“Heavens and hells, Hexe!” I shot back angrily, no longer able to hide my frustration. “I was there! I saw you smoking Dragon Balm! Lying about it is not going to make me change my mind.”
“But I’m not lying!” he said with a plaintive wail. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Oh? And I guess you don’t know anything about Lafo cutting you off at the Calf because you were picking fights with his customers, either?”
“Lafo said that?”
“Stop it, Hexe!” I snapped. “Whatever game you think you’re playing—just stop it! I’ve tried to be understanding about everything. I know you’re going through hell, but I just can’t stay under the same roof with you after last night. If it was just me, maybe things could be different . . . but it’s not just me anymore. . . .”
“What are you trying to say—?”
“I’m telling you that you’re what happened to the door, Hexe. That’s why I left and took Beanie with me.”
“I . . . I . . . did that?” He gasped.
“Hexe, I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I do know it has something to do with that damned thing Moot put on your hand. You need help, baby—you need to get rid of the gauntlet before the curse on it turns you inside out.”
“Please, Tate—whatever I did, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again—I promise. Just come back home. Please, don’t do this to me. I love you, Tate.”
At that moment he sounded so much like the Hexe I used to know, the one I fell in love with and came to trust, I was afraid my heart was going to split in two from the pain it was enduring. “And I love you, Hexe; more than I’ve loved anyone in my life.” As I spoke those words, my throat grew tight and tears fell with every bat of my eyelashes. “You once made me promise you I wouldn’t run into any more burning buildings while I was pregnant—well, that’s exactly what you’re asking me to do right now. I want to come home, but I can’t, not as long as you’re still wearing the gauntlet.”
“Please, Tate. Don’t do this to me,” he begged, his voice wavering. “I don’t want to lose you and the baby!”
“I don’t want to lose you, either—believe me, walking out of that house was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I can’t live with you while you’ve still got that thing fused to your right hand. I just can’t take the risk.”
“Please, Tate. You don’t know what you’re asking of me. . . .”
“I’m hanging up now, Hexe.”
I hit the END button and set the phone aside so I could wipe my eyes and collect myself. Within seconds “Magic Man” started playing. I stabbed at the REJECT CALL, only to have it start to play again. I snatched up the phone and powered it down. I needed time to think, to decide what to do. As I stared at the cramped confines of Vanessa and Adrian’s apartment—barely big enough for a newlywed couple, much less an indefinite houseguest, a bothersome dog, and eventual newborn—I realized I should not impose any further on their lives. Although I might eventually be able to find a place in Golgotham, that meant placing me in dangerously close proximity to Hexe. I wasn’t afraid of him stalking or intimidating me as much as I was worried that my resolve might weaken and I would move back in. Like it or not, I found myself with only one viable choice. But it would mean swallowing my pride and putting on my big girl panties and doing the one thing I had promised myself I would not do.
Beanie all but dragged me out of the elevator, his paws scrabbling frantically on the polished marble floor of the penthouse’s foyer. It had been months since the last time I had been there, but nothing much had changed. Save for the life-sized portrait of an old robber baron hanging on the wall, it still looked more like the antechamber of a four-star hotel’s presidential suite than the entrance to a private residence.
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves and then pressed the doorbell. Although it seemed to make no sound, I knew that somewhere deep within the penthouse, where the servants spent most of their time, a buzzer was going off. A few seconds later the door opened, revealing a very proper-looking older man in his early sixties, neatly dressed in the formal wear of a butler. The moment he saw me, his reserve disappeared and he grinned from ear to ear.
“Miss Timmy! Welcome home!”
Chapter 21
The water from the multiple-head shower felt good on my body. I could have stood there for another hour, without worrying about the hot water running out, but I knew I was just postponing the inevitable. And, besides, I was starting to prune. As I toweled myself dry in my old bedroom, Beanie patrolled the perimeter, diligently sniffing the baseboards, his eyes bugging even farther out of his skull than usual. There was a polite knock on the door just as I finished slipping into some fresh clothes. It was Clarence, of course.
“Your parents are awaiting you in the Grand Salon, Miss Timmy,” he announced.
“Can’t they just sit around the kitchen table like normal people?” I sighed.
“Then they wouldn’t be Eresbies, would they?” Clarence replied, with the same small, conspiratorial smile we used to share when I was in junior high and chafing under my parents’ rules.
“No, they wouldn’t,” I agreed. “Well, no point in putting it off any longer, I suppose. Come along, Beanie.”
Beanie stopped his sniffing and obediently trotted at my heels as I led him down the pristine marble staircase that was the only access to the Grand Salon, a cavernous room with ceilings, paneling, and mantelpieces looted from only the finest Venetian palaces by the family’s founder.
My parents were there, seated before the massive fireplace in antique club chairs. My father looked like he had just come back from yachting, his face still ruddy from the wind, while my mother was dressed in her after-luncheon ensemble and working on what I hoped was her first highball of the day. I was surprised to find myself actually glad to see them.
My father’s weathered face split into a wide grin as I descended the stairs. “There’s my girl!” he exclaimed, as he rose to hug me. “I’ve missed you, Princess!”
“I missed you, too, Dad,” I said around the lump in my throat.
“I told you she’d come back once she got tired of playing haunted house,” my mother said as she rattled the ice in her glass. “What on earth has that Kymie been feeding you? Look at that pot belly—oh my God, you’re pregnant.” As my mother realized what she was looking at, her usual sense of decorum disappeared and her jaw dropped in disbelief.
“Thanks for noticing,” I said proudly.
“You hear that, Millie?” my father asked with an excited laugh. “We’re going to be grandparents!”
“Yes. I heard,” my mother replied curtly, reaching for her decanter of bourbon. “How far along are you?”
“Eighteen weeks.”
She glanced at my stomach again. “Are you sure about that?”
Before I could ask her what she meant by that, my dog walked over to one of the statues that decorated the salon—in this case, a Bernini—and pissed all over its base.
“Beanie—! No—!” I yelped. Instead of stopping, he merely turned to look at me as he continued to urinate.