The Matriarch and I both looked at Molly, thought about it, and winced pretty much simultaneously.
“That . . . is a truly disturbing thought,” I said.
“You could never take charge of the Droods,” the Matriarch said coldly to Molly. “You’re not family. Even if you should eventually marry Eddie, which a whole lot of us doubt, that still wouldn’t make you one of us. Only a pure-blooded Drood can be Matriarch.”
“Yeah,” said Molly. “Because that’s always worked out so well in the past.”
“If we could just tiptoe back into the realms of reality,” I said. “We have something important to discuss, Matriarch. I came here to talk to you about something specific, and I will not be stopped or diverted.”
“You’ve made that clear enough,” said the Matriarch. “I can’t believe you’ve done this to us, Eddie. Untold damage, injured family members, and chaos everywhere. All because you couldn’t be bothered to make a proper appointment, like reasonable people.”
“There’s no point in being reasonable with this family,” I said. “I have tried it, and it never works. Because it takes two to be reasonable.”
“What do you want, Eddie?” said the Matriarch, meeting my gaze unflinchingly.
“You know what I want! You promised me the family would use all its resources to track down my missing parents! It’s been months since they vanished from the Casino Infernale in France, and you haven’t come up with a single damned lead!”
“We’ve been busy!” said the Matriarch. “The world doesn’t just stand still because you’ve got a problem! We have to hold Humanity’s hand and blow its nose, and protect it from a thousand different threats it doesn’t even know exist, all day and every night, with never a break. And there are, after all, very real limits to this family’s time and budget. We deal with the most important matters first. Everything else . . . has to take its place in the queue. Charles and Emily aren’t even officially members of the family any more. Like you, Eddie. You walked out on us, remember? Turned your back on family duty and responsibilities so you could run off to work with your precious grandfather in the Department of Uncanny. Who, let us face it, have never been more than second-raters in the secret organisation stakes. And you think you have a right to demand full access to the family’s limited time and resources?”
“After everything I’ve done for this family?” I said. “Damn right I do.”
Even I could hear the dangerous chill in my voice. The Matriarch looked away, unable to meet my gaze.
“The general feeling is,” she said finally, “that if Charles and Emily are still missing it’s because they want to be.”
“Don’t give me that,” I said. “This family can find anyone, if they want to. Ethel!”
“Yes, Eddie!” said the warm, comforting voice, from everywhere at once. “Welcome home! Always good to have you around. You do liven things up so. Did you bring me a present? You know I love presents.”
“Yes,” I said. “But you’re very difficult to buy for. What do you get the other-dimensional entity who is everything? Come on, Ethel. Why can’t you just See where my parents are? I thought you said you could See anything, anywhere.”
“I can! I can See everything that exists, and a good many things that shouldn’t. I can See things you humans don’t even have concepts for. But your parents remain . . . stubbornly elusive. They don’t have torcs, so I can’t track them that way; and when I try to look for them . . . wherever I look, they aren’t there. So I can only assume they’re no longer in this world.”
A cold hand clutched at my heart. “Are you saying . . . they’re dead?”
“I didn’t say that. There are, after all, all kinds of realities. Some so distanced from this one, or so carefully concealed, that even I can’t look into them. My abilities are very limited by my current circumstances. You have no idea what I’ve given up to take care of you Droods.”
“If you want all of our resources turned loose on your private problem, Eddie,” said the Matriarch, refusing to be left out of the conversation, “if you want to ask a personal favour from the family, you’re going to have to do a favour for the family.”
I looked at her slowly, consideringly, and to her credit she didn’t flinch.
“I just knew that was coming,” said Molly. “Didn’t you just know that was coming?”