Stiletto (2 page)

“Felicity, did you need me for anything else?” she asked in a thick Birmingham accent.

“Nah, I’m fine, thanks,” said the other woman. His heart thundering with anger and bewilderment, Joe reached into his pocket and drew out a knife, which he flicked open. His hands low, he lunged forward again, but the short woman was already evaporating away with an unimpressed look on her face. He turned around and saw Petey getting painfully to his feet. The blond bitch was tying her hair back from her face. She gave him a look that said he had gotten himself into this situation and really had only himself to blame.

“You — you...” Words failed him. This was
not
how it was supposed to go.

“Hey, I’m right here,” she said, and the complete lack of concern in her voice ignited something in him. He barreled toward her, his knife clutched in his fist, shoving past Petey. She swayed to the side, then turned, stepped back against his chest, and caught his knife arm. Before he could think, she had flipped him over her shoulder. He went down on the ground, the knife clattering from his hand, and seemed disinclined to get back up.

Petey came a little more cautiously, but as he moved toward her, she snapped into swift, dizzying motion. She swung her leg with mechanical precision and kicked out at the side of his knee. Under the combined force of her strength and her complete lack of hesitation or mercy, his leg simply crumpled. He fell into the mud and the rubbish, shouting and clutching at his leg. She stepped carefully over the trash and delivered a meticulous kick to the jaw that left him facedown and unconscious in the remnants of a pizza that someone hadn’t wanted anymore. The alley was quiet except for the sound of Pawn Cheng condensing out of the air.

“Well, that was nicely done,” said Pawn Cheng. “You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” said Felicity sourly. She dusted off her clothing, which did not make an appreciable difference to its appearance.

“Honestly, I can’t believe you needed me to step in to help you with two chavs.”

“Give me a break, Andrea,” said Felicity. “I just spent three and a bit hours squatting against a wall. Plus, I’m wearing these ridiculous leper shoes.” She looked down at the men on the ground. At any other time it would have given her profound satisfaction to break every bone in their bodies, or at least to put the boot in a couple of times. But there was the danger here that she might attract unwanted attention, not least from the house she’d been observing.

However...
she mused.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Andrea. “Are you
robbing
them?”

“I’m not going to keep it,” said Felicity reasonably. “But I think that losing their mobile phones and their wallets will teach them a valuable lesson about... um... you know... respecting the homeless.”

“You don’t think they learned that by having the crap beaten out of them by a homeless woman?” asked Andrea. “To say nothing of a chick who can turn into oxygen?”

“You know what would make this lesson extra-special?” said Felicity after a moment. “We should take their shoes as well.”

The Asian Pawn shook her head disapprovingly, then shrugged.

“Yeah, all right.”

Two minutes later, Felicity was humming cheerfully as she sauntered out of the alley.

God, I love this job.

“Wake up and get out of the bathtub. If you’re late for this cocktail party, the British will take us all out to the parking lot and shoot us in the back of the head. Plus, we need to get the slime out of the tub before the hotel maids come in for the turndown service.”

The voice came thundering into Odette Leliefeld’s sleeping brain by way of the waterproof headphones that were clamped to her sleeping ears. She was jolted awake, and opened her eyes. The light at the bottom of the bathtub was dim and lavender, and it really was tempting just to snuggle down in the warmth and return to a nice therapeutic stasis. But then Alessio’s voice came back into her ears. “Room service will be here in seven minutes, so hurry up.”

Odette grimaced and set about speeding up her heart rate from its restful one-beat-every-three-hours tempo. She pushed herself up out of the depths of the ridiculously large tub. The designers of the bathroom had apparently thought the hotel guests would be either engaging in group bathing or traveling with their exotic pets, because there seemed to be enough room in the tub for a party of six good friends, seven
extremely
good friends, or fifteen pedigree jellyfish. Instead of a bijou orgy or some purebred
Olindias formosa,
however, it currently contained Odette and about fourteen hundred liters of thick, viscous slime.

She surfaced with a little difficulty, the sludge holding on to her, and sat up, taking her first breath in five hours.

