Butterfly in Amber (Spotless Book 4) Read online

  TWO

  THE KNIFE

  “How do you feel today, Island?”

  Like crap. “Great.”

  I know Dr. Bentsen doesn’t buy it, not even with the smile I muster. That’s why she’ll remain silent for a minute or so to give me the opportunity to elaborate on this statement. Spoiler alert: I won’t.

  She leans back in the delicate armchair facing the sofa I’m sitting on. We always meet in the music room when she visits me: she once said that it’s because it’s brighter, cozier than the rest of the castle, and so she thinks it’ll affect my mood accordingly. Possible—I’m not sure. I do agree that the atmosphere here is different from the rest of the building. The windows are much larger, and the pastel blues of the floral toile covering the furniture speak of a time when a certain art-de-vivre took over the necessity of fending off enemies and keeping halberds in every corner in case you needed to skewer someone . . .

  Bentsen combs back a long, sleek lock of silver hair behind her ear. She must flatiron. There’s no way her hair is naturally that smooth. Her smile reminds me of Stiles’s: soft, patient—inescapable. “Mr. Stiles told me you were upset a few days ago. Is it something you want to talk about?”

  Upset. Her favorite euphemism. Upset like when I woke up in her clinic in Helsinki, terrified, disoriented, and surrounded by complete strangers. My father, Stiles, her . . . they’d try to talk to me, show me faces and ask if I recognized them, over and over. To me, it was nothing more than words piling up meaninglessly, questions I couldn’t answer, recounting of events that might just as well have been someone else’s life.

  She doesn’t need to remind me how it was, how the fear and the emptiness quickly degenerated into rage and paranoia. Most of the time, I do a good job putting a lid on those memories, and lie to myself that I’m taking meds because I had brain injury and that’s going to help, somehow. But of course, things look a little different from Bentsen’s perspective, who received a glass full of water and pills in her face—more than once—and who had to call in a bunch of male nurses to strap me to my bed a few times because I was so sure she wanted to kill me that I decided to strike first—with a fork and a plate of green beans. It’s the only thing I don’t want to remember, those hours spent screaming at no one in particular, the despair and the exhaustion afterward . . .

  I shift in my armchair, unable to meet her eyes. “It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t angry or anything. I just . . . I was frustrated that Stiles wouldn’t let me out, and it all kind of . . . bubbled up.”

  “When Mr. Stiles mentioned Joy.”

  I look through the window. I want out, away.

  “Island?” she probes gently.

  “Yes. Yes, I lost it, okay?” I snap. “I know it sounds bad, but I do feel better. It’s like you’re holding it against me.”

  Her voice is warm, gooey honey as she tries to get through to me. “No one is holding anything against you, Island. We only want to make sure you’re safe. We’re all worried about you.”

  “Then why don’t you let me go back to New York? I don’t need people to worry about me; I need fresh air.”

  It would probably take a lot more than a saucy attitude to make the slightest dent in Dr. Bentsen’s super-psychologist armor. She all but ignores my irritation and keeps going, as if this were a conversation between friends. “You told me the same thing during our last session. What do you miss in New York, Island?”

  She’s trapping me. She knows I can’t answer that, at least not really. What do I miss? Joy? Joy is gone, along with my memories of her. All there’s left of her is an indistinct ache, a void inside me. My other friends, my colleagues? They’re just names, smudges in my mind that could be faces. My job? Apparently I worked in IT, but I got fired not long before I took that vacation to the Poseidon Dome. In truth, everything that held my life together snapped when that dome collapsed, like dozens of frail strings. And yet . . .

  “My apartment . . . I’d like to return there. I think it’d jog my memory,” I say, truthfully.

  That seems to catch Bentsen’s interest. “Is there anything you remember specifically from your apartment, Island? Objects, maybe?”

  “We have . . . I had a pink vegetable knife. I’m sure of that.”

  I close my eyes. What I see, who I see, the faceless, broad-shouldered silhouette standing in what I believe to be my living room, holding the knife . . . I can’t tell Dr. Bentsen, not when I’m not even sure if it’s a memory at all. Bentsen warned me a few times that my brain might be sorely tempted to make up its own stories to fill the blanks. Horror vacui and all that.

