This one seemed to be a forgotten flower child, with dried blooms woven through her hair and light brown curls streaked with gold and red. Round cheeks dimpled beneath a cheerful spotting of freckles, but the sweet visage changed drastically below the neck. Cleavage bloomed over a black bone corset, covering the sinuous slide of those hips to end in a skintight pencil skirt. The outfit, and the body it encased, was totally out of place beneath a face of such abject innocence.
She took the cloth, smiling, and folded it in the crevasse between her milky breasts. “It’s only a question.”
But in case it was a trick one…“Old age. In bed.”
She shifted, causing gold flecks to spark from her limbs. Musk, like a tobacco rose, wafted to strike me in the gut. I hadn’t scented anything so heady and delicious since losing all my amplified senses. Though fully clothed, the sight and scent and sound of her were a promise of pure sex. The men in the Rest House, like Shen, and Tripp when he’d still been here, probably fell to their knees in front of her, begging for a taste of all that softness.
“In seven and a half billion years,” she said, breathy voice filled with wonder, “the earth will be dragged from its orbit by the sun, and spiral to a vaporous death.”
I blinked.
“Fucking cheery, Trish.” Diana rolled her eyes at me, then turned to address her companion on the hammocks.
“Does she know how to bring down a party or what?”
That woman said nothing, her silence a rebuke after Trish’s bubbling friendliness. She could have been either white or Asian, porcelain skin almost translucent atop chiseled cheekbones and piano-black lips. I thought about checking my reflection in them. Her hair was a severe bowl cut in the same glossy ebony as her mouth, but the thick bangs cutting straight across her face obscured her eyes, rendering her expressionless.
Covered from neck to ankle in form fitting black, she reminded me of a severe Audrey Hepburn without any other adornment beyond long dark nails. Yet every bit of her skinny body was revealed in a way even Trish hadn’t dared. Her ribs could be counted, her elbows jutted sharply, her nipples looked set in concrete.
She reminded me a bit of Mackie, I thought, shifting uncomfortably. Alert even without the use of her eyes. I glanced at Diana, who was lazily swinging a leg just above the ground, and when I looked back, the woman’s long, elegant fingers were tucked beneath her chin. A mannequin striking a different enticing pose, not moving into the position, but simply there, rigid and aloof. I frowned.
“I’m stating fact, right, Nicola?” Trish said, breaking me of my study as she whirled to join Diana, curls flying to emit another whiff of sweet muskiness. “Just because you don’t talk about it doesn’t mean we’re not all going to incinerate as the globe is engulfed by fire. Though we won’t even make it that long,” she turned, saying to me, “the sun will be ten percent brighter in just a billion years, causing all the oceans to boil away. No water, no life. Want a drink?”
“No.” Taking a drink was how I’d gotten into this mess.
Or was it? Shen claimed I’d called him to me, and these women were acting as if I’d stepped in from another room, rather than another world. I blinked again. “I am dreaming, right?”
“Of course,” Nicola said. Amazing, because her chrome mouth never moved. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t really here. You’re a part of this world now, or didn’t you know?”
Maybe giving up two-thirds of the essence de vie gave me free admittance for the rest of my natural lifetime. If only Disney had the same policy, I thought wryly. “So I need a drug to induce some sort of deeper level of sleep-”
“The theta level,” Trish said helpfully.
“And then I call the world to me just as I go under.”
“So telling someone to go to hell at that moment isn’t probably the wisest course of action.” This from Diana, hers a more mocking helpfulness. I scowled, and she smiled prettily. “Hope you have someone to pull you back out, though.”
“What?”
The smile widened. “You know. In case she finds out you’re here.”
But then the arching sound was back, bursting through the room like a low-flying phoenix. Ducking, I studied the cascading water walls, but the sound was already gone, lost in the rush. I held still, eyes darting, waiting for it again.
“So that’s why you’re here.” A slow smirk finally curled at the corners of Nicola’s black lacquered mouth.
“Should have figured.”
“Solange was right,” Trish singsonged.
The name alone sent shivers along my limbs, and apparently Diana felt the same way because she shushed Trish with a harsh glare. Maybe she’d done something to anger the woman too. Too bad for her…for us both. Solange’s was the sort of anger that blotted out entire planets. Basically, the difference between her and God was that God didn’t require the breath from your body, the bone from your marrow, the white from your eyes. Solange did.
Fuck the sound, I thought, and began looking for a way out instead. The other women chuckled, but didn’t look like they blamed me. “She sent Mackie after me,” I told them.
Trish shrugged, smiling sweetly. “He probably just wants to talk.”
Yeah, and porn stars just wanted to cuddle.
“Carlos?” I called the name tentatively, looking toward the ceiling. It echoed in that mix master’s scratch. Water continued to pour down the glass walls. I sighed.
“She sent him because you’re a danger to us all,” Nicola said, still stiff and autoerotic, like everyone else was incidental to her existence.
Diana flicked her fingers at me. “Joanna’s no danger to me.”
“She is if Solange catches you with her.”
“Stop saying her name!” This time Diana curled her delicate hands into fists, squeezing tight before forcibly relaxing them. “Besides, she doesn’t rule me.”
“She rules everyone whose soul has been melded into her sky!” Nicola said bitterly. Her sky, I thought, shuddering, remembering the planetarium.
“So you’ve all had parts of yourself put in her sky?”
Diana snorted. “It’s the first thing she does when someone new arrives. But you protected yourself from it somehow, and she hasn’t forgotten it. She thinks you’re after her power.”
“I don’t know why she wasn’t able to touch me.” I’d come awake while she’d been fashioning my gem, some how deforming it and keeping her from using it. “Besides, not everyone is after power.”
Nicola and Diana scoffed, but Trish lifted her chin. “Maybe Joanna just wanted to watch, like us.” She turned to me, wide-eyed. “Is that why you chose the water room?”
“I’ve no idea why I’m here.”
Yet even as I said it, the bottom dweller sound echoed again. Arching my head, I followed its path as it vaulted overhead, then fell like invisible rain into the basin sitting between Diana and Nicola and their four hammocks. I strained toward it like I had gills. What was that?
No, not a basin, I thought, frowning as I took a step to follow. A well.
Trish motioned me forward. “Come. Look.”
“No!” Nicola hissed.
Ignoring her, Trish slipped into a third hammock, and pointed to a fourth. I inched forward to peer in the thick crystal basin.
My anti-Olivia self was reflected in the water-dark eyes and choppy, blunt cut. Strong, lithe limbs, and a severe expression to match my mood. But I stared past my reflection, wondering where sound could go. Unlike the rest of the room, it was ice still. I waved my hand above the small pool.
“Not there.” Nicola was back in slideshow mode, bowl-cut fringe still perfectly arranged over the bridge of her nose. Her face was upturned, the shifting sands of the mirrored skies sending light to dance over her profile. She looked like a Roman bust, hard edges cut and sliced into soft curves.