Darkyn - Private Demon Part 29

The only person at the party dressed in a doctor's costume-something Alexandra might have worn-appeared to be Daniel. His white lab coat made him easy enough to spot, but he and her mother went out of the room and disappeared down a corridor before Jema could catch up to them.

Please don't start having chest pains, Mother, Jema thought as she followed them. I have to stay long enough to apologize to Mr. Jaus and find Thierry.

Thierry found Jaus's personal guard impressive, but not impa.s.sable. He used the trees to cross over the high security walls and jumped down to the roof, where he entered the house through an open window. He looked around the guest room, where several costume boxes had been left on the bed. Jaus always had been a fanatic about being well prepared for any calamity. It was too bad he didn't know Jema belonged to Thierry.

Tonight he would.

After sorting through the boxes, Thierry found a demonic lord costume large enough for him to wear, with a matching mask. He was here for Jema, not to be caught by Jaus's hunters, so he changed into the garish garments before he went downstairs to join the party.

Thierry picked up Jema's scent in the front room, and followed it into the ballroom. There he saw a couple dressed in dark blue waltzing in the center of the room.

It was Jaus, and he had Jema in his arms. He was dancing with her. Laughing with her. Thierry saw the way the Austrian was staring down the front of her gown as well, and giving off l'attrait so intense the room could have been packed from floor to ceiling with camellias. When Jaus touched Jema's throat with his hand, a slow, incredulous anger began to burn inside Thierry.

Jaus hadn't invited her to a Kyn masque out of neighborly kindness. Jaus wanted her. He intended to seduce her.

He wanted to use her for s.e.x. He was using his talent on her right this moment.

Use Jema. Take Jema. While she still had Thierry's seed in her body. Not if he breathes through his neck.

Thierry's dagger was in his hand as he stepped out onto the dance floor. So many of the guests were armed that no one paid him any notice. He wove through the whirling couples, intent on his target, and was only a few yards from Jema when two men stepped in front of him. One wore the costume of a mime, the other a priest's robes.

"Mr. Durand," the priest said as Thierry pushed him aside, "you must come with us."

Thierry swung around and looked down into the priest's smiling mask. The reminder of the Brethren brought something feral back to life inside him. "Why?" He brought the dagger up under the man's chin. "You think to take me again?" He leaned closer, enjoying the fear in the dark eyes staring up at him. "You should not have crawled out of your cell, priest."

"I am not Brethren. I'm John Keller, Alexandra's brother." When Thierry would have moved away, he seized his arm. "Mr. Durand, listen to me. Everyone here, including Miss Shaw, is in danger."

"Miss Shaw will not be in another minute," Thierry said. He glanced over at the man dressed as a mime, who lifted the white mask that covered his face. That was when Thierry got the second jolt of the night and nearly let his dagger fall from his hand. "Jamys? Mon Dieu, what is this? How are you here?"

His son, who was supposed to be a thousand miles away in New Orleans, reached across him and gripped the priest's arm.

"Please come with us right now, and I'll explain everything," the priest said. "Your son says that we don't have much time."

"My son cannot speak," Thierry snarled. "Your kind did that to him."

"He can speak through me," John Keller said, swallowing. "I can hear his voice inside my head. I'll tell you everything he says."

Thierry glanced at his son, who nodded. "You have been busy, boy." He looked at the dancing couple in blue, and reluctantly sheathed his dagger. "We do this quickly."

He followed Jamys and the human out of the ballroom and down a hall to a room where Jaus's collection of battle swords was displayed.

The priest closed the door and locked it. "Mr. Durand, members of a street gang were hired to infiltrate this party and a.s.sa.s.sinate Michael Cyprien and my sister, Alexandra. Your son rescued me from them. We came here to warn Cyprien, but it appears that they're already here, hiding among the guests."

"Now I remember you." Thierry went to the human and tore off his saintly mask. "You were the priest I almost killed in New Orleans." He turned to his son. "Why are you with him? Why did you not stay with Marcel and Liliette, where you would be safe?"

