Money Shot

by Susan Sey

  Hurt moved through her eyes, then they went shuttered and blank. “I’m not talking about me.”

  “I am.” He wanted to move toward her, take her into his arms and ease away the stiff unhappiness in those long, pretty limbs, but he knew she wouldn’t allow him that pleasure. Wouldn’t allow herself the comfort. “Calloway was a weak, cowardly bastard who did the world a favor when he blew his own head off. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am that he was able to damage you and your family so much.” He did reach out then, took one of her wooden hands. “But you have to admit that an experience like the one you had is formative.”

  “Formative?”

  “It’s the lens through which you see the world.” He spoke reluctantly but honesty compelled him, the way instinct compelled her. “I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong about Einar and Yarrow, but I do think you need to be aware of your bias before you take action here.”

  “My bias.” A vast ocean of pain uncurled in her eyes, pulling him into the cold, swirling depths. “You think I don’t recognize my bias?” She shook her head, but slowly. As if it were unthinkably heavy and caused her unbearable pain. “My bias is my gift, Rush. I earned it; I may as well use it. Isn’t that what you said yesterday?”

  “I—” He snapped his mouth shut. “Did I?”

  “I only recognize the trouble Yarrow’s in because I survived it myself. And what she feels, what radiates off her whenever she’s anywhere near Einar? It’s no crush. It may have started that way, but the innocence has been perverted into something dark and greedy and ugly. And that doesn’t happen by itself. That kind of twisting takes guidance. Encouragement. Help.”

  “Help you think Einar provided.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I’ll find out. I need to find out.”

  “Have you tried talking to Yarrow about this?”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged into her shell, zipped it with a jerk. “She was . . . uncooperative. It’s not unusual for victims to protect their abusers, you know. I’m hoping to have better luck with Lila. But right now I’m heading out to the mines.” She met his eyes. “Are you coming?”

  “You need to do this?” Rush asked her. “To be satisfied that you’ve done everything in your power to help a child, you need to do this?” He wasn’t talking about hiking to the mines.

  “I do.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Let’s go, then.”

  BY THE time they trudged into Mother Lila’s Tea Shop that afternoon, Maria felt like somebody had tied cinder blocks to her heels. They’d skied rather than snowshoed this time, and had exactly nothing to show for the miles they’d logged. Not one shred of evidence tying Einar to any of the crimes her gut insisted he was guilty of. Exhaustion covered her like a sodden blanket. Piled on top of the confusion she was already staggering under, it was enough to drive a girl to her knees.

  Lila took one look at the two of them and slid warm cinnamon scones under their noses with a sympathetic cluck. “Hard day?”

  Maria sighed. “You have no idea.”

  Lila lifted her omnipresent teacup to her lips and sipped. The afternoon sun slanted through the plate-glass front of the tea shop and painted sterling streaks into her gray hair. “You might be surprised.”

  Maria broke off a corner of her scone and chewed thoughtfully while Rush said, “We went back to the Stone Altar today.”

  “Did you?”

  “Maria was hoping to find evidence that would tie the two crimes together—the black magic and the smuggling—but we came up empty.”

  Maria frowned at her scone. “I know something’s there, Lila. I can feel it in my gut. Something’s there and I’m missing it. Something important. Something that’s going to point the way out of this mess.”

  Lila shot a questioning glance at Rush and received a what-the-hell shrug in response. She reached across the table and took Maria’s hand. “I can help you, dear. If you’ll let me.”

  Maria blinked at the older woman’s hand on her own. She thought about the vicious slap of emotion in Yarrow’s touch, about the warm comfort of Lila’s. She thought about Rush’s conviction that Mishkwa stripped something away, something essential to artifice. Something that kept people in ignorance of their own truths. She looked up to find Rush’s eyes on hers, warm and encouraging.

  “If you can help me see more clearly,” she said slowly to Lila, “I’m game.”

  “Brave girl.” Lila gave her hand a quick squeeze. “This way. Both of you.”

