The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(26)

“You think Katherine was given drugs to boost her intelligence,” said Jacob. He didn’t sound surprised.

“You got it,” I said. His flat demeanor was maddening. I stabbed the chart with my finger.

“Here’s a similar trend line in four other categories: physical strength, linguistics, math, and resistance to pain.”

Jacob said, “I see that.”

He got up, grabbed a baguette and a tub of butter from the counter, and brought them over to the table.

I continued my very focused rant.

“This strength drug. MusX. Matty took that. It’s for increasing muscle mass. Here, at the beginning of the year, Katherine could bench-press two hundred pounds. Not bad for a female high school senior with a small bone structure.

“One year later, Katherine could press four hundred forty pounds. That’s about four times her weight and probably an Olympic record. Shall I go on, Uncle?”

“I’ve seen this chart, you know.”

“So you understand, then, that MusX is an untraceable synthetic steroid made in Angel Pharma labs. This drug, plus the brain drugs, and the strength and no-pain drugs, dumbed down to commercial strength, would be pretty valuable in drugstores. But in the full-strength form, in the hands of military agencies, it would be priceless. And I can back that up, too,” I said to my uncle, patting the raft of memos from spy agencies in four countries.

“Maybe Katherine ran off. Maybe it was too dangerous to Angel Pharma for Katherine to be on the loose. What happened to Katherine, Jacob? Who killed my sister and why?”

“You think that, Tandy? That she was murdered?”

“It sure looks that way to me.”

Jacob shook his head. “Katherine wasn’t murdered. She was killed in a collision with a bus. As for the drugs, I’ll tell you what I know, but not now. It’s a long story. And right now, you have to get ready for school.”

I said, “After what I’ve just said, you’re going to talk to me about school?”

He said, “Damned right.”

I yelled and screamed like a wild animal. I threw my coffee cup hard against the wall, where it totally shattered.

Unruffled, Jacob said, “That’s enough. Clean that up. And get dressed.”

Then he left the kitchen.

I felt good about throwing the mug for about a second; then I felt like a drunken football player and a total idiot. I mean, throwing china is a true symbol of powerlessness.

I wiped down the wall and put the shards of the cup in the trash. Then I grabbed the chart and other stuff and marched up to my room. I wondered if Jacob was telling me the truth about Katherine’s death. He didn’t seem to be lying, but experience has taught me that I can’t trust any adult in my family.

Like Jacob.

Enough said.





I dressed in my school uniform. Which I now freaking hated. Itchy knee-highs and ugly flat shoes. No makeup. At all. Were these dowdy mouse clothes really necessary?

I was properly attired and backpack-ready when Monsieur Morel pulled up to our front gate. Not much later, I was at my desk on time, and it’s a tribute to my earlier education that I was sufficiently prepared without having studied. But I was exhausted from lack of sleep. I was also heartsick and paranoid.

The pills I’d once taken had protected me from depression, but now I was nakedly vulnerable to bottomless despair and the effects of what’s commonly called “birds coming home to roost.”

The birds were black shadows over my past, present, and future: my parents’ deaths and Katherine’s, along with the constant virtual threat of Royal Rampling, who’d made every black SUV seem like a messenger from hell.

The biggest, blackest bird was the unknown.

What was going to happen to the orphaned Angels? I was still a kid. How was I supposed to cope with things that were so out of my control?

No, really. How?

As I wallowed in my private downward spiral, I remembered a beautiful black lacquered box my dad had given me, saying it had once belonged to Gram Hilda. The box was inlaid with mother-of-pearl flowers on the outside and had velvet-lined compartments inside, in which I kept my very special high-potency, candy-colored pills.

A black pill and a pink gelcap would put an end to these horrid sinking feelings. I fantasized about taking one.

When school was over for the day, Harry took off for his new studio and Morel dropped me at home before driving Jacob and Hugo to soccer camp. I watched the taillights of the Mercedes round the corner, then went upstairs to my room.

I found the black lacquered box in the corner of my suitcase. It looked like a jewelry box, and it had probably been used as such by Gram Hilda. Inside the box was an array of Lazr and HiQ and, especially seductive, the pink gelcaps I knew as Num. Num could take me to a crisp, clean place where there was no fear, no pain, no anxiety. It was beautiful there.

I picked up the ten remaining Num capsules and held them in my hand, rolling them back and forth in the cup of my palm. And then I dumped them back into their compartment and slammed down the lid of the box.

Didn’t I want to have normal human emotions?

Or had my parents been right when they’d told me emotions were a useless distraction?

I knew I should take the pills to the bathroom and flush them down into the famous sewers of Paris. But I couldn’t quite do it. I put the box back in my suitcase and went downstairs.