Caryl nodded, then turned up the music a bit more. I took the hint and dived back into the file.
The viscount’s latest persona, John Riven, was the only one who had dabbled in acting; the rest had stayed out of the limelight aside from being occasionally photographed as a “close family friend” of the Berenbaums. His earliest alias, Forrest Cloven, had almost no paper trail at all and only one photograph, taken by the Project itself in 1971. None of his four faces really resonated with me the way the drawings had. They weren’t him.
I was overcome by an urge to look at the drawings again, to study them, as though somehow I could solve the mystery of this man by following the strokes of his pen.
“Did Teo give you both the drawings?” I half shouted at Caryl. “I want to see them.”
She turned the music down: a small victory. “You’ll destroy them,” she said.
“Then give me the one I already destroyed.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said irritably. “For the file.”
She kept trying to give me one of her long, searching looks, but it was hard to do while driving in the dark. Finally she gave up. “Open my purse for me, but do not touch its contents.”
It was an odd little bag, held together with leather straps and wooden rings. I managed to wrestle it open and presented it to her. Slipping my glasses back over my eyes, I saw the faint glow of magical objects inside the bag. I also noticed that Elliott was curled up in my lap as though dozing.
Caryl, surrounded by that odd dark haze, felt around for the drawings without taking her eyes off the road, then handed me the one that had been crumpled and folded and drained of its magic. I snatched it from her with a little thrill.
“Why did you hit Teo?” Caryl asked me before I had even unfolded the paper.
I tensed, glad the glasses hid my eyes. “I thought he already talked to you about it.”
“I want to hear your version.”
I proceeded carefully, not sure what he’d told her and not wanting to contradict. “I was rattled,” I said. “Dr. Davis would call them ‘vulnerability factors.’ I had just walked in on Gloria screaming at what’s-his-name, and then I went up to Teo’s room, which was all cramped and dirty, and I was feeling kind of . . . trapped. I overreacted, and I’m sorry. If I had access to a phone, I could keep up my coaching with Dr. Davis; it’s very helpful.”
“Overreacted to what exactly?”
“Just something he said. Something I interpreted as . . . an insult about my appearance.”
“Is your appearance important to you?”
I snorted. “This is Los Angeles.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“And you’re not my therapist. Give me a phone and I’ll call her.”
Elliott fluttered from my lap to Caryl’s side of the car. I came within a hairbreadth of apologizing to the creature, then stopped myself.
“Does Elliott have feelings?” I said.
“In a manner of speaking, I suppose it does. The emotions of a child: unschooled and volatile.”
“I’m sorry,” I cooed gently at the creature. “You’re a sweet thing. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Elliott crawled back across the car to me, wings limp. He lay back down in my lap, then rolled over, exposing a fine-scaled belly.
“Aw, I want to pet him,” I said. I stroked my fingers through the air where his belly was, but I had no way of knowing if he could feel it.
“Showing affection to the construct serves no purpose,” Caryl said.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I blurted, sending Elliott skittering away again. “Do you have no feelings at all?”
“Not when I am at work.”
“Wow. Must be nice to be able to just switch them off.”
“It is.”
I ground my teeth and opened up the paper to look at the drawing, pushing my glasses back to the top of my head. The confident, evocative lines of the sketch soothed me, even without the magic. Idly I traced a fingertip over the angular Ds on either end of DREAMLAND.
“I am concerned by the way you are fondling that drawing,” Caryl observed languidly. “I know how easily someone with your disorder can become infatuated.”
I stiffened, folding the drawing back up. “You know just enough about BPD to be really unhelpful.”
“I know how bored and restless you must feel when you have no one on whom to focus your passion. It’s why Teo’s dismissal enraged you; he was your best candidate.”
“Stop it,” I said.
“I need you to understand that you would find no happiness with Rivenholt either. He would always put you second. No romance can approach the bond between a fey and his Echo.”
“I guess it sucks that you don’t have one,” I said acidly.
“My dear Millicent,” she said lazily, “if that were the greatest tragedy of my life, I would be a lucky woman.”