He found Therese at the end of the hall, through a set of ornate glass doors and out on a wrought iron balcony that overhung the street below. She had shed her jacket, purse, watch and belt, all left in small piles that marked the route she had taken through the hall. Alex stepped around them carefully, but Therese didn’t seem concerned, seemingly enthralled by the view below her, her unlit cigarette dangling from one hand.
“Come on out here,” Therese ordered, her face composed and serious. Alex decided that heading out to the balcony was the diplomatic thing to do. “Let me get a good look at you, Mr. Alexander Warner.”
The way she lowered her glasses to look at him made him wonder if she needed them in the first place. Another thing that he’d noticed during the handshake — Therese was strong. Oddly strong for someone who dressed like they worked a desk. Unless, of course, they didn’t always work at one.
“Do you work for that Alistair guy? Is that how you know about me?”
Therese’s jaw dropped, and then she laughed, hard, but not exactly unkind.
“That’s actually not too bad of a guess,” she said, patting him on the shoulder as she ushered him out next to her, leaning on the balcony railing. There wasn’t much view to speak of — the Easter egg colored street stretched out before them, and beyond it, just the tip of the Ring and then the monotonous bulk of Central beyond. “But you’re exaggerating your own importance, and you’re mixed up on who my boss is.”
“Yeah?”
Alex did his best to sound nonchalant.
“Yeah,” Therese said, smirking. “Everything I told you was true. I heard about you as an anecdote to the Mitsuru Aoki situation.”
“There’s a Mitsuru situation?”
“Mind your own business,” Therese said, staring out at Central moodily. “I don’t work for Central, Alex; I work for the Raleigh Cartel. I most definitely do not work for the Chief Auditor, thank you very much.”
Alex shrugged and then nodded.
“Okay, I got it, you work for the cartel. Can you please tell me why we are having this conversation?”
Therese glanced over at him, her expression unreadable, and then went back to staring off at the city.
“Do you like her?”
“What?”
Alex was puzzled by her timing, not the subject. He was pretty sure he knew who she was talking about.
“They brought my sister back home for coaching, because the precognitives said that you would probably like her.” Therese’s tone was dull, and she spoke so quietly Alex had to lean forward to hear her over the wind that whistled through the channel between the great stone buildings. “They gave her a sixty-six percent chance, depending on circumstances. So, do you?”
Alex tried to formulate a response, while she finally remembered her cigarette and lit it.
“She seems cool,” he managed, after several moments of thinking. “We met pretty recently, and everything, so it’s not like I know her that well…”
“It took you a very long time to come up with ‘she seems cool’.”
“Sure, okay,” Alex said, running his hands through his hair. “So, are we all done here? Because I don’t really need to have one of these weird conversations right now.”
“What weird conversations? Who are you having weird conversations with?”
Therese looked at him sincerely. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“Did you have something you wanted to talk to me about?”
Alex wasn’t sure whether he was demanding or begging. Therese tilted her head to look at him over the top of her glasses again, and then smiled, and she didn’t seem all that different from Emily after all, for a moment, and Alex wondered why in the world she kept her golden hair tied back that way.
“It probably seems like I give her a pretty hard time, right? And I do,” Therese said, her elbows resting on the iron railing, her smile a little sad. “I do give her a hard time, because the world is always going to be hard on my poor little sister. She got a bad hand, right from the start, and there’s never been anything I could do about that. I’ve tried to make her as tough as possible, because I can’t make her life any easier.”
Therese paused for a while, and Alex let the silence be, not only because he couldn’t think of anything worth saying.
“Did you ever date a girl with a big brother, Alex?” Therese asked, not waiting for a response, sparing Alex the embarrassment of admitting that he hadn’t dated anyone, ever. “Emily doesn’t have a big brother. All she has is me. And normally, I would be doing the big brother thing right now to the boy she brought home from school. Do you know why I’m not doing that, Alex?”
Alex shook his head, too confused to try and guess.
“Because I got a call a few weeks ago from my father, who was extremely excited at his tremendous luck regarding his most disappointing daughter.” Alex was starting to realize that though Therese seemed calm, that she was actually quite possibly angry, something he didn’t particularly want to experience firsthand. “Never mind that it’s my baby sister, because I work for the cartel and it’s all about what the cartel wants. So I can’t be the big brother, and tell you to keep your hands off her.”
“Because it’s in the cartel’s best interest?”
“For all I know it might be in Emily’s best interest. Lord knows that nothing I’ve done or will ever do has made things much easier on her.” Therese looked gloomy. “So father says that I have to be nice to you, and stay out of Emily’s way. Actually, when he finds out that I came home anyway tonight, he’s going to be furious.”
“I kinda wondered if you did that on purpose,” Alex admitted. “Did you leave stuff all over the place to upset her?”
Therese laughed unexpectedly. When she laughed, Alex noted, she looked even more like Emily, but not nearly as reserved. Therese was prim and serious, Alex realized, but also much less timid than her younger sister.
“No, I’m just a slob,” Therese said, wiping her eyes and then replacing her glasses. “But you’re a funny guy. Let me say this,” she said, flicking the remainder of her cigarette onto the slate grey road below. “I hope that you can help my sister, and I hope that you join the Raleigh Cartel, I really do. And I promise that if you decide to do that, you will find yourself enthusiastically welcomed by everyone, myself included. But until that point, Alex, you had better be nice to my sister. And, if you decide you don’t like her, then you better make that very clear. Because if you string her along, well, I can and will make your life miserable. Do you believe me?”
Alex stuck with nodding. It seemed like the fastest way to put an end to the conversation.
“Okay, then,” she said, brushing past him on her way back into the house. “Let’s find out what we’re eating.”
Sure enough, Therese stayed and ate, ignoring the icy stares that Emily aimed in her direction, chatting away casually and not seeming to particularly care that neither Alex nor Emily had much to say in return. The meal was excellent, and Alex was particularly surprised at the pan-fried fish, not something he normally ate, which was moist and delicious and not at all, well, fishy, but the atmosphere left something to be desired. When Therese put her napkin on the table and made to leave, Alex practically wanted to embrace her in gratitude, but to his surprise, Emily grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the kitchen.
“Therese, help me with the dishes before you go,” Emily said, her grip on her sister’s forearm tightening.
“Aw,” Therese moaned, collecting the plates and then shuffling half-heartedly after Emily into the kitchen, shutting the door behind her. Alex wasn’t certain what was said in the moments that followed, because someone had turned the kitchen sink on full blast before the conversation started, but from the tone of the voice, he guessed that there was some disagreement. He stared into his empty wine glass as heated voices turned to shouting, and then eventually escalated to what sounded like dishes breaking on the tiled floor. Alex thought about getting up and going to check on the girls, maybe try and broker some kind of peace, but then his sense of self-preservation kicked in, and he decided to remain where he was.