by Madelyn Alt
The sun had gone down by six that evening as the hemisphere careened toward the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Streetlamps burned brightly against the shifting shadows, but if not for the Christmas lights twinkling cheerily within storefront windows, the hollow feeling that tugged at my insides when I looked out at the street would have been much worse. I pulled the café curtains that closed off the window displays from the rest of the store and felt a bit less vulnerable.
What I really needed was time to center myself, to focus my thoughts and energies, a little meditation in a safe place. The loft called to me, but I dismissed the notion out of hand. The loft was Liss’s sacred indoor working space as well as being the repository for our witchy stock. The large second-floor room had a presence all its own that even a newbie like me could sense. I felt at home there during N.I.G.H.T.S. get- togethers or when assisting our more, shall we say, specialized clientele, but to be there during quiet times, without Liss’s knowledge or express approval, just wouldn’t feel right. The protective Invisible Threshold spell Liss had placed upon the circle guaranteed that, for the good of us all.
No, I would not use the loft tonight, I thought as I locked down the security door for the evening.
Outside, the air was crisp, still, the sky moonless beneath fitful clouds. Fitful . . . that matched my mood to a T. Once upon a time I might have made my way across town to St. Catherine’s of the Cross, the spiritual home of the O’Neill family for decades. But I hadn’t been a regular churchgoer for years. Not since I was old enough to understand the kinds of things St. Catherine’s revered leader, Father Tom, had been up to during his lengthy tenure. You might say the good Father was at least in part responsible for my spiritual ennui. It was hard to blindly follow when faced with the purposeful betrayal of core teachings and beliefs by the person who should adhere to them the most. Hypocrisy cannot serve faith well.
And yet, in spite of all that, I found myself steering my old Bug along the familiar roads, wondering what the heck I thought I was doing.
At some point in the last few years, St. Catherine’s had discovered the joys of landscape lighting. The stately brick church with its twin spires absolutely blazed with lights. Hidden beacons dazzled from the shrubbery, casting obscene shadows onto the coves and corners of the neo-Gothic architecture and transforming the old gravestones in the backyard cemetery into something straight out of a horror flick. I pulled slowly into the rough chip-and-seal parking lot, hesitating at the number of cars already in attendance there. Crap. I had hoped to slip in for only a minute to light a candle for Amanda Roberson. It seemed the decent thing to do. But I’d feel ridiculous walking in and disturbing a bunch of regular parishioners. People who in all likelihood knew me or, more importantly, knew my mother, and who would waste no time in passing along the tale of my unexpected intrusion to her perked ears. For all I knew, Mom could be in there, too.
Cowards never win, Margaret . . .
The voice of my conscience butted in with its usual unsolicited advice. Everyone has a conscience—thank goodness for all the rest of us—but for some reason mine came all too often in the disapproving clucks of my late Grandma Cora. Grandma C had been a hard, practical woman of Catholic faith who’d ruled our clan with an iron hand, never mind the velvet glove. I had never been especially close to Grandma—can you get close to an emotional porcupine?—even though I’d spent loads of evenings with her back when my mom was going through her Tupperware Lady phase. So while Mom demonstrated the correct way to burp plastic lids and tried to entice acquaintances to throw still more boring parties, I baked bread with Grandma C and tried not to do anything that would get woolly worms stuck down my shirtfront. Even in death I hadn’t been relieved of her vigilant eye. Irony at its most Murphy.
So cowards never win. Big whoop-de-ding-dong. They never get shot on the front lines, either.
I scowled, tapping my thumbs against the steering wheel as I tried to decide what to do. It was always the same. Once I heard Grandma’s nagging from the recesses of my mind, I could squirm and I could wiggle, but in the end, what Grandma wanted, Grandma got. I didn’t have much of a choice if I wanted to skip a ride on the Great Guilt Trip on which Grandma C served as engineer, chief conductor, and ticket taker.
