‘Which floor?’ she asked.
‘Second.’
Leah counted a further four CCTV units on the way up. Their lenses, powered by silent motors, rotated as she passed.
When she reached the second floor, the man halted behind her. The lighting was softer here, illuminating pale-green walls. An enormous bay window, looking down into the street, curved around a collection of Chinese porcelain so ancient it might have dated back to the Han dynasty. Some of the pieces had been smashed and subsequently repaired.
‘First door on the left,’ he told her.
She nodded, feeling his eyes on her neck as she moved down the hall, sinking into carpet as dense and cushioned as the wool of a lamb’s fleece. Leah knocked on the door, then went inside.
The room she discovered could have been used to entertain royalty. Its walls were decorated with leaf-patterned silk, but no artworks hung from them, only mirrors. One was so enormous it stretched the entire width of the room. Marble-topped plinths bore bronze statues of fornicating couples. A huge Persian rug covered most of the parquet floor.
In one of two wingback chairs beside a fireplace bright with flames, sat the most formidably sensual creature Leah had ever seen.
The woman’s skin glowed as if lit from within. Her hair was as dark and rich as polished ebony, rolled into a simple twist fastened by a jewel-encrusted clasp. Her dress, a fluid black shimmer accentuated with sparse bursts of pink flowers, clung to her torso and trailed past her knees. She sat barefoot, one leg crossed over the other, toenails manicured but free of any adornment. Her face was as blank of expression as it was flawless, eyes a pale, frosty blue.
Leah, in jeans, boots and her old motorcycle jacket, felt her stomach sinking. She had wanted this woman to see her as an ally – perhaps even as an equal – but already a gulf seemed to stretch between them. She’d felt nervous enough meeting the six previous kirekesztett women, but standing here now she felt a trickle of sweat roll down her spine.
The woman continued to study her. She opened her mouth, revealing perfect white teeth and a small, crimson tongue. ‘Leah Wilde.’ Her voice was chocolate steeped in wine, the words a statement, not a question. Not an invitation.
Tread carefully.
‘Yes. You’re Etienne?’
‘Indeed.’
Leah nodded. A feeling began to descend on her that she had entered not a home, here, but a lair. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’
The woman indicated the empty chair with a flick of her wrist. ‘No need to thank me. Anyone who can soften the heart of Luca Sultés as quickly as you appear to have managed is a woman worth meeting. Knowing how often that man can have a change of heart, I thought it prudent to meet you sooner rather than later.’ For the first time Etienne smiled, although it was an expression entirely lacking in warmth. ‘You’re not hosszú élet,’ she added, folding her hands in her lap.
Leah moved to the wingback chair and sat. The room was hot, but she did not remove her jacket. She sensed that without an invitation it would be deemed a breach of etiquette; she also sensed, with just as much conviction, that to flaunt any unwritten rule of conduct in front of this woman would bring their interview to an immediate close.
She found herself contemplating how far away she was from the people who loved her. And for the first time since leaving Calw, she felt dreadfully alone. She recalled the man downstairs searching her for weapons, and the cameras that zoomed in on her progress during her passage up to the second floor.
Although it had doubtless been the right decision to leave her Ruger under the Mercedes’ passenger seat, right now it felt a dangerous one. She did not know why her host had been branded a kirekesztett. But she did know, simply from reading the woman’s face, that she was outshone, outclassed, outgunned here, in every respect. Etienne’s eyes gleamed with the intensity of a wolf pup’s, but they measured Leah with the feigned indifference of a far more experienced predator.
How much to tell this woman, waiting for her to speak? Every decision she made in this room felt like a step taken along a precipice. ‘I am,’ she replied. ‘Of a sort.’
Etienne tilted her head. ‘You either are, or you aren’t.’
‘I have hosszú élet blood in my veins,’ she said. ‘But simavér, too.’
‘Impossible.’
Leah took a breath. It was pointless to argue. Instead, she focused her eyes and felt the familiar stirring – tightening – as she bade them to do her talking for her.
Etienne’s lips parted, ever so slightly, in the merest feather of a reaction, and then they closed. She blinked. ‘I think you’d better tell me the rest.’
