“What does he want out of this, do you think? Now that all those plans are finished? Why keep playing with you?” Igor asked my thoughts aloud.
I read the note again.
Your room. Naked. Waiting. Bring a friend if you like. Love, Isabel.
“He wants us to bleed. He always wants us to bleed.”
But how does he plan to bleed me?
The Tsar shook Pocket’s hand before wandering off to plot and fleece someone else.
Just chose you to play the courier, did she, Igor? Maybe you are in deeper with Paine than you admit. What’s he giving you? Artifacts to sell on the black market? If I told you how he got the anima for them would it stop you?
“You don’t look very happy,” Pocket greeted. “Not that you’ve been unicorns and rainbows lately, but they turn your help down? Vega hinted as much when I talked to him. Also, your sister is pretty awesome. I always wondered how you knew how to dance during that first Winter Ball. Did she really duct-tape your hands together so you couldn’t run away?”
I handed the note to Pocket.
“Okay, now I get why you’re mad.”
[CLICK]
We stopped by one of the many Ouroboros hotel gift shops and got Pocket a house plant.
Now we were in the elevator.
Nothing bad ever happens in elevators.
“I hate you so much right now,” he told me, “that I’m thinking about standing aside and letting Soto Crazy kick your ass.”
“Rule Number One for Dealing with Isabel: don’t call her that unless you want her to kick your ass. Rule Number Two for Dealing with Isabel: Don’t have sex with her no matter whatever or whoever’s body she’s got on.”
Pocket very much didn’t grin at me. “What does that have to do with you buying me a philodendron?”
“Rule Number Three for Dealing with Isabel: have as big an anima pool as you can hold and be both willing and able to use it,” I finished. “And you Mr. Intro-Elementalist, need material to work with. Also . . . could’ve bought a fern but I didn’t, did I?”
“This is a very bad idea. If she is there in your suite alone, then we should’ve called the others to help outnumber her. If it’s more than her in the room, then—”
“It’s just her,” I said, sure of it. “Sapa’s seven feet tall now, he can’t hide in a place like this with the cameras all around. Only Isabel can go or be anywhere.”
“What if the Curator is in there with her?”
“He’s not,” I said, sure of that too. “He won’t leave his laboratory just to kill Jason Jackson. This was all henchmen at work. Only time a mancer has seen him was an accident, wasn’t it?”
“As in the walking accident that is King Henry Price?”
“Point is: he won’t come out into the open unless we dangle something he really wants.”
“Like you?”
“Like my World-Breaker.”
“That name is just terrifying. Also it makes it worse that you’re the person who has it.”
“Thanks, buddy.”
“No problem, dude.”
“Next point is: this is just Isabel and Sapa and maybe a few mercenaries getting orders from the home office. Curator ain’t in Vegas. But if you’re scared, maybe you should give your plant a hug. Look, it even has heart-shaped leafs for you.”
“I hate you so much right now,” he repeated.
[CLICK]
Isabel had lied in her little note.
She wasn’t naked at all.
Which was an improvement.
Don’t think either Pocket or me would’ve been able to look at her if she was naked.
I’m not exactly a puritan.
I’m pretty sure I’m actually a lecher.
But . . . there are still a few women in my life I don’t have the sexy-naughty-naughty thoughts about, or if I do have them I bury them deep and don’t want to admit I have them to myself, much less the world at large. Taboo in the extreme. If you’re too fucked up for even King Henry Price then you’re doing something that’s pretty fucked up. Like cousin-brother-sister-donkey-midget shit. Vampire nine-headed dragon shit.
Isabel had shed Hope Hunting.
Instead . . .
She looked like Ceinwyn.
Only not Ceinwyn. Not the Ceinwyn Dale as she was now, face finally starting to show its first sign of age even if her eyes never admitted that the sand rolled down the hourglass, even if you block the flow with aero-anima. Not even the Ceinwyn Dale as I first met her, totally in control of herself and you and the entire world around her.
Instead . . .
Young Ceinwyn Dale.
