Elle stalked back into MIB headquarters that evening, in a filthy mood and with her eyeliner running. It was bloody hot outside. She had no idea how the cute little college goths could stand walking around with white pancake on all day in weather like this......at least the Transylvanians looked like that naturally.......
The coffee room was, as ever, staffed with Vermars. Three of them were in the process of embezzling the next month's supply of Viennese Cinnamon Dark Roast while one stood lookout; Elle was just too tired and cross to say a word as they attempted to hide the vacuum-sealed foil bags of coffee behind their skinny little backs, and merely demanded a cup of whatever they'd left.
"Elle!" Iggy crowed, scuttling over to the burners. "What's with the Queen of the Undead outfit, baby?"
She flopped into a chair and removed the stiletto ankle boots. "Don't start with me," she warned the worm. "I've had to deal with the living pretending to be the dead all day."
Mannix 2 handed her some coffee. "Ah, you're undercover with that freak convention thingy," he said, understandingly, grinning. "Nice."
Elle looked down at herself; she was dressed in clothes that wouldn't have embarrassed Serleena—painted-on black vinyl dress, fishnets, opera gloves. Her hair had been teased into a confection of black-dyed braids and her face made Neeble 2 and Gleeble, sitting on top of stolen coffee bags, want to ward off the Evil Eyeshadow. Despite herself, she grinned.
"You guys think it's me, huh?"
The worms were mesmerized by her torso. "Oh, yeah."
"Well, that's just too damn bad," she told them, "because there is no way in the sixteen cold hells that I am doing this again. Someone else is gonna have to go undercover."
Jay poked his head in the door and caught the end of the sentence. "Thank God," he said. "I've gone through some shit in the course of this job but I ain't never wearing vinyl pants again." He disappeared down the corridor at speed, but not quite fast enough to evade the worms, who tore their gazes from Elle's chest and galloped off after him in the hope of getting some possible blackmail pictures. Elle had to laugh—the funny, unfair thing was that Jay looked even better in vinyl pants and a floppy black shirt than he did in the normal MIB uniform, which was saying quite a lot. She got up, wincing as her blistered feet yelled at her, and followed the sounds of carnage down the hall. That bloody song was running through her head again. By the light of day I'm not much of a man....but by night I'm one hell of a lov-errrrrrrrr...... She shook her head. A very bad training film, but there was something about Tim Curry in heels...........
Neither Kay nor Sea were in the main room, which surprised Elle. She'd have thought neither rain nor snow nor near-death at the hands of a peeved Mertagensian would keep Kay from his duty, and the same went for Sea—but nevertheless their desks were empty, and she shrugged as she walked on, ignoring the other agents' catcalls, to the locker rooms and the hope of a shower. Who could she convince to take over the undercover duty at the convention, she wondered. Who on earth would look even remotely convincing in those wretched clothes.......?
Sea woke to find herself not—as was often the case—curled in the passenger seat of Kay's LTD, nor yet slumped over her desk in the echoing headquarters hall, but in her own bed in her own apartment, with the TV on and the shower running.
Slowly images from the night before began to tabulate in her head, and an idiotic goony smile tugged at her mouth. She'd never broken so many departmental rules at once before, and certainly she couldn't remember having slept so deeply or so well since..............the accident.
She sat up, pulling the tumbled sheets around her, and squinted at the TV. It was still early, the Good Morning New York programs were on, flashing obscenely cheerful smiles at people whose jobs got them out of bed at five in the morning. They were showing scenes of a crowded hotel ballroom, full of people dressed in......
Ah. She paid attention. The dais at the far end of the hall was draped in black and purple with little pictures of skulls and coffins on it; signs on booths lining the room read "Spooky Press," "Dank Doom Darkness and Destruction Clothiers," and so on. They were clearly having some sort of keynote address, but before Sea could gather anything of importance, the picture cut back to the television studio and the cheery presenter smiling a rather thin smile. "Yes, folks, that's the exclusive GothiCon '02, going on at the Harborplace Marriott through this week. Many people don't understand this movement among today's young people, but I am assured by Dr. Guthrie Bloggs of the Sociological Institute that it is a harmless and natural phenomenon. In other news, sales of black wigs and fetish gear have rocketed and the NYPD is on alert for incidents like yesterday's so called vampire attack in the East Village."
Vampire attack? Sea reached for her cigarettes. What the hell is going on? And what does all of this have to do with the assassinations we're expecting?
"Vampire attack, my ass. Some dumb kid got carried away." She looked up. Kay, already impeccably dressed minus jacket and tie, toweling his hair, was leaning against the doorframe and regarding the TV sourly. "She's had a nice new rejuvenation treatment," he said, indicating Summer Gleason, the presenter. "When she landed here back in 1975 she looked just like that. Hasn't even bothered to change her hairstyle."
