A/N: This helps to set up the next chapter, which is a big one for B&W if not, necessarily, for the plot. Because it is a big B&W chapter and because I'm trying to wrap up the first part of my other story, I may be longer than usual in getting this fic updated.
Maybe it was Myka's reference to Gypsy Rose Lee, but Helena couldn't get the unironic blare of Night Train out of her mind as they were led down a corridor, paneled in cherry wood, to Dwight Sheffield's office. She was tempted to swing her hips as she walked, but her outfit didn't need the help, and there was the slight risk she could throw a hip out of joint. Nevertheless the thought must have been parent to an extra suggestiveness to her movements because she thought she heard Myka snicker behind her. Sheffield's assistant, a woman as glossily finished as the suite of rooms the investment firm occupied, stopped them outside his office door with a cool look that turned even frostier when her glance slid over Helena. The assistant disappeared into his office, emerging moments later with a beaming Dwight Sheffield behind her.
Despite her claims about his unattractiveness, Helena acknowledged that he looked much like every other middle-aged male executive, well-groomed and manicured, and while his suit might have been off-the-rack, it was an expensive rack, and the suit had been tailored to give more width to perilously sloped shoulders. The only discordant note was his hair, obviously dyed, the 'chestnut brown' tint showing as a lurid red in the artificial light, a red Helena usually associated with clown wigs and postcards of tropical sunsets. Trying to keep her eyes from continually straying to his hair, she had to remind herself to let her hand remain in his a second or two too long as she introduced herself and Myka. His gaze traveled the length of her neckline, settling between her breasts. Finally raising his eyes to hers, he gave her hand a lingering squeeze before offering Myka a perfunctory greeting.
He showed them to a table, pulling out chairs for the both of them, although he managed to touch the small of Helena's back as she slipped into hers. He took a chair not quite opposite them; he would have an unobscured view of Helena in her very short skirt. Myka's left eyebrow was questioningly arched as she handed Helena the portfolio; she was asking Helena if she was still intending to go through with her plan to entice Sheffield. Helena tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, giving her head a slight toss as did so. Of course, darling. He's putty in my hands. Or that was what Helena hoped she was signaling.
"I was hoping Mr. Bergstrom would be joining us as well. My associate and I represent several investors, and they so value an attention to detail and the personal touch. They believe in fostering very close working relationships." Helena patted the portfolio.
"Unfortunately Russ had an obligation he couldn't get out of this afternoon, but I can assure you that I'm very committed to my clients and always maintain open lines of communication with them. Unless you're representing an army, Ms. Wells, I believe I can perform to their satisfaction." His smile wasn't quite a leer. "But if you would rather reschedule when Russ is available. . . ."
Helena leaned forward in her chair, and Sheffield's eyes obligingly traveled the valley between her breasts. "I don't think that's necessary, Mr. Sheffield. I have hopes that we'll be very satisfied with you." She paused, smiling seductively in turn. "Assuming I recommend to my clients that they move their investments to your firm."
He reached out a hand, the fingernails buffed to a shine, and let it briefly touch hers as he tapped the portfolio. "Well, then, let's see what I can do to convince you to take me on."
Helena let him slide the portfolio out from under her hand. As he began paging through the statements, she looked at Myka, whose eyebrow seemed to be fixed in its questioning arch. Her mouth was too grimly set, and Helena nudged her with the toe of her shoe. Myka gave her a rueful quirk of her lips before she tilted her head to survey the office. Helena had seen nothing of interest during her initial scan when Sheffield had been seating them at the table. Some of the walls were covered with display shelves, which held the usual assortment of diplomas, certificates, and personal items, while others were mounted with the generic photographs of landscapes that seemed to grace (or deface, depending on your point of view) every business office. She hadn't sensed anything unusual from Sheffield either. But it would be unlikely, if his artefact worked as she suspected that it did, for him to bring it here. It wouldn't do to have all the women in the firm lining up outside his door.
"Is that a compass on one of the shelves?" Myka asked, moving her chair back. "It looks like one my brother used to have."
Sheffield glanced at the display shelves. "Feel free to take a look." He smiled apologetically at Helena. "I've been remiss. Would you like a bottled water, soft drinks? I can ask Gina to bring an assortment in."
Myka was at the shelves, reaching for the compass. Helena tensed; she had overlooked it when she had glanced at Sheffield's photos of his family and his few keepsakes. It did look out of place, she had to admit. The metal was tarnished and scratched. It was the kind of cheap metal compass you could still buy for a few dollars at any sportings goods store. Myka had picked up the compass and was turning it over. With a shrug of her shoulders, which Helena interpreted to mean that it was nothing special after all, she put it down. Coolly she said, "Helena and I are fine, thanks. Is that a compass from when you were a Boy Scout, Mr. Sheffield?"
He flipped a statement over, not raising his eyes from the page. "Yeah, how did you know?"
"My brother's always went with him on his troop's camping trips. His is a bit beat-up too." Myka walked back to her chair.
"I keep it around as a reminder never to wander off course." He was responding to Myka's comment, but he had raised his head and was looking at Helena. "Set your sights on what you want and go after it."
He was looking at her in a way, Helena knew, that she was supposed to find magnetic and masterful. Instead she thought he had the overdetermined focus of someone desperately trying not to belch in public. But she couldn't afford not to play along, so she murmured appreciatively, "I share that philosophy," and teased him with another seductive smile.
Moving his chair closer to hers, Sheffield placed the portfolio between them. "These are very conservative investments." The smile had never left his face, but his eyes had a shrewder, more skeptical glint than they had had before, and Helena wondered, not for the first time on an assignment, if she had managed to overtip her hand.
