There’s a knock at the door. “Lyssa?” calls Lily.
I silence the dial tone. “Yeah?”
“Mrs K says dinner is in fifteen minutes.”
“Lovely. I’ll have a shower.”
“’kay!” Footsteps patter down the hallway.
Feeling shaky and too hot, I go to the wardrobe to find clothes in the suitcases that Leo packed for me. Leon Knight, working in a naval dockyard. How did Dad manage to bully him into that?
I’m glare at the phone.
How hard is it to come see your daughter in person when she’s just been rescued from the man that you brought her to New York to keep her safe from? You had time to orchestrate that fiasco of a housewarming party, but you can’t take a moment to catch a ride up Long Island and give her a hug?
No, instead you interrogate me over the phone and then say I have to stay with strangers because, sorry, darling, I’m a bit busy right now, I’ll see you in six weeks.
Why? Why? The whole point of coming to New York was for me to be protected by the Marines, wasn’t it? Well, where are the Marines, Dad? The ones I’ve seen Shade killed, along with Maman. Why couldn’t you just leave us in New Zealand?
My grip on the phone has the plastic edges grinding into the bones of my thumb and fingers hard enough to cut off my circulation. My fingertips burn from blood loss. With a grimace, I stamp down on the urge to throw it through the window and instead bury it deep in the depths of the suitcase. If Dad wants to talk, he can do it in person.
Armed with a pair of black gym leggings and a grey sweater and beige underwear and these multi-coloured knitted socks that were a birthday present from my ERA girls. I step out into the hallway. The runner is thick and rough under my bare feet. The faded pattern is of purple grapes and deep green leaves and pools of cool blue water.
“The orange toothbrush is yours,” sings Lily from the end of the hallway. The grapes and leaves and pools end at a butter-yellow living room full of pot plants and bookshelves and antique leather couches. Lily sits cross-legged at a low wooden coffee table, using one of the couches as a backrest. The surface of the table is scattered with drawings. She beams at me and returns to scrawling on a fresh page. My anger ebbs a little.
In the corridor, the walls are eggshell blue with a series of twelve etchings hung at staggered intervals. They are careful, exact renderings of very familiar scenes, no bigger than a single sheet of paper. Paris, mid-nineteenth century.
“These are by Charles Méryon,” I say to myself, stepping closer to one.
“The Rhodes rescued them from the Frick Museum in 1990,” Mrs K calls from somewhere in the living room.
“We have reproductions back home,” I reply. When Maman moved from Khandallah to the Oriental Bay apartment, the reproductions moved with her.
I wander down the hall and recognise Le Pont-au-Change. Le Petit Pont. La Tour de l’Horloge. The rest I don’t know. Méryon was colour blind, Maman told us, so he drew in black and white. A thousand tiny, perfect lines seem to cut the images out of the yellowing paper. What Maman would have given to see these.
In the bathroom, the tiles are warm underfoot and every colour of the rainbow. Hot air wafts through vents in the skirting boards to rustle the pastel pink shower curtain, and three toothbrushes sit in three little glasses – mine the orange, a yellow and a green one – next to a jar containing the same tooth tabs as in the dressing room. There are the same shampoo, conditioner, and soap bars too. In proper lighting they are faintly lavender-coloured.
But, of course, there’s a mirror above the sink.
After a moment in which I consider whether Claire Kaliampos would be upset with me if I ripped the mirror from the wall, or just never showering again, I scoff at my own cowardice and step up to the glass to see . . .
Not Maman.
Oh, thank God.
A young woman looks back at me. Deep shadows circle her blue eyes and pale lines cut across her face like one of Charles Meryon’s drawings. I stare at my own reflection, force myself to blink, and, for once, am relieved to see my scars when I open my eyes. Despite three days asleep, I look exhausted.
Okay. Good. The pills have done their job. That’s one question answered. Now, how’s the water pressure?
It’s incredible is what it is. After washing every inch of myself with the lavender bars, I sit on the bottom of the bath under the hot, heavy rain and let my muscles relax and my mind unwind with a sigh of relief. It works for all of two minutes before anxiety settles in.
How long until Shade arrives?
Shut up.
How long until its Mrs K bleeding on the floor?
