by Madelyn Alt
She set the steaming cup down before me. “Marcus and I were just going over some of the data from the library digital.”
I raised my brows and chanced a glance at Marcus. “That was fast. Marion just sent the file over last night.”
He smiled, meeting my gaze. “Well, I didn’t have anything better to do, so I stayed up late analyzing it.”
Ooh. Ouch. I cleared my throat a third time for good measure, avoiding Liss’s concerned gaze. “So, what do you have?”
It wasn’t in Marcus to hold a grudge. He slid his PDA over to me. “You saw the digital yourself. But take a look at this.”
The screen displayed a zoom-in on the wavering image in the children’s section of the library that Marion had captured with her webcam. The screen was smallish, but the picture quality was good enough to show what appeared to be a face forming in the midst of the air distortion and shimmer. A face with full lips, fine bone structure, and arching brows.
A woman’s face.
I frowned. “But I thought that Bertie was a male spirit.”
Marcus nodded, his gaze never leaving my face.
“But if he’s male…and he exists…”
“Oh, he exists, all right,” Marcus assured me. You saw the blue glow yourself, remember?”
How could I forget? It was back in December. I’d never even heard of Boiler Room Bertie until then. Leave it to Marcus to introduce me to the creepy blue fella. “But if he’s male, and he exists…who the heck is this?”
“Don’t know. But it’s definitely a female face, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Did you tell Liss what Marion said about the shadow?”
He hadn’t; he’d only just arrived. Briefly he described Marion’s experience with the dark spirit with red eyes.
“It almost sounds like an imp,” Liss mused. “Or I suppose it could be what they call a shadow man. I’m not convinced the two are separate issues, myself. Just different in size. And it appears this was a fairly strong entity, based on its interference with the electrical power sources.”
An imp or a shadow man. Was either better than your garden variety ghost? I couldn’t be sure. Neither one sounded all that promising to me. “Is that in addition to Bertie?” I asked, frowning.
“It appears so, yes. Unless it’s just another way for Bertie to materialize.”
“So the library could have not one entity attached to it, but three?”
“Well…” Liss looked at me. “The number of spirits who visit a given location is limitless,” she said quietly. “Spirits—in this case meaning souls who have crossed over—have the ability to pop in from time to time, at their discretion, to look in on those they were close to, or places they loved particularly well or had some affinity for during their lifetimes. They’re not tied to linear travel or linear time lines, as we who are on this side are. But, though people often mistake those visitations for hauntings, they are quite different. Generally speaking, a true haunting occurs when a place or a person has attracted a spirit who neglected to cross over due to confusion or fear…or a spirit whore fused to cross over for whatever reason. Both can be problematic, given the right circumstances. Especially if they conflict somehow with current residents.”
“Which is not the case here, right?” I said, looking at the two of them for confirmation. “Marion looks fairly comfortable with the notion of living with a resident spirit. The website, the webcams, her research…she almost seems to revel in it.”
“Aye, that’s true,” Liss said, a little too thoughtfully. “Unless…”
I raised my brows at her, waiting for her to continue.
“Unless the imp-slash-shadow creature is a dark entity. In which case, all bets are off.”
A dark entity. That made absolutely no sense to me. “How could the library attract a dark entity? I thought they rallied around people with dark intentions, dark natures. Dark practices. The library and Marion definitely don’t fit that scenario at all. She’s one of the sweetest, nicest, most giving people I know.”
“Most of the time they do, but not always. Unless…” She paused. “Unless Bertie or the unknown entity with the female aspect has opened the door to others.”
“What, you mean a portal of some kind?” Marcus asked.
Liss inclined her head, as contemplative as ever. “It’s possible, I think.”
“Aunt Marion said that she has been researching the town and the library itself,” Marcus told her.
“Brava. Forewarned is forearmed. Your aunt’s propensity toward scholarly endeavors could be very valuable to us all.”
We fell silent a moment, each absorbed in thought. Liss rose to unlock the front door and switch on all the lights. I glanced at Marcus, but he was avoiding my gaze again.
