The Silver Thread (37 page)

“Precisely,” he sighed, nodding his head ever so slowly. He turned to look down at her. “And until I win them back, I’ll be wrapped around your finger.”

At that moment, the dark clouds parted, and a ray of light rested on the two of them, illuminating Annika’s dress in its rich, radiant, fiery hues. She could feel the warmth radiate through her body, before reflecting off of it.

“Why, look at you, all aglow,” Finn said softly, with a dreamy look in his eyes. “You look just like a fallen star, my little sun.”

“Maybe that’s because I
am
one,” she replied as she met his blissful gaze, abruptly remembering something he had said to her about Talvi.

You’re not ready to be married
to him.

He was right.

Along with their dry cleaned catacomb clothes, there was a white envelope on the floor with Annika’s name on it when they walked into their room. She opened it up and discovered that it was a telephone message. She snorted when she read it, because it was literally written word for word in James-speak.

Oh my god. Shit is blowing up. Call me ASAP. —James

That could have meant anything, coming from him, but the fact that he had bothered to call her in Paris meant it must be important. James would still be asleep anyway, so Annika decided it only made sense to take a shower and put on a clean outfit. She locked herself in the bathroom, and turned the dial in the shower to the hottest setting. She pulled off her clothes, inspecting herself again in the bathroom mirror of their suite. It was uncanny, how many nooks and crannies seemed to have blue paint.

The hot water felt so good on her tired body. Her head still hurt, and her stomach was still queasy, but the steamy shower helped tremendously. She washed her hair and scrubbed her skin as hard as she could bear until every last streak of the incriminating paint had been rinsed down the drain. She put on her robe and intended to get the overnight bag from Finn, but when she opened the bathroom door, she did not intend to find him stretched out on the sofa, wrapping his belt around his arm. Pandora’s box sat open, next to him.

“What’s this?” she gasped, reeling inside from what she was seeing.

“I’m afraid that even though you’re out of the woods, I’m a bit lost among the trees. I’m trying to come down to the earth as gently as I can,” he explained. He then put the end of the belt in his teeth, while he reached inside the box with his right hand and curled his left hand into a fist, looking for a vein. “I just need a little more.”

“Finn, wait,” she said, trying as hard as she could to stay calm while she casually knelt beside him on the sofa. “Can I go first? I’ve never done this before.”

He looked at her curiously, letting the belt drop from his mouth.

“Annika, what are you talking about? I gave you your first taste three days ago.”

“Was that when you told me to close my eyes and count to thirty?” she whispered, covering her mouth with her hand in surprise. “
That’s
what you did to me? Holy shit! I thought you stabbed me with something else!”

A low laugh sounded from deep within Finn’s chest.

“I’m quite flattered that you think I could ever feel as good as morphine. If only.” His face melted into a bemused smile as he picked up the needle and closed lid of the box. “I didn’t know any other way to resist you after you crawled on my lap and put such explicit images into my mind. You were rather…determined. But it was absolutely brilliant of you to suggest the gallery. Opiates are known for diminishing the sex drive, although I had no idea that I would need such a large quantity to prevent
la petit mort
from happening in each others’ arms. I honestly don’t know how else we would have gotten through the past few days without our lovely poppies. It makes me miss them so much.”

“Can I give you this dose,
sludoor
?” she asked, feeling relieved and terrified all at once. She reached her hand seductively toward his and took the needle from him. “I want to make you feel as amazing as I can.”

“You already do,
slunchitse
,” he murmured. He tightened the belt around his arm and held it out to her, waiting expectantly.

“Close your eyes,” she hummed in his pointed ear. “And count to thirty.”

As soon as his eyes were shut, Annika clamped her fingers around the syringe and snatched the box, darting into the bathroom as fast as she could. She locked the door behind her and quickly pushed the syringe’s contents into the toilet. There was a knock at the door, then a pounding, then his voice trying to reason with her, growing in urgency.

“Annika, open the door,” he plead from outside. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Annika,
please
…”

She opened the wooden box lined in brown velvet, and saw it was divided in half. In the front half, one longer section was filled with individually wrapped syringes. Those were the wrappers she had felt when she snuck her fingers into it three days ago, the wrapper she heard before he shot her full of this memory-erasing, mind-numbing serum. The other half of the box was divided into smaller sections, each containing a small glass bottle filled with clear liquid, though they were not all full. She lifted one out and read the label description; medical grade morphine.

“Annika, open the bloody door!” he demanded, pounding harder. “I did this for you! Do you hear me? Now let me in there! Don’t make me force my way in!”

