Stone Angel (2 page)

“I was in a mansion,” Jacqueline said,
“filled with statues. Horrible white plastered statues of people
with terrified expressions on their faces.”

“Like the people we saw trapped and dying in
the walls of Osgood’s skyscraper?” Isabelle asked.

“Not exactly. I mean, I knew that at one time
these statues were people, but I don’t know if they’re frozen or
asleep or cursed. I walked through an entry and then through wide
double doors, and I was in some sort of workshop. There were
sculpting tools and buckets of plaster. And standing at the work
table in the center of the room was a man holding a hammer and
speaking to one of the statues.” Jacqueline turned pale, and
covered her mouth and breathed slowly as if trying to contain her
nausea. “Except this statue was of a young girl, and it wasn't
covered in plaster. It wasn’t white, and she had tears running down
her cheeks. Her arm was stretched out as if she was trying to reach
something, or someone.”

In her mind, Charisma could see the scene,
and it made her want to put her back against the wall. “That is so
eerie.”

Reasonable as always, Rosamund pushed her
tortoiseshell glasses up her nose and asked, “What did the man look
like? Is he one of the Others? If I have a good enough description,
I can do some research and figure out what we’re up against.”

“
He was
handsome. Tall, with wavy chestnut brown hair and an elaborate
tattoo of a tiger along his right arm. ” Jacqueline looked at the
champagne-colored gloves she used to cover up the matching
eye-shaped tattoos on her palms. “Since we, and the Others, all
have marks of some sort, I would say it’s a good bet he’s one of
…
them
.”

“Sounds like we have a winner,” Samuel
said.

“
Anyway,
he said to the statue,
Your sister better hurry up because Osgood has
given her three days to bring us the old man, or I get to smash you
into little bits
. He
sounded furious, and he waved that hammer around the whole time.”
Jacqueline swallowed. “What do you think it means?"

The Chosen Ones looked at her, equally
dumbfounded, and worried. If Osgood had a hand in this, it was
trouble.

Charisma was trying to piece together the
puzzle of who the young girl was when she realized that Irving's
nurse, Amanda, was softly sobbing behind her.

As the
Chosen turned to look at her in surprise, Irving gently leaned to
where she sat crumpled on the floor,
To Kill a Mockingbird
flung to the side. He pressed his
handkerchief into her hand. "My dear, don’t you think it’s time you
told us the truth?"

“
The
truth?” Charisma muttered.
What truth
?

Lifting her tear-stained face to the group,
Amanda nodded, and swallowed, and nodded again. "I know what
Jacqueline's vision means. It means if I don't deliver Irving to
the Others in three days, my sister will be killed."

NOW THEY hated her. The Chosen Ones all hated
her.

Amanda had done everything in her power to
avoid getting fond of the Chosen Ones. She had no choice. She faced
hell every day and she could never allow herself a moment of joy or
kindness or friendship. Now here she was, having a weeping fit on
their floor while they stared at her as if she was a tick they’d
discovered after a walk in the woods … sucking their blood.

It was true, too. She was exactly that kind
of bloodsucker. She was the worst kind of human … yet what else
could she do?

If she didn’t do as the Others demanded, her
sister would die.

If she did, honor and decency would suffer,
and on the day she departed this life, she would face a judgment
both terrible and just.

Amanda could feel her eyes welling up again.
Holding Irving's handkerchief to her face, she sobbed
unrestrainedly.

Isabelle was the first to gather her thoughts
enough. "Amanda, could you please clarify for us. Your sister is
being held by the Others in the form of a statue?”

Ashamed and defiant, Amanda nodded.

“Why?" Isabelle asked.

Amanda was shaken, not just by Jacqueline's
vision and what it foretold, but also by having the attention of
every person in the room on her … except for Martha, who in the
manner of someone who had seen and heard too much to be surprised
anymore, laid out the tea on each individual plate.

As if sensing the disturbance, Irving's
butler, McKenna, came through the door and calmly joined her,
making murmured serving suggestions that made her brown eyes flash
with irritation.

“Go on, child,” Irving urged Amanda. “Tell us
the whole story.”