"The recession, understandably, made my clients very cautious. They're only now entertaining the idea of investing their funds in more speculative, but potentially more profitable, ventures. It's something I've been encouraging them to do for years, but they're very conservative in other ways as well. They want the right. . . man to handle their money, and they've asked me to find him." Helena shifted in her chair to press her leg against his. "But before he can prove himself to my clients, he needs to prove himself to me." It was bald, but she couldn't let him start, as he himself had put it, wandering off course and wondering who these women were showing up in his office with an investment portfolio that, with minor adjustments, could have come straight from the 1970s.
Maybe it had been too bald, because he was silent for a moment, staring down at the statements. With the artefact, he wouldn't need, or want, women completely throwing themselves at him. But he hadn't yet moved his leg away from hers. "Perhaps we could talk about this over dinner," he suggested. "I think the type of relationship your clients are looking for should be discussed in a more informal setting. That is, if you and Ms. Bering are agreeable."
On cue, Myka said, "I'm sorry, but I won't be able to join you. I have a prior engagement." It could have been said less stiffly, but Sheffield seemed not to notice. His leg was aggressively pressing against Helena's.
"Then it looks like it's just the two of us, Mr. Sheffield." Mainly because she felt the perverse impulse to tweak Myka, Helena casually rested her hand on Sheffield's forearm, her fingers not quite still, imperceptibly stroking the sleeve of his suit. "What do you recommend?" If her voice had been any more laden with suggestiveness, she wasn't sure she would have been able to drag it from her throat, as rich and heavy as the words sounded to her own ears. For her efforts, she felt a sharp kick in her ankles, but she kept her gaze firmly on Sheffield's face, who, for his part, seemed to have gone into a trance at the question. Blinking rapidly, he named a restaurant that Helena recognized, exclusive and not at all the type of restaurant where an investment banker should be hosting a business dinner.
After asking his assistant to make a reservation for him "and one lovely guest," he showed them to the door, his hand actually moving on Helena's back, rubbing in a rough circle against her spine. She wanted to move away from the caress, but she resisted the impulse and forced herself to give him a slow flutter of her eyelashes as he closed the door behind them. Passing his assistant at her desk, Helena couldn't help but linger until the woman reluctantly swiveled her chair in Helena's direction and then Helena gave her a triumphant smile. Myka chose not to share in the victory, striding down the corridor to the suite's entrance.
"You did lay it on pretty thick at the end," Myka wasted no time in saying once the elevator doors had closed.
"So your kick told me." Helena looked at her with faux innocence. "I was acting my part. I don't know why it disturbed you so."
"What about less is more escapes you, Helena?" Myka demanded. "Sheffield needed to think he couldn't have you without the artefact, and you practically had your skirt hiked up for him on the conference table."
"Interesting that you would describe it so graphically, darling. But sometimes less is, simply, less. I was well aware I was competing against women barely more than a tenth of my age; he needed to know, unmistakably I might add, that I was interested in him. Also, the fact that I appeared to be attracted to him without the assistance of an artefact would be no small sop to his vanity." Myka grudgingly lifted a shoulder in acknowledgment of Helena's counterargument, but her eyebrows were stubbornly drawn in toward the bridge of her nose.
Helena wanted to place her finger on the small creases between Myka's eyebrows and smooth them away. She wasn't sure how convinced she was by her own argument, but it was better than confessing that she had been blatantly flirtatious in part to see what Myka's reaction would be. It was so childish. . . something that Pete might have done. Buttoning the jacket of her suit to close the Grand Canyon view of her chest that her blouse offered and not-so-surreptitiously tugging her skirt down - amazing what a fleeting thought about Myka's claim that she and Pete were more alike than either would be willing to admit did for her desire to appear mature and responsible - Helena asked, "Do we need to find a way into Bergstrom's office?"
Myka shook her head as the elevator doors opened onto the lobby. It was past 5:00, and they had to wind around office workers and their managers rushing to start their commutes home, hierarchies forgotten as administrative assistants cut off their bosses in their hurry to get through the exits first. Leaning close to Helena to ensure that she could be heard above the din of thundering feet and conversations punctuated by shouts of "Have a good night" and "See you tomorrow," Myka said, "I don't think we'll find anything there, if Sheffield's office was any indication. There was nothing in Afton's office when Pete and Travis searched it. Maybe Sheffield will reveal something at dinner tonight." At Helena's laugh, Myka scowled. "That's not what I'm hoping he'll reveal."
"You and me both, darling." The scowl, in combination with the increasingly wild disarray of her hair, which was working out of its clip, and the sadly wrinkled state of her suit, left Helena thinking that Myka no longer looked like a college intern or even the tired Warehouse agent she was as much as she did a disgruntled accountant, as if the most dangerous weapon she could brandish would be the threat of an audit. But Helena wisely kept that thought to herself. Myka didn't like the dinner date as it was, no sense in further annoying her, although Helena instinctively remembered Tamalpais and being pressed against the wall by a very annoyed Agent Bering. There could be a purpose in further annoying Myka, but not here and not now.
"What's your plan for getting into Sheffield's condo?" Helena asked, quashing thoughts of Tamalpais and any other stray thoughts involving Myka and vertical surfaces. Horizontal ones too, for that matter.
"I've asked Jacqui to create a minor security disturbance. She's not Claudia-good, but she's good, and that should allow me to get up to his place. I can handle things from there."
"And you were the one who worried that I would get us arrested. What kind of 'minor security disturbance' is this?"
