“I haven’t seen you in some time, Alice. How have you been?”
Alice’s smile reminded Chris of the Cheshire Cat. Except much more frightening.
“A busy girl is a happy girl. But I’m certain that you’ve heard,” Alice cooed, sitting down across from him at the cafe table. “Unless you’ve lost your touch for these things?”
“Hardly,” Chris said, smiling back at her tiredly. “I’m afraid that there is still very little that goes on in our sordid underworld that I am not eventually made aware of. Word is that you’ve been working quite a bit these last few weeks. Saigon, Los Angeles, Manila, Paris… all operations targeting the Terrie Cartel, if I’m not mistaken.”
The waiter was clearly unnerved by Alice, and delivered the coffees Chris had already ordered in a hurried manner that made it abundantly clear that they would not be seeing the boy again. Alice seemed vaguely amused by this.
Chris had to admire their waiter’s keen sense of self preservation. Not everyone was so quick to spot Alice for what she was.
He’d first met Alice in Berlin, during the strange and exciting years after the First World War, not long before she’d started working as an Auditor. She didn’t appear to have changed much since — her hair was dyed black, now, and a faint white scar was etched along one cheekbone, but she didn’t seem to have aged at all. Even her clothes weren’t much different from the first time he’d met her, at a friend’s party in a flat in Fredericksburg, in a slinky black dress and high-laced shoes with pointed toes, though she’d ditched the dress and shoes in favor of tight black jeans and motorcycle boots. The coat she hung over the seatback was too heavy and long for the weather, so it had to be armor.
Chris liked to flatter himself by thinking that he looked much the same himself, except that his hair had faded to white a few decades ago. He dyed it for several years, before he’d lost interest in the pretense. Otherwise, like Alice, the body he inhabited appeared to be somewhere in its early thirties. Even the fantastically expensive cream-colored suit that he wore was fundamentally similar to the things he’d worn in the heady days of the Weimar Republic, though tailors had been better back then. One of the tragedies of the modern world.
“You aren’t mistaken, Chris.” Alice blew on her coffee, then set the cup back down, apparently deciding it was too hot. “But it’s more than the Terrie Cartel that I am dealing with. Witches, and Weir, and who knows what else.”
“I heard about some of that,” Chris said, idly stirring the coffee he’d ordered out of politeness. “Even for me, that’s a bit hard to swallow — Operators working with Witches. I thought your people were conditioned to make that kind of thing impossible?”
“We thought so, too.” Alice shrugged. “Not the first time Analytics has been wrong, you know.”
Chris nodded uncertainly, brushing an imaginary crumb from the front of his immaculate white blazer.
“Quite. Still, such a thing has never happened before. I would not have believed it to be possible, under normal circumstances.”
Alice shot Chris an inquisitive look.
“What, exactly, makes the current circumstances abnormal?” The question sounded innocent enough, but Chris knew better than to think that Alice would ask for anything. Alice took. It was what she did. “We’ve had rogue cartels before, after all. The Terrie Cartel is probably the biggest we’ve ever had to sanction, but it’s hardly a unique situation.”
Chris spread his hands innocently and put on the face that had sold more stories than he could count.
“I’m afraid that we’ll need to come to some sort of accommodation before we can discuss that any further,” he said, as if he regretted the necessity. “Of course, if it were up to me, I’d tell you gratis, but that would be bad for business, you understand.”
“I do, actually.” Alice blew on her coffee and sipped at it cautiously, then set the cup carefully back down in the chipped white saucer. “I appreciate your position. But, I wonder if you appreciate the significance of mine.”
Chris looked at Alice thoughtfully for a moment, and then gave her a tired smile.
“Believe me, I know that if you want to, you can force the information out of me,” Chris admitted. “I’m something of a coward when it comes to pain, after all, and I do intend on living a long, long time. While you do have a certain amount of leverage, give some thought to this, Alice — won’t you have questions you need answered, in the future? Who will you turn to, once you’ve used me up? Who else would talk to an Auditor?”
