They all come forward, and I’ve introduced each of them to Jane, thinking it’s going well, about to invite her to sit down to wait for tea, when Denys appears. He’s dressed in work clothes; black leather and heavy boots. Holding a glass of whiskey in one hand and a red corset in the other, he’s grinning. And loud. “’ello, Janie, m’dear! I’ve brought you a present.” He weaves toward us and she draws a bit closer to my side.
I watch what happens next the same way I’d witness a train wreck – morbidly fascinated and completely unable to stop it.
When he’s only a few feet away, he stops, his eyes grow wide and he stares at her. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my whole goddamned wasted life. If my brother wouldn’t hate me forever, I’d take you away with me and never bring you back.” His jolly mood is history. Fat tears well in his eyes and he looks at me. “Lucky. Shit, you’re so fucking . . . lucky.” He looks down at the corset in his hand before he hurls it into the fire. “Not funny. Aw, Christ, ‘s not funny.” He turns back to Jane and sniffs long and loud, obviously trying to not cry. “I’m s’sorry, Lady Jane. I mean no disrespect. And I promise if you decide to stay with us, I won’t ever off . . . ins . . .” He swallows. “Treat you like anything but the lady you are.” He sways slightly and blinks at her.
“Jane,” I say, “this is my youngest brother, Denys.”
She moves forward and kisses him on the cheek. “You’re very kind,” she says in her soft voice.
He tries desperately to stand straight, but he’s too drunk and she’s unbalanced him. Before I can stop him, he’s falling into her and they both go down in a tangle of blue silk and black leather. I’m reaching for Jane when I see Denys kiss her. Not a brotherly peck. He holds her head and kisses her full on the mouth. I’m reeling with the need to smack him around for his betrayal and impertinence – drunk, be damned – when it registers somewhere in my brain that Jane is kissing him back.
I’m certain no one notices. Not even Denys. As soon as I’ve retrieved Jane and she’s standing next to me, her breath coming in short little gasps which I refuse to believe is anything but the tightness of her corset, I say to Denys, “You need to leave.”
He rolls to his side and curls into his misery. If I wasn’t so angry, I’d feel sorry for him. As it is, I want to haul him up by his collar and shake him until his balls rattle.
Key steps up and lifts Denys to his feet before they both disappear.
The visit is over. My other brothers are so uncomfortable, it hangs in the air like a noxious odor. Jane is blushing, staring at the floor where Denys had been, smoothing her hair from its muss.
Without letting her say goodbye, I grasp her arm and take her back to her room at the Longbourne estate. As soon as we arrive, I draw her close and kiss her. I want it to be amazing. I want her to want it. But she doesn’t. I don’t. A terrible, traitorous thought has planted itself in my head and no matter how many times I whack it down, it grows again.
Maybe God got it wrong.
~~ Phoenix ~~
My dreams were weird again that night. Not scary. Nobody was dying. Mariah and I argued about strange topics, like whether or not Harley-Davidson manufactured the best motorcycle engines. In the dream, she knew as much as I did about bikes, and I’d been building them since they were first invented. The dream meandered along and we were standing on top of the Eiffel Tower arguing about gender politics, religion, and finally, about whether caviar was wretched excess, or the most delicious food on Earth and therefore worth the money. Then we were eating caviar on a bed in Morocco and she was naked and the rest of the dream took awesome to new heights.
I woke up in my cold, empty bed with a raging hard-on and said into the dark of my room, “Damn.” It had seemed so real.
I’d never had an argument with Jane. I’d tried, and failed. She gave in, or changed the subject. She never got angry, never called me on my bullshit, never told me to step off. I stopped trying because it seemed cruel. I argued with Jax instead. And the Luminas, and Deacon, who gave as good as he got. After Jane died, I would let it build, then argue with other guys in pubs. It typically never ended well. I had cost the family a lot of money rebuilding pubs. And spent a lot of time on Kyanos arguing with myself because I pulled months and months of solitary after beating the everloving shit out of men who turned a perfectly good argument into something personal. I never threw the first punch, but once one was out there, I gladly took the bait. I was usually drunk and forgot I was infinitely stronger than my opponent. It never ended with me losing. Except I’d be sent to Kyanos, which was a huge loss. I hated it there. I hated being so alone. There was nothing to do, no plans to make, no one to argue with.
