Live and Let Drood

“I really wouldn’t. Take it from me: That boat has sailed. Far too many people in that place now know Eddie and Shaman are the same man. No one’s actually given you up yet, but you can bet good money there’d be a race to drop you right in it if you were to push your luck. Give them time to calm down, and they might let you back in as Shaman. But right now the very least they’d do is set the hellhounds on you and blow your secret identity right out of the water.”
    “But they will calm down?” I said. “Eventually?”
    “Who can say?”
    I looked at her thoughtfully. “You could always…”
    “No, I couldn’t,” said Molly. “I’m banned, as well, just for knowing you.”
    “Ah,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
    “Don’t be! I’m not. Never cared much for the Wulfshead, anyway. Bit too elevated for my tastes. And it’s gone so upmarket these days…so up itself it’s practically staring out its own nostrils. And the bar prices suck big-time.”
    I smiled. Molly can be very loyal in her own way. “So, where do we go for answers?”
    “There’s always the Nightside.…”
    “No there isn’t,” I said, very firmly.
    “Oh, come on, Eddie! I know there are long-standing pacts between your family and the Nightside, keeping you all out…for reasons I have never had properly explained. But that can’t apply now, when you’re the only Drood left!”
    “Nothing’s changed,” I said. “If I did go in there, on my own, in defiance of the pacts, they’d come straight at me with malice aforethought.And, anyway, I don’t want anyone in the Nightside knowing my family isn’t around anymore. You couldn’t hope to ask questions and still keep it quiet. I don’t want the world knowing the Droods aren’t in charge anymore. When the Droods are away, the rats will run riot.”
    “I could go into the Nightside,” said Molly. “I’ve got lots of contacts there. Not very nice contacts, perhaps, but I’m sure they’d give me all kinds of help once I started banging heads against walls.”
    “No,” I said. “They’d only wonder why I wasn’t with you, start asking questions of their own and we’d be back where we started.”
    “You don’t trust me on my own in the Nightside, with all its temptations. Do you?”
    “No, I bloody don’t.”
    Molly smiled, satisfied.
    We both stood around for a while, trying to think of somewhere we could go, of people who might be persuaded to tell us useful things if we were insistent enough, in an intimidating sort of way. But approaching any of the usual unusual suspects would be bound to raise more questions than answers. The truth about my family’s…situation was bound to get out sooner or later, but I didn’t want to do anything that would make it sooner rather than later. I needed time to get to the truth—and whoever was behind it.
    “We could always go into London, down Grafton Way,” Molly said tentatively. “Pay a polite and very under-the-radar visit to the Order of Beyond. We did go there once before, remember, when we were trying to track down Mr. Stab.”
    “I remember,” I said. The Order of Beyond rounds up people who’ve been possessed by all the various forces from outside and then locks them up in cages and listens to them. Because the possessed do so love to talk. The Order slips in a few pointed questions from time to time, and sells whatever answers they get to the highest bidder. (You can subscribe to their monthly newsletter for the more basic stuff. I’ve never been tempted.)
    “I don’t think so,” I said finally. “We wouldn’t learn anything we wanted to hear from those sources. Hell always lies.”
    “Except when a truth can hurt you more.”
    “Exactly.”
    “All right. You suggest someone!”
    “How about the Middle Man?” I said, just a bit diffidently. “He wouldn’t know who was behind something as big as this, but he’d almost certainly be able to point us in the direction of someone who would. For the right price, of course.”
    “Eddie, he hates your family. You know that. You even hint at what’s happened to them and he’d break every record there is getting the news out to absolutely everyone. He loathes and despises everything Drood, and with more good reason than most.”
    “We are a much-misunderstood family,” I said.
    “Oh no, you aren’t.”
    “Well, who is there we can safely talk to?” I said. “Who is there we can trust with this information?”
    “We need my