MORTAL COILS (25 page)

He
felt normal now, though. Almost.

Eliot
turned to Fiona. She stared at fields of wheat outside. She was the one who
usually started asking questions. Eliot waited and the sun dimmed, eclipsed by
clouds. Fiona continued to stare, unnaturally quiet.

He
took a deep breath and shifted toward Henry. “I have a few—”

“Questions?”
Henry finished for him. “Life is full of them and there are so few answers.” He
sighed and hung his head. “I’m sorry, not everything should be a joke. I can
only imagine your confusion, young man.”

“Those
tests. Those people. Are they really my family? They’re so . . .”

“Odd?
Dilettante?” Henry glanced at Grandmother. “Violent?”

“So
not like me.”

“Oh,
but they are. You don’t see it yet, but I do. We all do.” Henry lowered his
voice and leaned forward. “It might help to think of this as a custody battle,
but with some very strange rules. We need to find out if you belong with us or
with your father’s family.”

Father.
The word exploded like a firecracker in Eliot’s mind. He was long dead, but
there was this other branch of his family that he had never met. Were they as
strange as his mother’s side of the family? Did they want him and Fiona, too?

He
recalled what Uncle Henry had said: the two families were like the Capulets and
the Montagues from Romeo and Juliet—two noble families at war for generations.

Had
his parents really died in a boat accident? Or like Romeo and Juliet had they
poisoned themselves and died in each other’s arms? Or maybe they had been
poisoned by these two families?

“No
one said anything about our father at that meeting,” Eliot said. “Is his family
that bad?”

He
wanted to ask “Was it as bad as this family?” but thought better of it.

Henry
eased back into his seat, and he and Grandmother shared a look that appeared
much like what Eliot and Fiona might exchange—a stream of unspoken information
that flashed between them with a raised eyebrow and shake of the head.

“It
would be best,” Henry explained, “if your Grandmother answered your questions.”

Eliot
turned to her, hoping she might melt a tiny bit and tell him something.

Grandmother
was stone. “Not here in front of this gossiping creature.”

Uncle
Henry set his hand over his heart, feigning hurt.

“You’re
not going to tell us anything?” Eliot said. “I can’t believe it.”

Grandmother
looked away.

Fiona
crossed her arms. “Stop the car.”

Uncle
Henry glanced outside: moonlight made the surrounding icescape sparkle. “My
dear, we are in the middle of nowhere and the temperature is far below
freezing.”

“Stop
this thing now.” Fiona glared at him.

At
that moment, Eliot thought she looked like Grandmother.

Grandmother
examined Fiona, then murmured, “Do it, Henry. Let’s see where she will take
this.”

Uncle
Henry rapped on the partition, and it slid down. “Stop the car, Robert.”

The
limousine fishtailed to a halt.

Fiona
opened the door. The inrushing air felt like a blast of ice water. Eliot
considered going with her; he wasn’t sure what she had in mind, but they should
stick together. Before he could undo his seat belt, though, the door slammed
shut and Fiona marched to the front of the car. She opened the front
passenger’s door and climbed back inside.

Shivering
so hard she could barely get her seat belt on, she said, “T-t-ttoo st-st-uuffy
back th-th-there.”

The
driver looked wide-eyed at her, then to Uncle Henry.

“It’s
fine,” Henry said. “Just continue and spare not the horses.”

“Keep
this partition down, young man,” Grandmother ordered, “and your eyes on the
road.”

The
driver paled, nodded, and the car jumped forward.

Eliot
wanted to ask more questions, but with Grandmother’s refusal, and Fiona up
front, he didn’t feel like trying again.

Outside
there were stars in the sky but no auroras. Fields of ice turned into darkened
forests; snow turned into a track, a dirt road, pavement, and then a four-lane
freeway. Eliot saw the lit storefronts of Del Sombra, and the Bavarian façade
of Oakwood Apartments. The car stopped.

“Shall
I come up?” Uncle Henry offered. “We can share a cup of coffee. Talk about old
times?”

“No.”
Grandmother opened the door and motioned for Eliot and Fiona to follow.

“It
was nice meeting you,” he told Uncle Henry.

“The
pleasure was mine, young Eliot. We will see you soon.”

That
seemed half promise and somehow half a threat as well to Eliot.

Fiona
joined them, looking one last time at the driver, and saying, “Thank you,” for
the ride. The driver tipped his cap at her.

Grandmother
led them up the three flights of stairs. She halted at their door, examining
the light filtering underneath. “Cecilia has waited up for us.”

The
door opened before Grandmother touched it, and Cecilia stood trembling in her
long nightgown. “I’m so glad you’re back. I have tea ready.” On the dining
table were two steaming pots, her spiderweb kettle and a chipped, blue coffeepot,
as well as a dozen cups and saucers.

Cee
reached out for Eliot and Fiona and welcomed them with an embrace. It felt good
to be held by someone who Eliot knew loved him.

The
clock in the hallway chimed midnight and Cee released them.

Eliot
and Fiona’s birthday was over. Maybe nothing more strange would happen. For the
only time in his life, Eliot just wanted to go back to his normal, boring
routine.

