Page 140

He looked at Maksim. At the black shirt, the combed hair, the folded hands. At the tall, still, unnervingly composed figure at his table, who had spent a week in his house and eaten four bowls of his wife’s soup and greeted him each morning with a bow.

“You,” said my father.

“Yes, sir,” said Maksim.

“ You are the one who got involved with my son.”

“I am.”

“You are the one.” My father’s voice was low and level and shaking with fury. “You are the one who is trying to play him. Who came into this house with your foreign accent and your shoulders and your pale, sinister, expressionless face. You took advantage of a good, simple, impulsive boy. He is smarter than this. He should not be with a person like you.”

“Dad!”

“Be quiet, Alexander.”

“He saved my life!”

“He nearly got you killed. “

There it was, the truth of it, the thing under the mask.

It went through the room like a slap. My father sat there, stiff-backed, with his hands flat on the tablecloth and his jaw working. He had not looked at me. He was looking at Maksim, and I saw, for the first time, that his eyes were red-rimmed. He had not slept. He had sat up all night in his study with the news on, and the police report, and the photographs, and the knowledge that his son had been taken by a maniac and was lying in a hospital bed.

He was not angry. He was afraid.

“Sir,” said Maksim.

My father said nothing.

“Sir.” Maksim rose. He did it slowly, smoothly, and stood at the head of the table with his hands at his sides. “You are right.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I nearly got him killed. It was my fault. A man came for me, and he took Lex to draw me out, and I did not warn your son because I was a fool and a coward. I have thought about it every hour since.” He inclined his head. “I do not ask you to forgive it. I ask only that you let me say something.”

My father glared at him.

“Go on,” he said, grimly.

“I love your son.”

The words sat there.

“I have lived a very long time,” said Maksim, “in the sense that I am older than I look. I have never loved anyone. I did not think I was capable of it. Then your son threw me against a locker and called me a name I will not repeat in front of his sister, and I felt for the first time in a very long while that I was alive.” He paused. “He is loud. He is stubborn. He hits things. He eats too little and talks too much and sleeps with one leg out of the blanket. He is the best person I have ever met. I would lay down my life for him. I would lay down considerably more than that.”

“Maksim,” I whispered. “Stop.”

“I am not finished.”

“You are making it worse.”

“I do not believe so.” He looked at my father. “Mr. Pendleton, I am not asking for your blessing. I am not a fool. I am telling you what I intend.”

And he reached into his pocket.

I saw it a fraction of a second before he drew it out.

It was small and square and dark blue. The kind of box that comes with a bow and a bill. Maksim opened it, and a ring lay inside, a wide, plain, brushed-platinum band, with a single garnet set flush into the metal. The garnet matched the one on my throat.