The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

'Didn't Gene say you could levitate?' said Keith, going to help her.

'She's not the one who knows everything,' said Susan. 'That was only once, and I was six. I've put on weight since then.'

Keith took her hands — 'she's all warm!' — and hauled her out of her hole.

'Abracadabra,' he said, flapping the cloak.

'It doesn't do to get overconfident,' cautioned Gene.

Susan made a rude gesture behind the other girl's back.

Jamie felt something. Deeper than the cold. He looked around. The whirling blizzard was thickening. And something was different.

'Hey, gang,' he said. 'Who made the snowmen?'

VII

'I know the Cold is spreading,' Catriona Kaye told Derek Leech. 'It's here, in Alder. We're three miles from you. Now put Richard on, would you?'

In the Manor House, the telephone was on a stand near the front door. She had to leave her guests in the drawing room to take Leech's call. The hallway was still cluttered from Edwin's days as Lord of this Manor: hats and umbrellas (and Charles Beauregard's old sword-stick) in a hideous Victorian stand, coats on hooks (she liked to use Edwin's flying jacket — still smelling of tobacco and motor-oil — for gardening), framed playbills from the 1920s, shotguns (and less commonplace armaments) in a locked case. Since Edwin's death, she'd tidied away or passed on most of his things, but here she let his ghost linger. Upstairs, on the landing, his shadow was etched permanently into the floorboards. After a lifetime in service to the Diogenes Club, it was all he had for a grave. She supposed she should throw a carpet over it or something.

As she waited for Leech to pass the phone to Richard, Catriona caught sight of herself in the tall, thin art deco mirror from the Bloomsbury flat she had shared with Edwin. At a glance, she was the girl she recognized — she had the same silhouette as she had in her, and the century's, twenties. If she looked for more than a few seconds, she saw her bobbed hair was ash-grey, and even that was dyed. Her wrists and neck were unmistakably a seventy-six-year-old's. Once, certain Valued Members had been grumpily set against even admitting her to the building in Pall Mall, never mind putting her on the rolls. Now, she was practically all that was left of the Diogenes Club as Mycroft Holmes would have recognized it. Even in the Secret World, things were changing.

'Catriona,' said Richard, tinny and distorted as if bounced off a relay station in the rings of Saturn. 'How are you? Is the Cold…?'

'In the village? Yes. A bother? No. We've enough lively minds in the house to hold it back. Indeed, the cool is misleadingly pleasant. What little of the garden survived the heat-wave has been killed by snow, though — which is really rather tiresome.'

Richard succinctly explained the situation.

' 'The planet's first evolved intelligence'?' she queried. 'That has a familiar ring to it. I shall put the problem to our little Council of War.'

'Watch out for snowmen.'

'I shall take care to.'

She hung up and had a moment's thought, ticking off her long string of black pearls as if they were rosary beads. The general assumption was that they had been dealing with an unnatural phenomenon, perhaps a bleed- through from some parallel wintery world. Now, it seemed there was an entity in the picture. Something to be coped with, accommodated or eliminated.

The drawing room was crowded. Extra chairs had been brought in.

Constant Drache, the visionary architect, wanted news of Derek Leech. Catriona assured him that his patron was perfectly well. Drache wasn't a Talent, just a high-ranking minion. He was here with the watchful Dr Lark, corralling the persons Leech had contributed to the Council and making mental notes on the others for use after the truce was ended. That showed a certain optimism, which Catriona found mildly cheering. She had told Richard's team not to call Leech's people 'the villains', but the label was hard to avoid. Fred and Vanessa were still in London, liaising with the Minister.

Anthony Jago, wearing a dog-collar the Church of England said he was no longer entitled to, was Leech's prime specimen — an untapped Talent, reputed to be able to overwrite reality on a large scale. The former clergyman said he was looking for property in the West Country and had taken a covetous liking to the Manor House. The man had an understandable streak of self-regarding megalomania, and Lark was evidently trying to keep him unaware of the full extent of his abilities. Catriona would have been terrified of Jago if he weren't completely trumped by Ariadne ('just Ariadne'). The white-haired, utterly beautiful creature had made her way unbidden to the Club and offered her services in the present emergency. She was an Elder of the Kind. Even the Secret Files had almost nothing on them. The Elders hadn't taken an interest in anything in Genevieve Dieu- donne's lifetime, though some of their young — the Kith — had occasionally been problematic.

Apart from Jago, none of Leech's soldiers were in the world-changing (or threatening) class. The unnaturally thin, bald, haggard Nigel Karabatsos — along with his unnaturally small, plump, clinging wife — represented a pompous Neo-Satanic sect called the Thirteen. Typically, there weren't thirteen of them. Maureen Mountmain was heiress to a dynasty of Irish mystics who'd been skirmishing with the Club for over eighty years. Catriona would gladly not have seen the red-headed, big-hipped, big-busted Amazon in this house again (she'd been here when the shadows took Edwin). Maureen and Richard had one of those complicated young persons' things, which neither cared to talk of and — Catriona hoped — would not be resumed. There were enough «undercurrents» in this Council for several West End plays as it was. Jago and Maureen, comparatively youthful and obnoxiously vital, pumped out more pheromones than a beehive. They took an interest in each other which Dr Lark did her best to frustrate by interposing her body. Leech obviously had separate plans for those two.

The mysterious Mr Sewell Head, the other side's last recruit for the Winter War Effort, was out in a snowfield somewhere with Gene-vieve's party. Catriona suspected they'd have a hard time getting through. Fair enough. If this council failed, someone needed to be left alive to regroup and try a second wave. Genevieve had Young Dr Shade and the interesting Rodway Girl with her — they had the potential to become Valued Talents, and the Cold Crisis should bring them on. Still, it didn't do to think too far ahead. In the long run, there's always an unhappy outcome — except, just possibly, for Ariadne.

Watching Jago and Maureen flex and flutter, attracting like magnets, Catriona worried that the Club's Talents were relics. Swami Anand Gitamo, formerly Harry Cutley, was only here for moral support. He had been Most Valued Member once, but had lately taken a more spiritual role. Still, it was good to see Harry again. His chanted mantras irritated Jago, a point in his favour. Paulette Michaelsmith had even more obviously been hauled out of retirement. She could only use her Talent (under the direction of others) when asleep and dreaming, and was permanently huddled in a bath chair. Catriona noted Dr Lark wasn't too busy playing gooseberry to take an interest in poor, dozy Paulette. Dr Cross, the old woman's minder, was instructed toward the witch off if she made any sudden moves. Louise Magellan Teazle, one of Catriona's oldest friends, always brought the sunshine with her — a somewhat undervalued Talent this summer, though currently more useful than all Karabatsos' dark summonings or Jago's reality-warping. It was thanks to Louise that the Cold was shut out of the Manor House. She was an author of children's books, and a near neighbour. In her house out on the moor, she'd been first to notice a change in the weather.

While Catriona relayed what Leech and Richard had told her, Louise served high tea. Paulette woke up for fruitcake and was fully alert for whole minutes at a time.

'This Cold,' Drache declared. 'Can it be killed?'

'Anything can be killed,' said Karabatsos.

'Yes, dear, anything,' echoed his wife.

'We know very little about the creature,' admitted Catriona. 'The world's leading expert is Professor Cleaver, and his perceptive is — shall we say — distorted.'

'All life is sacred,' said Anand Gitamo.