Double Eclipse

by Melissa de la Cruz

  I raised my head and sniffed, as if I could track breakfast like a dog on the trail of a rabbit, but whatever other abilities I have, the power of supersmell is not one of them. I had no idea where breakfast had gone, so I just pushed through the door closest to me.

  I was pretty sure the hallway beyond the door was the one that led to the servants’ quarters: in place of the elaborate parquet of the main hallways, there was simple wood, and the walls were plain white instead of covered in hand-blocked wallpaper, and the trim was unadorned instead of elaborately carved. But what made me pause was the dirt. I don’t mean dust like I’d seen in the corners of the dining room. I mean mud, trampled into the floor and pushing up against the walls, where it had dried and crumpled and been trampled down again until the floor looked more like a tunnel than a hallway in a three-hundred-year-old mansion, with only a few glimpses of the floorboards visible where the inch-thick coating of dirt had accumulated. The walls were filthy too, with trails of dirt and food and other stuff I couldn’t identify lining them in long streaks, as if someone had dipped their hands into muddy puddles or jars of peanut butter or molasses and deliberately dragged them along the walls. And when I stood next to the streaks, I couldn’t help but notice that nearly all of them were either about five feet above the floor—which is to say, Ivan’s shoulder height—or about six feet, which is to say, Janet’s shoulder height. I mean, I knew she hated the Gardiners, but did she hate them so much that she had to defile the house she’d stolen from them?

  And I knew I should probably turn around and go back into the, you know, not-crazy part of the house, but I couldn’t help myself. This hallway was obviously in heavy use, and I wanted to see where it led. And so, doing my best to put my new Miu Miu studded patent-leather sneaks into the least dirty parts of the floor, I began to make my way down its length. It got darker the farther I went. There were only a few windows, but they’d been plastered with mud and let in almost no light. But I was still able to see that there were bits of green and brown things scattered about as I went, leaves and sticks they looked like, piling up more and more toward the end of the hall, which made it look even more like a tunnel or a path in a forest. There were also a few feathers and things that looked a bit like fur and bones, all of which made it feel like I was walking into an animal’s lair, just like in my dream.

  I came to the end of the hall and turned. There was only a little passageway left. It was darker than the long corridor I’d just walked through, not to mention about ten times dirtier, and there was a bit of a smell too, something not-so-fresh, maybe a little fishy. Here and there among the leaves and sticks, I thought I saw the glint of a bone.

  From what I could see, the floor was wetter too, and I hesitated. Before I could decide whether or not to continue, a door burst open at the other end of the hall and Janet Steele appeared.

  “Magdi!” she almost shouted, her face startled, guarded.

  I caught a glimpse of the room behind her. It was dark but seemed quite large, and even filthier than the hallway. Then she hurriedly pulled it closed and locked it.

  “Can you believe this mess?” she said as she turned toward me and began picking her way down the muddy hall in a pair of high-waisted flowy gold pants tucked into stiletto calf boots in black snakeskin.

  “Are those Haider Ackermann?” I said. “They’re so chic I want to die!”

  “I know,” Janet said. “And I have to walk through this mess in them. Can you believe it?” she said. “A staff of eight, a gazillion dollars in the bank, and yet they let this happen.”

  “What did happen?” I said as Janet put her arm on my shoulder and steered us back toward the main house.

  “Ivan said a family of weasels was camped out here. Living, breeding, eating, and—” She sniffed, made a face. “Everything else too, from the smell of it.”

  “But I thought you said the servants live here?” I said as we walked toward the kitchen.

  “Did I?” Janet said, but didn’t explain further.

  We were walking past some of the streaks of finger- and handprints on the wall.

  “Weasels?” I said. “Really?”

  “That’s what Ivan said. He cleared them out before I got here.” She glanced at the stains on the wall and shook her head. “You know Fair Haven sits on a seam between Midgard and Hel?”

  “I heard something about that,” I said vaguely.

