by Ana Calin
The door to Billy’s office opens to reveal the mouse-faced man in a crumpled suit, the glasses large and round on his narrow, grey face. The office is cluttered with books and papers, his desk a mess, the small sofa patched and greasy, and the window closed. A catastrophe, since cigarette smoke fills the place, making me cough hard.
“Oh, Lauren, Lauren Morris, wow,” he exclaims as he sees Lauren, squaring his shoulders like a soldier on command. “Saphira, what a pleasant surprise.”
He hurries to the window, pulls a few times until it unsticks and cracks, and then motions us to take a seat on the gross looking sofa.
“That’s all right, I prefer to stand,” I say, my teary eyes darting from him to Lauren, who lights a cigarette and stomps about the room like a boss. She seems to be looking for something— or someone. I’m relieved that Jeremy isn’t waiting here, that he’s either late or already gone. Still, I’m afraid he might pop in any second and expose our plans to Lauren.
“To what do I owe the honour?” Billy says, clearing his desk with fast and clumsy hands, then emptying an ashtray in the paper bin and offering it to Lauren.
“I need to see to some formalities for the change of my name,” I say. “I’ll soon be married to the Marquis de Vandenesse, and I –”
“I know, I attended the engagement ball yesterday,” he interrupts, and in his eagerness, he stumbles and spills the cup of coffee he intended to offer Lauren all over her.
“Oh, God, oh, oh, that’s terrible, I’m so sorry,” he says, eyes wide, hands all over Lauren, whom he’s had a crush on forever.
“You complete idiot,” she cusses.
“Oh, please, let me—”
“Just get your hands off me. I know where the bathroom is,” she spews and stalks to the door, then up the creaking stairs. When I turn my eyes back to Billy, he’s so composed I’m staggered.
“I’ll keep her out for as long as I can,” he says, and follows Lauren.
Soon after they leave the cluttered bookcase behind, his desk starts opening heavily like a hidden door, as if pushed by a ghost.
CHAPTER XV
OLD LOVES
Jeremy emerges into the Notary’s small office. Wearing a tight black turtleneck and trousers, a black cap concealing his hair, he casts a dark, bulky shadow over the entire place. Square-faced and with a grave mien, he looks as badass as Zed. I’m taken with a feeling of trust, strengthened by memories of our shared childhood, but dimmed by the night when I caught him in bed with Pretty Lauren and ended our engagement in tears and pointed fingers. I stand still, uncertain how to react as his muscular arms close around me.
“You’re so thin, Saph,” he whispers, a bit rueful.
Indeed, I feel like Popeye’s Olive in the arms of a troll.
“My appetite took quite a few blows lately,” I say with a bitter attempt at a smile.
“I imagine being forced into prostitution is not an easy bite to swallow,” he says, and presses his lips on the top of my head. I try to take distance but he won’t let me, and all I manage is to raise my head to look into his eyes.
“It’s not like that, Jeremy. The Marquis had me lure a man in a place where he could take him down without witnesses, but it never came to—”
“You don’t have to go there, Saph. I saw what happened in the dungeons, what he did to you, and I swear I’ll rip his heart out for it. I wish you knew how much it hurt.” His eyes are hooded as he leans in to inhale my scent. “But it doesn’t matter. Soon, you’ll be mine again, and I’ll treat you like a queen, kiss every spot he ever hurt. I missed you so much.”
“Jeremy, I didn’t take the chance to come here for an amorous rendezvous. I did it because you promised me something important.” Again I try to put distance between us with palms on his overly pumped chest. I’m uncomfortable with his arms holding me prisoner, since his closeness infringes my sick loyalty to the Marquis.
“Nothing is more important than this, Saph.” He grips my shoulders tightly. “I still love you. And I will do everything in my power to save you from Kieran Slate.”
