Rites & Desires Page 12

  "What on earth are you talking about?" Ruby asked him pointedly. She knew he’d had struggles with the new administration, but she couldn’t fathom why seeing Prather in town would cause him to say such a thing.

  "It’s just that I used to be warned ahead of time when someone was planning to be in city airspace--" he explained, gesturing to the suit he wore. "--for flight path reasons."

  Ruby nodded. "Ah, I see," she said. "Well, don’t take this one as any part of a pattern. I have a feeling this afternoon’s visit was a bit spur of the moment."

  Stardust seemed taken aback. He crossed his arms over his chest and studied her. "So, what?" he asked. "Prather just stopped by for coffee?"

  Ruby’s lip quirked as she realized perhaps the hero’s interest in her meeting was something other than political. "Jealous?" she half-asked, half-accused.

  His eyes got wide then, and Ruby was sure she’d been on to something with that line of thinking. "Concerned," he answered after a moment.

  Without her powers to aid her, Ruby was at a loss to know exactly what Jaccob Stevens was thinking inside that armored suit. But his eyes told her he was walking a thin line between friendly and flirting, and he hadn’t decided which side of it he wanted to come down on.

  She resolved to do her best to help make up his mind in her favor. "Well, you have nothing to be concerned about," she assured him, reaching down to take hold of his gloved hand as she started toward the terrace stairs. "He had a little business to discuss with me, is all. As it turns out, he’s a friend of a friend." Ruby hoped that would be adequate explanation, because there was no way she was about to explain anything further. She had very little practice making up a lie without magic to reinforce belief in it, and she really didn’t want to have to do that with Jaccob.

  "I don’t believe you," Stardust said as he followed her down the curving metal stairs that led from the helipad to Ruby’s private terrace. Just as Ruby’s head began to spin trying to formulate a response, he added, "Prather doesn’t have friends."

  Ruby smiled. He’d been making comment on the President’s character and not on her story. That was just fine, then. She could roll with that. She allowed herself a tiny laugh as she led him, his hand still clasped in hers, to sit on the terrace sofa.

  "How about," she posed as the two of them took a seat, "he’s a one-time partner to an old acquaintance of mine."

  Stardust looked over at her and smiled. "Now that I’ll believe," he allowed.

  Ruby smiled back. Good. Truly, that was probably the best she could have done in describing the current nature of the tangle of relationships between herself, Loki, and Prather. It was enough that Jaccob wasn’t pressing her for details.

  "And, it seems," Ruby offered, moving on from her relationship with Prather to the ostensible reason for his visit. Best to control the conversation at this point, if she wanted to avoid unwelcome questions. "The poor bastard just isn’t as popular as he’d hoped to be by this point in his presidency, and he wants my help to remedy that situation."

  "And how’s that supposed to work?" Stardust asked her dubiously.

  "Heavens, Jaccob," she said, breaking what she knew was an interdiction against using his given name while he was in the Stardust suit. "Sometimes you make it sound as though you live under a rock instead of in that big glass tower over there. There is nothing that raises social capital higher and faster than getting into bed with pop stars. Figuratively," she assured him when his body tensed up at the metaphor. Even in the Stardust suit, Jaccob Stevens could be a precious cinnamon roll. "And there’s nothing that makes a President more popular than if he looks like a man of the people."

  "Prather is not a man of the people," Stardust countered. "I’m not sure he’s ever actually spoken to ‘the people.’"

  Ruby shrugged. "That hardly matters," she replied. "We’re talking grand public gestures, not sincere heart-to-heart discourse. A concert for inner city kids on the White House lawn featuring the Young Dudes."

  "And you’re going to do this for him?" Stardust asked.

  "Why wouldn’t I?" Ruby countered. "It’ll have my artists’ faces all over the news. There is nothing I like better than media exposure I don’t have to pay for."

  "Because the Young Dudes need so much additional publicity?"

