Live and Let Drood

kind. You really are everything I hoped you’d be.”
    I looked him up and down and then dismissed him to glare at Mr. Stab again. “How did he hire you? What could he possibly promise you?”
    “An end to my curse,” said Mr. Stab.
    “There is only one end for something like you,” I said. “And that’s to kill you. And I’ll do that for free, for what you did to Penny.”
    “And for so many others,” said Mr. Stab. “Funny how it’s always easier for you to care about the ones you knew. And, anyway, you already tried, and failed.”
    “But this time I’ll hold you down while he does it,” said Molly. “You promised me I could trust you.…”
    “Promises are made to be broken,” said Mr. Stab. “Who should know that better than I?”
    “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t you dare try and make us feel sorry for you. Not after everything you’ve done.”
    “I stood beside you,” said Mr. Stab. “Stood with the Droods whenyou went to war with the Hungry Gods. Helped you save the world. Shouldn’t that count for something?”
    “What do you want?” I said. “A thank-you?”
    “I tried! I tried because I didn’t want to be a monster anymore!”
    “Then what are you doing here with Crow Lee?” said Molly.
    “Because sometimes it takes one monster to destroy another,” said Mr. Stab.
    “Well,” Crow Lee said brightly. “Isn’t this nice? Old friends talking together. Thank you for joining me here in the Club Library, Eddie.”
    “Call this a library?” I said. “A collected Dickens and a few Trollopes?”
    “If you’ve quite finished chatting with the hired help,” said Crow Lee, determined to draw everyone’s attention back to himself, “we do have matters of importance to discuss.”
    Molly and I both looked at him, and he wriggled delightedly in his chair, enjoying himself; a disturbing movement in one so large. He looked me over, taking his time. Still ignoring Molly.
    “I never thought I’d have to look at a Drood again,” said Crow Lee. “But then, you’re like cockroaches, aren’t you? So many of you, and so hard to kill. But worth the effort.”
    “So you admit you’re responsible for the attack on Drood Hall?” I said.
    Crow Lee laughed happily. “Admit it, little Drood? I boast it. I glory in it! I’ve known all about Alpha Red Alpha for years and years, just waiting for someone in your family to be foolish enough to use it. I had the remote control, you see, the means to override the mechanism, but…”
    I cut in. I knew he was teasing me, but I just couldn’t help it. I had to know.
    “How did you get your hands on the remote control? Who did you get it from?”
    “From the same person who first told me about Alpha Red Alpha,” Crow Lee said easily. “You have a traitor in your family, dear Eddie. A very old and very well-established, very well-hidden traitor. And I havealways been so very well served by traitors. He hates you even more than I do, and with much better reason.…But as I was saying before I was so impertinently interrupted…I had to wait for someone in your family to feel so threatened that they’d actually risk using Alpha Red Alpha, before I could use my remote control. You see, you have to lower all the Hall’s protections before you can activate the dimensional engine. They interfere with its workings, apparently. Can you imagine what it was like for me, learning that you’d used the thing at last? And that all I had to do was wait for you to return and then hit the button on my special remote control? No, you can’t imagine what it felt like, knowing I finally had the means to send your whole stupid, interfering family away, forever.…
    “I struck while you were vulnerable, and just like that, you were gone! Good-bye, Droods, forever! Rotated out of reality and dumped somewhere else. I do hope it turned out to be somewhere really appalling.…I sent them there and I left them there, and I laughed and laughed and laughed.…”
    “And then you dropped the other Hall in its place,” I said, and something in my voice stopped his laughing. “To hide what you’d done.”
    “Oh no,” said Crow Lee. “That was just a happy accident. An entirely unanticipated and fortuitous side effect. I did enjoy it, though. A wrecked and ruined Hall and dead Droods lying everywhere—what’s not to like? They weren’t the actual family I hated, but they were Droods, and I’m sure I would have hated them if I’d known them.”
    “You