Chapter 3:Welcome Home
HARPER / 9:47 PM / Veridian City, Upper East Side
My instincts, which had kept me operational through four years of jobs that regularly tried to kill me, assessed him in approximately one second and filed him under not a problem. Whatever his opinion of me was, it wasn't backed by anything that mattered.
I pulled Duchess's carrier from the seat beside me, shouldered my bag, and took a slow look at the full spectacle of my apparent homecoming. Valerie was already moving up the steps ahead of me, heels sharp against the stone, and I could hear her starting in on someone—something about the drive, the hours, the specific indignity of Texas air—and she was still talking when she glanced back and found me watching her.
She stopped.
The crowd's attention shifted, and through the gap it opened, I saw him coming.
Arthur Vance walked with the unhurried confidence of a man who had never had to move fast for anyone, flanked by two aides who were clearly trying to keep up without appearing to. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and when I saw him clearly for the first time, the resemblance hit me like a joke I hadn't been warned about. Eight, nine points out of ten. The same jaw, the same set of the brow. The universe had a sense of humor.
Valerie moved to his side and immediately began performing—the trip, the effort, the many inconveniences she had personally suffered on his behalf—and Arthur Vance listened with the expression of a man who had learned to look attentive as a management skill. Then Valerie glanced at me again, mid-sentence, found my eyes already on her, and let the sentence drop entirely.
Smart woman, when she chose to be.
Arthur Vance looked at me. I looked at him. Whatever he was feeling about twenty-one years of nothing was somewhere in his expression, layered and complicated, and I didn't want to do the archaeology on it right now, or possibly ever.
He said, at full volume: "It's good that you're back."
I smiled at him. It was not a warm smile. I looked away, because giving him a reaction—any reaction, in either direction—felt like a concession I hadn't agreed to make.
There was a beat of silence I didn't fill. Then Valerie leaned in close to his ear, and whatever she said was efficient, because I watched his expression shift and harden, and he looked at the assembled staff and said, clearly, "Bring the things out. Have the young lady cleaned up before she comes inside."
I turned to see what he meant by things. Two staff members were approaching—one carrying a spray bottle of rubbing alcohol, the other holding a lit torch, the flame steady in the evening air.
I understood the logic immediately and found it so spectacularly stupid that for a moment I just stood there. Spray bottle first, then the flame—an accelerant followed by an ignition source, some purification ritual his astrologer had prescribed for receiving a daughter who'd been classified as cosmically hazardous. The staff member with the spray bottle was already extending it toward me with the apologetic urgency of someone following an order they also found absurd.
I took the spray bottle from his hand before he could use it. One motion, and then I turned and sprayed the alcohol across the front of the housekeeper's apron—a thorough, even coating. She looked down at herself. She looked at me. Then I reached past her and took the torch from the second staff member's hand and held it at an angle that made the flame's intentions toward the soaked fabric very clear.
I looked at Arthur Vance.
"Do you want to do it this way?" I asked. "Burn your daughter, or burn your housekeeper. Walk me through the theology on that one."
Arthur Vance went very still.
The housekeeper made a sound that was almost a protest, and I turned to look at her, and she reconsidered. The white-haired old man opened his mouth, preparing to intervene, and I was already deciding whether it was worth the energy, when I felt the shift of weight inside the carrier at my side—Duchess, turning to face the direction of Arthur Vance, and she said something short and emphatic in his direction that communicated a detailed professional opinion.
Arthur Vance looked at the cat. The cat looked back at him with the focused, unblinking attention she reserved for people she found structurally unsound. His expression did something unbecoming.
I lowered the torch, because I had made the point and I wasn't actually interested in burning anyone on the first night. I handed both items back to the staff, who accepted them with quiet relief.
"My room," I said.
Arthur Vance was quiet for a moment. Whatever was happening inside him ran through him in silence, and then his posture shifted, not much but enough. "Take Miss Vance to her room," he said to the housekeeper. "And her cat stays with her."
I had already been preparing the refusal. It sat unused in my throat.
The housekeeper led me inside without making eye contact, which I respected. The entry hall was high-ceilinged—good bones, new lighting, family portraits going back three generations interrupted by a smart home panel that cost more than a car. Duchess had gone quiet in the carrier, which with her meant she was cataloging.
I was halfway across the floor when I heard it: the clean percussion of heels on the upper staircase, unhurried and deliberate.
The girl descending was somewhere near my age, with the precise, finished quality of someone assembled with professional help. Silk blouse, wide-leg trousers, understated jewelry. Her chin was raised at the specific angle of someone who expected rooms to notice her arrival.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and looked at me the way certain people look at things they've already decided about.
"Who is she?" I asked the housekeeper, keeping my voice low.
The housekeeper said, with minimal volume, "The—the eldest Miss Vance."
"I'm the eldest Miss Vance," I said pleasantly. "Try again. Where did this one come from?"
The housekeeper went rigid, and before she could figure out which direction to fail in, Valerie appeared at my shoulder and said, in the tone of someone delivering bad news they've personally shaped into a weapon: "That's Victoria. Your father adopted her about two years after you left. An astrologer told him a girl found walking in the rain on a Tuesday would change the family's fortunes." She paused. "He believes it worked. Until recently."
I let that land. It was entirely consistent with the Arthur Vance I had assembled in my head over twenty-one years—I'd just miscalculated the scale of his commitment to the practice.
"So he threw out his actual daughter based on an astrologer's read," I said, "and then went and collected a replacement from a rain puddle, also based on an astrologer's read. That's a complete system, I'll give him that."
Victoria Vance crossed the hall toward me with an expression of engineered warmth that had been assembled quickly but not quickly enough. She stopped close and smiled at me with everything except her eyes.
"Little sister," she said, with the easy comfort of someone who had been practicing that sentence. "Mother said you were coming. I didn't realize you'd be—" her gaze moved over me, the carry-on bag, the cat carrier, the jeans that had lived a full life—"so soon." She turned with smooth authority toward the nearest maid. "Go and run a bath for my sister. Rose petals, the Diptyque oil—she's had a long trip."
The maid looked between us.
I watched Victoria Vance perform hospitality at me with the confidence of someone who had spent some years as the daughter in this house and had no particular reason to believe that was about to change.
Then I looked at the maid and said, "Don't bother," and walked up the stairs.
