SHADOWS

by Jonathan Nasaw

  He paused with a silver serving spoon in midair. "How did you know I used to paint?"

  "Jamey told me."

  "In the course of your… business relationship? Odd that he'd mention that."

  "To tell you the truth, Jo, our relationship was both business and personal."

  "Then I was right? You are a… working gal?"

  "Was. Gave it up when my looks started to go."

  "Nonsense!" declared the old man.

  "You're too gallant," protested Selene. "I thank you anyway. Actually, I've been in management for a number of years. I own an establishment in San Francisco."

  "And you let Jamey run a tab?"

  "Alas."

  "More's the pity. But you do understand it's not my problem?"

  "I do, Jo. I do." They'd begun eating now—with cutlery, not chopsticks. "But we were talking about painting."

  "Ah yes, painting. Odd that you should ask. I'd given it up entirely—hadn't lifted a brush since my wife died back in sixty-four. But a few months ago, as I was recovering from a rather serious illness"—he raised his hand, palm out, against her protestation of concern—"quite well now, thank you. But it was the most peculiar thing: within moments of coming out of what the doctor had assured everyone would be a final, fatal coma, I called for paper and pencil and began drawing. Quite astonished Mrs. Wah, it did. Perhaps you'd like to come up to the atelier with me after dinner to inspect the results?"

  Was he flirting? Selene wasn't sure. She tried a joke—"Come up to your room and see your etchings, eh?"—and punched it up with a leer and a waggle of bushy eyebrows that had never known tweezers.

  Old Whistler had turned his attention to peeling the sticky paper from the bottom of a pork bun. "Not etchings; sketches." He corrected her in a slightly annoyed tone, then looked up and caught sight of her eyebrows. "Are you all right, Sarah?"

  "Fine, fine." She found herself blushing. "Just kidding around."

  "Ah, humor," he said, as if it were a quaint American custom.

  It took her a moment to realize that he too had been joking—at least this last time. Sly old fellow.

  Just then Mrs. Wah entered with a pot of green tea. They would be drinking from a common container, so Selene didn't have to worry about the tea being doctored; all she had to do was wait for Jonas to drink first. But there was another way to doctor a drink, as Stan Kovic had learned to his great discomfort so many years before. And yet a third method: put the poison in the pot, some sort of antidoting or neutralizing agent in your own cup, and give the clean cup to your victim.

  But upon inspection, both cups were dry and empty. "I'll be Mother," said Jo. Fortunately Selene had learned the phrase from Jamey; it meant he'd pour. Selene sniffed the delicately scented steam, keeping her eye on the old man. He sipped, swallowed; she followed suit. Then, with the taste of the bitter tea still in her mouth, she had a dreadful thought. What if the housekeeper had meant to poison both of them? What good would all her precautions be against that?

  She caught herself. It was a fine line between caution and paranoia. But once you start poisoning people, as Andred and Bensozia had warned Selene so many years before, you will never enjoy a meal to quite the same degree again.

  * * *

  After dinner the old man showed Selene up to the second-floor parlor, then excused himself for a few minutes—to take his medicine, he explained. She had a pretty good idea just which medicine he had in mind, and wondered whether she oughtn't simply take her leave before it took full effect. But she hadn't learned anything about Jamey yet. Jonas continued to insist he hadn't seen his son in thirty years. Selene decided to string him along a little further. Perhaps the blood would loosen his tongue as it made him hornier.

  "Feeling better, Jo?" she asked him when he returned, though it was obvious that he did.

  "Yes, much, thank you Sarah." He pulled a second wing chair closer to hers and sat down with their knees touching. "I was thinking, while I was upstairs, that perhaps it isn't entirely fair to let you take this entire loss. If I may ask, how much did Jamey owe you?"

  Selene didn't know much about prostitution, much less what would be a reasonable tab for a madam to have allowed Jamey to run up. It would have to be enough to make a trip to England worthwhile. "Ten thousand dollars," she replied after a moment's hesitation.

  "Tell you what I'll do," said Jonas, patting her on the knee with those long-fingered hands that reminded her so of Jamey's. "I'll give you half."

