Blue Angel Read online

  “Sorry it took so long.” A huffing voice made Sam turn. “It’s a –” Landon stopped, breathless, in the doorway. The agent’s expression supported her conclusion, but he said it anyway. “They came for him?”

  “What?” The porter started. “You mean –”

  “Where do we start?” Sam asked Landon. She wasn’t going to pretend she knew how to handle a crime scene. Landon hesitated, not trusting himself with the responsibility either, so she raised her eyebrows for him to get started.

  He turned to the porter, saying, “You’ve got security cameras here?”

  “You mean –”

  “Go down to your office, retrieve whatever footage you have from last night. No one’s to come up until we say so, understood?”

  “Should I call the police?”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Landon said. “Go.” The porter nodded and scampered away. Landon turned back to Sam. “This is exactly what Casaria said was gonna happen. Should’ve known. The Fae are out of control.”

  “We don’t know it’s the Fae,” Sam said.

  Landon frowned. “Who else?”

  “I guess we find that out?”

  They walked in together.

  “Everything’s been moved,” Landon said. He pointed a thick finger at the carpet, indentations near the faux leather sofa’s legs. He nodded to a hanging picture, where a sliver of discoloured wall was visible along its edge. Landon voiced the question that was forming in Sam’s mind. “Why would they check there? Only a few places their weapon could’ve been.”

  “What else would they be looking for?” Sam asked.

  “From the looks of it...whatever they could get.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  In the elevator down, Sam processed their initial inspection, leaving Landon to continue searching. If this was the work of the Fae, she could definitely involve IS now – but Casaria did have Fae defences, and they were still active. And logically, any information the Fae could get off an agent like Casaria would be trivial. Her gut said it wasn’t them, even if that meant she’d be taken off this case. But who else? It couldn’t be a random burglary: nothing appeared to have been taken. As Landon had pointed out. He had also answered her unspoken concern, which must have shown on her face, that the Ministry themselves would never leave a scene like this. Their incompetence lay in the bureaucratic realm; leaving such a mess after disposing of a liable agent was unthinkable.

  Sam found the porter reading again, as though nothing had happened. He looked up curiously. “Find anything?”

  “The security footage?” she said.

  “Oh, that.” He took his feet down off the mop bucket. “Yeah. It’s a no.”

  Sam paused. “It’s a what?”

  “No. There’s no footage.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s blank,” the porter said. “Didn’t record.”

  Sam almost laughed. “You’re serious?”

  “As a beef dinner,” the porter said. “I’ll show you if you like? It’s just a blank file.”

  “How?” Sam could scarcely form a sentence, stunned.

  “Happens sometimes. It’s all digital, automatically loops to a new recording. Every now and again it glitches and does the wipe but doesn’t restart. You have to hit record manually. We check it at least once a week. Guess Larry missed it yesterday.”

  “Once a week?”

  The porter’s crooked face suggested he’d seen how hard she was taking this. “It’s not as useful as you think, you know. When there’s like, six, twelve hours of footage to look through, most people say forget about it.”

  Sam swallowed her agitation. There were a hundred responses she might say, chief amongst them being are you a complete imbecile and does doing a job ever actually matter? Instead, she said, “Have you got anything else that might help? It’s a new building, do you track who comes in the door? Anything like that?”

  The porter’s pitying expression said no.

  “Anything at all?”

  “Oh. There was something, don’t know if it’d be connected. Few hours ago I had to scrub up something outside the main doors. Might’ve been blood?”

  Sam smiled into her disbelief. If Casaria were here, he’d assault this man. But that was the difference between him and her, wasn’t it? She dealt with her emotions calmly. Through the gritted teeth of her uneasy grin, she asked, “How much blood?”

  10

  “Alright four-eyes,” Letty said into the phone, “put Pax on.”

  “Um.”

  “Today.”

  “It’s – it’s for you,” Dr Rimes stuttered. Letty waited for them to swap the receiver as she buzzed over a neighbourhood of square terraces, various shades of red and grey.

