Winter (The Manhattan Exiles) (10 page)

She turned a pretty smile on Gabby.
“I’ve a car waiting, just around the corner. Let’s get out of the snow, shall we? It does horrible things to my complexion.”

Lolo made a gurgling sound. Gabriel prodded his ear with a paw.

“Move, child. We’ve little time to waste.”

“
Whatever.” Lolo sighed. He trudged obediently after Summer. “But I don’t remember her worrying about complexions that time we spent an hour playing hide and seek along the Mall in a blizzard.”

“
That was a few years ago, dear.” Gabby wondered if mortals would ever understand just how fleeting time could be. “She’s a teenager now.”

Summer’s car managed to be wide and sleek at the same time. The driver behind the tinted window was a fay Gabby didn’t recognize.

She shivered a little, wondering if she had once known the man and subsequently forgotten him, as she had so many other
s of her kind. When he greeted her with a blank nod she felt a guilty surge of relief.

Summer slid into the back of the sedan and across black leather seats. Gabby hopped from Lolo’s shoulder, and ran across the upholstery. Lolo closed out the snow, pulling the car door
shut with more force than necessary.

The car jerked forward into traffic. Gabby clawed at leather to keep from tumbling onto the floor.

Summer sighed.

“
Morris is excellent with directions,” she explained. “Never gets us lost. Not so great with technology. Katherine Grey found him living in a tree in Central Park, fifty years ago. He still can’t quite get the hang of a stick shift, but Mama won’t let me drive with anyone else.”

“
Cars aren’t technology,” Lolo argued. “An iPad is technology.”

“
Maybe where you come from. In my world there are no such things as horseless carriages.”

“
Your world is the Upper East Side,” retorted Lolo. “You may be fay but I know you’ve never seen Gloriana’s court. You were born on Manhattan. So quit it with the attitude.”

Summer looked like she was ready to spit. Gabby jumped onto the girl’s lap before she could return Lolo’s taunt.

“
Samhradh
,” she chirruped. “I don’t remember any exile called Morris. Is it his true name?”

“
I don’t know.” Distracted, Summer glanced through the partition glass at the front seat. “I don’t think so. It’s what Katherine calls him. She said he was a child when he came over. One of Grandfather’s squires.”

Gabby closed her eyes and thought hard, but alth
ough she could still see Angus’ face with cruel clarity, she couldn’t remember if his small entourage had included a boy squire.

Once, she thought, she had known every single name, every single face, every single sorrow
belonging to Gloriana’s exiles. No longer.

She sighed, curling her tail around her nose. Her whiskers twitched, and the scent of stale sandwich forgotten under the leather seat made her stomach growl.

Mousy thoughts were easier, so much easier. A mouse lived a life fraught with danger but free of regret.

“
I’m tired,” she told the children. “Wake me when we arrive.”

She le
t sleep take her again, welcoming it with relief.

“Gabby,” Lolo woke her with a gentle poke. “Summer says we’re here. Wherever here is. It’s snowing so hard I can’t see anything. We might as well be back on Capitol Hill.”

“
It’s The Plaza,” Summer replied with great scorn. “There’s no place like The Plaza in . . . well,
anywhere
else.”

Gabby stretched one leg at a time.
“Your mother’s gone back to hotel living, has she?”

“
Barker says people were starting to ask questions at the penthouse. We’d been there too long.”

Morris opened the car door, waiting patiently while Summer shook out her skirts.

“And you know Papa never likes to be far from the Park. Papa says if The Plaza was good enough for Eloise, it’s good enough for us.”

She climbed out, and then stuck her head back into the car.
“Lolo’s right. It’s a blizzard. Hurry up.”

Gabby squirmed down the collar of Lolo’s shirt. She could feel the frigid wind beyond the open door.

“Who’s Eloise?” Lolo grumbled as he slouched across the leather seats. He grunted when the cold hit, then gasped. “Wow.”

Gabby stayed buried against the boy’s throat. Siobahn and Malachi had lived at The Plaza once before, not long after Hardenbergh’s posh hotel first opened its doors. Gabby didn’t need to poke her nose out into a blizzard to see if the building had changed.

Nothing in Manhattan ever changed. Trends came and went but the basic bones of the place remained unaffected.

“
Morning, Miss,” the doorman greeted Summer. Gabby heard the swish of the hotel’s revolving glass doors.

“
Wow!” Lolo said again.

“
Keep moving!” Summer snapped. “You’re blocking the doors!”

Gabby poked her nose around Lolo’s collar.

Yes, the hotel was much as she remembered. In the lobby grand chandeliers still hung from the gilt ceilings like tiered jewels. Polished floor tiles reflected gold and white scrollwork. Floor to ceiling windows shed stormy light across overstuffed silk chairs.

And it was warm, gloriously warm.

“Come on, will you?” Summer grabbed the back of Lolo’s rucksack, and tugged. “You’re gawking. Stop gawking. You look like a tourist.”

“
I am a tourist.” But Lolo let himself be pulled along. “You really live here?”

Gabby climbed back onto the boy’s shoulder. She parted the curtain of his hair with her tail, and peered back into the lobby. The chairs and couches were mostly empty, the revolving doors still again.

But the few guests, as well as the hotel concierge, stared after Summer with baffled and greedy fascination. It was the usual mortal reaction to fay; a hunger they couldn’t control, didn’t understand, and would forget once Summer had passed from view.

It was a harmless reaction, usually.

Still, Gabby watched carefully until the elevator doors closed the lobby away.

“
You haven’t had any trouble?” she asked.

“
No.” Summer keyed a button, then studied herself in the elevator’s mirrored walls. She smoothed her long hair, and readjusted the purse on her shoulder. “We haven’t been here long enough for trouble. Papa says to give it another few years before we start to worry. Did you bring them?”

