Charmed, Aldo tipped her an additional grand (in drachmas, of course) before booting her out, and was still feeling relatively bubbly when he had the hotel operator place a call to his employer in London.
"Yes?"
Aldo recognized the voice. "Operator? I'll take it from here." Then, after he'd heard the click of the operator dropping off the line: "How are you doing tonight, Jo? I hope it's not too late to call?"
"Spare me the Transylvanian charm. It's never too late to call me—I haven't slept a bloody wink in months. Where are you?"
"Lamiathos."
"Is there a problem?"
"Minor. I learned in the taverna tonight that our mutual friend—our late mutual friend, I should say—never actually owned the villa here. He only leased it on a year-to-year basis, at a greatly inflated rate, according to my new chums. I wanted to know if that makes any difference as regards my business on the island?"
"Do you recall my instructions?" There was a quality of command to the voice, mad as it was, that reminded Aldo of Major Strada of the Securitate.
"How could I not?"
"Were they clear?"
"As glass."
"Then carry them out. This is not a bloody real estate transaction, man. Carry them out!"
It will be my pleasure, Aldo started to say, but the line had already gone dead. Aldo hung up the phone, then quickly lifted the receiver to his ear. Satisfied that the operator hadn't been listening in, he replaced the receiver again.
"My pleasure indeed," he muttered out loud. Of course Aldo recalled his employer's instructions—he'd all but put them in the man's mouth himself. Exterminate the monster. Burn its nests. Music to his ears. Music to rival La Divina.
PART 2
Echoes in the Forest
And the thicket closed behind her, And the forest echo'd 'fool'.
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
CHAPTER 1
« ^ »
Less than an hour after taking off from the dock at St. Thomas, the Blue Goose, a twelve-seater seaplane, banked gently to the left and Selene caught her first glimpse of Santa Luz, alone in a round azure sea, its wild tangle of rain forest rising from the tawny beaches and canebrake to crown the long central hump of the island.
There were three other passengers on the seaplane. One of them, a Luzan cleric with small round gold-rimmed eyeglasses and a high oval forehead that reminded Selene of an Easter egg—the shade of black you get when the egg sits in the purple dye way too long—had been on the flight from Miami with her this morning. As they skimmed low along the coast, Selene mentioned how alarmed she'd been by their landing at the St. Thomas airport.
"Do you know what de St. Thomas man say about dot airport?" he asked. "Say, 'Why did God put de mountain at de end of de runway?' "
Selene looked around the seaplane, which seemed to be made entirely of overstressed fiberglass. "At least if you survive the crash there, you won't drown."
The man smiled, and patted the threadbare seat arm like a trusty horse. "Safe as church."
Oh swell, thought Selene. "May I ask you a question, Reverend?"
"Ask away."
"Do you ever have… doubts?"
"Doubts?"
"About God. Your profession. Your belief."
"Oh dot. Sometimes. Of course."
"What do you do?"
"Pray to Jesus for more faith," he replied, as the pontoons hit the water with a thump and a groan, and the little seaplane bounced like a skipping stone through the breakwater into the harbor of the Old Town.
The larger schooners and sloops were anchored just inside the mouth of the harbor. It occurred to Selene as she peered through the clouded Plexiglas that perhaps Whistler was actually in one of them. What had she been planning to do, she wondered—hire a dinghy and row from one to the other? Pardon me, mind if I check out your hold, Cap'n?
The Goose puttered purposefully through the labyrinth of rickety wooden docks, past the sailboats with their bare masts sticking up like a forest of phone poles—almost all of them seemed to be under repair to some degree or another—while Selene tried to deal with her sinking heart. It wasn't that she'd thought it would be easy—just that up until this point every step had suggested itself. Of course, they'd been awfully simple steps.
Maybe that's the answer, she told herself. Simple steps.
* * *
The Kings Frederick and Christian Arms, the hotel the Reverend Edger recommended, was a charming, thick-walled, three-story castellated structure built on the foundation of the old fort constructed by the Spanish to guard the harbor from the English, rebuilt by the English to guard the harbor from the Dutch, then rebuilt again by the Dutch to guard against the Danes, and so on. (Apparently, Selene mused, it was not such a great location for a fortress.)
Selene's room had French doors that opened out onto a balcony overlooking the rustic harbor. Out beyond the breakwater the sea was bright blue, with turquoise streaks over the reefs and shallows; the sun was lemon yellow, low in a powder blue sky. As she opened the doors and stepped out onto the balcony Selene heard men's voices—deep, musical, unintelligible—punctuated by bursts of laughter and the slapping of wood on wood. Chickens were scratching in the dusty street below; across the street was a bar that was little more than a sidewalk shack with a few tables under a sagging wooden portico; at one of the tables four Luzan men in bright polyester shirts were playing a furious game of dominoes.
The late afternoon shadows were long and blue, and the air smelled like a flower shop. Selene took a deep sniff and had to grab onto the wrought-iron railing for support as shapes began to swim before her eyes. Simple steps, she reminded herself. Unpack, shower, eat. I can handle that.
