by A. L. Tyler
“Sarcasm is not appealing.” Mrs. Corbett remarked sharply from behind her, and Lena flinched. “It won’t happen again.”
Without a word, Lena left the room. She had been exceedingly careful to keep that thought to herself, too. She went down to the living room and crashed on the couch with Eric and Hesper. They were watching a daytime game show and eating popcorn. When Lena sat down, Hesper looked over at her sympathetically.
“She’s a pill, isn’t she?”
“Not the word I was thinking of, but yeah, she is. Does everyone in your family have the ability to hear private thoughts?” Lena shot a pained look at Hesper. It was going to be a long few weeks until Griffin got back.
“Oh.” Hesper blushed. Behind her, Eric was nodding enthusiastically. “Well, yeah, I guess so. My mom’s the only one who abuses the advantage, though.”
Eric went from nodding to shaking his head. In one swift motion, Hesper swung her elbow back and nailed him in the gut. Eric threw a fistful of popcorn at his wife as Ava came running into the room carrying Maren at arm’s length in front of her.
“Take it! Take it!”
Eric stood up and took Maren. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s got that look again!”
Lena felt her stomach drop through the floor. She spun around and searched Maren’s eyes for disaster, but didn’t see anything wrong. While the Corbetts were apparently attuned mind readers, everyone in the Daray line had the ability to see death in the eyes of the soon to be deceased. Eric had forgone actually looking at Maren and had instead leaned in close and smelled her.
“Yep. I got it.” And he started for the stairs. Hesper smiled dreamily after him, then turned back to Lena.
“Just don’t take her crap.” Hesper shrugged easily as Ava wandered away again. “If you’re lucky, you might even end up like me and get to never talk to her again. How’s Darius?”
“He was sleeping when I was up there.” Lena said, fidgeting with the remote to turn up the volume on the television.
Hesper waited a moment to be sure that Lena wasn’t intending to add anything. “And?”
“And what? It’s a baby, they’re all the same, right?”
Hesper laughed, grabbing the remote and turning the television off. “No! Now tell me what he looks like, because I haven’t seen him. I probably won’t get to see him until he’s old enough to be out in public alone. He’s my brother, Lena.”
“Um, okay…” Lena thought back. It was a baby—bald and pudgy as they all were. She was trying not to focus on the fact that he was already showing a distinct resemblance to Griffin; it bothered her for some reason. “He’s bald and chubby.” She said simply.
Hesper stared at her a moment longer. Then she gave a frustrated sigh and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and started to find the camera mode. “You’re going to take a picture. For me, because I want to know what my little brother looks like.”
An image of Mrs. Corbett attacking her at the mere suggestion of taking a picture flashed into Lena’s mind. “He looks like Griffin, okay?! Geez! Why’s that so important?!”
Highly amused, Hesper smiled. “Why does that bother you so much?”
“Because I am not getting attached to this baby, and I am not living out whatever sick fantasy Griffin has about my becoming the surrogate mother after yours gets committed!” Lena stood up and paced to the window. She turned and leaned against it, facing Hesper, who was still looking very amused at her friend’s frustration.
“I wish they’d just give him to me. I’d take him.” Hesper smiled. She closed her cell phone and put it away.
“Ha! Doubt it!”
“Well, who knows…I mean, they might vote to just dispose the Corbett house from the Council this year now that there aren’t really any of us left. God knows where our servants are, even. I’d be truly surprised if Griffin gets them to put a hold on it until the kid’s sixteen.”
It was true, but Lena gave the Corbett name a better chance than Hesper did. Griffin had mentioned something about Master Daray wanting to keep the Corbetts on the Council because they had always voted in his favor. And if he got to raise another child under this roof, it was ensuring yet another generation of protection for the Daray family. History had proven that Daray held enough sway on the Council to enforce his will when he needed to.
