“Now let’s get some sleep,” Harvey said, wielding a mop to erase the glyphs drawn in a looping tracery outside the circle. “Early day tomorrow.”
The walk to the motel they were using was short, but even with an adept’s training sleep came slowly. Rancho Sangre was not somewhere he’d ever been physically, but his parents had lived there for decades, and Adrienne since their body-death. It was graven in the history of his life; and now Ellen’s world-line was woven with it.
What is happening there now, Ellie? I’m coming to you, as fast as I can.
“I am pleased to meet you, sir, madam,” Ellen said formally to Adrienne’s parents.
Should I curtsy or something? she thought. In this Jean-Charles creation I’m wearing at least it wouldn’t look ridiculous. But I never learned how anyway. Polite will have to do. And… they’re Adrian’s parents too. God, in a skanky sort of way this is like being taken home to meet the folks.
“No, you’re not glad at all,” Jules Br?z? said. “But it was polite of you to say so. By all means, call me Jules. This is America, after all. My parents were the ones who came from France.”
He advanced and took her hand. The contact had a slight shock to it, psychically cold and somehow wet, though the hand felt absurdly normal for a man who’d died before she was born; there was even a faint smell of wine and mint on his breath, beneath an expensive cologne.
His eyes were the thing that made what he was unmistakable, like pools of living gold. His wife came up beside him and reached out to touch Ellen’s hand as well. Both flared their nostrils slightly to take her scent; it was an oddly animalistic gesture. She could remember Adrian doing it when he forgot himself, but then she hadn’t had the context.
“Oh, I see what you mean, darling,” Julianne said over her shoulder to Adrienne. “One longs to consume her. Her mind is like a rose carved out of finely marbled meat until the petals are translucent, scented with fruit and flowers and blood.”
Errrk, Ellen thought. That’s an… arresting metaphor. All my life I thought my only talents were for tennis and art history, and now I find out I’m A-1 Shadowspawn fodder too.
“Even more entrancing than the others,” Jules said to his daughter. “My dear, you have without a doubt inherited the family’s discerning tastes.”
The elder Br?z?s were in slightly old-fashioned evening wear: a beautifully tailored suit and a long off-one- shoulder gown and slightly bouffant hairdo, like something she’d seen on the TV as a little girl back before the turn of the century. If she’d met them at a launch party at the gallery, she’d have put them down as extremely well- conditioned late thirties or early forties, with a sleek timeless look that appeared effortless and cost heavily; Adrienne’s mother was a bit fuller-figured than her daughter, and her hair not quite so dark.
They had the same slight Continental accent as their children, but there was also an indefinable difference in the way they treated their vowels and used contractions, a tinge of slow clipped harshness. The English language itself was in the process of changing out from under them.
“I’m glad I’m… interesting… Jules,” Ellen said.
“My dear, you are positively appetizing,” Jules said, bowing over the hand and releasing it.
Errrrk, Ellen thought again.
Adrienne laughed. She was standing by the carved-stone fireplace; the spring evening was cool enough that the low crackle of flames on the split oak there seemed justified. She had a snifter of brandy in her hand, and a cigarette in her ivory holder. Mark and Renata were the elder Br?z?s’ lucies, a golden-haired younger man and a slim dark woman of about thirty, and they were reclining on the sofa, chatting easily to each other about some cultural event in Los Angeles.
“So, what do you think of the Rancho Sangre art collection?” Julianne said. “Adrienne has added to it, but we and our parents did a good deal.”
“Ah… it’s very impressive. But eclectic and hardly organized at all,” Ellen said, both of which were true.
Jules shrugged. “It was a case of I know what I like with us, I’m afraid. Adrienne is more enthusiastic. I’m sure you’ll work immense improvements.”
“I’ve gotten a preliminary redistribution roughed out and approved by Adrienne, and we’re going to start moving some items soon. Before the, ah, party.”
Both the elder Br?z?s smoked-slim dark cigars for him, and Turkish cigarettes in an ivory holder like Adrienne’s for her. The way she held it…
By God, that’s the way they used to do it in old movies! Ellen thought. Not an imitation, it’s completely unselfconscious, and apparently they really did wave it that way. Really old movies, silents, back when it was a daring novelty for women to smoke in public. And the way the two of them talk… When were they born? “More than a century ago,” Adrienne said.
There was that sense that something passed between her and her parents. They both laughed, Julianne more ruefully than her spouse.
“Yes, implausibly long ago!” she said. “The habits you acquire in youth stick like glue, I find.”
No wonder Adrian smokes! In a way, he’s the same generation as my grandparents.
“That’s another reason we used to use foster parents a good deal,” Adrienne said. “To keep children from getting too out of period. Even so, when I was excited over something early in our acquaintance Jean-Charles gave me an odd look and said my French was splendid but sometimes he wondered if I’d learned it from Napoleon the Third.”
Jules nodded. “We’re still working out how to deal with such things,” he said. “It is all too easy to become… lost in memories and in dreams.”
“Do you have any elder brothers and sisters?” Ellen asked her Shadowspawn, intrigued for a moment.
“Two. Jacques and Jeanne. They went to Chile with their mates as… missionaries, you might say, seventy years ago,” Julianne answered for her daughter. “They’re still there. Even still corporeal! Though they’ll transition soon, I’m sure.”
Ellen shivered a little. Missionaries.
Julianne held out her snifter. The blond young man rose and filled it from the decanter of Martell X.O., and brought Ellen one as well.
“What do you think of the Getty’s repatriation policy?” he asked her.
“Mark!” Julianne said, gently reproving.
“We’ve heard these family stories so often, Julianne!” he said defensively.
Ellen sipped. She’d never liked brandy before she met Adrian; if you were going to drink something concentrated and harsh, vodka went down easier. He’d enjoyed showing her the difference between liquor-store brandy and actual cognac…
She closed her eyes for an instant and shoved the thought of his face smiling at her away, concentrating on the taste instead. This was as good as the type he favored, but different, heavier and smokier; a hint of dry fruit, and of almond and vanilla. It went down smoothly, but with a bite that warned it had to be taken seriously.
I’ve got to remember not to drink to relax tension or suppress fear, she thought. It’s too tempting. It’s always been too tempting for me but now especially it’s too tempting. It’s bad enough the way Adrienne feeding on me blisses me out. I’m getting too psychologically dependent on that, too, not just physically; it’s the only time I’m not afraid.
“Ah… I’m generally in favor of returning works that weren’t legitimately acquired, but I think they’ve got to draw the line somewhere,” Ellen said. “You can’t send everything back where it came from, just because the descendants don’t approve of many-times-great-granddad’s bargains!”
I’m actually enjoying this, she thought, as that conversation went on.
Mark Jensen knew what he was talking about; he wasn’t a professional, she thought, but he obviously cared deeply. Renata was mostly concerned with contemporary folk-art, but had something to say. The Br?z?s had seen artistic fashion change and change and change again.
After a while Leila and Leon were brought in to visit with their grandparents; evidently midnight was a perfectly normal time for Shadowspawn children to start thinking about bed. Adrienne smiled benignly.
“I’ll let you enjoy yourselves,” she said, and took Ellen’s hand. “Come, ch?rie. The evening is young, and our own personal carnival of the perverse is about to start.”
