“You first,” Marcus says.
It’s too dark inside the boat for her to see his expression, but she guesses Ryan is rolling his eyes and then some. “You’re free to put a bullet in me if you’d like, and after it comes out the other side of me like a flattened quarter, I'll even let you have it back so you can make a necklace out it. If you want, I’ll even pretend the whole thing hurts a little. But only if it'll make your nipples hard.”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to ask questions about what you are,” Emily says.
“I’m enhanced,” Ryan says. “How’s that? After you, Miss Blaine.” She complies, if only to avoid further sarcasm. She’s as big a fan of snark as the next mouthy smartass, just not when her best friend is being held captive. Dupuy’s a few steps ahead of her, but Marcus is waiting for Ryan to go first.
“I’m just trying to be polite,” Ryan says.
“We’re not here for polite,” Marcus says. “We’re here to get our friend back. After you.”
In a flash, Ryan leaps the small distance from the deck to the dock, all without touching a rail or a step. It wouldn’t be that impressive a move if he hadn’t given off two bursts of gold dust from both feet, which are now skittering across the boat’s floor in twin starbursts. Marcus jumps back from them as if he’s afraid they might dissolve his shoes.
“Told you,” Ryan says. “Enhanced!”
“Or that drug you gave us hasn’t worn off yet,” Emily says.
“You mean the sugar water and food coloring?” Ryan says, brushing past her as he starts up the dock. “Yeah, I hear it’s all the rage with the kids these days.”
Marcus appears next to her and grips her elbow. “And I didn’t drink any and I still saw that shit clear as day.”
“Just try to think of that one crazy thing you’ve always believed in that nobody else does,” Emily responds. “It’ll make all this easier.”
“How does believing in the Loch Ness Monster make this easier?” Dupuy asks.
“The guy looks like he can't be any older than twenty-one, right?” Marcus whispers as the three of them start to follow Ryan. “I’m not imagining that, right?”
“You’re not imagining any of this, babe,” Emily says.
“Dupuy, you really believe in the Loch Ness Monster, man?” Marcus asks.
“I do now,” he whispers. “I just hope he’s not here, ’cause that would be a lot, you know?”
Up ahead, Ryan walks briskly up a raked gravel path. When he’s within a few yards of the house’s soaring front door, he flicks both wrists, at nothing, it seems, and two beds of flame erupt inside previously invisible kettle drums flanking the front steps. It’s no Magnolia Gate, but it’s still a mansion by anyone’s standards, even though none of it appears oriented toward the outside world. Aside from the heavily curtained windows, there are no chairs on the front porch, and no garden furniture anywhere on the long expanse of manicured grass leading to the house.
“So the candles,” Marcus says. “They only light if one of you guys are around? Is that part of your enhancement?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“He’s a radiant,” Emily says.
“A what?” Marcus asks.
“She said he’s positively radiant,” Dupuy answers. “You might want to make sure she’s still into you, dude.”
“No. I said he’s called a radiant.”
“Oh, that makes perfect sense,” Dupuy says. “Thanks for clearing that up. You know, I have a sister who’s a radiant? She’s great, though. Really lights up a room, and you know her kids just love it when she flies off into the night with a circus tent in one hand.”
“Are you serious?” Marcus asks.
“No, I’m not serious, you moron! When do we get to freak out about all of this anyway?”
“When we have Jonathan back,” Emily whispers.
“Tent removal is a group effort, if you’re curious,” Ryan calls back. He mounts the steps to the front porch, then spins on one heel until he’s facing them. He sucks in a deep breath through both nostrils, clasps his hands together, and offers them a plastic grin, like an affected tour guide preparing to corral a group of rowdy but intelligent children. Emily finds the guy’s sudden bursts of playfulness more unnerving than his outright hostility.
“Okay. Allow me to warn you, Lilliane doesn’t receive guests often but when she does, she makes a huge fuss out of it, so you’ll have to forgive her. Also, some of the pomp and circumstance is a little old school, with a twist…if you will.”
