Rook

of the lift, and it felt conspicuous.
    “So, Ingrid,” Myfanwy said conversationally. “Do you ever get tired of purple?” The secretary turned surprised eyes on her boss, but before she could answer, the doors opened.

5
     
    Dear You,
    I’m not bipolar, I’ve just had a bipolar life foisted upon me.
    My personal life consists of my coming home, sitting on my couch with a bowl of popcorn, and combing through long and tedious files.
    My professional life consists of long hours of general executive responsibilities broken up by… well, as an example, this evening at work I had to deal with a visiting Argentine government official who spontaneously manifested the ability to create animals out of ectoplasm. The only problem was that she couldn’t control these animals, and it happened in the middle of the city of Liverpool.
    The first I knew about it was the flashing of my office lights. I’m not entirely certain who arranged to have the lighting in the Rooks’ offices and quarters hooked up to the Panic Lines, but it has taught me to flinch violently when a lightbulb ceases to work. It’s not even necessary, strictly speaking, because if there’s something big happening, my desk phone flashes a red light and rings with a particularly shrill tone, my mobile phone rings with a different shrill tone, and a message pops up on both my computer screens.
    All of which happened tonight.
    I then had details flung at me. Four civilian deaths. Thousands of pounds’ worth of property damage. The Argentine woman seemed to be having a nervous breakdown, and no one could get near her because there was a herd of ghostly green tarucas, jaguars, and llamas surrounding her.
    At that point, my palms became soaking wet, but my mind was absolutely dry. I’m good in a crisis, but it’s not because I’m not afraid. I’m always afraid. I’m so stressed I want to throw up. But I am good in a crisis because I am very, very good at making preparations. I try to cover every angle, to plan for every eventuality.
    As you’ve probably figured out.
    But back to the newly spawned luminous fauna of Liverpool. The man on the other end of the phone was the shift commander for the Crisis Office, which was located in London.
    “Our troops have been mobilized?” I asked.
    “Liverpool teams are either out there or on their way, but this is looking to be major,” he said, and I could hear concern in his voice, which was very worrying. Crisis officers tend to be the calmest people in the entire organization. Possibly the calmest people on earth. If this one sounded worried, then I could almost believe there wasn’t going to be a city of Liverpool the next morning. “I’m not certain that they will be able to handle this,” he continued.
    I opened a spreadsheet and scanned down until I found what I wanted.
    “There’s a team of final-years from the Estate doing covert maneuvers half an hour away from the city limits,” I offered. “We’ll dispatch them for initial assistance.”
    “Is that legal?”
    “Yes. According to the charter of the school. One sec.” I held the phone away and called for Ingrid to inform Frau Blümen. Then I returned to the call. “What’s the situation with the press?” I asked.
    “None so far” came the tense answer over the phone. I could hear people in the background being frantically busy. “There’s been some chatter, but we got this very quickly.”
    I weighed the situation and took a deep breath.
    “Cut the city’s communications,” I said.
    “Excuse me?” came the startled response.
    “Do it, and call me back when it’s done—wait, Lewis! Are you there?”
    “Yes, Rook Thomas.”
    “How dark is it there now?” I asked.
    “What?”
    “How dark is it there? It’s ten past six in the evening here, and it’s dark. Liverpool is farther to the west than us, so the sun will have set later there. How dark is it?” There was an indistinct voice behind Lewis. “What did he say?”
    “He said it’s dark there. As dark as here.”
    “Okay then… we’ll have to cut the entire power supply. We need a blackout,” I said, wincing at the problems this was going to cause. “Now.”
    “We can do that?” he asked.
    “Rookery techs have placed backdoor computer entry into the power facilities of the sixteen biggest cities in the UK,” I said, revealing the existence of a project I’d initiated nine months ago.
    “I never heard about that,” he said.
    “It’s… restricted.”