The Silver Thread (43 page)

“I really don’t want to do this,” Annika said to her husband as they walked up the steps of the London embassy. “Can I just wait outside?”

Talvi smirked and pointed to a sign on the side of the building that said ‘no loitering’ before he rang the buzzer on the side of the massive doors.

“Ugh, seriously?” she groaned. Even though she and Talvi were on speaking terms, things were still not remotely back to normal. Annika wasn’t even sure if there would be such a thing as normal for the two of them. The two of them hadn’t spoken much after he had returned, bathed, and sat down to dinner with his family as if nothing unusual had happened. It was a performance that only a serious actor could have pulled off…or a very good spy. Annika thought about the little clues here and there about her husband’s livelihood; the ‘training’ that Asbjorn said he had, him refusing to explain where his income came from, the fact that he always had some sort of weapon on him, his stealthy way of sneaking in or out of a room unnoticed, and Finn not arguing with her when she had suggested it in the first place.

And then there was Finn. For getting into such a serious bare knuckle fight while going through morphine withdrawal, he seemed to be in a fair enough mood when he had given his goodbye hugs to Annika. When Ambrose had told her to embrace the unfamiliar, she wondered if raging non-human hormones, opiate junkies making leaps of faith, and secret agents completely losing their shit were what he had been referring to. If that wasn’t the unfamiliar, she didn’t know what was.

Gerald opened the door, wearing less tweed this time, and looked at Talvi patiently.

“Good afternoon, Gerald. Do you happen to know any place nearby that makes a decent lemon meringue pie?”

“As a matter of fact, I do, Talvi. Won’t you come in?” he said, and motioned with his hand for the two of them to step inside.

“Annika, this is Gerald, one of our doormen,” Talvi said, introducing them. “He keeps the riff raff out of the embassy. Gerald, this is my sweet little wife, Annika.”

Gerald’s stoic face transformed into a surprised one. He fussed with one ear and leaned closer.

“I’m sorry; did you say your
wife
?”

“I did indeed,” Talvi said, and took Annika’s left hand, kissing her ring. He let go and nudged her gently. “Go on love, where’s your manners?”

“Sorry, this is my first time here,” she blurted, and stuck out her right hand to shake Gerald’s. “Nice to meet you.”

“A pleasure to meet you as well, Annika,” he replied as he gave her a gentle shake and let go, unsure if he was being taken for a ride or not. He shot a perplexed glance at Talvi.

“I believe Merriweather is conducting an interview, but if you wish to wait outside her office, I could give Annika the tour.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he chirped, grabbing ahold of her hand. “I’ll take her myself.”

Caught off guard again, Gerald took a key from his pocket to unlock the door on the right side of the small foyer, and gave a gentle wave as Talvi led Annika down the narrow hallway to an elevator. Talvi inserted a key of his own into a little brass box, before selecting the second floor. When the polished brass elevator doors opened and Annika stepped out, she looked with wide eyes at the scores of computer equipped work stations in the center of the main room in front of her. Sitting at the desks were a couple trolls, many elves, and a few wood nymphs, along with other magical beings that she couldn’t even begin to name. She saw a small pink orb of light zip by that could only have been a fairy, and she followed it as it rose up toward the ceiling of the thirteen story atrium, full of chandeliers and skylights. Upon the chandeliers was an array of multi-colored orbs, all radiating as brightly as the pink fairy, and she realized that there were probably hundreds of fairies resting on the light fixtures. It cast an ethereal glow upon the rest of the room, even in the late afternoon light.

“What
is
this place?” she asked under her breath, so as not to draw any attention to herself.

“A safe haven for political asylum, but mainly a research facility, focusing on intelligence, criminal activity and justice, although for a while, it acted as a hostel for misplaced travelers,” he answered. He leisurely led her past sofas, chairs, lamps and tables that were only broken up by the scores of bookshelves between them. There must have been hundreds of thousands of books on that floor alone. And then Annika realized that half of the floors above them were exactly the same. “It’s much less chaotic now than it was a few months ago.”

