"Bare bones. She's supposed to be out of it, helpless, unable to deal with reality. They have strange instructions for how to approach her, if I ever do find her. Which made me leery of getting involved in the first place."
"But you did anyway."
"Curiosity." He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out the folded copy of the sketch of Annabelle, and tossed it to Stanzer. "There's something about her picture--for one thing, why a sketch and not a photo? I just can't put my finger on what it is."
"That so?" Stanzer's smile didn't change when he opened up the paper, but Ethan felt tension shoot through the office.
Something dropped into his stomach. A heavy mix of dread, disappointment, and anticipation. "You know her?"
"The woman I know is far from helpless or unable to deal with reality." He continued to stare at the sketch. "I should warn you, we protect our own in Neighborlee."
"I'm not here to make trouble. Just wanted to drop off your book."
"Maybe not, but that's what you'll get if you do anything to harm Angela."
"Isn't that the name of the woman who owns the books?"
"One and the same."
"I don't believe in coincidences, do you?"
Stanzer slowly shook his head, his gaze assessing and weighing Ethan. Then he inhaled sharply, and he visibly came to a decision. "The only way we're going to figure out what's going on, what the link is between these people and this sketch and Angela--and maybe the robbery a few weeks ago--is to ask questions."
Ethan felt that tightening in his gut, the tensing of his scalp, the tingling in his fingers that had warned him long ago of... The only word he could come up with was "otherness." But he had lost that sense of otherness back in the darkness, back when he had learned to be logical and orderly and ignore the gaping holes in his past and most of his personal life.
He didn't argue when Stanzer asked for his promise not to do anything but ask questions, and not to reject anything he might see and hear and feel for the rest of his stay in Neighborlee. Ethan promised, quickly, and felt that sense of otherness deepen, as if he had crossed the threshold or taken a step into a new place, a new atmosphere.
Stanzer locked up his office and led Ethan down three blocks and over several streets, to a long, dead-end street that overlooked the park.
Ethan felt like he'd been slapped across the face with a length of the old-fashioned slate sidewalk under his feet when he passed an overgrown clump of bushes and saw the house at the end of the street. Gold and olive, with bits of Victorian gingerbread and a wrap-around porch. Four stories tall. The sign in front of the wrought-iron fence read "Divine's Emporium."
All the dreams he had tried to forget, to push back into the neat closet in his mind where he put fever dreams and useless bits of trivia, came rushing out to his conscious mind. He stumbled a step from the physical shock, the pressure of it all pushing him along. For a few seconds his feet sped up their pace, but he regained control and continued walking beside Stanzer in the warm, bright afternoon that promised a hot, brilliant summer to come.
Cautiously, Ethan tugged the sketch from his pocket and opened it. Nothing had changed. Why he expected some change in the sketch, he couldn't quite explain. Staring at the pencil lines, his imagination colored the hair gold and red, filled the eyes with green-blue, put roses in her cheeks and a curve to her lips, and colored them the shade of fresh raspberries.
"Dreams don't come true," he muttered.
"If you believe that," Stanzer said with a dry chuckle, "you're in the wrong place. Finding lost dreams and making them live is Angela's specialty."
"Is it?" Ethan jammed the sketch into his pocket.
His fingers curled around the talisman--which he didn't even remember putting in his pocket. An electric jolt shot through him and he nearly leaped up the sidewalk, onto the steps of the porch. Stanzer was right behind him. Ethan had time to wonder if the other P.I. was packing his gun, then his hand closed on the antique brass latch and he pushed the door open. He pulled his hand from his pocket and sternly ordered himself not to give Angela--or Annabelle, or whatever her name really was--the talisman until he had asked a lot of questions. The first of them being why she would appear here in the dead zone of information the Von Helados had given him.
Did they want him to find Annabelle or not? And if they did, why didn't they have any information, any clues or leads, pointing at Neighborlee, Ohio, and Divine's Emporium?
