“I hope I see you again,” she says, “my daughter.”
I hold onto those words, ones I never thought I’d hear. “You will. I promise.”
Mom’s last words drift out, take away that warmth, “Only if I’ve been alone all this time for nothing. Only if there is no fate.” Her eyes close, her breathing steadies. Her features become peaceful. I smooth a twisted lock of hair back from her face, and find a soft quilt on the back of the couch. We have one like it at home. A gift from Dad, then. I settle it over her. I smooth her hair back one last time, careful not to wake her.
“I hope your sleep is dreamless,” I whisper. Mine rarely is.
When I look up, Oz is watching me. “Are
you
OK?” he asks. I find that I don’t want to lie to him, either, even though he’s not really my friend. Not like Bree and Tam. Even though I know I’ll have to. And soon. For now, I stick with a harmless truth.
“No,” I say, “but I’ll live.”
I lead the way up the dark hallway and to the door. I swim around in the new information from Legba as if it’s the river he mentioned. I consider what I have to do next. I let it rush over me like the waters of the abzu, as I lock the door behind us.
Bree rushes to me, Tam behind her. “Is everything alright?” she asks.
Justin’s there too, and he and Oz close ranks. Shoulder to shoulder, watching and listening. Legba left right before Oz came in, almost as if he knew Oz was about to show. That can’t be a coincidence. I’ll have to be careful with them.
“Fine,” I say.
Tam takes too much pleasure in saying, “She can’t talk in front of you guys.”
“I don’t see why not,” Oz protests. But he must get it, because the protest is weak. “Kyra, you should come back with us. Your grandfather’s worried about you.”
“I know he is,” I say. The words flow out so smoothly I almost feel bad – except I don’t have time to feel bad. “We need to get these guys home first, and then I’m coming with you. Back to the Jefferson. I’m sick of doing what my dad says, and my mom can’t take me in. So I want to join. When can I get my stripes?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On the way to Tam’s house in the big black Society carriage, Tam and Bree try their best to talk me out of going with Oz and Justin. I’m ready for them, though. I have a purpose now, and my first objective is to get them out of harm’s way and myself further into it.
“Look,” I say, “Mom didn’t brainwash me in a half-hour. If I’m losing the parts of my family I’ve always known, I should find out more about where I came from. Bronson can give me that. I can’t stay at Tam’s forever.”
Bree
almost
buys that. “But tonight? So soon?”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“OK,” she says. “But we’ll talk tomorrow. Promise me. You can change your mind about this.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Tam says. He shoots a meaningful look at Oz and Justin.
I want to tell him they’re the last thing I’m worried about.
We stop at Tam’s, and the distraction I need is waiting on a silver platter. A carriage is parked there and it has a splashy TV station decal painted on the side. This means Bree’s mom Nalini left work early. That’s a big deal. Nalini is even more of a workaholic than Dad.
“Crap,” Bree says. “She’s going to kill me.”
“Let me take the blame,” I tell her. “I deserve it.”
Oz narrows his eyes like he’s suspicious of my motives. I shrug and ask, “What’s my dad going to do – ground me?”
Tam and Bree might feel guilty, but they don’t argue for me to let them take a noble fall on my behalf. I’m sure they
would
, but I don’t want them to and it’s not necessary. I’m glad they don’t press it.
No one arrives quietly in a giant carriage. So Nalini and Ben are out the front door and on top of us as soon as we climb out. They’re clearly upset. Nalini’s as perfectly coiffed and made-up as ever, but she’s scowling. It’s something that causes frown lines, so she usually avoids it. Nalini’s like an older version of Bree – with all the interesting artistic edge taken away and replaced with slickness and a business suit.
Oz and Justin stand off to one side, as if they know they don’t belong here, witnessing this.
“It was all me. Don’t punish them.” I purposely avoid sounding contrite. I want them to think of me as the bad influence with the winged eyeliner and leather jacket who marched their precious children into harm’s way,
into a
god’s
House
.
My years of practice with Dad pay off. It works.
Ben demands, “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t.” I shrug. “It was beyond amazing, though. Did you know about blessings?”
Nalini’s scowl cedes to horror. “You
didn’t
get blessed?”
