us. Tell us what we want to know. Tell us all your secrets. It’s the only way you’ll ever be free of this place.”
“You’re not the Sarjeant-at-Arms,” I said. “He’d die before he betrayed a single Drood secret to an outsider.”
“You can’t escape us,” said Walker.
“Yeah?” I said. “Kiss my arse.”
I sprinted past him, up the stairway and onto the next floor. Only the next floor wasn’t there; instead I stumbled to a halt inside the War Room, the nerve centre of the family, where all the really important decisions are made: looking after the hundreds of field agents out in the world, stamping out supernatural brush fires and slapping down the bad guys. Brown-trousering the ungodly, as my uncle James liked to put it. The War Room was usually packed with people at their work, full of sound and fury; but now it was deserted, silent. All the workstations were empty, the computer monitors and the scrying balls left unattended. All the lights were out on the great world map, and all of the clock faces, showing the time in every country in the world, were blank, without hands. Time had stopped here, too.
The work surfaces were layered with frost, and the communication systems were thickly coated with ice. (Part of me wondered where the blue moonlight was coming from to illuminate the War Room, but I’d made a conscious decision to worry only about those things that mattered immediately.) I wrote my name with my fingertip on the frost covering one monitor screen, but I couldn’t feel the cold of the ice. I looked up sharply, as one by one the monitor screens on the walls that should have shown trouble spots across the world turned themselves on, and vaguely familiar faces appeared on the screens, looking down at me, watching me with cold, angry, judgemental eyes. When I looked at any face directly it vanished, reappearing when I looked somewhere else. I was surrounded by a sea of faces, grim and condemning, but none of them could face me directly. I looked quickly back and forth, but all I could do was catch glimpses of my accusers out of the corners of my eyes. Glimpses of cold, scowling faces watching me with bad intent.
I almost jumped out of my skin when I suddenly realised there was someone in the War Room with me. I spun round, putting my back against the nearest workstation, and there facing me was the Blue Fairy. Half elf, thief, traitor . . . sometimes a friend, and sometimes not. That’s often how it is, out in the field. He looked very smart, almost fashionable, in his own ratty way; but his face was ravaged by time and far too much good living. He looked at me and shook his head sadly.
“Eddie, dear boy, what are you doing here, pursued by the dead, at the mercy of old friends and enemies? So much bitterness and unpleasantness, and all for a few secrets that probably never mattered that much, even when we were alive.” He looked about him. “Terrible place, no sense of style. Tell them what they want to know, Eddie, and then we can both get the hell out of here. I don’t like this place. Don’t like being dead, for that matter. When I first discovered what being dead was like, I cried and I cried and I cried. . . .”
“There has to be a way out of here,” I said. “Help me. I helped you. . . .”
“Did you, Eddie? Did you really? Yes, you rescued me from the depths of depression and disgrace, gave me new life and purpose . . . but did you think I’d be grateful? You should have left me as I was: a broken man, dying by inches and not giving a damn. You woke me up, gave me hope . . . just so I could die anyway a few years later in one of your stupid spy games. You should have left me as I was. It would have been kinder.”
“You always did make bad decisions, Edwin,” said another familiar voice.
And out of the deep, dark shadows of the War Room came my grandmother, Martha Drood, Matriarch of the family. She stood tall and stiff and proud before me in her neat grey twinset and pearls. Looking at me with her cold eyes and colder face. No sign of the awful wound that killed her in her own bed, soaking the whole front of her in blood. She looked me up and down and sniffed briefly. Another familiar sound. It tore at my heart. I hadn’t realised I’d missed it so much.
“You ran away from the Hall to be a field agent, and what good did that do you? All because you didn’t have the discipline to buckle down and do what you were told, like everyone else. I was grooming you to take a high position in the family, but you turned your back on us. You were always such a disappointment to me, Edwin.”
“I avenged your murder,” I said steadily. “I caught your killer, the Immortal disguised as your husband, Alistair. I killed him for you, Grandmother.”
