“But how do you think the daughter felt about all this? You know how a kid wants to be like the other kids? Huh, some chance. Nobody else’s mother sat down to tea with semi-transparent people or talking houseplants.
"Do you know what the daughter was most afraid of? That the witch, who was her mother after all, would take off for good with her magical friends, leaving behind a fake mother made out of bread.”
Poor Mom. She actually shuddered.
I patted her hand. “Did you ever tell Gran how you felt?” I said timidly.
“Who?” she said, blinking at me. “Tell who what?”
“I mean, did the witch’s daughter ever tell the witch how she felt about all that scary magical stuff?”
Mom shook her head. “Oh, no, she kept her nightmares to herself. But the witch should have known. I mean, what did she think? She was the mother and she was a witch! Her alma mater wasn’t Smith or Brown, it was this Sorcery Hall, where she was studying to become an even witchier witch!” She punched her pillow weakly. “And witches get burned!”
I said, “Not Gran. Gran can take care of herself.”
“She was just lucky,” Mom murmured, subsiding again. Her eyes closed. I suspected that only her memories of outrage were keeping her awake.
“ ’S not smart to push your luck, even if you’ve got magic powers. Anything could have happened. She could have died fooling around with magic. She could have . . . vanished. Been carried off somehow, somewhere. Could have . . .”
“But she didn’t,” I reminded her, thinking of the chance Gran had just taken with the drugged milk. “She wasn’t. She won’t be.”
Mom didn’t even hear me. “I didn’t want that kind of problem—the daughter didn’t, I mean—for her children. She wanted her own daughter to have the luxury of growing up just like the other kids, leading a normal life. What’s wrong with a normal life, anyway? Lots of people have them and like them fine. Any woman just wants a normal life. Even a witch’s daughter. ’Specially a witch’s daughter. For herself and her own kid.”
“Well, you should ask first,” I said. “Not every kid is completely sold on ‘normal.’ ”
“You would be,” Mom sighed, “if you’d had the other kind. But you were protected. I protected you, didn’t I? Like a good mom. Tried to.”
“Yes,” I said. “You sure did. Is that the rest of the story?”
“Not the half of it,” Mom mumbled. “Witches don’t stay married, did you know that? I know it, from experience. That witch didn’t keep her husband. The witch’s daughter made a bad marriage, too. I mean, a good marriage that fell apart. The man wants to be the powerful one, you know? At least he wants to think he is.
“But it’s better if he really is; if you don’t have to pretend . . .”
She smiled, and my scalp crept. I knew she was thinking of Brightner.
I didn’t know what to say. I mean, maybe this was the moment, the point at which the right words, the right question or comment, could zip right in there and yank my mom back into the real world.
Only I couldn’t think of that question or that comment.
“Mom.” I floundered. “Mom. Dad didn’t take off because of the magic in the family. I don’t believe that! And this guy, this other person who’s really more powerful” —I almost choked on that part— “he’s not the way to go. He’s a bad person, Mom. Honestly.”
“So the prince came and woke the witch’s daughter with a kiss that made her just like all the other girls,” Mom said dreamily, “her and her own daughter too, because he was a generous, powerful prince. Nothing witchy about them at all any more. And they all lived happily—”
“They didn’t,” I said loudly, right in her face. “They can’t! Mom! Don’t let him take you away with him, don’t!”
“—ever . . . after . . .” Mom tucked her face against her arm to stifle a huge yawn. “There, you’ve had your story,” she mumbled. “Go sleep. Sleep. ’S late.”
“I know it’s late,” I said.
I tickled her hair, which is just this very soft sort of hair-massage from when I was very small and didn’t know that hair doesn’t feel anything. She used to ask me to do that sometimes, when she was wired from work, to help soothe her for sleep.
“Is she sleeping?” came the small, scratchy voice of Gran-the-cat.
I jumped a foot. The cat was in the doorway, leaning against the side of it and looking at me with its eyes crossed.
“Yes, I think so,” I whispered. How long had Gran been there? Had she heard all that?
