“I trust not, but I like to give guidance when I can.”
A chill ran up Lance’s spine.
“Take off your shirt and come here.”
Lance didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare not.
“Oh, come, Mr. Mathews,” Osgood’s voice cajoled. “Surely you know I’m not going to eliminate you at this point. I own seven Others, each capable in his or her own way. You are the one best qualified for this job, and I would have a difficult time replacing you.”
“I know.” Driven by terror and pulled by hope, Lance pulled off his shirt. Holding it in tight fists, he stumbled toward the desk.
“You shouldn’t be so afraid.” Now Osgood sounded reproachful. “I realize how very much you cherish that pretty face of yours. That perfect hair. The body, so perfectly created for sin. And this youthful beauty is so useful to me. I wouldn’t hurt that tender outer surface.”
“Thank you.” Lance knelt before Osgood and stared up toward his face.
There was nothing remarkable about Osgood’s looks. He was past middle age, small-boned and not tall, bald and descended from some unmemorable branch of the white European populace. What hair he had was wispy brunet, his eyes were an indistinctive brown, and he was lightly tanned. He wore good clothes and expensive shoes, and was always formally dressed. He seldom showed expression; he looked the same when he was working, when he was fucking, when he was piloting his plane or threatening a debtor.
Right now, he wore that same serene face—and he scared Lance half to death.
“Half to death.” Osgood plucked the thought from Lance’s mind, and mused aloud. “Exactly. Half to death would work very well.”
“What are you going to do?” Lance’s voice quavered.
Osgood traced the mark of the flame on Lance’s chest. “Do you know, on the day your mother tossed you in the garbage, you received this mark as part of your gift, a compensation for the lack of a family’s love.” He held up a hand. “I had nothing to do with it, I assure you. I don’t share power. But I do harness it.”
“I know.” Lance thought of the Others, going about Osgood’s business all over the night-clad city.
“The thing about marks like this is—once the flesh and the spirit have been ripped apart, a weakness forever remains. And for someone like me, that’s opportunity, golden opportunity. It would be a shame not to take advantage of that weakness, now wouldn’t it?” Osgood warmed to his subject. “For instance, Mr. Mathews, I can feel your heart thumping beneath the flame. Racing, really. Are you frightened?”
Lance nodded, too scared to look away from that incredibly calm face.
“You should be.” Osgood flattened his hand on Lance’s chest. A blue flame lit in his eyes, burning like the hottest embers of hell.
And pain slashed like a knife into Lance’s heart.
He collapsed on the floor, writhing as agony tightened his shoulders and spread up his neck.
Osgood pushed back his chair and watched. “It appears you have a previously unrecognized heart defect. Probably it runs in your family—maybe you got it from your whore of a mother, or from the abusive sot she married.”
Sweat broke out on Lance’s forehead, trickled down his spine. He couldn’t breathe; his skin turned cold. He wanted to vomit; he couldn’t unlock his jaw.
“Death from a heart attack can take several minutes, and as I understand it, those minutes of torture seem to go on forever. That’s what makes a heart attack so interesting to view. The victim struggles so much—well, if he can.”
Lance could barely hear Osgood’s voice through the buzzing in his ears.
“Actually, the usual first sign of a heart attack is death. Did you know that, Mr. Mathews?”
Red spots paraded before Lance’s eyes. His struggles were growing more convulsive, less constant.
“But in your case, if you perform well and don’t make any more silly mistakes, your heart defect might remain unnoticed for the rest of your very long, long life.”
Suddenly, the pain was gone. Lance could breathe again. And he did, lying on the floor, gasping in the sweet, warm air of life.
“Mr. Mathews, I don’t want you to think that I’ve punished you unduly. After all, it was only this one little tiny failure.” Osgood waited for a response, then gently prompted, “Right?”
Lance gathered all his strength, and wheezed, “Right.”
“But nor do I want the Others to think I’ve favored you unduly. That would cause dissension in the ranks, and worse, it might encourage sloppiness with their work.”
This time, Lance knew to agree right away. “I understand.”
“So should you contemplate failing me again, please remember this hitherto undetected heart defect, the agony involved in dying of a heart attack, and how very long it can take.”
“I will.” The memory would hang like a knife above Lance’s head every day of his life.
“Now, I suggest you make your plans to take command of Dr. Hall and her knowledge so that when she finds that prophecy, it is ours.”
“I will. I swear I will.”
Osgood flicked his fingers in Lance’s direction. “Get out.”
Lance crawled toward the door.
When he reached it, Osgood called, “Mr. Mathews.”
Lance looked back.
Osgood touched his own chest, and once again, his eyes glowed blue. “Remember.”
Chapter 13
“And here he is. Mr. I-Can’t-Stand-the-Librarian-Upstairs.” Samuel chalked his pool cue and sneered as Aaron strode toward the bar in the downstairs library.
“Shut up, Samuel.” As he poured himself two fingers of tequila, Aaron didn’t look at the Chosen sprawled on the sofas. “I have my reasons.”