A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
I left the relative safety of Christine’s snug confines and crossed the parking lot as quickly as I could toward St. Catherine’s arched doors. With a little luck I could get down to business and leave before anyone noticed I had been there. Luck . . . I had never had an overabundance of it. The heavy doors squeaked on their old iron hinges as I pulled open the one on the right. I cringed. So much for subtle. The air outside the church had been so still I could hear the traffic from the highway at least a mile away, but from within, the traffic sounds were muffled by the singsong cant of the Father’s homily. It was both familiar and somehow foreign at the same time. A rite for the dead. I gave up straining against the heavyweight doors, took a deep breath, and slipped into the vestibule through the gap I’d created.
The entrance to the main sanctuary was closed. Thank heaven for small favors, I thought as the outside doors closed behind me with a tomblike phloomph—I would be able to see to my business in peace. I looked around as my eyes adjusted. Things hadn’t changed much. The same oak paneling lined the walls and ceiling, dark enough to be considered black. A truly awful gilt crucifix stood on the wall opposite the main doors, looking like something from one of the home shopping channels. Beneath it was the attendance book, proffered on a chest-high stand. I didn’t sign it. If by some miracle my appearance here managed to go unnoticed, I wasn’t about to let my signature in the Book of Days tip Mom off.
Off to the right was a painting of the Last Supper, just your average paint-by-numbers church fare. Next to it was a closed door that almost disappeared into the paneling, which I knew from past experience led to the upper gallery and bell tower. (Helpful hint #191: Never sneak off to the bell tower for an illicit makeout session when your bratty little sister knows your every secret. My ears didn’t stop ringing for a week.) To the left I saw my target—that same low table filled to overflowing with flickering votive candles in cut-glass cups of cobalt and crimson. I walked toward them, my hand outstretched in anticipation of the cup of long matchsticks.
The candle flames flared in unison as I approached them.
I saw them. I know I did.
I froze uncertainly, my focus riveted to the anomaly like the proverbial moth. As I watched further, the flames flickered, dropping in intensity until they nearly guttered, then flared again, one inch, two, higher, higher. It was amazing. It was confusing. It was . . .
Probably a stray air current. From the door closing, or even as a result of my own movement through the room.
Yeah, that was it. Had to be.
But just to be sure, I knelt and bowed my head before the marble representation of the Virgin Mary before touching a match to an unlit votive and saying a silent prayer for Amanda Roberson and the family she had left behind. Despite my own internal struggle, it seemed the least I could do. And while I knew a simple prayer might not help much, if enough prayers were made, perhaps we supplicants might set into motion a chain of events that would instigate justice. I would do my part, even though the God I’d been raised to believe in had ceased to have much meaning for me.
The Virgin Mother, on the other hand . . .
Mary had shown great resilience and strength in the Bible, and had managed somehow to be one of the few women of regard to be included in that lengthy narrative. I respected that about Her. And so, on the occasions when I did pray, I prayed to Mary, the Great Lady.
The statue of Mary smiled benevolently on. She could always be counted on to listen when you needed Her.
From within the sanctuary, I heard movement, rumblings. Time for me to exit, stage right.
My duty done, I turned to go.
“We’ve got to stop meeting li
ke this.”
The resonant male voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once. To an isolated female the sudden materialization of a man might well be viewed as threatening, but I knew that voice.
“Marcus! What the devil are you doing here?”
He stood in the darkened stairwell to the bell tower, a shoulder leaning indolently against the jam. A vision in black leather and aging denim. “Funny you should ask that. I was about to ask you the same thing.”
It was probably wrong of me to notice the way his jeans clung to his lean hips. I made myself look away. Marcus Quinn was my boss’s main squeeze, the May half of their May-September love affair. And no matter how much his bad boy image on occasion piqued my curiosity, he was indisputably off-limits. Period. Besides, despite the fact that I hadn’t seen Deputy Tom Fielding since he’d hightailed it out of my life in October, I still harbored a secret hope that I hadn’t seen the last of him. It might seem silly, but something told me I shouldn’t give up. Not yet.
I shook myself from my reverie. “I asked first. I’m surprised to see you here.” A nervous giggle threatened my composure. “Stunned, actually.”
