Extraordinary (11 page)

“I. Understand. You,” Phoebe told her.

“Of course you do. Don't talk, Phoebe. You're all sweaty. Your breathing sounds awful.” Mallory had her phone out and was pressing numbers. Phoebe relaxed as she listened to Mallory giving crisp, accurate information to the emergency operator, even taking hold of Phoebe's inhaler and spelling the name of the medication Phoebe had taken.

“I'm. Okay,” Phoebe got out, when Mallory hung up.

“Shut up. Yes, you will be okay. At the hospital. Now I'm calling your dad.” Two seconds later, Mallory was speaking into her phone again. “Mr. Vale, Phoebe had an attack at my house. She'll be fine. I've called for help.”

Phoebe tuned out and closed her eyes. She didn't have to listen or worry anymore. Mallory would do everything perfectly. Her dad wouldn't even be panicked because he knew Mallory had dealt with Phoebe's attacks twice before. He would trust her, just like Phoebe did.

The ambulance would come. The medics would give her oxygen. They'd probably make her go on a stretcher even if she thought she could walk. At the hospital, they'd give her medication, keep watch, and in the end she'd get to go home to her own bed by tonight. Because she was fine. She was going to be fine.

She could feel Mallory's hand on her forehead.

“Your dad will meet us at the hospital, Phoebe,” Mallory said. “Everything is under control.” Her voice was gentle and almost chatty. “You know, you were a fool not to call 911 yourself. I hope you weren't thinking my mother would have the sense to do it.” A slight pause, after which Mallory made a little impatient, resigned noise. “Okay. I'm just going to make sure she's breathing too, which I'm sure she is. Oh, wait.” She pressed Phoebe's arm. “Hear the sirens? That's your ambulance. I'll get the door.” Phoebe felt her move away.

The sound of the sirens got louder, nearer.

“Phoebe.” It was a soft breath of air on her left ear.

Turning toward it, Phoebe opened her eyes. She knew before she did so, though, that it was Ryland.

What she hadn't expected was that he would be so close. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor mere inches in front of her. How long had he been there? Phoebe's startled—and then guilty—eyes met his. She saw his thin, mobile lips moving in a smile, even though the expression in his green eyes was indecipherable.

As if it were entirely natural, Ryland took Phoebe's hand. His palm was hard, and his hand was large enough to swallow hers up.

Then, with his other hand, Ryland reached forward to run his fingers through Phoebe's flyaway, russet hair. She felt a tug as he detangled something and pulled it out. Then he held it up before her eyes.

It was a delicate new leaf of green ivy, the same ivy that had been entwined over the stone walls and archway in the secret, magical garden she had entered through Ryland's bedroom.

Ryland's gaze held Phoebe's. She would have looked away in shame if she could have, but she could not.

“Poor little Phoebe-bird,” Ryland whispered. His hand tightened on hers. “You can't even sing. What spring woodland were you wandering in?”

“Yes, it could have been a disaster, my queen. But it won't be. In fact, I believe it will end up an advantage, that the girl entered Faerie for a few minutes.”

“I was interested to see her. She is not at all like my Mayer. She's dull-witted and fearful. I am glad. It is—easier when one is not fond.”

“Yes, my queen. She is exactly what we need. I don't know how my sister could have failed to guide her properly. But I won't fail. She'll come to me now, and soon. Whatever the price, I will induce her to say the words we need.”

“And your sister?”

“I will still need her help for a time with the girl, but also with the woman. Then I will ease her out. Her return to the court will restore some share of energy and balance to you. I regret it cannot be more.”

“Any measure will stretch what time we have. None of this will take much longer, I hope.”

“No, my queen. A month, perhaps two. You will be as beautiful as ever you were.”

“I no longer care about beauty, Ryland. I have been thinking, however. I now understand what my Mayer did, and why. Before, I did not. My own situation is similar now in some ways to his.”

“He imperiled us for his own survival.”

“He did not know that he did so.”

“No.”

“I was the one who misjudged the situation, Ryland. I was the one who offered him the bargain, and I was the one who accepted his adjustments to it.”

“You were not alone. For many years, we all misjudged the cost of our end of the bargain. Any year now, we thought, balance would be restored.”

“And we behave now as my Mayer did then, taking from others because it is the only way to save ourselves. But we know fully what we do, which he did not. And we use guile, which he also did not.”

“Yes, my queen. It is ironic, but necessary, and not even worth thinking or talking about now. We must do what we must do.”

It was a blessedly quiet weekend. Phoebe was forbidden by her parents to go anywhere or do anything but rest at home. Even though she had recovered from her asthma attack and would normally have protested her confinement, or at least insisted that Mallory come visit, this time Phoebe did neither. And although she did not bother to put her feelings into words, they showed in her actions. Basically, wherever Catherine was, Phoebe wanted to be there as well.

Luckily, it was not one of the times when Catherine was away, something that tended to happen nowadays about one week in four. In between, she worked at home or in her Boston office, or used quick day trips to New York City and Washington, D.C., for meetings that, for reasons having to do with confidentiality and security, needed to be taken face-to-face.

It still sometimes felt strange to Phoebe when Catherine was gone, because, for the first twelve years of Phoebe's life, Catherine had rarely been away from her. Anybody who absolutely needed to speak with her in person had simply been forced to travel to Boston.

This weekend, after the asthma attack—and really, after what had happened with Ryland, though she wasn't quite ready to think about that, and her heart beat a little too fast when by accident her mind drifted that way—Phoebe wanted that feeling again. She wanted, though she couldn't express it, to feel like a child; an important, even spoiled child for whose happiness and convenience the adults made automatic, massive adjustments, and who never, ever, not even for a moment, would not be safe. So she followed her mother from room to room at home, and when, on Sunday afternoon, Catherine mentioned planning to go into her office in Boston to work, Phoebe blurted, “Can I come too? I'll bring my laptop and do homework. I won't bother you.”