“Yes. I know. You tell us every evening.” Samuel numbered the reasons on his fingers. “She doesn’t pay attention to her clothes. She doesn’t pay attention to her grooming. She can’t carry on a conversation because she’s always thinking about what she just read, or what she read years ago, or what she’s going to read next. Personally, I think you’re jealous because she doesn’t pay attention to you.”
“Asshole.” Aaron swallowed the tequila neat.
It wasn’t what Rosamund did that made him watch like a cat at a mousehole. It was who she was . . . and no matter how much time he spent with her, he couldn’t quite figure that out.
Charisma stepped away from the pool table. “Shut up, Samuel. You’re no sweet dream yourself.”
“I changed your damned toilet paper the other day.”
Charisma shot back sarcastically, “What do you want? A cookie?”
Turning back to the game, Samuel stumbled, and when Aaron laughed, Samuel picked up a gold platform sandal. “Damn it, Charisma. At least I pick up my shoes.”
“Sorry about that.” Charisma started to take it.
But he threw it, and then the second one, across the room at the fireplace.
Hands on her hips, Charisma got in his face. “You are the biggest jerk!”
He glanced at Isabelle, sitting with her feet tucked under her, sorting through stacks of papers. “So I’ve been told. Many times.”
The inactivity was getting on everyone’s nerves.
When the explosion had first taken out the Gypsy Travel Agency, everyone had been willing to hole up in Irving’s home and be safe. But days and days of enforced confinement had cured that. They had quickly realized that, yes, the Others were powerful and ruthless, and planned to eliminate them all, but they had to do something to fight them.
More important, they had discovered that living with strangers in a restricted space, while being deprived of their belongings and their freedoms, made everyone want to crawl the walls. The guys went out occasionally on the theory that men were less vulnerable than women, but then something happened like Aaron’s mind speaker, and they all went back into a huddle waiting for a sign, or a prophecy, or some direction.
Waiting for the prophecy was the sensible thing to do.
They all knew it. But Samuel paced like a caged lion. Charisma’s Internet orders poured in, everything from clothes to gourmet ice-cream sandwiches to jigsaw puzzles. Isabelle obsessively took notes from papers gleaned in forays through Irving’s notebooks and the historical documents he’d kept at the house, trying to get a sense of previous Chosen methods and procedures. Aleksandr ran off to school every chance he got. Only Jacqueline and Caleb were still calm and pleasant, but they weren’t here this evening. Aaron didn’t have to ask where they were or what they were doing. As Samuel said, I’d be happy, too, if I was getting laid all the time.
Aaron brooded over Rosamund, who barely noticed him, and when he wasn’t brooding, he researched Dr. Elijah Hall’s death. According to every record he could find, it had occurred exactly as Rosamund had been told. Yet . . . how to explain that text he had sent?
Run.
Samuel took his shot, flubbed it, then turned on Aaron. “I’ll tell you why I don’t like your Dr. Hall. It’s not because she doesn’t pay attention to anything. It’s because she hasn’t found that rotten prophecy yet. What kind of librarian did you bring us, Aaron? Because I am sick and tired of being stuck in this house.”
“At least you’re doing something.” Charisma leaned on her cue. “Legal research on the computer has got to be more interesting than just sitting here. I mean, I know you’re using the computer, because you can’t stand to leave Safari as the default browser.”
“I’m not using a stupid Apple browser,” he shot back.
“It’s a lot less buggy than your Microsoft browser,” she snapped.
“Come on, guys.” Aleksandr pulled one of his earphones out of his ear. “I’m listening to music.”
“You’re a kid,” Samuel said.
Aleksandr pulled the other earphone out. “I’m a kid? I’m not having a big fat tantrum and throwing people’s shoes.”
Aaron, already pissed off, got more pissed off about Aleksandr. The youngest member of their group, and he had the most freedom. Aaron poured himself a second drink, and said, “You’re not bored because you get to go to the university every day while the rest of us are stuck in this house waiting for the Librarian Upstairs to find us a prophecy.”
“I wish I could sleep at the university. Instead I have to sleep across the hall from Mr. I’m-Going-to-Get-Up-and-Exercise”—Aleksandr glared at Aaron—“but you can’t stand to actually get up, so you hit your snooze alarm over and over and everyone within earshot has to wake up every eight minutes for the next forty-five minutes until you finally manage to roll your lazy ass out of bed.”
Isabelle slammed her notebook closed, and in a voice that carried over and through their arguments, she said, “Would you all just shut up?”
Silence fell.
They had elected Isabelle to be their leader because of her serene good grace and intelligent, balanced decisions. In all the trouble they’d already had, she had kept her head and directed them fairly.
Now they all stared at her, at her angry eyes and tightly folded lips.
Then Samuel said, “Do you want to fight, Isabelle? Because if you do, I’m your man.”
She flushed. “You make this whole ordeal even more unbearable. You are unbearable.”
