“So what are they going to see?” she asked.

“Whatever I want them to see—nothing more, nothing less.” The Elf Lord was grinning. “An orphan, well, that’s true in its way … a street urchin … but you were a child prodigy.”

“In what?”

“Your choice.”

“Piano.” Charlie sang a few bars of “Stardust.” “Hoagy Carmichael played the piano.”

At once, the Elf Lord stopped inputting data and swung around. “Don’t fucking tell me!”

“He came to see me a week ago.”

“The rotten sonuvabitch!”

An uncertain smile flickered across Charlie’s lips like a lightbulb about to go. “Not so rotten. Maybe.”

The Elf Lord clutched her head with both hands. “Oy vey!” She only used Yiddish when she was genuinely upset.

“You’re judging me again,” Charlie said.

The Elf Lord’s head came up, her broad face flushed. “I am not! How can you so easily forget what Whitman did to you?”

“That’s in the past.”

“Please!”

“Listen, holding on to the anger hasn’t done me a lick of good. Anger’s a poison, EL. You should know that better than most.”

From the age of five onward, Lorraine Few had been abused by her uncle, becoming his de facto mistress by the time she was fifteen. This was the main reason she had chosen a profession where she could hide away, use another name, and never be found by any member of her family.

“Okay, but I just, you know, don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Now.”

“Yes,” Charlie said firmly. “Now.”

Sighing, the Elf Lord returned to her task. “I’d better give you different parents, no siblings, aunts, or uncles. The simpler the better, yes?”

Charlie closed her eyes, her past glimmering darkly in her mind’s eye like an old-time movie. Except in this case there was no freeing revelation, no clinch between long-lost lovers, no happy ending.

9

“This is bullshit,” Whitman said. “In what universe is Seiran el-Habib no longer a special person of interest?”

“In the NSA’s,” Cutler said, “which means in our world, as well.”

“And I call bullshit on that.”

“Say whatever you want, Gregory, but it is what it is.”

The two men were sitting across from each other at the Louis XIV oak table in Cutler’s party-sized dining room. The remains of a noble dinner lay before them, bones and skin, flecks of meat, interrupted swirls of mashed potatoes looking like week-old snow. Rain beat against the windowpanes.

So far as Whitman could tell this feast appeared to have been conceived with someone other than him in mind, but what the hell did he know?

“I don’t care what Hemingway has decided. Once Flix is operational we’re going after Seiran el-Habib.”

“The hell you are.”

Cutler went into the kitchen, returned with a triple chocolate cake, which he cut into quarters. Now Whitman was certain his boss had been expecting someone else—someone, he was sure, of the female persuasion. Good for him. In Whitman’s estimation, a bit of relaxation would do him a world of good.