  "That's very generous of you, Jo." She put her hand over his. "I accept."

  "He is my son, after all." Somehow the old man smiled without changing expression, placed his free hand over hers, and pressed it warmly. "And if I may say so, for all his faults, Jamey always did have excellent taste when it came to women."

  So he was flirting. "Why thank you, Jonas."

  "Which brings me to my next question…" His bottom hand slid a little higher up her thigh, and he leaned forward to stare into her eyes. His own eyes were a washed-out shade of pink. "Would you like to stay the night?"

  Well, perhaps flirting wasn't exactly the word. Time to start stalling. Selene squeezed the hand squeezing her thigh, before lifting it away. "Weren't you expecting someone?"

  He was puzzled for a moment. "Oh! You mean the hook—the woman I mistook you for. I called to cancel that visit before we sat down to supper."

  Selene stalled some more. "I'm afraid I'm well past the age where I can still pack all my overnight things in my purse."

  "Not a problem. We can send for your things."

  "I… I don't…" She screwed her features into a thinking-it-over face for a few seconds, then clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "I don't think so." In as reluctant a tone as she could manage without leaving him an opening.

  He saw one anyway. "Just for a few hours, then. I'll make it worth your while."

  Selene was almost offended; then she remembered she was supposed to be a madam—and a former hooker as well. "I'm sorry, Jo. I'm afraid I'm quite retired from that end of the business."

  "Not even for the other five grand?"

  "It's tempting." Another thinking-it-over face. "Tell you what I'll do. Let me go back to my hotel tonight—I am quite exhausted—and then tomorrow night, if your offer still holds, perhaps I'll take you up on it—be able to give you your money's worth by then."

  He gave her thigh another squeeze; his hand reached most of the way around it. "I'll have Mrs. Wah call a taxi for you, then." He inclined his head a few degrees—a delicate, understated nod that brought Jamey sharply to mind. But she felt a sudden chill come over her when he added that perhaps while they were waiting for the cab would be a good time to show her his recent sketches.

  Impossible to refuse, though. She followed him up another two flights of stairs, the last quite narrow, with a ceiling so low he had to hunch his shoulders. The atelier proved to be a thoroughly charming, if dusty, room with dormer windows cut into either side of a high peaked ceiling. To the south she could make out the Chelsea embankment and the wide black ribbon of the Thames; to the north the sky glowed mistily above what might have been Victoria Station. He indicated a sketch pad that was propped up closed on a dusty drafting table. She picked it up, blew away the dust, and began flipping through the sheets.

  The drawing on the first few was shaky; she could well believe they'd been done by a man coming out of a coma. But after a few pages the hand grew firmer, the line more fluid, the figure on the page more fully realized, until by the fifth or sixth page the slim reclining nude had taken on a life of her own, her arm raised languidly, her fingers curled in an invitation that would have been unmistakably sexual even had the figure been fully clad. All in all it was an astonishingly skillful effect to have achieved with a quick pencil sketch; Selene found it hard to believe it had been executed by the failed—and talentless—artist Jamey had always made his father out to be.

  Moreover, this madman with whom Selene had made no discernible telepathi
c connection whatsoever, had spoken to her clearly through his art. "This was your wife," she said, without a hint of a question in her voice.

  "It was," he said simply.

  "She was very beautiful."

  "She was." He had turned his head away as if he was unable to bear the likeness.

  "You must miss her very much."

  His head jerked up, and he stared at her intently for a moment, as if she'd said something astonishing; then he shook his head as if to clear it. "How odd," he murmured. "That's exactly what Jamey said when he saw it."

  "I thought you said you hadn't seen him for thirty years," said Selene, much too sharply. Her words hung in the air, obtrusive as a cartoon balloon. Their eyes met. It was one of those she-knew-that-he-knew-that-she-knew moments, and what they both knew was that they had each come within a whisker of having successfully duped the other, and had both failed.

  She allowed herself one shot at denial. "I must have misunderstood. My cab's probably here by now, don't you think?"

  He shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "That was clumsy of me." He took the sketch pad from her hand, and closed it carefully. "It's the damn blood—clouds my judgment." Then he reached for her purse. "If I might just have a look in there, Sarah? Just to be sure you are whom you claim to be?"