  Ruby smiled and shook her head with humor. As brilliant a technician and savvy a businessman as Jaccob Stevens might be, her charming neighbor clearly knew nothing about the way her business worked. "No, of course they don’t," she affirmed. "But all of the artists I’m going to put on the bill in front of them do. I could probably even get Mike on that stage."

  "He told me that was going well," Stardust said. "But I can’t believe he’d be ready to play The White House any time soon."

  Ruby shrugged. "I’m sure we could pick something he’s working on and dial it up to be a single," she said. "It’ll take some work on his part, but I think it might be doable. I’ll talk to development and see if they can get it in motion. We’ve barely started planning this thing--haven’t even picked a date yet. If we can have a single ready to drop in time for the day of the show, then I’ll do it. Nothing like leaving the public salivating for more from an up-and-comer."

  Stardust nodded once, slowly. Ruby could tell he was considering her words carefully.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "Normally," he answered, "I’d be thrilled at the idea of my son playing a show at The White House. But I’m not sure how I feel about him being associated with this White House."

  "There’s no such thing as bad publicity," Ruby assured him. "And I can’t imagine a downside to having the President of the United States beholden to me, even if that president is Lyle Prather. When a man with that kind of influence shows up on my roof unannounced asking for my help, I’m not going to say no."

  "Better your roof than mine," Stardust said. "President or no, I don’t think I’d have agreed to help Prather if he got on his knees and begged."

  "Of course you would," she argued, rolling her eyes. "You’re Stardust, remember? Big damn hero. If Prather was trapped in a fire and yelling for help, you’d swoop in and save him. I know you would." Ruby shrugged her shoulders and smirked. "Think of this as the public relations equivalent of that."

  "Hrmph," Stardust sounded, obviously consternated at her point. "You don’t mind helping to redeem the public image of someone like that? It is a little different from not letting him die horribly--which I would likely debate the merits of before saving him, by the way."

  Ruby couldn’t help but chuckle at Stardust’s unvarnished honesty on the matter. "I suppose it is," she conceded. "But the truth is, I’m not really doing it for him. I’m doing it for me. I’m doing it for my company. When someone has that much power to make my business interests blossom, I cannot very well say no, even if that someone is a bloviating tick. If Prather is going to make my fortunes improve, then sign me up for a rousing chorus of ‘Hail to the Chief.’"

  "The conflict of interest doesn’t bother you?" Stardust asked her plainly.

  Ruby shrugged. "I try not to think too hard about that," she answered him wryly. "The fact is: it may be ethically ambiguous, but as it turns out, it’s perfectly legal. And if I’m not willing to exploit that fact, then Prather is just going to go out and find someone who will. I have a fiduciary duty to my shareholders and my employees to do the best I possibly can by this business. So I’m going to see to that, even if it means I have to suffer the company of the dubiously elected leader of the free world."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ruby had been right to presume she wouldn’t see Jaccob again on Monday night, but she’d also been right in guessing that he would know she was home. He’d sent her a text between the time she’d put out the lights on the fiftieth floor and when she’d put out the lights in her bedroom on the forty-eighth, telling her it had been nice to see her, that he was glad she was feeling better, and would see her soon. That had led to a very self-satisfied night’s sleep.


  She’d placed the Eye of Africa into the table at her bedside, in a drawer she’d had specially built with lead lining beneath the lacquer. She’d wrapped it in a cloth stitched with salt tiles, too. She wasn’t sure just which magical precautions would keep the item from becoming a beacon, so she decided to throw everything she had at it. Ruby knew the wards on her penthouse were solid--they’d taken her weeks to spin and were being anchored in place by a number of foci hiding in plain sight around the apartment. But she also knew that these wards had been spun without the added weight of her own magical abilities behind them. She wasn’t altogether sure that an item with as much inherent power as the Eye of Africa would be fully and properly masked by the wards as they were at the moment.

  There was an appreciable difference in the power Ruby could feel radiating from the Eye when it was encased in lead and wrapped in salt, a difference that was palpable even when she was right beside it. By this she was sure she had done the right thing in storing it overnight with additional masking. She figured she’d spend the weekend spinning new wards on the penthouse using the power of the Eye to augment it, but until then, her stop-gap solution would do just fine.

