by Alex Gordon
“Is that why those history books were in the other library?”
“History books?”
“Histories of intelligence organizations. OSS. CIA. In the other library.” Lauren leafed through the other photos, all the while concentrating on whatever sense of the former occupant she could draw from the room. “Just seemed like odd things to have in a company library.”
“Unlike the grimoires and pseudepigrapha?” Carmody shrugged. “My father liked history.”
Lauren continued her examination of the photos, but after a few minutes, she was compelled to admit that the office held no magical memory. Wiped clean. Like fingerprints from a firearm. She shoved the file folder back in its slot, then perused a binder filled with blueprints of a sixty-year-old fertilizer plant as the realization settled that Carmody would never have allowed her through the door if there had been anything in the office worth seeing. She pushed the binder back in place with enough force to send the rest toppling over. The vibration shook the case, and something tumbled off the shelf above, bounced off her head, and fell onto the rug.
Lauren picked it up. She thought it a river rock at first—black, oval shaped. But then she saw the slight widening that formed a base, the eyes and claws inscribed in what proved to be dried clay. “This is like the forest figurines in the garden. Your mother made it?”
Carmody took it from her and turned it upside down. “It’s hers. She signed everything on the bottom.” He pointed to a tiny script c stamped into the lower edge of the base, then handed the figure back.
Lauren returned it to the shelf, then wiped her hand on her shorts. She felt nothing when she touched the piece, but the appearance alone was enough to give her the creeps. “I guess I’m surprised he kept it here, given that—”
“Given that she left him?” Carmody sniffed. “He missed her. At least, he said he did.” He reached up and set the figure farther back from the shelf’s edge. “We don’t seem to have much luck when it comes to marriage.”
“You both only gave it one shot.”
“Once was enough.” Carmody stared at the little clay oval for a few moments, then went to stand by the open doors.
Lauren flipped through files containing information about plants in Colorado and office space in Lima, Peru. Stuck the last folder back into its slot, then walked to the middle of the room and scuffed her flip-flop through the rug.
“Satisfied?” Carmody didn’t quite manage to keep the I told you so out of his voice. “I suppose I should be grateful that you didn’t just walk through the walls.”
Lauren held up her left hand. Even though the bruises had already begun to yellow, it still looked nasty. “It’s not that simple.”
“If it were, think of what you could do.” Carmody waved for her to step out into the hall. “I don’t mean to seem rude, but there are other things I need to attend to.”
Lauren trudged out, hands in pockets. She heard Carmody close the doors and reset the locks, and didn’t slow down when he hurried to catch her.
“I’m curious. What did you think was in there? What did you expect to find?” He held up a hand in front of her, forcing her to stop. “If I felt there was any chance that the answers we needed were in that room, don’t you think I’d have torn it down to the studs months ago?”
Lauren met his eyes, so different now that he had stopped trying to charm her. Washed-out blue, bloodshot, the skin beneath darkened and pouchy. “I suppose.”
“I don’t know what you saw in Jericho, or what you thought you saw. I’m trying to play straight with you, but there are limits. You’re not entitled to know my business dealings, or details about my personal life.”
“They matter.”
“I disagree.” Carmody stuck a finger in Lauren’s face, then retracted it when she took a step back. “Nyssa may tell you things she says she remembers, but she was only five years old when Fernanda disappeared. Much of what she claims to recall consists of years of overheard rumor combined with wishful thinking.” He turned his hand over so it was open, pleading. “She’s powerful, more powerful than I will ever be, and it affects the way her mind works. The way she sees the world. She needs to be around someone like you, who’s dealt with the jolts and setbacks. That’s what I need from you. Now, are we on the same page?”
Not even in the same library. Lauren remained silent until Carmody swore under his breath and left her in the middle of the hall. She knew he lied. She had to think of a way to prove it.
