CHAPTER 12
The Priestess at Huitaca
WHY DON’T YOU ALL take the night off? I don’t think you’ve had a day off since Opal.” Angelica di Rienzi Furiano reached for her glass of chardonnay. She raised it, toasting the sun where it struck bolts of violet and gold from the edge of the butte that rose above her home. In its delicate goblet the wine glowed. A tiny bee with green eyes hovered above the lip of the glass. Angelica flicked at it with a carefully sculpted fingernail. The bee spun off and disappeared into the late afternoon light. Angelica sipped thoughtfully at her wine, suddenly smiled. “I know! Dr. Adder’s playing in Flagstaff, you could go see that. It’s supposed to be pretty good.”
In the pool, Cloud and Kendra and Martin lay on inflatable plastic floating chairs. The two bodyguards wore plain back one-piece bathing suits; Martin an ancient pair of surfer’s baggies appliquéd with yellow smiley-faces sewn on by Kendra. Cloud’s dark pigtail drifted across the turquoise surface behind her like a dozing water moccasin. A few feet away Kendra and Martin held hands, their floats bumping noses every now and then in a companionable way. They were all three burnished copper by the sun, though Martin’s hair was white-blond, straight and fine as a baby’s. He was Angelica’s personal trainer, and lived in a casual ménage with the two girls in the adobe gardener’s cottage down the hill from the main house.
“Girls?” Angelica inquired softly.
“You sure?” Kendra lifted her head drowsily, shading her eyes as she squinted up at their employer. She was only eighteen, taking a year off between high school and Bennington. She had a black belt in karate and for the last two years had won the Idaho State Martial Arts Competition. “Cloud said she heard something outside last night—”
Angelica shook her head. “I saw it later—a coyote, looked like it had a jackrabbit. No, you all go on; I think the early show’s at seven.”
“A coyote?” Cloud repeated dubiously.
Angelica nodded. She tipped her head to gaze at Cloud from above the rim of her sunglasses. “Isn’t that amazing? It came right up to the house. They’ve never done that before.”
Damn straight they’ve never done it before, thought Cloud. They haven’t done it yet. The night before she’d been up late, reading a new Pasolini biography, when she’d heard it. Something was struggling on the path that led from the cottage to the pool, something too large for any animal, and besides, she’d distinctly heard a voice, a boy’s voice, she thought. She hadn’t been able to make out any words; she hadn’t waited around to hear more. By the time she got outside, arms and legs taut and ready to strike, whatever had been there was gone.
“You really should put the surveillance system back on, Angelica,” said Kendra. “I mean, someone could walk right up to the house—”
Angelica shook her head, her hair escaping from beneath a huge sun hat. “That’s why I have you, bambina. Besides, the animals would set it off every night—I told you, it was a coyote.”
Her tone was light, but Cloud heard the soft threat in it: the topic was closed. “Listen, Artie down at the Soaring Eagle said he was getting in a shipment of Dungeness crabs today—you all should go there for dinner, check it out for me. Elspeth”—Elspeth was her agent—”Elspeth will be coming out next week and I’ve got to figure out where to take her.”
Cloud grimaced but said nothing. She loathed the Soaring Eagle. The others were more cheerful.
“Aw right” Martin sang. He slid from his float into the pool. “Man, I need a night off.” He yawned and absently flexed his arms. “Thanks, Angelica. We’ll bring you back some Ben & Jerry’s.”
Angelica smiled. “Pomegranate sorbet, if they have it.”
“Cha, boss.” Martin gave her a thumbs-up, turned to pull Kendra from her float. She slid into the pool silently and smoothly as an otter. Then she and Martin swam to the steps and climbed out, Martin squeezing water from his long hair, Kendra shaking her feet off like a cat before they gathered towels and sandals and sunscreen and began to pick their way across the terra-cotta-tiled patio to the path that led to their cottage. In their wake a string of tiny garnet butterflies rose from the tiles, and fluttered tipsily about Kendra’s closely shorn head.
“You coming, Cloud?”
Cloud raised her head from her float, her pigtail slithering between her shoulder blades. On one cheek was a tattoo of a crescent moon, its dark curve outlined faintly in red. Three gold rings pierced the web of skin that stretched between her thumb and forefinger, and her upper arm was tattooed with zigzag bands of black and deep blue.
“In a minute. Go on ahead, I’ll catch up.” She turned onto her stomach and stared at Angelica, her golden eyes slanted and wary. “Leave me some hot water in the shower.”
“Take the Porsche,” Angelica called as the other two disappeared around a tumbled pile of sandstone. “You know where the keys are—”
She leaned back into her chair, a banana yellow Italian chaise that she had had shipped here from her villa on Santorini. It was elegant and simple and sleek as a driving glove. Its curves fit those of Angelica’s body, and she liked the feel of the warm kidskin against her own bare flesh, the musky scent the leather released in the heat. She was wearing only a simple black maillot, cut high to show off her long legs and the taut abdomen Martin worked so hard to maintain. “Cloud, don’t you want to go?”
Cloud gazed at Angelica, her eyes heavy-lidded. Lines of sweat had gathered around the outlines of her moon tattoo, giving a silvery gleam to the dark crescent. She smiled, a thin smile that showed her small white teeth and the pink tip of her tongue.
“In a minute.”
Angelica stared back at her, her wineglass balanced between two perfect fingers. Cloud had been difficult lately—nothing major, just small annoyances like this: her refusal to leave when she’d been dismissed, her insistence on having heard something last night when it was clear that Angelica wanted that something to have gone unheard. Cloud was smarter than Kendra and Martin, a few years older as well—she’d graduated from UCLA film school, worked for a while as an apprentice foley artist before getting bored and taking off on her own. Two years ago in October, she’d attended Angelica’s Samhain workshop in Minneapolis, the one where Angelica had been heckled by a guy who kept calling her a castrating bitch and a bull dyke. Afterward he’d slimed his way through the crush of autograph seekers and hauled off and hit Angelica in the face. Cloud had felled him with a single kick to the solar plexus, holding him down until security arrived. Angelica had hired her on the spot. A year or so later, when they were back in Los Angeles, she hired Kendra.
“So you won’t get too lonely on the road,” she’d told Cloud.
“You mean so you won’t get too lonely,” Cloud had replied with a smirk. Cloud preferred men, serious ironworkers when she could meet them at the gym, which wasn’t often when you were on the road, and besides, you had to be real careful whom you went out with these days. But she’d had a brief fling with a girl at UCLA; she figured Angelica must be a lesbian, one of those older lipstick dykes with the clothes and the heels and Opium perfume, although Cloud had already decided she wasn’t going to go to bed with her. It was bad karma to sleep with people you had to work with. But, somewhat to Cloud’s disappointment, Angelica didn’t put the make on her. She never seemed to put the make on anyone. Although sometimes when her son was visiting, Angelica might go out to dinner with him and a few of his friends, and afterward Cloud suspected that some of the young boys spent the night at the glass house in the desert.