Original: "Trafalgar & Boone," Chapter Six
New chapter! New character! Full of foe-yay! Foe-yay is a thing, right? C'mon, two characters hate each other but it's such a thin line between snarking at each other and doin' it? Foe-yay! It's a thing. Plus this chapter has the first mention of Trafalgar and Boone being a team! Reluctant as it may be. ;) I need to find an artist to do the actual illustration of Trafalgar and Boone. It's so tough to find someone who is good and available.
Chapter Six
Dorothy recognized Trafalgar’s car parked outside of Abraham Strode’s office and directed Beatrice to park behind her. The door was standing open when they arrived, causing her to believe the worst, but she found Strode and Trafalgar in the lounge, both completely unharmed. Strode was a tall, slender man with an ash-blonde Vandyck and his hair swept back in a pompadour. He stood behind his desk where a silver tray held a large porcelain bowl, a tall glass, and a pair of seasoning shakers. The room was spotless, a portrait of having a place for everything and everything in its place.
Strode was in the middle of some diatribe when Dorothy entered the room, and her sudden appearance caused him to stop midsentence. “Lady Boone. I suppose it’s too much to expect you to knock.”
“Your door was standing open.”
He rolled his eyes and removed his tinted glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Of course it was. I hope you left it open to ease your retreat.”
“I came here to warn you.”
He offered a patronizing smile. “Yes, I am aware. As I was telling your associate--”
Trafalgar and Boone both said, “We’re not associates,” and Dorothy awkwardly continued, “More like reluctant allies.”
“Whatever you may be, I assure you I am in no more danger today than I was yesterday. When one is the best at what he does, there is no small number of people who might wish him harm. You say that someone is attempting to kill people in our profession while framing our contemporaries? Well, you can imagine my skepticism when two of my contemporaries arrive on my doorstep with weapons drawn.”
Trafalgar said, “Dubourne and his secretary are both dead. My friend was murdered on the doorstep of our home.”
Dorothy said, “Leonard and Agnes Gray were attacked in their home. We have no idea how high the body count actually may be, but we are doing everything in our power to keep everyone safe.”
Strode sighed. “Be that as it may, I am perfectly unharmed. I’ve received no correspondence, and I have received no visitors until your friend here so rudely interrupted my work.”
“Sir...”
Dorothy held up a hand to stop her. “Trafalgar, it’s no use. We came here to warn the man that he was in danger, and we have succeeded on that front. There are many more on our list who are more deserving of our time. Mr. Strode, you have been duly warned to keep your eyes open and alert.”
He waved dismissively and looked down at his desktop, his mind obviously already returning to what he’d been doing before he was interrupted. Dorothy looked at Trafalgar and motioned toward the door with her head. When she turned to leave she stopped short and held up a hand so Trafalgar wouldn’t continue past her. She looked into the entry hall for a moment and then turned to scan Strode’s lounge once more. He looked up and sighed when he saw they were still there.
“What is it now?”
“You say we are your only callers today?”
“Yes, and the experience has completely put me off the idea. If I ever have another visitor, it shall be too soon.”
Dorothy stepped into the lounge. “Miss Trafalgar, please come into the lounge and close the door behind you.”
Trafalgar did as requested. Strode frowned at them as Dorothy’s eyes panned slowly from one corner of the room to the next.
“What in blazes--”
“Sh.”
“You will not shush me in my own home, Lady Boone! The--”
She took out her revolver, and he clamped his teeth shut on the next word. Dorothy crossed to the desk, lifted the pepper shaker off his lunch tray, and unscrewed the top with a deft twist of her fingers.
“What in the world are you doing?” Strode asked.
“Your front door was open. Not unlocked, it was actually standing open. Did you leave it that way when you let Miss Trafalgar inside?”
“Of course not.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so. A man with a lounge this tidy wouldn’t leave his door open like that. Miss Trafalgar, where is Leola?”
“She wanted to check the kitchen to ensure my food hadn’t been tampered with,” Strode replied.
Dorothy turned in a slow circle as she brought the shaker up to her lips. She tilted it slightly so the granules within were almost to the spilling point. She moved quickly toward the heavy curtains of the window and exhaled sharply through pursed lips. A cloud of pepper spread out across the chaise longue and the end table.
“Are you mad?” Strode demanded. “What in the blazes are you doing?”
Dorothy turned toward the fireplace and exhaled again. Strode rounded the corner of his desk blustering about the mess she was making. She blew again, this time aiming the cloud toward an empty corner to her left.
Someone sneezed.
Trafalgar straightened and looked around the room, while Strode froze where he stood. Dorothy splashed the contents of the shaker toward the sneeze and coated the head and torso of an otherwise invisible woman. The woman recoiled and sneezed again, more violently this time, unseen hands swatting at her face as she tried to clear away the grains.
Dorothy stepped forward and grabbed the woman’s wrists. “Why if it isn’t Ivy Sever. I haven’t seen you in ages!”
“Ugh, such an old joke.” The voice came from directly in front of Dorothy, a soft Liverpudlian accent tinting her words. “Never gets old.”
The apparent apparition leaned back to brace her shoulders against the wall, and then Dorothy rocked back from a kick to the stomach. Now that she knew where Ivy was, and with the help of the pepper still darkening her face, it was easier to fill in the blanks for the rest of the woman’s body. She released Ivy’s hands and stepped back. Ivy tried to make a run for it, but Dorothy blocked her with one outstretched arm and pulled the invisible woman into an embrace. She threw herself onto Ivy’s back and wrestled her down onto the carpet.
