by Gwen Hunter
“I saw it. I saw your wall, inside and out.” A grin covered her face, and her eyes sparkled. My handprint was a sharp red outline on her pale flesh. “I can do this!”
“You will not do this. You stopped breathing.”
“Yeah, okay, I forgot it was a vision. You can’t breathe inside stone, so I stopped. I won’t do that again. Promise. But I can do it—I can make a wall and enter the stone.”
“No!”
“I’ll breathe this time. I promise.”
“No.” I closed my eyes, feeling the fear rush over me in a wave of pure terror. I could have killed my niece. Of course she couldn’t breathe inside the stone. That’s obvious. I should have considered that part of the image and warned her, prepared her for the strength and texture of the mental picture. But it hadn’t occurred to me. What else might I screw up on if I tried to teach her?
“Aunt Tyler. Really. I can hold the breathing and the wall. I can do this. I was just surprised how solid it was. It’s hard to breathe stone.”
I opened my eyes, surprised. “Breathe stone?”
She shrugged. “That’s what you do. You breathe stone. You aren’t afraid of the dark or of stone. It doesn’t suffocate you. You just breathe it and it fills you up and makes you hard as stone.”
Was that what I did?
“So we’ll try it again. Okay? Only this time you won’t hit me.”
I looked into her eyes, eyes so much like my brother’s, deep and warm and full of life. I knew what she would suffer if she went back to school without a wall. I knew how long Davie had been gone when he came into his gift. Months. It had taken him months to learn to master his gift enough to reenter the normal world. Jane didn’t have months. And Aunt Matilda hadn’t called me back.
“If you stop breathing again, I’ll beat you with a switch. With a hairbrush. With a belt. I’ll slap you silly.”
“No, you won’t,” Jane laughed, her eyes glittering with excitement. She looked down at the candle and frowned.
My gaze followed hers. The flame was out. Gone. No scent of smoke was on the air. “Oh, crap,” I said. I knew I hadn’t touched the flame. I knew Jane hadn’t. That meant one of us had snuffed the flame some other way. “Chatoyant coprolite!” I swore.
“Shiny poop?” she asked.
I managed a wry smile. “Sorta.”
“Cool. Did I blow out the candle?”
“Sorta.” I shielded my reaction to that fact from her.
“Double cool. So, can we try again?”
My headache was worse even after taking medication. I massaged my temples, knowing she was going to try again alone if I didn’t try with her. It was the nature of adolescents. Hey, guys, watch this…. Look, Ma! No hands! I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. “Sure. Let’s try. But this is the last time tonight. No matter what, we stop as soon as I say so, and you promise not to try alone.” Jane looked mutinous. “I can read you. Promise.”
“Okay. One more try.”
“And?”
“And I won’t try it alone.”
I relit the candle and settled my mind, pushing the headache away. We breathed together, slowly, found a centered place and I showed her my wall. Inside was the dark, the dark of safety. The dark of complete control. And this time Jane followed me as I found the polished onyx stone and melted within it. Like me, she kept on breathing, steady and slow, no hitches, no stutters, no panic for Aunt Tyler.
“Good. Great. You held the wall. You are perfectly safe in the darkness of the stone. Now, we’re going to slide out of it. Slow and easy. Find the light. Envision the candle and the light and the room. See it?”
“Yeah. Cool.” I could hear the smile in her voice.
Brat? Jane?
I recoiled at the intrusion.
Pain. Fear and terrible pain. My hands! Cold and blood.
Jane screamed, and the image shattered like brittle obsidian.
I opened my eyes. The pain faded. Davie. That was Davie.
“Daddy! They cut my daddy!”
I took two Tylenol and gave a children’s dose to Jane, who now shared my headache and was in state of numbed panic for her father. There was no way to shield her from the image. The St. Claire gift was once again more curse than blessing.
But at least the shock of Davie’s scan had paralyzed Jane’s gift. She was head-blind for the moment, a benefit after the hard day. When the phone rang and Jubal and Isaac said they could bring dinner over, I agreed and opened the door to our rooftop garden, letting in the men, the smell of fresh-baked bread and the aroma of stew. Jubal carried a bottle of wine under his arm and the loaf in a basket. Isaac carried a tray with a stainless-steel pot of stew and an armload of linen. Behind them was Evan Bartlock, with a half gallon of ice cream and a jar of fudge. Last to enter, holding a satchel and a large box, was Quinn.