Delicate bells chimed over the door as he stepped into the shop, reminding him of--he wasn't sure what, but an image filled his head of a garden and sparkling, rainbow-hued creatures that flew about.
"Welcome to Divine's." The woman had a voice like the lower notes of a harp. The image of the garden faded from his mind as he turned around, looking at the shelves crowded with a bit of everything. He followed the voice to a large room with a counter and cash register and old-fashioned jars of candy lined up on it. "Is there something in particular you're--"
She came into view, standing behind the counter. Their gazes met. Her face went white at the same moment the words died on her lips.
"Angela?" Stanzer stepped forward, putting himself between her and Ethan.
"It's all right. I just didn't expect this...so soon." Angela shook her head and stared into Ethan's eyes.
He could have sworn she spoke silently to him, and he didn't have the slightest idea what she said or how to answer. After a few thundering heartbeats that threatened to deafen him, she shook her head. A sad little smile curved her lips and only made the pallor of her face more pronounced.
"Need help?" Stanzer tugged aside his coat. Ethan couldn't see the shoulder holster, but he was sure now the other P.I. had brought his gun. They did take care of their own in Neighborlee, didn't they?
"It's all right. Let me deal with this on my own, will you?"
"Angela--"
"Please, Stayn, you don't want to get involved in this." She tried to smile. "You and Dawn have enough to deal with, with the other children on their way."
"They're on their way? What did you--" Stanzer shook his head. "I ought to know by now not to question where you get your information. Are they all right?"
"I only know they're ready to make their break for freedom. Be ready when they make contact again." She glanced back at Ethan before she turned to Stanzer.
He was both amused and pained to realize he made her nervous, afraid. That aching spot inside him that he'd thought was permanently dead and numb throbbed to life. Sorrow and fury choked him--she should never be afraid of anything. It was his job to defend her.
Where did that totally insane thought come from? He didn't know her. Dreams didn't come true. They had never met. She was a figment of his imagination--correction, she looked like, sounded like, a figment of his imagination. Nothing more. Nothing connected them.
"You sure you're okay?" Stanzer said, when Angela gestured for him to go, leave the two of them alone. "Angela, if this guy is trouble--"
"I'll explain later. Please, for the sake of the Hunt, leave." Resolve hardened her voice. Whatever weakness Ethan had seen in her a moment ago, it was gone.
Stanzer must have seen that. He gave Ethan one hard stare of warning and stomped down the aisle to the front door. The chimes were silent, which somehow didn't surprise Ethan at all. There was something about Divine's Emporium that struck chords of recognition and warned him that whatever happened, he shouldn't be surprised.
"So, they call you Angela now?" The sooner he got this job started, the sooner it would be done, and the sooner he could leave. Ethan swore he heard soft voices whispering and giggling, but there was no one in the shop crowded with odd, glittering things. No one but him and Angela.
No company but a sparkle in the air that flew tight loops around his head and then zoomed down to settle on Angela's shoulder. Ethan could have sworn he heard a voice--and a familiar, male voice at that, which made no sense--but the words were indistinguishable. His ears buzzed and there was a m
omentary ache, as if he strained to hear something that wasn't there. He concentrated hard, erasing the light and sound from his consciousness, just as he banished the multi-colored, whispering, laughing lights that sometimes plagued him when he was tired and lonely, either on the verge of sleeping or waking.
"Who sent you, and what did they tell you about me? What do they want this time? Who is it this time?" She had regained her color. Ethan wondered how Stanzer connected her with the sketch. There was only a ghost of a resemblance.
"Annabelle--" He pulled the sketch out of his pocket and smoothed it flat on the counter.
"Burn it. Please." Her voice cracked and she took a step back.
Ethan's jaw dropped. Color drained from her with every heartbeat; face, hair, clothes, eyes. Another moment, would she become like the sketch?
He didn't care how impossible it was, Ethan ripped the sketch.
He tried to.
The paper wouldn't tear.
