The Hinky Velvet Chair

by Jennifer Stevenson

  One must have, I think, the soul of a circus performer to enjoy it, old Kauz had said.

  Clay bowed to Griffy. She curtseyed to him. In silence, they started waltzing.

  It didn’t look silly at all.

  Kauz, the butler, and even Virgil stared as if dumbstruck.

  Jewel swallowed a lump. Watching Griffy, she realized how very dangerous people like Clay and Dr. Kauz were. They knew what suggestion could do. And Randy, hell, he must be better at it than any of them. Two hundred years with nothing but a demonic ability to read thoughts, and the impossible goal of learning what women really want.

  This, Jewel thought, watching Griffy. We want this. To be loved, to feel lovable.

  Chapter Thirteen

  At dinnertime, Jewel had to ask the butler where her room was. Man, I was drunk last night. She sorted through the clothes Nina had brought. Randy’s things were there, oh yeah, Lord Possessive had asked for one bedroom. His dark suit hung on the door, clashing with the Michigan B&B Cute decor.

  Where the hell was Randy? Horndogging after Sovay, to punish her for spending last night in Clay’s room?

  Fine. Let him teach her a lesson. It’d keep him occupied. She could play with Clay.

  She didn’t want either of them all that much. What she wanted — what had Griffy said? They don’t have us figured out, and they don’t understand themselves, and sex is easier than love. They’re praying that sex is enough. And it never is.

  I always assumed sex was enough, too. She felt stupid. Plus, she was boxed in by these two horny guys, and they weren’t going away. Was that what she wanted?

  Weirdly, she felt more uneasy about Clay’s motives than she did about Randy sleeping with the enemy or reading her mind.

  Her partner was a con man. Who could she trust?

  Clay was ruthless. Sovay was a golddigger and an utter snake. Kauz could manipulate people’s feelings, yet he believed his own bullshit, which was scary right there. And Virgil, causing Griffy so much grief—

  —Was Clay’s father. Too late, Jewel remembered something Clay’d once said to her. My father’s in the same business, only he’s ten times better.

  Virgil was a con artist too.

  This mansion, the money, the diamonds all over Griffy, the collection room full of expensive toys — all were the fruit of his ill-gotten gains.

  Jewel felt cold.

  His doddering new ager act had sucked her in.

  I bet he fiddled the card game last night, too. Got her drunk and high on his charm, let her win at poker to make her stupid, so she would submit to that horrible Venus Machine. What the hell did he want?

  Virgil might be just as interested in taking Kauz for his campaign money as Clay was. He was up to something with Sovay. She bit her lip.

  I am totally out of my league.

  And still fatally attractive.

  Standing in her bra and panties, Jewel looked in the mirror. Her fair hair, freshly washed and free of green goo, hung past her shoulders. She was six inches taller than Griffy, thirty pounds heavier than Sovay, and her white cotton underwear said Hometown Girl, even after college and five years in the big city and countless men, most of whom hadn’t noticed her underwear since she’d been in such a hurry to take it off.

  I need to figure myself out.

  She looked into her own eyes. What do you want?

  The mirror vanished for a moment, and all she could see was Griffy waltzing with Clay. To be loved, to feel lovable.

  She blinked and took a step back from the mirror. Who am I to want such a thing?

  The big blonde dairy-farmer’s daughter in the mirror stared back at her, uncompromising in her white cotton, with a solidness that made the frou-frou room shrink around her.

  o0o

  Wearing her little black cocktail dress, Jewel joined the dinner party in the card room in time to hear Sovay say, “—That pink fog on the highway looks alarming.”

  “Merely a product of road rage,” Clay said. “Control your temper behind the wheel and you won’t even notice it.”

  Good boy. That’s how you administer Policy.

  “And the pigeons have the filthy habit,” Randy said. Jewel sighed. Now she had to teach him to administer Policy.

  “I haven’t heard smoking called ‘the filthy habit’ for fifty years,” Virgil said, eyeing Randy.

  “We’re a bad example to animals, aren’t we?” Griffy said.

