22
our heroes expand their minds (and other things)— a foregone conclusion—alice is in a sticky situation—revelations of a dastardly nature
Alice’s imagination was by habit ridiculously inactive; when the door was not open it didn’t even try the window, but sat morose in the room until a need for lateral thinking let it out.
Daniel’s imagination was a stone.
And yet, after dragging the bed’s mattress safely to the floor, they managed between them to invent several creative variations upon the theme of lovemaking, thus occupying the long hours of the night. This was, as Alice pointed out, professional behavior, since sleeping must surely be ill-advised when the Wisteria Society might at any point re-engage the hunt. They needed something to keep them alert. As it transpired, they were rendered so alert, so many times, that when dawn arrived, it found them lying naked and stunned on the mattress, barely able to move.
“I must say,” Alice mused as she watched the darkness fade to gold, “my neck doesn’t hurt as much as I feared it would.”
Daniel turned his head to look at her. His eyes, bright with new sunlight, unguarded by glass, held an expression she could not decipher, and yet it made her pulse flutter.
“You are . . .”
“Yes?” she asked. And when he didn’t answer, his eyes darkening, she repeated it more warily. “Yes?”
“I feel I should apologize,” he said.
“Oh?” Her pulse went from fluttering to threshing. Her heart shredded. But all she did was blink. “Do you have regrets about last night?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” Her brain marched in, swept up the remains of her heart, and shoved them into a trash can along with certain idioms.
“We ought not to have done what we did,” Daniel said.
“Uh huh.”
“I ought to have controlled myself until I had access to candles, soft blankets, or at the very least a clean bed, to give you the romantic experience you deserve.” He smiled shyly. “I’m so ruinously in love with you, Alice.”
Ta-dah!! Her heart burst from the trash can in a sparkling confetti shower of happiness.
“Oh,” she said primly, even while her nerves donned red dresses and began to do a tap dance. “I understand,” she added through the fizz of champagne being poured by her ego. Snatching a glass of it, her brain stood on a chair, pink feather boa about its neck and champagne raised for a sentimental toast she could not quite hear through the thumping of her heart. Love! it beat. Love!
“This is certainly an interesting development,” she said. “As it happens, I am in love with you also.”
She clenched everything inside herself nervously, but the world did not end. Academy staff did not come bursting through the window with birch switches at the ready to chastise her. Nor did Daniel assassinate her. In fact, he almost looked soft.
“That is welcome news,” he said. “Most convenient.”
He held out his hand, and Alice shook it. They gave each other a brisk nod.
“How are we going to inform Human Resources of this unforeseen consequence to the mission?” she asked.
His eyes went still. Her heart went still. For one silent moment, the truth lay between them.
There would be no informing Human Resources. Were their relationship to be discovered, they’d be separated—quite possibly from themselves, and certainly from each other. Years ago, Alice had befriended a stray cat outside the Academy dormitories. She still bore scars from when her tutors found out—one across the back of each thigh, and one through her brain, the ragged memory of what they did to the cat.
She smiled tightly at Daniel.
He gave her the exact smile in response. A barricade. If there were dead cats and desperate, hopeless dreams in his heart, she could not see them.
“We’ll think of something,” he lied.
She nodded. “It’s fine, either way. After all, we have only known each other a week.”
“Have we?” He moved suddenly, rising to straddle her hips, setting his hands on the mattress at either side of her head. “Alice Dearlove, you have dwelt in my heart since the moment I first saw you in Clacton-on-Sea, a year ago.”
Alice gazed up at his mouth and the calm line of his cheekbone—for looking too long into his eyes overwhelmed her even more now than it had before. He thrilled every nerve in her. He engulfed every thought.
And yet he was so familiar, she could have sworn she’d seen him every day of her life.
“I loved you even back in the Academy, years before we met,” she said, reaching up to trail fingers down his rose-and-thorn tattoo. “I was so alone as a child, so different from everyone except Student B, who had gone through ahead of me, and who had left a trail of psychological reports and broken brooms for me to follow. Each time I hid under the table because shooting practice or laundry class got too loud, the instructors reminded themselves of how they’d managed when B did that same thing. When I threw a knife into the chalkboard after Professor Hambly touched my arm without warning, it widened the crack B had made throwing a textbook—”
“Actually, a volume of Shakespeare’s complete works,” Daniel said. “I was reading Coriolanus when Professor Hambly walked behind me without warning. I’d just got to the line ‘action is eloquence,’ and it seemed instructive. Considering I only attacked the chalkboard, not the man, I still don’t understand why they were so furious with me.”