If Mariah stayed, if we could be friends, she’d dish it out and always understand it was as much for the adrenaline rush as to make her point. Just thinking of getting into it with Mariah had me smiling.
And thinking of getting into bed with her had me groaning. It would never happen. It couldn’t. I needed to read something like algebraic theory before bed tonight. Maybe I’d dream simultaneous equations instead of simultaneous . . . other things.
Damn, that was a hot dream. If I knew for sure it’d be the same, I’d go back to sleep and dream it all over again.
I’d never had a sex dream about Jane. She would have been glad to know, but I felt guilty. Jesus, my whole fucking life was a guilt trip and it seemed I could never get off the train.
I needed to lay off thinking about it. I had things to do today. Rolling over, I saw it was six in the morning, already two in the afternoon in Bucharest. I showered and dressed, and by two-thirty local time, I was back in the park with a cup of stolen coffee and my phone, Google-mapping Mariah’s apartment building. I’d gotten the address from Key, who’d asked me to clean it up. Whether Mariah returned to Bucharest or stayed on the mountain, there needed to be no blood from the lost soul in her apartment.
I suspected Kyros also wanted me to see where she lived, and I was certain of it when I finally found it and went inside and began climbing seven flights of rickety stairs. He wanted me to know what her life was like in Bucharest. He knew how it would make me feel. So maybe I knew he was manipulating me, but it didn’t alter that he was right.
Gustav’s was depressing, but her apartment made me angry. The building was falling apart and stunk of meth, there were cockroaches everywhere, and I know I saw a rat beneath the stairs on the fifth floor.
Inside her apartment didn’t make me feel any better. It was one small room with a narrow bed that was more like a cot. A tiny table and one chair sat next to a thin window that looked out at a concrete wall. One corner of the room was partitioned off by a half wall, barely hiding a toilet and a sink. I assumed she had to go down the hall to take a shower. No telling what kind of people shared the communal bathroom, but from the sound of some guy shouting and another one cussing at the top of his lungs, and a sound I could only assume was a body hitting the floor, my money was on scary as shit. The showers were yet another place where Mariah must feel exposed and afraid.
I felt all the weight of her life in my chest, bumping against my heart.
When I ripped the bloody blanket from the bed, the scent of heather drifted up from her sheets. The blood had seeped through, so I took the sheets, as well, and rolled all of it into a ball that I left by the door for the time being. I looked closer at the shelves attached to the wall next to the door and noticed she had exactly three books: The Bible, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and Life in the White House, a photograph book Jordan’s mom had done for charity before she passed. Other items on the three shelves included chipped dishes, a bag of cat food and two small kitty bowls, a box of the Romanian version of Pop-Tarts, some toiletries, a tin box full of odds and ends like rubber bands, old, short pencils and safety pins, and a coffee can stuffed full of Romanian money. There was a slip of paper inside with a tally. She’d drawn a pot of gold at the bottom; encouragement, I supposed.
The dented
toaster was on the floor next to the bed and when I picked it up, the plug came loose and fell out. I bent to retrieve it and noticed a box beneath her bed. Curious, I shoved aside hesitation of invading her privacy and pulled it out to lift the lid.
There were hundreds of photocopies of articles and pages from books, all of them about survivors of abuse and sexual assault. I sat on the bed and went through that box and saw notes she’d made in the margins, words and phrases she’d circled. I noticed a lot of the pages were wrinkled, as if they’d been wet. She’d cried over these words.
I read for hours, until it was dark outside in Bucharest and I willed on the light, which was an exposed bulb in the ceiling. When I was done reading, I laid on her narrow bed and stared up at the peeling paint and wondered what she thought about while she laid here before she went to sleep. This apartment was so horrible, it would have to get an update to be considered sketchy. I could hear the scurry of tiny rodent feet in the walls. But I had a feeling Mariah loved it here. This was her very own, a place that was just hers, where she didn’t have to answer to anybody.
