Faerie Wars 01 - Faerie Wars Read Free Page B

was waiting for him in his office. He wasn't expecting Martha, but sometimes she popped in when she was shopping. Anais would tell her he was out until five of course -- he hadn't bothered to phone in to say the meeting had been cancelled -- but maybe he'd catch her before she left again.

    He walked down the carpeted corridor to his office. Jim Handley came out of a door and collared him about the new presentation. By the time he'd finished with Jim and walked the rest of the way, it was seven minutes after three.

    To reach his own office, he had to walk through the smaller office of Anais Ward, who guarded him the way most secretaries did their bosses. He was a little surprised to find Anais wasn't at her desk, but only a little -- there was a coffee machine down the corridor or she might have slipped off to the loo. He was more surprised that Martha wasn't there either. He'd have thought he would have bumped into her if she'd left in the lift. But maybe she'd gone down the back stairs: she did that sometimes for the exercise.

    He locked his office when he wasn't in it -- some important documents in there -- so he pulled his keys from his pocket as he walked across Anais room. He had the key in the lock and the door open in maybe a second, two at the most. His wife and his secretary were both inside. They were startled, breaking apart at the sound of the door. They'd been kissing.

    'Maybe it was just ... you know, a friendly thing,' Henry suggested, sick to his stomach. 'Women kiss each other all the time.'

    'It wasn't just a friendly thing,' his father told him firmly.

    After a while, Henry said, 'You only found out yesterday?'

    They were bound to divorce. He couldn't see any way out of it after what his father had told him. The funny thing was Dad never said a word about divorce. Or leaving. Or separating or anything like that. But that could change tonight after he had his talk with Mum. Obviously he couldn't just ignore what had happened. Unless, of course, he was hoping Mum would get over it. Did you get over being a lesbian? Henry was so far out of his depth he felt he was drowning.

    For once Mr Fogarty opened the door so fast you'd have thought he was standing behind it. 'You're late,' he said. 'And you look like shit.'

    'Sorry,' Henry mumbled. 'I had to do something for my dad.'

    'You want to talk or you want to get started?' Mr Fogarty had a wiry, old man's frame, no hair at all and on wet days his right hip hurt like hell. But his face looked as if it was cut from granite and his eyes were so sharp they were almost scary.

    Henry'd had enough talk for one morning. 'I'd like to get started,' he said. 'Seeing as I'm late.'

    'Suits me,' Fogarty said. 'I can't get into the garden shed any more. Bin the crap and tidy up the rest. But don't touch the mower.'

    Mr Fogarty's garden was a stretch of dusty-looking lawn with a tired buddleia bush and little else, all surrounded by a high stone wall. The shed was a ramshackle wooden affair that had seen better days. The old boy had pushed three empty wheelie bins outside. It looked as if he was expecting Henry to throw out a lot of rubbish.

    Henry straightened his back. It was going to be heavy, dirty work, but he wasn't sorry. Heavy dirty work would take his mind off things for a while. As he pressed the latch of the shed door, a small brown butterfly detached itself from the buddleia bush and fluttered briefly on to the ledge of the tiny window before dropping to the ground. Mr Fogarty's fat tomcat Hodge appeared out of nowhere to grab it.

    'Oh, come on, Hodge!' Henry exclaimed. 'Don't eat butterflies!' He liked cats, even Hodge, but hated it when they killed birds and pretty insects. The trouble was, once they got hold of something like a butterfly, you couldn't take it from them without killing it yourself. 'Drop it, Hodge!' he shouted firmly, but without much hope.

    Then he saw the thing struggling in Hodge's mouth wasn't a butterfly.

Three

    What Pyrgus