  You’re where my tape starts.

  “Island? Island?”

  My head snaps up. The moment I realize I zoned out, I have this irrational burst of fear and guilt in my chest, like I got caught . . . doing what, exactly? It’s not like I’m under some sort of obligation to let everyone know every single thought that’s going on in my mind at all times. I need time to make sense of whatever shreds of memory I grasp at. I straighten in my armchair and force myself to meet Dr. Bentsen’s soft, querying gaze. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to visualize my kitchen, see if I remembered it.”

  “Do you?”

  “No. Only the knife. Maybe it’s because of the flashy color.”

  She seems satisfied with my answer. I breathe out. We’re almost done.

  “Your father will be here by the end of the week.” Something flickers in her gray-blue irises as she says this, hesitation maybe. “I’ll call him then. I’m thinking we could try a different approach . . . give you some space to heal on your own terms.”

  I sit perfectly still, even as an uncontrollable feeling of freedom sends my pulse to a frenzy. On my lap, my fists curl, bunching the material of my sweater in a supreme effort not to jump from my armchair. From a purely rational point of view, it’s a tiny step. All it means for now is that I’ll likely win the Christmas-ornaments battle. But it’s a start: with some luck, maybe Bentsen will eventually deem me stable enough to go face the chaos of modern civilization and get my life back, dammit!

  I hold back the grin I feel tug at my cheeks, schooling it into a meek smile. “Yes, I’d like that. Thank you.”

  She nods. Outside, the snow has started falling again; fat snowflakes drift past the windows, shrouding the castle’s park in a pearly fog. Dr. Bentsen checks her watch. This time, we’re done.

  When she opens the music room’s heavy doors, Stiles is here, waiting in the hallway, as usual. For once, though, I greet him with a beaming face. He cocks an eyebrow in question. I’ll tell him later.

  •••

  “Slice the banana, and arrange the strawberries on top.”

  A monotone male voice rises from Stiles’s tablet’s speaker and resonates in the vast kitchen, to dictate precise cooking instructions. His tongue darts between his lips in a frown of intense concentration as he fixes us an elaborate fruit carpaccio for afternoon snack.

  We do have a chef, French and all—Gwennaël. My mother was French too, so I like to chat with him when he’s here. She died more than ten years ago in a car accident, and I can’t remember anything about her, not even the fiery-red curls cascading down her shoulders in my father’s pictures. I find comfort in the simple knowledge that I haven’t forgotten the language though, its odd combination of soft sonorities. It makes me feel like there’s a part of her inside me, something that transcends memory.

  So yes, there’s a chef. But Stiles likes to cook, or, to be precise, Stiles loves to cook with step-by-step videos—and that’s not even his weirdest hobby . . . I watch him rummage through a massive fridge. The voice orders him to squeeze lime juice over his creation.

  “Do you really feel ready for that?” he eventually asks. “Going out on your own?”

  “Yes.” My head bobs up and down like a rear-shelf dog’s. “It’s just not working, being here, resting all the time. So my entire adult life got flushed down the drain, and I’ll have to live with brain inj
ury. Tough hand, but okay, fine. I’ll just have to build a new life. But I can’t do that if I stay here. I need, um”—I ball my fists—“to, like, get back on the ring. And my meds are making me slow; I can’t focus. I need to ease up on those too.”

  In Stiles’s hand, a long Japanese knife stops halfway in the middle of the lime. “Maybe it’s a bit early for that.”

  “Dad”—my voice catches on the word. Somehow, it still won’t come out easily even after eight months—“Dad would tell you that’s Dr. Bentsen’s call,” I say warily.

  He sighs and finishes cutting the fruit. When he’s done with his carpaccio, and he’s about to put the knife away in the sink, he does that thing, spinning it in his hand. I have no idea how he does that; I can’t even follow the movement of his fingers. Amazing.

  The knife clanks in the sink. “If you say so.”

