emotions, being displayed so openly. Still…could that be it? Were Hunter and I somehow linked now? Share a body and bed…share a soul and conduit?
A quick rap at the door and Hunter peeked in, still looking disturbed, and I could understand why. Touching someone else’s conduit-using it as your own-that was like reaching inside a body and shifting around a person’s organs. An apology was already on my lips when Warren snapped.
“Not now, Hunter.” He waved him away and motioned for him to shut the door.
“There’s a call-”
“Ignore it!”
“It can’t be ignored!” Hunter held out the phone, his good arm steady in the air, eyes leveled on his troop leader’s face. Warren frowned at the text on the screen, then crossed the room for a closer look. Once there, he stilled altogether. “Oh.”
Hunter’s gaze shifted to me.
“What?” My first thought was that Vanessa had been captured again…or maybe one of the others. But Vanessa was safe in our underground lair, and everyone else was here. So…“What?” I said louder.
Warren finally looked back at me. “I don’t know whether to tell you that I’m sorry or not.”
“Why? What happened?”
“It’s your father, Joanna. Or…not your father, but Xavier.” He swallowed hard.
“What about him?” I stepped closer.
“He died, Jo,” Hunter said, stilling me again. “In the middle of the night.”
17
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
My loss, I thought, staring at the suit of yet another man smiling placatingly in front of me. I’d arrived at Xavier’s compound directly from the warehouse, and had to push aside the thoughts of my relationships with Hunter and my ability to use his conduit as if it were my own, for the time being. But the fact was, all my thoughts seemed to be sluggish right now, and I finally gave up on trying to remember this man’s name-or even care-and simply nodded. This pattern repeated itself as I moved on through the sitting room, the family room, the living room…all the misnamed rooms in Xavier Archer’s house, while I avoided the sympathetic gazes of the strangers around me and thought about my
The man who’d despised me practically since birth was dead. The man who blamed me for my mother’s abandonment was dead. The man who treated people as usable objects, and siphoned his soul to the Tulpa in return for unlimited power and money was, finally, dead. I looked around at all that remained.
I’d lost nothing.
But strangely, I didn’t feel I’d gained anything either.
“My condolences, Ms. Archer.” I did recognize this man. This was John, Xavier’s closest confidant, and a man who moved like an offensive lineman instead of a lawyer. He’d never given either Olivia or me a second glance, but that had changed now. I could see him developing plays as he looked at me, looking for weaknesses, figuring out if I needed to be double-teamed, trapped, or cross-blocked. And why not? Once a Playmate, a plaything-arm candy to be given a second glance but not a thought-Olivia Archer was no longer simply an heiress. She was a mogul. John, I knew, had strategies for dealing with moguls.
I made my way to the winding staircase and the upstairs corridor under the watchful eye of John and the army of sycophants Xavier had left leaderless, though I knew I wouldn’t be followed. They thought I was in shock. Xavier’s personal physician had already offered me soothing sedatives, so I’d take the path of least resistance and play the part of the frail princess until I could get out of there and back to searching for Jaden Jacks. I didn’t feel bad about the hypocrisy, pretending to care when I knew I did not. Xavier had gotten what was coming to him. He was an ass, he was greedy, and I’d never loved him.
So why was my heart heavy, as if I did?
I dodged two maids who averted their eyes, arms filled with linens, their Spanish whispered once they thought I could no longer hear. The household staff had returned upon Helen’s orders, and were putting things back to order, dusting and scrubbing and wondering what I was going to do with all this space and belongings, with their paychecks and all their lives. Their gazes were just as assessing as John’s, which was probably how I ended up in Xavier’s vacant wing. There was no other reason to be there. But it was quiet, and with Xavier’s body still in residence, no one seemed ready to tread there yet.
Exactly what I needed.
Yet I hesitated until the soft dulcet tones of Spanish arose again behind me, then pushed the door open and slipped inside.
The first thing I noticed was that the flowers sent by well-wishers were no longer moldering in lukewarm water, the table once holding them now a bald spot among the rest of the ornate tableaus of the sitting room. I crossed to the window where thick curtain blotted out the sunlight and shoved it open. Xavier was dead. He couldn’t say a thing about it.
As if approving of this belated rebellion, the storm clouds that’d been dogging the valley last night had thinned and parted, revealing a tender blue sky and a sharp morning sun. I saw John step outside on the patio below me, the bald spot on his head a perfect O from directly above, a phone to his ear as he lit a cigarillo. Unlocking the window, I slid it open an inch, all I’d need to hear his end of the conversation even though I was thirty feet above him.
“Of course she’s incompetent,” he scoffed on a thin stream of smoke. “A figurehead is all…with the emphasis on her figure…”
He laughed, and so did the person on the other end of the line. I did not.
“…an easy mark for anyone with the intelligence above that of a soybean. I’ve called an emergency meeting with the board of directors. Yes, we’ll handle that now. And her…”
He disappeared under the back portico, totally unaware that I was there…and I was a woman who disliked being handled. Guessing he was going to take this conversation into the inner courtyard, I crossed into the bedroom, where I could watch and hear him from Xavier’s window. I was so preoccupied by listening in that I forgot about Xavier’s body, lying like an empty shell on the linen shore of his crisp bedsheets. I was also halfway through the room before I realized I wasn’t alone.
“He underestimates you.” The voice was strong and low. Charbroiled.
My gut reaction was to run. I jolted, automatically reaching for the mask in my bag, though the reaction could be attributed to the shock of finding someone else in the room. I played it off that way…and turned around to face the Tulpa.
He was seated in a straight-backed chair next to Xavier’s bed, looking neither large nor small, not overdressed or under, but as comfortable in this clothing and body as he was in any other. The skin he lived in today was pale, but a blank-slate pale, without a freckle to mar the entire canvas. It made him look as lifeless as the corpse next to him, and made me wonder if he’d hidden in the dark long enough to gather enough power to willingly take on these features, or if they’d been superimposed upon him by the mind and expectation of one of his followers. Perhaps Lindy-or Helen-as she was downstairs? I forced myself to calm. My scent was masked; I’d injected the pheromones before leaving the warehouse. I was here as Olivia, so Olivia I would be.
Still, I couldn’t help a fleeting wish for a layer or two of Micah’s protective webbing. “Y-You heard what he was saying?”
Of course he had. His hearing was sharper than a jungle cat’s.
The Tulpa shrugged. “Don’t worry about John. He’ll come at you head-on, full-force, like he’s in a demolition derby. I, on the other hand, learned long ago to be more circumspect around beautiful women.”
His smile widened, dimples appeared, as if that was supposed to be a compliment. Knowing what I did of his past, how it intertwined with my mother’s, I remained on guard. “Who are you?” I asked. Like I didn’t know.
“You mean Helen hasn’t mentioned me?” He tsk-tsked at the shake of my head. “I was a mentor of sorts to your father. A benefactor, if you will.”
But he still didn’t say his name. I tilted my head, frowning. “Daddy never mentioned you either.”
