Dad used to say that Ma was perfect for him because every balloon needs an anchor and without her he would just float away. Watching her at that moment, when the pills weren’t working, when the grief therapy was just talk, and even when a long-hidden cigarette was pinched between her shaking fingers as she tried in vain to light it, I realized that an anchor wants a balloon as much as the balloon an anchor. Without Dad, Ma was just going to keep sinking until she reached bottom.
Maybe this was bottom.
“Hey guys,” Bishop said to the detectives when she walked in. “There’s coffee downstairs.”
Her voice lilted like it was a question. It was a command, and Bishop was used to giving them. The detectives put away their minitablets and ducked under the yellow tape.
“Detective Bishop.” She flashed her badge. “SVU. How’re you holding up?”
“SVU.” Ma scoffed. “Call us a regular Boston cop. They know how to deal with criminals.”
Bishop tried to smile. “Mrs. Conning, the SVU has jurisdiction in all special victim cases, and I’ve worked a few myself.”
I hopped up. “Know what you need, Ma? A nice cup of calming tea.”
“I don’t want tea,” Ma said.
“Coffee then,” I said, because I had to do something to take care of her.
Bishop asked one question after another. Ma answered none of them.
“Here you go,” I said and put the warm cup in Ma’s hands. “A nice cup o’ joe.
She took a big swallow to make me happy, then gagged. “Tastes like cat piss!”
I pretended to take a sip. “Tastes fine to me.” I gave it back. “Maybe I like cat piss.”
“Such a fresh mouth,” Ma said and walked into the kitchen. The cabinet above the fridge made a squeak, and I heard the familiar rattle of a pill bottle. No more secrets, Ma had said when she’d stopped needing the pills. We’re a family again. My instinct was to stop her, to tell her that she didn’t need meds to get through this. But she did, and if I was being honest, I needed her to take the pills. Tonight I needed to have secrets.
“Just a few more questions,” the detective said when Ma returned. “To clarify some inconsistencies.”
Ma blinked at her. Just blinked like she wasn’t even in the room.
Siobhan cleared her throat. “Mrs. Conning’s too upset for questions. She’s been at work all day and doesn’t know anything about that dead lady. She needs to rest, right, Willie?”
At first I thought it was a clever ruse to get rid of Bishop, but Ma’s eyes were half closed. She was almost out like a light. Jeezum, how many did she take?
I patted her hand. “Time for bed.”
“No, I need my baby home.” She looked at me. I’d seen her look this frail once before. “I’m not moving from this spot till she walks through that door.”
“Ma, the cops are looking for Devon,” I said. “What good can you do if you’re too exhausted to help? Siobhan, give me a hand.”
“Yes, boss.” Siobhan hooked Ma’s waist and steered her down the hallway.
“Your mother’s distressed,” Bishop said. “Is there someplace you can go for the night? Family close by?”
“Devon and I are the only family Ma has,” I said.
“A hotel then.”
“No!” I said a little too loudly. “We’re not leaving. The kidnappers might come back, and this time, I’ll be ready.”
“Don’t worry, Jane,” Bishop said. “We’ve got the suspect under arrest.”
“My name is not Jane! It’s Willow Jane Conning! And that guy you arrested did not take my sister!”
“Jane, you need to calm down,” she said. “You can’t help your mother like this.”
“Don’t you dare try to handle me!” I stalked into the bathroom. “Leave my mother out of this, detective. She doesn’t know a thing!”
I slammed the door and splashed water on my face. Maybe I did need to calm down a little.
“You’re a terrible daughter,” I told my reflection. I had let a widow with a missing child drug herself and left a dead body under an old SpongeBob sheet. “And a terrible friend.”
My reflection nodded in reply.
“Thanks,” I said and opened the medicine cabinet and took out a box of Band-Aids. I closed the cabinet door and glanced at the mirror.
I whirled around.
On the wall behind me, words were cut into the wallpaper, as if it had been attacked with a straight razor:
When the witching hour begins to bell,
Knock three times at the gates of hell.
