Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(34)

As soon as we found a legal place to pull over, Caryl put on the parking brake without turning off the engine and started into a long incantation that made me taste bile at the back of my throat. When she was finished, she released the brake and pulled back into traffic. Before I could ask what that was all about, I felt Elliott land on my shoulder.

“What happened back there?” I said.

“A great many things,” she replied. “Which of them do you mean?”

“That woman made you a complete wreck.”

“It wasn’t entirely her fault.”

I thought about the way Caryl had flushed when Elliott’s construct dissolved. “Did you take on some of Elliott’s emotions when you reabsorbed his spell?”

“Elliott doesn’t have emotions.”

“You said he had the feelings of a child.”

“I didn’t say which child.”

“Ah.” Finally I got it. “Yours.”

Caryl nodded as though we were discussing the way she preferred her coffee. “Elliott is a sort of storage device.”

“For psychological trauma?”

“It serves as a repository for certain parts of my thought process when I am in a professional situation. My emotions are underdeveloped and . . . damaged, and that makes a bad mix with the amount of power I command.”

I studied her face. Once again I realized I had no idea of her age. No older than her mid-thirties, certainly, no matter how much she sounded like someone’s grandmother. But then again, I didn’t know the first thing about warlocks. She could have been two hundred years old, or two thousand. “What happened to you? What did Vivian mean about your mother?”

“That isn’t relevant.”

“If my boss has crippling mommy issues, I feel like it’s pretty damned relevant.”

“The auteur of The Stone Guest has no call to throw stones about mother issues.”

“That was fiction,” I said. “But I saw the real you back there.”

“Why is some accident of uncontrolled neurochemistry the ‘real me,’ and a carefully reasoned system of priorities somehow false? I have lived more of my life without emotions than with them. If you have to choose a me to be ‘real,’ this is it.”

I had a sudden desperate urge to talk to Dr. Davis. This woman, her former patient no less, had torn her mind in half. Her Emotion Mind was perched on my shoulder while her Reason Mind drove the car and told me it didn’t matter. It was fascinating and horrible, and I was deeply, sickeningly envious. I looked out the window.

Caryl glanced over at me, then back at the road. I felt Elliott nuzzle my cheek, and I realized that was as close as I would ever get to an apology from my boss.

“So who is Vivian exactly?” I said when I’d pulled myself together. “I mean, I know who she is in Hollywood, but who is she in Arcadia?”

“She was Countess Feverwax of the Unseelie Court, but she was exiled at the end of the nineteenth century when she unleashed a plague on her own people for reasons she has yet to explain—if she even has reasons. She talked the Unseelie King out of executing her, and so she’s this world’s problem now.”

“What did she do before she was a talent agent?”

“She’s most often an entrepreneur, favoring businesses with a touch of the macabre: slaughterhouses, funeral homes, that sort of thing. In the olden days she would invest through a husband who would then mysteriously die. She founded Cera Pest Control in 1970 and still holds a controlling interest. Over the years we suspect her to have committed any number of baffling, sadistic crimes, including murdering my predecessor, Martin, but we have never managed to pin her to anything.”

“I thought fey lost their magic if they stayed here too long.”

“Your attention to detail is one of your finer qualities, Millie.” I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic. “Normally yes, but certain Unseelie exiles use . . . legal but unsavory means to preserve their youth and power. We believe it may be these exiles who are the origin of the vampire legends.”

“What!” I couldn’t help grinning stupidly. “Are you telling me I just had an interview with a vampire?”

Caryl pretended she hadn’t heard me, and I couldn’t really blame her.

? ? ?

When we arrived back at the Residence, Caryl pulled into the driveway and stopped the car, releasing the locks on the doors without a word.

“Aren’t you coming inside?”

“No,” she said.

“Are you angry at me about something?”

By way of answer, Caryl gestured to my lap; I slipped down my fey lenses and saw Elliott curled up there contentedly. “If you hurry, you may still be in time to give Teo your requests for dinner,” Caryl said.

“I—I just thought—I mean, usually people say good-bye or whatever.”

“Shall I walk you to the porch and kiss you good night?”

The fact that I found the idea vaguely appealing was evidence of the severity of my social famine. “That’s quite all right,” I said. “Uh, see you, I guess.” I began gathering myself to get out of the car.

“I’ll call Song when I get home and tell her to give you Lisa’s phone.”

The name rang a faint bell. “Who’s Lisa?”