A/N: Some strong language. Also sometimes I have to remember I have a plot to develop here, when I'd just prefer to stick with the B&W exchanges and maybe the W&D exchanges too. So the plot creaks along. . . .
She had four hours before she needed to get up for the flight to New York. There was the time she needed to shower, to drive to Rapid City, and then to wait, bored, sleepy, and probably hungover once again, in the gate area until she was allowed to board. But North by Northwest was on, and though she had seen it many times before, she always liked to watch through to the end. She reached for the plastic cup on the nightstand next to her. She had gone to a proper liquor store this time rather than ordering off the room service menu, but she couldn't say that the quality was much better. Most likely because the liquor store was the hotel's supplier, this was Univille, after all. Some part of her was arguing that if she turned off the tv, she might eventually sleep for an hour or two. Another part of her countered that if she turned the tv off, she would be staring into the darkness for the two or three hours it took her to fall asleep. If she had to stare at something, whether or not she ever slept, she would rather stare at beautiful people. So North by Northwest to the bitter end, then.
He was quite beautiful, Cary Grant. She wondered if it had been an effort for him, in his mid-50s, to project such youthfulness, such lightness, to seem years younger than his contemporary, James Mason, and to carry off the illusion that he was the contemporary of Eva Marie Saint, although he was 20 years older. Had it been a matter of discipline, taking the same care he had so obviously applied to his appearance and applying it to his frame of mind? Had he evaluated his emotional equilibrium with the same professional concern he must have brought to watching his weight? They weren't all that dissimilar, the two of them, though she would grant him an edge, albeit a small one, when it came to attractiveness. Both expatriates, both of an ambiguous sexuality (whatever that meant), both caught between two worlds. He would have had to strive for humble beginnings, yet through some combination of persistence, good looks, and luck (the contribution of each to his success unknowable and impossible to replicate), he had thrust himself into a world vastly different from the one he had been born into. He had adopted a new name, a new accent, and an almost constant expression of wry amusement, as if he wasn't sure that the world he now claimed as his own had been worth the abandonment of the other. With the grace and agility of the acrobat he had been, he tried to balance himself between the two, suggesting that the abyss separating them could be bridged. But of the many things she had been, an acrobat wasn't one of them. She didn't know how to walk a high wire, couldn't juggle knives in the air. There had never been comical drops to the floor for her, designed to make the world laugh, only dreadful collapses that had threatened to bring the world tumbling after her.
She wasn't Cary Grant. She was Leo G. Carroll, the elderly Professor, scrambling to keep up with him.
In the glow of the nightstand's light (why was hotel lighting always both too dim and too bright?), she saw the folder she had brought with her from Myka's perched precariously on the corner of the bed. She had actually read it through, which would doubtless stun Myka and had left her feeling only slightly less surprised. The information on Afton's friends had turned out to be more interesting than she had anticipated, resulting in numerous calls to Claudia and extensive log-in time on her own laptop. After much grumbling about "some people's expectations that she would be at their beck and call," which would have made Artie proud had he been there to hear her, Claudia was able to provide the information Helena sought. When Helena had then asked her to print some financial statements for her, adding, as she thought, helpfully, that they should be packaged in a professional style that would be suitable for a presentation, Claudia had let loose a howl of indignation about how "some people needed to realize they weren't ordering around a junior agent but the frakking caretaker." Nevertheless, a portfolio had been produced, which was perched precariously on the opposite corner of the bed.
As she watched Cary Grant sidle up to the windows of Vandamm's Mount Rushmore hideout, which had her simultaneously wishing such a property behind the presidents' heads existed and recalling that, with a generous allowance for exaggeration, Myka could be considered to have a Mount Rushmore-area hideaway, Helena heard a faint noise at the door. She heard it again and realized that it was a very tentative knock. With an exasperated sigh, she rolled off the bed and looked through the peephole.
"You decided to knock this time?" She demanded of Claudia as she opened the door.
Claudia shrugged and stretched out on the other side of the bed, pulling a Tesla from the waistband of her jeans and setting it down on the matching nightstand. "For you."
"I thought I couldn't have one," Helena said, as she joined Claudia on the bed, sending both folders to the floor. At least she would know where they were in the morning.
"You couldn't have one that the DHS knows about. This is my own personal illicit Tesla, and you have to promise not to use it unless you absolutely have to." Her dark eyes narrowed in what Helena supposed she was to assume was a look of great significance. Claudia elaborated. "You and Myka have to be on the verge of dying. That means blood on the floor, H.G."
