by Scott Rhine
“I’ve tried.”
I put a hand atop hers. “Is there anything you wanted to get off your chest? Something you might regret? I won’t tell anyone.”
Gran-gran paused, attempting to find some heinous or reprehensible act, but she drew a blank. The lack made her smile. “I guess I’m more ready than I thought. Over the last few years, I’ve had to give up more and more of the things that used to bring me pleasure—like a baby teeth that wiggle loose.”
“To make room for adult teeth. Tools that you’ll need in your next phase.”
She wrapped an arm around me. “Promise me you’ll keep an eye on Luca. She’s got a wild streak that reminds me of her mother at that age.”
“She cares more about her shotgun and father than any boys. Besides, I have the best shields in New England.” Since Gran-gran was interested in angels, I summarized with, “Fear not.”
“It sounds so simple when you say it.” She hesitated. “If only all my problems were that easy to resolve.”
“What else is bothering you?”
“I-I don’t want you to think less of me.”
“Please. You set a kick-ass example for your granddaughter. There’s no way you could disappoint me.”
She lowered her voice. “I have one major unresolved issue. Before I married the love of my life, a certain producer in Hollywood took advantage of me.”
“You had another child. I hope it wasn’t a girl.” The oldest sibling would have rights to the Book, effectively robbing my friend Luca of her inheritance.
Gran-gran shook her head. “Goodness, no. The child was male, or the Council would’ve been involved. The producer denied any responsibility, and I had no money at the time. So I put the child up for adoption. I want to meet him again before I die.”
I nodded. “To explain and to give him a chance to meet his birth family. Several DNA sites have ways for you to find lost relatives.”
“I’ve located him already. He lives in a San Francisco artists’ colony. I just don’t know how to reach out.”
“He’s poor and needs work. Through a third-party, commission him to do a portrait and send him a plane ticket. When he comes for the interview, if the moment feels right, tell him. If it doesn’t, leave something in your will and include what you want to say in the reading.”
“Do you think my girls will be offended?”
Luca’s mother sounds so self-centered that her only objection will be that the portrait wasn’t of her. “The truth wants to be known, Mrs. Stanhope. Telling it can only lead to healing.”
The simple phrase dispelled her remaining worries like a leaf blower cleaning a driveway. “You’ve lifted a weight off my soul. What can I do for you, child?”
“I came here for Luca because she saved my life and had to spend days in the hospital.”
“Nothing at all?”
I considered asking her to sponsor Luca on her trip to Rome, but that felt too much like selling the grace of God. However, she could answer a question that might narrow down the mole in the law-enforcement community. “The warlock known as Raggedy Andy saved the life of a high witch official during his trial. Do you happen to know whose?”
“Our representative from the High Court—Judge Endecott.”
“Is she still active in the Council?”
“Passed away two years ago. Someone on her cruise ship didn’t speak English and gave her a piece of peanut-butter pie by mistake.”
“Youch.” Dead end, literally.
“Since that’s common knowledge for anyone of my generation, I can’t count that as repayment. What else?”
“You don’t owe me a thing.”
Refusing to take no for an answer, she gave me a business card from the university where she taught acting. “Don’t underestimate the influence of a famous old woman. I’ve thrown a lot of parties and done a lot of favors. I convinced your aunt to hire my lazy son-in-law. Call any time, day or night. I don’t sleep much anymore.”
****
After ice cream, Luca passed the smartwatch back to me. Emma and Gran-gran taught us card games. Blaise hadn’t played parlor games with teamwork or partners before and enjoyed them the most. Emma took a photo of us all together, and Luca showed her how to print a copy for each of us. We played until dark and thanked our hostess like proper young ladies should. Emma dropped each girl at her front door, saving me for last.
Dad was oddly quiet on my return. He didn’t ask who I’d met, and being sworn to secrecy, I couldn’t volunteer the information. Honestly, he looked like someone who’d been mugged on the way to the bank. “I appreciate this, Emma. Talk to you Monday.”
She was about to say something in reply, but he closed the door on her. I didn’t interfere. They have time, and I need to do homework. Instead, I went to my room, changed into PJs, and finished my latest History essay.
Before bedtime, Dad poked his head in. “You broke my trust and intruded into my room.”
“I-I sent Luca. I had to. Sorry.”
“So I went into yours.”
“What?” Oh, crap.
“Doesn’t feel good, does it? I found my interview pen in your laptop under the bed.”
“Please tell me you didn’t listen.”
Tears ran down his cheeks. “It was like having your mother right here in front of me but not being able to warn her. This case killed her.”
“Yeah. Probably why the house in Holy Oak was torched.”
“You’re not going to stop until you find who did it, are you?”
“Nope. I get that from you.”
He nodded. “You’re grounded. You don’t leave this house without me.”
“Why?”
“I refuse to lose another woman I love to the Advent Killer.”
“How long am I going to be a prisoner?”
“Until I bring this bastard to justice,” he replied. “No one can hide from me for long.”
I believed him. The weird thing was, he wasn’t afraid like Mom, Luca, and I had been. I would categorize his mood up there with the vengeance of God.
