Chapter Twenty One #2
there, somebody I need to help—an immigrant like you. But I'm not
going to leave straight away, because...” His throat constricted,
and he let Mateo stroke his hair until the spasm passed. “Because I
want to give Laurie time. No matter what you just saw, he's a good
man. He saved me, and...” Again came the disabling surge of grief.
“Never mind. I don't expect you to believe me, but he deserves for
me to wait, long enough to give him a chance to call me or to come
back here and tell me why this happened. And I need to wait alone.
Do you understand?”
“No. How long will you wait for?”
“Until noon today.”
“Why then?”
“Well, you have your interview at ten, don't you? That will
give you time to get back here and tell me how it went. You can
check that I'm alive and breathing, and we can say goodbye to one
another properly, like... like friends.”
A shiver
went through Mateo's frame. He was strong, and very young, and
Sasha sensed in him the taut frustrations of a first real
self-denial. “Like friends,” Mateo echoed bitterly. “If that's all
I can be to you—”
“Don't ever say all.
You have no idea how much it means.” Sasha pushed
him gently back, creating one safe inch of space between them, then
two, then an arm's-length gap so he could stand alone. “A friend
would do as I ask him now, Mateo.”
Sasha
let him out through the courtyard. It was five in the morning, and
he could have used the front door for once, not his refugee's
assault course through the gardens, except that Sasha knew a blue
Ford had replaced the black Altima in the vantage point across the
street. When Laurie called, Sasha would have a reason from him for
that too, a real one this time.
Mateo
and Sasha stood together for a moment by the pool, whose surface
was restless in the dawn breeze, scattering the pieces of a round
reflected moon. Sasha raised his fingertips to Mateo's chest,
rested them lightly there just in the V of his shirt. He wanted to
feel the powerful thud of his heart. He wanted to see, just for a
moment, the differences between them, the nuance of their skin
colour by moonlight, Mateo's honey and his own shadow. “Go on,” he
whispered. “I'll see you again, okay? Goodbye.”
He let
himself back into the house. The keycard and thumbprint process had
become automatic by now. He hardly even minded any more. He didn't
mind the sense of the glass and adobe closing around
him.
All he
minded was his computer, still active and rolling the clip. He had
been enchanted when Laurie had bought it for him, a first serious
gift. It was out of date now, by the standards of Laurie's world,
but Sasha had resisted his offers to replace it. Who could need
more than he’d already had?
He
picked the laptop up. He weighed it for a moment in his hands, the
images painting themselves onto his skin, stretching and
constricting the pupils of his eyes in the flickering light. Sasha
drew one deep breath. Then he stepped back, took the biggest swing
he could and smashed the machine hard against the corner of the
ironwood table.
The
screen cracked straight away. The rest of it was tough and well
made, and it took a dozen blows before the back fell off, the drive
shooting out to clatter on the tiles. Five more—Sasha was counting;
somehow in the maelstrom of his blinding, choking rage keeping
track—and the screen broke from the keyboard. Only then did it go
dark. Animal noises tore from him, harsh grunting sobs. He hurled
the board after the screen, so hard he threw himself off-balance
and crashed to his knees. Shards of metal and plastic drove into
his palms. The pain was a fiery relief. He let the pieces dig deep.
After a while he subsided against the leg of the table and sat
gasping, sightlessly watching the dawn.
***
When the
doorbell rang, Sasha didn't recognise it: the staff let themselves
in and out noiselessly, and they had had no visitors. The bell was
tasteful and soft, a brush of wind chimes. He almost went back to
sleep.
It was
very persistent. There was also something bizarrely familiar about
it, as if Sasha could have worked out from its pattern of repeats
who was standing outside. Neat, delicately impatient... He got up.
He brushed bits of circuitry off his jeans, ran his hands across
his hair. That would have to do. Hands were patting at the front
door now. An idea was forming in Sasha's head. It seemed too
unlikely to be true, but if he didn't go and open up right now,
this visitor would neatly and delicately bring the house
down.
The door
swung wide as soon as he'd undone its array of catches and bolts.
Sasha was made of shadows now and stepped back easily into them. A
slender figure shot past him. On its heels was Elena Dracinsky, far
more sedate. She stopped in the doorway, turned to Sasha and
accorded him a grave and courteous nod.
Sasha
returned it on reflex. Then he looked across the hall, the
glittering atrium now filled up with early morning sun. Clara had
come to a halt. She spun round, finally located Sasha and froze to
stillness, her sable hair escaping from its pleat. For an instant
she looked as though she would burst into tears. Then she visibly
set the reaction aside. Her face set into a mask of passionate
determination Sasha knew well. “You're not to believe in
it.”