"All right," Helena sighed.
"Spit and pinky promise," Claudia warned, licking her pinky finger and crooking it toward Helena.
Helena looked with disdain at Claudia's finger. "I'm not Pete. You'll have to be satisfied with my word. I will use the Tesla only as a last resort."
Claudia wiped her finger on her jeans. She pulled the pillows Helena wasn't using from underneath the bedspread and crammed them behind her head. "North by Northwest. High-waisted pants, Brylcreemed hair, and some really cheesy Freudian metaphors, like the train going through a tunnel when Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are getting it on. Not my groove." She sat up and reached for the remote. "Mind if I change channels?"
Helena drank her wine. "Feel free."
Claudia clicked through a few channels. "You weren't in your room this morning. Your bed wasn't slept in."
"There are so many things I could say to that." Helena arched one eyebrow disapprovingly. "But I'll settle for asking why you were here."
"To let you know that when you and Myka come back from New York, and assuming you haven't solved our problem, you're moving into the B&B. If you're on the Warehouse's dime, excuse me, the DHS's dime, you'll have to leave these palatial digs," Claudia lazily waved an arm at the room, "and rub elbows with us commoners."
"I thought I was on my own dime, which, without going into detail, buys me much more than your dime." Helena held out her almost empty wine bottle toward Claudia. "Drink? There are more plastic cups in the bathroom."
Claudia adjusted her pillows, rolling closer to Helena. "It's too late in the evening or, conversely, too early in the morning for me. But, H.G., really, drinking alone? In this crappy hotel room? It brings you down in my estimation."
"Heartbroken," Helena said offhandedly. "You haven't yet explained to me why I'm being sentenced to the B&B."
"Cause the longer you're here looking like you're sightseeing, and God knows Univille has precious little worth seeing, the more suspicious people are going to become. And then I'm going to get a call from a bureaucrat asking me why you're hanging around a government facility." Claudia wriggled even closer, the side of her head touching Helena's shoulder. "So Jane and I have sold the DHS on the story that you're an efficiency expert we've hired. And how efficient is it if our efficiency expert stays in Univille?" Working her head onto Helena's shoulder, Claudia mused, "They count the number of pencils we buy, but when we say we're hiring a consultant, the sky's the limit. Gotta love the government." She stopped the remote on a channel featuring some sort of reality show, which, being indistinguishable from a hundred other reality shows, confirmed Helena's belief that insanity was not doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result but watching one reality show after another and remaining convinced that everyone was intrinsically interesting. "Soooo," Claudia said, "did you bag Myka your first evening together? Because if you did, then I have to decide whether I'm going to hit you or hug you."
Helena awkwardly drew her head to the side trying to see Claudia's face. It was hard to tell from her voice whether she was joking. "Tell me which one you're leaning toward, and I'll tell you whether I did."
Claudia nudged her in the ribs with an elbow. "Eh, you were probably sacked out on her couch. No way Myka is going to give it up to you on the first night." She shifted, pressing herself tighter into Helena's side. "But she will, if you stick around long enough. She's been waiting for you, H.G. She'd die before she'd admit it, even to herself, but it's true."
Helena wrapped her arm around Claudia. She would lay with Christina like this, reading to her or watching her sleep. Literally a hundred years ago, and she hadn't let a head rest on her shoulder since. Not in this familial way, at any rate. She had forgotten how tactile Claudia was, draping herself over Pete and, at times, Myka, clinging to their backs like a baby monkey, and Claudia was small enough that Pete had sometimes left her on his back when he went into the B&B's kitchen foraging for snacks. Helena had always imagined him feeding her as he searched the cupboards, passing chips and cookies to her over his shoulder.
"You greatly exaggerate the nature of our relationship," Helena said softly into Claudia's hair. "And she has a boyfriend, who rather resembles Pete."
