“Show me the walls and the paint.”
“I’ve got a bedroom just waiting for a couple coats of Spiced Cognac.” She gestured to the newspapers he carried. “We provide drops. You don’t have to bring your own.” When he didn’t smile, she felt a little warning dip in her belly. “Uh-oh.”
“I heard about the media invasion, and your mother’s visit the other day. There’s been some coverage-TV, newspapers.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen some of it. Look, I know they brought your name up, and-”
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “That’s not important. Cilla, I debated doing this, and decided someone would tell you or show you before much longer. It might be better if it was me. Patty was in the supermarket this morning. They’d just stocked these at checkout.”
“The tabloids.” She nodded, pulled off her work gloves. “I knew they’d be hitting any day. Don’t worry. I’m used to it.” She held out a hand for the papers.
The headlines screamed. They always did in the tabs, she knew, but the screams seemed only more strident when her name was involved.
JANET HARDY’S GHOST HAUNTS HER GRANDDAUGHTER!
FORMER HOLLYWOOD PRINCESS IN NEAR FATAL CRASH! BEDELIA HARDY RUSHES TO HER DAUGHTER’S SIDE
AFTER ATTACK BY MADMAN!
IS LITTLE KATIE THE REINCARNATION OF JANET HARDY?
The pictures were worse, grainy, exploitative. Splashed on one front page was a photo of Cilla, angled to spotlight her injured face, with Dilly holding her close, a single tear sliding down her cheek. Behind them floated the ghostly image of Janet with the caption: “‘My mother’s spirit remains trapped here,’ Bedelia Hardy claims. Photographic PROOF corroborates her mournful statement.”
An insert shot showed Cilla carrying the very trim she now worked on out of the house. Cilla struggles to exorcise Janet’s ghost from her Virginia farm.
Ford hadn’t escaped, she noted. They’d slapped his photograph, his name, their ridiculous captions inside.
“Okay, worse. A lot worse than I expected it to be.” She pushed the papers back at her father. “Front page, multiple stories in each. Mom will be thrilled. I don’t care how that sounds,” she snapped before her father could speak. “She amped it up. Everyone I work with, do business with, will see this crap. And Ford’s sucked into the shit pile because he had the poor judgment to fall in love with me. Now he’ll-”
“He’s in love with you?” Gavin interrupted. Even as she started to shrug, Gavin set a hand on Cilla’s shoulder. “He’s in love with you? You’re in love with him?”
“The L word’s been spoken by both parties-or alluded to by me. Or, according to that rag there, spoken by Janet through me as they’re speculating whether Cilla’s outraged lover has been seduced by my grandmother’s spirit. Don’t say I shouldn’t let it upset me. Don’t say everyone knows this stuff is a load of crap. These papers sell because people love reading loads of crap.”
“I was going to say I’ve always been fond of Ford. If he makes you happy, I’m even more fond of him.”
“He’s not going to be happy with me when he sees all this, and has to explain to his family, his friends, his publisher, for God’s sake, why his name and his face have been smeared all over the place.” Helpless, she pressed a hand to her nervous belly. “I knew they’d pull him in, and I warned him, but I didn’t know it would be this bad.”
“You’re either giving yourself too much credit or Ford not enough. Either way, you’ve got a right to be upset. To be thoroughly pissed. I don’t have as much experience with celebrity as you do, but I know you have two choices.”
He spoke calmly, his eyes solemn. “You go out, make a stink, demand corrections and retractions, threaten legal action, or you ignore it. Do the first, and you have a slim chance for some satisfaction, while the story gains legs and they sell more papers. Do the second and it burns in your guts, at least for a while.”
“I have to ignore it, I know that. But it doesn’t go away. They’ll pull out those pictures, the worst of them, anytime they decide to run with another Janet Hardy story, or when Mom eventually divorces Number Five. I need a lot more thoroughly-pissed time before I can resign myself to it.”
“I could buy you a puppy.”
“A what?” Baffled, she pushed a hand at her hair. “Why?”
“Then you could spread these ridiculous papers on the floor for him to poop and pee on.”
She smiled a little. “I always wanted a puppy, but I guess I should actually finish the house before I put on additions like pets.”
“Then why don’t I paint that bedroom for you instead? Spiced Cognac, right?”
“That’s the one. I’ll show you where it is.”
FORD STEPPED OUT of the box for a bottle of water and to study the last pencils he’d completed. He liked the subtle changes in Cass, after she’d awakened and merged with Brid. The look in her eyes, the difference in posture when she was alone. She’d changed, and not just when she called out for power, and the symbol of her rank burned into her arm. The quiet, self-effacing academic would gradually come into her own, until that persona was more of a mask than her true self.
Then that loss would become an issue in future volumes.
To choose a path to destiny, as the Immortal told her in panel three, page sixty-one, required sacrifice. She would never be exactly who or what she had been once that choice was made.
How would she deal? Ford wondered. How would she handle who she became, and who she left behind on that journey?
He thought it would be interesting to find out. He hoped the readers did, too.
It wouldn’t hurt, he decided, to hit some blogs, give a few cryptic hints as to what was in store. He needed to check his e-mail anyway. And an hour break from the work would let the creative juices simmer.
He started to sit at his desktop when he heard a knock on his front door. Cautious since the Invasion of the Reporters, he checked out the window before he went down to answer.
“Hey, Mr. McGowan.”
“Ford. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
“No, actually, I was just taking a break. Come on in.”
“There are a couple of things I’d like to talk with you about.”
“Sure.” Stupid to feel nervous, Ford told himself. It had been a long time since he’d had term papers and final exams on the line. “Ah, you want something cold?”
“That would be nice. I just finished doing some priming over at Cilla’s.”
“Is there a problem over there?” Ford asked as he led the way to the kitchen.
“Something about the hot water heater, a protracted debate over drawers versus doors on some sort of cabinetry and Buddy bitching about O rings. Otherwise, it looks to me as if the work over there is going very well.”
“Cilla seems to be able to juggle all the balls. Have a seat. Tea work for you?”
“Perfect.” Gavin waited while Ford poured the cold tea over ice in tall glasses. Then he set the tabloids on the counter.
Ford glanced down, turned the angle of the top paper for a better view. “Ouch. Has Cilla seen these?”
“Yes. I take it you haven’t.”
“No, I’ve been in Centuria most of the day. Working, I mean,” he explained. “How’d she take it?”
“Not well.”
“Jesus, could this be any cheesier?” Ford asked, tapping the photo with Janet’s “ghost.” “Any twelve-year-old can Photoshop better than that. But this insert of Cilla when she was a kid’s pretty cute.”
Saying nothing, Gavin opened the paper, watched as Ford skimmed down and saw his own face. “Man, I need a haircut. I keep meaning to take care of that. Hmm, ‘Cilla’s Outraged Lover Rushes to Her Aid.’ I don’t appear especially outraged in this shot. Concerned would fit better. They ought to…”
The full phrase, and the fact that Cilla’s father sat at his counter drinking iced tea, sank in, and had him clearing his throat. “Listen, Mr. McGowan, Cilla and I- That is, it’s not… Well, it is, but-”