Borderline (19 page)

34

When I was able to locate some saliva and peel my tongue off the roof of my mouth, I did my best to answer Vivian's question. “Like you said, I slept with my screenwriting professor,” I said. Treading this old ground turned my stomach into a lump of lead. “We'd gotten pretty close outside of class by then, but he was . . . cold to me afterward. I was confused, and I confided in a couple of people I considered friends. After that, somehow the whole campus knew.”

I paused as the waitress approached the table with Vivian's cake, setting it down in front of her. Both waitress and cake may as well have been invisible for all Vivian noticed them; her eyes were fixed on me. “So what happened next?” she prompted.

I waited until the waitress was out of earshot. “He told everyone that I had made the whole thing up. He was highly thought of, and I'd shown just enough signs of crazy by then that people believed him. Rooms got quiet when I walked in. I was miserable, started flunking classes, so I confronted him about it. He accused me of sexual harassment and said that if I ever tried to talk to him alone again or continued with my ‘accusations,' he would involve the authorities.”

“Fascinating,” Vivian said, leaning forward slightly. “He lied even in private? How did you end up sleeping with him in the first place?”

“I wish I knew. I went over to his place, and was trying to get him to talk to me about what was bothering him, and then suddenly we were—” I stopped and shook my head.

“You were what?”

My hands went cold. “Please don't make me talk about this.”

“I am not
making
you,” she said. “Though I can. Would you like me to?”

I leaned over the table; the words spilled from my mouth like bile. “I was in his room, trying to get him to open up and—we kissed and he pushed me down on the bed and—we had sex.” I wouldn't give her the satisfaction of the details: his strange, bleak urgency, the scratchy afghan against my cheek.

“Why were you alone with him at his place to begin with?” she asked, with the precision of someone locating a paralyzing nerve cluster.

Dr. Davis's voice said,
Your guilt is disproportionate. You were both consenting adults. He initiated sex; you were only there out of concern for him.

Another voice answered: the same inner voice I'd tried to drown with expensive scotch.
Th
en why did you shave your legs and put on lacy underwear? Why did you wear his favorite perfume to class? Why did you spend weeks finding all the cracks in his armor so that you could painstakingly pry it open?
Even a year later the guilt was noxious, strangling.

“It was just—” I faltered. “It was the end of a long process of— It was like the frog in the boiling water.”

Vivian looked at me blankly.

“I mean, our relationship escalated slowly. Got more and more inappropriate without our quite realizing it. He had some emotional problems too, though he was better at hiding them. I thought I could help him. I thought we were—” And then I couldn't talk anymore.

“Friends?” Vivian finished for me, with a slow smile.

I nodded. This was not what I'd hoped for in a job interview.

“Losing him made you want to end your life?”

“It wasn't the first time I'd thought of suicide. I guess it was just the first time I'd been drunk enough to do it.”

“Fabulous,” she said brightly, and finally picked up a fork to address her slice of chocolate cake. “Next topic.”

I felt light-headed. I wished I had ordered a drink, even a soda, so I'd have something to do besides stare at the table, feeling my hands going numb. “The next topic is?”

“Why David wants to hire you.”

I tried to find my footing in the conversation again. “He, uh, he seems to think I show—”

“It wasn't a question.”

I sat back boneless in my chair while Vivian took a bite of cake. It was just like with Gloria. I should have fought. I would have, a year ago, or at least showed some spine. But I wasn't that girl anymore. Nor did I have that exact spine, not to put too fine a point on it.

Vivian slid the fork from her mouth, then studied the gory smear of red lipstick she'd left on it. “David's a horrible romantic,” she said. “He can't resist the lure of a broken-winged bird. I'm not sure if it's about his immortal soul or about PR, but either way, you're like a steak dinner to him. A talented director with a tragic past who just needs a bit of inspiration. . . .”

“You think I'm talented?”
Millie. Sadistic vampire interro
gating you. Focus.

“I could care less,” she said, attacking the cake again. “It's David who wants an apprentice, not me. I just want someone to lie to the Arcadia Project when they come calling.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “And why is it you think I'd do that for you?”

Vivian laid down her fork and lowered her voice until it was almost inaudible. “You know what I do, right?” she said. “What I am.”

I leaned forward to hear her, despite myself. “A bloodsucking vampire,” I said.

She laughed. “There are no such things as vampires.”

“But you drink blood.”

“Listen, darling. I live here, but I maintain . . . connections in Arcadia. I use those connections to match actors with their Echoes and turn them into stars. In exchange, I request regular donations of the fey partner's essence.”

“So . . . you drink blood.”

