Cheat the Grave (21 page)

I was back at the Archer estate a half hour later. Tripp was right; I did have a party to throw—more specifically, a rehearsal dinner Olivia Archer would be thrilled to put on for her best friend's mother on the night before her wedding. Despite the threat of Mackie's attack, I still had to keep Warren from being suspicious, all while trying to draw the Tulpa in close.

So when my driver arrived, I'd shoved Tripp into the trunk of the Town Car, along with a paper bag filled with the incriminating weapons. He eyed the bag warily when I placed it next to him, but Kevin—getting a “forgotten” bottle of wine at the store—would be back soon. Tripp also wasn't happy about having to leave my side, but he'd never blend with tonight's tony crowd, and we couldn't be seen entering the mansion together.

I exited the car, using the gigantic front steps along with the earliest guests, already arriving. My rumpled appearance earned me a few surprised stares, but I just smiled and waved as I headed up the winding front staircase. I'd pop upstairs for a quick shower—or maybe a splash bath, since scenes from Hitchcock's
Psycho
were winging through
my mind—then pull my hair back into a slick chignon for the evening. Olivia Archer's body was
her
weapon, and it didn't take a whole lot to pull that trigger.

“Your friends are waiting.”

The voice came from behind, and I jumped so high I half expected someone to score it. Whirling at the responding chuckle, I saw a figure slip from the shadows. The smirk that met my gaze wasn't a look any housekeeper should use on their employer.

Then again, Helen wasn't just any housekeeper.

She also wasn't really named Helen. Lindy Maguire was her given name in the Zodiac world, and she was the Tulpa's most loyal, lovesick lackey. Placed in this household years ago to look after the Archer interests on his behalf, she'd contributed more than a little to Xavier's death. Sure, he'd been mean-hearted, greedy, and got what was coming to him, but humans were walking squeaky toys to her. She'd have no problem sending me to an equally agonizing fate.

“You're late.” She held a flat gift box in one hand, vaguely familiar. She was also dressed for the occasion in crisp black and white, an old fashioned kerchief holding back her hair. Her skin was still sallow, her face long, but there was something additionally off about her today, I thought, tilting my head. I inhaled, but scented only drugstore perfume, and cleaning supplies. Still, it was something aggressive and predatory, because even with mortal senses, I instinctively tensed.

She tilted her head from one side to the other, like an insect considering its next meal. I half hoped Mackie
would
strike tonight. Maybe cleave her in two on his way to me. Then again, if she knew he wanted to kill the Zodiac's former so-called savior, she'd lay a red carpet at his feet then ask for his autograph when he was done.

“I brought this for you.” She held the box out, so close to my chest I had to take it. I shook it, straining for a rattler's shake or a bomb's tick. Nothing.

“What is it?” I asked suspiciously.

“Well, your little friends told me you had plans to reminisce about mothers and families. I thought you might want to join in the conversation.”

She smiled, sweet as saccharin, and I forced a smile in return. No doubt this was some item that would have Olivia tearing up. I merely inclined my head and tucked it beneath my arm. “Thank you.”

Helen frowned, obviously disappointed I wouldn't be opening it now, then recovered, lifting her chin. “By the way, Xavier's private consultant called here this afternoon. He said you have plans for a lunch meeting?”

She was fishing. The Tulpa had told her we'd met, and her job was to make sure we did so again as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the question marks stamping her retinas were jealous green swirls.

Schoolgirl crushes, I thought wryly, not just for schoolgirls anymore.

“Yeah, I might not keep that.” I shook my head. “Like, I don't even know his
name.
”

In my defense, I
was
screaming at myself inside to shut up.

“I'm sure if you take some of your precious time out of all-night keggers you'll find he's a font of valuable information.”

So was the encyclopedia, but it didn't try to suck out your soul in return.

My response was airy in contrast to her hiss. “It is a rather hectic life.”

“Well it ends tonight.”

“My life?” It was a flippant comment…but I wasn't so sure that wasn't what she meant.

A small sneer lifted her top lip, and her pale skin was mottled red. “You'll be staying here from this night on. It's time you shouldered more responsibility as the sole remaining member of the Archer dynasty.”

Even Olivia wouldn't have let that pass without comment. “You don't even like me, Helen, so what's it to you?”

She lifted her chin. “Your father wanted it this way.”