The clock on the wall caught her eye. She only had an hour and a half before Mrs. Corbett’s lunch was due, and she still hadn’t showered or eaten breakfast. Turkey on…something. Lena excused herself to go upstairs and shower, kicking herself for forgetting the order. When she came back down to the kitchen she made three sandwiches, hoping one of the guesses would be correct, and drudged back up to the fourth floor.
She knocked. Three minutes later, when no one had answered, she knocked again. Her second attempt went unrewarded. Slightly perturbed because the weight of the tray was starting to cut into her arm, she cracked the door and peered inside. Mrs. Corbett was seated at her table, with the baby in her arms, apparently unable to be bothered by getting up to answer the doors or even call a simple, ‘Enter!’
Lena walked in and set the tray on the table. Mrs. Corbett held the baby out towards her, and Lena froze. She didn’t want to hold him. Mrs. Corbett turned and glared at her.
“Don’t be unnatural, take the baby!”
Their eyes met, and Lena quickly looked away. She reached out and took the baby; he was heavier than she had expected, and never having held a baby for longer than a few minutes, she wasn’t quite sure what to do. Darius was heavier than Maren, and he wiggled far too much. She tried holding him the way she had seen Hesper hold Maren, but it didn’t work—he immediately started squirming and whining, arched his back, and Lena almost dropped him. Mrs. Corbett was on her feet immediately, grabbing the child back from her.
“Oh, for goodness sake! A girl your age should have more experience!” She glared at Lena as she swayed on her feet, clutching Darius close to her chest. “You’ve never held a baby before? Never?”
Annoyed and embarrassed, Lena lashed out. “Only your daughter’s! I’m sorry, but I’ve been too busy doing more important things to have done much more than that!”
“So you’ve made clear to the world.” Mrs. Corbett said disapprovingly. “Put your arms out.”
Lena gaped at her. “What? I don’t want to hold him!”
“This isn’t about what you want. This is about you being here to help me, and you’re going to hold him.” She once again held Darius out and away from her.
Lena gave an exasperated sigh, looked longingly at the door, and then put her arms out in front of her. Mrs. Corbett carefully handed Darius back to her.
“You’re going to have to hold him closer.” She directed. “There. Now, if he starts to fuss you need to move by walking or swaying.”
She sat back down and started eating a sandwich. Lena was terribly uncomfortable; he was heavy, and he kept looking at her like he knew she was a novice. He stared for a good ten minutes before he started turning his head to look around the rest of the room; his eyes landed on Mrs. Corbett and he arched his back again. Lena struggled to keep him from pitching himself at his mother, but he never cried, and the rest of the meal passed without incident.
Lena took the tray and the garbage out of the room. Mrs. Corbett’s dinner order had been even more complex than her lunch order, and in addition she had asked for more diapers and baby formula. After she cleaned up the dishes in the kitchen, Lena asked Hesper if she would be willing to make a run into town for her to get the requested supplies. As Lena watched the car pull away and down the drive from the front door, the spring season making the rest of the world so vibrant and warm, and with nothing to look forward to but serving Mrs. Corbett’s dinner and processing the RSVPs for the year’s Council, she was again struck by how depressed her life was making her. She needed to get out, and she had no idea how to make it happen.
*****
CHAPTER 2
Summe
r wore on and eventually wore out; in a perverse kind of way, Lena almost enjoyed watching the lawn turn brown and the flower gardens die. Waldgrave’s exterior was finally starting to match what she felt on the inside. Hesper and Eric had gone back to Australia at the start of August, and though Mrs. Corbett was becoming slightly warmer towards Lena, the best they could hope for was agreeing to disagree. Postcards from Griffin had been arriving all summer, which hadn’t bettered her mood any. He had decided to take his extended beach vacation in Greece. She hadn’t spoken to him since before he left, and he wasn’t answering her calls—Lena suspected that he was as fed up with his mother as she was. He was due back any day, as it was only two and a half weeks until Council was in again; the first families were expected to arrive the following week.
