Chapter 75: Darkness is Past
“For the darkness is past And it’s daylight at last, And the night has been long, Ditto, ditto my song, And thank goodness they’re both of them over.”
-– Iolanthe, W.S. Gilbert
Strephon awoke in his own familiar bed, in his own familiar room in his own house on Fitch Street. In any other circumstances, he might have wondered if the visit with his mother had really happened or if it were just a dream. Since it involved Faerie-land, however, he understood that this was a distinction without a difference. He sat up and gave his arms a stretch. Yes, everything seemed to be in working order. He could even move his legs without unreasonable discomfort. He saw that his mother had restored the tweed suit which had been damaged in his fight with Knox. That was thoughtful of her.
As he took inventory of his members, his cat came padding into the room. She leapt onto his lap and demanded his attention. “Ah, Mrs. Hudson. Come to welcome me home?” Mrs. Hudson responded with a critical “miao”, but permitted him to stroke the top of her head.
“Mrs. Hudson?”
Strephon heard Cassandra's voice from out in the hall.
“Where are you?” She stuck her head through the doorway of Strephon's room. “Strephon! So that's why Mrs. Hudson was so excited.” Cassandra hurried to the side of Strephon's bed. She hesitated briefly, then bent lower to put her arms around his shoulders and give him a hug. “Devon said you'd be back sooner or later, but he didn't say when.”
Mrs. Hudson beat a hasty retreat off the bed. If there was to be hugging going on, she wished no involvement. “Cassandra,” Strephon said. “You're here.” A silly thing to say; of course she was here. A misgiving struck him. “Are you still hiding from Philippe?”
“Phillipe? Oh no, he's taken care of.” She let go of Strephon and sat down on the edge of his bed.“No, Cecily and I are back in our flat. I thought I'd do a little house-sitting for you; coming in every day to take in your mail and feed Mrs. Hudson. I think she's starting to tolerate me.”
“But how have you been locking up? Please don't tell me you haven't been climbing in and out of my bedroom window again.”
Cassandra laughed. “We found your spare house key. Really, Strephon! Inside a fake rock? That one's so old it has whiskers.”
The criticism irritated Strephon. “I placed an enchantment on it so that it would look no different from any other stone in the yard.”
“That's how Eddie spotted it. He said it was the only stone in the yard that smelled of magic so that was the first place he looked.
“Eddie?”
“Eddie Muldoon. He's a werewolf. But he's one of the good ones. Well, actually he's a burglar too, but Reverend Shepherd says he's mostly reformed.. He helped defend the house when the other werewolves attacked.”
“You were attacked by werewolves?”
“Yes. Although Philippe was leading the attack. And I think our Evil Mastermind was orchestrating the whole thing. By the way, did the Evil Mastermind turn out to be Simon Knox?”
“Blast and bebother it all! How the deuce did you know?
“Oh, I worked it out. It was pretty obvious in hindsight. Saul Taylor gave me the first clue. Saul was so very helpful when I started out at the Morning Star. I guessed that someone had instructed him to do so. Well, that and he wanted to get into my knickers, but that was pretty obvious.”
Strephon frowned. “Yes, I thought so.”
“I thought maybe Billy -- he's the Features Editor, remember – maybe Billy told him to show the new girl the ropes. I certainly needed the help and I appreciated it, but I noticed something else. You know how, in school, there was always that one kid who liked to make jokes about the teacher behind his back, but when teacher was in the room he was the world's biggest suck-up?”
“I've known some barristers like that. Some men never outgrow it.”
“Well, that was the vibe I got from Saul. He liked to mock the Boss and he'd always refer to him as 'The Celestial Mister Knox, but I think Saul just put on the facade of the oh-so-clever cynic to look worldly and superior. Also, it occurred to me that since Knox had hired me, he'd have a personal interest in my doing well and that he'd want to assign someone to shepherd me. So I had this idea from the start of a connection between Saul and Knox. When Saul revealed to me that he was a wizard he admitted that he had been told to watch over me. He didn't say by whom, but I thought it pretty obvious that it was Knox which meant that Knox was a wizard too. You confirmed that for me when we compared notes at the restaurant.”
Strephon nodded in acknowledgment.
“I wondered at the time if Knox might also be our Mastermind, but you seemed so sure that the Mastermind had to be a member of the Council, so I let it lie.”
Strephon grimaced. “Yes, Knox took great glee in rubbing my nose in that.”
“Poor Strephon! Anyway, Saul showed up after the werewolf attack. He was trying to play the Guardian Angel coming to my rescue again, like he did the previous afternoon, but he botched it. Once I knew that he was working for the Mastermind, it followed that the Mastermind was Knox.”
“Q.E.D.”
“Precisely. Of course when I came to work the next day and heard that Knox had vanished mysteriously without a trace and the Board of Directors was in a state of panic, that pretty much settled things. The official word they put out is that Mister Knox decided to go to Barcelona on vacation.”