  "Why Jo, what—"

  He cut her off, snatched the purse out of her hand with a speed that belied his age, then with his back blocking the door he removed her wallet and flipped it open to her California driver's license. "Selene Weiss," he murmured, as much to himself as to her. "The striga. I'll have to give my employee Aldo a call. He'll be quite surprised to learn you're here. In fact, he'll be quite surprised to learn you're anywhere. He informed me just the other evening that he'd smothered you in your bed and burned your house around you. Good thing I haven't paid him off yet."

  CHAPTER 7

  « ^ »

  "I'll have you know that up until quite recently, I'd lived a largely exemplary life," remarked the old man, glancing around the atelier for a length of twine or cord with which to bind Selene's wrists. Finding none, he nodded toward the daybed. "Sit down."

  She stood there for a moment, arms folded across her chest, too angry to think clearly. She realized she was glaring at him, dropped her eyes, and turned toward the daybed. He reached for the stool by the drafting table and started to slide it across the room, obviously intending to position himself in front of the door. Seeing that he was off balance, she tried to dart around him; he snaked out his other arm and grabbed her by the sleeve of her blouse. As she tried to pull away she felt the shoulder seam beginning to tear, and the first glimmer of a plan began to form in her mind. She threw herself back violently; the sleeve tore away and her momentum sent her flying across the room.

  Selene fetched up sprawled against the daybed, breathing hard. "Damn you to hell," she muttered, sitting up. "That was a two-hundred-dollar blouse."

  In an instant he was standing over her. "Don't try that again," he said sharply. "Next time it'll be your arm." He tossed the sleeve into her lap. "And as for damning me to hell," he continued in a more reasonable tone, turning his back on her and rolling the stool toward the door again, "even if it weren't a ludicrous notion, coming from a witch, your old friend Jamey has already seen to that."

  "What do you mean?" asked Selene.

  "I mean that last year I was diagnosed with an incurable form of leukemia." Jonas Whistler settled onto the stool, his back planted firmly against the door. "And if it hadn't been for my son's meddling, my body would be lying beside Alice by now, and my soul would be with my Maker. Instead I've become a monster like him. If I had any character, any character at all, I'd have done away with myself months ago. I still intend to—but not until I've sent Jamey to hell first."

  * * *

  Jonas had wished to die at home, he told Selene, and was more than wealthy enough to see his wishes carried through. But soon after he'd slipped into what the doctors presumed would be his final coma, one of his nurses had taken it upon herself to notify his next of kin. Jamey, of course. A week later he was at his father's side, a little of the Whistler fortune having greased the wheels of British immigration, or perhaps purged a few incriminating records. The next night the old man woke up calling for his sketch pad, feeling better than he had in years. The doctors proclaimed a miracle—they wanted to write him up for the medical journals—but Jamey, whose presence Jonas seemed to have taken for granted, would have none of it. He threw them out, gave Mrs. Wah the night off, and father and son spent the evening catching each other up on their lives, making up for lost time.

  The reconciliation was going well—better than Jamey had dared to hope for—at least until he told his father the truth about the miraculous recovery: that shortly after arriving, Jamey had stolen a blood sample off a nurse's tray and drank it down. This was the only reliable method by which one Drinker could recognize another: a vampire couldn't get high drinking another vampire's blood. And when his father's blood failed to give Jamey so much as a buzz, it confirmed something he'd suspected ever since the old man had overreacted so dramatically to Jamey's arrest for stealing blood from one of the servants so many years ago: that the father, like the son, was a natural born blood drinker.

  "Had you known before?" Selene asked, casually beginning to unbutton her blouse. "About yourself?"

  "Yes, I—What are you doing?"

  "I'm going to baste my sleeve back on, if you have no objections," she replied. "Toss me my purse there, will you?"

  The purse had fallen by the door. Jonas picked it up and started to hand it to her, but when she reached for it he pulled it back—"Tch-tch-tch, not so fast"—dumped the contents on the floor, and began searching through them.

