prayer wheels in the stupa outside. Its handle was wooden, but there was an ornate metal cylinder at its apex, with a ballasted chain helping the cylinder whirl around with a deft flick of the wrist. His mouth moved as he repeated his mantra over and over, but it didn’t sound like Xavier’s voice. It was too low and respectfully resolute.
“Praying?” Chandra asked, so lightly only I could hear.
I shook my head. Xavier didn’t pray. “No. It’s more like…”
“Worshipping.”
Centered on a colorful rug, he leaned over in a practiced move to pick up a mallet, striking the side of a bronze bowl without losing beat with his prayer wheel. A warm bell tone overtook the tinny chiming in the room and resonated through my body, making the spot on my chest where the doppelganger had nearly rent me open pulse lightly. I lifted my hand, wanting to rub the feeling away.
I also wanted to back out of the room, ponder what this could mean far from the compelling smell and sound of ritualistic Eastern prayer, but Chandra was inching closer to Xavier. I caught up with her as the even spin of the wheel stopped and the tonal notes died in the air. The room fell to complete silence. We didn’t dare breathe in the unearthly stillness, and even Xavier’s mouth moved soundlessly as he set aside the first singing bowl and mallet, and picked up a second, larger one, placing it directly in front of him on the carpet.
He held the hollowed disk with straight arms, as if proffering it to someone, and I had just enough time to think:
Bending his elbows, he drew the mask toward his face in an exaggerated motion. It was too small for his bullish mien, its bowl delicate and shallow, and obviously a totem meant for ritual ceremonies, clearly not intended to be worn. Yet as Xavier drew the plain wooden artifact parallel to his features, the ancient wood startled and sprang to life. He cupped it to his face as the wood pushed against itself and began to flatten, grain thinning with a high-pitched noise. It attached itself to Xavier’s skin, caressing his cheeks in a jagged slide, seeping like wax beneath his hairline to add Xavier’s coiffure-down to his cowlick-to its inanimate features.
It went fast after that, like the wood was once again living and vital, anchored in the earth, and not merely a hollowed out husk. Xavier was already statue-still, but once the mask encompassed the whole of his face, I heard a sharp click-the animate wood meeting and fastening at the nape of his neck-and he went absolutely rigid.
Ash flew from his mouth to thicken the air in a blackening haze. I leaned forward, waving a hand before me, but the effect was temporary; the air was too heavy, molecules pressed so tightly together they were almost sticky. The whole scene took on a dreamlike aspect, as if what I was seeing was taking place inside of my lids. I took another step forward, and with a second I spotted the candle burning like a focal point in haze. A third step and Xavier became visible again.
Smoke billowed from the mask now, soot coating and darkening the walls of the room. If the smoky mixture had been cloying before, it was oppressive now, and it coated my mouth in wafer-thin layers with every inhalation.
“Only one thing tastes like toasted anise,” Chandra murmured, her face scrunched in disgust.
“What?”
“Parfum de personne.” She waved her hand in the air to look me in the eye. “It’s his soul essence.”
“But what’s he doing with it?”
She squinted, returning her gaze to Xavier. “It looks like he’s giving it away.”
“Well, that was a tad freaky.”
Chandra and I backed from the office, shutting the door silently behind us, and I made a face as I tried to clear the cloying sweetness from the back of my throat. Was I going to have to walk around all day with Xavier’s soul essence clinging to my clothes? “Let’s get back to the drawing room. We’ll wait for Deluca there.”
We started back through the giant stupa, neither of us seeing it this time, still mesmerized by what we’d just witnessed. I was so lost in thought, it wasn’t until Chandra called out to me that I noticed she’d fallen behind.
I walked back to her while she continued to stare into a sunken alcove, so taken by what she saw there that she actually touched me when I reached her side. We both jerked away out of habit, but her eyes stayed fixed on the wall across from her. “Do you see what I see?”