Careful of every single word she uttered for the next twenty minutes, Leah did exactly that.
Halfway through her story, the kirekesztett woman went to a rosewood cabinet and opened its doors. She selected two crystal tumblers and from a decanter poured a measure of spirit into each. Her hands were shaking, Leah noticed. An artery flickered in her throat.
Returning to the fireplace, Etienne held out one of the glasses. This close, Leah recognised her perfume: Guerlain’s Jicky.
‘You’re perspiring,’ Etienne said. ‘Are you afraid of me?’
‘I’m hot.’
The woman raised a quill-like eyebrow. ‘Then why are you sitting there draped in leather like that?’
Feeling foolish, Leah shrugged out of her jacket and accepted the proffered glass. She raised it to her lips, took a sip. Calvados, warming her throat.
She continued her story, and when she finished it Etienne began to question her. Leah answered as best she could, but she did not reveal the location of the centre in Calw, nor the exact nature of her and her mother’s heritage.
Finally the questions ended and they sat, considering each other, in silence. The fire popped. Wind flung raindrops against the room’s huge bay windows. Somewhere, out in the night, the muted blare of a car horn carried through London’s streets.
‘I hope I haven’t wasted your time,’ Leah said, after neither of them had spoken for five minutes.
‘Time is not as precious to me as to some,’ Etienne replied. Her eyes were on the fire, watching the flames bob and dance.
‘I must ask. Now that you’ve heard what I have to say—’
The woman’s eyes hardened; two sharp gemstones, a fraction paler than topaz. ‘You require an answer? Tonight?’
‘No, I wouldn’t expect to receive—’
‘Nor shall you.’
Leah closed her mouth, refusing to let the woman’s manner antagonise her.
You’re not here to judge. You know nothing of her. Nothing of what she’s faced. Nothing of what she’s endured.
Before leaving her home in Calw for this undertaking, Leah had set herself two rules. One: she would not ask the women she met the details of their crimes unless they volunteered them. Two: she wouldn’t allow herself to become moral arbiter. No one in this world, she believed, possessed the right to judge whether a woman was worthy of carrying a child. Certainly not her. Etienne might have walked the earth a hundred years or more. The very notion that Leah, with her twenty-four years of life, was a worthy magister of the woman’s suitability for motherhood was laughable.
She offered a choice, that was all; a choice that would be available to every woman she was able to find.
Rousing herself from her thoughts, she discovered that Etienne’s eyes had moved from the flames to study her face. Leah shifted under their intensity.
‘You’re in London long?’
‘A few days,’ she replied. ‘I have others to see.’
‘You’ve set yourself an unenviable task.’
‘I don’t view it like that.’
‘I admire your devotion.’
‘I can’t sit back and watch us fade away, Etienne.’
‘No. I see that in you. But it doesn’t explain why you haven’t offered yourself more fully to this undertaking.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You’re o
f an appropriate age. If this means so much to you, why aren’t you a mother yourself by now?’
‘I think I’m more suited to this. To finding—’
‘That’s not an answer, nor the beginnings of one.’
‘No.’ Leah dropped her head. When next she spoke, her voice was faint. ‘I can’t.’
‘You can’t?’
‘I can’t conceive. And I can’t be a surrogate. My body . . .’ She shrugged, raising her eyes to Etienne’s face. ‘Who knows why these things come about?’
‘You’ve known it long?’
‘Long enough.’
‘It pains you still, doesn’t it?’
‘More than you could imagine.’
Etienne laughed. ‘Don’t be so sure of that.’ She stood, dress shimmering in the firelight. ‘Come back in two days. You’ll have your answer then.’
Out on the street, Leah clutched her jacket around her as she unlocked the Mercedes. Frost stubbled the windscreen. Night had fallen, and with it London was beginning to freeze.
Inside the house, the beautiful kirekesztett woman with the wolf pup eyes stood at the window and watched Leah’s car pull away from the kerb.
Despite the room’s heat, she shivered. How long since she had experienced emotions such as these? She examined her hands, watched the way her fingers trembled. Turning away, she took the stairs to the third floor, walked along the corridor to the unadorned room and descended the spiral staircase to the antechamber adjoining her Aviary.