  “Maybe they’ll smoke some hemp and get too high to poop on my car,” Virgil suggested. “Get it? Pigeons getting too high?” He cackled senilely. Jewel thought he laid on the brainless-old-fart thing too thick. Now that she knew he was Clay’s father and mentor-con, she felt less vulnerable to his manipulations.

  Sovay gave Virgil a full-frontal of her cleavage. “This wine is wonderful.”

  Virgil peered down her dress through his wineglass. “It does great things for you.” He turned the wineglass toward Jewel and his eye appeared, magnified hideously through the wine. “I see we failed to reverse the Venus Machine,” he chortled.

  Sovay scowled.

  Jewel grinned at him. “I’m holding back.”

  He toasted her. You couldn’t help liking the old turtle. If he was playing her off against Sovay and Griffy, at least he was trying to make her feel good, too.

  She noticed Mellish, the butler, standing behind Virgil, looking down on his employer’s bald head with a puzzled expression. When he caught her eye, his face smoothed out. In that moment an image flashed across her mind of the butler doing her doggy-style on top of the tablecloth amid the crystal.

  Jewel spilled her wine.

  The butler lifted his chin and shifted his gaze over her head, his thick neck and ears turning pink.

  Did he just think that, or did I? she wondered. Look at him blush!

  Holy crap, she was reading his mind!

  Griffy was showing off her rings to Randy. “Virgil gave me that one for my birthday.” She wore a tailored white silk dress, higher-cut but classier than the showstopper displaying Sovay’s frontal assets. Her chin was up and her eyes sparkled.

  Sovay craned her neck. “Nice. For your fortieth?”

  Griffy looked her straight in the eye. “My forty-third.”

  Randy caressed Griffy’s palm and turned it over to examine the ring. “Diamonds signify permanence. Rubies mean passion.”

  Griffy giggled.

  Kauz told Jewel. “Men talk themselves out of much wisdom and into much foolishness.”

  “I agree,” Jewel said. “When people believe in magic, they get nothing but trouble.” I’m back in character, whew.

  “That is because magic and science haff diverged.” Kauz put his forefingers together and drew a ‘Y’ in the air. “A scientist has from magic nothing to fear, and much to learn.”

  Jewel sent a look at Clay, trying to beam the message, Get him talking.

  Clay seemed to catch on. “I’ve always said so.”

  “Why’s that?” Jewel said to Kauz. “I’d think a real scientist wouldn’t bother with magic. That’s the definition of magic, isn’t it? It’s not true, so it’s not science.”

  Kauz swelled. “On the contrary, the terms ars magia and scientia were once interchangeably used. Distinction was created in early eighteenth century by magicians — scientists — who didn’t vant to burn for witchcraft.”

  “Burning!” Sovay shuddered. “So uncivilized!”

  He gestured at Randy. “Your English Lord Bacon says this, that magic intervenes in God’s work, but science is the work of man upon nature.”

  “I thought Bacon wrote Shakespeare,” Clay said.

  “Is other Bacon, much later. This Bacon is a great thinker, great divider of hairs,” Kauz said, forking up prime rib.

  Clay said, “So the witch hunters come sniffing around your magician and he says, ‘Back off, man, I’m a scientist?’”

  “Is all context.” Kauz waved his fork. “Before big heresy crackdown, your old-time magician wants to
wooo nature, to looove nature, to maaarry her. Highly suspicious to witch hunters.”

  “Suspicious is right,” Jewel muttered.

  “New Baconian scientist says, God gave Nature to Man for his uses”—Kauz dug his fork into the air at every word—”to own her, to plow her, to enslave her. So is modern technology born.”

  Every woman at the table stiffened.

  Virgil let out a crack of laughter.

  Kauz smiled. “But of course that is also how a great deal of evil is born, for woman as well as for nature. You ladies glare at me! Come, a man who runs a spa respects both nature and woman. My life work is to defeat the patriarchal mechanisms that subject women.”

  “With beauty treatments,” Jewel said with scorn.

  “With treatments that convince every woman she is a beauty. For so she is,” Kauz said forcefully. “Every woman.” He gestured at Jewel, then at Griffy. “Behold the successful application of science to this, the correct problem — how the woman sees herself.”