"The less said about it, the better. Besides, I at least have reliable backup if I get into trouble." Myka swerved to avoid two co-workers who had stopped in the middle of the lobby to check their phones.
Hurrying to catch up with her, Helena said, "So do I." As Myka sent her a withering look over her shoulder, Helena insisted, "I do. Myka, I trust that you'll be there for me if I need you." Of course, she wouldn't be, couldn't be there in time - Sheffield's condo was too far away from the restaurant were something to happen there. But the reality of it didn't matter, what mattered was convincing worried Myka, not logical, cool-headed Myka, who, strangely, seemed to be in a subordinate role right now, that things were going to be all right.
Myka grabbed Helena's arm and guided her out of the path of a determined woman in a pant suit and running shoes, phone to her ear, barreling toward them and the glass doors they were about to push open. "You'll come sweeping in, just like you did now," Helena said as they stepped onto an apron of concrete fronting the sidewalk.
But Myka seemed not to hear her, the muscles at her jaw bulging a little with tension. As another anxious commuter bumped against Helena on her way to the subway station, Helena touched Myka's elbow. "I'm so rarely out among the little people these days. What is a 'rush hour'?" She hoped her imitation of Violet Crawley was adequate; her accent alone should have sold it.
A flicker of a smile appeared on Myka's lips. "I think I prefer the Helena who said television was a greater threat to the world than the nuclear bomb."
"If her invective was no better than that, she isn't worth missing." In a darker tone, Helena said, "Besides, wasn't she the one up in her room polishing her trident?
Myka cocked her head and looked at her for a long moment. "I don't think about tridents or Yellowstone much anymore. You should give it a try." She began drifting toward the curb, looking for a taxi to flag down. Suddenly she spun around, glaring at Helena, her expression fierce. "You call me if anything, and I mean anything, seems off tonight. If he looks at you cross-eyed, call me. Promise me, Helena."
"Scout's honor," she said breezily.
Trying to see Helena though the parade of passers-by on the sidewalk, Myka shouted in protest, "You weren't any kind of scout. I don't consider that officially binding, you know." A cab squealed to a stop at the curb, and with a last warning glare at her, Myka flung herself into the back seat.
Sheffield's assistant had made the reservation for 7:30, and Helena nursed a couple of club sodas in the restaurant's bar as she waited, passing the time looking at her accounts on her phone (she had gladly left the DHS-issued dinosaur in the loft) and tallying just how much money she had lost on creating the cover story she and Myka had used with Sheffield. Not that she cared about the money, but the tallying had absorbed her attention and quieted her nerves. She hadn't wanted to encounter an artefact or its possessor without any sort of defense, but fitting her phone into the tiny clutch purse had been difficult enough; there was no disguising the Tesla.
She sensed the pull of the artefact long before she saw him. It was strong but not overwhelming, which hadn't been her experience with artefacts whose effects were felt by others rather than the artefact holders themselves. As she glimpsed the crown of his head, garishly red even in the dimness of the bar, she found him no more attractive than she had a few hours earlier in his office, what she felt instead was the compulsion to say yes to anything he said. So that was how it worked, and he chose to use the artefact to have sex with women who wouldn't otherwise look twice at him. That wasn't quite true - they would look three or four times at that hair in utter shock before running in the opposite direction. In spite of herself, she was disappointed in his lack of imagination. She was fairly certain if he were to ask her to step in front of a bus, it would be all she could do not to run to the street looking for one. In other hands, an artefact with this power could be incredibly dangerous. That was one of the things they never told you when you came to work for the Warehouse. All you heard about was the endless wonder, they never told you about the endless stupidity of many of the people who ended up with an artefact. Back in the time of 12, there had been the idiot who had Napoleon's tricorne, and what did he use it for, an artefact that would allow him to devise military strategies that would crush opposing armies? He used it to build the unbeatable cricket team. Granted, the smallness of his ambition made it all the easier to take the artefact from him, they hadn't had to wage a war to retrieve it, but it had been galling all the same to walk onto the cricket field and see that fool jauntily wearing the tricorne and exhorting his teammates to carry the battle to their opponents.
- That was the exactly the kind of thinking that had led her down some very dark paths. Suppressing the thought of Napoleon's tricorne as well as a shudder of revulsion at seeing Sheffield cockily approach her, she unbuttoned her suit jacket and slowly crossed one leg over the other. He took in the view appreciatively, a hand brushing lightly against his trouser pocket before coming to rest on his hip. It was an odd little gesture that Helena hadn't seen from him while she and Myka had been in his office.
"Sorry I'm late. Last minute conference call." The hand moved from his hip to help her up from her chair. Helena accepted his assistance, just as slowly uncrossing her legs and rising. "The night's still young, Mr. Sheffield, but you have a lot of persuading to do."
"Dwight," he said. He had begun to guide her in front of him but stopped to reach for the napkin under her glass and wipe his forehead with it. "Damn hot in here." He crumpled it and dropped it on the table. He had made the comment seriously - it had been no heavy-handed compliment - and Helena could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead. She had been comfortably cool in the bar, and she noticed that the compulsion to comply with anything he asked of her had weakened.
"Are you feeling all right? We can do this some other time." She would prefer not to, she would prefer to get this over with tonight, whatever this dinner with him turned into, but he was looking pale. She hadn't been expecting the side effects of the artefact to start making their appearance this soon, but she needn't jump to conclusions either. It had been a warm day, more like July or August than June, and perhaps a stressful one for poor Dwight as well.
