Chapter 16
“Nice, ah, digs?” Caeco Jensen said as we stepped into the Marshall base directly from downtown Lake Placid. She was looking around curiously. “A little like Lost in Space meets lodge chic with a splash of Japandi.”
I never really assigned a style to the base. There were the streamlined spaceship walls, but they were decorated with a minimal amount of Adirondack-themed art and the floors were covered, at least in the main rooms, with thick wool rugs of various patterns.
“The furniture is all extruded by Omega, so we can change it to anything we want,” Vesta said. “This seems to be the default we’ve all arrived at, although private quarters vary quite a bit.”
Holly appeared in the hallway and waved us to follow. Her face was blank, but I sensed a bit of tension and annoyance in her intent.
She led us into a meeting room I hadn’t seen yet. The entire family was waiting for us.
“Well, the world knows of you now,” Declan said. He was angry. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone?” he asked me.
“No,” I said. “I don’t like bullies.”
“If I recall the stories, you don’t either, Dad,” Vesta said. “Plus, I was outted at school. Do you think I would have been ignored after break? Those kids can’t keep secrets to save lives.”
“On the plus side, you’re both trending, as they say,” Levi said, looking at his tablet. “With extremely positive remarks for the most part.”
“Omega, what’s the upshot?” Vesta’s mom asked. She didn’t seem put out at all.
“The videos are sweeping around the globe. The entire event was captured start to finish, and I have been careful to extinguish any clips that were intentionally shortened to take things out of context.”
“Actually, you’re killing it,” Kristin said. “It’s the biggest story anywhere right now. People have been speculating for years about you, Vee. Now that they have actual images, they’re freaking out.”
“Oh?” Vesta asked, deceptively casual. She was intensely interested but didn’t want to show it. She glanced over Kristin’s shoulder to see what she was reading.
“Flipping out over how beautiful you are. The dark-haired mirror of your mom is getting a lot of play. Dark wolf versus White Wolf.”
“Night versus day,” Levi said.
“Yeah, Night Wolf is coming up a lot,” Caeco said, looking up from her own tablet. Then she glanced at me and frowned. “You aren’t interested in what they’re saying about you?”
“I expect it will be good, bad, or indifferent and whatever it is now will change a hundred and eighty degrees an hour from now, wash, rinse, and repeat.”
I had everyone’s attention. “What does that mean?” Vesta asked, frowning, head tilted.
“Greenacres is a tiny population. We all know everything of interest within minutes. So the planetary attention is fixated on Earth. We had whole classes in observing the sweeping rhythms of public opinion flowing and sweeping across this planet. Politics, influencers, demographics, algorithms, money flows and prediction markets all pushing, shoving, and spinning. It’s the most aggressively volatile thing about this world. ”
“But how does it make you feel to know people are talking about you and Vee?” Kristin asked.
“Naked. Exposed. Vulnerable. Which translates to defensive.”
“And yet you had to know your intervention would be recorded?” Declan asked.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” I said. “Remember, Ilissa Shenn had turned the entire student body of Arcane against me before I showed up. Like she had done on Greenacres with her father’s employees.”
“What was that like?” Caeco asked.
“Like I would show up to handle an axehead incursion or move a Mackdragon and the workers would mutter and stare. Drop little comments here and there. Careful comments.”
“Why careful?” Caeco pushed.
“Because it’s a violent world, at least compared to most societies on Earth. You can and will get called out physically for things you say.”
“And they were scared of you… or your dad?” Caeco pushed, like a good investigator would.
“Yes. Dad first, then as I did more of the work, me. Ilissa loved it.”
“Well, you’re getting high marks, for the most part,” Levi said.
I shrugged. “It’ll change.”
“I should note that we have had multiple requests for interviews,” Omega said. “Including nine texts and two emails from Brystol Chatterjee.”
“Shit,” Declan said. “I forgot our promise.”
“She did not,” Omega said.
“What promise?” Vesta asked.
“We’ve kept you away from her your whole life,” Stacia said. “Early on, she got us to promise that we would give her first shot at any interviews when you came of age.”
“An interview?” Vesta said, clearly mulling it over.
I could feel her curiosity and interest through our bond.
She was excited by this breach in her anonymity, which made perfect sense.
Forced to hide under the radar her whole life, now shoved into the limelight her parents already occupied. And it was my fault. Fuck.
