Ophelia (9 page)

Her brother’s mind readily skipped over the fact that she
said she’d spoken to their father recently.

“I don’t remember any projects I haven’t finished.” Harry
grinned wildly. “But then I don’t remember much of anything right now, do I?”

“Enough mundanity!”
Ophelia snapped.
“Peter Parker is still walking the streets of this city because of
your little ‘accident’! It is my duty to take up your fallen mantle.”

Her boots beat a harsh staccato toward the door, but a simple
“wait!” was all it took to halt Ophelia’s imperious stride.

“You’re trying to tell me that
Dad
ordered you to
murder my best friend?”

“You will have to take up the reasoning
behind this decision with
Athair
.”

“I
told
you…I’m not looking for a good time!”

“I did not ask if you were.”

Peter grimaced. The woman had fallen into step beside him two
blocks ago and he’d been unable to shake her. When she first joined him, Peter
had the feeling he’d seen her before, but distance had done nothing for his
memory. Trying not to be obvious, Peter sized up his companion.

As he looked the woman over, Peter realized there wasn’t a
very good possibility that she was a prostitute—she simply wasn’t dressed for
the job. She wore a form-fitting black suit trimmed in shades of hunter green.
A streetlight caught the woman’s hair and Peter noticed it was a shining knob
of auburn, while another gleam showed that she wore gauntlets of the same
green-trimmed-black. When he finally gave into staring, Peter realized that the
woman was dressed almost as Harry had been in their last fight. But Harry’s outfit
had been thrown together haphazardly, while Peter had begun to suspect that his
companion had the latest technology—right down to her uniform, which he was
certain was made of the same super armor he’d recently read about in the
newspaper.

“What do you want from me?”

The woman kept walking, but did not meet Peter’s eyes when
she spoke a moment later.

“You killed my father.”

He looked at her again and discovered that Harry’s sister
accompanied him.

“I’m going to tell you the same thing I’ve told your brother
for the last five years—I did
not
kill Norman Osborn. He died in an
accident.”

Ophelia didn’t answer, and when Peter turned to read her
expression, she took him roughly by the arm and shoved him into an alley.

“Let me make this perfectly clear,”
she said in a voice just short of seductive. Ophelia slammed him into the wall.
“I do not care what excuses you make or what you claim as the
truth. You have disgraced the name of House Osborn and I will not rest until
you have paid the price.”

Peter felt a warmth in his stomach, but ignored it, so
distracted was he by her stormy violet eyes.

“Prepare yourself, Parker,”
she
warned.
“You will know neither the day nor the hour, but I. Will.
Come.”

He watched her march up the alley and round a corner.
Something gleamed in her hand, but Peter didn’t see it—the warmth in his
stomach had caught his attention once again. Awed, he touched the offending
spot, sifted it in his fingers and sniffed.

“She stabbed me! She
actually
stabbed me!”

~*~

“
¿Corazón?
Corazón
, wake up.”

 Eduardo shook his wife, but she barely stirred. He took a
seat on the edge of the bed.

“Westbrooke tells me that you’ve been in and out of
consciousness for three days. Was there another accident?”

“Too many hospital visits,”
Ophelia
murmured.

“Harry was just released,” her husband replied. “He stayed in
the guest room overnight and then asked Westbrooke if he could linger while he
recovered his bearings.”

Eduardo hesitated. “Why is David back on duty?”

“Whitaker did not last,”
he thought
he heard her say.

“Ophelia?” He shook her again. “Ophelia, what is wrong with
you? Every time I leave metropolitan New York for more than a few days, I come
home to find you a physical—and sometimes emotional—wreck.

“Is your father after you again?”

“I have not seen
Athair
in
weeks
,”
she murmured.

Eduardo watched his wife for a few minutes, her chest slowly
rising and falling, as if she had gone back to sleep. He was nearly ready to
attempt rousing Ophelia once again when she suddenly sat up and latched onto
him.

“Do not leave me again,
amor
!”

She broke their embrace long enough to look at him, and
Eduardo noticed her eyes were unusually bright.

