The driver shrugged in a particularly Gallic manner, illustrating again the cultural ties Haiti had to the country from which she'd been politically independent for nearly two hundred years. "She is a loa, the wife of Baron Samedi."
"Baron Samedi?"
"A most powerful loa. He is the lord and guardian of the cemetary. The keeper of the crossroads."
"What's a loa?"
He frowned, shrugged almost angrily. "A loa is a spirit, a part of God, very powerful and divine."
"And I resemble this Madame Brigitte?"
He said nothing, but continued to stare at her from behind his dark glasses, and despite the afternoon's tropical heat Chrysalis felt a shiver run down her spine. She felt naked, despite the voluminous cloak she wore. It wasn't a bodily nakedness. She was, in fact, accustomed to going half-naked in public as a private obscene gesture to the world, making sure that everyone saw what she had to see every time she looked in a mirror. It was a spiritual nakedness that she felt, as if everyone who was staring at her was trying to discover who she was, was trying to divine the precious secrets that were the only masks that she had. She felt a desperate need to get away from all the staring eyes, but she wouldn't let herself run from them. It took all her nerve, all the cool she could muster, but she managed to walk into the hotel lobby with precise, measured steps.
Inside it was cool and dark. Chrysalis leaned against a high-backed chair that looked as if it'd been made sometime in the last century and dusted sometime in the last decade. She took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly.
"What was that all about?"
She looked over her shoulder to see Peregrine regarding her with concern. The winged woman had been in one of the limos at the head of the parade, but she'd obviously seen the byplay that had centered around Chrysalis's jeep. Peregrine's beautiful, satin-feathered wings only added a touch of the exotic to her lithe, tanned sensuality. She should be easy to resent, Chrysalis thought. Her affliction had brought her fame, notoriety, even her own television show. But she looked genuinely concerned, genuinely worried, and Chrysalis felt in need of sympathetic company.
But she couldn't explain something to Peregrine that she only half-understood herself. She shrugged. "Nothing." She looked around the lobby that was rapidly filling with tour personnel. "I could use a few moments of peace and quiet. And a drink."
"So could I," a masculine voice announced before Peregrine could speak. "Let's find the bar and I'll tell you some of the facts of. Haitian life."
Both women turned to look at the man who'd spoken. He was six feet tall, give or take, and strongly built. He wore a suit of white, tropical-weight linen that was immaculately clean and sharply creased. There was something odd about his face. His features didn't quite match. His chin was too long, his nose too broad. His eyes were misaligned and too bright. Chrysalis knew him only by reputation. He was a justice Department ace, part of the security contingent Washington had assigned to Tachyon's tour. His name was Billy Ray. Some wit at JD with a classical education had tagged him with the nickname Carnifex. He liked it. He was an authentic badass.
"What do you mean?" Chrysalis asked.
Ray looked around the lobby, his lips quirking. "Let's find the bar and talk things over. Privately."
Chrysalis glanced at Peregrine, and the winged woman read the appeal in her eyes.
"Mind if I tag along?" she asked.
"Hey, not at all." Ray frankly admired her lithe, tanned form, and the black-and-white-striped sundress that showed it o$: He licked his lips as Chrysalis and Peregrine exchanged unbelieving glances.
The hotel lounge was doing desultory afternoon business. They found an empty table surrounded by other empty tables and gave their orders to a red-uniformed waiter who couldn't decide whom to stare at, Peregrine or Chrysalis. They sat in silence until he'd returned with the drinks, and Chrysalis drank down the thimbleful of amaretto that he'd brought.
"The travel brochures all said that Haiti's supposed to be a bloody tropical paradise," she said in a tone that indicated she felt the brochures all lied.
"I'll take you to paradise, babe," Ray said.
Chrysalis liked it when men paid attention to her, sometimes too much. Sometimes, she realized, she conducted her affairs for all the wrong reasons. Even Brennan (Yeoman, she reminded herself, Yeoman. She had to remember that she wasn't supposed to know his real name) had become her lover because she'd forced herself on him. It was, she supposed, the sense of power that she liked, the control she had when she made men come to her. But making men make love to her body was also, she recognized with her habit of relentless self-scrutiny, another way to punish a revulsed world. But Brennan (Yeoman, damnit) had never been revulsed. He had never made her turn out the lights before kissing her, and he had always made love with his eyes open and watching her heart beat, her lungs bellow, her breath catch behind tightly clenched teeth…
Ray's foot moved under the table, touching hers, drawing her back from thoughts of the past, of what was over. She smiled a lazy smile at him, gleaming teeth set in a gleaming skull. There was something about Ray that was unsettling. He talked too loud, he smiled too much, and some part of him, his hands or his feet or his mouth, was always in motion. He had a reputation for violence. Not that she had anything against violence as long as it wasn't directed at her. For goodness's sake, even she'd lost track of all the men Yeoman had sent to their reward since, his arrival in the city. But, paradoxically, Brennan wasn't a violent man. Ray, according to his reputation, had a habit of running amuck. Compared to Brennan, he was a self-centered bore. She wondered if she'd be comparing all the men she would know to her archer, and she felt a rush of annoyance, and regret.
"I doubt that you'd have the skill to transport me to the dreariest shithole in the poorest part of Jokertown, dear boy, let alone paradise."
Peregrine squelched a twitchy smile and looked away. Chrysalis felt Billy's foot move away as he fixed her with a hard, dangerous stare. He was about to say something vicious when Dr. Tachyon interrupted by flopping into the empty chair next to Peregrine. Ray shot Chrysalis a look that told her the remark wouldn't be forgotten.
"My, dear." Tachyon bowed over Peregrine's hand, kissed it, and nodded greetings to everyone else. It was common knowledge that he was hot over the glamorous flyer, but then, Chrysalis reflected, most men were. Tachyon, however, was self-confident enough to be determined in his pursuit, and thickheaded enough not to call it off, even after numerous polite rebuffs on Peregrine's part.
"How was the meeting with Dr. Tessier?" Peregrine asked, removing her hand delicately from Tachyon's grasp when he showed no inclination of letting it go on his own.
Tachyon frowned, whether in disappointment at Peregrine's continuing coolness or in remembrance of his visit to the Haitian hospital, Chrysalis couldn't tell.
"Dreadful," he murmured, "simply dreadful." He caught the eye of a waiter and gestured him over. "Bring me something cool, with lots of rum in it." He looked around the table. "Anyone else?"
Chrysalis tinged a red-painted fingernail-it looked like a rose petal floating on bone against her empty cordial glass. "Yes. And more, um?"
"Amaretto."
"Amaretto for the lady there."
The waiter sidled up to Chrysalis and slipped the glass out from in front of her without making eye contact. She could feel his fear. It was funny, in a way, that someone could be afraid of her, but it angered her as well, almost as much as the guilt in Tachyon's eyes every time he looked at her. Tachyon ran his fingers dramatically through his long, curly red hair. "There wasn't much incidence of wild card virus that I could see." He fell silent, sighed gustily. "And Tessier himself wasn't overly concerned about it. But everyting else