Vivian rolled her eyes. “Anyone could do it. You could. If you were to have a little sip from a fey's wrist, you could hop right up and make the next
Reservoir Dogs
in a week. But something tells me they don't put this in the Arcadia Project employee manual.”

“I wouldn't know,” I said, not without bitterness.

“Anyhow,
I
don't drink the stuff to make art, I drink it to stay
me
, to stay fey. Humans are adorable, but their lifespans depress me. Without my Plan B, I'd have been rotting in the dirt for nearly a century now.”

“Tragic.”

“But listen. I'm at the point where I have more essence coming
in than I need. Now, what if
everyone
who worked at Valiant Studios had access to it? Diluted, of course, just a little taste—but can you imagine the films that would come out of a studio like that?”

“Can you imagine the massive shattering of the Code of Silence?” I said. “Are you looking for war with Arcadia?”

“Arcadia aside, darling, I don't want war with every teenager who thinks she's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which is why none of our employees will have the faintest idea why they find our office environment so inspiring.”

“How do you plan to get fey essence into an entire company without them knowing?”

“I buy businesses, a little side hobby of mine. My most recent acquisition is a water delivery service.”

“You're going to drug everyone who works with you.”

“Oh, please, ‘drug' them? This is not like those ridiculous poisons you humans are so fond of. It's the actual arcane source of all human inspiration, and it has no side effects whatsoever. You call it norium; it's native to Arcadia and finds your laws of physics amusing. But until now, its effects have only been available to people the Arcadian nobles and their Project lackeys deem worthy.”

“I don't think it's about worthiness,” I said. “It's about bringing partners together, soul mates. This thing you're doing . . . you'd be enslaving a few fey to inspire a bunch of strangers, all for your own profit.”

“My donors are willing. There's nothing in the Accord that says fey can't give or trade away their own essence. You see, fey have this idea, very strange to your people, that we may do with our own bodies what we please.”

“I thought spilled blood was a huge no-no.”

“There's no ‘spilling' involved here; there's nothing accidental or violent about it. It's all consensual and hospital clean.”

“Like what you did at Union Station? That kind of clean?”

Oh, the glory of that moment. Her face went blank with shock.

“Yeah,” I drawled a little smugly. “I probably should have mentioned earlier that I know you smuggled Rivenholt out of there. So where is he now?”

I watched her slowly adjust to the fact that I'd taken the reins of the conversation. “I can't give him to Caryl,” she said. “My project doesn't work without him.”

“Because you need him as leverage over Berenbaum.”

“Where are you getting this from?” She couldn't hide her tension. It was exhilarating; she was terrified I knew something, knew
everything
.

“Is the Seelie Queen one of your ‘connections' in Arcadia?” I asked. “Is she in on this with you?”

Vivian's expression relaxed into one of baffled annoyance. “Of course not. I don't even know her name; they change queens like underpants.”

“So it's just coincidence that her agent showed up at the train station exactly when you did?”

She made a scornful sound. “No, it's
your
fault the damned agent showed up. Who prints out an e-mail?”

Someone with an obsolete phone and memory problems. But I didn't answer her; I was too busy trying to untangle ­mental knots.

Vivian let out a sharp laugh. “You don't even know why I was there, do you?” She smiled as she took back the reins.
I don't care how long she'd been living among us; there was nothing human about her smile.

“Trying to catch Johnny?” I guessed.

“Darling, I'm the hero of this story. I know I don't look the part. But I was
helping
him. You were meant to spot him heading for the train. Then, at just the right moment, I was to make him disappear. Then we'd wrap things up here while Caryl wasted her time flying to New Orleans.”

“Wouldn't she just call New Orleans and have them handle it?”

Vivian pretended to hold a phone to her ear, speaking in a fake raspy voice. “Hello, National Headquarters, this is Caryl, that teenager you put in charge of Los Angeles. I'm afraid I've lost a viscount.” She laughed. “No, no, you don't know Caryl very well, do you? Anyhow, that damned faun stopped him before we could even set up the red herring.”

“So you weren't working with Claybriar.”

“Darling, my allies are rare enough that I'm not likely to stand and watch one get beaten unconscious on a railroad track.”

That feeling again, like watching a duck turn into a rabbit. “That—that was Claybriar's blood, then.”

Her smile vanished. “I thought—” She gave me a long look. “Oh God. You had no idea what happened at the station.”

“Not until you just told me.”

“A bluff!” She laughed nervously and ran a hand back through her hair. “Oh, we do need you, darling.”

“I'm supposed to believe Johnny beat the snot out of an agent of the Queen?”

“Don't go making Johnny the villain either. He had no choice.”

“There's always a choice.”

