“Checked it three times, sir.”
To argue further would be ridiculous. When it came to portal thaumaturgics, Tokely was the expert’s expert. But—“Are you saying you found
nothing
unusual?”
“Didn’t say that, sir. There is a slight blip. And of course we’ve got one incomplete journey. Can’t say I’ve ever seen that happen before. Not without finding—well, you know. Remains.”
“You’re saying my agent simply vanished halfway to his destination?”
“Sorry, Sir Alec.”
Now Tokely sounded defensive.
“I know how it looks, but that’s my finding. You want a second opinion, call one in. You’ll get the same answer.”
“No, a second opinion’s not necessary. Written report to me soonest, Tokely. My eyes only. This one’s off the books, yes?”
“Whatever you say, sir.”
He replaced the receiver, heart knocking hard again. So Gerald really had disappeared on his way to Grande Splotze, with no alarms triggered here or at the DoT. How was that possible? Who could
begin
to—
No, surely not. Not even Ralph’s nephew is stupid enough to try something like this. Is he? By God, if Monk Markham’s behind this I’ll—
On the corner of his desk his crystal marble buzzed. Swamped sickeningly with relief, he snatched it up and hexed open a channel.
“Dunwoody? Dunwoody, where the
hell
are—”
“Um, actually, no, this isn’t Gerald,”
said a thin, nervous voice.
“This is Monk, Sir Alec. Monk Markham. I need to see you urgently. At home. Can you come?”
“Markham?” he said, incr›” hneeedulous. “How the devil did you get this—” And then he ground his teeth together. “Never mind. I’m on my way.”
He was too angry to bid Frank a very late goodnight. Barely nodded at Chawtok, the agent on front desk duty. Swathed in coat and scarf and gloves and hat, he slammed out of the building and into his car and drove at reckless speed through the dark night streets, out to South-West Ott and Chatterly Crescent.
Monk Markham, the incorrigible reprobate, was waiting for him on his charming establishment’s front doorstep. “I’m sorry, Sir Alec. I didn’t know who else to call.”
There was blood on Markham’s face. Dried, but recent. His usually cheerful, slightly anarchic demeanor was absent. He was tense, his face pale, and there was something approaching dread in his wide eyes.
Raging temper receded, slightly “This had better be good, Mr. Markham.”
Ralph’s nephew swallowed. “Actually, sir, it’s pretty bad. Please—come in. You won’t believe me until you see it for yourself.”
So he followed Ralph’s nephew inside the old, comfortable house, through to the parlor where he found—surprise, surprise—not only the young troublemaker’s precocious sister Emmerabiblia but Melissande Cadwallader and the bird.
And another Monk Markham, dead and stiffening on a couch.
“I’m sorry?” he said, looking at them one by one. “Is this some kind of ridiculous joke?”
“Do we look like we’re laughing, sunshine?” said the bird. “Would you say this is my
hysterically amused
face?”
Ralph’s appalling nephew wiped his hands down his front. “It’s all right. I can explain,” he muttered. Then he sighed. “Um—well, actually, I can’t. Not really. But I can tell you what’s happened, Sir Alec. And then—I hope—you can tell us what to do about it.”
He listened to their story, growing colder by the minute. Some small, rational part of his mind was screaming, very rationally,
This is not possible. There are laws of thaumaturgics. They can’t be bent like this.
And then he remembered with whom he was dealing and he felt like screaming again, not rationally at all.
“So you see, sir,” said Ralph’s regrettable nephew, when his insane tale was finished, “I really think we need to get Gerald back here. You know, from wherever you sent him. Because if ever there was a case for your best janitor to work on, I think this is it.”
He was so angry he felt perfectly calm. “You constructed an interdimensional portal opener? By accident? And you failed to declare it?”