"Just proof that it's going nowhere," Claudia grunted. "Funny, Steve figured it out first, even before they did, but then you couldn't miss it." She scrunched her shoulders together in a tiny shudder, and Helena fought the impulse to stroke her hair and kiss her head, just as she used to do when Christina shivered from the cold or a stray, scary thought. "Boone tore her up, H.G., and then the cancer scare. I told you about that, right?" She took Helena's silence as confirmation. "She was at a really weak point, and Pete was there. That was as far as I ever cared to examine it." She picked at the bedspread. "It was like Greg and Marcia hooking up, not that they had their tongues down each other's throat in front of us or were doing it in the B&B all the time. They were just . . . gone when they had always been around before. They'd come back late at night or at breakfast. Artie didn't care, and Abigail thought it was cute. Even Mrs. F. approved. Steve is so zen, he just thought the world would expand to encompass it. I was the only one who saw how axis-tilting wrong it was."
Claudia was as aggrieved as if she had walked in on Pete and Myka yesterday, and Helena didn't resist the impulse, this time, to kiss the side of her head. Claudia's losses had been as great as her own and even more undeserved. She clung to her Warehouse family still, stubbornly living in the old B&B even in the midst of the "new" one, and it wasn't surprising that she would have seen Pete and Myka's desire to create their own family within the larger one as a betrayal. "They had been friends, close friends, for many years, and partners, of course," Helena attempted gently. "Why Greg and Marcia? Why not Scully and Mulder, or Chandler and Monica?"
"Have you spent the entire ten years watching Netflix?" Claudia cried. "You're sounding less H.G.-like and more like, I dunno, some middle-aged cat lady who spends her nights in front of the tv."
Take away the cat, and Claudia wasn't that far off. Helena was jostled as Claudia suddenly leaned up, propping herself on her elbows. "I used to think there were two things you didn't know shit about, H.G. But maybe there're three. You." She poked Helena in the ribs. "Myka, and now I'm adding family dynamics." Her face taking on a determined cast, she pushed herself to a sitting position, crossing her legs. "I was just a kid when you came to the Warehouse, and I didn't know Myka all that well back then, but even I knew she was practically begging you to make a move on her."
"I'd hardly call some late night conversations about literature a come-on."
"They are in the Mykaverse. And you would have seen it, if you hadn't been so dead set on skewering the world with your trident, like it was a cocktail weenie or something. Pete was her big brother, her safety net, but you, you were trouble, you came in all Wuthering Heights-like with your tragic history and that black mane of yours and your brooding. She was gone. All that self-control, all that 'follow the rules' and 'read the manual,' it went out the window." Claudia was smiling, although her voice still sounded plaintive. "How can you not see that you still have that effect on her, even after all this time? No one tells Mrs. F. to essentially shut up, but Myka did, because she thought that Mrs. F. was attacking you."
Helena was remembering Myka saying to her last night that she was a circus, and she shook her head. She wanted to put her hand over Claudia's mouth and push the words back in, not because she believed them but because she was afraid she would want to. "Myka always defends the underdog, and, darling, when it comes to the Warehouse, there is no bigger underdog than I. Or perhaps I mean to say that there is no one more in the doghouse than I. Plus she has that great slavering brute at home, which, now that I think about it, also resembles Pete." At Claudia's look of confusion, Helena spread her hands. "Myka and dogs of any kind, she seems to have a soft spot for them, that's all I'm trying to say. I wouldn't read anything into what she said at the meeting."
"Whatever." Clauda uncrossed her legs and swung them off the side of the bed. She stood, shaking the legs of her jeans until they once more covered the tops of her high-tops. "I love Drew to death, but that marriage never should've happened." Sweeping her hair away from her face, she said, "Myka wanted the divorce, you know."
"Was Pete cheating on her?" Now it was Helena's turn to pluck at the bedspread.
"Not that I know of. They seemed to be getting along fine, and the next thing you know, Pete's back in the B&B, and Myka and Drew are in Rapid City." Claudia hesitated and when Helena stopped her pulling at the bedspread to look up at her, she saw that the eyes - and the expression - were serious, focused, adult. For the first time, Helena began to wonder if the cuddling, the talk about Myka's feelings had been orchestrated, as if Claudia had known what chords to touch in her and had played them, all with the goal of binding her ever more firmly to the job at hand. Her suspicion wasn't lessened by Claudia's next words. "Whatever happens between the two of you, it can't screw up what we're doing here. Stopping the replication, that has to come first."
"Thus the caretaker spoke," and though Helena tried to say it lightly, she couldn't quite keep a note of wounded vanity from her voice.
