The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [153]
“Pretty much.” Angleton nodded. His lip quirked oddly. A suppressed smile?
“Jesus fucking Christ, Angleton, that’s leaving just a little bit out. Not to mention Ramona. If you think you could tie our brains together like the Kilkenny cats, then just cut us loose—it doesn’t work that way, you know?”
“Yes.” He nodded again. “And that’s why you need to go to the Village,” he said briskly. “Talk to her. Settle where you both stand, in your own mind.” He picked up his papers and looked away, an implicit dismissal. I rose to my feet.
“Oh, and one other thing,” he added.
“What?”
“While you’re about it, remember to talk to Dr. O’Brien as well. You both need to sort things out—and sooner, rather than later.”
“HE MADE IT AN ORDER.” SHE SHRUGS. “SO HERE I am.” Looking as if she’d rather be anywhere else on the planet.
“Enjoying yourself?” I ask. It’s the sort of stilted, stupid question you ask when you’re trying to make small talk but walking on eggshells in case the other person explodes at you. Which is what I’m half-expecting—this situation is a minefield.
“No,” she says with forced levity. “The weather sucks, the beer’s warm, the sea’s too cold for swimming, and every time I look at it . . .” She stalls, the thin glaze of collected-ness cracking. “Can I sit down?”
I pat the sofa beside me. “Be my guest.”
She sits down in the opposite corner, an arm’s length away. “You’re acting like you’re mad at me.”
I glance at the book on the table. “I’m not mad at you.” I try to figure out what to say next: “I’m mad at the way the circumstances made things turn out. Are you still mad at her?”
“At her?” She chuckles, startled. “I don’t think she had any more choice in it than you did. Why should I be mad at her?”
I pick up my glass and take a long mouthful of beer. “Because we slept together?”
“Because you—what?” A waspish tone creeps into her voice: “But I thought you said you hadn’t!”
I put my glass down. “We didn’t.” I meet her eye. “In the Bill Clinton sense of things, I can honestly say I have not had sexual intercourse with that woman. You know what the Black Chamber did to her? If I had slept with her I’d be dead.”
“But how can you—” Mo is confused.
“Her monster had to feed. Before you came and unbound it, it had to feed. She had to feed it, or it would have eaten her. I was along for the ride.”
Enlightenment dawns. “But now she’s there—” a wave in the vague direction of the drowned village of Dunwich, a mile out to sea, where the Laundry maintains its outpost “—and you’re here. And you’re both safe.”
Acid indigestion. “Safe from what?” I ask, watching her sidelong.
“Safe from—” She stops. “Why are you looking at me?”
“She’s undergoing the change, you know that? They can usually hold it off, but in her case it’s looking irreversible.”
Mo nods, reluctantly.
“Probably it was triggered by the deep-diving excursion,” I add. “Although proximity to certain thaumic resonances can bring it on prematurely.” Which you would be in a position to know all about, I don’t say. It’s a horrible thing to suspect of anyone, especially your partner who you’ve been sharing a house with for enough years that it’s getting to be a habit. “I gather they expect her to make it, with her mind intact.”
“That’s good,” Mo says automatically. A double take: “Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Is it a good thing?” I ask.
“That’s not a question I’d have expected you to ask.”
I sigh. None of this is straightforward. “Mo, you could have warned me they were training you in deep-cover insertion and extraction operations! Jesus, I thought I was the one on the sharp end!”
“And you were!” she snaps at me suddenly. “Did you wonder how I felt about it, every time you disappeared on a black bag job? Did you ask if maybe I was worried sick that you were never coming back? You know what I know, how helpless do you think that left me