In a pacifying tone, as if he were trying to calm a temperamental child, Elic said, “Look, I realize she’s the administrateur’s daughter, which under normal circumstances would put her off limits, but it’s not like she’s going to be taking over from him. And you may not know this, but she’s been talking about how much she wants a child, so I thought why n—”
“Whose seed was it?” Adrien asked.
“Jason’s, but it’s no big deal,” Elic said. “Nothing came of it.”
“Elic, I just saw her,”Adrien said, his voice rising unsteadily as he took another step forward. “She’s pregnant with a gifted son.”
“She is?” Elic said, his feigned bewilderment only fueling Adrien’s ire.
“Awesome!” Inigo said. “Blondie gets knocked up, Elic gets him a little arhkutu action . . . Where’s the downside?” he asked Adrien.
“How about me having to know that I wasn’t the only man to sleep with her that night?” Adrien said.
After a moment of stunned silence, Inigo said, “Seriously? You and Blondie? That is so totally—”
“Inigo.” Lili caught his eye and shook her head.
“But . . . you don’t even like her,” Elic said.
“I love her. If I could have given her a gifted child, don’t you think I would have asked her to marry me years ago?”
“So you and Isabel . . .” Elic stared at Adrien a moment, then started chuckling.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Adrien asked.
“And now she’s carrying a gifted child, and of course it can’t be yours, ’cause she’s just a civilian.” Elic shook his head, still laughing.
“Okay, shut the fuck up,” Adrien said, but Elic’s hilarity was apparently unquenchable.
So Adrien hauled back and punched him in the face.
Elic spun around, cracking his head on the pool table’s side rail of inlaid rosewood as he fell to the floor.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Inigo through a burst of laughter as he darted around the table, along with Lili, to come to Elic’s aid. Elic appeared to be unconscious, but being a Follet, he’d be good as new within a few minutes, without even a headache to remind him that the druid charged with seeing to his welfare had just laid him out.
Adrien limped away to the ground-floor balcony off the library, where he smoked a Black Russian. He lit a second cigarette off the first, and smoked that. And then he climbed the stairwell in the southeast tower and walked down the hall to Emmett’s apartment.
Not wanting to disturb Emmett in case he wasn’t awake, Adrien didn’t knock, but rather eased the door open and stepped inside as quietly as he could, given the cast. The room was dim, the only light source being a small lamp on the desk that held the administrateur’s medications and various medical paraphernalia. Through the open French door that let out onto the balcony, Adrien could see the bottom end of the chaise and Isabel’s blanketed feet.
Emmett was, indeed, asleep in the hospital bed that had replaced his leather couch, dragging in slow, rattly breaths through his nasal cannula. Given how skilled Emmett was at keeping up appearances, it came as a shock to see him like this, bedridden with his hair all askew, a sallow film of skin clinging to the too-sharp bones of his face and hands. With most people, unless some special circumstance had boosted the energy they were emitting, as with Isabel’s gifted pregnancy, it took a bit of concentration to get a clear vision of their aura. The healthier the individual, the less effort it took. Only through an intense mental strain did Emmett’s darkly moribund aura become visible, an indication that death was imminent.
I will miss you, old friend.
In one bony, spotted hand, Emmett clutched a wadded-up handkerchief. Between his bed and the wall stood a hospital-style swing-out table laid out with a plastic cup and pitcher, the thickening powder, and Emmett’s beloved Russian edition of War and Peace. The magazine rack on the floor next to his bed was stuffed with an ever-burgeoning cache of periodicals that appeared to have gone unread for weeks: The Economist, Air Enthusiast, Ski, Vanity Fair, Ski & Board, The New Yorker, Country Life . . .
Something moved under the bed. Darius was curled up under there on a bunched-up towel, yawning. He blinked his slitted eyes at Adrien, who raised his hand in greeting. Darius nodded, adjusted his position, and went back to sleep.
Adrien crossed to the balcony door. Isabel wasn’t reading the book—it was actually too dark for that—but rather holding it to her chest as she gazed bleakly at nothing.