“All right,” Catherine said, after a moment of consideration. “And we can have dinner out afterward in Boston, if you'd like. Just us.”

Phoebe's face lit up. “But will Dad feel hurt?”

“I wouldn't think so. We'll just tell him we want some mother-daughter time.”

“Okay,” said Phoebe happily. “Can we go to the North End?”

“Sure.”

Phoebe hadn't been to Catherine's office on Rowes Wharf for a while, and enjoyed being there again. The office building was attached to a big hotel on the waterfront. Catherine's suite held a reception area with sofas and a desk for Catherine's assistant, a meeting room with a big oval table and high-backed, softly padded chairs on wheels, and a small kitchen and bathroom, along with Catherine's actual office, which had been deliberately designed to impress and also to intimidate. All of the rooms except the kitchen and bath had windows that overlooked Boston Harbor.

Phoebe went into the meeting room and stood watching the boats and activity in the harbor below. The water taxi arrived at the hotel marina and unloaded passengers who had just come from the airport. As Phoebe observed one man talking on his phone, she realized that she had taken her own phone out and was clutching it. Again.

She sighed as she tucked it back in her jeans pocket.

None of the photos that she had taken of Ryland's garden were any good. Oh, the pictures were there. It was simply that they showed only gray lumps and gray shadows against a gray background.

There was no evidence. Phoebe had not even so much as a leaf in her hair anymore for proof that the garden had been real.

But she knew it was real. In a way, the fact that the photos were useless was evidence. It was real enough to need to be concealed. Magically concealed, perhaps. It was evidence, at least, to Phoebe herself.

Her stomach churned a little with a feeling that was part excitement, part fear, and part something secret that she didn't yet feel able to examine closely. When she let herself think, questions came to her, questions that were, like the water-needles from an expensive shower, sharp and stimulating. Who was Ryland? What was going on? What did Mallory know? And what was she, Phoebe, to do? Should she talk to Mallory, ask questions, confide? Or should she go directly to Ryland?

No. Not Ryland. Phoebe couldn't. She felt hot with embarrassment and . . . something . . . even thinking of that. When she couldn't stutter out a normal conversation with Ryland before all this, how would she talk to him now?

His hand on hers.

God. Was she blushing?

“Darling? I thought you were going to do some homework.” It was Catherine, in the doorway. Her voice was mild, inquiring.

Phoebe spun away from the window, not entirely unhappy to be interrupted. “I am. In a minute. It's just that the water taxi came and I kind of got mesmerized, looking at the people.”

“I know.” Catherine came up beside her daughter and they looked out together. “Sometimes I think I would do better in an office with no windows,” Catherine said. “But other times, I love it here.” Together, they watched the water taxi load more passengers. It seemed mostly to be businesspeople, in suits even on the weekend, who were taking the water route to the airport. There was not one child or teenager among them.

Phoebe leaned against her mother's shoulder and breathed in the comforting scent of her perfume. Catherine was a pragmatic woman without much in the way of personal vanity, but she had a signature French perfume. Its scent was light and barely perceptible, and yet once you had noticed it, it was wonderful. Phoebe was allergic to so many things, but she had never so much as sneezed at her mother's perfume.

She leaned into her mother and put her arm around her waist, and felt Catherine do the same, hugging her close. And then Catherine said, “Phoebe? I was wondering if there was anything in particular you wanted to talk to me about?”

Yes! Phoebe thought. And then: No! No, I can't.

“No,” she said to her mother. She turned her gaze to the scene out the window.

“Are you sure? You know that sometimes when you have an attack, it's because you're worried about something. You might not even be aware you're worried, but your body knows.”

“I don't think I'm worried about anything,” Phoebe said. “I think the attack just happened because, well, it's spring now. Allergens everywhere. What I need is to be more careful.”

“Well, but nothing is blooming yet. There was even snow on the day you had the attack, and—”

“Yes, but I've remembered now that I forgot to take my pill that morning. I might have forgotten to use my morning inhaler too. I'm not sure about that part.” The lie came out of Phoebe so smoothly, so easily, and so entirely without premeditation that she was shocked. “That's what I meant about being more careful,” she said. “I'm so sorry.”

“Phoebe—”

“I didn't want to worry you, Mom. I promise, though, I won't forget again.”

“Phoebe.” Catherine gathered her daughter in her arms. “Don't you
dare
forget your pill again.”

“I won't.” Phoebe hugged her mother back. How could she have told the truth, anyway? Maybe if she'd had the photos, she could have shown them to Catherine and said,
I think I must have been allergic to something in this magical garden that was behind the door of Ryland's bedroom.

Except she knew there was no possibility of her saying anything about the garden to either of her parents, and there never had been, photos or not. The garden—the garden—what had happened belonged to her and her alone. Even if she didn't know what to do about it; even if it had caused one of the worst asthma attacks she'd had in years; even if she should never have gone into it—it was still hers.

Suppose she hadn't gone in? Suppose she had seen that Mallory wasn't home and had then simply said good-bye to Mrs. Tolliver and gone home? Then she wouldn't know now that Ryland . . . thought about her. Her, or her family. It was the same thing, wasn't it? Those books.

His eyes on hers.

The feel of his hand.

Suddenly, uncontrollably, Phoebe's whole body quivered. She pushed herself away from her mother, ducked her head down, and picked up her backpack. “Well,” she said. “I suppose we both had better do work now.”

“I suppose so,” said Catherine. “We can talk later, over dinner. Just in case there is something bothering you.”

“Sure,” said Phoebe. “But there isn't. I promise.”