Just graduated the Asylum and newly minted as a Recruiter Ceinwyn Dale. Before she’d taken over the whole organization and reshaped it to be an extension of her will. Before her friend Obadiah Paine had started to show signs of Anima Madness. Before Paine killed her lover, Amis Valet. Before Ceinwyn threw Paine down the side of a mountain and dropped a boulder on his head.
She was in the kitchen cooking food.
Which was the first time anyone resembling Ceinwyn Dale had ever cooked food in the history of the planet.
The whole hotel suite smelled good.
Chocolate chip cookies cooling on a rack.
Rice and beans boiling away.
Chunks of pork and steak sizzling on a grill.
She even had a bowl of fresh made chimichurri.
“I always forget you’re Argentine,” was how I greeted her. I also slid up into a bar stool and stole a cookie.
. . . What?
Seen me eat much today have you?
I was starving.
She wouldn’t poison the cookies.
Hitler wouldn’t even poison cookies.
Stolen, ageless blue eyes glanced at me. Isabel’s shoulders relaxed just a little over me not trying to kill her right off the bat.
No promises if I don’t like what you have to say. Got fifteen minutes of anima left to fuck you up with and it’s just itching at me to be let loose on you. Plus . . . Pocket’s got his philodendron.
Pocket did not sit down or take the relaxed tone as he placed said philodendron on the kitchen counter between himself and Isabel.
“Pocket instead of Tyson,” she commented, eyes flickering back to the food.
“He was with me when I got your note.”
“And you didn’t bring Heinrich or Victoria into this. I’m slightly surprised, King Henry. I expected I would have to yell at you and then escape again. This isn’t . . . do you like this body?” she asked shyly.
“Too close to home, Isabel.”
“I miss Ceinwyn,” she whispered like a child admitting a secret. “We always . . . she would always talk with me. At least once a month. The other teachers did too, but they would always make me be me. Ceinwyn didn’t care what body I wore. She talked to me after . . . after what happened at school. In the Holding Room that week. Plus, once I was in the Pit she came at least once a year to check on me. She always brought sweets we shared between us . . .”
“Fuck me!” Pocket grunted under his breath like this was about to send him to a padded cell too.
Now you know the kind of shit I’m always dealing with, Fernthrower. About to learn a bit more besides . . . no way around it. Time to start telling the secrets. Need to get them out, might as well start with the worst one I’ve been keeping.
“I bet Paine likes that body,” I said between cookie bites, “he had a thing for Ceinwyn before she tried to kill him.”
Isabel giggled.
Weirder than her cooking food.
Ceinwyn barks a single ‘ha!.’ Occasionally she’ll give you a whole chuckle. She doesn’t giggle.
“He gave me the pictures of her . . . to see if I could look like this for him. It wasn’t as easy as seeing a person, but . . . it’s quite nice, don’t you think? Of course, the pictures only showed so much, so I had to guess at some parts. But once you have most of a body the rest just seems to click into place.”
“Ewww,” Pocket said for the both of us.
Isabel’s stolen face got very dark, the spatula she flipped the meat with grinding against the metal of the grill. “Obadiah is a genius,” she stated sullenly.
It’s weird.
She’s crazier than Paine, but somehow I understood her a lot more. Also, Isabel still seemed to crave my approval, something I knew Paine would disdain. Too much of a megalomaniac, too much of a cult leader. Without anima in her life, Isabel Soto would’ve been a sweet-hearted, ugly rancher girl who married some rancher boy and had equally ugly rancher babies.
Obadiah Paine still would’ve been a prick. Some sociopathic hedge fund manager robbing grandma and smirking about being smarter than everyone else.
“He’s something alright,” I said to keep her talking.
“He just gets lonely . . . he hurts. He misses what he was, pieces that he’s lost. Neither of you would understand what that’s like. You’re still whole.”
“Who’s Obadiah?” Pocket asked, frowning. Yes, it took him like a minute to register the name. But he’s pretty, give him a break!
“The Curator,” I connected the links.