“I hate sleeping in a swimsuit,” she remarked weakly to the world as she wiped the gunk out of her eyes.

“If I have to come wake you up all the time,” said her younger brother, “then you are not sleeping naked in the tub.” She felt the headphones get plucked off her head as he bustled by, presumably tidying up the clothes that were still scattered on the floor.

“Did you order coffee?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “Although you’re not supposed to have hot beverages or caffeine until all your new organs have settled.”

“You know what? Don’t lecture me until your larynx has settled,” she retorted.

“Oh, would you like me to cancel the coffee?” asked Alessio.

“No, I’m sorry,” said Odette hurriedly.

“Don’t step on the floor yet,” he instructed. “Otherwise you’ll just get it everywhere. Here’s the strigil.” He handed her a curved rubber blade and then hurried out to the sitting room. She smiled at the retreating back of her thirteen-year-old brother as he closed the door behind him, then stood up and looked around.

“If any British government official is watching me,” she said out loud, “I really don’t care if you see me naked, but it’s very tacky on your part.”

No answer was forthcoming.

“Well, all right, then,” she said to herself. She peeled off her bathing suit and set about scraping the slime off her body and back into the tub.

Once she’d transferred herself, mostly slime-free, to the shower, Odette carefully examined her legs, limbs, and torso.
Coming along nicely,
she thought. The scars along her limbs were now only faint lines, and a few more nights spent in a bathtub of goop would get rid of them completely. The Y-shaped scar tissue that ran down her chest to below her navel was taking longer to heal and was still a little itchy, but she stopped herself from rubbing at it. She held out her arm, her hand bent back, and flexed. A sculpted bone spur the size of her index finger slid out from the underside of her wrist.
Okay, good.
She tensed another set of muscles, and a drop of amber liquid appeared on the end of the spur.
And good
.

Then she turned on the water and set about the laborious process of getting the slime out of her hair.

*

“So, what do you think of the place so far?” she asked Alessio as she sipped her coffee and swallowed one of her pills.

“What’s to think?” he asked without looking up from his tablet computer.

“Well, the view out the window is nice,” she said, taking two more pills.

“It’s a very gray, cloudy kind of place,” said Alessio.

“We’re right opposite Hyde Park, and I just saw one of those red double-decker buses go by. I expect we’ll get some time off from the negotiations. We can do London things. The Tate. Trafalgar Square. Harrods. And we could go to Buckingham Palace.” Her brother looked at her skeptically over his computer. “I’m not saying that I want to meet a prince or anything, but it would be cool to see the changing of the guard.” He shrugged. “And the hotel is very posh.”

“Every room on this floor is probably bugged,” Alessio said grimly, a little frown line appearing between his eyebrows. “And everyone we meet is probably from the Checquy. That woman who just brought up the food was looking around like she thought we’d have entrails on the floor for her to tidy up along with the wastepaper bins.”

“She was probably aghast that a twenty-three-year-old woman has to share a suite with her thirteen-year-old brother,” said Odette, swallowing another two pills.

“I’m aghast at that as well,” said her brother. Odette made a little snorting sound as she looked at him thoughtfully. They both had the same heart-shaped face and the same dark brown hair, but Alessio’s hair was dead straight whereas hers had a tendency to go curly unless she was concentrating. Thankfully, she was still a good deal taller than him, but people in their family often went through a growth spurt late in their teens, and she had no doubt that he would eventually be the one resting drinks on her head.

However, at the moment, he looked very vulnerable. There were still traces of puppy fat on his face, and in his little suit and carefully tied tie, he reminded her of a boy going to a funeral, forced to face adult things too soon.

“I really am sorry about all this,” she said to him, and he looked up at her. “You shouldn’t have to be acting as a diplomatic representative, you should be...” She trailed off.

“What?” he asked. “At home in Roeselare with my tutors, working on my surgical skills like a regular teenager?” He rolled his eyes. “Grootvader Ernst wanted me to come. He wanted both of us to come. He said it would help.”

