To Felicity, who hadn’t even realized that platypuses had venom, it sounded like the most ridiculous defense mechanism ever. She knew that the Grafters were capable of constructing utterly lethal weapons and had been doing so for centuries. But this woman had restricted herself to the equivalent of a pair of dueling pistols or a stiletto dagger.
The spurs were lovely, though. There were photographs of them, and sketches that looked like the work of Leonardo da Vinci. They were elegant little things, almost art deco in their design. If they weren’t tucked away in someone’s forearms, you’d want to have them on your desk as the world’s most exquisite letter openers.
Finally, Felicity turned to the itinerary of events that would be held for the Grafters over the next few weeks. Presumably, she would be attending them as well.
“Great,” she said aloud. “I’m going to have to buy a hat.”
*
Odette sat at the Apex House conference table and tried to ignore the looks of passersby. That morning, after the meeting in the graaf’s suite, Marie had pulled her aside to deliver the good news that she would no longer be escorted about the place by Pawn Bannister. It had been swiftly followed by the bad news that it was because the Checquy thought she needed more protection.
“Protection?” she asked incredulously. “From what?”
“Apparently, the Checquy feels you are in need of more protection from, well, the Checquy,” said her cousin apologetically. “It seems that your jaunt to that operating theater has made their people... dislike you a bit.”
“They already hate us!” exclaimed Odette. “You know that.”
“Yes, well, now they hate you a bit more than the rest of us.” Marie shrugged.
“But I only offered to help,” said Odette helplessly. “That boy was going to lose his leg, and I could have saved it.”
“Actually, he did lose the leg,” said Marie. “I checked.”
“Damn!” spat Odette. “What a fucking waste!”
“I couldn’t agree more. I gather that it was a traumatic amputation of the leg, perfectly simple to repair. Even I could have gotten him walking.”
“So who am I getting as a replacement?” demanded Odette. “Some huge thug who’s going to follow me around?”
“Actually, no,” said Marie brightly. “You get a girl this time. Here’s the file the Checquy gave us on her.” She passed over a slender manila folder. “And here’s our file on her.” She passed over a morbidly obese manila folder.
Although Odette apparently had no purpose to serve in the negotiations that day, she was not allowed to stay in her luxurious hotel room or go exploring in the city, because she would have no bodyguard until tomorrow. So she went to the Apex with the rest of the delegation and was given a room in which she could sit and study. Being a Grafter meant you always had homework, and so she dutifully lugged along her laptop, books, and notes. But once they had settled her in the empty conference room, she shoved her homework to the side and opened the folder Marie had given her.
Pawn Felicity Jane Clements. Who are you?
According to the Checquy, when Clements was born, twenty-three years earlier, there had been no indication of anything wrong or unnatural. Ten fingers, ten toes, no teeth, no pedipalps. Standard-issue Anglo-Saxon girl child. She slept, she cried, she cooed, she pooed.
Then, when she was three months old, her parents tried to give her some solid food. The instant that the pureed carrots passed her lips, Baby Felicity began screaming like they’d set her on fire. She kept it up for twenty minutes, crying piteously, then settled down to a prolonged whimpering that didn’t stop for hours. Finally, she fell asleep. Her parents, who had tried everything and were on the verge of calling an ambulance, were immeasurably relieved. They were less so when she started whimpering again immediately upon waking up.
A pattern emerged. Baby Felicity could not bear to consume any food but breast milk. Anything else left her screaming and trembling. When she was awake, she did not stop mewling unless she was placed, naked, in a bath of water and held in the center of the tub. If she even touched the sides of the bath, she began complaining again. The Clements parents were frantic, convinced that their daughter had some sort of hypersensitive skin. The family doctor and the physicians at the local hospital were bewildered. Pain medication was prescribed and made no difference whatsoever. The parents made appointments with experts, and waited in agony.
Two days before she was to see a Harley Street specialist, Felicity went into a coma. Her mother found her lying in her crib, eyes open, pupils shrunk to the size of pinheads. The baby was breathing shallowly, but apart from that, she was utterly still. Horrified, Mrs. Clements picked her daughter up. She had lifted the infant no more than four centimeters off the mattress when Felicity went into violent convulsions. Mrs. Clements was so shocked that she actually dropped her child back into the crib. Immediately upon the baby’s returning to the mattress, the convulsions stopped.
A few minutes before the ambulance arrived, Felicity’s pupils dilated; she blinked, wriggled, and started whimpering again. Distraught, her mother still took her to the hospital, where scans of her brain and heart revealed nothing unusual. The details of the coma were added, a trifle skeptically, to the baby’s medical files, which were forwarded on to the Harley Street specialist.
The specialist had never seen or heard of anything like it. He consulted a number of colleagues, and none of them had ever seen or heard of anything like it. But the Checquy had. In fact, they had seen it in 1552, 1585, 1634, 1827, 1884, and 1901. The symptoms afflicting Felicity were strong indications that she possessed the power of psychometry — the ability to read the history of any object she touched.
To the Checquy, it all made sense. Felicity’s unwillingness to eat was the result of her powers reaching into the history of the food. To her, it would have felt raw, or covered in dirt, or perhaps as if someone were touching it even as it was inside her mouth. Worse, it might have felt like it was still alive. Her aversion to clothing was much the same — a deluge of images and experiences pouring into her mind. Even the most mundane items would have foisted their histories on her. And the seizure, well, the Checquy had seen that before too. It was a textbook example of a psychometric who’d been deeply immersed in the experiences of an object and then torn away before she’d had time to reel herself back in.
Psychometry could be a terrifically useful power with many practical applications, and the Checquy were eager to have it at their service. So, once they learned of Felicity through their contacts in the medical industry, they made their move.
The dossiers were tactfully silent as to the means by which Felicity had been extracted from her family. They didn’t even mention whether she had any siblings. If, one day, Felicity were to marry a civilian, the Checquy would pull the relevant files to make certain she was not marrying a relation.
She’d retained her birth name. The Checquy’s policy, it seemed, was that if you’d been christened with a name, you kept it. (Although, to prevent anyone from tracking down their members, the Checquy did provide new National Insurance and National Health Service numbers, and new official dates of birth. Operatives were also usually posted in different cities from any immediate family members who might recognize them.)