Ophelia (7 page)

Jonah jumped a foot and whirled around.

“Whitaker! How the hell are ya? What are ya doin’ here,
anyway? Last I heard, you were chasin’ brats in Queens!”

“I do not know who your source of information was, but I can
assure you that I have spent the last five years organizing security for
Spanish aristocrats who summer in Connecticut,” Andrew said stiffly. “My
connections have gotten me presented to King Juan Carlos five times and Queen
Sofía seven.”

“Are they so old that they forgot who you were thirty minutes
later?”

Jonah’s snide comment fell flat. Ophelia was placing her hand
on Eduardo to stop him from physically defending the monarchs of his homeland
when David tapped her on the shoulder.

“Your brother needs your assistance.”

Ophelia followed David’s gesture—her brother was mid-harangue
with a flustered young man she suspected was Peter Parker. Thanking her
bodyguard, Ophelia picked her way across the room. She was halfway there when
the planetarium’s security team forcefully removed her brother.

“Go away, Shishter!”

Harry grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing server,
which Ophelia quickly snatched. He reached up to slap her, but Ophelia caught
his hand in midair.

“Who do you shink you are? Shuperwoman?”

Ophelia downed half the flute, eyed her brother and then
quickly fortified herself with the rest. Only when another server had taken her
glass did she speak.

“What was the purpose of interrupting this
event? Especially when the interruption was a verbal assault on your supposed
best friend?”

“Peter knowsh Shpidermansh. Shpidermansh killed our fasher.”

“But
Athair
would not want us to harbour
a vendetta, regardless of whether it was murder or manslaughter.”

Harry laughed. “Then you don’t know Dad!”

Ophelia raised her eyebrow at her brother’s use of the
present tense.

“I’ve been having vishensh. Ha! That’s a funny word.
Vishensh.” He grinned. “I shee Dad and he shesh my work ishnt done. He keepsh
reminding me of my duty.”

“What would that be?”

“To kill Shpiderman!” Harry made a face that was supposed to
represent a developmentally disabled person. “He sesh that if you were any good
ash hish…um…
hair
…you’d do your dutiesh too!”

“I am already running his company!”
Ophelia said indignantly.
“Osborn Scientific has been under my
governance for two years and we have nearly doubled our profits!”

Her brother cocked his head, as if someone were calling from
just inside the party.

“He shesh you know whatsh you duty ish. He sesh itsh not up
to me to repeat it.”

Ophelia shivered at this message, her mind flitting over
Project Rose. A chill came over her when she asked,
“Harry,
has
Athair
been talking to you?”

“I shee him in the mirror shomtimesh.” He appeared to sober a
little. “I dream of him sometimes, too, but he mostly whispers in my ear.”

She wondered then if she should tell him of her own
dreams…tell him why she thought their father might be badgering them about
duty.

“Go home, Harry,”
Ophelia said at
last.
“Do not hail a taxi—I will call Wahim and he can take
you in my limousine. I will not be ready to leave for a little while—I still
have to find Eduardo.”

~*~

“I
could carry you upstairs.”

Ophelia laughed. “You have
never
carried me upstairs! Not even when I was a little girl!”

“When you were a little girl, I would bring you the first aid
kit or make you a bed on the couch so you wouldn’t
have
to go upstairs!”
Her bodyguard was grinning.

“I am not plastered…I am more knackered than
anything.”
Ophelia held out her arm.
“Walk with me and
make sure that I do not fall on my arse!”

Completely disobeying her, David swept Ophelia into his arms
and laughingly took her upstairs. He had made it a third of the way toward the
master bedroom when they heard voices coming from the opposite end of the hall.

“Where’s your husband?”

“I do not know. He said something about
escorting my brother back to his flat, but I have not seen him since.”

David put her down and they listened together.

“Sounds like Harry, but the other voice doesn’t sound like Eduardo.”

Before her bodyguard could grasp what was going on, Ophelia
shed her heels and raced toward the voices. David was taller than Ophelia,
however, and easily overtook her.

“Ophelia!”

The young woman picked up her pace and arrived a moment
later…to discover Spider-Man on the divan, her brother hovering over him with
dagger in hand.

“Harold Ambrose Osborn!”
she
thundered.
“What in the name of all that is sweet and holy are
you
doing?
”

“I wanted to see the coward’s face before I killed him.”

Ophelia said something venomous in what sounded like a hybrid
of Irish and Spanish.

“She wants to know how Spider-Man got into her library and
why he’s tied with barbed wire,” David translated. He glanced at her. “In so
many words.”

“Octavius brought him to me in exchange for more tritium.”

“More
tritium?
”
Ophelia
shrieked.
“He was not satisfied with nearly killing himself
the first time?”

“I got what I wanted,” Harry replied with a shrug. “I didn’t
ask.”

“Please,” interrupted a weak voice from across the room. “I
can help.”

Ophelia shot her brother a harsh glance.

“If you let him go in peace, I will let you
see his face
and
I may reconsider reporting you to the
gardaí
.”

While her brother considered this, she beckoned to her
bodyguard.

“Where is Andrew?”
she murmured.

“I sent him home right before Wahim arrived.”

“I hope Harry does not get violent.”

“I’ll let him go,” Harry announced after a moment.

Ophelia made a “have at it” gesture and Harry sprang forward
to pull of his nemesis’s hood.

“
Peter?
”

“I’m sorry Harry, Ms. Osborn.” The young man sat up and
flexed his muscles, easily freeing himself. “I did
not
kill your
father!”

“Now is not the time for heartfelt
discussions, Mr Parker,”
Ophelia interjected.
“Go save Dr
Octavius before he kills himself—or worse.”