“Silly lass,” sighed Gran-the-cat, and I thought I heard a break in the voice. She sank down into a sort of oblong puddle of scraggy fur, unsteadily tucking her front paws in under her chest. “I do wish she’d told me. I wish she’d . . . wish I’d . . . wish . . .”
On this last plaintive word, the cat’s head dropped forward and hit the floor, nose first, with a soft thunk.
She stayed just like that, sleeping hard. I could hear from across the room her faint, whistling snores. She looked so helpless and small.
I went and got the handkerchief from my dresser drawer—the handkerchief that had been a flying carpet—and I rolled it up and tied it loosely around the neck of the sleeping cat, wedging the fat part of the rolled cloth so that it made a sort of pillow under the cat’s jaw. Even if she slept on the floor, at least she could be comfortable.
Then there was nothing more to do—until the time came to head downtown to Kali’s Kitchen, and that was still hours away.
There I was wide awake and jittering with nerves because of what still lay ahead for me to do, while everybody else snoozed around me. If I messed up, they might never wake again.
I got the mirror Barb had given me and studied myself in it. Funny, you wouldn’t guess from looking in there that the blond kid with the tired eyes was all whimpery inside from having too much responsibility on her shoulders. The kid in the glass looked determined.
I put the mirror in my shirt pocket. It would come with me tonight to Kali’s Kitchen, just as Barb had said.
For luck.
15
Kali’s Prize
A TRIO OF DINERS CAME WANDERING out of Kali’s Kitchen, yawning and burping and poking around for the armholes of their coats. Carrying the lumpy laundry bag as carefully as I could, I ducked past them to enter the restaurant once more. It was well after midnight, edging up on closing time.
Inside, the warm air and red-gold dimness folded around me, and my nose began to itch. This was the least of my worries, however. Ushah, draped now in a sari of pale blue shot with silver that gleamed as she moved, came rustling out swiftly from behind the register and stood staring at me with smoldering eyes.
In the bag, the doped cat stirred in its sleep so that the bag rotated gently against my leg. If Ushah should notice—
Well, if she noticed, she noticed. I was past fear, or that’s the way it felt, anyway. While Ushah looked me over, I took advantage of the pause to note that there were two people still at dinner over by the wall, right under the dancing figure of Kali. Kali’s third eye was closed. I found this slightly comforting.
Ushah said softly at last, “My husband said you might come.”
“I’m here,” I said.
“With your armor on,” she sneered, eyeing the silver glove on my left hand.
“He didn’t say not to wear it,” I said cautiously.
“And you bring a package, I see,” she added, with a nasty smile. “Why? There is nothing you will be needing.”
“He wanted me to bring him some things,” I said.
“What things?” She stared at the bag.
“Belongings of my grandmother,” I said. “You want to look?”
The two diners were watching us curiously. Ushah, noticing, shrugged my question away. “This is business of his, not of mine. But where is your grandmother? She was to come also. If you have not brought her, these little offerings will not buy you pardon.”
“I
’ve talked with my Gran,” I said as meekly as I could manage, which was probably not very. “She’ll be along a little later.”
Ushah smiled again, flashing her mean little pointy teeth at me. “Not too much later, let us hope,” she sneered. “My husband is to arrive soon. Meanwhile, you must wait. Take that table there, by the kitchen.”
The way she said this, with a contemptuous wave of her hand, made it a deliberate insult. I didn’t say a word. I sat down, setting the bag down gently on the floor under the table.
Ushah walked back quickly toward the kitchen, pausing to make some charming comment or other to the two people at the back table and to whisper in passing to the one waiter I saw in the place. He nodded and brought me a glass of water on a tray.
Then he went up front and turned the sign in the window to read, Closed. So soon, so suddenly? It couldn’t be closing time, with patrons still in the place! Was Brightner due to walk in at any second?
