Illuminate: A Gilded Wings Novel, Book One Page 4

  “Onward,” she said. The elevator doors closed and we plummeted to the hotel’s depths.

  Once downstairs though, we were permitted to see only the sealed door of the nightclub—a black-painted slab of steel like the kind you’d find on a bank vault—leaving us to imagine what lay beyond it.

  The rest of the tour felt endless, a blur of elegantly appointed rooms and an onslaught of facts and figures. The Outfit mysteriously met up with us again later when we reached the upper floors, fencing us in, which continued to make me nervous. I wished I could drum up some intelligent questions to ask, something to show how serious I was—something also that would force Lucian to look at me. His gaze remained firmly set on Aurelia, his eyes traveling over her face like ocean waves lapping at rock, painting her with devoted attention as she spoke. And who could blame him? She had such presence. You could feel the control in her voice, in her sharp movements and the forthright, steady pace of her walk. She was so unlike the women I knew, the no-nonsense, practical, get-the-job-done women at the hospital, like Joan. There was a polish to Aurelia. Could that be learned? Or was it just something you either had or you didn’t, the way that seemingly overnight some of the girls at school had become these creatures who could lure and lasso even the most elusive boys?

  As we wandered, so did my mind, more than I would have liked. But I was tired. We all were. I caught Lance stifling a yawn at one point. The place was mammoth and we covered a lot of ground.

  I scoped out so many intriguing spots I hoped to inspect more closely. On the main floor, in addition to the library, there would be a restaurant called Capone and a lounge called the Parlor—these were located to the right and left of the main entrance. Back near the elevator to the Vault, tucked behind the thick folds of a gold and burgundy velvet curtain, was a glass door leading into what would be the hotel’s own art gallery, which would be a museum of macabre artifacts from Chicago’s sordid past with plenty of original works of art and photography by local artists mixed in. For now it was no more than an empty expanse of blank white walls and glass cases, just waiting for beautiful and special things to display. Another elevator led down to a posh and tranquil spa.

  On the second floor at the top of the grand staircase, behind ivory-paneled doors, was the ballroom, complete with a painted ceiling that was the hotel’s answer to the Sistine Chapel. However, instead of the heavenly creatures depicted there, this length of ceiling was a stormy sky festooned with heavy and foreboding clouds, lightning bolts so vivid you could almost hear the crackling thunder that would accompany them, ravens and crows flying in formation, and other dark-winged, part-human characters slinging arrows, gorgeous but deadly.

  By the time Aurelia led us all back down these stairs, my feet were aching—unaccustomed as they were to doing this much walking in anything other than sneakers.

  At last, she dismissed us. “I’d like you to take the rest of the day to acquaint yourselves with the rich charms of your new surroundings, find your rooms, and so forth. Should we need you for anything, we’ll find you.” We thanked her in unison, as the Outfit slithered away without a sound. Lucian slipped back into that infamous darkened hallway behind the front desk and Aurelia pranced toward the library. Lance, Dante, and I were all fishing in our gift bags for the keycards to our rooms, when the sharp footsteps stopped and I heard that low rasp again.

  “Haven, a moment,” Aurelia called from the middle of the sprawling lobby, gesturing for me.

  “Yes, Ms. Brown,” I answered in my brightest, most respectful tone. I waved Dante and Lance on without me, as my nerves began their steady, ominous climb to the top of a roller coaster.

  “Aurelia, please,” she corrected as she started walking again, not waiting for me. I was jogging now, racing to get to her faster.

  “Of course. Aurelia.” I tried, but it sounded funny. I couldn’t quite call her that, even though, if we had met under different circumstances and she was dressed more like me, I might have mistaken her for a peer. Panting, I caught up with her.

  “I have a project for you to begin, if you please.”

  “I can’t wait!” I nodded, too much, too eager, my head bobbing around. My feet couldn’t match the rhythm of her steps. I bumbled along.

  “The gallery is to be a focal point of the Lexington, a cultural cornerstone, and I have something I’d like you to work on over the next several days. I understand you’re a photographer.”

