The Girl Who Would Be King(134)

“Uh, of course boss, it’s great,” Jeeves says.

“I’m not talking to you, Jeeves,” I snap, annoyed. He looks around confused. And then hurries out with the rest of them. I sit next to Liz and together we survey our awesome domain and riches. Not bad for a couple days’ work.

When it’s dark I decide to firebomb the forces outside our borders to give my men time to start on my outer wall. I know none of them are looking forward to the hard labor of building a wall all around our borders – they’re getting lazy already if you ask me – but it’s been the plan all along and they know it. So I swing a satchel full of grenades over my shoulder and go out onto the roof deck. I take off into the air, above the clouds and then once I’m outside my perimeter I drop down close enough to see all the LAPD/FBI sawhorses circling my lands.

Once overhead, I just start pulling pins and dropping the grenades from the sky. At first I’m a little too high and some are detonating before they hit the ground, thus making my attack totally ineffective as anything other than an annoyance. But I drop lower to maximize the impact. The screaming tells me I’ve got it just right. I do a few passes around the perimeter, dropping a dozen on each side of my borders. Back at my penthouse, Jeeves is watching the aftermath from the window with some binoculars, along with two other thugs whose names I don’t know.

“That ought to slow them down,” I say happily, dusting off my hands as I come back into the front room.

“Nice work, boss,” Jeeves says while the other two henchmen duck out conspicuously. There’s dust and grime on my leather cat suit and I step into the bedroom and strip it off, pulling on one of the silk robes I brought with me.

I fling the suit at Jeeves. “Have this cleaned,” I say, moving towards my throne, excited to check out the view of L.A. on fire from my new seat. Jeeves looks at me with his head cocked. “What!? Your name is Jeeves for chrissake, you’re SUPPOSED to do these kinds of thing,” I say. He turns to leave. “And don’t bother me unless there’s an emergency, I need rest,” I say with finality. The elevator doors snap closed behind him and I go into the kitchen for a drink, or fifty.

I tell myself I’m drinking because tomorrow’s my birthday, and because despite the fact that I’m only about to turn seventeen, I feel a hundred and seventeen. But really I’m drinking because of everything.



°

It’s a hell of a lot easier to get to the cottage in Maine when you already know where you’re going. Also, when you can fly.

It takes me only a couple hours, instead of the better part of a day, and with the stone in my pocket the intense tug of the place is ratcheted up considerably. I can zero in on the place like I have high-tech radar now, even if I didn’t already know where it was.

I set down in the expanse of trees near the cottage and walk across the rocky beach up to the porch, slowly, paying close attention to how crisp everything feels and sounds, tastes and smells. Compared to last time, when everything was like faint, pale memories, this is like vivid 3-D. The carving on the house is undeniably the symbol from my stone, and as I touch it with my fingertips a now familiar jolt of power courses through me. I draw back and bite my lip.

I pull the house key from my pocket and unlock the front door. It squeaks open and dust swishes around on the hardwood floors as the ocean breeze comes in with me. The moonlight does a good job of illuminating the house and the rooms spark old memories. Despite the small feel of the cottage from the outside, inside, there are soaring wood ceilings and to left is a small kitchen with a nook of windows overlooking the sea, I have a flash of my mother sitting there with a book in morning sunlight. Directly in front of me is a wood stair, leading up to the second floor. I walk down a hallway toward the back of the house and realize it’s actually the front. There’s a porch here and an old gravel drive. I peek in all the rooms and closets, hoping for more treasures from my past, but the house is painfully empty, with only a few pieces of furniture, that give off nothing particularly powerful when I draw my hands across them. I go back to the ocean side of the house and climb the stairs to the second floor. At the top, the space opens up and there’s a window seat that overlooks the water and an unobstructed view of the island. Just looking at the island is like taking a lightning bolt to the chest. As magical as the house is in my memory, I’m here for the island.

At the water’s edge I watch the island, silent and dark. Last time I swam there, and although there was something natural in that, something full of memory and even something baptismal about it, I don’t have the luxury of memory lane. I’ve wasted enough time as it is.