She hastily opened the bottles one by one, dumping them into the sink and then turned on the faucet full blast, rinsing them as fast as she could as he continued to threaten to break down the door. There was a hard thud, then another, then another, and she realized that he was indeed kicking the door in. The wood around the doorknob was beginning to splinter. He would be in there any second.

Her hands shook as adrenaline surged through her, and she threw the needles and the bottles into the toilet, flushing right at the moment that the door flew open.

“
What have you done
?” he screamed at her, scooping a handful of empty bottles out of the toilet. “What have you
done
?” he repeated, throwing them on the floor and grabbing the lapels of her robe. He jolted her so hard that it scared her almost as much as the crazed look in his eyes. She was being shaken like a ragdoll in his muscular arms. “Do you
know
how much money that cost?”

“Who fucking cares? You could have
died
, you dumb shit!” she yelled back. “You could have OD’d anytime over the past three days, and I was too fucking high to know up from down, let alone get you to a fucking hospital!”

“I
know
your limitations, and I sure as bloody hell know
mine
!” he insisted. “Who are
you
to question my intelligence?”

“Who are
you
to shoot me full of drugs for three days?”

“Would you rather I had put something
else
inside of you, you
kotka diva
?” he snarled, shaking her again.

“Yeah, actually, I
would
!” she choked, and started to cry. “I’d rather have your baby than have you die!”

He was so completely taken aback by her admission that the rage left his face. He sank to his knees with her still in his arms, and from behind his curls, she could see tears begin to gather in his eyes.

“That’s how people overdose,” she went on, afraid to move. “You’re off the shit for a while, and then you think you can handle your regular dosage, then
bam
, you’re dead! You think you’re so smart because you’ve read a zillion books, but you’re really just a fucking idiot!”

Finn was silent for a long time. He still held her by her robe, looking at her until his watery eyes blinked, sending tears down his face. He let go of her lapels and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her close as he buried his head into her shoulder. His hand rested on the back of her head, stroking her wet hair carefully, and she felt him take a deep breath and sigh.

“I’m sorry, Annika. I’m so sorry for all of this,” he whispered.

“It’s okay,” she replied, and felt a surge of comfort rise up within her. She imagined that they were in their safe little cocoon, not beside the toilet clogged with syringes, sitting on the bathroom floor among empty morphine bottles and splinters of wood.

Finn let go of her and wiped his tears on his sleeve, before brushing hers away with his thumb.

“You had your hands in the toilet,” she said, sniffing. “That’s a little gross.”

“Well, I’m certain it’s still cleaner than the water from the catacombs,” he sighed with a weak smile. He reached up to moisten a wash cloth under the faucet, and then shut off the water, which had been running the entire time. He gently wiped her face and then cleaned off his hands, removing the rest of the blue paint from underneath his fingernails. “Did you know, not once in three hundred and seventy-two years, has anyone ever called me a fucking idiot?”

“I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

He tossed the wash cloth aside and sat back, shaking his head at her.

“Oh, Annika. I’ve looked after my niece and nephew quite a bit, but you’re more of a handful than the two of them combined. Whatever am I going to do with you?”

Annika shrugged, grinning slightly, until he grinned too. Everything was going to be alright, just as he had assured her from day one.

The sound of a key in the front door snapped them out of their private moment, and Annika yelled out,

“No housekeeping,
s’il vous
plaît
!”

The door shut, and she sighed in relief. But then she gasped in horror as a tall, wild-haired figure clad in black stepped into the doorway. He did not look pleased in the slightest at what he saw.

“What the bloody…” Talvi trailed off as he took in the scene of the broken door, the syringes in the toilet, and the bottles on the floor, along with his wife sitting amidst it all in nothing but a disheveled robe. He looked at her for answers, then at Finn, who looked equally as disheveled in his wrinkled clothes, but he received no explanation.

“How did you get in?” Annika asked, utterly dumbfounded at her husband’s timing.

“I’m paying for this fucking room,” he said, his blue-green eyes looking angry and hurt all at once. “I have a
fucking
key. Why, cheers for asking how I’ve been, love. It’s fantastic to see you too!”

He stooped down and picked up an empty bottle from the floor, sneering as he read the label.

“So this is why you haven’t been answering the telephone,” he said, standing back up to resume his glare of disapproval. He dropped the bottle into the trash can under the sink. “I’ve been ringing your room for three days. I thought of a million awful things that could have happened to you both, but this certainly wasn’t among them.”

“It’s my fault, Talvi. Annika didn’t know what I was doing until quite recently,” said Finn from where he still sat on the floor. “I tried to hide it from her, but she just found out.”

