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holding his confused young son by the hand, and swore he would never leave the Hall again. Because he hadn’t been there for his wife and son when they needed him. He would stay, because his son needed him.
    Though of course by then, it was already too late.
    Jack took up a position in the Armory. He’d always been fascinated by the weapons and devices he’d been supplied with as a field agent, and had come up with a few useful things himself. He was a bit old to be a lab assistant, but the Armory was happy to have someone with firsthand experience of how their various creations actually operated under field conditions. Jack just wanted something to occupy his mind. To keep him from thinking about the happy life he used to have.
    He trained under the previous Armourer, his aunt Eloise, sister to the Matriarch. Eloise had been Armourer for decades. She was a real terror, working everyone hard, always shouting and swearing and carrying on, not prepared to let anyone get away with anything. Or take the credit for anything she could take the credit for. And God help you if you didn’t keep all your paperwork strictly up-to-date. Jack wasn’t sure anyone actually liked her, but everyone did good work under her unwavering glare. They didn’t dare do anything else.
    Eloise was a great believer in weaponizing unnatural forces, an idea that had been all the rage back in the 1920s and 1930s. But definitely starting to feel a bit old hat by the time Jack joined the Armory. He tried to steer the work in a more scientific direction, but Eloise would have none of it. She was getting old and slow and past it, but wouldn’t admit it. The quality of the work coming out of the Armory started to suffer, though Eloise made sure the blame fell everywhere except with her. Until she blew herself up. Jack was then promoted to Armourer. So he could put in place all the changes he’d been advocating for so long. Things improved immediately.
    Did she fall or was she pushed? The Armourer smiled. He’d never tell. Anything, for the family.
    He looked at the chair opposite him, and smiled at Natasha. She smiled sweetly back at him. She was sitting very straight and upright, as she always did, with her hands folded neatly in her lap. Still wearing her usual long black leather coat and her knee-length boots. Long, dark hair fell out from under her fur cap. She sighed and shook her head.
    “What are you still doing here, Jack? This was only ever supposed to be a temporary position.”
    “I came back to the Hall to look after Timothy,” said Jack. “So he wouldn’t be alone. I did mean to leave here, move on, as soon as he was old enough to look after himself. But everyone knows how that worked out. After he went rogue, I didn’t want to leave the hall and the family. They were very supportive. And they were all I had left.”
    “You should have gone back out into the world again,” said Natasha. “Back where you belonged.”
    “I was busy,” said the Armourer. “There was always so much work to do. And besides, if you weren’t in the world, I wasn’t interested in it anymore.”
    “So you stayed here and got old,” said Natasha.
    “Yes,” said the Armourer. “I miss you so much, Natasha.”
    “I know. Why didn’t you marry again?”
    “Because I never felt about anyone else, the way I felt about you.”
    The Armourer looked away, thinking, remembering, and when he looked back, she wasn’t there anymore. And neither was the chair she’d been sitting on.
    Timothy Drood . . . His son, his only child. Not like his brother, James, who had so many children by so many women, out in the field. You can’t go tomcatting around like James did and not expect there to be consequences. James produced so many illegitimate half-Droods they formed their own organization, the Gray Bastards. The Armourer tried to keep in touch with as many of them as he could, because they were his nephews and nieces, after all. But there were just so many of