“Did they beat you?”
“No, they took me to the range and showed me how to get a better angle on—” He stopped, his expression tightening. “Did they beat you, Alice?”
“It does not matter,” she said. Turning her head to the window, she squinted against the light, determined to see neither the mingled look of love and lethality in Daniel’s eye nor the wan, sad ghost of a girl who had been caned repeatedly over the years until she learned to mask her oddness behind a thousand faces.
“It does matter,” Daniel argued. “You matter.”
But she knew that she did not. Not the woman she was deep within, nor the girl she had been. Neither did the love she shared with this beautiful, dangerous, gentle man matter. The mission might be finished, but A.U.N.T. owned her soul.
“Day is coming on,” she said, her voice as faint as the misty autumnal horizon. “We must escape before the pirates wake and rem—”
Daniel caught her jaw tightly between his thumb and forefinger. Turning her face back to him, he bent and kissed her hard. She clutched at his hair, kissing him back harder, waging a desperate battle with his tongue. Passion lit a fire under emotion, and only when all that remained was smoke and coals did they pull away, breathing heavily, safe again from the dangers of feeling.
“I can’t believe you’re alive!” Veronica exclaimed for the third time as they stood in her tiny bedroom, faces pale with weariness in the morning shadows.
Daniel frowned. “We won’t be alive for much longer if you don’t keep your voice down. Now, listen, we are going to collect Snodgrass and depart at once. Your mission—”
“Whatever it is, I accept it!” Veronica said, bouncing excitedly on her heels.
Daniel’s frown darkened. “I am not giving you a choice, V-2. There are two suitcases in our bedroom. Secure them, and ensure they are sent with all haste and security to A.U.N.T. headquarters. This is vital.”
Veronica gasped. “Do they contain weapons?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Guns? Knives? Explosive devices?”
“Books.”
“Oh.” The girl sagged a little. Then her eyes narrowed as she looked from Daniel to Alice and back again. “You seem different, somehow.”
“What makes you say that?” Daniel asked stiffly. After all, Veronica was not long out of the Academy—how astute could her discernment really be?
“Agent A, your complexion is pinker than usual,” the girl noted.
Alice shrugged. “It’s a warm morning.”
“Agent B, your cufflinks are crooked.”
“Hm,” Daniel replied irritably.
“And you’re holding hands.”
Realizing this was true, they immediately snatched their hands apart.
“We’re staying in character,” Daniel said. “Now, this conversation will end in thirty seconds. Do you know what you’re doing, V-2?”
“Suitcases. Headquarters.” Veronica saluted. “It’s an honor to serve!”
“Yes.” Daniel reached for the door handle.
“One day I hope to be as reputable an agent as yourselves!”
“Uh huh.” He turned the handle.
“Really, I cannot believe I got to meet the greatest—”
“Goodbye, V-2.” Opening the door, Daniel stepped aside to let Alice precede him, then closed it on the sound of Veronica’s voice extolling their virtues. Glancing in each direction to ensure the corridor was unoccupied, he led Alice toward the back stairs.
“I’ll collect Snodgrass. You prepare the cottage for takeoff.”
“Shouldn’t you do that instead?” Alice asked. “You know I’m not capable of the flight enchantment.”
“No,” Daniel said. He wanted her out of this building, away from the pirates. A night spent in her arms, discovering all that she was, had roused every protective instinct in him, and he was determined she not be caught by the Wisteria Society. Just thinking of the damage she would inflict upon them with her terrifying combat skills sent a chill up his spine.
Besides, the pirates would certainly demand a ransom for her from the Home Office, and that would raise awkward questions—i.e., When you say you work for the government, which one exactly do you mean? In that case, Daniel would probably be assigned to assassinate her, so as to protect the secret of A.U.N.T.’s downstairs existence. He was reluctant to do that, especially since he intended to find some way to spend the rest of his life with her.
“Pick us up some food for breakfast,” Alice told him, entering the stairwell. “I’ll see you in ten minutes.”
“See you,” Daniel answered, turning away.
Alas, if only he had read a penny-dreadful novel or two, he would have been alerted to danger by this casual farewell. But it was with an overly erudite innocence that he headed for Snodgrass’s bedroom, not even glancing back.
