“Have you recently consumed salted peanuts, Winsome?”
Damn. I should have had a mint, although sweets were just as incriminating. I took a quelling breath.
“Yes, Aunt Bea.”
“In the G5?”
“Correct.”
“Salted peanuts in my jet,” she huffed, grasping the pearls about her throat. I think she wore them when she slept. “All that dreadful sodium chloride.”
I’d smuggled the nuts – which were a crime against good nutrition – onboard from the private airport lounge in Vienna. I’d taught myself pickpocketing and was spectacular at hiding things. If only I could make a career out of it, aside from as a drug mule. Why, oh why, did I not eat them straight away?
Bea leaned forward to rap on the window separating us from the limousine driver, as we sped from the airport. Her auburn bob swished with determination. In front, the Sydney skyline glittered in its evening coat. I couldn’t wait to get home to the cats, our warehouse, and the freedom of my new moped. Six months since my last holiday here was far too long.
The chauffeur happened to be the very same walking boulder possessive of acres of muscular flesh who’d escorted me from the Academy thirty hours previously. His manliness had encouraged a trail of drooling, giggling girls through the hallways as they made their way to lessons. Bird was absent for my departure. She couldn’t have given me a better farewell gift.
Hugo wore his straw hair jarhead-style, a single bulging biceps harder and thicker than Jenkins’ skull. He hadn’t allowed me to pack more than my iPod, two books and a change of summer clothes. The rest of my possessions would be sent on. The weird haste dampened the aura of excitement. I was leaving the school, never to return. No one bothered to share the reason.
“Is that hunk the Billie you holler about in your dreams? Mmm, I can see why.” I’d picked up Chablis like a tick on the way out of our shared dorm room.
“Haven’t you got a class?” I’d asked hopefully.
“Nope. I’m on a free. So, what is he doing with you?”
“We’re eloping to Mauritius. He’s not a big talker, but he’s great with his tongue.” I winked suggestively and flounced down the Academy’s grand staircase leading to the lobby, where Hugo tapped his boot impatiently. Along with the black-ops camos, he wore a now all-too-familiar grimace.
“Wait!” Jaime barrelled the stairs to join us at the bottom, camera in hand. He offered it to Chablis, who inspected Hugo brazenly. “Please, take a photo of us?”
My ex-roomy hesitated, until I glared at her. “Do something for me, and those files will disappear.” I leaned close so Jaime couldn’t hear. “You ought to report the dirty old perve.”
“Fine!” She snatched the camera and prepared for the shot. “It’s broken. The screen’s black.”
“Nah,” Jaime said. “It worked this morning.”
I’d taken a couple of excellent shots of Mallory and Chad for him to upload on the Net. Hugo cleared his throat, his annoyance growing. Shabby frowned and directed the camera about.
“That’s bizarre. I’ll try my phone.”
Jaime peeked up at me. “You’re really, really pretty in the daylight.”
“Well, thank you.”
He beamed and took my hand. My Judas face flamed. Mention the slightest embarrassing thing, and my cheeks could guide Santa’s reindeer through the bleakest North Pole winter.
“I’ll send you and your friends some training stuff. Sign up for mixed martial arts and practice hard, Jaime. Kick their sorry bums any time they so much as breathe in your direction.”
He nodded enthusiastically. “Are you coming back, Winsome?”
Hugo prompted me with a growl. “I don’t think so,” I said. Did he actually growl?
“Winsome?”
“Yes, Jaime?”
He looked at me with little boy puzzlement in his big blue eyes. “How did you find your way back from the kitchen so easily last night? It was dark and we didn’t even need a flashlight.”
Fortunately, Chablis interrupted, giving the phone a frustrated shake. “Er, not taking any photos today, people.”
She saved me from offering the same lame reasons Bea gave when I asked why my hearing was so advanced and I could avoid objects in the pitchest of black. I’d never come close to detection across my many night-time excursions. Everyone possesses some special talent or other, blahdy, blah, blah. The weirdness of it twisted my mind in knots, so I opted for denial.
“The screens go blank whenever I point it at you. You’re totally unphotogenic, Winsome. Bad Light.” Chablis had broken up at her own joke.
The ink-tinted glass separating us in the back of the limousine from Hugo in front rolled down. “Yes, ma’am?”
Replacing the ‘o’ from his name with an ‘e’ approximated Hugo’s measurements. The same number of vowels captured the extent of our conversation across nonstop travel. We’d forged a bond based on irritation. He appeared to despise questions as much as I hated not getting answers. And he was the only stranger I’d ever seen in Bea’s inner circle.
