TWENTY-TWO
“A word with you, if I may?”
The following evening, Vitoria looked up from her brother Eduardo’s desk—and thought about getting her gun out. “How did you get in here?”
“The door was ajar.”
The woman standing just inside the office and speaking in that autocratic, I-win-the-game voice, was all angles: Dark hair cut blunt at the chin and flat-ironed straight as a set of drapes. Anorexic body dressed in an avant-garde black suit with asymmetrical lines and shoulder pads out of Alexis Carrington Colby’s wardrobe. And the nose job and brow lift made her appear to be in dramatic lighting even if she wasn’t.
Miss Margot Fortescue. The one who had proven so resistant to everything, especially when Vitoria had informed the gallery’s staff first thing at nine a.m. that she would be taking things over. Fortunately, the others had been warm and open. Then again, exactly how many high-end art galleries did Caldwell have? Even snobs had to be employed.
When they were the salespeople as opposed to the buyers, that was. Such a world of difference.
Vitoria sat back and resolved to make sure she shut things firmly behind herself in the future. “What may I do for you?”
Miss Fortescue closed the door sharply. Then again, she no doubt did everything with a punctuation of some sort.
“I would like some proof of your identity.”
This was said as if it were meant to shock. Dismay. Cause a fluster.
And so when Vitoria made no response at all, Miss Fortescue’s left eyebrow, which had been drawn on as if it were part of an architectural rendering, twitched. “Well?”
“Life is full of unrequited desires.” Vitoria smiled. “We must learn to adjust to being disappointed—”
“We don’t know who you are. You could be anyone. Eduardo and Mr. Benloise didn’t tell us they had a ‘sister.’ ”
That last word was uttered with a tone that put its definition more along the lines of “thief” or “interloper” than familial relation of a female extraction.
As the woman’s eyes settled on the desk, her expression became remote—and that was when all became clear. Ah, yes, Eduardo had been engaging in a bit of fun with this paragon of precision and disapproval, hadn’t he.
Vitoria smiled. “Clearly, you were just not significant enough to merit information about our family. That happens to mere casual or business acquaintances.”
Miss Fortescue planted a hand on the blotter and leaned in. “I know what else got sold around here. I know what Eduardo was keeping track of—”
“Do you often find yourself overstepping bounds? Or do you simply lack the self-awareness to recognize them in the first place. I think perhaps the latter informs the former.”
The woman seemed nonplussed. But she recovered presently. “I could bring down this whole lie. Eduardo told me things, and when the two of them stopped coming in here, there was a lot of talk. I kept quiet, but that may not last.”
Vitoria sat forward and linked her hands on her brother’s journal of notes. As her burner phone started to ring, she let it go to voicemail. “This is an art gallery. My brothers sell art—which I believe is your reason for employment here?”
“I know about that little book.” The woman pointed to what Vitoria was covering. “I know what’s in there.”
“Tell me something, has my brother gotten in touch with you recently?” When there was only stony silence: “Yes, that is what I thought. I’m afraid you are less amusing than your cheerful attitude and dress suggest.”
“They say he’s dead.”
“Who is ‘they’?” When there was no reply, Vitoria shook her head. “You know so much less than you maintain you do—and I imagine it can be disappointing when one’s position is less exalted than one assumed.” Vitoria made a show of looking at her watch. “Is it six o’clock already? Closing time.”
“I want proof of who you are.”
“Yes, you’ve made that clear. However, what I would be worried about, were I you, was whether or not I will have a job in the morning.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Not at all.” Getting to her feet, Vitoria came around the desk. “Why would I fire someone who has just suggested that my brothers were engaging in illegal activity? That deserves a promotion. Now, off you go, and I’ll lock up behind you.”
“So I’m thinking Amalya is not going to show.”
As Jane spoke, Vishous looked over at her. The two of them had spent all day in the courtyard, lounging on the marble floor of his mother’s private quarters, propped up against the lip of the fountain. It was typical of the Sanctuary that not even the stone made your ass fall asleep. Even after all these hours, they might as well have been stretched out on a pair of Wonder Bread loungers.
“I guess not.” He rubbed his hair. “She knows we’re here. I mean, that’s the way it’s always worked.”
In fact, he had half expected the Directrix to magically materialize from out of his mother’s private bedroom and announce that she was the chosen one, the handpicked successor to the Scribe Virgin.
That shoe hadn’t dropped yet, though. And as for Amalya’s no-show? It had meant he and Jane had talked for hours and hours about absolutely, positively nothing that was hard stuff. They had stuck well away from her work, his work, their distance. Instead, they had covered things like Assail’s recovery, Luchas’s progress, the Lessening Society’s disintegration, the Dhestroyer Prophecy—and Right vs. Left Twix, Super Bowl predictions, and the theory of Atlantis.
That last one had been because they had also gotten into a quote war over the original Ghostbusters.
“I’m sorry I never asked you,” Jane said softly.
He refocused. “What?”
“About losing your mother.”
There was a pause, and then her eyes locked on his own. As the silence stretched out, he knew she was inviting him to talk…deliberately giving him space and attention.
V brought his knees up and propped his gloved hand on one of them. Flexing the fingers, he pictured the thing without a covering. “You know how when you go out at night, you look up and expect to see the sky? And when you do, it’s this combination of something that affects you, because it can be cloudy or clear, raining or snowing…and yet it is totally impersonal? The sky is at once dispositive and irrelevant—and that’s what she was like. She was always there, and I don’t know; maybe she tried the best she could to connect with me and my sister. But she sucked at relating to people.” He looked at Jane pointedly. “I get that from her.” Then he shrugged. “So that’s what it feels like for me on a personal level. But then there’s also the other, more important shit. I feel like the race is exposed, and I don’t like that. There’s too much weird shit happening at once. I mean, she disappears, and we’re coming down to the end of the war—and then I run into that shadow in the alley? I don’t fucking like it, true? We’re at a crossroads, and sometimes the new direction doesn’t improve things. It lands you right in the crapper.”
Jane nodded. “Makes sense to me.”
As she said the words, there was a loosening in V’s entire body, a relaxation of muscle he hadn’t been aware of tensing.
“Do you think also…” Jane cleared her throat. “Do you think maybe you’re disappointed that things between you and your mother didn’t get fixed? That as long as she was alive—or whatever she was—there was a possibility that sometime, way down the line, she might be who you needed her to be? But now that’s gone.”
“I didn’t need shit from her.”
“Everyone needs something from their mother. It’s the way it works.”
When he smiled, she said, “What?”
“No one ever disagrees with me. But you.”
Jane looked down at her own hands, her brows getting tight. “Not one of my virtues, huh.”
“Actually, it’s a part of you I love most.”
When she glanced at him in surprise, he leaned in quick and kissed her on the mouth—even though he shouldn’t have. Then to cover up the faux pas, he jumped to his feet and extended his hand.
“I guess we better go.”
Jane got up on her own, leaving his palm in the breeze—another thing he loved about her. She would never need anything from him or any male. Any female. Anybody. Jane took care of herself—and had so much competence left over, she could take care of everyone else, too.
“Do we get back the same way we came here?” she asked roughly.
“Yeah, we just focus and—”
With a quick shift, she fit herself against his body, wrapping her arms around him and holding on.
Vishous closed his eyes and embraced her, tilting his head down so that his nose was in the sweet warmth of her neck. “I can’t say I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she whispered.
“Kissing you.”
Before she could reply, he sent them back down to earth.
He wished that they could have stayed in the Sanctuary alone, though.
Forever.