Avenging Angels (7 page)

Antonia snapped on the overhead light, flooding the town house living room with a sudden glare. Bree shaded her eyes with her hand and said crossly, “For Pete’s sake, Antonia.”

“Why are you sitting here in the dark?” Antonia dropped onto the opposite end of the couch and swung one leg over the armrest. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“No.”

“Well, what have you been doing here in the dark?” She was fretful. She’d planned to leave the party at five, to go on to handle the Sunday evening show at the Rep, and Bree assumed she’d done just that. “You got something to eat, didn’t you? You haven’t been sacked out here for six hours!”

Had she? Maybe she had. Bree dropped her hands in her lap. “Thinking about my new client.”

“That is so
awesome
, that you’re going to represent Tully O’Rourke.”

Bree didn’t say anything. She hadn’t been thinking about Tully O’Rourke. She’d been thinking about Russell’s skeletal hand clutching at her from the depths of God-knew-where. Hell, probably, given what the media said about him, and as close to the core of the Dark Sphere as it was possible to be. Her appeals cases came from all nine circles of the afterlife; those condemned to the periphery paid penance for lesser sins in milder ways. Surely greed, fraud, and outright theft carried grave and terrible punishments. Although, come to think of it, lying to the SEC had been the only provable charge. His death had stalled further investigations.

But the pitiable desperation in those fragile, shadowy bones had pulled at her as surely as chains. And that led to turning over the hundreds of questions she had about her law practice, about the exact nature of her inheritance from her great-uncle. Then there was the unsettling visit from opposing counsel; her difficulty sleeping; the recurring dreams, at night, of death and worse.

With a faint brush of unease, she realized she
had
been sitting here in the dark for six hours.

She got up and walked restlessly to the fireplace. The family town house had been built before the Civil War, when the Savannah River had been a busy port channeling cotton across the Atlantic to Europe and hemp to the mills up North. The lower half of the building had been offices for the warehouses on each side, with living quarters up top, at the street level of Factor’s Walk. Winston-Beauforts had always lived here, since 1813, warming themselves at this same fireplace. The bricks, the mantel, the wrought-iron grate of this fireplace had endured through a lot of family history. Bree ran her thumb along the pine mantel and looked into the depths of the elaborately carved mirror that hung above it.

Shadows moved there. She reached up and laid her hands flat against the cold surface. It seemed to pulse, faintly, under her palm, as if it breathed.

Antonia’s voice cut into her thoughts. “I said, where’s Sasha?”

Bree brought herself back to the present with an effort and turned around. “Sorry. He’s curled up asleep right over there.”

“No, he’s not.”

“He most certainly is,” Bree said. “Right by the rocking chair.”

“Where?” Antonia leaned forward, hands on her knees, and then said, “Oh.” Her voice dropped a few decibels. “That’s funny. I could have sworn . . .” She rubbed her face with both hands and shook her head violently. “I swear I’m going nuts. He was there all the time? Sasha? Sash?” She patted the sofa. Sasha got up and ambled over to her. He put his head on her lap and sighed as she rubbed his ears. A handsome golden retriever/mastiff mix, he was the only canine member of Beaufort & Company.

“Honestly, Tonia.” But Bree looked at her dog reprovingly. He rumbled a little—which she took for an apology. There were times when you could actually see Sasha, and times when you couldn’t. It was all part of her Company’s way of operating in the temporal world. Generally speaking, Petru, Lavinia, Ron, and even the imperious and irritating Gabriel Striker made the effort to keep an unobtrusive profile. Sometimes they slipped up and the people around Bree asked uncomfortable questions.

Antonia set her jaw in a determined way. “Sit down, Bree. I want to talk to you.”

Bree raised one eyebrow. “You sound exactly like Daddy when he wants to have a Serious Talk. Do you want to have a Serious Talk?”

“Don’t get lippy with me, Bree. Not now.”

