Page 12 of Five

I can still feel Rory’s tiny hands holding onto my little-boy armor as we clip-clopped up and down the sidewalks.

We were so damn cute, we were even in the paper. I still have that old clipping framed and hanging in my boyhood bedroom back at the house, and another copy of it in my London flat.

And that wasn’t the only time Snowflake stood in as my steed. When I was seven and she was six, we’d go off on our own little adventures and it was Snowflake who took us there. Granted, these adventures took place in the Shrike backyard, but that’s a big-ass place. Especially when you’re so young.

Momshell would pack us a picnic, we’d stuff that into a pannier, and off we’d go. Rory would sit in front of me, holding the reins. She didn’t trust me as a rider by this time. She was the expert and needed to control the pony. But I didn’t care. Are you kidding? I could stare at her golden hair shining in the sunlight all I wanted when I sat behind her. And talk into her ear as she navigated the little rocky outcropping on the north side of the house. I could point things out to her and watch her eyes follow the line of my arm to whatever caught my curiosity.

And that was just the start of it. Snowflake took Rory to her first horse shows. She jumped those cross rails like a champion. I mean, I’ve seen the videos. The jumps were only a few inches off the ground, but it made my princess feel like she was flying. She won her very first blue ribbon on that pony. She scribbled Five and Rory on the back and gave that prize to me. I have it framed, hanging on the wall of my flat, right next to the newspaper clipping. I’ve kept it with me all through school. It’s faded to a weird purple color now, it’s so old. But I love that damn ribbon.

So yeah. Snowflake dying is a hit to the heart. And I’m actually a little ashamed that I didn’t come home for whatever elaborate funeral the Shrikes cooked up to match that pile of rocks marking her grave.

I’m in Denver before I know it, driving down the I-25 towards downtown. I get off at Speer and make my way towards Cherry Creek. It’s a pretentious neighborhood filled with pretentious houses, but these are pretentious people, so…

The meeting is really a garden party hosted by the Young and Mobile Society. It’s something they’ve been bugging me about joining for years now, but I keep turning them down. This year something they said piqued my interest.

“Mr. Aston,” they said. “It would be a mistake to fight the inevitable.”

It came off as a threat. I’m not a paranoid guy. I don’t believe in much, even though I know the real facts behind my oldest sister Sasha’s background. I know about the Company and how Kate fits into things. I have an idea about some important details my parents left out when they sat me down the night before I left for Oxford and tried to explain our complicated history.

But my life has been perfect. In just about every way. No weirdoes stalked us when I was little. There were no more trials or run-ins with the FBI. There were no secret meetings about assassins and all that crazy shit they talked about that night. And unless you count my grandfather’s attention every summer, there was nothing but lazy days on the Shrike ranch with my princess and her pony. Nothing but summer camps filled with the best and brightest. Lots of special invitations to join national robotics teams and such. And my little side business building apps that made me millions before I turned eighteen and landed me on in the top three of the “Who’s Who Up and Coming” list in Forbes four years ago.

We won.

We did win, right?

I can’t shake the feeling that something’s coming. That my parents missed something, or forgot something, or just plain left something out. That offer the Young and Mobile Society made me sounded like a threat. So I’m here to see just what the fuck these people want and get them off my back with a firm no, thank you, and that’ll be the end of it. Maybe I really can stay with Rory all summer? Maybe we really can finally have that fairy-tale ending?

When I get to a stop light, I open the Love Notes app, choose something special for her, and then press send.

It’s not a perfect second-chance plan, but it’s a start.

I make my way through the neighborhood streets until my map app tells me I’ve arrived. There are no valets parking cars. There is no sign on the front gate. There’s no music blaring or people walking down the sidewalk dressed up in their summer finery.

It’s just a big house with a big gate.

Hmmm.

I park the rental car, get out, buttoning my suit coat as I cross the street, and press the buzzer on the gate.

“Yes?” The answer comes almost instantly.

“Five Aston,” I say.

Silence.

Hmmm again.

Then a buzzing sound from the walk-in gate off to the left. Can these people be any more annoying?

Whatever.

I go through, follow a stone path leading up to the house, and end up at the front door of the most ostentatious-looking Tudor revival mansion I’ve ever seen.

The Astons are old money. We are rich. But my parents are modest. We live in an old four-bedroom house in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Fort Collins, Colorado. Ostentatious it is not.

Now my grandma, she’s a little more like this. Her house is a massive four-square in City Park with an imposing brick wall and massive iron gate. And even though her house is just a few miles up the road, City Park and Cherry Creek are worlds apart.

The door opens before I can knock.