He looked from me to Chandra, assessing her so quickly, I could practically see the ticker tape rolling across the screen of his gaze. I was glad I’d insisted on her makeover. Finally he sighed. “Five minutes. That’s all I have.”
“Thank you, Daddy!” I squealed, and clapped my hands wildly as I grinned at Chandra, who gave a good shot at giggling back as Xavier turned away. My apparent giddiness drained when my eyes stalled on the housekeeper, who was still staring at the hand I’d returned to the wall next to the mask. “Oh, you’re excused now, Helen.”
The impulse to stay where she was flashed like lightning in her eyes, but died just as quickly. Her lips thinned to a single line. “If you need anything,” she said stiffly, and left it at that.
Xavier had already disappeared back into his office, and Chandra whispered as we followed. “Does it seem like a little more than coincidence that she arrived just then?”
“Cameras,” I muttered, gesturing to the one above the study door with my head. “Helen seems to have a knack for popping up at the most inconvenient times.”
“Curiouser and curiouser.”
Maybe, I thought, and maybe not. When you grew up in a house of secrets and unspoken resentments, even oddities seemed normal. I suppose that’s what had kept me from seeing the masks before, and at the moment I had to admit Warren had been right. Partnering up had been a good idea. As annoying and spiteful and untrustworthy as I found Chandra, she was no idiot.
“You know,” she said, in a voice so low it couldn’t be picked up by a mic, “Hunter has mentioned before that Valhalla has a room full of Asian artifacts, tribal pieces reportedly collected while searching out Viking artifacts to accessorize Valhalla. I bet these are more of the same, but even more valuable.”
“Viking artifacts in Asia?”
I looked at Chandra-saw the same dark knowledge tingeing her gaze-then around at the room I’d both seen, and somehow hadn’t, my whole life. Thus a plan was born. Warren might kill me for not running it by him first, but he was the one who’d told us to go on the offensive. I had to start seeing the physical spaces that had occupied my old life in a new way-even when Chandra wasn’t with me-including my childhood home. Including Valhalla.
“Stay here,” I told Chandra, and headed back to Xavier’s office.
She caught up to me. “But-”
“I have an idea,” I told her, and shut the door in her face before she could say any more. Xavier would be too aware of her presence, his pride and self-consciousness acting as barriers to seriously considering my words, and I had to get what I needed from him in the same way Olivia always had. By appealing to the soft side of her beloved, doting father.
In retrospect I could appreciate that the years I’d considered myself trapped, confined, and caged under Xavier Archer’s roof hadn’t been heartbreakingly traumatic. He could be accused of neglect, but not abuse. He had never injured me physically, though his words, and even his silence, had possessed a whiplike feel to them. Compared to the way some people terrorized their children, Xavier could even be called benign. But back when I was sixteen- traumatized, alone, abandoned, frightened, pregnant-I didn’t have such a wide frame of reference. I only knew that he flinched when I walked into a room, he refused to let me speak of my mother, and he ignored both the physical and mental scars of my attack, so that I felt shamed in my own young body.
So fuck him if he was having trouble sleeping lately.
The office was normal once again, oversized furniture returned to the room’s center, desk spotless, wood gleaming like it’d just been polished. Even I wouldn’t have been able to scent out the lingering incense if I hadn’t known it was there only minutes before. The Tulpa had set Xavier up with some seriously powerful hoodoo. Which begged the question.
“Where’s your new partner in crime?” Xavier said, jerking his chin at the door as it swung closed behind me. His word choice threw me for a moment, but I relaxed when I saw he meant it figuratively.
“Outside. We’re just hanging out until Cher gets back from Fiji. But I wanted to talk to you alone.”
He motioned to a high-backed chair across from him, before settling in his own.
“I’m going to get a job,” I announced brightly, crossing my legs, and sitting up straight so I looked innocent and eager. Maybe my bright smile kept Xavier from recognizing Olivia Archer’s first ever act of defiance. When, after an awkward moment, he realized I was serious, he laughed anyway.
“We’ve discussed this before, Olivia,” he began, his tone patently patronizing, one most people used with domesticated animals and toddlers. He picked up a thick fountain pen and began twirling it in his fingers.
“No, you dictated before. I don’t remember ever discussing it.”
“Well, the answer is still the same.”
“Except this time I’m not asking,” I said, my voice both high and sweet. His fingers stilled. The incongruity between my words and tone seemed to baffle him, and I widened my smile, probably confusing him further. “I’ve been doing a lot of reevaluating the last few months and have decided I need to change some things in my life. I need a purpose. A rhythm to my days. A reason to get up in the morning.”
Xavier didn’t move. I realized I was going to have to sugar him up, so made sure my gaze wasn’t challenging when I met his eyes. “Like you, Daddy. You get up in the morning and you know exactly what you want from your day. I want to be like you.”
A number of emotions passed over his face in quick succession, fatigue overlaying them all. That might have softened me toward him if the very first emotion hadn’t been derision. If it had been Olivia sitting here, she would have seen it too. I consciously unclenched my jaw.
“Honey, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?” I asked, imbuing hurt I didn’t feel into my voice. “You don’t think I can do it? That I don’t have the ability to learn?”
“Why would you want to?” he asked, skirting the questions. “I give you everything you want. If there’s something more, tell me. I’ll get that for you too.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Okay. How about self-respect?”
When he only sat there, those fingers still and brow drawn, I thought,
I was talking about him, about the way the Tulpa dangled carrots to control him, but naturally he didn’t realize that. “Self-respect doesn’t come from what we do, Olivia. It comes from who we are.”
“Who we are?” I repeated slowly. “You mean an Archer?”
“Yes. Exactly that.”
I nodded my head slowly, like him, then stopped. “I don’t know, Daddy. Sometimes the title feels like something I’m wearing. A brand upon my skin. Like I belong to someone, rather than
And there it was. Humiliation had him wincing. Anger thinning his lips. Hopelessness lowering his eyes. The blended emotions smelled like used fuel and the soul he was so cheaply giving away. “That’s ridiculous. Now, you’re not getting a job and that’s final.”
I stood. “It’s not final.”
“You’re not getting a job.”
“Fine.” I angled my body around the chair. “Then I guess I’ll have to-”
“What?” he finally snapped, rising to his feet and turning away at the same time, only to whirl on me again two feet later. “What will you do, Olivia? Go on a spa strike until I give you your way?”
I let that hang between us to see if he could hear how ugly it sounded. He did, and shame dueled with stubbornness to have him turning away. He paced over to the window to regain his composure, but I wasn’t going to give him time for that.
“I was going to say,” I said softly, “that I guess I’ll have to leave.”
He stiffened, and half turned. “What?”
His face was sallow in the harsh daylight, and he suddenly looked fragile despite his bulk, or what was left of it. I didn’t care.
“Leave,” I repeated, clasping my hands in front of me. “Leave the city, leave the West Coast if that’s what it takes. Leave the Archer dynasty.”
“I’ll cut you off like I did Joanna. Is that what you want?”
