Sitting in the small, plain, but tidy little room on the third floor of an ancient stone house in Providence, Michaela dialled a phone number on a landline that had been there since telephones had come to private citizens. It rang thrice before a young man’s voice answered in Romanian.
‘Bună, Cine este la telefon, vă rog?’
‘Well, hi, sugar, it’s Michaela, how’s every little thing?’ Michaela said warmly, thickening her accent because she knew they found it charming, particularly the young man she was speaking to; and she needed all the charming she could muster for calling the Voivode during the day.
‘Miss Van Helsing! Hello,’ Claudiu said, his English pleasantly accented, but less so than his father. ‘Things are well here.’
‘Glad to hear it, darlin’. Can I talk to the Voivode? It’s mighty important.’
‘Yes, a moment please.’ There was the sound of the phone being gently set down—Michaela felt the pain of realising how nostalgic that sounded, these days. But there weren’t cell phones or electronics in the castle, or the village; the vampire eldest’s hearing wouldn’t tolerate such noise. The copper line of the phone and electricity was quite enough to tolerate. A lower, more archaic version of Claudiu’s accent spoke, after the phone was picked up again.
‘Domnișoară Van Helsing.’
‘Voivodul Drăculești,’ Michaela said politely. ‘I have news of something that concerns all of us, though I think it is for the better rather than the worse. What do you know of Cthulhu?’
⁂
Academia was the one place the Mummery was thin. The sort of immortal being that went into academia was not inclined to ever interrupt their research to fake their own death, after all, and tenure was forever. Yet because of its insular nature—and due to academics being notoriously good at following the letter of draconian rules while breaking them in spirit—academia was forgiven Immortal Beings That May Or May Not Be Vampires Exist being segreto di Pulcinella.
There was use in having someone in the antiquities department that had been studying history since Università di Bologna had been founded. Dottoressa Antonella Maria Chiara Liliana Rosa Di Napoli presided like a dragon empress over the archives—all of them—and guarded them with all the smiling promise of violence of the best librarians. These days, she had an assistant, solely to help with digital matters,* and it was Bidetti who answered the phone down in the archives, that very few had the number of.
‘Pronto.’
The answering language was not Italian but Romanian-accented Vulgar Latin, which meant only one thing.
‘Resti in linea, prego,’ Bidetti said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, and very gently set the phone down, going to find Dottoressa. There was only one person who ever would speak fluent, vulgar Latin to Dottoressa, and he had only called once before, in Bidetti’s lifetime.
‘Dottoressa?’
‘Hm?’ came the irritated grunt; but she was always irritated when interrupted, and was currently bent over cleaning a new acquisition with a very tiny brush, a loupe clipped to her large, boxy spectacles.
‘É…’ Bidetti swallowed hard.
‘É? É? É? É chi?!’ Dottoressa snapped, sitting up and pulling the loupe up, peering at Bidetti with her dark eyes narrow.
‘I-il Voivoda, Dottoressa.’
Antonella sucked her teeth, and swore impressively all the way to the phone.
‘Che cosa vuoi, vecchio bastardo?’ she asked, when she got there, because she had always firmly believed that scholars were outside the hierarchy of society.
‘Good evening to you too, Doctor,’ came the reply, smooth as silk, the Latin a pleasure to the ear, despite the slight accent to the vowels. ‘I have an assignment for you. There are books that will be arriving soon. When they do, you must attend to them immediately, and find out all you can.’
‘Hmph! Find out about what, exactly?’ but she switched to the common language they shared as a mark of respect. The Voivode did not speak Italian well, despite his mother tongue being its cousin; and she did not speak Romanian well, particularly the very local and medieval dialect he did. But they were both of them old enough that Latin had been the lingua franca of the world, not French (thank God!).
‘The entity Cthulhu has been finally released, and the Seers have begun to bestir themselves, particularly the American Cults, and we must keep ahead of them.’
‘I’m in agreement with you on that, at least,’ she admitted grudgingly—she hated to agree with anyone.
