Chapter 7
The day of the gala felt ominous to Mimi despite Ky’s assurances. 12:20 a.m., he said, would be her first and only seizure of the night. They would have plenty of time before that, back in the limo by midnight.
“Like Cinderella.”
“As normal as you can.”
“You try being me and acting normal.”
“I’ll change all your drinks to water. Drink as much as you like. It won’t effect you, but it will likely help you distract Henry.”
“You can do that?”
“It is in the nature of the trickster. Can you pretend to be drunk?”
“It is in the nature of the party girl.”
They passed the gate and approached Henry’s house. It was a large, gothic affair. Mimi had been there many times before, but had never realized what a perfect location it would be to shoot a murder mystery show. The gray gables rose up, forbidding against the night sky. The stonework was pale in the evening light, and cold. The columns that she’d always admired looked creepy to her now; even the fashionable outside lighting looked eerie. Ky had told her that Henry had more powers than he did. What did that mean for his house, his parties? She looked around and wondered what was a trickster’s illusion and what was real.
“I can sense him.” Ky sniffed out the window. His plan was to hop out of the car before Dennis dropped Mimi off at the red carpet, do reconnaissance around the house, and be back at the car at midnight, simple. If he could get through the night without a direct confrontation, that would be a huge boon.
“Can he sense you?” Mimi struggled to keep the alarm out of her voice.
“I’m hoping he has been a human for too long, and that there’s too much going on. What can you tell me about the house? What’s the layout? Do you remember anything unusual?”
She pointed to the wing on their left. “That’s the library, all three stories,” she said. “He’s big into books.” She gestured at the main part of the house. “The center is where we’ll mostly be tonight. There’s a great room and a terrace, pool, hot tubs, ordinary stuff. To our right are the bedrooms. Henry’s is on the third story.” She blushed as she said it.
Ky looked her full in the face. “Drive away at midnight whether I’m back or not.”
“Ky, don’t-” she started.
“I’m just looking around,” said Ky.
Mimi tried to feel his confidence, “Right,” she said. “Midnight.”
Mimi asked Dennis to stop the car for a moment. She opened the door for Ky, and he faded into the dry, crackly California night. Dennis said nothing. The party music seeped out of the house into the otherwise still night.
They pulled up to the pillared staircase and Mimi took a deep breath. No seizures until midnight, she reminded herself. Here you are in your normal life where you are not sick and where you have no magical companion who maybe wants to kill your boyfriend. Just have a good time. Keep an eye on Henry. She saw Henry standing at the top of the stairs. He was handsome. She thought she saw an inkling of that same not-quite-human eye that was Ky’s, something she had never seen before. Well, she thought, once you know something you can’t un-know it, whether you want to or not. She walked up the stairs and put on a big smile. Cameras clicked busily. It was a sound she used to love.
“I thought you had disappeared!” he whispered in her ear. She could feel his breath, a little too close.
“I was just busy.” She gave him a coy smile.
“Sorry about the cameras. You know how the press loves charity. Together?”
“Sure.” She posed with him.
“I’m not interfering too much with your inaccessibility?”
“I too love charity,” she said.
“Touché.” He took her arm. Mimi felt cold; she resisted the urge to pull her arm away, to look desperately behind her for Ky, or to run.
The night was warm and dark. The moon wouldn’t be up until after midnight. A few watery stars made a valiant effort against the high smog. From the bushes, Ky watched Henry take Mimi’s arm, and for a moment his throat locked with concern. He shouldn’t have told her. How could he expect her to have the stamina for a whole night of this artifice? But there was no going back now. He took a crow’s shape, glided up and landed on a third-story balcony. From Mimi’s description, this should be the wing with the bedrooms, and it should be empty. He took a man’s shape and placed his hand on the locked french doors. With a flick of his wrist the lock slid aside, an easy trick for him with a non-magical lock. He opened the door and stepped inside. The whole house stank of deceit. It was amazing that the humans had no idea. They really couldn’t smell anything. Be brave, Mimi, he thought.
