CHAPTER 32 GIGI #2
Gigi was not deterred. “A Woman in Red told me Orion isn’t Calla’s father, but that he does have another child.” When that got no reaction, Gigi took another liberty. “A daughter.”
“I think not,” Helena said. “Had Orion ever attempted to keep a daughter from me, he would not be the Thorp family heir.” The woman turned her head back toward Savannah. “That necklace. Where did you get it?”
Savannah lifted her hand to the fleur-de-lis. “I don’t recall.”
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Gigi thought.
“A woman named Zella gave it to someone to prove that she knew what happened to Calla.” Helena Thorp showed no reaction to those words at all, so Gigi kept going.
“And apparently what happened to Calla is that she fell in with some questionable characters and joined some kind of cult where she’s known as The Watcher. The Lily.”
Gigi watched for any indication that Helena Thorp recognized those terms, but the woman’s poise was bulletproof.
“I see.” Helena took another delicate sip of her coffee. “This Zella who had Calla’s necklace. She was in her twenties, I imagine? Quite beautiful?”
“Quite,” Gigi confirmed. “She said that she and Calla were sisters, once upon a time.”
Helena’s poker face wavered—just barely, just for a moment, but Gigi saw it. The old woman set down her coffee. “I do not wish to discuss Calla.”
“Calla’s alive,” Gigi insisted. “And possibly evil. Were you the one who named her Calla?” When in doubt, omit all possible segues. “Because if so, you basically named her Lily.”
Helena arched a brow.
“You waited generations for a Thorp daughter to be born.” Savannah seized the reins of the conversation like they’d always been hers. “The one to whom it was promised. The girl who would be queen.”
I had this, Gigi thought. I was handling it.
Helena’s violet gaze made its way back to the fleur-de-lis. “Give me my necklace, child.”
“Answer my sister’s questions,” Savannah replied. “And perhaps I will.”
I can do this without your help, Gigi thought. I excel at interrogations!
“Yes, I was the one who named Calla,” Helena Thorp said after a moment, addressing the words more to Savannah than to Gigi. “And yes, the name held meaning to me.”
Yes, you know something, Gigi translated.
“When a person of a certain sort is being watched, they’re sent a calla lily as a warning.
” Gigi leaned forward in her chair, which was a real mistake, knife-wedgie wise.
“But what good is a warning if the person being warned has no idea that she’s being warned?
Or what the heck she’s being warned about? ”
That was objectively far too many uses of the word warn, but Gigi didn’t care, and Helena didn’t seem to mind.
“Those who are warned,” the old woman said after a moment, “have generally discovered enough to know quite well what that flower can mean.”
“Beg to differ,” Gigi said.
“You’ve received one, I take it?” Helena replied. “Both of you or just—”
“Just me,” Gigi said, but the second she said it, she wasn’t sure. The first calla lily had definitely been hers, but the second one—it could have been for Savannah.
“And so it begins again,” Helena murmured.
“What begins again?” Savannah beat Gigi to the question.
“I am an old woman,” Helena told Savannah. “I am tired—of this life, of these games. And I just want what is mine.”
The necklace. Gigi caught her sister’s gaze. Please, Savannah.
After a long, torturous moment, Savannah reached back to unclasp the necklace. She handed it to Helena. The moment the old woman closed her fingers around the fleur-de-lis, she closed her eyes. For a split second, that aged face, that face that had been beautiful once, threatened to crumble.
But Helena Thorp was made of sterner stuff than that.
“What begins again?” Savannah asked a second time.
Gigi thought about Nora, about the way she’d said it’s not going to be you, about the way that someone had sent her to find Gigi. “When is a warning not a warning?” Gigi pushed. “When is it a prelude to… something else?”
Something bigger.
Violet eyes opened. “At a certain point in the cycle, a calla is not a warning for the recipient. It is a way of asserting a claim and warning the others off—a mark, if you will.”
“A mark of what?” Gigi asked.
“Potential.” Helena Thorp let that word hang in the air. “As metal is forged, so potential must be tested. And thus, Candidates are chosen.”
It’s not going to be you.
Run away, little girl.
You’d never survive.
“Tested how?” Gigi said. “Chosen for what?”
Helena rose from the table. “‘Spin, spin,’ said the spider to its web,” she murmured.
Gigi was on her own feet in a flash. “I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps you will,” Helena said. “Soon.” She rang a bell, and the butler reappeared immediately with their cell phones on a silver tray.
No, Gigi thought desperately. I’m not leaving. She looked to the necklace, Calla’s necklace, which the Thorp family matriarch still had in her left hand.
“That necklace,” Gigi said, refusing to give up, “that fleur-de-lis—it’s not just a fleur-de-lis, is it?
” The butler returned her phone and Savannah’s, but Gigi just kept right on talking.
“You put that symbol on the Musée, the library, the town hall—but it isn’t really the Thorp fleur-de-lis, is it? ”
There was the faintest flicker of emotion in Helena’s eyes. What emotion, Gigi wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. She was onto something.
“That symbol,” Gigi said, borrowing Nora’s words, “has no place in this town.”
“Get out.” Helena’s voice shook.
“No,” Gigi said.
Helena’s violet eyes got a faraway look in them as she walked over to the glass door to the garden. As the old woman turned the key in the lock, the garden path outside lit up.
“You two may see yourselves out through the garden,” Helena said, the oddest tone in her voice. “I can promise that you will not much care for what happens to you if you do not.”