typing happily away as though she didn’t have a care in the world, the heartless cow, and a half a dozen visitors’ chairs of such blatant discomfort that they had to have been designed that way to keep the visitors in a properly respectful frame of mind.
There were the portraits on the walls. Dozens of them, covering all four walls, no room even for a clock or a calendar. Portraits of past field agents who had covered themselves with glory, if not renown. Only the Institute knew what its agents did to protect Humanity from the Outer Forces, and it didn’t even tell itself unless it needed to know. Officially, these portraits were always referred to as the Honoured Members. Field agents more usually referred to them as the Honoured Dead because no field agent ever expected to die of old age. Most didn’t even make it to their midlife crises.
The oldest portraits on the walls were only that—paintings in various styles from various periods, often by artists with famous names and reputations. Which is why there are unexplained gaps in certain artists’ careers. The clothes in the portraits changed with the passing fashions, but the faces all had the same look. Hard-used, heroic, haunted. Unsmiling faces, with eyes that had seen things they could never forget. After the paintings came photographs, from the first daguerreotypes to sepia prints, to the sharp digital images of today. Men and women who had gone down into Hell and kicked arse, for no other reward than knowing it was a job that needed doing. No medals, no honours, and sometimes not even a body for the funeral. The job was its own reward.
The faces in the portraits were different every time JC was summoned to the outer office. He didn’t know who was in charge of rotating them, or even if there was any significance in the choices. He half suspected the portraits chose their own positions.
JC sat easily on his stiff-backed chair, his cream suit immaculate as always, and did his best to project an air of unconcerned nonchalance. With a touch of insolence. Never let your enemies think they’ve got you worried. And, having searched his conscience all across London, although the prospect of meeting the Boss in person frankly unnerved him, as it did everyone . . . he really wasn’t that worried. He hadn’t done anything too terrible, recently, and he was confident in his ability to talk his way out of any lesser charges.
Happy, on the other hand, was not looking at all well. He sat bolt upright on his inflexible chair, looking guilty and put-upon in equal measure. His hands were clasped tightly together in his lap, to keep them from trembling too obviously, sweat beaded on his high forehead, and he’d developed a small but definite twitch in one eye. At least he hadn’t started whimpering yet. Typical of Happy; always convinced that the Universe was out to get him. Of course, in this job, sometimes it was. Or the Boss; which was just as bad.
The seriously heavy-duty wards preventing him from using his telepathic abilities probably weren’t helping. Happy always described the experience as enduring the hangover without having first enjoyed the drunk.
Melody was playing the latest version of Doom on her phone and giving it her entire concentration; apparently completely impervious to the demands and dangers of the everyday world. Melody really didn’t care much about the ordinary world, except when it interfered with her personal needs and interests. And she was never happier than when she had a new toy to play with. Only someone who knew her really well would have detected the sullen anger coiled and waiting in her tense muscles. Melody’s first impulse was always to fight. With her tech, her knowledge, or a really big gun. She always played to win, or at the very least to go down with her teeth buried in an enemy’s throat.
Happy cracked first. He turned abruptly in his seat and glared at JC. “This is all your fault!”
“Really?” said JC. He made a point of relaxing even further in his chair, so that he seemed positively boneless. “And how, pray, is this my fault? Considering that we haven’t even been told what we’ve been called in for yet.”
“Because it always is your fault!” said Happy.
“He has a point,” said Melody, not looking up from her computer game. “Always first through the doors, always first into the thick of things, and dragging us along behind you. With us usually yelling
“I thought we’d all agreed that the Harroby Hall situation was not my fault,” said JC, with quiet dignity. “Neither of you noticed anything out of the usual either. How were we supposed to know the house was the haunting, and not the people? That the extremely unfortunate Price family were in fact living in the ghost of a house that had burned down thirty years before? It’s not as if any of your precious instruments detected anything, did they, Melody dear? Still, since we’re so happily reminiscing, perhaps we could share some precious memories of the Case of the Glasgow Bogle? When you assured me that the Bogle was, in fact,
“Well it was,” Melody muttered defensively. “Right up until Happy provoked it.”
“Oh right, blame me!” said Happy. “Why do I always get the blame?”
“Because you deserve it,” snapped Melody, crushingly. “Remember the Phantom Bugler of Warwick-on- Sea?”
Happy sniffed, stuck out his lower lip sulkily, and wouldn’t meet her eyes. “How was I supposed to know it wasn’t a bugle? I’ve led a very sheltered life. Or at least, I did, right up until I got drafted into this bloody organisation. I can feel one of my heads coming on.”
“Children, children,” murmured JC. “Let us not discuss our personal failings while the enemy is listening.”
They all looked across at the Boss’s secretary, Heather. She smiled sweetly upon them without slowing her typing for a moment. Heather (if she had a last name no-one knew it, for all sorts of security reasons) was the perfect secretary. Knew everything, said nothing; or at least, nothing that mattered. Calm, professional, and pleasantly pretty, in a blonde curly-haired round-faced sort of way, Heather dressed neatly rather than fashionably; and as the Boss’s last line of defence, she was probably the most-heavily-armed person in Buck House. Supposedly, Heather was equipped to take down a whole army of terrorists, if necessary, and certainly no-one felt like testing the rumour. You had to get past Heather to get to the Boss, and unless you had exactly the right kind of paperwork, signed and countersigned in all the right places, that wasn’t going to happen. JC once saw Heather kick an overpresumptuous Parliamentary UnderSecretary so hard in the balls that half the faces in the portraits winced.
That JC was still prepared to try to charm and wheedle information out of her showed how nervous he really was.
“Heather, my darling . . . looking ravishing as always, of course; might I inquire . . . ?”
“No, JC, my darling, you might not,” said Heather, kindly but immovably. “The Boss will see you when she is ready to see you and not one moment before. All I can tell you . . . is that the Boss is really not a happy bunny this morning.”
JC raised an eyebrow. “Is she ever?”
“Sorry,” said Heather. “That falls under Classified Information.”
“Come on, Heather,” said Happy, giving his best shot at an ingratiating smile. “Can’t you at least tell us what we’ve done wrong this time? I mean, how deep in it are we?”
Heather smiled sweetly at him. “Do you possess a pair of waders? Or perhaps scuba gear?”
“Situation normal, then,” said Melody, going back to her game.
“Oh God,” said Happy, burying his face in his hands.
“Told you not to shoot that albatross,” said JC. “Now brace up, man. We’ve been here before and made it out the other side. If we were in serious trouble, Heather would have shot us the moment we walked through the door.”
“You might think that;” Heather murmured, “I couldn’t possibly comment.”
Happy moaned briefly, then produced half a dozen bottles of pills from various pockets. He rolled them back and forth in his hands, considering the multi-coloured contents, and squinting at the handwritten labels.
“Now . . . These yellow ones are to remind me to take these red ones . . . And the blue ones are only for use in cases of possession. These stripey ones are for radiation exposure, the hundreds and thousands are for my mood swings, and these chequered ones . . . are to give me a better outlook on life.”
“Trust me, those aren’t working,” said Melody. She glared at him sharply. “I thought we were weaning you off those things. So many pills can’t be good for you. It’s a wonder to me you don’t rattle when you cough.”
“I need a little something, now and again, to help keep me stable,” Happy said defensively. “I’ve got to do something to keep the voices quiet.”
Melody sniffed loudly. “If this is stable, I’d hate to see you when you weren’t. Forget stable, Happy, that
