Chapter 7 #3
Her body hits the flagstones hard enough that the women nearest her jump back, shrieking now, chairs scraping in every direction. Someone knocks over a coffee pot. Another glass shatters. The whole easy, cultivated morning tears open in an instant.
I’m already moving before anyone else at the table has fully stood.
Yuri is behind me at once. Good.
The girl on the ground is convulsing by the time I reach her, her limbs jerking hard against the stone, froth spilling from her mouth, her face already going frighteningly pale. One of the guests starts crying. Another backs away so fast she almost trips over her own chair.
“Move,” I say.
People move.
Not quickly enough for my taste, but enough.
The doctor among the guests drops to his knees beside the girl and rolls her carefully onto her side. Good again. Someone has the presence of mind to know not to shove fingers into her mouth like an idiot.
“Call an ambulance,” he snaps.
“It’s already done,” Yuri says.
Also good.
I look up once, sharply, scanning the tables, the glasses, the plates.
The food stations. The champagne. The coffee service.
Alina is standing now, one hand pressed to her chest. Ethan has Camille behind him, as if there is anything useful he could do with his body between her and whatever this is.
Camille herself has gone sheet-white, all color drained out of her perfect morning.
Then I find Sienna.
She’s standing very still near the side station, one hand braced on the table behind her. Not panicking. Not frozen either. Watching. Thinking. Her face has gone pale, but her eyes are clear.
Our gaze meets for half a second.
Then she looks down at the glass in her hand, and my attention goes there too.
Water.
Untouched now.
Something cold moves through me. “Yuri,” I say.
He follows my line of sight at once. “Yes.”
“Get that glass.”
He’s already moving before I finish the sentence.
The doctor says something about seizure, poisoning, maybe anaphylaxis, all of it too fast and not yet useful.
Staff are gathering at the edges of the lawn in stunned little clusters, waiting to be told whether to run or stay still.
Someone is sobbing. Someone else is on the phone shouting the estate address twice because panic has made them forget it the first time.
I crouch beside the fallen girl just long enough to see what I need to see.
No obvious obstruction. No sign of choking. Foam, spasms, abrupt collapse.
I don’t like any of it.
The guests are starting to crowd in too close, everyone talking at once, half of them trying to be useful and the other half already turning it into a story they’ll repeat later over drinks.
“Back up,” I say.
That gets some movement. Not enough.
Then I hear another voice cut through the noise. “Move. Give her room.”
Maksim.
He comes across the lawn in shirtsleeves, jacket gone, hair still damp at the temples as if he dressed too fast and came out anyway.
My oldest friend drops to one knee beside the girl without wasting a second, his face changing the way it always does when medicine takes over and the rest of the world becomes background.
“What happened?” he asks.
“She stood, started frothing, then went down,” I say.
He nods once and gets to work. Two fingers at her neck. A quick look at her pupils. He turns her head slightly, checks her airway, watches the movement of her chest.
“She’s breathing,” he says. “Keep her on her side.”
The doctor guest beside him shifts back at once, relieved to surrender the moment to someone with more authority. Maksim doesn’t even glance at him. His attention stays on the girl.
“Has she eaten? Drunk anything?”
“Breakfast,” someone says from behind me. “Champagne, I think.”
“Coffee too,” another voice adds.
Maksim looks up at me. He doesn’t need to say much. I already know what he’s asking.
I glance once toward Yuri. He still has the glass wrapped in linen.
“Possibly one specific drink,” I say.
Maksim’s eyes narrow slightly, but he gives no sign of understanding to anyone around us. Good. “We’re taking her inside.”
He looks at the nearest two men standing there in expensive uselessness and points. “You and you. Lift carefully. Keep her on her side. Don’t straighten her out.”
That gets them moving. People obey competence when it sounds like certainty.
The girl lets out a small, broken sound as they lift her, her body still too loose, her face frighteningly pale. One of the bridesmaids starts crying in earnest now. Camille is nowhere in sight. Ethan has done at least that much correctly.
Maksim rises and gestures toward the house. “Guest suite on the ground floor. Somewhere quiet.”
Nadine is already there, of course. “This way.”
She leads them at once, clearing a path through the terrace doors while staff pull furniture aside and guests flatten themselves out of the way. The whole breakfast has gone silent now except for the rustle of movement and the far-off wail of the ambulance getting closer.
I turn to Yuri as the group disappears inside. “Keep that glass out of everyone’s hands.”
He gives me a look. “Obviously.”
“Also the tray.”
He’s already moving toward the side station.
Only then do I look for Sienna.
She’s standing exactly where I left her, one hand braced on the edge of the service table, face pale but composed. She’s not panicking. She’s watching. Thinking. Trying, I suspect, not to show how close this came to being something else.
I go to her.
“Come inside,” I say.
Her eyes lift to mine. “I’m fine.”
“Not for the purposes of this conversation.”
Something in her expression almost shifts at that. Not amusement. Recognition, maybe, that I am not going to let her brush this off.
Around us, the breakfast is dissolving into anxious clusters and low voices. No one is eating anymore. Good. Let them all be uncomfortable.
“This is insane,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Who would do something like this?”
A better question than most people here will ask.
I glance toward the lawn, toward Ethan somewhere out of sight, toward the scattered remains of breakfast and the chairs still half pushed back from the tables. “That is what I intend to find out.”
Her hand slips from the table to her side, close to her middle before she catches herself and lets it fall. The movement is small. Most people would miss it.
I don’t.
I take a breath and make myself say only, “Inside.”
This time she nods.
I keep one hand light at the small of her back as I guide her through the terrace doors, not because she needs steering, but because the house is suddenly full of frightened people and I want a point of contact I can account for. She tenses at the touch for half a second, then allows it.
Inside, the cooler air of the hallway wraps around us.
The noise is different here. Muffled, running ahead and behind in fragments.
A staff member hurries past with a basin.
Another with clean towels. Somewhere down the corridor, I hear Maksim giving instructions in that clipped, calm tone that makes everyone else stop flailing and start listening.
Good.
Sienna is standing a few feet away, pale but composed, watching the room with that same alert stillness she gets when something is wrong and she is forcing herself not to be one more problem.
I go to her, but before I can say anything, Maksim steps out of the room again and pulls off one glove.
“She needs a hospital,” he says. His voice is even, but there’s no softness in it. “She’s critical.”
For a moment no one speaks.
I glance past him toward the bed, toward the girl now barely moving, and feel the weight of it settle into the house. Breakfast ruined. Guests shaken. One young woman fighting for her life in a ground-floor bedroom meant for overflow family.
I nod once. “The ambulance is close.”
“It needs to be faster than close.”
“I know.”
Maksim looks as if he wants to say more, then thinks better of it and turns back into the room.
Beside me, Sienna speaks quietly. “It was the champagne.”
I look at her. “What?”
“She drank the champagne,” she says. Her voice is steadier now, because she has something concrete to hold on to. “I saw her have it. Right before Camille’s toast ended.”
A flash of memory. Champagne. The one that I declined moments before she choked on the same. Was that meant for me?
I don’t know that for sure. But if it’s true, then someone here is trying to kill me.