  “Tyr sealed it all up hundreds of years ago, of course, but still, a little energy can’t help but leak through. It attracts all kinds of weirdness,” she said, waving a hand at the dirty floor and walls. “This is the newest part of the house, but I’m guessing we must be pretty close to the seam.”

  I knew that in fact the seam was located in the ballroom, which, if I had my bearings (and I wasn’t sure I did), wasn’t far from here. But I didn’t point that out to Janet. If she was serious about this war-between-the-gods thing, I wasn’t going to give her any ammunition.

  “I’m tempted to have Ivan bulldoze it.” Janet was still speaking. “Build something nice and modern. Glass and steel. Impregnable,” she added as she pushed the door to the kitchen open. “But I don’t know. These old places have their charms—literally, in the case of Fair Haven.”

  “Ha!” I laughed as we stepped into the kitchen.

  “Mardi! There you are!” Molly’s voice rang out. “Ivan told me you were here, but I was beginning to think he was having a joke at my expense.”

  I was a bit taken aback at Molly’s seeming good cheer, after the frosty invitation she’d given me in the Cheesemonger yesterday. I guess she’d believed me when I said that nothing had happened between me and Rocky. Seeing her again made me realize nothing could happen between me and Rocky. Even if I was attracted to him, I couldn’t do anything about it, and I wouldn’t.

  “Sorry, I just took a bit of a wrong turn, but here I am, ready and raring to go.”

  “Woo-hoo, Bahamas!” Molly said.

  Now, I know I’m the dark, jaded sister and Molly’s the bright, happy-go-lucky one. But not even she had ever said “woo-hoo” in her life. I found myself wondering who had kidnapped my real sister and sent this Stepford clone in her place. But all I said was:

  “Woo-hoo.” I couldn’t bring myself to shout it, though, which didn’t matter, since Molly had already turned to Janet.

  “What were you doing in the servants’ quarters, Mum?”

  “Ivan told me the skunks were back. Thought I’d better check myself.”

  “Skunks?” I said. “I thought you said—”

  “I’m going to get one of those humane pest removal services in here while we’re in the Bahamas. Hopefully they can trap the little critters and cart them over to Hither Hills State Park on the big island. Well, is everyone packed? We don’t want to be late.”

  “Late for what?” Molly laughed. “We’re flying charter.”

  “Yes, and I’m paying for it. You miss a commercial flight and you pay a hundred bucks to change your ticket. You show up late for a charter and they charge you five thousand for the inconvenience. And I don’t know about you girls, but I would much rather spend that money on boots,” she finished up, lifting up one of her feet and flicking off a piece of mud with one golden-lacquered nail. “Not to mention bikinis!”

  Molly and I looked at each other and smiled, and this time her joy didn’t seem forced. “Yes, please!”

  At the sight of the two of us looking all sisters-in-love, a big grin spread across Janet’s face.

  “Look at the two of you! My girls, together again.” She extended her long strong arms and pulled us into a three-way hug. I felt Molly’s arms snake around us as well, and after a moment’s hesitation, I gave in and joined in the hug.

  “We’re going to have so much fun!” Janet breathed into my ear.

  Mum climbed into the Maybach and I went to follow, but before I could, Molly�
��s hand closed around my arm like a clamp.

  “I know you want to sleep with Rocky, you little slut. I’ve got my eye on you.”

  “Molly, what the—”

  But before I could even finish my question, she’d shoved me out of the way and climbed in next to Mum.

  “Hurry up, slowpoke,” Mum called to me. “We really don’t want to be late.”

  I got in warily, trying not to make eye contact with Molly. Her rage filled up the back of the car like a toxic gas, although Mum seemed oblivious to it. I just hoped Molly wouldn’t crash the plane.

  23

  CARIBBEAN QUEENS

  From the Diary of Molly Overbrook

  About a half hour after we took off from the East Hampton airport in Mum’s chartered plane, a funny thing happened. Both my phone and Mardi’s started buzzing like crazy. Voice mails, text messages, alerts from Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and a half dozen other social media feeds. At first, we thought something terrible had happened, and we started scrolling through them in alarm, trying to find out what it was. Then Mardi looked up, anxiety replaced by confusion.