“What in the blazes?!” Strode said.
Dorothy realized to him and Trafalgar it appeared as if she had just taken a very brief, very rough flight to the ground. She sought and pinned Ivy’s arms before she lifted her head to look at them.
“Abraham Strode, Miss Trafalgar, I would like to introduce you to Miss Ivy Sever. In addition to being a private investigator, she is also the unfortunate victim of a failed experiment which left her trapped in an invisible state. I presume she was looking for a way to gain entrance to your home without alerting you and took the opportunity when you let Trafalgar in. After that she was simply waiting until we left to strike.”
Strode had gone pale. “How did you even know to look for her?”
“She spent some time outdoors looking for an open window or an unlocked door. She traipsed through your back garden. When she came inside she left smudges of dirt on the tile. A man like yourself, Mr. Strode, would never abide such a thing.”
“I feel faint.”
“Fortitude, Mr. Strode. We may have just found the key to unraveling this entire bloody mess. If you would be so kind as to fetch a coat or something similar for our captive to wear, I would be most appreciative. It will be harder for her to slip away once she’s clothed.”
“Clothed? You mean... oh, goodness.” A bit of color returned to his cheeks before he turned away and retreated. All of his bluster and braggadocio faded at the realization of how close he had come to dying. He brushed a hand over his face and went to follow Dorothy’s instructions.
Trafalgar stepped aside to let him out of the room. She looked at Dorothy, who appeared to be crouched in an arachnidian manner. For a moment it seemed as if she wouldn’t say anything, but finally she inclined her head and offered a weak smile.
“Well done, Lady Boone. Lovely detective work.”
“It helps to know in advance that an invisible assassin is a possibility, of course,” Dorothy admitted. “Ivy and I have had our run-ins, haven’t we dear?”
“To be honest, I much prefer the times I’ve ended up on top.”
Dorothy patted the spot where she imagined Ivy’s cheek to be. “Now, now. Just because we’re enemies on this occasion doesn’t mean things won’t be friendlier next time.”
#
Strode returned with a long overcoat, a pair of slacks, and strips of cloth he indicated could be used to swaddle Ivy’s head. Leola had come back from inspecting the kitchen and gladly restrained the invisible woman to a chair once she was dressed. While it was still unsettling to see nothing through the gap in the cloth, and while the top of her head was left exposed, it was now obvious to everyone in the room that she was indeed a person rather than a poltergeist. Even with the confirmation, Strode looked lightheaded. He walked to the longue and stretched out with the slender fingers of one hand across his eyes.
Dorothy waited until Leola was finished with the restraints before she stood up and began her questioning. “First of all, I assume that you were left with instructions to frame someone else for this attack. Who was it?”
“Arthur Whitmore.”
“And what is the name of the person who actually hired you?”
Ivy scoffed and shook her head. “You’ll have to work a little harder than that, Dot.”
Dorothy smiled and leaned down, lining her eyes up with the wider strip where Ivy’s eyes should have been. She lowered her voice to a seductive coo. “Oh, come on. No special favors for an old friend?”
“Neither of us got where we are in this business by handing out special favors.”
“An exchange of services, then. If you tell us what we want to know, we’ll make sure you don’t get done up for attempted murder.”
Strode slapped his hand down on the table. “She entered my home uninvited and planned to murder me! I hope you don’t expect me to turn a blind eye to these crimes.”
“Ivy was working at her client’s behest. If we take the client out of contention, her employment will be terminated and she’ll no longer have a quarrel with you.” She raised an eyebrow at Ivy. “It’s the only way for you to come out of this unscathed. No client, no outstanding assignment, no connection to the string of murders and attempted murders all across London.”
“What you said is true?” Ivy asked. “Someone tried to kill you?”
“And succeeded in killing several others. I fear their work is not done yet. We’ve spent the morning traversing London in an attempt to stop his plans, but it would be much easier if you could simply tell us who hired you.”
Ivy considered that for a moment. “He didn’t give me his name.”
Dorothy smiled. “When has that ever stopped Ivy Sever? Come on. You must have done some digging before you attempted to murder a stranger for him. Tell us what you found.”
The shoulders of her borrowed coat rose and fell as Ivy took a deep breath. “Fine. Looks like talking is the quickest way out of this. Felix Quintel.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” Dorothy said.
“I have,” Trafalgar said. “He wants power, prestige. He does the same work we do, to a point, but his endgame is what he favor he can curry with the items he brings back. He wouldn’t think twice about raiding a tomb or pillaging a holy site for a few baubles.”
Dorothy chewed her thumbnail. She had heard of treasure hunters like Quintel, but she’d never had the misfortune to run into any of them. They rarely lasted long, either shunned by the establishment or punished by the local tribes whose relics were being defaced. Quintel was eliminating anyone who could potentially stand in his way. If that was the case he wouldn’t think twice about slaughtering anyone at his destination who might protest an expedition.
“Where can we find Quintel?”
“Easier said than done. I used all the resources at my considerable disposal and all I got was a name. Believe me, I looked. The man has firewalls and contingencies like you wouldn’t believe. I’m lucky I got his name. I have no idea what the man looks like or where he has his offices. You can waste your time looking but I assure you, you will not find him.”
