Sister of Shadows, page 25
The first rule of dealing with troublesome AIs was to keep them talking. He’d debugged Madam LaFontaine in the early days primarily by playing on her overblown ego. The problem was Livy’s consciousness and metabolism were in the process of being frozen and it most certainly did not suit his plans.
“I’ll deal with you later,” he said to Lazarus. He trotted down the corridor, past Livy’s room, and turned left to the elevator. He jabbed the call button and waited impatiently for the door to slide open.
A minute later, the door still hadn’t opened and it started to dawn on him that Lazarus was interfering.
Fine. He’d take stairs.
The door to the stairwell had a simple deadbolt and it locked from the outside. In seconds, he was through the door and pounding down the stairs.
He just hoped Senator Bentilius had followed all of Lazarus’s directions in preparing the girl for the cryopod. If she’d skipped a single step, the chance of survival dropped dramatically.
Given her suspicion of Livy, Dr. Carlhagen feared Senator Bentilius might make a mistake on purpose.
51
Pooooor Little Kitty
The throngs of guests on the pool deck had been too focused on themselves to pay any particular notice a mere drunk girl, especially one hanging onto Dante’s arm. Jacey’s face burned more from shame than from the bruises.
She could just imagine everyone’s thoughts: There goes Dante with another one of his girls. Who is she? Is it anyone I know?
Jacey kept her face down, hair falling over it, as Dante guided her toward the stairs.
“Go on the inside, my dear, there’s no rail,” Dante said too loudly. He was performing for everyone else’s benefit, Jacey realized. No reason not to play it up. She leaned heavily on Dante, half-hoping he’d fall off the edge. But he was strong and easily half-carried her to the mezzanine.
Their progress was blocked by the skinniest pair of legs Jacey had ever seen on a girl older than thirteen. They plunged into calf-high boots that looked like something borrowed from Captain Wilcox’s men.
Jacey didn’t have to look up to know it was Dante’s lover, Meow Meow.
“There you are,” she sang to Dante. “I’ve been looooooking for you.”
“I need to get this young woman to bed, Meows,” Dante said. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
The legs moved closer, the boots somehow not clomping.
Jacey swayed and pressed her bruises to Dante’s shoulder, making sure her hair swung to cover her face. There were enough gaps she could see the woman now.
She was tiny. No more than five feet tall. Her hair was chopped in an artfully ragged way in a uniform length ending at her chin. A part, like a pulled-back curtain, revealed one eye. Her skin was as pale as Belle’s, but freckled across her nose and cheeks. She had painted thick rings of black around her eyes, making her look vaguely corpse-like.
Her upper half was covered by what appeared to be a leather bra and twenty or thirty necklaces. Below she had on a skirt so short Jacey wondered why she even bothered.
Her ribs showed beneath her skin, as did the tops of her hipbones above the waist of her skirt. She appeared to be starving to death. The skeletal structure of her arms was quite obvious.
And yet she was striking to look at, and her girlish—and overtly sexual—smile seemed to be directed as much at Jacey as it was at Dante.
“I’m actually going to put her to bed, Meows. To sleep it off.”
Meow Meow strutted closer, placing each foot directly before the other. The gait was odd, as she kicked her knees very high. It was almost a dance.
Jacey turned her face into Dante’s shoulder and made a burping noise.
“Aw, what a pooooor little kitty.” The lightest touch brushed Jacey’s hair, a fingertip stroking along the edge of her ear. “Maybe I should come along, help her get undressed.”
Dante pulled Jacey aside, guiding her around the emaciated girl. “Maybe later. Right now she’s probably needs to throw up. Besides, I don’t think she’s into girls as much as you are.”
The purring noise that followed held no disappointment. “We’ll see, hero boy. I’ve brought a few to my side of the bed. At least temporarily. None of them ever complained.”
Dante didn’t answer, but instead guided Jacey down the familiar hallway toward his bedroom.
“I’ll be in my room getting ready for the big to-do,” Meow Meow called after them. “But if you change your mind . . .”