  And until then, she’d have to figure out how to conduct business as usual in her office on the forty-seventh floor while the Eye of Africa sat, practically calling to her, in a drawer in her bedroom on the forty-eighth. She was forced to hide her thrill during a particularly onerous meeting early in her day on Tuesday, when she realized she could still feel the thrumming of magic from the Eye resonating within her. She felt a connection to its power even though the physical item was shielded from her both physically and magically.

  This was indeed, excellent progress.

  She’d made what she needed to of that meeting, and was about to head upstairs for a bite to eat and a quick moment’s recharge in the presence of the Eye when the door to her office opened unexpectedly. She was about to give Bridget or Arsho (whichever one of them had decided they were suddenly welcome to barge into her office) a stern piece of her mind when she felt her face flush.

  Her caller was not an employee. Ruby couldn’t help but smile as she swiveled in her Aeron chair and gestured with a wave for her caller to come further into the room.

  "Well hello, neighbor," she said, trying not to show just how happy she was to see Jaccob Stevens standing in her office.

  "I hope you don’t mind," Jaccob said sheepishly, crossing the wide expanse of custom Persian carpet between Ruby’s door and her desk. "I don’t have an appointment."

  Ruby quirked her lip. His contrition at this was clearly sincere, and she couldn’t help herself but to find it endearing. He knew exactly what it meant to be barged in on in the middle of a busy work day, and he was clearly unsure of whether his visit to her office was a welcome interruption. She decided to let him in on a secret. "You don’t need an appointment, Jaccob," she assured him. "My receptionist would have made you wait if I was in a meeting, but, as you may or may not have noticed, I have a standing directive to my security and my personal staff that you’re welcome to be anywhere in the building any time you want."

  Jaccob’s eyes got wide; this was clearly a surprise to him. Ruby found it odd that he had perhaps thought her security was lax enough just to have let anyone through without an appointment. "Thank you," Jaccob said, obviously impressed.

  "Well, I wouldn’t even have this building if it wasn’t for you, Jaccob," she replied. It had been Jaccob Stevens’s neighborhood revitalization efforts that had paved the way for the development of the Ruby Tower in the first place, so it wasn’t at all a stretch for her to be making such a claim. "The least I could do is welcome you into it." Ruby watched as a slight flush rose to Jaccob’s cheeks. She smiled and pretended not to notice.

  "How’s your morning going?" he asked her. It was an obvious tactic to change the subject, but Ruby didn’t mind going along with it. He could be so adorably awkward sometimes, and she liked the idea that every once in a while she could let him feel like he was getting away with something.

  "Well it was a little bit awful until about a minute ago," she replied.

  "Yeah?" he asked, sliding his hands into the pockets of his trousers. He was dressed smartly in navy chinos and a brown tweed jacket, with a white button-down shirt and subtly patterned tie; she was sure he’d come over straight from his own office. And she was equally sure he hadn’t come across the sky to get here. The more she thought about the fact he’d just walked through three separate lobbies, past her receptionist, and through her door, the happier she got. It was a remarkable development in their interpersonal relationship, and she wasn’t going to let it go without being acknowledged. "Rough morning?" he asked her then.

  Ruby nodded. "Just the usual," she replied. "Someone wants one thing, someone else wants another, meetings that drone on forever and feel like they won’t ever get anything accomplished no matter how much longer you’re at the table."

  "Oh boy," Jaccob said, "do I know that feeling. And what had you in this familiar predicament this morning?"

  Ruby opened her mouth to answer, but stopped herself. He hadn’t come here to talk business, had he? She thought a circuitous answer might be better than the actual story. "It’s boring," she insisted, "insurance stuff." She made as ghastly a face as she could. Hopefully that would be enough to derail this talk of business and get on to more pleasant topics of conversation.

  "You can tell me, you know. I run a big business, too," he reminded her. "I know what it’s like to need someone to vent to."

