Chapter 45
Value of Normal
This place bore as much resemblance to the other stone houses as the Louvre did to a roadside tourist trap.
The lights were bright, the sconces expensive, the carpets plush, the hardwood drenched with beeswax and polish, and it was full of quiet activity, grim-faced men hurrying back and forth on booted, whisper-quiet feet.
Even the empty halls they carried her through—as if she couldn’t walk on her own—somehow managed to give an impression of being full, though you could have heard a pin drop in the hush while she babbled on and on.
When she was finally carried through a sitting room, into a bedroom, and deposited on a solid wooden chair with high carved finials as well as an entirely inadequate horsehair cushion, she was beginning to think Erik had, after all, made a mistake.
And it only got worse when the questioning started.
“It wasn’t him,” Liv insisted, knowing she sounded like the poster girl for Stockholm syndrome and not caring a single bit.
“He saved me. If it was him, he would have given me to the monsters. Christ knew he had…” She rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead, scrubbing hard as if the pressure would give her the right words to make them see.
“He had enough chances,” she finished, lamely. “They all did, I suppose.”
This suite was much larger than the ones at the old place, and the curtained, rumpled bed was draped with wine-red velvet.
The sitting room looked very Louis Quatorze, a walk-in closet the size of a small apartment was stuffed to the brim, and there were two bathrooms, one with the door half-open showing the edge of a clawfoot tub that looked older than Liv and her mother combined.
The windows were the same as the other stone houses, though, mullioned to within an inch of their lives, and she could see the shimmer over them clear as day.
Protection. Magic.
Had the other place been crawling with that gleam too, and she just hadn’t noticed it? Her skin shrank from harsh still air, the light stung her eyes, and even though everything was different here, the man questioning her looked a little like Ignatius.
It was around the eyes, mostly, and the way he moved, upright and efficient, no motion wasted and his signet giving a bright, bloody gleam every once in a while.
He paced before the empty fireplace—bare, scraped clean, and big enough for Liv to crawl into—until the woman glanced at him.
Then he stopped dead, even though she didn’t say a word.
She was tall, with a mass of long dark hair flowing in soft glossy ripples down her back.
She’d obviously been shaken awake in a hurry, because her eyelids were sleepy as a tired child’s and that amazing hair was mussed.
She was wrapped in an honest-to-God blue and gold patterned kimono over silk pajamas—and not the cheap kind, either.
Both kimono and pajamas looked handmade, and her light-brown skin had the kind of sheen you only got with incredibly expensive skincare and good genetics.
Her oneiros was heavy, its sharply geometric setting almost barbaric, but it probably didn’t scratch her soft skin either.
It was enough to make Liv, rumpled and dirty and monster-chased, want to scream. If there hadn’t already been so much to yell about, that was.
“Nevertheless.” The greying man stood to attention, his hands now clasped behind his back like Ignatius—was Liv actually missing the old man? And cocky, self-assured Jake, too?
She wasn’t exactly sad about making them fetch her books and other listed items, or about trying to escape. But she hoped like hell they were okay.
“What Albert’s trying to say is that we’re not ruling anything out.
” The woman—Sara—settled in the chair across from Liv’s.
It was warm enough in here to melt the snow in Liv’s hair and any residual chill out of her bones as well; Sara’s bare feet had some great pedicure action going on.
Her toenail polish matched the couth pink on her fingernails, and both were buffed to a high gloss.
“They believe in being very careful when it comes to lirai.”
Yeah, I noticed. “Look.” Liv gripped the arms of her own highly carved, not very comfortable chair.
If the table wasn’t rosewood she’d eat her nonexistent hat, and the chairs looked like antiques as well, with their wine-red horsehair cushions.
If they were going to keep her in here, maybe she could use the furniture for firewood.
Send up smoke signals. Something, anything.
“They kidnapped me, all right? I’m really mad about that.
But there are the goddamn monsters, okay?