33. Sunday
Sunday morning, I let my hair down, and the lobster braid had made it wavy, a completely different style for me. I brushed it until it looked like liquid gold. Mom would have loved it.
Dad and I had been searching for a new house of worship. This time, we chose a Society of Friends meetinghouse. He favored their antiwar, antislavery, and antialcohol stances. Like my school, they believed in the light of God shining through each of us, along with long periods of silence during the service. I did my best to keep my mouth shut.
The whole time, a woman in a plain dress with her hair in a bun kept staring at me.
At the tea-and-donut social afterward, Dad confronted her. “Why are you following us?”
“Gianna Harcourt, Bailiff for the Council. Your daughter was ordered not to exercise her abilities in public.”
“She hasn’t,” he said.
“She disabled her monitoring device while meeting with a former councilwoman last night.”
“Mrs. Stanhope made all the girls dinner last night to meet her granddaughter’s friends. Maybe Isa was washing dishes.”
“Ms. Stanhope has since consulted a former justice of the court and requested a special constable reporting only to her. What did Isa tell her?”
Both of them turned toward me. No way I’m telling the Council about the adoption and the changes to her will. Let them sweat a little. “I’m bound by what we’ll call the seal of confession.”
The bailiff jumped on the wording. “So she confessed something to you, and you gave her penance?”
“People decide for themselves how to show repentance. Some need it more than others.” I lowered my glasses to stare at her. “Is there something you’re hiding, Miss Harcourt?”
The Council spy jumped back. “Don’t look at me. Don’t you dare look at me! I didn’t know it was a dog.” She clamped her mouth shut as people stopped their discussions around
us.
“Really?” I asked, intensifying my gaze.
“It was dark out. No streetlights on that bridge. I only glanced at the text message, and then I heard the thump. I thought the animal had limped away, that it would be okay. I didn’t know I killed the poor thing until the next morning when I saw the ‘missing pet’ poster in the neighborhood.” She ran out before anyone could ask her another question.
I pushed my glasses back into place and pretended to be clueless about the crazy lady.
On our way out, Dad asked, “Did you make her fall apart like that?”
“Happens whenever guilty people meet my eyes or touch me. I have no control over it. I think it’s related to what the angel said. ‘The truth wants to be known.’”
“Hmph. Maybe we’ll read at home next Sunday.”
“I can support that.”
We had lunch at a buffet place with twenty different desserts and a soda fountain. Maybe he liked seeing a representative of the Council run from me.
That afternoon, he finished his lesson plans for the coming week and looked over night classes in teaching. I did my best to encourage him in that direction. “I heard the school will even reimburse you for those because teachers need continuing education. Besides, you could use more adult contact.”
While he was distracted in his office, I discreetly recharged my amulet upstairs in my room. I didn’t care what the school rules were. If a killer and the cops were stalking me, I’d be prepared. The ceremony felt more natural now that I knew what the gestures meant. I was actually singing a song instead of imitating the sounds in a foreign language.
I chose a sweatshirt from our lady lions’ volleyball team with my last name on it to remind me that I once belonged somewhere.
At two-thirty, we took off for Holy Oak to visit Zak. Over headphones borrowed from Luca, I listened to music on my smartwatch. All the Rejects had sent me a dozen of their favorite tunes for the trip. Some of them, I decided to add to my collection. In a better humor, Dad phoned Emma in speakerphone mode and apologized for his rude behavior Saturday night. She did most of the talking for almost an hour, but he smiled often. I did my best to ignore them and resisted the urged to open my can of Pringles and crunch loudly. Emma bragged about me a few times. Actually, she said nice things about all of us. Although, she worried that Blaise seemed to be “sixteen going on thirty.”
When I chatted with him after the call, he had no clue how much Emma cared for him. How can he be so dense?
We arrived after six, just in time for dinner with the Hamadi family. Through the living-room window, Dina saw our car coming and ran out to greet us. She gave me a big hug. “What’s with the glasses?”
“My Supergirl disguise. I can take them off inside.”
“Tell me everything!”
“Where’s Zak?” Dad asked.
“Dutifully setting the table.” Dina indicated the dining-room window with her thumb. “My father told him not to because it’s women’s work. My Zaki ignores him and keeps helping. I love him so much.”
“I’ll check in with your folks,” Dad said, heading inside.
As soon as we were alone, Dina showed me her ring, hopping up and down. “It’s official.” She was glowing with happiness.
I pretended to find the diamond chip impressive because Mom’s ring had been destroyed in the fire. “Any time frame on the ceremony?”
“Your dad wants me to finish high school first. My father wants Zaki to have a job.”
“You may even want to get a college degree.”
She sighed. “As long as I get to see him regularly, I don’t care when it happens.”
My brother is now bigger than KPOP in her life. “Have you kissed yet?”
She pushed against my shoulder and objected to the question. As we wandered toward the house together, she whispered, “Once, in the stockroom. He’s so shy.”
“So what engaged things have you been doing?”
“With this e-store thing Zaki started, we’ve been taking vanloads of packages to the post office and UPS. So he lets me drive.”
I stopped with my hand on the door. “Is that safe?”
“I haven’t hit any shopping carts since he’s been tutoring me.”