Strephon rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. Perhaps you should start from the beginning.”
Cassandra pulled a chair up to Strephon's beside and told him about the events of Sunday night; starting when Devon and Cecily woke her from her enchanted sleep, to the unexpected visit by Mrs. Palmer, and Reverend Shepherd and his friends, Luna's story, the arrival of Grandma Simms and Theodora and the attack of Philippe and his werewolf army.
Strephon fumed at the mention of Philippe, and uttered an ungentlemanly oath when she told him about Saul and how he tricked her into reading the Togwogmagog spell, but he regained his composure and urged her to carry on. He nodded with approval at how Cassandra figured out the pentagram, and fretted over the risk she took in confronting Morrigan.
“Having Devon try to disrupt the pentacle was extremely risky,” he said.
“It was the only thing I could think of. I was very afraid, but I don't think I understood the real danger until the spell yeeted me out of your house and sent me flying through space. And then when I came into that chamber where you were fighting the demon, it became all the more horrible because I knew that it wasn't just me in danger, it was you too. I wanted to speak to you, but then I was flying away again. At the end, when we finally caught hands and were spinning around together, I had a mad thought that we were like that scene in Dante with the two lovers in Hell, eternally whirling about in the middle of a tempest.”
“Paolo and Francesca.” Strephon recognized the reference. “Except that I don't think they were holding hands. You must have read a bowdlerized edition of Dante in school.”
Cassandra blushed. “Or something,” she said. “I think that was the point where the spell finally broke, because we were ripped apart and sent off in opposite directions and it seemed like the whole world was coming crashing down around us. I lost sight of you and everything went dark again; dark and empty. I realized that I wasn't circling back this time and that I would just keep on going farther and farther. Things had been happening so fast up to now that I didn't have time to panic, but now I did. Then I felt a pair of arms gather me up and the next thing I knew I was back on Earth, here in Redemption, just outside the castle near the Fairy Gate, and Devon was with me.”
“Yes, Mother told me she'd sent him to collect you.”
“The ground was trembling, and all of a sudden, the Fairy Gate opened up and a bunch of people came out along with a loud rumble and a huge cloud of dust. I found out later they'd been attending the meeting of the Hidden Council but that the meeting hall had collapsed. I saw Tobias, and I think his father, helping manage traffic and getting people to safety. Devon asked Tobias where you were but he didn't know and just said that you had vanished some time before the roof caved in, but he was busy and couldn't talk much. Devon was pretty pissed about that. I guess he expected you to end up in the same place. So he told me to stay there in case you showed up while he went looking for you.”
“I was in Fairy-land for a time. I'm afraid I awoke only just now.”
“I know. Eventually Devon got back to me and explained that you were with your Mother and would be back soon... ish. He also told me later that the magical stresses caused when the spell broke opened up a black hole or something in the underground crypt where Togwog was imprisoned.. That caused the Council chambers above it to collapse and did some significant damage to the Castle as well. It's a marvel that Tobias and his Dad managed to get pretty much everybody out safely. Which reminds me, was Togwogmagog really a demon?”
“He claimed to be the Prince of the Nephilim.”
“Then he was a space alien after all!”
“Oh, have it your own way!” Strephon regretted snapping at her, so he added, more contritely, “I'm sorry I worried you. I would have let you know sooner if I could.”
“While Devon was gone and I was looking for you, I met your friend Timmy. Or Thoth. He told me that you had left the meeting before the walls began shaking, but that he was sure you were fine. He said that as a former Archivist to the Gods, he had connections and knew about these things. He also said that before you left you transformed into a Jabberwock or some such thing.”
“Did I? I was somewhat distracted at the time.”
“About that time, Timmy noticed Cynthia Vane nearby and so he began talking in a loud voice about how lucky it was for me as a reporter that I was the first on the site to report on the earthquake and that he could tell me everything. Vane must have been terrified about what Timmy might say in front of the Press, because she immediately hurried over to keep him from saying anything imprudent.”
“I imagine.”
“I think I rather lucked out there. I got more information out of her than I might have had she the time to organize a proper press release. I strongly hinted that as far as I knew this was a simply private party being held at the castle and that I was mostly interested in the building collapse. Once she decided I wasn't going to be taking pictures of her in her witch's hat, she relaxed.” Cassandra paused thoughtfully. “It almost makes me wish I was still working for the Oracle. Potts would have paid good money for a picture of a city alderman in a witch's hat.”
“Okay then,” Cassandra continued. “Your turn. Tobias told me much of what happened at the Council meeting, but not everything. And what happened between you and Togwog?”
