“Wow.”
“Hmm. It’s not as great as it sounds. For one thing, he was the one who’d carried my body to safety, which makes me look pretty ungrateful. And for another, it made everyone think that I’d come back possessed by the vengeful spirit of a whale-monster. I had to talk very fast to persuade them otherwise.”
“And now you have to write up a report for your superiors,” said Alessio.
“Yup.”
“So don’t you think you should stop drinking?”
At this, Felicity opened her eyes. She had a wry, withering remark to make, but then the door slammed open. Leliefeld stalked in, clutching her huge hat. She didn’t look at Alessio or Felicity, just stomped across the suite to the bedroom. They heard two more doors slam, and then the distant sound of the bath running.
“I think now is the perfect time to be drinking,” said Felicity.
*
Odette put the toilet seat down and made a mental note to slap Alessio on the back of the head when next she got the chance. Then she put the lid down, sat, and listened to the roar of water pouring into the tub. The room filled with steam and the smell of jasmine. On the vanity was a photo of her and her friends, all dressed up to attend a wedding. She thought of that white corpse she’d seen in the belly of the beast. All of the memories that she spent every day deliberately not recalling came back to her. The horror, the loss. And then, very carefully, so as not to worsen her wounded skin, she put her face in her hands and began to weep.
25
When she awoke in the morning, Odette felt plain awful. She levered herself out of the tub, listlessly washed the slime off in the shower, and wandered out into the living room of the suite, only to find Clements engaged in some weaponized version of yoga on the carpet in front of the television. The Pawn looked up from under her own left armpit.
“Oh, you’re up,” said Clements. Odette shrugged. With a grunt, the Pawn unbraided her left arm and right leg from each other and rolled up onto her feet. She peered at Odette. “You weren’t kidding about that stuff in your tub,” she said appreciatively. “You look like you fell asleep on the beach in Tahiti, but that’s it. I don’t suppose the two men who were in the beast with you can use it?”
“You have to have had inoculations for two years and take supplements every day,” said Odette dully. “Otherwise, your skin comes off in big flakes.”
“Figures,” said Clements.
“Where’s Alessio?” The Pawn looked at her oddly. “What?”
“He’s off with the school group,” said Clements. “It’s three in the afternoon.”
“Oh,” said Odette. “What am I supposed to do today?”
“Nothing.” Clements shrugged. “It’s Saturday, so there’re no meetings scheduled. You can just stay in.”
“You don’t have anything to do?”
“I’ve been having fun with room service,” said Clements. “I had a lunch composed entirely of parfaits.”
“Well, I don’t want to stay in today,” said Odette.
“All right,” said Clements, raising an eyebrow. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to do something touristy. From the moment I got off the plane, they’ve been warning us that we couldn’t go out. Well, I have a bodyguard, I should be safe, so I’m going out.”
“You don’t have the best track record when it comes to ‘should be safe,’” pointed out Clements. “You managed to bring down spectral wrath upon yourself whilst sitting in a conference room. But fine, where do you want to go?”
“What’s your favorite thing to do in London?” asked Odette.
“It turns out that I really like watching repeats of forensic crime dramas and eating parfaits in a five-star hotel.”
“Let’s go to St. Paul’s Cathedral,” said Odette. “Alessio’s school group got to go there, and I really want to see it.”
“Sure,” said Clements. “I haven’t been there since primary school. It’s very cool. Any particular reason you want to go there?”
“No,” lied Odette.
*
St. Paul’s Cathedral stood before them, looking as if it did not quite belong in the world. It was as if it had been cut-and-pasted into the city just to make the surrounding buildings look tacky. Odette gazed up the steps, ignoring the lounging students, tracing the columns up to more columns, a gorgeously carved pediment, and then, soaring up into an unexpectedly blue sky, the dome.
You were so right, Pim, thought Odette. It is glorious. She relaxed a little. All the things in my life are just temporary, she thought. This building will be standing long after me and all my ridiculous problems are gone. It was both a comforting thought and a sort of depressing one.
Inside the cathedral, instead of the hushed sound of reverent visitors, the women heard an orchestra that was either tuning up or playing an extremely modern piece of music. A small notice board advised everyone that the Orchestra and Choir of Greater Juster Norton would be performing that evening and apologized for any disruption caused by the rehearsal. The two women walked down to the nave, beneath the gargantuan arches and the soaring ceilings.
In the center, under the dome, the orchestra sat on a broad platform. The musicians were tootling their horns or frowning as they drew their bows across their strings, making all those little sounds that constitute foreplay in the orchestral world. Singers — Odette and Felicity presumed they were singers — were sitting about reading books or peering at their phones. None of them were staring open-mouthed at the magnificent spectacle above them, which struck Odette as astounding, since that was all she could do.
The dome of the cathedral hung in the air, crowning at a height of sixty-five meters. A ring of windows beneath the dome filled the space with light, and its inner surface had been cunningly painted so that it seemed to be lined with gigantic sculptures.
“Ooh,” she said, despite herself. She nudged Clements and pointed up to the balcony that ringed the base of the dome. “That’s the Whispering Gallery.”
“What?” asked Clements over the sound of the orchestra.
Oh, for God’s sake.
“That’s the Whispering Gallery,” Odette said, slightly more loudly. “If you go up there and whisper to the wall, the curve carries your voice around so that someone on the other side can hear you.”
“I vaguely recall that.”
“You see the top of the dome?”
“Uh, yes,” said Clements. “It’s right above us.”
“There’s a tiny little window cut there, and if you climb up, you can look down through it to the floor.”
“Is it vomit-proof?” asked Clements. “Because I can imagine nothing that would be more likely to cause vertigo than doing what you just described, and if you throw up on someone from that height, your vomit would literally cut him in half.”
“I — I don’t think that’s the case,” said Odette.
“You want to climb it, don’t you?” asked Clements. Odette nodded. “Why?”
“Because it’s there. And it’s cool.”
“Well, you can’t.” Odette looked at her. “Not unless you tell me the truth about why you wanted to come here.” The Pawn did not give the impression of budging on this point.
“Fine,” said Odette finally. “I like cathedrals. I used to go visit them with someone.”
“Your boyfriend Pim,” said Clements. Odette stared at her in shock. “I read your file.”
“Oh. It’s in my file?”
“And Alessio talked.”
“That little shit!” exclaimed Odette, then looked around guiltily. Even with the orchestra doing their thing, several cathedral-goers had heard her. She made an apologetic face.
“Marcel too,” said Clements. “I’m sorry for your loss.” It sounded like an extremely rehearsed phrase, straight out of The Pawn’s Handbook for Normal Social Interactions.
Odette resisted the obnoxious urge to say that it wasn’t Clements’s fault. “Thank you,” she said reluctantly. “Anyway, we did all the major cathedrals in Europe and always wanted to go to St. Paul’s together.” And instead I’m here with you. “Happy?”