CHAPTER 18
Lauren first thought to hide out in her suite and consider what to do next, but hunger drove her downstairs to the dining room. Given the hour and the hell that the day had been, she didn’t expect to encounter anyone, so she was surprised to find Jenny seated alone at a table by the window. Lauren stopped at the buffet and collected cold salmon and salad, then joined her.
“I thought I was going to pass out up there. Then I remembered, no dinner last night and a cup of yogurt for breakfast.” Jenny looked a little less gray than she had in Nyssa’s bedroom, but her voice sounded scratchy and her eyes were red, as though she had been crying.
Lauren watched her pick at her food. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m rockin’ it, can’t you tell?”
“It’s just that in Nyssa’s room, you looked pretty shaken.”
“Well, we had just come back from shipping a deathly ill guest to the hospital only to find the daughter of the house threatening suicide, which you prevented by walking through a wall.” Jenny paused to sip the sparkling water she had opted for in place of anything alcoholic. “Call me overly sensitive.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I don’t know what you’re used to back in Gideon, but out here, that all adds up to a really rough day.”
Lauren stabbed a piece of salmon with her fork. “I didn’t walk through a wall. I just passed my hand through it.”
“You’re right, that’s totally different. What was I thinking?”
They ate in peevish silence. As soon as Jenny finished, she got up without a word and departed, leaving Lauren to stare at her plate and wish she had given in to her initial impulse to stay in her room.
Then she saw Jenny walk out onto the deck and lean with her elbows on the railing and her head in her hands, and went out after her, first detouring to the bar to collect a bottle of wine, this time complete with glasses.
When Jenny heard Lauren approach, she straightened, then hurriedly wiped her eyes with her shirtsleeve.
Lauren filled both glasses and set one on the railing. A truce.
Jenny stared at it for a time before sighing and picking it up. A sip first, followed by most of the glass. Then she stared out over the garden, a single tear spilling down her cheek.
“Seven months ago this week, I drove to my grandmother’s house to pick her up to take her to church. It was Saturday night, when all the flower ladies set up for services the next morning. I knocked on her front door, and went in, as always. Called out to her. She always had a snack set out for me, fresh coffee and some of whatever she had baked that day. That Saturday, it was lemon squares. Three of them, set out on a plate on the kitchen table. Napkin and fork beside the plate. She hadn’t brewed the coffee yet. She always waited until I walked in the door.” Jenny’s voice cracked, and she drank a little more before continuing. “‘Coffee has to be fresh,’ she always said. ‘Fresh coffee for my fresh little girl.’”
Lauren braced her hands on the railing. She knew what was coming. But her job now wasn’t to jump to the end of the story; it was to listen.
“I called out again, and when I didn’t hear anything, I thought maybe she had gone out to the backyard to get her laundry. Even though we bought her a dryer years before, she still had to hang her laundry outside. But I looked, and the lines were empty.” Jenny traced a finger around the rim of her glass. “So I walked through the house, calling. I started feeling a little scared then, that maybe she had fallen and hurt hers
elf, perhaps was unconscious. I went to her bedroom last of all. The door was open, and she would have closed it even if she were having problems because that’s how she was. Even though she lived alone. I looked in and saw this haze of steam coming out of the bathroom. Like fog. I walked across that bedroom—it took hours, it seemed like. Days. I found her in the tub, in her dress and hat. Shoes still on her feet. She had run the water hot—the mirrors were dripping and I almost fell, the tile was so slippery. She had—” Jenny mimed cutting her wrists, first one, then the other. “She must have done it just before I arrived.”
Lauren touched her arm. “Words don’t help, I know. But I am so sorry.”
Jenny nodded absently. “We thought maybe she was sick and hadn’t told us. But her doctor said no. The usual complaints, but nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to explain why she would do what she did.” She turned to Lauren, eyes wide. “You can smell blood, you know? I did that day—the bathroom reeked of it. And I could smell it today, running down the hallway to that girl’s room. I didn’t have to see. I knew what she did.”