Come on. Five minutes of peace, please.
How long until you’re back in the dressing room, with no Carter this time, spiralling worse than ever?
I pull my legs to my chest and bury my face in my knees and mount a counter argument.
Maybe he’ll go after Leo this time. Or maybe kidnapping was just a new phase for him - he didn’t kidnap anyone last year, did he? - and now he’s over it after his first attempt went so badly. He can get at Dad and the Marines in other ways that don’t include using me. Chill out. I’m on the island of one of the most powerful families in the New York whose son happens to be part of a team of vigilantes who’ve successfully taken Shade down before. He won’t come here. I’m not that important to him.
And yet, for some reason, with all that very good advice bouncing around my brain, I remain hunched over under the spray, wondering if I have enough pills to sleep until Halloween is over.
There’s a knock at the door. “Lyssa?” Lily calls. “Are you ready yet? Dinner’s on the table.”
I reach up and shut off the water. In the sudden, ringing quiet, I say, “Yeah, give me a minute.”
“Okay!” She dashes away and loudly reports to Claire Kaliampos that I am coming. With a sigh, I push aside the angst and get out and dress for dinner with a mad doctor’s prepubescent science experiment and her live-in psychiatrist.
.
Claire’s enchiladas are delicious, especially when smothered in black bean dip, salsa and guacamole made from Shelter Island’s greenhouse tomatoes and avocados, and sour cream grown in a vat by bacteria. “We’re mostly vegetarian here,” Claire explains. “D ‘n R’s animal protein fabrication isn’t up to city-wide rates yet.”
“They make it in big tubs,” says Lily. “I’ve seen it.”
“Really?” I ask around a mouthful of lentil chilli and tortilla. So good.
“Mrs K took me to the farms once,” says Lily. “It’s like a jungle. And they have holes in the ground where they pour in the fruit and vegetables and underneath is where they clean everything and fabricate stuff and put it in boxes and take it to Queen Bee. Cleo found me in Queen Bee,” she adds.
“Found you?”
“After I escaped. Their heads blew up.”
What?
I look at Claire for help. She takes pity. “Lily, it’s bath time. Alyssa and I will do the dishes tonight.”
Lily grins. “’kay!” She vanishes from the kitchen in a blur of white hair and linen. The kitchen, which shares a wall with my bedroom, is suddenly much quieter.
Claire starts clearing the table. I lazily finish the last few mouthfuls on my plate and stare at the kitchen windows. The brightness of the kitchen and living room turn the glass into a mirror. Points of green-blue light in the Japanese garden glow through the reflection, spectres from another world – the ghostly light of the Goo globes in their stone lanterns and patches of moss and gravel at their feet. High above us, the Russian house is a thicker block of black against the night sky.
I find myself wondering how Carmen is doing. The girls already know her well, to the point where she has a standing invitation to flat dinners. The first time I invited her along was on Yukiko’s night, and, for once, she chose Japanese. Carmen brought marinated fillets of a school-shark she’d caught herself. After general introductions, she was installed at a burner with a frying pan next to Tori, who manned the soup and noodles and rice, while Kate set the table and I cut vegetables and Yukiko whipped up half a dozen sauces. It was sweetly domestic. Carmen calmly played the straight man to Tori’s teasing over the stovetop and saved the rice from burning when Tori got carried away on some anecdote from the studio, much to Yukiko’s appreciation; she managed to grill the shark to such perfection that, come dinner time, Yukiko, who doesn’t eat if she can avoid it, finished her fillet; and she and Kate got on like a house on fire.
I should have anticipated it, really – both of them level-headed, observant, ruthless as needs be, strategic and goal-focused, the only difference being that Carmen hunts for animals, while Kate hunts for people. As Yukiko steadily ate her shark flake by flake, Kate interrogated Carmen about her family, her hobbies, her goals, and Carmen, answering with care, sent each question back at Kate. It was like a job interview. Tori and I sat back in fascination. At the end of the night, Kate and Carmen shook hands and Carmen became an honorary member of the flat. I want to be with them so much my chest aches.
I swallow my last bite. “What’s with the colour scheme?”
