Chapter Fifty-One
Is this… is this true?” My hand grasps the news article in a fist.
Pax nods and gnaws on his thumbnail. Spirit gives me the image of a dog baring its teeth in an anguished growl.
I feel sick. My vision narrows to a vein thrumming in Pax’s neck. His pulse, his life force, pounding with anger. The vein is dark, purple, full of ire—the color of his stormy aura.
His head drops. He sinks onto the sidewalk and puts his face in his hands. His shoulders shake. “I’m sorry, Stella. I read that and I—I wanted to kill him. I still do.”
“I—” I steady my breath, realizing I can’t exactly stand in judgment here. “I wanted to kill him, too. Last night, when he was strangling me, tied to that chair—”
“He what?!” Pax’s gaze locks on mine. His eyes blaze wild and his aura darkens further still. That gave me pause before, but I welcome it now. It seems to signal his deep concern for a loved one. And I have to admit: I don’t mind someone concerning themselves with my well-being.
I drop next to him. “That’s why I said Daisy and Julia’s names,” I whisper, rubbing my throat self-consciously. “I’m sorry. But I had to let him know why. Who.”
Pax nods and chokes on a sob. I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his hair. He smells clean like pine and salty like the sea. But there is a hint of vanilla there—the poison oleander.
“I wasn’t there for you, either,” he weeps, and I hold him. I cry, too. Together, we melt. Our anger cools from a boil to a simmer, then settles into deep sadness.
Holding someone while they cry is the most intimate of acts.
This is the most human a human can be. My heart turns here.
Pax becomes someone more to me in this moment.
He is no longer simply a person I find attractive, a business partner, a person with whom I have a shared past, an uncertain future.
He becomes a person whose soul intertwines with my own.
“I almost killed a man,” Pax whispers, wiping his wet face. He’s gasping for air. His regret is palpable.
“You changed your mind, though.” I run my fingers through his hair, soothing him. “That bullet fired into the ceiling, nowhere near Blanck. You didn’t do it.”
“No, Stella. I didn’t change my mind. I was stopped.” He inhales shakily. “My brother stopped me from murdering Max Blanck.”
Things quiet. Pax collects himself, and a blush of pink blooms under his high cheekbones. I cup my palms around his face and lift his eyes to mine. “We will be okay,” I whisper, echoing his words from after our kiss. I try to smile. “You promised.”
Do I mean we, all of us, or we, him and me?
He grins, tearstained. “I do always keep my promises.”
“So you say.” I stand.
“But let’s keep weaponry out of our future promises, yes?” William says, and I startle. I’d totally forgotten he and Nirav were here. Pax hangs his head between his knees and snort-laughs. He stands, dusts his trousers.
He crosses to me and cups my face in his hands. They are warm, and when our eyes meet, snick!
“There it is,” he whispers. His lips lift. “I’m sorry, Stella.” And he lays the lightest, sweetest kiss on my lips. I sizzle to my core.
I straighten. “Where do we go now?” We are tired and ragged and hungry. Pax, Nirav, and I have all packed up and left our respective boardinghouses.
William shifts in his chair. “Why don’t you stay at my home for a while? I believe I was the least visible of this lot in our plan. I can’t imagine anyone would trace you to me. Not quickly. It makes sense.”
I look to Nirav, whose senses are as keen as a spider’s. He nods.
“Very well. Follow me.” William gives his wheels a strong push.
The day has turned muggy, heavy with humidity, and a sense of dread weighs on me—I know William has been hiding something.
I hope we’re not being lured into something we’ll regret.
I’ve had enough lingering dread these last few hours, thank you.
Spirit is silent. I suppose no warnings is a good thing.
We approach 854 Fifth Avenue. It is a handsome building, four stories, with a copper roof and two chimneys flanking either side. The top windows are round, like portholes, giving the building the feel of a ship.
We have not even reached the arched front door when it swings wide. “William, old chap! There you are. Another late night? Huh!”
Pax’s silver-green eyes lock with mine. He arches an eyebrow.
The man rushes out and offers William a cashmere sweater, draped over his arm like a serving towel. William shimmies out of his jacket and into the cardigan.
“Robert, meet my friends. Stella, Nirav, and Pax. They’ll be our guests for a while. Can you ready their bedsuites?”