“
Bring what?” Lolo was busy fingering gold scrollwork.

“
The rubies. Granddad’s rubies.”

Lolo didn’t look around.

“Sure,” he said. “We brought them. Do you think this is real gold? It feels like real gold.”

Gabby suspected Summer wanted to stamp her prettily shod feet.
“Of course it’s real gold. Stop scratching the elevator! Can I see them?”

“
That’s for Himself to decide,” Gabby replied.

Summer lowered her chin. She considered Gabby through a fall of straight black hair.
“Winter’s seen them, hasn’t he?”

Gabby regarded the girl but said nothing. The elevator bumped to a stop. The door parted soundlessly.

“Fine!” Summer hissed. She exited the elevator in a swirl of dress and hair and insult.

Gabby sighed.

“The way Win tells it they were always trying to outdo each other at everything,” said Lolo. He stepped into the hallway, looking around. “He says they used to get into cat fights over checkers and Summer would draw blood.”

“
She would bite,” agreed Gabby. “She has her grandfather’s temper.”

Lolo took his time through the long hallway. Because he didn’t appear intent on stuffing any of the objects d’art he fingered into his rucksack, Gabby let him look in peace.

“It’s like something out of a movie,” he marveled, setting a miniature ebony horse back onto a sideboard. He sniffed the blooming orchid that arched over the table, and sneezed. “I’ve seen a few phat things in my life, but this is pretty unbelievable.”

“
Malachi and Siobahn have a role to play,” the mouse explained. “Fay run to extremity in all things. They expect their king and queen to do the same. Perhaps it comes of living too long. Eventually boredom will drive even the best of us mad.”

Lolo grunted. At the end of the hallway a wide door glittered. More mirror and gilt surrounded a crystal doorknob set at the very middle of the design.

The door cracked open as they approached. Summer waited on the other side, flushed but outwardly calm.

“
Come in,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Mama says to offer you tea.”

“
Sure,” Lolo said. “I’m starving. Got any cookies to go along?”

“
Hasn’t anyone told you never to accept fairy food?”

“
Really? Are your Oreos enchanted?”

Summer’s eyes flashed.
“They’re macarons, not
Oreos
. Hand made. By the kitchen staff.”

“
Samhradh
.”

The voice seemed to issue from nowhere. It surrounded them in warmth and amusem
ent, as welcoming as an embrace.

“
Don’t keep our guests standing in the hall.”

Summer took a step back. Lolo seemed frozen to the spot. Gabby could feel the boy’s shoulder muscles trembling.

“Don’t worry, child. She won’t eat you.”

“
Of course I won’t,” Siobahn called. “You have nothing to fear from me. And if Gabriel hasn’t yet turned you into a toad you have nothing to fear from any of us.”

Lolo probably would have wheeled and fled right then but for Summer’s patronizing smile.

“Apologies, Lady.” Lolo straightened his shoulders and bared his teeth at Summer. “I was only admiring your front door.”

He strode forward without further hesitation.

The suite Siobahn had chosen for her home was bright, awash in light. Antique rugs covered warm parquet floors. The walls were white, and adorned with 16th century oil paintings.

The Lady herself sat at a carved Louis XV writing desk. A fire burned on a marble hearth, and a discrete flat screen television scrolled silent news stories in an armoire across the room.

“
Good morning.” She smiled as she rose, offering Lolo a slender hand. “Welcome to The Plaza, and to my home.”

She was a little taller than her daughter, her black hair a little longer, but otherwise she was the stamp that made Summer and Winter near twins. Lithe and lean, with an expressive mouth and guarded eyes, she looked hardly older than a mortal adolescent.

Only the slight lines on her brow spoke of the centuries she’d spent exiled far from the Fay Court, of the effort it took to remember exactly who she was.

Gabriel, who had once been Siobahn’s most powerful ally, and Angus’ before that, and who could no longer find her own form, ran down Lolo’s arm and across clasped hands to settle on the Lady’s wrist.

Siobahn released Lolo’s fingers. She lifted her arm to smile into Gabby’s eyes.

“
I’ve missed you.” She smoothed the fur around Gabby’s ears. “Welcome home.”

“
Last time I was on this island,” said the mouse, “home was an overly Modern penthouse in Soho.”

Siobahn laughed.
“We grew weary of white and black and chrome. And of mortal artists with too many piercings in all the wrong places.”

She turned, and set Gabby gently onto the carved mantle. Gabby sighed in relief. The warmth of the fire seeped through the stone and warmed her old bones.

“Besides,” Siobahn continued. “Mal says a winter spent at The Plaza is almost as lovely as a winter spent at Court.”

“
Almost.” Summer swooshed into the room, a silver tea tray balanced on both palms. “Except for the Diadem Dragons, right, Mama?” She set the tray on a pretty side table, and shot Lolo a bright grin. “Tell Lolo about the Diadem Dragons.”

“
It’s bad manners to talk of brutal sacrifice before brunch.” Siobahn twinkled at Lolo. “I’m afraid Barker’s eaten all the Oreos, but do try a few of these espresso macarons, Lolo. They’re a hotel specialty, perfectly safe.”

“
Thank you.” While three pairs of fay eyes watched, Lolo settled himself in a spindly chair, crossed his booted feet at the ankles, and carefully helped himself to a lace napkin and two macarons. “Win shoved us onto the bus without breakfast.”

“
That sounds like Winter.” Siobahn poured out tea, then broke a macaron in half. She set the cookie on a napkin in front of Gabby. “I apologize for his lack of manners.”

“
He’s worried, Mama,” said Summer. “He actually texted, and you know how Winter feels about mortal technology.”