The food-bearing males went to the kitchen, but the bodyguard went directly to Jane, who was sitting on the couch covered by an afghan. He set the luggage aside and placed the cardboard box on the floor. I watched as he opened the box and lifted out a bundle of fur. Jane’s face softened from misery and terror to fragile happiness in a heartbeat.
“Dyno. Kitty.” She pulled the sweet-tempered cat onto her lap and up beneath her chin for a hug that melted my heart. “Look, Aunt Tyler. Quinn brought my kitty.” She held the small cat up close and breathed in the kitty-fur smell, her face relaxing by degrees. The cat swiveled her head, licked Jane across the nose and started to purr. When Quinn glanced to see my reaction, I could only smile. It was the perfect cure for Jane.
While I stood and did nothing except watch my niece, the other men covered the scarred table surface with the starched linen cloth and napkins that were draped over Isaac’s arm. They knew better than to think I’d have anything so elegant as the old damask. They set my antique kitchen table with my heavy stoneware and plain-but-serviceable stainless cutlery and my best crystal.
We gathered around the table, pulling wooden folding chairs from the chair rack along the wall and sitting with the noisy scuffling of a family. Which was weird. Living with Dumont Lowe, I had never known the simple joy of being together for comfort and food. I didn’t remember the noise made by so many people in one place.
I found myself at the head of the table, Jane and Dyno to my right, Jubal to my left, and the others scattered about. Too busy to stay and visit, Quinn excused himself and clattered down the stairs into the night.
Like the family I had compared us to, we shared the meal. We talked about nothing evil, nothing weird, nothing St. Claire nutty. We laughed, told stories about our first meetings, about our youth, about interesting situations in our lives. I told tales about David as a young boy, being chased by too many girls. Jubal told the story of the first time he sparred with Isaac in tae kwon do, Jubal thinking he had learned so much and wanting to show off. He carefully edited out the bloody parts in deference to the diners. Isaac told about a dinner of sushi consumed on a trip to South Korea, deliberately making Jane groan with tales of raw tuna and squid and other equally gross food options.
Evan watched us all as we ate, his eyes falling on me several times and lingering there. Though he was silent most of the meal, over dessert he said, “I’ve a got a story for you.”
“Go,” Jane said, licking a glob of fudge off her spoon. None of us told her she had chocolate on her nose. It was too cute.
“My first meeting with Aunt Matilda when I was about nine,” Evan said. “First meeting, not counting her visit right after I was born. That one I don’t remember, of course.”
“Cool. Did she read your mind?” Jane asked around a mouthful of fudge.
“No. It was spring vacation. We were living in Manhattan at the time, and made a detour to la-la land on the way to Florida. I remember it was cold in New York, some kind of freak cold spell. We had driven all night and most of the day, and when we finally stopped and got out, the heat was like a steam bath. It just soaked right into my wool clothes.”
&nbs
p; “La-la land?” There was fudge on her chin now, and Jubal was trying hard not to laugh. Face bland, Isaac just upended the jar of heated fudge over her bowl, filling it.
“That’s what my father called Aunt Matilda’s house.” He looked guiltily at me. As I happened to agree with his judgment, I said nothing. “Flowers were blooming like I had never seen before. When Central Park is your idea of nature and wildlife, it’s a shock the first time you see a Low Country garden. There was lilac and bougainvillea growing out of control, roses already open, mosquitoes were swarming. Bees were everywhere from Uncle Will’s bee boxes. I remember the bees. And this mockingbird.” His eyes lit up.
“I remember that bird!” I said, sitting up straight. “Standing on the eave of the house? Calling over and over?”
“Never shut up,” Evan laughed. “Drove me nuts. We spent the night and that da-a-ang,” he amended the word on the fly, “bird sang the entire time I was there. Woke me up at like four in the morning. Must have been sitting on the windowsill outside my room.”