Alice left the castle through a ground-floor window (a perfectly reasonable door stood unlocked nearby, but old habits are hard to break), and running across the frosty grass, she reached the A.U.N.T. cottage without being noticed. Upon arrival, however, she recollected Daniel had the key.
“Bother,” she muttered, leaning wearily against the door.
It swung open with a creak.
Alice’s instincts immediately leaped into action. Pressing her back against the wall beside the door, she listened carefully through the slight opening.
A muttering sounded from inside. Then something went twang, and the voice rose briefly with a curse. Alice nudged the door open wider and slipped through.
The hinges creaked, and a figure at the wheel turned with an alarmed cry. Alice did not pause to enter into conversation with them. Rolling head over heels to present a confusing target, she aimed for the sofa at the center of the room. Then crouching behind it, she reached to where an emergency gun was taped to its underside. As the weapon came free, tape still adhering to it, she shifted her stance and took aim over the sofa’s arm at the intruder.
“Don’t move! Put your hands up!”
“I say!” came the tremulous, high-pitched reply. “Which one?!”
Sighing, Alice pulled back the gun. “Dr. Snodgrass,” she said with exasperation, rising to her feet. “What are you doing here?”
“I-I-I came to check on—on things,” he explained, his marshy eyes widening as he watched her peel the tape from the gun’s barrel. “What are you doing here?”
“The mission has been aborted,” Alice informed him. The tape was now sticking to her fingers, and she shook her hand in an effort to dislodge it. “Agent B is searching the castle for you.”
“Jolly good!” Snodgrass said—then, when Alice cast him a confused frown: “I mean awful! Terrible! You should return at once to let him know I’m here.”
Alice smacked her hand against the sofa’s arm, causing Snodgrass to jolt, but the piece of tape clung stubbornly to her fingers. Snodgrass murmured something beneath his breath. Glancing at him, Alice took in his blanched countenance and the fervent manner in which he clutched the wheel. She smiled reassuringly, which only made him grow more pale.
“Do not worry, Doctor,” she said. “No doubt Agent B will realize you are missing and should arrive here any moment.”
Snodgrass’s high-pitched laugh in response jangled her nerves, which had been coiling themselves tight again after Daniel had so assiduously loosened them. Alice ignored them, for she had far more important matters to contend with than her dislike of the scientist. With an irritable sigh, she tossed the gun onto the sofa cushion and applied herself fully to getting the dratted tape off her fingers.
Suddenly Snodgrass lurched forward, taking Alice so much by surprise she could only stare at him, wondering if he was experiencing some kind of seizure. Seconds later, she understood her peril, but by then it was too late: Snodgrass had snatched the gun from the sofa and was aiming it at her.
“Don’t move, what! And—and—put your hands up!”
Alice gave him a long, cool look. He shook the gun, and slowly she obeyed. Her nerves advanced from jangled to outright jittering, for although she’d managed to remove the tape, her fingers were now sticky, and with Snodgrass holding her at gunpoint she could not immediately wash her hands.
Unmoving, barely blinking, she calculated the distance between herself and the kitchen bench with its kettle of water, including the necessary steps—two to the left, seven forward, one leap, a hard step (horizontal) against Snodgrass’s solar plexus, a karate chop to his throat rendering him unconscious, then several more steps to locate a razor so as to shave off his abominable mustache—before arriving at the kettle.
“Don’t try it,” Snodgrass warned with unexpected perspicacity. “I will shoot you. I will.”
“You won’t,” Alice scoffed.
He pulled the trigger.
Horsehair and fabric exploded as the bullet slammed into the sofa. Alice noticed a flash before her eyes—not her life, but sparks produced by a coiled spring within the sofa cushion. She raised one disapproving eyebrow at Snodgrass, who appeared far more startled than her by what he’d just done.
“Deliberately damaging A.U.N.T. property is cause for a fine, perhaps even suspension,” she told him.
He laughed rather hysterically. “I shall soon destroy more than a sofa, Miss Dearlove! Before I am through with my plans, the name Cornelius Snodgrass will become synonymous with Terror (and Quality Devices for the Discerning Villain)! What!”
“What?” Alice asked.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, clearly blindsided by the question. Then a renewed fervor arose in him. “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”
“That’s monstrous,” Alice responded coolly. “And also unethical. If you quote Mary Shelley, you ought to provide an attribution.”