Dorothy stood up and brushed her hands together. “Then perhaps it requires the resources of more than one person.” She turned and looked at Trafalgar. “You and I have been at odds since before the war began. But one indisputable fact is that you were a worthy adversary for me, and vice versa. We are both very good at what we do, Miss Trafalgar. Quintel expects to eradicate us while he hides in the shadows like a coward. We are an extremely fractured group. We compete against one another. We lack trust in each other. He’s counting on that to make his plan succeed.”
Trafalgar nodded. “It’s the only way his plan of framing us would even work.”
“He managed to hide from Ivy, which is no small feat. We’ve managed to combine forces today for the greater good. We may have saved a few lives in the process. I propose that we continue this partnership in the interest of stopping Quintel before he can cause any further harm. He wouldn’t have gone to such great measures on a single day unless he was planning something big. I would like to stop him, but I doubt I could do it alone.” She held out her hand. “What say you?”
Trafalgar stared at Dorothy’s outstretched hand for a moment. Finally she reached out and took it. “To obtain justice for Adeline, and the other deaths Quintel is responsible for.”
Dorothy squeezed Trafalgar’s hand. “I believe that’s a cause I can support.”
“Are we really going to let her go?” Trafalgar asked, nodding to where Ivy was still strapped to the chair.
“But of course. How else can we follow her to meet up with her client?”
Ivy cleared her throat. “Pardon?”
Dorothy smiled. “Consider it the terms of your surrender and release. You’re going to lead us back to the man who hired you and, with luck, he will lead us directly to Felix Quintel.”
#
After checking to make sure Strode would recover from his shock, Dorothy suggested that Trafalgar ride with her, Beatrice, and Ivy. Leola was hesitant but Trafalgar argued that they would have to start trusting each other eventually. She also understood it would be easier to keep track of Ivy with more people in one vehicle. She and Boone sat on either side of the invisible woman in the backseat of Boone’s car for the ride back to Ivy’s base of operations. Beatrice drove, and Leola waited until they were on the road before she pulled away from the kerb to follow.
Ivy’s offices were located in the Barbican Estate, near a bastion of the ancient London Wall. The area had been horribly damaged by air raids during the Great War, and every building they passed bore some measure of damage. Dorothy recalled the terror of the first raids, hearing London’s aeroplanes flying overhead with rail guns blazing while something in the distance exploded with ground-shuddering force. Production of their own airships was quadrupled so they could meet the enemy on equal ground, and the air above London became a battlefield. Dorothy recalled the newspapers that urged people to relocate to hovels popping up in the Underground, which reminded her far too much of H.G. Wells’ time-traveling novel for comfort. Eventually the German airships were sent back where they had come from. London’s bumblebees took up sentry along the coast to deflect any further attacks, and the city began to slowly rebuild itself.
Ivy directed them to one of the many buildings that was still waiting to be repaired. Its neighbor had been completely demolished, either by the initial bomb or by residents who were afraid it would collapse if left on its own. A handful of windows on that side of Ivy’s building were covered by wood or plastic that bellowed and caved in with the passage of the breeze. Dorothy found it hard to believe they were only a mile or so away from her home on Threadneedle. If the Germans had dropped their bombs just a minute earlier...
She pushed the thought out of her mind. They were escorting an invisible troublemaker onto her own turf. A moment of distraction could be all it took for Ivy to give them the slip. She unlocked her office and dutifully waited in the hall while Beatrice and Leola, unenthusiastic allies due to the agreement between their employers, examined the office for booby traps or secondary exits. Once they had the all-clear, Ivy was allowed inside.
“I have pancake makeup and some clothes through there.” She gestured at a door behind the desk. “It might make it a little easier for you to trust me if you can see me.”
Beatrice checked the room and made sure there were no windows, but Dorothy insisted on leaving the door open enough that they could watch her while she changed.
Ivy chuckled. “You just want to peek.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“Flirt.” Ivy shed the coat she’d taken from Strode as she entered the room, the rags unwinding themselves from around her head and rising to drape across a coat hook. There was a surprisingly dainty vanity mirror hanging from one wall, decorated with brass accents and small lights that cast a solid glow on the empty space in front of it. A small canister rose from a shelf next to the mirror and the cap unscrewed itself. As Dorothy watched, Ivy applied some of the cream to her fingers and began spreading it across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
Dorothy met Ivy while they were both investigating a self-described inventor named Colin Pettigrew. He was a grave robber who raided buried cities and sought out lost civilizations solely to find evidence of what he believed to be a long-forgotten advanced society that existed before the rise of humanity. In 1912, Pettigrew discovered a hidden cache deep in the Peruvian Amazon that he believed belonged to such a society.
One of the items he brought back was a sealed jar carved with a formula for a chemical compound of unknown properties. He managed to produce a sample of the compound before Dorothy tracked him down. She tried to stop him from imbibing it and their confrontation quickly turned into a brawl. Ivy stumbled upon the laboratory during their fight and tried to use the opportunity to steal away with the compound for herself. Pettigrew tried to stop her by opening fire on her, but he only hit the sample she had stolen. The highly unstable and untested compound exploded in her hands. Pettigrew fled, but Dorothy couldn’t leave the screaming and terrified Ivy behind.