"I'm just fine." His hand glided briefly down to his trouser pocket again, and Helena felt such a violent surge of. . . eagerness, not desire, but eagerness to please him that she clenched her hands into fists to keep herself from sinking to the floor and begging him to do whatever he wished with her. Still, she knew the smile she was shining on him was one not normally in her repertoire, giddy and unguarded, and she felt, underneath the pressure to comply with his every wish, a flash of resentment that she was wasting this smile, one she hadn't even remembered she had, on him. "Shall we?" He asked, and the resentment was gone in the breathless "yes" she couldn't hold back.
Thankfully she had been agreeing only to leaving the bar for the main dining room, where they were seated in an intimate alcove set off from the other diners. Occasionally Sheffield would dab at his face with his napkin, but he otherwise made no complaint about the heat. Sometimes he would let his hand drop below the table, and Helena knew he was touching whatever it was in his trouser pocket that was serving as the artefact. She hadn't felt another surge in response to it, for which she was thankful, but she still felt the need to be in perfect unison with him. Which was why she had automatically agreed to a glass of wine, although she was aware that alcohol would only weaken her resistance to the constant impulse to say
"Yes?" At the last minute she had inflected the word, making it into a question rather than a surrender.
Sheffield looked pleased and gave a brief nod to the waiter. What had she said yes to? Some sort of appetizer. "I had been planning to make a pitch to you over dinner about the investments I think your clients should be making, but I find you much too attractive, Helena, to spend our evening discussing start-ups and venture capital. I'm hoping that the attraction isn't one-sided." He smile was too confident, too insincere. He knew what she would say because he had compelled other women to tell him what he wanted to hear. His elbow crooked slightly, and she knew the hand was at his pocket.
"You're not hoping in vain." She would have said something similar, even without the artefact, because she had a script to follow, but with the artefact, she had to say it. She would have said more, along the lines of being willing to leave the restaurant with him now if he wanted to, but she was biting down very hard on the inside of her mouth to prevent those words from tumbling out. Feeling an everpresent push, as if a hand were between her shoulders giving her a shove every few seconds, she thought of other dinners, other men and other women, when the attraction was truly mutual; they had been different than this, surely. She had never felt the wanting was forced, never had to acknowledge that she didn't find the other person terribly attractive, never ended up having sex because there was no other way, it seemed, to end the evening. She had never been that lonely or desperate, had she? And all the smugness and smirking and winking suggestiveness, that couldn't have felt as clumsy and unappealing as it did now. This, with him, it was part of a mission; it was a task, a means to an end. The other. . . maybe there had been an element of marking time, she reluctantly allowed. There had always been in the rote compliments and sly glances a sense that they were going through their paces, she and the man, or woman, across from her, as though there were a certain number of moves that had to be made, certain things said or implied, before they could advance to that next stage, where there didn't have to be any talking at all. And hadn't that had, even at its best, a whiff of something slightly stale? As if they were having sex in a room that hadn't been aired out in a while or on top of a bed made of old clothes.
"You're a thousand miles away, and here I thought you couldn't take your eyes off me," he chided her. His hand hadn't moved, but she felt another sickening surge of the artefact's power. She had displeased him, and she needed to make it right. Her hand shot out to his, and she was saying, what was she saying? That she was so intensely attracted it took her breath away, that she had felt drawn to him from the moment she saw him. Reassured of her interest, he relaxed, and Helena felt the compulsion recede. She sank back against the leather of the booth, fighting against the desire to take a deep breath. Or two.
He looked at her over the rim of his wine glass, and she couldn't force herself to look away. Their waiter quietly appeared at their table and just as discreetly placed the appetizers between them. Helena wondered dismally if Sheffield was going to ask her to feed them to him. As he took his fork and speared a tiny pastry (Helena didn't think she could have borne the absolute cliche the evening would have become had the appetizers been oysters on the half shell), they both noticed the fork wavering in front of his mouth. He managed to steady his hand and he joked, "This is the effect you have on me," but he wasn't smiling. He put down his fork, but the tremor in his hand was still visible.
Helena saw the perspiration at his hairline, and the prickle of foreboding she had felt earlier in the bar grew into a shiver. She wasn't sure how much time he had before the side effect or effects worsened, and she wasn't sure to what extent the artefact would let her resist his displeasure - his momentary pout had had her all but leaping onto his lap -but she needed to say something now. "Dwight, you've been touching an object in your pocket all evening." At his grin, she said as crisply as she could, "It's not that object I'm interested in, I'm interested in the other one, the one Stewart Afton gave you. Maybe it's a key chain or a special coin, but it brings you luck with the ladies, or so you think."
"I don't know what you're talking about." He picked up his napkin and wiped underneath his chin. He looked at the napkin with dismay and flung it on the table. "I thought we were getting along, having a nice dinner. I like you, you seem to like me. That's all there is." The hand was trembling more violently, and he flexed his fingers. "Perhaps we ought to call it a night. I'm not feeling too well, after all."
Pleas for him to forgive her, to ignore what she had just said were bubbling up her throat. Gritting her teeth, she said, "You're not feeling well because whatever it is Mr. Afton gave you has some powerful side effects. They're deadly side effects, Dwight. You need to relinquish that object."
His smile was sarcastic. "Give it to you, maybe? This has all been a set-up, hasn't it? The meeting this afternoon, the investments. And then your associate, with her interest in my compass. You were looking for it then, weren't you?" He began to pull at the collar of his shirt, his breathing becoming more labored. "Stew said we had to be careful. . . not attract attention. . . he said they wouldn't be happy." His muttering became unintelligible, and he unsteadily pushed himself out of the booth. "I need to go home." He swayed, and Helena slid out of the booth to grab his arm. He shook her hand off, taking a step before he fell to his knees.
