The Taker (50 page)

“Such a waste.” Adair was at my ear instantaneously, like the serpent in the Garden. “You, Lanore, are capable of such a perfect love, a love like nothing I have ever seen. And why you choose to waste it on someone as unworthy as Jonathan …”

His whisper was like perfume on the night air. “What are you saying? Are you offering yourself up as a more worthy object of my love?” I asked, searching for the answer in his wolfish eyes.

“Would that you could love me, Lanore. If you really knew me, you would see I am unworthy of your love. But one day, perhaps you will look on me as you look on Jonathan, with the same favor? Impossible, it would seem, given your devotion to him, but who knows? I’ve seen the impossible happen, every once in a great long while,” he said slyly, but when I tried to ask him to explain himself, he merely wrinkled his nose and laughed. Then he rose from the divan and called to be dealt in on the next round of faro.

Ignored, I went into the study to find a book with which to divert myself. As I passed Adair’s desk, the light from my candle fell across a sheaf of papers left on the blotter and my eye went as though by magic to Jonathan’s name, written in Adair’s hand.

Why in the world would Adair be writing about Jonathan? A letter to a friend? I doubted he had a friend in the world. I held the pages closer to the candle.

Instructions for Pinnerly
(the solicitor’s name, I’d learned).

Account to be established for Jacob Moore
(Jonathan’s false name)
with the Bank of England in the sum of eight thousand pounds
(a fortune)
transferred from the account of
… (a name I did not recognize).

The instructions called for several other accounts to be set up in Jonathan’s false name, drawn from the accounts of other strangers in Amsterdam, Paris, and St. Petersburg. I read it over twice more but could make no sense of it, and left the page as I’d found it on the table.

It appeared Adair was so smitten with Jonathan that he was taking steps to provide for him, as though adopting him. I admit I was slightly jealous and wondered if a fund had been set up for me
somewhere. What would be the point, if Adair had never told me as much? I had to wheedle and beg him for spending money, as did the others. It seemed only another sign that Adair had taken a special interest in Jonathan.

Jonathan seemed to accept his new life. At least, he didn’t object to being made to share Adair’s indulgences and vices, and he didn’t bring up St. Andrew. There was only one vice Adair hadn’t shared with his new favorite yet, one that Jonathan would not decline if it were offered. That vice was Uzra.

Jonathan had been living with us for three weeks when he was introduced to her. Adair asked Jonathan to wait in the drawing room, as I clung jealously to his side, and then Adair brought Uzra in with a flourish, the odalisque dressed in her usual swath of winding cloth. When he released her hand, the fabric dropped to the floor to reveal Uzra in her glory. Adair even had her dance for Jonathan, swaying her hips and twisting her arms as Adair sang an improvised tune. Afterward, he had the hookah brought down and we reclined on cushions thrown on the floor, taking turns sucking on the carved ivory mouthpiece.

“She’s lovely, isn’t she? So lovely that I haven’t been able to part with her. Not that she hasn’t been trouble: she’s a devil. Thrown herself out windows and off rooftops. Thinks nothing of giving me fits. Still burns with hatred for me.” He traced a finger down her nose, despite the fact that she looked as though she’d bite that finger off if given the chance. “I suppose that’s what’s kept her interesting to me over the years. Let me tell you how Uzra came to be with me.” At the mention of her name, Uzra tensed visibly.

“I met Uzra on a trip to the Moorish states,” Adair started, unaffected by Uzra’s distress. “I was in the company of a noble who was negotiating for the freedom of his brother, who had foolishly tried to steal some treasure from one of their leaders. I had by that time a fair reputation as a warrior. I had fifty years’ experience with the sword, more than most men. I had been bought, as it were, to help this nobleman,
my loyalty paid for in coin. That was how I came to be in the East and stumble upon Uzra.

“It was in a large city, in the marketplace; she was following behind her father, and draped as custom demanded. All I could see of her were her eyes, but that was enough: I knew I had to see more. So I followed them to their encampment on the outskirts of the city. Speaking to some of the men tending the camels, I learned that the father was the leader of a nomadic tribe and that the family was in the city so that she could be given to some sultan, some indolent prince, in exchange for her father’s life.”

Poor Uzra was completely still now. She had even stopped drawing on the hookah. Adair wrapped a tendril of her fiery hair around a finger, gave it a tug as though reprimanding her for her aloofness, then let it fall.

“I found her tent, where she was attended by a dozen women servants. They formed a circle around her, and thinking she was hidden from view, helped her out of her robes, slipped the fabric from her cinnamon skin and unfurled her hair, their hands fluttering all over her body … Chaos broke out when I burst into the tent,” Adair said with a throaty laugh. “The women screamed, ran, fell over each other trying to protect themselves from me. How could they think I would settle for one of them when this mesmerizing jinn stood naked before me? And Uzra knew I’d come for her, from the look in her eye. She barely had time to cover herself with a robe before I swooped down on her and carried her away.

“I took her to a place in the desert where I knew no one would find us. I took her over and over that night, heedless of her crying,” he said, as though he had nothing to be ashamed of, as though he had as much right to her as he had to water to slake his thirst. “The sun came up the next morning before my delirium started to subside and I was sated with her beauty. In between our pleasures, I asked her why she was being given to the sultan. It was because her tribe held a superstition about a jinn with green eyes who would bring pestilence and
suffering. They were fearful, the idiots, and they petitioned the sultan. The father was ordered to hand her over or be killed himself. You see, to break the curse she had to die.