  “Hi?” Pax said, cautiously.

  “I’m done. What’s the plan?”

  Pax paused, probably needing a moment to remember that Fae could use phones. She asked, “What do you mean you’re done?”

  “I met with Rolarn. He’s got a place big enough for all of you, better than that Ministry haven you’re in now. But I get the impression things have been moving quickly in Fae circles. He’s in league with someone, and that’s not normal. He wouldn’t tell me who, which is extra bad. So tell me you’ve got a better plan than relying on my people.”

  Pax paused to digest that little nugget of essentially bad news. “Well. There’s somewhere Apothel used to go with the others, seems he clawed shit in the walls, the same way he did with the book. You know it?”

  That brought back memories. Letty said, “Half his crazy hideouts got locked down by the Ministry. I spent months, years, searching the crap he left behind for clues to where he dumped the Dispenser. What makes you think there’s anything left now?”

  “This one was in Ripton,” Pax replied, like that mattered.

  Letty slowed down. “His chapel. One of his favourites. I went there once. Got a good enough look to know he didn’t leave anything behind. The place was empty, even the cellar. We watched the MEE board it up; all they took out was junk furniture. You want to get yourself on the Ministry’s radar for what, to feel his aura?”

  “The writing on the walls, maybe he left something.”

  “What writing? The guy was nuts. He left nothing remotely legible.”

  There was movement around Pax, in the background, suggesting they were already underway on this dumb plan. She said, “I’d still like to give it a go. Barton said he contacted the Blue Angel nearby, too.”

  Letty tutted. Stubborn as a damn squirrel. “And you reckon you can do the same?”

  “I’m going there to find out,” Pax said.

  Pax cut the engine to Rimes’ scooter and allowed herself a few moments of deep, relieved breathing, squeezing the handles to keep herself from trembling. Driving was as terrifying as she remembered, especially on this exposed little vehicle. The one saving grace of the bike was how small it was, so she didn’t have to guess how close she was to hitting obstacles. She could feel it. She’d flinched every time she passed a vehicle, even the parked ones, and a blaring car horn had almost knocked her off.

  Pax took off her vintage disguise of a leather helmet and rust-framed goggles. They matched the scooter’s cracked leather seat and duct-taped mirrors perfectly.

  “Didn’t realise you were coming in fancy dress,” Letty said, as the fairy appeared between Pax’s hands. “The Ministry have a blind spot for 1920s aeronauts?”

  Pax smiled, her tension defusing at the sight of her tiny companion.

  “Thing like this?” Letty stomped on the bike. “Gun it hard enough, it could make you cum.”

  “Is that how you get off?” Pax gave the fairy a questioning look.

  “It’s the doctor’s, right? Would explain a bit, wouldn’t it?”

  Pax smirked but left it at that, not wanting to insult Rimes when the doctor had taken them in and given her the scooter and a surprisingly modern smartphone for use as a satnav. Rimes hadn’t even pressed for
information about Pax’s friend, who no one was pretending wasn’t a fairy.

  Pax took the phone from the frail mount in the middle of the handlebar, making Letty skip out of the way. The building she’d arrived at was a square launderette with a yellow-on-blue sign: Suds Fun! It sat between a convenience store and a closed flower shop, the rest of the street a line of brick townhouses with white-framed windows. The area was small-scale and grimly unimaginative, with no trees or bushes, just the occasional weed poking through a pavement crack. Typical Ripton.

  “The blue screen,” Pax said, “should be around the corner.”

  She stood, opened the seat of the bike and squeezed the helmet and goggles in, then paused. Now the tension of the bike ride had passed, she realised her fingers were tingling and her heart felt oddly warm. Somehow bigger, notably present in her chest. She had the same feeling she’d got looking at the points on the map or the face in that news article about the burst gas main. The feeling she associated with that bizarre dream. What if the minotaur had permanently damaged her somehow? Messed up her whole central nervous system? As the sensation faded, she looked up and saw a couple of women walking towards them, one pushing a pram.