“We will,” Emily says, “as long as we get Jonathan back.”
Ryan shrugs as if that were a distinct possibility, but not absolutely guaranteed, then he spins on one heel to face the front door. He flicks his wrist and the front door flies open.
Suddenly, all four of them are stepping into what the interior of a plantation house might look like if it were gutted and redesigned by a luxury hotel group based out of Asia. Nothing about the house’s layout resembles the temples to the Antebellum South she toured on school trips as a child. Instead of white walls bearing portrait paintings of old, dead white people, the front hallway is big enough to drive a Mack Truck through, and it’s covered in dark wood paneling so smooth it almost looks like both walls are covered in two expansive pieces of solid red mahogany that’s been stained to look darker. Instead of crown moldings, chrome gutters conceal long runs of recessed lighting, and the high ceiling is covered in tufted purple fabric similar to the kind that made up the flying tent. Both glittering chandeliers overhead resemble clouds of icicles. But the centerpiece of the foyer is a grand staircase Jonathan would probably describe as epic; two facing staircases descend from the second floor, before meeting in an expansive landing that gives way to an even bigger staircase oriented toward the front door, each descending step longer than the one before.
As they move deeper into the hallway, Emily notices the plush rug underfoot. It would have been easy to mistake its slashes of gold, yellow, and orange as some sort of abstract contemporary design, but the further they walk across it, the more Emily can see it’s an impressionistic rendering of a candle’s flame. And it looks vaguely familiar, like something she might have seen on the sign for a French Quarter boutique.
On the walls on either side of them, rows of purple candles sit on small chrome shelves arranged in matching pyramids. As Ryan passes the pyramid to their right, one of the candles flickers silently to life, and that’s when she sees the initials R B on a small plaque just below the candle’s shelf. A quick scan tells her that are about twenty-three candles total, one for each radiant.
Ryan stops walking, holds up one hand indicating they should as well.
Just then, the candles start popping to life on either side of them. Emily hears the approach of footsteps.
There’s something unnerving about the sound, and she realizes she’s hearing twenty people marching in lockstep across hardwood floors. Two groups of radiants appear on either side of the staircase, their storm of footfalls softening as they assemble into formation next to each other on the carpet at the foot of the stairs. They’re all masked, but they’re wearing skimpier versions of the outfits they had on earlier. Pants have been replaced by leather shorts that look painted on. The women’s breasts are exposed. In the unforgiving light of the chandeliers overhead, every inch of exposed skin is smooth, unblemished perfection, and while the body types vary somewhat, even the more full figured among them have a tense muscularity to their movements. But the fact that the body types on display vary at all suggests to Emily that some criteria other than a rigid magazine-approved standard of physical beauty was used to select the people before her.
If they were selected, she thinks. Maybe it’s some strange fate that brought each of them here. Enhanced could mean a lot of different things.
She’s so busy studying the radiants she’s missed the fact that Lilliane has descended to the middle landing. She wears the same jewel-fringed, black leather dress, only n
ow she carries a giant whip in one hand that makes the prop in Alexandra Vance’s fantasy look like a Tinkertoy.
Lilliane observes them each in turn, without greeting, then she cracks the whip through the air in front of her with a sound so sharp and loud it makes Emily cry out. On cue, all of the masked radiants at the base of the staircase drop to all fours, the crowns of their heads touching as they form two rows of solid, upturned backs. It seems old school with a twist was Ryan’s preferred way of describing the image of a proud, whip-toting black woman walking across the upturned backs of prostrate white people inside of an old plantation house in the Louisiana swamp.
“Good evening, Miss Conran. Do you feel like telling me your real name?”
“Emily. Emily Blaine.”
So Jonathan didn’t tell her my name, which means he’s either being loyal, or he’s unconscious somewhere in this vast house.
