Simon Green - Property of a Lady Faire

But he wouldn’t have done that to me . . . would he?

Or could it be some shape-shifter or face-dancer, pretending to be him? Wearing James’ face to get into the Lady Faire’s Ball, to get to the Lazarus Stone? I smiled coldly behind my security mask. If someone here was hiding behind Uncle James’ reputation, I would have their balls.

I wished Molly was with me, so I could discuss this with her. She would have known what to say, what to do. She always was the professional one.

Then, quite suddenly, everything stopped. The noise broke off as everyone stopped talking. The music stopped and the singer fell silent. Everyone in the Ballroom stood very still. We were all looking at the Lady Faire, standing in the open doors at the far end of the Ballroom, come at last.

She held an effortlessly aristocratic pose, smiling on her gathered guests. Someone started applauding, and everyone joined in. I did too. Just couldn’t help myself. People started cheering, and shouting happily. Some wept, quite openly. The great ice cavern filled with a joyous sound, overwhelming and overpowering. A spontaneous outbreak of good cheer and affectionate tribute. The Lady Faire was here at last, and everyone wanted to show how much they still cared for her. Perhaps the one great affair, or even love, of their troubled lives. The only person who had ever really mattered to them. The Lady Faire smiled graciously about her, accepting it all as her right. Her right of conquest, perhaps.

Everyone was looking at her in the same way, or at the very least, in varieties of the same way. Looks of love and hunger and lust, but more than that . . . They were the looks of a subjugated people, of those who had been touched by the Lady Faire and loved it. Or had been made to love it, by the perfect honey trap. The Baron Frankenstein had done his work well. The Lady Faire was so much more than an ex-lover to these people. She was a living goddess. Male and female and everything in between; they had loved her once and they loved her now, despite themselves. And having finally seen her, I could understand why.

The Lady Faire, that most infamous omnisexual and ladything, the most successful seductress in the history of espionage, the Ice Queen herself . . . was tall and stately and wore a perfectly fitted white tuxedo. Her hair had been shaped and dyed into a perfect re-creation of Jean Harlow’s platinum bombshell. Her face was handsome and striking and beautiful, all at once, with a strong bone structure. She had golden-pupiled eyes, a pointed nose, and pink rosebud lips. Her smile was a practised thing, but charming as all hell. More a man’s smile than a woman’s . . . Shapes and movements inside the white tuxedo suggested a woman’s body, and then a man’s, both and neither and more.

There was no point in even trying to guess her age. She looked perfectly youthful, no more than her twenties. But there was a suggestion of age, of long experience, in her eyes and her smile, in every small movement, and in the grace and elegance that hung about her like a well-worn cloak. Much used, and invisibly mended. You could tell that here was someone who had been around. Who had seen things and done things, some of them awful. Not that she cared, and nothing she would ever apologise for. You just knew, from looking at her. She had a feminine glamour, and a masculine presence. There was nothing androgynous about her. She was quite definitely female. And male. And so much more.

The Lady Faire took your breath away, sweet as cyanide.

She certainly made one hell of a first impression. My torc was burning fiercely at my throat, or I might have fallen under her spell too. She-it was easier to think of her that way, less complicated-was overpoweringly sexual, seductively alluring, without even trying. I could feel the attraction burning off her, like the light that calls moths to throw themselves into the flame and perish. Looking at her was like staring into a spotlight aimed personally at you. And yet . . . there was something else there too. Like a maggot squirming deep in an apple. An almost arachnid revulsion, a bone-deep, soul-deep aversion to something that just shouldn’t exist in the natural world.

Or maybe that was just me. After all, I’ve been around a bit myself.

I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t. I felt the same need, the same hunger, that drew everyone else to the Lady Faire. I fought it, drawing on the strength of my torc, and my armour, and my Drood training. To always be in control, and never the one controlled. I was half tempted to armour up, just so I could hide behind it. I thought of Molly, and all she had come to mean to me, and that helped. What was a living goddess in the face of the wild witch of the woods? There was no room left in my heart for the Lady Faire. But still, I couldn’t look away. I knew the Lady Faire was a honey trap, and a danger to everything I cared about . . . but I was finding it hard to care.

She was just like the legendary Ice Queen. You looked at her, a sliver of her ice entered your eye, and you were hers forever.

Except I was a Drood. A field agent trained to never give in to outside influences. Trained from an early age to be loyal only to Droods. Anything, for the family. I concentrated on my torc, and immediately a tendril of golden armour shot up my neck to form a mask under my security mask. And just like that, I could See the Lady Faire so much more clearly.

No one else could tell, but I could See her pumping out pheromones on an industrial scale. Musk, mating signals, bypassing the conscious mind to appeal directly to the unconscious, affecting people on the most basic, fundamental level. No wonder I’d been having so much trouble thinking clearly. I breathed deeply through my hidden golden mask, and felt my head clear as though a cold wind was rushing through it.

The Lady Faire still looked just as impressive, but also . . . beautiful and horrible. Human and inhuman. As though two sets of impressions were at war with each other. She was still strikingly attractive, but no longer seductive. The brute force of her chemical appeal made her seem more like an Insect Queen than an Ice Queen. I could See cracks in her perfect face, in her practised composure. Age had taken its toll, after all, and she was no longer the great creation she had been.

And just like that, I could remember everything Molly meant to me. I could see her face and hear her voice, and there was no one else in the world I wanted as much as I wanted her.

It was a shock to the soul, to step back from the precipice I’d been ready to leap over. To realise how close I’d come to jumping off that cliff edge along with all the other lemmings. Molly was back, like she’d never been away. I didn’t think I would ever mention this to her. How I’d felt, for those few delirious moments. I felt a certain sense of relief, now that I understood what had been happening to me. It wasn’t all down to the pheromones, to the chemical impulses, but they had definitely got to me. The Baron had put a lot of thought into his creation. The bastard.

The Lady Faire finally got bored just standing there, and strode regally forward into the Ballroom. Her ex-lovers were all still cheering and applauding, trying to outdo one another and catch the Lady Faire’s eye. She moved easily among her conquests, stopping here and there to favour this one and that, by remembering their name. And then she would remember a place or a time or a moment, and everyone hung on her every word and smile and gesture. Great men and women fawned over her openly, competed shamelessly for every glance, and debased themselves just for the chance of a smile. Sometimes she would lay a hand briefly on a shoulder, or caress a face with her fingertips, and the guests so favoured all but swooned.