Probably for the better. For both of us.
“Did Maggie tell you, Marcus,” Liss said as she returned to the counter, “about our visit with Eli yesterday?”
I shook my head. “I, uh, didn’t mention it.”
“No time,” Marcus added helpfully, fiddling with the buttons on his PDA.
Hm, maybe he was feeling a little guilty by now, too.
Liss poured herself a fresh cup of tea, adding as an afterthought a splash of cream and a sprinkling of sugar. “Maggie and I went out to Eli’s place yesterday afternoon, to see how he’s doing. It must have been a wrench, Luc’s passing. Eli is holding up well, but he’s torn, I think, between his ways and convictions and the very human desire to see justice done for his friend.”
“That’s understandable. Eli is very big on honor.”
“And on friends.” Liss smiled. “We went out to the place where Luc was found, you know. The three of us.”
“Miss Maggie included?” Marcus quirked a brow at me. “Wow.”
I stuck my tongue out at him, but nearly bit it when his gaze lowered to my mouth and his brow rose even farther.
“Miss Maggie was indeed included. In fact, Maggie was the one who found the symbol on the tree.”
“What symbol?” Marcus asked, all seriousness again.
“A sign on a tree, just off the road. Definitely magical in nature.”
“Light or dark?”
Liss hesitated, picturing the scene in her mind. “Light, I think. Though it was difficult to know that for certain. The energies of the place were all mixed up. Pure bedlam.”
“Did Eli use his pendulum to try to sort things out?”
Liss and I both nodded. “It wouldn’t work right,” I supplied. “The pendulum just swung wildly. Erratically.” I paused, wondering whether I should say more. I had carried the piece of paper in my pocket ever since finding the sign; I didn’t know why. Maybe in hopes that the opportunity to understand would present itself to me when I least expected it, and thus I needed to be prepared. “I, uh, did make a drawing of it.”
“Oh, that’s brilliant, Maggie!” Liss proclaimed. “And here I was thinking I was going to have to go back out and take a picture of it myself.”
If it had been just Liss, I might have admitted my own reasons for not taking a photograph, but there was no way I was going to confess to Marcus that the reason I hadn’t snapped a pic rather than make a drawing was because Tom told me not to.
Liss furrowed her brow as she puzzled over the drawing, tracing the outlines with her finger. She leapt up and headed for the stairs. “Back in a mo’.”
“You okay?”
I looked up in surprise at the unexpected question from Marcus. “Yeah, I’m okay. You?”
He smiled at me, managing somehow to look mischievous and confident and brazen all at the same time. “Yeah. Not mad?”
I smiled back at him. “Nope. Not mad. Definitely not mad.”
“Good. Because I would hate to lose you as a friend over something as trivial as a kiss.”
“Oh…” Somehow I wasn’t quite sure I liked how that sounded. “Um…”
My cell phone blared trumpets from my front pocket. “Remind me to change this, would you?” I
said as I flipped the case open. “It’s driving me crazy. Hello?”
“And how are you this morning?”
It was my mother’s voice, surprisingly cheerful, given that it was Monday morning and I had been too busy to call or visit over the weekend. “Hi, Mom. I’m good, good. How is everything?”
“The same, of course. Your father has been grinding his teeth at night. I don’t know what is going on with that company, but they really need to hire some help. He can’t go on putting in all of the hours that he does. He never has any free time, and his ‘Honey Do’ list never gets any shorter. You should see the state of things around here.”
My mother was big on Honey Do’s. When we kids had lived at home, most of our weekends were filled with the minutiae Mom hadn’t gotten around to during the week. Much of it had been necessary, but a good bit of it felt more like busywork meant to fill our hours and days—idle hands are the devil’s playthings, as Grandma Cora had been fond of saying. But mostly I think Mom relished directing traffic. So to speak.
“I don’t know, Mom. I think what Dad really needs is a vacation.” Either that or an intervention.