My table was right next to the little service counter, and under the counter was a big plastic tub of dirty dishes. If there were still dishes to be done, they weren’t ready to actually shut down the working part of the restaurant. Better wait, maybe, and not start things yet. Give Gran-the-cat as much rest as I could. Me, too.
But anticipation was rising in me, shooting little lightnings of energy through my body so that I itched to get moving. For one thing, from this angle the image of Kali couldn’t see me even if the third eye did open.
The last diners paid their check and left, the Indian Muzak droned along, and the waiter disappeared into the kitchen and didn’t come back out through the swinging doors. I heard people calling to each other back there, and the side door banging open against the alley wall and then thumping shut again.
Sooner or later, there would be no one here but Ushah and me. And, at some point, Brightner. Before he came, Gran and I had to deal with Ushah.
I picked up the laundry bag, carefully laid it out on the table in front of me, and pulled the drawstring loose. The silver glove made the knot fall open in my fingers. With my other hand, I reached inside the bag and touched the round, hard head of the sleeping cat.
“Gran!” I whispered. “Wake up!”
At my back the double doors swished, and Ushah seized the bag with a triumphant shout. Raising it high over her head, she shook out the limp cat onto the carpet at her feet.
“What is this trash you bring here?”
I couldn’t draw a breath to answer.
“Ah!” Ushah grinned at me and pounced. Slim fingers closed like iron pincers, and Ushah raised poor Gran triumphantly in the air and shook her by the roll of cloth around her furry neck.
The shaking seemed to blur the cat’s shape, elongate it, change it. Ushah herself gave a gasp and let go.
The cat landed in the middle of the restaurant floor, suddenly much larger than any cat, and it did something too fast to turn away from and too awful to imagine.
The cat-head jerked inward toward its scrawny chest, like the start of a convulsion, and in the wink of an eye the cat-body turned itself inside out and whipped upright into a new form. I saw a blur of red and purplish blue and shining surfaces, a flash of white teeth and bone like the worst scene of a horror movie, all getting bigger and bigger as I watched. My stomach was winding up for a good, sick heave.
But suddenly it was over: there stood my Gran just as I had last seen her, in tweed coat and cowboy boots with a kerchief tied, bandana-style, around her neck. She was panting a little, but that was all.
I heard a shuddery breath. The waiter was peering out between the swinging doors. I don’t know how much he’d seen, but if it was everything I had, then you had to admire his presence of mind.
He said in a high, barely controlled voice, “Good night, good night, Madame, staff are leaving now.”
“Go,” Ushah barked, without even looking at him.
He sketched a quick sort of salute and ducked back out of sight. With a flurry of whispers and footsteps and the shuddering clang of the alley door, they were gone. We were alone.
A weird hush had fallen in the dining room. I braced myself against the wall that I had stumbled back into, holding a chair by the uprights of its back. Maybe I was no enchanter myself, but I was ready at that point to try to break the chair over Ushah’s head if I got the chance.
Ushah moved a few paces sideways, with soundless footfalls like a panther’s. She stood under the painting of Kali, her back to it.
I caught my breath with fright.
Kali’s third eye peeled itself open. The eye seemed to pulse faintly as I stared at it, like something alive, something hungry. It blazed a hot, evil scarlet with a black center like a hole right into hell.
Ushah drew herself up as tall as she could and said to Gran in a tone of bitter contempt, “Old woman! You dare to face me?”
My vision seemed as sharp as a razor. I saw the gathered stillness of my grandmother, who was actually an inch or so shorter than Ushah. And I noticed a faint shine of sweat on Ushah’s smooth forehead. For all her bold and insulting words, Ushah was afraid!
“Ushah,” Gran said, and her dry old voice had somehow acquired an echo that seemed to reach away into enormous, invisible distances. “You know me well, as I know you. Listen to me, I have a thing to say to you. Sister, rival, daughter, friend: you have lost your way, you are led astray into danger and disgrace. Take my hand and let me draw you back toward your path.”
She held out her hand, the fingers bent with arthritis. Her expression was not one of anger but of concentration. I saw that Ushah trembled and leaned forward slightly, as if some part of her yearned to respond to Gran’s strange offer.