I sat up even straighter. “Me, too. The guest room on the left of the front door? It had an old down mattress on the bed, homemade blue quilt with a blue heron in the center?”
Evan looked at me strangely. “Yeah. Bed was dark wood with a curved headboard and footboard.”
“A sleigh bed.”
“Yeah.”
“Aunt Matilda told me she never let kids stay in that room—”
“But she made an exception because of the mockingbird,” he finished, his eyes on mine. Jane looked back and forth between us, far too interested in our expressions, her chocolate-covered spoon in the air, forgotten.
“The mockingbird was an omen,” I said, feeling as if the words were dragged out of me.
“So she said. Maybe it was something she said to all the kids who came to visit?” he asked.
Reluctant to speak, the pause was too long before I continued. “She never let Davie stay in that room. He had to use the kid’s room down the hall. The one with the bunk beds and the old toys.”
“Well, well, well,” Isaac drawled, his Texan accent stronger than I’d ever heard it. “Ain’t this cozy. Kissin’ cousins and all.”
“Coincidence,” I said.
“Kissing?” Jane asked. “Are you two gonna jump bones?”
Jubal spluttered. Isaac laughed, enjoying the interrupted story far too much. Evan turned red again. I looked at Jane, hoping my complexion would stay pale, but feeling the red blotches break out all over my neck. “Kissing cousins is an expression, nothing more. And we talked about that phrase.”
Jane shrugged in a whatever gesture, her eyes gleaming. “Sorry,” she said, but I could tell she wasn’t.
“Want more ice cream to go with the fudge?” I asked, letting the story stay interrupted.
Jane looked down at her bowl, the fudge swirled with vanilla. “Nope. I’m fine.”
“Coffee anyone?” I stood and crossed to the cabinet holding Stan’s coffeemaker. It hadn’t been used since he left me, but now seemed like a good time. Keeping my back to the room, I busied myself pouring ground beans and water. Isaac took pity on me and started a story about a trip to Montana and wild mustangs, which kept Jane enthralled. I could feel Jubal’s eyes on my back and Evan’s discomfort as I worked. Studiously I ignored both of them and the moment passed, their interest claimed by the mustangs, but Jane’s question stuck in my mind. Are you two gonna jump bones? Spit and decay…
Eventually, even that annoyance waned, my embarrassment unable to keep up with the fast-flowing conversation, and I rejoined the group, passing out cups of coffee. When dinner was over, Jane and I were restored. Long before eight o’clock, I tucked my niece into my bed, Dyno sharing her pillow, and both girl and cat were instantly asleep.
Jubal and Isaac left, loaded down with dirty linens and empty pots, crossing the snow-covered roof to their place and grousing about who was going to shovel the garden this time. When I closed the door, it was to find myself alone with Evan Bartlock.
An almost preternatural clarity of vision welled up in me, an awareness that sliced beneath the skin into unconscious thoughts and emotions, into the soul of the man before me. He almost glowed with a richness of light. And then he spoiled it.
“You’re going all St. Claire nutty on me, aren’t you?”
I blinked away my vision of him and went to the pile of clean dishes by the sink. “No,” I said. For a moment there was only the clink of dishes as I dried and stacked them. Then Bartlock was standing at my side, a cloth in his hands. He dried a bowl, then a plate, and stacked them neatly with mine.
“Sorry.”
I nodded, drying a handful of cutlery. Minutes went by. Finally he said, “So, what do you see when you go all wacky on me?”
Laughter burbled out of me. I couldn’t help it. Grinning, I looked up at him, then down at his hands, drying a plate, and decided on humor and honesty. “You’ll make a good wife someday for some woman. You look good in a kitchen, drying dishes. You look good in jeans. You have nice hands and a nice butt.”
“Thanks, but that wasn’t exactly what I was asking.”
I sobered. “You’re a good man, trying to do a good thing,” I said, as I let the St. Claire part of me take over. “You carry the darkness of guilt on your soul. A black place just here.” I touched the center of his chest, below his heart. My damp fingers made a wet mark on his white sweatshirt. His skin was warm through the cloth. I kept my fingers in place, between the hollow of his ribs and closed my eyes, opening myself to him fully.