“Why was it so chaotic?”

“Because there used to be another embassy in Paris, exactly where you fell when you disappeared from my world and landed in your own,” he explained. “That one dealt more with accommodating travelers, issuing passports and exchanging currency, so it’s been a bit overwhelming, to have an entire embassy disappear.”

“What happened to it?”

“I can’t say.”

“Oh, right, it’s probably classified information,” she said, grinning primly, and he raised a curious brow at her.

“I can’t say, because I don’t
know
yet,” he said, squeezing her hand gently.

“Is that why you brought me there in the first place? Finn said you wanted a working vacation out of this whole ordeal.”

“That was the original plan, but that didn’t pan out too well, now, did it?” he asked, touching the tip of her nose affectionately.

They walked to another wing of the building, with a few long wooden benches outside of the hallway, and came to a tall set of doors. With another key, he opened them up and they walked into a large, empty, round room filled with wooden tables and heavy chairs, all facing forward in a half circle. It looked like a cross between a senate floor and a courtroom.

“My father spent many a day here, debating and creating laws, and overseeing countless proceedings,” Talvi informed her. “That’s why my family spent so much time in London when I was younger. Now he’s mostly retired from the embassy, and only gets involved in very difficult cases.”

“Is he like a judge, or a politician, or what?”

“He is and has been many things. A judge, a diplomat, a mayor, a consigliore…”

“Oh my god, like Tom Hagen in
The Godfather
?” she squealed, making her voice reverberate off the walls and ceiling of the huge room.

“Shhh, love,” he said with a disapproving look, touching his forefinger to his lips. “There’s no need to scream so bloody loud when I’m right here beside you.”

Annika was just starting to wonder what sort of family she had married into when she caught a whiff of jasmine. Her stomach turned a little, her heart started to beat faster, and her palms began to sweat.

“Hello Talvi, and hello at long last, Annika,” a crisp female voice said from behind her. Annika turned around to see a tall elven woman with long black hair standing there. She looked sharp as a tack and sexy as hell in her well-pressed white blouse, black vest, black pencil skirt, and black high heels. She was more stunning than Talvi had described. Her shiny hair did indeed come down to her breasts, and her flawless skin held the golden brown hue of a perfectly toasted marshmallow. She wasn’t wearing much makeup, other than a bit of lip stain and mascara. Her lashes were so long and dark that her eyes naturally appeared to be lined with soft kohl.

“You must be Merriweather,” she said, trying not to frown as she gave the sophisticated woman a once-over. She found herself wishing she’d worn something more stylish than jeans and sneakers.

“I am indeed,” she replied confidently, looking at Annika with her large, dark, unreadable eyes. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ve heard too much about you,” said Annika, trembling with anxiety. It was painfully easy to imagine her husband’s hands on Merriweather’s bare hips, and his face buried between her thighs, lapping up her very best scotch. Merriweather’s eyes widened subtly, and she glanced at Talvi before looking back at Annika.

“I’ve gone through all of your reports, Merri,” he said, avoiding his wife’s gaze as he patted his messenger bag. “Did you want to have a look at them in your office?”

“No, I’ll not waste the time going back up there if you’ve truly earned that reward I promised you,” she said, walking over to one of the desks. She patted the spot beside her, prompting him to join her. “Besides, my new assistant is filling out a few forms and would appreciate the privacy.”

“Your new assistant? I thought you were only having an interview,” said Talvi, taking his laptop and the stack of files from his bag and setting them next to her.

“It was a second interview,” she said, looking very pleased with herself as she flipped her hair behind her shoulders and crossed her arms over her chest. “I believe we’ve finally found the perfect candidate.
He
just graduated from a military academy, so following orders comes naturally to him.”