Jamys also removed his mask and came over to grip John's forearm with his hand.

"Your son came to Chicago to find you," Keller told him. "He was afraid for you. He knew Cyprien had issued orders that you were to be captured. He feared that one of the Kyn might kill you."

Thierry reached out to touch his son's face, but Jamys flinched away. That small rejection hurt him more than any wound he had ever received. "I have controlled this thing inside me. I will not harm you, boy."

Sweat began running down John Keller's face. "He's not afraid of you. He's ashamed."

"What?"

"Jamys wants you to know that he's sorry for what his mother did." The priest panted for a moment. "He should have told you, but he was afraid of her, and thought you wouldn't believe him. He thinks what happened to you is his fault." He looked up at Thierry's son. "I don't think I can take much more of this. I feel as if I'm going to pa.s.s out."

With a nod, Jamys took his hand away from Keller's arm. He went to inspect the swords Jaus had displayed on the wall, as if deciding which one to take.

Thierry removed his mask and went to join his son by the wall. Jamys had not changed for hundreds of years- would never change-but if he had grown to full maturity, he would have been his grandfather's twin. Thierry could see some of old Jean-Vayle Durand's fierceness in Jamys's eyes as he watched him.

What could Thierry say to heal the wounds that still bled inside his son? Perhaps it was time to show Jamys that he was not the only Durand still bleeding.

"Your mother brought this evil into our house, but it was always inside her," Thierry said. "I loved her too much to permit myself to see it. I think that is what drove me mad. Not the things they did to my body. My blindness to her, my failure to protect you and our family from her."

Jamys shook his head violently and moved away, going to the next case of swords.

"I understand how you can blame yourself," Thierry said, following him. "It is all that I have done since she died. It is part of what drove me away from you. I believe your mother wished for that. In her hatred she could not understand love. She could only destroy it. Now she is gone, but her evil lingers. Must it be forever between us? Her hatred, turning us away from each other? Have we not suffered enough?"

The boy covered his face with his hands.

Thierry went to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "I should not have left you behind with Michael. I did not think of how it would make you feel, that you would blame yourself, as I did. I could not think, Jamys. The madness consumed me. When I had a lucid moment, I was terrified. I feared that I would harm you, or Marcel, or Liliette, and I would not be able to stop myself." He pulled the trembling boy into his arms and held him close. "I could not take that chance. Forgive me, my son."

They stood together like that for several minutes, holding on to each other.

"Mr. Durand," the priest said, sounding exhausted now, "I don't want to interrupt, but there was something else that your son told me. This a.s.sa.s.sination attempt is planned for midnight." As Thierry looked over at him, Keller pointed to a large, polished oak-and-bra.s.s grandfather clock standing in the corner of the room. "We have only ten minutes left."

Michael Cyprien finished copying the last of the data from Alexandra's medical computer and removed the CD copy from the burner. For the last half hour he had listened to Valentin Jaus pour out his frustrations with Jema Shaw and his anger at himself. He kept his silence until the Austrian finally requested permission to resign from his position and return to his homeland.

"You cannot step down as suzerain." As he slipped the CD into a protective case, he turned toward Jaus. "I need all the men I can trust in this country. You are one of them."

"I contacted Lucan to ask his advice on how to handle Thierry Durand," Jaus said. "He told me the only way to stop him was to kill him."

Cyprien knew his friend was deliberately trying to goad him into losing his temper. "That was probably wise. Lucan did capture him in Dublin." He glanced up from the files he was sorting through. "I would prefer you limit your contact with Lucan. He will use you to get to me."

"That is just another reason to let me go. I cannot do this anymore, Michael." Jaus's shoulders sagged. "I would put an end to it, now, before my humiliation destroys me."

"What shall I tell Tremayne?" he asked, letting some of his own frustration color his voice. "That the man he handpicked to serve as suzerain of Chicago is running away from his responsibilities? Because some human female rejected him?"