His expression swayed wildly as he tried to process this advice. Alice took the opportunity to re-examine the various clues he had presented over the past week, from his determination to prove himself authorized for the mission to his trying to shoot her just now. “The trap Jane set in the library,” she said, amazed she hadn’t realized earlier. “It was your work. The ribbon in the library ceiling was written over with the incantation, wasn’t it?”
Snodgrass nodded with such excitement, his mustache struggled to keep up. “And the tie around Wordsworth’s bust. Er, that is, the neck of his bust. It was a brilliantly devised deadfall trap.”
“Except it failed.”
“Only because you interfered! I tried for days to assassinate you, but you kept—”
“Wait. Miss Darlington said the pirates hadn’t tried to kill us. I assumed she was lying. But you were responsible for the washroom door explosion after all.”
He jutted out his chin. “It was an excellent piece of magical engineering. Just a little more sensitive to vibrations than I anticipated.”
“So a case of premature explosion? Interesting.”
Snodgrass flushed and shook the gun at her, but Alice was too involved in her deductions to even notice. “You crushed the cake—no doubt testing your plan. And I see now you have a scab on your hand from where you must have cut yourself with the cake knife. And you were the one who shot at Agent B with a crossbow, weren’t you?”
“And I put the snake in your bed!” Snodgrass burst out, as if he could not help himself.
Alice frowned. “What snake?”
“I have all along been a force to be reckoned with, Agent A! You should have feared me! Fear me now!”
“There was a snake?”
Snodgrass made a strangled cry and shook the gun yet again. Alice tried not to roll her eyes at these overwrought dramatics. Her mind was humming with a low, aggravating white noise that she supposed meant an encroaching headache. The stickiness on her fingers would incite her to murder if she could not wash it off soon. And she really wanted some breakfast.
“Look,” she said briskly. “Why don’t we discuss this over a cup of tea? I’m sure Mrs. Kew will release you from your A.U.N.T. contract so you can pursue a career change to Nefarious Criminal. I’d be happy to write you a reference. I can certainly vouch for your expertise in aggravating people.”
“It’s too late for that!” Snodgrass shouted. “If only you and the other A.U.N.T. agents had taken me seriously, I’d not have been forced to the recourse of maniacal vengeance! I won’t turn back now. Triumph shall be mine! Aereo!”
Abruptly the house lurched up from the ground, rocking perilously as it ascended without control. As Alice gripped the sofa for support, she realized her mental hum had in fact been magic loitering in the air, waiting for Snodgrass to finish speaking the flight incantation.
“What are you doing, Doctor?” she demanded as the house groaned and rattled around them.
“Flying back to London!” he said. “The Mayor’s Parade is today! The streets will be filled with city officials and hundreds of innocent bystanders! Ha ha!!”
Alice paused, but he did not continue. Finally, she prompted him: “And?”
He frowned. “And what?”
“And what is your plan? Really, Doctor, if you want to be a professional villain, you need to fully reveal your plan.”
“I say!” He rubbed his mustache gleefully, then pointed across the room. “That crate is an atrocity!”
“It certainly is,” Alice said, eyeing the crate set before the sofa in lieu of a table, its wooden sides gritty and stained.
“I mean, literally, Miss Dearlove! Inside is a special device incantated to detonate upon contact with the ground!”
“Huh,” Alice said. She thought back to her first day in the cottage, opening the crate and seeing what she had supposed to be a fire extinguisher. She’d fiddled with one of its switches and, at the resulting internal clatter, had assumed it broken.
“Well, I do concede that is fiendish indeed,” she said.
“Yes! Jolly fiendish! And it was under A.U.N.T.’s noses for weeks, in my lab. No one appreciated my genius enough to suspect me.”
“But Jane said there was no weapon.”
“None that she knew about,” Snodgrass scoffed. “It’s true that, when she approached me with her nefarious commission, I was inspired to create The Big Banger™. But, I say, why would I waste it on merely assassinating one person? Jane Fairweather’s silly little plot gave me practice with villainy, but ultimately I have bigger fish to fry!”
Alice frowned in confusion. “You want to take up cooking?”
“What? No! I’m going to drop my bomb on the Mayor’s Parade, killing hundreds. Then no one will ignore me! I shall be instantly inducted into the Hall of Infamy! What!”
Alice shrugged with professional nonchalance. “I will stop you.”
“I’m afraid I can’t take that chance.” He yanked the black tie from around his neck and dropped it to the ground. “Descendeo rapido!”
Alice had just enough time to think fiddlest—
And the ceiling fell on her.