“Right away, sir.”
“I’ve told you, please. No ‘sirs’ allowed. It makes me feel ancient.”
Robert laughs like that’s the funniest joke he’s ever heard, and scoots away back into the home. A woman in a prim black dress emerges and grabs the handles of William’s chair. She glares at us. “Follow along, then.”
I slide my eyes at Pax and step inside the foyer. He is suppressing a grin, and his irresistible dimple winks at me.
Spirit whistles, long and low.
Stellar, if you thought Blanck’s place was fancy, this place is… is…
Fancier.
The front hall is frosted in lush, red carpet, and a marble staircase winds up in a showy display of stone and intricate wrought iron railings.
A massive, dark tapestry stretches down from the second story, and the roof is glass and iron, a conservatory.
A large, lantern-like chandelier drops to the center of the room.
The woman guides William into a sitting room, where the walls are papered in…
is that leather? The gilded molding is a foot wide; the parlor glistens like buttered toast. The marble fireplace sputters with exactly the right amount of heat for a May afternoon, and there is a mural of clouds painted on the tray ceiling.
I spin. I’m speechless.
“Elizabeth,” William says to the woman in the dress. “Will you please get each of us a brandy? Except my friend Nirav here.” He smiles. “Maybe hot chocolate for you?”
Nirav grins and nods eagerly.
Elizabeth gives him one sharp tilt of the head. “Yes, sir. Shall I… um… also start some baths?”
William chuckles. “Always so candid, our Elizabeth. Yes, that sounds wonderful.”
Elizabeth scoots out of the sitting room, backward, closing the doors with a flourish.
“I’m sorry I didn’t invite you over earlier,” William says. He crosses the room to a gorgeous roll-top secretary desk and flips through a stack of correspondence. “I didn’t know if you could be trusted. No offense.”
Pax’s head swivels about, taking it all in. A curl flops adorably over his forehead. “None taken. I wouldn’t trust me at first, either.”
William seems to find Pax’s awe delightful, and he belly-laughs. Pax smiles at him. “What did you say your last name was again?”
“I didn’t.”
I perch on the edge of a leather sofa. I run my finger around one of the tufted buttons. The material looks and feels like silky caramel.
“Vanderbilt,” William says at last. He crosses the room to the fireplace. He doesn’t look at us. Is he… embarrassed?
Pax closes his eyes and tosses his head back. “Like Commodore Vanderbilt? The naval officer? The railroad tycoon?”
Spirit is having a heyday with this. It’s flashing me images of stacks of money and biplanes and yachts and castles nestled in the mountains. But I’m not getting a feeling of greed. Just a feeling of… excess.
William shrugs. “In Sweden they say att glida in p? en r?kmacka.” He chuckles. “It means literally ‘to slide in on a shrimp sandwich.’ It refers to someone who didn’t have to work to get where they are.”
Nirav, who has been running the palm of his hand over the back of a horse statue, as if petting it, starts to laugh silently. He wheezes and tears pop out of the corners of his eyes.
I can’t help it. I laugh, too. Then Pax, and at last, William joins in.
Ah, that kind of laughter that feels like a summer rainshower, washing all your emotions clean.
I miss that feeling.
Elizabeth returns with brandy in smooth, heavy snifters. She disappears quickly, and William lifts his glass.
“To new friends,” he says.
“May they become old friends,” Pax adds. He winks at me. Friends?
We clink glasses. The brandy is silky and it burns. It warms me to my toes.
“So,” Pax says to William. “I don’t understand. How did you end up working for Clarice?”
William swirls the brandy in his snifter. Nirav watches him and copies the motion with his hot chocolate. William grins at him.
“You misunderstood that relationship, Pax. Clarice works for me.”
“So those contacts when you left,” I say. “Those were yours. Not hers.”
William takes another long pull from his brandy snifter. “Yes. All mine.”
An anxious, odd swirl of emotions rises at that revelation. Did Pax even need to… convince Clarice, then? My eyebrows knit together, and I stare at the thick, sweet brandy, suddenly a tad ill.
If you’d admit yer feelings to the boy, it’d change things, Stella.
You told Pax it was okay. You said it was nothing but business.
You talked him into going.
