Page 64 of My Trojan Horse Majesty

“It’s a suite.” I point. “There are two showers.”

“Oh.” Her laugh’s so awkward it’s adorable. “Right. Okay.”

It takes her longer to get ready than it takes me, probably because of the whirring of the blow dryer. When she comes out, her hair looks fluffy and perfect, falling in little layers around her face. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m not the fastest.”

“I’m not in a big rush.” Except I do want to hear about her dream. “Let’s go.” I grab the keys.

“What’s that?” she asks. “Those aren’t mine.” She’s holding her purse, staring intently at my Mercedes keys.

“Ah, well, now that I’ve been discovered, I have duties and people making demands. But I also have all my toys back, including my SL 63.” I can’t help my smile. “It has a bit more horsepower than your little cobra without all the accompanying growl, but you insisted on a truck from that dealership, so my options were limited.”

She swallows and nods. “Fine.”

“I have a meeting later with the governor of Utah,” I say. “Apparently there’s no way around it, now that we’ve been seen in this city, but we have a few hours before then.”

She barely speaks while we walk to the elevator, and she doesn’t bother pressing the button for the first floor. She pressed it on the way up yesterday, smiling like a little kid when it lit up for the penthouse.

“Are you alright?” I don’t mean to stare, but I can’t help worrying that she’s looking at the floor. It’s not like her.

“I’m—I’m fine.”

“So you’re clearly not fine,” I say. “No one who’s actually doing well says they’refine.”

Her eyes snap up. “That’s not true. It’s exactly what I am—fine.”

I inhale slowly, and don’t say another word. I give her a minute to process whatever weird thing she dreamed about. But once we reach my car and she’s safely ensconced in the passenger seat, I say, “Tell me.”

“What?”

“Tell me whatever weird thing you dreamed so I can reassure you that it’s not real.”

She frowns.

“My dad used to have dreams,” I say as I follow the map toward Emigration Canyon. “He’d dream that we’d been betrayed, or he’d dream that he was finally crowned, or he’d dream that he’d buried some treasure in a strange place. The only way he could let go of his anger or his fear or his hope was to speak the dream out loud. Sometimes we even had to travel to whatever place he’d imagined and try digging around.” It was actually one of his more harmless delusions. I found it sort of endearing, most of the time.

“It’s not like that,” she snaps. “Or. . .” She slumps in the seat. “Who knows? Maybe it is.”

I like driving toward the mountains. They’re much steeper here than back home, but with mountains visible in most directions, it’s easy to orient where you are. Following a path here is predictable. It’s reliable. And as the path to the mountains passes outside of the city, I breathe a little easier. Mountains, like most land masses, are honest. You know where they are and what their limitations will be.

“Last night, in my dream, I was like a ghost, watching you and your father.”

“What?” I can’t help my smirk. “Isabel, he died a very long time ago.”

“Yes, he probably did,” she says. “But he was very alive in my dream.” She leans her face against the cool glass of the window. “It was the night Vasily and Sergei and two other men came and stole your father’s relics.”

“What?” I look at her, confused now. “Did I mention their names?”

She shakes her head. “No, you didn’t. In fact, there were a lot of things about that night you failed to mention.”

“But—”

“I saw them, Leonid, and I saw you. You didn’t say this either, but I watched them beat you badly. Your father looked dead by the time they were done, but you proudly told him that you stole a coin pouch, and then you wrapped your dad with a blanket, and you dragged him into the woods all by yourself.”

My hands tighten on the wheel. She—she couldn’t have seen it. It’s. . .crazy. But is the idea of her seeing my past any weirder than the way in which we’re already connected?

What bothers me is that I don’t understand what’s going on or who’s behind it. In my life, I’ve learned that when something inexplicable happens, there is an explanation—you just don’t have it yet.

“I think we need to try to figure out exactly what’s going on,” she says. “And why it’s happening.”

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