By the time they reached the hospital, Ivy’s skin had turned a peculiar shade of pink. When the first doctor arrived on the scene to examine her, every vein and muscle was visible through the thin resin her skin had become. Though they had never met, Ivy clutched Dorothy’s hand like a lifeline. Dorothy had initially stayed simply out of curiosity; she watched with detached amazement as the fingers squeezing hers turned to pink muscle and then bone. By the time the bone vanished, Dorothy could no longer feign separatism and admitted she was terrified for the poor girl.
The doctors were completely stumped by her vanishing act. She was bathed thoroughly every hour, her skin rubbed until it bled. The blood curiously only became visible a few seconds after it had left her body. Droplets appeared on the floor around the bed, and only after the rags seemed to blossom after being tossed aside did they realize what was happening. Dorothy stayed with Ivy until the doctors kicked her out. They kicked Ivy out of the hospital a few days after that. She was taking up a valuable bed and far too often a nurse tried to place a patient on top of her without realizing.
Ivy eventually came to terms with her new state, embracing it, in fact. Her work as a private investigator had never been easier. She got used to wandering the streets of London in the nude. What did it matter if no one could see her anyway? Eventually she tracked down Dorothy, the stranger who refused to abandon her in her darkest hour, and they struck up a tenuous friendship. Ivy often took jobs Dorothy didn’t agree with, and Dorothy’s strict guidelines about what was and was not fair game conflicted with Ivy’s, but they couldn’t make the leap to consider themselves enemies.
In the intervening years Ivy had made quite a few adjustments to make up for her new reality. She wore makeup to meet with clients, she hid the fact her eyes were invisible by wearing tinted eyeglasses with blinders on either side. She shaved her head, since letting her hair grow out would be all nuisance with no benefits, and doing so allowed her to wear a variety of wigs when she was “presenting herself,” as she liked to call it.
In the small room next to Ivy’s office, her visage was slowly coming back into view. She had a Greek nose, flat between the brows and straight along the bridge. Her eyes were spaced widely apart and, if Dorothy remembered correctly, had originally been green. At the moment they were simply dark craters where she hadn’t bothered to detail the lids or wrinkles. She instead focused on her cheeks and her wide mouth, applying crimson powder to her bottom lip before rubbing it against the top. She ran her fingers down her throat to the curve of her shoulders.
Her round spectacles and a long brown wig covered the parts she hadn’t covered with makeup, and she returned to the room like a bust come to life. She put on a blouse, buttoned it to the collar, and then covered it with a black vest. A pair of gloves twitched in midair and then inflated to give shape her hands. She put on a pair of trousers and shoes and, with those final touches, appeared to have manifested an actual human being out of several disparate parts.
Trafalgar and Beatrice seemed to be the most impressed by the transformation. Dorothy smiled at the sight of her old acquaintance and gestured at the wig.
“New hair?”
“Thought I’d try it. What do you think?”
“It suits you.”
Ivy smiled. Trafalgar recoiled and Ivy grunted. “Oh. Sorry.” She opened a tray on her desk and pulled out a set of veneers. She snapped them over her real teeth, smoothed her tongue over them, and smiled again. “I sometimes forget to put in the caps. Sorry.”
“No apologies necessary. It’s quite a remarkable gift.”
“I’ve decided to take it as such, yes.” She scooted her chair forward and flipped her journal open. Dorothy took one of the client seats in front of Ivy’s desk, while Trafalgar took the other. “I spent three weeks tracking down Felix Quintel. After the first week I began to suspect he was merely a figurehead. Just a name used by a conglomerate of people to strike fear into their competition. But then I found this.” She turned the journal around so they could see her sketch of a circle with a cursive F cutting through the center of it. The lower part of the F was stylized to give a tail to the circle.
“F and Q,” Trafalgar said. “Felix Quintel left a calling card? Where?”
“Carved on the stone entrance of a tomb in Jordan. His people were the ones who carved it, but as far as I can tell he didn’t make that particular trip himself.”
Dorothy said, “So the name acts as their brand. Just because they mark the man’s name doesn’t mean he actually exists.”
“I thought the same thing. But I looked into some of the goons who were present on the majority of Quintel’s expeditions. I found their names on passenger manifests of nine different airships heading to the continent, as well as to South America, India, and the Middle East. I figured they were his most loyal employees, so I dug as deep as I could on them. They all receive payments signed by F. Quintel. As far as Barclays is concerned, he exists. And he has a lot of money to throw around.”
Dorothy said, “You tracked him to a bank account, but you couldn’t follow that thread to a flesh and blood person?”
Ivy held out her hands. “And what does that tell you? I know where he lives, but even I couldn’t get into the place to confirm he was there. The place is a fortress. He has a guard posted at the door and security watching the perimeter. Even if I got in, I have to believe there would be countermeasures even I would have a hard time getting past.”
“You’ve had it easy,” Beatrice said. Dorothy turned to look at her, and Beatrice shrugged. “It’s true. She’s gotten so used to slipping through places unseen that she doesn’t know how to avoid a normal security perimeter.”
Dorothy said, “Do you think you could do it?”
“I’d have to see the place first,” Beatrice said, “but I got into your place, didn’t I?”
Dorothy grinned. “That you did.”
Beatrice said, “I’d have a good shot by myself, but with Ivy’s intelligence and if Miss Trafalgar is willing to loan me Leola, I think we’d stand a better than fair chance of robbing the National Gallery.”