"I wasn't playing you, H.G.," Claudia said, and Helena wanted to laugh at how their roles had reversed, Claudia was the one explaining something Helena didn't want to hear. "Not completely, anyway. The Warehouse always has to come first for me. But I have missed you like hell. And what I was saying about Myka, all true. She's waiting for you, but you fucked with her, and you can't just charm or win her back. You're going to have to earn her back."
"What happened to 'frak,' darling?" Those were old eyes staring at her, older than Claudia, older than Mrs. Frederic.
"I'm a big girl now, H.G. I can whip out the obscenities when I feel they're needed, and I need you to know that you deeply, deeply messed with her."
"I thought you said I came back for the sake of the Warehouse. Now you're saying I came back for Myka. What if I just came back? And when this little mission is over, I very well may go away again." Helena wasn't angry, but she wanted to push back. The space she created between herself and the Warehouse ten years ago might be arid and desolate, but it was her space nonetheless, and she would determine when she was tired of living in it, not Claudia, not Mrs. Frederic, and not the Warehouse.
"See? That's a perfect example of you not knowing yourself. Myka and the Warehouse, they're one and the same to you." Claudia sucked in her cheeks. "I wish I could love someone that much, but I can't. The Warehouse is my ol' ball and chain." Yet she didn't seem truly regretful. "You don't even realize it, do you? How much you love her." She glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and then gave Helena a mock sympathetic grin. "Aw, you're gonna have to get up in a couple of hours. I should let you get some sleep."
"Before you disappear into the ether or whatever it is you do, since you seem to think you know me better than I know myself, tell me why you kept communicating with me, even when I wouldn't respond."
"For one thing, it's called a Mini-Cooper, and it's parked in the lot," Claudia said. "As for the other, I kept at it precisely because you didn't respond. If you had ever once written me back, saying 'Gosh, it's great to hear from you, keep sending the pics,' I would have said, 'Fuck you,' and you wouldn't have heard from me again. Because you would have worked through whatever it is you're working through and come out on the other side and not needed us anymore. We'd be like those people you meet up with at class reunions and are all 'Call me' with and then forget the next day. And if you had ever said, 'Don't send me anything anymore. Don't e-mail me. Don't try to call,' I wouldn't have. Because you would still be so deep in your shit that you weren't ever coming out. But the silence? It meant I had a chance, that you had a chance. Don't go ruining it again, H.G."
Myka was waiting for her at the gate, a small roller at her feet and a frown on her face. "You're late. They're practically ready to shut the door."
A little dismayed by how out of breath she was simply by hurrying through the small, very small, Rapid City airport, Helena made a mental note to increase her exercise regimen before turning a sunny smile on Myka. "But they haven't, so turn that frown upside down and let's go take our seats."
Myka shoved her in the shoulder then, just as she would have Pete in the old days, and took Helena's sunglasses off her face. "Your eyes are bloodshot. You were drinking last night and overslept." She handed back the sunglasses. "Do I need to worry that you're developing a substance abuse problem?"
"The only abuse of concern here is the abuse of my sensibilities by Univille. Darling, it's a wonder that I don't drink more," Helena said, flashing an equally sunny smile at the gate attendant, who was unmoved as she twisted her phone to be read by the scanner. "But if it's of any comfort to you, I intend to remain drink-free on the flight. And just so you know, I misjudged the time it would take to get to the airport, I did not oversleep."
She had been awake when the alarm had rung at 4:00. She hadn't slept once Claudia had left, and getting out of bed, taking a shower, and repacking her few items in her carry-on had seemed efforts she was trying to accomplish underwater, leagues underwater. It had exhausted her lifting her arms to shave, and when she had finally forced herself from the shower, where she had perhaps fallen asleep for a few minutes, and lurched back into the room, she had stood transfixed in front of the mirror that hung slightly aslant on the wall.. Her white streak looked wider or maybe just whiter. Her mother had grayed the same way, first a single streak just past her left temple, then more until, for awhile, she had resembled a lhasa apso. Eventually the color had resolved itself into a white that looked rinsed with steel, rather an imposing color Helena had found and suited to the domestic tyrant her mother had become. She had never thought she resembled her mother other than in her coloring; her features had been her father's. But the older she grew, the more she saw the likeness. She wondered briefly, very briefly, whom Christina would have grown to resemble. Her daughter had shared her dark eyes and hair, but there had been a squareness about her jaw that wasn't from the Wells' side. Perhaps it had come from Christina's father, a quick-witted, ambitious M.P. from Yorkshire, who had had a tangential relationship to an artefact Helena was pursuing. Their affair, if it could be called such, had lasted a few weeks until his engagement to the daughter of a prominent family was announced, and then with no real regret on either side, it had ended. It was futile to imagine whom Christina would have taken after, whose traits she would have exemplified; she had died an eight-year-old girl whose greatest desire had been to live in a large house with her mama and scores of bunny rabbits and kittens. Helena had thrown her towel over the mirror.
