Obsidian Butterfly - Laurell K. Hamilton [6]
Donna used the handshake to draw me into a hug. “Ted said you’d never believe he’d finally agreed to tie the knot.” She hugged me again, laughing. “But, my god, girl, I’ve never seen such pure shock.” She retreated back to Edward’s arms and his smiling Ted face.
I am not nearly as good an actor as Edward. It’s taken me years to perfect a blank face let alone outright lying by facial expression and body language. So I kept my face blank and tried to tell Edward with my eyes that he had some explaining to do.
With his face slightly turned from Donna, he gave me his close, secretive smile. Which pissed me off. Edward was enjoying his surprise. Damn him.
“Ted, where are your manners? Take her bag,” Donna said.
Edward and I both stared at the small carry-on bag I had in my left hand. He gave me Ted’s smile, but he said Edward’s line. “Anita likes to carry her own weight.”
Donna looked at me for confirmation as if this couldn’t possibly be true. Maybe she wasn’t as strong and independent as she appeared, or maybe she was a decade older than she appeared. A different generation, you know.
“Ted’s right,” I said, putting a little too much emphasis on his name. “I like to carry my own bags.”
Donna looked like she’d have liked to correct my obviously wrong thinking but was too polite to say it out loud. The expression, not the silence, reminded me of my stepmother Judith. Which made me push Donna’s age over fifty. She was either a mightily well preserved fifty-something, forty-something, or a sun-aged thirty-something. I just couldn’t tell.
They walked ahead of me through the airport, arm in arm. I followed behind them, not because my suitcase was too heavy but because I needed a few minutes to recover. I watched Donna bump her head against Edward’s shoulder, her face turning to him, smiling, glowing. Edward/Ted bent over her, face tender, whispering something that made her laugh.
I was going to be sick. What the hell was Edward doing with this woman? Was she another assassin, as good an actor as he was? Somehow I didn’t think so. And if she was exactly what she appeared—a woman in love with Ted Forrester, who didn’t exist—I was going to kick Edward’s metaphorical ass. How dare he involve some innocent woman in his cover story! Or—and this was a very strange thought—was Edward/Ted really in love? If you’d asked me ten minutes ago, I’d have said he wasn’t capable of such depth of emotion, but now . . . now I was just plain confused.
The Albuquerque airport broke my rule that all airports look nearly identical and you can’t really tell what part of the country, or even the world, that you’re in just from the airport. If there are decorations, they’re usually from a different culture entirely, like inland bars having seaside motifs. But not here. Here there were hints of a southwestern flavor everywhere. Multi-colored tile or paint leaning to turquoise and cobalt blue lined most of the shops and store fronts. A small covered stand sold silver jewelry in the middle of the large hallway leading from the gates to the rest of the airport. We’d left the crowd behind and with it the noise. We moved in a world of nearly ringing silence, heightened by the white-white walls and the large windows on either side. Albuquerque stretched outside those windows like some great flat plain with a ring of black mountains at the edge, like the backdrop to a play, somehow unreal. The heat pressed down even through the air conditioning, not really hot, but letting you know it was going to be. The landscape was totally alien, adding to my sense of having been cut adrift. One of the things I liked about Edward is that he never changed. He was what he was, and now Edward, dependable in his own psychotic way, had thrown me a curve ball so wild I didn’t even know how to swing at it.
Donna stopped and turned, drawing Edward with her. “Anita, that bag is just too heavy for you. Please