“Only me,” I say, quickly. Maybe mentioning that was too far.
Bree’s cheeks go pink, and Tam’s studying his feet. I really do want to know what they saw.
Oz gives his head the slightest tilt backward and off to the side. I look fake-casually over my shoulder in that direction… and spot Anzu at the end of the driveway, beyond the mailbox. The golden brown ruff of his mane flares above it in the night.
That’s
something I don’t want to explain. It’s not as if I can communicate with him telepathically or start waving him away without the parents noticing.
“We’d better get going,” I say. “Mr Bronson will be worried. You shouldn’t be, Ben,” I add, when I see he’s considering an objection, “I’m the granddaughter he never wanted. I promise to make him a little bit crazy. For you.”
Nalini examines her perfect coral nails, ready to get out of here and not in the mood to argue with me. “Sorry about your dad,” she says. “If he’s in trouble, I may have to cover it. No hard feelings. I always liked him.”
I raise my eyebrows at that.
“No,” she says. “Really. He always knew when you were staying over. He told me not to tell you that he’d call to ask. But, now, you may as well know.”
I assumed he didn’t care, since he bothered to come home only about half the time lately. Since no matter how I tried to get his attention by staying out, he refused to take the bait.
“Guess we never really know anybody,” I say.
“We do,” Bree says, pointedly. “I will talk to you tomorrow.”
I nod, and check to make sure Anzu’s still relatively out of sight, before climbing back into the carriage with Oz and Justin.
My bones feel tired. My blood. My everything.
But as soon as Oz gives the driver the destination and we take off, I jostle back to nervousness. There’s no guarantee, after all, that my grandfather will greet me kindly. I may have to win him over.
Exhaustion still lurks beneath the nerves. I rest my cheek against the cool leather seat.
What a day. What a life. What a mess
.
“Sleep,” Oz says. “We’ll wake you when we get there.”
I begin to tell him I don’t think that’s possible, but why not let them think I am? They might talk if I give the appearance of conking out. “I’ll give it a shot, but I don’t know…” My voice dies to a mumble, and I close my eyes, dropping my head back and letting out the world’s heaviest sigh.
The clomping hooves outside and the quiet inside conspire to make me drowsy. The bounce of the carriage puts me in mind of the flowing abzu, and, in minutes, I actually am almost asleep. But not quite. I hear when Justin asks, barely above a whisper, “Do you think they would allow her?”
My impulse is to sit up and say, “Allow me to do what?” but I simply shift a little on the seat to sell the sleeping more. It’s only after I’ve settled that Oz says, “She’s got the bloodline.”
“Pedigree might not be enough. No training.”
“She went in a House and came back out again unharmed. And with a guard.”
“Fair point,” Justin says, a cringe hidden in the words. I wonder if today was the first time they’ve ever visited a House. I get the impression it isn’t.
“And,” Oz says, “she has nowhere else to go. He won’t turn her away.”
That he’s right about the first part isn’t the best feeling, but he seems confident about the second and that’s a relief. The carriage slows, then stops. I contemplate yawning, coming slowly to, but before I do Justin asks, “How do we wake her?”
There’s a long moment in which Oz says nothing. Then I feel his arms gingerly slide under my knees and around my shoulders. He picks me up, and I do my best not to tense up. My head tucks in against the fabric of his uniform and I feel muscles everywhere. He’s crouching in the carriage, and carries me out of it, easily, like I weigh nothing. And carefully, like he’s smuggling precious cargo.
I’m far too aware of every place he’s touching me. Of how warm he is. Of how nice he smells. Not that I can describe it as anything except
boy
. The smart thing to do would be to open my eyes, see where we are at least. But I can’t bring myself to. Not just now. I’m afraid of what my face might show.
I hear a door open and footsteps. “She fell asleep,” Oz whispers.
A hand smooths the hair back from my face. I recognize Bronson’s voice, low. “Long day,” he says. “Her mother could sleep through an earthquake at that age. She can use the rest. Take her to the guest room. I’ll bring up some Hypnos tea in case she wakes up.”
I’m carried over a threshold. I make a little noise, because otherwise it seems too unbelievable that I wouldn’t stir at all, despite my mother’s long-ago sleep patterns, and they are quiet for a moment.
