zg_shadows | Ghoul tat

"Natasha. I want you to go to York for the week."

The voice broke into deep concentration, but long practice enabled Natasha to crimp the last claw of the setting into place before looking up. This was not the first time Miss Allen had had a sudden and incomprehensible need to pack her off to some distant part of the country, and it wouldn't be the last.

"Are you sure, Miss Allen? I thought you didn't want me to go to York since you thought I might be... compromised." There was no note of reproach in her voice. She was quietly rather proud of that. It would take more than some Dominated compulsion to make her betray Miss Allen. Miss Allen should have known that.

"Just go, Natasha. You're leaving tomorrow. And I don't want you to talk to anybody in London while you're there."

"Even you, Miss Allen?" Natasha queried tentatively, beginning to worry. This suggested either some ambitious political scheme or a mission of great danger, and she didn't like the idea of either.

"I won't be contacting you," Miss Allen responded, devastatingly. "So if I do, it won't be me, it will be someone impersonating me."

"Yes, Miss Allen," Natasha said, her sense of worry sharpening. So Miss Allen was protecting her from someone. Someone who might pretend to be her. Mr Face? He was the only one she could think of that would panic Miss Allen this badly, and he had been at the court all these months without her ever seeing him for what he was. Though surely she could tell. Surely.

"Oh," Jade tossed over her shoulder as she turned to leave, "You might talk to Katherine Neville while you're there. See if you can help her with anything."

"Yes, Miss Allen," Natasha said in an external voice that sounded very calm while she panicked inside.

***

Natasha sat in the York workshop and mangled another piece of silver wire. Her attention ought to be on her work, but instead it was all focused on the neat black shape of the phone that had sat at her desk, silent and motionless, for the past three days.

She wasn't sure whether she wanted it to ring or not. She needed to know Miss Allen was all right. She needed to hear her voice, the sharp, angry inflections that said she worried about Natasha, the abrupt orders that she had to give to protect her. She wished she wasn't so stupid at politics, that Miss Allen wasn't forced to grab her and pull her aside from people she should have known better than to talk to.

She lingered in the warm glow of the memory of Miss Allen's fingers, sharp and cold and bruisingly brutal on her arm, as Miss Allen had yanked her away from Face. The harsh actions and words that told her her domitor was so scared for her that she ignored, for a few seconds, the social niceties that ruled her life. It was one of her favourite memories, one to be taken out and cherished at moments like this, when Miss Allen was far away and in danger...

The phone rang. Natasha stared and then she picked it up, butterflies forming in the pit of her stomach as she recognised Miss Allen's number. She pressed the answer button.

"Miss Allen?"

"Natasha. I need you to cancel whatever else you're currently doing and start work on an Abyssal Bangle."

Her gut froze solid. It was Miss Allen's voice. It was Miss Allen. She couldn't mistake her. She couldn't.

"But Miss Allen..." she said weakly.

"Don't argue. Just get on with it."

"Yes, Miss Allen," Natasha said miserably as the phone went dead in her hand. She stared at it.

Which order was she meant to follow? Miss Allen did change her mind, and if that's what had happened she would be vicious if she found Natasha still working on commissions and a bangle nowhere in sight. But if that hadn't been Miss Allen (oh, but it was, it was Miss Allen, surely she could tell?), then there would be only icy disdain and silence when Miss Allen came home and found that she had done something she had been ordered not to...

Natasha stared at the phone as if it held the answers. There was only one thing to do, of course, for a loyal ghoul who trusted her domitor.

But oh, what if she were wrong? What if she were letting Miss Allen down when she was needed? And what, oh what, was happening back there in London?