There was the squid thing coming through the window and the spiders in the hall, and they all got beat up really bad getting us out of there.
Then the car blew up, and then the other car blew up, and it was just Erik and me.
He took me to the place Ignatius said, but it was closed up—”
Sara glanced at the older man, who stirred. “Rochester, my lady.”
“Shuttered for twelve years.” Sara looked at the door to the sitting room. There was an overstuffed fainting couch in there, embroidered with pineapples, of all things. “Or is it thirteen?”
“Thirty-seven, my lady.” It should have been funny, but the way Albert said the last two words was deadly serious and utterly respectful. Liv had hung out with a few Renaissance Faire types in college, but they’d always sounded faintly self-conscious saying my lord this, my lady that.
This guy definitely didn’t.
“Time gets strange in here,” Sara murmured, and shook her head. “But if this Ignatius was working from old information, it could make some sense.”
Albert didn’t scoff, but his nostrils twitched slightly like he smelled something bad. “When he could simply call in and have transport at a satellite temple within hours?”
“Perhaps communications were cut off. Do we know who his liaison is?” Sara now studied Liv, who tried not to fidget.
Much.
“Where’s Erik?” She couldn’t help herself. He was the only familiar thing in all this insanity, and they’d handcuffed him, dragged him away. “I want to see him.”
“Did he make that?” Sara leaned forward, one of her hands freeing itself to gracefully indicate the necklace.
“Yule gift.” And I’ll bet someone made yours, too. But he probably wasn’t as nice. “Erik’s all right, okay? I didn’t like any of them, but they didn’t deserve… that.”
“Fostering dependence. Not moving her or calling in immediately.” Albert wasn’t ticking points on his fingers, but he gave a good impression of wanting to.
Liv had an answer for that one, but she was beginning to suspect it wouldn’t satisfy them. “Ignatius said they were supposed to wait until the days were longer.”
The man’s eyes flashed, those blue star-pinpricks like Erik’s showing for a moment before being swallowed. “Standard procedure for the last decade is to bring the potential immediately—”
“Albert,” Sara said, softly. “Not helpful.”
Amazingly, he dropped his gaze, staring somewhere between the two women. “Forgive me, my lady.”
“Of course. We’ll approach the questions of the control liaison and Islington being shuttered as soon as our new sister has been settled.
” Sara’s smile looked unforced, unfeigned, and completely magnanimous.
What was it like, being so calm? She returned her attention to Liv, tapping thoughtfully at her pretty mouth with one finger.
“So, Erik gave you an oneiros. And he brought you to the Flame?”
“Well, he pushed me into the, uh, the hole.” Liv’s entire body ached, and she couldn’t help but shudder. “I get it, you know? It’s not the sort of thing you can explain, and if he’d tried, I probably would’ve fought.”
Probably? No, she would have tried to claw his eyes out, escape—and run right up the stairs into the monsters, if she could have gotten past him. Which was a very big if indeed.
They might both have died down there, if she’d tried. In the dark. And all this talk about “Control” and “being shuttered” didn’t sound good at all.
“Well, you’re taking it more gracefully than I did.” Sara’s slight smile held an edge of pain. “It took me a long time to forgive my betrayer.”
“Betrayer?” Man, these people had a whole new language, even if they were using English for the spare parts.
“That’s what they call it. Betrayed to the Flame.” Sara exhaled, harshly, and for a moment something like pain flashed in her velvety dark eyes. “A potential can still live a normal life, for some value of the word. A lirai? Not so much.”
He didn’t tell me about that. Still, it made sense. “So he dunked me in it yesterday—I think it was yesterday, at least. Something happened. We drove most of the night to get here, and now I can’t turn off the radio in my head and—”
“Radio in the head,” Sara murmured. “That’s a good way to put it.”
Liv couldn’t help herself. She looked at the door to the sitting room, invitingly open. Maybe she could reach it before the older guy caught her, maybe not.