Silence came as a relief. Lauren refilled Jenny’s glass, then her own. She spotted movement down in the garden. Stef and Peter, moving from level to level, recasting the wards. In the distance, the mad yipping of coyotes erupted. Hadn’t she once read that those were sounds of greeting, of the pack becoming reacquainted at the end of the day?
Her mind drifted. Then the sound of the approaching helicopter shattered the quiet. It swooped low over the house, then circled back toward the helipad and touched down.
Jenny leaned out over the railing, craning her neck one way, then the other, as she tried to see the new arrival through the trees. Then she stilled. “I thought he wasn’t coming back until tomorrow.”
Lauren joined Jenny in time to see Heath hiking toward the house. He wore fresh clothes, jeans and a light sweater, and had traded Sam’s handbag for a cross-body messenger bag.
“This can’t be good.” Jenny shook her head.
“Maybe he came to get his things.”
“Carmody could have shipped them to him. He’d have had them first thing tomorrow morning.”
They headed back inside the house and reached the main living room to find Heath and Carmody in heated discussion while Kaster paced nearby.
“You said I had the chopper at my disposal.” Heath looked more the worse for wear up close. He needed a shave and eight hours’ sleep, and looked ready to throw a punch at whoever had the nerve to suggest it.
Carmody nodded. He had switched out shorts for jeans but still wore the same shirt. He looked just as rumpled as his unanticipated guest, but with him it was a feature, not a bug. “Yes, I did. I just didn’t expect to see you here until tomorrow at the earliest.”
“What’s the problem? No time to get your stories straight?”
“Careful what you say, Heath.” Kaster’s voice came quiet and his tone remained calm, almost light. You needed to look into his eyes to see the ice, the promise of the avalanche to come.
Apparently, Heath did. He stepped back from Carmody, then spun on his heel, wobbly as a top losing momentum.
Carmody grabbed him as he stumbled. “Perhaps you should have stayed in the hospital for one night.”
Heath shook off his hand. “I signed myself out. Nothing they could do for me. Nothing anyone can do for me.” He looked one way, then the other, when he realized that Lauren and the rest had filtered in. He squinted at Lauren, then pointed. “She spent the day with you.”
Lauren felt all eyes move to her. Glanced toward the stairs in time to see a shadow flicker beneath. Nyssa the spy, at her post. “She spent two hours with me.”
“Everybody said that fungus doesn’t work that fast. That mushrooms don’t work that fast. You gave her something, didn’t you? You killed my Sam!”
“Why would I do that? I didn’t even know her.”
“Sacrifice.” Heath mimed stabbing someone. “An offering to that—that bitch you worship.” He moved toward her, fist still raised as though he held a weapon. “I knew you didn’t belong here. The rest of us are educated. Accomplished. You’re nothing but a trumped-up business with no sense or talent or grace—”
“That’s enough, Heath.” Carmody came up behind him, took hold of his wrist, and brought it down. “You’re finished here.”
“Finished? I haven’t even gotten started.”
“Go upstairs to your room. Get some rest.”
Heath stilled. Then his face crumpled. “My girl. My gorgeous girl.” He wept, shoulders shaking and his sobs echoing off the glass.
Carmody motioned to Peter. They grabbed Heath under his arms and led him to the elevator. “We’ll take it from here.” He looked back, face flushed with a blend of exertion and embarrassment, his gaze settling on Lauren until he entered the elevator and the doors closed.
“Well, that was . . . unfortunate.” For the first time, Kaster appeared unsettled. He stood in the middle of the floor, his hand to his mouth, eyes fixed on nothing. Then he looked at Lauren, and the air of imperturbability returned. “You’d think some people would know when to call it a day, wouldn’t you, Mistress?” He bowed his head, then turned and headed across the room toward the entry to the house’s private wing.
Lauren watched him leave. A beat later, she caught another movement in the shadows as Nyssa exited her observation post. Then she heard footsteps from behind and turned to find Stef regarding her coolly.
“We’ve reset the wards.” Her voice, the way she held herself, offered challenge, but whether it was to invading entities or to Lauren wasn’t entirely clear. “Nothing can enter this house now unless we give it leave.”