Strephon had been dreading this part. Usually he had no reservations about explaining his own cleverness, but in this case he could think of very little he had done which seemed clever, particularly compared to Cassandra's adventures. “To start with, I must apologize for the sleep spell. It was presumptuous and disrespectful and, and... ungentlemanly. I regretted it almost immediately, but by the time I could steel myself to remedy the situation, it was already too late.”
He briefly described his encounter with Melchior and Inanna outside the castle and of meeting Tobias's father. He spoke little about the conversations he had with the various Council members before the meeting; apart from Apollyon Sedge's remarks about the “Big Money Man” who had taken over his grandfather's cult, little had anything to do with the crisis of that evening. Strephon did admit to wrestling with the urge to look at the letter Inanna had given him to read at the meeting.. He also mentioned giving Tobias a note to pass on to Aoi Kurayami.
“It seems to have been quite the night for note-passing,” Cassandra remarked. “What was in the note?”
“I told Kurayami that I had reason to believe that Lord Melchior was working for the same person who was supplying the Fae Essence drug which has been appearing in her club. I thought it might drive a bit of a wedge between her and Melchior which could only be a good thing.”
“That explains what she said to me Sunday night. She came up to me during the confusion after the disaster and said, 'You win, Miss True. You may tell Mister Bellman that I am passing the word amongst the Kindred that you and your friends are under my protection and are not to be molested. You will have no more trouble from Philippe.'”
“Interesting.”
“I'm not sure how I should feel about being under the protection of a powerful vampire. Still, I suppose it beats the alternative.”
Now Strephon was coming to the difficult part of his narrative: standing before the Council to give testimony and having to decide whether to endorse Melchior for a Council seat as he had requested, or to denounce him; succumbing to the temptation to read the letter.”
“I did much the same thing,” Cassandra reminded him.
“Yes, but you had no reason to suspect that your note was a trap. I did.”
He told her about the taunting message; about losing his temper and denouncing Inanna and forcing her, under the threat of her faerie oath, to take him to her master. He told her about Knox's plan to revive the Wild Hunt and to use Melchior's computer games and various other plots to spread it all over the nation and across the world. And he told her Knox's revelation about Cassandra's connection to Aithea, the witch who had originally imprisoned Togwogmagog.
“So I really am descended from Aithea? That's weird. I suppose it explains a lot; why I've always felt an affinity for her. It's still weird.”
Strephon drew up the counterpane into his fist. “Cassandra, I have been an unmitigated ass.”
Cassandra blinked at him. “Oh, I wouldn't go that far,” she said.
“Really?”
“No, no! Sure, you've been an ass, no question of that! But I do think you had some mitigating circumstances.”
For a moment he had hoped she wouldn't be quite so quick to agree with him.At least she didn't seem angry. “Knox counted on me leaving you here,” Strephon said. “If I had let you accompany me to the Council Meeting, you would have been safe from the werewolf attack, and Taylor wouldn't have been able to entrap you in that damnable spell. I played directly into his hands.”
“Piffle! I played right into his hands by bringing Saul's paperweight here where Knox wanted it. If we had gone to the meeting together, we probably would have left the paperweight behind and it still would have been in the right position to complete the pentagram. And Saul was waiting at the Castle for me anyway, so I'm betting Knox had back-up plans whether I went to the meeting or not. And even if Saul couldn't get to me at the meeting, the werewolves still would have been waiting for us when I got home.”
“Nevertheless, the fact remains that I put you in danger.”
“We were both in danger.” Cassandra lowered her voice and added. “Although I would have felt more confident if we were facing the danger together.”
This lay another blanket of guilt over Strephon's shoulders, and he could think of nothing to say.
They were both quiet for a while. Then Cassandra sprang to her feet. “Oh! I was going to mention. Stay right there; I'll be right back.” She must have realized this was a particularly foolish thing to say, because she paused on her way out the door and said, “I mean... you know what I mean.”
She ran out into the hall and Strephon heard her footfalls tripping down the stairs. Then, less than a minute later, he heard the whine of the lift. When Cassandra re-entered the room, she pushed a gleaming new wheelchair with angled wheels and an upholstered seat and rugged tyres.
“What is this?” Strephon said, frowning.
“A wheelchair, of course! Your old one got buried when the Council Chamber collapsed, I'm afraid. Tobias said he tried to recover it, but he was too busy getting people out.”
“Certainly, he had quite enough on his plate as it was.”
“Go on! Try it out!”
Strephon regarded the chair with mistrust. It looked more like a sports car than a conveyance for an invalid. But Cassandra seemed so eager he felt an obligation to try it. He swung his legs over the side of his bed as Cassandra maneuvered the chair beside it and set the brakes on the wheels. He grasped the armrests to brace himself, as he did with his regular chair and lowered himself into the seat.
“Do you like it?”
Strephon released the brakes and gave the wheels a try. “It's a bit lower than I'm used to.”
“That can be adjusted.”
“Why are the wheels crooked?”