“What he needs is to find his backbone,” Mom said, as sympathetic as usual. “Things will never change if he continues fulfilling that company’s whims on his own. Why should they? They have a willing victim right there in front of them. He just needs to tell them no every once in a while.”
It was easy for Mom to say. She didn’t have the responsibility of supporting the family in an uncertain business world resting on her shoulders.
“Aw, Mom. You know, I think the house looked fine when I dropped by yesterday. I think Dad’s getting more done than you’re giving him credit for.”
“Grandpa said you’d stopped in for a quick visit while I was out.” There was an undertone there, unmistakable, that made it sound as though I had purposely timed the visit to coincide with her absence. Which, this time, was patently untrue. “But…cookies, Margaret?”
Whoops. Busted! How did she manage to ferret that out of him so quickly? “Sorry. I thought he’d like them.”
“He does; only too well. When he wouldn’t eat his rice pudding last night, I knew something was up. He’d eaten the whole dozen you’d bought him!”
It was probably because she kept him deprived of his creature comforts 95 percent of the time, but now was not the time to say so. “Sorry about that.”
“You know your grandpa,” she continued, on a roll now. “An ornerier man you’ll be hard pressed to find. You give him a yard, and he’ll go for the touchdown before anyone else even gets into position. Honestly, I think I’m going to have to take his battery pack away. As soon as the snow melted, he started going out and about on his Hoverchair, sniffing after the widows in the neighborhood. One morning last week he went out and forgot that he hadn’t put his teeth in. I ask you, how do you forget your teeth? That’s what I want to know. Apparently he thought the ladies were all smiles that morning because of his abundant charm.”
I laughed at the visual. “Heis a handful, that’s for sure.”
“He is, and your Grandma Cora must have been a saint for putting up with him all those years.”
Saint Cora. Nowthat was funny. I wondered if Grandma filled Mom’s head with random thoughts of conscience, the way she had commandeered mine.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, with my eye on Marcus, “I’d better get back to work. Did you want anything in particular, or were you just calling to chat?”
“Actually, I did,” she said, and the tone of her voice made me suddenly wary. “It’s about time that you brought your young man home to meet your family, don’t you think? You’ve been ducking us long enough, and God help me, I’ve let you. But I’m starting to get the feeling that you’re ashamed of us, Margaret. You’ve been seeing him since October…things must be going well, hmm?”
Oy.
I had almost forgotten that I’d somehow, kinda, sorta given my mom the impression that Tom and I were indeed in a committed relationship, and that we had been seeing each other since October. It had seemed such an innocent little lie, but that one little fib had been giving me grief ever since because my mom had real issues with letting go of things once she sank her claws in. Case in point. It would never occur to her that she might be the reason for my reluctance to bring a guy home. That it might be easier to forge a relationship without fending off the well-meaning intrusions of a mother who was a matrimonial force of nature and who would not rest until she saw her oldest daughter married, with a mortgage, children, a cat, and a dog. And the sooner, the better.
Besides, she had powers of perception that could sniff out Tom’s not-quite-divorced status in a heartbeat. Any such dinner would require a rigorous premeal briefing with Tom—not to mention Dad and Grandpa, who were both in the know—and I wasn’t quite convinced that any of them were up to the face-off.
“Well…Mom, Tom has been really busy with everything that’s been happening around town.”
“He has to take time to eat, doesn’t he? An hour, that’s all I’m asking, Margaret. Just long enough to shake hands with your father and get acclimated to Grandpa on his best behavior, before he has a chance to tell too many of his awful jokes.”
I smothered a sigh and stared at the ceiling. “When are you thinking about doing this smorgasbord of fun?”
I could hear the triumph in her voice before she uttered a word. “I’ll tell your dad that we’ll be expecting you for lunch this Sunday after church. Easter Sunday is so important. And you won’t forget to go to Reconciliation beforehand and receive Communion, of course? Does Tom go to church? Maybe he’d like to be our guest for that as well.”
“I’ll let you know about that later.”
