“Drink your tea.”
Alice lifted the cup to her lips.
Mrs. Kew turned to Hazel. “What do you think, dear?”
Hazel continued to regard Alice steadily. “I think Agent A is agood servant. She needs no reminder that, after all the resources poured into creating her, she belongs to A.U.N.T. and no one else. Her feet are firmly on the ground and her head nowhere near the clouds. I am certain A.U.N.T. can rely on her from here on.”
Alice listened to this praise and understood it for the warning it was. She half expected Hazel to bring out a birch switch for reinforcement.
At that thought, her back and thighs tingled, reminding her unnecessarily, but vividly, what it would feel like. She blinked, and tea trembled in the cup.
“Good, good,” Mrs. Kew murmured. “So we can confidently reassign her?”
“I believe so,” Hazel said. Alice swallowed dryly, for, in all her years as an agent, she’d never heard a death threat so clearly stated.
She imagined Daniel sitting in some other room in this building, getting the same message. She remembered his fingers hard on her jaw as he kissed her into peace. Just the two of them ensconced in a tiny, safe bubble of love, pretending it could last for longer than a bubble ever did.
“We care about you, A dearest,” Mrs. Kew was saying, her voice like a cuddle from someone wearing a cardigan—the soft, fluffy wool kind that itches your skin and leaves you with a rash. “We are doing this for your own good. You’ll leave straightaway. Agent O is waiting to accompany you to Bath, where he will introduce you to your new mission subject. First, though, you’ll need to be outfitted in servant garb. We’ll have that dusty dress burned.”
Alice nodded, not even glancing at the dress Cecilia had gifted her, not touching its soft material or inhaling the delicate scent of it. She set her teacup on the table and went to rise—
And then paused.
“My books?” she inquired. “I left them in V-2’s care.”
Mrs. Kew’s laugh fluttered through the lace-fretted lamplight. “Oh goodness, don’t worry about them!”
Alice exhaled in relief.
“They will be discarded once V-2 returns to London. Can’t have my star agent distracted on the job, can I? No, dear, better just to read the A.U.N.T. operations manual from now on.” She produced a smile as sharp and pitiless as the thorns along Daniel’s spine.
Alice curtsied to her.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.
26
daniel is tranquil—reflux—alice is tranquil— redux—butlerama—daniel takes a hot bath— all’s well that ends well
No words. He had no words.
He stood outside A.U.N.T. headquarters in the waning light and absolutely could not think of one single word. They had taken away his books—that didn’t help.
They had taken away his heart.
“It’s not safe to see her again,” they’d said, pouring him another cup of tea, not even disguising their movements as they tipped tranquilizer into it—because they were not idiots, giving unpleasant information to a man who could reach over the table and kill them in seconds then sit back down without even wrinkling his suit. Of course they would tranquilize him. Everyone understood this; there had been no need for obfuscation.
“She’s already gone,” they’d said, watching him drink the tea.
Not long after, the medical officers had inspected the empty cup, frowning in bemusement. “Exactly how much tranquilizer did you give him?” they’d asked the debriefers.
“Clearly not enough,” the debriefers had answered from where they lay, bleeding and bruised, on the floor, amongst the shards of furniture. Then, catching sight of Daniel sitting quietly against one wall, waiting for the mess to be cleaned up, they’d whimpered and wailed and had to be carried to the sick bay.
He’d gone on sitting there alone for a while longer. Maybe hours. Maybe days, for all he knew. He’d stared at the white walls, overwhelmed by their vividness, and by the roaring volume of the silence, and worst of all by the snarling, weeping tangle of his own thoughts. Finally, a squad had entered, dressed in black combat attire, guns aimed at him. He’d been handed a book, and the squad had backed out again.
It was a paperback edition ofAnna Karenina, and it got him up off the floor, out of the room, and all the way out of headquarters. No one stopped him—no one was in sight at all, but he could sense them behind locked doors, waiting for him to go.
Mrs. Kew met him on the street outside. “Cupcake?” she asked, trying to hand him something pink-iced and so sweet-smelling his olfactory senses nearly imploded.
