Gray Widow Trilogy 1: Gray Widow's Walk

by Dan Jolley

“I don’t guess you have Grape Crush?” Janey asked. The blonde gave her a blank stare. “Didn’t think so. That’s cool. I’ll take a diet Mountain Dew.”

  Drinks in hand, they turned from the bar, and Tim took her arm and led her toward one of the couches.

  “You don’t drink, I take it?” he asked.

  “Not too often.”

  “Do you mind if I do?”

  “No, no, of course not. All things in moderation, as the saying goes.” They reached the couch. It was set back into a small alcove, still affording a clear view of the stage but slightly isolated from the rest of the crowd. Janey hesitated. “Would you rather sit at one of the tables?”

  “Nah.” He plopped down on the couch and motioned for her to join him. She did, sinking back into the spongy cushions. “You can hear yourself think a little better back here,” he said, and laughed at the sight of his own knees, which were almost on a level with his eyes. “If you can put up with the less-than-firm padding.”

  Janey folded her long legs under her as she sat, and poked at the couch. “Sort of has that Salvation Army thrift store charm, doesn’t it?” Tim laughed, and Janey turned her head away and scanned the club as she took a small sip of the soda. Neither of them spoke.

  Tim broke the silence. “I still can’t get over that painting of yours. I’ve never known a painting to have that much of an effect on me. I mean, the ones I saw in the gallery were fantastic, but nothing like that one. Are you going to show it?”

  “No...I’ve got something special in mind for it.”

  “Oh really? What?”

  She took another sip of Mountain Dew, straining to remain casual, and changed the subject. “So, ah, you said your brother would be here tonight?”

  He paused, switching gears. “Well, he’s supposed to be, anyway. His girlfriend’s in the opening act. He said he’d find us and say hello. He sort of plays guitar himself...”

  “Sort of?”

  “Well, he’s pretty good, really, if he’s just, y’know, dicking around at the house. Get him on stage and he gets all nervous.” He sipped at his own drink, and set it on the floor. “So how much do you get from selling one of your paintings? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”

  Janey let one corner of her mouth quirk upward. “It varies. Depends on what I think they’re worth, what kind of price I put on them. Did you really like ‘Pure Thought’? The crystal tree one?”

  He nodded vigorously. “Yeah! I mean, like I said, I’ve never seen a painting before that made me feel so much. And that one really did.”

  Well. He’d just given her the perfect opening. Acting on a decision she’d made earlier in the day, she took a deep breath and said, “So you liked it better than the other one?”

  Tim’s smile froze. Janey experienced a touch of sadistic pleasure at catching him so flat-footed, and immediately felt ashamed of herself.

  “The ones at the gallery? Which one do you mean?”

  She calmly drank from her cup. “The other one I had in my bedroom. You know, the one you saw before I came home the other day. When you were in my apartment.” He looked like a deer caught in headlights. “If I’d realized you were there I wouldn’t have walked around almost naked, y’know.”

  Tim half rose from the couch, shifting between guilt and anger. “Look, I don’t know what you’re—I mean, I’m sorry that...” When her face didn’t change, he sank back down onto the cushions. “How’d you know I was there?”

  “You left a couple of signs.” She shifted around to face him directly. “I’m not upset. Not really.”

  He looked suspicious. “Then why did you pretend you didn’t know? All this time? Through that whole date?”

  She stared down at her soft drink. “I’m not sure why I didn’t go ahead and ask you if you’d been there. In my bedroom, I mean. I guess I was waiting to see if you brought it up first. I was going to talk to you about it before, out at the statue, but I couldn’t ever seem to find the right time. And…I really didn’t want to ruin things.”

  Janey looked up, into his narrowed eyes, and shrugged. She felt the heat rising into her face, and wondered if he could see it in the dim light. “I know, it’s not exactly standard for the beginning of a rel—” She stopped, unwilling to say the word. “Um. Well.”

  Neither of them spoke for several seconds, and Janey finally said, “Awkward, huh?”

  Tim slumped backward and nestled into the corner of the couch. “Sort of, yeah.” Janey started to say something else when she saw his face darken, as though remembering something unpleasant. He sat back up. “Well, okay, but...how come you weren’t soaked? When you came in? It was pouring rain outside.”

  “I’d gone downstairs to take out my trash.” The dumpster for the LaCroix was in back, outside an access door. “I just stuck my head out and pitched the bags around the door, y’know, to try to keep from getting wet.” She paused. “I took the stairs...you must’ve just missed me.”