“The door’s open,” Dante said to Jacey as they got to the end of the hall. But he wasn’t telling her to go on in. He’d stopped her, in fact. The door to his room was, in fact, standing open.
“Wait here,” Dante said, then went into his bedroom. “Oh, it’s you.” He motioned for Jacey to come in.
Ping sat in the armchair, hand on his chin, knee bouncing with impatience.
52
You Caught Me
The marine looked like a kid to Mario, face pocked with acne scars, eyes a bit wide with the discomfort of reporting news he wasn’t sure merited being reported. “Yessir. Both holds are set up with bunk beds.”
A weird sort of quiet settled over Aphrodite’s bridge. It wasn’t peaceful, but rather full of tension. A muscle under Sergeant Jin’s left eye throbbed.
“Sergeant Jin?” said a voice over the radio. “Please repeat your last transmission. I did not read it.”
The man lifted the radio to his lips. “That’s because I didn’t finish it. We might have found something on this rust bucket after all. Please wait while I find out what’s going on.” He handed the radio to a soldier and jabbed a finger at Orson. “Why are there bunk beds in your cargo holds?”
Mario tensed, realizing the fate of the Scions rested entirely with Orson’s ability to make up a lie on the spot. Orson’s men, Dickie and Rosales, looked ill. They shifted from foot to foot, looking like they were about to be arrested for murder.
Orson’s face had gone pale and his beard quivered as he stammered. “Well . . . You see . . .”
“Out with it man,” the sergeant barked.
Orson wiped a pudgy hand over his face and shot a furtive glance at Mario. All at once, Orson sagged and seemed to surrender to the inevitable. Mario moved one foot back and bent at the knees, a fighting stance. He doubted he could take all these trained fighters, but he would die trying.
“Smuggling,” Orson said, as if Jin had pulled the word right out of him. “Okay? You caught me.”
The sergeant didn’t react, as if he’d known all along. “Smuggling what?”
Orson waved in the general direction of the cargo holds. “People. Workers. I’m just the captain. I drive the boat from point A to point B. I don’t ask questions. I dropped off a load five days ago. Egyptians mostly. Low-paid construction laborers.”
Workers? Mario immediately saw the genius in the lie. It explained the bunks and any other evidence of previous passengers.
Sergeant Jin swore under his breath. “A slaver?”
“No!” Orson said, face flushing red. “Never. Every man got on board voluntarily. They make enough in a month to support their families back home a year. They want the work.”
“Then why did you say you were smuggling?”
Orson threw up his hands in a shrug. “They’re undocumented. No passports, no visas. I said they were cheap labor.”
The sergeant turned away from Orson. Mario had been in enough fights to know when a man was about to explode into violence. By the way the old soldier carried himself, Orson was very lucky to have escaped an unrelenting beatdown.
A flash of black caught Mario’s attention. The top of a dark head was just visible through the window of the door to the starboard wing. Eyes and nose appeared next, then dropped out of sight.
It was Sang.
“Let’s finish the search and get off this boat,” Sergeant Jin said. He arrowed a finger at Mario. “You, with me.”
Mario pretended not to understand and looked at Orson. To his credit, Orson repeated the sergeant’s statement in much slower Spanish. Mario nodded slowly, rephrased it in Portuguese, then smiled and continued toward the door.
The sergeant ordered a marine to stand watch on the bridge. The young soldier was focused on Orson and his men, and wasn’t paying any attention to what was happening outside the bridge. That was good. The last thing Mario wanted was Sang to get alone time with Orson.
He had tried to give Sang the benefit of the doubt, constantly reminding himself of the difference between what he suspected and what he knew. The more time that passed, the more it seemed that Sang was Mr. Justin. But Mario still had no proof. That the boy had tried to get onto the bridge was very suspicious, though.
He led the sergeant down the stairway and made the turn toward the cargo hold, but the sergeant caught him by the collar and pushed him toward the engine room.
“Oh, sim, sim,” he said nodding, and waved them to follow him as if he was eager to take them back there.
