Ascendant (38 page)

He called a few times, but I wouldn’t talk to him or return his messages, and I dared Phil to act disappointed. Luckily, she decided she had bigger fish to fry when it came to the matter of rebuilding my head.

After Giovanni had gone, life at the Cloisters became more unbearable than ever. I always felt on the outside looking in. Looking in on the hunts, on the classes, on Phil’s ever-accelerating activities, on her secret conversations with Neil. I was even jealous of the bond between Wen and Flayer, of the one between Flayer and Bonegrinder.

The mist in my mind dissipated more every day, but I was the only one who seemed to notice or believe it. It was as if Phil had encouraged me to a certain level of competence but refused to believe that I could go any further. After sending Giovanni away, I never got another offer of an outing. I’d even asked Father Guillermo if he’d take me for gelato and he’d mumbled something about running it by Phil first. I still wasn’t allowed to hunt. Phil no longer gave me her drafts to decipher.

And every time I complained, she just said I was experiencing mood swings and the neurologist had warned her that I’d get frustrated when my recovery hit a plateau.

I was
not
on a plateau, except in terms of my being allowed out of this prison. Besides, if she wanted to see how I handled myself away from unicorn magic, she ought to let me leave the Cloisters altogether. The entire building was a crutch, with its walls of singing bones.

Was it any wonder that Lilith thought it was the perfect location for my television debut?

L
ilith arrived at the Cloisters with a truck full of cameramen, journalists, and wardrobe specialists. “She looks much better than last time,” was the first thing my mother said when she saw me.

“She’s
happy to see you, too,” I responded.

“Ah.” Lilith clapped her hands together. “I see the brain damage hasn’t affected your smart mouth. Excellent.”

Lilith had come when I’d been in a coma. I knew this because she’d told me on the phone every time I’d spoken to her since the accident. I got proof when she and her agent showed me the footage they’d filmed of her sitting by my bedside and stroking my poor, limp hand.

My mother was right. I looked way better now.

They took over the Cloisters, rearranging the courtyard so it looked prettier and “more classical”—their words. As far as we could tell, it involved removing our targets and dragging several large bits of broken columns into their favorite corner.

“Great,” Cory said, watching as they erected the “set.” “I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to make this place not look like a ruin and they’re strewing masonry all around the garden.”

“There, there,” said Valerija, placing a hand on her shoulder. She turned to Phil. “The money is worth it, definitely?”

Phil frowned. “It had better be. No one told me we would lose our practice space.”

Then came the fittings. I was shoved back into a hunting habit and fitted with a long blond wig.

“The point of the headscarf is to
cover
the hair,” Phil drawled from the door. She gave me a sympathetic shake of her head.

“Eh,” said Lilith with a shrug. “This will look better on TV.”

“This is a bad idea, Aunt Lilith. I don’t think Astrid is in any position to speak on television.”

“She doesn’t have to talk. This is my visit to my old stomping grounds, my emergency trip to sit with my poor, injured, unicorn-hunting daughter.” The staff clucked their tongues. I’d already learned that this was an automatic response, done in unison. My mother’s very own Greek chorus.

Phil rolled her eyes. I would have, too, but the makeup person was jabbing at me with eyeliner. Some emergency. It had taken my mother almost three months to come back.

“These eyes are going to look kind of off-putting on video,” she said to one of the producers. “Maybe contacts?”

“If the point is that I’m injured,” I said, “wouldn’t it be better if I was in bed, maybe in my pajamas?”

Lilith considered this. “No, I don’t think that sells
hunter
, visually. Besides, we already have bed footage. Trust these people on this, Astrid; they’re experts.”

Neil joined us at the door to watch the commotion. “This is disgraceful.”

Phil looked relieved that he’d come out and said it. Donna or no donna, Lilith was still Phil’s aunt.

Lilith turned to him. “Well, we can always leave, if you don’t think you want our money. But if we do, I’ll also make sure your little campaign isn’t mentioned in the piece. I’m sure eight point five million viewers don’t need to learn about the plight of endangered unicorns, don’t need to see any other side to the story other than the one where they are monsters killing innocent people.”

Neil shook his head dismissively. “And presenting the tragic story of an injured hunter is going to somehow convince the world at large to show the animals mercy?”

Lilith shrugged and turned back to me. “That’s your problem, not mine. I think she needs more blush. Astrid, you’re so pale.”

“Sorry, Mom,” I muttered, shooting a pointed glance at Phil. “I don’t get out much.”

Phil stuck her tongue out at me. I giggled.

Downstairs in the courtyard, two cameramen were trying to bait Bonegrinder and Flayer into a fight. Wen and Ilesha stood guard, arms crossed over their chests, vehemently not amused.

“They’re just lying there,” said one of the cameramen. “Can’t you get them to wrestle or something?”

“Yeah,” said another. “There’s so little footage of killer unicorns close up. This is an amazing opportunity, and these guys look like kittens.”

Ilesha gaped at them.

Grace stepped in. “Are you all mad? Do you know the lengths to which we’ve gone to make sure these creatures aren’t ripping your throats out right now?”

As if to punctuate the statement, something caught Bone-grinder’s interest and she began to growl.

“No!” Grace said sharply, and the unicorn settled down. “The day I came here,” she said, “this zhi almost killed my mother and my little sister. We’ve spent months bringing her to a point where she is calm in the presence of people, with great personal risk to every nonhunter who has entered these walls.”

The cameramen stepped back, more subdued. Then one said, “Did you get any footage of that attack on your family?”

Luckily, Grace was unarmed. As it was, Ilesha had to tackle Bonegrinder, who’d gotten a bit excited by Grace’s sudden rage.