Helena caught him as he crumpled to the floor. "Someone call 911!" She shouted as the diners closest to them sent her alarmed looks and shoved their chairs away from their tables. As a waiter rushed up to her, she said, "Find out if there's a doctor here." Sheffield was still conscious, but his eyes were unfocused and his breathing was shallow. "You're going to be all right," she said to him as she searched his trouser pocket. As one diner gave her what Helena thought was a suspicious look, she said, "I'm looking for his epi pen." Car keys, spare change, and something else, something oblong and metallic with a rough, knobby inlay. She drew it out, a money clip with an oval of rhinestones down its middle. It was cheap and garish and empty of bills. Slipping it into a pocket of her jacket, she looked at Sheffield; the breathing was raspier and his eyes were closed. "Dwight," she said, leaning over his face, "stay with us here." He gave her no response. Bent over him, she ran her hand along the inside of his suit coat, searching for his phone.
Then a hand was on her shoulder pulling her away from him. He was an older man, with a fringe of hair around his head that did nothing to undermine the look of authority he gave her. "I'm a doctor. Can you tell me what happened?"
Helena, clutching Sheffield's phone to her, rapidly identified the symptoms she had noticed. She had been hoping that once she removed the artefact that Sheffield's condition would improve. But if anything, it had gotten worse. As the doctor examined Sheffield, she reached for her purse in the booth. She needed to call Myka, but the doctor started talking to her, asking her questions about how Sheffield had acted before he collapsed. She tried to be as detailed as possible, glancing all the while at her phone, and then he was standing up, motioning to two paramedics who were loping toward them.
They strapped Sheffield to the stretcher and began wheeling him out of the restaurant. At the ambulance doors, she didn't hesitate to follow the stretcher into the back, saying with firmness, "I'm his wife." One of the paramedics stayed with them, while the other jogged to the front of the rig. As lights flashed and the siren began its loud pulse, Helena watched the paramedic recheck Sheffield's vitals. Sheffield's eyelids fluttered open, and he turned his head toward her. "Dwight, you need to tell me about the money clip."
The paramedic frowned, shooting her a puzzled look. Not sure at all what properties the artefact still possessed or how they might work with her, Helena took a gamble and smiling as sweetly as she could at the paramedic, she said, "Would you humor me by not paying any attention to what we're saying?"
His eyes suddenly glassy, the paramedic only nodded, busying himself with various monitors. Sheffield was moistening his lips and looking around the interior of the ambulance. "Where are we going?" His voice was thready, and drops of sweat were running down his face.
"To a hospital. You're going to be fine, Dwight." Helena had no idea whether he was going to be fine, but she certainly wasn't going to tell him that the recovery rate so far for holders of replicated artefacts was zero. "Dwight, how did you, or Afton, get the money clip?"
"Stew got it for me. Said it would make me lots of money." He swallowed with effort. "Am I going to be okay?" Helena smiled reassuringly. He didn't appear to take comfort in it. "Need to call my wife."
"I will." Helena lightly touched his shoulder as his eyes began to roll back in his head. "Dwight, who sold Afton the clip?"
He didn't answer, and one of the monitors he was attached to began beeping. The paramedic checked the screen and ripped open Sheffield's shirt. He began applying CPR, and Helena looked on helplessly. The technology had changed, but that was all. When she had been younger and before death had touched her irrevocably, the adrenaline of retrieving the artefact had frequently been enough to carry her through this part of the process, when they hadn't been able to arrive in time to save the victims, which had all too frequently included the artefact holders themselves. The gore, the agonized expressions of the dead, she had picked her way through broken bodies and pools of blood and narrowed her field of vision to eliminate all but the artefact itself. She had treated the scenes like dioramas at a museum, exhibits she could linger over, if she wished, but just as easily turn her back on in her search for objects of greater interest. The excitement, the detached curiosity, they had served her well until every dead body was Christina's and every mouth frozen open in shock or fear was silently echoing her screams.
Eventually the paramedic stopped the compressions and looked at the monitor, sharing a look of relief with Helena. "We've got normal rhythm," he said.
At the hospital, Sheffield was rushed into examination, while Helena paced the waiting room, calling Myka. Myka answered before the first ring had ended, but before Helena could tell her what had happened, Myka was asking, anxiously, "Are you all right?" Then her voice grew harder, more demanding. "Tell me you're all right."
"I'm fine, but I'm at the hospital." Hearing Myka's sharp intake of breath, she said rapidly, "It's Sheffield. He started succumbing to the side effects at the restaurant, but I was able to get the artefact." Helena winced at the word, but no one else in the waiting room seemed to be listening; people were on their own phones or listlessly flipping through magazines.
"It's on you? Of course it is, God, you should've had . . . ." Myka trailed off. "Where are you?"