⁂
The Switchboard was run out of Rochester, because Rochester had been the first high-tech city, and the Switchboard was that old. During the advent of radio and telephone service spreading across the world, just after the Treaty, the first act of cooperation between vampires and Hunters was to set up a private phone network; and, unlike the other phone companies, that had phased out copper and switched to the lower quality of VOIP, The Switchboard still remained copper. Vampires didn’t believe in upgrades, they believed in maintenance.
It meant that, in a small office building in Rochester, there had always been a telephone exchange. The ground floor was taken up by various shops over the years, and was currently an antique shop, because antique shops were quiet. The building was well-insulated and entirely wrapped in a faraday cage, because what use had they for wifi signal when everything was hard-wired? Privacy was critical, and there were enough ancient vampires with deep enough coffers to maintain such things.
The Operators were all carefully vetted, a mix of elder Hunters and monsters; but they weren’t the only part of the Switchboard—there were servers that hosted the ongoing body of information that Hunters used, from maps of various sorts of activity to a log of every hunt since 1880, this maintained, added to, edited by slightly younger Wizards.* It was carefully locked and warded, unhackable by virtue of not being connected to anything that wasn’t also in the room with it. Monsters and Hunters both believed in the security of hard copies, which could only travel so far, and could be burned.
Where the Old World operated their database in old universities guarded by vampire librarians, the New World had the Switchboard, just as carefully guarded by everyone.
When the Red Phone rang at two-fifteen that afternoon, it was picked up by the wizened, well-manicured hand of Diane, who had manned the Control Desk since time immemorial. She was A Woman Of A Certain Age, always perfectly dressed and made up exactly how one expected a really efficient secretary to be, smelling faintly of jasmine and sandalwood perfume.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said, with the perfect, accentless, crisp diction coloured by the low, smoked timbre of her age. ‘This is Diane, how may I be of service?’ She listened to the reply, and said, ‘Attendi, ti sto trasferendo, grazie.’
⁂
At the very top floor of the building that held the club that had once been known as The Black Cat, but was now under new ownership, which had yet to decide on a name, a very beautiful telephone rang, and a very well-manicured white hand picked it up.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Gaz, darling, how are you?’
‘Oh Gazzy! How are you, old thing?’
‘Much piqued by a rumour flying about, my dear, and I simply had to call and ask you all about it.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Hello! Hello, old bitch!’ said a glossy Hyacinth Macaw cheerfully, from where she’d just landed on her perch on the roof. She was ancient, having lived many lifetimes longer than she should due to the blood her human fed her—accidentally, when he’d first gotten her; but now she knew the command “bite”, and he’d taught her by using himself.
‘Is that your parrot again?’
‘Yes, our Grizelda loves the telephone,’ he said, as she climbed on his shoulder and started preening his golden hair. ‘But what rumour, my dear? Spill, as the hep cats say, the tea.’
‘Well! I heard that your captor has kicked the bucket, and killed by some manner of pagan god, called down by a witch. That can’t be true,’ was an invitation for a reply that assured it was.
‘Hmm, some manner of, I suppose. He insists he’s merely a student of linguistics and was defending a friend—oh, twice. I suppose you heard that She Who Must Be Obeyed is dead as well?’
‘Yes, I think every one of us in the grave felt her departure,’ came the rather more sombre answer. ‘And the witch? Was that Her Majesty?’
Roseblade giggled, always liking Gaz’s particular way of mentioning Victoria. ‘No, he’s new. And he likes monsters. She Who Must Be Obeyed scared him off, but he’s returning to us now. I do hope he stays. We can invoke the law to make him, of course, but I’d rather he chose to stay here with us. He likes pirates!’
‘How lucky for you then,’ Gaz said, in characteristically English tones of affectionate derision, as Grizelda chuckled like the old woman she was, and fluttered to the railing of the balcony, strafing back and forth and turning around to look out. She screeched warningly at a sparrow, scaring it off before it could decide to nest on her balcony.
