"She's scary enough as it is without having this kind of stuff in her brain." Maurice shuddered. "How's the big guy?"
"He'll feel better when he takes care of the trouble triplets."
"Think he was just kidding? You know--about making them vanish? Burying the trash?"
"Hope so." He leaned back, bracing his hands against his hips and stretching a little. "Ready to head home?"
"Sounds good." Maurice flew over and landed on Stanzer's shoulder. "Think Angela'll have any answers about Ethan?"
"I don't know. He can feel magic working. He can see the winkies, but refuses to see them. Who knows what else? But the question is if he's conscious of it or not. And if not, why not?"
"Whatever's going on, this guy is bad news for somebody."
* * * *
Ethan found more amusement in Stanzer's reaction to his suggestion that they bury the book thieves than in the fear the three punks showed. It bothered him a little that they couldn't find the Taser, or whatever the biggest one had used on him, when they searched the area. He put in a call to a friend in the local police department, letting him know what had gone down in the early morning hours and to be on the lookout for the weapon to appear--or anything else unusual.
"Story of my life," he muttered, his mind tripping over the word "unusual."
Lately, weirdness and "unusual" had been cropping up a little too much in the investigations he conducted, almost as if he was a magnet for the bizarre and slightly unreal. Pushing it out of his consciousness took a little more effort lately. On the other hand, he was getting better at it, able to sense the unworldliness tiptoeing into the room behind him, so to speak, long before it could be heard or smelled or seen. Then he would concentrate, focus, push it away, and it would be gone again. Until the next investigation.
Ethan took the three blindfolded and whimpering thieves into the lake district and drove as far as he could into the forest, before he hauled them out and marched them until sunrise. He left them deep in the woods with strict instructions not to move. That would hold them for maybe fifteen minutes, he figured.
The sound of the forest waking up for the day would cover the absence of his footsteps. The punks would eventually get frightened or nervous enough to make a stupid move. When nothing happened, they would get a little braver, until finally they would break free of the ropes around their wrists, remove their blindfolds, and find themselves alone in the middle of nowhere. They were in a section of forest that wasn't regularly patrolled by the park service, and it wasn't hunting season, so it might be a whole day before the threesome stumbled on another human being. Or maybe they would find the road and have the sense to follow it back to civilization.
What they did after that, how they got back to their home territory, was entirely up to them. Ethan hoped the scare they got would slow them down. He didn't have much hope for a change in their minds and attitudes. Long ago, he had tried to talk sense into some of the hoodlums he had encountered. The ones who laughed at him and scorned his advice were much more honest than the ones who seemed to listen, who agreed with the observations he made about their lifestyles, and promised they would change. And then didn't. Ethan had given up on trying to help so long ago he couldn't remember when it had happened.
He returned to his office around lunchtime, put a call in for his friend in the police department, filed a report on the case, and left a message for Stanzer to see what his client's reaction was. Then he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes...
And stood inside a castle courtyard. Everything was moonlight and shadows and decay. The stonework on all sides was crumbled where it wasn't covered with moss and ivy. He crossed the courtyard, up the tall steps, through the double doors that hung open, the wood rotting so the hinges had fallen into piles of rust on the cobblestones. The darkness parted before him, revealing the grand hall with its roof open to the sky. In the spill of moonlight, he made out blurred shapes that could have been mistaken for men.
As he got closer, he saw the vines and moss covering the shapes, and the glimpses of bare bones and scraps of fine cloth, swords, rings, and necklaces. They had once been men and women. What had caught them, freezing them in mid-stride? What kept them upright when they should have fallen into piles of detritus ages ago?
A shadow moved, up near the roof. He looked up, and realized he looked through a helmet that enclosed his head, all but for the area around his eyes. Raising one hand to touch the helmet showed he wore heavy metal gauntlets, once shiny silver but now spotted with the same mold and rot that touched everything else in this castle. He shuddered, imagining looking into a mirror and seeing he was nothing but a bare skull trapped inside the helmet.
