by Gloria Craw
She stood up and began putting on a pair of gloves. “I am going riding,” she said in answer to my first question. “Would you like to come? It’s a very soothing activity.”
Before I could reply, Spencer said, “I don’t like it.”
“That’s why I didn’t ask you,” she replied with a glance his way.
“I don’t mean that,” he said dismissively. “I don’t like the way Helen was acting when we dropped by her place. She was too pleased to see us, and Valentine wouldn’t look me in the eye for more than a second. Something is going on with them.”
I could have confirmed that there was indeed something going on with the Vasitass, but I’d learned a lesson where Spencer and Katherine were concerned. Their definition of the greater good wasn’t necessarily the same as mine. I wasn’t going to tell them about the conversation I’d overheard between Helen and Valentine until I knew more about “the offer” they’d discussed.
“If there’s anything going on, I’m sure we’ll find out at the reporting ceremony tonight,” Katherine remarked. “Helen will be gabbing her head off even before drinks are served.”
Spencer ran a hand through his blond hair, making it stand up in places. “We’re not waiting until then,” he said, grabbing his keys off the coffee table. “We’re going to have lunch at The Gull, and we’re taking the Vasitass with us. Katherine, you can do that thing you do when we get there.”
“That thing I do?” she asked.
“Get her to tell you all her secrets,” Spencer replied.
She lifted her chin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she responded.
Ian snorted. “Yes, you do. People will tell you almost anything, and you don’t have my joining to make them. Sometimes I wonder what good it is to be a confidant when you’re around.”
Spencer clapped his hands together in anticipation. “Let’s track them down, Katherine,” he said.
She sighed in resignation and replied, “I need to change clothes first.”
“You look fine,” he said impatiently. “Let’s go.”
“I’m not leaving here in riding gear,” she said with a shake of her head. “You should call to see if they’re even interested in going.”
“Good idea,” he replied, turning toward the door. “I’ll drive down the road until I get cell phone service, make the call, and come back for you.”
I heard the door slam behind him as he left.
“There are days when I question how I’ve lived almost two hundred years with that man,” Katherine grumbled.
“I question that too,” Ian said under his breath.
“Be nice,” I whispered.
He leaned over to give me a quick kiss. “I feel Theron around,” he said. “When did he get here?”
“Last night. He’s with Lillian right now.”
“How is that going?”
“Believe it or not…great,” I replied. “I was afraid they’d offend each other so badly that they wouldn’t be able to stay in the same suite, but they were having a friendly game of chess when I left. Theron even made Lillian smile. It wasn’t a grimace from indigestion, either. It was an actual smile.”
“What?” Ian asked astonished. “I’ve been trying to get her to like me for nine months, and he gets a smile the first day? It’s so unfair.”
I chuckled but then remembered the conversation I’d had with Lillian about Helen and Valentine Vasitass.
“You know how we’ve always wondered what happened to make Lillian leave her clan?” I asked. When he nodded, I said, “I was asking her about the Vasitass chiefs yesterday, and she got really weird when I mentioned Valentine.”
“Lillian is always weird,” he remarked.
“I mean weirder than usual. I almost think Valentine had something to do with why she left.”
Ian thought for a moment and shook his head. “She knew he’d be here. If something had gone down with Valentine in the past, she wouldn’t have come?”
“I’m not so sure,” I said. “She’s so closed down sometimes, maybe the idea of seeing him didn’t affect her one way or the other. Seeing him for real might be different. What if she has a breakdown or something?”
The worry in Ian’s bright eyes mirrored mine. “I’ll talk to my parents,” he said. “Maybe they know more about what happened to Lillian than they’ve let on. If we can stop her from getting hurt, we will.”
I nodded agreement.
“Ian,” Katherine called from the other room.
He laid his head back against the sofa. “Yeah, Mom.”
