“I’m here,” she whispered back, kissing his cheek as lightly as possible. While it might not have mattered, there was no reason to tempt the Fates.
“Where am I?” After a few tries he managed to open his crusted eyes. Chloe swallowed her sadness at the damage done to another human being, the ravaging of his good looks. Brian’s eyes were red and there was a pool of blood or something covering half of his left one; his right was sunk in a swollen mass of purple flesh.
What a stupid, stupid thing! was all she could think.
“You’re safe,” she said, deciding that was the easiest answer.
He snorted. Then he coughed, a long, rasping fit.
“No,” he croaked. “Really.” His dull eyes managed to twinkle just a little.
Chloe sighed.
“You’re in the emergency room of Mai HQ. Can’t reveal the location; it’s a secret.”
“I’m—” He hacked some more. Spittle came out of his mouth and ran down his chin. No blood this time, Chloe was relieved to see. Before she even thought about it, she took the edge of her shirt and wiped his face with it. “I’m where?”
“Well, where else was I supposed to take you?” she snapped with feigned annoyance. She was just relieved he was able to speak this coherently.
“That doctor … lady … ?” A weak finger pointed at the door.
“Mai.”
Brian took so long to answer that she was afraid he had fallen asleep with his eyes open.
“Holy crap,” he finally said, groaning. “Irony …”
“Shhh. Rest.”
“Not … dead …” he suddenly realized, eyes flaring. He turned his head and tried to move his shoulders so he could look at her. “I kissed you! Not dead … How?”
Chloe shook her head. “I don’t know…. Kim thinks the curse might be lifting because I saved a human life—my mom’s.” She decided not to burden him, once again, with the details of Xavier. Later. When he was feeling better.
“Kiss me,” he ordered.
So she did.
He pulled her partly onto the bed with him, and except for one bad moment when her elbow dug into what was probably a cracked rib, they remained that way for a while ….
Chloe was so distracted by the fact that Kim seemed to be right—the curse did seem to be lifted—that when she finally left to go see Sergei, she forgot to be nervous or worried.
“Hey,” she said. Olga and Sergei were bent over his desk together, looking at a newspaper or a contract or something. Her short platinum hair and his natural tweedy orange clashed so badly that Chloe almost had to look away.
When Olga looked up and saw her, she smiled with genuine affection and dipped her head.
“Yes, Chloe.” Sergei also smiled, but Chloe saw something else in his blue-water eyes: fear, mistrust, eagerness; she couldn’t tell. “Oh, and we’re confirmed for Tuesday, October 28. Your introduction to the Pride.”
“Oh, great. I have to check my class schedule and talk with Mom, but I don’t see why not.” All Chloe could picture was Sergei onstage in a giant auditorium, speaking at a blue-draped podium with Chloe sitting in a folding chair beside him, waiting to be introduced. All of the eyes she could see beyond the foot- and spotlights were slit, and there were occasional hisses from the audience.
“Has Kim fitted you with a robe yet?” Olga asked, jotting something down on the PalmPilot she carried.
If only that woman knew how ridiculous those words sounded coming out of her mouth. Chloe could just see it on her college application: Math team, AP French, and two years of mostly dead ancient-Egyptian-related language and religion. Well, at least Brown would be interested.
“Robe?”
“You have to start learning the Precepts of the Mai and at least some of our language before the ritual.”
“Ritual?” The scene in Chloe’s head switched from a high-school assembly to a cross between a bat mitzvah and something she might have seen on Buffy.
“Chloe, you have to start taking this seriously,” Sergei said sternly. “It is not all about fun and power.”
She opened her mouth to tell him Kim’s theory about the curse and her possible lifting of it—but something made her stop. Something her cat-eared friend had told her weeks ago, when she first came to the mansion, about not always revealing everything she knew.
Sergei misinterpreted the look in her eyes and sighed. “I’m just trying …. There’s a lot more to being a leader than just, well, ‘leading,’ Chloe. You really need to understand the soul of our people. And while you were born with a better natural insight of our ways and religion, you are still without a connection to those who live it every day.”