“He only used it the once,” said Ralph’s equally regrettable niece, firing up. “It’s been in his sock drawer ever since. And it was the other Monk—” she pointed without looking, “—that one, who got his opener to work between worlds. And he only did that because his Gerald’s gone insane and has to be stopped. So really it’s lucky our Monk made his, isn’t it, or he’d probably not understand how this other one works, would he? And then Gerald would
have no way of getting through to the other world and stopping his mad self before h›d srste kills everyone. So—so you might remember that before you start being mean.”
“Really?” he said. “That’s your informed, experienced opinion is it, Miss Markham?”
As he’d intended, Miss Markham wilted.
“Sir Alec,” said Miss Cadwallader, her chin lifted, her green eyes grim. “I appreciate you’re upset but you need to focus on what’s relevant. This might be a mess but for once Monk didn’t make it. Not our Monk. He didn’t bring this poor man here and he’s not responsible for what’s gone wrong in the other world. But now that we know what’s happening there, I believe we
are
responsible for stopping it.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Are we?”
“Legally? No, of course not,” she retorted. “But morally? Ethically? Now that we know people are suffering and dying? Absolutely. So please, recall Gerald so we can sit down and work out how to fix this before it’s too late.”
She was an eminently reasonable, sensible and decent young woman. They were all of them, at heart, decent young people—well, except for the bird—and while they might frequently drive him to raving distraction they weren’t actively evil. Well, with the possible exception of the bird. But none of them seemed to have grasped the true import of these remarkable events. The shock of the other Monk Markham’s death, no doubt. Not that the reason mattered. What
mattered
was that if one man could breach the boundary
between worlds then who was to say there wasn’t another coming close on his heels?
And if the next man turns out to be their Gerald Dunwoody… twisted by grimoire magic, his mind overturned by a lust for power…
“Given the circumstances,” he said, knowing it would be a long time before he slept easily again, “I would agree that our only viable course of action is to recall Mr. Dunwoody from his current mission and apprise him of these startling events. Unfortunately—” He cleared his throat. “Mr. Dunwoody has disappeared. And at this particular moment I have no idea where he is.”
I
t was the teasing and flirtatious scent of perfume that woke him. Perfume? In Grande Splotze? In his bachelor guesthouse room in Grande Splotze? Surprised—and just the slightest bit alarmed, because during his training there’d been any number of pointed lectures about
inappropriate personal dalliances while on janitorial assignment
—Gerald kept his eyes closed and waited for recent memory to return.
I was in the car with Sir Alec. There was a farmhouse, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. And a portal. I got into the portal. Sir Alec was operating it. I got into the portal. I had an overnight bag. Sir Alec gave it to me. Something to do with a yellow cravat. I got into the portal.
Hmm. There was a theme developing here. He got into the portal and then—
And then what happened? Did I reach Grande Splotze? Did I meet up with my contact? Perhaps my contact was a woman. Perhaps it’s her perfume I can smell. Perhaps thžtheings got a bit cozy. Were they supposed to get cozy? I don’t recall Sir Alec mentioning it. There was
something about elk stew. But elk stew doesn’t sound terribly cozy. Actually it sounds bloody awful.
Slowly and carefully, still not opening his eyes, he groped around under the blankets. No. Perfume or no perfume, he was definitely alone in the bed. That was a relief. He couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d explain an inappropriate personal dalliance to Sir Alec. Not after all the other things he’d had to explain.
I got into the portal…
But did he get out again at the other end? Try as he might he could
not
summon the memory. Recollection ended with the secret Department portal in that remote, abandoned farmhouse and the dry, self-contained look on Sir Alec’s never—well, almost never—communicative face.
I got into the portal…
Well, obviously he
must’ve
got out of it again because he was lying in a bed now, wasn’t he? So the real question was, whose bed and where was it? And the only way he was going to find the answer to those questions was to stop delaying the inevitable and open his eyes.
“Hello, Gerald,” said Bibbie Markham, lounging nearby in a silk-covered chair. She was wearing something startling and not altogether proper in red. No.