I turned my head, and though I’d passed by it hundreds of times before, my gasp was real, and immediately smothered. Of course! I did a mental head slap. “More masks.”
Half a dozen more. And they’d been hanging on these walls so long, they’d only ever registered as creepy, not significant. But they were. Clearly antique, and bearing a freakish resemblance to the one Xavier had donned, the one in front of me looked frighteningly like the mask the Tulpa had been wearing when he’d tried to microwave me only days earlier. I looked around, pointed to another, and we crossed the room in implicit silence, standing before it like it was a caged animal. It was simply, even primitively carved, and painted entirely red, like it’d been shellacked with fresh blood, but for the black line painted down the bridge of the wide nose. I’d just reached out to remove it from its wall peg when a voice behind me went off like a firecracker.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I whirled, hand falling like it’d been slapped. Recovering quickly, I performed the eye roll I’d perfected in front of the mirror last month, and crossed my arms, tapping my fingers impatiently.
“Buffy,” I said, quickly thinking up the name for Chandra’s socialite alias. It was cute, and it’d piss her off. “This is Helen, our long-time housekeeper.”
And if Xavier had been the devil when I was young, Helen Maguire had been his succubus. Her looks were ordinary enough; she was mousy, in fact, with hair that was neither curly nor straight, and a long, sallow face framing eyes that were slightly hooded. But beneath the lids that made her look like she was dozing on her feet were sparrow-bright eyes. Apropos, as I’d always had the feeling she stored away the dramas of the Archer dynasty like shiny baubles to line her own emotional nest. She gleaned information about other powerful families as well, and after every party Xavier threw she could be found in the camera room, eyes devouring the video as she replayed recorded conversations.
And what did she do with those tiny bits of gossip she scavenged and studied? She marked them as experience, and counted them as her own.
If bothered by the way I’d pointed out her position in the household, Helen didn’t show it. Probably because she considered it a title, like mistress or duchess or queen. After my mother had left, I thought wryly, she’d certainly acted like it.
“I asked what you think you’re doing?” She took a step toward me, a laundry basket with crisply folded sheets resting snugly between an arm and one flaring hip.
“Dusting, Helen,” I retorted before I could stop myself. “Someone has to.”
She reddened under the implied criticism, and for what may have been the first time, really looked at the woman she thought was Olivia. The look softened after a moment; she’d never treated Olivia as anything but a fluffy piece of lint and was obviously still unimpressed.
“Don’t touch the artifacts, Olivia.”
“Don’t tell me what to do in my own home, Helen.” I glared at her. She took a step forward.
“What’s going on here?”
For a moment neither of us acknowledged Xavier’s presence. Then duty overcame Helen and she started babbling. “Sir, Olivia is manhandling the relics. I just want to be sure they don’t come to harm.”
“Daddy!” I said, and raced to throw my arms around him. His clothes reeked of charred spice, and I jolted upon realizing he didn’t fill out the custom-made suit as well as he used to. Pulling away, I saw dark smudges circling his eyes, and though a two-hundred-pound man couldn’t be considered gaunt, his cheeks were sunken and his skin sallow. I pretended not to notice, and shot him a blinding smile. “I was telling Buffy about your world travels, and how there’s a story to the way you acquired each of these masks.” I reached out and stroked the one nearest his office and heard a quickly indrawn breath behind me. Interesting. “But the hired help told me to leave.”
Helen stuttered. “I didn’t-!”
She hadn’t. But maybe it was time the brownnosing sycophant learned Xavier wasn’t the only Archer in this household. Gain for Olivia in death a little of the respect denied to her in life. I shot her a blazing look over my shoulder before turning back to Xavier with a brilliant smile. “Of course, I’ve forgotten most of the stories behind these masks, so I was hoping you had time to tell us one of them.”
Xavier closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Olivia, I’m awfully busy today.”
My bottom lip shot out. “You’re always busy.”