Myka led her to their seats. Helena had been used to flying first class for the past several years, but she knew better than to complain as Myka shuffled sideways to the window seat and almost immediately inserted ear buds into her ears. No conversation to pass the time on this flight. Awkwardly extracting the portfolio of financial statements from her satchel, Helena passed it to Myka, who quirked an eyebrow at her and lifted an ear bud away from her ear. "I need you to have a nodding acquaintance with this information by the time of the meeting," Helena said. "It's our cover story."
"It better be good since our meeting's at 3:00. We won't have a lot of time once we land to decide on a plan of action." Myka placed the folder on her lap.
"I moved it to 4:30," Helena said. "I need to go to my loft, and there, in relative comfort and privacy, we can discuss how we're going to approach Mr. Sheffield and Mr. Bergstrom."
"Thanks for letting me know you're taking over," Myka said dryly, reinserting the ear bud but also opening the folder.
"I promised that I would come up with the cover story, and I never fail on the small things," Helena said.
Myka smiled in acknowledgment at the allusion. "Not so small. They're our best chance for finding out more about the new artefacts. We need something to get them to open up." Her smile dipping sardonically, she added, "Something that won't get us arrested."
"Darling, the commissioner of the SEC is one of my clients. Were we to have impersonated investigative staff from his office, I'm confident I could have traded on our relationship to keep you from serving substantial jail time."
"You're such a bullshitter," Myka said, but the smile was in her voice too.
Although it felt like her tray table was wedged against her diaphragm, thanks to the person sitting in the row ahead of her who decided to move his seat back, Helena managed to sleep on the flight to Chicago. She put a pillow behind her neck and stretched her feet around her satchel, but when she woke, her head was on Myka's shoulder. At least there wasn't a wet patch where her cheek was resting, and, other than having her neck craned at a somewhat uncomfortable angle, Myka seemed oblivious to her presence. When Helena lifted her head, muttering an embarrassed "Sorry," Myka opened the portfolio between them and stabbed at a statement. "You need to explain this," she said in utter seriousness.
"I will," Helena said. "Later."
The flight to New York was no less crowded or uncomfortable, but Helena read a book on her laptop to fight off sleep. As she limped up the jetway to the gate, her knees feeling so stiff she feared they might lock, she watched Myka stride springily ahead of her and promised herself that she would fly first class back, happily paying the difference in price herself.
During the cab ride to her home, Helena observed Myka's constant twisting of her head as she tried to take in all the views the cab windows offered. Finally noticing how Helena was watching her with amusement, Myka shrugged and said with an embarrassed grin, "Hey, I'm just a tourist whenever I come here." She practically pressed her nose against the window. "Where are we going?"
"Brooklyn." At Myka's surprised look, Helena said, with mock horror, "Imagine my distress when my agent said he had a loft for me here. The last time I had been in Brooklyn was 1889. If only I had thought to snap up real estate then."
Her loft was in a rather nondescript former warehouse and occupied the entire top floor. Helena felt more than a little trepidation as Myka followed her in. It wasn't that milk was souring in the refrigerator or that weeks-old magazines and newspapers were littering the furniture, Helena was never in the loft frequently enough for either to be a problem. Plus she had a cleaning service that came once a week whether she was there or not. It was that the loft looked so obviously unlived in, so clearly decorated by professionals - so hotel-room like.
"So. . . cavernous," Myka said finally. She flushed. "I'm sorry -"
"Don't apologize," Helena interrupted her. "It's an address, that's its purpose."
Myka had wandered over to the windows that faced the city skyline. She had taken her shoes off at the door, and she was curling her toes into the deep pile of the area rug. Behind her were loveseats and a few chairs, all in the off-white tones that were the dominant color schemes; Helena wasn't terribly fond of white, or any variation thereof. It reminded her of coroners' offices and burial shrouds, and she had seen enough of both. But she had given the designers a free hand, and she didn't care enough about the loft to hire another team to redecorate. That would be tantamount to suggesting that she might make the loft a home.