“You and Alison should come with us. Since you’ll both be clan chiefs eventually, you can watch how we interact with the Vasitass. They’re nice enough, but when they get their backs up, you’re in for a battle of wills. Like everything else in politics, they have to be handled with kid gloves.”
“Does Dad even know what the term ‘kid gloves’ means?” Ian said.
“When he puts his mind to it,” she responded, “he can be quite tactful…for about half an hour.”
Probably fearing she wasn’t going to be able to convince him, she tried her luck with me. “Will you come, Alison?”
Ian put his hands together like he was offering a prayer and shook his head in a silent plea for me to say no, but I wanted to go. If either of the Vasitass let anything slip about “the offer,” I wanted to hear it for myself.
I kissed him and mouthed sorry before answering, “Sure. I’ll go.”
“I guess that means you’re coming, too, Ian,” she said triumphantly. “Go change. Wear a button-up, nice pants, and no Converse. Brush your hair, too.”
“I’m seventeen years old,” he said with a huff. “I think I can dress myself.”
“Prove it to me,” she said as she headed out the door. “And hurry, we should go before Spencer has an aneurism.”
“See what’s ahead for us?” Ian asked with a sigh. “Distrust, manipulation, and lunches with boring people.”
Chapter Ten
The Gull was a dimly lit, low-ceilinged place. The hardwood floors, timber-paneled walls, and sturdy lumber tables gave me the momentary impression I’d stepped inside a tree trunk. My nose wrinkled at the overwhelming odor of seafood, which permeated the air, and I sighed in resignation. I didn’t like fish.
Though it was a bit early for the lunch hour rush, the place was humming with soft conversations from seated customers. A waitress with a pleasant English accent introduced herself and showed us to a table in what seemed to be the farthest, darkest corner of the restaurant.
She handed each of us a menu, and Spencer opened his with joyful enthusiasm. “I’ve been craving the trio of fish,” he said. “The Gull does a great gurnard, hake, and monkfish.”
“Sounds…interesting,” I responded, hoping they served hamburgers, too.
Katherine glanced at me. “The atmosphere is…quaint,” she said, “but the food is all locally sourced and fresh. You’ll love it.”
I tried to hide a shudder of revulsion as a server approached carrying several plates. The fish on them still had their heads on. Cloudy, cooked eyes seemed to stare reproachfully at me as he passed.
Katherine noticed my shiver and asked, “Are you cold? You can wear my sweater if you’d like.”
“I’m warm enough,” I assured her.
Ian chuckled. “It’s the dead fish parade,” he explained. “She doesn’t like seafood.”
“Oh dear,” Katherine said. “I forgot.”
“I’m sure they make other things,” Spencer remarked.
Katherine searched her menu and pointed triumphantly at a section titled Beef. “You can order steak and potatoes,” she said to me. “I know you love steak.”
“Bless all the cows in Cornwall,” I muttered thankfully.
Ian chuckled and grabbed my hand under the table. I gave him a conspiratorial smile.
“What was that?” Spencer asked.
“Nothing,” Ian and I replied in unison.
&n
bsp; I was trying to decide what I wanted to drink when I felt Ian tense up next to me. “No, no, no,” he groaned with a sharp look at his mother. “You didn’t tell me she was coming.”
“I didn’t know she was,” Katherine replied, turning her gaze on Spencer.
“What?” he asked innocently. “I told Valentine to bring her, but since Ian obviously has a girlfriend now, I think Helen’s little darling will leave him alone.”
Katherine shook her head. “No one is supposed to know he’s dating Alison,” she reminded him. “They want to keep it a secret until after her first roundtable.”
“Crap,” Spencer muttered. “Sorry, son.”
I’d felt the Vasitass coming toward The Gull, too, but didn’t understand why Ian was so weirded out by it. “What exactly is the problem?” I asked.
Katherine sighed. “It’s Rose. She’s had a crush on Ian since she was five. She can get a little obsessive about it sometimes.”
