Chapter Ten
Ten
The anti-Devil meeting took place, appropriately enough, in a church located about a half mile from my offices.
The marquis had told me the night before I wouldn’t be needed today—it seemed the Devil wanted a day off from revelry—so I’d spent time in the office doing paperwork, mainly tracking how some of the past conflicts I’d resolved were going and deftly dodging some of Mr. Connors’s questions.
I really wasn’t cut out for this double agent spy thing. I was normally plainly honest, so when Mr. Connors asked me my impressions of the Devil and his son, it was difficult to respond indifferently.
I did get to tell him I thought the Devil was akin to a preening debutante, which was delightful. Mr. Connors laughed so hard he barked, and his tail knocked over a stack of books he’d placed on the floor.
While that was enjoyable, he pressed me on my thoughts on the marquis, and I couldn’t very well tell him that certain Hastings lady parts were all aflutter because of his dark hair, golden eyes, and rakish good looks.
Or that the marquis had indicated a certain interest in me that had manifested beyond the professional.
Or that the marquis and I were working on a covert operation to discover who had leaked the Devil’s location to an assassin.
That would be the big item, I supposed.
I was therefore exhausted at the end of my workday, but I wasn’t going to skip the meeting on the slim chance that one of the conspirators would be there and would let something slip.
At the very least, I would be able to discern just how frightened some of the populace were and what types of species were the most frightened.
I had deliberately worn my fussy housekeeper gown that day so I could be as innocuous as possible (I didn’t need to be in disguise after all, despite my housemates’ dismay) and entered the meeting a few minutes after the announced starting time of seven o’clock.
There was already a substantial number of beings there, which was concerning.
If this many individuals were perturbed by the appearance of the Devil in their midst—when their Queen was a self-professed blood drinker—then it seemed that Hell–England relations might not go as smoothly as I might have hoped.
“Take a flyer.” A fairy handed me a piece of paper at the door, then nodded to one of the corners of the room. “There’s some space over there—there might even be a seat left.”
“Thank you,” I said, moving in the direction she’d pointed to. Along the way, I passed mostly humans, but there were a few other species, ranging from a trio of harpies to an ogre or two, as well as some werewolves (or extremely hirsute individuals, but I tended to think they were the former).
I found a chair, an old rickety thing that looked as though it’d been in use for a good long while, and held my breath while sitting down. Thankfully, it didn’t collapse. I scanned the flyer, which repeated some of the same verbiage from the original one I’d seen, plus added some details:
The Devil wants to drag you back to Hell with him!
Likely not, I thought, since he just had to wait until death to get the ones he wanted.
What would be the point of taking people early?
Also, I couldn’t imagine the Devil—who did seem quite lazy, despite his enthusiasm for all things torturous—would want to bestir himself enough to drag anything back with him, unless it was potent alcohol, a flattering portrait of himself, or the most excellent treacle tarts.
What other creatures has he brought to pollute our streets?
Well, that I could answer. Demons and a drooling dog. Not really worth getting in a fuss over, what with our current situation.
Honestly, it seemed that our world had learned very little from the Great Revelation.
The whole point was that there were other creatures in the world, and that meant we had to remain open-minded about possible additional creatures in the world.
It really wasn’t that hard, but some people refused to let go of their prior prejudices, or they just couldn’t wrap their heads around any kind of change.
I had to say, I was feeling quite grumpy about this whole thing.
Or perhaps it was because I hadn’t eaten enough—I had come to the meeting directly after leaving the office.
Usually I would be home by now, munching on a bit of cheese or something as I figured out what I wanted for dinner.
If I was lucky, Hannah would have cooked something already. She made an excellent savory pudding.
“If I might have your attention, please?”
It was one of the harpies, a woman with an appropriately beak-like nose, whose wings were exposed through some clever tailoring. She followed her words by clapping her hands and then uttering a sharp whistle, which silenced everyone in the room.
I took that opportunity to survey more of the attendees.
“As you know,” she began, “we have learned the Devil is in London.”