"Spectacular view," Myka was saying. "You must show it off to all your guests."
"You're my first guest." Myka looked at her disbelievingly. "I don't bring people here," Helena said.
"Not even your girlfriend?"
"She's not my girlfriend." Perhaps because being in the loft always made her irritable, its space, its furnishings, its very whiteness a reproach to her for not living in it, for not putting dimples in the cushions and the occasional mark on the walls, or perhaps because it was Myka who was privy to all that the loft told about her, none of it good, Helena said brusquely, "We fuck, and that's the extent of our relationship. We don't call, we don't text. The only understanding we have is that there is no understanding."
Myka's eyes widened, but she didn't immediately respond. She cocked her head, her gaze measuring Helena and then she smiled in understanding. "You hunt, but you don't bring your prey to your lair. I guess that's one way to conduct your social life."
"It's less messy that way." Helena headed toward a small winding staircase at the side of the room that led to her bedroom on the upper level. "I'm going to take a shower and wash away the stain of air travel. There's water of various kinds in the refrigerator, none past its expiration date, I believe. Help yourself." She saw that Myka had turned back toward the view. "You're welcome to stay here, if you'd like. I have a guest room."
"Thanks, but I'm fine with the place the DHS puts us in midtown. I may take you up on the water, though."
Myka was still in front of the windows when Helena finished her second shower of the day. She held a bottle of water, which she nearly dropped when Helena, leaning over the railing, called to her to come upstairs. Looking down at herself, Helena realized that she was only in a bra and panties. She hadn't given it a thought when she had decided that she wanted Myka's opinion on what to wear to the meeting with Dwight Sheffield and Russ Bergstrom. They had shared hotel rooms and more than once changed together in the car; the B&B, with its shared second floor bathroom, had hardly promoted modesty. "I need your opinion on the least professional outfit I can get away with wearing."
"Least professional?" Myka's voice managed to rise above the muted ringing of the metal staircase under her feet.
"Claudia did give you a copy of the additional information I requested on Sheffield and Bergstrom, did she not?" Helena said from in front of her custom-made wall-length wardrobe.
"Yes, but. . . ." The glance Myka flashed at her skipped over her quickly and landed on the excessively large bed. That also seemed to make her uncomfortable, and she went to stand at the railing, three-quarters turned away from Helena. She tapped it a few times in an uneven rhythm before she let her breath out in a dismayed sigh. "You think the artefact's properties have changed."
"Transmuted, yes, into another form of luck." Helena took a skirt suit from the wardrobe. "I wasn't struck by the type of investments they were having success with, I was struck by the type of clubs they were visiting and how frequently." She held the skirt, which was very short, against her waist. "What do you think of this one, with this blouse?" She reached back into the wardrobe and pulled out a long-sleeved crimson silk blouse with a plunging neckline, holding it against her chest.
Myka's eyes first roamed over her face, lighting on her lips and the fall of her hair against her cheek. Then she appraised the clothing. "That should get their attention," she said quietly.
Helena flung them over the top of one of the wardrobe's open doors. "Three months ago, Dwight Sheffield lived with his wife and three children in Greenwich, Connecticut. Four weeks ago, his wife filed separation papers, and he's living in a Manhattan condo. Three months ago he hadn't visited a single one of the clubs he haunts now. Some I've been to, and others I know of by their reputation. They're meat markets, some a bit more meaty than others, if you get my drift."
"Afton, who had the original artefact, the dice, got lucky, for awhile, with investments. Sheffield has a replicated artefact, and you think he's getting lucky the old-fashioned way. And Bergstrom looks to be doing the same."
"Stands to reason. He's a bachelor, if I remember correctly." Helena was holding up the other skirt against her waist; it was gray, rather than black, and, although longer, it had a side slit that would expose most of her thigh. She also held up another blouse. "What about this, darling?" The blouse didn't button; it had three decorative chains that would loosely close it over her chest. "Too much?"
"It depends on the reaction you're looking for," Myka temporized. "You can't wear a bra with that blouse."
"That's why they invented breast tape," Helena said slyly. "At my age, you can't let the girls run free."
Her glance again sliding away from Helena, Myka sat gingerly on the bed. "What age are you trying to pass for these days?"
