Starling by Lesley Livingston Page B

his luck. He just took the room card and walked casually to the bank of elevators. The door to one of the cabs glided open, and Fennrys stepped inside.
    As the elevator began to rise, he pulled what was left of the money roll out of his pocket and fanned the bills with his thumb. He felt a twinge of guilt and wondered idly why a high school student would be wandering around with that kind of a stash. But then again, he’d seen enough of the school to know that it was populated by the abnormally rich. That made him feel a little less bad—that, and the fact that the kid had seemed like kind of a jerk anyway.
    Fennrys shoved the money back into his pocket. It had started out as a small fortune, but at New York prices it would dwindle rapidly. At the hotel’s regular rate, he could afford maybe a couple of nights. Time enough for him to figure out what the hell he was going to do with the rest of his life. Maybe even time to remember what he’d already done.
    The water in the penthouse suite’s shower ran hot and for a long time. Fennrys stood there, palms pressed against the glass-tiled wall, letting the water drive the chill from his bones and muscles that seemed to have always been there—as if he’d spent a long time in a very cold place and it had become a part of him. He closed his eyes and tilted his face up toward the spray, his mind a strange, empty place. Memoryless. Almost.
    There were flashes. Images.
    Blinding light reflected off burnished, shimmering rooftops. Green fields. Clouds beneath him … then the light and the brilliant colors shattered, like someone taking a hammer to a rainbow, and he was plunged into suffocating darkness. That particular image carried the bonus feature of smell with it. Dank, earthen. Heavy and cloying, the odor of graves and of rain-wet ashes in long-dead fire pits. The smell of death. And, echoing in his head, the sound of a woman’s voice telling him to remember. Remember your promise , the voice said. Fennrys turned off the shower and reached for a towel. He had to see that girl from the school again.

X
     
    T he trip home to their estate in Westchester County was, as usual, via Gunnar’s private train. Her father didn’t like driving and hated sitting in traffic, but he was a mad rail-travel enthusiast—the result of having been raised from a long line of shipping magnates. Boats and trains were Gunnar’s great love, as they had been his father’s before him. It was, apparently, a familial thing, although Rory seemed to be the only one from Mason’s generation who had inherited the gene. Roth’s preferred mode of transportation was his Harley, and Mason was indifferent.
    She had a suspicion that her claustrophobia was the main reason her father used the train to take them home, even though he would never draw attention to the fact. In truth, she appreciated the gesture, but she still felt uneasy as their chauffeur dropped them off at the small outbuilding in the uptown Manhattan rail yard that had been converted to an elegantly appointed executive lounge where her father’s clients could wait in comfort for his private train to pick them up for business trips.
    When she was little, it had been fun riding around in a private train car decked out with antique Waterford crystal chandeliers and Italian leather banquettes and burled oak paneling. She’d actually felt like a princess in a fancy carriage. Now it just made her feel like the proverbial bird in a gilded cage.
    In the train car, it was deathly quiet except for the low strains of classical music: Puccini’s Turandot . Roth had left Mason back at the school and gone to get his Harley, saying he’d see her at the estate. Mason wished she had his kind of freedom. Her father sat in the front of the car, which had been partitioned off and turned into a high-tech mobile office, and that left Mason alone with Rory to share the ride. And he was lousy company, more so than usual, sprawling in one of the sleek swivel