By the end of the third hour, tears streamed down her face and her head was killing her.
Endelle paced and shouted, “You should be able to do this. I don’t get it. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Havily would have responded but words wouldn’t leave her lips. She wondered if she might have permanent brain damage from all the ways Endelle had invaded her mind trying to get her to understand the skill.
But it was Marcus who stepped in front of Her Supremeness and said, “Maybe it’s the goddamn teacher.”
Endelle lifted a hand, surely to strike him dead.
Havily even rose to a sitting position, her mind spinning wildly, her hands outstretched as though ready to stop the slaying, but Marcus smiled and dipped his chin.
Endelle, much to Havily’s surprise, started to laugh.
“How about we try again after lunch,” Marcus suggested.
“Fine,” Endelle barked.
Havily didn’t want lunch. She wanted to crawl under a rock. And never return. Her head ached as though someone had moved a boulder inside her head, then sat on it, was still sitting on it, was jumping up and down on it.
A soft knock on the door, then Alison entered. “Lunch is ready. Anyone hungry?” Her timing was perfect, which Havily suspected wasn’t mere happenstance.
Her gaze fell on Havily and her eyes widened. As though she always did so, she crossed the room and put a hand on Havily’s forehead. Havily gasped because it felt as though sheets of warm water spilled through her brain and eased her,
eased her.
The boulder disappeared along with the six-foot-five creature that had done all the jumping, thank you very much.
More tears fell, but this time with relief. She felt an arm under her elbow, Alison’s arm. “Come on. I ordered spaghetti with Italian sausage, your favorite.”
“My first meeting is at two,” Havily said as she reached the conference room. She paused on the threshold. She had intended to argue with Endelle about continuing the lessons after lunch, but she was too stunned by the state of the long executive table. There were fresh pink and white roses in a large silver vase in the center. White ceramic bowls, filled with spaghetti and the promised sausage, sat on maroon silk place mats. The smell of the sauce caused Havily’s stomach to set up a dedicated rumbling.
She took a seat next to Parisa in a chair opposite the door. Goblets containing Medichi’s Cabernet label sat above a fork and a large spoon. There were even linen napkins.
Endelle plopped down in a chair next to Marcus. She frowned at the food. “COPASS has set up Parisa’s hearing for tomorrow at one. Can you believe that shit? The same day as the Festival.”
Parisa, who had just taken a sip of wine, choked. “I have a hearing?” she cried.
Endelle rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t concern you. I mean, you have to be there, blah, blah, blah, but basically Greaves and I will square off and we’ll see who wins.” She pointed to herself. “That will be … hello …
me.
”
Havily glanced at Parisa and tried to catch her eye, to somehow encourage her not to take Endelle too much at her word. Instead the ascendiate set her goblet down and put her hands in her lap.
Havily glanced at Endelle. She wanted to kick some sense into the administrator. The woman had no idea how her flippant, scornful, way-too-casual remarks could be interpreted. On the other hand, assuming Parisa chose to align herself with Endelle, the mortal-with-wings probably needed to get used to Her Supremeness.
Havily used her fork and swirled the spaghetti against her spoon.
“So Greaves will be there?” Marcus asked. “Somehow I thought he played an invisible role here in the Valley.”
Endelle, sitting to the left of Marcus, shoved the empty chair next to her away, leaned back, and angled her legs up onto the table, crossing them at the ankles. The heels of her stilettos looked like a pair of daggers. Havily shook her head. The black-and-white-striped fur had a faint musky odor and slid up her thighs. That and her black leather bustier just didn’t add up to “Supreme High Administrator.”
She shrugged at Marcus’s question then folded a bottle of Dos Equis into her hand, apparently uninterested in the wine. She flicked the lid off with the tip of her finger, which created a spark, then drank deep. Afterward, she belched. What a fine example of womanhood. “Oh, the bastard shows up when it suits him and COPASS suits him.” She turned to Alison, who sat on the other side of Marcus. “I’ll want you to do some empathic surveillance work, take the temperature of the room, see how many more of these freaks he’s turned.”