She referenced Xavier, but the Tulpa was the one she meant. And “Helen” was so blindly in love with the Shadow leader I doubted she even saw her own reasons for it anymore. The spark igniting those feelings all those years ago had probably snuffed into long-cold ash, and she just held it so tightly inside of her it had yet to come apart. Not that she could afford to let it go. Everything around it, all her insides and reasons and feelings, would crumble if she did. It defined her life. Without it, I bet she wouldn't even know how to live.

“You miss him, don't you?” I asked softly, ostensibly referencing Xavier too. “I understand, you know. You think you can count on someone to always be there, but sometimes they're gone even before they leave. Sometimes,” I said, shaking my head sadly, “they've been gone for years.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Then let me clarify.” I stared at her, tried to regain a sense of deference, and failed. “Fuck my father and what he wanted from me. I'm not a belonging, and no one claims me. Got it?”
Pass that along to your schoolgirl crush, you bitch.

Helen's face was sandblasted shock. “Olivia…?”

“And fuck you too for being such a goddamned sycophant.” My mouth was dry but my tone never wavered. “He never thought of you as anything but a tool. So keep dusting, Helen. Because you and I both know you're just here to keep things clean.”

I pushed past her then, and wondered what I'd smell if I could still manage it. Shock like an acid burn? Sorrow like stale air freshener? Then I forced myself to stop wondering, to cease caring if I ever smelled emotion again. There was no point in lamenting that loss.

And, I thought, shutting the door behind me, there was no pity for Shadows.

“That is one nosy twunt,” Cher said, cocking her head at the closed door. Helen could be heard stomping down the hallway, and Cher's rude amalgamation only increased the effect. I smiled and looked for Suzanne, before hearing water running in the adjoining bathroom. “She'll probably offer to bring up some cookies and milk just so she can spy on us. We can't let her ruin our sleepover, okay?”

Shit
. I tossed the box Helen had given me on the dresser, then flopped on the bed next to Cher. I'd entirely forgotten about the sleepover. It'd been a sound enough idea in the monotonous safety of my sickbed, at a time when I believed the supernatural world had abandoned me altogether.

Cher, misinterpreting the wince on my face, smoothed the hair back from my forehead. “Don't worry. I've brought enough alcohol and chocolate to last the night. We'll bar the door with a chair back like we did when we were kids.”

“Sounds great,” I lied, because it sounded dangerous. I couldn't allow Cher, or anyone else, to remain in this house any longer than necessary. If Mackie knew I was here—
and odds were he did—he wouldn't wait long before trying for me again.

Suzanne appeared just then, and clapped like a schoolgirl upon seeing me. “Oh, good! I was starting to get worried. And hungry. Arun flew in his personal chef from Delhi. Get ready for some Tandoori to-die-for!”

I momentarily wondered what it was like to live in that brain.

Cher, used to it—a party to it—reached over the bedside to hoist an overnight duffel. “I brought the letters too.”

“Letters?” I asked absently, watching Suzanne apply poinsettia lipstick.

“The ones I told you about before?” She crossed her arms, piqued. “On the party bus, remember?”

“Nah. It kinda fell out of my head when you got hospitalized,” I told Cher, though I did remember now—the letters her birth mother had written when she found out she was dying.

“I thought tonight would be a good time to reminisce.”

I glanced at Suzanne. Weren't we supposed to be celebrating? Looking forward, not back? But Suzanne shrugged as she caught my gaze through the mirror, seemingly more concerned with her updo than anything else. “Oh, I think it's a wonderful idea. We're products of our pasts, after all. And of the people who shaped them. I'm not jealous when it comes to love. I want my baby to feel as much love as possible.”

Cher teared up. “Aw, Momma…”

“Besides, my psychic told me it's not too late to have another baby with Arun. Fingers crossed that your replacement is on the way!” She did just that.

“Momma!”

“What's in the box?” Suzanne asked, pointing at whatever Helen had left in there to flatten me.

“Nothing,” I lied, but she was already lifting the lid. Her movement slowed, then froze altogether, though her eyes
darted to my face and away so quickly I knew I'd been right. Helen's intent was to sully the celebratory mood. I held out a hand for the box, wondering why some people thought making someone feel bad would make them feel better.

The only blessing was that it wasn't Olivia really opening this box. Had to give it to Helen, I thought, shaking my head. She sure knew how to hit below the belt.

Cher had told Helen that tonight's gathering was about mothers and family…but the photo I held was devoid of either. It was of my college graduation, three people glaring into the afternoon sun with false smiles plastered over sweating faces. Olivia's had been bright and eager, almost frantic in her hope to wring some happiness out of the occasion. Mine was as stiff as the cardboard in my graduation cap. Xavier's wasn't even that, just a half squint, and a meaty-jawed scowl as he gestured for the photographer to hurry up. Of course, my mother was absent entirely…just as she'd been for nearly the entire previous decade. And that was what Helen was so clearly pointing out.