Spirit can sound oddly like a conscience.
“You know Max Blanck,” Pax says it rather than asks it.
William shrugs. “We do run in the same circles, yes. He has what the Germans call a Backpfeifengesicht. A face badly in need of a fist.”
Pax sits next to me, and my body warms like sitting next to a low fire. It’s still there—the mild electric field that draws me to him, a tug of gravity. An orbit.
He lays his hand over mine, and I try to read his touch. How can I be so good at telling a stranger about their dead loved ones, but I can’t tell the meaning of Pax’s hand on mine?
But then Pax eases the straps of the black satchel out of my hand. I hadn’t even realized I’d been gripping it this entire time.
“We need to figure out how to split this haul,” he says.
Right. I sigh. Business. Temporary. Bandits and whatnot.
William downs the rest of his brandy and holds up his palm. “Count me out. No evidence on me, thank you. Plus that stuff carries too much emotional weight.” He grins. “I was in it for the kicks. Never liked that asshole.”
Pax leans over, leans in, locking eyes with me. Oh, Lord, those eyes. That same disobedient curl loosens itself and falls over his eyelashes. “Let’s get down to business. Right, partner?”
Partner. It’s what I’ve been trying to convince myself that we are: business partners only. Friends, he said. My heart drops as I reply:
“Yes. Let’s get down to business.”
After we get cleaned up, we meet in, of all places, William’s bathroom.
Oh, this bathroom! All four walls are floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and the marble gleams white.
Everything is so shiny and bright and the mirrors create illusions of cuts and angles that don’t really exist; I imagine this is what living inside a diamond would feel like.
And it smells light and crisp and clean—lavender, I realize. My heart pulses and I think of Daisy and me, snuggled up against Maman, who always smelled of lavender. I close my eyes and inhale deeply.
Nirav hops into the large claw-footed bathtub, fully clothed and without water. He gestures and mouths things to himself, then stands and salutes. He’s playing: rowing a boat, driving a carriage.
It’s so easy to forget he’s just a kid. I wink at Nirav. He smiles and holds his nose, puffs his cheeks, pretending to drop underwater in the large tub.
Pax has divvied up the piles of jewels and gems, all except the Hope Diamond.
“Stella,” William says, eyes gleaming. “Try it on.”
Pax’s silver eyes meet mine. I turn and sweep my hair up.
He drapes the necklace over my shoulders.
It weighs heavy on my heart. Literally. I have to adjust my shoulders to carry the weight of this gem.
Pax leans close to clasp the necklace, his breath warm on my neck.
I inhale sharply. His lips are so close to my skin. Chill bumps race up my arms.
Pax brushes—accidentally?—his fingertips up the nape of my neck. “There!”
I turn. The boys, all three, fall silent. “What?”
“It looks lovely on you, Stella,” William says, full of sincerity.
I lean around them and look in one of the mirrors. The blue gem is the exact color of my eyes, and the sparkle of the white diamond setting matches the creamy color of my skin. I look—I feel—like a princess.
Wow, Stella, you are beautiful.
You’re our princess, you are.
Princess of the Otherworld—ha!
“Wow,” Pax breathes. We lock gazes.
An ache stirs deep inside, a longing, like I’m missing Pax, though he’s standing in front of me. I want him to sweep me around this glittering room in that waltz, the music of our hearts guiding us.
I shake my head like I’m awakening. Partners. Friends.
Pax blinks rapidly. “I, um. We need to go, Stella.” He calls over his shoulder as he leaves the bathroom, “Bring the necklace, please.”
I unclasp the Hope Diamond from my neck. William manages to catch my eye in the mirror opposite us.
“Stella,” he says, his face stoic. “You need to tell Pax how you really feel.”
“No,” I whisper. I drop the Hope Diamond into a simple blue cloth bag. I limp toward the door, my foot now clean but still throbbing. “I think you’re mistaken, William. You’ve read this one wrong.”
William’s lips flatten. He reads nothing wrong. “Tomaten auf den Augen haben—‘ you have tomatoes on your eyes.’ ”
“What?”
“It’s a German idiom that means you are not seeing what everyone else can see.”
If I ignore and deny and run long enough, these feelings for Pax will go away.
Oh, Stella.