Helena looked around the waiting room, why she was expecting something like a street sign with the hospital's name on it, she didn't know. Tapping the shoulder of the person nearest to her, she asked the woman for the name of the hospital and then relayed it to Myka. After a completely unnecessary caution that she shouldn't go anywhere, Myka hung up, and Helena put her phone into her other jacket pocket, the one not holding the money clip but Sheffield's phone. His wife, he had wanted her to call his wife. She made the call, introducing herself as a business associate, and Sheffield's wife immediately grew suspicious, asking Helena what a 'business associate' of her 'husband' - pronouncing both as if they were dead mice she was being asked to carry - was doing calling her on her husband's phone. Mrs. Sheffield's tone softened as Helena patiently explained the seriousness of the situation to her, and as she began asking Helena if Dwight had asked for her or the children, if he was conscious, Helena felt a resurgence of the helplessness she had felt in the back of the ambulance, and she recognized that she hadn't missed this part of being a Warehouse agent either. On top of the sheer awfulness of having to tell family or friends that their husband or sister or child wasn't coming back, would never be coming back, there was the awkwardness of not being able to tell them why. Even if they were too stunned to actually ask the question, it was on their faces. And Mrs. Sheffield was asking her that question now. "What happened to him?"
And Helena had nothing more to offer than the same mix of facts and half-truths she had offered over a hundred years before. "We were at dinner, and he said he felt ill. Perhaps it was a reaction to something he ate or drank, I don't know. He collapsed and was brought here."
Her regret, at least, was honest, and Mrs. Sheffield seemed to recognize it, thanking Helena for staying with her husband. Helena smiled bitterly at the gratitude. All the better to rifle his pockets, darling. But she wouldn't say that either, of course. The call ended, she dropped the phone in her pocket and dropped herself into an empty seat, waiting for Myka.
It may have been minutes or a half-hour, Helena didn't know. She was alternating between looking at the doors to the emergency room and the doors to the ER's reception area. The doors to the latter opened first, and Myka charged in, head twisting as she searched for Helena. She was in another one of her summer-weight sweaters and jeans, the corner of something purple peeping from one of her back pockets. Helena called to her as she crossed the waiting room, and Myka's wry smile couldn't disguise the relief flooding her face.
"I wasn't sure what to expect. When you said you were all right, I thought, at the very least, there would be bandages and a cast." Myka ran her hand down Helena's forearm, but her eyes were still anxious as they searched Helena's. "You're sure you're okay?"
"Physically yes, emotionally I may be a little worse for wear. I had forgotten what it was like to witness the adverse effect of an artefact." Helena had her head turned over her shoulder, watching the doors to the emergency room as Myka led her toward the women's room.
"Helena, we need to take care of the artefact," Myka said in a low voice.
The restroom was empty, and as Myka tugged a pair of gloves and the bag from the pockets of her jeans, Helena said, with the flippancy that she felt was expected of her, "Darling, we should make sure I've grabbed the right item. I think there's a stall over there we could occupy while we determine whether I can get lucky just by holding a money clip. Don't you feel the least bit inclined to rock my world?"
Myka pulled on the gloves and opened the bag. "You can stop, Helena. I can tell your heart's not in it." She held out her palm, and Helena, with a sigh that sounded more ragged than truly theatrical, placed the money clip in it. They both shielded their faces as Myka dropped the clip in the bag.
The sparks were brighter than Helena had anticipated, and she continued to squint as Myka stripped off her gloves and threw them in the bag as well. Wrapping the bag around the clip, she crammed the small bundle into her jeans pocket. They exited the restroom, and Helena scanned the reception area and the waiting room to see if Sheffield's wife had arrived, but the number of people hadn't changed.
"Have you eaten?" When Helena shook her head, Myka suggested, "Why don't we go to the cafeteria and get something quick?" Helena shook her head again, and Myka, trailing her to a couple of empty chairs against the wall, asked, "If I get you something from the vending machines, will you eat it?"
Helena shrugged in a way that might be interpreted as a yes and shifted her shoulders against the hard plastic, leaning her head against the wall. Ostensibly she and Myka were still here on the off-chance that Sheffield might not slip into a coma and might be willing to tell them more about the clip, but she was here because she wanted to talk to Sheffield's wife. She wanted to tell her that she had been Sheffield's last thought before he lost consciousness. She wanted to tell her that the other women had been meaningless, the product of an artefact, and the artefact itself, his possession of it, anyway, the passing vagary of a middle-aged man. She wanted to tell her to prepare herself because no one had survived the side effects of a replicated artefact. She wanted to tell her. . . . because there had been no one to prepare her, no one to tell her what Christina's last thoughts had been, no one there with her at all. The hotel clerk had given her the telegram, unable to meet her eyes, and she had thought his shifting feet and his inability to look at her just another sign of the infatuation that had been on display all week in his blushes and mumblings whenever she had spoken to him. So she had carelessly unfolded the telegram at the desk, expecting it to be a communication from the Warehouse, and when she had grabbed at her throat, unable to breathe after she had read it, there had been no one in the hotel's lobby to ask if she had received upsetting news, no one to urge her to sit down or to clumsily pat her hand. She had simply torn the telegram into tiny pieces and climbed the stairs to her room, her breath coming in and out in such harsh gulps that she thought her lungs might tear themselves from her chest -
"I hope there's something here you'll like," and Myka placed a handful of candy bars and packages of nuts and crackers in her lap. She handed her a bottled water as well.
"Thank you," Helena said faintly, trying to open the bottle.
Myka took the bottle from her and opened it. "Where were you just now? Were you thinking of Christina? I didn't think about hospitals being. . . I know back then they weren't like what we have now. . . ."
"I'm all right, truly." Helena absently took a drink and set the bottle down. "I confess that I still think of them as pits of vermin and incompetence, but I suppose you can't take all the Victorianism out of the old girl."
"I'll stay," Myka said. "Helena, go back to your loft. It's been a long night for you already." The green eyes were so earnest that Helena began to smile. Myka had always had that effect on her. She could be sunk in the darkest of her thoughts, which, during her sojourn at 13, she frequently had been, and while Myka never really jollied her out of them, in part because Myka wasn't someone who jollied others by nature (that had always been Pete's talent, if you could call it such), the intensity of her sympathy, even when Myka couldn't have known what was prompting it, had nearly always managed to make their weight seem less oppressive.
