Ophelia cleared her throat again. “We’ve come to ask you about one of your clients, a Mr. Calix. Have you met him?”
“No, not face-to-face. I usually don’t meet my clients in person. It’s more comfortable for both sides. Is Mr. Calix in some sort of trouble?”
Mr. Crown lifted an elegant black brow and sneered at me. “He’s missing.”
“Oh, no!” I exclaimed, hoping that my distress came through as concern for a client. “That’s awful.”
“It’s nothing to worry about, dear,” Mr. Marchand said, taking me by the elbow and leading me to the grouping of cedar benches that my dad had installed around a stone fire pit near the rosebushes. Ophelia was watching me carefully as I sat down, hoping to catch some nervous twinge or tic. But I was the picture of clueless composure. If anything, the complexities of my job taught me to keep my poker face even when faced with the bizarre, the alarming, the odd naked human who can’t seem to remember why he woke up in a vampire’s living room with a splitting headache and a new tattoo. The only exception was Cal, who seemed to make my equilibrium all wonky just by looking at me.
“When was the last time you were in his home?” Sophie asked, her eyes drilling tiny holes into my forehead, as if she expected all of my secrets to come spilling out from her sheer concentration. Sadly, most of my secrets were pretty lame, with the exception of the one currently cowering under a window seat upstairs.
“Friday,” I said, looking to Ophelia. “Didn’t you ask me this on the phone the other night?”
“It’s not your place to question the Council; it’s the Council’s place to question you,” Mr. Crown spat crossly.
I lifted the corners of my mouth, smiling mirthlessly. “I think you’ll find that my place is being polite to the Council for the sake of friendly cooperation. I don’t actually have to answer any of the Council’s questions, since I’m not governed by vampire laws. I’m a living, breathing United States citizen. I have all kinds of annoying civil rights.”
Mr. Crown huffed. “Just have Sophie examine her. An adjustment of attitude is certainly in order.”
I fought to keep a straight face as a ripple of fear zipped up my spine. Sophie would drag the truth from my mouth. And then Cal would be dragged from my house. And then my business would fail, I’d lose the house, and Gigi and I would be dragged onto the streets. There would be an exhausting amount of dragging.
As quick and lethal as a cobra, Sophie slithered toward me. I closed my eyes, concentrating on the scents around me: the spiced tang of geranium, the heady sweetness of honeysuckle and roses. Because passing out under scrutiny would not scream “guileless, innocent bystander” to the vampires clustered around me.
“Are you sure that’s necessary, Ophelia?” Mr. Marchand asked, frowning as I let Sophie step well within the acceptable social-space bubble.
Ophelia was staring at me, considering. I was afraid to show any fear, any hesitation, because I didn’t want to tip my hand. Innocent people didn’t protest telling the truth, even if compelled through abusive psychic means.
After some consideration, Ophelia nodded at Sophie, who didn’t do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye as she wrapped her long, cold fingers around my hands. I winced, knowing that the burning pain of her talent would start singing through my skin at any moment. But other than mild discomfort in the areas where she was touching me, I didn’t feel much. Sophie and I shared a moment of perplexed hesitation. Her hands seemed to slip uselessly over mine, unable to get the grip she wanted. She frowned, grasping my hands so tightly that I whimpered under the pressure.
Was it the geranium oil? Did it have some unknown properties beyond being a stinky natural bug repellent?
Nope. Wait. Blinding, disorienting pain. Sophie’s filter-crippling powers are a go.
“Ow!” I shrieked as Sophie’s handprint seemed to sear into my skin. I sank to my knees on the grass, limply wrenching my hand away from her.
“Look into my eyes,” Sophie commanded, her voice stripped of all pretense of charm. Breathing through the pain, I met her gaze. Her irises flared to black, and I was plunging through bottomless space. My head seemed so heavy, too heavy to lift. Images of the vampires standing around me, the house, swirled around my head like jetsam in a tornado.
The sting from Sophie’s grip was venom spreading through my system, scorching from my arm to my chest. Hot iron claws dug into my throat. At any moment, they would begin scraping words from my tongue …
Or would they? Unlike in previous “interviews” with Sophie, I felt a strange sort of detachment from the proceedings. Don’t get me wrong, it burned like the dickens, but I was able to think around it, like a strange little detour in my brain that gave me time to think before I spoke. I blew through the pain like it was a labor contraction, forcing myself to concentrate on Sophie’s questions, on the words coming out of my mouth. I could think clearly with some distance between my brain and the throbbing heat of my skin. I couldn’t prevent myself from telling the truth, but I could keep myself from sharing unnecessary details. I could work around the compulsion to spill my guts.
I heard myself repeat the barest possible account of my visit to Cal’s house, how I’d arrived a little before sunset, how nothing had been out of the ordinary when I’d arrived. And nothing had been, really. My visit hadn’t gotten weird until I’d walked into the kitchen.
It turned out I was quite the agile liar. That could be considered a skill set, right?
“Had you had any previous interactions with Mr. Calix?”
“It was my first day with him. I was dropping off the contracts. He hadn’t even called for any supplies yet,” I said.
“So you didn’t see anything amiss at the house?”
“Other than the moving boxes, not much,” I said.