Henry walked into the house with Mimi, but quickly made his way back to the door to greet more guests. Mimi tried to keep an eye on him. She floated from group to group, making small talk, always facing Henry. She had been out of the party scene for almost a month and it felt both strange and completely natural. All her life Mimi had known how to hold court at a party. It was her skill; she had been so proud of it. Now, in light of her illness, it felt trivial, bordering on bizarre. Why hadn’t she gone into neuroscience? She could have helped real people with actual problems. She stood with a beautiful champagne flute in her hand and felt it change instantly to water as it touched her lips. What a horrible trick Ky had played off as an advantage for her. Of course, they didn’t know if drinking would affect her seizures and she didn’t want to get drunk; better safe than sorry. She saw Henry come back into the room, smiled at him, and then made her way over to him.
Ky walked through the hallways, changing periodically from a dog to a man. On this assignment he had struggled to put all the pieces together. Hal Or-ta, alias Henry Halstead, had been in the human world for too long, was too interested in human affairs, was courting a senator who had a strong chance to run for the United States presidency, may have even created that chance. He was throwing parties for high-powered officials. He had taken a high-profile human girlfriend, Mimi. The Or-ta had abandoned human civilizations two hundred years ago. Except for a few groups of people who had maintained the old ways and traditions, they had limited their contact. Visiting Earth was not prohibited: young Or-ta came occasionally, but briefly, to learn shapes, to see the worlds. But Hal, what was Hal doing? Hal was one of the oldest, and most powerful.
Ky passed from the bedroom wing over the main stairs and the foyer. He could hear the party guests, Mimi’s voice, coy, cheerful, and in control with just the slightest edge of discomfort to it. But, he thought, that was to be expected. The question was, would Henry notice? Ky walked toward the library wing, padding as a dog along the soft blue hallway carpet. He disapproved of Hal’s décor. It was too ostentatious, he thought, and it was cold. As he approached the second story doors to the library balcony, he heard men’s voices from below and a faint smell came to him, familiar, and yet not so. He slipped in through the wooden doors and found himself between high-stacked bookshelves. The interior balcony was narrow; he looked through a low railing at the main floor below, where eight men were sitting on plush leather chairs in a dimly lit circle. Henry was not among them. But there was one, one who might not be human. Ky raised his nose in the air. He still couldn’t place the scent. Their conversation wafted up with the clinking of their glasses.
“I think things will really start going our way now that we’ve hired the right man.” The voice was self-congratulatory, relaxed.
“If the prototypes yield any results.” A skeptical man, younger, stiff.
“They will.” An older, confident man’s voice, slightly sinister. “They’re perfectly matched, the Boss assured us. They’ll be stable.”
“I did. And they will be.” This voice didn’t seem fully human. It was soft, slightly petulant.
“It was bound to happen sooner or later. I just hope we make it work first.” The skeptic again.
“The other side has nothing like it. They have to go for quantity, not quality,” said
the confident man.
“Well, gentlemen, I should be going. Enjoy the festivities.” Ky recognized Senator Ellsworth’s voice. It carried some false bravado with it. It sounded almost as though he’d like not to hear the conversation.
“Bottoms up, Senator. Tastes good, and it’s good for you,” said the first voice.
“All he needs it to do is make him a little more influential with the Missus,” quipped another voice. They all laughed. Ellsworth’s laugh was a little too loud. He sounded nervous. In what company does a man who was almost certain to be elected president feel out of his league, wondered Ky.
They drank their toast then filed out of the library, shaking hands, giving the forced casual goodbyes of those very sure of themselves. Ky reminisced for a moment about a time in his youth when he had been on Earth, just for fun in the late eighteenth century, the time of Masonic halls. He had played a good prank on one group of powerful Masons with the transformation of a skull. He had made it look different to each Mason: for one a mastodon, for one a crocodile, for the Grand Master a kitten. The mastodon took up the whole room. They accused each other of blasphemy. They got confused, bumped into something that wasn’t there. Ah, the old days when magic was part of daily life. He watched these men leave the library. Senator Ellsworth and another split off from the group; the rest headed toward the sounds of the party in the main hall. Ky flew as a crow down to the first level of the library. It was quiet. The glasses sitting on the table were empty, down to the last drop. Ky transformed back into a dog and stuck his nose into a glass. It seemed to be scotch, but it wasn’t quite. What was it?
He closed his eyes to get a better scent. He inhaled deeply as a human shape crept quietly up behind him.
“The Or-ta think I need to be looked after?” Hal had a booming voice.
Ky shifted quickly, instinctively into a man. It had been many, many years since he had seen Hal Or-ta. If Hal could sneak up on Ky like that when Ky had a dog’s shape, he was more powerful than Ky had thought, certainly more powerful than he remembered.