“A little obsessive,” Ian responded with raised eyebrows. “She’s a stalker. She used to follow me around the Arx all day… She would have slept outside my bedroom door at night if you’d let her. And she’s always touching me with her creepy little hands.”
“She’s not that bad,” his mother said dismissively.
Ian didn’t agree. He threw his napkin on the table. “Come on, Alison,” he said. “I’m not sticking around so Rose can manhandle me. We’ll walk back to the Arx.”
Across the table, Spencer chuckled, but Katherine was not amused. “You aren’t going anywhere,” she told him in a stern voice. “The three of them have felt your signature by now. Leaving would be rude.”
“You can’t avoid Rose forever,” Spencer cautioned. “You’ve got to set her straight or she’s never going to stop harassing you.”
“I told her she was like a sister to me,” he said. “I thought that made my feelings pretty clear. She pretended not to hear me.”
“Then figure out a way to get her to listen,” Spencer suggested.
Ian looked to have a sarcastic reply on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t say it because the Vasitass had entered The Gull and were walking our way.
Katherine stepped forward to hug Helen and Rose while Spencer and Ian shook hands with Valentine.
“You look so grown up,” Katherine said to Rose.
“I am grown up,” she replied, bounding over to Ian. “I’m seventeen.”
So much for polite conversation, I thought as she threw her arms around my boyfriend. He submitted to her embrace and patted her back awkwardly. Over his shoulder, Rose’s reddish-brown eyes met mine. The message I saw in them was clear: He’s mine.
I gave her a sweet smile. If only she knew.
“This is Valentine,” Helen said, introducing her likeness to me.
“Alison,” I replied, reaching out to shake his hand.
He was a small man with thick, white hair and dark, heavy-lidded eyes. His skin was wrinkled and discolored with age, but like all older dewing, he moved with the agility and grace of youth. Because of my discussion with Lillian, I expected him to be older than Helen, but the reality was astonishing. Valentine was close to Lillian’s age, and Helen was younger than Katherine. There had to be a century and a half difference between them. I hadn’t realized likeness could happen across such a large age gap.
“Let’s sit and order some food,” Katherine suggested. “I’m starving.”
“As am I,” replied Helen.
Everyone managed to claim a chair except for me. Rose took mine and moved it closer to Ian. Annoyed, I borrowed one from a neighboring table and wedged it into a space on the other side of her.
She ignored my existence and laid her hand on Ian’s leg. He startled, pushed it off, and inched away from her. Undeterred, she reached for him again.
I’d seen it happen often enough to have gotten over being jealous when girls moved on Ian. Rose wasn’t the first I’d seen throw herself at him, but she was definitely the most assertive.
“I understand you’ve been living in the Boston area, Alison,” Valentine said from across the table. When I nodded, he followed up with, “It must have been hard leaving your family and all you were familiar with.”
An image of the McKyes flashed into my mind, leaving me with a sharp stab of grief.
“Not really,” I replied as stoically as I could. “As far back as I can remember, I was in foster care. I’ve stayed in a lot of homes but never considered anyone in them my family. You learn not to get attached to people or places in the system.”
“How sad,” Helen said. “You have no family in the human realm and none in ours, either.”
Katherine stiffened at the subtle barb in her remark. “Alison may not have family, but she has us,” she said. “We plan to support her in any way she needs.”
“Of course,” Helen responded. “And she can count on Valentine and me as well. We’ll do our best to help guide her transition into this new phase of life.”
Thinking I wouldn’t let her guide me across a deserted street, I gave her a false smile of gratitude.
Rose scooted her chair even closer to Ian. I could tell she was watching him under her lashes, and when he laid his hand on the table, she laid hers next to it so the backs touched.
“Daddy just bought me a car,” she said, turning her eyes up to him.
“That’s nice,” he remarked, quickly moving his hand back to his lap.
“It’s an Audi TT coupe,” she added.
