by P. R. Frost
“Scrap?”
Imp business. Imp law. I must judge as a neutral party. Go to your mother.
A fake to the right, then Juniper sank her talons deep into Fortitude’s spine.
At the same time his jaws clamped on her neck.
I heard bone crack.
“No!” Sancroix screamed, clutching his back in the exact same spot where Juniper hit Fortitude.
Gert gargled, releasing Sancroix to clutch at her throat with both hands.
The imps flashed into blade form even as death throes jerked them backward, toward the limp hands of their Warriors.
They all collapsed together onto their weapons. The tines of one penetrated Sancroix’s heart, the blade of the other slit Gert’s throat.
Scrap bowed his head, faded and shrank back to normal size. So be it. I declare an end to this.
I jerked out of my paralyzing horror and stumbled to my mother’s side. Her hand already grew cold. A glaze covered her eyes.
She looked so peaceful, so relaxed.
All traces of the tense and waspish woman who’d raised me had vanished.
“Tess,” she whispered.
I bent closer to catch those precious words.
“Tess, I love you. Tell Steph and Cecilia I love them. You are my baby. My last baby. I cherish you.”
And she wilted, an almost smile frozen in place.
I wanted to believe the true woman, the chanteuse who empathically projected love, compassion, and joy through her music shone through.
For a few hours each night she had balanced some evil in the world with her songs.
I couldn’t speak. The horror of my dead mother lying on the pavement choked me.
As sirens erupted around me, Lucia bounded out of the fire door. She grabbed me beneath the shoulders and dragged me back inside the hotel.
“You can’t be seen here. Let them believe this a love triangle gone wrong,” she whispered. “But don’t let them bury her with the pearls. You have to claim the pearls.”
I nodded numbly. “Why?”
“No time to explain. They were mine once upon a time. Now they are yours. Guard them better than you did the ring.”
“Junior?”
“I’ll find him. He’s finished in this town and he knows it. But I’ll find him and bring him to the Powers That Be for justice. And you will help me. Later. Now you must flee.”
Some morsel of self-preservation kicked in, and I followed her back up to my room.
Sister Gert’s final words pounded into my brain. “I don’t have the luxury of looking for a future, a normal life with Gollum, do I?” I said to no one in particular.
“If you stay with him, you will want a family. Your concerns will shift from fighting demons to protecting your children. Believe me. I know this.” Lucia fixed me with her gaze.
Her sincerity penetrated my growing grief.
“I have to remain alone, focused and angry enough to complete the jobs the Universe hands me.” That scared me more than a full pack of Midori, Windago, Sasquatch, and Damiri combined.
“Good-bye, Mom.”
Epilogue
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Sometimes.
THE NIGHT BEFORE I took my mom home for her funeral and burial in the family plot on Cape Cod, I stood on the tiny stage of the lounge in The Crown Jewels Casino and Conference Center. I wore the midnight-blue dress spangled with pixie dust and my mother’s pearls.
They caressed my neck with warmth and the memory of her love.
Donovan and Lady Lucia sat in the front row. Lucia had used her influence to end the investigation into Mom’s death before it got started. She convinced high-powered lawyers and commissioners that the three bodies in the parking lot were a bizarre lovers’ triangle gone sour with murder and suicide.
Everyone in Vegas and back home accepted that story as the truth.
I wanted to believe it.
Even more quietly, Lady Lucia bought out Junior’s stock in The Crown Jewels. He disappeared. Even Scrap couldn’t find him, and I know he looked long and hard.
Penny Worth and Mr. Stetson also sat in the front row. She wore a new wedding ring and had her heavily mortgaged house up for sale. She looked tired and resigned rather than a radiant bride.
Allie had come, too. That’s what best friends do. They fly halfway across the country to hold your hand, help you make hard decisions, become a buffer between you and people who ask too many questions.
Gollum offered to come. I had to tell him no. Seeing him again this soon, while I was so fragile, would upset the tiny bit of balance I’d found within me.
“I’m dedicating this song to my mother,” I said. No other words would come through the growing lump in my throat. I had to sing now or never.
“Take me in, yes, I’ll be your victim,
I’ll be the matchgirl, and you be the wind.
Take me in, yes, I’ll be your victim,
I’ll be Red Riding Hood, you be the wolf.
I’ll be the girl who gets burned in the oven,
and you’ll be the baker who serves me for pie.
I won’t expect any boring old woodcutters
coming to save me at the end of the day—
In the end, yes I’ll be your victim.
You’ll be my frog and I won’t be a princess.
In the end, no curtain, no laughter,
no pumpkin, no coachman, no happily ever after.”
Gollum is standing behind a pillar where Tess can’t see him. He clenches his fists and squeezes his eyes shut to keep the tears from leaking out.
He listens closely to Tess’ music. In his heart he sings a different song, one that Mom sang often. A song from a different era.
A song people sang when they sent their lovers off to fight a war. “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.”
It ends, “I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you.”
