She walked past him into the long hall. The air inside was warmer but smelled sterile, as if she’d just stepped into a void. Hepa-filters in every duct, she guessed, along with electronic dust-zappers and God only knew what else. A speck of dirt wouldn’t survive long within these walls.
“May I take your jacket?” the butler was asking.
“No.”
“As you wish. Mr. King is in the master suite.” He gestured toward the hall to the right. When she didn’t move, he added, “He’s expecting you, miss.”
“Thanks.” She shoved her hands in her pockets and strode down the hall, which ended at the double steel doors of a private lift. That took her up five flights to the top floor, where she stepped out into one of the most beautiful rooms in Manhattan.
The antiques dated back to the turn of the century, but the art hanging on the polished cherry wall panels was much older. She eyed the brooding masterful Renoir hung between a complicated da Vinci sketch and a serene Raphael Madonna before walking across priceless Syrian rugs to the open arch leading into the next chamber.
With all the pricey, impressive stuff displayed in the receiving room, the master suite seemed almost bare. A plain four-poster bed stood against one wall, and a complicated computer system neatly arranged on an extended black worktable took up most of another. There were no chairs, tables, or other furnishings; the only other objects in the room were various bits of portable medical equipment crowded against both sides of the bed.
The old man lay under the plain white linens, his balding head and thin face the color of ash. A few tufts of white hair stuck out over his ears, and the white bristles of an uneven beard tried to cover his lantern jaw and the lower half of his hollowed cheeks. Although his labored breathing rasped audibly, his chest barely moved. Only his eyes, two little espresso beans floating in bloodshot whites, showed any signs of real life.
Rowan walked up to the end of the bed but didn’t touch it. “I’m here, old man.”
“So you are.” The corners of his mouth tried to dig into his jowls. “I never thought I would see you again.”
“I thought you’d be dead by now.” She studied the equipment keeping him alive. “Maybe if I hang around for dinner.”
“I regret that I’ve disappointed you.” He lifted a hand with effort, and gestured toward the heart monitor. “As you’ve guessed, I don’t have much time left. It’s an aggressive form of brain cancer, if you are interested.”
“I’m not.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. “What do you want?”
“My dear.” His smile was a ghastly thing, a skull’s grin. “What have I always wanted? Only your happiness, and my own.”
She produced the photograph she’d taken from Sean’s apartment. “You didn’t waste any time in looking for me, or in replacing me.”
“No one could ever take your place in my heart,” he countered. “You know that.”
Nothing he said would move her. “I’m sure you got my phone message, but in case I wasn’t clear enough, here’s the deal. You call your guns off Sean Meriden, and I’ll do whatever you want.”
“That’s a very generous offer.” He inspected her face. “Seeing as you don’t know what I want.”
“Oh, I know, old man.” She would have all the time in the world to puke over it later, when he was in the ground. “But I’m not doing it until I know that Sean is safe.”
The old man pushed aside the linens and rose from the bed. The difficulty of the task seemed beyond him, and his face blanched as he placed his feet on the floor. He rested for a minute before straightening, and held on to the bed-post while he gasped in air.
Rowan didn’t move a muscle. If he dropped dead on her now, she’d ring down for champagne.
“As you’ve surmised, I stopped searching for you several years ago,” Gerald told her as he shuffled around the end of the bed. “I had resigned myself to the situation and, with some alternative arrangements, made the best of it.”
Rowan wanted to hit him. “I know all about your ‘alternative arrangements.’ How could you do all that to another kid? She could never be what you wanted, and you knew it.”
“I had hoped she would prove a reasonable substitute. Besides,” he chided, “it wasn’t as if she had any sort of future. Her birth mother abandoned the girl a few hours after her birth. She would have spent her childhood in foster care. I gave her the life children only dream of having.”
“While you hacked up her face and tried to make her into a dead woman.” Now she was going to puke. “If you found someone else to play Alana, why did you come after me?”
“I discovered—much to my consternation—that while some things can be altered, others cannot.” He propped himself against the end of the bed. “Such as the cancer my physician discovered growing in my brain. It was only after I was diagnosed as terminally ill that I realized what a mistake I had made by giving up the search for you.”
