Sleight of Hand (25 page)

“He’s nice,” said Tullah, her chin in her hand, looking at the door.

Oh yes?

“Do I look as if I bite?” I asked.

She looked up at me and grinned. “Absolutely.”

I got myself ready. I was carrying the HK again and was pleased it fit neatly under Jen’s loaned jacket. I was going to be upset when I had to give this jacket back. Maybe I could find something to replace it while I was buying a dress today.

Tullah’s eyes were on the jacket as I came out of my office. She stood and came over.

“Very nice,” she said, feeling the leather, but I could see her thoughts were elsewhere. She met my eyes. “What you said before when we needed to move the office, Amber—it is
us,
isn’t it, this business?”

“Tullah, one of my big worries at the moment is what to do when you graduate and get a real job.” I gave her a hug. “Yes, it’s us.”

“Maybe we can talk about that tomorrow, if,” she took a deep breath, “if everything’s okay.”

Why wouldn’t it be?

I was going in too many different directions to worry about that now. Tomorrow would be early enough to find out. I gave her a quick kiss on her head and headed out to my car.

I had a meeting with Jen’s former employee later and I had to find some time before that to buy something appropriate for the charity ball, but first, I had a far more important person to see.

Chapter 31

The shop had that wonderful smell of leather and waxes. I breathed a deep lungful as I walked in.

Werner looked up from his bench and gave me a huge smile. He dropped what he was doing and eased his bulk out from behind his work space to greet me, his big arms spread wide.

“Klara, Klara, come, it is Amber here,” he called out to his wife over his shoulder before sweeping me into his embrace. “Welcome. Welcome, my American daughter.”

I laughed. His big beard tickled and he smelled of his work, but I enjoyed his whole-hearted Bavarian greeting.

Klara bustled in, as petite as he was huge, and she joined the embrace to kiss my cheek. Her eyes were red. I had no doubt of some of the things going through both their minds, but Klara showed it more easily.

“I can’t stay long; it’s so busy,” I said. “But I just had to come and see Emily.”

“Of course, of course,” said Werner. “Yes, she has stayed home from school today. They are very understanding, and she is okay most times,” he waggled his hand side to side, “but it is difficult today. On the anniversary.”

“Come, sit with us and have coffee first,” said Klara. “We have let her sleep late.” She fussed over Werner’s bench, tidying away things he would have to get out again later, before leading us into the back. She had her percolator going and the coffee smell took over from the leather and polishes as we sat around a small table in the kitchen.

“Such a beautiful jacket, Amber,” said Klara, placing a small cup of strong espresso in front of me.

“Yes, but just borrowed.”

Werner tugged at the jacket and I had to surrender it to him to inspect the workmanship. I quietly slipped my HK holster off and folded it away on a sideboard out of sight.

“He is so rude,” said Klara. “He has not even thanked you yet.”

“For what?” I asked.

“New business! Clients!” said Werner, temporarily leaving off examining the seams. “Ms. Kingslund came in with her friends. They all are wanting the same boots as yours.” He smiled and wagged his finger in the air, looking for all the world like Karl Marx lecturing students. “I told them that only you, only you, wear those, but I make for them their boots. Different, but very good.”

I laughed. I had given Werner’s contact details to Jen, but I’d completely forgotten about it. “It’s nothing, really. She just asked me about the boots when she saw me wearing them.”

“It is not nothing. It is something, when Ms. Kingslund and her friends are my clients, that is very much something.”

I shrugged and smiled.

“Why so busy, Amber?” said Klara.

“Well, I have a meeting this afternoon that’s important, and you wouldn’t believe it, but I have to buy a dress this morning. A client needs me to attend the charity ball this week.” I laughed. “I know it’s a cliché but I really don’t have anything.”

“The big charity ball? The McIntire-Harriman ball?” asked Werner.

I nodded. “Far too expensive for me, but the client has paid for the ticket.”

Werner and Klara exchanged a look, but before I could figure out what that was all about, I heard Emily’s footsteps above. I stood up and Klara reached out and squeezed my hand quickly, turning away so I couldn’t see the tears that came into her eyes. Exactly a year ago today, they would have been sitting here getting the news that Emily had been abducted.