If she stayed with us and became a Lumina, she’d have her own cottage. She could decorate it however she liked. She would live there and come to the mansion every day to work, and hang out with the other Luminas. They went skiing and hiking. Sometimes they took pack trips deeper into the mountains even than where we lived. They were forever having get-togethers, dinners, barbecues, game nights, and in the warmer months, sports. Lots of sports. Jax had an entire basketball league. They played baseball, rode horses, rode the bikes I built for them, and had picnics in the meadow. Life on our mountain was a certain kind of Hell for my brothers and I, but for the Luminas, it was never-ending bucolic tranquility. They were dead and resurrected to immortality. Living angels. No matter what, they were always at peace, and they played as hard as they worked.
Mariah would like it. And as time passed, she’d heal. I’d help her. I’d coax her into opening up, and she’d eventually get it all out and muck it around and look at it and talk about it and be mad about it and finally, eventually, make peace with it.
I roused off the bed and gathered up the sheets and blanket and the old toaster, turned off the light, then popped back to Colorado. I went first to Mathilda’s housekeeping room, where she had a desk and shelves filled with all sorts of cleaning supplies, and several sewing tables where some of the Purgatories made and repaired our work clothes. Bolts of black leather stood in one corner. Through a wide doorway was the laundry with several washing machines and dryers, ironing boards and deep sinks.
Mathilda looked up from the list she was making and smiled at me. “Master Phoenix. What can I do for ye?”
I dropped the toaster in the trash, then set the soiled sheets on the laundry table and explained what they were. “I think you should throw them away and get Mercy to buy new. Even if Mariah stays with us, I want her apartment neat and clean.” M would provide a doppelganger and someone, probably Gustav, would find it and think it was Mariah. She’d want to know he didn’t find her on a bed without sheets. I have no idea how I knew this – I just did.
“I also want Mercy to buy her some clothes. Tell her to buy some of everything. Whatever girls wear. And other girly stuff. Whatever Mariah doesn’t like, Mercy can return.”
Mathilda nodded as I spoke, then said, “The first thing she needs is a warm coat. She’ll catch her death in that rag she’s wearing today.”
“What are you talking about? Is she outside for some reason?”
“Oh, aye. She took a painting lesson this morning from Miss Sasha, then they had an early lunch and went out with Jax, Ty and Denys to ski.”
Surely Sasha and my brothers weren’t at the Telluride lifts. Surely they’d taken Mariah cross-country skiing, right here on our mountain. Or maybe they were snowshoeing and Mathilda was confused. They wouldn’t take Mariah away from here, where she was safe from Eryx. Trying not to panic, I closed my eyes and concentrated carefully until I found Jax.
Then I panicked. And my fury nearly choked me. Opening my eyes, I said, “I gotta go.”
“I heard them talking about it before lunch,” Mathilda said. “Eryx is at Miss Jordan’s school, too wrapped up in her to be following any of you. They made a plan to stay with Mariah at all times, so they could pop her back here if need be.”
Mathilda hated it when we fought, and we did it a lot. She was trying to pacify me so I wouldn’t kick Jax’s ass. To be kind, I nodded and said, “I’m sure it’s fine.” Then I popped myself to the base of the lifts at Revelation Bowl and found my brother, fully intending to tell him he had exactly as long as it would take me to return Mariah to the mountain to prepare for war.
He’d shoved his Oakleys to the top of his head, so I could see his eyes when he turned to face me. Before I could say anything, he pointed his ski pole toward the run right in front of us. “I’ve never seen anyone learn this fast, and she’s been laughing since we got here. Sasha is holding Eryx’s location in her head, because she’s awesome at that, and he’s in D.C. panting after Jordan. Calm the fuck down and let her have some fun.”
I heard her laughter from halfway up the mountain, saw her racing toward us, Sasha right behind her, Denys and Ty on either side of her. She was dressed in navy, a snug cap over her head and goggles covering her eyes. Her nose was sunburned.
“We went first to the shop at Mountain Village and rigged her out. She made a couple of runs on the bunny slopes, then insisted we take her on some blue runs, and this is her first run on a black diamond. Look at her. She’s fearless. A natural. And she loves it.”