Lilliane clears her throat. “Before we begin, a history lesson. It shouldn't surprise you to hear my ancestors were brought across the Atlantic in chains. But for the length of their abominable journey, they were subjected to a far more effective tool of oppression. Nudity. Constant, forced nudity. The history books will try to convince you the sole reasoning for this was so any prospective buyer could thoroughly examine them for wounds and other defects. They were salable goods, after all. But how likely were they to rise up in rebellion when their most tender parts were constantly exposed? Ryan, take the lead.”
Ryan says, “Why? None of this is my fault.”
“It most certainly is!” Lilliane’s voice is something between a growl and a hiss. “If you wish to question my thinking, allow me to inform you, young man, that my major concern this evening is with the ugly impression your loss of control left on those guests who were not involved in Miss Blaine’s act of deception. All of you, disrobe. Now!”
With a sigh, Ryan strips out of his leather-lined jeans, holds them up in one hand like proof of kill and then drops them to the rug. Fully naked, he is an exquisitely put together work of art, and Emily tries not to ogle his perfect buns and the hard swells of his quads.
When she sees that Emily, Marcus, or Dupuy haven’t so much as unbuttoned their pants, Lilliane gives each of them a long, appraising stare. Underneath her bare feet, two radiants continue to support her weight without so much as a muscle tremor.
“Rest assured, I don’t seek to humiliate or degrade any of you. But deception is how you chose to introduce yourselves to us, and so I’m sure you can have no trouble seeing how only total honesty will normalize relations between us. If that’s possible.”
“Are you actually going to hurt Jonathan if we don’t take our clothes off?” Emily asks.
“Oh, no, sweet girl. I’m not going to hurt Jonathan at all. Rather, if you continue to deceive me, I'll give him so much pleasure he’ll never want to leave here again.”
“If you really want to see us naked,” Marcus says, “tear our clothes off yourself. You’ve got the power.”
“I don’t want to see you naked,” Lilliane says. “I want to see you humbled.”
“And then we can see Jonathan?” Emily asks, but she’s already sliding out of her leather jacket and unbuttoning her blouse. Lilliane nods.
Marcus whispers, “Seriously? I was hoping the first time you saw the full package was going to be…”
“Special?” Emily asks. “You mean like my honey test?”
“Still…”
“I promise not to look all the way down. How does that sound?”
“Can I go?” Dupuy asks.
“No,” Lilliane says. “At the very moment our guests were at their most vulnerable, the three of you injected lies and violence into our ceremony. You all stay until we're done.”
“I see,” Emily says, unhooking her bra and letting it fall to the floor. “So this is about the other guests, is it?” She unsnaps her jeans and steps out of them, one leg after the other. “The same guests you left stranded in the middle of the swamp?” She slides her panties down both legs and kicks them off her right foot. “I have a hard time believing that, Lilliane.”
“Do you?” Lilliane asks, giving Emily's naked body a clinical once-over.
“Yes, I think you left them out there like that because you’re afraid of being exposed for what you are.”
“And what am I, Emily Blaine?”
“Lonely,” Emily says. “I saw it in your face when that guy asked to leave. I saw it in your eyes when you watched him go. That’s when I knew it was real, all of it. That there was nothing in that punch, that you weren’t using some crazy projector. If it was just a joke or racquet, you wouldn’t have looked so hurt. So rejected.”
“Well,” Lilliane says gruffly. “My fault for requesting honesty. It doesn’t always go hand in hand with insight, I see.”
“I want to see Jonathan,” Emily says. “Now.”
“Talk to your friend,” Lilliane answers.
At first, Emily thinks she’s referring to Marcus, until she realizes she just pointed in the wrong direction, and it’s Dupuy who’s standing there shirtless, with his hairy chest exposed and his hands folded protectively over his crotch even though he’s still wearing jeans. “Dupuy,” Marcus says. “Clothes off, man.”