“This is the cottage they built for Lily. The large house you can see through your window is the family home, but Kyle lives in his grandfather’s old villa on our other side,” Claire had explained earlier. The base design of the cottage seems to be Scandinavian-inspired – clean lines and light wood floors and large cased openings between rooms, peaceful, and lovely. Just ignore the jungle’s worth of pot plants, the overflowing bookshelves, the drawings everywhere, the rainbow tiling in the bathroom, and the paintwork. My room is apricot, the hallway is blue, the living room yellow, the kitchen lavender and its cupboards turquoise.
Claire chuckles. “That’s for Lily. There weren’t a lot of colours where she grew up.”
“I thought you didn’t know where she’s from?”
She shakes her head. “We just don’t know who her parents are. She’s one of the Oikos orphans – she remembers growing up in the base that they stole from the Risorgimento. Cleo tells me it was quite a sight. The mafia carved a complex of tunnels into Todt Hill, on Staten Island. They kept it a secret for years by using generators to stay off-grid and using underground entrances.”
“That can’t have been healthy.” I imagine the dressing room extended into a rabbit warren and shudder. “I’m amazed she’s so cheerful.”
“She’s a fighter, that one.” Claire takes my plate, rinses it, sets it with the other dishes to clean, then joins me at the table. She cups both hands around her water glass.
I think of Lily’s hair, her arm. “Was Doc part of the gang?”
“He lived underneath them.” Claire is silent for a moment. “He took most of the Oikos children when the gang collapsed.”
“And he . . . was she already amputated when he got to her?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
Claire’s lips thin.
I move on. “Their heads blew up?”
“Kyle thinks Doc had bombs implanted in the heads of his subjects. An insurance policy, if you will. Lily doesn’t know how she escaped, only that she remembers going along with a group of people like her in a big tunnel. In her words, their heads exploded and she was alone. She found a ladder and climbed up into Southside in Queen Bee. Cleo found her while out on patrol. Later the Marines found the bodies of the other victims around where Lily said they’d be.” Her hands clench around the water glass.
“Lily? Did her bomb not . . . explode or something?” I feel sick talking about this.
Claire raises her glass, then puts it down, grimacing. “We couldn’t find anything, apart from the arm and the albinism. He must have thought she was special, or that she wouldn’t run. Whatever the reason, you’ll be pleased to know that it was your father who ridded us of him at last.” She gets up again and heads back to the sink under the windows. She tips out her glass, fills the sink with hot water, pours in a portion of white powder out of a jar on the windowsill, and the water begins to fizz as the scent of citrus and baking soda blooms in the kitchen.
“How old was she?” I ask quietly.
“Seven.”
I was thirteen when I got caught in the fire. I’d had a normal childhood up until that point, except for an absent father and the hybrid French-Kiwi lifestyle. And while I was in high school, bemoaning my appearance, Lily was growing up an orphan in a gang underground, was being kidnapped and mutilated and experimented on, was running for her life as her fellow escapees’ heads blew up.
I look at the lines on my knuckles and picture Lily’s grin and feel pathetic.
“Is there a Mr Kaliampos?” I ask at length, hoping to lighten the mood.
“My husband died in an Oikos raid, oh, it must be ten years ago now,” she replies.
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. Doctor Walsh will be here in the morning to check on you.”
“Who?”
“Doctor Stanley Walsh. He’s the head of the medical sector these days, but his training is in primary care. His patient list is small due to his other commitments - the Rhodes and the Daniels, some Village executives, your father.”
“Ah.” I ignore the twinge of anger at the mention of Dad and instead think, Great. A VIP doctor. I bet he’s insufferable to his staff.
Claire smiles at me in the mirror as if she knows what I’m thinking. “He’s a lovely man, very easy to talk to. Of course, I am always available if you’d prefer to talk to me, but you will have to be examined by him first.”
“Yeah, okay. What time is he coming?”
Claire glances at the oven clock. It flashes 19:13. 19:14. “A little past eight.”
“Thanks.” I yawn. The lethargy of recovery and a good meal washes in like the tide. “I might head to bed.” One pill now will keep me under until maybe three in the morning, four at a stretch. A pill and a half should do the trick. “Thank you for dinner.”
“You’re welcome,” says Claire, still smiling. “Sleep well.”