The Last of Leng started to say something, and then turned abruptly and strode away. Several guests nodded approvingly. They would have liked to applaud, but it was the Last of Leng, after all, and they weren’t as brave as me.
I turned away, and there was Dead Boy, waiting for me, grinning all over his deathly pale face. I sighed inwardly. As if I didn’t have enough problems . . . Dead Boy had a tall glass of something dark and steaming in one hand, and a half-eaten dodo leg in the other. He dropped me a heavy wink.
“I knew it was you! I never mistake an aura. Don’t worry,” he said, in what he probably thought was a conspiratorial tone, “I’ve got your back.”
“Oh good,” I said. “I’m sure whoever you think I am is very grateful. Now will you please go away and ruin somebody else’s day?”
“That’s what I’m here for,” said Dead Boy.
He dropped me another heavy wink, with his heavily mascaraed eye, and swaggered away. Dead Boy didn’t care what I was doing here. He just thought it was funny. Being dead for so long has given him an odd sense of humour. I wasn’t sure whether having his support felt comforting or not. I watched him latch on to a waiter with a new tray of party snacks, and launch himself in hot pursuit. Dead Boy had the attention span of a goldfish swimming in a bowl of liquid LSD. I sighed quietly again, and wondered what else could go wrong. I was attracting far more attention than was good for me. In fact, I was starting to wonder whether I should just leave the Ballroom and start bullying hotel staff until one of them told me where the Lazarus Stone was.
And then I spotted a face I knew, deep in the milling crowd. A face I recognised immediately, that I had thought never to see again. My heart hammered painfully in my chest, and I had trouble getting my breath. A tall, distinguished figure in a formal tuxedo moved easily through the crowd. He looked exactly like my uncle James. My late uncle James, the legendary Grey Fox. I hadn’t seen him since he died right in front of me, in Drood Hall, all those years ago. He couldn’t be here. He died. I went to his funeral. Unless . . . somebody had already used the Lazarus Stone.
Unless someone had rewritten History, bringing James back from the dead. But if History had been changed, I wouldn’t still remember the way things used to be . . . would I? I had survived the destruction of the Sceneshifters . . . so I was the only person in the world who still remembered them . . . I plunged forward into the crowd, pushing people out of my way and ignoring their objections, but by the time I got to where I’d seen my uncle James, he wasn’t there any more. I looked quickly about me, while everyone else stuck their noses in the air and made pointed comments about my rudeness, but I couldn’t see Uncle James anywhere.
If he’d ever really been there.
I was seized with an awful sense of urgency, a need to do . . . something. If the Lady Faire, or anyone else, had started using the Lazarus Stone after all these years . . . we were all in real trouble. But deep down, I didn’t believe it. If James’ death had been undone, I wouldn’t still remember him dying. Hell, I probably wouldn’t still be standing here. So whoever it was I saw, it couldn’t have been the Grey Fox. Just someone trying to pass as him. Unless . . . Could Uncle James have pulled off the greatest trick and comeback of his career? Faked his own death, back then? I saw him die, but so had a great many people, down the years, and he’d always bounced back, smiling broadly, refusing to explain how he’d done it. All part of the legend of the Droods’ greatest field agent: the infamous Grey Fox.
But he wouldn’t have done that to me . . . would he?
Or could it be some shape-shifter or face-dancer, pretending to be him? Wearing James’ face to get into the Lady Faire’s Ball, to get to the Lazarus Stone? I smiled coldly behind my security mask. If someone here was hiding behind Uncle James’ reputation, I would have their balls.
I wished Molly was with me, so I could discuss this with her. She would have known what to say, what to do. She always was the professional one.
Then, quite suddenly, everything stopped. The noise broke off as everyone stopped talking. The music stopped and the singer fell silent. Everyone in the Ballroom stood very still. We were all looking at the Lady Faire, standing in the open doors at the far end of the Ballroom, come at last.
She held an effortlessly aristocratic pose, smiling on her gathered guests. Someone started applauding, and everyone joined in. I did too. Just couldn’t help myself. People started cheering, and shouting happily. Some wept, quite openly. The great ice cavern filled with a joyous sound, overwhelming and overpowering. A spontaneous outbreak of good cheer and affectionate tribute. The Lady Faire was here at last, and everyone wanted to show how much they still cared for her. Perhaps the one great affair, or even love, of their troubled lives. The only person who had ever really mattered to them. The Lady Faire smiled graciously about her, accepting it all as her right. Her right of conquest, perhaps.
Everyone was looking at her in the same way, or at the very least, in varieties of the same way. Looks of love and hunger and lust, but more than that . . . They were the looks of a subjugated people, of those who had been touched by the Lady Faire and loved it. Or had been made to love it, by the perfect honey trap. The Baron Frankenstein had done his work well. The Lady Faire was so much more than an ex-lover to these people. She was a living goddess. Male and female and everything in between; they had loved her once and they loved her now, despite themselves. And having finally seen her, I could understand why.
The Lady Faire, that most infamous omnisexual and ladything, the most successful seductress in the history of espionage, the Ice Queen herself . . . was tall and stately and wore a perfectly fitted white tuxedo. Her hair had been shaped and dyed into a perfect re-creation of Jean Harlow’s platinum bombshell. Her face was handsome and striking and beautiful, all at once, with a strong bone structure. She had golden-pupiled eyes, a pointed nose, and pink rosebud lips. Her smile was a practised thing, but charming as all hell. More a man’s smile than a woman’s . . . Shapes and movements inside the white tuxedo suggested a woman’s body, and then a man’s, both and neither and more.
There was no point in even trying to guess her age. She looked perfectly youthful, no more than her twenties. But there was a suggestion of age, of long experience, in her eyes and her smile, in every small movement, and in the grace and elegance that hung about her like a well-worn cloak. Much used, and invisibly mended. You could tell that here was someone who had been around. Who had seen things and done things, some of them awful. Not that she cared, and nothing she would ever apologise for. You just knew, from looking at her. She had a feminine glamour, and a masculine presence. There was nothing androgynous about her. She was quite definitely female. And male. And so much more.
The Lady Faire took your breath away, sweet as cyanide.
She certainly made one hell of a first impression. My torc was burning fiercely at my throat, or I might have fallen under her spell too. She-it was easier to think of her that way, less complicated-was overpoweringly sexual, seductively alluring, without even trying. I could feel the attraction burning off her, like the light that calls moths to throw themselves into the flame and perish. Looking at her was like staring into a spotlight aimed personally at you. And yet . . . there was something else there too. Like a maggot squirming deep in an apple. An almost arachnid revulsion, a bone-deep, soul-deep aversion to something that just shouldn’t exist in the natural world.