  "All right," she conceded. She really hadn’t ever had anyone to tell her professional woes to, and if Jaccob wanted to hear about it--to commiserate with someone whose professional life was as similar to his own as one could get--she didn’t mind telling him. It wasn’t as though it was any trade secret or anything. "Metalcholy wants to use the Goblin Town Rollergirls in their next video, and the insurance company doesn’t want to let them," she explained. "There’s something about high-value artists and tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of production equipment in the vicinity of a bunch of aggressive women on roller skates that just doesn’t sit well with them."

  "I can see where they’re coming from," Jaccob allowed.

  Ruby frowned. "You’re not a heavy metal band," she countered. "I think I’ve got them talked into it. As long as there’s a perimeter between the Rollergirls and the grip equipment, we use prop instruments when the girls are on set, and absolutely no musicians on skates, it looks like they’re going to sign off on it."

  "Nicely done," Jaccob congratulated. "I’m impressed. That sounds like one hell of a negotiation."

  Ruby smiled. She had, of course, chosen not to mention the fact that she was sure the residual magic from the Eye of Africa she was able to access had been part of garnering the insurer’s cooperation. Her magic, particularly her skill with mental manipulation, had always been a great asset in her business dealings. She’d managed to remain successful in the months since the loss of her powers, but knowing that today’s victory had been at least in part due to her use of a little magic--even though that magic was borrowed--made the whole thing extra special. But Jaccob didn’t like magic and he didn’t know, nor could he ever be allowed to suspect, she had the Eye of Africa in her possession. It was enough for him to be impressed by her skills as a brilliant and persuasive businesswoman.

  "All in a day’s work," she replied casually as she rose from her desk and walked around to lean on the far side. "Now, you didn’t come all the way up here to listen to me complain about the woes of keeping a metal band insured. So tell me: to what to I owe this unexpected pleasure?"

  Jaccob stuffed his hands back into his pockets and averted his gaze for a moment. Even after these weeks of their association, it still struck Ruby how shy he could be sometimes. As a CEO or as Stardust, Jaccob was one of the most self-assured and assertive people she’d ever met. But one-on-one in a personal situation, he could be adorably demure. He shrugged his
shoulders and lifted his head to look back at her, but his gaze instead settled on something on the desk behind her. "What is that?" he asked, taking his left hand from his pocket and pointing.

  "What is what?" Ruby asked, feigning ignorance as she scooted ever so slightly to her left in a vain attempt to block his view of the thing she was sure he’d spotted.

  Jaccob took a step closer and reached around Ruby, bringing forth the item in question. "This!" Jaccob declared, holding the little plastic figure up for her inspection. It was a figure of Stardust. Made from LEGO and painted in his signature gold super suit trim, Jaccob had to have known they had made these things. But from the way he examined the one in his hand, Ruby had to wonder if maybe he’d never seen one in person before.

  She felt her cheeks flush, but tried to play it cool. "You don’t want me to explain that," she claimed, but not with enough force to have any magic behind it. She wasn’t altogether sure how much of the magic of the Eye she still had access to at this point, and she was already feeling the gentle nudge of drain. This was neither the time nor the place to push it. She’d use her many mundane skills to keep what control she could of this conversation.

  "Yes, I do," Jaccob countered, examining the little toy further.

  Ruby sighed. Pursing her lips and trying not to blush more, she conceded. "Promise me you’re not going to laugh and point?" She’d teased herself enough over this thing, she didn’t need to hear teasing from anyone else, least of all Jaccob.

  "Promise," Jaccob agreed lightly, momentarily shifting his gaze from the tiny Stardust in his hand to the blushing woman beside him. "Tell me."

  Ruby nodded. "I think about you sometimes, when I’m here stuck behind my desk. And it makes me smile. And I want to see you. But this is new, and we’re not exactly out in the open. So having a picture of you in my office could lead to questions from people who come in here. Questions," she emphasized, "that don’t have answers. But I thought a little toy figure of the superhero next door who also happens to be the man whose neighborhood redevelopment plans let me have this office in the first place--" Ruby paused and shrugged. "I thought the worst it would seem is quirky."