important?”
Isabella looked at Molly. “Just once, I wish you’d go out with someone who doesn’t need everything spoon- fed to him.” She looked back at me. “I’ve spent over a year now investigating a secret underground Satanist conspiracy. And don’t look at me like that, Drood! There are still such things. I’m talking about a worldwide, highly organised cabal involving very highly placed people from all walks of life. All of them worshipping the Devil, and dedicated to the destruction of civilisation as we know it.”
“I thought that kind of stuff was an urban legend,” I said. “Something for the tabloids to get excited about on slow news days.”
Isabella smiled smugly. “That’s what they want you to think. And who do you suppose owns most of the tabloids these days? If people could see the birthmark on the back on Rupert Murdoch’s head, they’d shit themselves. All right, I can see you’re not convinced. Quick history lesson. Pay attention and don’t make me repeat myself, or I will slap you a good one, and it will hurt.”
“She will, too,” said Molly. “I’d stay out of reach, if I were you.”
I sat down on the edge of the desk, conspicuously within reach of Isabella, and smiled politely. “Go ahead. I love being lectured by strict women wearing leathers.”
“Oh, Eddie,” said Molly. “You never said. . . .”
“Later, sweetie,” I said.
“Young love,” said Isabella. “The horror, the horror. Anyway, the last really big Satanic conspiracy took place during the nineteen twenties and thirties, back when all those bright young things were looking for something new to believe in. Most of them had the good taste to become Communists or sexual deviants; the rest sold their souls to the Devil because they were bored. . . . The whole thing crashed to a halt when they backed Hitler and the Nazis, and everybody else backed the Allies. After the war, people had too much else to think about. There were some brief surges in the sixties, but it’s hard to get people excited about sin when nothing’s a sin anymore.”
“What about the eighties?” I said.
“No,” said Molly. “The Satanists weren’t behind that. It only seemed that way.”
“Right,” said Isabella. “Back then, people were throwing their souls away every day, of their own free will. The Devil didn’t have to do a thing.”
“I’m not always sure I believe in the Devil, as such,” I said.
“You’d better,” said Isabella. “He believes in you. Where was I? Oh, yes, the Satanists are back now, and organising with a vengeance. They see the Droods as dithering, without real leadership, and preoccupied with other things. Like the Loathly Ones and the Immortals. So the Satanists have quietly launched a major comeback, while you’re too busy to notice.”
“Pardon me if I’m not too impressed,” I said. “I can’t help seeing Satanists as so . . . old-fashioned. And what are they doing here? Planning bad business practices? Plotting better ways to avoid paying taxes?”
“It’s a really good cover,” said Isabella. “But it’s still just a cover.”
“What brought you here?” said Molly, attacking the question from another front.
“You know me,” said Isabella. I need to know things. Secret things. Especially when someone else doesn’t want me to know them. I was looking for something and found something else, which is always the way. I was investigating a local legend of a town where everyone was a werewolf, in Avignon, France, which led me to the abandoned Danse Academie in Germany’s Black Forest that had been a feeding ground for one of the Old Mothers; and that in turn brought me to an outbreak of ancient forces around a circle of standing stones in darkest Wales. But in each case, by the time I got there, someone else had already been there and put a lot of effort and a lot of money into cleaning it all up so that not one trace remained of what had happened there. Everyone I talked to smiled and shook their heads and lied right to my face. Someone had spread some serious money around in a major cover-up that would probably have fooled anyone else.
I didn’t know who these people were, or what they’d wanted in these places, and I hate not knowing things, so I started digging. I went underground, into the city subcultures, showing my face in the kinds of places the powers that be like to pretend don’t exist, because people aren’t supposed to want such things. . . . And there I asked a whole bunch of awkward questions, stirring up the mud to see what was underneath. A word here and a name there put me on the trail of something unusually big and organised, and after that it was a case of ‘follow the money. . . .’ I followed the bribes through the corrupt officials and the compromised authorities, rising higher and higher, until it led me here, to an office building that had nothing to do with business. Lightbringer House may be only the tip of the iceberg, but this is where the Satanists come to get their orders. This is where things are decided and things are sworn in Satan’s name.
“One interesting side note: According to the official records, all the businesses in this building are subsidiaries of Lightbringer Incorporated. Which, if you look back far enough, was once known as Fallen Star Associates. The main front for the nineteen thirties Satanist conspiracy. These people are back, and this time they mean business. They have a plan, and I want to know what it is.”
“Okay,” I said. “All very interesting, and possibly convincing, but I don’t see anything in this office to back it up. The papers on the desk are boring to the point of bland, and it’s not like there’s a knitted sampler on the wall reading, ‘I Love Lucifer.’ Are you sure this isn’t paranoia and scaremongering? We see a lot of that in the Droods. In fact, it’s pretty much business as usual.”
“If Iz says there’s evil here, there is evil here,” Molly said firmly. “No one knows evil better than Iz. She’s never wrong about things like this. Except when she’s wrong.”
“Molly, do me a favour,” said Isabella. “Stop trying to help. Look, the evidence is here somewhere! I just haven’t found it yet. They’d hardly leave it lying around, would they? The trail I followed led me to this floor, and this office. Orders come from here, and payments, and even a few not very discreet threats.”
“If this really is as big a conspiracy as you believe,” I said, “I don’t think we should do anything to let them know we know. I think we should all return to Drood Hall and discuss a more . . . organised response.”
“Put myself in the hands of the Droods?” said Isabella. “Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen! Never trust a Drood!”
“Why not?” I said, genuinely taken aback by the anger in her face and the venom in her voice.
“Your family killed our parents, remember?” said Molly. “Isabella isn’t as forgiving as I am.”
“I still don’t know what you’re doing with this one,” said Isabella. “I mean really, Molly, a Drood?”
“He’s different,” Molly said stubbornly. “He’s . . . special.”
“You always say that,” said Isabella. “And you always end up sleeping on my couch, crying your eyes out. You have the worst taste in men. . . .”
“Molly and I have something in common,” I said. “It’s possible that my family was responsible for the death of my parents, too.”
Isabella looked at me sharply and then shook her head. “None of this is important. The truth is here, and I will find it, even if I have to tear this whole office apart.”
“Oh, not again . . .” said Molly.
Isabella glared at both of us. “Get out of here. Both of you. Go back to your precious Drood Hall. I don’t need your help, and I don’t want you here.”
“Too late,” I said cheerfully. “I’m intrigued now. The return of the Satanists! It’s all so very Dennis Wheatley. . . . Molly, my dear, do you think you could keep a lid on any booby traps I might set off by persuading this computer to talk nicely to me?”
“Don’t see why not,” said Molly. “Silicon sorcery’s always been a specialty of mine.”
“You haven’t gone back to cloning credit cards, have you?” said Isabella.
“Of course not!” said Molly. “I’m into a much higher class of lawlessness now.”
“If you could concentrate on the computer, Molly . . .” I said.
“Oh, sure! No problem!”
I half expected her to work some dramatic chaos ritual over the computer, or sprinkle fairy dust on it, but she sat down before the machine, fired it up and worked some subtle magic through the keyboard, until the computer dropped its pants and showed her everything it had. Molly pushed back the chair, grinned at me and got up so I could take her place.
“There you go. Ask it anything you want. I’ve got the security systems eating out of my hand. You could pry this computer open with a crowbar and piss in the back, and it wouldn’t shed a single tear.”
“You always did have a delicate touch,” I said.
