Underbelly (68 page)

Germaine nodded as her heart raced. “Monsieur, please. I’m pregnant.”

“
You’ve more to lose then if you don’t obey me. You’re coming with me.”

Grey unlocked the door to the apartment and shouted into the bedroom, “The Octavius Saga continues, Germaine. We made communication with him.”

When Germaine did not respond Grey walked through to the bedroom and checked in the bathroom. He ran a bath, having worked up a sweat through sheer concentration with his brain, the dry sweat making him feel unclean. The afternoon was a complete washout, though they’d still put in over three hours. Walking back through the apartment he took his shoes off and checked the coat rack where he saw that both his and Germaine’s coats were missing. Unless he’d put it somewhere else, though that didn’t seem right as they both kept the apartment tidy: proving this point Grey put his clothes in the laundry basket as he undressed. The riddle of the missing jacket. Grey left the bathroom again and went back to the coat rack and noticed that his favourite hat, which had been on the coat rack, was also missing. His considerate wife must have took them out to be cleaned.

Grey took a longer bath than planned, the fatigue of the day taking its toll, and emerged with wrinkled skin more suited to Octavius. He hoped that Laura would now give up on trying to contact him again. Such a man was never going to help them and was always going to view them as his (im)mortal enemies. He was arrogant, obstinate, bloodthirsty, unpleasant; basically everything that the spirits had told him to expect. Such men did not share their secrets, especially with those he deemed his inferiors (though that covered every creature to ever walk the earth). He’d bathed for over an hour and still Germaine wasn’t home. It would be getting dark soon...

“
What’s wrong? You look worried,” Laura noted as she opened her door to Grey.

“
Germaine’s not come home yet.”

“
Where’s she gone to?”

Grey shrugged. “She never mentioned she was going out. I know she was worried about what we were trying today so I figured she might have gone shopping to take her mind off it, or to buy something to treat me after. She’d be home by now.”

Laura looked at the clock. While 10 past 8 wasn’t that late, it was out of character for a girl like Germaine to be out alone at this hour. “Worry after 9, James. This is the city that never sleeps. The queues can be bad in the shops.”

“
My coat and hat are missing too.”

“
I think Germaine should be the top priority,” Laura quipped. “Where did you have them last?”

“
I’ve checked everywhere. They’re not there. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“
Not particularly. I’ll come up and wait with you. She’s probably home now.”

“
I hope so,” Grey said, his mouth suddenly dry as a sense of dread came over him.

“
Your apartment is a lot better than mine,” Laura said as she looked out across the skyline. “Better view, better bed, better bath.”

“
Hmm.”

“
I wouldn’t have made the offer to come up if I’d known you were going to be such crap company. Get your playing cards out, James, take your mind off it.”

“
Laura, it’s 8:52,” Grey said, feeling she was taking his wife’s disappearance far too lightly. “I’m going to have to phone the police.”

“
I’m sure they know the time. Relax, please. You’ll give yourself an ulcer. She would have been fretting about you and she decided to go out and cheer herself up with some clothes shopping, maybe some more nice lingerie. She’ll come through that door laden with bags; she’ll apologise for spending so much, you’ll say you’d buy her the world if you could, I slink out of here instead of playing gooseberry. The end.”

Grey took his cards from the drawer and sat at the table with Laura, though as he would be unable to concentrate the outcome was not in doubt as he shuffled the cards. “You’re gonna trounce me. Can the credits run soon then on this production?”

“
She may have spent so much she can’t afford to get a taxi back. Cue five minutes time and she’ll be wanting to show you her stuff and you’ll say ‘Sure, once I throw the limey witch out’.”

Grey smiled at this, which was Laura’s intention, and he said, “I know you think I’m reading too much into the coat and hat being gone. But where would she take them?”

“
To be professionally cleaned, like you said.”

“
I don’t know why I said that. Even I don’t believe it. Which beggars the question; why am I sat here doing nothing? I’ve got to call the police now.”

“
Think this through. Pretend you’re a police constable and a weirdo medium rings and tells you his wife is missing. You’d make their case for them.”

Grey put his cards down and said, “I’d only be a suspect if she never came home. It might be best if you go back to your room.”

“
Finish off this hand first, please. I’ll never have cards this good again! Give me time to go over your options.”

Grey picked up his cards again and exhaled deeply. “Can you use your power to track her down?” Grey asked.

“
Technically yes.”

“
Why the reservations? It wasn’t chance we met at the rodeo and that you found this room.”

“
There are currently only eight genuine mediums living in the world today, with three of them in America. There are substantially more teenage Caucasian females, hence the increased difficulty. I can still do it, it’s just a lot harder. The fact we have her things helps.”

“
Do that then, will you? Please.”

“
You don’t need to say please. I will, if you don’t call the police yet.”

“
Okay. What do you need? Will her dressing gown do?” Grey said, feeling this was the item she wore most.

