Terrible Praise Page 3

  Tonight, I need to meet with Fane and review the affairs of the day. I must have my thoughts organized. He cannot know of this. He cannot know how rash I’ve been. How wildly trapped I feel in a service that has always been my heart’s only joy, unquestioning for centuries that to be his hand, his confidant, his loyal and humble servant was my life’s purpose. But when the role assigned to me changed from bloodshed to banking, so too did my enthusiasm for service. A century of monotony ensued.

  “This too shall pass,” I murmur, and they are more than comforting words. A prayer of sorts, to return to the life I loved, to the warrior I was. Anything but the endless errands that comprise and consume my waking hours. But this is the world we live in now and I must crush this growing cynicism, this feeling of walking in a slumber when I am wide awake. I need to stop asking myself every evening when I rise why I bother. It is vain. Worse, it is traitorous, and I am neither of those things.

  I chastise myself once more and whip my vehicle onto the black expanse of the whistling highway. I am certain that Elizabeth is a mistake that will keep for another night.

  * * *

  I park my car beneath the lazily strobing lights of the parking garage that sits atop my family home. Outside, the city begins to awaken. I hear the faint patter of weary feet dragging over buckling floors in windowless apartments. Is my drudgery so different? A century ago, the question would never have occurred to me.

  The sweltering blush of the first rays of a new dawn threaten the black ocean of the horizon. I enter the passcode on a hatch that conceals the service entrance, slinking down beneath the pavement of a city so changed I scarcely remember its beginnings. With a wheezing, pneumatic sigh, the hatch shuts firmly above my head as I leave this world to the living for a few precious hours and slide down the steel ladder into the dank embrace of the tunnels below.

  These underground service tunnels had fallen completely out of public memory. It was not until the nineties, when a construction company broke a retaining wall, flooding downtown Chicago, that the city realized the underground wasn’t a myth. The old tracks remain largely intact, a smaller set, heavily rusted, once used for freight carts. Pipes—water and electric—laced into the ceiling above, and warped cables dead center, running straight through. There is no breeze in the stale air, only the distant rumbling of the L, and though the moniker is short for “elevated”, the subterranean sections of the train are near enough to rattle our walls.

  “What on earth kept you?” Lydia paces the entrance to Fane’s chamber like a caged beast, her arms flying out in such fierce exasperation that I am uncertain whether she means to strike or embrace me. Thankfully, she does neither. She runs a soothing hand down the length of her long black hair, pushing it back from her oval face and the wide obsidian eyes we share. When I do not reply, she cocks her head curiously, both hands firmly mounted on her hips as if to bar my passage.

  “Is he resting?” I ask, stepping up against her. She flinches—predictably—and I reach around her body for the gilded handle of his chamber door, but she does not step aside.

  “No one rests until his Stela is safely at his feet,” she chides. Lydia cannot insult me by ridiculing my fealty because it is fact, and this relentless jealousy is precisely the emotion that drives her further from Fane’s good graces.

  She has always been weak-minded and I tired of her petty taunts ages ago. However, I do feel a pang of guilt that my carelessness has kept the whole household awake. Lydia senses this and grows bolder.

  “One evening in the sun is clearly too much for you in your old age,” she delights. “If you are unable to complete a simple errand in a timely manner, perhaps I will bear the burden of next quarter’s meeting.” She brings her face near to mine as I count the ways I could end her pitiful existence, but the faint mark on the skin of her neck suggests that Fane has already fed at least once tonight. The relief that he may not need very much from me improves my mood considerably.

  “You will move. Or I will move you.” I swipe a hand between us, brushing the front of her white sweater, and Lydia all but jumps to one side of the hallway. I smile knowingly as she mutters empty slander and rushes into Fane’s chamber ahead of me, announcing my arrival to our Prince.

  “My Lord, Stela has returned.” She infuses those words with the rancor of one child tattling on another, and kneels in the entryway. Lydia has loved Fane from the moment she was named. There is no space in her heart for anyone else.

