Read Online Book 3 - The Spy Who Haunted Me by Simon R. Green - Free Book Online

crowns and regal robes, surrounding Big Aus. He looked from face to pititless face, mumbling his useless words of power, and then they closed in on him, and he screamed. And just like that, I was alone in the Jewel Room.
    The Kings and Queens of England had returned to their rest with one new ghost condemned to defend the Towers of London for all eternity.
    I went back down the curving stone stairs, back through the stone passageways and across the open courtyard, and then out through Traitor’s Gate. No one tried to stop me or ask questions. If a Drood field agent was leaving, then the trouble was over, and that was enough. Outside on the causeway, the sun was up and morning had come. It looked like being a good day, for England.

CHAPTER TWO
    Summoned to Judgement, Summoned to Tourney
    S o; previously, in the Secret Histories . . . My family used to be ruled by a Matriarch, my grandmother Martha Drood. But I discovered that the family had become corrupt and divided under her rule and that she was party to an old and terrible secret at the heart of the Droods’ So power. So I turned against my family, brought my grandmother down, destroyed the awful Heart from which our power came, and took over running the family myself. I replaced the alien Heart with an interdimensional traveller that preferred, for inscrutable reasons of its own, to be called Ethel, and I did my best to change the way the family did things, introducing democracy for the first time.
    I organised free and fair elections to decide who should run the family, and they voted overwhelmingly for Martha Drood.
    I did consider killing her, blowing up the family home, scattering the Droods to the four corners of the earth, and generally acting up cranky, but basically . . . I couldn’t be arsed. They’d made their choice; let them live with it. I had overthrown the Zero Tolerance faction within the family, destroyed the evil Manifest Destiny conspiracy outside the family, and saved all of humanity from the invasion of the Hungry Gods . . . and I just didn’t have it in me to fight another war.
    Besides, Martha did have the experience, and she had mellowed, and the Heart was gone, so . . . I just let her get on with it. I went back to being nothing more than a field agent again, with no more crushing duties and responsibilities and decisions—which was, after all, what I’d always wanted.
    I was still part of the Matriarch’s advisory council, to which she was, technically, obliged to explain herself and if necessary answer to. The family insisted. Thanks a whole bunch, family. And if Grandmother should go to the bad again, I could always kill her, burn the place down, scatter the family, etc.
    The advisory council consisted of myself, my uncle Jack the Armourer, my cousin Harry, and William the Librarian. But not my girlfriend, the wild witch of the woods, Molly Metcalf, even though she had served with honour on the previous council, during the Hungry Gods War. In the end the Droods wouldn’t accept her in a position of authority over them, because she wasn’t family. If she were to marry me, that would be different, of course. But Molly is a free spirit and not the marrying kind. So she left the Hall and returned to her own private wood. I could have gone with her. I wanted to. But I had my duty, to my family and to the world, and through everything that’s changed I still believe in the importance and necessity of what I do.
    Molly understands. She’d never been happy in the Hall anyway.
    I have my own room in the Hall, with a good view, and I also happen to possess a handy little item called the Merlin Glass that allows me to jump straight to where I’m needed. It’s also a direct doorway to Molly’s wild woods. I spend as much time there as I can. Distance and family and duty are not enough to separate or divide us.
    Molly and I love each other. In an ever-changing world, it’s the one certainty I can rely on.
    I was always happiest working