Yet even before my mother left, we hadn't been the Cleavers. Xavier was only present on this day because it was expected. He'd hopped from his limo, posed for this moment upon Olivia's request, before tossing me this sterling silver frame and an unsigned graduation card with the down payment for my own house, then disappearing again. Both his absence and the money were readily accepted. We all knew he wanted me out of the mansion as badly as I wanted escape.

I filled that new home with items that spoke to the person I'd become—photography equipment and a darkroom, modern pieces with Asian accents—taking nothing from the mansion, including this frame. I shook my head again. Olivia had been so desperate for a normal family life that even a farcical photo of a broken, unsmiling family had moved her.

“What's that say?” Suzanne asked, pointing to the frame's lower edge.

I read the inscription. “‘Making an impact is easy. Making a difference is hard.'”

I scoffed at the irony, musing how he'd only ever accomplished the former, but halted in mid eye roll. “Huh. That's funny.”

“Really?” asked Cher, tilting her head. “I think it's profound.”

“No, I mean I know someone who used to say that.”

“Xavier?” Suzanne guessed, pointing at the quote's attribution.

“Someone else,” I murmured, biting my lower lip. Someone I hadn't known when this photo was taken.

Of all the agents of Light, I'd spent the most time around Tekla. She wasn't comfortable with me at first, nor I with her. Though sparrow-slight, she was too powerful to induce relaxation, with a sense of the otherworldly about her that set her apart from even those in the Zodiac. As the purported Kairos, I'd been much the same. We were also mutually indebted to one another, having saved the other's ass more than once.

So we were an unlikely pair, the Seer and the reluctant new Star Sign. I wondered now if she'd taken me under her wing because she'd seen Fate's plans for me—my fall from the troop's grace, my restored humanity, my lost loves—and wanted to prepare me, or maybe even provide a soft spot while she could. After all, with the murder of her son the year before, her mothering instincts had no obvious outlet, and I doubted it could just be turned off. Perhaps she saw me as the daughter she never had.

We had certainly butted heads like mother and daughter.

“Goddess damn!” she'd said once. “You're birthing plant life from thought and giving it roots in the world. You're not smashing sandcastles. Try to use a bit of finesse!”

And Tekla waved her hand over her own giant pot of soil,
the gesture so elegant it was probably Kabuki-inspired. I'd looked down at my pot and given it the middle finger. Tekla scowled.

“Well, maybe it's the Shadow in me that keeps life from growing,” I said, shrugging. Bringing living things to life was a skill particular to the Light.

She'd lifted her sharp chin. “Maybe it's stubbornness of spirit and a prideful mind.”

“Maybe it's indigestion.”

But despite all the maybes, she did teach me. We spent hours in the sanctuary's dojo together, sparring with our bodies and minds and words…and occasionally smiling. We never talked about our losses on or off the mats. I think we both dwelled on those too much when we were alone to indulge when there was a task at hand, and another person in view.

And then one day she took me into her astrolab. It was more geek dome than observatory, a den detailing her obsession with the stars, and piled high with the mathematical tools she used to read the sky. It may as well have been a space station
on
the moon for all I could tell. She'd dimmed the lights, and the night sky appeared above.

“Can you point out the twelve constellations that comprise the Zodiac?” she asked imperiously.

“No.”

“That's okay. I only want to show you one.” She pointed to a constellation west of my own, Sagittarius. It looked like just another clump of stars to me. “This is Ophiuchus, and its brightest star is a white dwarf. It's feeding on matter from its neighbor, a red giant, and quickly approaching its maximum possible size. It's highly unstable.”

Like you, I remember thinking, as she craned her neck upward. “Maybe it should go on a diet.”

Tekla's mouth firmed, but she otherwise ignored me. “It will go supernova soon. It will be a violent explosion, one that will outshine entire galaxies for a time.”

“‘Soon' meaning thousands of years from now, right?”

She shrugged. “Or tomorrow.”

I'd eyed the star nervously because there was a reason she was telling me this. Tekla didn't waste energy on trivialities.

“Don't worry. It won't affect earth in the least. And after it goes supernova, turning into the thing it was meant to be all along, all that will remain of it will be a little pulsar. Just another tiny neutron star freckling the face of the night sky.”