  Chapter 26

  THEY FOLLOWED her through the doors that separated the tea shop from her living quarters, through the kitchen and up the spiral staircase in the back corner. They entered the sun-filled sitting room and waited as Lila gathered up an odd assortment of knickknacks from a nook in the built-in bookshelves. She bent and shoved a low, round coffee table into the center of the room, and Maria noticed for the first time the pattern of constellations woven into the midnight-blue rug, and the compass points marked into edges. How had she missed that?

  Lila moved around the compass, casting the now-familiar circle with candles, then held out a hand to Maria and said, “Come.”

  Maria shot a questioning look at Rush and Lila said, “Just you, dear. For now.”

  Maria moved around the outside of the circle described by the candles and joined Lila at the easternmost point. Lila moved into the circle and knelt beside the round table in the center. Maria followed, but hesitated. Was she supposed to kneel? Or just hang back and watch?

  “Lila?” she whispered. “Um, what should I—”

  Lila smiled up at her and said, in a perfectly normal tone of voice, “Kneel here beside me, dear.”

  “Right.” Maria folded herself into a kneeling position and tucked her hands between her thighs. She felt ridiculous. “Lila?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “What are we doing?”

  Lila grinned at her. “Nervous?”

  “Oh, of course not,” Maria said airily. “I do this kind of thing all the time. I was just curious.”

  Lila laughed. “Don’t worry, dear. I won’t hurt you.” Her grin went sly. “Or convert you.” She patted her knee. “I just need to see more clearly.”

  Maria glanced around the sun-flooded room. “See what more clearly?”

  Lila produced a pretty ceramic dish, its blue bowl so deeply glossed it could’ve been used as a mirror, and placed it in the center of the coffee table. She tipped a flask of water into the dish until a glassy pool covered the bottom. Then she moved around the bowl, as if looking for a better vantage point. She settled onto the floor across from Maria and laid out her hands, palms up, one on either side of the bowl. Maria hesitated, then put her hands into Lila’s.

  Lila stared hard into the little dish for a few seconds then shook her head. “Yarrow!” she shouted. “Come here!”

  Yarrow’s black head poked into the room, earbuds hanging around her neck. “What?”

  “I need you, dear,” Lila said. “In the circle.”

  Yarrow rolled black-rimmed eyes. “I’m not allowed, remember?”

  “Your parents will understand.”

  “So, what, it’s okay for me to be a pagan when you need something but not when I do?”

  “I’m making a judgment call,” Lila said, her tone gentle but absolutely commanding. “A call that, given my age and experience, I’m infinitely more qualified to make than you are. Now, in the circle, please.”

  Yarrow shrugged and moved to the easternmost point of the circle before she stepped in. She glanced at Maria and her lip curled. “A sacred threesome, huh? I’m honored.”

  “Smart girl,” Lila said. Maria blinked, then turned beseeching eyes on Rush.

  “Don’t look at me.” He shook his head. “She needs another female.”

  “It’s true,” Yarrow told her. “Pagans dig girl-on-girl action.”

  Lila ignored
her and said to Maria, “You grew up Christian, I assume?”

  “Catholic.”

  “Then you’re familiar with the Holy Trinity.”

  “The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost? Sure.”

  “Three different forms of the same divine, yes? A sacred trinity?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Pagans have their own version of this, only our divinity is female. We revere the feminine power, in each of its three incarnations—the maiden, the mother and the crone.”

  “I’m the maiden,” Yarrow said, going heavy on the irony. She jerked her chin at Lila. “There’s your crone.”

  “In all my infinite wisdom,” Lila said aridly.

  “Which makes me the mother?” Maria laughed. “I don’t think I’m qualified.”

  “It’s ceremonial,” Yarrow told her. “I haven’t been a maiden since—”

  “Join hands, please,” Lila said. Maria expected Yarrow to kick up a stink about touching her, but she obediently placed one hand into Lila’s and held out the other for Maria’s. After a moment, Maria took it. An immediate sense of peace stole into her, a calm completeness she hadn’t felt in years, if ever. It flowed into her through her palms, drifted lazily up her arms and into her center, where it smoothed out the static that had lived in her head and heart so long she’d forgotten to be aware of it. A stillness rushed into the space it left behind, a patient quiet.