“Yeah, I know, you’re right,” Chloe admitted.
“Even those of us who have had many years of experience can still make horrible mistakes …. I feel terrible about what happened to your mother, Chloe,” he said out of nowhere and stiffly, as if he wasn’t used to apologizing. “My previous decision to not risk Mai life for the mother of the Chosen—of any Mai—was shortsighted and foolish and almost led to great harm. Anything could have happened once the Order kidnapped her—and I would have been partially to blame.”
Where is he going with this? Chloe wondered.
“I know how important your human friends and family are to you. At least I do now.” He tapped a manila folder on his desk. “Consider this a peace offering, not a bribe. I’ve set our human resources department the task of finding your adoptive father.”
Of all the things Chloe was expecting him to say, this definitely wasn’t one of them. She felt like she had been hit on the forehead with a shovel, too stunned to speak.
“My dad?” She stared at the folder, wanting and not wanting to reach for it.
“We don’t have anything yet,” Olga said gently. “But we’ve tackled tougher cases—nameless orphan Mai half a world away. We will find him,” she added.
“Oh.” Chloe shifted her weight from one foot to another. “Thanks.” She got up and turned to leave, unsure what else to do. “I guess I’ll see you ….”
“Chloe—,” Sergei called. She looked back. He had a pained expression on his face, like he was really trying to get through to her but didn’t know how. “Olga and I are here for you, for whatever you need. Anything.”
“Thanks,” Chloe said, maybe actually meaning it this time.
She closed the door behind her and stood there a moment in the lobby, trying to take in what had just happened. He was going to help find her dad. Her human dad. It was obviously Sergei’s way of apologizing.
“Honored One,” Igor greeted her coldly, approaching Sergei’s office. His eyes never looked more feline as the light caught his irises and made them almost red.
“Igor,” Chloe said uncomfortably.
There was no trace of the former friendliness he had shown her when she had interned briefly at Firebird. “I heard about the big meeting—where you will take over,” he hissed. “Sergei has devoted his entire life to the Pride, you know.”
So much for automatic acceptance of their divinely gifted spiritual leader, she thought glumly. There didn’t seem to be an upside to any of this.
“I’m not trying to take it away from him. This is the way I was born,” Chloe said, a little desperately.
“Yes. Just remember, while you were being raised by humans, Sergei was helping to save the Mai.” And he strode off—Rather cowardly, Chloe thought—not giving her a chance to reply.
“This just keeps getting better and better,” she muttered.
Things seemed to be finally getting back to normal that evening. After homework, Chloe treated herself to watching some dorky reality show and flipping through the latest Vogue. It was the first mindless, enjoyable downtime she’d had in weeks.
“Hey.” Her mom suddenly appeared next to her, kneeling by the couch with an expectant look on her face. For the second time that day Chloe was pretty sure she didn’t like where things were about to go.
&nb
sp; “Yeah?” Chloe said suspiciously.
“I was just thinking about Paul and Amy, and you and all the stress you’re under, and your, uh, other friends … Alyec, and the one with the ears ….”
“Yes?” Chloe said, still suspicious.
“Well.” Her mother brushed a wispy lock of ash blond hair behind her ear, once again pixie perfect. Her earrings—replacements for the ones she’d dropped at the Order’s hideout when she was kidnapped—swung, hypnotic dark silver crescent pendulums. “Whatever happens, I really need to be more informed about your life and get to know your friends better.” While this was said lightly, there was a look in Anna King’s eyes that allowed no defiance. This was a Mother Decision.
Chloe braced herself.
“I was thinking about throwing a little pizza party for all of you,” her mom said with a brilliantly white grin.
The surprise party that she had thrown for Chloe’s sixteenth birthday was actually pretty swank and fun. But this …
“Awww, Mom! Come on,” Chloe said desperately. “That was cool when I was, like, ten ….”
“It’s still fun,” her mom insisted. “We can do make-your-own pizzas—maybe even get the dough from Carlucci’s. Different toppings—it will be totally retro. Like a little pre-Halloween party.”