The third eye of Kali began to blaze, and as if in answer so did the red dot in the middle of Ushah’s forehead which marked her, I knew, as upper class.
Ushah lifted her chin sharply and shouted, “My path is my husband’s path—this path!”
She extended her arms and fanned out her fingers in front of her. Beams of black energy seemed to dart from her polished fingernails, reaching for my Gran.
Gran skipped nimbly sideways. A bolt of black energy hit the cash register and melted it into a sizzling blob that dripped down off the counter like a watch in a surrealist painting. The air stank of hot metal.
Gran snatched something from the inside of her coat: her reading glasses! I couldn’t believe it! What was she going to do, read the riot act to Ushah, who could melt brass? Alzheimer’s, I thought wildly; Mom was right, it’s true, but what a time for it to hit!
I tried to lift the chair off the floor, but I seemed to have no strength in my arms.
“Ushah,” Gran said urgently. “That man’s way is wicked, false, and cruel. Choose a different way, quickly, while there is time!”
For an answer Ushah opened her mouth and screamed something in a voice that rattled the silver on the tables. I had to let go of the chair and cover my ears. I saw Ushah join her hands in front of her, surrounded by flares of dark energy.
“Then, foolish woman,” Gran cried fiercely, “follow your chosen path to its end!”
Ushah’s black beam sizzled through the air again. Gran thrust out her hand, holding the eyeglasses in front of her like a shield—and the killer beam broke in blinding shards of darkness from one of the tilted lenses.
My head rang with a soundless explosion. I saw the darkness reunite and roll back the way it had come like a huge black wave. The wave dipped down as if bowing to Ushah. It slid under her scrambling feet and surged up again, lifting her on its smoking back. It threw her against the wall behind her.
And the four arms of the painted Kali reached out like spider legs and folded Ushah in.
The struggling witch, her whole face distorted by shrieks that I couldn’t hear, simply faded into the painted image. Her flailing arms and legs became fixed, her awful face was just a painting of a fright mask. She went as flat and lifeless as the rest of the picture of Kali dancing and—now—clutching her prize.
A little sign flashed in my mind, “Do Not Feed The Kali,” and I giggled wildly. Actually, I felt like throwing up.
Then the paint curled, shriveled, and flaked silently off the wall in a drift of pastel powder. Nothing was left but a pale patch of bare plaster on the wall. The leatherette seats below were lightly coated with fine gray dust.
My legs gave out and I sat down with a gasp on the carpeted floor.
“Wow,” I said, hearing my own voice like something under water. But at least I heard it.
“Wow with knobs on,” Gran said a little shakily. She put down the twisted ruin of her reading glasses on the tabletop closest to her. “I wasn’t really up for that, not right off the bat.”
“You got her,” I said. “You got her, Gran!” I would have danced, if I could have made my legs hold me up.
“She got herself,” Gran said grimly. “A fine young power in the world has been perverted till it had to be destroyed.”
“But how—?” I remembered what she had said to me about strafing Brightner from the flying carpet. “You turned her strength back on her,” I said. “You reflected it back with your glasses.”
“I did indeed,” she said. “I sent back what she sent me.”
“Wait till I tell Barb,” I babbled. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, it’s just like she says: what goes around, comes around!”
Gran said in a quiet, thoughtful voice, “Oh, yes, lovie, it does. That puts it very well.” She stretched. “Good, I’m feeling better. There’s nothing like being forced to your uttermost to get the blood stirring again, is there? I feel almost ready for him!”
“What’s that?” I said. Now that my hearing was back, I seemed to hear more sharply than before. And what I heard was a faint jangling noise from the back of the restaurant, and then a hollow boom that was alarmingly familiar. “That’s the alley door banging against the wall outside!”
“Hurry!” Gran said.
I followed her through the swinging doors and the kitchen, and there was the alley door gaping wide, and out in the alley itself—
The Silver Glove Page 13
