The Spy Who Haunted Me

He smiled briefly, as though he wasn’t used to it anymore. His eyes were watchful. “Sorry,” he said. “I had to give all that up when I took my place at the Fae Court. They insisted. Elves take a very firm stand on personal weaknesses. Not just frowned on; not allowed. When you’re an elf, even your failings have to be on a grand scale. Anything less is beneath us. I do miss my old sins, my old indulgences . . . much in the way I miss my childhood, when I could make all the mistakes I wanted, secure in the knowledge it didn’t really matter. But that was such a long time ago. I was a different person then. I’ve finally grown up, Eddie, and I don’t think I like it at all.” He met my gaze steadily. “Are you really prepared to kill me, to get your precious torc back?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Probably.”

He nodded. “You’d make a good elf.”

“Now you’re just being nasty.”

We shared a smile. Perhaps it’s only old friends and old enemies who can be really honest with each other. We stood side by side for a while, looking out over the loch. The gray skies were now definitely overcast, and the waters seemed darker. The wind was blowing steadily, the bitter cold sinking into my bones. I stamped my feet into the mud and spiky grass to keep the circulation going. If Blue felt the cold, he hid it well. He smiled suddenly and drew my attention to farther down the bank, where Katt was snuggling up to Peter King. It was like watching a cat stalk a mouse. But to my surprise, Peter didn’t seem in the least intimidated by her practiced glamour or by the way she was expertly pressing her body against his. He politely disengaged his arm from hers, stepped back, and said something no doubt calm and civilised and very firm. Katt stared at him as though she couldn’t believe it, and then dismissed him utterly with a turned back, kicking at the grass as she stomped away. I don’t think she was used to being turned down by so many men in one day.

“Didn’t see that coming,” said the Blue Fairy. “Thought for sure she’d eat young Peter alive.”

“A chip off the old block, I suppose,” I said. “Alexander King was quite the lady-killer in his day. Sometimes literally. Oh, look; I think Peter’s found some more sheep droppings.”

“How lucky can one man get?” Blue said solemnly. “Have you noticed, Walker seems quite at home in this primitive and entirely uncivilised place. Not what you’d expect from a man who spends his whole life walking the mean streets of the Nightside, where the sun never shines . . . It’s as though nothing here can touch him.”

“Nothing here would dare,” I said. “Everyone’s heard of Walker. Hello; now Honey’s going over to talk to him. I think perhaps we should wander over and do a little shameless eavesdropping. We can’t afford to be left out of anything. Not in this group.”

“Hear all, see all, and keep our thoughts to ourselves,” said the Blue Fairy.

“You see?” I said. “You’d make a good Drood.”

“Now who’s being nasty?”

We laughed briefly, and then he looked at me with an expression on his face I couldn’t read.

“It’s all right that you never liked me,” he said finally. “Not many do.”

“I liked you well enough,” I said. “I just never approved.”

“I liked you,” he said. “Admired you, even. For having the nerve to tell your family to go to hell, and make it stick. For having the courage to live your own life, and go your own way, and to hell with what anyone expected of you. When you brought me into your family, I really did mean to make you proud of me. But . . . you should never trust an elf, Eddie. And a desperate, lonely, stupid half elf least of all.”

“Let’s go see what Honey and Walker are up to,” I said. Why is it always the ones who aren’t really your friends who insist on baring their souls to you?

We joined Honey and Walker just as she stuck her face right into his and demanded he use his legendary Voice to summon the monster to the surface of the loch. Walker, not one bit intimidated, stood his ground and gave her back stare for stare. Peter and Katt hurried over, not wanting to be left out of anything.

“Voice?” said Peter just a bit breathlessly. “What Voice?”

“They say many things about Walker, in the Nightside,” I said. “Most important, they say he has a Voice no one can resist, that can compel anyone to say or do anything. A Voice so powerful even the high-and-mighty gods and monsters of the Nightside must bow their arrogant heads and answer to it. There are even those who say Walker once made a corpse sit up on its mortuary slab and answer his questions.”

“It was just the once,” said Walker. “I wish everyone would stop making such a big fuss about it.”

“Oh,” said Peter. “That Voice.”

“Would it work outside the Nightside?” said the Blue Fairy.

“I don’t think it works at all,” I said, making a sudden co

He looked at me coolly, saying nothing, but sometimes silence is its own answer. I felt like jumping in the air and doing high fives with myself. I knew now what Alexander King had offered Walker to tempt him into this contest: a new Voice. Honey made a short, exasperated sound and moved abruptly away from Walker to stare out over the loch again.

“What do we know about this place?” she said loudly. “I mean, I know the story, the legend of Nessie; everyone does. But that’s about it.”

“I can tell you that Aleister Crowley once lived here,” said Walker unexpectedly. “He had a great house, right on the side of the loch, to which he summoned his pathetic followers to teach them the ways of magic. And in that dark and feverish place, he and his circle danced and took drugs and had all kinds of sex, driving themselves to exhaustion and beyond, all in the service of one great unholy ritual.”

“Crowley,” said Katt. “I sort of know the name, but . . .”

“Kids today,” said the Blue Fairy, shaking his head.

“The Great Beast,” Walker said patiently. “Called by some, not least himself, the Wickedest Man in the World. Back in the thirties, his name was a curse on the lips of the world, hated and feared and reviled, and he loved it. People would cross themselves when they saw him in the street. Perhaps he started to believe his own press; I don’t know. But he came here, and in that house, in that place, he and his followers tried to invoke and summon a great and primal power. But when he caught a glimpse of precisely what it was he was trying to bring through into our reality, he was so horrified he broke off the working and ran away screaming, along with his shattered followers. He ran all the way back to England, and many said he was never the same after that. The house is still here. It’s said to be haunted by bad dreams.”

“Was he really?” said Katt after a pause. “The wickedest man in the world, I mean?”

Walker smiled. “No.”

“You’d know,” I said generously.

“Well, that was all very interesting, I suppose,” said Honey. “But when I asked if anyone knew anything, I meant anything relevant.”

“Legends about the monster of Loch Ness go all the way back to the sixth century,” I said briskly. “Saint Columba was supposed to have come face-to-face with it while crossing the loch in a boat. He spoke gently to the creature, and it turned away and did him no harm. There were various stories after that, all for local consumption, but the first modern sighting was in 1933, which was when the world first learned about Nessie.”