Lucinda, in her belled skirts, laid a hand on the flustered woman’s arm. “Let it be, Moira.”
Moira deflated slightly, though she still puffed with aggravation. “Are ye fine then, Lu? Did everything go as planned?”
“Yes. Quite well, in fact. I think the senator will be most pleased.”
Lucinda pulled the bag from her wrist and passed it to Moira. A grin passed over Moira’s lips as she took a quick peep inside. The bag made a muted metallic clank as she set it on a nearby crate.
I gawped in disbelief as everyone around me acted as though it was perfectly normal for grown people to prance around in the middle of the night dressed like extras in a bad movie.
“Go back to bed, Moira,” Lucinda leaned her parasol against a bumpy covered object. “You too, Collum. I’ll explain things to Hope after I get out of this blasted costume.” She gave an irritated tug at the low neckline. “We’ll be up in a while.”
Moira shook out the fabric bundle she carried under one arm. “Nonsense. I’ll stay too. Ye’ll need help with the corset. Besides, ye must be exhausted.”
“You’re too good to me,” Lucinda said. “Hope, you’ll help as well, won’t you?”
I stared from one to the other, my mind whirling so fast, it flipped into blankness. I found myself nodding.
“That’s settled, then,” Lucinda said.
When we entered the costume room, a guy was sitting at the computer desk, his enormously broad back turned toward us.
“Hey, Lu. Col,” he said before wheeling around in his chair. “How’d it go with—?” He sprang to his feet. “What’s she doing here?”
Computer boy was a titan. At least six and a half feet tall, with skin the color of an autumn acorn. Twisted, finger-length dreadlocks stuck out in all directions as if he’d been tugging on them. He topped the freckled Collum by a head, and his beefy proportions mirrored many of the professional football players my dad so admired. He should have been formidable. Yet behind a pair of gold-framed glasses, the boy’s brown eyes seemed bashful as they fixed on me.
“Oh no,” he groaned, slapping a hand the size of a small ham to his forehead. “Lu, I only left the watch room for a tic to get . . . something. I—I thought she was asleep.”
Though he towered over her, the boy visibly shrank under my aunt’s scrutiny.
“Yes, Douglas.” Aunt Lucinda flicked a look at the mangled remains of a sandwich lying near the desktop monitor. “I see that.”
“Douglas Eugene Carlyle.” Moira’s scorching tone made the big guy shrink even further, until his head looked like it wanted to crawl inside his shoulders. “How could ye leave the door untended, lad? The poor lamb is likely scared out o’ her wits.”
Collum strolled over and gave Douglas a sympathetic clap on the shoulder. “Bad timing, mate.”
Douglas reached up and swiped at a smear of mustard on his cleft chin before he bowed his head in shame. “Gor, Lu. I’m pure sorry for it.”
Lucinda nodded and patted him on the arm. “No harm done. It’s likely better this way, actually.” She grunted. “Introductions, then, I suppose. Just because we’re weary doesn’t mean we should neglect the niceties. Hope, this is Douglas Carlyle, my ward, and your cousin . . . of sorts. His father—my cousin Charles—and his mother, Yourna, were killed in a car accident when Douglas was only seven. He joined our family and has lived here with us ever since.”
I met the boy’s kind eyes. His hand swallowed mine in a gentle, warm grip. “Call me Doug,” he said, smiling. “And it’s pleased we are to have you here at last.”
“And Collum MacPherson you met informally.” Lucinda gestured to the laconic boy, who barely glanced at me as he slipped off his officer’s cap and tucked it under one arm. “Collum is Mac and Moira’s grandson. Later today, you’ll meet his sister, Phoebe—”
“Too late,” Moira muttered.
“Ah, naturally.” Lucinda and Moira exchanged a wry look before Lucinda went on. “Well, in any case. May I present Sarah’s daughter, and my niece, Hope Walton, lately from the United States.”
I felt like my eyebrows had disappeared into my scalp by then. Even leaving aside the whole costume thing, my aunt’s so-proper introductions were too bizarre to bear, especially buried as we were in some freaky high-tech burrow secreted deep beneath the ground.
“Um . . . hi?” was all I could manage before I spun on Lucinda. “What—”
Before I could say another word, Moira had hustled my aunt away into one of the curtained booths. Fabric rustled, and I heard the snap of hooks being undone.
“Hold your water, Hope,” Moira ordered as she emerged, carrying a huge bubble of yellow taffeta. “Ye’ll get your answers. But let your auntie change first. She’s pure tired.”
Moira began to bustle about, humming under her breath as she tucked the various costume accouterments away in the tall cabinet. Doug crept back to his computer. Only Collum acted as if anything unusual might be going on. He passed his gun belt and officer’s coat to his grandmother, but his cold hazel eyes stayed focused on me. Dressed in a tight gray T-shirt, his Union-blue pants tucked into black boots, Collum’s muscles bulged as he leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
If he wouldn’t scowl like that all the time, he’d actually be kind of cute.
Ignoring him, I marched over to the booths just as the curtain was whisked aside. Lucinda emerged swathed in a soft navy tracksuit, a terry-cloth turban wrapped around her head.
“Much better, Moira,” she said. “You were right, as usual.”
When I wouldn’t move out of her way, Lucinda stared into my face, her turbaned head tilted. A look of something like pity creased her eyes as she studied me. “Yes. Yes, you’re absolutely right. It’s time you knew.”
For one split second, I longed to stop her. To walk away and go on with my broken little life. I straightened my spine and stared right back. I’d come way too far to chicken out now.
“This will be difficult for you,” Lucinda said without dropping her gaze. “You were brought up in a household of logic, Hope. Of academia and rationality. And your mother’s descriptions of your eidetic abilities are quite astonishing. In the end, however, Sarah decided your phobias had grown too intense for you to bear those secrets she wanted so desperately to share with you.”
My face burned at the casual way she brought up my issues . . . problems . . . whatever, but I disregarded this. “What are you talking about?” I said. “My mother didn’t have secrets.”
Doug wheeled the desk chair over and offered it to Lucinda, who skirted around me to sit. Pinching the skin between her eyes, she exhaled long and deep. “Hope, I want you to know that my sister’s decision to keep all this from you is not something I agreed with. We argued about it. Often. In the end, I honored her wishes. Unfortunately, we’ve now come to a place where that is no longer an option.”
Lucinda let out a long breath and squared her shoulders before continuing. “Prepare yourself, Hope. It is now time for you to set aside what you think you know of this world. For there are things in it which are not easily explained.”