Live and Let Drood

hide my disbelief. “I never knew there were that many still alive, running loose in the world!”
    “I told you,” said the Regent, smiling easily. “It’s my job to know everything and anything that matters. Because you never know when it might come in handy…Can’t hold out much hope for contacting most of them. Too busy with their own little schemes, which my people are, of course, keeping a careful eye on…And I really don’t seehow Crow Lee could have suborned any of them without my agents knowing.”
    “You didn’t know about Miss Mitchell,” said Molly. “And she was right under your nose.”
    “True,” said the Regent. “Very true. I’ll have my people reach out to the rogues, Eddie, but…”
    “Yes,” I said. “But.”
    “Some of them might talk to my people, where they wouldn’t talk to you,” said the Regent. “And I’ll approach the more cautious ones through a series of cutouts, so they won’t know who’s asking. Might learn something useful…Anything else I can do for you while you’re here?”
    “Yes,” Molly said bluntly. “Do you know where my sisters are?”
    The Regent blinked a few times at the sudden turn in the conversation, but he recovered quickly. “Isabella and Louisa? Can’t you just contact them yourself?”
    “Normally, yes,” said Molly. “We’re very close. But for the moment they’ve both got their auras turned off.”
    The Regent looked at me. “Does that mean anything to you?”
    “Not a thing,” I said. “And I know better than to ask.”
    “Oh, good,” said the Regent. “It’s not just me, then.” He looked at Molly. “The last I heard, which I’ll admit is some time back, because it’s never easy keeping up with any of the infamous Metcalf sisters…Isabella was busy investigating an ancient set of stone catacombs deep underneath the Sahara Desert, while Louisa had brought something interesting back from her investigation of the Martian Tombs.”
    “Really?” I said.
    “As far as we can tell, yes,” said the Regent. “If you ever find out how she got there and back, please tell me. We’d really love to know. It seems she took whatever it was she found down to the Black Heir Headquarters, down in Cornwall. They specialise in the study of things left behind after alien contact: bodies, tech, altered people…the usual. Louisa wanted her big find studied by the big man himself, Professor Nightshade. A very impressive mind, by all accounts. Haven’t heardanything about Louisa since. I can put in a request for information direct from Uncanny to Black Heir, but they’ve never been big on sharing. If Louisa brought them something important or valuable enough, they’d never even admit they’d seen her. She could be sitting right there in their office when the call came in, and they’d still deny they’d even heard of her.”
    “And Louisa would just go along,” said Molly, nodding grimly. “She’d think it was funny.…”
    The Regent looked at her thoughtfully. “To be honest, my dear, if your sisters don’t want you to know where they are, there’s probably a good reason for it. Good for them, anyway.”
    “Are you getting worried about them?” I said to Molly.
    “Just a bit,” she said, frowning. “This isn’t like them. We never avoid each other just because we’re doing something we think the others wouldn’t approve of. Hell, usually we’d insist on bragging about it, just to make it clear we won’t be told what to do.”
    “Do you want to take off on your own?” I said quietly. “Go look for them, make sure they’re okay? I don’t mind.”
    “No,” Molly said immediately. “That’s sweet of you, Eddie, but I won’t leave you. Not when you’ve so many enemies around you. You need someone close you can depend on.”
    She didn’t look at the Regent when she said that, but I knew what she meant. Molly has never trusted anyone in the family except me. And maybe Uncle Jack. I looked at the Regent, who was politely pretending he hadn’t understood anything he’d just heard.
    “How long do you think Crow Lee has been planning these attacks against the Droods?” I said.
    “He’s always been one for taking the long view,” the Regent said judiciously. “Miss Mitchell being a very good example. How long did he invest in turning her, just for the one day when she might be useful? God alone knows how long he’s waited for the whole Drood family to be vulnerable.…”
    “So it is