Isabelle stepped inside. Samuel followed.
The elevator doors shut, and the elevator rose.
At least, Samuel thought it rose. He didn’t experience the sensation of motion. The interior was utterly silent. No Muzak, no mechanical noises, no ding of the bell as they passed floors. If they passed floors. They could have been standing still, as far as Samuel could tell.
He looked at Isabelle and lifted his eyebrows.
She whispered, “Indiana Jones and the Cone of Silence.”
He laughed softly and took her hand. “Are you frightened?”
“Yes.”
“I am, too.” He thought of the white marble lobby, the gold embellishments, the beauty and the power it all demonstrated. “This place holds a fatal attraction for me.”
Chapter 56
“What?” Isabelle’s head whipped around. She stared at Samuel in consternation.
Without warning, the doors opened.
He pressed her hand in support.
They stepped out into a large, empty, dimly lit office.
But not quite empty; in the corner was a gray steel desk.
They walked toward it.
A green-shaded desk light shone on the surface. In the chair sat a man: scrawny, unimpressive, his eyes a dark glitter in an unilluminated face. They could clearly see his pen, a platinum Montblanc, and his hands as he signed documents, one after another, and those hands were thin-skinned, liver-spotted, with the raised veins and swollen joints of an elderly man.
They reached the desk.
The hands stopped signing. The man looked up.
“Mr. Osgood?” Samuel asked.
“That’s right.” His voice was gentle, with a vague Southern drawl.
Isabelle positioned herself directly in front of him. “How disconcerting to realize such a soft-spoken, frail-looking gentleman bears so much evil within him.”
Samuel swallowed a gasp. He hadn’t expected that Isabelle would go on the attack.
Apparently Osgood was surprised, too, for his hands stilled. He blinked, and again Samuel saw the dark glint of his eyes. “It’s a gift, Miss Mason.” He smiled, but that smile held no comfort, no warmth, no humanity. Osgood’s smile was a cruelty, a hint of the torment in store.
A piece of art had been sculpted into the wall, an amazing likeness of two men and one woman struggling in a death agony, fighting to escape from the wall that had trapped them in place. It was a sample of hell aptly demonstrated by an artist whose skill surpassed talent.
Disturbed, intent on finishing their business as soon as possible, Samuel stared into Osgood’s shadowed face. “A contract was taken out by Todd Winstead on Miss Mason with your corporation. The contract was fulfilled.”
“And yet she stands before me.” The smooth voice was politely incredulous.
“This morning she died,” Samuel said.
“As we know through our theology, death is, of course, not the end, but I find that someone who has recently left this life doesn’t, er, breathe and speak and move. Miss Mason’s clothing appears to have taken more damage than she has.” Osgood’s head turned toward Samuel. “As have yours. So you’ll pardon me if I don’t believe—”
Isabelle leaned across the desk and placed her hand on his.
The physical interruption made Osgood freeze.
Samuel wanted to yank her hand away. What is she doing?
Osgood’s eyes flared, no longer dark, but blue and hot as coals. “You cannot heal me, Miss Mason.”
“No, I can’t.” Her voice pitied him. “But you can feel the truth, can’t you? You have powers far greater than mine. I am alive, yet this morning I was dead. The contract has been fulfilled.”
“Yes.” His voice ground with irritation and malice. “I can feel that.”
“You’re bound by eternal rules not of your making. So call off your dogs.”
“It’s done.” As if her touch burned him, Osgood pulled his hand out from under hers. “You will have no more trouble with assassins from my organization.”
“From any organization,” she insisted.
Yes, Isabelle knew enough to carefully examine Osgood’s promise and close the loophole there.
“How can I guarantee that?” Osgood asked.
“Your assassins gave me to know that your organization did not allow for competition in their territory,” Samuel told him.
Osgood glanced at the wall. “Of course they did. Very well.” He wearily waved that fragile-looking hand. “I’ll let it be known that I would take it ill should you suffer an injury from an assassin.”