He hoped everyone was well-hidden. He couldn’t believe how much trust he was about to put in one fourteen-year-old Spider called Summer.
53
A Special Hatred
When Ping saw Jacey, he leapt up from his chair. She couldn’t read his face because he was silhouetted by the window. “What happened?” he asked her.
Instinct guided her now. Not the impulse to attack Ping. Not the sudden gut-clenching terror that begged her to run. This instinct was to stay calm yet alert to the slightest twitch in Ping’s body.
Dante seemed to be doing the same. He knew Ping was the one who’d hit her.
She touched her bruises and sat heavily on the bed. “I don’t remember. I woke up in a loading dock area downstairs. I wandered outside and Dante found me.”
“Obviously, she was attacked,” Dante said. There was real heat in it, which surprised her. Maybe he did have some empathy after all. “Go get Vin,” he ordered Ping. “We need to discuss this. One of her guests did this.”
“You go get her.”
Dante stared at Ping. “Why can’t you cooperate for once?”
Ping dropped his chin to his chest and heaved out a sigh. “Fine.” He pushed himself to his feet and left. But not before throwing a sidelong look at Jacey.
The door swung shut behind him.
“He had two men with him. Big guys,” Jacey said. “I struggled, so he thunked my head.”
Dante frowned at her. “I don’t get why he’d do that.”
“You told him I was still a Scion. He figured he could get into Dr. Carlhagen’s good graces by turning me over to him. Maybe he’s already contacted him.”
“I can see that. Ping isn’t much of a risk-taker. He was probably afraid Dr. Carlhagen would cut off his supply of ATR meds.” A smile quirked his lips. “It seems there’s no place safe for you, my lovely.”
“You don’t say.”
Dante moved to the door and peered out. “Come with me.” There was a note of urgency in his voice, so Jacey followed him out of the room.
He motioned her to stay close to the wall as they crept down the corridor. They passed three doors and came to the open area of the mezzanine that looked down into the icy living room. A few voices floated up to them.
They kept away from the railing and slipped into the hall leading to the opposite wing from Dante’s room. At the first door, Dante stopped and rapped lightly. “Come on. Come on.”
The door opposite opened. Jacey’s heart nearly stopped.
She didn’t have a chance to see if it was Ping or Vin before Dante slid an arm around her waist, the other curled around her back. A second later she was engulfed in his embrace. He spun her away from the open door and pressed his lips to hers.
Instinctively, she wedged an arm between herself and Dante, tried to pry him off her. But then her rational mind caught up to events. He was hiding her in a very Dante-like way. She forced herself to put a hand to the back of his neck, to let a low moan escape.
Dante’s kiss grew suddenly warmer and Jacey clamped her teeth together to signal she wasn’t actually enjoying the moment.
“Get a room,” said a female voice. It sounded older, a bit hoarse. Jacey didn’t recognize it.
The door closed and the sound of a woman muttering to herself faded away.
Dante released her, his lips flush from the kiss. Instead of his usual lascivious look, his eyes were intent, serious. Then a wicked smile flashed across his mouth. “Not bad. A little less teeth next time would be nice.”
He reached past her fuming head and knocked on the door again.
This time it opened.
“Ooh, I see she’s feeling better.”
It was Meow Meow.
Dante pushed Jacey into the room and closed the door. She kept her head down. What she could see looked through her curtain of hair was pretty much like Dante’s room, except nobody had painted the walls. Every surface was white. Only the soft texture of the bedspread alleviated the chill atmosphere of the place.
Across from the door was a wall of windows looking over the lawn and the swarm of people milling about there.
Meow Meow stood with one foot in front of the other, hips cocked to one side, arms dangling loose. She tilted her head forward so that she stared out from beneath a fringe of pink bangs. “Have you two discussed my proposition?”
Dante ushered Jacey forward. “I’m afraid we don’t have time for that right now. We need your help.”
He put a finger under Jacey’s chin, forcing her to lift her face. Jacey met Meow Meow’s gaze, which morphed from total shock to indignant anger in the span of two heartbeats.
