“You said you thought Sahara did all the killing.”
“It’s a tactic,” I murmur. Is she truly out of earshot? “Arthur, lying to her—”
“You’ve never hesitated to lie to a subject before.” Frustration burns in his voice.
“Except when it’s likely they’d catch me out,” I say. “Arthur, what’s the sudden rush? You did run Sahara off, didn’t you?”
“Hardly matters—she’d never get in here,” he scoffs. “This facility is secure.”
“Then let’s stick with the plan.”
“We almost had them, Will. Sahara, that second-in-command of hers, Passion, maybe Caroline too.”
Caro…now I’m the one struggling for control.
“Until Astrid gives me a preliminary statement, we’re playing a guessing game. And we’re getting somewhere here. We thought she’d be raving, remember?”
“Okay,” Roche says. “It’s your show, I guess—sing your heart out. Just come home with good reviews.”
“It’ll be just like St. Louis.” I interviewed a kid there, a young man convicted of killing his sixteen-year-old girlfriend. He’d been up for release after six months in minimum security. He was a clean-cut boy from a well-off family, a model prisoner showing model displays of remorse. If he’s sorry, the victim’s parents said, let him go.
But he wasn’t, and I sank him.
Sahara’s Primas—her high priestesses—may have fished the aircraft carrier crew out of the Pacific, but the Alchemite cult has plenty of blood on its hands. Women resembling Sahara and Astrid have been shot in twenty cities across the country. Sahara has taken responsibility for two major earthquakes, the epicenters of which were near Indigo Springs, quakes that have taken over ninety lives. Alchemized animals—crows, mostly—have caused horrific traffic accidents. A Wiccan who disputed Sahara’s claims to godhood was beaten to death by an Alchemite mob.
Poor Roche. The calls he must be fielding!
“Prisoner’s headed your way,” Roche says. “Showtime.”
“I’ll get results,” I promise, and he hangs up.
I put the receiver down, turn…and almost jump out of my skin. Astrid is right behind me.
“Ever fire a gun?” she asks.
“I’m a policeman,” I say, “I go to the target range.”
“You didn’t ever point a gun at someone? Never went hunting? Ever see someone get shot?”
“Have you?”
“What about hitting someone? Fighting?”
“We’re talking about you, not me.” I gesture down the corridor toward the couches.
She closes her eyes, seeming to listen. “I’m sorry you’re caught between us. Me and Roach.”
It is easy to see this comment of hers as a stratagem, a means of driving a wedge between me and Arthur. “What makes you think it’s like that?”
“He wants me dissected. You’re the knife.”
“What do you want?”
“To get through Will day.”
“That’s not much of a goal if you know how everything’s going to play out.”
“Do you think seeing a train wreck before it happens makes it easier to live through?”
Train wreck? “Doesn’t it?”
“There’s the cutting edge now,” she whispers.
“Astrid, nobody is here to dissect you.”
“Roach wants you to take me apart. That’s what you do, isn’t it?” When I open my mouth, she adds, “Don’t lie.”
“Sometimes.”
“But you can’t help liking me. This was all harder than I thought it would be….”
Was harder—her sense of time is slipping again. “You’re worrying about me?”
Her hands have become entangled in the phone cord, twisting its coils as she presses her ear to the fake white door of her prison. “Keep them out, right? It’s all about keeping them out, just long enough to hide the spill. Daddy knew I was going to blow it…. He avoided initiating me, looked for another apprentice, anyone, anyone, marry Olive, get money, any alternative—”
“Shhh.” I pry the cord out of her hands before she can break the telephone. “Astrid, it’s okay.”
“Did you call my father a hypocrite once?”
“I never met him. And why would I say something like that?”
“Which part is this? Patience?” Her voice rises to a scream.
“Astrid, listen to me.” Glancing around, I see a laminated picture on the wall, a square board with an image of a country cottage on it. I pull it off the wall and the fastener comes with it, harmless plastic hook and a chunk of plaster. “Listen to me. You can’t live like this, can you? It must be painful—”
“Of course it hurts.” Thick fury in her voice now, and tears are running down her cheeks.