“This is not a good idea,” Chloe pleaded.
“I’d really like to meet your friends,” her mom said through gritted teeth. “Since they came to help rescue you and me.”
“You know how, like, Angel and Buffy used to do crossovers? Like, Willow showing up on Angel and Angel appearing in the last episode of Buffy?” Chloe said, trying not to sound whiny. “Well, Smallville and The O.C. don’t—and this is like that. Paul and Amy are breaking up. Amy and Alyec … something weird is going on there. And Kim? Mom, you don’t even know her—she’s a freak. I love her, but she’s not exactly a party animal and she doesn’t like Alyec, either…. I just can’t really deal with this whole worlds-colliding idea.”
“I want. To meet. Your friends.”
The Mai had a thing or two to learn about intimidation from this woman who had normal, round pupils, Chloe decided.
She sank woefully back into the couch. No good could come of this.
Ten
“Hello, Mrs. King,”
Chloe’s mom opened the door for Kim, then stared at her. She wore a black felt hat pulled tightly down to cover her ears and loose black jeans with a frumpy black sweater, like she was trying to disguise her whole body, not just her head. Round Lennon-style sunglasses with thick red lenses hid her slitted eyes. She stuck a gloved hand out and presented Anna King with a bouquet of flowers. “Here. I hope this is an acceptable hostess gift. Thank you for inviting me to the party. I’ve never been to one before.”
Chloe closed her eyes in horror and exhaustion. Amy tried not to giggle, for the first time ever not the weirdest and most socially inept person at a party.
“You can take all that off,” Chloe said, trying to sound lighthearted and polite. “Mom saw you at the Presidio, and anyway, she knows who you are.”
“These are lovely flowers, Kim, thank you.” Chloe’s mom had her game face on, but she was genuinely touched by the gesture. She rummaged for just the right vase in the cabinets. Kim took off her gloves distastefully and removed her hat.
“Here, I think this will do.” Anna King turned around with the flowers nicely arranged in a cobalt blue crystal thing just in time to see Kim running her clawed hands through her hair, scratching at the base of her unfolding, velvet black ears. “Ah,” she said, trying not to look surprised, trying desperately for the politically correct you-can’t-shock-me look she usually reserved for transsexuals or the severely deformed.
“I’ve never interacted with humans like this before—undressed, I mean,” Kim said, a little uncomfortably.
“Hey, have a drink,” Amy suggested, waving at a little platter of virgin coladas with grenadine “blood” dripping down the sides of the glasses. Sometimes Chloe wished she had a younger sister just so her mom would have someone else to get all Martha Stewart on.
Kim picked up a plastic glass suspiciously and her tongue darted out, taking the smallest lick from the top. Apparently it was acceptable; her eyes widened and she took a sip.
“He’s such a douche bag,” Amy said, turning to Chloe and continuing their conversation from before as if nothing had happened. Kim nodded wisely as if she knew what was going on. “He just fucking gave back the CDs I gave him, like I was just loaning them or something. ‘Oh, uh, Amy, I think these are yours,’” Amy said, standing on her toes and imitating him. “What’s up with that?”
“Paul and Amy are definitely breaking up,” Chloe told Kim, feeling the need to let her in on it. Also, it gave her something else to do. It was easy to console Amy when the boy involved was someone Chloe barely knew; with previous boyfriends she had joined in with a happy chorus of “he can go to hell” and wishing various poxes on his genitalia.
She didn’t really want to say anything bad about Paul—although he really was being a douche about this, Chloe reflected. But he had his own shit to deal with …. She really didn’t know what to say or do now.
“Is this a bad thing?” Kim asked with all the innocence of a vaguely interested psychotherapist.
“He … I … ,” Amy began and stopped. “He’s just being a total douche bag about it!”
“Do you want to stay together?” Kim said, in a tone that was like she was just repeating the previous question.
“I don’t know. Not if he’s going to be like this all the time.”