Laughter floated up from the grate, and I lifted the toilet seat and threw up. It was the color of tea.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
“HEY, Siobhan.” I ducked my head into the hallway and called to Ma’s room. “Got a minute?”
“Michael?” Ma said in a dreamy voice, and my heart broke a little.
“It’s just Willow, Mrs. C.” Siobhan appeared, checked the hallway, and rushed over to the bathroom. “What’s up?”
“Where’s the detective?”
“She left. Told a cop to watch us. He’s on his phone.”
Excellent. It would make escaping easier. “Listen, can you watch Ma for me? Make sure she doesn’t doing anything stupid?”
“Why?”
“There’s something I need to do.”
“Like what?”
“If I tell you, you’ll try to stop me.”
“Maybe I’ll stop you anyway.”
“This—” I stepped back so she could see the letters gouged into the wall. “—is what.”
Her eyes grew big, and she tugged on her braids. “Then again, maybe I won’t. Willie, what the shitbiscuit have you gotten into?”
As much as I yearned to tell her everything, I couldn’t risk it. She was the only one I could count on, and I didn’t want Malleus coming after her.
“Willie,” she said. “Let the cops handle this.”
“Like they handled it so far? They arrested the guy who’s helping me find Devon.”
“He was helping you?” She smacked her forehead. “And I knocked him out?”
“Like the badass you are.” I checked my watch. “Crap! I’ve got to go!”
“You promised you’d spill.” She blocked the way. “So spill.”
“I made no such promise,” I said. “And I don’t have time for this.”
“You can fill in the details on the way.” She grabbed her coat from the bedroom. “I’m coming with.”
“Like hell you are.”
“I helped put your ma to bed so you could get rid of the cops. I’ve earned some fun.”
“How did you know?” Of course she knew. Siobhan always knew. “This isn’t fun, dammit! It’s dangerous!” I tried to push by, but Siobhan held her ground like she was guarding her crease. Stupid goalie balance. “It’s about saving Devon’s life, for chrissakes.”
“Like I said, I’m coming with,” she said. “Devon’s my sister, too.”
“Siobhan, I’m scared to death, but I’m the only one who can fix this.”
“Life Plan,” she said, sounding un-Siobhan-like serious.
“What?”
“The Life Plan. You and me. Defender and goalie.” She raised a hand for a fist bump. “You got my blind spot, and I’ve got your back. No matter freaking what.”
“But—’’ I almost burst into tears. Wanted to tell her how much she meant. How much I loved her. Why because of that, she was staying right here. Where it was safe. Too many people were dying. Devon was gone. Dad was gone. She and Ma were all I had left, and if I lost her, no one would have my back.
“Michael?” Ma called. “The baby’s crying.”
Siobhan dropped an F-bomb and looked back at Ma’s dark room. “Christ, how much did you give her?”
“Just one.” I checked my watch again. “Please? I really have to go.”
“Look at you, being all badass.” She gave me a hug. “I’ll take care of your ma, but I want f
ull details later. Full details, missy, or we’re dropping the gloves.”
“Full details,” I said and forced a smile. “Later.”
Siobhan checked the cop in the living room to make sure the coast was clear. She waved me over to Devon’s room, pushed the door to without letting the lock catch, then turned out the light. In the glow from the streetlamps, I opened a window to the fire escape, then climbed out into the night.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
MY first goal was to spring Harken from police custody. When I got outside, he was still in the back of a squad car on F Street, handcuffed to an O-ring and looking like he could spit nails.
F Street was crawling with law enforcement. The whole block was jam-packed with police cars, blue lights flashing and radios squawking. The neighbors were watching from their windows, but nobody was allowed on the street. The beat cops had strung up yellow tape and set out the sawhorse barriers. You had to have a badge to get in out of the area, or you had to know how to stop time.
