“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“No,” she said frankly. “My people were on Justine’s trail, but something happened to the team. They haven’t called in. Riley will let me know what happened in a few hours, when he gets to St. Petersburg. Skavis and Malvora are plotting again. I suspect Father is communicating with them somehow. Which makes him a fool, to move against me. It isn’t as if they’d respect him enough to leave him alive after they seize power. And if he’s found ways to communicate with them, it’s possible he’s working with others as well, to undermine me.”
“Should I be worried?” I asked.
She frowned a bit and glanced at me.
“Coming after me is coming after you, isn’t it?” I asked.
She considered it, exhaling slowly. “I suppose it might be. I hadn’t considered that.” She shook her head. “I’m not thinking clearly. I haven’t slept well in…a while now.”
Her voice sounded unusually flat. Not like she was doing funny voices or anything, but it lacked its usual vibrance. Physically, she was doing the same thing—slouching. I had always had the impression thatno matter how hard you tried, you wouldn’t be able to catch Lara in an awkward or unappealing photograph, but today…
“You’re not wearing any makeup,” I noted.
She spread her gloved hands. “At the party, I showed you the part of me that…has done some terrible things, in her day. That’s one portion of who I am, and I assume it always will be.” She focused on me more intensely, her eyes having stolen all the celestial blue from the landscape. “But that’s not all I am. For a very long time, I have been working to rise above the…the base nature of my heritage. I want you to know that it is a road I will be following.”
I stared at her in total silence for a minute.
“That’s a big statement,” I said.
“It is.”
“I hope you realize how big.”
“I do.”
“It is, of course,” I said, “exactly what you should say to get me to like you and lower my guard.”
Her teeth showed. “That’s the problem with making fools of people,” she said. “After a while, they come to expect it even when you’re sincere.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Not really.” She sighed. “There’s only one way for you to know for certain. And that will take time.”
“I suppose we both have some of that on hand,” I said.
“I liked it,” Lara said. The words weren’t exactly hurried, or stammered, or rushed. Or they wouldn’t have been, from anyone else.
“Liked what?” I asked in a neutral tone.
“Kissing you,” she said, staring firmly into the distance. “The way you…you taste, I suppose.”
“You got one bite and haven’t slept well since,” I said. “Am I right?”
Her mouth firmed into a line. “You aren’t entirely wrong.”
“Well,” I said. I cleared my throat. “I liked it, too. Or at least, a lot better than when we thought we were both going to be blown to kingdom come or torn into little pieces by ur-ghouls.”
“My God, you silver-tongued devil,” she said levelly.
I felt myself smile.
She noticed. Her own mouth softened, and the corners of her eyes crinkled.
“I have a proposition,” I said.
“Really?” she asked. “At the feet of the Scarecrow, of all places?”
