‘Because I was tall, Mr Murphy.’
‘From now on, Murphy,’ he muttered, ushering us out of the rear door, ‘do not work with children, animals, or tall girls.’
Rio d’Incurabili, Dorsoduro, Venice
The wedding dress had been delivered while we were away. Signora Carriera had taken it from the messenger for Diamond and hung it up in her room so that it was the first thing my sister saw when she got home.
‘Oh my God.’ She sat on the bed, staring at it. ‘I can’t wear that.’
‘It’s beautiful, Di. Give yourself a few days. The wedding isn’t until Saturday and we might have sorted you out by then.’ I brushed the lace overskirt reverently: it was fabulous. I wanted her to feel wonderful wearing it, not this desperate, empty person who couldn’t recall any of the most important people in her life.
‘Will you phone Mama and the others for me? I wouldn’t know what to say.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I mean, I don’t even know what they are really like, do I?’
‘Yes, I’ll do that.’ I took the phone out to the garden to make the call. Telling Mama that her golden girl had lost so many memories was one of the most difficult conversations I’d ever had. Our mother leapt to the conclusion that it had to be my fault because I had organized the hen party. I don’t think she really grasped the seriousness of what had happened to her daughter and was seeing it as an extension of the embarrassment I had caused ending up in the papers with Steve. I was so used to being the family screw-up that it took me a moment to remember that I was blameless for once.
‘Hang on a minute, Mama, you can’t say that.’ I cut her off mid lecture about my part in spoiling my sister’s life. ‘Diamond doesn’t blame me and I know I am not responsible for the choices made by the contessa.’
‘But what about the wedding!’
My mother’s mind could be amazingly narrow-focused; that was probably why she had never asked herself what the wider implications of my gift might be. ‘The wedding isn’t the important thing here. Diamond and the others are.’
‘I’ll come out immediately. I’ll … I’ll get Topaz to organize a ticket for me.’
I didn’t think I could cope with another person in the flat at the moment. Mama was more likely to be a burden than a help, hovering and wringing her hands. I hadn’t really realized how much in need of care she herself had become since Dad died, but my siblings had paid more attention; no wonder Diamond had stepped in to fill her shoes for me.
‘Please, don’t come just yet. We’re sorting it out.’
‘But Diamond needs me!’
I thought ruefully of the number of times I had needed a mother over the last year but that had never been on the agenda. ‘Diamond needs most right now not to be upset. She doesn’t remember us properly and it might be too painful to have you here.’
‘You’ll call every day, let me know how she is?’
‘Of course. She might even ring you herself when she can.’
‘I’m coming out on Tuesday whatever happens.’
‘That’s fine. We’ve a room booked for you. I’m hoping that this situation will have been sorted by then.’
‘But who’s sorting it, Crystal?’
‘I am.’
Silence. ‘I see.’
‘You should have more faith in me: I’m a soulseeker, Mama.’
‘A what?’
‘Soulseeker.’
‘No. You can’t be. They’re … they’re like gold dust.’
A line from the Bible came to mind, the one about a prophet never being recognized in his home town. To my family, my default identity was always going to be the big disappointment. ‘Why don’t you ask my brothers and sisters why they never noticed? Why you never realized.’ I took a breath, reminding myself that bitterness was ugly and pointless. ‘Anyway, it’s a good job I am one because apparently I stand the best chance of restoring the soulfinder links.’
‘Oh, Crystal.’
‘So, don’t worry, Mama: I’m on the case. Got to go.’
‘I hope you succeed.’ She sniffed. ‘I do love you, you know.’
‘Yes, well.’
‘I do.’ Her tone was firm now. ‘You were always your father’s favourite, his baby girl, and I felt I had to make it up to the others by paying them more attention, but that did not mean I loved you any less than I did them.’
‘Didn’t it?’ My question was genuine. I had always doubted that she cared.
‘I’ve not been a good mother to you, have I? I’m sorry.’