My eyes stay closed. I swear I can hear Oz’s heart pounding through the fabric of his uniform, but I know it’s only my imagination. His grip tightens around me the slightest bit.
“How’d you convince her to come?” Bronson asks.
“We didn’t,” Justin says. “She asked us to bring her. She said she wants to join.” He half-snorts. I don’t frown, but I’d like to. “She asked when she could get her stripes.”
Given the tone he’s using, I expect scoffing agreement that it’s a ludicrous idea.
“You won’t regret this,” Bronson says, and I believe he addresses it to me. There’s an emotion I can’t read in his voice. Is this really the man who woke the gods? The man plotting to kill my father? He sounds so… human. Like me. Like Dad. Like anyone.
It’d be easier if he wore a sign around his neck that said Monster. But nothing is ever easy. Is it?
Oz carries me up a long flight of stairs, and he’s strong enough that I hardly move in his arms on the way. He deposits me on a bed in a dark room, and someone pulls a blanket over me. I don’t want to be dosed with Hypnos tea, whatever that is – a nasty brew in some relic from the sleep god is my guess – so I keep mimicking sleep. Until at some point, I’m no longer pretending.
The last thing I think before I give in to it is that I hope Bronson’s right. I hope I don’t regret coming here.
I wake from a nightmare – the usual, about Mom, with bonus laughing Legba and snarling Set, and sloshing black tanks of seven sages’ water – breathing hard, sitting up in the bed. I can’t recall where I am right away, but I know it’s not home. The bed feels different, and so does the darkness.
There’s a streetlight outside our brownstone that shines in my room at night. I can make out the shapes of furniture in its glow, except when the power’s down. Here, the curtains must be heavy enough to block any light that might come in from outside. That or I’m in a windowless room.
Joy.
I push off the blanket and walk with my hands extended in front of me, feeling my way to the door. My fingers graze a light switch beside it, but I worry turning it on will bring someone. I want a look around.
So I ease the doorknob around slow-oh-so-slow, and open it as quietly as I can. I’m rewarded with a long, dim hallway, a lamp left on at the end of it. I stand in the doorway, ready to duck back inside if I need to, but no one’s making noise in the house. They must be sleeping.
I close the door behind me with care and head into the hall, passing the doors to other rooms upstairs that I assume are bedrooms – wondering idly which is Oz’s, which my grandfather’s. Whether Justin’s still here or stays somewhere else? None of the doors up here are open, and I don’t investigate to find out. I keep moving.
The house is impressively big and well-appointed. Clean as if someone tidies it daily. Of course, I’m sure there’s a staff that does. Bronson’s an important man. Expensive art dots the walls, but there’s something impersonal about it. As if he paid a decorator to make this look like the image he needs to project, should anyone come to check and make sure he’s a real person.
I don’t see a single portrait of my grandmother. I think back to Bronson’s office and remember her name. Gabrielle. She’s nowhere in evidence here.
It goes without saying that neither are Mom or me.
The staircase down to the main floor is at the end of the hall, and I give thanks that the boards are too dignified to squeak as I make my way down. Or the thick carpet laid over them mutes the sound. Whatever, gratitude.
The front door’s right there. I could leave.
But, come on, I’m not going to. I glide past it, discover the kitchen, but keep fishing for what I want. At the very back of the house, a door is cracked, and – score – there it is. Home office.
The lamp on the large, tidy desk is on, but nobody’s in here. There are glassed-in shelves along one whole wall, holding ledgers and old leather books that seem to be journals of some sort. They have names and years, but affixed on small gold plates, not printed on the spines. Mental note, made. Grandfather prefers some records to live here. The back window of the office looks out over a sprawling backyard with a high fence. Other, similarly fancy properties adjoin. No surprise there.
The surprise is Anzu sitting in the middle of the yard, gazing up at the window like he’s my Romeo instead of my scary assigned stalker. I’m going to have to figure out if there’s any way to lose him. Later.
The grass itself could use mowing. I don’t get the sense that Bronson entertains much. The house feels solemn, like it hasn’t seen a party in a long time. I recognize it, because it’s the same feeling mine and Dad’s townhouse has.