"Fortyish." Helena paused. "Do I look older? I've been debating about coloring my hair, but I don't want to look like I upended a coal scuttle over my head." She shivered. "I want to appear as naturally fortyish as a woman who's 148 can be."
"Don't worry," Myka said. "Most people would take you for younger than 'fortyish,' even with the white streak." She leaned back, balancing on her hands. "I'd suggest going with the black suit and red blouse. You don't want Sheffield and Bergstrom too distracted."
"Am I distracting, darling?" Helena grinned as she slipped on the skirt and partially zipped it.
"You don't have to try to vamp them," Myka said, not answering her. "We can come up with another angle."
"You've seen their pictures. Not the most prepossessing of specimens," Helena said dismissively. "They're not likely to give up their artefacts willingly, so I figured one of us needed to set up a honey trap of sorts."
"Helena, you have no idea of the power of the artefacts they have, especially if some of the properties are new." Myka raised one hand to tug at her hair, her forehead crinkling.
"We'll meet with them, show them the financial statements of the 'investors' we represent, and, with any luck, I'll be able to inveigle one of them into taking me out to dinner. While I'm at dinner fending off Mr. Sheffield's or Mr. Bergstrom's advances, you'll be searching his home, his office, wherever we think he might have information on the people behind this." Helena opened one of the drawers in the bureau next to the bed and took out another bra. "You may want to avert your eyes, darling. I'm about to give your modesty another jolt." She began to unhook the bra she was wearing. "Or you can finally give way to the prurience you've denying all these years and take a peek. I won't tell."
Myka rolled her eyes before turning her head to the side. "This isn't wise, Helena. I wouldn't be in a position to help you if something went wrong."
"The worst thing I can think of happening is that I would fall under the influence of the artefact and sleep with him." Helena adjusted her bra. "There," she said with satisfaction, "all tucked in."
Myka looked up. "Jesus, I think pasties show less." She quickly turned her head to the side again, her cheeks pinking.
"They're called plunge bras for a reason. And it wouldn't be the first time that I sacrificed my virtue, what there is of it, on the altar of the Warehouse or country." At Myka's appalled expression, Helena said impatiently, "Not while I was with 13, darling, 12. You know, Rule Britannia, God save the queen, and all that rubbish." She walked back to the wardrobe and put on the blouse. "I'm back to being barely respectable."
As Myka slowly and warily pivoted on the bed to face her, Helena was twirling her fingers at her. "Now we have to take care of you."
"Me?"
"I can't have you outshine me," Helena protested, shrugging on the jacket. She heard Myka's snort of derision as she searched the bottom of her wardrobe for the appropriate pair of heels. "Don't tell me that after all these years, you still don't know how stunning you are. You took my breath away the first time I saw you." Shouting it from the bowels of a closet didn't leave her feeling nearly as vulnerable as saying it face to face would have.
Myka, not surprisingly, took it as another joke, another exaggeration. "That explains why you left Pete and me stuck to the ceiling in London," she said wryly.
"I needed time to recover." Helena felt a twinge of disappointment that Myka hadn't taken her seriously. More matter of factly, she said, "You'll need to wash your make-up off, and please tell me that you brought your glasses with you."
"They're in my bag downstairs."
"Good. You'll need to wear them." Moving closer, she stretched out her hand to touch Myka's hair. Myka tilted her head up and looked warily into her eyes. Her heart unaccountably beginning to pound, Helena fingered the strands, lightly pulling on a curl. The very few fantasies of Myka she had ever allowed herself, they had begun like this, her hands in Myka's hair. But the Myka of her fantasies had been swaying toward her, eyes closed, much like the overcome ingenues in old-fashioned romances, Helena realized with a flash of embarrassment, which was not at all what the real Myka was doing. The real Myka was already preparing a skeptical reception for whatever Helena had to suggest next, leaning back more on her hands, eyes narrowing. Myka, at least, recognized that she was on an assignment. This was business. Her hand arrowing straight to her own head once it disentangled from Myka's hair, as if that had been its target all along, Helena said, "You'll need to pull it back, as messily as possible. I have clips, if you need them."
Myka laughed. "If you wanted me to return to my high school days, you should have just told me. Am I playing Betty to your Veronica?"
"Far frumpier than that, darling. You need to be Velma to my Daphne." At Myka's look of surprise, she said, "Those Saturday morning cartoons Pete insisted on watching, a few of them filtered through." Unable to resist the mock dig, she added, "The government-sanctioned slacks and blazer you're wearing aren't quite Velma's turtleneck sweater, but they'll do."