My anger dialed back to a low boil, probably because the sound of her laughter made my insides flip around. I wished I was skiing with her. I’d only skied a few times. But then, I rarely did anything outside. I wore my horsehair shirt of guilt and wouldn’t allow myself to do things I’d once considered fun. I hadn’t been on a horse since the invention of automobiles. I built bikes for everyone on the mountain, but didn’t have one of my own. Denying myself anything that could be considered fun and enjoyable, including sex – especially sex – had seemed a small price to pay for what I did to Jane.
Watching Mariah shout her triumphant joy as she came closer to me at breakneck speed, my want, my need to join her was a physical thing that coiled around me and squeezed so hard, I was breathless.
Her stop was flawless. She was breathing hard, laughing up at me as she moved her goggles to her cap. Her eyes were bluer, I could see her glow, and her scent was beautiful. My brothers and Sasha skied up just behind her and looked at me with obvious anxiety. They knew I was pissed.
Mariah didn’t. I bit back what I wanted to say to them and instead said to Mariah, “I wish you weren’t a liar. That whole I’m poor thing really had me going. Clearly you’ve lived in Switzerland your entire life and trained with the Olympic team.”
“This is the most fun I’ve ever had. It’s such a rush! And the mountains are beautiful, and all the snow.” Still breathing hard with exertion, making her breasts rise and fall, she looked down at my boots. “Where are your skis?”
Peeling my gaze away from her chest, I focused on her eyes. “I don’t have skis.”
“What? Why? Go get some and ski with me.”
“I’d love to, but I have to work on—”
“Are you scared? I mean, it’s dangerous, I guess, but it’s not like you’re ever permanently hurt. If I get hurt, Sasha says she can fix me.”
The only thing in the world I was scared of was what I could do to her if I wasn’t constantly on guard. She was so wounded. I had to keep that front and center in my mind at all times. Had to be careful and not step over a line. Not only my words, but actions and even thoughts.
I fought to keep from looking at her breasts again. Jesus, that dream had me undone. I wished I could see her as I saw Sasha – like a sister. I’d never, even once, had a sexual thought about Sasha. Strange, because honestly, I had sexual thoughts about most women. Exc
ept for the Luminas. I was a son of Hell, but even I couldn’t have impure thoughts about angels.
Would this low hum of sexual awareness disappear once Mariah became a Lumina? Could I then see her as a beautiful girl and not a hot woman I’d sell my soul to see naked, to touch, just once? I cleared my throat and said, “I assure you I’m not scared of skiing.”
“Then work later and ski with us now.”
I leaned down and whispered, “You’re away from the mountain, at risk.”
With her face scarcely two inches from mine, she whispered back, “They think I don’t know, but Sasha is keeping Eryx front and center in her mind. He’s in Washington and I’m nowhere on his radar. Come on, Phoenix, don’t worry so much. Go get some skis and do this with me, just for a little while.”
“I’d rather take you home.”
“Three more hours until dark, then I’ll go back and stay there until it’s safe for me to leave again.”
I knew I should say no. It was a needless risk. But the look on her face, the sound of her laughter – I wanted to hear it again and again. I sighed. “All right, fine, but the second you ski too far away from any one of us, we’re going back. Capice?”
She grinned at me and my heart thudded hard against my ribs. “Let’s race.”
I groaned, then we all popped down to Mountain Village so I could get some skis. And food. I hadn’t eaten and was starving.
We went in the Blue Dog Grill and ordered crab claws, chicken kabobs, and burgers. Mariah ate almost as much as Sasha, who ate far more than an ordinary human girl because of Mephisto. I wondered if Mariah was too poor to buy food? She obviously relished what she ate, seeming to enjoy every single bite.
When we were back up on the slopes, she beat me twice, I beat her twice, and Jax said we had to have a tie-breaker, which is how we wound up at the top of the most difficult run at Revelation Bowl. I looked down at the almost vertical drop, at the tiny figures that were Jax and the others waiting for us at the bottom, and asked her, “Are you sure about this?”
The Mephisto Mark: The Redemption of Phoenix Page 13