“He called on Thursday,” Faraday said. “He hates it, living all alone in Albany. He’s realized that next year, he wants to live with friends.”
I didn’t say anything.Friends.
“I had to say yes, of course,” she went on. “It was my idea in the first place. But it seemed polite to ask you if it’s okay…again. Especially since you’re fighting.”
“It’s fine, Faraday. With Sebastian in your house, you’ll have an amazing year. The parties! The scandals! And he’ll have forgiven me by midterms.”
“Can I ask what you’re fighting about?”
“No,” I said.
“Of course not. Can you at least tell me why the hair?”
“Garrett wants me to look more artsy. It was blue last weekend.”
“Hah.” The sound was half-hearted.
“Sebastian still loves me,” I said. “It’s just family stuff.”
“And I’m not really family.”
“You will be. It happens slowly, dear, a little every day. The longer you’re part of us, the more you see of our ways, the more you’ll understand.”
“Of course,” Faraday said, trying to look as if she believed me. “Twelve thousand, you said?”
We sat on opposite sides of Garrett’s desk, and she pulled one of Gertie’s checks from her breast pocket. It was folded in half, wrinkles pressed into it, like she carried it everywhere. Marlow’s forged, florid signature crowded the lower-right corner.
Faraday took out the fountain pen that Grandmother had gifted her.
“By the way,” she said, printing the numbers carefully. “Something funny happened on the way here. One of Dad’s old business partners was on my train.”
“And when he saw you, he went to a different carriage?”
“Yes, just like your aunt promised. At parties, at restaurants, even on the street one time—they vanish whenever one of us appears, even if it’s just Oscar Junior.” Faraday hesitated. “But this time, it was kind of scary.”
“How?”
“On his way past, he stopped and gave me this…look.”
I spoke firmly. “What kind of look? Describe it in detail.”
“Like he was disgusted with me. Like I was something on the bottom of his shoe.” Faraday put down the pen. “Like I was nothing.”
I reached out and pulled the check away.
“Don’t worry, dear. We’ll fix that too.”
29
The restaurant Hiromi chose for our first date, Mixed, was five minutes’ walk from Garrett’s, on another narrow, doglegged street of brownstones with front stoops.
Mixed looked exactly like the residences on either side, except for a brass nameplate on its door and a handful of diners spilled onto the sidewalk.
I arrived early for our ten p.m. reservation, waiting across the street until Hiromi’s dot grew close. The June heat had settled in, and I wore Uncle Orrin’s pinstriped waistcoat—the one Garrett had vetoed—over bare skin. My charcoal, high-waisted linen pants had been the best find on a flea market shopping trip for Jessica Anderson. Sebastian’s black-beaked skull rested gently on my chest.
“In six weeks, Lyon has his annual party in the Catskills,” Garrett had told me as I dressed. “It’s a chance to see his cult up close, how they recruit, how they seduce. Make sure to be Hiromi’s plus-one.”
“She won’t go.”