“Who did this to you?” Meow Meow hissed, stepping forward to put an arm around Jacey. With surprising strength, the scrawny girl guided her deeper into the room, stroking Jacey’s hair and making comforting noises. “I will kill him, whoever it is. This I swear.”
“That’s a bad idea, Meows,” Dante said. He sat next to Jacey and folded his hands in his lap. “You said Ping had two men with him?”
“Yes. They were not particularly tall, but thickly built. They wore suits and long ties.”
“Ping does not have any such men on this island,” Dante said.
“Ping? Are you talking about that young Chinese guy?” Meow Meow asked. “He’s so quiet. I never could get him to talk to me.”
Jacey nodded at Meow then answered Dante. “Whether they work for him or not, those men took orders from Ping.”
“I know them.” Dante rubbed his palms together, a curiously nervous mannerism for such a self-confident person. “They work for Vin.”
“Oh, wow.” Meow Meow ducked her head, hunched up her shoulders. She looked ready to jump in any direction at the slightest sound.
Jacey supposed it made sense the men were Vin’s. “So she and Ping both wanted to turn me over to Dr. Carlhagen. Cowards.”
“I didn’t tell either of them your secret, Jacey.”
“So they thought . . .” she glanced at Meow Meow. She didn’t know the girl, didn’t know how much to reveal to her.
Dante understood her hesitation. He nodded, confirming the question she hadn’t asked. Vin and Ping had kidnapped her—violently—while still believing she was Jacqueline Buchanan.
“So they thought they could keep their facade going by getting rid of me?”
Dante patted her thigh, but didn’t let his hand linger. “I don’t know what they’re thinking. But they did not include me in their plan. And that worries me. I’m starting to think I’m not safe here either.”
Meow Meow padded—in her heavy-soled boots—to the window. “The big event is going to start in ten minutes. I’ll be missed if I’m not down there.”
She turned back to face them. “I don’t know what’s going on here. But I have a special hatred for people who hit girls. You stay here until we figure out what to do. I’ve got a helicopter coming tomorrow to take me to Puerto Rico.”
“We don’t have that much time,” Dante said. “As soon as Ping and Vin discover Jacey and I have left my room, they’ll lock the place down.”
Meow Meow glanced over her shoulder. “I think you’ve got time. Vin is just now going out to the stage.”
Jacey and Dante raced to the window. Sure enough, Vin, dressed in a short red dress and high heels, was walking across the lawn. A red veil covered her face.
The guests had taken their seats, but did not seem to be aware of her approach.
A gust lifted the veil, but Vin caught it and held it in place.
“I’m supposed to introduce her,” Dante said. “Looks like I’ve been fired.”
Ping was mounting the steps at one side of the stage. He carried a leather folder in one hand. At the podium, he glanced around at the guests and started to speak. She couldn’t hear what he said because the window glass muffled his words.
To one side of the guest chairs were ranks of tripods. People in plainer clothes stood behind cameras. Several were also capturing video on their hand-held tablets. Small machines of some sort—like miniature aircraft— hovered above them. Jacey had no idea what their purpose was.
“Looks like they’ve got some others looking for you?” Meow Meow said. She pointed to the right, where a squad of soldiers was splitting up to begin a patrol. There was an urgency in their movements that Jacey recognized. She’d been chased by some of these same men before.
“Those are Captain Wilcox’s men,” she told Dante. “Dr. Carlhagen must have called them in after Vin and Ping contacted him about me.”
“Meows?” Dante said. “Please tell me you have more wigs.”
“Darling, I never travel without a couple dozen. A girl never knows who she’s going to be when she wakes up each morning.”
She took Jacey in hand. “But first we need to fix that bruise.”
In minutes, Meow Meow had applied creams and powders to lighten the bruise, then painted dark circles around Jacey’s eyes. A bright purple lipstick completed the transformation. If you didn’t know the bruises were there, you’d think it was part of the intended look.
