11. Strange Odors Come to Me
It was late afternoon of the next day when she finally got back to the house in the Capital. Ex-Prime Minister Voorhees had come to her rescue, providing not only a car and driver, but taking care of the press as well, doing his best "indignant elder statesman" act and shaming them for hounding an "emotionally devastated young woman". He really was a master. Her father had never come. She waved to the guard at the front gate and walked up to the door. It was very quiet. It was Wednesday, of course! And the household staff left early. Wednesdays she and her father always went out in the evening, either together or separately. But going out was the last thing she wanted to do now. She hoped she could find a sandwich, heck, she hoped she could find a key. No, she'd just go in from the back. There was a set of French doors that you could unlatch if you jiggled them just so.
Though the white columned façade of the house had still been sunny, the garden at the back was already cast in shadow. She moved hastily to the third set of doors and was about to commence her "break-in" when she heard something, or felt something or… she wasn't sure what that was, but something was there. She slowly turned around and peered, past the veranda, past the burbling fountain and the flowerbeds, toward the willows at the rear of the garden. It was there she saw him.
Now Lucia knew that she had magical powers. A powerful, troublesome, adversary attacks and is struck dead. A long, lost, dream is wished for, and it appears! He was exactly as she had remembered him, impossibly tall, impossibly slim… impossibly beautiful. He still wore his hair long, like the knights in romans courtois, but unbound. No fighting man could wear his hair free like that, but Illumi wasn't that kind of fighter was he? No face offs across a field of honor. He struck an unprepared opponent, unexpectedly from the shadows. And it slowly dawned on her that that was where he was right now… or had been, because between one thought and the next, he was beside her. "We should go inside, Miss VerHoffen."
It wasn't a dream. In her dreams he never called her Miss VerHoffen. She shook open the door and they entered the solarium. She noticed a table moved to the middle of the room, where it would stand out. On it was a huge floral display, a magnum of champagne in a cooler, an iced bowl of caviar, and an envelope. She took out the note:
My Darling Daughter,
Here's a little something to help you celebrate. The food riots caused by the drought in the Eastern Provinces have gotten worse and I won't be able to celebrate with you. Please know that my thoughts are with you and I am so proud and happy to be
Your Loving Father
Now that didn't sound right. The drought was six months ago, and the last riot at least three weeks ago. Had he just wanted to avoid seeing Dewalt's gloating face? He needn't have worried. It just didn't make sense; it stunk like three-day-old fish. In fact, she could actually smell the rotten fish now. Ugh, the caviar! The ice had melted in the formerly sunny room and it now reeked. "Please pardon me, Illu- Mr. Zaoldyeck. I have to take care of this." She dashed to the powder room under the stairs and dumped it in the toilet. She rinsed the bowl three times in the sink. It was still rank. She grabbed a handful of potpourri from the counter and tossed it in, leaving the bowl. Then she went out and closed the door behind her. She suddenly was reminded of Mike's breath and giggled. Maybe Illumi's beauty was balanced by fate with foul odors. Well, it was worth enduring then! And speaking of "Mr. Zaoldyeck"…time for "Miss VerHoffen" to find out what was going on.
"Sorry about that. The champagne seems relatively undamaged. Will you pour, or shall I?" There were about a dozen glasses on an adjacent table, another anomaly. Father didn't expect her to come home alone? He expected her to bring the rival Party's party back here? Illumi hadn't made a move, so she pulled the bottle from the cool water. Illumi took it then, adroitly removing the foil and metal cage and popping the cork. It looked like he was good at this. He was probably good at everything. She giggled again. She hadn't had any sleep for over forty-eight hours and had only eaten half a stale donut in around thirty, so some might think it would be unwise to consume champagne before attempting to interrogate an assassin, but if you couldn't be incautious after having the biggest victory of your career, watching a man murdered in front of you, smuggling evidence out of a police station, being suddenly visited by the man you've pined over for a decade, and receiving strange uncharacteristic notes from your Dad, when could you? Lucia felt indestructible!
She grabbed a glass and held it out to him. Illumi paused, "Miss VerHoffen, do you-"
And she was going to stop that right now. "Please, call me Lucia," she interrupted; gesturing with the glass, "and I will call you…" Here she paused, stepping closer to him. She saw his eyes widen infinitesimally as he filled her glass. "…whatever you wish!" She turned away to hide her laugh. Getting this information was going to be fun. A man was killed in her arms and less than twenty-four hours later; there was an assassin in her solarium. These events could not possibly be unrelated.
"I have no wishes or preference."
Well, that was no fun. And he wasn't drinking. Lucia put down her glass; picked up the bottle that Illumi had put down and filled another glass, shoving it toward him as she said, "No preference, no preference at all?" He was holding the glass, but he still wasn't drinking. She put the bottle back, picked up her own glass again and continued on petulantly as she drank and paced back and forth in front of him, "What if I wanted to call you Clarence…or Marie? How about Hey You…or Grumpy Pants?"
"I know!" She stopped pacing and stood toe to toe with him. "I'll just call you Pin Boy!" At that name she dropped the pin into her hand and raised her arm simultaneously, using another of the card tricks picked up as a kid, like the one she had used to conceal it in the first place. The pin was now held in her curved hand between her first and second finger, ball and cylinder on top and spike hanging down her palm, and around her wrist…Illumi's hand, holding her in a firm, unbreakable, though not uncomfortable grip. She hadn't seen him move, of course. She had wanted to startle him. To make him think she knew more than she did, so that he would tell her what he knew, but now he was staring hard at her. And his eyes hadn't widened… they'd narrowed. She may have overplayed her hand.
