A pack of lies

Part I: In the Hood

Chapter I: Stranger in this town

“B.B. Wolfe and Associates, how may I direct your call?”

“Yes, I’d like to speak to Mr. Wolfe please.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I believe Mr. Wolfe is in a meeting at the moment.”

“Well do you know when he will be out of the meeting?”

She was struggling, she knew, to keep her voice calm and polite, while inwardly dark rage was bubbling up inside her, and threatened to come flooding out. But now was not the time. This was just the receptionist – sounded like a dormouse or some small creature, inoffensive, clinically courteous in the way receptionists are trained to be, perhaps because it pisses people off so much, perhaps because, despite how angry you are you always have to rein yourself in with the thought it’s not her fault. Don’t take it out on her so that by the time you got to the person you really wanted to let fly at, your anger had dissipated like smoke in a strong breeze.

“Let me just check that, dear.”

She sounded old, which made it even more important that tempers must be controlled; some of these old biddies would actually cry on the phone if you got them upset, and if just simply being the one who was not the target of your anger was enough to cool that anger, actually making them cry would evaporate it completely.

So she listened, silently grinding her teeth together as Morten Harkett sang Cry wolf, ooh-ooh, time to worry! Cry wolf, ooh-ooh...

She smiled grimly. Time to worry indeed.

Harkett was cut off in mid ooh as the rodent receptionist clicked back onto the line, the polite regret in her voice already telling the caller what she had expected.

“I’m sorry, dear,” she said, as if it was somehow her own personal fault, “but as I suspected, Mr. Wolfe is indeed in a meeting, and will be there, I’m told, for most of the day.” She wondered if the old mouse was feeding her a line, and had a momentary nasty and not at all fair vision of herself feeding the receptionist to a very hungry snake. She shook herself mentally, forcing the brightest, most nonchalant tone she could into her voice.

“That’s all right,” she assured the mouse, in her mind’s eye almost seeing the relief on the creature’s face as she relaxed. “It’s probably better if I come to see him in person. Can you make an appointment for me?” She left a meaningful pause as she drew breath, steadied herself and forced the word out. “Please.”

The dormouse asked her to please hold on while she checked Mr. Wolfe’s (no doubt busy) schedule, and this time it wasn’t a-ha who sang in her ear but Duran Duran, a snippet of music in which Simon Le Bon assured her that he was on the hunt, after her, and was, additionally, hungry like the wolf. She winced inwardly: no coincidence, surely, that all the hold music had to do with wolves. Were she to be left holding long enough, no doubt she would hear things like Howlin' Wolf, Wolves in the Throne Room, Shakira’s “She-Wolf” and many others. How predictable, and how very arrogant and condescending. But then, what should she expect?

The receptionist popped back into her ears just as John Taylor was gearing up for what amounted in pop music at any rate to a mighty guitar solo. She was glad to hear him go.

“I’m afraid Mr. Wolfe has a very busy week.” She again sounded personally sorry, and being a dormouse, she probably was. “I can pencil you in for next Tuesday, three o’clock?”

Clamping her teeth together to hold in the scream, she nodded, then realised the rodent could not see her, and breathed, in as calm a voice as she could manage, “Thank you, that will be fine.”

The sound of tapping on a keyboard, and then the dormouse asked “And what name shall I say, dear?”

She took another breath, held it, let it out slowly.

“Hood,” she told her, and broke the connection.

It was absolutely intolerable, she complained to herself as she waited in the drizzling rain for a bus which was already ten minutes late. Another whole week! Still, she had waited this long, and there was time yet. A large badger offered her his umbrella, and she forced a plastic smile. His kindness meant that she had to thumb off the ipod she had been listening to, and that of course then meant conversation, meaningful or no. She began with the traditional thank you, and he nodded, making some comment about the weather.

“Long way from Grimmtown, miss.” As he said it, the badger suddenly looked alarmed, in case she might take offence, but she shrugged.

“I have some business here,” she told him, and he nodded, privately thankful that she didn’t seem to be one of those dreadful HRA types. As far as he was concerned, everyone deserved the same rights, be they animal, human or faerie, or anything else, but he knew some humans, being a minority, tended to feel they were treated differently. He, personally, had never done so, nor ever seen anyone else do so, but he had heard stories. Determined to do his bit for cross-species relations, he feigned interest in her story.

“With those guys?” He pointed a large clawed paw at the imposing edifice she had just walked out of. The building, twenty-four floors high and of shining reflective glass off which the rain seemed to glance and skate, frowned down at her in disapproval. In the perfectly-manicured grounds stood a large sign with a stylised wolf howling at a stylised moon at night, the disc of the moon stencilled with letters three feet high which spelled out the words B.B. Wolfe and Associates, Venture Capital. A similar sign, floodlit by banks of halogen lamps so that it could be seen at night, stood on the roof. He whistled. “Looking to get backing for a project? Need money to help you get started? You can tell me, I’m good at keeping confidences.”

She shook her head. She was beginning to regret having snapped off her ipod. Never, though, a good idea to be rude to a morph, especially when you were on their turf.

“Not really,” she told him. “Wolfe and I go way back.” She scowled, though since she was underneath his umbrella the badger didn’t see it. “A long way back.”

“Wow!” He seemed really impressed. “You know Mr. Wolfe? What’s he like? Is he like they say he is? You think he’s going to get the nomination? You know, we could do with a guy like him running things around here.”

She sighed. His enthusiasm, whether fake or real, was tiring her out, and she had not had a good day. Yet she felt a need, a sort of compulsion to explain.

“I have a meeting with him next week, which may change all that.”

The badger looked at her strangely. “You don’t think he will pull out of the race?” He sounded both disappointed and awed. She shrugged.

“He may not have any choice. Not after I -”

She stopped. What the hell was she doing? Why was she telling this complete stranger her business? Was he working a spell on her? No. No, magic was forbidden everywhere except the Kingdom, the Faerie had seen to that. Besides, morphs didn’t have any magic. The fact that they were alive at all was magic in itself.

She opened her mouth to say more, feeling the words tumbling unbidden from her throat to her lips, but at the last moment he stuck his fat paw out as a large green bus huffed up the road.

“This is my bus,” he told her with a shrug of apology, then smiled. “You can keep that,” indicating the umbrella. She smiled at him. It was almost genuine. As he waited for two teddy bears and a small unidentified rodent which she thought might have been a woodchuck to alight, he told her “If you’re coming back in a week I’d get your passport stamped at the town hall. Save you going through Customs again when you return. You can get a seven-day pass stamp.”

“Oh, okay, thanks.” One of the bears scowled at her, splattered with the rain from her umbrella as she turned towards the helpful badger. “Where is that, exactly?”

“Just down there,” he told her, pointing as he hopped up onto the vehicle. “Two doors past the bakery – oh, you should try their gingerbread me-” He cut himself off with the guilty look of someone who fears he may have made a racist comment, and hurried on. “Just ask the clerk for a seven-day special. Won’t cost you a thing. Take care now!”

As the bus sputtered away (he waved from the top as he settled in his seat) it came to her why she had been so ready to share her secrets with him.

He was a badger.

And what do badgers do? They badger you.