This was not something that could be sorted out on a single phone call. ‘Look, we’ll talk when you get here. Oh, by the way, I’ve found my soulfinder too. Xav Benedict. Trace’s younger brother.’
‘What!’
I ended the call on that little bombshell. I’d give her time to get over the embarrassing gush of enthusiasm before I rang back. I switched off the phone. Mama would be busy for a while passing on the news but I would wager that my brothers and sisters would all be wanting an update directly from me and I couldn’t face any more for a few hours.
The garden gate slapped shut. Peering out from behind my tree, I saw six very welcome people coming in from the street.
‘Hey, Xav, over here!’
Xav peeled away and ran to me, vaulting Barozzi’s table to shave a second off his dash.
‘Am I pleased to see you!’ He lifted my feet off the ground with his hug.
‘I don’t know: are you?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Whoa, you’ll crack a rib if you squeeze me any tighter, you muppet.’
He put me down. ‘What’s with this muppet thing, Miss Piggy?’
‘English for “you idiot”—but in a nice way.’
‘Neat.’
‘Is it OK to go in?’ Trace called.
‘Yes, fine.’ Well, not fine, but we all knew what I meant. ‘I think they’re making sandwiches for lunch. Go slowly with them, won’t you? They’re not … ’ I twirled my hand, unable quite to put my finger on it.
‘Not yet on the right page,’ suggested Yves, looking up at the upstairs window with unbearable longing.
‘Something like that.’
Xav hadn’t taken his eyes off my face. ‘We’ll be along in a moment.’
‘OK. I’ll make coffee.’ Yves led the way inside.
As soon as we had the garden to ourselves, I tackled Xav, bringing him to the ground.
‘You … ’ poke, ‘promised … ’ another poke, ‘you’d come back … ’ light thump on the chest.
Xav let me sit on him as he threw his arms wide. ‘And here I am.’
‘Only after spending the night in jail. You got bail OK?’
‘Yeah, thanks to Yves’s millions. One time when none of us minded raiding his piggybank.’
‘But what if you hadn’t?’ I couldn’t bear to think about the ‘what ifs?’.
‘Then I would’ve expected you to bust us out with your ninja powers.’
‘I’ll kill your brothers. I asked them not to mention that.’
‘Cupcake, they couldn’t help themselves. There’s not much to do inside but talk. They told me you did good.’
‘I was crap, but we got out.’
‘Dad said to tell you all that Will’s getting on really well. Apparently the doctors are amazed by his recovery—almost as if someone with a healing touch got to him first.’ Xav grinned so I pummelled him again for good measure. ‘Ouch, I surrender! They are hoping that he can be transferred to a hospital over here. Dad is just sorting that out with the insurance company. Can I get up now?’
I sat on my haunches and thought about it. ‘I don’t know, Androcles. I have you right where I want you: under my paw.’
‘That’s my girl. Knock ’em when they’re down. Come here and give me a kiss then.’ He beckoned, pointing to his lips.
I leant forward, letting my hair brush his face and neck. Ever so gently I let a butterfly of a kiss play over his mouth. Sitting up swiftly, he
caught me against him, taking the kiss further. If I had been a lioness I would have ended up purring.
‘Sorry I scared you,’ he whispered, my head resting against his shoulder.
‘No more scary skiing and taking on bodyguards, two against one.’
‘I’ll try to avoid that in future.’
I sniffed. ‘You smell of cheap cigarettes, soulfinder.’
‘My accommodation last night was not that great, to be honest. Let’s go in so I can change.’
The atmosphere in the apartment was awful in its quietness. Sky was sitting beside Zed, letting him hold her hand, but there was no enthusiasm in the gesture on her side. Yves was showing Phoenix something on his computer like polite strangers met in a public library. Trace and Diamond sat at the kitchen table looking through the list of everyone expecting to come to the wedding; it broke my heart to hear him remind her of her friends and family and her whispered answers. Uriel and Victor stood at the sink, shoulders touching, brothers seeking solidarity in face of the horrible odds stacked against the happiness of their family.
Uriel’s face lit up when he saw me. It felt good to be someone’s glad thought.
