Live and Let Drood

sleep a little more safely in our beds, at last. Are you in trouble, Molly?”
    “Perhaps a little more than usual.”
    “I always did have a soft spot for you, much against my better judgement. Like the daughter I never wanted. Lose the Drood, Molly, while you still can.”
    “I can’t,” said Molly. “He’s the only one who ever really mattered to me.”
    Madame Osiris sighed. “And love makes fools of us all. One more question, dearie, on the house, and I’ll see what I can do.”
    “Where are my sisters?” said Molly. “Right now.”
    Madame Osiris raised a heavily painted eyebrow. “Don’t you know?”
    “Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be asking! They’ve got their auras turned off, and that isn’t like them. So where are they?”
    Madame Osiris sat thoughtfully for a long moment, her dark eyes staring off into the distance…and then she sat up straight and shrugged quickly. “Sorry, dearie. Outside my range. But then, they always were. Come on, Molly. You know as well as I do that no one finds Isabella and Louisa if they don’t want to be found. And wherever they are right now, they clearly don’t want anyone else knowing.”
    “But I’m not anyone else! I’m their sister!”
    “Then the question you should be asking yourself,” said Madame Osiris, “is, What could they be up to that they know you wouldn’t approve of? Maybe you should go talk to the Regent of Shadows. He knows everything about everyone. That’s his job description. In fact, it’s probably engraved on his business cards.”
    Molly nodded brusquely and turned to leave. “You do know Osiris is a man’s name, right?”
    Madame O laughed in a good-natured way. “It’s all Egyptian to me, dearie.”
    Molly and I made our way back down the Pier. Neither of us was in a hurry to get anywhere. We both had a lot to think about.
    “Well,” I said finally. “That…was pretty much a waste of time.”
    “Did you know the Regent of Shadows was now in charge of the Department of the Uncanny?”
    “I’d heard rumours.…”
    “Did you know he was hiding out at Big Ben?”
    “Nice to have the rumours confirmed, I suppose,” I said. “Your Madame O gave me the impression of being just a bit rattled by our sudden appearance. She wasn’t pleased to see you, and she definitely didn’t like having me around.”
    “Of course not,” said Molly, smiling briefly. “You’re a Drood.”
    “The point I’m making is, Do you think someone else might havegot to her first? Crossed her palm with a hell of a lot of silver to point us in the wrong direction?”
    “She didn’t know we were coming to see her,” said Molly. “She couldn’t. Hell, we didn’t know until I made the decision just a few hours ago.”
    “But if she can see the Future…”
    “Grow up, Eddie. Of course she can’t! You are so gullible sometimes. That whole Madame Osiris thing is just for show! Just another con for the unwary…It takes a hell of a lot of power to look into all the future timetracks ahead of us.”
    “Someone with real power…like Crow Lee?” I said. “My old tutors always said no one understood the Theory of Magick like Unholy Crow Lee. Molly, is it just me, or is it getting dark in a hurry?”
    We both stopped and looked around us and then up at the sky. Grim, overbearing clouds were forming out over the ocean, filling the sky and cutting off the sunshine. The temperature dropped perceptibly as something leached all the summer’s warmth out of the day. A great grim fog was forming, rising up off the sea and heading straight for the Pier.
    “Okay,” said Molly. “That…is not natural.”
    The fog surged forward, racing across the ocean, and fell upon the end of the Pier like a beast on its prey. It consumed the whole end of the Pier in a moment and then moved slowly, purposefully forward, enveloping the Pier foot by foot. I lost sight of the huge rides and then everything else at the rear of the Pier, unable to see more than a few feet into the thick pearlescent fog. Molly was right: There was nothing natural about this. We both backed carefully away from the fog, sticking close together. We couldn’t risk being separated.
    People farther down the Pier began to cry out as even the everyday tourists sensed something was wrong. Panic moved quickly through the crowds as they felt what Molly and I already knew: that there was something in the fog. Something bad. In ones and twos and then in groups, they headed for the exit.