Amanda nodded, but she couldn’t look at him.
Of all the people she had betrayed, it was him who would have
suffered most from her treachery.

“Let me … let me start at the beginning.” So
long ago. So far away. “First of all, you should know that I am
fifteen years older than my sister, Sophia, and I'm her only
guardian. Our parents left soon after she was born because …
because they were frightened by the strange mark on of her
arm."

"What was the mark?" Rosamund asked.

"It looks like a tattoo, a perfectly formed
lily. It reaches across her back." Amanda sighed shakily. "I
remember my parents bringing her home from the hospital. They were
in shock. They said it wasn't natural. They stayed for few months.
They wanted to abandon Sophia. When I refused to leave her, they
abandoned both of us.”

“
Great
folks,” Aaron said,
sotto voce
.

Amanda couldn’t pretend she didn’t hear him.
She was done with pretending. “Yes, they cowered at every portent,
believed every televangelist, looked for omens and ran from their
responsibilities the first chance they got. They were not admirable
people, and my DNA is nothing to brag about. But I loved that baby,
and I didn’t tell anybody my parents were gone. I’d been working
summers for three years—”

Genny interrupted. “You were too young to
work.”

“
I was
too young to work
legally
,” Amanda
corrected.

The Chosen Ones looked at each other, and
nodded their heads or shook them.

They had all been abandoned, too, and Amanda
would bet some of them had worked as children, too. She continued,
“My family was already on welfare, which made it easier for me to
fool the system and keep food on the table. I used my college
savings to pay for Sophia’s daycare so I could finish high school,
and after I graduated I worked nights to put myself through nursing
school. Sophia was totally worth it. She was bright and
sweet-natured, and I knew I had done the right thing when I took
her as my own." Amanda felt the glow of pride at her sister's
accomplishments, and her own.

The Chosen Ones circled her.

She supposed they weren’t trying to be
threatening — well, maybe Caleb and Samuel — but they made her ever
more nervous. "Anyway, when Sophia turned eleven, the tattoo, well,
I guess it bloomed. It had always been a closed bud along her
forearm. But that year, it grew and changed until it seemed to be a
full-fledged flower."

Rosamund pulled out a notebook and a pencil
from behind her ear, and took notes so intently Amanda knew she
wanted to rush to one of the books on the shelves and find the
specific meaning of flower tattoos among the Abandoned Ones.

Amanda continued haltingly, "I was in a … um
… relationship. And I wasn't paying enough attention to Sophia. I
know that now. I got caught up with the one man who hadn't run away
when I said I was raising my sister.”

Isabelle and Genny nodded their heads in
understanding.

"He led them right to me. The Others." At the
memory of how she had been betrayed, Amanda’s face flushed with
humiliation and rage.

Aaron’s eyes grew cold.

Irving's lips pressed into a thin, pale
line.

John asked the question hanging in the air,
the answer to which they all probably already knew. “So Sophia has
a gift. What is it? Why did the Others want her?”

Amanda faced him. "She's always been able to
create small force fields. She used to do it when she was a baby
and didn't want me to take a toy away from her. But as she grew
older, the force fields became stronger, larger. She could control
them, put them up at will. I should have known someone would
notice.” She paused to collect herself. “I should have known no one
would love me without an ulterior motive."

“That’s dramatic,” Charisma said coldly.

Amanda matched her stare for stare. “Is it?
Have you ever been in love? Have you ever been betrayed?”

Charisma’s gaze faltered, and she stepped
back. “No.” She shook her head slightly. “No, not like that.”

“
I
figured.” As Amanda thought of
him
,
she could feel the anger rising in her, the familiar surge of pain
and hatred. She tamped it back down, knowing it would do her no
good to show the Chosen her weaknesses.

She needed to make them understand.

She needed their help.

“After the Others took Sophia, they told me I
would be placed here, in Irving’s home. They wanted me to use my
abilities as a nurse to get access to Irving and to all of you. I
was to report back each week with information about the Chosen Ones
and especially Irving’s movements.”