"Good morning to you too," she said, grinning. Kay was always bitching about age, generally his. He transferred his gaze to her, and his scowl turned into a grin. "When'd you wake up?"
"Half an hour ago," he told her. "Coffee?"
She squinted."What have you done to it?"
He sat down on the bed with a long-suffering sigh. "Nothing. You don't even have coffee sugar, you horrible woman."
"I wasn't expecting company," she said, sliding out of bed and stretching. He watched, running an appreciative gaze down the marimba of ribs thus displayed. "Maybe I should have Iggy steal me some Bavarian Hazelnut Boysenberry Grapefruit, or whatever it is this week."
He chuckled. "Salzburg Tunafish Mandheling, I should think. Zed's getting a bit exploratory in his tastes, even for me."
"You?" She grinned. "You are the man, are you not, who yesterday purchased with a straight face a cup of something called 'Gottingen Raspberry Mocha French Vanilla Double Latte'?"
"That," said Kay, "is classified."
Some time later he let her go and she got her cup of coffee—plain, ordinary, non-European coffee—and was allowed to assume some clothes. She wasn't surprised when he gave her black lace undies a considering look—that was more or less expected, with Freddie's of Hollywood foundation garments, her only vanity—but she wasn't expecting the professional frown. "What?" she asked. "You don't like?"
"I like," he mused, "but I'm thinking that perhaps we're on the wrong track here." He gave her a cryptic, measuring look and got up, rummaging through her underwear drawers, completely ignoring her startled cries of protest. "Ah," he said, pulling something out. "Here. Put this on."
It was one of her oldest possessions, something she'd picked up in the heady, stupid days of college, which she'd only kept because of a few beer-sodden memories that clung to it. A black satin lace-up corset top, vintage Bettie Page stuff, with spring-steel boning and eyelets from which the chrome was beginning to flake. It crushed her waist down to nothing and made her secondary sexual characteristics stand to attention, and she hadn't worn it in years and years and years, and she couldn't for the life of her imagine why Kay wanted her to put it on now. Kinky.
Nevertheless she suffered herself to be squashed and lifted and adjusted and laced into the garment, pulling the old bootlaces as tight as she could, and gave him a questioning stare. "What?"
He swallowed; she could see the bruising on his throat move as the muscles worked. "You haven't by any chance got any really stupid shoes? And a garter belt?"
"What the hell is all this about?" she demanded. "I mean, if you want me to dress up like a cheap Fifties whore, just ask."
He impaled her with a look and reached for his coffee. "Don't be stupid. If I were motivated by prurient interest, you'd already know."
She had to admit that one. "Okay, but what are you getting at?"
"Shoes." He pointed to the wardrobe.
Some time later, she stood in front of a full-length mirror, arrayed in an old pair of dance fishnets, a garter belt, the corset, a black velvet skirt she'd meant to throw away because of the rips in it, her old clubbing stilettos, and a trenchcoat. Kay was frowning thoughtfully at her. "You can do the makeup, of course," he muttered. "Yeah. It's a lot more convincing than Elle."
"Kay," she said with steel in her voice (and, it felt like, in her spleen), "my ribs are killing me. What is this all about?"
"You haven't figured it out? You're going undercover."
Her jaw dropped. Kay gave her a quick smile, tilting his head, and closed her mouth with a finger. "This is a better look for you. And try to look excitingly bored and obsessed with vampires, would you?"
He marched her into headquarters. The clove cigarette in its long black holder was making her feel a trifle dizzy, but it was nothing to the looks she was getting from every other agent in the place. She felt rather as if she was wearing the Emperor's New Clothes. Kay's little understated smile didn't help. From all around them she caught fragments of whispers—who is she? what the hell is he doing? that's not....—and her mind reeled under the onslaught of both simple, disinterested lust and deep red curiosity. She scowled fiercely at Kay, who was walking next to her with his famous impassive look in place, and hissed, "I'm gonna get you for this. You know that, don't you."
Out of the corner of his mouth he hissed back "I can't imagine what you mean......Oh, hi, boss. What do you think?"
Zed had come out of the locker rooms just ahead and was staring, like everyone else, only his stare quickly turned into a wide, satisfied grin. "You've done it again, old friend," he said, slapping Kay warmly on the back. "Never woulda thought of it."
"Thought of what?" she demanded. Just then someone else came out of the locker rooms and her mouth slid open again; it was Elle, but an Elle so thoroughly out of place that it was tantamount to seeing a Supreme Court Justice flitting around in a pink tutu. The other woman wore a long black sheath dress that flared at the knees and had long bell sleeves dragging on the ground; her white makeup and black lips were livid in the unforgiving light of the main hall, and her hands looked unpleasantly square with their two-inch-long black claws. Elle gasped.
"Zed," she said, "this is what you want. I'll just go get changed. She can have the dress."
