Storm of Visions (23 page)

When he had made the circuit twice with increasing impatience, Aaron went to him and offered, “Let me help you, sir.”

Irving looked at him sharply, glanced at the two guys, then took Aaron’s proffered arm. “Thank you, my boy. It’s been a long day for this old man.” He walked with a fair imitation of feebleness down the corridor and into the TV room. Once there he straightened, seated himself at his writing desk, and muted the television. “Close the door behind you.”

Aaron did as he was told.

“What’s on your mind?” Irving asked.

“Depending on a seer, or rather a pair of seers, for our next move seems a precarious proposition. There are other ways, probably just as accurate, to tell what is forthcoming.”

“Prophecies.” Irving’s lips curled in scorn.

The old man was really opinionated. And irritating. “In my business, I’ve seen a lot of them carefully preserved and guarded in manuscripts and scrolls.”

“And you’ve stolen them.”

“And I’ve stolen them,” Aaron agreed. He was, after all, the foremost retriever of stolen fine art—which was exactly how he’d gotten his ass in such big trouble.

“In my time, I’ve seen lots of them, too. Hundreds, maybe thousands, in the library at the Gypsy Travel Agency and here.” Irving waved a hand at his well-stocked bookshelves. “I’ve met self-proclaimed prophets, and even read that charlatan Nostradamus in the original. Real or fake, well-tended or treated like trash, it doesn’t matter. Trying to figure out which prophecy applies to this day is like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“You need a librarian.”

“Our librarian went up with the building.”

“I am sorry about that, but it’s not so difficult.” Aaron’s lips quirked. “There is a librarian, a Dr. Hall, an expert in ancient languages and prophecies, who works in the Arthur W. Nelson Fine Arts Library antiquities department here in New York City. . . .”

“J
acqueline, we’d better wash your face.” Charisma sounded prosaic as she headed into the bathroom.

“Yes.” Isabelle collapsed in the chair. “You’re all bloody.”

Instinctively, Jacqueline lifted her hand to the still-tender bump on the back of her head.

Isabelle shook her head. “You rubbed your hand on your face. You look like a wounded soldier.”

Charisma appeared in the doorway holding a wet washcloth. “In a way, that’s what she is.”

Jacqueline got off the bed, leaned over the dresser, and looked in the mirror. She was pale, with brown stains marking her cheek and her forehead, and her eyes were shocked, like a deer who’d escaped a forest fire. “I look like I’m wearing war paint. Couldn’t someone have told me?”

“We had other things on our minds.” Charisma handed her the washcloth.

Jacqueline scrubbed at the brown stains, then paused and cocked her head. She could hear water dripping. Slowly. Steadily. Constantly. “Charisma, did you leave the water on in the bathroom?”

“I don’t think so.” Charisma checked and came back. “No, it’s off.”

“Okay.” Jacqueline went back to work on her face and wished the constant dripping sound in her head would just stop.

Just . . . stop.

“It’s just me, I guess,” she said. “A hangover from getting hit on the head.”

“You
hit
your
head
. When you fell. Remember?” Charisma peered at her in concern.

“You’re right, I guess.” In the mirror, Jacqueline could see the women exchanging glances.

The guys had brought back jeans and T-shirts for all the women, so they all dressed in approximately the same outfit. They should have looked like triplets, but they were each so very different.

“How are you feeling . . . otherwise?” Isabelle asked delicately.

“My head feels fuzzy, like I just recovered from a concussion, and my lungs feel . . . odd . . . as if I’ve shared them with someone.” Jacqueline met Isabelle’s gaze in the mirror. “Which I guess I did, and I thank her most gratefully. But considering what I went through, I feel good.”

“I think she meant—how do you feel about your mother?” Charisma raised her eyebrows at Isabelle.

Isabelle nodded.

“You mean—how do I feel about a mother who pushed me out of an airplane without a parachute when I was trying to save her life?” Jacqueline found herself squeezing the washcloth as hard as she could.

Charisma plucked the washcloth away. “If Tyler is to be believed, she saved your life.”

“Oh, what the hell does he know?” Jacqueline snapped.

Charisma and Isabelle both looked surprised, and then laughed.

“It’s true. What does he know?” Isabelle asked.

Charisma filled up the sink in the bathroom and put the washcloth in to soak. “For that matter, what do any of us know? We’re all just stumbling around, doing nothing when we should be . . .”

Jacqueline and Isabelle looked inquiringly at her.

“Be doing something that . . . that helps the fate of the world,” Charisma finished dismally.

“I feel so helpless, but I don’t know what to do. This morning, when I called, my mother wanted to know why I didn’t come home,” Isabelle said.

“What did you tell her?” Jacqueline sat cross-legged on the bed and patted the mattress. “Sit down here.”

“Yeah. You don’t look so good.” Charisma had apparently assumed the role of the tactless one in their little group. She was good at it.

“I told Mother that I’d agreed to be part of this organization and I couldn’t abandon you because times got rough.” Isabelle got up and moved to the other place at the head of the bed, rearranged the pillows behind her, and reclined with her feet out and her ankles neatly crossed. “That’s the only way to talk to my mother. If I’d told her I couldn’t leave because I’d be hunted by the Others, she would have freaked. Telling her I have an obligation put it in terms she understands.
Noblesse oblige
and all that.”

“She really thinks that way?” Charisma flopped down on the foot of the bed on her side and propped her head on her hand.

“Oh, yes.” Isabelle didn’t know it, but her voice held a sigh. “My mother ’s family landed on Plymouth Rock, and ever since then, the men have been leaders and the women have remained invisible and invincible.”

“You’re tugging on my lariat.” Charisma stared in wide-eyed fascination. “That’s archaic!”

“I know, but she means well, and she does get a lot done that way. She pulls strings and serves on committees and everyone in Boston does her bidding, or else.”