“Too bad the same thing doesn’t apply to people.” Jenny looked down at her empty wineglass, then out toward the deck. “If you don’t mind, I sort of want to be alone right now.” She hesitated, then gave Lauren a quick hug. “Thanks.” She nodded to Stef before departing.
“Do you have a minute?” Stef’s smile held an edge, as though refusal wasn’t an option.
As my Mistress commands. Lauren followed Stef into the bar and sat at a table in the corner while the woman got herself a glass of water, then settled into her chair.
“This has been a time for you, hasn’t it? Quite an introduction to the Council.” Stef paused to sip, then set the glass on the table and turned it one way, then the other. “We’ve weakened so over the years, become scattered by migration and circumstance. Both the Council and our guardian settlements. We’ve lost track of who we are. Our purpose. We need an injection of something positive. Life. Hope.”
“Cash.” Lauren looked out toward the woods, and wondered what walked the trails as the darkness closed in.
“As you say.” Stef smiled. “The type of financial assistance that you believe Gideon requires is outside the Council’s current purview, of course. It would mean an entire layer of administration and expertise that we do not currently possess. And of course there’s Andrew to convince.”
“Of course.” Lauren felt as though she had just been dropped in the middle of a foreign-language film without subtitles. Just smile and nod. If she could discover why Stef had decided to be so nice, maybe she could also learn why she had been so abrasive in the first place.
“The Carmody Foundation has provided support for the Council for some time, as you know. It’s unfortunate that matters have taken the turn that they have. It pains me deeply.” Stef pressed a hand to her heart. “A good word from you could, I believe, help smooth things over.”
“Quid pro quo.” Lauren nodded. “Which I might be quite happy to do if I knew what exactly what I was quid pro quoing for.”
“You have an annoying habit of playing coy.”
“And you and everyone else in this house have done nothing but blow smoke since I arrived. Why exactly do you believe I was invited here?”
“Officially? To help Nyssa.”
“How about unofficially?”
“We both know the an
swer to that, now, don’t we?”
Lauren sat back, and let her business brain churn for the first time in months. Something financial. “I would rather you explained it to me.”
Stef’s mood flipped, the anger returned. “You are so like your father. Arrogant. So certain yours is the only way. When I approached him in Seattle to return to the host, he ordered me out of his sight.”
“You knew my father?” The revelation threw Lauren at first, but she soon recovered as Peter’s words returned to her. It’s a small world we inhabit. “He was trying to protect me.”
“And yet, here you are.” Stef closed her eyes. “How fortunate for us all.”
Lauren backtracked. Smiled. “I appreciate the offer to help Gideon, I honestly do. But the assistance you’re offering benefits the town. What about me’?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. What do you want?”
“Some questions answered.”
“I’m not sure I can help you.”
“I think you can. You’ve known the Carmody family for how long?” Lauren waited until Stef gave her the barest of nods. “I wondered about Andrew’s father. I know he supervised work for the government before he took control of the company, and I wondered what it consisted of.”
“You should ask Andrew.” Stef sniffed. “Though I expect he would decline to answer, therefore so must I.”
“So the wards around Jericho—”
“Are for Fernanda only.”
That was well rehearsed. Lauren wondered if Carmody and Stef had already compared notes. “Elliott Rickard.”
Stef’s hard shell softened slightly. “My Lady, I haven’t heard that name in ages.”
“Was he a medical doctor?”
“He never treated patients. He preferred the research bench.”
“What was his specialty?”
“Clinical psychology.” Stef’s brow knit. “I believe behavior modification was an interest. Ways to treat anxiety.” She quieted, her hands massaging the arms of her chair. “If you have no more questions, I shall retire for the evening.” She struggled to her feet. “Peter and I meet with Andrew tomorrow morning at ten. I look forward to hearing of your fulfillment of your part of the bargain, at which point we will fulfill ours.”