“Ah, see Merri, I told you that your luck would change. You shouldn’t have kept my lighter for so long. Perhaps you should give your new assistant one of his own so mine doesn’t get nicked again?” Talvi said playfully; perhaps a little too playfully for Annika, but she just stood in the background and kept quiet, trying to ignore the long-legged, exotic and elegant creature that was perched beside her husband as he booted up his computer.

“He doesn’t smoke, you cheeky bastard,” she said with a lofty roll of her eyes, and motioned for him to show her his work.

“These two reports contain multiple discrepancies, which I thought you should have a look at,” he said quietly to her as he handed her the top two folios. “You’ll want to re-examine these statements.”

Merriweather was silent as she opened the cover and let Talvi point out a few pages to her. She looked up at him, and then Annika.

“Annika, would you mind giving us a few moments?” she said, motioning to the doors that had been left open.

“No problem; I’ll just wait in the hall for you,” she replied, relieved to have an excuse to not be in that room. The relaxed banter between them wasn’t proving much to her except that they definitely had a long, unconventional history together. She hurried out and shut the doors behind her, and sank into a bench in the hall.

As soon as the doors were shut, Merriweather turned to Talvi, steely-eyed.

“Why did you tell her about the last time you asked me for a raise?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, running his fingers seductively through his hair.

“Well I know that you only do that thing with your hair when you don’t mind getting caught lying. You think you have everyone believing that’s your tell-all giveaway, but I know you better than that. You’re the best liar I ever met.” Talvi’s eyes flashed darkly as she pointed this out, but he said nothing.

“I’m not certain why you felt the need to share that information with anyone, especially not your new wife,” she said, shooting him a severe glare. “You know full well that everything that occurs within my office is supposed to be confidential. You are risking an awful lot, and I’m not certain where this carelessness is coming from.”

“It comes from the fact that Annika doesn’t trust me as far as she can throw me,” he said quietly. “She thinks the worst of me half the time that we’re together. It’s been up and down like a damned yo-yo with her, trying to soothe her suspicions. I just can’t seem win her completely over.”

Merriweather looked like she couldn’t decide whether to laugh in his face or slap it.

“My very best raven flies away on hiatus because he has some personal problems and a long-awaited prophecy coming to a head; he returns two years later wearing an irremovable wedding ring, and then he’s baffled that his new, human-born bride is suspicious of how he earns his keep. Is that what you’re telling me? Because that’s what I’m hearing.”

Talvi thumbed the ring on his finger and tossed his mane, looking sullen as she went on.

“I’m amazed that we’re even having this conversation, given that you earn your keep by getting others to trust you, women in particular. Did it ever occur to you to try and treat her like one of your assignments? Speaking of which, I thought of a fantastic cover for the reason you’ll never take off your ring. You can claim that you are a poor, young widower, and that you promised your wife on her death bed that you would always wear it. It’s really a good story, don’t you think? I know if I were being seduced for information, I would gladly tell you anything you wanted to know after hearing such a maudlin tale. It’s a shame that neither one of us had thought of it earlier, but you’ll be able to test it out soon enough. I have an assignment lined up for you, and I need you on top of it as soon as possible.”

A faint burning sensation began to form around his ring, traveling up his arm and into his shoulder. Talvi closed his eyes and saw himself and Annika in a snowy clearing in a dark forest, just before dawn. They were surrounded by a circle of white candles, kneeling on soft pillows. He watched as he slipped her wedding ring onto her finger, and then she placed his on his finger. He remembered how clear and intense the sunrise had been on that winter solstice, how it illuminated their matching wedding bands and made them twinkle and shine. The rings hadn’t moved since. He saw her cut his palm with his now cursed knife, and then him cutting hers, before their bleeding hands were tied together, as he promised that his love for her would cross any distance. He remembered her crying, telling him that she didn’t want him so far away, telling him that she needed him near her. He remembered crying also, and most of all, he remembered promising that he would in fact, be right there for her.