The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [94]
“You must be Mr. Howard?” a calm, somewhat musical voice says from right beside me.
I don’t jump out of my skin this time: I barely twitch. The urgent nagging of my wards spikes in time with her voice. “Everyone seems to know who I am. Who are you?”
Looking round I recognize her at once. She’s the supermodel type with the hangman’s eyes who was chilling with Mr. Stiffy: she’s got skin the color of a perfect mocha, her dancer’s body exposed rather than concealed by her sheer white gown, a fortune in sapphires at ears and throat. Looks to die for, like Ramona—yes, it’s a glamour. Predictably, she’s the center of the manifestation my wards are yammering about. “I’m Johanna, Mr. Howard, Johanna Todt. I work for the Billingtons.”
I shrug. “Doesn’t everyone?”
It’s meant to be a black joke, but Johanna doesn’t seem to take it in the intended spirit. She frowns: “Not yet.” Then she sniffs dismissively. “I’m supposed to bring you to see him.”
“Really.” I make myself look her in the eye. She really is beautiful, so much so that normally I’d be tongue-tied and babbling in her presence. But thanks to the time I’ve been spending with Ramona, supernatural beauty isn’t as dazzling as it used to be, and besides, I’ve got other preoccupations right now. I manage to keep a lid on it. “Liza Sloat just got through warning me off, then I had some security consultant called McMurray all over me like a vest. What’s the story?”
“Interdepartmental rivalry. Sloat and McMurray don’t get on.” Johanna tilts her head to one side and looks at me. “There are many mansions in the house of Billington, Mr. Howard. And as it happens, Mr. McMurray is my manager.” She lays a long-fingered hand on my arm. “Walk with me.”
She steers me past the bar and into the outer room, past the jazz butchers. There are French doors open on the balcony. Where’s Ramona? I worry. She wasn’t in the back room; she’s not here . . .
“For obvious reasons we don’t make it too easy to reach the chief,” Johanna murmurs. “When you’re as rich as the Billingtons it makes you a target. Money is an attractive nuisance. We’re currently tracking six stalkers and three blackmailers, and that’s before you count the third-world governments. We’ve got enough schizophrenics to fill one-point-four psychiatric hospitals, plus an average of two-point-six marriage proposals and eleven-point-one death threats per week, and a federal antitrust investigation which is worse than all of them combined.”
Put that way, I can almost feel a sneaking sympathy for the man. “So why am I here?” I ask.
The ghost of a smile tugs at her lips. “You’re not a stalker or a blackmailer.” A faint ghost of a breeze comes through the open doors. She leads me out onto the balcony. “You’re asking inconvenient questions and silencing you won’t stop them, because the organization you work for is staffed by determined, intelligent, and very dangerous people. It’s much better to get everything out in the open and discuss it like sensible people, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, well.” My mind’s eye flickers back to the nightmare meeting in Darmstadt, the shadow of a diver’s oxygen tank rippling across encrusted concrete . . . Dammit, where’s Ramona? She should be relaying this! “Incidentally, who was your boyfriend?” She raises an eyebrow. “Humor me. The guy in the white suit.”
“What, him?” She shakes her head. “Just an ex of mine. He hangs out with me sometimes.” My wards are still tingling and I get a sharp stab of pain as I look at her. Her smile slowly widens. “I walk the body—one at a time. Not all of us are