Several people booed.
I noticed other beings who seemed to prefer anonymity—hats pulled low over their faces or cloaks disguising their figures—and decided to observe them more closely.
Perhaps they were just modest dressers, or they were beings who didn’t want to be seen attending this kind of meeting. If it was the latter, I needed to know.
“He has the temerity to come up here, to be welcomed by the Queen, a vampire who can defend herself if he were to attack. But what about the rest of us?” she asked, swiveling her position to address every corner of the room.
“We are undefended, and the Queen did not see fit to warn us so we could protect ourselves. We only know he is here because of a disturbance in Saint Aloysius’s Church—” And then she gestured to another of the harpies, and I recognized the woman who’d been so reluctant to help at the bazaar.
It wasn’t a secret secret that he was here—after all, he’d been gallivanting around London like any other tourist, doing typical tourist things—but it somehow didn’t feel right that the church harpy would run around inciting everyone’s anti-Devil sentiment.
There was a reason the government hadn’t treated it as an official visit.
I wasn’t surprised to see the now-sober vicar from Saint Aloysius’s as well; he looked less terrified than the last time I saw him.
A petty part of me wanted, however, to go up to him and tell him the Devil wanted to thank him in particular, just to see how he’d react.
“Where more of Hell’s citizens emerged from a portal that mysteriously opened while the Devil was there,” the harpy continued.
Another reason to continue to be mad at the marquis for testing me. If the Devil’s visit to the church had just resulted in some sales of jam and a few parasols, perhaps the church harpy wouldn’t have gotten so alarmed. The vicar would have been, but he would have been on his own.
Humph.
I noticed one of the incognitoed attendees looking around at the other beings as I was, and I focused more closely on them.
They were most definitely not human, though I couldn’t say what they were.
Their skin had a ghastly pallor, as though they’d been kept from the sun, but they didn’t have a vampire’s unmistakable haughty aura (really, they were absolutely full of themselves all the time.
No wonder, they could kill anyone within seconds, but did they have to swagger about so we were just as aware of their lethality?
It made polite conversation a bit strained).
“What is the Devil doing here in the first place?” the harpy continued.
Nobody would believe me if I told them. Especially the treacle-tarts bit.
“Is he going to try to lure us to his home?” she demanded.
The individual I was watching looked up suddenly, meeting my gaze, and I gasped. It was one of the Devil’s demons, one of the ones I hadn’t met the other night. They nodded in recognition, and I did the same in return.
“Is he going to try to take over London?” she continued.
They began to make their way over to me, and my mind started racing as to what I would say—I supposed it wasn’t entirely odd I was here, given my assignment, but I hadn’t told the Devil or the marquis I would be attending, and that seemed like a deliberate omission.
Because it was.
“Hello,” the being whispered, stooping down when they reached my side. I rose from my chair and leaned against the wall.
The harpy was now in full-on ranting mode, mostly repeating what she had said earlier, albeit in different ways, so I didn’t have to pay full attention.
“Hello,” I returned, also speaking quietly. “I’m—”
“I know who you are,” they said. “I’m Az’gen. You can call me Az.”
“Nice to meet you, Az,” I said.
A few of the attendees in front of us turned and glared. I made an apologetic gesture and resumed listening.
Eventually, another speaker, this time a human, got up and spoke, urging the attendees to be cautious and stick together when out late at night. Good advice at all times, I wanted to point out, not just when the Devil was in town.
The third speaker, the vicar from Saint Aloysius, returned to the harpy’s themes of drumming up fear against the Devil’s presence. I knew he was truly frightened, so I couldn’t blame him, but I wished he were less hyperbolic about the whole thing.
I kept searching the crowd, wondering if there were any other infiltrators, but by now there were so many in attendance it was hard to see everyone.
I’d have to stick by the exit and see if I could identify anyone else as they left. Though I’d have to somehow shake my new friend—I didn’t want to share that I was mole hunting in addition to anti-Devil surveillance gathering.