“Oh,” he nodded, “of course she knows who he is. Wait . . . do you know who he is?” My face must have been a little guilty. “You know who the Curator is and you haven’t told anyone?!?”
I opened my mouth to answer.
“Wait . . . isn’t Obadiah Paine the guy that Miss Dale killed? The one people are always gossiping about?”
I tried to speak again.
“Holy shit, King Henry! How could you keep this from Miss Dale? Or the Asylum or anyone? Does Val know? Does Tyson know? Does—”
“No one fucking knows but me!” I yelled to stop him. “And you . . . if Ceinwyn would’ve been fair with me, I would’ve told her in London . . . but she wasn’t, was she?”
“Obadiah was very happy you kept his secret,” Isabel told me, finally taking the meat off the grill and piling it on a plate. She put it on the counter next to the chimichurri like an offering to me, her only way of making amends besides really fucked up sex. “It confused him at first. It made him search into your past and that’s when he found out about me being locked up. It also made him wonder if maybe you keeping his secret was an indication that perhaps you might one day take up his offer.”
I finished my cookie in silence, not answering her.
“He’d like that . . . he has questions and answers for many things. I’d like you joining us too.”
I watched her fidget. Third thing that Ceinwyn Dale never does.
“He’s a great man, King Henry. Not as powerful as you, but he understands so much. He could probably tell you what Miss Dale wouldn’t . . . if you had the humility to ask him.”
Pocket nervously touched the rim of his philodendron’s plastic vase.
Isabel continued, “All that’s happened the last few days was about answering the questions both of you have about the world after all. You showed him that so many rumors and legends he believed were lies were actually the truth, King Henry. He’s thankful to you . . . that’s why he hasn’t tried to kill you since then.”
I picked up a piece of steak and spooned some chimichurri on it. I took a bite, still saying nothing.
Fucking weird being the one pulling off Ceinwyn Dale moves on someone who looks like Ceinwyn Dale.
“Instead he has begun to reconsider everything that he assumed about the world. About the Mancy and Vampires and . . . Fairies. After . . . after we know each other he tells me stories he’s learned. Stories about places that might exist somewhere. Stories about what mancers like me and you might be able to do. Rumors about what once was and what we’ve lost. He could tell you those stories. He wouldn’t even ask for anything in return.”
I swallowed and turned to Pocket. “Did you see this shit coming?”
“Uhh . . . I’m too freaked out to focus on one single aspect of said shit, dude.”
Welcome to me two days ago, buddy.
It was late out.
Whole Day of Brawn . . . capturing Isabel . . . Jason dying . . . losing Isabel. Clearing out the arena, talking with them Weres.
Well into night.
Dark outside my suite’s balcony window.
I cut up another piece of steak and put it in my mouth. “Who could have foreseen Isabel being a good cook, right? You should take a bite. It’s juicy. Your philodendron won’t be jealous you’re not a vegetarian. Always thought it was weird how you floromancers and the faunamancers are backwards from everyone else. Won’t eat your aspect instead of craving it. Weird, ya know?”
Isabel’s face had gotten ugly again. “You’re making fun of me.”
“You don’t think you’re a good cook?”
“Of course I am. My mother taught me before she died. I had to cook for my father for years. Before I left for the Asylum.”
“Why cook a meal if you’re gonna complain about me liking it then? Ain’t that like a woman, Pocket?”
“Uh . . .”
“Your sisters beat you too much as a child, I see.”
“At least they never duct-taped me to them as a way to force me to dance.”
“If only it was that one time with the dancing—”
“I just offered you everything you wanted!” Isabel screamed. “I cooked because I like to cook. I don’t get to cook when I’m with Heinrich. Veronica would never cook. Hope would never cook. Ceinwyn would never cook. The real me, she cooks. I don’t like the real me, but I do like the part about her that cooks.”
I nodded like you would nod to a crazy person or a wild animal or a two-year-old with a paint bucket. “Have some then. You must be hungry.”
