Property of a Lady Faire (A Secret Histories Novel) by Simon R. Green Read Free Book Online

you’ve taken, right now, and I’ll give you back your head of MI 13. With all his important parts still attached.”
    There wasn’t even a pause. A voice from the other side of the screen said, “Keep him.”
    Diment looked shocked, but not particularly surprised. I sighed inwardly and tried again.
    “All right,” I said. “You want to escalate? I can do that. First, you’ve already seen that I can pass through the screen. Don’t make me come there in person and show you just how much damage I can cause to things and people when I’m in a mood. Second, do you really want my family at your throats? Now, and forever?”
    There was a long pause, and then all the dark hands on their long black arms whipped back into the plasma screens and were gone. The few people left in the club, who’d managed to fight the hands off, raised their heads and looked slowly about them. And then all the people who’d been taken came flying back through the screens into the club. They poured through in a rush, piling up on the floor. Those still conscious cried out at the impact, but didn’t have enough strength left to make a fuss. No one seemed badly injured; but a lot of them looked like they’d been hit with some heavy-duty sedation. I glared at the dark figures moving uneasily about on the other side of the screens.
    “There had better not be anyone missing!” I said sternly. “Not even one. Or I will come and find you.”
    Four more bodies came flying through the screens. Interestingly, I didn’t recognise any of them. But apparently someone thought they were important . . . I looked at Alan Diment.
    “This was a really bad idea. Don’t ever try it again. Not here, or anywhere else.”
    “I wouldn’t,” said Diment. “But someone else might.”
    I looked at him thoughtfully. “Who was it, exactly, who pressured you into doing this?”
    “The current Government has an awful lot of new people in it,” Diment said carefully. “Obsessed with secrets, and the power having those secrets would bring them . . .”
    “Names,” I said.
    “Sorry,” said Diment sadly. “You might kill me for not talking, but they definitely would, if I did.”
    I nodded, turned him around, and booted him back through the nearest plasma screen. It swallowed him up in a moment, and then every screen in the club went blank, shut down from the other side. I had no doubt that by the time the club’s management had the screens up and running again, all ties to the other side would have been cut. Not a trace left behind, to point the finger at anyone.
    People were getting to their feet now, and looking at each other and the blank plasma screens with equal confusion. Whatever they’d seen on the other side, and whatever had been done to them, they clearly didn’t remember. I discreetly made my golden hand disappear, and then moved through the crowd, checking that everyone was all right. Ellen de Gustibus was leaning heavily on Monkton Farley, exhausted. He comforted her as best he could. He understood all there was to know about people, except how to be one. I gave him bonus marks for trying. Jumping Jack Flashman left through the nearest exit, the moment someone discovered they were working again. And the Painted Ghoul . . . just brushed himself down, briskly. As though this kind of thing happened to him all the time. And for all I knew, it did.
    “Light my cigarette, lover,” said Waterloo Lillian, and I did, though I had to hold his hand steady with my other hand while I did it.
    “You all right?” I said.
    “As close as I get,” he said, smiling briefly. “Do you understand what just happened here?”
    “Me?” I said. “No, I’m just passing through.”
    I spotted Harry Fabulous, slouching in the open doorway at the far end of the club, and excused myself. I wandered casually over, to have a quiet word. Harry half retreated into the shadows of the door, preferring not to be noticed or recognised by the clientele. He needn’t