Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(16)

“All of them? You’re saying Martin Scorsese hangs out with fairies?”

“Yup. Not all fey are sunshine and rainbows.”

“Kubrick, Eastwood, Coppola?”

“Kubrick’s before my time, but probably. Eastwood and Coppola, yeah.”

“Spielberg?”

“He doesn’t need one; he’s a wizard.”

The wave of vertigo that swept over me suggested that this was a good time to stop asking questions.

“Let’s get you back to the house and feed you some lunch before we go see Berenbaum,” Teo said. “Half the reason we get to hang out with these people is that we stay cool about it, and you are not looking cool right now.”

When we got back to the car, which was badly parallel parked under a palm tree, Teo reached into his jacket for the drawing and studied it again in the sunlight. I peered around his arm at it curiously; it gave me the same icy-bright rush of exhilaration as before. No matter how many times I looked away and back, the feeling was the same, like traveling eight years into the past.

But the drawing was showing me what Rivenholt had felt when he looked out his window, a fact both intimate and puzzling.

“Do you remember when Los Angeles made you feel like that?” I said to Teo.

“Nope,” he said, folding the paper and tucking it away. “Unlike ninety percent of this town, I was born here.”

? ? ?

We arrived back at the house to find a crisis in the living room. We heard it as soon as we opened the car doors, actually, but had to see it to believe it. When we walked in, a very tall black man was kneeling behind Gloria, holding her by the arms. Gloria was shrieking, red faced, at the bearded white guy I’d met briefly the day before. The bearded man—whose name I’d already forgotten—was slumped at one end of the couch, face buried in the crook of his elbow, sobbing.

“Look at me, you coward!” Gloria shrieked at him. “Have the decency to say it to my face!”

“Quit it,” said the man holding her, barely audible over her screams. “Settle down.”

When it comes to drama, I am both amplifier and sponge. You want to keep drama as far away from me as possible. Faced with this spectacle, I planted my sneaker-clad carbon feet on the hardwood floor as though I were staring down head-lights.

“Where is Song?” Teo asked briskly of the only other calm person in the room.

“She went to the store,” said the man holding Gloria. For just a moment I saw the strain on his high-cheekboned face, the coiled control. When he spoke again, he sounded almost bored. “Gloria, you know they need you back on set in twenty. You need to stop it now.”

Teo touched my elbow, startling me. “Let’s go up to my room,” he murmured. I was too disconcerted to make any smart-ass remarks; I just nodded and tried to follow as Teo gave a wide berth to the tableau and practically vaulted up the stairs. I stumbled on the steps myself, dropping my cane as I grabbed for the rail with both hands. Teo doubled back, picking up my cane and helping me up the stairs none too gently.

“Unless the rent is dirt cheap here,” I said breathlessly once we’d reached the top, “I think I’ll take my chances on some other living arrangements.”

“Three things,” he said crisply, handing me back my cane. “One, Gloria’s normally very sweet, and when she’s not, it’s always Phil who gets it. Two, rent is free here. Three, employees at our level have to live in a Project Residence.”

“Why?”

“There are wards on the property and stuff; it’s a little complicated for your pay grade.”

“I’m not being paid.”

“My point is, there are reasons we all live together. Working for the Project isn’t dangerous, but only because we follow the rules to the letter. It’s extra important that new people don’t do stuff on their own, but the perks get better as you work your way up. You should see Caryl’s place.”

I wanted to, once I stepped into Teo’s room. There was barely enough space for his loft bed and the computer desk he’d shoehorned under it. His Avengers bedspread hung off the footboard in a lumpy tangle, and I could smell the dirty laundry that had piled up all the way to the windowsill. His closet was partially blocked by a chest of drawers that was missing the bottom drawer. The only available floor space was dominated by a suspiciously streaked beanbag chair.

“Ugh,” I said. “Doesn’t it seem like a terrible idea to you, hiring a bunch of crazy people and penning them up together?”

“I like it here,” said Teo. “It’s nice not to be judged all the time. So maybe don’t start, okay?”

“Seriously, what’s the deal? Does mental illness give people some kind of sensitivity to magic?”

“I dunno; Caryl’s cagey about it. But I get the feeling it’s just—we’re all creative people who might not get a shot anywhere else, you know? And I guess we’re open-minded ’cause we’ve got no illusions that life makes any sense.” He gestured toward his “chair” as he rifled through the file drawer in his desk. “Sit if you want.”

“Even if I had a prayer of getting back out of that thing, I wouldn’t sit in it for a hundred dollars.”

“How about a thousand?” he said absently as he flipped through folder after folder at near-light speed.