After Gregor dropped me off at my condo, I showered and pulled on a cashmere turtleneck and pinstripe trousers. The ensemble was expensive, but nondescript enough for everything I had to do that day, and as I dressed I decided I didn’t need so-called allies who didn’t believe in my inherent goodness. Going it alone also meant not having to fight with anyone about returning to Xavier’s. I wanted to put some pressure on him about the Valhalla job, and as much as I wanted to believe that was because of Warren’s blessing, I knew Hunter’s objection to my employment was equally motivating.
I called Cher’s hotel room in Fiji on the way to the mansion, but was asked to leave a message by some man at the front desk with overpolite mannerisms and a thick, lovely accent. I sighed wistfully, gave the clerk my name and number, thinking a long vacation with nothing more complicated than frothy mixed drinks sounded divine. Given the benefits my new powers and strengths afforded me, my inability to leave the valley was an insignificant limitation, but it still chafed. At least the mortals most likely to be affected by my current troubles were temporarily safe. All except Ben, and I’d be taking care of that exception soon.
Reaching Xavier’s estate, I batted my lashes at the guard dozing in the gatehouse, then gunned the Porsche’s engine, knowing my arrival was being phoned in even as I drove. I screeched to a stop outside the mansion, raced up the white, palatial steps, and used the key I’d remembered to bring along with me this time to open the door. I didn’t want to be stalled by Deluca, accosted by Helen, or spend more time in this gloomy mausoleum than I had to.
I hurried through the servants’ quarters and used Xavier’s private hallway to access his office. I still had to walk through the stupa, with the throne identical to that in my rooftop vision, and with the animist’s masks I now knew were aching to glue themselves to my face. I controlled a shudder by moving fast, though the spirit I’d felt living inside the one I’d worn wasn’t in evidence in any of the grainy faces staring back at me. However, there was a glaring blank spot where it’d once hung, and I knew Helen would’ve noticed its absence by now.
All the more reason to hurry.
I skipped the customary knock on the office door and flung it open, taking a deep breath to airily explain my unexpected intrusion. But Xavier wasn’t glaring up at me from behind his gigantic desk. The tinny jangle of foreign chimes once again filled the air, muting my steps across the Persian rug as I inched toward the gaping mouth of Xavier’s secret room. I’d misjudged him, I thought wryly, shaking my head. Because if he was spending this much time siphoning off his soul energy, he must have had a soul to begin with.
But my dark humor abated as I peered around the bookcase and into the hidden chamber. Xavier was kneeling again; his hair disheveled like he’d sprung from bed, still clothed in pajamas that showed more of his frame than his custom suits would allow. A tremor of shock moved through me. The once-giant man was absolutely gaunt.
But this time he wasn’t meditating or lost in prayer. Helen loomed behind him, hands on his shoulders, thumbs on his neck. They weren’t, I noted, placed there in support. In fact, her entire demeanor had lost the solicitousness that’d always marked her servitude in the Archer household. Instead it looked like she was holding Xavier in place; stilling his shoulders as they twitched beneath her palms, grounding him like he might float away.
“It hurts,” he was saying, head bowed, snaking wisps of incense twining around him. “I feel like my ribs are going to pop. Look, they’re still bruised from the last time.” He tried to pull up his pajama top. “They’re bruised from the inside.”
She pushed his arms down, shushing him. “Because you’re holding your breath.”
“No, it gets trapped inside and expands like-”
“No, it doesn’t!” she snapped, her arms straight as she levered him forward again. “The matter is pouring from the mask like a smoky waterfall.”
“But that’s not my breath! It belongs to the one who lives inside.”
“Just put it on, Xavier. You don’t want to make him angry, do you?”
I thought he whimpered. “No, but-”
“He wants more.”
“It hurts,” he whimpered.
“Put it on!”
Helen’s roar was so loud I didn’t hear my phone ring, but I felt the accompanying vibration, and acted instinctively, darting from the room before the ring tone could sound again. The theme to
I knocked on the door as I swung it shut, knowing they’d both hear that. My heart was pounding as I backed away from the door, and I whirled to give myself time to regain my composure, answering the phone in the middle of the next refrain. As the office door whipped open behind me, I turned with a bright grin on my face, held up a finger in Helen’s glaring one, and giggled into my BlackBerry.
“Cher, honey, let me call you back. I’m at Daddy’s, and you know how he likes my full attention.” I paused, then laughed cheerily as Helen shifted on her feet, the hands that’d been stilling Xavier now planted firmly on her nonexistent hips. “Oh, I know! That humid island air hates me too. Just tell your momma to make a Nyquil smoothie and she’ll feel all better in the morning.”
Helen cleared her throat impatiently.
“Oh, darlin’, gotta go. There’s a shark outside Daddy’s door too.” I laughed again at Cher’s reply as Helen’s hooded eyes narrowed into slits. I blinked prettily after I dropped the phone back into my handbag, though it didn’t have the same effect on her as it’d had on the guard at the gate.
“Your father’s busy,” she said before I could ask for Xavier.
“Helen,” I said, batting at her like she’d told a joke. “You know he’s never too busy for his favorite daughter. Just be a gem and tell him I’m here.”
I made a move toward the office, and her hand shot out, palm on my chest. “You don’t understand me,” she said firmly, letting a cool gleam enter her gaze. “He’s not well, and can’t see you now.”
“Not well?” I exclaimed, stepping back from her touch. She let her hand fall, and I put a hand to my face, covering the deep breath I allowed to coat the bridge of my mouth, my teeth, and throat. I closed my mouth, ran my tongue over the fresh air molecules, exploring their texture and taste. “Then I must tend to him!”
“I’m tending to him. It’s my job, remember?”
I tilted my head. “I remember you telling me to take care of myself because you weren’t anybody’s nurse.”
“That wasn’t you. That was your sister.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding slowly, before straightening. “Well. It was still bitchy.”
Her nostrils flared. I was careful not to breathe. “Either leave now or I’ll throw you out myself.”
I fell still and serious, and finally met her eye. “Oh, Helen. You’re making a very grave mistake.”
She snorted, rolling her own. “I’ll tell your father you stopped by.”
I bit my lip like I was confused about something, then turned away as she wanted. I felt her watch me as I crossed the throne room, and knew she continued to watch on the office monitors as I left the house and climbed back into the car. It was only after I’d sped through the gates that I let out my own scented breath.
“A very, very big mistake, Helen Maguire.”
And it was either the first one she’d made in the twenty years she’d been employed in the Archer household, or else I simply hadn’t had the tools to notice such a slip before. But I had them now-skin so sensitive to texture I could pick up the marble-smooth fingertips even without seeing them. A palate so refined I could taste decayed emotion. And an internal alarm alerting me to Shadow agents, one that currently had me smiling to myself…and sharpening my metaphorical knives.
I returned Cher’s call en route to Master Comics.
“We’re comin’ home,” she said without preamble. “Momma’s not getting any better and I think the humidity is fermentin’ her lungs. Why do people live in places where your hair can get all frizzy?”
“Spoken like a true desert rat,” I told her before growing serious. “What are her symptoms?”
“She’s wheezing and has a fever that causes her to break out in sweats and cry out in her sleep. She has the weirdest dreams…our cabana boy stars in all of them.”
Was that out of character for Suzanne? “Has she seen a doctor down there?”
“Are you kidding? The local medicine man would probably kill a chicken and splatter its blood in a circle around the bed. They’re hospitable enough, but I wouldn’t call them civilized.”
“Cher,” I chided, narrowly avoiding a tourist who’d eschewed an overhead walkway for a shortcut that’d take him twice as long. “That’s so ethnocentric.”
