She flipped that photo over too. The back of it had a scribble in blue pen, a streak like someone had slashed at it. More papers. “This is a transcript of a call between an unidentified member of the Order and a nosferat of Sergej’s line. In it, the unidentified Kouroi gives your mother’s location. Christophe is the only person who might have known, he trained your mother personally, and they were close.”
He trained her? “Close? How old is he?”
“Old enough to remember the last half of the First World War, Miss Anderson. We have no more proof, the recording is gone and the person who transcribed it died in battle. Rather suspiciously, I might add.” She was watching me very carefully, I realized. There’s a certain way people look when they’re not focusing forward, when they’re tracking you in their peripheral vision. “It is very likely Christophe will seek further contact with you. If and when he does, it is imperative that you notify an advisor and stand by for debriefing. Is that clear?”
The tone of command was something new. I got the idea that when this lady said jump, everyone around her made like a basketball player going up for a dunk.
The words hovered right on the tip of my tongue. He’s already been to see me. A few simple words, and I could stop feeling like there was a weight pressing against my heart. I could lay the problem in someone else’s lap and stop worrying about it. I could hand it over to an adult and be done.
But I heard the sound of soft wings again, and feathers brushed my face. I almost flinched, the feeling was so real.
Look what happened last time you tried to dump the problem in someone else’s lap, Dru. You called Augustine, and things seemed like they were going to get better, and now look at where you are.
It was a warning, delivered just like all of Gran’s lessons. Simple and without a lot of bullshit messing it up. “Crystal,” I heard myself say. It was the first time I’d ever sounded as weary and adult as Graves sometimes did. Did he ever feel this weight pressing on him too?
He probably did. I wanted to see him so bad my hands almost shook.
“Then I shall be on my way.” She scooped the file together, and I glanced up. Dylan looked worried, as usual, and he was staring straight at me. It was like he was willing me to figure something out, his lips pressed together and his dark eyes beaming a message I couldn’t decode.
“The transcript. Do I get to look at it?” I didn’t mean to sound stubborn, but I guess I did. Dylan actually flinched, and Anna drew herself up.
I finally figured out what bothered me about her face. She looked Popular. She’d never been an outcast; we all just existed to throw her own reflection back at her. There was the same unfinished, greedy kind of prettiness I’d seen on cheerleaders and female boa constrictors all over America. If she wasn’t djamphir, she’d probably have ended up as an obese, lacquered middle-aged woman with a turned-down, bitter mouth. The kind that makes a huge fuss in a grocery store over an expired coupon, or a can of corn costing fifteen cents more than she’d thought.
The kind that always gets her way, because she’s shameless when it comes to wearing you down over it. Like that.
“It’s classified, Miss Anderson. When Christophe contacts you, listen to what he has to say. Remember it, and be ready to repeat it.” She nodded brusquely and tucked the manila folder under her arm. Her silk swished as she headed for the door. “My bodyguard will see me out, Dylan. Thank you.”
“Milady.” How he managed to say the word without choking, I don’t know. She swept away, her heels tapping with little sharp sounds.
The door swung shut. Cobwebs up at the top of the tall bookcases made little shushing movements. The ceiling tiles in here were rotting too.
This place was really falling apart in more ways than one.
Dylan tilted his head, one eyebrow raised. I stood there, aching and wet with sweat. I didn’t realize I was shaking until I sat back down in the chair, hard. Every part of me was quivering like electrified Jell-O. Her smell left reluctantly, heaviness coating the back of my throat, especially that place on the palate normal people don’t have, the place where I taste danger.
It’s like the pickled ginger you get with sushi. That always tastes like perfume to me. This was heavy, oily perfume too.
What does that remind me of? I swear to God it reminds me of something. But the little spring that wheels memories out of their slots and throws them into the soup of your brain was busted in my head. I just couldn’t come up with anything coherent.
Climbing up the stairs to my room seemed like an awfully huge task. But the thought of hiding under the bed with the dust kitties, the malaika, and Dad’s billfold more than made up for it. I was glad, for no reason that I could name, that Mom’s locket was tucked safely under my T-shirt. The idea of Anna seeing it made my heart feel cold.
Dylan’s shoulders slumped. “They’re gone,” he said quietly. “Are you all right?”
What a question. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Peachy. Perfect. Not.”
“I’m sorry.” He really did sound sorry. But then, he always did. “She insisted on seeing you, and…”
And what? What the fuck was that? I stared at the space on his cluttered desk where the file had rested. I knew it existed now. I’d seen where my mother died.
He hung her in the tree. Her sweet little voice, saying it like it was nothing when it wasn’t. It wasn’t nothing. It was my mother, and she—