“Ms. Dauplaise will see you now.”
Calista’s office might better have been described as a small library. Towering rosewood bookshelves encircled the room. The high ceiling necessitated a rolling ladder to access the upper shelves. The kind Gibson had only ever seen in black-and-white movies. All the books were leather-bound, and Gibson doubted he’d find one written in the last half century. At the far end of the room, an enormous printer’s table dominated, completely bare apart from two brass desk lamps and a single stack of papers. Behind the desk, the curtains were drawn back on tall bay windows that let in the cool winter sunlight. In one of the window seats, Bear sat with a book open on her lap. The way she’d spent so many afternoons in Pamsrest when they were children. He didn’t like her by the windows, which looked out over the gardens, at the bottom of which was a small family graveyard. Bear looked back at Gibson when he entered and smiled sadly. He shouldn’t have brought her here; he just didn’t know how not to do that.
In the center of the room, a pair of green leather chesterfield sofas flanked a crackling fireplace. Calista sat on one with her back to the door, a throw across her lap and her feet tucked up underneath her. On the low marble table between the chesterfields, a pot of tea steeped beside a stack of the day’s newspapers and a black rotary telephone. Across the base, the phone had six square buttons, one red, the others clear for changing lines—straight out of the old spy movies that his dad loved. For a woman trying to drag her family into the new century, Calista lived a decidedly museum-quality life.
She didn’t turn to greet Gibson but waited for him to circle into her line of sight. Calista did not adjust to the world; the world moved to suit her. She gave him an appraising nod, offered him a seat on the opposite sofa, and set to serving the tea. She poured two cups, to which she added milk and a single teaspoon of white sugar, all without asking if Gibson wanted tea, and if he did, how he took it. She pushed one of the cups a quarter inch in Gibson’s direction and lifted the other to her lips and blew across it contemplatively. The normal timeframe to greet a guest had passed, and now they sat in awkward silence, neither inclined to be the first to speak.
It gave Gibson a moment to acclimate to being this close to Calista Dauplaise. Disappointingly, she appeared unchanged from their last encounter more than two years ago. If there were any justice in the world, recent history would have withered her. The na?ve sentiment that the truly evil wore their sins on their skin. But like Dorian Gray, Calista Dauplaise must have had help to appear unblemished. One didn’t look ageless at sixty-five without either medical or supernatural assistance. Gibson would have believed either.
Calista sipped her tea.
Gibson waited.
“You’ve lost weight,” she said, breaking the deadlock. “You must tell me your secret.”
As with everything Calista said, there were layers to the seeming compliment. Gibson wondered how much she knew, but, rather than take her bait, he forged ahead.
“We had a deal.”
Calista set down her teacup. “And as far as I’m concerned, that arrangement stands.”
“So what am I doing here?”
“Having tea.”
“I hate tea,” Gibson said.
“You were far more charming the first time we met.”
“You want charm, maybe snatch people whose fathers you didn’t kill.”
Calista contemplated the wisdom of that.
“What am I doing here?” he asked a second time.
“I require your assistance,” Calista replied.
Gibson put a fist to his lips but couldn’t prevent the hiccup of laughter that escaped him. A full-throated laugh followed. It could have been mistaken for forced or fake, maybe it was, but he needed it to vent some of what he was feeling. It was either laugh or choke her to death. Calista’s face dropped like a stone into a well. Not a woman accustomed to being laughed at, she struggled with how to respond, eventually choosing to conceal her displeasure behind her teacup. When Gibson’s outburst subsided, he stood to go. That was all the catching up he had in him.
She didn’t speak until he had his hand on the doorknob.
“Sit. Down.”
He paused to look back at her; she still sat with her back stubbornly to the door like a parent refusing to acknowledge a child’s tantrum. Gibson had used the same tactic on Ellie a time or two.
“You will want to hear this,” she said.
“What?” Against his better judgment, Gibson took his hand from the doorknob.
“I am not speaking to you while you are standing behind me.”
“Well, then turn your ass around.”
Calista’s back stiffened, but she didn’t turn. He badly wanted to walk out on her, but it would be a meaningless victory, and he did want to know what was important enough for her to risk their cease-fire. He returned to the sofa where she could see him, but remained standing. Gratefully, he saw that Bear had gone from the room. He didn’t want her here for this.
“All right,” Gibson said. “What exactly do you need my help with?”
Calista took a sip of her tea before answering. “I need you to help me free George Abe.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“He’s alive?” Gibson asked.
Invoking the name of George Abe felt like a lure. Something Calista knew that he cared about enough to hear her out. She wasn’t wrong. He’d more or less written off George after Jenn Charles had disappeared, but the mere mention of George’s name sparked hope.
“More than that,” Calista said, “I know who has him.”
“Where is he?”
“That, I do not know,” she replied.
“I knew it—” Gibson began.
Calista cut him off. “But, I do know where he will be in eight days.”
Gibson sat down on the couch. She had his attention now, but he reminded himself to trust nothing that this woman said. Some of it would be true; she always built her deceptions on an honest foundation, but mixed in, often in plain sight, would be the lies and half-truths that masked her agenda. Whatever story she told him, it wouldn’t be the whole picture. If he found himself believing her, he had only to remind himself that it had been Calista Dauplaise who had sent him after Bear despite knowing, from the very beginning, exactly where to find her.
“If you know where he’ll be, what do you need me for? It’s not as if you’re short of goons, and we don’t exactly trust each other.”
“We certainly do not.”
“So you can see where I might find that suspicious?”
Calista smiled. “Uncouth though you may be, you are a clever boy.”
“And how did that work out for you the last time?”
“Poorly,” Calista admitted.
“So what am I really doing here?”