“I’m still dead,” she said. “All because you weren’t paying attention. Too caught up with your new girlfriend. I never approved of her.”
“You never approved of me, Edwin,” said Alistair Drood, stepping forward to stand beside Martha. “You were responsible for my death too. I was only trying to do the right thing and protect my wife. You watched me burn in hellfire, and did nothing to save me. Tell them what they want to know, Edwin. Let your grandmother and me know peace, and rest at last.”
“Tell them,” said Martha Drood. “Tell them everything, Edwin.”
“Tell them,” said the Blue Fairy. “Or we’ll never leave you alone.”
“None of your deaths were my fault!” I yelled at them, and then I turned and ran out of the War Room.
And straight into the Armoury, even though it was located in a whole other wing of Drood Hall. I looked quickly behind me, but no one had followed. I moved slowly forward, checking every dark shadow for a new accusing face. The huge stone chamber seemed strange and unsettling, far too quiet without the usual hustle and bustle of the Armourer and his lab assistants. Always busy working on new weapons and devices of appalling destruction. Or raising hell and getting themselves into trouble for the fun of it. It isn’t a successful day in the Armoury unless someone’s been transformed into something distressing, or exploded, or committed some brave new crime against nature. But the workstations were empty, and the weapons-testing ground was unnaturally quiet. I moved quickly through the Armoury, looking for something I could use as a weapon. There were always nasty destructive things lying about in the Armoury. But the few dark shapes I could make out were welded to surfaces by the extreme cold, buried under thick layers of ice. I tried to pry a few of them loose, but no amount of effort would budge them. I beat at the crusted ice with my fist, but couldn’t even crack or splinter it.
A sound behind me spun me round, hands up to defend myself, half expecting Uncle Jack, the Armourer. But instead it was my uncle James. The greatest field agent the family ever produced: the legendary Grey Fox. Dead, because of me. He stood there smiling, tall and dark and handsome in his splendid tuxedo. Every inch the master spy I never was. Looking just as he had before I got him killed.
“No,” I said. “Please. No. Not you, Uncle James. I can’t stand it. . . .”
“Relax,” said Uncle James. “It’s all right, Eddie. I forgave you long ago.”
For a long moment, I couldn’t say anything. Uncles James nodded understandingly.
“It’s good to see you again, Eddie. I understood why you did what you did, even when I was alive. Ah, the things we do for the family . . . I don’t hold grudges. You see things a lot more clearly once you’re dead. You did for the family what I should have done long before.”
“Why are you here?” I said. “Are you a prisoner in this place, like me?”
“No. I was called here, like the others. But unlike most of them, I’m on your side.”
“Do you think I should tell Walker what he wants to know?” I said. “Tell him all my secrets, and those of the family?”
“Of course not,” said Uncle James. “Walker always was too ready to bow down to authority, or to anyone with a public-school accent. Tell him to go to hell, Eddie.”
I had to grin. Death had not mellowed Uncle James. “Do you know whom Walker’s working for? Who it is who wants my secrets?”
Uncle James frowned. “It’s hard to be sure of anything here. Hardly anyone or anything is necessarily what they appear to be.”
“Even you?” I said.
He shrugged easily. “Hard to tell. I think I’m me, but then I would, wouldn’t I?”
I put out my hand to him, but when he went to shake it, our fingers drifted through one another.
“Am I a ghost?” I said. “Give it to me straight; I can take it.”
“Not even close,” snapped another familiar voice. “You shouldn’t be here, boy.”
And suddenly standing next to my uncle James was Jacob Drood, the family ghost. He wore a battered Hawaiian shirt over grubby shorts, looking older than death itself. His face was a mass of wrinkles, his big, bony skull graced with a few flyaway hairs. But his eyes were as sharp and fierce as ever. He nodded brusquely to Uncle James, and then fixed me with his glare. “I’m the only ghost here, Eddie; but I can’t help you. There are rules even the dead have to obey. Perhaps especially the dead.”