“I need you here with me!”

“I have to leave
sometimes
,” he reminded her gently.
“It’s part of my job!”

Ophelia’s answer was somewhat muffled, as she had buried her
head in his shoulder.
“You do not have to work! I have enough
money for both of us!”

Eduardo began stroking her hair. “What would I do if I didn’t
model? I can’t sit around all day doing nothing! We don’t even have kids to
take care of!”

“We should try for children!”
she
exclaimed, her bright gaze locking onto his.
“I will find you
a position at Osborn Scientific—something that will keep you occupied, but that
will be easy to get out of once I come back from maternity leave!”

Ophelia didn’t give him a chance to argue, swiftly capturing
his lips in a kiss such as they had not had for a long time.

Some Weeks Later

I
can’t blame the Osborns every time I have a problem!
Peter thought.

He was glad that the accident had caused Harry’s memory to
reset, but Peter couldn’t help feeling that it would return at any time and his
best friend—his
former
best friend—would be very annoyed. Sighing, Peter
lay back on his bed and began to consider the implications of Harry’s sister
being involved in the “Osborn vendetta”.

The last few weeks had been rough. After a thorough interview
at the hospital, the police had promised to catch his attacker as quickly as
possible, but Peter doubted they would have any luck. As an Osborn, Ophelia
would surely be able to talk her way out of any consequences—if she didn’t
successfully deny the incident in the first place. Peter was sorely tempted to
tell Detective Morgan that he knew the identity of his attacker, but—again—it
came down to not blaming the Osborns every time he had an unusual problem.

     After three days in the hospital—complete with a visit
from Mary Jane Watson, two from Gwen Stacy and Aunt May dropping off his
graduate homework every day—Peter had returned to his apartment. J. Jonah
Jameson had wanted Peter to go back to his job as staff photographer
immediately; but Robbie Robertson had called within the hour and made Peter
swear to stay home and get better, saying that he would deal with Jonah.

~*~

It
was a rainy day; which left Peter all the more surprised when a rock came
sailing through his window.

Peter struggled to open the door and hurry out onto the
balcony, but by the time he got outside, the miscreant was gone. Shaking his
head, Peter scampered back inside and began attaching a plastic bag across the
hole. Yet another thing the landlord would have to fix—preferably before the
door, with which besieged Peter on a daily basis. He grabbed a ragged towel
from his vanity and nearly tripped on the rock on his way over to wipe the
floor. Startled, he picked it up.

“Sedimentary,” he announced to no one in particular. “No…” He
squinted. “A curious form of igneous.”

Peter frowned and held the rock at arm’s length. When he
picked it up, he had failed to notice that it was inscribed with a green glyph
in a language the likes of which he’d never seen. Peter’s mind drifted lazily
about until it settled on his landlord’s daughter, Ursula.

“That’s crazy. Why would she know?”

But he didn’t have time to reason before he found himself
heading toward the door. With a sigh, Peter yanked it open and limped across
the hall.

“Peter!” Ursula lit up as she opened her door, then quickly
deflated. “The brownies won’t be ready for another ten minutes.”

“What? Oh…that’s not what I’m here for.” He glanced over her
shoulder. “Is your father around?”

“He went to get groceries. But I can tell him you stopped
by!”

“No. I want to talk to
you
. Uninterrupted.”

Peter stepped inside the apartment, causing Ursula to blush.
She motioned to a rickety chair and they sat down. He eyed her for a moment,
then sprang for the door.

“I should go. You dad will probably be back any minute.”

“No!” Ursula tugged on Peter’s arm. “He just left. Stay.
Please?”

Peter looked at her for a moment before folding into the
chair and silently handing her the rock.

“Oh…wow…where’d you get this?”

“Someone threw it at my window an hour or so ago.” Peter
leaned forward. “Do you know what it is?”

“It’s a rock. I mean…” Ursula paused in an effort to collect
her thoughts. “It’s not a…a…what do you call it?”

“A glyph?”

“Right. It’s not a glyph.” She fingered the rock lovingly.
“At least, I don’t think so.”