  Pax quietly told Letty, “You might want to lay low.”

  “Bollocks,” Letty said. “No one’s gonna notice me unless you draw attention.”

  “I see you well enough.”

  “Because you’re you. Keep quiet, let them pass.”

  The woman approached, chatting loudly: “Don’t advertise it that way, that’s all I’m saying. Wherever I got it, the coupon’s valid, ain’t it? You gotta honour it.” They eyed Pax as they passed, but kept talking. “By rights, it was my bloody burger, wasn’t it?”

  “By rights. No doubt.”

  As they moved on, Pax’s eyes ran to Letty. They hadn’t noticed her at all, stood right there on the bike. Even if they’d thought she was a toy, wasn’t that curious?

  “Okay,” Pax whispered. “What the fuck?”

  “They’re talking about McDonald’s,” Letty said.

  “Huh?”

  “Cheated out of a 20p burger saving or whatever. Dumb fucking humans.”

  “How does it work?” Pax asked.

  “The bitching or the neediness?”

  “Them not seeing you.”

  “Dust.” Letty shrugged, like it was nothing. The fairies’ mysterious drug of choice.

  Pax said, “I see you perfectly. I saw your men when they came to attack us – Holly and Grace saw them too.”

  “Dust gives you energy,” Letty said, and lifted off towards Pax’s shoulder with her auxiliary wing whirring. “You can use it to power a fake wing or go wild in a fight. Same energy creates a haze like heat-shimmers, making mirages.”

  “But I see you perfectly!” Pax protested. “They went right past.”

  “Something their brain can’t comprehend, they don’t see it. Know what I mean?”

  Denial was something Pax understood well, but it still didn’t make sense. How did taking a drug affect other people? As if she didn’t have enough questions already.

  “Come on,” Letty said, “what are we doing here?”

  Pax pointed and started walking to the side of the laundromat. “If there’s a blue screen here, I grill it, we go home with questions answered.” There was the wall Barton had described, a five-foot structure enclosing the three shops’ commercial bins. Pax checked the empty road, then used the scooter’s ancient key to scratch the brickwork: You here?

  She backed off and watched the wall carefully, studying the greying bricks.

  With nothing happening, she looked at Letty.

  The Fae wasn’t just a tiny person, she was conspicuous in her grungy style, too. Frayed vest and shorts, messily coloured hair, a chunky holstered pistol; even the bulky, metallic strap of her artificial wing crossed her chest like a punk fashion accessory. Maybe her extreme appearance made her harder to believe. Pax said, “I knew a guy, Georgie Weyland, doorman in the West End. One game, he went to take a big pot after I showed a winning flush. I laughed, before I saw he was serious. Big George was glaring at me like I was mad. I said, ‘Look at the cards. Take another look at the cards.’ I kept saying it, over and over, before he got it. Then he went quiet as a mouse, finally seeing the hearts. Left the game shortly after, barely showed his face around me again.”

  “Sounds about right,” Letty said.

  The bricks weren’t changing. No blue anywhere. Pax’s scratched words stood out plainly, permanently. She said, “What’d happen if a human took your dust?”

  “Want to try?”

  “Would I be the first?”

  “Maybe.” Letty hovered up, scanning the wall closer. “There’s nothing here, Pax. Or it doesn’t want to be seen. Big surprise.”

  She was right, but Pax kept waiting. “What’s the connection between dust and glo? Dr Rimes said their drink has an energy they couldn’t explain, too.”

  “No connection I know of,” Letty said. “Ours has a number of highly beneficial properties, theirs is basically psychedelic booze.”

  “Where’s dust come from?”

  “State-controlled production. Val’s people have run it since long before she took charge. Her people own these big vats on the edge of town. Sealed off in ugly square buildings. You can hear the machines through the night from two blocks away.”

  “Humans don’t hear that?”

  “FTC blocks, idiot. All within the confines of the FTC. To you, I guess it’d seem small.” Letty made it sound like an insult.

  “And these vats and machines do what, exactly?”