Alice sipped her coffee again, and then grinned at him over the cup.
“Don’t worry about it, Chris. For reasons I don’t understand, I have a certain misplaced affection for you. What is it going to cost me?”
“Well,” Chris hedged, “what do you need to know, exactly?”
“Everything,” Alice answered flatly. “I need to know everything that the Terrie Cartel has been doing for the past several years, what the Witches have to do with it, the Weir, everything. Gaul says that the store is open on this one.”
“He wants it that bad?” Chris asked, too stunned to hide his surprise. Gaul was notorious for his cheapness.
“He has a hard on for this like you wouldn’t believe,” Alice said glumly, setting her coffee aside. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so worked up. I need to know anything I might need to know, alright? So, tell me what it is that you want.”
“Two things.” Chris considered his coffee, and then decided against it. It wasn’t that he couldn’t drink the stuff, but the last time he had, it had given him heartburn for days. “I want a favor from Central, and I want a favor from you.”
“Oh, Chris,” Alice said, putting one hand on her chest, and fluttering her eyelashes. “I’m here in a professional capacity…”
Chris did his best to look appalled, rather than hurt and saddened. He didn’t like to make Alice aware of the times when her memory failed her, even if it wounded him that she had forgotten the nights they’d been together; at the Russian embassy in Prague, on the porch outside a tiny cottage near Hamburg they had rented one balmy weekend in June, in a hotel in Copenhagen so expensive that they never even saw the employees — fresh towels and meals simply appeared, as if by some kind of domestic magic. Chris couldn’t imagine forgetting all of it, but that had always been the score with Alice.
“I’d never try and blackmail you into it, my dear,” he said with a pained grin. “I’m certain that eventually you’ll succumb to my charms. No, I think you’ll find that what I want you to do is more along your usual line.”
Alice shook her head in mock resignation.
“Your loss. But I can’t offer anything, until I know the particulars.”
“I want Central to assume total responsibility for Margot’s education and upbringing,” Chris said abruptly, moodily pushing his coffee away. “I did make promises to provide her with mentorship and financial support, but it has become quite a burden.”
Alice smiled at him.
“Times are hard all around then, Christopher?” Alice pursed her lips briefly. Chris knew from experience that meant she’d agree — reluctantly, of course. He’d seen that face during that bad business in Moscow in the ‘53, and then again, decades later in Serbia. Alice was extremely concerned about something, and he had a pretty good idea about what. “You’re gonna break that little vampire’s heart, if she finds out you are shifting the responsibility. And what do you want from me?”
Chris folded his hands in front of his face as if in prayer, and tried his best to look beneficent and thoughtful. Not that he could hope to fool Alice, who knew him well enough to spot an act, even without using the Inquisition Protocol she had access to as an Auditor. It was a habit that helped him feel more confident in his presentation.
“It will probably get heavy,” he admitted. “But, you know I wouldn’t bother you for anything that wasn’t.”
“I’d probably get bored with anything else,” Alice said, gradually shredding a discarded sugar packet into dull pink ribbons. “Get to the point, please, Chris.”
“I need you to watch my back on a job,” Chris said plainly. “It’s something personal, it isn’t Society business. I can’t use my normal channels to handle this thing.”
Alice leaned back in her chair and looked at him with the most open confusion he’d ever seen her express, already starting to morph into anger.
“And now I am supposed to say ‘Just like old times’, or something, right? I’m an Auditor, Chris, not a hired dog. I don’t do favors. I certainly don’t help you deal with your ‘personal business’.”
Chris held up his hands pleadingly.
“Credit me with a bit more intelligence than that, Alice. I know perfectly well who I’m talking to. I wouldn’t have bothered to make the request, but the fact is…”
Chris hesitated for a moment, then. It was like looking down off of a height, right before he jumped. It didn’t change anything, other than reminding him to be terrified. He still had no options other than a leap of faith.
“The fact is that this job pertains to your Audit, Alice, and I think you’ll be very interested in it.”