But she couldn't. Suddenly it all seemed to catch up to her at once: hauling her suitcase around the Denver airport, a crowded flight to Miami, a febrile, all but sleepless night in a cheap motel room near the airport. Her belladonna fever had broken around dawn, by which time the couple next door who'd been bed-surfing all night had finally gone to sleep, but by then toilets had begun flushing all around her, and showers running and pipes groaning and elephants waltzing in the room overhead.
She'd made it back to Miami International in plenty of time to board the connecting flight to St. Thomas, which then sat on the tarmac for an hour, causing her to miss the first Blue Goose of the day on the other end, which gave her just enough of a layover in St. Thomas to wear the raised numbers off her American Express card at the duty-free shops. Normally a wary shopper and casual dresser, she found herself temporarily manic from exhaustion, and ended up having to buy another suitcase just to haul her stylish new wardrobe down to the Goose.
Okay, forty winks, then shower, then eat—I can unpack after dinner. Selene closed the dark green wooden doors and shutters, but left the jalousies open just a slit, and threw herself down on the bed. She awoke disoriented an hour or so later and saw to her horror that her nude body was streaked with vivid red horizontal stripes.
She would have shrieked, but her throat was still too sore from the smoke she'd inhaled—which was lucky in a way, because when she sat up she saw that it was not just her body, but the entire room that was striped with glowing red bands.
Feeling a little foolish, she climbed off the bed and opened the French doors upon a short-lived Caribbean sunset. Short but glorious—a Turner sunset would have looked like a Hogarth etching in comparison. Across the street the domino game was still going on in the failing pink light.
Selene dined alone that first night under a fragrant yellow trumpet flower tree in the sparsely occupied courtyard of the hotel dining room. Moist, white-fleshed snapper in a golden pecan croustade—real snapper, not the ling cod they called snapper in California; the side dish was a round scoop of some glutinous yellow stuff identified as fungi on the menu. A creamy mound of shivering flan drizzled with amber caramel finished off the meal.
Back in her room the maid had turned down the bed and lowered the mosquito net around i
t. Selene opened the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. The chickens in the street below had been replaced by a pack of stiff-legged, feral-looking dogs; across the street three domino games were in full noisy swing under yellow bug lights, the players casting jerky shadows across the stucco wall of the bar.
She closed the doors behind her, undressed inside the mosquito net, changed into a ridiculously sexy nightgown she'd purchased in a fit of jet-lagged optimism on St. Thomas, climbed under the covers, and fell asleep listening to the men across the street swearing and laughing and slapping dominoes.
Selene awoke late the following morning feeling considerably refreshed. As for her next simple step, that problem seemed to have resolved itself overnight as well. There was really only one move that made sense, she realized as she climbed out of bed and headed for the shower. But underlying her new certainty and her sense of physical well-being was a different sensation: a feeling of unease that she couldn't quite place, but couldn't quite shake either.
It wasn't until she was going through her bureau picking out her clothes for the morning that she saw the goat-bladder bag in the back of the top drawer and identified the source of her unease. The runes. Of course, the runes. Her morning ritual. She'd thrown the bones every morning for over half her life. Selene started to close the drawer, then changed her mind. She was still feeling somewhat ambivalent about Wiccan ritual, but the runes were like old friends. Don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, she told herself as she pulled the bag out of the drawer, along with a sleeveless white cotton blouse and a pair of knee-length khaki safari shorts. Or the baby's bath toys.
She put the clothes on the bed, unwound the towel from around her wet hair, and sat down cross-legged and mother-naked on the floor. Without looking she selected three smooth tiles from the bag, laid them facedown on the beige carpet, shuffled them around like a three-card-monte dealer, then turned over the rune that had ended up on the left.
She wasn't expecting much—this was the quick-and-dirty method of casting—but the old bones surprised her once again. This first tile was supposed to represent her current situation: she found herself staring down at Raidho reversed. Raidho, the wagon. Travel. Journey of the body, journey of the soul. Obvious enough, if right side up. But Raidho reversed—that symbolized a journey that must be taken, no matter how inconvenient the time or perilous the way. Visit to a sick friend—that was a common interpretation.
So far, so good. The center rune would suggest a course of action. Selene turned it gingerly and saw her crooked old friend Nied—patience. Reversed, the skewed X would have meant think twice, turn back. But this morning it was straight up. Straight up meant straight on. Patience in the face of obstacles. Patience in the face of delay and despair. Patience while crossing the abyss.
The third tile was the outcome tile: what was supposed to happen if you applied the advice of the second tile to the situation in the first. She had a pretty good idea what it was before she turned it; after twenty-five years a witch knows her runes like a cardsharp knows a marked deck. The faintest mottle in the center of the tile told her to get ready tor iihwaz, the symbol tor Yggdrasil, the Great Yew of the world. But which way would it be facing? Right side up, Eihwaz promised protection no matter how fierce the storms. All mysteries would be revealed—even delays would further. But reversed? No shelter from that shit storm.