"I'm staying." She opened a package of crackers and offered them to Myka. "Until I was debronzed, the only part of a hospital I ever saw was the morgue." She hesitated. "You must not have the most pleasant of associations either."
"They're not all unpleasant," Myka said with a smile. "I had Drew in one. And Pete and I have been in and out of them enough times that I don't fear them." She looked more intently at Helena. "You're thinking about what Claudia always calls my 'cancer scare.'" She shook out a few crackers and passed the bag back to Helena. "It didn't amount to much, in the end."
"Of all the times that I never responded to Claudia's e-mails, that's the lapse I regret the most. Even though she told me long after it happened, I should have said something. No need to have caused any of you to add 'heartless' to whatever string of adjectives followed my name." Helena bit off a tiny corner of a cracker and look toward the reception area. No frightened woman with a gray-blond bob was standing at the desk asking about a Dwight Sheffield. She bit off another corner of the cracker.
"I didn't want anyone to know about it. Which was a mistake." Myka blew out a stream of air. "It wasn't fair to burden Pete with all of it. If I had been more open about what was going on, he wouldn't have felt he was on his own, and all that followed with Paracelsus. . . ." She shrugged her shoulders almost moodily.
Helena couldn't help herself; she brushed back a strand of Myka's hair, tucking it in among the other curls. Myka didn't shy away, and she took the bag of crackers from Helena's lap. "I'm sorry you felt that you couldn't tell me. We were still having our virtual coffees back then."
Myka shook out more crackers. "You were still trying to work things out with Nate. I thought Pete and I, no, I had already done enough to screw things up for you on that score."
After giving her a long look, Helena opened one of the candy bars, a Snickers. She broke it in half and handed one end to Myka. "Eat it," she said firmly. "You haven't had anything either." She chewed her half meditatively. This wasn't really the time or place - funny, how many times when she had thoughts about Myka, her immediate reaction was that it wasn't the time or the place - but they were at least talking around Boone, if not about it, and God alone knew how long they were going to be here in this waiting room. "You were right about Nate and Adelaide, about my being with them for the wrong reasons," she said finally. "Perhaps if I had been more honest with you about why I had moved in with Nate, you would have been more honest with me about the cancer."
Myka looked doubtfully at her half of the Snickers bar and placed it, still in its wrapper, on the empty chair beside her. "It's water under the bridge, Helena," she said wearily. "Boone, the cancer. It wasn't my place to tell you whom you could love. You don't owe me any explanations."
Oh, but I do. But Helena had no intention of telling her everything about Boone, only what would confirm the suspicions that she had had. "He was a very kind, very decent man, but I wasn't in love with him, and I don't think he was in love with me. What we had in common was that we both loved Adelaide." She looked at Myka from the corners of her eyes, but Myka's face was expressionless, and she was folding the empty bag of crackers into a small square. "I was used to seeing successful marriages built on less. My parents had been pushed into an engagement by their families, and while they never fell madly in love with each other, not to my knowledge, anyway, they ended up caring for one another quite deeply. I made a mistake in thinking Nate and I could do the same. But when the truth came out about my past, well, part of it, we had nothing to fall back on. Our relationship became an endless volleying of recriminations on his part and apologies on mine." Myka was creasing the square of foil with her thumbnail. "But even if we had been able to get past my lies and his fears for Adelaide's safety, we wouldn't have stayed together."
"Because he would have wanted more?" Myka asked, not looking at her.
"Because I would have." That was as close as Helena could come to the truth. For tonight, anyway.
"Then why -" But the swinging open of the doors to the emergency room brought them both to their feet. After a quick visual sweep of the waiting room, the doctor went to the desk in the reception area and spoke briefly to the woman standing behind it, who was wearing the cheerfully patterned smock that was standard issue for medical assistants everywhere; hers was covered with flowers sporting smiley faces. Myka was already halfway to the desk, pulling a small leather wallet from another pocket. Helena hurried after her.
"Are either of you Mrs. Sheffield?" The doctor asked brusquely, glancing from Myka to Helena. Her scrubs, like her voice and her demeanor, were no nonsense, an institutional green.
Myka flipped open the wallet. "We're the ones who brought Mr. Sheffield in. We're with the Department of Homeland Security."
The doctor barely glanced at it. "Has his wife been notified?"
"She's en route," Helena said.
As the doctor pivoted back toward the doors to the emergency room, Myka said quietly but firmly. "We'd like to talk to him if at all possible." The doctor hesitated, and Myka added just as politely but just as firmly, "He's a person of interest in a case we're investigating, we need to talk to him."
"All I can tell you is that he's in no shape to be talking to anyone." The doctor's eyes narrowed. "If there's anything you know about why he needed to be brought in, I suggest you tell me."
"We can't tell you anything you would find helpful," Myka said. "My associate was interviewing him when he suddenly fell ill."
"The paramedics said they were called to a restaurant," the doctor said, crossing her arms. "Since when does an investigative agency interview persons of interest over dinner?" And how does what your associate's wearing meet the definition of 'business casual' her contemptuous once-over of Helena practically shouted.
"When they don't want to tip him off," Helena interjected, pulling her jacket tighter around her. "If there's anything more specific you could tell us about his condition, we would appreciate it." Not a little irritated at her reaction to the doctor's disapproval, Helena added, "While I'm sure the Tea Party would be supportive of your interrogation of our methods, I believe Mr. Sheffield is the one in greater need of your services."