Antonia was six years younger. From the time Francesca had brought her little sister home from the hospital, Bree had brushed her hair, read her bedtime stories, and watched over her on the playground. As time went on, she kept an eye on the dozens of dazzled teenage boys that trailed after her sister in high school like hounds after a particularly delectable fox. She’d thrown herself into the breach when their parents went ballistic over her sister’s merry distaste for college and took her in when she left home to chase after life on the stage. Not once, in all that time, had Antonia reared up and tried to come over the parent with her. Until now.

“Okay,” Bree said, amused.

“And if you keep on smirking at me, I’ll pull your hair so hard your scalp’ll be pink for a week.”

Bree tucked her hair behind her ears. It was long, silver-blonde, and, as Anthony Haddad had seemed to figure out, her one vanity. She wore it in a coronet of braids to keep it out of the way when she was at work, but she hadn’t bothered with that this weekend. It fell freely down her back, almost to her waist. “Got it.” Then, since her sister looked both worried and cross, she added a real apology. “Sorry. It’s usually me talking to you like a Dutch uncle. Not the other way around.”

“Yeah. Well. Get used to it. I mean, we’re here to take care of each other, right?”

“Right. Sisters forever.”

“Right.” Antonia took a deep, nervous breath. “So. What’s up with you, anyway?”

“What do you mean, what’s up with me? Nothing’s up with me.”

“Something’s wrong.”

Bree gathered her hair up and twisted it into a long tail. “Got a scrunchie on you?”

“Something’s really wrong . . . a what? A scrunchie? We’re having the most important talk of your life and all you can think of is your hair?”

Bree held her hair in one hand and extended the other. “Just keeping my hair out of the way of your grabby little fists.” Antonia dug a rubber band out of her jeans pocket. Bree sat next to her on the couch and fastened her hair up in a ponytail. “Now,” she said kindly, “spill it.”

Suddenly Antonia looked much older than twenty-two. “I don’t want the kindly big-sister act. I don’t want the mother-in-absentia act. I want you to take a good look at yourself and then . . .” She took a deep breath. “I want you to see somebody.”

Bree stared at her.

“A doctor, first. You know, like an internist. And then maybe a shrink.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her voice seemed to come from somebody else.

“I’m not ridiculous.”

“You think I’m going crazy?”

“I don’t know what to think. All I know is, ever since we’ve moved here you’ve gotten well and truly weird.”

“Maybe you could be a little more specific,” Bree said. She could be very sarcastic if she put her mind to it and she was putting her mind to it right this minute.

Antonia flinched, but said, “Sure. You want specific? I’ll get specific. I hear you talking to people and when I walk into the room—nobody’s there. I hear you screaming at night with bad dreams. And those huge scary dogs? Miles and Belli, you call them?”

“They’re Russian mastiffs,” Bree said. “I told you: I’m taking care of them as a favor for Professor Cianquino while he’s out of town.” This was a good fib. She wished she’d thought of it before. “They’re a pair of perfectly normal Russian mastiffs.”

“You didn’t tell me any such thing. And if you had, I would have said bullshit, bullshit, bullshit! If those are Russian mastiffs, I’m king of the Martians.”

“King of the who?” Bree said, bemused.

“Well!” Antonia stood up and placed both hands on her hips. “I know you don’t have a lot of respect for me, Bree, being your dumb little sister and all, but I just happened to mention them tonight at the theater, and you know what John Allen Cavendish said?”

Bree chewed on her lower lip. John Allen Cavendish had been a classics undergraduate at Yale before he’d gone on to the drama school.

“He says those names mean ‘War’ and ‘Soldier’ in Latin. So what’s normal about that?
Nothing!
” Antonia yelled “Aaagh!” for good measure, and then went on, rapidly, “Nobody I know seems to be able to find this office on Angelus you’ve supposedly rented—and the only actual live employee of yours I met is Ron Parchese, and there’s something weird about him, too.”

“He’s gay,” Bree said flippantly. “Maybe that’s too weird for you.”

“You’re a lot of things, Bree Beaufort, but you’re not a creep. At least, not until now.”