Samuel started to insist on more assurances.
But Osgood said, “No. That is as far as I am forced to go. Miss Mason might, after all, sustain an injury or lose her life in the ridiculously wild activities the Chosen Ones believe necessary to justify their existence.”
Isabelle widened her eyes. “We don’t know what you mean.”
Osgood snorted softly.
For the first time since she had returned to him, miraculously alive again, Samuel could breathe again. This was what he had come for. With Osgood’s capitulation, Samuel’s mission was complete.
Isabelle was safe.
But Osgood wasn’t finished with them yet. The blue flames faded from his eyes, but in a voice rich with malice, he said, “Mr. Faa, I see you are in good health.”
“Very good health, thank you.”
“My employees reported to me that they’d killed you. I was displeased.” Osgood gestured toward the wall, toward the horrific sculpture.
In a flash, Samuel realized why the faces looked so real.
He’d last seen them, alive and vicious, on dock thirty-seven A. The Other, the man with the pistol and deadly aim, and Shrimp, frozen in his last agony . . . or was the agony ongoing?
This wasn’t art. This was torture.
“Mr. Faa, I have long watched you with interest.” Osgood leaned back in his chair, his face deep in shadow, and played with his pen, a hypnotizing motion. “There’s a place for you in my organization. As lead counsel to my law team, you would make great contributions to our development. Rather than the pitiful existence you now live, chasing after lost children and comforting broken old men ...”
He let the sentence dangle, but Isabelle heard the unspoken words: Broken old men like Irving Shea.
Why was Samuel letting him get away with such an insult to the elderly gentleman who had been so good to them?
Osgood continued. “You, Mr. Faa, could have wealth beyond your imaginings, the authority of life and death over thousands, the freedom to use your gift as you wished whenever you wished.”
Isabelle was mesmerized by the pen, spinning slowly around and around in the light shining on the desk, and by the power Osgood projected.
“Mr. Faa, that proposition is appealing to you, is it not?” Osgood asked.
When Samuel didn’t answer, alarm gave her the strength to turn away from Osgood and look at Samuel.
He stood motionless, watching the pen with a fierce intensity.
And she remembered what he had said in the elevator. This place holds a fatal attraction for me.
Of course. As a child, Samuel had been beaten down time and again—by the circumstances of his birth, by the woman who raised him, by Darren, even by Patricia, working in defense of her daughter. All his life, Samuel had craved power, and in that pursuit he had been clawing his way to the top of the legal profession.
Then the Chosen Ones had happened. Forced to join, he’d been one of seven, struggling against impossible odds, without influence or income of his own.
This place holds a fatal attraction for me.
She wanted to reach out to him, to tell him no.
But she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
Because Osgood had somehow used his powers to leave her unable to move, to speak?
Or because she knew this was a decision Samuel had to make on his own?
“I signed a contract with the Ch
osen Ones.” Samuel’s voice sounded far away, as if he had sunk inside himself far beyond her reach.
“Mr. Faa, I comprehend your concerns and admire your integrity. You think of your vow to the Chosen Ones, the contract you signed.” Osgood sounded as if he were Samuel’s best friend, and still he turned the pen around and around. “But you didn’t want to sign that contract. The Gypsy Travel Agency board of directors blackmailed you. You’re a lawyer. You know a contract entered into under duress would never stand up in court. And why should it? It’s not legally binding.”
“I’ve always known that.” Still Samuel used that quiet, subdued voice.
“You signed that contract because you would have gone to prison if you hadn’t. At the time, you truly had no choice, and I’m appalled that an organization that touted itself as the bastion of goodness and defender of the weak would stoop to such behavior.” Osgood sounded indignant on Samuel’s behalf.
“It was the cause of their downfall,” Samuel said.