“I made it explicit Winsome was to snack on miso and dried fruit. As her personal bodyguard, under no circumstances were you to leave her. My grand-niece has consumed contraband in your presence against my instruction. Alternatively, Winsome snuck them in your absence. Please enlighten the circumstances precipitating this appalling dereliction of duty, in either case.”
Confusing the object of her ire with large words was Aunt Bea’s standard attack. Ordinarily, I’d enjoy witnessing a million-kilo guy with a dagger tattoo on his neck and fists as registered weapons crumple under the cool dismemberment of my aunt. Once he’d used a dictionary to translate the threat. Over nuts, of all things. Hilarious! However, something she’d mentioned took my complete attention.
“Bodyguard?”
“Turbulence, ma’am. We encountered windshear conditions and the pilot called for my aid in flying the jet.”
“Personal bodyguard?”
“Hmm.” She settled back into buttery leather and steepled her fingers, tapping them in a mini Mexican wave. I was fluent in this sign language. Time to intervene.
“I brought the nuts onto the flight and ate them while Hugo was occupied keeping the plane aloft, Aunt Bea. If he hadn’t assisted the pilot, we’d still be swimming home. He doesn’t deserve to be punished.”
Hugo’s eyes flickered to me in the rear-view mirror. It topped our list of meaningful exchanges. The engagement would probably be a while away yet.
“I see,” she relaxed and smiled. Her small teeth were blindingly white in the murk of the backseat. She squeezed my hand. “We shall overlook it, just this once. I’m sure a repeat lecture on the hazards of excess salt is uncalled for.”
There were other pressing concerns. “Um, did you say personal bodyguard? As in my personal bodyguard?”
“We are expecting an extremely important guest in the coming days, Winnie. A bodyguard for you is simply a precaution. Our visitor attracts unwanted attention, and we intend to leave nothing to chance.”
The whole thing made no sense. First, this transcontinental yank, and now a guest who somehow challenged my safety? And imagine the spectacle of tracking about Sydney with a gorilla in dark glasses reporting my position via a wrist communicator and roughing up anyone caught glancing at me sideways. Every boy within a fifty-metre radius would sprint in the opposite direction.
“Ohhh, but Aunt Bea. Where will I put him when I’m in public?”
“Really, Winsome, that tone befits a two-year-old. Now, enlighten me about the past six months at school. Leave out no detail.” And so I did. “I apologise unreservedly for enrolling you at that den of iniquity,” she harrumphed, her slim shoulders squared in indignation. “Imbeciles.” Heads would soon roll at the Academy. Compared with my subtle yet infinitely more powerful great-aunt, Chablis’ family’s reach was short.
Still at a distance from the city, we pulled over to the curb beneath a gloomy concrete archway. Parked in a row before us were two other limousines, identical to ours, and Bea’s silver Bentley Continental GT.
“Winsome, you will continue the journey in the Bentley with Hugo.”
What in the CIA-witness-protection-programme-conspiracy-theory was going on? “I’m not budging until you tell me what this is about.”
Almost the instant the car stopped moving, Bea had the door open and prepared to hop out. She turned back to me with a strange sympathetic expression. “It is time for your education to match your ability.”
“What?” My lacklustre grades tended to deny the need for a more challenging curriculum. “Who’s coming to stay? The Queen?”
Bea was already out of the car as the words left my mouth. She reached our tiny, ancient housekeeper Mrs Paget and my butler, Fortescue, dapper in his bow tie and vest, who loitered by the side of the road. The trio dipped their heads for a brief conference. I attempted pursuit, simultaneously thrilled to see them, and mortified when Hugo blocked my progress by stepping in front. Where had he come from so speedily? The man was a ballerina in Goliath’s body. He planted his hands on his hips and raised his eyebrows in challenge. I remained trapped in the car. No doubt, manhandling would occur if I caused a ruckus.
“You wouldn’t!”
His jaw set, highlighting the manly dimple in his chin. “Don’t make me,” he threatened in his finest deep Mufasa.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I was stuck in a Coen Brothers’ farce.
In the triangular gap between Hugo’s elbow and his body, Mrs Paget grinned and waved, her puff of white hair and plain shift masking a wiry, eighty-year-old ball of energy. She took the limousine at the head of the posse and drove off into the night. Hugo whisked me so rapidly to the Bentley if I were egg whites I’d have been stiff and fluffy. After a sober nod at me as he strode by, Fortescue replaced Hugo at the vacated steering wheel and followed the others.