  We eat in silence. I know Stiles disapproves of Dr. Bentsen’s project to open the doors to my cage, but it’s Stiles; he’s not gonna throw a tantrum about it. He’s not going to say anything, actually. I get that he worries though and that he’s responsible for me on a professional level too. If I lose my mind and somehow fall off a cliff, he’ll have to answer to my father for it, and getting fired will be the least of his problems.

  Honestly, my father is no worse than, say, Anna Wintour. I suspect he intentionally cultivates this cliché of the unfunny billionaire who’ll pink-slip your ass in a heartbeat and sue your underwear off on top of it—the other day, I overheard a security guard hiss to another that “Mr. Keasler doesn’t tolerate failure,” like the guy would get thrown into a shark pool James Bond-style or something . . . The bottom line is that my father goes to great lengths to protect his private life—me included—because the world is full of people willing to kidnap a wealthy man’s offspring and send him a big toe in guise of an invoice. And, yes, fed up as I am to convalesce here, I do understand that I and my fickle brain make an easy target.

  “You know, I’m not gonna run off naked in the woods or something,” I joke, playing with a slice of banana on my plate.

  Stiles chuckles. “Please put on pants if you’re gonna do that.”

  “We can find a middle ground,” I add, in a more serious tone. “I need to stretch my wings. But I can definitely do with some help. Up to a point.”

  He raises a blond eyebrow. “Up to a point?”

  As if to answer his question, a tremor shakes my hand when I raise my fork to eat. He sees it, and I can tell he’ll be on his feet in an instant if needed. I shake my head negatively. “When my hands do that, for example, I don’t want you to help me, because if you do, I’ll never learn to live with it.”

  I gobble the piece of fruit, my gaze firmly planted on his. He gives a nod of understanding and stands to pick up our now-empty plates. Moments later, I see him open the fridge and reach for a bottle of apple juice. Knots form in my stomach.

  I stare down at the ashen veins running across the marble tiles, unnerved by the sloshing sounds of juice being poured in a heavy crystal glass. Stiles reaches in his pocket for the pillbox that never leaves him, where each dose is ready. When he hands me the pair of white pills, I bite my lower lip, aware of the blood pounding in my neck.

  “No, I’m good. I think we can skip them for today.”

  I register the faintest click of his tongue. “Island. I’m not sure we can find any . . . middle ground if you don’t take your treatment.”

  “I want to see how I fare without the pills, just for a few days. I’ll take them if I don’t feel well.”

  Stiles takes a step forward, concern and some degree of annoyance wrinkling his brow. “Island, you’re putting me in a tough spot.”

  I shake my head obstinately. He won’t force me; I can’t believe he would. Yet he takes another step, and I find him uncomfortably close. Stiles has touched me, carried me before, in the first months of my recovery, when my legs would sometimes betray me, but I’ve never experienced any real sense of threat at his proximity—except for the early days, when confusion and paranoia got the best of me. At the moment, however, he’s towering over me, dwarfing me with his brawny build, and I’m acutely aware of the difference in physical strength between us.

  There’s no detectable anger in his gaze as he studies me but rather an odd tenderness. He’s so close I can smell the notes of aftershave and some woody cologne, see each line of his face. I can’t help but flinch when his left hand moves. Slowly, carefully, the back of his knuckles graze my cheek. I gasp, his hand drops, and it’s over within seconds, before I can even process what happened.

  “You were always trouble,” he says, his baritone down to a thrumming whisper.

  Was I? I don’t know what to make of that. I don’t think there’s anything romantic about his gesture. I mean, if Stiles was interested, considering all the time we’ve spent alone together since I arrived at Ingolvinlinna, he’d have . . . Yeah. No. This is about control. The realization seems to pop out from a part of my brain I didn’t even know still worked. I’m proven right when he reaches for the glass, now fully expecting me to submit.

  •••

  There’s a rumor among the personnel that my father pays Stiles like Ronaldo to watch me 24/7. I have no idea whether this is true—I certainly hope so for him, since we’re talking two grand an hour. There are nonetheless levels of debasement no amounts of soccer money can buy. For example, Stiles never follows me to the bathroom. Well, almost never, if we take into account that time when I caught some kind of stomach bug three months ago. It was sad, ugly, and mildly traumatizing. The toilet bowl still remembers as Stiles held my hair while I threw up. He has made a point never to get directly involved with my bodily functions since. Can’t blame him.

