reactors in the world slag down and suchlike. So you see why this has to be stopped.”
Adrian’s mouth quirked. “Harvey, how often have the Brotherhood been able to stop one of the Council’s larger schemes?”
“Well…” The older man looked out the window.
It was raining, a dark persistent mist falling out of the sky onto the parking lot and the little strip of dead or half-alive stores and fast-food eateries beyond. His voice was reluctant: “Not too often.”
“Ah, that is how you say never in Texan?”
Stung, Harvey frowned in concentration. “We got Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, back in 1919. They were going to make him Dragon Emperor of the East. He was a bad one.”
Adrian began ticking off points on his fingers. “But the Brotherhood never even realized the Council was behind the Black Hand and Prinzip. That’s World War One. They’d been grooming Hitler for years even then-”
Harvey nodded reluctantly. “Little bastard was a battalion runner on the Western Front for four years, most dangerous job in the TOE. And he lived. Now, that’s not right or natural. Must have taken some special Wreaking to beat the odds that way.”
“And Lenin’s stroke, so perfectly timed to put Stalin in power. And the Great Depression. And-”
“OK, OK, you’re right. We still got to do some serious thinkin’ about these schemes.”
“We have to rescue Ellen and kill Adrienne, Harvey; that’s why I’m here and not in Santa Fe, looking out over the arroyos and moving more supplies into the sub-basement. When Ellen is free and Adrienne dead, you and Sheila and the Brotherhood can concoct whatever futile schemes you wish, and I will take her back to New Mexico and guard her, if she will let me. In the meantime, send Sheila a memo.”
The blue eyes grew somehow distant and savage at the same time.
“You know, I’d off your sister in a moment and it’d be a right good deed. But I’d like to get me Hajime, I’d like that very much.”
Adrian looked at him. “The only difference is that Adrienne has not yet had the time to commit so many crimes.”
He sighed. “And now I will keep watch while you sleep.”
“I can-”
“Drop dead from exhaustion, Harv? Believe me, I will wake you as soon as possible.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“This one is just for clothes, ch?rie,” Adrienne said. “Really, I thought you’d be more interested in the last. All the things we bought there were replacements for your own… gear.”
I got all that stuff on the Internet, dammit! Ellen thought, her ears still burning.
Not in a sex store with attendants asking questions about whether I like plugs or clamps! And playing up to you as if you were… well, you are the top and I am the bottom, but it was still embarrassing! “You should become more comfortable with your identity. Now, clothes.”
The establishment was so exclusive that it didn’t resemble a store at all; it was more like a wealthy family’s house with stockists-cum-models on call, amid a smell of rich fabrics and flowers and upscale consulting rooms. The owner beamed delight at Adrienne; he was a middle-aged man with a gray mustache and a rather blocky build, immaculately dressed in a three-piece suit and shoes that had to have cost more than Ellen had ever made in a month.
“?a va, Jean-Charles?” Adrienne said, as she drew Ellen in through the door by the hand. “I am sorry for the short notice.”
Except that she didn’t quite say that, Ellen realized suddenly.
She’d used the standard French casual greeting, which meant roughly How goes it? Ellen spoke fair basic French and understood and read it much better; that and some Italian were pretty well compulsory in her field if your area of study was Western art.
She pronounced it something like cha va, instead.
“Tu dit-moi ‘?a va’?” he replied, drawing himself up and crossing his arms. “Rien pendant toute une ann?e! Infid?le!”
Well, that’s friendly, in a gal-pal sort of way, Ellen thought. They must have known each other a long time.
Adrienne made a shrugging gesture, almost apologetic, and continued in the same language: “Jean-Charles, I never promised you a monogamous relationship. I was in Paris three times in the past year. In Paris, one buys clothes, is it not so?”
She’s got an accent in her French, I think. Something nasal and quick, faint, I didn’t notice it until I heard it together with someone who doesn’t. Regional, maybe? “Ah, it could be so,” he said, and opened his arms. “And you are here now.”
They exchanged an embrace and kiss on both cheeks. He held Adrienne at arm’s length and said: “My God, it is over a year since I saw you and you have not changed at all. In the ten years since we first met you have aged perhaps one or two.”
“Oh, three or four, certainly.”
“While I have gone gray and wrinkled. In a very distinguished way, but still, gray; and you were not a young girl then. How do you do it?”
“I have told you so many times. Wicked sorcery and the drinking of human blood, my old. Besides, there is a wrinkle. One. Here, beside my eye, you see?”
He laughed easily. “And I thought you were called Br?z?, not Bathory,” he said.
He doesn’t know, Ellen thought, and relaxed very slightly.
Then he turned to Ellen and raised an eyebrow at her rumpled jeans, clean plain T-shirt and padded jacket; not entirely out of place-Pacific Heights was still part of San Francisco-but not exactly fitting in either.
At least my hair’s combed and I had a shower and the underwear and bra are fresh, she thought mordantly.
Adrienne was in a severe outfit of dark blue, with a modishly asymmetric skirt that came to a point beside the left knee, and a gold-link belt; it somehow made her look a few years older.
“This is a young friend, Ellen Tarnowski,” Adrienne said. “She lost all her possessions in a fire. I need a complete outfitting for her. I have taken her under my wing, as one says.”
Elegant, batlike wing, Ellen thought, and saw a sardonic look in the gold-flecked eyes.
God, telepathy adds whole layers of meanings to conversations even when you don’t have it yourself.
“You have certainly given us something to work with,” he said enthusiastically. Then to her: “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms. Tarnowski.”
Another lift of the eyebrow to Adrienne. “Ms. Darton… she was here only two months ago…”
“Monica and I will always have a deep bond.”
“You are a constant and faithful friend, Adrienne.”
Or a collector, Ellen thought. Then she remembered Dmitri Usov saying Don’t you ever just kill them? and the hopeless caged desperation in his lucy’s face. And T?kairin Michiko’s avid eyes when she wondered how the last living drops of Ellen’s blood would taste, as her heart quivered and died.
Let’s hear it for collection! she thought fervently. At least until I get out of this madhouse-slash-Hell.
“Never are you out of it,” Adrienne whispered in her ear. “Abandon all hope, remember?”
Then she went back to her discussion with the designer. The premises included a laser scanner in a changing room that made a complete three-dimensional model of her body. When she came out it was already on the screen, and the proprietor and Adrienne were consulting over the curiously sexless silver shape.
“Oui, mais-” the owner said. “With such a complexion and such a figure-magnificently traditional, a veritable maize-fed American goddess-it would be criminal not to-”
“Mais non, Jean-Charles; you make her sound like a prize Jersey at a state fair in Wisconsin. She is also a woman of great intelligence and sensitivity, an artist. Look at that face, those eyes-”
Ellen offered an occasional comment as clothes appeared on the figure or mysteriously wafted out of the depths of the establishment; once or twice they took her seriously, or more often gave her pitying looks and then