I take in a deep breath, and close my eyes. For months after the incident with Lauren I dreamed of Jeremy crawling at my feet asking for forgiveness. Had he done it, we’d be together now. But he was too proud, and decided to ask his superiors to transfer him to London instead, burying his pain or whatever he felt after our break-up in obsessive weightlifting, and explaining how men will be men only in e-mails. At my turn, I’ve been too proud to ask Lauren if they still saw each other when she went to London, which was often.
“I thought you and Lauren kept seeing each other.” I raise my chin and square my shoulders in an I’m-entitled-to-know attitude.
“Of course we didn’t.”
I snort bitterly. “Of course? How come ‘Of course’? You did her just two months before our set wedding day.”
“It was a one-time thing, Saphira. I was weak and stupid, I—”
I hold up my palm to stop him talking. “It’s all right. No need to dig out the dead. But I assumed you’d be seeing someone anyway, it’s been two years since we broke up.”
“Those haunting golden eyes of yours are impossible to forget, Saphira,” he murmurs, his lips against my forehead. “I tried, but I couldn’t get serious with anyone, I never got over you.” The confessional tone of his voice makes it hard to doubt his words. In the end, I’ve known him for a lifetime, I know how to read him. But then again, he’s known me for just as long, and he’s skilled at fooling me.
The sour part of me wants to retort something accordingly sour, such as, “what you can’t forget is how I let you do everything you wanted with me.” Young and inexperienced, I never refused Jeremy’s sexual fantasies out of fear of losing him. I doubt he’s found another sex slave like me again. But I refrain from spitting out the line.
“Please don’t waste time, Jeremy. Lauren might be back any second. Why did you have me come here?”
“You still ask?” He frowns, making me feel like an idiot missing some obvious point. “Kieran Slate, a.k.a. the Marquis. He’s a terrible danger to you. You need to break away from him and run. Run away with me.”
I freeze at the idea and realize one more disturbing truth—I do not want to break away from the Marquis.
“I don’t . . . I’m not prepared. If I disappear, he’ll break the engagement and make that recording of me reach everybody in Northville, he’ll upload it all over the grid, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.” He can hurt other people too, including your little sister.
Jeremy pulls me close again, his face now inches from mine. I can feel the smell of mint as he speaks.
“So freaking what? Does that even matter under the circumstances? Look. I initially wanted to spare you these details, but it seems you need the naked truth.” But he’s hesitant to speak out whatever truth he means.
“Go ahead, Jeremy, don’t spare me. I’m not a child.”
He tightens his jaw, his brow furrowing.
“Kieran Slate was engineered into a serpent-man, that you know,” he says. “You also know he’s made a career as an assassin. But you don’t know how he does what he does. Saphira, in his early days he used to drag his victims in the tunnels underneath London and tear the flesh off their bones. He ate them alive!”
I shudder and struggle to come away, but Jeremy keeps me locked in his arms.
“Soon he began accepting other clients besides his makers, and made a fortune as a contract killer,” he continues. “That’s how he became filthy rich. The Marquis de Vandenesse was one of his targets, whose identity Kieran Slate assumed. After that, he not only cashed in from his clients, but also took over his victims’ wealth.”
Jeremy’s words slither under my skin, making the blood draw from my face. Again, I remember the Night of Venice, and how I’ve learned that, before dying, his victims had signed cession of all their wealth to the Marquis. I don’t want to imagine the way he made them do that.
“In the best
case, after he’s done with his revenge, after he has no more use for you, he’ll leave you, Saph,” Jeremy continues. “But, to be honest, I expect he’ll do much worse. And if by any chance his hypnotic grip on your senses makes you not care about yourself, think about your mother. Your dad may be a monster who deserves his fate, but that poor woman who loves you above all else? Come with me, Saphira. I’ll take you to a safe house, and bring your mother to you. I’ll protect you and all those you love.”
Muffled voices come from the stairs, and I recognize Billy the Notary talking to Lauren, as well as a blur of her bitchy responses. The stairs creak under their feet.