  Barely ten minutes after lunch is over, I stand alone in front of the bathroom mirror, surrounded by the many shades of blue in the kaleidoscopic Moroccan tiling. I’m thinking that what Stiles doesn’t know can’t hurt him. This time, I need no help kneeling in front of the bowl. I stick my fingers down my throat, careful to stifle any undignified noises, even as my stomach starts heaving. And up goes the apple juice, along with Dr. Bentsen’s med cocktail.

  THREE

  THE GREEN FAIRY

  We’re waiting for him.

  My father should be here for dinner, so I went to curl up in one of the salon’s armchairs with a book to pass time until he arrives. Night has fallen, and the room is plunged in a silence only disturbed by the occasional crack of a log in the fireplace. In comparison, the rest of Ingolvinlinna is in ebullition. As usual whenever my father visits, security appears to have doubled, and you can’t go ten feet without seeing black uniforms. On the second floor, maids hustle to make sure that my father’s room is ready to welcome him, while in the kitchen, Gwennaël is putting the last touch to a haute-cuisine feast he said would be a welcome change from “Internet recipes”—Stiles took the jab well, like he takes everything else, really . . .

  Speaking of the devil, he’s checking his phone while I flip through a painfully detailed account of the disastrous Arctic expedition led by a certain Sir John Franklin. After some prolonged typing, Stiles puts his phone away to dedicate himself to one of his favorite activities . . . staring. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s bored and wants to make small talk, but I recognize his attentive gaze for what it is: he’s monitoring, analyzing, gauging my mental state—no doubt to later provide a detailed report to our lord and master.

  My father is away most of the time, conducting business all over the globe—it’s actually been almost a month since his last visit. He rarely calls me, which I’m willing to blame on work and time difference rather than the product of an aloof and secretive personality. That’s just the way he is: he never calls to chat, he calls when it’s 2:00 a.m. in Shanghai and he needs to hear my voice—in which case I’m the one who does what little chatting I can. Even so, I don’t mistake his introversion for indifference: I’m well aware that he keeps a close watch on me through h
is favorite snitch . . .

  The culprit tilts his head at me with a soft smile. “Watcha reading?”

  I hold up the book so Stiles can see the cover. “It’s about the lost Franklin expedition.”

  “I heard about it. They found the ships a while back, right?”

  “Yeah, it was an arctic exploration mission led by the British in 1845. They sent two ships that never came back, and it took almost one hundred and fifty years to figure out what happened to the crew.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Bad karma. They ended up stuck in ice for two years, died from the cold, disease . . . some tried to walk south, and they all died on the way. The bones the scientists found showed traces of cannibalism too.”

  The way Stiles’s eyebrows pinch tells he won’t borrow that lovely tome.

  “Actually, the most interesting part is that the men developed scurvy and pneumonia, but they had no idea they were also dying from lead poisoning from their canned food. Possibly from their tinned cans or the ships’ water systems. Gruesome stuff.”

  As he listens to this, Stiles leans back in the couch and crosses his arms. “Interesting.”

  “There’s also pics of the bodies,” I say, flipping the book to show him the chilling rictus of death painted on the face of an otherwise perfectly preserved, frozen body.

  Stiles shakes his head. “I’ll pass, thank you . . . Besides”—he turns to the latticed bay window behind the couch. Outside, the faint droning of a rotor is growing louder by the second—“they’re here.”

  He’s right; moments later, the beam of a helicopter light swipes across the park and clouds of fresh snow swirl around the aircraft as it slowly descends. When the doors open, a few men jump to the ground. I recognize my father’s bodyguards. Right afterward, a tall silhouette in a dark coat unfolds from the back seat and steps out from the chopper. His graying head turns to the castle; I wave at him. He doesn’t wave back, but I know he saw me—there’s very little that escapes my father’s notice.