“No, darling, literally, he was under a compulsion. But I'm not going to explain that part. Suffice it to say he could not return to Arcadia, and Claybriar was going to force the issue.”

“Because Johnny abducted someone.”

“Ugh, no! Johnny hadn't abducted anyone! And he told Claybriar as much. But he
had
broken the Accord, so Claybriar didn't care. He went all Tommy Lee Jones about the whole thing.”

“How did Johnny break the Accord?”

“I'm not going to tell you that, either. But the penalty for Accord violations is death. Even trivial violations. Rivenholt had no choice but to get Claybriar out of the picture.”

“You mean kill him.”

“No, no, I'd never let someone die who could still be useful. You might want to keep that in mind as you're considering my job offer.”

“Vivian,” I said, hearing a pleading note creep into my voice, “I won't force Johnny to go back to Arcadia, especially not without knowing the whole story. But I do need to see him. Just tell me where he is.”

“At the moment? I don't know. Ask David.”

“But David doesn't—”

Of course David knew. Everyone knew he knew. Everyone except me.

“David sent me to Regazo de Lujo,” I said, feeling suddenly tired. “David sent me to the train station.”

“Yes, well, we're all just doing our best to keep that brat Caryl from destroying everything we've built.”

“I'm supposed to work for a man who looked me in the eye and lied to me?”

“If you're on our side, he won't need to lie to you anymore.”

“What's to stop me from walking out right now and telling Caryl everything?”

“Be my guest,” said Vivian. “By the time Caryl shows up, we'll have circled the wagons, and she'll find nothing. And you'll have a long, happy career fetching doughnuts. David will be so disappointed; he's awfully fond of you. But go ahead, betray our trust. I lose nothing. You lose a job, and a friend, and most importantly, you lose
my goodwill
. I would think long and hard before you decide to do that.”

“None of this matters anyway,” I said. “We're all dead. What happened at Union Station will start a war with Arcadia.”

“Not at all. The Accord specifies that a
human
spilling fey blood is cause for war. Fey merely get executed, and since Johnny had already earned that, he didn't have anything left to lose. Tell Caryl whatever you like, but if you really want to help Johnny, the last thing you'll do is let anyone find him.”

35

Vivian gave me twenty-four hours to make up my mind, and as much as she personally sickened me, she had also successfully confused and therefore tempted me. Doesn't the devil always?

Poor Inaya. No wonder she'd been feeling out of the loop. But my sympathy for her only lasted until eight the next morning, when she sent her latte-swilling envoy to Residence Four again, this time with a manila envelope in one hand and a ­couple of breakfast burritos in the other.

“Mild or spicy?” he said, holding out the two wrapped ­bundles. They smelled tantalizingly of egg and salsa.

“Is ‘get the hell off my porch' an option?” I glanced back over my shoulder at Gloria, who had been the one to come knocking on my bedroom door to inform me that there was “an African-American gentleman” at the door for me. When Gloria caught my eye, she immediately began fluffing couch pillows in a thin attempt to pretend she wasn't eavesdropping.

“Come,” said Ellis. “Let's have a bite of breakfast and look at these photos. I took them just for you.”

“If they're of your junk, let me save you some trouble.”

“You're funny,” he said with the precise enunciation that
people use when they're trying not to strangle you. “Even if I had the remotest interest in you, I can't see my husband agreeing to a ménage à trois. Your friend David, on the other hand . . .” He waved the envelope gently. I reached for it, but he held it away with a smile.

“Show me the pictures.”

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“You can show me on the porch.”

The look on his face as he contemplated the mildew-­spotted love seat made this whole annoying encounter worthwhile. Finally he sat down as though the thing were covered in wet paint.

He handed me the burritos; they were warm, and I considered quickly snarfing both. But when he pulled three pictures out of the envelope, ink-jet printed on photo paper, I forgot about breakfast. They showed the front door of a salmon stucco house with a trio of people gathered at the doorway. It was either twilight or just before dawn, more likely the latter, to judge by the bathrobes.

In the first picture, a smartly dressed Berenbaum was ­giving a hug to a blond man in a white robe who could have been anyone, but in the next photo Berenbaum was kissing his robed wife, and the blond man's head was turned toward the camera.

It was, of course, Viscount Rivenholt. His hair was longer than in the file photo, and even just rolled out of bed, he was so beautiful I wanted to punch him.

“When did you take these?” I asked.

“About three hours ago.” Ellis furrowed his brow at me, a surprisingly cute expression on him. “You don't seem all that shocked,” he said.

