Siren Queen(23)

“Give me a kiss, China doll,” he said, a growl in his voice.

Without thinking, I lifted my hand, pushing away my fringe. The kiss that Maya Vos Santé left there glimmered silver, and for some reason, it sat Wolfe back. He leaned forward—bent down on knuckled fists—and my hair stirred as he sniffed at my brow. Deliriously, I thought he would lick it, and my skin wanted to crawl right off of my body.

Wolfe bent his head down, and a sound came from him like barrels rolling down in hell. It shook the room, and I put my hand back against the door, not to run but only to steady myself. I realized that he was only laughing.

“Clever thing,” Wolfe observed. “That’s not something I can get for myself anymore.” Maya Vos Santé was gone by that time. One day she was making movies out of Wolfe Studios, splitting her time between Jacko Dewalt and Lance Dunholme, and the next you couldn’t remember when you had last seen her name on the marquee. There were rumors, but nothing you could hang a fact on, and though her movies would keep for another few decades in the vaults, she left nothing behind.

Gingerly, as if afraid that I might lash out at him, Oberlin Wolfe closed the distance between us again. He was tall enough to lean forward and place his lips over the silvery mark on my forehead. At the touch of his mouth against my skin, I shuddered. It felt like nothing at all, only a kind of coldness and a kind of loss. My throat was full of something thick and viscous, and when I was finally able to swallow again, Oberlin Wolfe looked human.

One languid hand came up to touch his lips, and he regarded me carefully. For just an instant, there was something fearful in his gaze, or a confusion as to what I was and what I was for. It certainly wasn’t the first time someone had looked at me like that.

Then he turned away from me with a shrug. Whatever I was was taking up far too much of his time.

“Well?” The word slipped out before I could stop it, brash and demanding.

He glanced back.

“You still here? Yeah, fine. We’ll give you a try. Two hundred and fifty a week to keep you for the next three years. That’s traditional. You can stay in the dorms unless you want to run home and live with Ma and Pa at night. We’ll get you trained up, and see what we can make of you.”

“No maids,” I said, thrusting my chin up. “No funny talking, no fainting flowers.” At the very end of my meeting with her, Mrs. Wiley had laughed when I asked her what I could expect from the studio.

“From any of them? Lies, damned lies. Self-interest. The only thing you know is that you don’t know a goddamned thing. Ask for the sky. Who knows, but they might give it to you.”

Wolfe turned and stared at me. Right then, he looked like nothing more than a harried man who wanted me to go the hell away so that he could finally deal with his hangover in peace, but even with this face, he could force a fall before I had even begun to rise.

“Crucified god. What the hell am I supposed to do with you then?”

I shrugged.

“Find something. Of course you can.”

That was a challenge, and Wolfe’s kind, they seem designed for them. It was a weakness, but whether it was a weakness for them or for us, I never decided. He laughed his coughing laugh again.

“Fine. And what do I put on the press releases, Miss Ambitious?”

“Esme Ling,” I said.

“No, dumb,” Oberlin Wolfe said. “Another.”

I flushed a dull brick red and gave him my second, and then my third and fourth choices.

“Hey, aren’t you meant to give me a name?” I asked after the tenth one I tried.

He dropped something into his water to make it fizz and threw it back with a wince. His smile was the furthest thing from humor.

“You want things your way so bad, this is what it’s like,” he said. “If I had my way, you’d be Lotus Bell or Spring Green or some damn thing like that.”

He threw himself back into his chair, raising his hand at me like a bandleader about to strike up a tune.

“Go on. Give me a name.”

Lena-Barbara-Seana-Marlene-Darlene-Sandra-Pearl-and-Emerald

Time stretched like a piece of taffy. I stood on Oberlin Wolfe’s rug, and names fell from my lips like rose petals, and then like rocks. I felt as if I stood there for hours, giving him names that he shook away. My throat went dry, and my voice turned to something rusty and hard.

Janet-Wendy-Susannah-Elizabeth-Sarah-Michelle-Candice-and-Edie

He wasn’t doing it to torture me, or at least he wasn’t doing it just for that. If he could have given me a name to get me the hell out of there, I believe he would have. Instead, he watched me with a face made of stone and teeth that were hidden and sharp.

Mila-Ophelia-Juliet-Coral-Eglantine-Rue-Lacey-Winifred-Pauline-Elle

I drew up names I didn’t even know I knew, scraping my throat until it was raw. I even think my own real name was in there somewhere, as dismissed and forgotten as all the rest.

Doreen-Isabela-Lark-QuinnJoanBetteMarilynGayleLoretta …

Somehow the names still came, even as I clenched my hands, digging my fingernails into my hot palms. My voice was a drone in my own ears, and I might have stood there forever under some strange spell if Oberlin Wolfe hadn’t raised his head, nostrils flaring and a slow smile splitting his face.

“Luli,” he repeated. “Good. You can keep the last name, Wei, isn’t it? Luli Wei. That’s you. Now get the hell out of here. Janet will do the rest.”