“I already am,” Alice said grimly, her smile suddenly gone. Chris wondered how he’d forgotten how much scarier she was without it. “Have you done something ill-advised, Chris?”
Chris shook his head and sighed.
“I wasn’t planning on trying to hide it,” he said guiltily. “We don’t have nice jobs, Alice, and they aren’t easy, either. I’ve made a mistake.”
Alice leaned forward even further, taking his ice-cold hand in her own. It was a friendly gesture, but with an underlying firmness. He knew better than to flinch from her touch.
“What did you do for the Terrie Cartel, Chris?”
He heard the edge in her voice, and knew that it could go either way, but Chris faced it down with the nerves of a life-long gambler.
“Remember, when I took the job, they were still a cartel in good standing!” Chris protested. “The suspension only came down a few weeks ago. This all started almost three years ago.”
When he realized that no reaction from Alice was forthcoming, Chris sighed again, more out of habit than anything.
“The Terrie Cartel approached us, the Society, wanting to buy all kinds of intelligence — anything at all on the Witch cults, those Anathema freaks in the Outer Dark, the movements of the Weir tribes and population estimates, that sort of thing.” Chris shook his head, and wished that he could take his hand out from under Alice’s. “It’s obvious to me, now, they were interested in how much we knew, and by extension, how much Central was likely to know, rather than the information itself.”
Alice nodded grimly, but she released his hand, much to Chris’s relief.
“You provided this information?”
Alice tapped her fingers on the table expectantly.
“Of course,” Chris acknowledged, feeling a bit foolish. “There was nothing proscribed, nothing outside the boundaries of the Agreement. We continued to provide intelligence for them up until we heard about the attacks. The arrangement was terminated before Central proscribed the Terrie cartel.”
Alice’s grin returned. Apparently she had caught the emphasis on the last part of the statement, the proactive termination of the relationship. Weeks could mean everything. Nothing was trivial when Alice Gallow was sitting across the table, and Chris wasn’t about to assume any more guilt than he had to.
“What happened once you heard about the proscription?”
Alice finished the better part of her coffee in one swallow. Chris found himself wondering idly what his chances were of surviving the encounter, and then put it aside. There was no point in worrying about what couldn’t be changed.
“I told them the arrangement was dead, of course,” Chris said, immediately regretting his choice of words. “They told me that ending the arrangement would be a very serious error on my part, that it could have consequences for the Society. I walked away, never even looked back.”
Chris wondered if Alice had activated the Inquisition Protocol. She was a skilled enough Operator that he couldn’t read anything from her Etheric signature, but it was certainly possible. He hoped that she had. He desperately needed her to know he wasn’t lying.
“Why are you so cold, Chris? Why are you starving?”
Alice put down her empty cup on the table, ignoring the saucer, and the porcelain clattered against the glass tabletop.
“The entire London branch of the society is gone for certain,” Chris said, hanging his head. “They moved on us two days after they were proscribed. There was a bombing, at our central office. It did a lot of structural damage, but no serious losses. We followed the standard evacuation procedures, split up into small groups and headed for the safe houses, to wait for the all clear. They were waiting at the safe house when we arrived, I assume it was the same for the others,” Chris continued, his voice tired, wooden. “They looked like they had been there for a while. They’d killed the human servants… unkindly. There were Witches with them, and Weir, and there were only four of us. It wasn’t even a fight.”
Chris’s hand shook as he remembered Evelyn screaming while Paul and Miguel died, devoured by the maws of horrible, malformed wolves.
“Evelyn and I both activated emergency apport protocols, with randomized destinations to elude telepathic tracking. There was nothing else we could do.” Chris couldn’t look at Alice. He couldn’t stand the thought of what his face might show. With an effort, he recalled fifty years of professional composure. “I woke up in Amsterdam, near the docks, with a half-dozen bullets still lodged in me.”
“What about the Amsterdam lodge?” Alice asked, fruitlessly searching for their waiter, who had fled long ago.