  Fane sits in his chair, the mirrored skylight at the epicenter of his suite open to receive the only trickles of sunlight that ever reach this lair. The small corridor built into the tunnels above his head glistens as the first rays break and bathe the crown of his head in gold. “Thank you, Lydia, that will be all.” He waves her out of the room with the back of his hand, not even a smile to dismiss her. “Rest now,” he commands. Lydia pouts and turns with a flutter of indignation, sure to let her shoulder collide with mine as she retreats.

  My jaw clenches and only the hearty laughter of my Lord pulls me back from the brink of altercation.

  “Tell me, my dove. How can petulance exist in a being that has witnessed whole empires turn to rubble before her very eyes?”

  I kneel beside his chair and bow my head, ashamed that her tantrums have any effect on me at all. “Lydia’s or mine, my Lord?”

  He curls his hand to cup my chin and lifts my face to his. Despite the pain it causes me, I look upon his sun-struck face to find a gentle smile settled on his lips. “Lydia, of course.” He runs his thumb along my jaw, and I answer his smile with my own.

  “Come,” he says. “Sit beside me a while. I will not keep you long. You have a very good reason for having made me wait.”

  I stand on fatigue-stiffened knees and skirt the edges of stolen light that embrace him, to sit on the weathered lounge to his left. My head droops on my shoulders and with marked reluctance I fight to maintain eye contact. The gossamer strands of his pale golden hair are fire to my weary eyes, but the iridescent blue of his impatiently await my full attention. His muscles are tense, plainly visible in the stark glow of the sun reflected down upon him. They twist upon themselves in his shoulders, across his wide chest. The periwinkle veins that stitch him together beneath a single protective layer of flesh, web down his flexing forearms.

  Not for the first time I note his very magnificence, the ethereal qualities that have always made him beautiful to me—his single layer of near indestructible skin, his fiercely magnetic, impossibly bright eyes—are why he cannot show his face aboveground and must entrust his children to oversee his affairs. Once more I am ashamed of my own folly, my ingratitude, and so I say nothing.

  “I do so miss the sun.” A genuine lament. He tilts his face up to the light just as the sun passes, and the beam that ensconces him ascends back to heaven. My eyes immediately welcome the reprieve, and as it happens every morning, my Lord stands with a heavy heart and covers himself with his robe. “Tell me,” he says, tying the emerald silk sash firmly about his waist, “how does your Andrew fair this quarter?”

  “He is not my Andrew, my Lord.”

  Fane chuckles. “Of course. But even still?”

  “He is well, my Lord. He sends his respect and good tidings.” My spirits rise as they normally do in Fane’s presence and I find my footing in the conversation, the trifles of my evening momentarily removed.

  “I preferred entrusting our affairs to his father’s capable hands,” he remarks, absently rubbing the fabric of his gown between his thumb and forefinger.

  “As did I, my Lord.” I reach for the report folded in my coat pocket. “But despite Andrew’s wanting personality, it seems he makes an adequate substitute.” I present Fane with the summary and his fevered, strong hand brushes my cool fingers. He reviews the numbers for himself.

  “And the state of the Caymans?” he inquires and begins to pace.

  “I found that curious, my Lord. We have seen no formal documentation specific to that account fo
r over a year now.” He stands very still in the center of the room, staring at the papers, searching for something. “But Rachel will have the figures sent to me before sundown.”

  Fane’s demeanor lightens and, pleased with my diligence, he trails a hand across my shoulders as he steps around the lounge to deposit the report on his writing desk. He will give it to Darius this evening, so that it may be properly recorded.

  “Very good,” he says, joining me once again in the sitting area. He slips gracefully into the ebony arms of his enormous chair, a throne to any person of normal stature. “And on the off chance that the findings are bleak, there is a silver lining. You may finally have the good fortune to put an end to that horrid little man, after all.” We share a laugh at Andrew’s expense, and I shake the notion away before it becomes irresistible.