Jaus's expression turned remote and arrogant. "Whatever the reason, it is my right."

"Do you know what I am doing? I am making copies of Alexandra's research so I may send them off to Tremayne."

Michael removed the duplicates he had made of the blood-profile printouts from the copy machine bin. "Without her knowledge or consent."

"You are braver than I," Jaus said.

"Courage has nothing to do with it. She wants her brother alive, and this is the price I pay for that." Michael tucked the report copies into a doc.u.ment wallet and sealed it. "I love her, but I am stealing from her. I wish it could be another way, but I have responsibilities to more than my love. Tremayne wants this information. As long as I feed it to him, I will be able to keep her with me, and her brother alive."

"So I must compromise." Jaus rubbed a hand over his face. "Settle for what I can have. Is this your sage advice, seigneur?"

"I would never advise anyone to love a woman whom he may have to kill someday," Michael told him. "As I may Alexandra."

Jaus looked appalled. "You cannot mean that. I have seen your love for her. You would rather suffer yourself than harm her."

"This is not about harming her. It's about saving her. You think you know Richard, but I am the only one who has been close enough to know him completely. I know exactly what he would do to Alexandra. I will never permit her to suffer that fate, even if it means killing her." He handed the files and the disks to Jaus. "You may send this by private courier to Dundellan Castle. Mark them for Richard's eyes only."

"If Alexandra discovers you are doing this, she will leave you," Jaus warned.

"If she did, she would not remember it," Cyprien said. He met Jaus's narrow gaze. "Alexandra is still human enough to be affected by any Kyn talent. With mine, I can make her forget anything I wish."

Jema wandered down the hall and checked through each open door she pa.s.sed, but she couldn't find her mother and Daniel. She was about to give up and return to the party when she saw a closed door and heard her mother complaining.

There she is. She opened the door to look in, and saw her mother and Daniel with their backs toward her. They were looking through the shelves of what appeared to be Jaus's library. She opened her mouth to ask them what they were doing.

"I don't want to put her in your private hospital," Meryl said. "People will ask too many questions. I've told you, the only way to be sure is to kill her."

As if she were sleepwalking, Jema slipped inside the room.

"I never agreed to murder, Meryl." Daniel took down a heavy volume to look behind it. "Our arrangement won't hurt anyone. Jema will be locked away, safe and sound, and you'll have her millions to spend."

"They're not her millions; they're mine," her mother snapped.

The doctor sighed. "Once Jema turns thirty, there's no more risk of the estate going to charity. She inherits everything James had placed in trust for her. We've done the paperwork; you're her legal guardian. The board of trustees will no longer have any say as to what you do with the money."

Jema pressed herself back against a wall, but neither her mother nor Bradford noticed her.

"It still won't be mine until she's dead," Meryl told him. "I don't know how you can be so callous," Daniel complained. "Jema is your daughter. She's all you have left of James, for G.o.d's sake."

"James hated me because of her. He blamed me for almost killing her in the cave-in. Did he care that I nearly died?

That it turned me into a cripple? No. All he wanted was his precious daughter." Meryl wheeled over to begin searching a desk.

"James was upset over what you did," Daniel said. "If he had lived, he would have forgiven you."

"He would have divorced me, you idiot. Why do you think he changed his will before he left for Greece? It was as if he knew I'd spend the next thirty years keeping the sickly little b.i.t.c.h alive just so I could get what I was due." Meryl looked over at her reflection in the floor-length mirror. "I can't stand another minute of it. Do you know what it's like, watching her walk around and smile and do everything I can't? She should be in this chair. No. She should have died in that G.o.dforsaken cave. Then James wouldn't have stopped loving me."

Jema looked across the room, aware that in a moment Meryl would move close enough to see Jema's reflection in the mirror. Jema in the mirror... Jema in the mirror... the conversation she'd had with Luisa, the one she'd forgotten.