“You thought I’d come back here and hold your hand? Stay with you to the end? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“I see your language has suffered immensely since leaving my care.” He sighed. “The fact of the matter is that I did not appreciate the other gifts you possess. There is no one like you, my dear, and there never will be again.”
The sick smell rolling off him—a stomach-twisting blend of chemicals and rot—didn’t make her step back. The greed in his eyes did. “Where is the kid?”
“I haven’t the slightest notion.” His upper lip curled back from teeth pasty with plaque. “She doesn’t matter anymore. You’re home again, my princess. You can give me what I want and need.”
Princess. If he touched her, she was going to scream, and she wasn’t sure she would ever stop. “I want to hear you make the calls to pull your men off Sean. Now.”
He nodded. “Of course I will. Just as soon as the nurse arrives and begins the procedure.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “What are you talking about? What procedure?”
“A very simple blood transfusion,” he told her. “It shouldn’t take long. Thirty minutes or so.”
Rowan looked at the medical equipment again, and saw the two long tubes that hadn’t yet been used, and the tray of needles, swabs, and tape. “You want my blood?”
“I want to live,” he corrected, “and your blood is the only thing that can save me now.”
Drew kept his footsteps light as he passed the novelist’s room, but before he could reach his own the door opened and a head appeared.
“Mr. White.” Brian Cantwell stepped out into the hall, his arm filled with a thick stack of pages. “I thought that might be you. Do you have a minute?”
“I really need to get back to work.” Drew silently cursed himself for ever speaking to the would-be author in the first place. “My thesis isn’t going to write itself.”
“You may find this of great value to your own writing,” Cantwell said. “I’ve just discovered the most marvelous blog about writing. You’ll never guess what the title is.”
“ ‘Words R Us’?”
“Paperback Writer,” the other man said, beaming. “Exactly like the Beatles’ song. I’ve always considered that my personal anthem, you know. I think it’s an omen, Mr. White.”
“It probably is,” Drew said. Now he’d have the damn song stuck in his head all night. “I’ll look it up when I have a chance.”
“Be sure to leave a comment on one of the giveaway posts when you do.” Cantwell held up a paperback book with the naked, wet torso of a man on the cover. “I did and I won a free copy of her latest novel. She even signed it for me.”
Drew smiled, nodded, and began backing away toward his door.
“And do come by whenever you take your next writing break,” the novelist called after him. “You can read the first draft of chapter thirty-seven. The Orcs have just surrounded my paladin and his band of elven warriors.”
“Sounds amazing.” He was almost there.
“They have a spell battle, and accidentally transform the Orcs into dragons—”
“Okay.” Drew unlocked his door and darted inside, leaning back against it with a sigh. “Next time, I swear, I’m posing as an illiterate migrant worker.”
He chuckled at his own joke as he went over to the computer and booted it up. There were several messages from Jessa and Matthias, no doubt with details on Rowan’s identity makeover and relocation. Another e- mail caught his eye; it was from Paracelsus. The e-mail itself contained a terse suggestion he play the lottery immediately.
He took out his mobile and muttered as he saw ten voice mail messages from Paracelsus waiting. He didn’t bother to listen to them but called his friend immediately.
“It’s Aphrodite,” Paracelsus said. “She’s decided to go home and give herself over to her demons.”
Drew knew a little about Rowan’s background. As a kid she’d run away from a wealthy, abusive father, and although she’d never gone into details, she’d always made it clear that she would rather kill herself than see him again. “Maybe she needs to do this.”
“Do you know what he did to her?”
“Not exactly.”
“He forced her to become the image of his dead wife,” Paracelsus said. “The same religious fanatic of a wife who thought Aphrodite was possessed by a demon, and who tried to kill her when she was nine years old.”
Drew closed his eyes briefly. “Why is she doing this?”
“Her father has made some very effective threats against Rowan’s lover and her friends, which he is fully capable of carrying out.” The other man sighed. “She never gave me her father’s name, so she could be anywhere. I had hoped she had told you something.”