And the color continued to drain from Angela's features.
"I don't have a match!"
She went to her knees, clutching at the counter, and gestured with a shaking hand. Ethan turned and saw an oil lamp made of stained glass, sitting on a display shelf by the door of the room. It hadn't been lit when he walked in. The flame wavered as if in a high wind, but nothing stirred inside the shop. He leaped down the aisle, yanked the chimney off the lamp and thrust the paper into the flames. He felt the scorching of the hot glass on his fingers. He dropped the glass chimney, but it didn't shatter when it hit the wooden floor. The paper vanished with a sigh and a puff of sour smoke. The lamp flame grew stronger, and a sweet, fresh, citrus scent swept through the shop.
"Thank you." Angela pulled herself to her feet. She managed a wobbly smile and wiped a bead of sweat off her forehead. A rough chuckle escaped her when Ethan staggered back toward the counter. "You don't believe in magic, do you?"
"I don't know what I believe."
"Do you at least believe the people who want to find me aren't my friends?"
He did believe, and it angered him to be used to hurt an innocent party. "Who are they, and what do they want?"
"I'm not sure who they are, but it should be obvious they want power over me." She caught her breath, looked away, then met his gaze again. "Can you tell me--have we met before?"
He shrugged, to fight the shiver that filled him. At her words, the certainty swept over him that he did know her, that the shop felt familiar. Could he blame that on his dreams?
"Usually, I'm not at a loss. Usually, I know all the little secrets." She tried to laugh. "Now I know how everyone else feels when they come in here. It isn't pleasant, is it?"
"Depends on how much you have to be in control."
"We are all puppets in someone else's hands, one way or another. Control is a temporary gift, a responsibility more than a privilege." She rubbed at her face with her fingertips, and it seemed to him that she rubbed color back into her features, rolling away wrinkles.
That spark grew brighter, bigger on her shoulder. Ethan could have sworn he saw a person in the middle of the spark. He shook his head and looked away. A soft gasping laugh escaped Angela, and when he looked back, the spark was gone.
"So... Angela, right?" He took a deep breath, consciously shoved away the tension tightening his gut again, and braced his arms on the counter directly opposite her. "I don't like it when people play games with me."
"Believe me, I am as in the dark as you."
"Oh, I believe it." He yanked his gaze free of hers when he sensed something stirring inside him, reaching for a memory that stung and burned and flared bright enough to blind him. "I may not understand what just happened--"
"You don't believe because you don't want to believe."
"What does believing have to do with understanding?"
"Everything. But I think..." She took a step back from the counter, arms crossed, almost hugging herself, and tipped her head to one side as she studied him. "I think, for a time, your refusal to believe might be our armor and shield."
"Armor, huh?" He forced a brief chuckle to fight down the ache that shot through him at the word. "I'm no white knight, lady. Never have been, and after what I've seen... It'd take a miracle to make me one."
"Divine's Emporium specializes in miracles." That tightness around her eyes relaxed a little.
"Not doing you much good right now, is it?"
"The world fights against miracles, don't you know that? The world wants everything to be in neat, orderly, standard packages. Everything explainable and controllable and uniform. No one different from anyone else. Predictable. But that leads to such a plain, flat, monotone world."
She sighed and reached into a candy jar, pulled out something and tossed it to him. "Where would we be without color and oddness and things that don't quite fit, to make us wake up?"
Ethan caught it, feeling sharp angles and a hard length in his palm before he opened his fingers and saw the rock candy stick lying in his palm. The stick the crystals clung to was a thin, pale blond wood with a tiny knob on the end. The crystals were multiple colors, some shimmering with a pearly gleam, other streaks almost metallic.
"How did you--" He shook his head. Asking how someone made candy was a time-waster. Unless of course the candy was laced with drugs or poison, and his gut instinct said Angela was the last person to stoop to such crude tactics. If she believed in magic as strongly as she seemed, she wouldn't need drugs to make the world beautiful and full of wonder. "I don't usually eat candy."
