City of Night

Chapter 58

After the unknown thing in the glass case spoke her name and made its ominous claim to her, Erika did not linger in the secret Victorian drawing room.

She did not like the roughness of the voice. Or its confidence.

At the threshold of the room, she almost hurried boldly into the passageway before she realized that the rods bristling from the walls were humming again. A headlong exit would result in a contest between her brilliantly engineered body and perhaps several thousand volts of electricity.

As extraordinarily tough and resilient as she might be, Erika Helios was not Scarlett O’Hara.

Gone with the Wind had been set in an age before electrical service had been available to the home; consequently, Erika was not certain that this literary allusion was apt, but it occurred to her anyway. Of course she had not read the novel; but maybe it contained a scene in which Scarlett O’Hara had been struck by lightning in a storm and had survived unscathed.

Erika stepped cautiously across the threshold and paused, as she had done when entering the farther end of this passageway. As before, a blue laser speared from the ceiling and scanned her. Either the ID system knew who she was or, more likely, recognized what she was not: She was not the thing in the glass case.

The rods stopped humming, allowing her safe passage.

She quickly closed the massive steel portal and engaged the five lock bolts. In less than a minute, she had retreated beyond the next steel barrier and had secured it as well.

Her synchronized hearts nevertheless continued to beat fast. She marveled that she could have been so unsettled by such a small thing as a disembodied voice and a veiled threat.

This sudden, persistent fear, disproportionate to the cause, had the character of a superstitious response. She, of course, was free of all superstition.

The instinctive nature of her reaction led her to suspect that subconsciously she knew what was imprisoned in the amber substance within that glass case, and that her fear arose from this deeply buried knowledge.

When she reached the end of the initial passage, where she had originally entered through a pivoting section of bookcases, she found a button that opened that secret door from here behind the wall.

Immediately that she returned to the library, she felt much safer, in spite of being surrounded by so many books filled with so much potentially corrupting material.

In one corner was a wet bar stocked with heavy crystal glassware and the finest adult beverages. As a superbly programmed hostess, she knew how to mix any cocktail that might be requested, though as yet she had not been in a social situation requiring this skill.

Erika was having cognac to settle her nerves when from behind her, Christine said, “Mrs. Helios, pardon me for saying so, but I suspect that Mr. Helios would be distressed to see you drinking directly from the decanter.”

Erika had not realized that she had been committing such a faux pas, but on having it drawn to her attention, she saw that she was, as charged, guzzling Remy Martin from the exquisite Lalique decanter, and even dribbling some down her chin.

“I was thirsty,” she said, but sheepishly returned the decanter to the bar, stoppered it, and blotted her chin with a bar napkin.

“We’ve been searching for you, Mrs. Helios, to inquire about dinner.”

Alarmed, glancing at the windows and discovering that night had fallen, Erika said, “Oh. Have I kept Victor waiting?”

“No, ma’am. Mr. Helios needs to work late and will take his dinner at the lab.”

“I see. Then what shall I do?”

“We will serve your dinner anywhere you wish, Mrs. Helios.”

“Well, it’s such a big house, so many places.”

“Yes.”

“Is there somewhere I could have dinner where there’s cognac — other than here in the library with all these books?”

“We can serve cognac with your dinner anywhere in the house, Mrs. Helios — although I might suggest that wine would be more appropriate with a meal.”

“Well, of course it would. And I would like to have a bottle of wine with dinner, an appropriate bottle complementary to whatever the chef has prepared. Select for me a most appropriate bottle, if you will.”

“Yes, Mrs. Helios.”

Apparently, Christine had no desire for another conversation as intimate and intense as the one they’d shared in the kitchen earlier in the day. She seemed to want to keep their relationship on a formal footing henceforth.

Encouraged by this, Erika decided to exert her authority as the lady of the house, although graciously. “But please, Christine, also serve me a decanted bottle of Remy Martin, and save yourself the trouble by bringing it at the same time you bring the wine. Don’t bother making a later trip.”

Christine studied her for a moment, and said, “Have you enjoyed your first day here, Mrs. Helios?”

“It’s been full,” Erika said. “At first it seemed like such a quiet house, one might almost expect it to be dull, but there seems always to be something happening.”