A suspiciously specific denial. What about strollers, old ladies, or geese crossing the road? “Why’s that?”
“He trusts me, so I can relax.”
“You deserve to be happy,” I told my bestie.
She lowered her eyes. “How are you doing with the whole magic thing?”
“My Book is severely damaged, but I’m finding other things I’m good at.”
We headed inside to join our families. I didn’t get to speak to Zak alone because Dina and her mother asked for my help in the kitchen, probably to keep me out of Mr. Hamadi’s sight. Really, none of Dina’s “corruption” had been my fault.
Dinner smelled wonderful, and they made twice as much food as necessary. Dad had the same rules about hospitality, so it must be a Middle-Eastern thing. Dina sat next to Zak, so I couldn’t whisper anything to him then either. I was going to say, “Blink if you’re being held hostage,” but I saw him sneak his hand into hers under the table. Stockholm syndrome looked good on him. Maybe more human interaction would smooth off some of his rough edges.
We socialized until half past seven. When Dad announced we were leaving, I thought we’d need a crowbar to pry Dina off Zak. “We’ll have him back as soon as possible. The terms of his probation require therapy and supervision.”
“But he only broke the law to save me,” Dina said. “That crazy man was holding a gun on us and called me a terrorist.”
“Trust me,” Dad said in his most soothing tone. “I won’t let anything happen to him. Would I lie to the woman who’s going to be my second daughter?”
That did the trick. Dina released the docking clamps.
Our car was directly in front of their garage door, next to the Mrs. Hamadi’s van. Mr. Hamadi’s Mercedes was parked inside. I opened the rear door to sit in my normal spot for family trips, figuring Zak deserved the shotgun seat for our ride to the asylum. I could have it on the way home.
As Zak placed his foot on their driveway, Dina said, “Wait.” She removed a necklace and passed it to him. “To remind you of me and to keep you safe.”
“Where did you get that?” asked Dad, examining the polished, white stone.
“Isa gave it to me. She said it was from the Jordan River and blessed.”
“I thought I recognized it.” Dad nodded but gave me a look that said I’d be answering questions later. “We’ll call you when he’s safely ensconced.”
Zak gave her a finger wave and sad, puppy-dog eyes.
I wanted to make gagging noises, but my brother surprised me by sitting in the back seat beside me. Once we were out of sight of the house, he ripped his eyes away from the back window.
The moment he glanced at me, he squirmed with guilt, the same symptoms so many people had been showing around me.
I asked, “What do you need to confess?”
“Remember when you were five, and someone shaved your doll? It was me.”
“Dad punished me for lying about that. Why didn’t you say something about it then?”
“Because then I wouldn’t have been able to go to the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby with Dad that weekend.”
My right eye only twitched a little. “I suppose I forgive you, but why did you do it?”
“Oh, at first it just tried to give her a trim to cover the burn marks. I suck at scissors. It was so uneven after my fifth try that I just shaved it all off with Dad’s electric razor.”
I hesitated to ask, but I had to know. “What burn marks?”
“I was using your doll as a scale-model passenger on my racecar. I wanted to give it a jet booster like the Batmobile had. It was all going fine until—”
I’d heard too many similar Zak stories. “Stop. Just don’t do it again.”
My brother wiped his for
ehead in relief. “You’re the best sister. I never thanked you for rescuing me at MIT. I’m not sure how you knew, but I’m grateful.”
I considered telling him I’d come for the Book he’d ruined, but I couldn’t kick a puppy who’s already whimpering. I gave him as much of a hug as the seatbelts would allow. “Nobody can beat you up but me.”
He chuckled at that. “The SWAT team that came after me didn’t explain a whole lot. What happened that night?”
“I’d like to know the same thing,” Dad called from the front.
I pointed to my watch. “Anything I say is probably being recorded, so I have to follow Council guidelines. I can tell you in terms of things you already know. First of all, the dimensional folds you were playing with were the same sort that Mom had all around the house. The protection charm around your neck was from the mandala by my bedroom door.”
Zak glanced at the stone. “Pocket dimensions. Hmm. A lot of things make more sense now. I thought I was just compressing information.”
“Nope. Mom used them as knickknack shelves and filing cabinets. You made a gate the size of a computer room.”
“Can we go back to our house and look at one of the mandalas? It’d really help me with my equations.”
Dad shook his head. “No time, son.”
He hasn’t told Zak about the house burning down. I saw no need to traumatize my brother further if he was already on mental thin ice.
Taking out a pen and a fast-food napkin, Zak scribbled some notes. “Fine. I have enough to keep me busy for now. Talking to that Math professor helped, too. When I accessed the experiment data from Dina’s laptop, I discovered why the gate wasn’t stable the first few times.”
I waved my hands across my throat in a cutting motion, but he didn’t shut up. He was too excited. “The random numbers weren’t random. The more power the circuit had, the more the pattern repeated. The most common values were resonance frequencies, where the system was divided by zero or the square root of a negative.”
I grabbed his shoulder and shook. “Stop confessing!”
“I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m finding universal truths.”
“Avoiding computers in general and that experiment in particular were conditions of your parole.”
