Welcome back to the bad, gentle readers! This latest chapter is one of the good ones – in fact, it's right there next to chapter 16 with the amount of uncontrollable laughter it provoked from me as I read. I don't want anyone to feel deprived of that, so let's get started right away!
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| Pictured: me trying to follow the things I read in this chapter. |
Chapter 18: The Baseball Bat o' "Seriously?!"
Chapter 18 starts with Anemone arriving to the Hotel Bergeron as per Thomas Carstairs's instructions to meet him there, exhausted from bawling and admitting to herself that she's not really in an ideal headspace right now to do spywork. (Then again, is she ever?) We're treated to a paragraph the size of a brick where she thinks about how Burke took a flower in its prime, and then he used it, and he abused it, it was a murder but not a crime. I mean, Anemone starting to sing the Cell Block Tango would actually be fun (and understandable, given Buffalo Burke's courting habits), but no – what really happens here is that she wangsts for over a page about something she never actually heard confirmed by Burke, and only was told about by the guy who openly despises her and wants to make her suffer. I'll spare y'all because I love y'all, but it continues to amaze me just how little faith she has in her dumber half's feelings for her.
After a genuinely lovely description of the sounds and scents of New Orleans – see, I'm not just here to bitch and moan, but bitch and moan I will when the book gives me a reason to – Anemone decides to finally shut up about her paaaaaain and enters the hotel, and I thank her in the name of my poor nerves. The Hotel Bergeron turns out to be a very fancy place with a very elegant concierge, and she asks in French for her dad under the fake name he told her to ask for. Holy moly, some actual spywork in this spy story! Color me impressed.
I then stopped being impressed when Anemone, left alone in a parlor to wait for her dad, immediately stops thinking spy stuff and goes back to her paaaaaain... then when Thomas Carstairs steps through the door, she quite literally throws herself crying into his arms.
SUPER MEGA SPY!
Is now really the time for that?
Mr. Carstairs is somewhat taken aback, to put it gently, by what Anemone's POV narration calls "silly tears". Not going to disagree there. After Mr. Carstairs tries to clumsily comfort his daughter, he realizes that something is quite wrong because she's been crying all over him for the past several minutes. Then Anemone tries to form words beyond "Papa" at him.
"Papa, I'm sorry to be such a... such a goose," she finished, for lack of a better word.
I sincerely doubt that there wasn't a better word.
Anyway, Anemone realizes she's starting to make her dad worry, so she tells herself to suck it up and try to reassure him. And then she makes me worry.
"Papa, I'm all right, truly I am." She gazed tenderly through her tears at his dear, handsome face.
Ma'am, please stop lovingly calling your dad hot.
After I threw up in my mouth a little, Mr. Carstairs and Anemone trade some banter about him faking his death, then he finally drops a twenty-dollar word into the conversation: assassination. Yes, that's the direction De Vauban and the Spider's plan is going in... but when I say nothing will prepare you for who they want to kill and why, I heckin' mean it. Anemone, however, says that they shouldn't talk right now because there's another person who knows they're meeting here and she wants to leave before he arrives; she doesn't tell her dad, but she means Burke, since she slipped off the ship without him knowing.
SUPER MEGA SPY!
Yeah, maybe telling someone else about something your dad explicitly asked you not to tell someone else about wasn't such a hot idea, Sea Urchin.
The Narrative Conservation Law of Stupid, however, has different ideas than our leading lady. So before Anemone could even finish her sentence, Burke all but kicks down the parlor door and freaks me the fuck out.
Stephen, towering over them in tightly controlled fury, looked thunderstruck. Then the murderous gleam faded from his eyes.
Jesus Christ, man, did someone run over your cat?!
Before we find out why Buffalo Burke looks like he want to commit acts of violence, though, it turns out he and Mr. Carstairs are already acquainted with each other, although Burke didn't previously know that "Wilcox" was actually Anemone's world-famous spy dad (snrk). Mr. Carstairs tells him it's a good thing he's here because they could use his help, much to Anemone's chagrin (and mine).
Then we get treated to... whatever the hell this is as she looks at Burke, thinking about how hot he looks today and how sad the sight of him makes her.
The rugged, arrogant set of his shoulders and the unruly black hair she had so often run her fingers through struck a chord of pain in her so deep that she had to gasp to keep from crying out.
She... wants to scream in pain... because his shoulders look arrogant? What the fuck am I reading?
While I'm scratching my head in utter bewilderment at that description fail, Burke realizes that he's looking at his lady love's father and very blatantly death-glares at her. For some reason. Then Mr. Carstairs chuckles jovially because he somehow doesn't see Burke trying to hate his daughter to death, and informs her that he knows Burke well and she has no reason to be scared of him. I beg to disagree. She begs to disagree too (oh, the romance) and yelps a loud "No!" when her dad says they need Burke's help. Despite her obvious agitation, Mr. Carstairs continues to be utterly at ease with whatever is going on, until Anemone gets so overwhelmed she has to go stare through the French doors of the room as she tells her dad that she doesn't want to work with Burke.
Buffalo Burke then tells Mr. Carstairs that he'd like to be alone with Anemone, who immediately refuses and is obviously scared shitless of the prospect. Romance! Mr. Carstairs thinks that something's clearly fishy in Denmark between these two but now is not the time to hash it out, and then I laughed very hard.
If the plan he had devised in the last thirty seconds was accepted by them both and put into action, they would have plenty of opportunity to discuss personal matters.
Thirty seconds. He cooked up a plan to foil an international spy assassination plot that three people already died for and he himself had to fake his death for in THIRTY SECONDS.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA– Okay, sorry. But dear readers, the Thirty Second Wonder Plan will never not be hilarious.