  “Concentrate, Maria, on the Stone Altar,” Lila said, bending over the little bowl on the table. “How it smelled, how it looked. What you felt as you looked into that rough clay bowl. What you thought as you descended into the earth.”

  Maria concentrated as directed, and suddenly she was there again. Her mitten was tight in Rush’s elbow, the smell of his warmth reassuring in her nose. She lost herself in the memory until the scent of frozen dirt was as strong as the scent of Lila’s tea cooling on the window seat.

  For long moments, Lila peered into her pretty little bowl as if the fate of nations hung in the balance. When she looked up, concern darkened her eyes.

  “What?” Maria asked, snatching her hands back. The quiet snapped and broke, the pieces drifting away like smoke. “Did you actually see something in there?”

  “Nothing I could identify,” Lila said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a scrying dish,” Yarrow said. “Not a crystal ball.”

  “Yarrow.” Lila’s tone made the name a gentle reproof and Yarrow rolled her eyes again.

  “Are we done here?” she asked.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “I’m going to be late for practice,” Yarrow said as she stalked out of the circle. “Write a note to the coach for me, will you? He’s a real hard-ass.”

  “Have a nice time, dear,” Lila said absently as Yarrow disappeared. She fixed her attention on Maria. “Yarrow’s tone was a bit harsh, but the information was accurate,” she said. “It’s not a crystal ball. I don’t read the future or anything. A scrying bowl shows emotions more than pictures. Suggestions rather than certainties.”

  “What did it suggest, then?”

  “There was a darkness,” Lila said softly, and her gaze shifted to encompass Rush now, too. “A rage. A hopeless sorrow that took my breath. And a hunger, a driving, insatiable appetite.” “For what?” Rush asked, elbows on knees, eyes intent.

  “For what?” Rush asked, elbows on knees, eyes intent. Lila shrugged. “It wasn’t entirely clear. Power? Fame? Money? Worship? I’m not sure. But it was an appetite I fear blood won’t sate.”

  “It was chicken blood, by the way,” Rush said suddenly. Lila blinked, startled. “What?”

  “The blood we found at the Stone Altar. Maria got word yesterday. It was chicken blood.”

  “Oh. Well, thank heavens it wasn’t . . . something else.” She leaned forward, touched the back of Maria’s hand. “I know I’m probably a nervous old woman, but I’d feel so much better if you’d let me protect you.”

  “Protect me? How?”

  “The moon is past full but it’s still above half. Enough for a protection spell. I’d like to cast one for you.”

  “Oh, wow, I don’t—”

  “You don’t have to do anything at all,” she said. “Just be here at eight Friday night. Both of you.”

  “We’ll be here,” Rush said before Maria could open her mouth. He checked his watch and winced. “Damn, Yarrow was right. I’m going to be late for practice.”

  BACK IN the front room of the tea shop, Maria drew on her mittens slowly while she turned Lila’s offer over in her head. She wasn’t really eager to put herself through a pagan ceremony that took place at a moonlit minus twenty, but allowing Lila to perform it might be a wise move. It would go a ways toward laying a foundation of trust and mutual respect, a foundation she’d need to draw on if it turned out she was right about the kind of mess Yarrow was in.

  The girl clomped into the tea shop’s front room as if Maria’s thoughts had conjured her, a pair of skis over her shoulder, her jacket unzipped.

  “Where’s Ranger Rush?” Yarrow asked.

  “He went ahead to meet the rest of the team.”

  Yarrow accepted this in silence and headed for the door.

  “You seem to know a lot about the pagan tradition,” Maria said to her, falling in beside her.

  Yarrow curled her lip. “Anybody who lives here more than, like, two minutes does,” she said.

  Maria pulled on her hat against the bitter blast of arctic air that assaulted them the moment they stepped outside.

  “Nice curls,” Yarrow said.