Jeremy doesn’t wait for me to answer. He grabs my hand, pulling me after him down a dark set of stairs. The bookcase that conceals the secret exit closes the very second the front door opens, and Billy and Lauren walk into Billy’s office. Lauren will surely think I left while she was at the ladies’ room, and Billy will support that.
Jeremy and I hurry to a car at the back of the building, right by the fire escape. He opens the door for me and I lunge in, my heart beating hard.
The Marquis is evil and dangerous, and this affair can only end badly. That’s what I tell myself as Jeremy drives away. I strengthen myself in the conviction that it was his hypnotic powers alone that made me fall for him, that I can’t have been so stupid to do so of my own accord, and I pray to all saints that distance will cure this sick crush.
But only a few streets down a black car speeds by us and blocks our way. It brakes with a loud, sharp screech, making Jeremy come to a violent halt that almost throws me through the windshield. I knock hard into the dashboard, but I manage to look up. My heart smashes my chest as Zed “Stone Mask,” the Marquis’s head of security, emerges from the other car, walking towards us and pulling out his gun, his steely eyes fixed on us through the cracked windshield. Behind him black and grey smoke rises in the air, billowing into a heavy cloud. When I realize where it comes from I let out a scream.
Jeremy throws open the door on his side, pulls out his gun and points it at Zed over the upper frame.
“Stop right there,” he calls out, and Zed halts. Yet nothing in his face changes. His eyes remain steely. I know how fast and deadly Zed can be, I’ve seen him on the night the Marquis killed Pukov. I know that, if he decides to, he can be quicker with that gun than Jeremy can imagine. But right now nothing of all this matters.
I throw my door open, scramble out of the car and start running, stumbling and falling and getting back up, losing my shoes and calling out Vivienne’s name. Her house is burning, and the smoke grows thicker as I approach. People run in all directions, yelling and coughing in scarves and handkerchiefs they hold at their mouths. I’m dirty and coughing by the time I reach the antique barbershop close to Vivienne’s house, where I’m forced to stop.
Through thick smoke I see fire fighters in red-and-white jackets and helmets hold bulky hoses, calling out urgent commands at each other. It seems they’re doing everything they can, but they’re not optimistic. Flames surge with a roar from the window on the first floor where I know Vivienne’s room is, and a woman yells somewhere close.
Even though I can’t see her right, by some mysterious mechanism in my brain I recognize her as Vivienne’s mum. I feel my way to her, keeping contact with a wall through the thickening smoke. Two people hold back the woman, one a fire fighter judging by the jacket and helmet, the other a civilian. I wrap my arms around her waist, making her turn around and burst into even more violent crying. She throws her arms around my neck. Noticing she knows and accepts me, the fire fighter and the other man let go.
“Saphira!” She squeezes me so hard it adds to the clogging of the smoke. Despair and adrenaline feed her strength, and she doesn’t even attempt to control it. Her hair is messy like a witch’s and her voice that of a woman gone mad with pain.
“That monster –” she coughs – “He destroyed my girl in stride. He destroyed her, Saphira!”
It takes a few moments of her coughing and hysterically repeating, “He destroyed her,” until I gather myself enough to make sense of what she’s saying.
“Who? Who destroyed her, what are you talking about, Lynn?”
“He used her and disposed of her. I warned her not to trust him, I knew he was dangerous. I’ve been married to a monster like him for decades.”
That Mrs Grant would think of her husband and Vivienne’s father in those terms is completely new to me, and I’m taken aback. The memory of Vivienne holding up her hands to stop me as I hurried to the stairs that led to the dungeons last night flashes in my mind as my lungs constrict and spit out the soot in violent coughs of my own. “Saph, we need to talk.”
“Who are you talking about, Mrs Grant?” I manage in a bruised voice.
Mrs Grant’s lips move, but a burst of flames from the house covers the sound. I wince and stagger, yet find balance again and repeat the, “who,” which for some reason Mrs Grant takes as a refusal to believe the name from my part rather than a genuine question.
“He has you mesmerized,” she admonishes. “He has you all fooled. But me he couldn’t fool.”