Scarlet
. “I was wondering how much longer you were going to keep up the charade.”
“Bibbie?” he said blankly. “What are you doing here?”
Dressed like that. In Grande Splotze. In my bachelor guesthouse room in Grande—
And then he looked past Monk’s unexpectedly alarming sister to the wallpaper behind her—muddy beige with mustard stripes—and realized—
Wait a minute. That’s my wallpaper. In my room in Monk’s house. In Ott. So—I’m at home? How did that happen? And why is Bibbie waving that cigarette holder? She doesn’t smoke. Does she? Something’s not right here. I think I’m in the middle of a very strange dream.
“No, you’re not,” said Bibbie, cheerfully. With a tap of one elegantly manicured fingernail she ignited the cigarette in the gold-inlaid ivory holder. “You’re wide awake, Gerald.” And then she laughed. “How odd, having to call you Gerald. I might have to think up another name for you. Pity your parents didn’t give you any spares.”
What?
What the devil was she talking about? Nonplussed, he stared a little closer at Monk’s sister. She looked… subtly different. Like Bibbie, and yet not. A thin stream of cigarette smoke curled ceilingwards in front of her face. Her—her
painted
face.
Good lord. I must be dreaming. Bibbie’s wearing makeup.
But how could that be possible? In Ottosland only socially inferior theatrical ladies and those fallen girls who regrettably sold their—their—charms—to unscrupulous gentlemen put paint and powder on their faces. A respectable girl who—who—what did they call it? Oh, yes.
Tarting up.
A respectable girl like Bibbie who tarted herself up would be subjected to the most
astringent
criticisms. From what he could understand, even tweed trousers were pref£useikeerable. With her face painted like that, Markham or not Bibbie would be an instant social outcast. Her family would come down on her like the proverbial ton of bricks.
Reg disapproved of the restrictions, of course. Called them fuddy-duddy and anti-female. She’d
worn her war paint every day when she was queen. Nothing wrong with it. Looking her best was the birthright of every woman and bugger the old sourpusses out to rain on the parade.
But Bibbie refused to listen to Reg’s demand that she take the fight for female suffrage that next important step. At least, he thought she’d refused to listen. But here she was in his bedroom with powder on her cheeks and paint on her lips and something on her eyelids and lashes that made her blue eyes almost too beautiful to bear. Wearing scarlet.
Bloody hell. How long has it been since I got into that portal?
Bibbie was grinning now, and at least that hadn’t changed. Her smile could probably power entire small countries. “Poor thing. You do look confused.”
“Um—probably because I am,” he said. With a glance down at his chest—good, he was wearing a nightshirt, except—
Oh, lord, who put it on me?
—he cautiously eased himself to sitting and rested his back against the knotty old bedhead. The chamber’s curtains were closed, and his clock was missing from the bedside nightstand. “What time is it?”
Bibbie waved the cigarette holder. Smoke wafted through the air, the smell of burning tobacco unpleasantly mingling with her muskily floral perfume. “Oh, yes, well,
time
,” she said, disparaging, and inhaled deeply on her unlikely cigarette. Tipping her head back, she proceeded to produce seven perfectly round smoke rings and then pierced all seven with a startling smoke arrow. “D’you know—Gerry—I think we’ve more important things to talk about than
time
.”
She’d done something different to her hair, too. On first glance he’d thought she’d just twisted it up in a new style but now, as she turned her head to watch her smoke rings on the arrow dart about the room, he could see that she’d
cut
it. Cut off her long golden hair and—and—slicked it down with some kind of feminine pomade. And there was something else, too. Something… unwholesome… that had nothing to do with face paint and cigarettes. A sour tang in the ether.
But that can’t be right. Bibbie would never get her thaumaturgical hands dirty. Not like that. Not Bibbie.
Dismayed, he stared at her. “
Bibbie
—enough nonsense, all right? I want to know what time it is—what
day
it is—
and
I want to know what’s going on!”