“Who, me?” Marcus stepped down off the landing with the nimble grace of a stretching cat. “My aunt goes here. She wanted to come tonight for the vigil for Amanda Roberson, and I came along to lend moral support. Not to mention that I knew Amanda. Besides, I love churches.”
Doubtfully I squinted at him. “Really?”
His eyes were dark and shadowy in the dim vestibule, but I felt the weight of them on me for a long moment before he spoke. “There are many paths to the Divine, Maggie. Mine is just one of them. No better than the rest, except that it works for me. And isn’t that the most important thing?”
My own thoughts were too muddled to agree, so I simply avoided the question. To fill the silence, I said, “So, your aunt belongs to this church? I wonder if she knows my mother. Oh.” A sudden uncomfortable thought. “You don’t mean your Aunt Marian, do you?”
“You know her?”
Did I ever.
If Marian Tabor was inside, it really was time to get the heck outta there, and fast. As well meaning as she was, Marian was one of the town’s most determined matchmakers, not to mention my mother’s longtime friend. Besides, she’d already made noises about fixing me up with her nephew when I’d met up with her at the library a couple of months back. Evidently she was oblivious to Marcus’s involvement with Liss. And if he hadn’t told her, I wasn’t about to let the cat out of the bag.
“Yes, I know her. Listen, I have to go.”
“If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll go with you. I have something I need to talk to you about.”
I glanced nervously toward the door. “Um, sure. I’ll just wait outside.”
“Be right back.”
I wasn’t about to stand on the doorstep waiting to be discovered, so I huddled out by Christine in the dark, fists in pockets and shoulders hunched against the lowering temperatures, while the muffled strains of a the pipe organ trembled the church’s old stained glass windows. The moment might have been peaceful if not for the reality of why I had come in the first place. I thought about Evie’s perceptions that Amanda’s death was not accidental, and I shivered. We had good people here in Stony Mill, a fact I sometimes forgot. And yet good people have been known to commit really horrifying acts. What would we find about the circumstances surrounding Amanda Roberson’s death? Did one of our own cause it to happen? Or had it been an accident after all?
Nervously I eyed the starkly illuminated church and wished that Marcus would hurry.
Finally the doors to the church opened and my wish was granted. Out walked Marcus with his recognizable Lone Cowboy gait. Except he wasn’t alone. On the left was his aunt, and—Oh-Sweet-Jesus—there was my mother toddling beside him on the right. I knew a moment of cold fear. Alone, each woman was formidable indeed. Together they were like a matchmaking nuclear bomb, ticking away toward matrimonial Armageddon.
Maybe I should have mentioned to Marcus that I was trying not to be seen.
My first thought was to duck behind Christine. My second thought was to get in and take off before they saw me.
It was way too late for that.
Chapter 6
Marcus’s voice drifted to me across the parking lot: “Aunt Marian, there’s someone over here I think you’d like to say hello to.”
With a smooth gesture, he ruined my last hope to escape unnoticed. Marian’s face lit up like a ten-strand Christmas tree the moment she noticed me skulking on the far end of the parking lot.
“Maggie! Yoo-hoo, Maggie! I had no idea you were here!”
She waved at me across the expanse of gravel at the exact same moment my mother caught sight of me—I could tell by the look of annoyance on her face. Before anyone else could say a word, Marian made a beeline for me, leaving Marcus and my mother scurrying to keep up the pace.
Damn and double damn.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see my mother—I did. I just didn’t want to see her there, tonight, with Marcus and the church in the background. It wasn’t exactly what I would call neutral ground. My mom and I had a relationship that might best be described as grudging acceptance. I was the black sheep of the family, the child who could not manage to conform to my mother’s strict views of the world, no matter how hard I tried, and she had never quite forgiven me for that. Eventually I had given up trying. She’d never forgiven me for that, either.
“Hello, Marian,” I said as they drew near. “Hi, Mom.”