“I knew that I was not the first man she had been with, so I asked who had taken her virginity. A brother? A male relative, no doubt—who else would be able to get close to her? It turned out to have been her father. Can you believe that?” he asked, incredulous, snorting as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. “He was the chief, a patriarch used to having his way. But by Uzra’s fifth birthday, he could tell by the girl’s coloring that he was not her father. The mother had been unfaithful and, by the green of the child’s eyes, had consorted with a foreigner. He said nothing, merely took the mother out into the desert one day and returned without her. By Uzra’s twelfth birthday, she had taken her mother’s place in his bed; he told her that she was the daughter of a whore and no blood relation to him, so it was not forbidden. She was to tell no one. The servants thought it charming that the girl was so affectionately disposed toward her father that she could not bear to be apart from him.

“I told her none of it mattered. I was not going to give her to that superstitious sultan. Nor would I send her back to her father so he could force himself on her one last time before handing her over, like a coward.” Over the course of Adair’s story, I had managed to take Uzra’s hand and squeezed it, from time to time, to let her know I commiserated with her, but I saw in her dead green eyes that she had taken herself to another place, away from his cruelty. Jonathan, too, was quietly embarrassed for her. Adair continued, heedless of the fact that he was the only one enjoying his tale. “I decided to save her life. Just like the others. I told her that her long ordeal was over. She was to start a new life with me and she would stay with me forever.”

Once the opium had had its effect on Adair and he’d fallen asleep, Jonathan and I crept away. “Good God, Lanny, what am I to make of that story? Please tell me he was being fanciful, that he was exaggerating …”

“It’s odd … he said he saved her life, ‘just like the others.’ But she’s not like the others, not from the story he just told.”

“How so?”

“He’s told me a bit about how the others came to be with him, Alejandro, Tilde, and Dona. They had done horrible things before Adair met them.” We slipped into Jonathan’s room, which was next to Adair’s but smaller, though it did have a good-size dressing room and a view of the garden. And a door that led straight into Adair’s chamber. “I think that’s why he picked them, because they’re capable of doing the bad things he requires. I think that’s what he looks for in a companion. A failing.”

We shed a few layers of clothing to get more comfortable before lying on the bed, side by side, and Jonathan draped an arm protectively over my waist. The opium was affecting us, too, and I was on the verge of falling asleep. “It makes no sense … Why would he choose you, then?” Jonathan asked drowsily. “You’ve never hurt anyone in your life.”

If ever there was an opportune time to bring up Sophia and how I’d driven her to suicide, this was it. I even drew in a breath to ready myself but … once again, I could not. Jonathan thought me innocent enough to question my place here. He thought me incapable of evil and I couldn’t spoil that.

And, perhaps as telling, he didn’t ask why he had been selected, what Adair saw in him. Jonathan knew enough about himself to believe something evil lurked within, something deserving of punishment. Maybe I knew it, too. We were both failed, in our way, and chosen for a punishment that we deserved.

“I meant to tell you,” Jonathan muttered, sleepy, eyes already closed. “I will be going on a trip with Adair soon. He told me he wished to take me somewhere … I forget where, exactly. Perhaps Philadelphia … though after that story I can’t say I’m looking forward to going anywhere alone with him …”

As I pulled his arm tight against me, I noticed through the thin gauze of his shirt a mark on his arm. There was something sickeningly
familiar about the dark mottles veiled by his sleeve, so I pulled the loose garment back to see thin black lines incised on his inner arm.

“Where did you get this?” I asked, sitting up in alarm. “It was Tilde, wasn’t it; she did this with her needles?”

Jonathan barely opened his eyes. “Yes, yes … the other evening, when we’d been out drinking …”

I studied it closely; it was not the heraldic shield, but two spheres with long, fiery tails, interlocked like two fingers hooked together. It might have been different from the one I bore, but I’d seen it before—adorning Adair’s back.

“It’s the same as Adair’s,” I managed to say.

“Yes, I know … He insisted I wear it. To signify that we are brothers, or some such nonsense. I did it only to end his badgering.”

Touching my thumb to the tattoo, I felt a coldness ripple through me; that Adair had put his mark on Jonathan signified something, but I could not figure out what that might be. I wanted to beg him not to go away with Adair, to disobey him … but I knew the inevitable outcome of that folly. So I said nothing and lay awake a long time listening to the steady, peaceful rhythm of Jonathan’s breathing, unable to shake the premonition that our time together was coming to an end.

FORTY-TWO

Q
UEBEC
C
ITY, PRESENT DAY

L
uke wakes to the sound of human misery. He is disoriented, as he always is when waking from a nap, and his first thought is that he has overslept and is late for his shift at the hospital. It isn’t until he nearly knocks the alarm clock—never mind that it’s not ringing—off the nightstand with a wild grope that he realizes he’s in a hotel and there is only one person with him, and that person is crying.

The door to the bathroom is closed. Luke knocks gently and, when there is no answer, pushes the door back. Lanny sits hunched in the bathtub, fully clothed. When she looks over her shoulder at him, Luke sees that her eye makeup is streaked down her face in black daggers, like a frightening clown in a movie.