“Everyone clear the street,” a fire fighter calls, running toward us with arms spread wide as if to protect us.
“Run!” another one calls in the distance just before a huge explosion deafens me and sends my head spinning. I can’t hear anything but the buzz in my ears, and see people moving in slow motion as Mrs Grant throws me to the ground and glass shards fly over us.
CHAPTER XVI
THE MYSTERIOUS MAN
From fire fighter, to cop, to nurse, I get transferred back to Zed’s hands, who drives me back to the Marquis’s manor in silence. I’m dizzy and coughing and convinced that the man Mrs Grant referred to is the Marquis, and that Vivienne became in some way threatening to him, which put her in death’s way.
I’m shaking as Zed escorts me to my chamber in the tower and seals the door behind me, pulling three heavy locks from the outside. In a fit I take off my soot-smeared clothes and brace myself, rubbing my arms up and down and chewing on my lower lip until I taste blood with ash. Curling between the cold pillows on the bed, feeling dirty and drained, I stare at the ragged canopy hanging over me as my mind spins around Vivienne. My head snaps to the door the moment it creaks open, and the Marquis enters the chamber.
I retreat to the bedhead like a beaten dog and brace my knees, but I lose control of my shaking as he approaches. My lips are dry and cracked, yet the tip of my nose drips sweat. Those black eyes, demonic in his pale face, scare me to death, and he doesn’t try to numb me with his hypnotic powers. His neckline is open, revealing part of his marble-like pectorals, strong and smooth like serpent muscle.
“You really believed you could elude me, Saphira?” His voice is calm and slithery, but I feel how angry he is. I can’t bring myself to speak. My vocal cords seem stuck, and my arms lock painfully around my knees. I wouldn’t be able to let go if I wanted to, I’m so afraid.
“There’s no way out of this for you but the way that I provide,” he says and stops still, staring hard at me. For moments he looks a statue of marble with eyes of coal, a deceivingly handsome monster.
“What will you do with me?” The question comes out of my throat in a hoarse whisper.
“Why Jeremy Simmons of all people?” he demands.
“He—” I cough and lock my fingers around my wrists. The marks left by the cuffs hurt, distracting my attention from the fear and restoring my ability to speak. “He was the only one who offered an alternative.”
“And did you consider the consequences in case his alternative went wrong?”
I ponder. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t.”
He walks around the bed and stops by my side. I sink my nails into my wrists, but can’t keep down the fear anymore. He’s too close. I expect him to grab my hair and pull my head back, then push his serpent tongue deep through my mouth to my inner organs and rip out my stomach like
he did Pukov’s. But what he does is sit by me, a humid coldness emanating from his body. I know he’s warm in his human form, so he must be in an intermediary state between man and serpent. I shudder with horror.
“A few weeks ago, your friend Vivienne Grant began seeing a mysterious man,” he says. “They met only at night. Always around the lunatic asylum, according to what the police discovered by now, but he kept cloaked and hooded, and no one other than Miss Vivienne ever saw his face. Last time they saw each other they also entered the asylum. The place is as fortified as a high-security prison, as you surely know, so Miss Vivienne must have used her good relations to some of the personnel—which is what the mysterious man needed her for. After he got what he wanted, he tried to dispose of her and any proof of their relationship, and caused the fire. Miss Vivienne’s mother was probably supposed to die in it as well, but managed to escape.”
He looks into my eyes, the blackness of his gaze chilling. I can’t imagine how I could ever accept his closeness while “sober” of his hypnotic powers, he’s such a perfect blend between man and beast, so unnatural. His beauty is of a rather fantastic than human nature, and it’s hard to put up with for a normal person. “He has you mesmerized,” “He has you all fooled,” Mrs Grant’s words come back to me. He must wield immense power over the psyche.
“Vivienne is a super intelligent woman,” I manage. “She would have seen through any dirty plot, nobody could have persuaded her.”
“Maybe he blackmailed her?”
“No way. Vivienne is—was—as clean as an angel.”