“
Yes.” Laura followed Grey through to the bedroom and began to share his concerns. This was most unlike the girl and she desperately hoped nothing had happened to her yet could not let Grey see how she felt as she had to steady him, to stop him breaking down. Taking the silky lilac dressing gown from him she joked, “And a better dressing gown too! I’m a second class citizen down below in the depths of level 32!”

Grey smiled at her wacky comments, clearly designed to amuse him and he said, “When she’s back let’s finish that hand. Even if we don’t get to play today I’ll keep the table untouched. Do you want to do the spell in your room?”

“
Why not go back to my rightful place? I promise you I won’t try it on; I don’t want to have to perform another spell to fix it. Come down if she comes home.”

“
Will do. Back to the depths with you,” Grey said, shooing her with his hand, earning him a playful glare as she left. The spell was one method of finding her and as soon as Laura left the room he picked up the phone and rang the police. While Laura may have disapproved of the idea, Germaine was his wife and he was taking no chances.

Two spells in one day might have proved difficult for most witches. For Laura, who was at worst the second most powerful creature in the cosmos, it should have proved a rudimentary exercise. Yet there was no trace of Germaine Grey. Which indicated that she was dead, or someone had masked her existence, and there was a faint shadow of a spell of this description. Why on earth would anyone go to such effort for Germaine? Jemima Harding had approached Grey and met Germaine briefly, though kidnapping such a harmless, inoffensive girl did not fit with her modus operandi. How the fuck was she going to tell Grey this?

Laura waited a while to go up to him and it was approaching eleven when she knocked on his door. Grey opened the door and his brow crumpled when he saw it was not Germaine. “Do you know where she is?” he asked, now frantic with worry.

Laura closed the door and said, “No. I said it was harder for normal people.”

Grey paced the room as Laura took a seat. “I phoned the police. It had to be done.”

“
That’s your call. Have they been?”

“
They left 20 minutes ago. They didn’t seem that concerned.”

“
That’s how they always are. They have to be detached to stay professional.”

“
Can you try again? Please, Laura, this is killing me. I haven’t even got any cigars left, I’ve gone through my whole supply. Something must have happened to her. Send me back to a foxhole because that was easy compared to this, sitting around waiting for terrible news.”

“
I’ll try again. If the worst happened you’d know, she’d be in your head, and she isn’t and won’t be...”

“
That’s not the case,” Grey said agitatedly, his breathing erratic. “When Octavius couldn’t take over my head things went boing. It’s been silent since. That’s happened before and will pass, I’m not concerned about that at the moment.”

A terrible idea occurred to Laura as Grey spoke of Octavius. She made her excuses and left, after promising she’d try the spell again and would succeed this time. As a medium Grey would be hard for even the mighty Octavius to supplant, and with her added protection this was impossible. Octavius vanished immediately after trying to jump ship and there were hundreds of other possible candidates in the hotel and nearby vicinity. Even Germaine was a possibility. In fact that was the best outcome, as then they could restore her spirit to her body. The alternative was that vulnerable Germaine was the prisoner or victim of a bloodthirsty madman with a chilling track record.

“
I will make an exception, this once, and repeat an instruction for the first time. Remove your stockings,” the gangly man said menacingly. This time Germaine complied, her hands trembling as she sat down in the one chair he had been able to find in the aircraft hangar. She had done everything he had asked prior to this and only hesitated because of the nature of the order. What would he have her remove next? He had kept a tight hold of her arm as they travelled across the city, ultimately leading her to this quiet space after first entering a seemingly derelict factory which turned out to be operational with a night shift who they narrowly avoided.

Germaine held her stockings up for him and he took them from her and knelt down in front of her and began to tie her wrists to the arms of the chair. She began to hyperventilate as the thought of becoming even more helpless, unable to stop the direst of tortures occurring, wrecked the little composure she had. By the time he had tied her left wrist and she was fully secured she was weeping uncontrollably, which she tried to do as quietly as possible so as not to offend him.

He had said very little to her as he steered her around the city. Bar the initial threat, that he would break her arm and then her neck before anyone could help her if she gave him any trouble, he was quiet. Germaine deduced it was Octavius from little clues he gave; he didn’t understand how the trains worked, his accent sounded Italian with a twist, and he knew of Inge, and of Laura (and of James too, though his medium status was well known and did not prove so much). This was certainly no ordinary kidnap. He removed his shirt and Germaine felt despair on a par with seeing that pig rock the staircase with the impact it made on every step.

The kidnapper did not seem interested in her as he crossed his arms and felt his bony shoulders and tried to grab some flesh to hold on his pigeon chest. He muttered something in a foreign tongue in a temper.

“
How old do you think he is?” he asked Germaine.

Germaine gathered his meaning and said tremulously, “45?”

“
I would not have picked this body. This weakling. My vision is weak on the right side. Little hair, not even on his arms. Half a man at best,” he said disparagingly. He ran to a crate he could see nearby and booted it several times. Germaine was glad his attention was elsewhere and she strained at her bonds. Already she couldn’t feel her hands anymore which were turning white as he had bound her too tightly.

His face was flushed when he returned to her and he said, “You know who I am, don’t you?”