“Nothing more than a burning building, surrounded by things in police uniforms that weren’t human,” Chris said sadly. “I got myself patched up by my own means, and then I went underground. I’ve kept moving since then, trying to find a safe place to retreat to. Everywhere I’ve gone, it’s been the same thing. Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona.”
“Barcelona is the largest lodge in Europe, right?” Alice looked skeptical.
“It was. All I found there was more rubble, and a package sitting in front of it with my name on it.” Chris felt an absurd urge to laugh. He wasn’t at all sure why. “Nobody watching, this time. Pretty clear that they wanted me to have it.”
Alice looked sadly at her empty coffee cup. Chris wondered if maybe she was mellowing slightly with age. Perhaps, after all this time, Alice was finally capable of dealing with small disappointments without resorting to homicide. Perhaps.
Otherwise, Chris sincerely hoped their waiter never came back.
“I didn’t open it, at first. I tried peeking at it a number of different ways, but no matter how I looked at it, it came up clean. Eventually I cut the thing open in my hotel room. There was a cell phone.” Chris looked around them nervously, checking the faces at the surrounding tables, and then continued. “There were videos, the things they had done to the others. I saw members of a dozen different lodges — Alice, I think that they’ve destroyed most of the lodges in Europe!”
“And?”
Alice stared at him patiently, clearly aware that he was still skirting the main point.
“They have Evelyn, Alice. They have her. My wife.”
He dug a cheap Korean cell phone out of his pocket and slid it across the table to her, hoping she would overlook his wet eyes.
“There are photos of her on the camera. They want me to give myself up, the bastards, and they don’t even bother to make any assurances that she’ll be alright.”
“You aren’t worried about paying for Margot’s education,” Alice said, slipping the phone into one of the side pockets of her long black coat. “You’re making arrangements for her to be cared for in your absence. Taking care of your obligations.”
“I’m her sponsor, so I’m responsible. My obligation is to the Society, not to Margot. It’s nothing personal,” Chris said darkly. “I’m not so naive as to hold out hope for finding Evelyn alive. And I understand that even if I survive, that I will have to face an Audit of my actions. And I’m prepared for that. But, Alice, please… I know where they are. The people holding her have to be the same people who are attacking Central. I can’t let her disappear down some Weir’s den. She deserves a clean death, at the very least. And, you couldn’t help but learn something about your enemy, right?”
Alice looked at him for a long time then, considering. Chris sat and waited, making no attempt to sway her. If he hadn’t already, then there was no point in trying further. Alice could not be reasoned or bargained with.
She didn’t say anything to him, but after a long hesitation, she dug her own cell phone out of her pocket.
“Xia,” she said into the phone, a moment later, her voice cross and efficient. “I’m going to need to use the closest London safe house to where I am now. King’s Cross? Alright, I remember where it is. Have them send my usual things.”
Alice met Chris’s eyes for a moment, and then gave him a toothy smile.
“I’m going to be plus one for the time being, Xia. Christopher Feld. You can find his info on the network, go ahead and request it from Central. He’ll need a full kit, clothes, the works. Also, we’ll need some IV equipment, and several pints of O negative. Can you make it happen this afternoon?”
As far as Chris could hear, and Chris’s hearing was nothing short of remarkable, even in his half-starved state, there was no response. In the time that he had known Xia, he had never heard him speak. But Alice certainly acted as if she had received a response.
“You’re a life-saver, Xia. We’ll have to take the tube for a while, to make sure Chris hasn’t picked up any new friends. Let them know we’ll be there in a couple hours, okay? Everything going well in Saigon? Pat Mitzi on the head for me, won’t you? Okay, then.”
Alice hung up, and then folded up her cell. Her eyes wandered down to her still empty cup, and she looked disappointed.
“I guess we can stop somewhere on the way,” she said, standing up from the table and motioning for Chris to do the same. “Since they finally have fucking Starbucks in this town. If I don’t get another cup of coffee, I’ll get a headache and be bitchy all day.”
And I certainly don’t want that, Chris thought, following Alice out the door and into the chilly London afternoon.