“We’ll save that as a possible victory celebration.” She stood up and faced Ivy. “Miss Sever, kindly point us toward Mr. Quintel’s home. We shall see how much of a fortress it truly is.”
Chapter Six
Dorothy recognized Trafalgar’s car parked outside of Abraham Strode’s office and directed Beatrice to park behind her. The door was standing open when they arrived, causing her to believe the worst, but she found Strode and Trafalgar in the lounge, both completely unharmed. Strode was a tall, slender man with an ash-blonde Vandyck and his hair swept back in a pompadour. He stood behind his desk where a silver tray held a large porcelain bowl, a tall glass, and a pair of seasoning shakers. The room was spotless, a portrait of having a place for everything and everything in its place.
Strode was in the middle of some diatribe when Dorothy entered the room, and her sudden appearance caused him to stop midsentence. “Lady Boone. I suppose it’s too much to expect you to knock.”
“Your door was standing open.”
He rolled his eyes and removed his tinted glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Of course it was. I hope you left it open to ease your retreat.”
“I came here to warn you.”
He offered a patronizing smile. “Yes, I am aware. As I was telling your associate--”
Trafalgar and Boone both said, “We’re not associates,” and Dorothy awkwardly continued, “More like reluctant allies.”
“Whatever you may be, I assure you I am in no more danger today than I was yesterday. When one is the best at what he does, there is no small number of people who might wish him harm. You say that someone is attempting to kill people in our profession while framing our contemporaries? Well, you can imagine my skepticism when two of my contemporaries arrive on my doorstep with weapons drawn.”
Trafalgar said, “Dubourne and his secretary are both dead. My friend was murdered on the doorstep of our home.”
Dorothy said, “Leonard and Agnes Gray were attacked in their home. We have no idea how high the body count actually may be, but we are doing everything in our power to keep everyone safe.”
Strode sighed. “Be that as it may, I am perfectly unharmed. I’ve received no correspondence, and I have received no visitors until your friend here so rudely interrupted my work.”
“Sir...”
Dorothy held up a hand to stop her. “Trafalgar, it’s no use. We came here to warn the man that he was in danger, and we have succeeded on that front. There are many more on our list who are more deserving of our time. Mr. Strode, you have been duly warned to keep your eyes open and alert.”
He waved dismissively and looked down at his desktop, his mind obviously already returning to what he’d been doing before he was interrupted. Dorothy looked at Trafalgar and motioned toward the door with her head. When she turned to leave she stopped short and held up a hand so Trafalgar wouldn’t continue past her. She looked into the entry hall for a moment and then turned to scan Strode’s lounge once more. He looked up and sighed when he saw they were still there.
“What is it now?”
“You say we are your only callers today?”
“Yes, and the experience has completely put me off the idea. If I ever have another visitor, it shall be too soon.”
Dorothy stepped into the lounge. “Miss Trafalgar, please come into the lounge and close the door behind you.”
Trafalgar did as requested. Strode frowned at them as Dorothy’s eyes panned slowly from one corner of the room to the next.
“What in blazes--”
“Sh.”
“You will not shush me in my own home, Lady Boone! The--”
She took out her revolver, and he clamped his teeth shut on the next word. Dorothy crossed to the desk, lifted the pepper shaker off his lunch tray, and unscrewed the top with a deft twist of her fingers.
“What in the world are you doing?” Strode asked.
“Your front door was open. Not unlocked, it was actually standing open. Did you leave it that way when you let Miss Trafalgar inside?”
“Of course not.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so. A man with a lounge this tidy wouldn’t leave his door open like that. Miss Trafalgar, where is Leola?”
“She wanted to check the kitchen to ensure my food hadn’t been tampered with,” Strode replied.
Dorothy turned in a slow circle as she brought the shaker up to her lips. She tilted it slightly so the granules within were almost to the spilling point. She moved quickly toward the heavy curtains of the window and exhaled sharply through pursed lips. A cloud of pepper spread out across the chaise longue and the end table.
“Are you mad?” Strode demanded. “What in the blazes are you doing?”
Dorothy turned toward the fireplace and exhaled again. Strode rounded the corner of his desk blustering about the mess she was making. She blew again, this time aiming the cloud toward an empty corner to her left.
Someone sneezed.
Trafalgar straightened and looked around the room, while Strode froze where he stood. Dorothy splashed the contents of the shaker toward the sneeze and coated the head and torso of an otherwise invisible woman. The woman recoiled and sneezed again, more violently this time, unseen hands swatting at her face as she tried to clear away the grains.
Dorothy stepped forward and grabbed the woman’s wrists. “Why if it isn’t Ivy Sever. I haven’t seen you in ages!”
“Ugh, such an old joke.” The voice came from directly in front of Dorothy, a soft Liverpudlian accent tinting her words. “Never gets old.”
The apparent apparition leaned back to brace her shoulders against the wall, and then Dorothy rocked back from a kick to the stomach. Now that she knew where Ivy was, and with the help of the pepper still darkening her face, it was easier to fill in the blanks for the rest of the woman’s body. She released Ivy’s hands and stepped back. Ivy tried to make a run for it, but Dorothy blocked her with one outstretched arm and pulled the invisible woman into an embrace. She threw herself onto Ivy’s back and wrestled her down onto the carpet.
“What in the blazes?!” Strode said.