Her seventeenth birthday had been somewhat anticlimactic after the plane tickets the year before, but it had been nice to have Hesper, Eric, and little Maren there to share it. She had received cards from all of the usual families, one signed by the entire Colburn staff, and one specifically from Devin. He had stuck some dry-pressed flowers into the middle.
Flowers for my uptown girl.
Happy Birthday, Dev
It was very nice, and had even raised her spirits for a few days, but in the end she was still living at Waldgrave, scrubbing out Mrs. Corbett’s bathtub because she didn’t trust anyone else in the room, and that thought alone depressed her so much that she began to lose track of time. Every day was the same as the last, and it all blurred together too easily. The year had gone by far too quickly and uneventfully, and Lena knew she had to be going crazy the day she was happy to be spending time with her grandfather.
“I’ll be requiring new suits this year, Howard.” He said, clearing his throat and staring expectantly.
Howard carefully folded his hands on the table. “Are you making an announcement of some sort?”
Lena looked up from her cheese broccoli soup at her grandfather, who was making a face that was all too innocent.
“No. I merely require new suits; I trust you can make the necessary arrangements?” Master Daray asked.
Howard’s eyes went slightly squinty; he suspected something. The other Council members would too, and it spoke of trouble. Excitement, Lena reminded herself, but surely a good deal of trouble as well. Anything her grandfather did inherently landed on her at some point in the future.
Howard spoke again. “You can order them.”
“I don’t want to order them. Only custom fitted suits will do. If it’s her you’re worried about,” he nodded at Lena, “Then why don’t we make it a household outing of sorts? Surely no one will object if we all go; it will be the exact same as if we were here.”
Lena wanted to leap across the table and hug him; it was then that she realized she had been cooped up far too long. It was only a clothing run, after all. With her grandfather, of all people. But it was something to do other than sitting around, waiting on Mrs. Corbett, changing Darius’s diapers and dealing with last minute travel changes for various Council members—these were often hard to deal with, as the visas had to be planned months in advance.
A few days later, after Howard had cleared the arrangement (though doing this was not easy), Lena found herself happier than she should have been to be crammed in the backseat of the sedan between her mother and Mrs. Ralston. Howard drove, and Master Daray gave an ongoing commentary from the front passenger seat.
“It’s been a few years now since we’ve done this, hasn’t it Howard? I see they’ve finally finished the repairs to the road from so many winters ago. Lazy humans—can’t even patch up potholes in a decent time span. When I rebuilt Waldgrave after the fire, I used only Silenti labor, and the house was up in less than two months. Lucky the original foundations survived the fire; that did help. Of course, human-borns have always inherited the laziness and other weaknesses of their less-than-pure heritage, and I was constantly on them to get it done that quickly…”
He trailed on from there about the details of the house and how much he hated humans, human-borns, and the general prospect of servants ever gaining the political standing they were recently asking for. Lena began to tune him out, but he noticed, and so said something she couldn’t ignore.
“I made them sleep in tents until the house was done enough for the servants’ quarters to be livable. That was a harsh winter; I believe we lost five or ten to pneumonia and hypothermia, but in the end it was well worth it.”
“They died?” Lena asked.
“Hmm…from the cold. It wasn’t a huge expense, though. After the house was finished I turned all of them out. I wasn’t sure who I could trust, you see, so they all had to go. I took on a modest amount of servants the following spring, and even with the time it took them to adjust to the way I liked my household to be run, I still consider it worth it. Of course, I inevitably threw all of them out again when Thomas was murdered…lazy, sneaky, self-serving, back-stabbing rats.”
Lena looked over at Mrs. Ralston, who was looking stoically out the window. She grabbed her hand and tried to ignore the biological relationship she shared with the man in the front passenger seat.
“Most of the new servants were children between the ages of eight and fourteen given as tribute from faithful supporters of our family—“
Howard interjected. “You’re done. No more talking until we get there. And so help me, I’m not above turning this car around and giving my recommendation that you never leave the house again.”
