When the human got a few paces ahead, Maygar stepped closer, lowering his mouth to my ear.
“We’re in a building owned by the British military,” he murmured. “Following a man who says he knows who you are.”
“It’s going to be okay,” I told him.
“Really? How reassuring.”
“Just trust me. Please, Maygar.”
He looked at me like I had brain damage, but shrugged when I didn’t flinch, falling in step behind me.
I focused so intently on the man in front of us that I barely took in the house itself. Once we’d reached the first staircase, however, I found my eyes pulled off his back, and suddenly I was seeing the high, wood-paneled walls and ceilings, bronze sculptures, paintings and stone floors. Hanging tapestries the size of my apartment floor covered one of the high walls of the main hallway. Faded with age, they looked like they belonged in a museum.
Even the walls had been polished recently. A blanket-sized thankah of that Buddha with the many heads drew my eyes as we passed to the left of the giant marble staircase. Staring at the thankah, then up to the landing below the second floor where I saw another Asian vase, I found myself thinking that maybe these were Revik’s things after all, waiting for auction. I let my eyes travel further up, taking in the domed cupola above the stairs, an oval window with smaller but equally ornate ionic columns ringing it like the bell tower of a cathedral.
Eddard led us into a room with built-in, floor to ceiling walnut bookshelves and worn but expensive-looking leather furniture planted before a marble fireplace. The walls were paneled like the others, but I saw another Asian-looking stand in one corner, a heavy, hand-painted Chinese cabinet and a number of Japanese vases. Olive green drapes as old and expensive-looking as the rest of the furnishings hung beside tall sash windows.
No pictures decorated the room, I noticed...then paused. Well, only one. A small, normal-sized photograph sat on the mantle in a wooden frame.
As I walked towards it, I felt something constrict in my chest.
“Wait here, please,” Eddard said.
“Hey,” Maygar began. “Wait a...”
But Eddard was already closing the double doors, blocking us off from the main hall. Folding his arms, Maygar turned on me.
“Great. This is brilliant, Bridge. He’s probably calling his pals in the Sweeps.”
My eyes remained on the photograph, tracing the lines of an image I knew so well I found it difficult to look at. In it, my father held me in his arms, smiling. He’d already lost weight from the MS, but he looked happy, and strong.
My mother’s face shone from the other side of the frame, so young it shocked me, and between them, I leaned against my dad’s chest, grinning, one arm clamped around his neck as I played with my mom’s hair. The picture hit me like a punch in the face.
Maygar finally seemed to have noticed. “What?” he said. “What is the matter?” He looked at the mantle over the fireplace, where the picture stood. “What, Bridge?”
“I want to go,” I said.
“Did you feel something?” Wariness sharpened his voice.
“No.” I shook my head, looking away from the photograph.
The doors slammed open. I turned, but couldn’t see past the clouds in my eyes, couldn’t take in the form running at me across the Persian rug. When she finally reached me, she threw herself into my arms, nearly knocking me over, then squeezed me so tightly I couldn’t breathe.
But gods, she was so thin...like a ghost. Even in my shock, I was afraid I might break her.
“Allie!” she shrieked. “Allie! Allie! Allie! Allie! Allie!”
I stood there, feeling like I’d been repeatedly hit in the face. Cass snatched the sunglasses off my eyes, yanked the sweatshirt hood and the wig off my head. When I saw her without obstruction, my heart seized.
I saw Maygar jerk in our direction, unholstering his gun.
“Stop!” he said.
His tone of voice shocked me, jerked my eyes off of her.
“Take your hands off her!” he said. “Now!”
“No!” I held up a hand to him. “No! It’s okay!”
Then I saw my brother in the doorway, and lost my voice.
I barely recognized him. His black and red and blond-dyed hair had grown out in a streaked tangle past his shoulders. His face was paler than I’d ever seen it, his eyes too large, his cheekbones too prominent. One of his hands wore a flesh-colored bandage, but he didn’t look like Cass, who...I turned, staring at the scar that split her face, feeling sick for staring but unable to stop. I wanted to touch it, to see if it was real, when she grinned, shaking my shoulders to get my eyes back to hers.
“Hideous, aren’t I?” She grinned, but I saw a denser pool of sadness there. No, not sadness, a kind of brokenness that disappeared even as I glimpsed it. “Forget that! You’re here! You’re here!” She squeezed me again, jumping up and down.