At the dressing table, she retrieved the bundle of photographs. Then she retreated to her bedroom.
Closing the door, she caught sight of herself in the three floor-length mirrors. Her face was pale, the skin of her throat flushed red. But she was still beautiful. And that was what mattered. Beauty had mattered all her life. It defined her.
Her chest rose and fell. She climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged, pulling the rubber band off the sheaf of photographs. Soon she had laid a row of five before her.
She stared at those images, unblinking. After a while, she picked up the fifth and final photograph: a girl, eight years old, sitting on a bicycle. A smile for the camera, from a child not used to smiling.
She examined the girl’s face, turned the photograph over in her hands.
Leah Wilde.
Eight years old in this photograph.
Twenty-four years old when she sat downstairs tonight.
Etienne tapped the photograph against her chin, thinking. The girl offered something incredible. Something too life-changing to be credible.
Decided on her course, she reached out to the telephone beside the bed. Keyed in a number long committed to memory.
The phone rang four times before a man answered.
She closed her eyes. Opened them. Turned the photograph of the smiling girl on the bicycle face-down on the bed.
‘I believe,’ she said, ‘I’ve found someone you may wish to meet.’
CHAPTER 17
Yosemite National Park, California, USA
Angel River stood in the RV’s doorway and peered out at a fresh Sierra Nevada morning rich with the scent of pinesap and wood smoke. Already the sun filtering through the tree canopy carried a sharp heat, warming the forest floor and adding a note of damp mulch.
Having spent most of the night too frightened to sleep, Angel had succumbed to exhaustion just before dawn. She was, as a result, the last to rise.
At the twin benches still dragged together from last night’s feast, her family – Mom, Elliot and Hope – and her new depths-of-a-nightmare family – Ty, Regan and Luke – were hunkered down and enjoying a late camp breakfast.
Sitting beside Ty on one of the benches, her mom spotted Angel hovering in the doorway and waved her outside. ‘Ah, the sleeper awakes. Come and check out this breakfast. I think our woodsman surpassed himself.’
Ty raised his head and grinned. ‘Grab a plate, Angel. Plenty for everyone. You know what they say about breakfast.’
‘Most important meal of the day!’ the others chanted in unison.
As if this was normal.
As if nothing had happened in the night.
As if they were two happy families, growing into one.
Angel stepped out of the motor home and crossed the patch of ground to the picnic tables, limbs stiff. She stared down at the food.
Boxes of cereal and cartons of milk. Orange juice, cranberry and pomegranate. A skillet full of crisp bacon. Sausages, tomatoes and hash browns. A serving plate piled with pancakes. Loaves of bread, cut into slices, a few of them toasted. Jars of preserves. Peanut butter and chocolate spread.
‘I can do you an egg,’ Ty said. ‘Or even a waffle, if you like. How about a couple of waffles? Butter, cream, strawberries and syrup. The works.’
He was wearing the same wizard T-shirt as the day before: THAT’S WHAT I’M TOLKIEN ABOUT. It looked a little greasier this morning. Ty looked a little older this morning, too. And, weirdly, a little fleshier, as if the cholesterol from last night’s feast was riding high in his cheeks.
His jaw was streaked with soot. Toast crumbs and jam clung to his stubble. His eyes didn’t blink as he watched her.
He knows, Angel thought.
It was real. And I saw. And he knows.
She smiled back at him; had to, to keep up the act. Mouth drawn wide, lips curled back over teeth. That was how you did it, wasn’t it?
Picking up a plastic plate, she dumped bacon onto it from the skillet, added a hash brown and two slices of bread. The nearest empty space was opposite Ty. She wasn’t going to sit there. No way. She walked to the far end and squeezed in between two large plastic coolers.
‘You OK, hon?’ her mom asked.
Angel nodded. She made a crude sandwich from the bacon and hash brown, added a squirt of ketchup, mashed the other piece of bread down on top.
‘Gonna have some fun today,’ Ty said.