Dorothy realized to him and Trafalgar it appeared as if she had just taken a very brief, very rough flight to the ground. She sought and pinned Ivy’s arms before she lifted her head to look at them.
“Abraham Strode, Miss Trafalgar, I would like to introduce you to Miss Ivy Sever. In addition to being a private investigator, she is also the unfortunate victim of a failed experiment which left her trapped in an invisible state. I presume she was looking for a way to gain entrance to your home without alerting you and took the opportunity when you let Trafalgar in. After that she was simply waiting until we left to strike.”
Strode had gone pale. “How did you even know to look for her?”
“She spent some time outdoors looking for an open window or an unlocked door. She traipsed through your back garden. When she came inside she left smudges of dirt on the tile. A man like yourself, Mr. Strode, would never abide such a thing.”
“I feel faint.”
“Fortitude, Mr. Strode. We may have just found the key to unraveling this entire bloody mess. If you would be so kind as to fetch a coat or something similar for our captive to wear, I would be most appreciative. It will be harder for her to slip away once she’s clothed.”
“Clothed? You mean... oh, goodness.” A bit of color returned to his cheeks before he turned away and retreated. All of his bluster and braggadocio faded at the realization of how close he had come to dying. He brushed a hand over his face and went to follow Dorothy’s instructions.
Trafalgar stepped aside to let him out of the room. She looked at Dorothy, who appeared to be crouched in an arachnidian manner. For a moment it seemed as if she wouldn’t say anything, but finally she inclined her head and offered a weak smile.
“Well done, Lady Boone. Lovely detective work.”
“It helps to know in advance that an invisible assassin is a possibility, of course,” Dorothy admitted. “Ivy and I have had our run-ins, haven’t we dear?”
“To be honest, I much prefer the times I’ve ended up on top.”
Dorothy patted the spot where she imagined Ivy’s cheek to be. “Now, now. Just because we’re enemies on this occasion doesn’t mean things won’t be friendlier next time.”
#
Strode returned with a long overcoat, a pair of slacks, and strips of cloth he indicated could be used to swaddle Ivy’s head. Leola had come back from inspecting the kitchen and gladly restrained the invisible woman to a chair once she was dressed. While it was still unsettling to see nothing through the gap in the cloth, and while the top of her head was left exposed, it was now obvious to everyone in the room that she was indeed a person rather than a poltergeist. Even with the confirmation, Strode looked lightheaded. He walked to the longue and stretched out with the slender fingers of one hand across his eyes.
Dorothy waited until Leola was finished with the restraints before she stood up and began her questioning. “First of all, I assume that you were left with instructions to frame someone else for this attack. Who was it?”
“Arthur Whitmore.”
“And what is the name of the person who actually hired you?”
Ivy scoffed and shook her head. “You’ll have to work a little harder than that, Dot.”
Dorothy smiled and leaned down, lining her eyes up with the wider strip where Ivy’s eyes should have been. She lowered her voice to a seductive coo. “Oh, come on. No special favors for an old friend?”
“Neither of us got where we are in this business by handing out special favors.”
“An exchange of services, then. If you tell us what we want to know, we’ll make sure you don’t get done up for attempted murder.”
Strode slapped his hand down on the table. “She entered my home uninvited and planned to murder me! I hope you don’t expect me to turn a blind eye to these crimes.”
“Ivy was working at her client’s behest. If we take the client out of contention, her employment will be terminated and she’ll no longer have a quarrel with you.” She raised an eyebrow at Ivy. “It’s the only way for you to come out of this unscathed. No client, no outstanding assignment, no connection to the string of murders and attempted murders all across London.”
“What you said is true?” Ivy asked. “Someone tried to kill you?”
“And succeeded in killing several others. I fear their work is not done yet. We’ve spent the morning traversing London in an attempt to stop his plans, but it would be much easier if you could simply tell us who hired you.”
Ivy considered that for a moment. “He didn’t give me his name.”
Dorothy smiled. “When has that ever stopped Ivy Sever? Come on. You must have done some digging before you attempted to murder a stranger for him. Tell us what you found.”
The shoulders of her borrowed coat rose and fell as Ivy took a deep breath. “Fine. Looks like talking is the quickest way out of this. Felix Quintel.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” Dorothy said.
“I have,” Trafalgar said. “He wants power, prestige. He does the same work we do, to a point, but his endgame is what he favor he can curry with the items he brings back. He wouldn’t think twice about raiding a tomb or pillaging a holy site for a few baubles.”
Dorothy chewed her thumbnail. She had heard of treasure hunters like Quintel, but she’d never had the misfortune to run into any of them. They rarely lasted long, either shunned by the establishment or punished by the local tribes whose relics were being defaced. Quintel was eliminating anyone who could potentially stand in his way. If that was the case he wouldn’t think twice about slaughtering anyone at his destination who might protest an expedition.
“Where can we find Quintel?”
“Easier said than done. I used all the resources at my considerable disposal and all I got was a name. Believe me, I looked. The man has firewalls and contingencies like you wouldn’t believe. I’m lucky I got his name. I have no idea what the man looks like or where he has his offices. You can waste your time looking but I assure you, you will not find him.”