Peter bowed to David and Ophelia, nodded to Harry and took a
flying leap off the balcony, firing a web line into the night.

“I guess I’ll turn in…”

“You will do no such thing!”
Ophelia
barked.

Her bodyguard moved between her brother and the door.

“You may think that you are doing your
filial duty, but you still have to justify your actions to
me
,”
she continued.
“Not to mention that you cannot sleep in your
old room—it is now a guest room, where my husband sleeps on nights we come home
separately.”

“Then I’ll take a cab back to my place,” Harry replied.
“Unless you’re offering the limo…?”

“Wahim was dismissed
hours
ago. But
not to worry…David and I will be happy to ensure that you remain in the room
until all my questions are answered.”

Harry stared sullenly at his sister.

“What did Dr Octavius want the tritium for?”
Ophelia pressed.

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Why did you give it to him, then?”

“He threatened to kill me.”

“Why did you ask for Peter Parker in
exchange?”

“I didn’t
know
it was Peter!” Harry protested. “Ock
said he’d get
Spider-Man!
”

“What is the likelihood that Dr Octavius
would have snatched an innocent young man off the streets and put him in a
Spider-Man costume?”

“I don’t know.”

Ophelia sighed.
“I would ask you why you
wanted to kill Spider-Man, but that comes back to visions of
Athair
reminding you of your filial duty.”

“Right.”

She thought for a minute.

“What did the autopsy report say?”

“Dad didn’t want an autopsy.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!” Harry protested. “You knew him better! I
thought it was some weird science thing!”

A clock on the opposite side of the room chimed three just as
Eduardo appeared in the doorway.

“What’s he doing here?” Eduardo asked in Spanish.

“I could ask you the same!”
Ophelia
snapped, whirling around.
“Did you not see him up to his
flat?”

“I can’t remember!”

Ophelia was tempted to argue, but she bit it back.

“He has been wandering back and forth
between my office and the library all night, waiting for Spider-Man to arrive. No
doubt he has been drinking all the alcohol in the house while he waited!”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“I will call the
gardaí
tomorrow. We
have more to discuss.”

Wednesday,

September 27, 2006

(Dawn)

Ophelia
woke to the sound of shattering glass. Her first thought was to wake Eduardo,
but he was in Spain visiting family. Her mind lingered briefly on David. His
room was on the ground floor, at the opposite end of the mansion. If there was
an intruder, it was likely that he would be between the two of them. With that
in mind, Ophelia grabbed a dagger from her nightstand and headed toward the
source of the noise.

“Go
away, Ophelia.”

“Not until you tell me how you got in here.”

“The balcony doors were unlocked.”

She glanced across the room and saw that one of the doors was
ajar.

“
Why
are you in here?”

“I thought you said you’d go away after I told you how I got
in here?” Harry stopped watching the hole where a full-length mirror previously
hung and glanced at his sister.

“I never agreed to anything of the sort!”
Ophelia replied.
“Furthermore,
you
are the one
trespassing—you are in no position to be making deals.”

“Dad wouldn’t shut up. I came here to do something about it.”

“Our father is
dead!
”
Ophelia
exclaimed. She didn’t mention that she had finally seen a doctor for medication
to put an end to her nightmares.
“Even if his shade
was
present,
what can be done here that cannot be done at your flat?”

Harry didn’t answer, opting to take a stroll down the
corridor that had appeared in the absence of the mirror.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“Dad always appeared to me in this mirror before you kicked
me out,” he replied. “He was crazy for it when he was alive.”

Ophelia stopped in the entrance, played with the mirror
frame.

“You know Harry, I think this opened. Like a
door.”

“Doesn’t matter. Dad wouldn’t shut up. If I hadn’t broken the
mirror, he would’ve been after you when he was done with me.”

Ophelia watched her brother continue down the corridor.
“Where are you going? This cannot lead anywhere.”

“I
know
there’s something here…”

She came to her senses and jogged after him, arriving just in
time to see Harry turn on a light in a room at the very end.

What they found amazed them.

Several displays filled the room, including a mannequin dressed
in armor that looked like a bad Halloween concept. To their immediate left was
a large stand that crested near Ophelia’s waist and seemed to have a giant bat
perched upon it. A few shelves down from the bat was a rack that held several
ampoules of a glowing green liquid; as they drew closer, brother and sister
discovered that the ampoules had incomprehensible labels. A glass-paneled
chamber on the opposite end of the room caught Ophelia’s eye. A darkened
computer waited nearby, confirming her suspicions.

“Did
Athair
ever tell you about this
place?”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t think so. It looks kind of
familiar, though.”

“A chamber like that one stands in the
laboratory in the second sub-basement of the Tower.”

“Never been there,” he replied. “But that looks like the
Green Goblin’s armor.”

Ophelia motioned to the giant bat.
“Did the
Green Goblin use that, too?”

Harry stared. “It looks like the glider he was riding at the
World Unity Festival!”

“So…the kiddies found the Goblin Chamber!”

The siblings screamed.

“The portrait?”
asked Ophelia,
motioning to the picture above the computer.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed.

“Very good, Ophelia,” Norman’s voice said again. “I created
you well!”

“It must be some kind of recording!”
she said.

“‘Created’?” Harry echoed.

“I am
not
a recording!” their father growled. “I know
that Westbrooke is asleep and Miraz is in Valencia.”

Ophelia and Harry looked at each other, bewildered.

“It’s about time you found your
true
inheritance.” The
portrait went still.

Ophelia frowned.
“What is it that we are
supposed to do?”

Harry didn’t quite hear her…he was too busy backing toward
the door.