The one I refused to think about. It all came back to Jema, who stood paralyzed and lost in the memory.

Roy's looking for something for your mama. Luisa had stopped by Jema's office after she had finished her shift. You know if we got an ah-midge, Miz Jem?

She had smiled. What's an ah-midge?

Don't you make fun, now, Luisa said, lifting her nose and posing in a deadly imitation of the events coordinator in a huff. I'm going to night school. I get my diploma; I'm gonna start college courses. Then you'll see-I'll talk as nice as you, and so will my baby.

I know you will. Jema admired Luisa and how hard she worked, not only to support herself and the baby she was expecting, but to improve her situation in life. She made a silent promise to do what she could to help the girl.

Luisa had looked out of Jema's office and frowned. Maybe it's Roy you looking for, Miz Jem. See your nameplate in the mirror over there?

Jema had gotten up to look. The sign on her office door, JEMA SHAW, was reflected in a display mirror that had been temporarily moved downstairs, and read WASH AMEJ.

See? Jema backward spell ah-midge. Don't worry, Ms. Jema. I won't tell no one. I know how to keep a secret.

Luisa had left, giggling over the joke. The next day her mother had called, choking out the news through her sobs that Luisa had been attacked and burned, and was not expected to survive the night.

The words pounded inside her head.

Jema. Amej. Image. Homage.

Meryl went past the mirror and began poking through books on another shelf. Jema looked into the mirror, where she had no reflection, and went cold. The same thing had happened that night, at the museum, after Luisa had left.

When she had stood looking at the reflection of her name. She had been thinking about Meryl. Thinking about how her mother looked at her sometimes, as if she wished Jema would just disappear. Then it happened, just as it did now.

She had turned transparent, and then invisible.

Her image slowly appeared in the mirror, and then faded away again.

The museum had not been the first time. There had been other times she had forgotten, when she was a little girl. It had taken an hour of staring into the mirror at the museum before she could make herself reappear. That was what had frightened her so much that she refused to remember it. She'd hated mirrors ever since she was a child, and now she knew why.

Jema stared at her reflection. If I can control it...

Daniel Bradford walked right past Jema without seeing her. "I wonder if this is something special," he said, opening a gla.s.s display case and taking out a long, folded length of ancient linen. "Look at this." He showed Meryl one side of the cloth, upon which was the image of a Christlike face.

"It's a cheap reproduction of the Mandylion," she snapped. "Claimed to be one of the possible burial shrouds of Christ-and a piece of religious nonsense. The Homage would be something Greek. Something older, perhaps a pot or a carved chest." "I've sometimes wondered if Jema wasn't the real Homage of Athos James brought back from Greece," Daniel said, his eyes crinkling with amus.e.m.e.nt. "After all, he did find her in the cave, where you gave birth to her. He certainly treated her as if she were some rare and priceless object. And he left all his money to her, and not a penny to you.

Maybe it was his little joke."

"Only you would think of something that dim-witted, Daniel."

"Someone has to, I suppose." Daniel turned and looked directly at Jema. He walked over and took a book out of a shelf not six inches from her trembling shoulder. He sniffed. "Smells like Jaus is having his friends bob for apples out there."

Jema waited until Daniel walked away before she silently opened the door and fled.

Frantically Jema searched the masks of the guests, looking for anyone who might be Alexandra or Thierry. She saw a group of late arrivals walking in and hurried over to them. They were dressed in medieval animal costumes, with very realistic-looking masks.

She stopped a few feet from a man in a hyena mask. She didn't have to pull any hairs from the mask to recognize the fiber. It was the same hair she had found on the hate-crime murder victim. It was also the same type of mask the men who attacked her had worn.

Daniel Bradford considered himself a patient man. He'd had to be, working for Meryl Shaw. It was strange that after three decades of planning, waiting, researching, and doing what he was told-or, at least, acting as if he were- that he discovered that his infinite patience had suddenly come to an end.