So after Thomas Carstairs shows everyone why he's the author of the Carstairs Family Handbook of Spying, he decides to give Anemone a little time to get ready for whatever confrontation is clearly brewing between her and Buffalo Burke, and tells them to shut up and listen to him for now. Anemone sits next to her dad, "conscious of Stephen's frowning gaze upon her" – how the hell is he frowning with his eyes, is he related to the Corinthian from the Sandman comics? – and Mr. Carstairs drops the bombshell we've all been waiting for.
Thomas Carstairs stared him straight in the eye. He spoke softly but clearly. "De Vauban is going to butcher Lord Melvin Bromford and send the dismembered parts of his body to King George courtesy of the American people."
In case you're wondering what the fuck that word salad means and who the hell Lord Melvin Bromford is: we're getting there. Mr. Carstairs explains that De Vauban's magnificent evil plan is to heighten the existing diplomatic tensions between England and America. And he plans to accomplish that by sending the King a Hannibal Lecter-style gift basket in the form of the various body parts of one of his favorite aristocrats, then having "a small, anonymous band of both Creoles and American citizens" take credit for the murder. And that... will... piss off England enough to eventually start a war between the country and America, so America will join forces with France. Somehow.
I swear I'm not making this up. And if you're wondering why a single band of random Americans openly telling everyone they killed a guy would want to make the King retaliate against a whole country, how they're planning to do the "telling everyone" part while staying anonymous, or why the King thinks the sun shines out of this Lord Bromford's ass to the point of being willing to start a war over him dying while England's already at war with France... Fuck you for asking, that's why. As usual.
So after that whack on the head with the Baseball Bat o' "Seriously?!" the three super mega spies start pondering when the most epic murder of the century is supposed to happen. When Mr. Carstairs admits it could be happening right now for all he knows (brilliant spywork, sir), Burke has a helpful observation to make.
"No. De Vauban is a man of high drama. He'll choose his moment carefully."
I love being randomly told things about characters I have never seen before, nor expected to suddenly be required to care about. Don't you?
Anyway, after we're informed that De Vauban is a man of high drama, Burke asks if there's going to be a ball given in Lord Bromford's honor (who the hell is Lord Bromford?!) and Mr. Carstairs lights up like a Christmas tree as he tells Burke that there will be one, and that it might be when De Vauban attempts to shuffle the guy off the mortal coil. Burke does something halfway intelligent for once (I use that term generously, as always) and tells Mr. Carstairs to maybe not base trying to save a guy's life on assumptions and conjecture.
Spoiler from the future: they'll totally try to save the guy's life based on their assumptions and conjecture.
Then Anemone says they might want to warn Lord Bromford as she thinks about how popular the guy is in his home country, and I laughed very hard.
His death – no, murder – would devastate the country. Morale would topple, and the clamor for revenge would echo throughout the land.
Apparently it's not just the King who thinks Lord Bromford has a celestial body in his rectum, but everyone else in England, too. Holy shit.
So after the second whack on the head with the Baseball Bat o' "Seriously?!" Anemone says they really should get Lord Bromford out of murdering range, but her dad disagrees. Apparently, despite Mr. Carstairs spying at the top of his lungs for the past few months, he and his trusted associates still only have a few names and zero concrete proof actually uncovered from this evil plan. So if they whisk away Lord Bromford now, the Spider and De Vauban will only plan another attack on someone else, and that one these master spies might not suss out in time to stop it. I'm having trouble believing that England has even one aristocrat the country's willing to go to war for, let alone several, but then again, "I'm having trouble believing..." has been a pretty constant mood for me during this recap. Maybe I'm just a cynic. Or maybe this plot makes no sense. Nah, the fault must be in my wiring.
After Burke gives his blessings to Mr. Carstairs basically saying they should just use his Lordship as bait (not in these words, but that's what this strategy would amount to), Anemone calls them out because they're risking the guy's life, and says that they should at the very least tell Lord Bromford that something's afoot. She uses her braincell for once to point out they're making a pretty big gamble on this whole business, Burke shoots down her arguments while still giving her the evil eye for some reason, and Anemone thinks that he must be angry because she caught on to his seduction scheme, but at least she'll never let him know how much he injured her feelings as she stares him down.
Even more miscommunication. Just how I like my lazy romance tropes!
Mr. Carstairs tells them they have no time to argue right now (thank you, sir), because they only have four days until the murder ball, and suggests to see if they can gather more intel in the next two – if they don't make any progress in two days, they'll take Lord Bromford to safety, but if they do, they'll carry on with their super mega spying. Of course, given that a world-famous spy (snrk) like him couldn't uncover anything concrete about this masterful plan in several months, it'd be a miracle if they managed to foil the whole thing in four days.
Spoiler from the future: they manage to foil the whole thing in four days.
So after Mr. Carstairs tells them to put their trust into the mysterious deity named Plot Contrivance, he also tells them that he has a team already protecting Lord Bromford without his Lordship's knowledge.
"Lord Bromford, of course, has no idea of their purpose. They're doing their best to remain inconspicuous."
Judging by this book's track record with spies being inconspicuous so far, I presume that means they're all doing cartwheels in mime makeup around the guy.
Nonetheless, Burke is again deeply impressed with the Carstairs Family Handbook of Spying, and suggests adding William "Rope Ladder Noise" Tuttle and Johnny "Got Caught By The British" Tucker to the protective detail. Told y'all he'd fit right in with these two master spies. Anemone, at her wits' end after the day and a half she just had, asks what role they intend for her in their plans to take down De Vauban, and her dad ends the chapter by telling her that she will "be the one to deliver him directly into our hands" in his best Dramatique chapter-ending revelation voice.
I can only apologize for all the braincells you just lost from this entire chapter, dear readers. I hope you have plenty to spare, because we will lose many more to the third act of this book. See y'all next time.
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