The movement resolved into a woman, standing in the doorway of the gallery above, braced against the cold, moon-bleached stone. She stared down at the scene of death and decay, her eyes wide, her mouth open in a soundless cry of dismay. The moonlight turned her heavy gown with long, draping sleeves to silver and gray and white. The only warmth and color in the scene came from the heavy gold of her hair and the blue of her eyes. Her skin was as pale as the moonlight enclosing her.
Her gaze met his and she staggered, nearly stumbling forward, off the rotted remains of the gallery. He took a step closer to her, and the skeletal figure on his right swayed in reaction to his movement. Soft, silent dust rose up in the air, and slowly, the figure toppled. It hit the one behind it, which also swayed and toppled, hitting two more, as the air filled with silver-white dust that rose up in the air, forming clawed hands that reached toward the woman who stared at him, tears glistening diamond-bright and sharp in her eyes.
Ethan gasped and sat upright, yanking himself out of the dream.
"Just a dream," he told himself, and reached for the phone. It rang as his hand touched it. He gladly dove into whatever mundane questions a prospective client or a lawyer needing definition on a case might have for him. Only later, when he went home exhausted and headachy, did he pause to wonder if the phone had rung before he reached for it. Or if his panic and the force of his will caused it to ring.
As night closed in, and sleep approached, he thought about the dream he had in his office, and wondered if he would see the woman again. There was something familiar about her, a sense of warmth, of completion. Ethan supposed if she was a product of his imagination--because how could she be a memory?--then he could have dreamed of her many times.
That was the logical explanation. He lived his life by logic. Even though right now, there was something very sad and empty about logic.
* * * *
The next morning, the Von Helados came into Ethan's office to discuss a missing person they needed desperately to track down.
"It's for her own good, of course." The tiny grandmother who led the delegation spoke in a delicate voice that did nothing to hide her grim Iron Maiden determination. She wore unrelieved black--as did the four men who accompanied her.
They stood over her like sheltering oaks. Oaks that had been charred in a killer forest fire and still stayed standing, determined to protect the delicate plant resting among their roots.
Nightshade, Ethan decided. She pretended to be delicate, but she had more power and deadliness than all four escorts combined. She tried to look broken-hearted, but couldn't mask the glint of cold anger in her eyes that made Mafioso bosses look like clowns at the circus.
"Why is it for her own good?" He used the quiet voice that never failed to make his clients sit up and look closer at him.
The four turned their dead black gazes on him, and stepped a little closer to Iron Grandma, as if they thought he could be a threat.
"Dearest Annabelle isn't quite right in her head. She's harmless. So very good-hearted. And that's the problem. She sees herself as a good faerie, helping everyone who comes across her path. You and I both know there are people in this world who would take advantage of her. Horrid advantage."
Yeah, and I bet she has mega-bucks and you want to make sure she doesn'
t give that money to anyone but you, Ethan mused.
"This will help you," Mrs. Von Helado said. She opened up her iron black shoulder bag and brought out what Ethan thought was a large coin. Round, with a dull gleam, a little bigger than a half-dollar piece. It hung on a chain of fine black beads interspersed with silver links.
"How?" He didn't hold out his hand to take the coin, so she had to put it on the desk between them.
"Annabelle wore this constantly as a child. She loved it. I hope that when she sees it, she'll see you as a friend and trust you, and let you bring her home."
"Why don't you just go see her yourself?" Ethan tapped the papers the youngest Von Helado had put on his desk. One was a pencil sketch of innocent, demented, lost Annabelle. The other was a list of possible places to find her.
"We don't want to frighten her, of course."
Ethan muffled a snort. If he were on the run, he'd take off at first sight of the troop dressed like a bunch of undertakers.
"Annabelle vanished during a fire at our family mansion. She believes our ancestral home was destroyed and our whole family is dead. Can you imagine her hysteria if one of us showed up on her doorstep without warning?"
