Vivienne ignored him, rounding on Thomas.Did P-h-i-l-i-p give you “the talk”?Did he do his “keep it in the family” speech? Did he tell you about his fraternity?
“He might have mentioned it,” admitted Thomas.
She circled her fists, thumbs and pinkies extended.Typical.
“Vivi,please,” said Amelia. “That is quite enough.”
Vivienne tugged her hat loose and tossed it onto the hall tree alongside her sunglasses.I had a handler before you, she signed.You should know that. You’re not the first. The first is rotting at the bottom of the S-o-u-n-d.
“Vivienne!”
She ignored her mother, too.Tell him you’re not taking the job.
“And why should I do that?” Thomas asked, though he had the terrible sense that he was poking a bear.
Vivienne’s fingers moved furtively, as though she was letting him in on a secret. There were, he noticed, thin crescents of brown packed beneath the pink shellac of her manicure. The rest of her was pristine and pretty and polished, but her nails—her nails were packed with dirt.
Like she’d been out digging in the earth.
Where to start, she signed.One, because I don’t want you to. Two, because I don’t like the thought of you living in my house, sniffing around my things.
“Oh,” said Thomas. He was surprised to find his pride wounded. “Is that all?”
Hardly.Her thumb popped loose from her fist. Her smile was deceptively sweet.Three—because if you don’t turn down the job, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.
Today was going to be a very bad day. Vivienne Farrow could feel it in her bones.
She’d awoken that morning on the bathroom’s tiled floor, the hexagonal pattern mosaicked into her left cheek and a headache blossoming behind her eyes. Her nightdress had been torn, her arms scraped raw, as though she’d done her level best to claw clean out of herself in the dead of night.
And maybe she had.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
She dressed slowly, feeling strangely fractured as she slipped into a clean pink leotard and petal skirt. The sky outside her bedroom window was milky white, humidity thick as soup. She pulled on a knitted warm-up anyway, tugging it into place until the sleeves swallowed up the angry lattice of her arms. By the time she twisted her hair into a bun and shoved out into the hall, she was already sweating. The vision in her right eye had begun to tunnel.
She’d sat awake through much of the previous night, her thoughts a glittering pinwheel of panic—hyperaware of their newest houseguest settling into the guest room beneath her. He didn’t know it yet, but Thomas had the power to bring everything she’d worked for crashing down around her ears. It was inevitable. She couldn’t possibly keep her secrets with him tailing after her all summer. All it would take was a single word to Philip, and she’d be ruined.
She needed him gone, that much was clear.
The trouble washow. She’d lain awake all night worrying. Wondering. The air in her room had been too hot. The house, too still. Everything fit in exactly the wrong way—her covers scratched, her pajamas itched, her skin crawled.
And then—as it so often did on nights when the moon was sharp as a sickle—a cold, unwelcome something had wriggled its way to the surface. Like an earthworm, writhing out of the mud in the rain. She hadn’t been able to keep it at bay, even with the lights on and the mirrors covered, a protective circle drawn in chalk around her bed. Even with the dogs snarling at her side, their hackles raised.
She’d spent the next several hours trying to expel the feel of maggots in her belly. Knees pressed into the bathroom floor, she’d braced herself against the toilet bowl and breathed in the smell of bleached porcelain water. Doing whatever she could to make the wriggling stop.
That was how most nights went—long bouts of sleeplessness followed by a great, clawing struggle. Life had been that way for years. It was practically rote.
Though she didn’t normally unravel quite so thoroughly.
Which meant it was getting worse.
•••
Her very bad day became immediately worse the moment she stepped outside. She drew up short beneath the steepled portico, shielding her eyes from the late-morning sun. Thomas Walsh stood at the bend of the horseshoe drive, dressed in a suit her stepfather had no doubt provided him and inspecting the garish fountain her mother had recently had installed. He didn’t appear to notice her at all, and yet she was certain he was waiting there specifically to ambush her.
Finding Thomas in the receiving room the previous day had been a shock to the system, although maybe it shouldn’t have been. She’d known this was coming. Mikhail’s accident the preceding winter had snapped something vital within her, but the loss had been little more than an inconvenience for Philip. Just another problem to fix. Another vacancy to fill. She’d made the mistake of assuming Mikhail’s successor would be a carbon copy of her former handler: middle-aged, menacing, and—though he’d always vehemently denied it—suspected former Bratva.
Thomas Walsh was none of those things. He was scarcely older than her, with a friendly face and a short crop of sandy blond hair and a left cheek that dimpled atrociously when he smiled.
