“Kat,” Dad warns from his place at the other end. Except he knows that none of us are buying his disciplinarian act, so he doesn’t push it. Dad is always best in the role of Good Cop. Mom plays the Bad Cop without even breaking a sweat.
“Oh, come on,” Kat says. “I’m only kidding.” She points her fork at Griffon. “Well hey, look at you there.” Kat nudges me with her elbow. “Didn’t think we’d be seeing him again.” As she turns to me I catch a whiff of alcohol on her breath and wonder if Mom and Dad can tell that she’s been drinking. “Owen’s thinking about coming out here this summer. Do you talk to him much?”
Dad looks confused. “Do you and Griffon know each other?”
“Didn’t Cole tell you? Griffon is the guy who helped her out when she fainted at the Tower of London that day.” Great. Now I’m not only going to have to explain how we met, but also why I never mentioned it before now.
“Fainted?” Mom sits up straight. “You didn’t say anything about fainting. Sam, did you know about this?”
Dad shrugs. “She said it was nothing. Jet lag. She’s been fine ever since, haven’t you, Cole?”
“Mom, please,” I say, looking pointedly at Veronique and Giacomo. We’re quickly becoming the world’s best argument for not starting a family. Single and childless is probably starting to look pretty good about now. “It’s nothing.”
Veronique turns to Griffon. “So, let me get this straight. You were visiting London with Cole?” Dad glances at her and then over to Mom, and I know they’re all waiting for an explanation.
“I live there part-time,” he says. “That’s where we met.” He looks at me and I can tell he doesn’t know how much to say.
“That’s a funny story, actually,” I say with a little laugh for emphasis. “Turns out that Griffon’s dad is a Yeoman Warder at the Tower. I felt a little sick, and Griffon happened to be there, that’s all. Kat found out through his friend that he lived around here and we got back in touch.”
Kat spears a large forkful of salad. “Isn’t that the cutest coincidence?” she says, jamming the salad into her mouth.
Veronique tilts her head toward me, her eyes locked on mine. “Totally,” she agrees. “That’s an amazing coincidence.” Something about the way she says that word makes me uneasy, and out of the corner of my eye I can see Griffon sitting motionless next to her.
“A Warder?” Dad says. “That must be fascinating.”
Griffon’s focus shifts visibly as Dad speaks to him, and I wonder if anybody but me notices the effort. “It is,” he agrees. “When I’m there I stay with him at the apartments inside the Tower.”
Kat busies herself with the lasagna, and I can see Mom relax now that we’re on to other, less volatile subjects. “I visited there years ago before the girls were born,” she says. “What’s it like after dark?”
“Haunted,” Kat says, apparently listening to the conversation despite appearances. “Headless ghosts and chained prisoners roaming the grounds all night long.”
Images from the vision at the Tower give me a sinking feeling in my stomach, but I press them down, determined not to let detached, fleeting memories overwhelm my evening. “Knock it off, Kat,” I say. “There are no ghosts.”
Giacomo smiles at me. “Ah, a skeptic,” he says. “You do not believe in the supernatural?”
I can feel the smile on my face shift, and I will it back into place. “No. Not really.” After all, people who can remember hundreds of years’ worth of past lives, put overturned chess sets back together, and memorize a page of writing in ten seconds aren’t exactly supernatural. Are they?
Mom jumps in. “Nicole has always been the practical one,” she says. “She didn’t even like fairy tales when she was little.”
I can feel my face getting hot, and am grateful when Griffon takes over, steering the conversation in another direction. “There may not be ghosts at the Tower, but there have been a lot of famous people who came through over the years.”
“Yeah,” Kat says, “like who?”
Griffon starts naming all of the celebrities that he’s seen at the Tower, starting off with a funny story about a famous heiress who insisted on trying to buy one of the pieces in the Crown Jewels collection and almost causing an international incident. Giacomo participates in the lively conversation in his halting English, but through it all Veronique remains unusually quiet, sitting across from me with her hands in her lap. Her eyes seem to focus on the conversation, but I can tell that her thoughts are elsewhere.
After dinner, Mom shoos us all into the living room for dessert. I sit next to Veronique on the wide couch, while Griffon takes his place in the chair by the fireplace. Although he looks relaxed, I can tell that he’s watching us carefully. It’s impossible to know if he’s gotten any information from her, but he looks determined not to leave the two of us on our own.
“Has Veronique played the piano for you?” Giacomo leans over to ask me.
I look at Veronique, surprised. “No. I didn’t know you played.”
She shrugs. “I play a bit,” she says. She looks over at Giacomo like she’s going to kill him for bringing it up.
Giacomo snorts, either ignoring her or not seeing it at all. “More than, how do you say, ‘a bit.’ Go on,” he encourages her.
“Oh, you must,” Mom says, sticking her head in the room to get a coffee count. “Our piano is pretty lonely these days.”
“If you insist,” Veronique says, uncharacteristically shy. She perches on the piano bench and rubs her hands on her pants. As she exhales, she brings her hands down, and I recognize the opening bars of Meditation. My glance darts from her closed eyes to her hands as they flex and bend in a way that’s natural and at the same time otherworldly. She plays the whole piece flawlessly, with more passion and emotion than even Julie did, her adagio section barely more than a fluttering whisper of the keys. As she finishes, she puts her hands back on her knees and looks embarrassed at our applause.
“You play a little,” I repeat, amazed and a little irritated that she hasn’t told me that she’s some sort of piano genius before now. “And I play a little cello.” Here I’ve been teaching her the basics like she didn’t have a clue about music, and all along she could have been the one up on stage at the conservatory. “That’s embarrassing.”
“Oh, come on, it’s not embarrassing,” Veronique insists, coming back to sit next to me. “Okay, so I know how to play piano. I can’t play the cello at all. At least I couldn’t until I started taking lessons with you.” She looks down at the black splint. “How’s the arm? Did they say you can play again soon?”
“It’s getting there,” I say. Without thinking I rub my thumb against my tingling fingers, my mind flashing back to holding the cello earlier. “But they say that it might take a long time to get the feeling back in my fingers.” If it ever comes back, I think, not able to say the words out loud. The black splint hides all but a few inches of the scar, and I see her eyes dart involuntarily to it as I speak. Is there a little bit of guilt in that glance?
“The important thing is that Cole came out of it in one piece,” Dad says, standing behind me with his hand on my shoulder. “Thanks to you.” He nods at Veronique. “If you hadn’t been there to help, it could have ended very differently.”
I can see a slight scowl on Griffon’s face as Dad speaks, but I turn my full attention on Veronique. “He’s right,” I say.
“Well, it’s not like I was going to let you bleed to death,” Veronique says with a small smile. “I prepaid for this month’s lessons, and I need to get my money’s worth.” She puts her arm around me and gives my shoulders a quick squeeze. I focus on where she’s touching me and feel faint Akhet vibrations. As casually as I can, I look up at her face, scanning her eyes to try to see Alessandra in them, trying to see the essence of the girl I knew back then, but I get nothing. I suddenly want to tell her everything I know about Alessandra and what happened on the roof that night. That it wasn’t me who pushed her off, that I would never do something like that. That I know we were friends and that I’d never try to take Paolo away from her. I want that connection again, to pick up the pieces of our old friendship that was cut short the last time. I feel like I’m surrounded by memories of Alessandra as the rest of the room grows distant.