I went up the stairs to the living room and met Emily coming down.

“Amber,” she squealed as she leaped on me. “I thought it was you I heard. Awesome.”

I chuckled and carried her a while.

“You’ve grown, Em,” I said, putting her down, but not letting go. “I won’t be able to carry you soon.”

“Yeah, you will. You could carry Dad.” She giggled at the image and burrowed her face against me, which muffled her voice. “Thanks for coming.”

“No problem at all, sugar.”

We stood there with our arms around each other and if she got comfort from it, I was happy, because so did I. It felt to me as if a strength flowed from her to me, not the other way around. In all the difficult, ambiguous things I’d done over the last few years, saving Emily was a beacon I felt I could point to and say,
that was simply right
. If there were Emilys to save, then there was a point and a purpose for me.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Mostly I’m good. Sometimes I have nightmares or I start thinking about it and it’s not good.” She sighed into my shirt. “I’m not strong like you.”

I snorted. “I don’t feel strong sometimes, Em. No one feels strong all the time.”

“You always seem like it though,” she said. “How did you get like that?”

“Well, let me see. When I was a little girl, I always ate the right food, I always kept my room tidy, I always did my homework neatly and I never answered back to a grown-up.”

I could feel her smiling. “What’s that smell?” she asked. “Dad must have bought a bull and put it in the backyard.”

I laughed. “That was a bad word you thought there, Emily Schumacher.”

“But I didn’t say it.” She looked up at me. “If I only think it and don’t actually say the word, it’s not so bad, is it?”

“Oh my God, that’s too difficult for me. You need to ask someone really smart that question. Ask me a simpler one.”

She didn’t say anything immediately, and we just enjoyed the hug. I bent my head over her and closed my eyes. There was a warm, citrus shampoo smell from her. I sighed; I needed to savor this while I could. There was no guarantee I would feel able to do this again if I became fully Athanate. Even if I felt able to do it, I didn’t know whether it was something that I would enjoy. I might need this memory for comfort later. Diana had said that Athanate do not give birth, and the way things were going, I knew I would never be able to hold a daughter of my own like this.

She leaned back and looked up at me with her wise child eyes. “Something bad has happened to you, Amber.”

My heart lurched. “No, I’m fine.”

“I hate it when grown-ups say that to me because they don’t want to tell me something.”

I sat us down on the sofa so that we were more on a level. “I’m sorry, Em. Bad things happen to everyone and that includes me.” I bit my lip. “Yes, some bad stuff has happened and I’m sure it’ll happen again in the future. Maybe, sometime, I won’t be able to be here. But I’ve just got to go on trying to do the right things while I can and trying not to worry about the things I can’t fix.”

Emily nodded and we hugged again.

“I think I would like to stop worrying about things I can’t fix and go in to school now,” she whispered into my shirt, and I ached inside.

I carried her downstairs on my back and Klara said she would take her in, but that she had to have something to eat first. She hurriedly made something healthy while Emily pulled faces behind her back.

I put the holster and jacket back on, feeling numb. Time to go.

But Werner took my arm. “Come. Come with me,” he said, grinning. “It may be you do not need to go shopping in the expensive places.”

Puzzled, I hugged Klara and Emily one last time and followed him out the door and down the street.

He guided me into a dressmaker’s shop and greeted the neat little lady who came out from behind the counter.

“Lisa, this is the lady I told you about on the phone. Amber, Lisa Macy.”

I shook her hand. Okay, this was a kind of a dress shop and I might as well start here as somewhere more expensive downtown, but I couldn’t wait for a dress to be made and off the rack had to be cheaper.

Lisa was small and quick in her movements. Having double checked what the dress was for, she walked around me a couple of times before disappearing into the back. I looked at Werner for an explanation, but he simply made a ‘be patient’ gesture with his beefy hand. I was starting to worry that he wanted to pay for a dress, which I was not about to allow.

Lisa came back with a bolt of material and some sketches. The material was a dark green silk and it looked beautiful. Lisa flipped through the sketches before handing me the pad.

