was feeling very sulky about it.

  I had been twirling the business card Allesandro had slipped into my pocket, flipping it over and over in my fingers while I stared out of the window from my perch on the old armchair, furious with the world at large. Now I stared at it.

  The telephone number, and the handwritten message, in frankly very un-gothic biro: ‘When you need me – A’

  Sighing, I dialled the number.

  It was still daylight hours, so the young female voice which answered was undoubtedly human. I had assumed, and she confirmed, that the number on the card was the number for the vampire club.

  The nocturnal GOs often had human staff to do their day work for them. Sanctum was a vampire club, run by them for the burgeoning human tourist trade, but it had human staff for such mundane day-to-day tasks as table bookings, taking deliveries, all those pesky things which had to be done under the sunshine (such as it ever was in Britannia).

  The woman on the phone sounded breathless and sultry. Professionally so. In my opinion, she was trying a little too hard, but I reasoned it had taken her a while to answer the phone when I’d called, so for all I knew she was out of shape and had to run up a flight of stairs to answer. Probably corsets were involved. I decided not to judge.

  I enquired after Allesandro and was told he was ‘resting’, which was euphemism for the strange paralysis which affects all vampires from sunup to sundown. It’s more than just a heavy slumber. They are literally dead to the world and no good to anyone, unless you needed a door propped open.

  I asked the breathy staff member to pass on a message that I would be calling in the club this evening. When she asked to take a name for the message, I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if Allesandro had approached me representing the wider GO community, or if his … interest, if that was the word, was of an individual nature. In the end I told her to just tell him the doctor called to make an appointment and hung up before she could question me further.

  The thought of my actually attending a vampire club filled me with quiet, toe-curling discomfort. I didn’t even like human clubs. The vampire district which had sprung up around St Giles was notorious. The human clientele who went there were generally either very gothic, in it for the glamour-by-association, or hopeless vamp-worshippers, rather sad and desperate people half-hoping to be chosen to be bitten and feverishly seeking eternal life and beauty.

  This never happened by the way. Period. Vampires are not flighty when it comes to turning humans. If they were, there would be a hell of a lot more of them. The very fact that they were so notoriously picky proved that there was at least some form of common sense at work in the GO community. If you face spending the rest of eternity in someone’s company, it’s unlikely you are going to choose a drunken nightclub patron with an Anne Rice obsession and a penchant for morose internet poetry. That would get old fast, even if the individual didn’t.

  Even if the vampire lovers went home without their dreams of eternal life coming true, they still had a good time. The vampires had no problem entertaining said people, as long as they were happy to buy drinks and part with their money. Business was business.

  Still, I didn’t fit into the usual clientele by any stretch of the definition. I didn’t even think I had anything suitably dark and moody to wear. A quick inspection of my rather capsule wardrobe confirmed this. I had work clothes, sweats for jogging, pjs, and some rather older work clothes which had been relegated to ‘weekend wear’. As I may have intimated already, I don’t have time for much of a social life. Astonishingly, I found I was clear out of blood red corsets, leather pants and PVC stiletto boots.

  I had a moment’s shining hope when I thought I had found a suitable off the shoulder black top, but my euphoria was quickly crushed when I pulled it off the hanger and discovered it was a long relegated-to-the-closet number which actually had a line of stylised Hello Kitty silhouettes along the waist.

  What the hell I had been thinking when I bought that, I will never know. I wasn’t cute enough to pull off the Hello Kitty look. Neither were most people I saw wearing Hello Kitty to be honest.

  There was nothing else for it. Going completely against every natural fibre of my being, I admitted I needed help. After pacing my flat a few times, listening to the hubbub of the cafe below drift up through my floorboards, I dialled the only person I could think of who might be able to solve my pending crisis.

  Lucy answered on the second ring. It was past six by now, and she couldn’t have been long back home from the lab.

  “Doc!” She sounded surprised to hear from me. I had never called her before, so I wasn’t offended by this. “Everything okay? We missed you today. Weird day all round, huh?”

  “Yeah, sorry about that, I had to go over some files for the big bosses in Trevelyan’s absence,” I said apologetically, which was only half a lie so I didn’t feel too bad. “Listen, Lucy, this is kind of a random question, I know, but are you doing anything tonight?”

  Her silence was rather suspicious for a moment. God, was I really so unsociable that she was reeling from even my phone call? Mental note, spend more time with people before you completely morph into crazy cat lady.

  “Do you need me back in the lab?” she asked warily.

  “No, no … nothing like that,” I winced awkwardly, pacing my bedroom avoiding balled up socks and discarded piles of resolutely non-gothic clothing, with my phone clutched to my ear. Was I really such a slave-drive
r? I decided just to spit it out. “This is going to sound odd, Lucy, but I’m going vampire hunting tonight … and I desperately need a wingman … oh, and to borrow some clothes.”

  14

  “This is a truly terrible idea,” I said as Lucy and I stepped out of the taxi on the corner of St Giles. It was almost midnight, traditionally the time that most of the GO clubs opened their doors. We were only a short walk from Cornmarket Street, the University and St John’s College, but we were well out of normal human territory here. The wide four lane sweep of St Giles was thronged with thrill-seekers – the brave, the brassy and the bold, all out to have a good time in the vampire district of New Oxford. On a Tuesday. Didn’t these people have work in the morning?

  “Don’t worry, Doc, you look totally awesome,” Lucy said in her usual bubbly, slightly over-excited way, as she paid the driver and followed me onto the street. Across from us, beyond the shiny snow-wet cobbles glowing phosphorently in the amber streetlamps, stood a rather unassuming pub called The Eagle and Child. As Oxford pubs go, it wasn’t a bad pedigree. It had been the watering hole of several of our previous society’s dreamers. C S Lewis used to wet his whistle here with Tolkien back in the day. They had called themselves ‘the Inklings’, meeting up to drink and weave strange tales and new and wonderful worlds out of the ether. I wondered briefly what those two legends of literature would have thought of the place in its present form, considering the pub was now nothing more than the antechamber to the large, subterranean vampire club known as Sanctum. Times change, I guess.

  Despite Lucy’s reassurances, I did not, in my opinion, look fine. Lucy had come over roughly half an hour after my phone call, having almost bitten my hand off at the offer of a night on the tiles. She’d been bearing a selection of outfits which made me immediately reassess my estimation of her. It just goes to show, what people appear to be in the daytime isn’t necessarily who they are at night. Lucy in the lab had always seemed to me a meek wallflower. Not tonight.