“You do want to fight. C’mon, Isabelle.” Samuel danced toward her, fists up. “Just once, forget who you are, and let’s fight.”
She half lifted her notebook as if she wanted to throw it at his head, and the only thing stopping her was her upbringing.
Aaron glanced between them. Her upbringing, and that light in Samuel’s eyes that clearly relished the thought of breaking through Isabelle’s reserve.
Those two had known each other before they came to be Chosen. Something had happened between them, something that wasn’t yet finished. But it wasn’t going to get finished now, because Isabelle put her book down, rose, and started for the door.
“Coward,” Samuel taunted.
Isabelle swung on him, fists clenched.
“All right.” Martha stood in the doorway, frowning darkly at them. Her voice carried over Samuel’s stupid jeers, drowned out the click of Charisma’s cue against the balls, and made them all straighten up and pay attention. “There’s no choice. I’m taking you all down to Davidov’s Brew Pub.”
Samuel got that look on his face, the one that said Martha had interrupted just when he had Isabelle where he wanted her. “Gee, Martha, thanks. We can go outside, as long as you lead us yourself? What are we going to do, walk single file, Indian style?” Samuel turned to Aaron. “You ought to be good at that, Tonto.”
“My God, Samuel.” Isabelle sounded as if she were in despair. “Do you have to be as offensive as you know how?”
“Someone has to counterbalance all that gentility of yours,” he answered.
Aaron didn’t care whether Samuel tried to insult him. Not when he could brush close to him and, sotto voce, say, “You missed your chance again, champ. She’s never going to care.” Then he smirked.
He could almost hear Samuel’s teeth grind.
Charisma grabbed her shoes off the fireplace and hopped around as she put them on.
Martha stood straight and stiff, her hands clasped before her. “Mr. Faa, the pub is underground. It’s connected to the mansion through one of the tunnels that honeycomb the city.”
Isabelle picked up her sweater off the back of the sofa.
Martha continued. “I would send you on your own, but you’d get lost in the dark and cry like a baby, and I’d hate to see you so mortified.” Clearly, that was a lie. She would love to see Samuel mortified. “Now if you’re done complaining, I’ll escort you to the pub.”
Aaron started to dump his drink in the bar sink, then paused and looked up toward Irving’s private library.
Samuel took his turn to whomp on Aaron’s ego. “Don’t worry, Tonto. Your librarian won’t notice you’re gone. She doesn’t even know you’re alive.”
“To hell with you,” Aaron muttered. But Samuel was right, so he poured out the tequila and put down his glass.
He looked up in time to see Martha turn.
McKenna stood directly behind her, quivering with Celtic outrage. “Martha. Mr. Shea expressly forbade that we take them out, and you know what he thinks of Vidar Davidov!”
Martha considered the butler for a long moment. She turned back to the Chosen Ones clustered behind her. “In the interest of fairness, I should tell you that while you will be perfectly safe in Davidov’s Pub, Mr. Shea is concerned that during the trip there, you might be attacked by the Others and captured or killed. The danger is real, and one you might want to take into account.”
The Chosen Ones looked at each other, then looked at her.
“I’m not the leader of the Chosen, but I feel as if I can speak for us all.” Charisma looked around.
Everyone nodded.
“If I don’t get out of this house pretty soon, I’m going to throw myself screaming out the window.” Her voice rose with every word.
Martha turned back to McKenna. “There you have it. If Mr. Shea wishes to complain, he can come to me.”
McKenna scuttled off toward the stairs.
“What a tattletale,” Samuel said.
“No, Mr. Faa,” Martha said. “He is loyal to Mr. Shea. There is a difference.”
“What about you? What are you loyal to?” Samuel was still being snotty.
She looked at him without expression in those calm, dark eyes. “I am loyal to the Chosen Ones. I am loyal to you, Mr. Faa.”
Chapter 14
The tunnel was dim and cool, lit by occasional shafts of sunlight from grates twenty-five feet above in the New York City sidewalks. For the first half mile, the tunnel was wrapped in gray concrete, and the Chosen Ones exclaimed and pointed, awed and amazed at the network that connected the city.
Abruptly, the smooth surface quit. Gravel and dirt crunched beneath Aaron’s shoes, the air grew dank, and once, pebbles from the ceiling fell like a patter of hail behind t
hem. It got darker until they came to what looked like a crossroads, where passage after passage stretched into the gloom. Here Martha switched on her flashlight and continued steadily on. As they passed one passage, Aaron caught a whiff of fetid air. He looked; it plunged downward, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck.
They were being watched.
The Chosen Ones moved closer to each other, and to Martha.
“Martha, who built this labyrinth?” Samuel asked.
Unlike the Chosen, Martha seemed impervious to the atmosphere. “Some of the tunnels were dug during Prohibition to move liquor. Some were dug during the World Wars as safety measures. Some were dug by the railroad or the subway commission and used and abandoned, or never used at all. And others . . .” She shrugged.