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people with the power to make or break her and waiting by her desk for the phone to ring with the decision—but the worst, the most horrible vision that passed through her mind, was that of reporting to her older sister.
    Then a sound made both of them stop, a sound that could only be made by a pair of Christian Louboutin booties being driven down the hal like Herefords to the slaughter. Only the Herefords weren’t the ones about to get a bul et between the eyes. Cam dove under her desk just as the door flung open.
    “You meddling, manipulative bitch ! If you think you can have me dragged out of—Where is she? Where’s Cam?”
    She could see Anastasia’s seething form reflected on the armor breastplate—a funhouse mirror in a medieval house of horrors. Jeanne straightened papers on her desk with the cool of an ice cube. You could sure tel she didn’t have a narcissistic older sister with a Darth Vader temper.
    You could also tel she was trying not to look at Cam.
    Jeanne said, “She’s under … a deadline.”
    “What the hel ’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Her book’s almost done, you know. Finishing touches.

    Her editor’s talking the New York Times bestsel er list. First print run: a hundred thousand.”
    Bless that woman!
    Anastasia’s eyes narrowed to battleship gun ports.
    “Wel , take a message for me. Tel her she’s to cal me the instant she sets foot in here, that if she thinks I wasn’t going to talk to Tim Lockport and figure out what the hel happened, she’s got another thing coming. And you can also tel her if they printed a mil ion copies of her stupid book, it stil wouldn’t get her one step closer to the executive directorship because that spot belongs to the woman who has demonstrated time after time that she can grow a complex col ection, manage the fund-raising needs of an organization, demonstrate academic excel ence and eat without getting condiments on her shoes. Did you get al that?”
    Jeanne read back from the message pad. “‘Cam, cal your older sister.’”
    Smal tendrils of smoke curled out of Anastasia’s ears, or maybe it was just the coffeemaker. She picked up Jeanne’s bowl of pink paper clips and reared back.
    “Oh, for God’s sake, Stacy.” Cam crawled out of the kneehole and dusted herself off. “Get over yourself.”
    “You heard al that?”
    “Squirrel Hil heard al that.”
    “You have a lot of nerve.”
    Cam mimed an introduction. “Pot. Kettle. Kettle. Pot. By the way, Bal loved the new wing.”
    Anastasia drew herself up into ful Hydra horror. “You don’t own Bal !”
    “Wel , it’s not like I need the warning. You slept with my first boyfriend. You slept with my second boyfriend and told me he was gay. You stole my major in col ege, and now you’re working at my museum. I’d offer you an apology, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to take it whether I give it to you or not.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake, Campbel . Man up.”
    “Yes, clearly I ought to keep a pretty deep inventory.”
    Anastasia gave a howl of frustration, reared back again and threw the bowl, but not before half a dozen paper clips tumbled down her arm and attached to her bracelet. The bowl smashed into a dozen pieces, and Anastasia shook her arm like two attack dogs were hanging there. When the pink wire didn’t release, she stormed out.
    “Wow,” Jeanne said. “It must have been a red-letter day for you when Anastasia left the house to start kindergarten.”
    “Why does she have to be so mean? You know, I remember it kil ing me when she ignored me in high school.
    Who’d have thought I’d look back on those days so fondly?”
    She plopped in her chair and returned to the computer.
    There, on her monitor, the manuscript she’d been kicking around for two months looked out at her. Sex it up, eh? She supposed there were a few ways to do that. She could add sex. Lord knows there was enough of that in the art world even then, and she knew Van Dyck had had a long affair