Dorothy stood up and brushed her hands together. “Then perhaps it requires the resources of more than one person.” She turned and looked at Trafalgar. “You and I have been at odds since before the war began. But one indisputable fact is that you were a worthy adversary for me, and vice versa. We are both very good at what we do, Miss Trafalgar. Quintel expects to eradicate us while he hides in the shadows like a coward. We are an extremely fractured group. We compete against one another. We lack trust in each other. He’s counting on that to make his plan succeed.”
Trafalgar nodded. “It’s the only way his plan of framing us would even work.”
“He managed to hide from Ivy, which is no small feat. We’ve managed to combine forces today for the greater good. We may have saved a few lives in the process. I propose that we continue this partnership in the interest of stopping Quintel before he can cause any further harm. He wouldn’t have gone to such great measures on a single day unless he was planning something big. I would like to stop him, but I doubt I could do it alone.” She held out her hand. “What say you?”
Trafalgar stared at Dorothy’s outstretched hand for a moment. Finally she reached out and took it. “To obtain justice for Adeline, and the other deaths Quintel is responsible for.”
Dorothy squeezed Trafalgar’s hand. “I believe that’s a cause I can support.”
“Are we really going to let her go?” Trafalgar asked, nodding to where Ivy was still strapped to the chair.
“But of course. How else can we follow her to meet up with her client?”
Ivy cleared her throat. “Pardon?”
Dorothy smiled. “Consider it the terms of your surrender and release. You’re going to lead us back to the man who hired you and, with luck, he will lead us directly to Felix Quintel.”
#
After checking to make sure Strode would recover from his shock, Dorothy suggested that Trafalgar ride with her, Beatrice, and Ivy. Leola was hesitant but Trafalgar argued that they would have to start trusting each other eventually. She also understood it would be easier to keep track of Ivy with more people in one vehicle. She and Boone sat on either side of the invisible woman in the backseat of Boone’s car for the ride back to Ivy’s base of operations. Beatrice drove, and Leola waited until they were on the road before she pulled away from the kerb to follow.
Ivy’s offices were located in the Barbican Estate, near a bastion of the ancient London Wall. The area had been horribly damaged by air raids during the Great War, and every building they passed bore some measure of damage. Dorothy recalled the terror of the first raids, hearing London’s aeroplanes flying overhead with rail guns blazing while something in the distance exploded with ground-shuddering force. Production of their own airships was quadrupled so they could meet the enemy on equal ground, and the air above London became a battlefield. Dorothy recalled the newspapers that urged people to relocate to hovels popping up in the Underground, which reminded her far too much of H.G. Wells’ time-traveling novel for comfort. Eventually the German airships were sent back where they had come from. London’s bumblebees took up sentry along the coast to deflect any further attacks, and the city began to slowly rebuild itself.
Ivy directed them to one of the many buildings that was still waiting to be repaired. Its neighbor had been completely demolished, either by the initial bomb or by residents who were afraid it would collapse if left on its own. A handful of windows on that side of Ivy’s building were covered by wood or plastic that bellowed and caved in with the passage of the breeze. Dorothy found it hard to believe they were only a mile or so away from her home on Threadneedle. If the Germans had dropped their bombs just a minute earlier...
She pushed the thought out of her mind. They were escorting an invisible troublemaker onto her own turf. A moment of distraction could be all it took for Ivy to give them the slip. She unlocked her office and dutifully waited in the hall while Beatrice and Leola, unenthusiastic allies due to the agreement between their employers, examined the office for booby traps or secondary exits. Once they had the all-clear, Ivy was allowed inside.
“I have pancake makeup and some clothes through there.” She gestured at a door behind the desk. “It might make it a little easier for you to trust me if you can see me.”
Beatrice checked the room and made sure there were no windows, but Dorothy insisted on leaving the door open enough that they could watch her while she changed.
Ivy chuckled. “You just want to peek.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“Flirt.” Ivy shed the coat she’d taken from Strode as she entered the room, the rags unwinding themselves from around her head and rising to drape across a coat hook. There was a surprisingly dainty vanity mirror hanging from one wall, decorated with brass accents and small lights that cast a solid glow on the empty space in front of it. A small canister rose from a shelf next to the mirror and the cap unscrewed itself. As Dorothy watched, Ivy applied some of the cream to her fingers and began spreading it across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
Dorothy met Ivy while they were both investigating a self-described inventor named Colin Pettigrew. He was a grave robber who raided buried cities and sought out lost civilizations solely to find evidence of what he believed to be a long-forgotten advanced society that existed before the rise of humanity. In 1912, Pettigrew discovered a hidden cache deep in the Peruvian Amazon that he believed belonged to such a society.
One of the items he brought back was a sealed jar carved with a formula for a chemical compound of unknown properties. He managed to produce a sample of the compound before Dorothy tracked him down. She tried to stop him from imbibing it and their confrontation quickly turned into a brawl. Ivy stumbled upon the laboratory during their fight and tried to use the opportunity to steal away with the compound for herself. Pettigrew tried to stop her by opening fire on her, but he only hit the sample she had stolen. The highly unstable and untested compound exploded in her hands. Pettigrew fled, but Dorothy couldn’t leave the screaming and terrified Ivy behind.
By the time they reached the hospital, Ivy’s skin had turned a peculiar shade of pink. When the first doctor arrived on the scene to examine her, every vein and muscle was visible through the thin resin her skin had become. Though they had never met, Ivy clutched Dorothy’s hand like a lifeline. Dorothy had initially stayed simply out of curiosity; she watched with detached amazement as the fingers squeezing hers turned to pink muscle and then bone. By the time the bone vanished, Dorothy could no longer feign separatism and admitted she was terrified for the poor girl.