Using the nosy gawkers as cover, I walked along the yellow police tape until I was close enough to Harken’s squad car to hear Bishop’s voice. She was standing outside the car, the back door open, which was not standard procedure on any cop show I’d ever seen. “I’m not in any hurry,” she said. “So I’ll play along. Got a name?”
Harken looked straight ahead. “No.”
“You’re somebody,” Bishop said. “I’m going to find who. Just like I’m going to find out why you kidnapped a little girl and cut off a woman’s thumbs.”
“I did not.”
“Who did?”
“Not who, what.”
“All right, what?”
“Evil.” Harken snapped his head so that he stared right into Bishop’s eyes. “Pure evil beyond your comprehension.”
“Highly refined evil. Got it.” Bishop waved to a nearby cop. “Time for that psych eval. He’s talking about evil spirits.”
As I waited for the right moment to act, I wondered if I should be doing this at all. Devon was in danger. Not TV danger but real danger. She could be dead already.
Don’t think that, just don’t, I told myself. She isn’t Dad, who died for no reason. That was the worst part: He died for no reason.
“Here’s goes nothing,” I said and bit my thumb.
I tasted something metallic, and my teeth closed on a sliver of metal. The squatting detective froze like a mannequin.
Yes! I pumped my fist. I had glimpsed! On purpose! Two times in a row!
I lifted the handcuff keys from Bishop’s belt, then cuffed her to the side mirror. I felt a pang of guilt because the poor woman was never going to live it down. She might even lose her job, but it was either the detective’s dignity or my sister’s life.
I unlocked Harken’s handcuffs and dragged him off the seat. He hit the pavement like a dead weight, and I pulled him to the sidewalk and under the yellow tape.
“God, you’re heavy!” I dragged him up a neighbor’s driveway and hid him behind the trash cans. “What are you, stuffed with doughnut holes?”
My stomach began to churn, right before a wave of nausea hit. Time to end this glimpse before I got too sick and blacked out. I stuck a note in Harken’s pocket, then circled down the alley back to my house, giving the cops a wide berth.
You better not run out on me, Harken, I thought and licked my thumb. The strand of gossamer melted on my tongue with a sudden rush of sound and lights, and I heard a crack like a gunshot.
“Hey,” I said softly after calling Siobhan’s cell. “If Ma’s okay, there’s something I need you to do. It’s a matter of life and death. . . . That’s what I said, life or death. . . . Yours if you don’t shut up and listen.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
TEN minutes later Siobhan was waiting for me at the Broadway T station. “Spill,” she said.
So I did. As we swiped our CharlieCards and waited on the platform, I unloaded the whole sad tale. I kept waiting for her to laugh or call crisis intervention or worse, run away screaming. But when the next train came to a stop, she cocked her head and said nothing.
The doors opened, and we got on, welcomed by the familiar scent of body odor and motor oil. We found a spot at the back, in the little nest of seats between the connecting doors and the spot reserved for handicapped. The car was fairly empty, except for a group of college kids clumped in the middle. They completely ignored us, which was fine by me.
The train sped up, and I closed my eyes, exhaustion seeping into my bones.
“So that’s your story?” Siobhan said. “A refugee from The Walking Dead kidnaps your sister to trade for a petrified egg, which you hocked to pay rent.”
“Don’t forgot the part where I stop time with my magic thumb.”
“And the stalker/not-stalker the cops are chasing.” Siobhan stretched out and yawned. She kicked an empty drink cup across the floor. “No wonder you’ve been acting so, so—”
“Weird.”
“So shitbiscuit.” She thought for a moment. “This has to do with Will Patrick’s suicide and what’s-his-face dying, right?”
I shrugged a yes and looked at my reflection in the scratched and foggy window of the train. I hardly recognized my own face.
“Kelly, too? Cause her mom’s been texting mad crazy since the game, saying Kelly’s gone missing.” The gears turned in her head. “Is she dead, too?”
I remembered her crumpled up in the stairwell of the burned-out building. How could I explain that she was already dead when Siobhan had extinguished her? “Her, too.”