“This Brystol was a big deal a couple of decades ago, right?” I asked.
“She was at the forefront of the emergence of the supernatural world,” Stacia said. “Early exposure to Chris and Tanya and me. Then Declan. She had the inside scoop all through the Vorsook wars. But nothing has really happened in the last fifteen, so yeah, her platform has shrunk.”
“This ruins you for undercover work on Golf Alpha,” Caeco said, back in Special Agent mode.
“I was never a great fit for it anyway. Those Shenn videos are prevalent and the population is tiny.”
“So will you sit for an interview?” Stacia asked.
“Me? I thought she wanted Vesta?”
“She’ll want both of you.”
“I think it’ll go to shit but if Vesta wants to do it, I will too.”
“Cynic,” Vesta accused me before switching to her mother. “I’ve heard about her all my life, so of course I want to meet her.”
“We’ll set it up,” Stacia said, looking at her mate. He was frowning, but he nodded.
They did… fast. Like, that evening. Just portaled the whole crew into the base in one shot.
“Don’t tell them where we are,” Holly told me for the twentieth time as she led us to the interview space that Omega had created inside the drone base. One big room with an attached set of bathrooms so that no one had a need or excuse to be anywhere else.
I figured it would ramp the production crew into stratospheric heights of curiosity, a theory borne out when we entered the room and two of the crew tried to get out the door.
“Wait, where did it go?” one of them asked, looking for the door that was there a second ago.
“Why?” Holly asked, her arms crossed and face set on dangerous.
“Just curious how it disappeared, that’s all,” the other said.
“Best to curb your curiosity around here. It’s a dangerous place,” the pack second said with a mean grin.
Props to Holly. The lady could menace with the best of them.
Across the room, an attractive woman had turned from where she was talking with Vesta’s parents.
I guessed she was in her forties, based on what I knew about Brystol Chatterjee, but she looked ten years younger, without a speck of gray in her thick black hair.
Her eyes fastened on Vesta in triumph and after a second flicked to me, her intent anticipating some victory or another.
Something surprising but not physically threatening.
Still, it was enough to make me very, very wary.
“Brystol, this is our daughter, Vesta,” Stacia said. “Vesta, Brystol Chatterjee. And Brystol’s assistant, Sami.”
Sami was young, just a few years older than Vesta and me, and looked like a younger version of Brystol. Same black hair, dark eyes, dark skin. “Are you related?” Vesta asked.
“My daughter. Oh, I have waited a long, long time to meet you, Vesta,” Brystol said. “ And look at you! Bleach your hair and you could be your mother’s twin.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Vesta said, smiling as she shook Brystol’s hand.
Then she turned my way. “And this handsome young man… your boyfriend?” Brystol asked.
“This is Craig—my beloved,” Vesta said in a happy tone.
Brystol blinked at her words, her hand already reaching to shake mine. She glanced at Vesta and back at me. “She honors you with such words.”
“Completely,” I said, keeping my tone even.
“Hmm, aren’t you mysterious,” she said.
“Brystol, we need to get them in makeup; we’re only ten minutes out,” a tall man with a small tablet said.
“Do they even need makeup?” Sami asked, looking at us closely.
“I have optimized the lighting to eliminate the need,” Omega said, popping into existence and making the entire crew jump.
“So you have,” Brystol said. “Let’s get seated. Just relax,” she said. “We’ll have a friendly conversation.” Her intent flared. Anticipation mixed with a small amount of anxiety.
We sat, me on the outside, then Vesta and then Brystol. Comfortable chairs extruded on demand by Omega. An arc of four floating camera drones run by two techs with remotes. Sami the daughter/assistant, a makeup person, the producer, and two others in the background.
“You chose a pretty splashy way to come out to the world,” Brystol said, making conversation.
“I think Corrigan Fife did much of the choosing,” Vesta said.
“Pretty common behavior on his part,” Brystol said. “Just wrong place and wrong time.”
“We’re ready, Brystol. Live in thirty,” the producer said.
I sat a back and watched Brystol. She almost shook with eagerness. It had likely been years since a story this big had broken for her.
“Okay, live in five, four, three, two… “ the producer said, holding up fingers for the last two seconds. Then he pointed at Brystol and she lit up with a huge, white-toothed smile.