Helen smiled indulgently at her daughter. “I thought something more practical was in order,” she said, “but Rose had her mind set on a sports car. Since she’s doing so well in school, we really couldn’t say no.”
She proceeded to tell us what a paragon of intelligence, beauty, and charity Rose was. Some of her claims were too far-fetched to believe, but her daughter wasn’t embarrassed by them. She just nodded occasionally and kept trying to engage Ian in a game of footsy under the table.
I could totally understand why Ian wanted to leave. Her behavior was obnoxious.
Trying to ignore her, I concentrated on learning anything I could about the clans from our table conversation. Unfortunately, it was all pretty general stuff. Each time there was a pause, I experienced new hope Spencer or Katherine would press the Vasitass about their earlier weirdness. They never did. By the time our food came, I was fighting disappointment. It seemed I wasn’t going to learn anything relevant after all.
Things changed as I was finishing my steak. With a serious expression, Valentine looked at Spencer and said, “There’s a matter Helen and I were hoping to discuss with you.”
“I thought that might be the case,” he responded. “I got the impression you had something on your mind when we stopped by your house.”
Valentine nodded. “It’s clan business.”
“Do I have to stay while you talk about a bunch of boring stuff?” Rose asked with a whine in her voice.
“No,” Helen replied, reaching across the table to pat her hand. “Why don’t you go for a walk on the pier. We’ll join you when we’re finished.”
Her face brightened. “Come with me, Ian,” she urged.
“I can’t,” he replied. “Alison and I need to get back to the Arx.”
Feeling a few twinges of guilt for abandoning him to Rose, I said, “If they’re going to discuss clan business, I should probably stay.”
“You should definitely stay,” Katherine agreed. “You need to be as well-informed as possible before the roundtable.”
“Great,” Rose said, grabbing Ian’s hand. “There’s a new surf shop on the pier. They’re selling an original John Kelly board. Let’s go see it.”
Ian’s eyes widened. He loved everything to do with surfing, and even I knew seeing a John Kelly board in person was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing. He glanced from her to the pier and back again.
“That’s a tough one, son,” Spencer remarked with a sympathetic look.
Ian took a deep breath a
nd gave in. “Okay, I’ll go with you for a minute.”
Rose pivoted and pulled him toward the door.
I watched them go, thinking Spencer was right. Ian needed to make her understand he wasn’t interested or she was going to go on harassing him until one or the other of them likenessed with someone else.
Spencer sat back in his chair and stretched his legs out under the table. “What’s on your mind?” he asked Valentine.
“The new Truss clan chief plans to ask for a loan,” he replied. “A big one.”
“We hadn’t heard so officially,” Katherine said, “but we expected she would.”
“Sebastian liquidated all the Truss assets,” Spencer said. “The new chief is trying to run things with limited transportation, no headquarters, no properties, and no functioning labs.”
“Be that as it may,” Helen said. “We don’t owe the Truss anything. As far as a lot of us are concerned, the Truss can figure out their own financial mess. Sebastian left plenty of other problems to deal with.”
Valentine nodded. “We’ve invested significant resources to cover up his ties to the opposition candidate in the last United States election, and we’re still trying to round up all the documents that link him to blackmailing members of Congress. It seems to me we’re doing more than enough already.”
“But if Sebastian were still around,” I said, “he’d be creating new problems. In comparison, giving the Truss a loan doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.”
The four of them glanced my way as though they suddenly remembered I was sitting at the table.
“Wouldn’t it benefit all of us to help the new chief get her clan running smoothly?” I pressed. “When she’s got a handle on things, we won’t have to worry about cleaning up potential messes in the future.”
Helen’s expression turned sour, and Valentine’s eyes took on a wary look. I could almost read their thoughts: Looks like the Laurel is going to be a problem after all.
“She makes some good points,” Katherine said.
“Perhaps,” Helen said with hint of nastiness, “but you don’t understand what it takes to run a clan, Alison. This new chief is young and inexperienced. She might not be able to hold them together.”