  “Thanks.” Maria tucked a few into her hat. They sprang out again. She sighed. She hadn’t wrangled with her real hair in a long time. It was a handful. “So, you know anything about blood sacrifice?”

  Yarrow barked out laugh. “You’re fingering me for the chicken-murdering bandit?”

  Maria lifted a brow. “Eavesdrop much?”

  “Sure. All the time. Nothing better to do.” Yarrow yanked her zipper up to her chin and shook her head. “I’m not bored enough to off chickens by the light of the full moon, though.”

  “You know anybody who is?”

  “No.” She moved past Maria toward the harbor. “I have to go ski the bridge now,” she said.

  “The bridge?”

  “The ice bridge. You know, between here and the mainland? The lake froze during the storm. Enough to ski to town, anyway. The team does the round-trip—four miles each way—every afternoon while the ice is stable.”

  “You know, I think I’ll go with you,” Maria said pleasantly. “I skied in today from the Ranger Station, so I’m all equipped and everything.”

  “Great,” Yarrow muttered.

  “They seemed like nice girls. Your friends from the team.”

  “I don’t have any friends on the team.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course you do.” Yarrow stalked down the street, and Maria followed.

  Chapter 27

  MARIA CLICKED her boots into her skis. She flexed her feet a couple times to make sure the bindings were secure before putting her skis into Yarrow’s tracks and taking off.

  Back home she’d spent a lot of time in the gym, logging grueling hours on the treadmill, the elliptical machine, in the weight room in an effort to turn her body from a terrifying liability into a professional asset. But skiing and snowshoeing, she’d discovered, was a whole other thing.

  It was soothing somehow—the quiet shush of her skis kissing the snow, the rhythmic pumping of her arms, the solid push of her legs against the earth. It put her higher-order brain into some sort of a trance, leaving her primitive, reptilian brain to enjoy the feeling of her muscles doing what they’d been designed for. It was only while skiing that she could contemplate with any kind of calm the idea that her body might really be a blessing instead of a burden.

  She caught up to Yarrow as the rest of the team skied toward them from the mainland, all colorful winter wear and puf
fing breath.

  “Are you going to turn around to ski with the team?” she asked.

  “No,” Yarrow said. She didn’t slow down.

  Maria squinted at the approaching team, Rush encouraging them from behind like a big, implacable sheepdog. Yarrow blew past the oncoming team without even a nod.

  “If you don’t ski with the team, why come out now?” Maria asked. “I mean, if you don’t want the company, why not ski earlier? Or later?”

  “Lila likes me to interact with my peers.”

  “Ah.”

  Yarrow poured on a burst of speed and Maria let her pull ahead. She skied in the girl’s tracks for several thoughtful minutes. She looked up a while later, startled to find Yarrow already kicking off her skis in front of a little shack on the bank of the mainland. It was a warming hut or an old fish house or something, Maria saw as she moved closer. Yarrow disappeared inside and Maria picked up the pace, her long legs eating up the distance to the shore. There were, she mused, some marked benefits to unseemly height.

  She reached the banks, kicked off her own skis and joined Yarrow inside the little hut. “What is this place?” she asked, following the girl’s lead and propping a boot on the bench to stretch out.

  “It’s Einar’s fish house. He leaves it here at the turnaround so I can cool down out of the wind.”

  Maria peered out the tiny slit cut at eye level into the wall. The trees were thick enough to conceal whatever lay behind them. “Where are we?”

  “Just north of Thunder Bay.”

  “Canada?”

  “No, France.”

  Maria stuck out her tongue at Yarrow’s back.

  “So,” she said, switching legs along with the subject. “You don’t ever ski with the team?”

  “No.” Yarrow went to work on her hamstrings.

  “You don’t get lonely? Don’t miss having friends?”

  A bitter laugh shot into the air. “No.”

  “How about your family?” she asked. “You miss them?”

  Yarrow said nothing and Maria pressed a little harder. “You’re what—a junior now? You’ll be making college decisions pretty soon. I’ll bet your folks are all over you about SAT scores.”