  “I would not give Christine the satisfaction of an easy reason to terminate our relationship with her family’s enterprise and forsake the legacy she stands to inherit,” I confess, and pace along the window-like panels that line the front of his chamber. Floor-to-ceiling screens, blocked like lattice, illuminated this evening with an obnoxiously green forest-scape. A powerfully calming illusion, to be sure, but an illusion none the less, and one made all the more obvious by the fact that Fane never uses the accompanying soundtracks. The wind that rushes over the tall grass, between the leaves, and the specks of quick darting avian life are disconcertingly mute. He says the quiet helps him think.

  “Ah, Christine,” my Lord sighs. “How has she grown?” Fane comes to stand beside me with crossed arms and more than a little teasing in his tone.

  “She has grown lovely. She leaves for university this fall.” I stare at my boots and the glistening floorboards, thinking of the way I used a daughter’s place in her father’s heart against him today—a necessary evil—and push the fleeting emotion aside before Fane can sense it, unsettled that I should be anything but pleased with my methods, effective as they were.

  “Well, then we will just have to tolerate Andrew for a moment longer.”

  I shift my weight from foot to foot, marveling in the strain of each muscle, my body pleading for sleep. Beside me, Fane flexes his shoulders.

  “My dove,” he laments. “I promise you, he will one day meet his end by your hand.” Fane brushes his fingers against the small of my back, beneath the edge of my blouse.

  “If it pleases you, my Lord.” I place my hand over his, and Fane’s smile pulls his upper lip up over his shining teeth.

  “What pleases me is what pleases you, Stela.” His warm hand splays across my skin. “Do I not always grant you that which you desire?”

  I close my eyes and push the deepest dissatisfactions of my soul just out of his reach. “Always, my Lord.”

  Fane tenses, his familiar touch held rigid and firm. “And what of this late hour?” he presses. The edge of his voice has sharpened with renewed curiosity, and he no longer distracts himself with the calming projection cast upon the windows. I can feel his eyes digging their way down to the truth, burrowing into my temple. I cannot avoid their depths for very long.

  “I fell asleep.” I give him half the truth I hold and hope to fabricate the rest as I go. My hands are clasped in front of me like the child I am, and though I do not turn to face him, I keep my body relaxed—prepared to be turned by force if it suits him. Deeper he searches, pushing his way to my heart, rolling the words over in his mind and weighing them carefully. The words ring true, and the sincerity of my confession was not contrived in the least, nor is my embarrassment.

  “You fell asleep,” he repeats in a slow, deliberate voice. He seems neither pleased nor disappointed. Finally, the grip on my mind loosens, like the unexpected slacking of a noose. Fane breaks his stare and once again resumes his seat, tapping his lips with a pensive finger. I collect myself quickly, careful not to show my relief through any physical display, and turn around.

  Fane beckons me closer. I cautiously take his hand in mine, filling my mind with nothing but the panic I felt when I awoke in the backseat of my vehicle, focusing my thoughts entirely on that moment. Fane cradles my hand in his, raises his clear blue eyes to mine, and makes a final push for the truth.

  I answer him with a push of my own, sending all the anger I harbor for myself hurdling to the surface of my wayward thoughts, and I funnel that fury into a single memory: the moment I ripped open the backseat door and took my first inhale of the cool night air. Fane’s lips press lightly against my knuckles, his thumb soothing the skin of my wrist with gentle ministrations.

  “Falling asleep outside these walls is a very dangerous thing,” he warns.

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “And falling asleep at our servant’s doorstep…even more so.”

  I hold my body stiff against the threat of the impending lecture.

  “Perhaps I belabor you too greatly with responsibilities that should be mine,” he says. I reach for him and place my hand along the side of his smooth face.

  “To labor in your service is what I desire most in this world.”

  For a moment Fane is content, his eyes bright and untroubled. He looks every bit the happy youth his ageless body suggests.

  “Get thee to bed, my dove.” Fane turns his face into my hand, and places a kiss to my palm. “You have had a trying night.”

  “As have you. I loathe to give you cause for concern.” I run my fingers through his fine gold hair. “Have you eaten, my Lord?”