“So it just disappears?”

She shook her head. “It's displaced, dispelled. The matter comprising it simply goes somewhere else, and all that work, all that energy and violence, really amounts to nothing.”

“So?”

“So it shows that against the palate of the universe, making an impact is easy. But making a difference…that's what's proven to be hard.”

And no matter how much I huffed, puffed, teased, and taunted, she'd refused to say more than that. Apparently I was supposed to look at ol' Ophiuchus and be a Seer too.

Making an impact is easy. Making a difference is hard.

As Cher said, how profound. How telling that it could have such disparate meaning depending on who, Tekla or Xavier, was saying it.

“I have something too,” Suzanne said. Her cheerful voice was strained with the need to get this party back on track. I smiled, grateful for her concern, though it was unnecessary. I wasn't Olivia, and held no soft spot for Xavier. She pulled a small jewelry box from her black clutch, handing it to me with a shy smile. “It's a thank-you for throwing the rehearsal dinner tonight. Arun wanted to show his gratitude for allowing the wedding to be held at Valhalla too. We know how much work you've put into this.”

“It was no problem,” I murmured, taking the box. Open
ing it, I found a bracelet in gold so yellow it was almost orange. It was studded with multicolored precious stones, obviously antique and very expensive.

“It's called a hand flower. It's been in Arun's family for five generations.”

“I have the matching ring, see?” Cher clamored from the bed to join her mother and me at the mirror. “They're kundans, one of the most popular motifs in Indian jewelry. Isn't that right, Momma?”

Suzanne nodded. “Arun said they're good luck. Protects against the evil eye.”

“Arun said that, did he?” I murmured.

I thought of Tekla giving me lessons and knowledge she thought would protect me, and of Caine, another Seer who gave me weapons and his body as armor. And now this woman—or more accurately, her wannabe baby-daddy—was giving me a pretty, hopeful little bauble with mystical meaning from a country I'd never visit. I lifted the bracelet to the light.

“Why would Arun give these to me?”

“I told you. He's grateful. And besides,” she said, eyes flicking to the photo Helen had tried to destroy me with. “True friends are the families we choose.”

I looked at her for a long moment before pulling her into a hug I think surprised us both. Taking in the scents of expensive bath oil and custom perfume, I smiled against her hair. “Sometimes
you
are shockingly profound.”

She pulled back, eyes glistening as she smiled at me, then pulled Cher—the rest of my chosen family—into the hug. “Well,” she said modestly, “I've skimmed a lot of life-coaching articles in my day.”

It was perhaps the girliest moment of my life, but I didn't mind so much. There was no one I had to defend myself from here.

“So. Shall we go celebrate?”

I nodded, then dumped the photo in my bag. I didn't want to leave it behind and let Helen think she'd gotten to
me, so I'd dispose of it outside of the mansion. I refused to let that woman make a difference
or
an impact on me.

 

Cher accompanied Suzanne downstairs to help attend to her adoring guests, Lindy left me alone, and Mackie wasn't lurking behind my shower curtain. The night was looking up.

I made sure to don my “hand flower” bracelet, and joined them within the hour to find the secondary dining room transformed.

Into a gothic bordello.

Terry, winner of the now infamous treasure hunt, sidled up to me almost immediately.

“What's all this?” I asked, gesturing at the unapologetic red and black scheme. Sure, the party was being held in “my” house, but like all good social debs, I hadn't a thing to do with the planning. Besides, if there was one thing that could give me away as Joanna Archer, it was my inability to juggle a menu and a seating arrangement.

“I know.” Terry had a camera in one hand, a red cocktail with an onyx-stemmed glass in the other, and was dressed in the basic black the invitations had requested. “It's just one big juicy pot of pornography, right? Arun wanted to show off some of his more intricate textiles, and these are done in the colors of the family coat of arms.”

“Indians have coats of arms?”

“Compliments of the British. There weren't any fire hydrants to piss on in the old days, so they had to mark everything with a sword and a lion.”

I glanced at the silks lining tables and chairs, the tapestries hanging from the walls and their matching footstools, the double-wide lounge chairs with their red brocade. Crystal tassels set practically every inanimate object to sparkle. I guess nothing said “home sweet whorehouse” like black teardrop crystals. I blinked until I could focus properly again, turning to Terry. “You're the photographer?”

“Unofficial,” he sniffed, casting a glance over his shoul
der. Two small dark men were snapping photo after photo of the room's focal point, a moon-shaped table where Suzanne sat, arms linked with her groom.