‘Hey, Crystal, everything OK?’
‘Yes, thanks. What do you reckon, Victor?’ I gestured to the girls. ‘You know more about the mind than I do but I don’t understand what’s happened to them.’
Victor rubbed the bristled edge of his jaw. All the brothers were looking like outlaws thanks to their rough night. ‘Sky let me take a look in her mind as I’d been there before and I’m familiar with it. She once had gaps in her memory brought on by childhood trauma but this thing that’s been done to her: it’s completely different. I can’t get near the real her.’
‘Go on.’
‘There’s no false information planted that I can detect; it’s more like she’s a locked box. I don’t know if when we lift the lid there’ll be anything much inside.’
‘I wish I knew what the contessa had done exactly, then I might be able to reverse it.’
‘How much do you remember?’
‘To me, when she attacked, it felt like being mown down by a lorry.’
‘Same as my mind-plough? The one I used at the castle?’
‘No, not quite. I could feel the power of your attack; it had a sound, a hum. Hers was more like a blow to the back of the head—unexpected, numbing.’
Uriel jumped up so he could sit on the counter. ‘She’s a spider.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Xav.
‘Spiders often paralyse their victims then put them in store … ’
‘Before sucking them dry,’ finished Xav. He glanced over at the girls. ‘Oh God, tell me they aren’t really the … the empty husks they feel like. My brothers would never recover—and Dad. Not to mention the girls themselves—what they’d feel if they knew.’
‘They do know,’ I said quietly, remembering Sky’s sobs last night.
Victor tapped his fingers on his forearms. ‘That actually gives me hope, Crystal. I’d be more worried if they had no idea what they were missing. The brain has an amazing ability to recover. Look at stroke victims—all sorts of head trauma cases. Maybe there is something inside the locked box after all.’
Xav curled his arms around me. ‘Let’s not get too hung up on our metaphors. OK, the contessa is a spider but that doesn’t mean she had the whole set of spider abilities. I mean, I didn’t see her shoot webs, did you? Fricking pathetic spider woman—we can crush her like a bug.’
I tapped the back of his hand. ‘I wish.’
‘Yes, we can. We have you—our spider exterminator. We have our girls with us and on our side. C’mon, no madwoman is going to take the Benedicts down without one hell of a fight.’
Yves looked up suddenly. ‘Hey, guys, you’ll want to see this.’ He had tuned into a rolling news channel. ‘We’ve made the front page.’
We clustered around the screen. A sympathetic Italian reporter was interviewing the contessa as she sat ensconced in her antique armchair. She was dressed in black and looked convincingly frail, a poor little granny bewildered by the battering her home had taken at the hands of young louts. I had never hated anyone so much as I did her just then.
‘What’s she saying, Crystal?’ Yves asked.
I listened for a bit. ‘She’s telling her side of the story, how her ancestral home was invaded by a bunch of redneck Americans who objected to her socializing with their partners. The implication is that you are all xenophobic, anti-old worlders. She’s also—the cow—implying that Victor and Trace abused their law enforcement contacts to persecute her, just because her son had been caught up in a complicated financial transaction and was then arrested on false charges. She’s making it sound as though the whole thing has been a set up to disgrace her noble family.’
‘Our motive?’ snapped Victor.
‘Well, you do have access to a large bail fund. She’s suggesting you’ve been making illegal gains from your police work and is calling for you to be suspended or sacked.’
‘Any mention of Savant matters?’ asked Trace.
I listened some more. The reporter was practically calling for Trace and Victor to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. ‘No … no. I guess that would prompt questions as to her own abilities, changing her defenceless victim to someone more than capable of looking after themselves.’
Trace turned away. ‘We’ve spent years flying under the radar and now, thanks to one night, we’re big news. This is going to ruin everything.’
‘As she no doubt intended,’ cut in Victor.
‘I think she is doing revenge in the old Italian way—complete and cruel. “You hit me once where it hurts, so I’ll blast you out of the water.” It’s not enough to take our soulfinder links; she also wants us disgraced, as her son has been.’
