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by Genevieve Valentine

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  Turned out those well-cut clothes worked for you even when you pulled up in front of the Concordia Club, where you were not and never could be a member. So long as you looked sharp, you could dawdle long enough to check the windows and the license plates without any of the door staff asking you your business.

  Grace’s car was in one of the rare parking spaces in the gated courtyard, looking exactly like the other two cars beside it, and something around Daniel’s throat loosened when he saw it.

  Then he calmly moved around the corner and staked out the staff entrance until someone ran out with a shopping list in their hand, and Daniel could catch the door and go inside like he’d done it every day of his life.

  Suyana had pulled the same thing when she wanted to stay beneath notice in a place where she wasn’t welcome. Daniel wasn’t going to pass up any trick that worked.

  The Concordia Club, established on a date important enough to write in stone above the entrance, was exclusively for IA employees. (You could sometimes usher your family in with you for dinner, according to Bo, so long as they kept quiet and seemed suitably impressed.) Faces, handlers, and those in administration who could afford the membership fee got to use the facilities inside, which Bo said included a restaurant, a lounge, a library, a pool, a gym, massage, and complimentary dry cleaning. Daniel was laughing by the end of the list—something about the combination of dry cleaning and the pool made him imagine handlers sheepishly floating in the water waiting for clean clothes as diners watched them coolly from over their lunch salads—but he’d never questioned the reconnaissance. If anyone could get inside without being noticed, it was Bo.

  Daniel hung his coat on the first hook he found and grabbed three glass bottles of seltzer—no way Concordia Club members would settle for tap. And as it turned out, the kitchen had a rhythm that was easy to parse. One staircase heading from the kitchen up to the dining room, another for bringing dishes back down. To avoid collision, but he liked knowing there were two possible exits if he needed them.

  “Daniel, what is this?”

  “I’m observing the news, Dev.” Daniel moved for the upward stairs.

  “Daniel, I’ve ignored your personal meetings because nothing came out of them except you getting your heart broken, and I figured that was your business. But she’s with another Face—oh my God, you’re in the Concordia Club, that entire room is Faces. Daniel, absolutely not. Pull out of this right now, or I’m going to call Li Zhao.”

  “You should. I’d love to see her come down here.”

  The dining room was busy and dim, and he paused a moment to get his bearings before he set two seltzers down and headed over to Suyana’s table with the third. He didn’t have to look to see where she was; he’d known before his eyes adjusted exactly where she was.

  He stopped at the table next to them and poured, smiling at the two men sitting there (one of Egypt’s handlers, and someone Daniel didn’t recognize).

  “You were nearly at the end of your contract,” Grace was saying. “I was beginning to wonder what was going to happen between you two.”

  “It was such a surprise. I can’t imagine how he ever got that idea in his head,” said Suyana in a voice that some people might buy.

  “I’ll bet,” said Grace, who was not one of those people.

  A photographer, UK national credentials, stepped up to their table, and Daniel stepped smoothly back until he was out of frame. Suyana bent a little forward, rested the fingertips of one hand on the table between them—bridging the gap visually, or looking as if she was in serious discussion, Daniel couldn’t tell. Grace turned to her and looked sharp, surprised, for half a beat before she could smooth it back into the sly, beautiful canvas the UK always wanted her to have when she represented the nation: always present, never involved.

  When the photographer had moved on, Suyana said, “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to look after a press conference like that. Without Ethan soaking up the sincerity, sometimes I forget what to do.”

  Grace smiled around her wineglass, the edges of her arms softening, her body easing an inch forward along the table.

  He couldn’t blame Grace for believing Suyana’s lie; he wanted to believe it himself.

  Daniel moved to another table in their line of sight and poured for two of the administrators he recognized vaguely from the IA offices.

  “Listen,” Suyana said. “If anyone were to ever . . . require a press conference from you where you had to admit things you didn’t think, what would you say?”

  “If you mean because of personal developments, I’d refuse. Nothing to address. And we’re in enough wars at the moment that the UK has template speeches ready for allying with one country and vaguely apologizing for striking another. Colin and I just write press releases without me having to stand there and answer questions about things I can’t help. I’m not sure I’d ever agree to give a press conference like one of yours, actually.”

  A muscle in Suyana’s jaw flexed and disappeared. “Sure. But you’re Big Nine. I’m not sure I’d survive another disagreement with Margot.”

  It was spoken like hyperbole, but her face was serious as stone, and after a moment it looked like something was falling into place for Grace.

  “Well, of course, if Margot made the request, I suppose that’s quite another thing.” Grace picked up the wineglass with slightly shaky fingers. “Then I can see the advantage of a press conference with your fiancé.”

  Daniel stepped back to let two waiters through. Neither of them glanced over—a waiter didn’t have to concern himself with what the water boys were wearing.

  Suyana glanced around the room, and Daniel was already half smiling despite himself, the instant before she saw him.

  Absolutely nothing crossed her face—the mask never dropped, and when the waiter came by she turned toward him and smiled placidly and ordered dessert and coffee and joked with Grace that she’d need all the caffeine she could come by, and when she laughed, the Egyptian handler looked over and smiled faintly, like it was nice to see someone trying to overcome adversity over dessert.

