Simon Green - Daemons Are Forever

My skin crawled. “An infected Drood, at the very heart of the family? Could there be others, still moving among us?”

“It’s possible,” said Rafe. “We’ve grown complacent down the years. Maybe the Armourer could come up with something we could use as a test…”

“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “A traitor in the family…maybe that’s why there were so many unexpected drones waiting for us at Nazca. They knew we were coming. Someone tipped them off.”

“Has anyone gone missing, since you returned?” said Rafe.

“Just Janissary Jane, but… No. Wait a minute.” I scowled, not liking where my thoughts were leading me. “She’d just got back from a demon war when I found her. She said she was the only survivor… and now I have to wonder why.”

All our heads snapped around sharply as we heard a faint, furtive noise among the stacks, not far away. I was up on my feet in a moment, plunging through the towering shelves, with Rafe and William not far behind me. And there, not even trying to hide or run away, was the Blue Fairy, caught with a pile of books in his arms. He smiled quickly at the three of us, while being careful to stand very still.

“Hello!” he said. “Don’t mind me. Just here to pick up a little light reading.”

“This is the old library,” I said. “Off limits to everyone, but especially you.”

“How very unkind,” said the Blue Fairy. “Anyone would think you don’t trust me.”

“Those are forbidden texts,” growled William. “Rare and important, very valuable. Put them down. Carefully.”

“Of course, of course!” said the Blue Fairy, still smiling his bright and easy smile. He lowered the pile of books slowly and cautiously to the floor, and then held up both hands to show they were empty, before stepping back from the pile. “Can we all just calm down a little, please? I mean, we’re all friends here, aren’t we? All on the same side?”

I gave him my best withering glare. I’d always assumed the Blue Fairy mostly came back to the Hall because he felt in need of protection from his many enemies. Like the Vodyanoi Brothers. And only secondly to do good works for the redemption of his chequered soul. After all, when all was said and done, the Blue Fairy was still half elf, and you can never trust an elf.

“What…precisely, where you looking for?” I said.

“I was interested in your family’s past dealings with the elves,” the Blue Fairy said immediately. “I don’t really know much about Daddy’s side of the family. Full blood elves don’t talk to half-breeds. Our very existence is taboo to them. But seeing you here, Eddie, among your own kind, made me sort of curious about mine. You know your roots, who and what you came from. I never have.”

I would have believed anyone else, but this was the Blue Fairy, so …

“Next time, ask permission first,” I said. “How did you get in here, anyway? The shields I had put in place around the portrait should have eaten you alive.”

“Oh please,” said the Blue Fairy, with an airy wave of one slender hand. “I am a professional, after all. I’ve been getting in and out of better-guarded places than this since before you were born.” And then he hesitated, and looked at me oddly. “I couldn’t help overhearing the librarian’s fascinating discourse on the Kandarians… It seems to me that I read something about them, and their connection with the elves. The Fae Court was already ancient when the Kandarians began building their very unpleasant empire, and it is said…that the elves introduced the Kandarians to the Loathly Ones, as a way of destroying them. Beware of elves, Eddie, they always have a hidden agenda.”

He turned and walked away. I watched him go, and wondered whether he’d been trying to tell me, in his own indirect way, something very important about himself.

I left the old library with a lot on my mind. I’d learned a lot of important things, most of which horrified me, all of which made me just that much more determined to go ahead with my secret plan. If I was going to have to fight a war against Hungry Gods, with all of reality at stake, I wanted some seriously heavy backup. First, I needed a place where no one would bother me, where I could use Merlin’s Glass in a way I was sure absolutely no one in the family would approve of. So I left the Hall and went to the old chapel, tucked away around the side of the house. Jacob’s old haunt, before I brought him back into the family. The chapel had been officially off limits to the whole family for centuries, because Jacob was there, and while he might have left the chapel, no one had got around to reversing the ban.

I approached the chapel cautiously, but the thick mat of ivy half covering the heavy wooden door didn’t even twitch. While Jacob was in residence, the ivy had acted as his early warning system, to ensure he remained undisturbed…but now he was gone, and the ivy was just ivy. The door was stuck half open, as always, and I had to put my shoulder to the heavy wood to shift it. The door scraped loudly across the bare stone floor, raising acrid clouds of dust. I coughed a few times, and called out Jacob’s name. I still half hoped…but there was no reply.

Jacob was gone.

The pews were still stacked up against the far wall, shrouded in dusty cobwebs. The huge black leather reclining chair still stood in front of the old-fashioned television set. It was only too easy to remember Jacob, slouched at his ease in the chair, watching the memories of old television programmes on a set with no working bits in it. The old refrigerator still stood beside the chair, but when I opened it, it was empty. I closed the door and sat down on the chair. The old leather creaked mournfully under my weight.

I wished Jacob were still around. I could always talk to him. And, just maybe, he would have been the only one I trusted enough to talk me out of what I intended to do. I wasn’t up to running a war. I didn’t have the experience. The Nazca Plain nest had proved that. I was damned if I’d see any more of my family killed because of me. I needed expert help and support, from real warriors and tacticians, to help me plan the battles in the war that was coming. And since it didn’t seem likely that I’d find such experts here in the present, I’d just have to look for them in the past, and the future.

The Armourer had forbidden me to do that. But I never was any good at listening to what my family told me.

I took out Merlin’s Glass and just looked at it for a while, turning it over and over in my hands. I wasn’t blind to the risks of what I was planning. But the family had to be protected. I shook the mirror out to full size, and it hung before me on the air, its surface a shimmering blank.

“Open yourself to the past,” I said firmly. “And find me the best warrior, the best planner, to help me in the war that’s coming. Find me a man good and true; someone I can trust. Find me the one perfect individual, to do what’s needed.”

The mirror snapped into sharp focus, showing me a clear image of… Jacob Drood. At first I thought the mirror had misunderstood me, and just located the ghost of Jacob because he was most on my mind. But the more I looked at the image, the clearer it became that this wasn’t any ghost. This was the real Jacob, the living man… from long, long ago. He looked so much younger, and… less complicated. As I watched, the image burst into movement, and I was looking through a window into the past, as the living Jacob chased a giggling young woman around the chapel. Grinning cheerfully, he pursued her in and out of the properly positioned pews, the girl staying just enough ahead to encourage him. Their clothing suggested late eighteenth century, though I was never very good on dates and history.