  “Oh, well, yes, I mean—” I stammered, caught off-guard that she knew this about me. But she cut me off.

  “Are you or aren’t you?” she asked, her words firm. “I was under the impression I had hired talented students.”

  Man up, Haven, I told myself, and don’t be modest. “Yes,” I said, matching her strong tone as best I could. “I’m good. I won first place in a countywide competition at school for a series I did on—”

  She cut me off again. “Excellent. Do you know why our group is called the Outfit?”

  I didn’t. If I had time, I would unearth every last scrap of trivia there was to know about this place, I just needed more time. “I don’t, but I’m anxious to learn.”

  “That was the name of Al Capone’s gang. And, like his, our Outfit is about exclusivity and it’s also somewhat underground.” She walked at a quick clip down the hall, the material of her dress and jacket swishing as she went, and her heels clicking staccato against the marble floor. We reached the velvet curtain shrouding the door to the gallery. She gathered it, pushed it aside, and pulled out a keycard.

  “But just without the, uh, Tommy guns and things?” My joke flew by, unnoticed, like a blackbird in the night sky. She sliced the card in the vertical pad.

  “Instead of a rogues’ gallery, ours is more a royal court. It adds a patina to the hotel. They are beautiful for a reason, our members, they are our ambassadors. We have all of Chicago looking at us and talking about us. But, unlike with Capone, it’s socially acceptable for people to want to be part of us. And they do.”

  Lights twinkled in the keypad and a lock popped. She held open the glass door for me and I stepped inside the bare space. She swooshed past me, into the darkness, and a light mushroomed out from a room we hadn’t seen on our tour. I walked toward it, into an area staged for a photo shoot. A white screen curved toward the floor, creating a seamless background. Spotlights, covered with umbrellas to direct their glow, shone onto the set, trained on a single wooden stool awaiting its subject. A camera sat atop a tripod, prepared to snap. Extra lenses, like a wardrobe of long and short noses, were lined up on a tabletop.

  “We are our best advertisement. We embody the youth and vitality that people want a piece of. We are that touch of wild and unpredictable and untamable that they crave. So we’re going to celebrate that, and anoint ourselves more powerful in the process.” Aurelia shed her blazer and slung it over a freestanding light not being used, then took a seat on the stool facing toward me. “Over the course of the next couple days you’re going to photograph each member of the Outfit, Lucian and myself to be included on a wall of our gallery.” She folded her hands in her lap, hooked one heel onto a rung of the stool, and twisted toward me.

  “Thank you, I appreciate that you would entrust that to me.”

  “So, let’s go.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ll start with me today. Then we’ll unleash you on the masses tomorrow.” Her eyes were flinty with a burning efficiency, as if to say, Get on with it already. “Everything you need is here. I trust you’re well versed in how to work it all.”

  I nodded, just once—not the most resounding show of confidence, but I figured I would rather underpromise and overdeliver. I set down my Lexington Hotel tote bag and took a place behind the camera. A quick scan of the bells and whistles told me this equipment was worlds more advanced than anything I had ever used. My own digital camera was a secondhand number I’d had for years. It didn’t do much and could be a bit slow (sometimes I felt it would be faster to chisel someone’s
likeness out of marble), but it took decent shots, and that was enough for me. Now that I got to investigate close-up, I realized I had seen this model before, but only inside a glass display case at the camera shop I always went to. It was professional quality, single lens reflex, and the guy at the shop always said it could make up for any multitude of lighting sins—from too dark to too blinding—which was a relief because I didn’t know the first thing about adjusting these monster lights and didn’t want to embarrass myself by touching them.

  “This is quite a camera,” I said mostly to myself, but she overheard me anyway.

  “I’m glad you like it. You’ll be spending a good deal of time with it.” She smoothed her dress and patted her hair, barely touching it. I don’t think she even noticed when I snapped a shot—this camera was silent, stealthy. Looking through the viewfinder, with that barrier of a lens between us, gave me just enough distance to feel my stomach untying its knots, probably for the first time all day. Aurelia seemed less intimidating from here. She was under my control now. Or at least we were collaborators. I made a few quick adjustments, framing her, deciding just how much to get in the shot, setting the shutter speed.