The doctors were completely stumped by her vanishing act. She was bathed thoroughly every hour, her skin rubbed until it bled. The blood curiously only became visible a few seconds after it had left her body. Droplets appeared on the floor around the bed, and only after the rags seemed to blossom after being tossed aside did they realize what was happening. Dorothy stayed with Ivy until the doctors kicked her out. They kicked Ivy out of the hospital a few days after that. She was taking up a valuable bed and far too often a nurse tried to place a patient on top of her without realizing.
Ivy eventually came to terms with her new state, embracing it, in fact. Her work as a private investigator had never been easier. She got used to wandering the streets of London in the nude. What did it matter if no one could see her anyway? Eventually she tracked down Dorothy, the stranger who refused to abandon her in her darkest hour, and they struck up a tenuous friendship. Ivy often took jobs Dorothy didn’t agree with, and Dorothy’s strict guidelines about what was and was not fair game conflicted with Ivy’s, but they couldn’t make the leap to consider themselves enemies.
In the intervening years Ivy had made quite a few adjustments to make up for her new reality. She wore makeup to meet with clients, she hid the fact her eyes were invisible by wearing tinted eyeglasses with blinders on either side. She shaved her head, since letting her hair grow out would be all nuisance with no benefits, and doing so allowed her to wear a variety of wigs when she was “presenting herself,” as she liked to call it.
In the small room next to Ivy’s office, her visage was slowly coming back into view. She had a Greek nose, flat between the brows and straight along the bridge. Her eyes were spaced widely apart and, if Dorothy remembered correctly, had originally been green. At the moment they were simply dark craters where she hadn’t bothered to detail the lids or wrinkles. She instead focused on her cheeks and her wide mouth, applying crimson powder to her bottom lip before rubbing it against the top. She ran her fingers down her throat to the curve of her shoulders.
Her round spectacles and a long brown wig covered the parts she hadn’t covered with makeup, and she returned to the room like a bust come to life. She put on a blouse, buttoned it to the collar, and then covered it with a black vest. A pair of gloves twitched in midair and then inflated to give shape her hands. She put on a pair of trousers and shoes and, with those final touches, appeared to have manifested an actual human being out of several disparate parts.
Trafalgar and Beatrice seemed to be the most impressed by the transformation. Dorothy smiled at the sight of her old acquaintance and gestured at the wig.
“New hair?”
“Thought I’d try it. What do you think?”
“It suits you.”
Ivy smiled. Trafalgar recoiled and Ivy grunted. “Oh. Sorry.” She opened a tray on her desk and pulled out a set of veneers. She snapped them over her real teeth, smoothed her tongue over them, and smiled again. “I sometimes forget to put in the caps. Sorry.”
“No apologies necessary. It’s quite a remarkable gift.”
“I’ve decided to take it as such, yes.” She scooted her chair forward and flipped her journal open. Dorothy took one of the client seats in front of Ivy’s desk, while Trafalgar took the other. “I spent three weeks tracking down Felix Quintel. After the first week I began to suspect he was merely a figurehead. Just a name used by a conglomerate of people to strike fear into their competition. But then I found this.” She turned the journal around so they could see her sketch of a circle with a cursive F cutting through the center of it. The lower part of the F was stylized to give a tail to the circle.
“F and Q,” Trafalgar said. “Felix Quintel left a calling card? Where?”
“Carved on the stone entrance of a tomb in Jordan. His people were the ones who carved it, but as far as I can tell he didn’t make that particular trip himself.”
Dorothy said, “So the name acts as their brand. Just because they mark the man’s name doesn’t mean he actually exists.”
“I thought the same thing. But I looked into some of the goons who were present on the majority of Quintel’s expeditions. I found their names on passenger manifests of nine different airships heading to the continent, as well as to South America, India, and the Middle East. I figured they were his most loyal employees, so I dug as deep as I could on them. They all receive payments signed by F. Quintel. As far as Barclays is concerned, he exists. And he has a lot of money to throw around.”
Dorothy said, “You tracked him to a bank account, but you couldn’t follow that thread to a flesh and blood person?”
Ivy held out her hands. “And what does that tell you? I know where he lives, but even I couldn’t get into the place to confirm he was there. The place is a fortress. He has a guard posted at the door and security watching the perimeter. Even if I got in, I have to believe there would be countermeasures even I would have a hard time getting past.”
“You’ve had it easy,” Beatrice said. Dorothy turned to look at her, and Beatrice shrugged. “It’s true. She’s gotten so used to slipping through places unseen that she doesn’t know how to avoid a normal security perimeter.”
Dorothy said, “Do you think you could do it?”
“I’d have to see the place first,” Beatrice said, “but I got into your place, didn’t I?”
Dorothy grinned. “That you did.”
Beatrice said, “I’d have a good shot by myself, but with Ivy’s intelligence and if Miss Trafalgar is willing to loan me Leola, I think we’d stand a better than fair chance of robbing the National Gallery.”
“We’ll save that as a possible victory celebration.” She stood up and faced Ivy. “Miss Sever, kindly point us toward Mr. Quintel’s home. We shall see how much of a fortress it truly is.”