  In other words, I’m cheating you for your own good. “Using science,” Jewel said.

  “Even so. As did Katterfelto, my hero.”

  “Using magic, too?” she said with challenge.

  He swivelled to face her. “By whatever means necessary.”

  They made eye contact, and she had a flash of the good doctor sticking a needle into her arm, drawing out a big vialful of her blood, and gloating over it.

  Eeeuw! That was a nine-point-oh on her ick-o-meter.

  He meant business. He could talk himself into trouble and charm his way out of it. And he was nuts enough to take this cockamamie philosophy to the media and spread it all over a vulnerable city, a city already struggling to cope with an assault on reality that might take it down.

  “The power of suggestion,” Virgil said, breaking the silence, “must be very important in your business.”

  “Natürlich. A man is seen as powerful if he has money. A woman, if she is beautiful. Money, this is a tangible thing, but beauty is an illusion, an idea, a mood, a whim. I can give a woman power by suggesting that she is beautiful.”

  “There are money illusionists, too,” Clay remarked, glancing around the table.

  You’re all crooks and con men. Jewel felt a cold rage building. “If I were a cynical person, I’d say you’re getting rich on your customer’s fears. The older a woman gets, the more vulnerable she is to being fooled by a lot of razzle dazzle.”

  Kauz shook his head. “My older customers are wiser, not more foolish. They know how old they are. They know quite well that beauty is an illusion. Merely, I must convince them. I teach them to use the power of suggestion to project the illusion of beauty, und lo, the illusion becomes reality. They become powerful women again. They use their power more wisely than when they were young and easily duped.”

  “That’s corkscrew logic if I ever heard it.” And yet it made a goofy sort of sense. Con artist sense.

  “Primitive tribesmen,” Virgil said, “use something similar.”

  “Sympathetic magic,” Clay said. “Well-known phenomenon.”

  Yeah, you two are out of the same workshop. “Bunch of baloney,” Jewel harrumphed.

  Griffy was looking puzzled and distressed. “But the Venus Machine works. You didn’t do anything to Julia to — to convince her,” she protested.

  Jewel’s heart bled for her. The magic of her transformation was being exposed, and might crumble at any moment.

  “No, she duped herself,” Sovay murmured to Virgil, eying Jewel. Jewel saw Randy flash her a brief, ugly look.

  Griffy’s voice rose. “So is the Venus Machine real or isn’t it? It worked for both Julia and me, but it worked different.”

  Randy smiled at her. “That is because you are different women. It’s like the fairy tale about roses and jewels.”

  “Ooh, do tell us a fairy tale,” Sovay cooed.

  Virgil clapped his hands. “I love fairy tales!”

  Randy looked from Jewel to Griffy to Sovay. “There once were three sisters, two sweet and one sour. The first sister went to the well for water and met an old woman, who asked her to draw water for her. The first sister drew her water and spoke courteously to her, and in return the old woman bespelled her. When she returned home, every word she spoke became a rose.”

  Randy leaned forward. “The second sister went for water, met the old woman, gave her courtesy, and drew her water. When she returned home, every word she spoke became a ruby.”

  Randy smiled and narrowed his eyes. “The third sister hunted down the old woman, and cried, ‘Bespell me as you did my sisters, and do it now!’ The old woman said, ‘You are not so sweet as your sisters.’ The third sister hit her with a stick, and the old woman said, ‘Go home, for you are bespelled.’”

  Randy paused to look around the table. “From that day forward, with every cruelty the third sister uttered, a live toad or a snake jumped out of her mouth.”

  Griffy gasped. “That’s mean!”

  Virgil said, “It’s not nice, but it works.”

  “It is justice,” remarked Kauz.

  “Real justice is a lot slower,” Jewel said darkly.

  “And so often it misses the mark,” Sovay said.

  Hearing the word ‘mark’ in Sovay’s silky voice made Jewel flinch. I’ve got con artists on the brain.

  This whole table was a minefield.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Pleading tiredness, Jewel escaped the post-prandial poker game. Randy followed her upstairs. Uh-oh.

  “What was with the roses and jewels?” she said. “Should I have gotten something subtle out of that?”