“I’m sorry I bothered you,” Peter said after a moment. He
reached for the rock and Ursula snatched it away.”

“I wasn’t done yet!”

Barely mollified, Peter returned to the rickety chair yet
again.

“I was about to say that it looks like Old Russian.”

“You know Old Russian?”

Ursula flushed and dipped her head; she saved from having to
answer a moment later by the sound of the oven timer.

“It reminds me of something I saw in a book, once,” she said
when the brownies were safely cooling. “I learned a little Old Russian when I
decided I wanted to read some of the older fairytales.

“The brownies should be cool enough to eat in about fifteen
minutes.”

Peter tried to avoid scowling. This girl certainly had a gift
for changing the subject.

“Can you remember what it was that you might have read?”

Ursula examined the rock for quite a while before answering.
“I think it might mean ‘demon’.”

“Oho! What have we here?”

Peter’s landlord burst through the door and the young man
flew to his feet.

“Nothing, Mr. Ditkovitch! I was just leaving!”

Peter was halfway to his apartment before Ursula called out
about the brownies. He pretended not to hear as he flung himself into his
apartment and quickly flipped his lock.

I wonder what the chances are that that actually means
“goblin”?

~*~

Late
in the evening of the following day, Ophelia came home to a nearly empty
mansion. Eduardo had a shoot that did not wrap until 2:30 in the morning and
Ophelia had dismissed the kitchen staff after breakfast, knowing that she had a
meeting that night. Bernard would be the only one left, likely enjoying the
day’s edition of the
New York Times
in the parlor. Or so she thought.

“Your brother is sulking in the guest room, Miss Ophelia.”
Bernard announced as he took her things with his usual aplomb.

“My brother is not permitted in this house
without an invitation,”
she reminded him.

“He said that he had a date. When he found out that Ms. Marcy
had the day off, Master Harry used monetary persuasion to encourage me to pick
up a few extra items he needed to cook dinner.”

“He has his own flat,”
Ophelia
replied.
“What is wrong with entertaining there?”

“I am afraid that I do not know, Miss. When I inquired,
Master Harry simply handed me an extra twenty dollars and insisted that I ‘keep
the change’.”

Ophelia glanced over at her bodyguard, but David did not
appear to have an opinion. She looked at her butler.

“Was my brother’s cooking so horrible that
the young lady left halfway through?”
she inquired.
“Or
perhaps he is sulking because she had the intelligence not to show up.”

“I do not know, Miss Ophelia,” Bernard repeated. “When I
returned with the groceries, Master Harry bade my disappearance. I have only
been out of my room for a quarter of an hour.”

Ophelia nodded.
“You may return to your
paper. I will deal with my brother.”

David
started to hold her back, but she plunged past him.

“It is
Athair
’s voice,”
Ophelia said.
“He is probably in the library mirror again.”

Her bodyguard frowned and gestured for her to wait, but
Ophelia was already slipping inside.

“Ophelia! So good of you to join us!” Norman’s voice was
grating, as if from decades of disuse.

“Why are you here,
Athair
?”
she demanded.
“More importantly,
how
did you get in
here?”

He smirked. “I may not be able to leave it any longer, but
the mirror is still my domain!”

Ophelia raised her hands, as if she were about to direct
energy, but her father roared so loudly that she nearly jumped into David’s
arms.

“I’ve come to deliver a message to your brother, but there is
no reason why you can’t be here,” Norman said imperiously.

But Ophelia did not listen. She stood with her arm around
Harry’s shoulder, trying to look for all the world as if she were paying
attention, but her father had given variations on this lecture many times
before. When she stopped thinking long enough to pay attention, Ophelia gleaned
that Harry had been a complete failure in his filial duty, which he had resumed
after leaving the hospital. She was tempted to defend her brother; argue that
it was difficult to fulfill your obligations when you couldn’t remember having
them in the first place, but she knew there was no point. Norman had become
increasingly insistent since his death and the only thing to do was to pretend
that she had every intention of obeying. Ophelia nudged Harry.