When Phil got word of the incident, she removed the zhi from public viewing. “This isn’t some underground betting ring,” she explained when the producers complained. Lilith had apparently granted them total Cloisters access. “We’re trying to train the pet zhi and make sure they are no danger to the public. But you must remember, they are wild animals.”

“I resent that,” said Wen. “Flayer is a bottle-fed sweetheart.”

“But can you make it growl on command?” the cameraman asked.

The hunters voted to sic a zhi on them. Phil overruled us all.

I was told that the so-called plot of the piece would revolve around Lilith’s life on the home front—what it was like to advocate for unicorn hunters while her daughter was overseas risking her neck by slaying unicorns.

“Slaying?” I said blankly. “That makes me sound like some kind of butcher.”

Lilith trotted out a phrase I knew quite well by this time. “It plays better. Trust the experts.”

“It’s just really violent,” Phil pointed out. “We’re trying to get to a point where our hunts are targeted eliminations of specific problem unicorns—”

“Like what you did in Cerveteri?” Lilith replied. “When you took out an entire pack? Several dozen unicorns in one go? What was that except a massacre?”

Phil and I shut our traps. Cerveteri had been an exception that would doubtless
also
not “play well” on television.

The talent arrived. Her face seemed familiar to me, as well as her perfect coif of honey-colored hair, but the names of American network news anchors had long ago vanished as my brain made room for hunting techniques and methods of sword cleaning.

She swept in on a cloud of pancake makeup and too much perfume, and moved right past Lilith’s outstretched hand. “Philippa Llewelyn, right?” she said, closing in on Phil. “The one who writes all those adorable letters to Congress. You’re in charge here?”

“Yes,” Phil said. “Jointly with—”

“I’m Marianna Matheson, lead on the story. Lilith didn’t tell me you were so young,” she said. “She’s my aunt,” Phil replied flatly.

“So
young,”
Marianna Matheson repeated, casting significant glances at the producers. “And so
charming
. How ever did you come to be in charge of this entire operation at your age?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Phil began, then saw the look on my mother’s face and clamped her mouth shut. “I’m Aunt Lilith’s successor,” she said instead.

I burst out laughing, startling the three closest staffers. Guess the truth would have pissed Lilith off too much.
After Astrid’s mom went nuts, shut down the Cloisters, and locked herself in the weapons hall, blaming herself for Astrid’s assumed death, all us teen hunters got together, forced her out, and decided to take charge ourselves
.

Marianna Matheson’s smile seemed ready for prime time as she looked at Phil. “Let’s get you in makeup. I’d love to have you in on the interview as well.”

“But—” Lilith began.

“Oh, it’ll be excellent!” Marianna Matheson clapped her hands together. “All three of the Llewelyns!”

Grace and Melissende, standing in the shadows at the edge of the courtyard, rolled their eyes.

We were ushered to the set and placed in armchairs inexplicably scattered on the cobblestones. I was dressed in a full-on camouflage habit, my blond wig artfully arranged under the scarf to make the hair look as full and lustrous as possible. Both Flayer and Bonegrinder, against the protests of Neil and Phil, were chained to the legs of my chair and instructed to lie there like stone statues of unicorns. Wen stood just offscreen with a bag of treats and the unicorns’ full attention. Ilesha stood in the parapet with a bow at the ready, just in case.

My mother sat in a nearby chair and gripped my hand as if she actually cared. Phil, who’d managed to squeeze herself into one of Zelda’s old hunting habits, sat on Lilith’s other side.

Marianna Matheson approached the set, looking over her notes. Flayer lifted his head as she approached, and she froze. “Will they behave? I was told they’d not do anything in the presence of hunters.”

“They’re chained,” was all Phil would say. I snorted. They could yank this chair out from beneath me in a second if they wanted to.

Marianna Matheson looked from me to Phil. “But you’re not a hunter, correct?” she asked Phil.

Phil pulled off her don’s ring. “Here, put this on if you’re concerned. It’ll keep them away from you if they attack.”

I saw Neil’s back stiffen from his place in the shadows of the Cloisters. Even now, given how far we’d come, he hated it when Phil took off that ring.

Marianna Matheson took the ring, and from the grumbling of the staffers clustered closely around us, I wondered if she’d have to fight them for it.

The shooting started.

“Good evening,” Marianna Matheson said. “I’m Marianna Matheson, reporting from the Nunnery of Ctesias in Rome, Italy, the world’s only training camp for unicorn hunters. As the unicorn menace spreads across the globe, many people have been wondering how to stop these vicious, deadly monsters. Well, tonight we’re here to talk to the people whose lives are dedicated to just that. A group of women, all from the same family, who have a powerful birthright, an innate ability to track and control these dangerous creatures.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see the camera panning across our little group.

“The Llewelyns are the only people in the world with the ability to be safe in the presence of unicorns… .”

Uh-oh. The other hunters would have a field day with that one. Was that Grace snorting in the shadows?

“… which is why I am wearing this ring.” Marianna Matheson flashed the don’s ring at the cameras. “The only one of its kind, it is capable of actually repelling a unicorn attack.”

Phil pursed her lips, probably already calculating how soon it would be until the Cloisters was burglarized by a mob in search of the ring. There were four people on the screen. Only one of them was an actual hunter.

“Lilith Llewelyn, many of you know. She selflessly gave up her own career to travel to Rome and train her daughter, her niece, and other hunters in their service to humanity.”

Lilith’s hand tightened on mine. She must have heard my gulp of disbelief. I listened as Lilith presented her usual spiel about the glories of hunting and her dedication to the cause for many years before the Reemergence, dealing with society’s ridicule, preparing for the day when she could give back to mankind.