Should she try?
“The rest of my Flight are in that room.” Sara’s gaze was disconcertingly direct. “Except the Youngers; they’re probably in the hall past it, first line of defense. It took some fifty mortal years for the blind urge to run stopped tormenting me.”
Fifty years? And there was that other little word too.
Mortal.
“You don’t look a day over twenty-eight,” Liv said, numbly.
“My, you’re polite. I would have said mid-thirties. We tend to stop when the Flame hits, but I’ve been around a while. Experience shows in the eyes, I think.” For a moment the other woman’s mouth turned down, and Albert made a restless movement near the fireplace.
A snowy night like this pretty much called for a nice crackling fire, but maybe the chimney was blocked so something couldn’t get down it. The image of a monster Santa Claus was horrifyingly detailed inside Liv’s head, and she flinched. Outside the windows, frozen feathers were still steady.
It wasn’t the individual flakes. It was the accumulation that caused problems. It piled up on you, and Liv was already exhausted from carrying so much.
“Fifty years.” Liv’s voice was a dry husk. “Mortal years.”
Sara’s slight grimace didn’t alter her beauty one whit. “You’ll have some trouble with the notion. It’s natural.”
“None of this is natural, ma’am.” Was she taking refuge in sarcasm? Maybe. “I want Erik. I don’t trust you.”
“That’s wise. I think it’s quite possible he’ll be cleared and will build your trios, but we have to make sure.
Will you at least agree to take quarters here, and learn what you’ve landed in?
” Sara leaned forward slightly, and she was right—there was something around her eyes that said I’ve seen it all, disliked most of it.
Not lines, and not dark circles, though the rumpled velvet-choked bed had to be hers.
“Like I could go anywhere else.” At least Ignatius had respected Liv’s intelligence, or it felt like he had. Even if he didn’t like her much personally—but to be fair, that feeling had been overwhelmingly mutual. “Like you’d let me go anywhere else.”
“That’s fair.” Sara smiled, and extended her hand again over the table. “It’s not a bad life, all things considered. You’ve had a rather… nonstandard introduction to it, and for that I’m sorry. But we’re not the enemy, Ms. Stellack.”
“We are a lesser evil, my lady.” Albert dropped his gaze to the floor when the women both looked at him.
“Funny.” Liv reached across the table, clasped Sara’s hand. A strange, champagne-fizzing sensation slid down her back; Sara’s necklace brightened, the white stone filling with vivid colors. Her own was probably doing the same. “That’s what Ignatius said.”
“If he’s alive, we’ll find him. And the Younger Brother, too.
” Sara shook hands the way women used to a lot of men did—quickly, with an almost apologetic half-smile, taking her touch away as soon as possible.
“You seem in remarkably good shape for a lirai who has endured what you have, which speaks well of this Erik. Daniel—he’s one of us—is checking him now, and if the elder’s cleared you’ll see him again soon.
In the meantime, perhaps something to eat?
Your liraim is being readied, and you’ll have at least two temporary trios while we sort this out. ”
That means absolutely nothing to me, thanks.
“I’m fine. I just want Erik.” She sounded like a dippy teenager, Liv realized, and dropped her hands into her lap.
At least the surf-sound of the city outside didn’t penetrate this place, but she didn’t trust the quiet, either.
“But I suppose you’d like to go back to bed. ”
Sara shook her head again, a slight, graceful movement. “I doubt there will be any more sleep for me tonight. Or for you, just yet. Shall I order some coffee?”
Oh, for God’s sake. “Sure. Knock yourself out.”
“We’ll be civilized, then.” Sara paused. “It will be nice to have another woman here,” she added, finally. “Daniel’s lirai, of course. But I miss girl talk.”
I don’t feel really friendly right now. “Girl talk is my specialty,” Liv lied.
It would, after all, be good to have an ally. And she couldn’t help but wonder what else Ignatius—and even Erik—hadn’t told her.