Any Other Name (13 page)

William pulled her in. The scent of fresh mundane air was unmistakeable after the feather-like brush of crossing over into Mundanus. It was the only room she’d seen redecorated so far and the paint smelled fresh. She scanned the pastel walls and the frilly curtains that framed windows overlooking the park, glorious in the sunshine. The room was dominated by an elaborately carved cot covered in stylised irises and fleur-de-lis.

“This arrived today, sir, sent by your mother. I understand it’s a family heirloom.”

“It is indeed,” William said, beaming. “Isn’t it lovely, Catherine? What a perfect nursery. Soon our firstborn will be sleeping in there.”

 

Max adjusted the cap, making his forehead itch. The rucksack was uncomfortable and the straps kept trying to work their way off his shoulders as they approached the apartment building. It felt strange to be walking down a mundane street without the flap of his raincoat around his knees.

“You know, you look like someone in disguise,” Sam said. “I thought you were like a detective. Surely you know how to be under cover.”

“I’m an Arbiter, I don’t normally hide in the line of my work. In fact it’s usually the opposite.”

“So you just dress like a private detective, rather than being one?”

“I wear what I feel comfortable in, and what’s acceptable in public.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Sam said as they reached the lobby, “but have you seen any men wearing a fedora on the way here?”

“I wear a trilby.”

“Whatever, have you?”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“That’s because men stopped wearing them over fifty years ago. Sorry, but when you walk down the street, you look weird.”

Max mulled this over as they crossed the lobby. He was used to innocents staring at him but he’d always assumed it was because of his unpleasant face and total lack of emotion. The possibility that it was because his clothes were out of fashion was revelatory. He wondered what the gargoyle would have to say about it when he got back to the Sorcerer’s house. It seemed to have an opinion on everything these days.

Now wasn’t the time to focus on his sense of fashion or lack thereof. He needed to identify what had caused Sam to disappear from Ekstrand’s tracking bug. When he’d reported that the cause seemed to be the wife’s apartment, Ekstrand speculated whether the wife was connected with the Sorcerer of Essex, whose wards could block the tracer. With the corruption in London, and their suspicion that the Sorcerer of Essex was behind the murder of the Bath Chapter, it was of the highest priority to investigate.

He looked around the lobby as Sam wished the concierge good morning. The apartment building was modern and the security was good. The lift felt smooth and reliable as it carried them upwards.

“There’s no chance your wife will come home whilst we’re here?” Max asked once more.

“She’s at work, I checked again this morning. She won’t be home until tonight.” Sam leaned against the lift wall, hands in pockets. “This feels weird though, like I’m breaking into my wife’s home.”

“I thought you had a key. The concierge recognised you.”

“I do. She doesn’t know I’m here though. Oh shit, the concierge will tell her.”

“Tell him not to mention it to her because you’re organising a surprise.”

“Good idea,” Sam said, jangling the coins in his pockets with nervous energy. “You know I’m probably going to lose my job because of all of this crap?”

“If another agency is interfering with your wife, surely that’s more important to you?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah.”

The lift doors opened and the first thing Max saw was the copper detailing. He’d never say he was a man of instinct – it wasn’t a quality associated with having a dislocated soul – but he did have a good eye for the unusual.

He checked for residents as he stepped out. The brightly lit corridor was empty. He examined the nearest strip of copper running parallel to the floor like a dado rail. A scrape with his thumbnail revealed it was only copper plated, with a thin layer of lacquer to prevent verdigris, covering a different metal underneath.

“Which is your wife’s apartment?” Sam pointed and Max followed him to the door.

“What do you think of the décor?” Sam pointed at the stylised horseshoe, pulling a face. “I’m not sure I like it.”

Max examined it and verified it had the same copper covering as the rail. “I think it’s very interesting.”

They went inside. “I’ve got to make a couple of phone calls,” Sam said, heading towards the living room and its light at the end of the corridor. “My boss will be in the office by now.”

Max observed the continuation of the décor in the apartment and how the bands of metal crossed the door with only a millimetre’s gap where it sat flush in the frame. Taking out his knuckle-duster, he reached up and scored into the plaster work near the top. As he’d suspected, there was a strip of metal sunk into the wall and covered over, meaning the metal continued unbroken around the doorway and down the other side of the hallway.

He confirmed it was present in all the rooms as he listened to Sam stumbling over an excuse to his boss. In the bedroom Max noted a large metal light-fitting hanging over the bed and suspected it was connected to the rest of the metal.

Max switched on the light, moved behind the bedroom door to a place where the rail wouldn’t be in constant view and scratched the layer of copper and lacquer off a small section. He rummaged in his backpack – it was hard to find his tools when they weren’t in the correct pockets on his person – and found his mini-screwdriver kit. The magnetised tip was enough to confirm his suspicion that iron lay underneath the copper.

After dropping the tool back into the bag and checking for mundane bugs and cameras, Max went to the living-room window and examined the gap between the triple glazing and a fine mesh laid between the inner two panes. It was only noticeable at a certain angle thanks to the sunlight breaking through the winter clouds. “Very subtle.”

He sat on a chair opposite Sam, plucked a small notebook from the depths of the rucksack and pulled out the pencil tucked into the spine.

“So how does it look to you?” Sam asked, trying to see what he was drawing. “Anything dodgy? Cameras hidden in the bedroom?”

“There are no hidden cameras,” Max said.

“Well, that’s something,” Sam said. “You checked everywhere, right? And you know what to look for?”

“I did and I do. Who does your wife work for?”

“Pin PR. They do all the communications and marketing for loads of different companies. She’s not one of those PR bunnies though. Leanne’s high up and runs international campaigns.”

Max flipped onto a new page in the notebook.