Shaking, Angel raised her sandwich to her lips and bit into it. The food was a dense slug inside her mouth. She worked it with her tongue. At the far end of the table, her mom poured a glass of pomegranate juice and told the others to pass it down. Angel received it gratefully, nearly choking as she knocked it back.
She heard a buzzing by her ear, and saw a large bluebottle land on top of her sandwich. It skated around in a figure of eight, a metallic-looking bead with red compound eyes.
Disgusted, she waved it off.
‘Careful, Angel,’ Ty said. ‘Calliphora vomitoria. They lay their eggs in dead animals. Hundreds at a time.’ He grinned again. ‘Someone hasn’t taken a shower this morning.’
‘Ty,’ Angel’s mom warned, digging him with an elbow.
‘Sorry, sorry. I just . . . it’s educational.’
‘Not while we’re eating, it isn’t.’
Angel placed the sandwich back down on her plate. She wiped her mouth. Saw the fly loop around the table and settle on a loaf of bread.
‘So,’ Ty said, addressing the group. ‘Are you guys all set to see the giant sequoias today? Think you’d like that?’
‘Yeah!’ Elliot shouted.
‘You want to hear a fact? They’re named after a Native American fella. Guy called Sequoyah. He invented some system of writing for the Cherokee. Fascinating stuff. We’ll head over to Mariposa Grove after we pack up breakfast. Some of those trees are a couple thousand years old. Hey, Angel. You looking forward to that?’
Angel stared at her plate. She forced herself to nod.
It took them half an hour to pack up. Angel took a shower in the space-age cubicle at the vehicle’s rear, scrubbing her body and her hair and her face. When she switched off the water and stepped, steaming, onto the bath mat, she thought she heard a thump – or a bang – from under her feet, directly over the RV’s luggage bay.
For most of the night, she had lain in bed too terrified to sleep, thinking they shared the motorhome with a corpse. Now she knew that wasn’t true. Locked away in the darkness of the vehicle’s underbelly, t
he beautiful woman with the seaweed eyes and the sunlight hair was alive. Angel felt bile rising in her throat. In a way, this was even worse. She had been locked inside a nightmare of her own, but this new revelation brought an urgency with it. It meant she had to do something. And soon.
Dressing quickly, she brushed her teeth and pulled a comb through her hair. Back in the main living space, she glanced out of the window and saw that everyone was outside.
Not everyone. Not the woman. She’s underneath you, Angel. Alive, but perhaps only barely. Stuffed into that vault like a sack of meat.
Inside the RV’s kitchen, she slid open a drawer and rummaged through a heap of cooking utensils and cutlery. She found a short filleting knife, and managed to slip it into her bag just as her mom opened the door.
‘OK, hon?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sure?’
‘Of course.’
‘You OK with Ty?’
Angel grinned. ‘Yeah, Mom. I’m fine.’
‘Great. I really want you guys to be happy.’
‘I know.’
Her mom reached out a hand. Squeezed her arm.
They arrived at Mariposa Grove twenty minutes later and parked up. Ty and her mom swivelled around in their front seats. He flashed them all a grin. ‘OK, Bradies, Mariposa Grove. Some of the oldest trees in the world. And some of the largest, too.’ He began to list them, reeling off names as if from a football roster. ‘We’ve got Grizzly Giant, we’ve got the Fallen Monarch, we’ve got the Clothespin tree and the Telescope tree.’
Reaching over, Ty massaged the top of Angel’s mom’s bare leg. ‘Then we’ve got the Faithful Couple. Two trees that grew so close their trunks fused together.’ He slid his hand around the inside of her thigh – high up, really high up – as if no one was watching, as if it was OK to touch her there while her kids sat opposite and stared.
‘Oh, Ty,’ her mom said. She picked off his hand, cheeks colouring.
He grinned as if nothing had happened. ‘Right, gang. Let’s go bag us some trees.’
On any other day, Angel would have found herself struck mute with awe at the grove’s inhabitants. The flared bases of the giant sequoia trunks reminded her, in a curious way, of elephants’ feet; as if she walked beneath a herd of enormous beasts whose bodies were lost in the clouds. Angel recalled a Dali painting she had once seen: Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening.
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