Pocket eyed the steak. “It could be—”
“Put a big piece of meat in your mouth, Pocket. We both know it won’t be the first time.”
“What?!?”
“You won’t listen to him,” Isabel whispered, mostly to herself. Had a feeling she talked to herself a lot when she wasn’t fully into pretending to be another person.
She was pitiful, cruel, violent, dangerous and more besides. Yet here I was forcing myself to be at ease before her. Keep her calm. Keep her talking. Hope that she wasn’t just here to offer me another team up with Paine but that somehow I’d use her to get to Conan Sapa for some revenge. Without all the chasing around Las Vegas I didn’t exactly anticipate with glee.
“I don’t trust him at all,” I explained to her like it needed to be explained and wasn’t just an obvious state to be around Obadiah Paine. “He murdered Amis Valet for one.”
“A misunderstanding!” Isabel cried. “Like . . . like what happened at school. Amis tried to turn him in to the Guild Master! Obadiah was just doing what Miss Dale asked him to do. Amis was jealous of how close they were! They fought and Amis attacked him with the lab animals and then . . . it was an accident.
“He knew what it seemed like . . . that’s why he ran away. That’s why instead of hiding he called Miss Dale so they could talk, but she wasn’t interested in talking . . . just like you’re not interested in talking!”
“We are talking,” I said calmly, working overtime to keep the snarl and anger out of my voice over those little tidbits. “You and me . . . and Pocket and his philodendron.”
Of course Paine would blame everyone but himself.
I wonder if he was broken then?
Or was it Ceinwyn who broke him?
“But you’re not listening,” she pouted. “You always listen to Miss Dale, but you aren’t listening. I should have known it wouldn’t help. With the way you two are fighting. Who should I be? Who would you listen to? I already hurt you, I already made myself a threat, but . . . why won’t you listen?”
She turned into Valentine, shook her head, turned into . . . was that my mom? Did Paine give her pictures of my fucking Mother?!? But before I could get a good glimpse at it, Isabel shook her head again and turned into Veronica Lee. “You liked this one, didn’t
you? Now that you’re not so surprised about it being me, you’ll listen to it, won’t you? He wants me to make you an offer, King Henry. You can’t say ‘yes’ to it. It’s . . . it’s a dangerous offer. You should . . . you should listen to me instead. You should talk to him. You could learn so much from each other if you would just talk. I don’t want to have to choose between you. I want both of you. I want his stories and your power. I want to know how the stories end when they have that power behind them!”
I met stolen, slanted eyes again. Better than stolen, ageless eyes. Even if they were stolen, I don’t know if I could have stared them down after what happened between us in London. “What’s the offer? Dark Side shit again?”
She grabbed my hands, reaching over the bar to do so. “No! You can’t!”
“You have to tell me, Isabel. If you want to go back to Paine then you have to tell me what he’s offering. If not . . . well, I suppose if you turn yourself in then we could make sure you’re safe from him somehow. Of course, the Asylum would find out and we’d have to talk to the Lady. You’d have to tell her what you know about Paine . . . like where he’s hiding.”
“They would put me in my cell again!” she shrieked, fingernails digging into the backs of my hands.
“I wouldn’t let them,” I lied.
“No . . . no, no, no,” she whispered, pushing away from me. She stalked up and down the kitchen, absently turning off the rice pot. “They don’t listen to you, you said so yourself. Obadiah listens. Obadiah always listens when I look like Miss Dale.”
And there went Veronica Lee back into Ceinwyn.
Good thing we aren’t in a movie or this shit would be killing the FX budget.
Nah . . . just real life.
Real life in the one-in-a-mil world.
The Crazy.
In the Crazy, dealing with a crazy.
Fate showed me some muff. How you like it, King Henry?
Bit saggy . . . but I done worse . . .
“Pocket,” Isabel seized on the other person in the room with us, “talk some sense into him. You always talked sense into him at school. You didn’t want him to be here, did you?”
“What?!?” Pocket squeaked.
“It’s not safe. You didn’t even want Jesus to compete. If . . .”
The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5) Page 39