GEORGIA SULKING IS NOT A PRETTY SIGHT. Although I had apologized a million times, she wasn’t speaking to me.
Things were pretty uncomfortable around the house. Mamie and Papy tried to ignore the fact that anything was wrong, but on the fifth day after my unforgivable crime, Papy pulled me over and said, “Why don’t you come see me at work today?” He glanced over at Georgia’s brooding silhouette and gave me a significant look, as if to say, Can’t talk here. “It’s been months since you’ve stopped by, and I have a lot of new inventory you haven’t seen.”
After school I headed directly to Papy’s gallery. Walking into his shop was like entering a museum. In its muted light, ancient statues were lined up facing one another from either side of the room, and glass cases displayed artifacts shaped in pottery or cast in precious metals.
“Ma princesse,” Papy crowed when he saw me, shattering the room’s opulent silence. I flinched. That was my dad’s pet name for me, and no one had called me that since his death. “You came. So, what looks new to you?”
“Him, for starters,” I said, pointing to a life-size statue of an athletic-looking youth stepping forward with one foot and holding a clenched fist tightly down by his side. The other arm and his nose were missing.
“Ah, my kouros,” Papy said, walking over to the marble statue. “Fifth century BCE. A true prize. The Greek government wouldn’t have even let it out of the country nowadays, but I bought it from a Swiss collector whose family acquired it in the nineteenth century.” He led me past a jeweled reliquary in a glass case. “You never know what you’re getting these days, with all these iffy provenances.”
“What’s this one?” I asked, stopping in front of a large black vase. Its surface was decorated with a dozen or so reddish-colored human figures in dramatic poses. Two armored groups faced each other, and in the middle a fierce-looking naked man stood at the head of each army. They held spears toward each other in a face-off. “Naked soldiers. Interesting.”
“Ah, the amphora. It’s about a hundred years younger than the kouros. Shows two cities at battle, led by their numina.”
“Their what?”
“Numina. Singular, numen. A type of Roman god. They were part-man, part-deity. Could be wounded, but not killed.”
“So since they’re gods, they fight naked?” I asked. “No armor necessary? Sound like show-offs to me.”
Papy chuckled.
Numina, I thought, and muttered under my breath, “Sounds like numa.”
“What did you say?” Papy exclaimed, his head jerking upright from the vase to stare at me. He looked like someone had slapped him.
“I said numina sounds kind of like numa.”
“Where did you hear that word?” he asked.
“I don’t know . . . TV?”
“I very seriously doubt that.”
“I don’t know, Papy,” I said, breaking his laser gaze and searching for something else in the gallery that could bail me out of the situation. “I probably read it in an old book.”
“Hmm.” He nodded, hesitantly accepting my explanation but keeping his worried look.
Trust Papy to have heard of every archaic god and monster that ever existed. I’d have to tell Vincent that revenants, or at least the evil branch of revenants, weren’t as “under the radar” as they thought. “So thanks for the invitation, Papy,” I said, relieved to change the subject. “Was there something you wanted to talk about? Besides statues and vases, that is.”
Papy smiled wanly. “I asked you to come here to check on you and Georgia. Is this just a skirmish,” he said, glancing at the vase, “or a full-out war? Not that it’s any of my business. I’m just wondering when you’re planning on calling a truce and restoring peace to the household. If it goes on much longer, I might have to leave on an urgent unforeseen business trip.”
“I’m sorry, Papy,” I said. “It’s totally my fault.”
“I know. Georgia said that you and some young men left her stranded at a restaurant.”
“Yeah. There was kind of an emergency, and we had to leave.”
“And you didn’t have enough time to bring Georgia with you?” he asked skeptically.
“No.”
Papy took my arm and gently led me back toward the front of the store. “Doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d do, princesse. And it doesn’t sound very gentlemanly on the part of your escorts.”
I shook my head, agreeing, but there wasn’t anything I could say to defend myself.
We arrived at the front door. “Be careful who you choose to spend time with, chérie. Not everyone has a heart as good as yours.”