‘Well, perhaps lucky for those of us who decide to stay,’ Roseblade amended. He was still undecided; on the one hand, he had never intended to make port here forever, and resented being held hostage and his ship being burned by Diedrich, and he wanted to go home, to London; and then perhaps to sail around pirating ships again. On the other hand, if he left, he would not ever get to know Aix… and René would likely have him fully tied up (literally and otherwise) by the time Roseblade came back to visit.
‘You? Come back here? Only to claw out the eyes of that wretched harpy, I hope.’
‘Which harpy is that?’ Roseblade asked; Thatcher was dead already….
‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard of her, with how she’s trying to wipe out the T of LGBT.’
‘Oh! Oh, her. Well, it’s a pirate’s prerogative to kill and rob a pirate-hunting aristo, of course.’
‘Good luck accessing her money when it isn’t gold and jewels, my pet.’
‘Bitch,’ Roseblade said affectionately.
‘Whore,’ came the reply.
‘Cunt!’ Grizelda said gleefully, delighting in her human’s laughter.
‘In any case, you can’t come back to London. I won’t have it.’
Roseblade snorted. ‘I think Lord Rackstraw will have something to say about it if you try and stop me.’
‘Oh no he won’t.’
‘Oh yes he will!’ Roseblade chanted.
‘You haven’t any idea what that means.’
‘Oh that was low,’ Roseblade said, hurt, ‘even for you, that was low.’
‘You’re not welcome on these islands, Roseblade. I’m prince and I won’t chance you getting it into your head you want to unseat me.’
‘Can you afford to make enemy of me?’
‘Like this? Yes. Try your luck in Paris, or any of the old territories on the continent. Or Ireland.’
Roseblade shrieked a laugh that was incredulous. ‘And chance The O’Malley? No fear! Ireland belongs to her and always will.’
‘As England is mine. Look, Roseblade, I understand you wanting to leave as soon as you can; but you’re quite a lot older than most of us who survived the War, now, you have to understand we aren’t going to welcome you with open arms, surely?’
In that moment, it hit Roseblade—Gaz was afraid of him. And why shouldn’t he be? He couldn’t truly stop Roseblade if Roseblade decided to show up at his door, and couldn’t fight him head-on and come out on top. He was only a couple of centuries old, and Roseblade had been born before the Norman Conquest. The War—vampires and other immortals only ever called it the one war, not two—had changed the whole world, theirs as well, mostly by extinguishing whole bloodlines, leaving the New World full of ancients who had once been the young bloods.
Except for Roseblade. Roseblade and René had just been unlucky. Roseblade had just caught up to René after thinking the boy lost forever, was planning to get him drunk and kidnap him out of this American whorehouse and sail off with the tide. Roseblade hadn’t seen the trap Diedrich had set until his ship was burning and his human crew dying all around him in the fight at the brothel that had become his prison.
‘But I don’t want England,’ came a far-away voice that sounded like a Roseblade in shock, as though he were just realising it. ‘I just want my ship back.’
Gaz… wanted to laugh it off as a lie, but… that tone of voice gave him pause. He’d never heard that tone of voice from Roseblade before, in all his years knowing the man’s voice (nearly a hundred). He’d never even heard surprise, let alone shock. And he was very, very good with voices, with tones, with all details of people and their idiosyncracies. It was how he made his way in the world.
He considered all he knew about Roseblade, about Roseblade’s reputation. He’d spent many eventful decades as a pirate—a very long career for a pirate; most averaged months, with The O’Malley being the exception. If he’d wanted power, he could have taken it—anyone who controlled the weather could bring famine, flood, hold entire countries ransom. You weren’t supposed to; but there were ways to gain power, even in secret. Mistress was so named for her expertise in using a woman’s power in a world of kings; Gaz had his charisma and his followers, and knew that—if he wanted to—he could orchestrate the new kind of stochastic terrorism. He had no intention of doing so; but he knew he could. He didn’t have the long-rooted connections his peers had, but he had something they didn’t understand—he was the first of the vampires to really grasp the internet, and social media, and that was power like theirs, but spread out over more than simply London, or even England. He’d helped Roseblade and the others with taking a little power from Diedrich, making their brothel relevant in the new millenium; but that was small and local and still based in the physical world.
