After all, Nether Stowe House caters to any and all requirements—just as long as the customer has enough money to pay.
Mo finds herself in a low-ceilinged corridor, paneled in antique oak and well lit. Paintings of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century aristocrats line the walls in lieu of windows, punctuating the gaps between doors. The doors are labelled: some mundane (CLOAKROOM), others less so (BONDED STORE). Near the end of the passage, a staircase leads down into the cellars. Mo descends carefully, acutely aware that she’s moving beyond the bounds of the easily explained. I got lost will only carry you so far when you go wandering around the private spaces at this kind of venue. Also, she realizes, she’s underground. If she needs backup and her phone loses signal, this could be a problem.
She is on edge as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, so she startles as an usher clears his throat. “Ma’am, the chapel is nearly ready for communion, but it will be another five minutes. Would you mind waiting in the club lounge?”
She smiles instinctively as she assesses him. He’s another of Schiller’s security guards, but he wears a surplice over his dark suit, an unadorned silver cross dangling from his collar. His eyes track her incuriously. “Certainly, if you’d show me where it is,” she replies. “Which service is it to be, first?”
“The Communion of the Inner Temple,” he states. “The lounge is that way.” His movements are slightly off, as if an unseen puppeteer is pulling his strings. Mo nods and follows his direction, trying not to shudder. She’s read the GOD GAME BLACK report and knows about Schiller’s parasites packaged as communion wafers. But isn’t the Inner Temple something different? She strolls along another low-ceilinged corridor, towards a lounge furnished in oak and red leather with brass fixtures, all wingback chairs and gentlemen’s club ambiance.
She’s not the only partygoer here; there must be another staircase, she realizes. But this is a different crowd, older and expectant. The media stars and party people and escorts Schiller had invited for the event upstairs are absent; this is a more select gathering, although the bar is open and a bartender is offering wine by the glass to all comers. Mo accepts one, then does her best to fade into the wallpaper between prints of a Stubbs racehorse painting and an aristocrat who wears an identical expression to the steed.
“Cassie, where are you?” she subvocalizes tensely. Opening her clutch she sneaks a quick glance at her phone. It’s showing one bar of signal, a tenuous connection at best. “Sitrep.”
“Here I am!” The breathy voice next to her, in her ear, nearly makes her jump. “Am I Late Late?”
Mo gives Cassie a hard stare. “Not yet.” She’s still recognizable, but the alf?r woman’s glamour has lent her waitress uniform the semblance of a black cocktail dress. She’s done something to her hair and added face paint, too, or more enchantment so that she looks older, elegant, and less out of place than she might otherwise be. “Whatever they’re doing, they’re going to start soon—”
Very soon, as it happens. Mo hears jovial laughter and bonhomie as a new party approaches by way of the corridor she used. Eyes turn, conversations temporarily dampened, for the arrival of Jeremy Michaels, arm in arm with the Minister of Magic and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. All three of the ex-public-school types are somewhat tipsy; the outer two are trailing bottles of Bolly. “Party on, ladies and gentlemen!” The Prime Minister is avuncular, his smile magnanimous. The small talk starts up again on all sides, but there’s an edgy note of pleased anticipation to it, and Mo feels her ward heat up, prickling the skin of her chest like a nettle rash. All of a sudden the lounge feels sultry and small, the background noise pulsing with turgid expectation.
“Oh this is not good.” Cassie clutches her left arm. “FuckFuck!”
“Yes,” Mo says tightly. Despite her ward she feels a tight heat growing in the pit of her belly. She clenches her thighs together instinctively, unsure whether she’s resisting or complying. Around the room, middle-aged men are shedding their jackets and loosening their bow ties. And now a peculiar pilgrimage emerges from the staircase: gorgeously muscled and toned young men and shapely women wearing not very much at all, most of it underwear of a kind normally reserved for bedroom games. Overholt and McGuigan, Schiller’s handmaids, enter the lounge from the side passage that Schiller’s usher was guarding. They’re wearing sheer white gowns, their movements languid and hesitant, as if they’re sleepwalking. Four more women follow them, all statuesque Valkyries: they converge on the ministers of state, take them by the hand, and offer them dreamy smiles and air-kisses as they lead them towards the chapel.
Mo taps her left earpiece. “MADCAP, get Alex down here right now. OCCULUS, go go go. ZERO, red alert, extraction imminent.”
Cassie’s grip on her arm tightens painfully. “What are they doing?” she asks shakily. “There’s something in there, something horrible—”
The alpha males are whooping it up, stripping off their clothing and grappling with the Middle Temple communicants Schiller has brought in to service them. They don’t seem to notice that none of the youngsters are speaking or smiling as they press breasts and crotches up against the VIP guests.
Mo feels the strength of a host-mother’s will beating down like tropical sunlight, a glowing benign lust that floods every body and moistens the driest soul. “Schiller’s endgame,” she says quietly. “He’s going to plant those parasite things in everyone here. Cassie, we need to leave now.”
But Cassie is staring at the passage to the chapel. “YesYes, but there’s something different—”
“Different?” Mo stares at her. “Didn’t you hear me?”
Cassie’s eyes blur momentarily as her glamour slips; for a moment her pupils seem to stretch vertically, becoming catlike. “I—I’ve heard of this,” she says, and Mo realizes her younger companion is shaking. “Don’t you see?” Abruptly she releases Mo’s arm and darts towards the chapel.
“Cassie!” Mo hurries after her. The rich chords of organ music swell from the open door ahead, liturgical and naggingly familiar. The usher stands before the doorway and moves to intercept Cassie, but she reaches out to touch him lightly and he crumples to the floor. Mo swears, then runs after her on throbbing feet. But she doesn’t have far to go, for Cassie stops just outside the chapel.