Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(20)

“And this is a big deal?”

“Johnny isn’t other fey. He doesn’t just take off on a whim. I should have realized something was wrong. If I’d listened to him, he would have trusted me enough to tell me what was going on.”

“I hardly think that makes it your fault,” I cut in, earning myself a sharp look from Teo. I leaned back into the couch with a sigh.

“So you think he went on some sort of a . . . vacation?” said Teo dubiously. “On his own?”

“It sounded like he needed an escape,” said Berenbaum. “But I didn’t bother to stop and ask myself what someone like Johnny would want to escape from.”

“That’s not our business,” said Teo. “Our business is getting him back to Arcadia. You know him better than anyone; where would he go?”

Berenbaum steepled his hands in front of his mouth, tapping his fingertips together as his eyes took on a distant expression. The silence stretched out long enough that I shot Teo a nervous look. Teo gave a staccato shrug, seeming generally impatient with the whole business.

“A spa resort,” Berenbaum said. “Winningham Grove or Regazo de Lujo maybe. Something inside the Project peri-meter, with orange trees. Somewhere we’ve been before. Maybe Elysienne. Check for him at places like that. Under all his old names, too.”

Teo nodded, scribbling on a memo pad, then glanced at me. “He can’t make up new aliases,” he said in a teachery voice, “because fey can’t lie. Not with words anyway. Our languages are foreign to them on a really deep arcane level, so they can’t use them to create anything. We have to invent their human names. Rivenholt’s been coming here so long the Project has to keep giving him new names and faces every decade or so to hide the fact that he doesn’t age.”

“Huh,” I said stupidly.

Teo turned back to Berenbaum. “Do you know any reason why Inaya West would be trying to get in touch with him?”

Berenbaum frowned. “They worked together on Accolade a few years back, but they don’t really socialize. I try to minimize Johnny’s contact with people who aren’t hip to the Arcadia thing.”

“We intercepted a couple of messages from her meant for him. She seemed to want to talk to him about something, and she said you weren’t returning her calls either.”

Berenbaum gave an odd little snort. “She hasn’t called me in days,” he said. “Or maybe Araceli has been aggressively screening my calls since I’m behind schedule.”

My eyes drifted over to the signed poster for Red Cotton. I wondered if seven-year-old Inaya’s scrawl was somewhere under the glass. She had never so much as been in a school Christmas pageant when Berenbaum found her chatting up a snow goose in New Orleans City Park and directed her straight to her first Oscar nomination.

“Don’t worry about ’Naya,” he said. “I’ll give her a call later on today and find out what’s going on from her end.”

“All right,” said Teo, rising. “Call us right away if you get any new information.”

“You do the same,” said Berenbaum, moving forward to give Teo’s hand a brisk shake. “I’ll tell Araceli to put you guys through no matter what.”

Teo was already halfway out the door by the time I -managed to get off the insidiously pliant couch and back to my feet. Berenbaum reached for my hand more gently than he had Teo’s, and his eyes did a quick circuit over my face that made me feel as though he had just scanned the deepest contents of my psyche. He spoke quietly, still holding my eyes.

“It gets better,” he said.

The words blew into me like I’d left a window open. My brain was a white noise of the thousand things I wanted to say, and then I realized I was still holding on to his hand. I blushed to the roots of my hair, managing only an awkward smile and a half bow before hurrying after Teo.

“Did he say something to you?” Teo asked after we got back into the car.

“To me, not to you.”

“As long as we’re partners, anything said to you on the job is to both of us.”

“It was personal.”

“How can it be personal? He just met you.” Suddenly he swiveled in his seat, looking aghast. “Did he hit on you?”

“No! It wasn’t like that! God, why do you have to spoil everything?”

“Oh man, don’t cry; that’s not fair.”

“I’m not!” But I was.

“Fine, you don’t have to tell me.” He started the car, looking irked, as though I had started crying on purpose. Men seem to think that women do this on a regular basis, which is bullshit. Just because you don’t feel something, it doesn’t mean the other person is faking it. You know who thinks like that? Sociopaths.

I sat in silence for most of the way back, trying to figure out what Berenbaum had meant by his parting words. Maybe it was a reference to working with the Project. Maybe he was referring to the physical healing process. But I had received the comment at a much deeper place.

I love people randomly and suddenly, and it’s a curse most of the time. When it isn’t, it’s a lifesaver. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work with Teo, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to live at Residence Four, and I wasn’t sure if I gave a crap about Viscount Rivenholt or expired visas or Arcadia. But I would have walked across the 405 for David Berenbaum right then, and that was enough.