“You don’t say,” Talvi mused, glancing at the toilet and then at the splintered door, but his tone was skeptical at best. He lifted his left leg and with his right hand he withdrew a black-handled knife from inside his boot. Annika clutched Finn’s arm, afraid to even breathe. The blade gleamed brightly in her husband’s hand, but he rested it on the counter while he shoved his left hand into the messenger bag slung across his chest. He pulled out his smartphone, then unlocked the screen and tapped it a few more times, bringing it to his pointed ear as he looked down his nose at the two of them.

“You’ll want to start packing your things. Your Parisian holiday is officially over.” He motioned with his head towards the suite, and they hurried past him, over the bottles and wood splinters, and out of the bathroom.

Without warning, Finn whisked her out onto the balcony, shutting the door behind them.

“I know you like to let your imagination run wild,” he began, gripping the rail while he watched the rain pour down on the city. A cool breeze licked at Annika’s neck, and she pulled her robe tightly around her chest. “But don’t you
dare
spend one single second thinking about our misadventure. Fill your mind with sunrises and cafés au lait out here with me. Fill it with the scent of the catacombs and the sound of polo ponies running across the field. Let your mind wander to the dressing rooms at Chanel, but don’t you ever,
ever
let it wander to the depths of
la Société d’
Art
Souterraine
, do you hear me?” He turned to face her, and when Annika saw his grave expression, she felt a chill run down her spine. “I wasn’t joking when I said Talvi would have my head if he ever found out that I took you there. We’re skating on very thin ice,
slun
chitse
.”

She nodded quickly and darted back inside as soon as Finn opened the door. The silence in the hotel room was only broken by her husband’s one-sided conversation. Annika strained to listen in as she and Finn gathered their clothes, shoes, and souvenirs, and began stuffing them into their luggage. Talvi’s voice was low and biting as he knelt down and began picking the paraphernalia out of the toilet with his knife, adding it to the bottle in the trash can.

“So how soon can you get me three first-class plane tickets to Sofia?” Annika heard him say as she stuffed her painted dress into its garment bag. There was a short pause.

“Bit of a family emergency, Merri. I’m sorry, but I won’t be back in time for what you and I had planned this evening.”

Long, long pause.

“Yes, but if we’ve waited all this time, what’s another week or so? If I can return sooner, I will.” Talvi’s voice shifted from sounding irritated, to sounding downright lecherous. “You know how badly I want to see what you’ve been hiding from me down there. It’s been so long I’ve almost forgotten what it looks like. Such a shame, really. You know how much I love it when you let me loose in there, and give me whatever I want.”

Annika’s heart crawled up into her throat just far enough to make her nauseous, before sinking down into the bottom of her stomach. She had never felt more repulsed by a man in her life, but then, this was no man. As much as she didn’t want to hear the rest of the conversation, she couldn’t turn back now. She hoped desperately that she was misunderstanding something, and she strained her ears again, only to hear him say, “Trust me Merri, I’ll wrap this nonsense up and come back as soon as I can. I can’t wait much longer, either.”

Two hours later, the three of them were on a plane forty thousand feet above France, with Annika sandwiched in the middle of the Marinossian brothers. Talvi had claimed the window seat and Finn had the aisle. She shared looks of sympathy from him and looks of condemnation from his brother, but words were scarce between those three; both telepathic, and spoken aloud. After his phone call to Merriweather, Talvi had rifled through their luggage, searching for any hidden paraphernalia. Annika thanked her lucky stars that Finn had torn up the incriminating little black business card from her wanton waiter, letting it drift away in the breeze down the Champs-Élysées.

Talvi dragged his messenger bag out from under the seat and pulled out a small stack of folios and a laptop computer. He pushed the bag back in place and put the laptop on his fold-down tray, setting the folios in his lap. When he opened the screen, he angled it so Annika couldn’t look at it without being obvious. He opened the top file on the stack and began to type at a steady, fluid clip, which left her almost speechless. Had he really been telling her the truth when he claimed he’d been doing paperwork for the past two weeks? On top of that, the last time she had seen him type, it was strictly of the hunting and pecking variety.

“What are you working on,
sludoor
?” she asked, trying to break the silence between the three of them.

“Paperwork,
slunchitse
, as I told you on the telephone,” he quietly answered, not looking away from his task.

“Can I see what kind of paperwork you’re doing?”

“You can…however, you
may
not,” he said, and continued to type away.

This grammar lesson wasn’t the answer Annika wanted to hear. She frowned, feeling irritated, and anxious. Finn unbuckled his seat belt, grabbed an airsickness bag, and disappeared into the lavatory.

“I just remembered, I’m supposed to call James as soon as possible.
May
I use your cell phone when we land?”

“No,” Talvi replied without missing a beat.

“Why are you giving me the cold shoulder?”