“Don’t wait too long. You know I like to be able to plan ahead.”
“Yes, Mom, I know.” Boy, did I ever!
“Oh, there’s another call coming in; I’d better go. You have a good day, now.”
“’Bye, Mom.”
I glanced up. Marcus was watching me with an amused twinkling in his eyes. “Mommy trouble?”
I shrugged. “Typical mother stuff. Dinner with the family, and she wants me to bring Tom. You know.”
He grimaced. “Ooof. Prospective husband meet-and-greet. Better Tom than me.”
I had no doubts my mother would concur. Marcus, with his shoulder-length hair and Goth-punk-rock-star clothes preferences, was not quite her idea of husband material.
“I think I found it!” Liss called from the door to the loft. She came toward us waving a book. With both hands. The thing was huge.
I turned my head sideways to see the title. “The Light-worker’s Complete Encyclopedia of Magical Symbols?”
“Mm,” she enthused, plopping the thing down on the counter and flipping to the table of contents. “There has to be something in here to help us. And if there is,” she said, sliding her half-moon reading glasses into place, “I will find it.”
Marcus threw back his head to down the last of his coffee, then set his cup down on the scarred antique countertop with a very male kind of clatter. “Well, ladies, it’s been fun, but I have to get going. Places to go, people to see, magic to make. The usual.” He blew a kiss to Liss, then with a wink at me, he was gone.
Marcus’s leaving was like the opening of floodgates as far as Enchantments was concerned. All morning long, the shop had a steady stream of customers, most of whom seemed to be in a buying mood. I spent most of my time zipping back and forth assisting in the trenches, while Liss rang up the purchases with her usual style and grace. The hours sped by. When my cell rang again and I opened it to see Tom’s number on my Caller ID, I could scarcely believe it was already twelve thirty.
“I don’t suppose I could entice you to have lunch with me?” he asked by way of a greeting.
“Hmmm, you’re singing my favorite tune. Where and when?”
“Now, and Annie-Thing Good?”
“You got it. I’ll be there in five.”
“Don’t you stand me up and break my heart.”
Liss looked up expectantly as I ended the call and approached the counter. “Lunchtime beckons?”
I nodded. “And so does Tom. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. You go on, we’ve hit a lull.”
“I’ll bring you back some soup.”
“Annie’s? You’re on.”
The lunch crowd had thinned out somewhat by the time I pulled Christine up in a parking spot across the street from Annie’s always bustling café. In the seven months since Annie Miller, N.I.G.H.T.S. member and chef extraordinaire, had opened her doors, she had quickly claimed her space in the upper echelon of Stony Mill eats. I loved the ambiance of her place, a mix of old Midwestern comfort food combined with modern health-nut sophistication, where you could get your soup and eat it, too (not to mention your gourmet sandwiches). But the things Annie was especially known for were her desserts. Cheesecakes, pies, and brownies of all types and textures, including my favorite: a double fudge turtle brownie with the meltingest caramel swirling in and out of layers of brownie and fudge and pecan. It was out-of-this-world heavenly.
Come to think of it, I had not had a truly cosmic experience in way too long.
Tom waved at me from a table in the front window as soon as I walked through the door, my entrance accompanied by the chiming of a dozen brass feng shui bells. Not seeing Annie immediately, I headed over to join him.
“I’ve already ordered for you,” he told me. “Barley vegetable beef, baguette, and raspberry iced tea. I hope that’s okay.”
The soup was still steaming in the bowl. “Yum, thanks. This will be great.”
He smiled at me as I sat down, his gray eyes soft with affection. “I’m glad you could get away. I missed seeing you last night.”
I felt a pang of guilt, wicked sharp. “I missed you, too. You’ve been so busy.”
“And I’m about to get busier,” he said, avoiding my gaze.
“What do you mean?”
He stirred his soup around and around in the bowl. “I spoke to Chief yesterday. I’ve been promoted. Kind of.”
“Oh, wow, that’s great! I mean, well, isn’t it?” I frowned, confused.