  Letty scoffed. “Something hidden. Ancient family recipes and state secrets and that shit.”

  Pax scratched a nail over the marks on the brick, picking out the reddish-grey dust. “So. A mystery substance that messes with people’s heads.”

  “Don’t fucking go there,” Letty warned. “The secrecy in dust is deliberate. Mystery adds class. Exclusivity. That’s all.”

  “It stops people asking questions. You’re honestly telling me that’s all the public knows? Vats and state workers doing what?”

  Letty grunted. “Well, there’s the stories you’re told as a kid. Starts with peepy-tales about ground-up animal bones, or beans gifted down by giants, that kind of shit.”

  “Peepy-tales?”

  “Peepy-tales, yeah,” Letty said. “You know, the peeps, fantastic stories about magic and heroes and giants and nonsense like that. Tansel and Gretel, the House of the Human, all that.”

  Pax tripped on the interplay of the familiar and random. “And when you get over the...peepy-tales?”

  “You realise the stories hide the boring truth about them fermenting some kind of fungus. It first came over from a Fae colony in France or something. Up in the Alps. Our people don’t travel much, so who’d check?”

  “A mystery fungus, then. Even if it’s not the same as glo, you don’t see a parallel?”

  “I see you trying to shit on a world you know nothing about. Dust has been a part of Fae society forever. Your monsters and conspiracies have only plagued Ordshaw for fifty, a hundred years max? Spin on it.”

  Pax went quiet, seeing that she was only making Letty defensive. She’d put it out there, anyway. The fairy could stew on the idea.

  Letty pointed at the wall and angrily said, “How long you gonna stare at this?”

  “Barton said it’d be practically instant,” Pax sighed. “Or nothing.”

  “Could’ve told you it’d be a bust,” Letty snorted. “And don’t expect anything better from the chapel. This way.” She flew ahead, and Pax followed, with one last glance to the wall. It’d been a long shot, but there was definitely nothing there now.

  They continued down the side street, around a turning and past another row of near-identical houses. Letty floated closer to Pax, saying, “Apothel suggested it once, trying dust. He stabbed me in the back before he got round to it. Don’t know of any other human that’s th
ought it’d be a good idea. You’ve got a lot in common, you and that lummox.”

  “That makes my day,” Pax said.

  “When we’re done with all this, we could give it a go.”

  Letty drifted ahead to a squat single-storey building with a peaked roof. The windows were boarded up and the entrance hidden behind a chunky steel panel and door. A wooden sign hung over the entrance, most of the letter’s gone: St. J...n’s...ion...F..t.

  Pax suggested, “St Julian’s Zion Fart?”

  Letty snorted a little laugh. “Pretty sure whatever this was wasn’t religious. Else someone would’ve cared about it.”

  The steel seal bolted over the entrance was smooth despite its evident age, with wires of weeds rising up one side and rooted into the brickwork above. Pax pushed the metal door. It didn’t even move on its hinges. When they sealed the place, the Ministry had made sure no one could squat there again. She patted her coat pockets, looking for her lock picks. All gone? “How do we get in?”

  “Easiest way?” Letty flew higher, up past the sign. “There’s a hole in the roof.”

  “You gonna carry me up there? Tell me you have ant-like super-strength.”

  “Comparing me to a fucking ant, now, you want your jaw broken?”

  “It’s a positive comparison. You prefer a rhino beetle?”

  “I’d prefer you shove it,” Letty drifted back down. “I’m Fae, not an insect. And even my one shitty wing could lift a lot more than you’d think. Just not your fat arse. There’s a bin out back. Can you climb? You people are like monkeys, right?”

  Pax rolled her eyes at the attempted retort. As she followed Letty down to where an alley cut between two townhouses, though, she wasn’t sure she actually could climb. When was the last time? She’d broken the low branches of a tree in her childhood garden, once. Climbed on top of a wall when she was drunk at university?

  She found herself at the end of the alley, before a walled gate.

  “Boost yourself over here,” Letty said.