“You do her bidding, too?” Jacqueline asked.

“Me more than anyone. She has never in thought, word, or deed suggested that I owe her anything for adopting me, and that guarantees my constant devotion. And I know she hates my gift; it embarrasses her because it’s not . . . normal, so I don’t use it much.” Isabelle smiled, a cool lift of the lips.

Charisma sat up. “But you should still get to do what you want! With your life, I mean.”

“I moved from being president of my college sorority to president of her pet charity, I am engaged to a man she suggested, I will become one of Washington’s top hostesses, and I did it all so when something came along that I really wanted to do, I could do so without guilt. That’s why I’m here.”

“You go, girl.” Charisma gave her a thumbs-up.

“We’ll see. The one other time I rebelled, it turned out badly. And it was not my mother’s fault; it was . . .” Isabelle’s composure cracked, and she cackled. “Heh, heh.”

Charisma’s eyes got wide. “Wow. I’ve never actually heard someone laugh like that.”

A surprising color rose in Isabelle’s pale cheeks. “Sorry. I’m sitting here talking about myself when Jacqueline has suffered shock and injury and possibly a painful loss.”

By which Jacqueline understood Isabelle didn’t intend to talk about her mother any longer. And Jacqueline didn’t want to even think of her mother, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Every time a silence fell, indignation seemed to burgeon out of her. “Zusane was always going off with her boyfriends and her husbands. I should have realized one of them would kill her sooner or later.”

“It wasn’t exactly his fault,” Charisma pointed out.

Yes, it was.
Yet Jacqueline still couldn’t talk about the man with the blue flame in his eyes.

“Besides, I suppose he’s as dead as she is.” Charisma bit her lip at her inadvertent bluntness.

Isabelle made a warning sound.

Jacqueline didn’t care how blunt they were. She was still mad. “She didn’t have to go. Abandoning us like that in the subway right after she has a vision that the Gypsy Travel Agency is up in smoke and there’s a good chance we’re going to be toast. I mean, how careless and thoughtless can anybody be? You’d think she’d done it on purpose. . . .” She froze, as the thought worked its way into her brain.

“Well. If it makes you feel any better.” Charisma slithered back onto the bed, flat on her back, and stared at the ceiling. “My mother’s about as careless as anyone you’ve ever met. She married her one husband on a whim, then decided to adopt me on a whim, then sold their house on a whim while he was at work, and when he objected, she divorced him and took me on the road with her. I’ve lived all over the West Coast and Pacific Islands . . . Hawaii, Tahiti, Yap. . . .”

“Yap?” Isabelle asked.

“Trust me. It’s a place. One year she got a wild hair and decided we were going to rough it in Alaska in the winter. We almost died before we were airlifted out.”

“Okay. You win the my-mother’s-crazier-than-your-mother contest.” For now, Jacqueline pushed aside the thought that Zusane had deliberately joined her boyfriend for some reason. . . .

“I always win.” For the first time since Jacqueline had met her, Charisma sounded weary. “The big problem came when I went through puberty and she realized I had a gift. Did you two ever see the musical
Gypsy
?”

“Oh, no.” Jacqueline had seen the movie, she instantly understood, and her heart ached with sympathy.

Isabelle looked between the two of them. “I never saw it.”

Charisma gestured widely at Jacqueline.

Jacqueline explained, “In the play, the mother has two daughters. When she realizes one of them has a
gift
—not like our gifts; this kid could sing and dance—the mother decides they’re going to go into show business, and she pushes and prods and forces and manipulates them every miserable inch of the way.”

“The ultimate stage mother,” Isabelle said.

“That’s my mama,” Charisma agreed. “In the summer, we traveled to every farmers’ market in the Pacific Northwest and California. We’d set up a stand and sell crystals that I had blessed. She called it
blessed
. I called it aligning the molecules. Once the customers found out they worked—”

“What do they do?” Isabelle asked.

“I can fix a crystal to ward off harm or illness, or improve your health or your mind.”

“Wow.” Jacqueline had never heard of such a talent.

Despite their makeup blackout, Charisma’s black eyeliner was intact, so Jacqueline surmised it was tattooed on. Her lips were red, so they’d been done, too. The purple streaks in her black hair were as vibrant as ever, and a small climbing rose tattoo curled along her spine and out of her T-shirt to bloom behind her left ear.

Charisma was different from Jacqueline and Isabelle, and at the same time, when she talked about her mother, she was so very, very normal.

“As a matter of fact”—Charisma took off two of her bracelets—“I want you guys each to wear one of these until we get some idea what kind of trouble we’re in. They’re mine, so not fine-tuned to you, but they are really well-balanced.”

“What about you?” Isabelle allowed Charisma to fasten one around her arm.

Charisma shook both her wrists, showing them another set of bracelets, and marks beneath them, too. “Since I didn’t know what I was getting into, I brought extras.”

“You’re a good friend.” Jacqueline examined the jewelry as Charisma wrapped it around her arm. The chain was silver; the charms were different-colored stones trapped in silver cages. This didn’t look like a powerful charm, but Jacqueline wasn’t about to be scornful. Not here. Not now. Not after her experiences today. “So your mother treated you like the road show?”

“More than that. She wanted to open a shop and have me be the main attraction. She wanted to dress me as a gypsy, which I am not, and pass me off as a psychic, which I am not, and make a fortune lying to desperate people and giving them false hope.” For the first time, Jacqueline heard Charisma sound less like an enthusiastic girl and more like a woman whose hard-won maturity had cost her dearly. “So I left home and went to college. I didn’t tell Mom where I was for two years.”

“Did she leave you alone?” Isabelle asked.

“Yeah. Eventually. When I went to work in a lab testing soils. She thought that was . . . pedestrian.”