"You should. Children know how to enjoy small tastes and let treats be treats. It's when the world presses in on us and we think nothing can be wonderful that we start to be gluttons and greedy, and we want treats to be meals instead of high points." She tipped her head to one side and her smile softly grew, with a hint of mischief sparkling in those big, blue-green eyes, daring him.
Growling so softly he only felt it in his throat and didn't hear it, Ethan lifted the rock candy stick to his mouth and took a tentative lick.
He should have expected there to be more than just sweetness. More than just colored sugar crystallized on a stick. But what he tasted, he wasn't quite sure. Could he taste memories? Or maybe this was what sunrises and the feeling after a raging thunderstorm cleared the air would taste like, if that taste could be collected and condensed.
Ethan shook his head free of that fancy and lowered the stick. He could have sworn Angela blinked away a single tear when he didn't take a second lick. But that made no sense.
"Look--what I was going to say before--I don't know what's going on, but it's clear to me these people looking for you are up to no good. You're not their demented niece who ran away after a fire and thinks everyone in your family is dead, are you?"
"I have been in this town so long...if I ever had any family, they are long dead or have forgotten me. No, these people claiming to be my family are lying." She shook her head, her face going somber again, tightening around the eyes and mouth as she thought. "People lie for a reason. What do they hope to gain by lying about me?"
"That's what I think we need to find out."
"We?" That sparkle returned to her eyes.
It made him feel like he had taken a big whiff of oxygen, opened up something inside his head, let light in.
"Why 'we,' Mr..." She laughed. "I still don't know your name."
"Ethan Jarrod." He held out his hand to shake hers without thinking. A cool feeling like dew and the breeze at dawn rushed over him when her long-fingered, smooth hand rested in his grasp for a moment. It took all his discipline to let go after that brief clasp and not hold on. Maybe yank her across the counter and into his arms.
The talisman in his pocket stung and burned through the cloth of his pants and he flinched and tugged free.
"Ethan. Nice to... Well, not exactly nice to meet you. Strange. Disrupting. But I think I shall be glad we met. If only because I now have some details about my enemies." Angela nodded and took a deep breat
h. "As I started to say, why do you speak about 'we,' Ethan?"
"I don't much like it when people try to use me to hurt other people. Turning people into tools, that's wrong. Lying to me, that makes me mad. Hurting you the way they did with that picture."
"But you don't quite believe in what happened there, do you?"
"Doesn't matter if I believe or not, I know what I saw. Something happened and it wasn't right. So from where I'm standing, I owe these folks some payback. For me, if not for you. And I owe you something because I did hurt you, even if I didn't mean it."
"Which means you owe them even more, for using you that way." Her smile widened just a little more, with a touch of weariness that made him want to sweep her up in his arms and carry her to some place quiet and shadowed and cool, so she could rest.
Ethan didn't quite understand that. He shook away the impulse like he pushed away the sense of those colored, laughing, whispering lights gathering around. That irritating spark had returned, sitting on the edge of the cash register, with a man's grinning face staring up at him from the center of the brightness.
"I'll be in touch--through Stanzer, okay?" He jammed his hand into his pocket and flinched when his fingers touched the talisman again.
Ethan backed away from the counter, trying not to shake his hand to get rid of the sting as he withdrew his hands from his pockets. He needed to get some hand sanitizer, at the very least, to reduce the effects from that contact. Why exactly had he put it in his pocket? He thought he had left the talisman in his desk back in his office. "We'll figure this out."
"I'm sure we will." She sighed and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter, and watched him step toward the doorway. "But will you enjoy the answers, Ethan?"
"Doesn't matter if we enjoy it or not. The truth is what's important." He paused, and for a moment teetered on the edge of letting her big blue-green eyes draw him back to the counter, to lean in close and stare into their jeweled depths. And do what, he wasn't quite certain. "Take care of yourself, Miss Angela."
"You too, Ethan."
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