 

Wife works for Pin PR
 

High up in company
 

Who do they promote?
 

No rabbits
 

 

Then he went back to the original page. “And you’re certain her boss recommended the forge where you made your wedding rings?”

“Positive. He told me himself. He said he used it for his own wedding. So what’s with all the questions? Is there something else wrong with it?”

“Is there anything about her work that makes you uncomfortable?”

“You know you’re starting to freak me out now, right?” Sam moved to the edge of the sofa.

“I’m sorry,” Max said, “I need a little more information before I can decide what to share with you.” He tried to look reassuring, but as it always had with any innocent, it just made Sam squirm nervously. Max let his face fall back into its natural position.

“Anything about her work… Well, they make her work crazy hours, but she enjoys it. This apartment is top-notch but she pays a tiny rent because it’s subsidised by the company.”

 

Apartment provided by employer
 

 

Max added to the list. “Go on.”

“Her boss is called Marcus Neugent. Look, you said you’re not a private eye, but you know how to investigate people, don’t you? I mean, you do that to protect innocents, right?” When Max nodded, Sam leaned forward. “Then I think you should look into Neugent. I’ve never liked him.”

Max added his name to the list. “I’ll do that. What does he look like?”

“He’s in his fifties… greying hair, really blue eyes. So is there something weird about this place?”

Max jotted down the description and then looked up at Sam. “This apartment has been warded.”

“Warded? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s protected against other influences. Now, I don’t think they’ve warded it specifically against sorcerous magic, I don’t see any of the markers for that. It seems to be warded against the Fae.”

“Eh?”

“The copper strips, the horseshoe design on the door… copper renders the Fae’s minions inert if they come into contact with it, and the Fae themselves hate it.”

“That’s why you put on those weird plated gloves before you went through to grab Lady Rose that night we got Cathy’s uncle back?”

“Yes, it makes them weak. The copper design here is only plating though. There are bands of iron underneath.”

“Do the Fae not like iron either?”

“There’s a lot of superstition about it protecting people against the Fae, but it’s less effective than copper in our experience,” Max said. “There are traditions that still persist in some parts of England, horseshoes on doors being one of them. It could be that the iron is there to be thorough, or there could be another reason that I can’t determine yet.” He wondered if it was something hidden in the iron that was blocking the tracer, or something about the pattern of the metal bands that was beyond his knowledge.

“So you’re telling me it isn’t for show at all?”

Max sketched and then showed it to Sam. “This shows what the apartment would look like if you took away the walls and only the banding wards were left behind.”

“It looks like a cage!”

Max nodded. “Yes, it does.”

“Those bastards have put my wife in a flat that’s really a cage? That’s beyond fucked up!”

Max decided it would be wise not to mention the bedroom light fitting, and his suspicion that they were particularly concerned about when she slept. “I’m given to understand,” Max said, his voice flat in comparison to Sam’s panic, “that the cages at London Zoo are as much to protect the animals from the visitors as the visitors from the animals.”

“You’re saying they want to keep her safe? But why?”

“Lord Iron’s protection has been placed upon both of you, as we already know. This is no surprise, Sam, it simply confirms that, for some reason, one of the Elemental Court wishes to keep your wife safe. If anything, it demonstrates they’re more interested in her than in you. We just need to determine why.”

“Yes, we bloody well do!” Sam stood. “I don’t want to stay here, this is creeping me out.”

“I’ll look into Neugent, and the company your wife works for,” Max said, putting the notebook away and following him to the door. “If it’s any consolation, the members of the Elemental Court aren’t like the Fae. They don’t toy with innocents and they don’t destroy people’s lives.”

“Not much of a consolation,” Sam muttered, and they left.

 

Cathy woke with a cold compress on her forehead and the cape gone from her shoulders. She was lying on the new bed in the master suite, William sitting next to her.

“You fainted,” he said before she spoke.

“I don’t faint.” Her head was woolly and her lips were tingling. “My sister does silly things like that, not me.”

“Well, you did it very dramatically. Lucky it was just the butler there, if it had been a lady’s maid there would be gossip about a pregnancy rushing through the house.”

“No worries on that front.” He was holding her hand again. She tutted and pulled it away. “You don’t have to do that when we’re alone, you know,” she said, pulling herself up and trying to ignore the way the room span.

“I was concerned,” he said stiffly and helped her onto her feet.

“I’m just tired.” She held onto one of the posts to steady herself. “Obviously there’s no other reason.” She wondered briefly if Lord Poppy was interfering, but the teardrop diamond had turned back into a tear as soon as she had left the Oak with William. And why make her faint anyway? The possibility that it could have simply been too upsetting to see the place she was expected to populate with babies made her horrendously ashamed of herself.

“You were pale at the top of the stairs. Is something troubling you? Is it the house?”

“No. We’ll rattle around inside like marbles, but there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Good.” He smiled. “Only you could say that. Most women would gush with excitement.”

“I don’t gush either,” she said. Not with you, anyway, she thought.

“Will you permit me to approach you?” he asked.

She frowned. “What for?”

He moved closer, rested his hands on her shoulders. “Welcome to your new home, Catherine Reticulata-Iris,” he said softly, and gently kissed her cheek.

A blush competed with the frown. “Will you please stop that.”

“At least you have some colour in your cheeks again,” he said, and she pushed him away.

She was about to make some kind of excuse to extricate herself from his non-magical charm offensive, when the bedroom door rattled violently.

“Letterboxer,” they said simultaneously and a gilded letterbox appeared in the door. A letter shot through, skidding into the middle of the floor. As William picked it up, another came through, then, just as the letterbox started to fade, it reappeared again, precipitating a burst of letters as if they were being fired from a Gatling gun. After a brief pause the letterbox stretched and a large package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string tumbled through.