“The best dress for you will be this style in the green silk. With a stole and gloves.”

She was a good artist, if she had drawn them, and if she could make me look like the woman in the picture, then she was a great seamstress. Or a magician.

“Oh, I love it,” I sighed. “I know I can’t afford it.”

They smiled. Werner stroked his beard and Lisa put her head in her hands in mock despair. “Amber, you’re striking, you’re tall and slim and you’re going to be at the McIntire-Harriman ball. Do you know how many designers would pay you to wear their dresses to that event?” Then she looked nervously at me from the side of her eyes. “I can’t pay you,” she said quietly.

She might have been speaking German for all the understanding I had of those statements.

“Look, Amber, I’ll make the dress for you by tomorrow night, no charge,” she said, misinterpreting my silence. “Please, just wear it at the ball and if anyone asks about the dress, give them my card. Then I put the dress in my shop window and hire a couple of extra workers to handle all the new business.”

After my mouth had practiced opening and closing I few times, I managed to say “Okay” and that was it. Lisa whirled around me taking measurements and Werner stood in the corner with his arms folded and grinned as if it was all a huge joke.

“And I,” he said, waving a finger as Lisa scribbled, “I will have some shoes for you. You must come here before the ball to try out.”

Lisa started pinning together rough cut test fabric and draping me with it. In less time than it would have taken to trawl the shops for something I probably couldn’t afford anyway, the most wonderful evening dress was starting to take shape. Presently, she hurried me into a changing room and had me strip so she could hang the tests on me.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Was I dreaming? “It’s all going to fall apart as the clock strikes midnight, isn’t it?”

They laughed. From the sound, I knew Werner was laughing with his head thrown back. Lisa was laughing carefully, with a mouthful of pins, never stopping as she worked around me.

Chapter 32

The cell bleeping caught me as I was about to fall asleep. My afternoon meeting at the coffee shop with Geoff Hansen, formerly of the Kingslund Group’s Central Finance department, had been good and I had gotten what I needed, but ending it was proving difficult, even after I’d paid the check.

It was Tullah. “Amber, it’s me, I’m sorry, I need help,” she said. Her voice sounded strained and panicky.

“Hold a moment,” I replied.

“Geoff, thanks very much for your time,” I said, standing up. “I have an emergency here.” We shook and I grabbed my bag and walked. At that point, I was thinking of debt collectors or a leaking pipe.

“Okay, Tullah,” I said as soon as I was outside. “What’s up?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve messed up. I’m at Mykayla’s house.”

I plugged in my ear piece and started running for the car. “I’m on my way. Keep talking to me.”

“I couldn’t get an answer and then the phone was disconnected. It’s just down the road.” She stopped and I could feel her steeling herself. “They beat her up, Amber. She’s hurt, she’s really hurt.”

“Who did?”

“I think it’s that gang you’ve been looking into, ZK. Amber, I think they’re coming back.”

I slid into the seat and started the car. It was lucky I had agreed to meet Geoff at the Café Vienne near the Cherry Creek shopping center and I was only about ten minutes away from Tullah. I could shave minutes off that.

“Keep talking, Tullah. Have you called the police?”

“No. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to get them involved. I’m sorry.” She was so good at her job, I kept forgetting she was just a college kid and she felt totally out of her depth now.

“Stop saying sorry, Tullah. It’s going to be fine. I’ll be there in less than ten. Have you got your car?”

“No, I walked along the Canal Trail. It’s so close.”

“Okay. How badly hurt are we talking? Do you think Mykayla can be moved?”

“Uh, I think so. I don’t think they damaged her spine or anything, but she’s got wounds everywhere. She’s passed out now.”

I clenched my teeth and felt anger take over from the worry. Colorado Boulevard was moving quickly, but not quickly enough. I downshifted and passed a couple of cars on the inside before switching back to the outside. What if the traffic got worse?

“Have you phoned your mother?”

“Yes. She didn’t answer. I left her a message.”

I took the slip road for I-25.

“Okay, I’m there in five, Tullah. Keep a lookout while you tell me why you think they’re coming back.”