  Suyana didn’t look back at Daniel. She didn’t turn her body an inch toward him, like she’d done in the early days. (Sometimes even when it wasn’t a signal to meet her—sometimes it just seemed like she wanted to be that much closer to him, for no reason at all.) He might as well really be some water boy, instead of the only friend she had. His knuckles were white around the bottle.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Suyana said as she stood, and tilted her head toward the hallway to the restrooms. Grace nodded and reached absently for her tablet.

  Daniel moved for the ladies’ room.

  It was empty, thankfully, and when he heard her coming he opened the door, threw the lock behind her. She frowned over her shoulder. Then she turned the faucet on, her fingers trembling a few inches above the water before she turned to look at him. It drowned out the sounds they made, white noise shielding them.

  “Not my first time meeting this way,” she said, and he realized he must have been staring.

  Dev had gone silent in Daniel’s ear. He couldn’t remember the last time Dev had said anything—maybe nothing since the threat to call Li Zhao. She needed to see this if it was going to work, but God, how many people were watching this feed?

  “Everyone can see us,” he said, meaning it as a warning, but it came out ragged and at loose ends.

  She waited a beat, and he realized he should have dragged his hair over the camera by now to keep her expressions away from prying eyes, so that even if she had to watch her words, she could be human for a minute or two.

  He was still holding the bottle. He didn’t move.

  When Suyana caught on, she looked him in the eye (the hair at the back of his neck stood up, always), and then looked right into the camera. Her throat sounded dry when she asked, “What should I know?”

  It shouldn’t have infuriated him that this blowup was going according
to plan, that her focus on what he could do for her would work to his advantage. It really shouldn’t have.

  “Wow. Cut right to the fucking chase, don’t you?” He crossed to the counter, pretending not to notice that she pulled back from him just enough to keep a clear path to the door.

  “Daniel, this place is high risk. You wouldn’t be here unless something was really wrong.”

  “Yeah. Kipa’s bringing a friend to wherever you’re headed after this. I’m not sure it’s a friend you want to see, but what do I know—she’s a mutual friend, though it would have been nice if I hadn’t had to find that out from Kipa.”

  The meaning landed on Suyana. Then she glanced in the mirror and back at him, and it took him a long, heavy heartbeat to realize she was looking for options in case the worst happened and she had to fight him and run. The whole place suddenly smelled like lemon polish; he could hear his shoe squeaking on the floor as he moved closer to her.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just—just don’t go wherever you’re supposed to go. They could have anything planned. We know they could.”

  She cleared her throat, looked at the floor. It sounded like she’d gone a week without water. He imagined her drying up all at once, like everything he’d seen in the last year had been her slowly pulling away on the inside; maybe she was just a husk now that did as it was told.

  “Thanks for the warning. I’ll be careful.”

  He took a step back. “You’ll be careful . . . when you go?”

  “I can’t change plans. Magnus will be suspicious; it’s not worth the risk. I’ll be all right. They wouldn’t try anything that could make me a martyr.”

  It felt like all the blood vessels in his jaw were going to burst. She was better with information than this. He knew she was. He dragged his free hand down his face. “Suyana, every time I speak with you, I’m risking everything. My boss is probably on her way over right now—they’re all listening to this goddamn feed, all the time, any time they want. They might be outside the door waiting for me. Why the fuck am I risking everything to help you if you won’t even keep yourself safe?”

  Suyana looking at him always left a scorch mark. Her eyes were so dark, and just at the ends there was some deep-purple shadow that made it look like she hadn’t slept in years, and he couldn’t even tell if it was on purpose.

  When she spoke, she dropped her eyes again, and her voice was the one she used during the contract negotiations to date Ethan, in a room full of American men who had to be carefully explained to.

  “And I appreciate it. But I need to know what’s happening—it’s more important for me to know than to be safe.”

  Not to me, Daniel thought, the words a hot lump at the base of his tongue, but he didn’t say it. Li Zhao should be listening by now; he couldn’t imagine her face if she ever heard him say something so lost. There was a snap being overly involved with his mark, and there was someone who’d gone pitiable over someone they’d already lost, and he had to be careful. Suyana was a loss he had to accept, but a lot of things were less important than pride.

  “Fine,” he said, with the sense of tipping off a ledge, falling closer to something he’d tried not to think about. “Good luck. I’m headed to Paris, probably, since she’s going to reassign me the instant she sees this footage, but since you’re going to ignore warnings anyway, it doesn’t much matter.”

  The hiss of the faucet pressed against his ears. When he looked at her again, she wore the expression he remembered from that long day a year ago; the Lachesis he’d seen in the moment she wanted him dead.

  “I can’t imagine why you’re so angry,” she said, the edge of her voice like a blade she was slowly drawing. “I don’t want to think that you imagine I’m ungrateful because I don’t simper for you like I do for strangers—I can’t believe you’d think that. Or that I don’t appreciate your warnings. And even your witness, despite the details of your watch.”