I offer her the picture. “I can help. You talk of me dissecting you, Astrid, but what if I could cut away some of the hurt?”
“Confession is good for the soul, is that it?” Her voice is still raw, but I’m on the right track. It is so obvious she longs for peace of mind.
“Stay with me.” I lay the picture on her trembling palms. Immediately it fades to blankness. “Show me how I can help.”
She pants shallowly. “Right. Okay.”
I give her a nudge and she shuffles back in the direction of the couch, eyes locked on the picture. Paint begins to color in the interior of Albert Lethewood’s house: wood and wallpaper, old tile and worn carpets. All vastly different from this elaborate, modern prison cell.
I glance around, struck by how colorless the room is.
Inhaling raggedly, Astrid begins to speak. “That afternoon in Leeda’s garden, I learned the basics. The magic fluid trapped beneath my fireplace—the vitagua—was the source of the chantments—”
“I know—” Then I remember she told me this in the unreal, where Roche could not hear. “Did you learn how to deal with your and Sahara’s alchemic exposure?”
“No.” She regards me soberly. “And I had other reasons for wanting to learn more.”
“Such as?”
She reaches for one of the scattered playing cards, poking it with a finger. All its color seems to flow toward her skin, shrinking to a black dot. Then small drops of ink ooze up from beneath, as if the card is mesh lying just above a sea of paint. She raises her hand and the multicolored seepage resolves into an image of her father’s face.
“In Springer eyes, my father was a deadbeat. He took care of me while Ma brought in the bacon. When he started doing odd jobs…then he became the guy—every town has one—who paints your fence every other year, hauls your dead leaves to the dump for ten bucks. Dad was the town drunk, except he didn’t drink.”
“Instead he shopped for junk, is that it?”
“It destroyed him,” she says. “He lost Ma, he nearly lost Olive, he was always broke. Whenever something odd happened in town, the police questioned him. Most Springers thought he did drink, or gambled.
“When Dad cheated those people out of their damage deposits, when he actually went to jail—I was ashamed of him.” Her face colors, and I see strong emotion straining to break the dams of her self-control. “But suddenly, it looked as if there was a reason for it. The junking, the money he spent on things that vanished afterwards—”
“He wasn’t a deadbeat, so you could love him?”
“I always loved him,” she snaps.
Point for me, Roche, I think. You happy?
“I wanted to look up to him, like I did when I was little.”
Time to push. “You weren’t concerned about the fact that you and Sahara had been exposed to the vitagua, were you? Or that you’d told Albert’s secret to the least discreet person in the world. He spent all those years playing the buffoon, and you had tossed it away.”
“It’s not—”
“He gave up everything, and now you were encamped in that house with someone who was giving the chantments cute little names as if they were toys or—”
“Stop it!”<
br />
“Pets—”
“That’s unfair.”
“And—let’s not forget—she was playing with your mother’s mind.”
“Shut up!” Her voice rises. “I didn’t know what was at stake, I didn’t realize there was so much vitagua coming out of the unreal. My head hurt all the time, I was exhausted and forgetful. I couldn’t believe the chantments were dangerous….”
“Or that Sahara was?”
Blue is flooding the whites of her eyes. “Sahara wasn’t dangerous.”
“Please. She led hundreds of her followers to a contaminated area outside of Indigo Springs. Are you saying you don’t know this, Astrid? Your psychic powers didn’t tell you three people got shot rushing police barricades?”
“Your guys got trigger happy.” Her voice is angry.
“We lost people too. The retrieval team sent to get the Alchemites out of the woods didn’t come back.”
She shrugs.
“After the government burned out the alchemized trees, Sahara returned to Mascer Lane with all her followers. She caused a six-point-two-Richter earthquake there. Do you know how many people died, Astrid?”