“Yes, but I’m actually going to be engaged in negotiations, albeit in some unspecified capacity,” said Odette, pausing a moment to swallow four more pills. “You’re going to be, what? Standing around looking harmless, showing them that we’re not all monsters that have been so heavily modified that we’re no longer human.”

“Only because I’m not fifteen yet,” said her brother. “At least you have some weapons inside you.”

“Not enough,” said Odette darkly. She popped three more pills in her mouth and slammed them down with the last of the coffee. “Now, how long do I have before the meeting to finalize the strategy for the cocktail party?”

“Half an hour,” said her brother.

“All right, I’m going to go do my injections and get ready.”

In the bathroom, Odette eyed herself closely in the mirror.
I need to look businesslike, professional, and normal,
she thought.
Not overly attractive or unusual. Not threatening in any way.
She concentrated, and her lips flushed slightly.
Good. Not too red, not too dark
. Her eyelids darkened subtly, and she dilated her pupils a bit, flinching in the suddenly brighter light.

“Going for the belladonna look?” said Alessio as he came into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

“Well, we have to make a good impression, and people are attracted to dilated pupils,” Odette said defensively. But she constricted them a little. “You’re just lucky you don’t have to go to this thing tonight.”

She watched in the mirror as Alessio carefully rolled up his sleeve, slid his arm into the slime-filled bathtub, and fished around. He finally located the plug and yanked it out. A little dimple appeared on the surface of the liquid, but the slime did not seem to be in any hurry to vanish down the plug hole. They both stared at it in chagrin.

A couple hundred gallons of eldritch ooze probably aren’t going to make a very good impression,
Odette thought.
Even if it
is
nectarine-scented.

“Try adding some hot water,” she suggested finally. “And the shampoo from the shower breaks it down a little.”

“I may simply have to try flushing it down the toilet,” said Alessio. “I can use the rubbish bin as a bailer.” Odette could all too easily imagine something horrible happening to the toilet as a result. A bathtub of evil somehow seemed much less embarrassing than a toilet of evil. With a toilet, people might think the evil had come out of
her.

“Better not,” she said hastily. “I think we should just leave it. And since you think the maids are with the Checquy, they aren’t going to bat an eyelash at a slowly draining bathtub full of biochemical soup.”

“Well, I’m not
positive
they’re with the Checquy,” said her brother, the little line appearing between his eyes again. “You could help me with this, you know.”

“This thing I’m doing right here? It requires a fair amount of close attention,” said Odette. She pursed her lips in concentration and watched in satisfaction as her cheekbones shifted under her skin, moving up and out a little.

Five hours before her
pied-à-tête
with Joe and Petey, Felicity had been sitting in an office in the Hammerstrom Building, dressed in a suit and very definitely
not
covered in filth. The Hammerstrom Building, despite being the most boring-looking building in the City of London (it appeared to have been designed by a committee of depressive Puritans), was in fact one of the facilities belonging to the Checquy Group, the secret government department that employed the supernatural to protect the populace from the supernatural.

The Hammerstrom Building was the headquarters for all domestic operations of the Checquy, overseen by two executives known as the Rooks. As a result, it was affectionately referred to as the Rookery. It was where government strategists made the arrangements to acquire every child born in the British Isles with unexplainable abilities. It was where the course of those children’s lives, including their rigorous education at the remote and heavily fortified boarding school known as the Estate, was planned. It was where the supernaturally gifted operatives, once grown up — the Pawns — received their assignments to stations across the country. It was the place to which intelligence was funneled from a thousand different sources. It was the place from whence elite soldiers sallied forth to combat the unnatural.

It was also where Felicity had arrived early that morning in an effort to catch up on paperwork. She had been sipping an inferior coffee and waiting for her computer to boot up when a courier trotted over and handed her the envelope containing the summons. The last part of the official message — the caution about the urine — had given Felicity a moment’s pause, but then she’d shrugged. Service in the Checquy called for all sorts of unorthodox duties. Those duties tended to be especially unorthodox when one was a member of an urban assault team.