35.
The car that’s being parked is a grey Jaguar. Three men and a woman get out. One man has a broad figure and is wearing a white suit that resembles those of nurses. His face is grim and he walks with self-assured steps to the house. The other man looks like his younger brother, but smaller and above all fairly bald already. They both have an English accent, but talk Dutch fluently. Number three of the male gender is in my opinion also a nurse. His ginger hair is tightly combed backward and he has a neutral look in his eyes and freckled cheeks. I vaguely hear he’s of German origin. The woman is, if I’m right, a doctor. She wears a simple green dress, has a pearl necklace around her neck and looks a bit doubtful, as if she doesn’t really know what she’s doing here.
I greet them at the door and coax them along the inside. I’m proven right, only the woman in the green dress presents herself as doctor Sophie Servais. She talks Dutch fluently with a pleasant French accent. The nurses call Michael Trent, Kevin Trent and Carl Kurz. Aha, so those first two are brothers.
‘The doctor is awaiting you downstairs in the operating room,’ I say and point at the cellar stairs.
‘Thank you,’ Sophie says with a wavering smile.
She comes around less self-assures than the three others. I don’t think it comes forth out of incompetence, but maybe because she doubts about the intentions of the operations. Noël must have offered an enormous amount of money to this woman to convince her. She looks a lot more sincere than those other three.
They descend the stairs and at that moment I hear a car’s engine. The next ten minutes four clients arrive. Two limousines, a Mercedes and a Bentley. A chauffeur or a bodyguard who looks after the car accompanies them.
The first is Ghalid Nabilsi, a middle-aged man with black hair and a regular face. He looks around as if the world is his and at me especially haughty. He refuses to shake my hand and walks immediately inside where Ed offers him a glass of champagne.
The next one, Johanna De La Torre, is a beautiful brown-haired woman with long eyelashes, full Botox lips and an olive skin. She has really tried her best to pass for someone in her thirties, but you clearly notice the unnatural tightness of her skin. She greets me shortly with a hand that’s full of twinkling rings and looks jealous at me.
Jack Jefferson is the third one who arrived. He’s the only one who’s approaching me with a big smile on his face and looking shamelessly at me from head to toe. His dark blond hair is fairly messy and the sleep lines haven’t totally disappeared from his face yet. Amused I follow his nonchalant cowboy-ish steps towards me.
‘Hello,’ he greets me in American. ‘You don’t look bad!’ Then he leans conspiratorial towards me and whispers: ‘Are you also different?’
I nod, a bit unsettled for a moment.
‘Then what?’
‘Vampire,’ I say and grin, showing my teeth.
‘Oh,’ his eyes become as big as full moons. ‘Beautiful, beautiful. Interesting. I’ve doubt about it, but finally decided to take something else. Sorry!’ He throws his hand with a flamboyant gesture in the air and rolls his eyes.
I chuckle, surely impressed by his charms.
When the last one arrives, I feel my nerves increase seriously. The game can’t take long anymore now. Soon I’ll have to swing into action, in any case before they’re going to lie down on the operating table.
Number four is a little Japanese with the name Yuta Yamamoto. Luckily I don’t have to remember the names for long. Yuta looks nervous and uncertain. He approaches me with quick little steps, looking timidly to and fro in the meantime. I’m towering at least a head above him and greet him by bowing very deep. The deeper the greeting in Japan, the more respect you show. He greets me back with a little bow, but doesn’t say a word, so I gesture he can come inside.
Inside the English conversations between the clients are modest and short. Only the American seems to be perfectly at ease and even blows kisses to me when I join them. Since Ed doesn’t do anything, Jack fills me a glass of champagne and offers it to me with a wink. I wonder if this can actually be, drink champagne before an operation, but decide it are none of my business. I do know, I’ve heard that once, that brains are insensible.
The others don’t realize it, but I observe Ed better than them. From time to time a black haze appears in his eyes, a sign he’s reading the clients’ minds. If only he doesn’t penetrate mine, I suddenly realize terror-stricken. Damned! Why didn’t I let Diedie protect my thoughts? Ed sees me looking at his black eyes, but Selena is of course informed about everything and he doesn’t need to hide his telepathy for her.
Johanna’s face seems to brighten up immediately when Noël enters the room. Apparently she knows Noël well or adores him for what he’s planning to do, I can’t really determine that. Noël greets them all in a different way, it’s clear he’s having tighter bonds with some than with others. Ed gives him a glass of bubbles, exchanges a knowing glance and then walks out of the room. We all take a seat in the white leather couches, Jack in between me and Yuta. Ghalid and Johanna take a seat on the other couch.
Initially the conversations are about nothing in particular. Their last financial successes and transactions, muttering about the stock market, their new countryseat in one or another exotic country, and more of that stuff. I can barely concentrate because my thoughts go to how I can nip all of this in the bud before there’s really an operation going on.
I hear Jabar say in my plug: ‘Still do nothing, Manon. We hear everything that’s being said. When the moment is right, we’ll give a tip.’
Ed comes upstairs again and has a laptop in his arms. He takes a seat next to Ghalid and opens the laptop.
‘My assistant will now first check if all the advance payments have been done,’ Noël says.
‘Of course they’ve been done,’ Jack brings out quasi upset and grins.
Noël only nods. I see in his look he doesn’t like Jack much, probably he’s too flamboyant for his taste.
Ed starts to type and then looks up. ‘It’s been accomplished.’
Noël seems to relax now, his shoulders lower noticeable.
Then he gets up and says: ‘Time for a demonstration.’
Jack clasps enthusiastically in his hands, Johanna looks at hem with even a bigger adoration than before, Yuta keeps looking unemotionally and Ghalid straightens up a bit. I didn’t see what follows next coming in a hundred years! I really need to control myself to not cry out of bewilderment.