“You loved a woman recently. She had red-blond hair, like mine, and a temper like mine. But when you got in trouble, she stepped back, away from you. She hasn’t called, and that hurt at first.” Warmth rose up toward me from Evan. The warmth of the skin, of the blood, of the heat between a man and a woman. “But she’s starting to fade for you now, in the cold of the mountains. And you find yourself wanting to kiss me. To reach beneath my shirt and touch me.”
Bartlock stepped back, away from my hand. I opened my eyes and met the cool ice of his gaze, a look that was banked fires, like a smoldering mountain beneath a cap of snow. He wanted me to stop.
I let the gift settle over me like a heavy shroud, I heard the deadened tone of my voice. The coolness of the earth filled me, the emptiness of stone without a wall to protect it.
“Her name was Snub.” Bartlock jerked. I’d scored on something that was private, between the two of them. The gift took me deeper. “Because of her nose. And you had been sleeping together for months before the shooting. You haven’t heard from her even once, since.
“She could have come forward for you at the initial hearing, and she didn’t. And you’re a proud man, too proud to call her and hear the sound in her voice that will tell you, surely and finally, that it’s over between you.
“And if you kiss me, you’re afraid that I’ll know too much about you, even more than I learned just now.” I closed my eyes, letting the gift fall away. I remembered to breathe, feeling the freshness of a single deep inhalation. Tears prickled my lids. Pain chiseled at my brain, a physical pain both like, and unlike the pain in Evan’s soul.
“I learned that you’re a good man. One of the best I’ve ever known. Honest, fiercely intelligent. And you have a gift of the St. Claires. You use it every day, half afraid of it but depending on it. You know it’s necessary to help you bring in the bad guys. I can tell you that you don’t have to be afraid of it, though. Your gift isn’t dominant. It’s recessive. It’ll never take over and make you nutty-weird like Aunt Matilda.” A single tear crawled down my cheek, a slow salt burn on winter-chapped skin.
“Your children will have the gift, if their mother is a St. Claire. Because of the omen of the mockingbird, you’re afraid that Aunt Matilda sent you here to find me. To make something happen between us that wouldn’t have happened on its own. And you’re scared to death of me because of that.”
Suddenly his mouth was on mine. Warm, sea
rching, with a defiance not against me or the St. Claire gift he feared, but against himself. Against his own fear. I smiled into his mouth and his tongue touched my lips. Heat roared up between us.
He slammed me against the cabinet, hands cupping my bottom, and lifted me to the counter. I heard a sound from myself, a moan that wasn’t soft at all, only far away. Needing. My legs opened, wrapped around him. His heat enveloped me, filled me.
Hands slipped into my hair, dislodging the braid that secured it. His body was hard, pushing against me, mouth plundering as if he would know my every secret.
The phone rang. A single ring, from his coat thrown over the couch. He laughed into my mouth, teeth bumping mine. I opened my eyes. “I intend to come back to this,” he said, his lips moving over mine as he spoke. “Soon.”
“Okay by me.”
“If that mockingbird knew something about what I might feel if I ever got near you, then that’s one mighty smart bird.”
I laughed low.
“And she didn’t have hair like yours, gold and copper, like something Jubal would make in a forge. No one does.”
I was obscurely pleased, a joy welling up in me like tears.
He moved away to find his phone. I sat on the counter, feeling tousled and warm and thoroughly kissed. I was in trouble. Big trouble. I wanted a St. Claire man. One Aunt Matilda had sent my way.
Evan rummaged through his coat and answered his phone. “Bartlock.” A moment later he began asking terse questions, followed by short pauses. “When? How bad?” His face grew hard, thoughtful. “You believe him? What? Hmm. Yeah, I agree. Thanks. I appreciate the call.”
He flipped the little phone closed, his eyes on me across the room. “You look good sitting there.” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Quinn was accosted in a parking lot. It was recently shoveled, so we got no footprints, no evidence. Quinn’s got a bloodied lip and some bruises. He was loading groceries, out of sight of any security cameras. Claims he pulled his gun and fired four shots. OS say they recovered four casings. No sign of blood.”
“OS?”