  Selene shrugged as if it were no big deal. "All I want's that little sewing packet there. The one that says 'For Our Guests.' " She nodded toward it, with her fingers poised on the third button of the blouse—this one would show, if not cleavage, at least the lacy top of her bra, and considering what she knew about blood drinkers' sex drive, she wasn't just flattering herself by imagining that the prospect might sway him.

  And it did—he scooted his stool a little closer and handed her the packet. She dropped it into her lap, and continued with her unbuttoning. "You were saying?"

  "Where was I?" He brought his eyes back to her face, but they kept returning to her torso as she began taking her blouse off.

  "About to tell me whether you'd known about your… tendency before Jamey."

  "I did. It's a story I've never told anyone."

  "I'd like to hear it," she said, sticking out her chest as far as she could without being obvious about it; a girl had to do the best she could with what she had. But it was enough, apparently; his attention seemed sufficiently diverted for her to risk picking up the sewing packet.

  "Not a chance."

  Selene's heart was beating so hard that she could hardly hear him over the pounding in her ears as she felt around in the packet for the weed woman's paper of pins. Five of them, each smaller than the next, and of a lower potency. The largest for the largest man, the smallest for the smallest woman—but even that one would kill a child, Granny had warned her. "Beg pardon?"

  "I said, not a chance. I'd have to be a good deal higher than I am at the moment to blab that story."

  Selene shrugged, and his eyes dropped to her chest again. "That can be arranged," she said, turning her wrist up and showing him the tiny scars from years of serving as Whistler's donor.

  He narrowed his eyes. "Why are you suddenly so cooperative?"

  "I figure as long as you're talking—or drinking…" She hesitated, not wanting to go too far—then went there anyway. "… or getting what your son used to call the world's best blow job, then you're not killing me, which is what I presume you have in mind eventually."

  She bent forward, subtly pressing her elbows against her sides, thereby manufacturing enough cleavage to distract his eyes again as she selected the two
largest pins from the paper—however much weight he might have lost recently, he was still an awfully tall man. She would try the second-largest first, she decided, but promised herself that if the first dose didn't drop him like a stone she wouldn't hesitate to use the second. The combination of the two would kill him for sure—hell, it would probably kill a horse—but if the alternative was being murdered herself, well…

  And as she slipped the pin between the ring and middle fingers of her left hand, the point peeking out just below the first knuckle, Selene's mind dredged up a stray line of Browning: "Life's business being just the terrible choice."

  She glanced up to see if any of her propositions had caught his interest. If he wanted blood or sex he'd have to come within reach of her pin—but to her surprise, he seemed to want to talk. "World's best, eh? Well, you know what the Bible says: 'All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.' "

  Selene didn't recognize it. "Old Testament?"

  A nod. 'Isaiah, sixty-four six. "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.' I committed it to memory on the day Alice passed.

  "Not for her," he added hastily. "For myself. I was as responsible for her death as if I'd put a bullet in her head."

  Selene was mystified. Jamey had never hinted that his mother's death had been anything but a heart attack. "I'm so sorry," she said, placing the larger pin in her mouth, fitting the sleeve against the torn shoulder of the blouse.

  He didn't seem to notice that she hadn't started sewing yet. His gaze had turned inward, backward in time. "We met in Manhattan. I was just back from the Eritrean campaign—and looking rather dashing in my lieutenant's uniform, Alice later confided."

  "I'm sure you were," said Selene.

  "I was supposed to be joining some friends for drinks at the Hotel Pennsylvania. In nineteen forty-four it was one of the places to meet in New York. When I arrived to meet my friends I saw, hiding behind an enormous rubber tree plant, a little bitty slip of a brunette in a shiny green dress. I could tell she was hiding because she kept circling the plant to keep it between her and someone else. Of course I sidled over to her to see if I could be of some assistance, and learned that she'd arrived somewhat early for a dinner engagement and spied her lover, an officer, but obviously no gentleman, having a drink and a bit of a cuddle with a WAC with whom he was obviously on intimate terms. She asked me to give her my arm and walk her back through the lobby; she marched past the bastard with her chin up, making damn sure he saw her, but not giving him so much as the benefit of a glance.