*
“I’m sorry, but you can’t co — ow! Ow!” Odette opened her eyes just in time to see Pawn Clements grab the doctor by his tie and his belt and swing him smoothly out the door and into the hallway while at the same time relieving him of his clipboard. She kicked the door shut behind her and advanced on the bed. At no time had the Pawn taken her horrified eyes off Odette.
“Sweet bloody hell!” Clements breathed. She sounded utterly distraught. “Oh Christ, look at your face!” Since this maneuver was not possible, Odette settled for staring wide-eyed at the deeply upset Pawn. The other woman was distinctly disheveled and for some reason was dressed in a peculiarly sheer set of coveralls through which her underwear could be seen. Her hair had come partially out of its braid, her face was red, and she was breathing heavily. It was clear that she had just sprinted to the medical facility from somewhere.
“Look at your poor hands!” moaned the Pawn. Odette brought them up with difficulty. She had to concede that they did not look good. They were red, raw, and weeping and had been slathered in antiseptic cream. “Are you in a lot of pain?” Odette opened her mouth to say something, but the Pawn was flipping through her chart.
“‘Burns, smoke inhalation, possible toxic exposure’!” Clements read aloud. “Jesus, they unleashed Pawn Mnookin on that thing. With that radiation of hers, this could actually be classified as a war crime.” The Pawn looked up, aghast. “Are you all right? How do you feel?” Odette felt the rush of happiness that comes when someone is concerned for you.
“I don’t know what the hell you could possibly have been thinking,” Clements continued without waiting for an answer. “Do you have any idea how much trouble I’m going to get into for this?” Odette’s rush of happiness departed abruptly, replaced by the rush of distress that comes when someone is about to tear into you. “I can’t believe your selfishness! I’m responsible for your safety, my career is on the line, and the first time I turn my back, you go crawling into a fucking monster? Are you mad? Or is this just a case of suicidal stupidity?”
“I thought that since the other scientists were going in —” Odette started.
“The other scientists were doing it, so you thought you would? What are you, thirteen?” shouted Clements. “The other scientists are expendable. The other scientists aren’t diplomatic envoys. The other scientists aren’t supposed to go to the country with their senior delegates as guests of the Lord and Lady this weekend. Now look at you! You’re going to be in hospital for days — maybe weeks!”
“Well, actually —” began Odette.
“And this could do unbelievable harm to the negotiations,” continued Clements. “Do you think something like this sends a good message? ‘Yes, we have a member of your family under government protection and she has just been burned, crushed, and poisoned inside a gigantic porpoise.’” She paused, apparently overcome by Odette’s idiocy. “Well, I can tell you that that Fielding woman is going to regret ever meeting you.”
“You can’t punish her! It was my idea to go in there!” protested Odette.
“Yes, and now we’ve established that you can’t be trusted to keep yourself safe. Your decision-making privileges have been revoked. You will be transferred to the Apex hospital, and I will sit in a corner of your room, reading fashion magazines and making sure you don’t accidentally stab yourself in the eye with your plastic hospital spork.”
Right, that does it!
“You know what?” said Odette, incensed. “You can just shut the fuck up.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Clements in a dangerous voice.
“Shut. Up. You are not my boss, and you are not my mother. Yes, if I ever get into the Checquy, it is possible that you will outrank me in some bullshit chess-related pecking order. Although I doubt it, because I can sew a man’s head back on and he will live if I get to him in time, while your main qualification is apparently that you can be a real bitch!”
“Do you think I won’t beat the shit out of someone just because I’m responsible for her safety and she is suffering from serious burns and” — Clements looked down at the clipboard — “possible internal cookage?”
“I think you won’t. Because at the moment, I am the VIP, and you are... my entourage.”
“Your entourage?” repeated Clements. Odette could practically feel the heat of her outrage. “Your entourage?”
I may have made a tremendous error here, Odette thought, but I’ll get my hits in before she destroys me. She pushed on recklessly.
“Yes,” said Odette. “My entourage. And you don’t have to worry about the burns. All I need is a night or two in a bath full of some chemicals I have back at the hotel, and I’ll come out looking like I’ve just had some sunburn. So you’ll have to give up on your hospital scenario. Sorry about the fashion mags,” she added tartly.
“I am not your servant,” said Clements through gritted teeth. “I’m here to protect you. And apparently I need to be protecting you from your own moronitude. Let me explain something to you: You don’t need to seek out danger. Thanks to your inspired activities at the Apex, people — people with supernatural abilities — already hate you. Before, they hated the idea of you, and now you go and —” She took a deep breath. “If you do anything like this ever again and I manage to keep you alive, I will proceed to break your ankles.” She paused for a moment. “And if you have some sort of weird ankle-based abilities that preclude that, I will simply put a collar and a leash on you.”
*
“Ah, Odette, come in,” said Grootvader Ernst without looking up. He was seated at the conference table in his suite, a mass of papers laid out before him. A new executive assistant — a replacement for the unfortunate Anabella — was seated a little farther down, looking distinctly nervous at her new responsibilities. I wonder if she heard what happened to her predecessor, thought Odette. “You’re back earlier than I anticipated.”
“They helicoptered us in from Portsmouth,” said Odette sourly.
“That’s nice. Ria, once you’ve purchased the train tickets, you can e-mail them to the Chimerae’s phones.” From memory, he wrote out a list of numbers with a fountain pen. “And they will need accommodations in London.”
“Separate rooms?” asked the EA. “Separate locations?”
“No, get them a single hotel room, as central as possible,” said Ernst. “One bed. They each only need two or three hours of sleep in a twenty-four-hour period, so they can sleep in shifts. The rest of the time, I want them out in the city, tracking down the targets.” He slid a piece of paper covered in his distinctive copperplate handwriting across to Ria. “Here are the details of the accounts to use and the identity for which the booking should be made.”
“Yes, sir,” said the woman, who appeared to be about the age of Odette’s mother. She opened her laptop and began typing away.
“Grootvader, I need to talk to you.”
“Of course, sit down,” said Ernst. “Give me a moment, we’re just about to activate the Chimerae.”
“That’s one of the things I need to talk to you about, you see —” She was cut off by Marie, who entered the room with a large bottle of water tucked under each arm and one in each hand.
“Hello, Odette,” she said. “You’re back early. Why are you wearing that insane hat?” Ernst looked up briefly from his papers and raised an eyebrow.
“That hat is insane,” he agreed. The chapeau in question was made of an iridescent turquoise straw and had a dense black veil and a brim wide enough to shelter Odette and three other people from the burning rays of the sun (which was not shining that day).
“The Checquy gave it to me,” said Odette. “They felt I needed a way to conceal my face from guests in the hotel.”
“Well, that was very thoughtful of them,” said Ernst absently.