"So when I find her, I show her the coin, make friends with her, get her to go for a ride with me and bring her home." Ethan had heard more cockeyed plans in his career. "You think if she sees the house is all right, she'll figure out everyone is okay and come running home for milk and cookies."
"Succinctly put, yes." She nodded.
A glint in her eyes let Ethan know she didn't appreciate his stab at humor. That was fine. He didn't like anyone in the grim group standing on the other side of his desk. He didn't have to like his clients. Or trust them. The need to rescue innocence drove him, the need to solve mysteries and find the lost. The paycheck was far down on the list.
When the Von Helados left, Ethan listened for the sound of a car pulling away on the street below his open window. Through the normal sounds of the city in the mid-morning slump, he heard nothing. So, they were rich enough to afford a new, luxurious car with a quiet engine and hinges that didn't sound like a gunshot. That didn't mean they really cared and Annabelle was a demented soul who had no right to her own life. Ethan tried not to pass judgment, just get his job done and find the truth. When he found Annabelle, he'd know both sides of the story.
Ethan caught up the chain with a pen, to take a closer look at the coin. Gut instinct warned him not to let the chain touch his bare flesh. Not yet, anyway. Not until he got it tested for poison, drugs, or tracking devices.
The coin had three flattened spots on the edges, equidistant, so Ethan knew it was deliberate and not an accident. The metal didn't look old or dirty, so much as it had a reddish cast, a dull film that obscured the surface. His fingers itched at the thought of touching it. What had Iron Grandma tried to foist on him? To hurt or control him, or poor Annabelle? Ethan had an instant vision of Annabelle snatching up the coin, delighted to have a childhood memory back, only to be drugged on contact.
Then again, this whole scheme might not be about Annabelle at all, but an elaborate revenge aimed at him. It had happened before. He was very good at what he did. Uncomfortably good. When he helped innocents, he necessarily made enemies of their oppressors.
The Von Helados had paid in cash, saying they wanted as little record as possible, "to spare poor Annabelle the embarrassment." People who didn't want records or a paper trail had things to hide. Von Helado could even be a fake name. The only way he would get answers was to find Annabelle.
Ethan turned the coin over, using his letter opener. He couldn't make out what was on the back. Someone had slashed it with something sharp. The gouges didn't look worn with time, but they didn't look fresh, either. What had been there and why had it been defaced?
He dreamed of the house again that night...
...but he couldn't seem to get through the door to go inside. The angel with gold and strawberry hair and eyes like the sea appeared on the porch. She smiled and beckoned for him to come inside with her. He took a few steps forward, wanting to go in, aching for it as painfully as he longed to taste her raspberry-colored lips.
She spoke to him, but he couldn't hear her. She held out her hand and stepped backwards. One foot rested on the threshold. Strangling panic shot through Ethan. If she went inside without him, he'd never find her again. He caught hold of her hand and pulled. Hard.
The woman screamed and he heard it. She tried to pull her hand free. He gripped with both hands and pulled back, away from the house. Her face went white with panic and tears streamed. They hit his hand and burned him. Ethan pulled harder. She screamed, louder, higher, breaking only to sob. He pulled harder, with a massive yank as if he'd tear all his muscles. She stumbled forward, into his arms.
Silence. She stared into his eyes, barely managing to keep her head up when her whole body went limp. Ethan gathered her up and cradled her against his chest.
"No. Please," she whispered.
Ethan paused and looked back at the house. It had vanished into mist. When he looked at her again, he nearly dropped her.
She faded before his eyes. All her luxurious gold and strawberry and blue-green turned to gray and black. She shriveled into a pale, wrinkled crone in the matter of a few heartbeats. Her eyes went dead black. Then she turned to dust, disintegrating out of his arms.
Ethan woke drenched in sweat, heart racing and his groin aching as if he'd been kicked there.
"It's just a dream." He scrubbed his hot, sweaty face with shaking hands. He didn't believe in dreams.
