"Where did you get your hands on a restricted device like a portable door, Shaman?"

"Found it on eBay," I said.

Time continued to pass pleasantly, and by the early hours of the morning I was drifting through a drunken haze and chatting up a giggly sex droid who’d dropped in from the twenty-third century to do some research for her dissertation on strange sexual hang-ups of the rich and famous. She was tall and buxom and one hundred percent artificial, sweetly turned out in a classic little black dress cut high enough at the back to show off the bar code and copyright notice stamped on her magnificent left buttock. Her fizzing steel hair was full of sparking static, her eyes were silver, and she smelled of pure musk. She ran off a nuclear power cell located in her lower abdomen, which was just a tad worrying, but then, no one’s perfect.

"So, what brings you to the Wulfshead?" I asked.

"Just playing tourist," she said with a smile so wide even Julia Roberts couldn’t have matched it. "I’ve got so much more spare time since we finally got unionised. Let’s hear it for Rossum’s Unionised Robots!"

"Down with the bosses!" I said solemnly. "Work is the curse of the drinking classes."

"Oh, I love my work," she said, batting her huge eyelashes at me. "It took more than one man to change my name to Silicon Lily."

And that was when my mobile phone rang. I was not pleased. The only people who have that number are my family, and I shouldn’t have been hearing from them so soon after a completed mission. It had to be some kind of bad news, and almost certainly more mine than theirs. People all around me scowled at the phone in my hand and gave me significant looks; you’re supposed to turn off all communication devices before entering the Wulfshead. I hadn’t thought to, because the family so rarely bothers me when I’m on downtime. I smiled weakly, shrugged apologetically, blew a quick kiss to the sex droid, and retired to a more or less private corner to take the call.

"I thought I told you never to call me here," I said coldly.

"Come home," said an unfamiliar voice. "Come home now. You are needed for a personal briefing on an urgent mission."

And that was it. The phone went dead, and I slowly put it away, my mind racing. Another mission, already? That was unheard of. I was guaranteed at least a week between missions. Too much work in the field, and you burn out fast. The family knows that. And why did I have to go home to be briefed? Ordinarily they send me my mission brief, and whatever hardware I might need, via a blind postal drop that I rotate on a regular basis; and then I just go off and do whatever needs to be done and do my best not to get killed in the process. Make my report to Penny afterwards, and then go to ground till I’m needed again. The family and I maintain a civilised distance, and that’s the way I like it.

I scowled into what remained of my drink. The phone call had shocked me sober again. I really didn’t want to go home. Back to the Hall, ancestral home of the extended Drood family. I hadn’t set eyes on the place in ten years. I left right after my eighteenth birthday, to our mutual relief, and the family sent me a regular and (fairly) generous stipend guaranteed to continue as long as I continued to work in the field. If I ever chose to give up my career as an agent, I could either go home or be hunted down and killed as a dangerous rogue. That was understood. They allowed me a short leash, but that was all. I was a Drood.

I left home because I found the weight of family duty and history more than a little suffocating, and they let me go because they found my attitude a pain in the arse. I’d kept myself busy, down the years, accepting assignment after assignment just to avoid having to go home again and submit to family authority and discipline. I liked the illusion of being my own man.

But when the family calls, you answer, if you know what’s good for you. I was going home again, damn it to hell.

In the morning. Tonight, there was Silicon Lily…

CHAPTER FOUR

Home Is Where the Heart Is

The sun had only been up an hour or so when I finally left my comfortable little flat tucked away in an enclosed square in one of the better parts of Knightsbridge. The place cost more in rent every week than the family sent me in a year, but I once did the owner a favour, and now he picks up the tab. And in return I keep very quiet about exactly what the succubus had been doing in that flat before I exorcised her. (Let’s just say I had to burn the bed and scrub down the walls with a mixture of holy water and Lysol.) The brightening sky still had streaks of crimson in it, the birds were singing their little hearts out, the noisy bastards, and the day felt fresh and sharp with the anticipation of things to come.

I’m not normally a morning person, but it had been a really good night, thanks to Silicon Lily. She’d vanished from my bed in a crackle of discharging tachyons about an hour ago, leaving me with the memory of a wink and a smile and the scent of her perfumed sweat on my sheets. Damn, they know how to live in the twenty-third century. I took a few deep breaths of crisp morning air, yawned abruptly, and brushed vaguely at my blue jeans, white shirt, and battered black leather jacket. Good enough for the family. I don’t normally believe in getting up at the same time as everyone else, people who actually have to earn a living, but I had a long day ahead of me. I unlocked the garage under my flat with a Word and a gesture, and then backed my car out into the cobbled courtyard. I revved the engine and it roared cheerfully, and I had to grin as I thought of heads jerking up off pillows in flats all around the square. I have to get up early, everyone gets up early.

I swept through the almost empty streets of London, ignoring red lights and speed limits and marvelling at all the empty parking spaces. London just after dawn is a whole different place. A few partygoers were still stumbling home, clutching empty champagne bottles and the occasional traffic cone, and I waved cheerfully to them as I passed. We twilight people have to stick together.

I was driving my Hirondel sports car, the powder blue convertible model, with the top down, and the wind ruffled my hair affectionately as I headed out of London and aimed for the southwest countryside, going home to meet the family. I’d had hardly any sleep and only a rushed breakfast of milky cereal and burnt toast, but there’s nothing like a night of really good sex to stave off a hangover. I powered down the M4 motorway, through grasslands and open fields and cultivated countryside, enjoying the run. I sang lustily along to the Eurythmics’ Greatest Hits in the CD player, doing harmonies when I couldn’t hit the high notes. That Annie Lennox has got a hell of a range.

The Hirondel is a 1930s model, perfectly restored, but it also has many modern extras and some extraordinary options, courtesy of the family Armourer. Who firmly believes in every member of the family being prepared for enemy attack at all times. He also believes in doing unto others before they get the chance to do it unto you. As a result of his very talented work, speed cameras can’t see me, my license plate is Corps Diplomatique so the cops don’t bother me, and any car that makes the mistake of getting too close can suddenly find itself experiencing severe engine problems. For those who insist on getting too close, I have fore and aft electronic cannons capable of firing two thousand explosive fléchettes a second, flamethrowers, and an EMP generator. If you ask me, the Armourer’s seen too many spy movies. I prefer to put my faith in driving like a bat out of hell and leaving my enemies behind to eat my exhaust.

I turned off the M4 near Bristol, by now crooning along to Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man, and quickly left the main roads behind me as I headed deep into the countryside. I drove down increasingly narrow roads until I was well off the beaten track, and the roads became lanes, without even any road markings or cat’s-eyes down the middle. The morning air was sharp and fresh, filled with the scents of recently cut grass and the unmistakable presence of cows. The southwest is dairy country. Small towns gave way to even smaller villages and hamlets until finally the lane I was following just petered out into a dirt track, deeply churned by heavy farm vehicles. I kept going, slower now, following a winding way through dark and brooding woods, golden shafts of sunlight forcing their way through the general gloom like spotlights full of dancing dust motes. I braked sharply to avoid hitting a badger the size of a pig as it wandered across the road, and it actually had the nerve to give me the evil eye before scurrying off into the undergrowth. Deer watched me silently from the sides, their eyes gleaming in the shadows.