  “Ready when you are,” I said, doing my best in-charge voice.

  “Then fire away.”

  I snapped rapidly, capturing a million shots a second it seemed. This camera had such power, I couldn’t keep up with it. Aurelia made subtle tweaks to her pose. Never allowing a full grin, she would vacillate between a soft smile and a wistful look. The hollows of her cheeks and sleek line of her delicate nose, the tiniest of clefts in her chin, all caught the light and danced with it, coloring her expression—sometimes she looked solid and strong, other times, thoughtful to the point of melancholy. Within the first minute alone, I was sure I’d gotten the shot I needed, maybe more than I needed.

  She unpinned her hair from its twisted prison and shook the waves over her shoulders. I continued snapping a few minutes more until, at last, she declared, “We’re finished. Let’s see your work. Come.” In a burst, she was up from the stool and had disappeared behind the backdrop.

  My hands shaking, I flipped through the last couple of shots, confirming what I already knew—they looked beautiful. I freed the camera from the tripod, cradling it in my arms like a baby.

  The room in the back was a whitewashed cubbyhole of an office, no more than a desk, a computer, with a slim screen the size of a TV, and another flat screen twice that size mounted on the wall. Aurelia, blazer back on and buttoned, sat before the computer, waiting to be impressed. I hooked up the camera and hundreds of postage-stamp-size photos littered the monitors. Aurelia clicked on the first shot: she was touching her hair at the beginning, before she knew I was paying attention. She looked at me, a hint of admiration flickering in her eyes, then returned to the screen. She shuffled quickly through dozens of shots, all uniformly stunning. She was one of those people blessedly immune to bad photos. I, on the other hand, hardly ever found a picture I could tolerate of myself. In fact, I had been systematically destroying all photographic evidence of me at twelve and thirteen years old—those were particularly gruesome.

  “Lovely. You’re done for today. Tomorrow you’ll begin shooting the others.”

  Aurelia clicked away the photos and the computer faded to black.

  “Great, thank you.”

  She switched off the monitor on the wall, shut the lights, and held the door for me to exit. I scurried to get my gift bag, still beside the tripod, then met her at the gallery doors.

  She bid me farewell with “Tomorrow, eight o’clock in the lobby,” then clomped away, escaping back through that curious doorway behind the front desk.

  I found my legs carrying me to the library, a lighthouse bringing me in from the storm. The soft tap of books being placed onto shelves echoed from the room. I peeked my head in and saw Lance standing on one of the ladders, clutching several volumes in his arms and sliding them one by one into empty gaps on a high shelf. He looked over when he heard me enter.

  “Hi, sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. You’re actually working in here.” I started to leave.

  “Hey, no,” he said, looking away quickly. “No problem.” He fidgeted with the books in his hand. One fell. I stepped back into the room, picked up what had dropped, and handed it to him. “Thanks. Lucian put me to work shelving and alphabetizing.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, it’s going to take me forever. The Harold Washington Library has got nothing on this place. And they say that people don’t read anymore.”

  “Do you want some help?” I wandered in farther and sifted through a stack left on the long wooden table near the door. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Oscar Wilde.

  “Nah, I’ll save you. I bet you’ve got your hands full anyway.” He snuck a conspiratorial glance at me.

  “I’m on a photo project.”

  “How did that go?”

  “Okay so far, I think. Check back with me tomorrow. I’m off the rest of the day, I guess. Which feels weird.”

  “Yeah. Right now we would be in AP Euro.”

  I checked my watch; he was right. That reminded me.

  “I think I’d better do a little reading up on Chicago history, you know? After this morning . . .” I didn’t need to elaborate.

  “I know what you mean.” He pushed his glasses up on his face and shook his head, recalling our collective embarrassment earlier. “I’ve been trying to pull some books out as I go. I put a couple good ones over there. Great history ones and some really good Chicago architecture coffee-table books too, but I’ve got first dibs on those.” He pointed to a stack on a delicate wooden secretary’s desk.

