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“No,” he said. “Of course you should stay with me.”
***
The next anonymous text directed me to 25 Marion Coates Road, which was within walking distance of Whitney. This time, lights blazed from every window in the Pater house. Even from the street, I could hear faint strains of jazz. The scene was almost civilized.
Inside, it was like I’d stepped through a portal in time. I pushed past men in suits mingling with women in dresses like mine, hemlines swishing below the knee, boat collars lying flat across our throats, demure and polished. The living room buzzed with saxophone notes, murmured conversations, clinking wineglasses. I snagged one from on top of the piano and drank quickly, unnerved by how convivial it was, how much like a college department’s end-of-year salon. Jamie said the house was owned by Cane & Company, a management consulting firm notorious for helping university administrators strip college budgets until they were at maximum profitability. I assumed it was a clue, a link to the real life of whoever lived here. I just had to connect the dots.
I scanned but didn’t spot Nicole, which was strange. She’d said she craved Pater gatherings, so why would she miss one? As my eyes traveled, committing faces to memory, my gaze snagged on the Lieutenant, standing with two men in the corner. He was watching me.
He inclined his head, but the intensity of his stare didn’t falter. My arm throbbed where the brand had singed my skin.
Michael Corbin, I whispered to myself, the secret curling through my mind. It was a talisman of protection, a knife hidden up my sleeve. I smiled back.
Then I turned, almost spilling wine down the front of a man’s shirt. He jumped, and I had an untethered moment of self-flagellation—awkward body, inelegant, unwomanly—before the man boomed a laugh.
“I like wine, young lady, but not enough to wear it.” Glancing down to see his suit was unblemished, the man took a step closer and held out his hand. “You’re new. I came to say hello.”
He was tall, with thick fingers, a stomach that strained his suit jacket, and a shock of white hair. He was easily in his sixties, and his face was red from too much alcohol. I took his hand; he snapped it to his mouth and kissed it.
“Your name?” There was a quality to his voice I had trouble placing.
“Shay Deroy.”
His eyes sparkled. “I can hear the American South in your voice. And your surname is a clunky French bastardization.Du roi, of the king. Let me guess…Louisiana or East Texas.”
I recognized it now. He had a professor’s voice. The slow, self-satisfied cadence of a man who was used to standing in front of a classroom, receiving attention.
“Texas.”
He smiled. “Longview?”
“Dallas.” This grinning professor was so unlike the Lieutenant.
His eyes twinkled. “Ah, the Bible Belt. Tell me, Shay, how closely have you studied scripture?”
I frowned. “Scripture?”
He reached around me for a glass of wine, coming unnervingly close. “Say what you will about religion, but there’s no denying the Bible is a great work of literature. Endlessly teachable.” He sipped his wine with a satisfied smile. “You’ll see.”
Uneasiness hollowed my stomach. There was something about his cheer, the way he spoke to me as if I were a child. I could feel his desire to diminish me humming underneath his smile.
His eyes caught movement to my right, and he jerked forward, grabbing someone by the elbow. “Speak of the devil!”
He pulled a young girl forward, wisp-thin and stringy-haired, no older than twenty. Her dowdy collared dress hung loose off her limbs, and her elbows were sharp, cheekbones too pronounced. “Shay, meet Katie. It’s her special night.”
For a moment, I blinked between them, trying to read Katie’s face. Her cheeks were flushed. “Hi,” she said shyly.
“Hi, Katie.”Run, Katie.
The man squeezed her arm tighter. “I was just asking Shay what kind of student she was.”
“A bad one, I’m afraid.” I took a step back. “I almost didn’t graduate college.”
“Pity,” he said, eyes finding mine. “Then you won’t understand why the daughters call me the Marquis.”
I took another step back. I’d read de Sade.
He winked. “Like I always tell Katie, pushing girls into higher education was where we started to go wrong. We told a generation of women they needed to have a life of the mind to be happy, and now look at us—girls enrolled at twice the rate of men, and men committing suicide in record-high numbers. If this continues, it’ll only get worse.” He shook Katie’s arm. “Katie was miserable in college. All her instincts told her it was unnatural from the start. Isn’t that right?”