“Exactly! Yet now, the Gypsy Travel Agency is gone. The proof of your influence on that witness—which, let us remember, you performed in the pursuit of goodness and justice—is gone.” Osgood lifted one hand to toss the image of the Gypsy Travel Agency away. The other hand spun the pen in slow, constant motion.
“It is gone,” Samuel agreed.
Now Isabelle knew what to say. “The Gypsy Travel Agency was not a faceless thing. It was an organization filled with people, and they’re gone, Osgood, because you killed them.”
Beside her, Samuel stirred.
Osgood turned on her and snapped, “That was never proved.”
Had she broken the spell he had cast over Samuel? Could she? “So you deny you caused the explosion that destroyed the Gypsy Travel Agency, with its repository of knowledge, ancient texts, and artifacts? You deny killing hundreds of people in your pursuit of dominance?”
“Please, Osgood, let me answer for you.” Samuel looked at her, his eyes as black and shiny as obsidian, and in a tone she’d never heard from him before, in the tone of a ruthless, immoral lawyer, he said, “Look at Osgood. He’s old, he’s thin, he’s feeble. He’s a businessman. To accuse him of anything else is mere supposition.”
“Samuel!” She held out her hand to him.
He stepped away. “Let Osgood finish.”
Her heart pounded in dismay.
“Mr. Faa, you’ve just proved my theory correct. You would make an excellent counselor for my organization. And the power you would wield! You would be second only to me in strength, in authority, in influence. You would be my face to the world. You would own New York City. You would direct every operation already in place, expand into new territory. Men would cower at the sound of your voice.” Pale, quiescent, Osgood coiled in his chair like a huge python whose prey was willingly walking into his maw. “And women . . . ah, women. I feel your desires. I understand them. No one understands better than me. You love women. Pretty women, young women.”
Osgood’s gloating gaze touched Isabelle.
Repulsed, she stepped back.
“Think of the women who would come to you, beg you for favors, offer you anything, adore you, please you in every way you could ever imagine. . . . You would be a god, long-lived, vigorous, commanding the loyalty of all you touched.” Osgood allowed his voice to trail off, waiting for his words to work their magic.
Isabelle wanted time to go backward. She wanted never to have come here. She would rather spend her life in hiding from Osgood’s assassins than to face . . . this.
This isn’t worth it. Having my life back isn’t worth it if I leave Samuel behind.
I can’t leave Samuel behind.
“Mr. Faa”—Osgood’s pen spun—“let me say a final word to dismiss any lingering doubts you might have. The Chosen Ones and the Others are simply flip sides of the coin. Members have been defecting in both directions for time immemorial.”
At last Samuel stirred. He smiled, that toothy lawyer-shark smile Isabelle despised. He looked up from the pen, into Osgood’s eyes. “You’re very persuasive. You say all the right words, push all the right buttons. I do long for power and glory. There’s not a doubt in my mind that I could run New York City better than it is run now. I do love women, all women, everything about them.”
Samuel’s words made Isabelle sick. He was succumbing to temptation.
What could she do? She had to stop him.
Somehow, she had to make him realize that this was a betrayal of all that he was, all he had pledged himself to be.
He took Isabelle’s hands. “But only one woman holds my heart. If I took your offer, Osgood, I couldn’t have Isabelle, and without her, what good would wealth and power do me?”
Isabelle’s head buzzed. She took a good, deep breath, the first she had taken since Osgood had addressed Samuel. And her eyes cleared.
She should never have doubted him.
Samuel had made the right decision.
He was hers.
The pen stopped. The voice froze. “Touching, Mr. Faa. Very touching.” The voice warmed and enticed once more. “For you, I could possibly bend the rules and influence Miss Mason to stay at your side.”
Isabelle stilled in terror. She had thought Samuel was Osgood’s prey. Now she realized that if Samuel failed this test, she would be the one who vanished.
She should never have worried.
Samuel lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it, and smiled at her. “If she were influenced to stay with me, she would not be Isabelle. I only want her if she wants me.”