  Fane closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Enough,” he smiles. “If the mood strikes me I will call for someone I have taxed less.”

  Exhausted by the sheer force it takes to thwart his searching stare as well as my own ridiculous antics, I bow my head and take my leave of him before he can change his mind. A little too gratefully, a hair too fast, and my obvious relief does not go unnoticed. Fane grabs me by the wrist, and pulls so frightfully hard that I bend backward over the arm of his chair and fall into his lap. He is not smiling anymore.

  “Would you leave me without a taste when I will be so many hours without your company?” He poses a question that is not a question at all. When I attempt to arrange myself gracefully in his arms he holds me closer and leans his body forward until there is nothing to push against but him, which he knows full well I will not do.

  “No, my Lord.” It was foolish to think I would leave this meeting without thorough inquiry. Foolish to believe I had completely dispelled his skepticism.

  Fane’s hand cradles the back of my head as he brings my mouth to his. “Good girl,” he whispers against my open mouth. His teeth graze my lower lip and, as blood floods my mouth, we taste the iron left over from William Moore. Fane lingers in the blood, coaxing it into his own mouth with a firm tongue. I see my victim’s face, I hear the chorus of his monitoring machines, the stench of bleach, the sweat long since dried on William’s body. I hold that image as tightly as I can and think only of Mr. Moore. The weight of his body in my arms, the memories he showed me—I offer them up to Fane and wrap my arms around his shoulders until he finishes.

  “Until tonight, my Stela.” He brushes the last rivulet of blood from my bottom lip and his grip falls slack around my body. I rise from his embrace without grace, wavering slightly on unsettled feet. I smooth the front of my blouse, and retrieve my jacket.

  “Until tonight, my Lord.” I genuflect—a proper exit—remembering my place, and wait to be dismissed by a nod that takes noticeably longer to receive.

  When my freedom has been granted, I depart with marked humility and retreat quickly to the safety of the hall. Nothing stirs in the darkness, the rest of my family long since retired. I slip inside the narrow ironwood corridor that barricades Fane’s chamber from the tunnels outside, headed for my dormitory, crawling silently. Only one light remains in the narrow enclosure, the intentional, unnavigable darkness—the candle perched above my hatch. The air in the tunnel smells of the snuffed-out day, my charred and flickering wick mingling with the dry air as I lift the w
ooden hatch and drop into my darkened suite.

  The sconces dotted along the hall serve more as aesthetics to appease Fane than anything else. Everything in the fashion of his long-abandoned home in Brașov. I flip the light switch on the wall, and from the oak-concealed control panel choose a night surf scene for my windows. The small speakers mounted in every corner wake to life with the soft lapping of waves, and the glassy cry of gulls. The windowscapes were Darius’s idea, installed several years ago in every dormitory as a distraction. An inspired notion from my most curious sibling. My brother Bård procured the contractors, I procured the funds for materials and guaranteed discretion, while another of my family, Crogher, was in charge of overseeing the installation. The contractors, of course, proved painfully capable and inquisitive. They were handled, and their bodies were given to the hounds.

  I throw my jacket over the arm of my sofa and fling myself across the expanse, imagining the salt from the spray and the cool seaside breeze tangled in my hair. I am tired, far more so than I have been in a great while, but I am positive that sleep is still hours away. I lay my face against the distressed leather upholstery and before I start searching for her, will myself to sleep. One defiant eye opens and falls upon the sleek steel casing of my laptop glinting in the light—a playful taunt. With a frustrated growl, I sit up and settle my feet on the floor. I know how all of this will end.

  South Bayside Hospital’s internal records are easier to access than I anticipated and within minutes I find exactly what I should not have gone looking for in the first place: Elizabeth Dumas. Twenty-six. A degree in nursing from Claremont—the accelerated program—but prior to that, enrolled in a dual degree in Medicine and Medical Science from the University of Michigan. Two published articles on stem cell research, the last with a footnote indicating that Ms. Dumas was headed for Johns Hopkins the following fall for their prestigious Medical Scientist Training Program. Obviously, she never went to Baltimore.