Bree flushed with embarrassment and said, firmly, “Cut out the drama queen crap, will you? I don’t have time for it.”

“And there’s something else.” Antonia had the brave, rather hopeless air of someone walking defenseless into an ugly storm. “Which is why I want you to get, like, a complete physical or something. You’re getting harder looking, Bree.”

Bree stared at her in exasperation. “What?!”

“Maybe it’s because you’ve lost weight. Don’t think I haven’t noticed those size six jeans of mine are, like, hanging off you.”

“Those aren’t your jeans.”

“They absolutely are! Who picked them out?”

“Who paid for them?” Bree shot back.

“Fine!” Antonia, prone to fits of temperament which were very satisfying to her, if to nobody else, made a visible effort to get herself under control. “Let’s not talk about jeans, okay? Let’s talk about this weirdness I’m seeing.”

“Okay, let’s.” Bree was good at keeping a poker face. Even a lawyer specializing in corporate tax law—actually, now that she thought about it, especially a lawyer specializing in corporate tax law these days—needed to ‘keep her head when all about her were losing theirs.’ “What’s weird, exactly?”

Antonia squinted at her. “It’s hard to say out loud. It’s like part of you is being pruned away.”

Despite Antonia’s out-of-control imagination and fondness for melodrama, she was an acute observer. Most actors had to be, if they had any hope of a career, as Antonia frequently pointed out. Bree patted her sides and admitted, “I have lost a couple of pounds. But who doesn’t need to lose a couple of pounds?”

“You remember that ceramics class Mom dragged us to when you were in Girl Scouts? It’s like you went into the kiln a person and came back out something else. Harder. Tougher. Glossier.” She leaned forward and said, with an urgency that made Bree’s flesh creep: “It’s like you’re turning into something else. Tell me something. When’s the last time you had a date?”

“A date?”

“You know. A date. A normal sex life. I thought maybe you were coming back to normal when you were flirting with Tony Haddad this afternoon, but after you came out of that meeting with Tully, and he asked you out for a drink, you, like, totally ignored him. Tony Haddad! I mean, even if you can ignore what a fabulous, fabulous brain he’s got, he’s absolutely gorgeous!”

“I don’t have time for this. I’ve got to go to work in the morning.”

“You’d better have time for this. You’re, like, consumed with this career thing. It’s not normal. It’s unhealthy.”

Bree got up. “I’m going to get something to eat. Did you have dinner at the theater or do you want something, too?”

Antonia grabbed her elbow.

Bree shook it off and said tightly, “It’s not a good idea to piss me off, Antonia.”

“Oh, yeah? Like, you’re the Incredible Hulk or something?”

Or something. Bree had to smile. “Okay. You made your point. I hear you. I said I’m not in the mood for this right now, and I meant it.” She wheeled around and drove herself into the kitchen. Sasha got to his feet and followed her, and then, after a long moment, so did her sister.

Bree opened the refrigerator door and began to pull containers and packages out one by one and stack them on the blue-tiled countertop. Genoa salami. Yogurt. The last few slices of a seven-grain bread from the bakery on Bull Street. A jar of sweet pickles. She hated sweet pickles.

“Here.” Antonia pushed her into a kitchen chair and worked a jar of pesto free from her clutching fingers. “First, I’m making us both a cup of chai. Then I’m making us both a sandwich. I picked up some watercress from Parker’s Market yesterday and it’s going to be fabulous with the salami. You just watch.” She kept up the stream of aimless chatter as she plugged in the electric tea kettle, took down plates and cups from the cupboard, and brewed the tea. Bree listened and reminded herself to be patient, and when, finally, their impromptu supper was laid out in front of her, she said, “What’s this really all about?”

Antonia poked at the sandwich she made and set it aside. “I’m scared of you.”

Then:

“It’s like those pod people in the movies.”

And finally:

“I don’t know who you are anymore.”

Bree stared at her sandwich. She wasn’t hungry. She hadn’t really been hungry for a long time. And she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a good night’s sleep.