Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

I lifted my hand to shield my eyes as I approached. “I think I just burned my retinas.”

“Ha ha,” Olivia said to me before turning to Cher, dimples flashing. “Joanna thinks being caustic makes her appear intelligent, not to mention morally superior to those of us with a Neiman’s card.”

Damn, that was a good one for a woman who’d once worn bunny ears and a fluffy tail.

“You know, it could just be the sun, Joanna, dear.” Taking in my black-on-black ensemble, Cher snapped her gum loudly, also pink. “Olivia tells me you only come out at night.”

“Only if there’s a full moon,” I replied, trying not to let it bother me that Olivia would speak of me to Cher at all. She and I had a long-standing enmity, born on the day we met, half a dozen years earlier. She was a southern version of Olivia, a sharp-tongued shrew in the guise of a belle, with a manipulative nature that would make Scarlett herself blush. She didn’t take herself too seriously, which I rather thought a good thing, but she didn’t take anything else seriously either, and that I just found irresponsible. She also had the ear of the woman I considered my best friend.

“Well, that explains your color, darlin’.” Cher pressed a cool, bejeweled finger to my skin. When she lifted it, the color didn’t change. She repeated the test on herself with more satisfying results.

“Touch me again and you’ll lose your finger.”

She lifted that finger to her lips and blew me a kiss.

I barely contained a snarl. “Flirting won’t work on me, Cher. I don’t have a penis.”

“Are you sure?” She smiled, lashes opening and closing like butterfly wings, and before I could answer, turned away. “I’ll be waiting for you in the drawing room, Livvy-girl. Don’t forget, we have a date for high tea at four.”

“It’s a fucking family room,” I muttered, watching until she disappeared from sight. I turned to find Olivia regarding me with sad eyes. “What?”

“Why do you have to take shots at her?” At us , said her expression.

“Easy target.”

“She’s my best friend.”

“I know.” The words settled uneasily between us. Finally, I cleared my throat. “Come on, let’s get this Daddy Dearest moment over with. I wouldn’t want you to miss high tea.”

“You could come with us,” she said as we entered the wraparound hallway leading to the office wing.

And maybe after that I could stick burning pokers beneath my fingernails. “I don’t think so.”

“What about tonight?” she persisted. “Want to come over?”

“What’s wrong? Malibu Ken already have a date?”

“No, but my sister is having a birthday. I thought we might have a party, just the two of us.”

The need in her voice both softened and hurt me. It had been a long time since we’d done anything together, just for fun. Then, remembering the way she’d stared, I also wondered how much of our alone time was reported back to Cher. I love you, Olivia, but …“I already have plans.”

And I was desperate to tell her about them, about Ben. I just couldn’t with Cher’s face and voice so fresh in my mind.

Olivia’s lower lip popped out. “But aren’t you curious to know what I got you?”

“Does it involve the color pink, or a grossly overvalued designer initial stamped on it?”

“No. It doesn’t involve crosses or holy water either. You’re perfectly safe.”

“Ha ha.”

But Olivia linked her arm in mine as we continued walking, making it hard to cross my arms over my chest, and utterly defeating my snarl. Damn it, she was like PMS kryptonite. She instinctively knew how to sap a bad mood of all its energy.

“Stubborn,” she muttered, singsonging it, as if to herself. “Too stubborn to admit any weakness—”

“Don’t start this again.”

“And too in love with life to just shut down completely.”

In love with life? I raised a brow. “Olivia, I sleep all day—when I’m not training—and wander the dirtiest, grittiest morasses of this city’s butt crack at night.”

She only smiled. “You volunteer at the soup kitchen once a week. You take portraits of the homeless to raise awareness, and as a tribute, marking that they’re here. You let them know that you, at least, see them. And you’ve helped dozens of teen runaways return home, and if they couldn’t do that, found them a new one.”

I stopped dead. “How do you know all that?”

She shot me that secretive smile over her shoulder and kept walking. I had to rush to catch up. “Because I don’t just chair the events that cater to the rich who feel better about themselves for eating a five-hundred-dollar dinner that they can write off at the end of the year. I talk to the people who talk to the people you help. Those who pay for plates might call me Ms. Archer, but those who are given a free meal call you ‘friend.’”

“I’m going to puke now,” I said, embarrassed…and secretly pleased.

“Mind the carpet.”

But by this time we were making our way across a room of marble, one markedly different from that of any other in the house. The floors were bare, the three windows unadorned, and its core was shaped like something called a “stupa.” That, Xavier had once explained, was a mound the old Tibetan lamas built to house the remains of great meditation masters when they died.

Now, I don’t know what a Tibetan stupa was supposed to look like, but other than the white marble adorning every surface, ceiling included, this looked just like the inside of a crypt.

Xavier had jazzed it up a bit, of course. There was a glass case in the center of the room, spotlit from above, holding the first full English translation of a thirteen-hundred-year-old manuscript— The Tibetan Book of the Dead . Nice and cheery. There was also a dais at one end of the room, large enough for a throne, which was what Xavier eventually planned on putting there. Right now there was just a large gold-framed oil painting, featuring snowcapped mountains hovering over gently sloping grassland, and wildflowers combed over by gentle winds while mountain yaks grazed between them.

Now, leading up to the dais things got a little less pastoral and a little more interesting. A phalanx of vertical prayer wheels sat aligned like wooden soldiers, though I’d never seen anyone spinning them and I didn’t know what they were for. What did an overbearing, self-centered, egotistical gaming mogul pray for anyway?

But none of this was as weirdly perplexing as the masks. Xavier claimed they came from a Sherpa village, high up in the Himalayas, and while there was no reason to doubt him, I had no idea what connection Xavier Archer thought he had with the Himalayans. He was from the Bronx. Exotic in its own way, but slightly different.

The first mask was made of copper, an elongated devil’s face that leered at us as we entered the room. That one never failed to make me shiver. Halfway into the room some round-faced god of corroded burlwood blew visitors a wispy kiss through pursed lips. Yet another god attended the office door, this one wearing a pointed crown, crimson mouth open in a silent painted scream. If these weren’t enough to ward off all ill intent, the security camera staring from the corner with its cycloptic red eye would certainly finish the job.

A buzzer sounded next to the door. “Come in, ladies.” Then a clicking sound as the oak doors unlocked.

Xavier’s office was more in line with what you might expect from a gaming mogul. Gone were the spiritual hoohahs and totems. This room was all dark wood, oversized furniture, and chocolate walls. The coffered ceiling soared with smoked mirrors and crown molding, and hand-painted cabinetry held an impressive collection of dusty hardbound books, spines uncracked. The man himself was no less grand and imposing.