Howard kept his eyes on the road, but Lena could see he was clutching the steering wheel a little too tightly. Daray sighed and turned his head to look conceitedly out the window. Five minutes later Howard’s cell phone started buzzing; he unclipped it from his belt and threw it over his shoulder in Lena’s general direction.
Lena opened the cell phone and pressed it to her ear. “You’ve reached Howard Collin’s personal number, he’s unavailable at the moment, how may I direct your call?”
“Lena, put Howard on.” Griffin’s tone was…defeated. Maybe a little angry.
Lena raised her eyebrows, surprised to be hearing Griffin’s voice. “He’s driving.”
“So tell him to pull over, dammit!” The anger in his voice was rising, but after he had ignored her for so long, Lena wasn’t in the mood to bend to his wishes over a little yelling.
“Oh, okay, calm down now! I’m not going to—“
An eruption of yells and expletives came out of the phone so loud that everyone in the car could hear.
“Griffin, just take it down a notch and tell me what you want!” Lena hissed into the phone.
There was dead silence on the line. In the rearview mirror, Howard watched Lena’s expression go from annoyed, to shocked, to devilishly amused.
“Okay. I’ll tell him, and he’ll get back to you as soon as possible. And remember, soap on a rope is your friend.” She clicked the phone shut, smiling as Howard hadn’t seen her do in several months.
“What?” Howard glanced back up into the rearview mirror several times to try and keep eye contact.
Lena handed the cell phone back to the front, still looking far too happy, and Howard reattached it to his belt. “Griffin’s being held in a slammer in New York and needs you to post bail.”
Ava grabbed her arm. “What?!”
Master Daray spun as far around in his seat as he could without undoing his seatbelt. “Did he say anything about the relics? Are they okay?”
“What did you do? What the hell did you do this time?!” Howard pulled the car over. “Out. Get out of the car now.”
Howard and Master Daray got out of the car. Through the windshield, Lena and the other two women watched intently as Daray calmly explained something and Howard went red in the face. Then it was Howard’s turn to talk…or yell, as the case may have been.
“Is he okay?” Mrs. Ralston whispered. “Griffin?”
Lena looked over at Mrs. Ralston. Her eyes gave nothing away that she was concerned; Lena wishe
d she had the power to seem so calm. “He’s a little miffed that he’s in jail, but I think he’s okay. He picked a fight with some guy in customs when he tried to confiscate one of the relics…apparently there were seeds in it, or something organic. So yeah, now he’s in jail, and I guess he needs someone to bail him out.”
Lena’s eyes went back to the drama unfolding in front of the car. Howard was holding his cell phone to his ear with one hand and making animated gestures as he talked with the other. Lena wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but the conversation was very brief. The two men got back in the car, and without anyone saying anything, they continued to drive to their shopping destination.
The shopping was similarly curt as far as verbal communication went, and Howard was looking the way he usually did when a load of unnecessary paperwork landed on his desk. Mrs. Ralston took the opportunity to fit Lena for new formal wear, and Ava bought herself some new dresses. The car ride home was silent, but as soon as they were in the door Howard asked Lena up to his office.
He sat down at his desk and immediately put his cell phone down and rubbed his head like he had a really bad hangover. He sighed deeply then looked up at Lena. “Okay, so here’s where we stand. I haven’t told the Council yet, because it would have looked too suspicious that it happened while we were out and away, and I’m absolutely sure this part of Griffin’s excursion wasn’t planned. So if anyone asks, I didn’t get that phone call until we were back. Greg Mason’s been on the phone trying to get a hold of one of Griffin’s cousins to post the bail for him, if he even has cousins, but he hasn’t called back yet.”
“Why a cousin?” Lena settled into a chair in front of the desk; she knew it was a big deal, but Howard was acting unusually perturbed.
“Well, I’m sure you know that we try to fly under the radar, and we don’t want someone random posting bail because it might be cause for attention. We think he’s got a cousin through his mother’s side who’s old enough to do it, but we’re not sure where he is because he’s in hiding…the way Griffin was and the way several others are. It’s…complicated, to say the least.”