“It's an ergonomic design. It gives the chair a wide wheel base while keeping the top of the wheel within easy reach. It's also rugged and can handle uneven terrain, and it's lightweight and folds up easily.” Cassandra looked at Strephon with a hopeful expression. “I wasn't sure what you'd like best, so I just got a rental. I can take it back if you don't like it.”
It probably cost more than she could afford on her reporter's salary too. He would have to see about reimbursing her. “It will do,” he said, and he did a few circles around the room to get a better feel for it. Then he stopped. “This was very kind of you and quite unnecessary. Thank you. I only wish I could have done better for you. It seems like I keep bringing you into stories that you will never be able to write about.”
“I don't know about that,” Cassandra replied. “Granted, the Morning Star is never going to print an expose about how their own publisher is a centuries-old demon and I don't think anyone would believe in the Hidden Council even if I did reveal it. But I got quite a good story about the collapse of the chambers under the Castle. I got several interviews with people who escaped from the disaster and even if I couldn't tell everything about what was going on there, survival stories always make good copy. The story made the front page, and I got a co-writer byline. Me, on the front page! I called Mum and Dad to tell them, and Dad told me to buy extra copies. And I've heard gossip that the City Desk editor had taken notice of me.”
“My! Then there might be another promotion in your future?”
Cassandra gave a self-satisfied smile. “That might be a little too soon, but I will tell you this: This morning, Billy yelled at me.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Oh it is! It means he's taking me seriously. He's decided I don't need to be coddled and can pull my own weight. It's a great thing! Boy, was Saul sure surprised when he came in this morning and discovered I was doing just fine on my own.”
“That scoundrel! He has the nerve to show his face?”
“He's been lying low for a few days, since the night of the meeting. He tried telling me that he was following Knox's instructions and had no idea that Knox had any evil intent.”
Strephon snorted. “I hope you gave the blighter what for!”
“I was polite. I still have to work with him after all. But when he asked to take me to lunch, I let him know that wasn't going to be happening any more. Oh, and let me tell you the big thing.”
“The big thing?”
“The night of the meeting, after everything had died down a bit, Timmy talked with me some more. He said that as Archivist to the Gods, he knew how important it was to maintain records of events. He offered me a job – part time of course, on the side – writing down some of my experiences for the Council's Library. So any stories I might come across that the Morning Star won't publish or aren't suitable for mundane audiences, I can sell to him. I am now a Stringer to the Gods.”
“Capital! Then... he informed you of the Hidden Council's existence?”
“He assumed that I already knew. Besides, he said that since I already have been dealing with witches and werewolves and vampires and such, that makes me an honorary member of the Hidden World. He also said that he suspected I had some magical ancestry. Maybe he knows something about Aithea.”
“That is quite possible.”
“And he said that even if I didn't, he reckoned that pretty soon I'd be a member of the Supernatural Community by marriage.”
“Marriage? Who...?” Strephon turned red. “That impertinent wretch! How dare he make that sort of personal insinuation! Why I---”
Cassandra laughed. “Don't worry. I made it very clear to him that, although I hold you in high regard, we are just good friends and that I have no immediate plans to become Mrs. Binky Bellman.”
“I am glad to hear that. And --” He stopped. It took his mind a moment to process what she had just said. “You are not to mention that name to anybody, especially not to Devon, do you understand? I mean it, Cassandra! Stop laughing!”
“Don't worry, Strephon, I won't tell a soul.” She placed her hand on his shoulder and moderated her giggles into a smile. “You know, there is one other thing Timmy told me. You were wrong.”
Strephon groaned. “I have been wrong about so many things these past few weeks, you shall have to be more specific.”
“You told me once that stories are meant to be told but secrets are meant to be kept. You were wrong.”
“Was I?”
“Secrets are meant to be shared... with someone you trust.”
He knew she meant it kindly, but the remark felt like a dagger in Strephon's chest. He lowered his head. “I have given you little reason to trust me,” he said at length. “I have done almost nothing but lie to you from the very moment we met.”
Cassandra frowned, as if he had said something puzzling. Then she cocked her head to one side and pondered it a bit. Then she cocked her head the other way and pondered some more. “She's teasing me,” Strephon thought.
Then Cassandra came around to the front of Strephon's wheelchair, planted her hands on the chair's armrests and leaned over him. “Mister Strephon Bellman,” she said, looking into his eyes with an earnestness deeper than any faerie oath, “I think I shall always trust you.” Then, as if to break the spell – or perhaps to seal it – she planted a pert pixie kiss on the tip of his nose and added, “I'll just know not to always believe you!”
Then she turned to the door and said, “Come downstairs. I know where your tea things are; I'll fix something up for you.
Before he followed her to the lift, Strephon rubbed his nose thoughtfully and mused, 'If that is the case, I think we shall be very happy.”
Sometimes Gilbert said it best.
--finis--