“It hurts,” he was saying, head bowed, snaking wisps of incense twining around him. “I feel like my ribs are going to pop. Look, they’re still bruised from the last time.” He tried to pull up his pajama top. “They’re bruised from the inside.”
She pushed his arms down, shushing him. “Because you’re holding your breath.”
“No, it gets trapped inside and expands like-”
“No, it doesn’t!” she snapped, her arms straight as she levered him forward again. “The matter is pouring from the mask like a smoky waterfall.”
“But that’s not my breath! It belongs to the one who lives inside.”
“Just put it on, Xavier. You don’t want to make him angry, do you?”
I thought he whimpered. “No, but-”
“He wants more.”
“It hurts,” he whimpered.
“Put it on!”
Helen’s roar was so loud I didn’t hear my phone ring, but I felt the accompanying vibration, and acted instinctively, darting from the room before the ring tone could sound again. The theme to Gilligan’s Island just didn’t fit the mood.
I knocked on the door as I swung it shut, knowing they’d both hear that. My heart was pounding as I backed away from the door, and I whirled to give myself time to regain my composure, answering the phone in the middle of the next refrain. As the office door whipped open behind me, I turned with a bright grin on my face, held up a finger in Helen’s glaring one, and giggled into my BlackBerry.
“Cher, honey, let me call you back. I’m at Daddy’s, and you know how he likes my full attention.” I paused, then laughed cheerily as Helen shifted on her feet, the hands that’d been stilling Xavier now planted firmly on her nonexistent hips. “Oh, I know! That humid island air hates me too. Just tell your momma to make a Nyquil smoothie and she’ll feel all better in the morning.”
Helen cleared her throat impatiently.
“Oh, darlin’, gotta go. There’s a shark outside Daddy’s door too.” I laughed again at Cher’s reply as Helen’s hooded eyes narrowed into slits. I blinked prettily after I dropped the phone back into my handbag, though it didn’t have the same effect on her as it’d had on the guard at the gate.
“Your father’s busy,” she said before I could ask for Xavier.
“Helen,” I said, batting at her like she’d told a joke. “You know he’s never too busy for his favorite daughter. Just be a gem and tell him I’m here.”
I made a move toward the office, and her hand shot out, palm on my chest. “You don’t understand me,” she said firmly, letting a cool gleam enter her gaze. “He’s not well, and can’t see you now.”
“Not well?” I exclaimed, stepping back from her touch. She let her hand fall, and I put a hand to my face, covering the deep breath I allowed to coat the bridge of my mouth, my teeth, and throat. I closed my mouth, ran my tongue over the fresh air molecules, exploring their texture and taste. “Then I must tend to him!”
“I’m tending to him. It’s my job, remember?”
I tilted my head. “I remember you telling me to take care of myself because you weren’t anybody’s nurse.”
“That wasn’t you. That was your sister.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding slowly, before straightening. “Well. It was still bitchy.”
Her nostrils flared. I was careful not to breathe. “Either leave now or I’ll throw you out myself.”
I fell still and serious, and finally met her eye. “Oh, Helen. You’re making a very grave mistake.”
She snorted, rolling her own. “I’ll tell your father you stopped by.”
I bit my lip like I was confused about something, then turned away as she wanted. I felt her watch me as I crossed the throne room, and knew she continued to watch on the office monitors as I left the house and climbed back into the car. It was only after I’d sped through the gates that I let out my own scented breath.
“A very, very big mistake, Helen Maguire.”
And it was either the first one she’d made in the twenty years she’d been employed in the Archer household, or else I simply hadn’t had the tools to notice such a slip before. But I had them now-skin so sensitive to texture I could pick up the marble-smooth fingertips even without seeing them. A palate so refined I could taste decayed emotion. And an internal alarm alerting me to Shadow agents, one that currently had me smiling to myself…and sharpening my metaphorical knives.
I returned Cher’s call en route to Master Comics.
“We’re comin’ home,” she said without preamble. “Momma’s not getting any better and I think the humidity is fermentin’ her lungs. Why do people live in places where your hair can get all frizzy?”
“Spoken like a true desert rat,” I told her before growing serious. “What are her symptoms?”
“She’s wheezing and has a fever that causes her to break out in sweats and cry out in her sleep. She has the weirdest dreams…our cabana boy stars in all of them.”
Was that out of character for Suzanne? “Has she seen a doctor down there?”
“Are you kidding? The local medicine man would probably kill a chicken and splatter its blood in a circle around the bed. They’re hospitable enough, but I wouldn’t call them civilized.”
“Cher,” I chided, narrowly avoiding a tourist who’d eschewed an overhead walkway for a shortcut that’d take him twice as long. “That’s so ethnocentric.”
Cher gasped, offended. “I am not a bit religious, and you know it.”
“Look,” I said, blasting through a reddish stoplight. “She doesn’t sound well enough to travel right now. Why don’t you call Dr. Porter and give him her symptoms. He might be able to prescribe something over the phone and fax a prescription to a pharmacy down there.”
“You think?”
What I thought was that the last thing I needed was for those two to come back to town, setting up two more big bull’s-eyes for Regan to train her sights on. What I said was “I sometimes manage it, yes. Call me if Suzanne gets any worse. And give her a big smooch from me.”
I didn’t just say it because Olivia would have. Both Cher and her mother had grown on me, and I was as protective of them as if they were my own family. Natural, I suppose, since I didn’t have any left. Keeping them out of Vegas wasn’t just necessary because of Regan; now I had the doppelgänger to contend with. If she knew about me she might know of Olivia’s friends as well.
The next call I made had to be done in person. It was almost closing time when I walked back into Master Comics, and I’d intended to head straight to the storeroom-flipping off Zane on the way-only pausing long enough to pick up this week’s Shadow manual, the Light presumably still not showing up. But one look at the little girl peering up at me with wide and hopeful eyes was enough to have me dropping to my knees.
“Oh, Li,” I whispered, cupping the soft oval of her face in my hands. There were no bandages covering the claw marks marring her face, an effort to get the wound and stitches to dry out, and my heart broke as I wished I could help her heal faster.
“It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks,” she said, in an attempt to be brave, tilting her head so her straight hair swung over the angry red slashes. The fissure in my heart widened.
“Yes it does,” Jasmine cut in sharply, standing at Li’s right side, one hand dropped protectively on her shoulder. It reminded me of Helen’s hands on Xavier, though I didn’t know why. “She screams when my mother cleans it, and now the rest of her skin is starting to crack. She looks like Humpty Dumpty.”
Li blushed furiously, which only accentuated her scars and made the cracking Jasmine was talking about more noticeable. She was right. Li’s once pristine skin now resembled a chaotic inner city road map. Blue veins and red vessels had risen to canvass the thinned-out skin, and I noted her eyes were beginning to bulge a little too.
Jesus, I thought, it even looked like the muscles beneath the skin were thinning. How did I fix this?