Tandem (22 page)

“What …” A server placed a tray in front of me and lifted the lid. “Oh no.”

“I was in the European Federation last week,” Whitehall explained, while I stared at what was on my plate. “And our ambassador in Paris—you’ve met Richter Barnard, haven’t you, Juli?” I nodded, not sure she had but certain nobody would question me about it. “Anyway, he ordered this for us both, and I liked it so much I twisted the chef’s arm for the recipe to give to the Castle kitchen. I thought you might enjoy it. I know how much you love chocolate.”

I swallowed hard. I was looking at what was probably the most delicious chocolate mousse cake ever invented, but I was never going to taste it. I hadn’t had chocolate since I was three years old, when a birthday cupcake brought on a brain-splitting migraine and full-body hives. I’d been tested and sure enough—I was allergic to cacao, the main ingredient in chocolate. And now, here it was, sitting on my plate, as everyone waited for me to take a bite.

I took a deep breath and beamed at Whitehall, who seemed very proud of himself. “Thank you so much, Whit. It looks amazing, but I promised Her Majesty that I’d watch what I ate. I have to fit into my wedding dress!” My smile was so wide and tight, I thought my face might split in half. The General looked at me suspiciously over the rim of his wineglass, and the queen rolled her eyes.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Juliana, I think you can manage a couple of bites,” she said. “After all, Whitehall went to all this trouble to do something nice for you. Skip lunch tomorrow instead.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” the General said. “A small taste won’t kill you.”

I picked up my fork. It didn’t look like I had a choice; everyone at the table was waiting for me to start eating my dessert so they could dig into theirs. I’d have to eat at least a little bit, to appease them. But I wasn’t sure a small taste
wouldn’t
kill me, as the General so succinctly put it.

I plunged my fork into the soft, spongy cake and lifted it to my mouth. I barely tasted it; I was too worried about what was going to happen next that I wasn’t even able to enjoy eating chocolate for the first time in over a decade. When I’d gotten it down, I turned to Whitehall with a grateful smile. “That is the best dessert I’ve ever had. They’d better take it away from me now before I eat the whole thing!”

Whitehall laughed. “Oh, just eat it, for God’s sake, girl. You’ve only got one life, you know.”

Well,
I thought ruefully.
I guess that depends on who you are.

The rest of the guests turned to their own desserts, and soon the air was full of rapturous exclamations over the cake. Whitehall grinned like a self-satisfied child as even the queen thanked him for thinking to ask the French chef for his delicious recipe and bringing it to the Castle. Only the General withheld his opinion, leaving everyone to wonder what he thought as he slowly and deliberately picked at his dessert.

Eventually, though, people got tired of praising the cake and moved on to other topics. Whitehall, desperate for the General’s attention, asked him about how his sons were doing.

Sons?
I thought in surprise. It had never occurred to me that the General might have children—and, in that case, a wife, or at least an ex-wife. An ex-wife seemed like a more reasonable assumption. Either way, the thought of him breeding turned my stomach. What must it be like to have the General as a father? He didn’t seem like the type of person who would even want children, or enjoy raising them. I listened closer to their conversation, my interest piqued. To my relief, I wasn’t feeling any differently than I had before I’d eaten the cake. Maybe I’d outgrown the allergy. And not a minute too soon, it seemed.

“They’re fine,” the General said. He was speaking to Whitehall, but he was staring straight at me. “Lucas just got back from visiting his mother.”

“Is Alice still living at the Montauk house?” Whitehall asked.

The General shrugged. He seemed irritated that Whitehall was pressing him about his family life. “She likes it better by the water. Alice has never been one for cities.”

“She must miss both your boys, though,” Whitehall continued, either oblivious to the General’s displeasure, or in defiance of it. I mentally pocketed this piece of information—so the General had
two
sons. How interesting.

Suddenly, a shock of pain rolled across my temples.

“I’m sure she does,” the queen piped up. Her voice was far away, like the sound of ocean waves inside a seashell. “It must be so difficult, having your children gone and not knowing what could happen to them. Especially in your line of work.”

The General nodded. “I suppose she does miss them, but they visit regularly. Well, Lucas does, at any rate.”

“Just Lucas?” Whitehall asked. “Thomas doesn’t go to see her?”

A sudden crash drew all the attention in the room to me. My wineglass lay shattered on the floor in dozens of glinting pieces. The room was silent but for the sound of my labored breathing. I couldn’t get enough air. Everything seemed to be closing in on me, faces pressing into my eyeballs. Blood roared in my ears and my skin was growing hotter by the second, as if someone had doused me in kerosene and then lit a match.

“Juli!” Whitehall reached out to steady me. I was listing to one side, in great danger of toppling off my chair. Whitehall’s skin had the pallor of a bar of soap. “What’s wrong?”

I touched my neck; I could feel hives rising beneath my fingertips. My head hurt so badly, I thought it was going to explode. I rubbed my temples, hoping to coax the pain out but failing miserably.

“I think she’s having an allergic reaction. Someone call a doctor!” Whitehall shouted. He put his arm around my shoulders. I was shaking, my teeth chattering. “Close those doors! She’s cold!”

The General stared at me, unmoving, his expression blank. The only indication that he might have been upset by what was happening was a slight tightness in his jaw. He didn’t resemble Thomas at all, but the way they looked when they were trying to hide an upswell of emotion was something they shared. I hadn’t noticed before, but now it was all I could see. Thomas was the General’s son.

How could I have been so blind? It made so much sense. It explained why Thomas was in the position he was, so young and yet so uniquely placed in the agency. Nepotism had played its part well. And what about Thomas’s brother, this other boy, Lucas? Was he in the KES, too? How old was he? And what was
his
reward for being the General’s spawn?