“She can’t help herself. You can’t blame—”
“Who should we blame?” I say, and Astrid’s head rears back, like a snake about to strike. “You can’t pretend Sahara isn’t reckless, morally corrupt—”
“Quiet!” She slams her hands down on mine, on either side of the table. The brushtips at the ends of her fingernails are bright blue, seeping vitagua. The fluid is a quarter inch from my skin—a bizarre threat, but a real one.
It is a shock, but I can’t afford to show fear. I resist the urge to yank free, even as I think of Mark Clumber’s obvious paranoia, and of the wet sound he makes whenever he tries to speak.
Astrid clings with ferocious strength. Unnaturally blue veins throb in her face. Her skin is ice-cold. “The vitagua has made Sahara insane.”
I refuse to look at my hands, the drops of blue welling so close to my skin. I keep my voice even. “Has it made you insane too, Astrid?”
“I’m different.” She releases me and lolls onto the couch. The blue fluid pulls back out of sight, leaving her so pale that each freckle stands out on her skin.
The phone shrieks again in the foyer.
“Roach is worried about your safety,” Astrid says.
“I’m not in danger,” I say. It stops in midring.
“Can we go back to talking about gardening now?” she asks wearily.
“Fine. I’ve got all day, don’t I?” I keep my voice light, as though she hasn’t just attacked me. “The gardening. It triggered your memory flashes.”
“Touching things was triggering the flashes. At first it was contact with objects Albert and I had both touched.”
“I understand. Leeda’s garden was a place you’d been together. Digging in the garden brought on the memories of your father.”
“Right. As time passed, I got better at it.” Her anger seems to ease. “Remembering wasn’t quite like seeing Dad again. The memories were vivid, but old.”
“Did you leave Leeda’s? Go on to your next client?”
“Shamro Moore. Yes.”
“And did you learn anything else?”
“Plenty,” she said. “How to make a chantment, where the vitagua came from, why Dad had lived his life letting everyone think he was the village idiot. What he’d done with the things he’d bought and chanted over the years.”
I look at the painted image of Albert Lethewood. He is kindly and guileless, with childlike eyes. He reminds me of an alcoholic I used to arrest twice a month, back when I was new to the force. A sweet drunk’s face. It is easy to see how the people of Indigo Springs made assumptions.
Harmless, invisible. A perfect mask for his activities.
I look at the daughter who has thrust Albert’s mystery into my world. She has the same chin, the same wiry red eyebrows. But the innocence that suffuses his face is gone from hers. Maybe that’s a game, and this half-crazed exterior is all she wants Roche to see. Is there more to Astrid, or is this all that has survived Sahara?
She didn’t expose me to the vitagua just now, I think, and I certainly made her furious.
Despite my denials to Roche I wonder again: Did Astrid really commit the crimes she has all but confessed to, or is she covering for the friend she so obviously loves?
• Chapter Eleven •
Jacks was home when she returned from work, pulling hot corn bread out of the oven while a thick mass of curried potatoes and chickpeas bubbled on the stove.
As soon as Astrid walked through the door, he set a plate in front of her. She didn’t bother to sit, pulling apart the bread and taking a bite. It was thick, grainy, and fragrant.
She dunked a piece into the curry. “You can’t keep cooking all the time—you’ll get resentful eventually.”
“Mom made this. I stopped by the bookstore and she dumped a housewarming package on us.”
“Oh. Good. And how was your day?”
He beamed. “I ran into a woman who’d blown her radiator on the highway. She spotted the sketches for the mural while I was calling the mechanic and it turns out she works at an art gallery in Eugene. Probably nothing will come of it, but she liked the sketch. Oh, and Dad stopped by the tour office twice and missed me both times.”
“You’re gonna have to talk to him one day, you know.” Curried potatoes sang on her taste buds. The spice was intense enough to make her sweat.
“All in good time.” Jacks brandished the magic wristwatch playfully.
She thought about pushing the issue, only to decide not to break his good mood. The choice brought a faint pang of sadness. She and Albert hadn’t been getting along at the end. She didn’t want Jacks to end up with regrets.