  Her gaze flicked to the camera, and Daniel wondered if, three thousand miles away, Dev was recoiling from the contempt on her face.

  The gunshot scar shone under the lights as she stepped forward. Daniel fought the urge to look around him like she had; it would be giving in. (To what, he didn’t know. This had started out deliberate. Now he was afraid.)

  “But more than anything,” she said, and the knife was out in every word, “I wouldn’t want to think you resent me unless I’m covered in blood and begging you for help.”

  They were nearly touching. Three strands of hair that had come loose from the knot were floating near enough to cling to the static of his shirt. He didn’t know when she’d moved closer. He’d never have let her. She was warm; her eyes were two black circles, dark and deep.

  She’d killed a man this way once, standing this close. His body remembered it without his permission and went cold, his wrists heavy. If he wanted to brush the three hairs back behind her ear, he couldn’t lift his hand.

  “You should get going,” he said. “Grace will be waiting at the table for your next photo op.”

  He’d leaned in to intimidate her, he thought as the door swung closed behind her. He’d leaned in to force her to move away, because of course she would have, because she’d bluffed him and he’d called, that was all. There was never any question what she’d do.

  He threw the bottle into the sink so hard it broke, and took the exit stairs without even a look around to see if she’d ratted him out. It didn’t matter if she’d broken their confidence. It didn’t matter. He didn’t give a shit where she was. She wasn’t his problem any more.

  “Dev,” he barked as soon as he was on the street. “Is her new tail in place?”

  There was a long pause that would have sounded like dead air except he could hear Dev holding his breath.

  “Yeah,” came over the line at last. “I can’t tell you who—”

  “I don’t care who it is. I just want to be gone. I know you’ve talked to Li Zhao. Who’s my new assignment and where are they now?”

  Miserably, Dev said, “Um.”

  “Dev, just—who is it?”

  “Grace.”

  14

  Grace always entered a nightclub looking like whatever she was wearing was a lucky plume of smoke from which she had just emerged via some other, better realm.

  Before the assassination attempt, Suyana had mostly been concerned about scoring invitations to enter the nightclub at all. Since the assassination attempt, Suyana knew she entered clubs like she was daring them to throw her out. She couldn’t help it.

  She’d worried at first that it looked too aggressive, that it looked like she was hiding something and she was sure to be found out, but it turned out that in pictures it just looked like she was a stocky newcomer, suitably aware of how close she was standing to Grace or Martine—a lucky C-lister raised up through the goodwill of others until she could stand next to her betters.

  As she and Grace posed on their way into Empire, Suyana cheated her scar forward.

  The Empire (“That’s terribly pointed,” Grace said on opening night, at the same time Martine said, “They cannot fucking be serious,” and all along the gauntlet of photographers on the red carpet, the three of them were careful to pose so that no one got them and the sign in the same shot) was a nightclub of the old kind. Inside, it was a comforting maze of small tables and dim light and breaks in conversation as the bandstand introduced a singer for a handful of low-key torch numbers at a time. It was the sort of nightclub you could go to right after an explosion on your home soil, and magazine readers would believe you’d wanted to go there to think.

  Grace headed for the bar. Suyana headed for the tables on the low, deep mezzanine, where she could sit facing the door. One chair she left open opposite her for anyone who wanted to take their chances.

  (“You won’t want to be involved in what happens,” Suyana had explained in the car, and Grace had looked at her, the thin silver necklace at her neck casting a constellation against her dark skin, and said, “A
bit late for that, don’t you think?”)

  It was relatively early in the evening, as IA parties went, and Suyana could rake through the crowd for Kipa and Columbina. Not that she could prepare for much—if Kipa had fallen in this tightly with Chordata, there was little Suyana could do without disaster—but there was no allure in being taken by surprise.

  Suyana wished she’d ignored Zenaida’s warnings and been closer with Kipa. They talked at a brunch here or a charity bowling tournament there, but it was dangerous for anyone to connect them, so Suyana had never connected. And Kipa had done her one better; while Suyana had been hurling herself into the limelight, no one knew anything more about Kipa than they had a year ago. That took a kind of quiet skill you had to be born with. Suyana admired it and feared it in equal measure; there was something thrilling about someone she couldn’t read.

  (Grace and Martine had seen the connection between them a year ago, but neither of them had ever mentioned it since—not even Martine, not even as a joke. Suyana pretended along with them; she was happy to pretend.)

  If Kipa sat with her and Columbina kept her distance, then Kipa was in control of the situation, and was still her friend. Suyana could manage that; she could smooth things over and tell Kipa whatever Chordata needed to hear in order to take her name off the list of liabilities.

  If it was Columbina—and Suyana could see it happening, Columbina’s dark hair swinging as she took a seat, Kipa standing behind her, nearly swallowed up by the gloom—then Kipa was just an accessory to someone else’s wishes, and all Suyana could do was make sure Kipa realized the trouble she was in before the worst started. Before she called Suyana by the name of something that had no spine. Whoever had chosen it had been deliberate; Chordata had so many heads there was no knowing. So long as it wasn’t Zenaida; Suyana let herself imagine that Zenaida wouldn’t let her be erased without a fight.