“This is amazing,” Imp whispered. “All the dreams of films unmade: I could be Fritz Lang—” He shook his head.
“What do you think your sister saw in the mists here?” Doc challenged him: “Come on, tell me!”
“Eve … she lost her I; she’ll have seen nothing.” Imp smiled crookedly, or maybe it was meant to be a grimace. “Evie would have been another matter.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about and I’m scared now.” Doc relaxed his grip, now that Imp was at least responding to stimuli. “Come on, let’s go home.”
Imp sighed, then set one reluctant foot in front of the other. “I’ll never get a source of raw material like this again,” he complained.
“Save it for later.”
The mist rose head-high and obscured almost everything now, but a faint rectangular glow limned the outline of the doorway. “Come on.” Doc tugged Imp’s hand. “Nearly there!”
“Nearly where?” Imp’s voice sounded so dreary.
“Nearly home. Just another step.” Imp wasn’t moving. Doc tugged, but Imp’s feet were planted. He turned and grabbed Imp’s arm in both hands and heaved him forward, feeling a faint sucking resistance as his shoes slithered free of the dream pavement and they crossed the threshold into a lobby lit by the cheery yellow glow of a low-power incandescent bulb and the welcoming cries of their friends.
“What took you so long?” demanded Game Boy as Del slammed the door behind them. “What happened?”
“He froze up,” Doc told them.
Imp rubbed his forehead with one hand while he leaned against the door. “I feel drained,” he complained. Then he looked down, and shuffled nervously aside, searching for something on the floor.
“What is it—” Doc began, just as Imp said, “Has anyone seen my shadow?”
But answer came there none.
The Bond had a smug. But of course, to his way of thinking he had good reason for it.
Despite the pileup of hunting parties outside the Neverland reading room, he had the book. The black dyke chick had given it to him fair and square and her crew of deviants and shoplifters hadn’t even tried to stop her. No surprise: they didn’t have enough guts to house a tapeworm between the lot of them. The men were faggots or trannies, the women were ugly bitches, and he was … well, he was going to be a lot richer once he figured out how to extract Miss Starkey’s collection bonus from her bank account and fence the goods, which would be a lot easier once the numb cunt was dead.
He hurried through the nodes of the treasure map with bag in hand. Somewhere off in another room the windchimes were jangling—somebody had probably left a window open—but it wouldn’t matter for much longer. Not once he set the charges and brought the house down.
He was feeling the burn now. He’d walked several miles around Whitechapel, managed to avoid getting sucked into a firefight—there was always an insane adrenaline crash afterwards—then pushed through the crash and jogged several more miles up that spooky sunken road. He hadn’t brought any protein bars or hydration, not having expected what he’d found on the top floor of the haunted mansion. He was probably dehydrated by now, and he wasn’t as young as he used to be. As he faced the seventh flight of stairs (three up, then two down, not to mention a whole bunch of corridors and a ring around the roses) he thought, Why not take the elevator? After all there was a lift just two corridors and a receiving room away from his current location, and he’d seen the other elevator doors on the top floor. It was the brass wire slam-door kind that had been current in the late nineteenth century, but dammit, why not? It’d save a couple of miles of this shit, and the Bond was all in favor of doing that right now.
The Bond stole along the passage to the elevator lobby. But as he came close, who should he find but Miss Starkey and her bodyguard, already waiting for the lift car as if it was no big deal? How the bitch had gotten ahead of him was a question for another time. Right now, his biggest problem was the Gammon with the submachine gun who was covering her six. He was alert and doing his job properly, which is to say he’d clearly swept the lobby seconds ago and was now drawing a bead on the darkened elevator shaft beyond the shuttered gate. Miss Starkey was looking the same way, her back turned to the Bond. The whine of ancient machinery covered the Bond’s final step, although something—possibly a shadow, or his presence disturbing the air flow—made the Gammon whirl towards him and aim just a fraction of a second too late. A tight cluster of red-rimmed holes flowered around the bridge of his nose and he dropped like a sack of potatoes, his gun clattering to the floor.
“Freeze!” barked the Bond. Miss Starkey froze in the act of turning. “Hands on top of your head, fingers laced!” She complied. “Kick it away! Now! Do it or I shoot! Face the wall!” The sinister windchimes chuckled their appreciation of his performance.
The lift finally put in an appearance, sliding glacially down to halt behind the gate.
The Bond licked his lips. “Open the lift gates,” he ordered her.
Miss Starkey stiffened, then shrugged, drawing attention to her arms, her hands—
“One hand only,” he warned. “Then back on top of your head.” He had zero intention of giving her the slightest opportunity to make a dive for her bodyguard’s gun, now resting on the carpet halfway across the lobby.
Beside her feet, a pool of blood was spreading. Miss Starkey stepped delicately around it to reach for the outer gate. It clattered as it retracted. She drew the inner gate back as well, revealing a wood-panelled room, as cozy as a coffin sized for two.
“Go inside and face the wall,” said the Bond, already stiffening with anticipation. This was not quite how he’d envisaged
