He saw her stiffen, and then scrabble in her purse. “Here.”
It was an ordinary flash memory card of the type Office Depot and a hundred others sold, a cheap twenty-four gigabyte model.
“There’s another lucy, a man named Peter Boase, we’re friends,” she said quickly. “He was a physicist at Los Alamos. This Council of Shadows sent Adrienne to kill him.”
Harvey raised one eyebrow. “Adrienne’s a bit high powered for that sort of routine duty. They must have taken him serious. So why ain’t he dead, instead of providin’ the lady with refreshments and frisky recreation?”
“Adrienne has him working for her. I remember, a while ago, he was talking about why the Power can’t grasp silver. I didn’t understand a word of it, and neither did Adrienne.”
Adrian took the chip. “Now that is very interesting,” he said.
“He was, ah, occupied up at the casa grande again yesterday, and sort of stayed in bed today, so I dropped in and copied everything.”
Adrian hissed. “Dangerous, so dangerous. The very desire to conceal something stands out like a flag to the Power!”
“I’m very much aware she can read my mind, Adrian. It’s like being naked in public all the time.”
He flushed and made a gesture of apology. Harvey glanced at the younger man. “Not just a pretty face,” he said slowly. “To think that clear with a Wreakin’ messing up your head… not easy.”
“Harvey, take this,” Adrian said, tapping the chip with one finger. “The Brotherhood must examine it.”
“How does it feel?” Harvey asked. “Got any baggage weighing its paths?”
Adrian gripped it in one hand. The other made three precise motions over it, and he murmured under his breath: “Or-ok-sszee, m’naiii-t-”
After a moment he opened his eyes again. “Now, that is extremely strange,” he said.
“Not important?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Neither important nor unimportant. It is as if there are no potentials at all attached to this. As if its world-line vanishes rather than spraying out into a fan of possibilities.”
“Hmmm. That is odd,” Harvey said.
Then Adrian turned back to Ellen. “I am so proud of you!” he said. “Your mind is supple. It bends, but like good steel it does not break and springs back when the pressure is removed.”
She shrugged. “I’m proud of myself, right now!”
The main courses arrived. Harvey looked at the food and grinned. “Black truffle agnolotti, chanterelles, Loch Duart salmon, brown butter b?arnaise… that’s your idea of a working dinner?”
To Ellen: “You probably know what a food snob this boy is.” “Oh, yes,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “I remember once it was late and I suggested we stop at Blake’s Lottaburger, and he just looked at me. Like I had some skin disease or something. Then he insisted on driving an extra twelve miles to Bobcat Bites.”
Adrian laughed. “I have been eating worse than that, often enough lately,” he said defensively. “You shouldn’t take anything this salop says seriously. He is the one who taught me to cook-and well, too.”
The desserts came out, and for a moment they could relax and be happy. Then he reached into his jacket and held up a piece of paper. Her eyes fell on the glyph and fixed, unwinking. Then her fork went back to her whiskey- raisin carrot cake.
“Oh, God, Adrian, I wish you were here,” she murmured softly, as they rose and left.
“Name of a black dog!” Adrian swore. “I have to leave her like that… I cannot even pay for the whole dinner!”
“Now that’s petty. And if you’re feelin’ helpless… well, it’s a lot worse for her, ol’ buddy.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“How do I look?” Ellen said.
Monica made a turning motion. “Wonderful, actually. I wish I had your figure.”
“You do,” Ellen said, turning around slowly.
The shoes were low-heeled, but it was a while since she’d worn anything but sneakers and sandals and flats. The coral below-the-knee dress had a princess seam bodice and flared skirt, under an open-fronted turquoise jacket with a neckline gathered into the band. She went on: “Pretty much exactly my figure. You could wear this with only a little alteration.”
“No, I used to have it. You’re… thirty-five, twenty-four, thirty-five?”
“Just about.”
“Add an inch or so all ’round for me. And I’m a little shorter than you. Maybe I should start running every morning too.”
“An inch isn’t a real difference, and you’re certainly welcome to join Peter and me!”
“I think you both look pretty,” Joshua said.
Ellen smiled at him; at ten-going-on-eleven he was just after the age when boys find women totally uninteresting as such, but well before actual reflexive lust snaps in, and he looked at her with an almost detached critique. His sister, Sophie, was simply entranced by the dress, taking in the details over and over again. They were both in their pajamas-rabbits on hers, some sort of tentacled thing on his-which fit in with the well-kept but very slightly worn look the living-room had, the inevitable result of two active children in an ordinary-sized house for years.
“You’re going to meet the Do?a’s parents,” Sophie said. “I wish I could meet them. They’re probably really cool.”
They’re mass murderers, Ellen thought. I’ve been perfectly glad to put this off for a while. But no point in scaring a kid.
The door opened, and Adrienne walked in, dramatic in a classic black dress with platinum and sapphires on throat and wrists. Both the children stood politely; she smiled at them, nodded to Monica, then raised a brow at Ellen.
“My, Jean-Charles did not labor in vain! Impressive! Well, nearly time to go. I thought we’d stroll up. My parents are eager to meet you, now that they’re well settled in with their things.”
Suddenly Joshua spoke. “Ma’am?”
“Yes, Josh?”
“Do… you drink my mom’s blood? Is that what her being your lucy means?”
Monica started and flushed. “Joshua! ”
Adrienne chuckled and made a soothing gesture. “You can’t avoid rumors in a renfield town, Monica, and they’re getting to the age when little people hear things. Better they hear from us than in the school-yard at recess.”
She turned to Joshua, bending a little so that their faces were level.
“Yes, that’s part of what being my lucy means. I’m a Shadowspawn… you’ve heard that name?”
“Like… like vampires? With superpowers?”
“Vampires are just a story. Very silly stories. Shadowspawn are for real. We aren’t catching, like a cold or the flu; we’re born that way. Superpowers… well, we can do many things your type of people can’t.”
She sat on the sofa and folded a piece of paper there into an origami bird, holding it out on her palm when she finished. Then she hummed… and the wings of the bird began to vibrate to the same rhythm. She slowly lowered the hand, and the bird stayed suspended, hovering. Then it moved, circling and swooping around the children. Sophie gave an exclamation of awed delight as it paused before her face, and Joshua’s mouth fell open slightly as it circled his head before it flew back to the table, stopped and hovered, then settled gently down.
“It’s called the Power, Josh, and it’s… magic, really. That’s why we Shadowspawn rule the whole world, as I do here in Rancho Sangre. And to use the Power, we need to drink blood.”
He swallowed, and visibly gathered himself, his face flushed with determination.
“Does… does it hurt her when you drink the blood?”
“No,” Adrienne said easily. “I only take a little at a time from her, and that doesn’t hurt. It’s fun for both of us.”