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Help yourself,” he said, and returned to his shelving. I took a seat and began leafing through a book called Chicago During Prohibition, with a grainy sepia-toned cover shot of men in 1920s-style suits and hats lined up against a bar.

  “I almost forgot.” Lance swung around again, climbing down the ladder. It creaked and moaned as he hit each rung. “I found something for you.”

  “For me?” I twisted around in my chair, resting my chin on its back.

  He tapped the tops of the stacks on the long table, searching. Finally he grabbed a slim black hardcover sitting on its own in the corner. He pulled at a slip of paper on the cover.

  “Yeah, I mean, I guess. I was going through one of the boxes and I found this one with your name on it.” He held out a leather- bound tome, old and worn, with gold-etched lines bordering the spine and front cover. Sure enough, on a black-and-white postcard of Michigan Avenue from a bygone era taped to the front, someone had written “For Haven Terra” in a script I didn’t recognize.

  “Huh. Thanks.” I took it in my hands and leafed through. The wispy pages, all edged in gold, were entirely blank. Lance nodded and creaked back up to his place at the top of the ladder. “You sure this is for me?”

  “It had your name. That’s all I know.”

  “I just mean, it’s totally empty.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that too.” He scratched his head, shrugging. “Maybe it’s a birthday gift or something.”

  “Maybe,” I said, looking at the postcard again as he got back to work. I opened the book again, this time going through slowly page by tissue-like page. They crinkled and crackled under my gentle fingers and seemed almost too delicate to write upon.

  Suddenly, a bell pealed, ringing out Ding-dong-ding.

  Lance and I looked at each other, eyebrows twisted in puzzlement, then we looked toward the hallway where the sound was getting louder.

  Dante appeared in the doorway, apron on, dreads tied back in a bandana under a cylindrical marshmallow of a chef’s hat. In his fingertips, he swung a piercing golden bell. We stared, speechless.

  “Check this out. Cool, right?” He grinned, thrilled with himself.

  “I dig the hat,” Lance offered.

  “Yeah, but it’s the bell that really makes the outfit,”
I declared.

  “Thank you, I’m flattered. Now, ahem.” He cleared his throat and made a grand bowing gesture, over-annunciating. “Lunch! Is served.” He walked away.

  “Really?” I called after him.

  Lance scurried back down the ladder, and we followed Dante to the Parlor, where he had set a table with three silver-dome-covered plates and unveiled our precious meals all at once. There was something royal about having the run of this place, lunching on immaculate white cloth-covered tables while curled up in cushy armchairs amid armies of potted palms. Naturally we took the best table, beside the long, tinted picture window looking out on the street.

  “I think from now on ‘familiarize yourself with the kitchen’ will be code for ‘make us lunch,’” I joked, biting into my sandwich. “This is amazing, D.”

  “Be nice and I’ll keep cooking—that kitchen is stocked. This is nothing.” He gestured to our three matching plates of grilled chicken and gruyère sandwiches on brioche, with skinny, crispy french fries. To wash it down, sparkling water bubbled in our crystal wineglasses. And just for me, a chocolate milk shake with mountains of whipped cream. “I made myself a caviar appetizer.”

  “Dan! You’ll get us all into trouble.”

  “Please, I just had a little spoonful. Good stuff, fish eggs.”

  “Ew.” I made a face. “But I like these!” I held up a blue-corn tortilla chip in the shape of the hotel insignia. I dunked it into a dish of salsa and popped it in my mouth.

  “I know. I found these great cookie cutters.”

  “Apparently,” I said, lifting from another communal plate a sugar cookie in the same exact shape but larger, and then a brownie too.

  “It’s possible that I got carried away.”

  “We’re glad you did. This is amazing.”

  “Thanks, man, I was starved,” said Lance, already nearly done with his sandwich.

  “Gladly,” Dante said, regally. “The pleasure is mine.”