  “She is insolent to you,” he said coolly. “That is not permitted.” That made Jewel blink. “I pointed the moral.”

  “You’re sweet,” was all Jewel could say. “But I thought you were trying to get into her pants.”

  “That, too. Then I can read her mind.”

  “I know that. But I thought you were going to, like, stay in character here.”

  “Perhaps my character would seduce Sovay. If she means to seduce Mr. Thompson, she’s foolish to flutter toward me.”

  “So you’re egging her on?” Jewel said, her voice rising.

  “Surely you do not object if she turns from Mr. Thompson to me,” he drawled. The madder she felt, the cooler he sounded. “Mr. Thompson may take offense. This would harm her schemes.”

  “I — uh.” Jewel wanted to strangle Sovay for being mean to Griffy. It had completely escaped her mind that Sovay was out to take Virgil for money, too.

  “In addition, the suspect may make a misstep. Or I may seduce her and bare her thoughts.”

  “And you don’t feel that’s kind of slutty?” Jewel blurted.

  “No.” He seemed pleased to get a rise out of her. “Why?”

  She couldn’t think of one single reason why she could object. Unless she was jealous, which was absurd. “What else?”

  He took off his shoes. “Something’s amiss with the butler.”

  “Mellish? He’s a bit thick-necked. I think he pretends to be stupid sometimes.”

  “No, that’s customary. In fact, he is the one servant I’ve observed here who seems to know his work.”

  “Griffy explained that. He’s new.” She remembered that unbidden fantasy of doing the butler doggy-style among the wineglasses. “What’s the matter with the butler?”

  “I don’t know. In my own century, I could say. I’ve not known servants here. Perhaps I mistake. I will consult Clay.”

  “That reminds me, guess what? Virgil is Clay’s father.”

  Randy stripped off his shirt. “So I suspected.”

  Jewel’s jaw dropped. “Oh, you did not.”

  “There is subtle scorn in Virgil’s manner toward Clay. Of course Griffy is his paramour, soon to be cast off, and Clay resents the change, perhaps out of sentimentality, perhaps because the new mistress is not under his influence.” Randy’s very correct undershirt came off next. At the si
ght of his naked torso Jewel forgot what she was going to say. “One cannot but observe that Ms. Sacheverell will be an improvement.”

  Jewel’s gaze moved to his face. “What?”

  Randy shrugged those beautiful naked shoulders. “She’s younger, better bred, more discreet. She deals well with servants, unlike the lowborn paramour. She’s better spoken, though she is not English and counterfeits an English accent.”

  Jewel gasped. “You’re such a snob!”

  “She also has a brain. She partakes of his interests intelligently. At his age this becomes more important, perhaps, than it was when he acquired Griffy.”

  Jewel snarled, “Doesn’t ‘bitch’ count for anything?”

  “And she comes with money of her own.”

  “So she’s a good tradeup,” Jewel said with sarcasm.

  “Precisely.”

  Steamed, she slipped out of her black cocktail dress and hung it up. “Well, try this on your well-bred pianola, asshole. Sovay’s also after his money.”

  “Of course. Any bargain with Virgil must be a mercenary arrangement.”

  “The hell it is!” Jewel protested. “Griffy loves that old turtle! She told me at the spa she’s been with him for eighteen years. Nobody could have stood him that long without affection.”

  “That also is manifest,” Randy said unpleasantly, “from your conversation with him.”

  Oh, now her sex demon was jealous of Turtlehead Thompson! “He’s a mean old geezer in some ways, but I like him.” She smiled. “He reminds me of somebody I used to date.”

  “‘Date,’” he sneered. “This is your politesse for ‘someone you were used to fornicate with.’” He raised his brows. “Have you fornicated with a septuagenarian before?”

  “I won’t discuss my sex life with you!”

  “But you discuss it with everyone else. With the cast-off mistress, for example.” He looked dark with anger.

  “She isn’t cast-off yet.” But Jewel knew that sooner or later she’d have to face Randy over what she’d told Griffy about him at the spa. “Look, I’m sorry you overheard that stuff. But women talk. Don’t follow me around and you won’t get your feelings hurt.”