He nodded.
“What about your father?” Colette prompted. “Sisters? Brothers?”
Zephyr answered more quickly than I expected. “Brothers!” He blinked, and the surety wavered. “Or maybe just one?”
Colette hummed. “The first answer is usually correct,” she said, then scribbled something in the margin of her paper. “Well, your English is impeccable, and you don’t have an accent, so I don’t believe you were raised in France.”
Her voice had gone soft. Fishing, but gentle. She was good at this.
“What about your performance?” she asked. “Where did you learn that?”
He was quiet for a long time, rooting around in the darkplaces in his mind. Then quietly, he said, “There was a circus.”
I glanced up from my file drawer, and Colette stilled beside him, pen hovering midair.
“I grew up there,” he murmured. “By a red and white tent. We lived out of wagons. Everything smelled like straw and sweat and dust. The music was always real, not like at the club. It was all brass and drums, and it echoed.
“I don’t remember learning how to climb. I think I always knew. The rigging felt safer than the ground half the time.” His smile was small, wistful. “But Idoremember letting go for the first time. No harness. Just chalk on my hands and a net below. And I flew.”
He looked down while hugging one of the sofa pillows against his chest.
“I practiced every day after that,” he continued, his voice gaining confidence with each word. “My hands would bleed from the rope burn, but I didn’t care. I learned to twist, to flip, to hold myself midair like it was nothing. I could land on a wire, light as a bird.”
His smile was wide and unguarded, and it lit up the room. I’d wanted to know him, and to knowabouthim, but I hadn’t realized how gratifying it would be. How satisfying to see him becoming complete.
“I was happy there,” he said. “I think I really was.”
The corner of Colette’s mouth curled, pleased. “Now that’s something. French family, brothers, and a circus in America. I can work with that.”
I leaned back in my chair, feigning interest in my files while watching them from the corner of my eye. There was something in the way she handled him—gentle, assured, and undeniably maternal. Had she ever mentioned havingchildren? In our centuries together, surely the topic must have come up. Had she told me, and I forgot?
Damn. Maybe I reallywashard to talk to.
Colette touched Zephyr’s arm, then leaned in conspiratorially. “Back to our lesson. I’ve thought of something you should share with Beck.” Her smirk made me immediately wary. She turned back to Zephyr and spoke in an authoritative voice. “Répète après moi:Je veux embrasser ta bite.”
Zephyr’s eyes widened, and a scarlet blush splotched his cheeks. He glanced at me, then giggled and repeated the words carefully, his accent light but passable.
I groaned. “No talking about me in your made-up language.”
“Comment oses-tu?” Colette gasped in mock offense. “It’s a very real language.”
“You’ve never tried to teach me,” I said.
“And I won’t,” she said with a wink in Zephyr’s direction. “This will be our little secret.”
Zephyr beamed.
They babbled on in words and phrases I didn’t understand, but it had a certain melody. The cadence played through my brain like music, or maybe that was just the joy of it all. The two people most important to me carried on, laughing, making clear what my life had been lacking all these many decades.
Love.
After a few hours, I found what I was looking for: a plan, and the wherewithal to carry it out. It required flexing a few muscles I’d let atrophy, and the willingness to be slightly less than forthright. But when I thought of how Maslow had conned the Dollhouse dancers into captivity, I was almost giddy at the prospect of karmic justice.
Standing, I smoothed the wrinkles out of my slacks andbeckoned to the hellhound currently sharing a bag of M&Ms with Zephyr.
“Coll?”
She perked up with a blue candy piece pinned between her lips.
