This is silly, she thought. It’s just a dog. She’s the dangerous animal in the room!
The fear didn’t go away. “What’s the matter?” Adrienne asked. “That’s a delightful flash of apprehension there, but why?”
“Large dogs… make me nervous. I was badly bitten once. Sorry. I can’t help it.”
The Shadowspawn snapped her fingers and pointed, and the dog left after giving her a curious sniff. She relaxed…
And now I can remember I have something to be really frightened of.
Suddenly she looked after the dog. Shouldn’t it be barking, or going crazy? “No, dogs aren’t frightened of us, ch?rie,” Adrienne said dryly. “That’s Terminators you’re thinking of, which don’t exist.”
Oh, Jesus, but I wish it was robots!
Adrienne grinned; Ellen could see the slight difference in the incisors.
Adrian was always very careful not to bite or scrape me, now that I think back. Even when things got a little rough, or once more than a little rough. Everyone said “they say they’re sorry but they really aren’t”… but I think he was. A special case.
“I’m sure he was sorry. What exactly was it he did… Oh, goodness, but that’s an arresting image! You might have smothered! Not to mention spraining your neck. You and I must try something analogous sometime.”
She felt her face go crimson. Then she saw what the little girl was doing; she had her hands on the table, cupped as if sheltering a candle-flame. Within was a tiny yellow feather, like a shaped golden dust-mote… and it was bobbing in midair, slowly turning. For a moment she simply stared in wonder. Then her mind lurched:
If you could do that with a feather, you could do it inside someone, couldn’t you?
The feather fell, and the girl’s face scrunched up.
“The air didn’t wanna do it! It slipped. You should teach me some more special Words and I wouldn’t slip. Please, Maman? I don’t ever say them aloud unless you’re there or the cousins or someone.”
“Nyah, I did it beehhhh-tttter!” her probably-brother said.
“No, you didn’t, Weasel Two,” Adrienne said decisively. “And I will most certainly not teach either of you more Mhabrogast yet. It’s dangerous if you can’t pronounce it properly.”
He looked heartbreakingly like a younger Adrian, in shorts and T-shirt and sneakers, his black hair cut in a bowl shape like his sister’s. Her mouth began to droop towards a sob, until Adrienne hugged her and kissed the top of her head.
“That’s splendid work with the feather. Most children can’t do that for another year or two. What else have you been doing? Besides your lessons, I hope.”
“Feeding the snake,” the boy said. “Gerbils, mostly. Two. But now it just sleeps.”
“Well, it won’t want any more for a while. Ellen, these are my demon spawn; Weasel One-Leila-and Weasel Two, Leon. One and Two for order of arrival. Children, this is Ellen. She’ll be living with us now. Don’t you tease her, or you’ll be sorry. Now run along.”
The girl slipped off her lap. She lifted a strikingly beautiful tow-haired china doll in a frilly dress from the floor beside her mother’s chair. The child looked at it consideringly for a moment, and then up at the stranger.
“Hello, Ellen. This is my new dolly. She has hair and eyes like yours. See, blue, they close and open if you rock her like this.”
“Ah…” Ellen thought, looking down into the innocent face.
And how do you address the Lady Demon’s demon spawn? “Hello, Miss Leila. What’s her name?”
“Lucy,” the girl said firmly. A broad smile. “’Cause she’s my lucy.”
That was when she saw the miniature bandage around the doll’s neck. The children walked away, then suddenly ran, giggling, out into the courtyard.
“Bit of an experiment, so to say,” Adrienne said. “Often we foster our children out until after puberty. But I’m actually rather fond of my two little weasels… in moderation. Mind you, puberty’s the test.”
Then Adrienne shrugged and continued: “Come.” An inclination of the head. “We’ll have lunch over here in the nook. There’s a bit of a problem we should discuss.”
Adrienne rose; she was wearing jodhpurs with leather inserts on the inside of the thighs, polished riding boots and a real polo shirt, with a riding crop in her hands. The golden-brown eyes stared into hers; she remembered with a slight shock that she was an inch taller than the Br?z? woman. You always forgot that, somehow, just as she’d been surprised again at Adrian not being tall every time they met again. A thought sprang unbidden and unstoppable into Ellen’s mind…
“Bettie Page comics?” Adrienne said. “I’m not nearly that pneumatic, and I don’t do high heels. I’m actually wearing this because I’m going riding later today. Hmmm. Visualize… Yes, I see your point, though. I wonder if one could do that in real life?”
A noiseless servant in a high-collared white jacket brought two fluffy ham-and-scallion omelets with glazed crusts into the nook, along with a salad of fresh greens, walnuts, and slices of small tangy orange and glasses of a pale yellow wine.
“Ah… you said we have a problem?”
“Yes. Your former employer, Giselle Demarcio. She’s been making inquiries, trying to trace you-which means, trying to trace me. That really will not do.”
Anxiety turned into real fear with a sudden cold jolt, and the light omelet assumed the texture of mud.
“Please don’t hurt her! She’s just-I’m a friend as well as an employee. My place burned down. She’s probably worried sick about me.”
A hand reached out and cupped her jaw. Something tickled behind her eyes, and she started to pull back.
“Don’t squirm if you’re concerned for your friend,” Adrienne said-not threatening but abstracted. “This is delicate. I’m probing for memories. It’s not like playing back a computer file. They’re unwritten and rewritten every time they’re called up; it needs concentration. Don’t resist. That’s right…”
She murmured something under her breath; Ellen felt the words as sound, but they didn’t resolve themselves into anything she could recall an instant later. She forced her body to relax and tried to think about nothing. The tickling grew, as if tendrils were growing into the structure of her brain, rooting, opening, merging with the folds and pathways. Things moved in the corners of her vision; little flecks of light swam across her vision, the way they did when you closed your eyes, or opened them in a perfectly dark room. Her head felt full, a squirming sensation of penetration.
Then she began to remember, impossibly vivid jerky chains of images, as much like briefly reliving as ordinary memory. Herself paddling in the waves on the Jersey shore, the cold salt shock on chubby toddler feet and the taste of salt on her lips and the scuttling alienness of a sand-crab. Her father crying at the kitchen table the night her mother died, and the scent of cheap whiskey and the taste of fear. The first kiss with Paul and the book of art prints falling off the sofa between them, the first day at the gallery, the way Adrian had smiled as he extended his hand over the net and the feel of his palm and fingers-they blurred together, faded, whirled.
It stopped with a grinding shock as Adrienne released her jaw and broke eye-contact; there was a moment of pain, like whiplash of the mind, then it faded.
“Yes, I see. Still, Dmitri is fond of a saying: when a person causes you a problem, remember, no person, no problem. I don’t want my little visit to attract any attention.”
“Look, if I tell her I’m OK…” A hooded glance. She went on desperately: “Please. I’m begging you, please. I’ll do anything, just don’t hurt her. She’s always been good to me. Please.”
“I do enjoy it when you beg, ch?rie,” Adrienne said, with a lazy smile. “And as I said, it’s really no longer so essential to keep perfect secrecy…”
She picked up a control bar and thumbed it; a medium-sized screen flipped up from the center of the table.
“I love these things,” Adrienne said absently. “It lets you interact without having to smell everyone. We Shadowspawn have become friendly tout court compared to the way things were. Scoot over so you’ll be in the pickup zone.”
Another smile, at a thought that flitted through Ellen’s mind: “No, you don’t have to strip this time. It would be socially inappropriate. The number?”
“Uh… the videoconference code-”
The query went through; then accepted came up on the screen. The image was a little grainy and jerky at first; Giselle had never thought it worthwhile to spend much money on her office system. Then it sharpened to bell-tone