Slowly and painfully Sea began to understand. The pictures she'd seen of the guests of honour at the GothiCon convention had included a short, buxom woman with a wasp-waist whose outfit had clearly been ripped off Vampira's in Plan 9 from Outer Space, a thin girl with short blood-red hair and plucked 1930s eyebrows in a black vinyl ballgown and a blonde woman in a dark corset, garters, fishnets, stilettos and way too much makeup—the twin, she realized, of the outlandish reflection she'd seen in her own full-length mirror that morning. She was being costumed as an important GothiCon participant, and she was being sent in under what might well prove to be considerable enemy fire.
Later, in the makeup department hastily put together by some of the costume experts, she smoked pointedly and made mental lists of nasty things to do to Kay when next she got him alone. They'd glued fake eyelashes onto her, painted her face pale, slid her into a version of Elle's dress that laced up the front under the corset, and given her black patent leather stiletto boots and a vinyl cloak (these last had necessitated an emergency requisitions trip to the East Village). She was due at the convention in half an hour as "Lady Sepulchravia de Mortuis," and she was ordered not, under any circumstances, to smile at anyone whatsoever. She wasn't sure she could, actually, since the lipstick she was wearing might crack if she tried. The wig was itching, as was the garter belt. She fished in her cleavage for the little pocket recorder, making sure it was there. The Cricket and her communicator were also shoved down the bodice of the dress, and she was reminded of their presence every time she tried to take a deep breath. How the hell do these kids stand dressing up like this? It's like being in an Iron Maiden.
At last they were finished, and she got to her feet with a creak of pressurized steel, swirling the cloak around her shoulders. The training film—if that's what it really was—had put her in a bizarre frame of mind, and as she took the elevator down to the main hall floor, turning to face the little group waiting for her, she felt a strange urge to break out into song. How d'you do, I........see you've met my......faithful handyman.......
Instead she stuck her nose in the air, lit another black cigarette, and stalked toward them, her hips swaying rhythmically in an effort to stay balanced atop the five-inch heels. She felt a right pillock, but it was difficult to twist her features into any expression besides the bored impatience they'd been painted into.
What they saw—was something from the fevered imaginations of Lovecraft, Le Fanu, Stoker, Shelley, Wood and possibly Romero; a woman in black, all black, her white skin alight with an unhealthy pearlescence, her figure impossible, a wasp-waisted silhouette swaying toward them with slow sensual inexorability, her face a delicate and eggshell-perfect nightmare of life in death, her eyes alight with chilly and distant unknowable knowledge, her hands elegant bone, the nails long and curved and pointed as talons, her sharp heels tapping out a slow rhythm on the stone. She was the queen of all the darknesses ever cast; she walked in beauty like the night, she was the sweetness of death. She paused, black draperies swaying around her, menace and intrigue and unutterable beauty swirling in an invisible cloud, and said in a cross Brooklyn accent "Don't get strung out by the way I look, would you? And can someone kindly get me an Excedrin, this perfume is giving me a headache."
Elle shook herself and blinked, grinning, as the men tried to get themselves under control. "You look amazing, Sea," she remarked, giving the corset an exploratory poke, "and you are a much, much braver woman than I. Here, you'll want these." She handed Sea....Lady Sepulchravia....a ridiculous little evening bag, black silk and beads, containing a neuralyzer, one of the agency's cartes noir and an onyx-and-silver case containing more of the black clove cigarettes. "You know the drill, right? Your life is a dark pit of darkness, you are elegantly and impossibly miserable, your sadness is eternal, you thrive in the dark, you're only happy when it rains, your favourite flowers are Erik's roses that bloom only in darkness, etcetera."
She couldn't help it, she grinned, despite the feeling of things cracking on her face. "And I am forever alone in my dark solitude, yeah?"
"You got it." Elle turned to Jay, Kay and Zed, all of whom were still staring like fools. She snapped her fingers a couple of times. "Guys. We're ready to roll. Kay, you cover the outside, Jay, you're with me as backup. We're cool, boss." She led them off toward the motor hall, leaving Zed staring mesmerized at Lady Sepulchravia's retreating ass. "Oh, and Kay," Elle added, mildly, "you better do something real nice for her, after this."
Kay didn't bother to reply. He was still staring. In the car, she was forced to snap her own fingers in front of his face to get him to pay attention to the road. "Oi," she said. "Drive."
He shook himself. "Yeah."
Part of her was a bit flattered, part of her was puzzled, but a lot of her was still very cross at him for getting her into this whole deal, no matter how good he thought she looked in this Vampirella crap. She longed for her comfortable uniform and her sunglasses; she felt as if she was carrying a big sign saying Look At Me, I'm Undercover. They drove in silence all the way to the Marriott.
Kay parked by the front awning, and looked over at her again, his dark eyes utterly unreadable. "Sea," he said roughly. "I...."
"Shh," she said, leaning over and kissing him very quickly and lightly, so as not to screw up her lipstick, and was gone.