So what would be waiting for her up in the rain forest this morning? Protection or betrayal? Triumph or tragedy? The lady or the—
Oh, the hell with it. Selene closed her fist around the tile and dropped it back into the bag, grabbed her hairbrush, gave her mane a few whacks, then twisted it into a thick gray-black braid, donned her spiffy new white blouse and khaki shorts, and went downstairs for a cup of coffee. She asked the waiter where she might find a taxi.
"No need, ma'am. Just step outside, and de taxi find you."
At first Selene thought she'd misunderstood, for when she stepped out onto the raised wooden sidewalk there were no cars of any description to disturb the chickens that were scratching at the ocher dust in the road. But across the street at the bar three Luzan men were playing—what else?—dominoes in the shade of the portico. When Selene appeared, one of them, a seedy-looking fellow in a ratty aquamarine Miami Dolphins cap, poured himself a shot of rum, downed it at a gulp, pushed his chair back, and disappeared into the shack.
A few moments later an ancient yellow Checker cab came chuffing and clattering down the left side of the street, sending the chickens scattering. "Taxi, ma'am?" asked the man in the Dolphins cap.
"Yes, please." The doors were so high that Selene hardly had to stoop to climb in; the backseat of the cab was roomy enough for a modest orgy, with a cracked leather seat facing two fold-down jumpseats.
"Tour of de island dis fine mornin'?" the driver asked hopefully.
"Not this morning. Do you know how to find a place they call the Greathouse?"
"Greathouse? How me ain' know dot?" he said scornfully.
Selene heard it as one word—howmeeyainodot?—and took it for an affirmative, but when he made no effort to start the car, she wondered if she'd misunderstood. "Well that's where I need to go."
"Nobody ain' need a go deh, ma'am." He turned around to face her again, the smell of Luzan rum sweet on his breath. "Ain' no stone left standing, deh."
Selene thought about ordering him to drive her, then recalled something Whistler had told her once, about the reason Santa Luz had never seized its share of the tourist trade that supported the other U.S. Virgins. "The entire population of the island is passive-aggressive," he'd explained. "It's like a G-rated horror movie, unless of course one is a Drinker. Then they'll hop to smart enough."
But Selene was not a Drinker, the Caribbean term for a vampire of Whistler's persuasion, nor could she pretend to be one, given that she had emerged from the hotel into the bright sunlight. "So I understand," she said to the driver. "But I'm with the insurance company, and you know how they are—don't trust anybody—dot the i's and cross the t's."
The driver narrowed his eyes. "Dey pay expenses?"
"Naturally."
His face brightened. "Fine and dandy. Me ga take you up de dundo track for double de fare, an' twice double de receipt, what you tink?"
"Fine," agreed Selene.
"And dandy!" declared the driver, throwing the old heap into gear; they lurched off down the empty street, sending the chickens scattering again.
* * *
By the time the Checker turned off Mainline Road, the island's major artery, Selene was ready to start praying to the Goddess again. It wasn't just that the Luzans drove on the left side of the road, but that they did it in left-drive American cars. A few miles out of the Old Town, Selene's driver—Rutherford Macintosh, according to the license clipped to the sunvisor—found himself behind a wide-bodied panel truck. There was no way he could have checked for oncoming traffic, short of sliding over into the passenger's seat, but that didn't stop him. He pulled out blindly to the right, into the path of an oncoming Volkswagen. Selene screamed and closed her eyes.
When she opened them again the Checker was roaring down the right (wrong) side of the road, and the Beetle had pulled off onto the dusty verge. Its driver shook his fist at them, and Rutherford laughed as he pulled back into the left lane. "Ain' no bitty bug ga tangle wit me tank," he said, patting the dash proudly.
So Selene was glad enough when they turned off the two-lane blacktop onto a dusty lane that cut through a flat cane field toward the dark forested mountain ridge on the horizon. The lane was bordered by palm trees and telephone wires, the wires draped at intervals with dry clumps of old man's beard, a rootless air plant. After a mile or so they passed about a dozen wooden shacks with tin roofs raised on poles. The boundaries of the little village were marked with red-leaved plants; bedraggled chickens and scrofulous dogs shared the road, yielding it disdainfully at the last moment as Rutherford steered straight for them, honking maniacally.
"Eames Greathouse," announced the driver as the Checker rolled to a stop. "Previously." He jerked the hand brake, which made a ratcheting sound that was echoed in the depths of the forest by a cruelly deceived parrot. "See? Nothing. Let's go."
"I just need to look around for a minute," said Selene, climbing out of the driver's side door. "Wait here for me."
"Like fuck," muttered Rutherford.
Lack fuck, was how Selene heard it. "I beg your pardon?" She turned back and saw him releasing the hand brake.
An abrupt change of tone. "M'say, bad luck. Bad luck to wait here, ma'am."
"Please. Just give me ten minutes—I'll give you an extra ten dollars."
He appeared to be mulling it over. Finally he agreed, but insisted on being paid in advance. She gave him a twenty; he tucked it into the pocket of his short-sleeved white shirt and drove off. Stunned, Selene listened as the sound of the Checker's engine receded; she heard the gears grind around the bend, then the sound of the engine grew louder again. Thank Goddess, she thought. He was only turning around.
SHADOWS Page 9