Parisa once more picked up her wine. She still hadn’t touched her spaghetti. She’d grown very quiet.
Endelle glanced at her then said, “Just so ya know, I have the worst manners on the planet. I have no subtlety and I hope you can get used to it. Thorne said he’s sure I’ve had a couple of strokes given how old I am, which has inhibited normal social screening. I told him to go fuck himself.”
Parisa stared at her for a long moment. “We had a part-time librarian with your attitude. I fired her sorry ass the second day after I got promoted.”
Endelle lifted her brows, her lips parted. She chuckled. “Well, then let’s hope you don’t get promoted over me.” She took a long swallow of beer then released a sigh and another belch, only this time she politely covered her mouth with her hand. “You’ll need to be tough in this world, ascendiate. Just remember that. Ascension ain’t for sissies.”
“No shit,” Alison murmured.
Havily’s gaze shot to her then she laughed. Alison so rarely made use of profanity that when she did, it was always funny because it was always unexpected. Marcus smiled as well.
Endelle pursed her lips. “I know this hasn’t been a barrel of laughs for you, Parisa, but I want you to know that I’ve decided to assign Medichi as your Guardian of Ascension until we can make you safe here. In the meantime, I want you to stay at his villa. We’ll let him sleep the rest of the day; then he’s to stick close to you until you’ve completed your rite of ascension. You do know about all this shit, right?”
“Yes,” Parisa said, her gaze fixed to the untouched pasta. “Havily explained everything to me.”
“Good. And don’t worry, we’ll get all this sorted out at the committee meeting tomorrow.”
Parisa released a heavy sigh.
* * *
After lunch, Marcus leaned an elbow on the mantel of the fireplace on the west wall of Endelle’s office. He looked his woman up and down. She wore a mid-calf gray silk dress and a dappled scarf, tall gray leather heels. Dynamite. And so at odds with the skunk-lady.
What a contrast between the women, at least from a fashion viewpoint. One thing about Havily, she set an excellent tone for the administrative offices.
But in the past hour, as Endelle barked her way through the coaching session, Havily had made little progress. Though she reclined on the chaise-longue intended to encourage her darkening abilities, Marcus felt certain, given what he understood of Havily’s temperament, that her concentration was fogged by the fact that she had a meeting in less than an hour with her committee heads.
“But I can’t even feel,” she said, “anywhere in my body or in my mind or over my nerve endings, a sensation that remotely resembles splitting myself into two parts. It makes no sense.”
“It’s not supposed to make sense,” Endelle cried. “What are you, a fucking moron? How many times have I said this is an ability, a power, just like dematerializing. You can’t
think
yourself into a self-split, you just have to feel it.”
“But I can’t
feel
it,” Havily shouted. She swung her legs over the side of the chaise-longue. “I can’t do this. I know I need to, but there’s nothing there, no sensation, nothing. Every time I think of the darkening
,
swoosh, I’m there.”
“Then stop thinking!”
Marcus tried not to smile but there was something perverted in the male psyche that liked to see two women, two
beautiful
women fight, maybe with the hope that they’d get physical and start wrestling. The thought of Havily on the ground wrestling with another woman did him in.
Havily turned toward him very slowly, her mouth agape. “Why am I smelling fennel?” she cried, her temper now raging in his direction as she rose to her feet.
He could only shift and rest his back against the mantel. He crossed his arms over his chest. He shrugged and said, “I was just hoping this was going to turn into a catfight. One of my favorite things.”
Havily hunched her shoulders, narrowed her eyes, and growled. “You’d better be careful, oh-grinning-bastard, or you’ll be dead meat in about two seconds.”