She hugged me, and I hugged her back, and we both began to shake with exhaustion and grief. I clung to her like my father held on to my mother on those nights when he would come home empty-handed from a gig, and while I peeked around the corner, she would build a nest for his frustration. The door would close, and the sounds of crying wept through the door. All those times I thought it was Ma, but now I realized that it was my father.
Our friend was dead. She had drifted from us, and we had let the currents take her, but she had once been part of the Life Plan.
“How’re we going to do this, Willie?” Siobhan whispered, sounding tired.
Maybe I was wrong to keep her out. Maybe I needed a goalie, at least for now. “The way the Life Plan says we make it through everything,” I said. “Together.”
“Jeezum H. Crowbar,” Siobhan whispered, then, with a snap of her fingers made the connection. “The cemetery. Those three were futzing around with that tomb.” She covered her mouth. “It was real. I thought Will Patrick was just nursing a wicked hangover and Kelly was being all drama queen about what’s-his-face.”
“Flanagan,” I said and drew in a deep breath.
“Huh?”
“What’s-his-face,” I said as the tracks clacked and the train leaned into a turn. “His name was Flanagan.”
“Flanagan. Yeah, Flanagan. Nollaig shona duit!” She raised an imaginary glass and let a moment pass out of respect, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her she had just wished him a Merry Christmas. “Enough with the emotional claptrap, let’s see it.”
“See what?”
“The thumb. I’ve never seen a magic thumb before. Is it sparkly like fairy dust?”
“It’s not sparkly.”
“Want me to believe your wild ass story?” she said and picked up the cup she’d been kicking. She crushed it and shoved it under the seat. “Then I need some physical evidence, so get your head outta your ass, Conning.”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
I showed her my thumb. In the train’s flickering lights it looked swollen and hot, with a hard knot of pus in the middle. A thick filament of gossamer peeked out, shimmering in the train’s fluorescent lights.
“That’s not magic,” Siobhan said. “You’ve got gangrene.”
“I wish.”
“That could be a staph infection. A really, really nasty staph infection. One requiring amputation.”
“Want it
to get better?” I stuck the thumb in her face. “Give it a kiss.”
“Gah!” She threw her hands up. “Get that nasty thing away from me!”
“Magic isn’t something you shake out of Tinkerbell’s ass.”
“That thumb smells like ass,” Siobhan said. “Which proves nothing to this doubting Thomasina. I’ll buy our friends getting caught up in some crazy rituals because this is Boston, but magic?”
I opened my coat and pulled Dad’s letter from the inside pocket. “Read this.”
“Read what?” she said, squinting. “It’s blank.”
“To you it’s blank. To me it’s a letter from my dad.”
“Nah.”
“To my darling daughter on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday,” I began. Then I read her the whole letter, front and back, even the poem.
“Wicked creepy.” She rubbed the goose bumps from her arms. “But you write poetry. Maybe you made it up.”
“And recited it all from memory?”
“Says the girl who won the Scrabble championship three years running.”
“Fine. Write a word on your palm,” I said and tucked the letter back in my coat. “I’ll do a glimpse, and the word will appear on the window behind you.”
“If it doesn’t?”
“I’ll be the happiest girl on Earth.”
“Then we can take your ass thumb to an emergency room.”
“Write.”
Siobhan scribbled on her palm. “Ready, Betty.”
I pressed my thumb to my lips and pulled out a short bit of gossamer. Please let it work. I need someone to believe me, or I may lose my mind.
The train froze, and I opened Siobhan’s palm. A smiley face stared back at me. The fate of the world was hanging in the balance, and she was drawing a smiley face.
With my house key, I scratched the image on the window behind her, then broke the thread.
The train surged forward.
“So?” Siobhan said. “When’s this shiz going down?”
I pointed at the window. “Already has.”
“Busted! There’s no—” Siobhan turned around. “Smiley . . . face. Oh hell. Oh hell hell. Oh hell that hell! That means . . . you’re a . . . oh hell.”
Uncanny Page 20