A high-pitched sound, like a child's shrieking giggle, floated through the stifling quiet. Ethan's windows were open and the curtains drifted in the breeze, but the air around his bed was still and thick and heavy. He heard no sounds from outside. It felt as if someone--many someones--surrounded him, holding their breaths, waiting for him to do something.
"I don't need this," he muttered. "If I'm going to have crazy dreams, I might as well start drinking myself to sleep."
A flicker of color--gold and emerald and blue--danced at the edges of his vision. Daring him to look. Ethan felt sweat pour down his back and forehead. He refused to look. The high-pitched burst of childish laughter turned into a sigh. The colors faded. The air came back into his room, cool and fresh and moving again.
Ethan stretched out on his back and closed his eyes. He didn't sleep, and he was honest enough to admit he didn't want to sleep.
If he had any friends close enough to confide in, they'd tell him to take a vacation, that stress brought on the hallucinations. Ethan knew better. The more work he took on, the busier he kept his mind, the sooner the dreams would go back into the closet in his mind, and he would have peace.
* * * *
Angela sat in the dark in her kitchen and sipped cold tea and listened to the night. All was well in the sleepy college town. The deer in the woods crept through the pre-dawn mist or lay in their sheltered spots and waited for day. Owls fluttered to their nests. A soft, cool breeze meandered through the park and up the slope to Divine's Emporium. It brought her the scents of sleeping flowers and pine trees, budding maples and oaks and elms, the sharp perfume of fresh-cut grass, and dust churned up by a few local boys violating curfew on the park roads. All was well. Except inside Divine's.
She had dreamed four nights in a row now of the knight in mottled silver-gray armor that shifted in color with the play of moonlight across its surface. If he was silver turning black, or black turning silver, she didn't know. Angela only knew if she could get him to come into Divine's Emporium, they would both be safe.
Tonight, she had been a fool. Angela understood dreams and dreaming and knew they had more power over reality than most people could ever believe in the light of day. She had never before been helpless in dreams. Tonight, the dream had caught her up and carried her along. When the gray knight appeared, she had dared to believe she could coax him into the shop. She stepped across the threshold, and t
hereby lost all the protection Divine's Emporium wrapped around her, day and night, waking and sleeping.
He caught hold of her hands and fire shot through her veins. He pulled her off the porch, into nothingness. His armor burned cold against her skin. She felt the metal bite into her flesh and drain her life, shredding her soul. Panic nearly destroyed her control.
Just before she tore free of the dream, his armor melted away and she saw part of his face. Dark, curly hair, stern, lightless blue eyes and a wide, hard mouth. Angela was sure she would know him if she ever saw him in the daylight--if he was flesh and blood--just by those few details. She would know him by the chill up her spine, the burning cold in her flesh, and the warm, hungry churning in her belly.
She had no memory of feeling that aching, sweet need before, yet the sensation felt familiar all the same. If this man was a tool of her enemies, they might well have found the one weapon, the one weakness in her wisdom and strength, that could destroy all the secrets and treasures Divine's Emporium guarded, and Angela herself.
"The funny thing is," she told the darkness, her sheltering friend, "I would enjoy it. I have to die sometime. Why not die happy?"
Sparks coalesced out of the darkness, turning into winkies, all light and wings, sparkles and high, sweet, whispering voices. They danced around her, living shards of rainbows. They didn't speak, but in their song and the patterns of their dancing flight, Angela understood their concerns and pleas and soothing promises.
"Don't worry. It was just a flutter of self-pity. Nothing more. I won't give up." She closed her eyes and fought the heat and damp that threatened to become tears.
* * * *
The next morning, Diane and her sister-in-law, Meggie, came into the shop. In one week, they were heading to Paris with Troy, Diane's husband and Meggie's brother. He was attending a summit on hazardous material handling. Diane and Meggie would do the tourist thing while he was busy, and when the summit was over, Meggie would come home and Diane and Troy would take a vacation.
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