Marian puffed to a halt, her breath steaming around her in the lowering temperatures. The town’s head librarian, Marian defied the conventions of her post with her love for any item of clothing that hearkened back to the animal kingdom for inspiration. Tonight she appeared to be practicing a modicum of self-control in honor of the occasion. Wrapped in her thick wool overcoat, the only sign of her predilection for animal prints was her plush mittens and scarf, both a cheesy faux leopard.
She put her hands on her generous hips and pretended to frown. “Maggie O’Neill. Did I miss seeing you inside?”
“Now, Marian, you know my Margaret has been avoiding the church. Haven’t you, dear?” My mother was one of the few people I have ever known who possessed the ability to speak through pursed lips. I’ve often felt she missed her calling as a ventriloquist. “She’s also avoiding her mother and father these days. It’s a crying shame how you give your best years to your children, only to be abandoned by them the instant they leave your house.”
She tugged on her oh-so-practical Isotoners with undue force. Behind her, I saw Marcus grimace. He met my eye as if to say, “Oops.” I shrugged. What could I say?
“I’m not avoiding you, Mom,” I tried to explain. “I’ve just been . . . busy.”
She shook her head sadly. “I can understand too busy for your parents. Children grow up and grow selfish. But too busy for your church? It’s shameful, Margaret. The ladies of the auxiliary ask after you every Wednesday afternoon. What am I supposed to tell them?”
If they did ask, it was only to make my mother feel small, of that much I was certain. I’ve met these women. A pit of vipers had more compassion, at least when it came to each other.
“I’ve always thought the truth the best approach,” I said, only marginally successful in disguising my irritation. “Tell them I’m busy.”
My mother opened her mouth to say more, but Marian elbowed her out of the way. “Oh, put a sock in it, Patty. Give the girl a bit of breathing room.” Marian turned to me with a speculative glint in her eye. “I had no idea you knew my nephew, Maggie. Marcus has never mentioned you.” She paused to transfer her eagle-eyed stare to her nephew, standing in the background with a grin on his face. “Come to think of it, Marcus rarely mentions anyone. You been holding out on me, boy?”
His answer was the arch of a blackguard brow.
“I knew it! I just knew it. I’m going to have to watch you more closely,
I can see that right now. You wicked thing, you.” Her gaze flicked back to me. “So. How do you know Miss Maggie here?”
She thought we were an item. I held up my hands, laughing. “Whoa, there. I’m not seeing Marcus. In case you were wondering.”
Her face fell, but she recovered nicely. “Well, you can’t blame an old girl for trying. I figure if I’m not getting any action, someone might as well be.”
My mother made a huffy sound. “Really, Marian. Can’t you reign in that tongue, in light of the occasion?” She stepped forward, positioning herself between Marcus and me. “How is Tom, dear?” she asked.
Her maneuvering was not lost on me. By appearances alone, Marcus was not the type of guy my mother had in mind when she cased out prospective husbands for her oldest daughter. But she needn’t have worried. Marcus wasn’t the least bit interested in me. And Tom . . . well. I cleared my throat and mustered an airy, “Oh, he’s fine,” while I dug around inside my purse for my keys, which were hiding somewhere between my wallet, credit card receipts, candy wrappers, lint, pennies, and other assorted flotsam in the bottom.
All right, all right, I admit it. I never told my mother that Tom and I had never really gotten off the ground. So I’m the biggest coward that ever lived. Cowardice has its advantages.
Three sets of eyes were watching my hands. I wanted to hide from all of them.
My mother picked a piece of lint off my wool coat. “It occurs to me, Margaret, that we never rescheduled that dinner with you and Tom. I know your father would like to meet him. How about next Sunday?”
Keys, keys, where were the blasted keys? “Um . . . well, we’ve both been working an awful lot lately, Mom.”
“He does take the time to eat, doesn’t he?”
“Um . . . well . . .”
“I’m sure I could get Melanie and Greg to come to dinner that night. You really should see the girls. Little Jenna will be in preschool next fall, and baby Courtney just took her first steps. As their aunt, you should be taking more of an interest.”