There’s time, she thought—the Chief is healthy enough. “I found out some stuff about Albert and the chantments today.”
“You promised to stay away from the blue goo.”
“It’s called vitagua, and I have. Dad told me everything a long time ago.”
“You’ve been holding out?”
“Course not. I forgot, somehow.”
“‘Somehow’? I love the sound of that.” He glowered.
“Well, I’m remembering now. Where’s Sahara?”
“Can’t you give me the ABC’s without Her Majesty present?”
“Don’t snark. A is for Albert. He was making chantments out of the crap he bought at flea markets.”
“Making them?”
“Yeah. B is for the blue goo in the fireplace.”
“Vitagua,” Jacks said.
“Yes, vitagua, which is what he used to pull it off. You infuse vitagua into an object and it becomes magical.”
“Okay. And what’s C?”
“Uh…confidential. He was pretty firm about it being a bad idea to tell people about this stuff.”
“Damn. I just sent out a press release.” With a teasing smile, he popped a clump of hot bread into her mouth.
Momentarily flustered, she swallowed. “Be serious. There’s also D for danger. Apparently one day there will be too many chantments gathered together in one place—”
“What’s that…a prophecy?”
“I guess. If they pile up, people can sense them.”
“What people?”
“Chantment collectors—thieves, really. And Albert hinted some people would destroy them if they could.”
“Why? They seem pretty benign.”
“He was vague.” Now that she wasn’t hands-deep in a garden, her recollection was getting fuzzy, as if the conversations with Albert had been dreams. Pain ground into her skull. “Know that face he used to pull when he didn’t want to admit some ugly truth? A thing he’d done, money he’d spent?”
“Oh, don’t I just. But if Albert was making chantments but couldn’t stockpile them, where are they?”
“He sent them away.”
“To who?”
“P
eople in trouble, or in need. All that junk he bought, Jacks—he chanted it and then gave the stuff away. That’s where his money went.”
“Mom’s money,” he said. Then, grudgingly: “Ev’s too.”
“Yeah.”
“That ol’ drunk Al Lethewood,” he said, doing a fair imitation of his father before bursting into laughter. “He conned the whole town.”
Catching her hand, he tangoed her around the kitchen, twirling her into the hall.
Astrid concentrated on not tripping over her boots as he reeled her back against him. He smelled of aftershave and hot bread. “Chief’d bust a gut if he knew, huh?”
“To say the least. Why didn’t Albert sell the things?”
“It would have made it easy to trace him?”
“Would have kept him solvent too,” Jacks said ruefully.
“He found hard-luck cases in the newspapers and mailed them the chantments anonymously.”
Still dancing, he dipped her. “Magical gifts.”
“Exactly,” Astrid said as she came up again.
“And we’re supposed to do this—be an unregistered charity? Become Santa Claus?”
“It’ll be fun, Jacks.”
“Screw charity.” Sahara chose that moment to appear, drifting through the back door in a high-necked black dress and new shoes. The mermaid hung over her collar and her arms were full of bags. “We’re funded,” she announced. “The jeweler was putty in Siren’s hands.”
“Take that thing off now,” Jacks said. Astrid stepped away from him, flustered.
Sahara removed the mermaid and dropped it into a new purse. Throwing herself into a chair, she grabbed a hunk of bread. “I’m starving.”
“What’s this about a jeweler—you zapped someone else?”
“Only a little, Eligible. What’s with the bread?”
“Olive made it, it’s delicious, and we are grateful,” Astrid said, rubbing her temples as Jacks bristled.
“Don’t encourage him, Astrid. We’ve been running ourselves ragged all day and he’s feeding us health food.” Sahara fished in one of the bags. “I bought champagne.”
“C is for conspicuous,” Jacks grumbled.
“Flashy by nature, that’s me.”
“We have to keep a low profile, Sahara,” Astrid said.
Sahara tossed her head. “Astrid, my dear, unless you plan to become your father—bad reputation, bad finances, bad liver, and all—”
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