Another roll of the eyes, but Myka rose and washed her face, clipped back her hair, leaving a hank of curls to spill over the clip, and replaced her contacts with her glasses, which were no longer the plastic-frame monstrosities she used to wear. They were smaller, slimmer, squarer, and, in combination with the business suit, gave her the look of an ambitious college intern. Not sexy but impossibly cute. Suppressing a groan, Helena wondered if it would just be easier to put a bag over her head, her own, not Myka's.
Myka completed a sardonic, half-pirouette. "Do I meet with your satisfaction?"
"Always," Helena said as casually as she could.
"You are going to bring Claudia's Tesla with you." Myka used the same tone she might use to remind Drew not to forget his homework.
"Darling, it'll ruin my line." Helena grandly swept her hands down her sides. "Besides, how do you know about it? Claudia acted as though she were being forced to ask me to babysit the Warehouse. 'Call me if it runs a temperature.' 'Don't let it roll off the changing table.'"
"Everyone knows about her secret Tesla." Myka smiled sheepishly. "Plus she told me she was giving it to you. She didn't want you out in the field without any protection."
"I thought you were my protection. I seem to remember a threat about kicking my ass back to Univille. Don't tell me that ass-kicking Myka isn't up to the job."
"If this plan of yours works as you hope, you'll be completely exposed to the artefact. I've already told you I don't like it." With an aggravated sigh that signaled she was conceding the argument before it started, Myka headed toward the staircase with her quick, purposeful strides. "We need to get going. We have to make a stop in midtown first." Slowing at the top of the steps, she said, "About the financial statements of those fake investors we're representing. They look real, Helena."
Helena, trying to insert an earring, focused on the image of Myka in her bureau mirror. "They should. They're mine."
"Jesus, that's what I was afraid of." Myka seemed to fold onto the top step, her shoulders slumping, all her purposefulness fled. "You didn't just manage quants for a hedge fund, did you?"
Helena fumbled the other earring off the top of the bureau. Muttering curses, she bent to pick it up. "At the very start I did. But then I formed a company that manages hedge funds. I still own it, but I'm not actively involved in it."
"None of that's in our dossier on you."
Helena lost the earring again. There was no reason for Myka's reaction to be affecting her, but Myka was making no attempt to hide the pained expression on her face. "Because I didn't want Claudia or anyone, for that matter, to find it. I appraise antiques. That's true, but it's not how I make the majority of my money. If it makes you feel any better, I give most of the money away. You wouldn't know it by looking at this place, but I do. And I took a bath yesterday transferring money into Treasuries and money-market funds."
"Helena, I don't care that you're rich." Under her breath but still audibly, Myka said, "Really rich." She rubbed her chin distractedly. "It bothers me that you're bankrupting yourself to create a workable cover story just like it bothers me that you're willing to let one of these men use an artefact on you.
Helena frowned at herself. The little hook went through the little hole in her earlobe. Why was it proving so difficult? "We need to have a substantial net worth to show for the Sheffields and the Bergstroms of the financial world to give us the time of day. I'm not exhausting my 'fortune,' if you want to call it that. I'm not anticipating that I'll be in Sheffield's or Bergstrom's bed by the end of the night. But we don't have much time, and, strangely, I feel less ridiculous prostituting myself in front of a money manager than I do saying 'terroristic.'"
"A few days ago, you had no interest in helping us. Now you're designating yourself the sacrificial lamb. Why?" Myka pushed herself up from the floor and slowly came to stand behind Helena, who continued jabbing with annoyance at her ear until she felt the earring's hook poke through.
"Darling, before I became completely irredeemable, I didn't ask someone to do something I wasn't willing to do myself. I want you to be able to look your son and your. . . Jeff in the eyes when we return. Think again about those pictures in the folder." She grinned mischievously at Myka in the mirror. "Think about fates worse than death. That's what I'm sparing you." Myka looked at her steadily until Helena turned away from the mirror. "Braggadocio aside, I have complete confidence that you'll figure the replication out, with or without me. I"m the expendable one here."
She thought she saw something flare then in Myka's eyes, not anger exactly, but something as resistant. "You thought that before, Helena, and you were wrong." With an effort, Myka summoned a crooked smile. "Come along, Gypsy Rose Lee, you have a show to put on."