Sasha
leaned his brow against the door. “Why?” he asked tiredly. His
voice was shadows and cobwebs too. “Don't you think it's
true?”
“No. I think it is. But—”
“You think he couldn't do such a thing?”
She
straightened up. Even in her crumpled LYB sweatshirt and leggings,
she was a force to be reckoned with. “No. I grew up with him. I saw
every single thing that made him what he is. I think he
could.”
“Then...”
“Don't believe in it. Oh, Sasha—my poor prince! The LYB's up in Seattle. I flew
down as soon as I saw.”
She was still rigid. Huge tears had begun to force themselves
from her eyes, though, and the sight of them brought Sasha back
from his refuge of shadows and dust. To think and feel again was a
raw agony. Swiftly he crossed the floor to her, opened his arms to
meet her onward rush halfway. “I'm sorry!” he rasped, lifting her
off her feet, whirling her once in a circle in an echo of their
old, laughing pas-de-deux
embrace after long separation. “Clara, sweetheart,
what are you doing here?”
“Being adult and responsible. You'd better put me
down.”
He
obeyed, although her grip around his neck suggested she'd rather
have stayed up among childhood's clouds, the safe places Laurie and
Sasha had made for her. Steadying her back onto her feet, Sasha
flinched at a scraping sound from the kitchen. “What's
that?”
“I'm not sure. It may be my dragon.”
Sasha
glanced over his shoulder. He could just see through into the
kitchen from here. “Oh, God,” he whispered. Elena Dracinsky had
found a broom from somewhere and was plying it across the tiled
floor, a vision from some blend of Cinderella and The Sorcerer's
Apprentice. Gold wire and plastic shards gleamed as she worked.
“She doesn't have to... Miss Dracinsky, you don't have to do
that.”
She
didn't pause or look up. “I do. Miss Fitzroy’s feet.”
Clara’s
feet were clad in solid rubber soles, but Dracinsky had closed the
front door and taken herself to a discreet distance, and Sasha
understood that she was giving him and Clara time. “Thank
you.”
“It is nothing. I will mention only that the security persons
who watch your house are very inefficient. Now I will work while
you and Miss Fitzroy discuss.”
“You saw them? How did you know they were—”
Clara
knocked strands of hair out of her eyes, the gesture a perfect echo
of her brother’s. “Never mind now. Like she said, we have to
discuss—which means you being quiet and listening to
me.”
“Ah. I always did wonder what discuss meant.”
“I haven’t seen this video, Sasha. I’m eleven years old—I’m
supposed to go blind if I see anything between a boy’s waist and
his knees. But I know what happens in it. I know, all
right?”
“Oh, Clara.”
“I’m not going to say a word to defend him, beyond what I
already have. But I have to tell you something. When Laurie brought
you out here—when he was so crazy about the idea of you coming,
leaving England with him—it wasn’t just his ego. He didn’t just
want you along for the ride.”
Sasha
folded his arms. He was lightheaded and sick with grief, or the
dull-edged misery that followed in grief’s wake. “I know that. He
said... He said he couldn’t do without me.”
“And that’s true. You have no idea how much. He told me
something at the wedding. It scared the shit out of me, and I acted
like a little girl.”
“You are a
little girl. Mind your language.”
“Sorry.” She smiled suddenly. “Laurie would have said that too.
You two are such good parents. I cried and ran away, and I got the
dragon to take me home. I've come back now because—well, you know I
never could keep a secret.”
Sasha
remembered. “Without you, I'd probably still be sneaking up the
back stairs of the Mayfair house to see your brother. Is this
Laurie's secret?”
“Yes.”
“Clara, wait. Lovers don't have to know everything about each
other. If this was a confidence he placed in you—”
“He doesn't deserve me to keep it,” she interrupted
passionately. “It was a wrong thing for him or for me to keep
secret at all. He's told you to stay here, hasn't he? Set guards to
make sure you do?”
“He won't even admit they're there. Clara, what the
f-...”
“Language. He's not just being a diva.
I know he's done things, said things you don't understand. The one
thing that he's frightened of is losing you, and the truth is—the
truth is, Sash, that your father didn't go to prison. That nice
Interpol man, John Kucharski...” Her voice wavered, but she
steadied herself and went on. “He was killed. Without him the case
against Stefan and his gang fell apart. Laurie thinks Stefan’s in