“Do you know where Mr. Calix is now?”
Although I’d expected the question, the urge to respond honestly surprised me. The words were like an air bubble trapped in my throat. I could feel them stretching the tissue of my larynx, forcing their way out. Don’t tell them he’s upstairs, I commanded my brain. Tell them he moved to Pacoima to start a commune for vegetarian vampires. Tell them he’s looking into getting a sex-change operation and renaming himself Lulu Pleshette. I glanced up at the window, but I couldn’t see Cal. “I—I don’t know where he is.” I said.
I blew out a wheezing breath as Sophie relinquished her grip on my hand. It was the truth. I didn’t know exactly where he was. He could have been in the alcove. He could have been in the bathroom. He could have been in the basement. It was all about semantics … maybe I needed to look into law school once this was all over.
Sophie eyed me speculatively, like she didn’t quite believe me. I would have smiled guilelessly, but I couldn’t control all of the muscles in my face yet.
“See?” Mr. Marchand said, offering me a handkerchief to wipe the drool from my chin. “She doesn’t know anything about Mr. Calix’s whereabouts. There’s no reason to subject her to any more questioning.”
“Always the soft touch, Waco,” Sophie murmured.
I cradled my arm against my chest and smacked my dry lips against each other. My mouth tasted like old pennies and Gigi’s volleyball kneepads. I felt a hand at my elbow, leading me to one of the benches so I could sit. I was surprised to find that it was Ophelia, and she was gazing at me intently.
I nodded weakly and smiled at Mr. Marchand, handing him his square of crushed linen. There was a W embroidered on the corner and a strange little white-on-white flower. I would remember to ask him about it, once I could produce all of the vowel sounds.
“This is the last time we’ll discuss this matter,” Ophelia told me, her voice official and louder than was probably necessary. “Do not discuss Mr. Calix with anyone outside of the Council office. Do you understand me? Continue with your business as usual.”
Mr. Crown and Sophie left without another word to me—surprise, surprise. Mr. Marchand gave me a little bow before turning to the car to argue with Mr. Crown about the proper etiquette involved in calling shotgun.
Ophelia lingered, her eyes glued to the upstairs window. Without looking down at me, Ophelia said, “If you should stumble across Mr. Calix, let him know that we are looking for him. But he should stay where he is.”
While the use of the word “stumble” was eerily accurate, I kept an untroubled expression on my face. Behind Ophelia, Mr. Crown had lost the shotgun argument and was currently glowering at me from the backseat. Ophelia threw on a mask of smug indifference, which was her usual expression. Turning to the car, she tossed her hair and sauntered away.
When the SUV was safely speeding down the drive, I called over my shoulder, “Did you get all that?”
There was no answer from the upstairs window.
“Cal?”
Still nothing. I sank my head into my hands and sighed.
“If he’s thrown up again, I’m going to leave him outside and let the sun sort it out.”
A dark blur popped up to my right. I shrieked, picked up another of my mom’s soapstone sculptures—a squirrel—and brought it crashing against Cal’s head. Or I would have, if he hadn’t managed to duck at the last minute. The momentum of the swing carried my arm through the arc, and the statue was slung across the kitchen. Off-balance, I stumbled into Cal with an “uhff.”
I shrank back, sure that this would be enough of an excuse for Cal to sink his fangs into my neck and cease my attempts to brain him with ugly wildlife statuary. But instead, he seemed to think it was adorable that I had tried to drop him like panties at a KISS concert. He grinned down at me, leaning close and running his nose along my hairline. He murmured, “You’re a vicious little hellion when cornered, aren’t you?”
“No, you just seem to bring it out of me.”
“I like it. I do have a question for you, though.”
Cal took my elbow and led me to the little reading alcove near the top of the stairs. My dad had built a special window seat for my mom, who had always dreamed of a place where she could “think and meditate”—also known as hiding from us all.
After culling through most of their paperbacks and secondhand-bookstore finds, I’d filled the shelves with my old college textbooks, the family’s old botany books, the encyclopedias Dad had bought one letter at a time from the local Kroger. Cal was folded up in said window seat, poring over our copy of Rare Plants of Kentuckiana.
“Why do you have these books?” he asked me.
“Because my mom was an avid gardener. And I studied botany in college,” I said. “And my dad liked yard sales.”
“Why didn’t you mention that before?”
“Because you were being an enormous asshat?”
He scowled. “An enormous what?”
I ignored the instinct to clap my hand over my mouth at the use of such a naughty word. I shook my head, crossing my arms over my chest. “No, I don’t think I’ll be explaining that. I will enjoy your situational ignorance.”
“It didn’t occur to you that these books might be helpful to me?”
I smiled thinly. “Oh, no, it did.”
“Resourceful and resentful,” he muttered.
“Only toward asshats. Look through the books as much as you want. Though I don’t know how helpful they’ll be. None of them was written with the supernatural in mind.”
I turned toward the shelf and looked for a particularly battered tome covered in red cloth. It was an estate-sale find that my dad had teased my mother shamelessly over: Metaphysical Aspects of Botanical Aromatherapy. He’d told her that no matter how much she searched, she wouldn’t find a legitimate spiritual reason to return to her hedonistic college pot-loving ways.