Chloe marveled at how well Amy and Kim seemed to be getting along. They seemed to have bonded even more since the night at the diner; Amy was spilling her guts to the girl she normally would have been dead jealous of—beautiful, exotic, and far more outré than herself. “I don’t know how to break up,” Amy finally admitted, pulling one of her dark locks straight. “I don’t know if we can go back—if I can go back to just being friends again.” She paused, chewing her lip uncertainly. “We were intimate, you know? We—”
“Stop,” Chloe suggested, deciding it was time she entered the conversation again. “Please.”
The three of them were silent, sipping their drinks for a moment.
“He wasn’t very good,” Amy couldn’t help saying.
“Stop” both Kim and Chloe said at the same time.
“Your necklace,” Kim began, trying to change the conversation, “is fascinating—it’s one of our Twin Goddesses.”
“Bastet, yeah. What do you mean Twin Goddesses?” Amy asked, fingering the little cat charm she had worn every day since her bat mitzvah.
“Bastet and Sekhmet, the goddesses of the Mai. Whose divine blood runs in our veins and whom we worship.”
“Get out!” Amy said, excited. “You all are like Egyptian and polytheistic and stuff?”
Chloe shook her head as the two girls spoke animatedly about religion. Even Amy would make a better Mai priestess than me. Aside from being Jewish, her best friend was always the one into Wicca stuff, and Buddhism, and ancient pantheons and things like that.
Just when Chloe began to relax, Paul and Alyec arrived—together. Which was weird for a number of reasons, not the least of which that the latter had been dissing the former pretty badly just a couple of days before.
“Hey, Mrs. King,” Paul said. He came bearing a Greek salad.
“Nice to meet you, Chloe’s mom,” Alyec said, both charming and breezy, polite and insouciant. That’s Alyec. She hadn’t really talked to her mom much about him or Brian since being caught dating both of them—when she wasn’t originally allowed to date anyone at all. That would require talking about Brian, and that was still a subject best left alone until he had fully recovered.
Alyec also brought her mom flowers but presented them with more of a flourish than Kim. Once again Chloe wondered if some of the stranger habits of her new family were a result of being Mai or Eastern European.
>
“Two bouquets in one day,” her mom said, instantly smitten with Alyec like every other female on the planet. “I haven’t gotten that many even on Valentine’s Day.”
“Chloe.” Alyec came over and kissed her on the cheek, a safe bet. Paul and her mom exchanged pleasantries, then Paul suddenly found himself deeply interested in a bowl of wasabi peas.
“Hey,” Chloe said uncertainly.
“I’m sorry—,” Alyec began. Somehow she suspected it was something he wasn’t used to saying.
“No, you’re completely right,” Chloe said, stopping him. “I … wasn’t treating you fairly.”
Amy had discreetly removed herself a few feet, looking at their CD collection, eventually wandering over to Paul. Chloe’s mom had managed to corner Kim and was questioning her as politely as she could without reverting to lawyer mode.
“So, you’ve lived with your, uh, Pride your entire life?” her mom was asking Kim interestedly, popping a chip into her mouth. “Never went to school or anything?”
It was supposed to sound neutral, a casual question, like Anna King was talking to another adult. But Chloe could hear the tone in her voice, see the look on her face: maternal concern was beginning to manifest. Chloe thought about her biological sister, the one whom she had only found out about recently, the one who had been murdered—probably by the Rogue—before they ever had a chance to meet. She had told her mom about the other Mai girl but wondered what would happen if she had brought her home. What would Anna King do?
Throw a party, came the obvious answer.
“So,” Amy said, turning back to Alyec. “How’s the music for the prom coming along, prom boy?”
She cocked her head and sat down. Amy’s latest new look involved shorts almost like knickers, tights, leg warmers, and a cardigan over a T-shirt on top. Long used to looking at the outfits while carefully erasing her friend from the picture, Chloe could see it was a look that might actually grace a runway. Amy, while pretty in her own way, never really made a good model for the clothes she designed. Her looks were complicated, second-look beauty; she should have worn simpler outfits. And if Chloe didn’t know better, she would have thought Amy was interacting almost humanly with Alyec for once.