He said her name—whispered it, actually, so as not to disturb Emmett’s sleep.
She turned and looked at him, her aura fluttering orangey-pink for a moment. “Adrien.”
He held a finger to his lips and pointed toward Emmett.
She nodded, saying softly “If we keep our voices down, I don’t think he’ll hear us.”
“Where’s Chloe?” he asked as he stepped onto the balcony. “Taking a break?”
Isabel rolled her eyes. “She didn’t show up when it was time for her shift to start, so Grace went to her room and found her sleeping off the day’s copulatory antics. Grace dragged her out of bed and told her to shower and dress and get her butt over here pronto. Meanwhile, I’m holding down the fort.”
“Chloe should have been sent packing the first day.”
“Tell that to Dad. I’ll never understand how a man who’s so big on duty and responsibility can tolerate such an ass—idiot.”
“How’s he doing?” Adrien asked, knowing the answer to that, but wanting to find out if Isabel was still in denial about how much time her father had left.
She shook her head, started to say something, cleared her throat. “It won’t be long. Only two days ago, he seemed to be doing so well. He was in such good spirits, hanging out with us in the Beckett Garden, talking and everything. But maybe he overdid it. He hasn’t eaten a thing for the past two days, and he won’t drink water except to take his pills, which he can barely choke down anymore. Yesterday he had trouble sitting up, and today he didn’t even get out of bed. And you know how he hates being in that damn . . .” She sighed. “. . . in that darned hospital bed.”
“I know. I’m so sorry, Isabel. But at least he seems fairly comfortable.”
“It won’t stay that way. I wish to God he’d let Grace put in an IV for diamorphine so he doesn’t have to suffer at the end. He’s such a control freak. He hates the idea of being in an opiated stupor, but I hate the idea of him struggling for air, which is what’s going to start happening pretty soon. I can see it starting already.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“I’d appreciate that. He respects you so much.” Taking him in thoughtfully, from his bed head to his cast, she said, “What happened?”
He said, “I broke three metatarsals kicking the stove yesterday morning.”
She met his eyes, looked down and shook her head. “I’m sorry. About, you know . . . leaving like that. I tried to call you. Did you get my voice mails?”
“I’ve had the phone unplugged.” Indicating the chaise, which was the only seating on the balcony aside from the chairs tucked under the café table, he said, “May I?”
“Oh. Of course.” She pulled in her legs to make room for him.
He took a seat. “What is that you’re reading?”
She smiled and showed him the cover; it was the Beckett notebook. “I can’t put it down. It just blows me away.”
“There are little excited yellow streaks in your aura,” he said. “It’s really beautiful.”
She looked dubious. “My aura’s violet, right? Yellow and purple are opposites on the color wheel. I’ve always thought they looked really gross together.”
“It’s not violet right now.” Rubbing her foot through the afghan, he said, “Do you remember, in the L’histoire Secrète, when Brantigern’s wife had a silvery aura?”
“Sure, after she became pregnant.”
“Your aura is silver, Isabel.”
She held his gaze unblinking
ly.
He smiled.
She sat up straight. “Are you . . . are you saying . . . ?”
He nodded.
“Oh, my God.” She covered her grin with her hand, her eyes enormous. “Oh, my God, really?”
“You’re going to have a son.”
“Are you serious? Oh, my God. That’s . . . that’s . . .”
He took her hand. “Marry me, Isabel.”
She stared at him.
“I love you,” he said. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone else, and I know I never will. We can live in the hunting lodge. I know you like it there. We’ll find another administrateur, or you can take over, whatever you like. We can have as many or as few children as you—”
“Adrien, I . . . I love you, too. I’ve loved you since I was sixteen years old, but I can’t marry you. God, how I wish I could, but—”
“You can.”
“You need to marry a woman with the Gift so you can have a gifted child to succeed you as gardien.”
“The child you’re carrying is gifted, Isabel.”
She shook her head, her brow furrowed. “That’s not possible.”
“I can see it very clearly in your aura,”he said. “There are little sparks, like stars in a swirly, silvery fog. Your son has the Gift.”