Okay, he was enjoying this way too much and completely at her expense. He turned away and tried to compose his face but he couldn’t keep from smiling and chuckling. When from his peripheral vision he could see that she had now planted her hands on her hips, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“You are no help at all,” she cried. “Maybe you should leave the room. Or help us out here. Do you have any suggestions?”
This time Endelle chuckled. “You know, Morgan, for a minute there, with all that sarcasm and the wag of your head when you said that, you sounded just like me.”
Havily gasped again and whirled. “And you,” she cried, her light green eyes blazing as she shot a finger sword-like in Endelle’s direction, “You’re the worst!”
Endelle, instead of throwing the woman to the floor and planting her stiletto on Havily’s neck, threw her head back and laughed, not a simple trill, but the full-throated, deep-chested laughter of a woman who had seen and done everything.
The room calmed down and Havily once more sat on the chaise-longue, her knees together but her feet splayed to the side. She looked like she was about ten except that her gaze moved back and forth over the zebra skin in front of the desk. Her lips worked and her brow crinkled. The funny thing was, she didn’t seem all that upset. She was like Endelle in that once she gave vent, the moment passed.
Marcus watched her and put his mind to the difficulty. He wanted to help but he’d never done anything split-self. He couldn’t imagine the difficulty involved. Finally, he said, “I know I don’t have a basis of experience from which to offer advice, but Havily maybe this is more about you than about the skill itself.”
“What do you mean?” Her brow was still wrinkled.
“I’m going to get into so much trouble saying this, but I think it might go to the issue here.”
“Just say it,” Endelle snapped. “Havily’s not as delicate as she looks.”
Endelle was both right and wrong on this one. Havily was a helluva lot stronger than she looked, than she presented herself. But she could be wounded … easily. Still, he knew he was on the right track when he said, “You don’t trust yourself, you don’t trust life, and I don’t blame you. So how can you even think about splitting yourself into two pieces when you’ve spent the last century holding yourself together?”
The room got very quiet.
Havily rose once more from the chaise-longue. She looked like he’d slapped her, hard, right across the face. She rubbed her forehead and shook her head. “If that’s the case then we’re done here.”
She moved around the bottom of the chaise and headed to the door.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Endelle cried. “We’re not finished! We’ve just gotten started.”
Havily kept moving. “I have a meeting I need to prepare for. We can practice tomorrow if you want.”
“Get the fuck back here.”
“Endelle,” Marcus cried. “Let her go. This is enough for one day and she has the Reception tonight.”
Endelle turned on him just the same. “But you’ve felt it, too. I’ve seen it inside your head. She has to figure this out … now. Her life depends on it.”
“I know,” he said. “Damn, I wish we were both wrong about this but I’m going to the meeting. I want to talk to the head of security.”
“Ten heads of security won’t matter if Greaves gets involved tonight or tomorrow, you know that.”
“Then I’m just going to have to stick damn close so that if he messes with Havily, I can be the physical shield she needs.”
* * *
At six in the evening, long after Marcus and Havily, as well as Parisa, had returned from the administrative offices, Medichi approached the library, his tread slow and measured. Marcus and Havily were dressing for the Ambassadors Reception while he had orders to stay with Parisa at his villa, serving as her goddamn guardian.
He’d accepted his new orders from Endelle but only after he’d shouted at her for about ten minutes, paced her office a dozen times, then cursed her for laughing at him. He’d almost lost it when she’d spoken the word
breh-hedden.
He had never hated her quite so much as in that moment.
But if all that hadn’t been enough, he’d actually suggested she assign guardian duty to Santiago. But the moment the words had left his mouth he’d started listing all the parameters he would require for his brother warrior to be around Parisa, to wit, a female Liaison Officer would have to be brought on board to stay twenty-four/seven by Parisa’s side, she must sleep in Parisa’s room, she should be someone Santiago could neither seduce nor manipulate, and Santiago should be required,
required,
to sleep in a tent on the villa grounds and not inside the house.