McKenna’s shoulders stiffened. He was known
for his protectiveness of Irving, and he probably wanted to throw
Amanda out a window right about now.

She wouldn’t really blame him. But she
couldn’t blame herself, either. “And to ensure my compliance,
Sophia would be kept frozen, a statue in the Sculptor’s home.” She
choked on the last words.

“That’s … horrible.” Samuel’s dark eyes were
wide and appalled, and he reached for Isabelle’s hand and held it
as if he needed support, or wanted to assure himself she was still
there, and with him.

“Frozen? In his home?” Genny looked as
horrified as Samuel. “She’s still a kid. This is the most
heartless…” She seemed to struggle for words.

John hugged her shoulders.

And as Amanda looked around the room, she
realized that, although they didn’t know her sister, the horror of
it hurt them all. After so much anguish and secrecy, the knowledge
that they shared her loathing for the Sculptor and his despicable
actions allowed her her first free, full breath in two months. “The
Sculptor will keep her prisoner for as long as it takes for me to …
to…”

“Deliver me into their hands?” Irving
asked.

“Yes.” Amanda looked apologetically at
Irving, slumped in his wheelchair and chilled even with the heat
from the fire washing over him. “I’m not even sure why the Others
want you. You’re not someone they should be frightened of.”

“And yet they are. What does that tell you?”
John looked grimly satisfied.

Irving saluted John. “Thank you, my boy. And
Amanda — old and sick as I am, I have knowledge the Others wish to
gain, and strength the Others wish to emulate.”

“If only they had your courage.” John
half-smiled, and saluted Irving in return.

“The Others wish to take the heart out of us.
For what would we do without our mentor?” Charisma moved forward to
gently squeeze Irving’s arthritic hands.

“So the Sculptor is your contact?” Caleb
watched Amanda intently, and his eyes were several degrees chillier
than anyone else’s.

“
No. I
report to Liam Gallagher.” Amanda tasted the slow, familiar burn of
fury and humiliation. “He’s an Other.
The
Other. The one who romanced me. The one who betrayed my
sister’s location to the Sculptor.”

Charisma snorted. “Nice to see this Sculptor
fellow has a sense of humor.”

“Yes, because humorless bad guys are just the
worst,” Aaron said sarcastically.

Irving waved them into silence.

“What information have you told them?” Caleb
asked.

Amanda tried to contain her rising fear that
the Chosen, normally so reasonable, would hurt her now. After all,
they had trusted her with Irving, their source of wisdom and
support, both financial and emotional.

Yet surely they understood the bonds of
blood, kin and sisterhood. Surely they did.

“I tried always to tell the Others the truth,
although never a truth that could do you harm,” Amanda said. “I
told them that Isabelle and Samuel had chosen each other as mates,
but I supposed they would know that anyway since you went to
Osgood’s building. I’ve kept them apprised of Irving’s
rehabilitation, and done whatever they’ve suggested to ease his
pain and hasten his recovery. They are anxious for him to get well
enough to leave the mansion. I suspect they intend to snatch him
the first time he goes outside.”

“And you wouldn’t stop them because they
would retaliate by killing your sister,” Genny added the part
everyone was thinking.

“Yes,” Amanda agreed.

Silence descended.

The fire flickered.

Martha tapped on the teapot.

Finally, Charisma broke the silence.
“Blackmail is a bitch.”

Nods and murmurs of agreement circulated
around the group.

Amanda let out a little of the breath she’d
been holding. Maybe they wouldn’t kill her for being a turncoat
after all. She steeled herself and gazed at Irving, who had been
mostly silent, staring into the fire, thinking.

Leaning close so she was face-to-face with
him, she said, “Irving, I’m sorry I lied to you and betrayed your
confidential medical information. I am so truly sorry. But I need
your help.”

IRVING ATTEMPTED to sit up straighter, and
Amanda moved instinctively to help him. In the slow, halting way he
had spoken since his accident, he said, “No one can blame you for
doing whatever you could to get your sister back. No one
understands the importance of family and love more than an old man
who has no family at all.” Reaching out an unsteady hand, he
grasped Amanda’s cold fingers, warming her with his sincerity.