The doctor gave Helena a disdainful look before growling, "He's still unconscious. Is that sufficiently specific?" She turned away from them and disappeared through the doors.
"Thanks for alienating her," Myka said as they made their way back to their chairs. "We need her to be cooperative."
"I didn't like her attitude," Helena sniffed. "Didn't you see how suspicious she was getting?" She picked up the snacks she had left on her chair and sulkily settled against its back.
"She really wasn't giving us that much static. You're bristling because she was looking at you as if you had come off the set of a porn flick." Myka grinned at her, taking a swig from her bottle of water.
"Please, my blouse alone costs more than the budget of a porn movie." She opened another candy bar wrapper, while Myka lifted a bag of nuts from her lap.
They ate in silence for a while. Myka finished the nuts and placed the empty bag over the half of the Snickers bar Helena had given her. "When Drew was about four, he contracted a virus. It seemed like a typical cold, but then his temperature began to climb. It was the middle of the night, and we drove him to the hospital in Rapid City. The doctors couldn't figure out what virus it was, and his temperature was soaring. Pete was nearly frantic, and I wasn't much better, but I knew I had to be the calm one, and so I was. We sat in chairs like this, and Pete pretty much emptied every vending machine, although neither of us could eat." Myka glanced at Helena and then looked away. "I kept telling him everything would be all right, and eventually it was. The doctors came up with a combination of antibiotics that knocked the virus out, and Drew's fever dropped. But you asked me about unpleasant associations with hospitals, and I wouldn't be completely honest - if we're being completely honest - if I didn't tell you that I always associate hospitals with that day. Not because Drew was so sick, because I knew, knew that he was going to be okay. But because that was also the day I realized I couldn't stay married to Pete." She was bent over in her chair, hands loosely clasped on her legs, and looking down at the floor. "Drew was better, and we were on the hospital bed with him, eating all the junk from the vending machines we hadn't been able to force ourselves to eat before. Pete had the biggest smile on his face because everything was right with his world and everyone he loved most was on that bed with him, and all I could think was 'I can't do this anymore.'"
She was silent after that, and though Helena's mind was filled with questions, she didn't ask them. "I'm sorry" was what she said.
"I think you actually mean it." Myka laughed softly, but there was no humor in it.
"Of course, I do," Helena said just as softly. "You don't commit yourself lightly, Myka."
"Claudia always thought it was a mistake, the marriage. Even on our wedding day, she was telling me it wasn't too late to change my mind, and she was my maid of honor. She tried to pass it off as a joke, but I knew better, Pete knew better." Myka shook her head in fond exasperation at Claudia's stubbornness. After a moment filled only with the sounds of medical staff being paged, she turned to Helena, regarding her steadily. "It wasn't a mistake, I need you to understand that, Helena. Had Pete and I stayed married it would have been a mistake. But for awhile, it was real, what we had."
"I knew, I knew when you called me from the airport that night. Do you remember?" At Myka's nod, she continued, "And I meant what I said then, too. I think one of the few virtues I've managed to hang onto is that I've always wanted you to be happy."
"Why do you have to be thousands of miles away from me when you say things like that?" Myka asked, and the look in her eyes was the one that always left Helena feeling seared, the look that was so open and questioning that she burned whenever she realized she was the object of it. Open and questioning and, fundamentally, innocent, as if Myka believed there was no darkness in Helena that she couldn't face and, by facing it, conquer it.
Because of looks like that. Because I'm usually the cause of your unhappiness. Instead, almost teasingly, Helena said, "I'm here now."
The doors to the reception area opened, and a middle-aged woman with a grayish-blond bob came in from the outside and uncertainly approached the desk. Helena nudged Myka, and they left their wrappers littering the chairs and walked toward Dwight Sheffield's wife.
"I'm Diane Sheffield. I understand that my husband was brought here." She was nearly buttonholing the woman in the smock, who edged away, saying, "Let me page Dr. Saunders for you."
"Mrs. Sheffield?" Helena devoutly wished she was wearing something other than a short, tight suit and a blouse with a plunging neckline.
Her wish was reflected in the appalled expression on Diane Sheffield's face. "You're . . . the associate who called me about Dwight?"
Myka casually stepped between them. "Mrs. Sheffield, I'm Myka Bering. We're with the Department of Homeland Security. We were talking with your husband in relation to a case we're investigating."
The confusion deepened on Mrs. Sheffield's face. "Department of Homeland Security? My husband works for an investment firm. Why would he be mixed up with anything involving Homeland Security?"
"It's a long story," Myka admitted.
The doors to the emergency room blew open, and the doctor approached the three of them with the same impatient attitude with which she had approached Myka and Helena before. "Mrs. Sheffield?" Her eyes fixed on Sheffield's wife, and she pushed Myka and Helena aside. "Will you please follow me? We need to talk about your husband's condition."
Mrs. Sheffield's face paled. "Is it that serious then?"
With a quick, hard look at Myka and Helena, the doctor said unhappily, "I'm afraid it is." She guided Sheffield's wife toward the emergency room doors. "I'm sorry, agents, but you're not going to have an opportunity to speak with Mr. Sheffield."
As they passed through the doors, Helena glanced worriedly at Myka. "I'm not misunderstanding her meaning, am I?"
Myka slowly moved her head from side to side. "She just told us he's not going to make it." She pushed her hand into the front pocket of her jeans, distractedly touching the bagged money clip. "We need to find Russ Bergstrom, and we need to find him now."