But the question that kept rising to the top, the one I needed an answer to above all others, was: why did Thomas tell me his parents were dead? Clearly that was a lie, and an awful one, because it had made me believe, for a few short but important seconds, that he and I might have something in common. I was so stupid. He’d only been trying to manipulate me, the way he had from the very first moment that we came into contact, and I’d fallen for it, just like I’d fallen for it back on Earth.

Hands grasped me by the shoulders and shook me to get my attention. I opened my eyes. Thomas was crouched in front of my chair, which someone had yanked away from the table with me still on it, to give me room and make way for help. I tried to wrench away from him, but I could only manage a weak shudder.

“What happened?” he whispered.

I looked over at the dessert, which was still sitting, mostly uneaten, on the plate. “I told you I was allergic to chocolate,” I whispered back.

He nodded, his expression grave. “Don’t worry. The doctor’s on his way.”

Thomas helped lay me down on a settee in the reception area that adjoined the dining room. The other guests had been shuffled off, and only the queen, the General, and Whitehall remained behind to oversee my care. The queen sat stiff as a poker in a straight-backed chair near the settee, her mouth set in a grim line. Whitehall paced back and forth. It wasn’t until the General barked, “Sit down, Whitehall!” from his place near the door, that Whitehall finally gathered himself and flopped into a nearby armchair.

A wave of panic swept through me and I began to cry. I tried to staunch the tears with the backs of my hands, but I couldn’t. I wanted my mother so badly. The first time I had a reaction, she took me home from the doctor’s and put me to bed, then crawled in with me and curled her body around mine, holding me through the night. I missed her so much it was like a black hole had opened up inside of me, consuming everything in its path.
I want to go home,
I thought desperately, and the tears came faster, spilling down my cheeks. Thomas gazed at me with eyes full of concern, and I almost lost it. The only thing that stopped me was the stark reality of my circumstances and fear of the General’s wrath.

The door to the reception room slid open and a man walked in. I turned to look at him. He was short and grizzled, with a shock of thinning silver hair and a thick white mustache that curled over his lip like a fat caterpillar. He held a black doctor’s bag in his hand and wore a pair of thick gold-rimmed spectacles that made his eyes seem overlarge and surprised.

“Who are you?” the queen demanded. “Where’s Dr. Rowland?”

“Dr. Rowland is off duty tonight,” the General said, before the man could speak. “Dr. Moss is one of our KES physicians.”

“Your Majesty.” Dr. Moss bowed low before the queen, then turned his attention to me. “Your Highness, I’m sorry to see you in this distressing state. Would you mind if I gave you a cursory examination?”

I looked at Thomas, who nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“Wonderful. Excuse me, Agent, would you mind moving aside?” Thomas did as he was asked, disappearing from my field of vision.

Dr. Moss looked me over for a few minutes, then asked, “Besides the hives, do you have any other symptoms, Your Highness?”

My fingers fluttered near my temples. “A headache. And … it’s hard … to breathe.”

“A simple allergic reaction, then. What did you eat tonight?” I told him, and he nodded. “When did you first start experiencing these symptoms?”

“A couple of minutes … after … dessert,” I said, pausing a few times to catch my breath.

“I see. Well, I’m sorry to say this, Your Highness, but it seems as though it was the chocolate that did it.”

“That’s absurd!” the queen cried. “Juliana isn’t allergic to chocolate.”

“Food allergies are mysterious creatures, Your Majesty,” Dr. Moss explained. “They come and go as we age, and they can manifest quite unexpectedly.”

“I suppose we’ll have to do something about the wedding cake,” the queen muttered.

“Don’t bother,” I told her. “I just won’t eat any.”

“Luckily for Your Highness, I can administer an antihistamine that should fix you up quite quickly. Have you any objection to needles?”

I shook my head. Under the circumstances, I could hardly protest. I squeezed my eyes shut while he gave me a shot in the crook of my elbow. “What now?” I asked when it was over.

“Now,” he said. “We wait.”

We didn’t have to wait long. Within moments I was feeling much better; the headache had started to recede, the hives were clearing up faster than they had appeared, and in the space of fifteen minutes, I could breathe normally again. I sat up as soon as I had the strength and thanked Dr. Moss.

“Happy to be of service, Your Highness. If there’s nothing else … ?” He looked at the General, who shook his head.

“That will be all,” the General said. “You’re excused.”

Dr. Moss nodded. As he stood, he made eye contact with me, and deliberately held my gaze. A smile quirked the ends of his mouth.
He knows,
I thought. Was Dr. Moss the same scientist friend Thomas had mentioned before, the one with all the theories about analogs?

When he was satisfied that I understood, the doctor turned and left. I wanted to call him back and pepper him with questions—Thomas had told me a lot about the tandem, but there was still so much I wanted to know, especially about the strange visions I’d been having of Juliana. Maybe Dr. Moss could explain things better.

Thomas slid his arm around my back and helped me stand. “I’ll see you to your room,” he offered. I shook him off, remembering another offer he’d made once, to walk me home. I didn’t want him to touch me, or help me, or do anything for me. I just wanted to be alone.

Perhaps deciding it wasn’t worth fighting in front of the others, he let go of me, but I hadn’t gotten more than a few steps on my own before I had to stop, because the room was spinning. I reached out instinctively and he caught me around the waist.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” he asked. I gave in, seeing as I obviously wasn’t going to be able to get back to Juliana’s bedroom without assistance. As we left the room, Whitehall gave me a kind smile.

“Be well, Juli,” he said with affection. I nodded, wanting to appear grateful, but all I could do was wonder if I would ever truly be well again.