And Roseblade never grasped for more.
‘That was low,’ Gaz decided to say, ‘I am sorry I said it.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps… perhaps I have assumed you are too much like myself, despite all evidence to the contrary.’
‘Thank you, my dear. I know it pains you terribly to apologise.’
‘One gets used to it, being an Influencer,’ Gaz said, with a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘there’s a copy of your ship sailing about.’
‘Yes, the Audacity II. Privately owned, was an actress portraying most of the ships in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.’
‘Privately owned by an old family friend of mine, as it happens,’ Gaz said. ‘I could look into the particulars, maybe whisper in his ear about an excursion to Baltimore?’
‘Oh!’ was said with shocked joy, before, ‘Well! Buy a girl a drink, first!’
Gaz laughed; if Roseblade was back in Cabaret Mode, things were all right again between them. ‘I do own a stake in a small gin distillery,’ he said, already dashing off a message to the head distiller to prepare a case of the newest batch for shipping to the states. ‘And I know he’d find it thrilling, having the man himself appear to commandeer his ship,’ he mentioned idly.
‘Ooer! Is he hot?’
Gaz made a very expressive, very modern sort of high-pitched hum. ‘He’s not unattractive, I suppose? If you’re into that sort of thing?’
‘It’s a simple question, Gaz,’ Roseblade pressed, though it was teasing. That noise had been an answer in and of itself—though not any indication; Roseblade’s taste in men was decidedly more broad than Gaz’s, and less focussed on fashion. That Gaz didn’t find him attractive could mean he did not dress to Gaz’s exacting standards, or Gaz had simply known him as a child and couldn’t see him that way, or any number of other things that wouldn’t apply with Roseblade.
‘I’ll send you a picture,’ Gaz said. ‘In the meantime, I have to cut this short; I’m livestreaming while I sew tonight, and I haven’t had lunch. Ta ra.’
‘One last question before you go, poppet. Do you still make suits?’
‘For other people with interesting shapes, yes.’
‘Well, our witch needs a few, and I’ve a feeling we’ll be called to Council soon, so perhaps…?’
‘And he’s an interesting shape?’
‘A customized shape, you might say.’
‘Tell me more.’
So, Roseblade did. He knew very well Gaz no longer made suits for people with the average human shape; he only made them for what he referred to as “interesting” people. To most humans, “beauty” was symmetry, thinness; to most humans, male beauty added toughness and strength to these. Not to Gaz. Gaz preferred the ways fat made human bodies gain a breadth of variety, a mutability, that they didn’t have while thin. Like Roseblade, he preferred those men who mixed gender traits in their appearance—purposely and by accident of birth. Like all vampires, he tended to prefer the mature to the youthful. To them, Roseblade knew, Aix captured the imagination so powerfully he held it hostage for ransom. All the more, Roseblade knew, because Aix’s imagination was so powerful. Roseblade had met powerful imaginations before, but the thing about humans was that their imaginations just kept getting more powerful, faster, ever since the dawn of mass media.
He told Gaz all of this, knowing from all his years as a whore how to push a man’s buttons—particularly a man he knew. By the time Gaz tore away and finally hung up, Roseblade was sure that Gaz would pressure a meeting of the Grand Council, sure enough to start looking for luggage.
1 Bidetti had at least convinced her that digitising the collection would go far to help preserve the information should the originals be—God forbid—lost. Dottoressa had needed no convincing about making the collection freely available to the public, though—Dottoressa was from a time when literacy was a privilege, and believed that if you could read it, you deserved to know it.
2 This was a job title, one that the Wizards were very pleased about. It had nothing to do with magic, other than the fact that information technology seemed like magic to most people, even those who worked in the field.