  “These are all old. Like two, three weeks old.”

  I hadn’t been paying attention to the time stamps, but then I checked and saw that she was right. The most recent message was from yesterday; the oldest dated back almost a month to—

  “The day I moved into Fair Haven.”

  Mardi shot me a look when I said that. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other since I’d hissed into her ear outside Mum’s Maybach, and I could tell she was biting her tongue so we didn’t get into a fight.

  “Look at that,” I said sarcastically. “There are all the messages you said I didn’t send you. So good to see you yesterday. Let’s hang out at the North Inn with F. Maybe you can come out to FH and show me where everything is.”

  “And all the messages you said I didn’t send you!” Mardi protested. “So glad we finally talked. I missed you! It’s Jo’s birthday tomorrow. Are you coming to the party?”

  “I missed Jo’s birthday?”

  “She wasn’t happy,” Mardi said. “Neither was Ingrid.”

  “Oh, look,” I said, changing the subject. “Here are all the messages I sent Rocky. You remember Rocky? My boyfriend? Yesterday was amazing. I miss you already. Where are you? Is something wrong? Are you mad at me? WTF?!”

  “Molly, please,” Mardi said in a placating tone. “He didn’t get them. Neither of us did. How were we supposed to know that you weren’t having another one of your freak-outs?”

  “‘Another one’? Because freaking out is apparently something I do all the time?” I huffed.

  “Come on. Even you have to admit you’ve been a little gun-shy ever since Alberich.”

  “I might use the word cautious. But I wasn’t being cautious with Rocky. As you know.”

  “Nothing happened! And I didn’t know what was going on,” Mardi said. “You have to believe me.”

  “Well, you should have tried harder to find out. You should have driven out to Fair Haven.”

  “You don’t think I did? Three times! You were never there!”

  “Well, then I was probably at the tennis club with Mum. All you had to do was look online.”

  “How?” Mardi said. “None of those pictures and posts went up.”

  “Bull,” I said. “Look,” I continued, holding up my phone to her. “Here’s a picture from the club—that’s the day after Mum got back from England. And there are more than three thousand likes from that day alone.”

  “But look at my phone,” Mardi said, showing me her screen. “The alert from the picture didn’t come until just now.”

  I was so mad that it was hard for me to focus, but when I’d stared at the picture and the responses below it, I saw that she was telling the truth. Somehow the picture had gone out into the Twitterverse—to everyone’s phone in the world, except Mardi’s.

  “This smells like magic,” I said.

  Mardi nodded. “Like someone was playing a trick on us.”

  “Who was playing a trick on whom?” Mum said, emerging from the front of the plane, where she’d been hanging out with the pilot, who apparently gave her lessons.

  Mardi glanced at me warily, discreetly shaking her head. “No one. Just this dumb Internet prank.”

  “Ugh,” Mum said. “I try not to know anything about it. Ivan handles all my accounts, and I’m pretty sure he uses some kind of magic script to keep them going. Speaking of which.” She clapped her hands twice. “Ivan!”

  Ivan appeared from the galley at the back of the jet.

  “Yes, Ms. Steele?”

  “My daughters’ glasses are empty.”

  “Begging your pardon, Ms. Steele. Mooi, Magdi, can I refill your champagne, or would you prefer something else?”

  “Uh, champagne’s fine for me,” Mardi said, clearly uncomfortable at the way Mum was ordering Ivan around like a servant. I still found it a little off-putting, but it seemed to be their dynamic.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “And my throat is dry,” Mum added as Ivan collected our glasses. “Bring me a juice. Nothing too tart.”

  “As you wish, Ms. Steele,” Ivan said, bowing low and backing out of the cabin.

