“Two hours to get here from the airport,” said Mik. “This city is mad.”
Karou knew that it was. She’d had an aerial perspective of the great, pulsing ring of humanity that had collected around the closed-off perimeter of the Vatican. Even from the air, she’d heard their chanting, but couldn’t make out the words. From the air, it had reminded her, unsettlingly, of the way zombies in movies press in on human enclaves, trying to get in. And the rest of the city, while not quite as… zombic, was close. “I hope you at least got some more sleep in the cab,” she said.
They had, all of them, gotten a few hours of much needed sleep on the plane. Karou had lain her head on Akiva’s shoulder, and drifted off to memories of his bare skin against her own. Her dreams had been… more energizing than restful.
“A little,” replied Zuzana. “But what I really want is a bath.” She stepped back and gave Karou a quick scan. “Look at you. A couple of hours in Italy and you’re a fashionista. How’d you get new clothes already?”
“That’s what happens here.” Karou led them inside. “When you get to Hawaii, they give you flower leis. In Italy, it’s perfect clothes and leather shoes.”
“Well, ‘they’ must have been on break when we got here,” Zuzana returned, gesturing to herself. “To the horror of everyone down in the lobby.”
“Yikes.” Karou cringed to imagine it. “Were they bad?” She’d been spared the scrutiny herself, having arrived glamoured, and by way of the sky and the balcony, not the street and the lobby.
Mik said, “Zuze has been having glare duels.”
Zuzana cocked an eyebrow. “You should see the other guy.”
“I have no doubt,” said Karou. “And ‘they’ weren’t on break. They were just waiting for you here. Esther got us all new clothes.”
As she said this, they stepped into the living room. “I sent a shopper out for them, in fact,” said Esther, in her singsong Flemish accent. “I hope everything fits.”
She rose and came forward. “I’ve heard so much about you, dear,” she said warmly, reaching out to enfold Zuzana’s hands in her own. She was, in that moment, very much the picture of a grandmother.
Esther Van de Vloet, however, was nobody’s grandmother. She had no children and next to no maternal instincts. Playing the role of “grandmother,” she’d been more of a political ally to Karou than an emotional one. In her life, the old woman had midwifed countless diamonds into the possession of the ultrarich, and into the possession of Brimstone, too, dauntlessly doing business with humans and non-humans alike—and subhumans, too, as she called the more nefarious of Brimstone’s traders, with whom she maintained a global information network. She traveled in elite circles as well as shadowy ones—she’d told Karou on the phone that she had a cardinal in one pocket and an arms dealer in the other, and no doubt she had more pockets besides. And she was revered as a nearly mystical figure, first for her mysterious preservation—she’d been tickled to hear a rumor that she’d sold her soul for immortality—as well as for several impossible favors she was rumored to have performed for highly placed people.
Impossible, that is, unless you happened to have access to magic.
“I’ve heard so much about you, too,” said Zuzana, and Karou saw the glint in her eye that was either a matador sizing up a bull or a bull sizing up a matador. She wasn’t sure which, but Esther had it, too. The look that passed between the two women was mutual regard for a worthy adversary, and Karou was glad they weren’t adversaries, and that they were both on her side.
There was a brief spell of chitchat. The size of the dogs. Room service. The state of Rome. Angels.
It was when Esther said, “I’m just glad Karou had the good sense to come to me,” that a slight nostril flare turned Zuzana’s expression more bull than matador.
“She came to you once before,” Zuzana said, casual with an undercurrent of blame. Karou knew what she was getting at, and tried to intercede.
“Zuze—” she began, but her friend talked over her.
“And I’ve been curious ever since. When Karou came to you for wishes…” She tilted her head and gave the older woman a let’s be honest look. “You held out on her, didn’t you?”
Esther’s smile winked out, her face going smooth and masklike and wary. Not so grandmotherly now.
“No, Zuze,” Karou said, putting a hand on her friend’s back. They’d argued about this before. “She didn’t. She wouldn’t.” When the portals had burned, last winter, and she’d been desperate to find her chimaera family—desperate for gavriels that could carry her and the thing Razgut up to the sky portal and into Eretz—Karou had gone to Esther first. Esther had said that she had no wish stronger than a lucknow, and Karou had believed her, because why would she lie?
“I did,” said Esther, solemn and… contrite? Karou stared at her.
Did she mean that she had held out on her? “What?” she asked, confused.
“Well, I’m sorry to say it, dear, of course, but I didn’t really believe that you would find him. I’m a greedy old woman. If they were the last wishes I was ever going to get, I had to guard them, didn’t I? I can’t tell you how happy I am that I was wrong.”
Karou’s stomach turned over. “You weren’t,” she said.
Esther cocked her head, puzzled. “I wasn’t what?”
“You weren’t wrong. I didn’t find Brimstone. He’s dead.” She laid it out flat, no emotion in her voice, and watched Esther’s face drain of color.
“No, oh no. No,” she murmured, her hand going to her mouth. “Oh, Karou. I didn’t want to believe it.” Her eyes filled up with tears.
“You didn’t tell her yet?” Zuzana asked.
Karou shook her head. So much for breaking it to her gently. Esther had lied to her. When the portals had just burned and she didn’t know anything, when she was battered and bruised from near-death encounters with both Akiva and Thiago, and no gentle treatment from Brimstone himself, she had gone to her for help. She’d been at the lowest point in her life so far, never mind that she was to sink steadily lower and oh so very much lower over the next months, she hadn’t known that then. She’d trusted Esther, only to find out now that Esther had lied to her face.