“I'm afraid someone else beat you to the shock factor,” I said. “I found out last night that Berenbaum's been protecting him, though I'll confess I didn't know he was giving him room and board. God, the brass balls on that man. Looked me right in the face and spun all kinds of bullshit. I don't suppose you could tell me his address?”

He slid the photos possessively back into the envelope. “I will if you'll tell me why David, John, and Vivian keep meeting in secret at the studio.”

“They're not plotting against Inaya,” I said, handing him the burrito marked
SPICY
and then starting to unwrap mine. “I promise you that much.”

“Then why is she being cut out of the discussions?”

“It's personal stuff between the three of them that it wouldn't be right to talk about. But I know exactly what's going on, and it has nothing to do with Inaya, cross my heart. It's all Johnny drama.”

“And I'm supposed to just take your word for this?”

For a moment I didn't have an answer for him, but after a bite of burrito to jump-start my blood sugar, my brain kicked back into gear.

“I have a better idea, actually. Give me David's address.”

“What do I get in return?”

“I have an advantage that you don't. Johnny actually
wants
to see me. If I can talk to him, maybe he and I can figure out how to put Inaya at ease. It doesn't help anyone if she's so para­noid she's got people spying on him.”

Ellis exhaled. “Fine,” he said, standing and dusting off his trousers. “But if I don't hear from you by tomorrow morning, I'll be back, and this time I won't be bringing you breakfast.”

•   •   •

The drive up into the Hollywood Hills in the back of a cab was both breathtaking and nauseating. Nice view, but I could have done without the speed at which the cabdriver decided it was safe to take the curves.

A gate closed off David's neighborhood from random traffic. The gal working there asked for my name (“Millicent Roper”), identification (useless driver's license), and reason for visiting (“friend of the Berenbaums”), then disappeared into her booth for a moment doing God knows what. Tense, I found myself wondering what exactly Ellis had told this lady, or if he had found a way to sneak past her that I hadn't thought of. Finally she emerged, handed me back my driver's license, and to my surprise waved the cab through.

Berenbaum's house was situated along a narrow lane with houses on one side and a steep dropoff on the other. There was nothing to mark the house as his other than the street number Ellis had given me and the blush-peach stucco I recognized from the photograph. It wasn't a palace; there were no peacocks or fountains, but anything in that location with any sort of yard was evidence enough of spectacular wealth. In lieu of a manicured lawn, the entire property was xeriscaped with native ground-cover plants, broken up by delicate splashes of California wildflowers and organic arrangements of rocks.

I knew Berenbaum was probably at work on a Monday morning, but it wasn't him I was here to see. I made my way down the walk to the front door and rapped on it, taking a deep breath.

The baying of dogs approached like a roll of thunder, and then a young man with artfully disheveled hair answered my
knock. He looked like he was waiting for one small reason to give a kill command to the pair of ginger Dobermans behind him.

Since he wasn't glowing, I took off my sunglasses and conjured up a mental image of Rivenholt's latest drawing.

“Hi!” I said, using the rush of pleasure it gave me to power up my smile. “It's Millie. I'm here to see Johnny.” Dilated pupils are what make eyes seem to sparkle. People respond to this sign of joy on an unconscious level, warming to you without really knowing why. An old sales trick.

He seemed to relax a little. “Nobody named Johnny lives here. Are you sure you have the right house?”

“Pretty sure,” I said. “Johnny's staying with David right now, I thought.”

“Uh . . . Can you wait here just a moment?”

“Sure!” I said, trying to project confidence.

I waited, and the dogs barked a few more times. When the door opened again, it was Mrs. Berenbaum.

I stood up straighter. David's wife had silver-streaked red hair, a creased forehead, and the kind of thick-waisted figure that most people in Los Angeles would find revolting. She could have afforded any kind of work she wanted done, but she'd apparently abstained even though women half her age probably hit on her husband every day. For a moment I was tongue-tied by a paralyzing wave of respect.

“Hello,” she said with a wan smile. “You've caught me a little off guard; I'm not really set up for company. I'm Linda.” At further barking, she called over her shoulder, “Stefan, take Rick and Ilsa out back.” She turned to me. “Sorry, that's our housekeeper, Stefan, and those are David's dogs. Harmless, but loud. Kind of like David that way.”

“It's good to meet you,” I said. “I'm Millie, your husband's guinea pig. I was coming by to see Johnny, since I heard he was staying here.”

Linda hesitated, but then her good manners overcame her good sense. “Please, come in,” she said. “I'm sorry you came all this way for nothing, but I can at least make you a cup of tea or something. David's talked about you quite a bit.”

There might have been tension in that last sentence, so I made a note to myself to tread carefully. Rule number one when befriending men:
do not
piss off the wife.

Linda opened the door, and I stepped inside.