  With Mum present, Mardi clearly didn’t want to talk about the situation with Rocky or the weird, possibly magical glitch in our electronic communications, and I decided to let it go—for now. Even if some magical force had hidden my texts and phone calls and social media posts from her and Rocky, and vice versa, she still should have tried harder to track me down before making a move on the guy I’d been seeing. But I didn’t need to have a knock-down, drag-out fight with my sister the first time we hung out with Mum. Better to break her in easy.

  Instead, we spent the rest of the flight sipping champagne and eating caviar, and before I knew it, we were landing in the Bahamas—or the BH as everyone called it—and then heading off in a waiting limo to the hotel.

  The hotel was a bit like the Chateau Marmont in LA, with a large main building and a dozen or so “bungalows” scattered around it. “Bungalow” makes me think of a little building, but ours was bigger than Ingrid’s house in the East End, a single-story U-shaped building that wrapped around a private pool, with bedrooms that opened right onto a private beach. I mean, my old room at Ingrid’s looked out on the beach too, but it was on the second floor, and, well, as nice as the beach is in North Hampton, it’s hard to compete with the tropics’ perfect eighty-five-degree weather and seventy-five-degree water.

  Seconds after we arrived, all three of us were in our bikinis (four if you count Ivan, whose Speedo was almost as tiny as our swimsuit bottoms—I guess he’s European?) and splashing into the water. It was heavenly, and afterward, when Mum and Ivan went off to the tennis club to get in an hour of practice, it just seemed too peaceful to start fighting with Molly. And so it went for the next six days: every morning a pitcher of fresh-squeezed peach nectar appeared outside our door, served with a selection of croissants and fresh Caribbean fruits (gri gri, papaya, and chironja were my faves). They were so good they actually made me look forward to breakfast (and that’s saying something).

  But as good as breakfast was, dinners were even better. Normally, Mum said, she would’ve wined and dined us at the best restaurants in Nassau, but since she was playing a tournament, she had to be super careful about what she ate. So instead of going out, she’d arranged for a personal chef to come to our bungalow every night and cook for us. It was one of the few times I thought about the fact that Mum wasn’t like me and Mardi and Dad—that she was human. We never worried about how healthy our food was, only if it tasted good. But Mum was mortal, and she had to be extremely conscious about what she put in her body to keep it not just looking as good as it could, but working as well as it could, and for as long as it could. Her chef, however, put a
ny of those thoughts out of my brain because he served up an unbelievable array of grilled fishes that had been caught that same day in the Florida Straits—swordfish and octopus and shrimp and several things that came in shells that kind of grossed me out a little, but tasted divine. It didn’t hurt that Sebastien, the chef, was gorgeous and spoke with a beautiful French accent (he was from Martinique).

  Meanwhile, though, there was the tennis tournament itself. This was the first time we’d been seen in public together as Janet Steele’s daughters. I started the week with 846 followers on Twitter. By the time Mum won the tournament the following Sunday, I had 13,351. Mardi scored almost as many. But of course the real star was Mum. There were paparazzi stationed outside the gates of our hotel to snap her picture in the morning, and sport photographers stationed at the practice courts to watch her warm up each day, and TV cameras at the matches themselves, to catch her in all her glory.

  Crazily enough, even though our hotel was right on the beach, we never actually put on our swimsuits after that first day until our last day in the BH, the day after Mum won the tournament. Mum had scheduled an extra day at the hotel so we could all chill out and actually spend some time together without Mum being “distracted” by the tournament (although I have to say, when she wasn’t playing tennis, she didn’t talk about it at all, and seemed not to think about it either). And so, after another breakfast of croissants and guanabana (it tastes like the perfect marriage of a strawberry and a pineapple), we slipped on our bikinis and made our way to the beach, which in our case just meant walking out the door. Although just as we were finishing breakfast the phone rang, and Mum ended up getting called off to do an interview with ESPN Australia, who happened to have a correspondent in the Bahamas.

  “They’ve promised to let me shill for my clothing line and my vodka, so I kind of can’t say no. It pays the bills, you know.”