Noël changes into a giant python in front of everyone. The snake isn’t that long, but it is just as fat and his green-yellow scales shimmer in the light. My mouth falls open and I close it quickly again before Ed sees it. Noël a transformer? Just like me? My thoughts work like crazy. Have I really not seen any proves of that before? No, I don’t think so. Besides the color of the eyes doesn’t change when a transformer transforms, that in comparison to the other otherkinds.
But didn’t Jabar want Noël to stay away from his sister because he was a human? Although that also applies for when he’s a transformer. Also transformers can’t have children with elves. And transformers age, just like humans, so his age is correct. Did Jabar know this? It doesn’t seem likely to me, because he certainly would have told. Another possibility is of course Noël has undergone the operation already. In my opinion this theory seems more plausible.
‘A snake!’ Jack cries out. ‘Ain’t that cool!’
Johanna shrinks back and looks at the reptile less slobbery than when she looked at Noël. Yuta didn’t move an inch, it seems as if that guy is sleeping with his eyes open. Ghalid smiles and is clearly impressed.
‘That’s Noël, a transformer now,’ I say. Not to inform the others, but so Jabar hears it. Johanna looks at me with frowned eyebrows, the other didn’t even hear me.
Noël transforms back into himself and looks self-satisfied and haughty at every one of them.
‘How can we know for certain you’ve undergone the operation?’ Ghalid asks in a calm tone. ‘And that you haven’t been a transformer for your entire life. This still isn’t a sufficient evidence.’
‘You’ll have to take me at my word,’ Noël says, who is clearly trying not to lose his self-control. His one hands clenches to a fist. He continues: ‘The person who could confirm this unfortunately couldn’t be here tonight. She could tell you I was a human before.’
I suspect he’s referring to me. So I didn’t only get kidnapped to become his wife and play a dirty trick on Jabar, but also to nicely explain to the others he was a human being.
I naturally understand the Arab’s suspicion. The price for the operation won’t be low and of course he wants certainty.
‘You just follow me,’ Noël then orders. ‘There are still some evidences in the cellar.’
Without waiting for them, Noël walks to the cellar stairs.
Walking next to me, Jack says: ‘I’m really starting to doubt now.’
‘About letting the operation go on?’ I ask hopeful.
‘No, no, I doubt about my choice. I’ve now chosen for an angel because it looked cool to me to be able to move things.’ He lets me go before him on the stairs and says against my back: ‘But now I would maybe choose for a transformer. Ah, nothing can be changed about it anymore.’
In the hall I want to ask him what the other one’s chose, but then I realize Selena was probably informed about it. It would thus be imprudent to ask about it.
We are taken to the back room. All immediately hold their breath and stare with big eyes at the glazed tubes. Somewhere I hope this horrible image will make them give up on the operation, but I fear the worst. Be able to transform, read minds, move things with the mind and manipulate nature, is of course attractive. They didn’t make the trip for nothing and paid so much money. I try not to look at Lucas and go standing in such a way I can’t see him anymore.
When the initial bewilderment and disgust are over, the clients only become more enthusiastic. Doc is standing at the tubes and answers their question as good as possible. He assures them the procedure is safe and above that painless.
I find the way in which Noël observes his clients looks sinister. It seems as if he’s hiding something. The surreptitious looks he and Ed exchange, can’t predict much good.
‘Time for the last payment,’ Noël says, when the clients’ questions seem to be at an end.
They all nod passionately.
‘Selena will guide you upstairs, because here in the cellar the connection for mobile phones is rather bad,’ Noël still adds. ‘Afterwards I’ll let you show the operating room.’
Arriving upstairs, they all open their mobile phones and give through instruction in their own language. I only understand the American.
‘Fifty million dollar, right now,’ he snaps. ‘No… yes… of course!... Did it happen?’
I accompany them innocently back to the cellar and straight to the operating room. The entire way Jack is making overtures to and flirting with me. I try to behave like the cold-blooded Selena, but from time to time he really makes me laugh. I wonder when Jabar thinks the time is right to strike, because in my opinion they’re going to start with the operations in a minute. Unfortunately I can’t ask him.
In the operating room the doctors and nurses are all standing along silly and I can’t help but think they all don’t really belong in this environment, except for the Doc. Sophie looks at the operating tools as if they’re strange objects that are willing to bite her any minute.
Jabar talks to me: ‘Manon, take out the pistol and keep Noël covered. We’re on our way.’
I lean down and pretend I’ll scratch my ankle. At the same moment everything happens super-fast and so unexpected that neither I, nor Jabar could have foreseen something like this. With my look turned to ground I see Ed moving from the corner of my eye. I hear a shot and immediately another one. Nevertheless, it isn’t me who’s shooting, but Ed, I see when I quickly pull my Glock from the belt and stand up. Johanna screams, Jack falls down to the ground. Even before I can recover from the astonishment, Ed shoots for a second time. Ghalid is staring surprised at his chest from where an arrow-like object is sticking out and collapses. The four clients are lying flat on the ground and for a moment I don’t know what to do. Where are the others?
Noël sees my doubt and surprise, because he says: ‘Selena? What’s wrong?’ Then he notices the pistol in my hand and now it’s his turn to look surprised. Quickly I point my pistol at him.
‘Not a single movement or I’ll shoot you,’ I swing my pistol threateningly in Ed’s direction. ‘Drop it! Drop your pistol!’
Ed luckily obeys. With a loud thump the pistol falls to the ground.
‘Selena? What the hell are you doing? You knew we we’re going to anaesthetize them, didn’t you?’ Noël seems to be totally upset. Good.
Both Ed, the doctors and the nurses are standing stock-still and follow every move I make.
With the pistol aimed at Noël’s forehead, I say: ‘I’m not Selena.’