“Because I have a mountain of work to complete before I can move on to my next project, and dealing with your bullshit has now made things exponentially worse,” he explained, still typing. “I’ve been watching my accounts, keeping track of how much you’ve been spending, and where you’ve been spending it. I thought it odd to see no charges since Tuesday morning; however, not answering your telephone since then is what aroused my suspicion. I never expected it was because the two of you were getting as high as kites. And here I thought you’d been kidnapped by doppelgängers or Finn had acquired a debt with the wrong crowd. He does love his cards, but I guess he likes gambling with opiates more. Either way, I am fairly disgusted with you both, hence the cold shoulder.”

“Oh, and you expect me to believe that you’ve been a total prince for the past two weeks?” she asked. “Or maybe you
have
been, Prince Talvi. What did you have planned tonight with Merriweather that you can’t wait to get back to do with her, hmm? I heard the way you were talking to her in the bathroom, you ass.”

Talvi said nothing, although his typing slowed down considerably. His lips were pressed together in a tight, thin, angry line. His eyes grew dark, like the black clouds of an approaching storm.

“I know you can’t wait to get back and get it on with her,” Annika taunted. “I know no one else but her can handle you at work. I’m sure I know exactly how she handles you. You said she gives you whatever you want, and that it’s been so long you’ve almost forgotten what she looks like down there. I’ll bet she’s pretty, isn’t she?”

“No, Annika. She’s not pretty at all,” he replied softly, catching her off guard a second time. A cruel smile played on his lips as he stopped typing and closed his eyes, resting his head against the back of his seat. “She’s absolutely
stunning
. Her skin is rich and dark like maple sugar, and when she lets her long black hair down, it just barely covers her perfectly shaped tits. She smells like jasmine and tastes like spiced vanilla, although sometimes she tastes like scotch. I used to pour it down her neck and drink it out of her lap, but now when I come inside her office, she has me use a glass like everyone else. Regardless, I’ll do whatever it takes to please her, because she makes me want to work so bloody
hard
.”

He moaned quietly to himself, then opened his eyes and blinked a few times before resuming his typing as if nothing had happened. Annika raised her hand to slap him, but he caught her arm in mid-swing. She tried to jerk it away from him a half dozen times but it was pointless in his iron grip. All she wanted was to pull off her ring and run away, but she was unable to do either.

“Why would you
say
something like that?” she hissed, feeling horrified and repulsed.

“I thought it would be more effective than simply telling you to shut up,” he said with a brazen smirk as he finally released her arm. “I hope it worked. I have a lot more reports to read through before we land, and the sound of your voice is quite unbearable.”

Annika, however, was aghast at the image he had planted in her mind of him and his boss.

“You are the biggest douchebag I’ve ever known!” she cried, trying to reign in her anger so the entire plane couldn’t hear her, except for maybe the row behind her. And maybe the row behind them. “Oh my god, I hate you
so
much! How am I even married to you? You’re like, the king of the douche lords! What’s wrong with you, that you would say something like that to me?”

“I’ve tried saying everything else I can to stifle your insecurities, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I suspect deep down, that’s the sort of thing that you wanted to hear all along. If you must insist upon thinking the worst of me, I may as well try and meet your expectations. Isn’t it a husband’s duty, to make his wife happy? All I’ve tried to do is make you happy, my little dove.” He paused long enough to bat his lashes at her, feigning innocence as no one but he could do. “Shall I elaborate further on the many ways that I used to ask my director for a raise? Because I can, if it pleases you. She certainly gave me a lot of them.”

“I think I’ve heard enough!” she snapped, turning her back to him right as Finn returned and settled into his seat. He reclined his chair as far as it would go and covered up with a blanket. His curls were damp with sweat and his skin looked clammy.

“Finn, what’s wrong?” she asked, brushing his curls aside, but he seemed afraid to open his mouth. It was probably for the best. He looked like he might throw up again. Annika draped her own blanket over him and smoothed his hair, trying to be as comforting as their airplane seats would allow.

“He’s going through withdrawal,” Talvi informed her casually as he resumed his typing. “He’ll live. He just
feels
like he’s dying.”

To Annika, the next few days seemed to take forever to pass by. She couldn’t even imagine how long they must have lasted for Finn, who was fighting an upset stomach, hot sweats, cold chills, an aching back, a runny nose, and insomnia, all while traveling the long hike to his family’s home. He had little to say other than moans, groans and the occasional sigh. Annika didn’t have much to say either, after her little chat on the plane with her charming husband. Instead, she focused on taking care of Finn however she could, wiping away his neck and forehead with a cool wet cloth when the sweats came on, and keeping him bundled up when the chills arrived. She rubbed his shoulders whenever he needed to stop and take a break, and was always quick with a sympathetic smile and bottled water.