“But doesn’t it take two gifted parents to have a gifted child? Obviously, you’re gifted, but I’m—”
“It’s not my child.”
She looked bewildered, perhaps even a little offended. “Of course it is.”
Taking her shoulders, he said,“I’ll explain, but I want you to know that, as far as I’m concerned, this is a blessing in disguise. I get to marry you and have a child who can carry on the guardianship of the Follets. And I will consider him my child. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have Morel blood. None of that matters.”
“Of course he has Morel blood. There’s been nobody else, Adrien, not since last August. I wouldn’t lie about—”
“I don’t think you’re lying. You just don’t remember, because he must have used his liggia spiall on you, but—”
“Liggia spiall?” Isabel looked as if a lightbulb were switching on in her brain. She smiled slowly. “Oh. Of course. You think this is Elic’s child.”
“Well, Jason’s DNA, but Elic’s . . . Wait. You know?”
Laughing, she took his face in her hands and kissed him. “Wow, your beard is scratchy.”
“Isabel, did Elic—”
“He tried. He came to my room with Lili. He did his hocus pocus, but it didn’t work.”
“What do you mean, it didn’t work?”
She shrugged. “It didn’t work. He touched my forehead and said . . . whatever it was he said, but it had no effect. He tried another spell, but that didn’t work, either.”
“At all?”
“Yeah, they thought it was weird, too. I asked them what it meant, but they just said some people are immune to their enchantment.”
“Mon dieu,” he whispered, and then he started laughing. He grabbed her and kissed her, hard.
“Okay,” she said breathlessly when they drew apart. “Mind bringing me up to speed?”
“The only people who are immune to the spells cast by Follets are those who are gifted,” he said.
She shook her head, looking baffled. “I’m not gifted.”
“Most gifted people don’t realize it,” he said. “Sometimes they even think they’re going nuts. Have you ever noticed a little shimmer of light around someone’s head, or had a dream that came true? Perhaps when you were going through puberty? That’s often when giftedness comes to the fore.”
She shook her head. “Well, I did used to fool around with a Ouija board with my girlfriends, like during slumber parties, and the what-do-you-call-it, the pointer thingie, seemed like it was moving on its own. I thought my friends were making it move, but when I did it alone, it still moved and answered questions. I thought it was my subconscious, but some of the things it said would happen really did happen, like me getting my first kiss in the toy department of Harrod’s, which is pretty freakin’ specific. And my parents getting divorced, and me moving to New York, and the name of the school I ended up at . . .”
“You have the Gift,” Adrien said excitedly.
“But how . . . ? I mean, my mom has it, but Dad doesn’t. Or maybe he does, and he just doesn’t realize it?”
Adrien shook his head. “He’s susceptible to enchantment. He’s definitely not gifted.”
“Then . . .” She looked toward the door to Emmett’s sitting room. “Oh, my God. He’s not . . . He’s not really my . . . ?”
Adrien scratched his prickly chin and sighed.
Isabel ruminated on this for a minute. “Wow,” she murmured, shaking her head. “Wow. Do you . . . You don’t suppose he knows, do you?”
“I doubt it.”
She groaned and lowered her head into her hands. He took her in his arms and held her.
“I want to tell him I’m pregnant,” she said, “and that we’re . . . You know, about us. I think that’ll make him happy. But don’t let it slip that the baby’s gifted, ’cause then he’ll put two and two together, and the one thing he doesn’t need right now is bad news.”
From within the sitting room came a dusty chuckle. “I’ll be turning up my toes in fairly short order,” Emmett said in a voice like the scraping of sandpaper. “Any news beats that.”
Isabel mouthed, Fuck.
Adrien rose, handed her up from the chaise, and gestured her into the sitting room ahead of him.
“How much did you hear?” she asked her father as she took a seat next to his bed.
“Enough to confirm . . .” He paused to suck in a few strained breaths. “. . . my suspicions. Sit me up, would you?”
Adrien raised the head of the bed and rearranged Emmett’s pillow.