“Samuel ...” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
“You must be very proud of yourself, Miss Mason.” Osgood’s gaze sliced over her.
“No.” She squeezed the fingers that held hers, and cleared her throat. “I’m proud of Samuel.”
Osgood stood. “Very well. If our business is concluded, I’ll walk you back down to the lobby. I’m sure your friends are anxious about you.”
“Yes,” Samuel said. “It’s time to leave.”
“Before you’re further tempted by my offer?” Osgood asked.
“No.” Samuel gave a jaw-cracking yawn. “Before I fall asleep right here. Remember, I was up all night fighting assassins.”
“And Miss Mason was healing your wounds. Quite the miracle workers you two are.” As Osgood moved into the room, they could see him clearly, a frail elderly man with a receding hairline, a receding chin, and brown eyes that to Isabelle seemed unremarkable—until he turned them on her, and she shivered. Walking around his desk to a door hidden in the wall, he opened it and gestured them inside. “If you’re up for a little exercise, we’ll walk down.”
At first, Isabelle didn’t understand why they took the winding spiral staircase. Then, as they descended, she saw them. Faces, like the faces in his office, struggling against the white marble, dying in agony, trying to escape . . .
The walls in this building were cemeteries.
And Osgood wanted them to see.
Chapter 57
Osgood opened a narrow door set in a hidden panel in the wall of the lobby. “Here you are, Miss Mason, Mr. Faa. I hope we meet again one day under different circumstances.”
“Very different circumstances.” Isabelle offered her hand, wanting to touch him once more, to feel what she had felt before.
She knew that information was important.
He ignored her gesture—because he didn’t want her to know him better? He turned his head as if listening to something, then walked out of the stairwell and into the corridor.
Samuel and Isabelle exchanged glances, and followed.
As they stepped into the lobby, Isabelle saw the Chosen Ones gathered around the long plaque that decorated the lobby, and from the midst of the group, she heard Rosamund’s voice loud and clear.
“In the mural,” she said, “in these two panels, we see Lucifer’s expulsion from heaven, his fall toward earth, and how his angel wings peeled away during his fiery descen
t.”
The group murmured and shuffled forward, their gazes fixed on another panel, looking for all the world like a group of tourists spellbound by their guide.
Rosamund continued. “Here we see how he completed his descent to hell and set himself up as lord of the wicked.”
The group murmured and shuffled again.
“Most interesting of all, because this is a part of the tale I’ve never heard before, here Lucifer exults as he entombs the final surviving feather from his angel wings in the building’s foundation.” Rosamund’s voice rose questioningly. “It looks like this building. Is that right, Wendy?”
A strange woman’s voice answered her. “Yes, it’s this building. See? Here Lucifer—who, by the way, looks incredibly like our boss—clearly believes that the wing makes the building invincible. Which, according to my research, it should!”
Who was this Wendy? One of Osgood’s corporate librarians? One of his researchers?
Isabelle glanced at Osgood. He stood frozen, listening without emotion or any apparent flicker of interest.
She knew that wasn’t true.
Whoever the woman was, she was giving information freely, without thought to the consequences.
Or perhaps she was so like Rosamund, she never imagined that consequences for providing knowledge could even exist.
The group moved again to allow everyone a good look at the carvings, and for the first time Isabelle saw the stranger. Although Wendy was an older female with bobbed gray hair, she bore a marked similarity to Rosamund in her boundless enthusiasm and her knowledge of the arcane.
“According to my research”—Rosamund’s eyes snapped with excitement—“and that research is confined to only one source—”
Wendy’s eyes narrowed. “A good source?”
Rosamund nodded. “So far, I’ve been unable to document the texts back any further than the late 1950s, but I’m following a lead into the ancient Abyssinian texts—”
“Darling.” Aaron placed his hand on Rosamund’s shoulder to recall her to the subject. “You can talk with your new librarian friend about sources and research trails later. Right now, we’re all hanging on your words. What is it that you think you know?”
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