And that’s when Emily sees that Marcus has disrobed entirely, his hands gently crossed over his crotch. He’s got bulk and long, hard planes of muscle where Ryan Benoit has hard pencil-lines of definition, and she’s shocked by how aroused she is by the sight of him even in these forced, degrading circumstances. It feels as if all of the brawn on Marcus’s body has been electrified by his embarrassment, or his attempt to squash his embarrassment as something he finds unmanly or weak. This conflict tenses his posture and makes her dizzy with desire. But it’s only fair, after all, given what he watched her go through the night before.
He’s trying his best to stare straight ahead, but his jaw’s working as if he’s got a tiny piece of gum stuck to his back teeth, and his lips are pursed. “Hi,” he whispers as if they’re meeting for the first time.
“Hello back,” she whispers. “Big boy.”
“Not as big as that dude.”
She thinks he’s referring to Ryan. The guy’s letting it all hang out as he leans against the wall with arms crossed over his chest, looking thoroughly bored with the proceedings. But Marcus has jerked his head in the other direction, where Frank Dupuy is still awkwardly kicking his way out of the jeans he’s pulled down to his ankles, having just revealed a member for the record books.
“Everyone just shut up,” Dupuy growls. “Now.”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” Ryan says.
“Who said I was embarrassed?” Dupuy asks as he turns the color of a tomato.
Emily says, “I’d like to see Jonathan please.”
Lilliane drapes her whip over one shoulder and claps her hands twice. A few seconds later, two masked radiants enter carrying a high-backed chair similar to the throne they used in the tent earlier that night. Jonathan is stark naked, his wrists tied to the chair’s solid arms, his ankles bound to the chair’s chunky legs. His eyes widen when he sees the group assembled before him.
“What’s up, other naked people?” he croons, sounding drunk or exhausted or in shock, or a combination of all three. “Holy shit, Dupuy. You and I have a date later!”
“As if, kid,” the man growls.
“Is he drunk?” Marcus asks.
Lilliane says, “He’s still processing the events of the evening.”
As soon as the two radiants put Jonathan’s chair down on the floor a few feet from where Lilliane stands atop two of her subjects, Jonathan says, “What my new friend Lilliane really means is that I'm still trying to get over the fact she took me in her arms and flew fifty feet into the air, over and over and over again. And I'd just like to say the fact that I didn’t throw up then, and that I’m not throwing up now just from talking about it, has gotta qualify me for paratrooper school. I mean, am I right, or am I righ
t?" He gives them a pathetic, dual thumbs-up with his bound hands.
“Seriously,” Marcus says. “You haven’t drugged him at all?”
“I’ve been very tempted,” Lilliane answers. “Trust me.”
“Jonathan, have you been drugged?” Emily asks.
“Yeah. They drugged us all back at the tent.”
“There was nothing in it,” Emily says. “It was sugar water and food coloring.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jonathan whispers. “Seriously? This shit is for real?”
“Shall we return to business?” Lilliane asks with a sigh.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Marcus says. “Business. Of course. Now that, you know, we’re all naked and everything.”
“The arrangement you made with Ryan is as follows. Jonathan will share the contents of his father’s letter with him, and in exchange we will let Jonathan go so that he can put in his application for paratrooper school.”
“Uhm,” Jonathan says, “I, uh, kinda lost the letter somewhere over the swamp. See, it’s hard to keep things clamped in between your butt cheeks when you’re flying through the air and screaming. I don’t expect you to understand, Lilliane.”
“I do understand, Jonathan,” Lilliane says. “I was there the whole time, listening to your screams, remember? The point is, you have actually read this letter of Arthur Benoit’s, or so I’m told, and one of the conditions of your release—”
“I’m sorry? One?” Marcus asks.
Lilliane holds up a finger meant to silence. It does the trick. “—is that you share the contents of this letter with Ryan. Now.”
“Really?” Jonathan asks, then he looks expectantly at Emily. Emily nods, encouraging him to go ahead, but apparently Emily’s permission is not enough.