Isabel said, “You suspected you weren’t my . . . that someone else . . . ?”
He nodded.
“Why?” she asked. “Because of how Mom pounced on you when you got back to London after that weekend here?”
“That, and . . .” Emmett pressed the handkerchief to his mouth as his harsh breaths devolved into a coughing fit.
Adrien said, “This is too much of a strain for you. We should—”
“Blond hair . . .” he said. “Recessive gene, don’t you know.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I did wonder about that during the genetics part of Bio one-oh-one. Mom’s red hair is a mutation, but her parents were fair, so she had fair-haired genes. So if she’d been married to a blond guy, this”—she indicated her corn silk hair—“would have made sense, but your hair is so dark, it’s almost black.”
“My tuition dollars at work,” Emmett said.
“So, then, who . . . ?” Isabel shook her head, saying “It doesn’t matter. I don’t c—”
“He had the Gift, whoever he was,” Emmett said, pausing to catch his breath. “And blond genes.”
“So you were pretty sure I wasn’t really your child,” Isabel said, “and you just let her pretend . . . ?”
Regarding her with bemusement, Emmett said, “Of course you’re my child—my only child. She never—” He coughed stridently. “Maddy, she never wanted more children after you. I’m so grateful for you. You’ve been the daughter of my heart. And now, you’re to be a mother, eh?”
“And a wife,” Adrien said, “as soon as it can be arranged.”
Isabel asked whether blood tests were needed in France, or if they could get married right away. Adrien knew what she was getting at. Emmett had just a few days left, if that, and she wanted him to see them married.
Resting a hand on her shoulder, Adrien said, “I would marry you tomorrow if I could, but here in France, blood tests are the least of it. There’s a mountain of paperwork to complete, and then we must wait at least thirty days after the posting of les bans before the wedding can take place.”
“Oh.” Isabel glanced away.
/> The reason for her dismay wasn’t lost on Emmett. “The important thing,” he told her, his voice nearly inaudible now, “is that I know you two will be together, and that you’re giving me a grandson. You can’t imagine . . .” He coughed into his handkerchief again. “You can’t imagine what joy that brings me.”His gaze fell on the Beckett notebook on her lap. “I thought you’d like that.”
“I love it,” she said. “It’s brilliant—beautiful.”
“Keep it,” he said.
“What? No, I can’t. It . . . it’s far too valuable, too . . .”
“Take it—please. I want it to belong to someone who appreciates it.”
Isabel looked down, nodded. A tear fell onto the book. She brushed it off, then wiped the spot dry with the hem of her shirt. “Thank you, Daddy.” She let out a watery little laugh of embarrassment, shaking her head as if to say Silly me, calling him that.
And then she burst into tears.
“Isabel . . .” Adrien snatched a handful of tissues out of the box on the desk and handed them to her, rubbing her back. “Mon coeur . . .”
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she choked out. “I’m sorry. I know you asked me not to c-cry around you, but—”
“Come here,” said Emmett, holding his arms out.
She stared at him for about half a second, as if stunned that her undemonstrative father should make such a gesture, and then she rose and threw herself into his arms, sobbing.
“It’s all right,” he said, patting her back, his own eyes shimmering. “Shh, it’s all right.”
Adrien, thinking to step out into the hall so as to give them some privacy, was crossing to the door when it slammed open.
“Hi, guys,” Chloe chirped as she sashayed into the room in her nurse’s aide uniform, equipped for her shift with an armload of periodicals, a manicure kit, and her iPod. “Sorry about sleeping in. I’ve been bloody knackered lately. How are we feeling tonight, Emmett?”
“A bit knackered myself, actually,” he said hoarsely as Isabel turned away to wipe her face. “Don’t mean to be rude, but I wouldn’t mind closing my eyes for a bit.”
“Of course,” said Adrien, who suspected that Emmett was having a hard time controlling his emotions, and didn’t want to be seen shedding tears. He held the door open for Isabel, but she asked him to wait for a moment while she took Chloe out into the hall for a little chat.
Whispers of the Flesh Page 24