“Hello, Hal.”
“You were not invited, Ky Or-ta.”
“No, but perhaps my presence was required.”
“I think I already have everything I need, thank you.”
“Not required by you, Hal, but for the innocent people whose path you have put yourself in.”
“Trust me, they are not innocent.”
“Can I trust that there will be no innocent blood spilled?”
“Tell Ezik Earth is now mine. He didn’t want it anyway.”
“What’s in the glasses Hal? What are you doing to these people?” Their eyes met. Hal was proud. Ky could feel power coming off him in waves. “I promise if it doesn’t break the code, I’ll leave you alone.”
Hal laughed. “You love your code so much. Have you forgotten whose handiwork brought it about in the first place? Remarkable, that you would be the one to tell me not to break the code.”
“I have spent many years living with that wound, Hal; you cannot salt it more than I have done myself.”
“Nice to hear you’re over it, all those innocent people, not to mention Or-ta. I don’t believe we’ve spoken since then. There was this little issue of exile. So tell me, did I hear it correctly? Was it really for human love? You were so swept up in their emotions? Or maybe you did it on purpose, hmmm? A setup, so that you could have your precious code?”
Ky’s eyes flashed. “The code was a long time coming. You should have created it before I was even born.”
“We certainly should have, all the carnage you caused. Don’t worry, I don’t have anything planned that even comes close to what you did.”
Ky said nothing.
Hal continued, “Tell Ezik I’m not coming home just yet. Actually, tell Ezik I’m not coming home ever.” Hal raised his voice. He was like talking thunder. Much of an Or-ta’s power was in his voice. Ky hadn’t heard an elder speak with such force in a long time. It was like being dropped into icy water. He had to brace himself.
Hal then said, “Tell him I love the irony, seeing you here, as protector of the code. Tell him- actually, don’t tell him anything….” Hal moved quickly, sending a blast of wind toward Ky. Ky was accustomed to fighting with wind, but the force of Hal’s blast was astonishing. It flung him against the wall and pinned him there. Ky tried in vain to shapeshift out of the hold, becoming the dog, then the crow. He shifted back to his human shape, frowned, looked around him at the size of the room, and then burst into the shape of a minke whale crashing down on the floor, out of Hal’s grip. The leather chairs were crushed or bounced away and splintered on the floor. He sprang back up as a man.
“Nice,” said Hal patronizingly. “But perhaps not nice enough.” He threw a blast from his hands at Ky again, but this time Ky lifted his arms just in time, flinging books off the shelves to create a momentary shield. Taking advantage of Hal’s inability to see, Ky sent a blast through the books, knocking Hal onto the floor. Ky followed it with his body, but Hal quickly, easily escaped his grip. Ky had never fought anyone like this before.
Hal flung a wide desk at him, then lamps, glasses. Objects flew toward Ky in a swirl of wind. Ky countered, shielding himself with the carpet. In a burst of strength, Ky pulled the stairs from the balcony and threw them between himself and Hal. Hal flicked them out of the way. Ky was breathing heavily. He changed to his kangaroo shape and jumped up onto the balcony.
“You are young,” Hal’s voice was cold. “You don’t know what you’re doing with your code of conduct. The Or-ta have become weak. We were involved in the creation of the earth; why shouldn’t we control it?” With a single gesture, he pulled down the railing Ky was perched on. Ky jumped clear, became the crow in midair, and landed on two feet as a man.
“Or-ta were not alone at the time of creation,” Ky replied.
“You are too young to remember. I am disappointed that they sent you after me.” Hal picked up a stack of books and hurled them at Ky. In the air they changed into spears. Ky had never seen someone turn paper to metal so easily. The surprise gave Hal a moment’s advantage. Ky jumped away, but too late. As he jumped, one spear lodged fully into his stomach. He fell to the ground. Blood rushed hot through his fingers. Hal approached, pulled a real knife from his pocket, and prepared to make the final blow. Ky made a sudden move; the knife caught him in his already open wound. He gasped from the pain but managed to roll clear, stand, and stumble to the open window. He felt Hal close behind him as he jumped, hurtling to the ground.
Hal cursed. He turned into an owl, alighted on the balcony railing, prepared to dive. Then he hesitated, cursed again, and turned back into a man. He ran back through the library and down the steps to the lawn.