To add to the humiliation, my bodyguard made me sit in front next to him as he drove. Apparently, he’d taken Bea seriously and decided to dial up the scrutiny. We were the last to leave after half an hour. Then came another half an hour of tooling around town in stony silence, checking for mystery tails. Surely this was overkill? I was too grumpy to lap up the scenery, hunching in for a mope on the deficient explanations.
There was absolutely no point asking Bea for anything more. A crowbar couldn’t prise her lips apart until she deigned to open them. My head drooped. Vibrating glass massaged my forehead, wheels thrumming the verge.
“Where are you?”
The woman laughed, running downstairs from the back porch of a large, elegant mansion. Simple cream pants and a singlet adorned her lithe body, long mahogany hair pulled up in a messy bun. Her amber eyes sparkled with mischief. She seemed in her early twenties and was very beautiful. A solid wall of tall, moss-draped trees circled the house in lined soldiers, a wide expanse of lawn sloping down to wetlands and a wooden jetty.
A vegetable garden, fruit trees and herbs quilted a sizeable area off to the side, chickens clucking somewhere to a chorus of trilling frogs. The woman’s land flourished green and abundant, the morning light golden. Her hair shone in the sun; the perfect moment captured from a gentle Southern USA romance.
She halted on the grass, bare feet sinking in its lushness. Her smile faltered as silence chopped the air like a fallen axe, and her expression morphed to fear. She lifted two fingers and blew a short, sharp whistle. Wings whooshed and a peregrine falcon plunged from the sky, alighting on her upraised forearm.
“Find Seth for me, Poe,” she urged.
The powerful bird bulleted skyward, the perspective changing to reveal the house from above, obsidian water glistening in patches through the thick canopy. A stone fence the size of the Great Wall of China contained the glorious gardens surrounding the young woman’s house in a semicircle to the swamp. Egrets and fowl took flight in panic, bigger, less harmless creatures splashing the sucking depths.
The falcon searched the ground in widening arcs, eventually showing thinned vegetation and a scrawny dirt track meandering beyond the gates of the woman’s fortress paradise. A fat hedge marked the outer extremity of her land where dense wilderness ate any sign of habitation.
Abruptly, a man came into view, poised within her boundary on one side of the hedge. He was tall and seemed somehow noble, even at a distance, his longish dark hair whispering in a slight breeze.
“Stay this side of the line where you are hidden. Please,” the woman pleaded, seeing through her bird’s sharp eyes.
From the other side came frenzied shouts. Poe floated overhead in time to sight a boy in sodden coveralls pop up to slap the surface of a water hole, gagging. His fishing pole sat suspended next to an abandoned scoop net, where a catfish flopped feebly on the bank. The youngster had clearly lost his footing in the effort to snag his catch.
His friend clambered the ridge, frantically jerking a branch to the shore. But his efforts weren’t fast enough and the struggling boy submerged again, this time for longer. The man paced the perimeter, plainly trying to decide if he should save the boy or remain within the woman’s haven.
“Please, please. Keep inside the line!”
The boy came up gurgling, his flailing arms limp with fatigue. The man paused, and then thrust his way through the hedge, stripping off his shirt while moving in swift, long strides down the embankment. Powerful muscles flexed beneath bronzed skin in the light, his movements sleeker than those of a hunting jaguar. The woman dropped to her knees and sobbed, both hands cradling her belly.
“No. No. We are damned. Our baby …”
He dived in, emerging with the boy moments later, sculling to the edge and hefting them up by tree roots. He hastily checked the boy’s pulse, and once satisfied he was still breathing, deserted him to the care of his friend. The man bolted away from the woman’s house through the scrub with more grace and speed than humanly possible.
“Poe! Get Billie,” she groaned. “We must prepare. The Crone comes for me.”
A tortured cry ripped from the man, a sound to rend the heart. “Sorry! I am so sorry, my Keeper,” echoed his footfalls. “Stick to the plan. Protect the Stone. I love you, Raphaela.”
I gasped to consciousness, spit on my chin and an anvil in my chest. I scrubbed my tired eyes, which felt like a massage with sandpaper. Jetlag had never caused such vivid dreams before. And I knew that beguiling voice: Seth. The man who paraphrased Baudelaire in my dreams was the same man forced to make a terrible choice between protecting his lover and saving a dying boy. My mental disturbance had seemingly reached new heights of detail and I had no idea what weird message my brain was attempting to send.
Hugo observed me sidelong through narrowed eyelids, his brow creased. Headlights briefly illuminated the dark corners of the basement garage. The journey was finally over.
“You are home, Winnie.” It was the first time Hugo had addressed me personally, the care in his words more disconcerting than anything else.