“I
hadn’t realized it was so late,” Cee said. “Are you hungry? Should I—”

Grandmother
closed the door and threw the dead bolt. She went to the window and looked down
at the street. “Stop hovering over the children, Cecilia. It is late. They are
tired.”

“Wait,”
Eliot said. “You were going to tell us things. About the family.”

Grandmother
considered a moment. She then moved to the sliding double doors on the far side
of the dining room and parted them. “Come.”

Grandmother’s
office was sacrosanct. Eliot and Fiona had been in there before, but just to
announce that dinner was ready or a tenant was at the door. They’d never
actually been invited inside.

Her
office had a single window overlooking Del Sombra’s downtown—dark now save for
a row of orange streetlamps. A Victorian, high-back love seat sat facing the
window. On a side table was a legal pad, ballpoint pen, and yesterday’s San
Francisco Chronicle. It was the only room in the apartment with a decided lack
of books.

“Sit,”
Grandmother said.

Eliot
and Fiona sat on the love seat as far apart as they could.

Cecilia
hesitated in the doorway, looking unsure if she had been invited in as well.

Grandmother
inhaled and said, “We will start with the family.”

Eliot
knew she meant their mother’s family, not his father’s. He was dying to know
more about his dad, but he had a feeling he’d never learn anything about them
from Grandmother. But both families were connected somehow. He felt it.

“Children
are rare for us,” Grandmother continued. “For reasons of convenience and
biology. We are not”—she paused, searching for the correct words—“there are
medical issues.”

Eliot
looked at Fiona. She nodded and said, “Like the congenital defects of the
seventeenth-century European dynasties?”

“Alexei
Romanov,” Eliot added. “He was a hemophiliac, right?”

He
wished he hadn’t remembered the heir to the last Russian empire. Alexei Romanov
had been assassinated by the Bolshevik secret police in 1918—two weeks before
his fourteenth birthday . . . almost Eliot’s age.19

“Not
like the Romanov’s,” Grandmother said quickly. “Our children have always been
healthy.”

“Tell
them why there are so few,” Cecilia said behind her, wringing her hands.

Grandmother
narrowed her eyes to slits and turned. Eliot didn’t see the look she gave Cee,
but he saw the result: his great-grandmother withered and shrank back into the
shadows.

Fiona
shifted on the love seat. “So why?”

Grandmother
faced them. “The reason there are so few children in this family is because of
this family.”

Cecilia
slinked back to the doorway.

“The
politics of our family are complicated,” Grandmother said, “treacherous, and
often deleterious to its younger, most vulnerable members.”

“The
people at Uncle Henry’s,” Eliot said, “they told us we had to ‘survive’ their
trials.” He shuddered, thinking of murdered Alexei Romanov. “They meant we have
to live through them, didn’t they?”

Grandmother
pursed her lips as she was trying to hold back her words, but finally said,
“Yes. And we are lucky to have the chance. Many have been crushed without so
much as that.”

“They
are strong enough to know what they face,” Cecilia whispered. “Tell them about
the kidnappings, the burnings . . . the seductions.” She

19.
One of the legends surrounding Anastasia and Alexei Romanov (would-be heirs to
the former Russian empire) is that they escaped death at the hands of the
Bolsheviks and were spirited away in a forest-green 1917 Buick Tourer. The
children and the car were seen in Paris, and then as the rumors spread, in New
York, Chicago, and even Seattle—impossibly a day later. Recently recovered
remains of the royal Russian family, however, yielded a positive identification
via DNA analysis with a 98.5 percent certainty, so this legend must be
dismissed as wishful romanticism. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century,
Volume 6: Modern Myths. 8th ed. (Zypheron Press Ltd.).

tried
to say more but her eyes glistened with tears and her hand clutched at her throat.

Grandmother
closed her eyes. “Very well. You cannot, you must not, trust your relations.”
She opened her eyes and her pupils were dilated as if she had been looking into
the darkness. “Your dapper uncle Henry has dueled many of your cousins just
come upon manhood. He employs young ladies and then ‘steals’ them away. This
provokes a predictable confrontation—and then a snapped neck, bullet to the
brain, or blade to the heart. He is a most kind assassin, as his methods are at
least quick.

“Gilbert
. . .” Grandmother’s jaw clenched. “He has always had a predilection for the
younger women in our family, sometimes seductions, and other times less than
gentlemanly methods.”

Fiona
shifted uncomfortably on the love seat at this.

“And
sweet Aunt Lucia prefers poisons. Once a young boy, your second cousin, was
hidden away in an orphanage near Cork, Ireland. Lucia did not know which
orphanage, so she planted swine belladonna near the local dairy farms to taint
the milk. The following spring hundreds of children died the ‘sleeping death.’
”20

It
seemed too weird to be true, but Eliot had never known Grandmother to lie.

The
air in Grandmother’s office pressed in on Eliot, smothering him, hot in his
lungs. “You’re saying they’re going to murder us? Is that what their trials are
about?”