Immortal Lycanthropes - By Hal Johnson Page 0,42

I’s house, and I may have been compelled, through no fault of my own, to serve as an instrument, or rather a trusted lieutenant of your enemies, your family itself remains perfectly safe. This status of things was made certain of personally by myself. Their safety remains a priority of both Miss Emanuel and I, and it is my pleasure to inform you that they are residing in a series of luxury hotel accommodations. Their exact location remains uncertain even to someone as knowledgeable as myself.

“If wickeder people had not threatened, if the choice had not had to be made by myself between your enemies and Evelyn—”

“Thank you, Sophie,” said Mignon Emanuel abruptly, her expression neutral. To Myron: “I hope this reassures you for the moment. If you would like to produce a letter, or a voice recording, we will make every effort, through our agents, to bring it to your parents’ attention. Let us all work toward a time when such secrecy will no longer be necessary.”

That seemed fairly final, if unsatisfying. “Okay,” Myron said. “New question. Who’s Evelyn?”

“Loxodonta africana, the African elephant. A terrible nuisance. There are more elements after you than you may know, Myron.”

“Would you like myself to be returned back under the desk?” said Mrs. Wangenstein.

“No, please just stand,” said Mignon Emanuel.

“Last question,” Myron said. “Where am I?”

Later, when Myron left the room, he found Oliver hiding outside, waiting for him. No sooner did the heavy doors boom shut than he sidled up and in a harsh whisper asked, “What did Florence say about me?”

“I don’t think she said anything at all,” Myron said before he remembered that this was not true.

“I am so in love with her. Do you realize she’s the only girl our age in a ten-mile radius?”

“I think she’s older than I am.”

“Miss Emanuel said you were thirteen. I’m almost fourteen, and Florence is probably fifteen. She may be too old for you, but I’m right in the zone.” He wrapped his arms around himself and rocked back and forth. “Oh, Flossie! Flossie! Flossie!”

“Flossie?”

“And did you notice that she’s shorter than me?”

“She’s shorter than a lot of people.”

“She’s more beautiful than a lot of people. I’ll pretend you meant that.” He shook his fist menacingly.

“Miss Emanuel is very good-looking, too,” Myron observed after some hesitation.

“She’s completely unobtainable, and everyone is in love with her, even though she tells them she’s five hundred years old. I should warn you, you should be less saucy around Miss Emanuel.”

“Saucy?”

“I could hear a few things, accidentally, through the door. Not the words, just the tone of voice. And I’ve got to say, no one talks to her the way you do, not even Florence.”

Myron hadn’t meant to be particularly saucy. He was just tired of the runaround, tired of people he loved disappearing. He also rather liked Miss Emanuel, if tentatively, and he didn’t find her intimidating. When he had been alone with her and Florence, he’d had the feeling that for the first time in a long time he was with people he could stand a chance against in a fight.

“Did you see the shape?”

“The what now?” Myron said. He had still been thinking, rather than paying attention to Oliver.

But now, “Come on,” Oliver was saying, “I’ll show you around.”

Show him around where, though? Where was Myron? Michigan was the short answer, but Mignon Emanuel was fairly candid in her longer answer. The house in which he now stood had been built in the 1880s by bad architect Ricardo Canuteson, and then rebuilt, with sounder structure but with the same rococo-gothic façade, in 1903. At more than one hundred thousand square feet, it had been, at one point, the largest private residence in Michigan. Rectangular in design, built around a central courtyard, with two flanking asymmetrical towers.

Myron didn’t know what rococo meant, and scarcely knew what gothic meant in this context. Later, he would look them up, in the pocket dictionary on the bookshelf in his room, and not understand how they went together, until he made it outside and saw the place himself.

During the Depression, the building, and surrounding land, had been bought by the Knights of Pythias, a minor fraternal order best known for having in 1954 invented rock-and-roll music. They sold their acquisition in the seventies to a conglomerate of Qarmathian heretics from Bahrain. And Panthera leo fifteen years later picked it up from them with the money he had made in customized pornography. Originally the idea behind this gold mine