‘If they’d put her in charge of the criminal Savant network, they wouldn’t have fallen so easily in London, that’s for sure,’ said Uriel.
‘I don’t care if I lose my job, but I’m not losing you, Diamond.’ Trace reached for her.
My sister squeezed his hand in sympathy.
‘I beg to differ as I do mind being fired.’ Victor flipped his phone in his hand, debating who it would be best to call. ‘I think it’s time we started a serious counter attack. First thing is to get a statement taken from your Milanese banker, Crystal. I want every little detail on record so we can go after her with our version of events.’
Xav gave an unexpected whoop.
‘Jeez, don’t do that!’ said Yves, clutching his chest.
‘I’ve just had a really evil idea.’
‘My favourite kind,’ noted Zed. Sky gave him a glimmer of a smile.
‘The old witch is expecting her notoriety in Italy to play in her favour—we are unknowns. She can project on to us any kind of baloney as no one had any idea who or what we are—we’ve done too good a job at keeping our heads down.’
‘I’m not getting the evil part, bro.’
‘She did not factor in that we have one of the biggest names on the planet on our side. Steve Hughes, Crystal’s boyfriend, rushing in to save his girl’s sister like the hero he is.’
‘I thought I was your girl?’ I muttered.
‘You are, darlin’, but we’re talking about the make-believe land of publicity—which is where the contessa has taken this battle. How about you put a call in to your Hollywood hunk and get him to give an exclusive interview to some international news corporation? Talk about blowing the contessa’s story out of the water; she won’t even be a rubber duck afloat on the ocean when his warship sails into view.’
‘Do you think he’ll do it?’ asked Phoenix, rubbing her temples roughly. I could sense she was trying to cudgel her brain into remembering. Yves took her hand and kissed the knuckles before she hurt herself.
I nodded. ‘Yes, he’ll do it. He might even get something out of it for himself as I imagine that right now he wants to distract the press from his new relationship with L
ily. This will give them something to write about for a few weeks.’
‘You might have to give an interview,’ cautioned Trace. ‘Are you ready for that, Diamond? Crystal?’
‘Anything it takes,’ said Diamond firmly. ‘Just help me say the right things.’
‘Always,’ promised Trace.
If Diamond was brave enough to do it in the knowledge that only a fraction of her mind was functioning properly then how could I refuse?
‘Sure. I’m up for that.’
‘Great.’ Xav rubbed his hands together. ‘Let’s make some calls.’
By the time Saul and Karla arrived back from transferring Will to a Venetian hospital, the story was running on every major news channel. The arrest of the Count of Monte Baldo made a nice background piece. The BBC had found photos of the operation in Central London and shared them with the other media outlets. The contessa’s version of his innocence was now heavily undercut by the wild-eyed, pasty-faced police mugshot taken while he was being processed. This was then matched with the six shots of the Benedict brothers taken in the Verona police station.
We watched the whole news package unfold.
‘Hey, you look like a serial killer,’ Zed mocked Victor. For guys who had shunned publicity, they were making the best of their newfound fame. I thought they all looked gorgeous, especially Xav. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started receiving fan mail from TV viewers.
Then came the interview with Steve, conducted picturesquely on the top of the mountain, his helicopter as backdrop.
‘Yeah, I rushed to my girlfriend’s assistance. Of course I did. Her sister is very important to her.’
‘What about the contessa’s claim that Diamond Brook and her friends were just guests?’ asked the reporter.
Steve snorted. ‘That’s one weird lady. I mean, when you have a house party do you knock your guests out, abandon one on an island to freeze, and then hold the rest hostage from their family? I prefer to send out invitations and make sure everyone has a good time.’
The reporter preened, doubtless hoping to be a recipient of an invitation for Steve’s next private bash. ‘I’m sure you do.’
‘Seriously, maybe she’s lonely; but to me what she did sounds like the actions of one severely disturbed woman. Her son’s in jail, she sees the means of getting revenge, and then she takes it way too far.’