“I sweep this place twice a day for bugs. We’re as secure here as Dedlock in the Eye. Probably safer.”
I took a breath, before the truth came out in a torrent. “The Directorate is going to let the Prefects lead us to Estella. And it’s going to happen soon.”
The old lady gazed at me gravely and murmured: “There’s no fool like an old fool. By which yardstick, that old man’s a moron. But why have you come to me with this?”
“I need to know what happened with Estella.”
Miss Morning tottered toward a colossal fang and rested on it for support as she released a long, rattling sigh. “You’d better sit down,” she said at last.
I lowered myself onto a tiny wooden chair which looked as though it had been stolen from a classroom.
“Your grandfather loved Estella,” Miss Morning began. “Adored her. He was the only one who loved her for who she was and not simply for the contours of her figure. But he let it happen to her just the same.”
I shuffled uncomfortably in my chair.
“At the end of the sixties, we were losing the war badly. An entire division had just been wiped out on field exercises in the Malvern Hills. Leviathan was coming and we had no means of stopping it. Your grandfather grew desperate. He started to consider the most extreme solutions. Even this… Against all advice and his own better judgment, on April fourth, 1967, he summoned the Prefects. He told them everything. Begged for their help. They thought for a while — Hawker scratching his head, Boon sucking on a sherbet lemon — before they told him how to stop the beast. All they wanted in return, the only thing they asked for… Well, I’m sure they haven’t lost any time in telling you that.”
My stomach turned over and I thought of my father’s last, frantic moments of life, gasping for breath on the hard shoulder of a motorway.
“In exchange, the Prefects told your grandfather about the Process.”
“The Process?”
“You’ve heard the phrase before?”
“From the Prefects, yes. And it was in Granddad’s journal. Why? What is it?”
“The Process is high science and low magic. It bends time and compresses matter.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Your mouth is open and there are words coming out but I don’t know what any of them mean.”
Miss Morning sighed. “The Process transforms a person into a vessel. It turns them into a living prison, a jail to hold the monster. We needed a volunteer. Someone strong. Someone physically tough. They would require certain preparations… incisions to the brain… Then we were to take them to a place of power.”
“What do you mean? A place of power?”
“An old site. Somewhere charged up with psychic energy. Marked out with certain signs and sigils.”
“And then what?”
“We had to make them bleed, Henry. We had to slash their wrists and let the life dribble out of them. Until they were empty. Until they were hollowed out.”
“That’s murder.”
“No. Not quite murder. That was the art of it.”
“And you went along with this?”
“We had no choice. Believe me. Can you guess who they chose as the vessel?”
The answer was grotesquely obvious. “Estella.”
Miss Morning gave a bleak twitch of her shoulders. “Dedlock insisted on her. So we went through with it. The whole thing.”
“Where did it happen?” I asked.
“You don’t need to know about that. I doubt you’d like the answer.” She looked at me as though I was expected to figure something out, to make some leap of logic here. I probably just looked blank.
Miss Morning went on. “It was a night of dark miracles. When we cut that woman’s wrists they healed right back up again.”
“Impossible, naturally.”
“Naturally. But we saw it happen. Your grandfather and I were both there. Poor Estella — not quite human any more. A medieval mind would say that what we did was cut out that woman’s soul. Leviathan came to earth and we bound it in a jail of flesh and bone. Like a genie in a bottle. Like a spider in a jar.” She seemed to shrink back at the memory. “We made a prison cell from a human being. I don’t expect that was right of us. But there it is. Estella was an empty shell of a woman once we were done. The strain of keeping Leviathan inside her had shut down most of her motor functions. She became sluggish, glazed, absent. Two days later, I was babysitting out safe house at Mornington Crescent when the Prefects strolled through the door and announced that they wanted to turn themselves in.”
“Why?”
“They said their consciences had too much to bear. They told me that they were ready to give themselves up.”
“You didn’t believe them?”
“Of course not. They’re playing some larger game. That chalk circle no more holds them than a shopping bag would restrain an ocelot.”
I frowned slightly at the metaphor.”
“Your granddad quit the service and took Estella with him. He went home to your grandmother and a couple of days later, Estella disappeared. He would never tell us where he hid her, even under the severest provocation. The Directorate has men who specialize in persuasion but your grandfather never spoke about it. Not once. So you see why they need to find Estella so badly. She’s not the key to the war. She is the war.”
Miss Morning and I stared uneasily at one another across the curve of a clay tumor.
M phone shivered in my pocket. “Excuse me,” I said as I retrieved it, terrified at what news it might bring.
It was Mr. Dedlock. Our conversation was brief and almost entirely one-sided.
“What did he say?” the old lady asked as soon as I was done. “Spit it out.”
“Dedlock has agreed to their terms.” My voice was trembling despite my attempts at moderation. “The Prefects will be moved tomorrow.”
Miss Morning looked at me sadly and turned away. “Then I think it’s time you went home and enjoyed what little time you have left, because, believe me, everything’s about got to hell.” I got the impression that, in Miss Morning’s world, this constituted fruity language indeed, reserved for use only in the very teeth of catastrophe.
I was rummaging through my jacket pockets, trying to locate my key, when the door to our little flat in Tooting Bec was shoved open and Abbey stood before me in her dressing gown, her hair still damp from the shower, her pinkish face scrubbed clean of cosmetics, smelling all over of caramel-scented moisturizer.
“I was worried.”
“I’m fine.” I walked inside, shut the door, locked it, drew across the chain. “Had to work late, that’s all.” I shrugged off my coat and hung it on the hook.
“Are you cross with me?”
“Why would I be cross with you?” I glimpsed bare flesh beneath the dressing gown. She seemed fragile, doll- like, and I had never before felt a more irresistible compulsion to embrace her.
“I just thought that after what happened last night…” She was chewing on her lower lip. “After what
I took her in my arms, clasped her close and kissed her on the lips, not caring about the consequences, not worrying for once if I might make a prat of myself.
“Henry?” she asked tremblingly once our lips had finally parted and my hand had begun to slip unthinkingly downward.
Silently, I led her to my bedroom, where, as gently as I could, I slipped away that gown, brushed my fingers across her breasts, dropped to my knees and began to kiss every part of her.
Lying in warm-skinned intimacy, we had just begun to drift into a doze when the grouchy buzz of the bell wrenched us back into the real world. Abbey snuffed her disapproval but I disentangled myself, pulled on T-shirt and