  Tim’s eyes got wider, and he smacked himself on the forehead. “Of course. Of course I did.” He laughed self-consciously. “Okay, okay, I’m a total moron. I mean, I guess you know why I was spooked when you came in. That first painting would give the undead nightmares.” Janey smiled. “But how come you didn’t notice the door was unlocked? When you came back? You had your keys with you.”

  That stopped Janey cold. She slowly opened her mouth, wondering what was going to come out of it, when an unfamiliar voice sounded from over her shoulder.

  “Tim! Hey! Thanks for coming, bro!”

  Tim looked up and grinned and rose off the couch, heading for a rail-thin, long-haired young man in ratty jeans and a blue T-shirt with the Superman emblem on the front. He and Tim embraced briefly, then he turned to Janey, flashed what looked like every one of his teeth, and stuck out one long, bony hand.

  He looks like somebody grabbed Tim by the head and feet and stretched him.

  There were a few more differences. The young man’s skin was a shade or two lighter, and he’d inherited his mother’s freckles. But, putting him side by side with Tim, it was obvious at even the barest glance that they were brothers.

  “Hey! I’m Cary.”

  Janey stood and returned the handshake. “Janey Sinclair.”

  “Great to meet you!” Cary gave Tim a mischievous smirk. “For that matter, great that Tim finally managed to talk to a girl.” Over Tim’s loud protest, Cary went on: “And listen, I’d love to stay and talk, but you won’t believe this. Kate’s guitarist has the flu, and I talked them into letting me play tonight!”

  Janey watched Tim’s face. He was clearly surprised, and not pleasantly. Before he could say anything, though, Cary shook Janey’s hand again. “I’ve got to get backstage now. Nice meeting you! Wish me luck, guys!” He sprinted away.

  Tim watched him go, and shook his head. “This is going to be a disaster.” He sat back down. Janey followed. “Kate takes this band pretty seriously, and if Cary makes them look bad she’ll kill him.”

  Janey pretended to watch the stage, but kept glancing at Tim out of the corner of her eye. Maybe he’d forget what they had been talking about...?

  “So,” he said. “What about that door?”

  Shit.

  “Well, I’ll tell you, but it’s sort of embarrassing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sometimes I just forget to lock it. I mean, y’know, the building’s got security, cameras and what-not, so it’s not like my door just opens onto the street or anything. Plus, where I grew up I never had to lock my door at all. So sometimes I just forget. When I came back yesterday I figured I’d left it unlocked again, and nothing was missing, so I didn’t think about it.”

  Tim fell silent. She didn’t think he believed her and, considering it, she wouldn’t have believed such a lame explanation either, but before he could respond, a voice crashed out over th
e PA. Easily five times louder than the canned music, it made Janey wince and wish for ear plugs.

  “All right!” the voice said. Janey turned toward the stage and saw that a tall, bony girl with lustrous purple hair stood at the center mic, a big guitar slung across her chest. The other members of the band were all guys—kids, really. A swarthy, shirtless young man with long, unkempt hair and a fretless bass took up his position near the west corner of the stage. The drummer came out and sat down, also shirtless, with shaggy blonde surfer hair and enormous biceps. He grinned at the girl and twirled his sticks in his fingers. Then, finally, Cary appeared, clutching a blinding white Les Paul six-string. He already looked nervous, and the harsh lights made the sweat on his forehead sparkle.

  “We’re Flay,” the girl, Kate, barked into the mic. She turned and nodded to the drummer, who cracked his sticks together, one, two, one two three four, and the band launched into their first song.

  The drummer and the bassist seemed at least adequate. Their pounding rhythms nicely complemented Kate’s vocals, which she belted out in an oddly melodic growl. The song progressed smoothly through the intro, which did not involve guitar at all—and then Cary started playing.

  Tim shook his head and mouthed the words, “Oh, no.” Janey couldn’t hear him at all over the din, and her ears started to hurt. She squinted, tried to decide whether or not to stick her fingers in her ears, and watched Cary play.

  He made mistakes almost from the first note. To begin with he couldn’t find the rhythm of the song, and when he did find it he couldn’t get the right chord. What probably would have been a good song instead became unlistenable. Kate turned from the mic halfway through and gave Cary a look that, to Janey’s surprise, didn’t kill him where he stood. Cary saw it, though, and flinched.

  Tim pulled Janey up from the couch.

  “Come on,” he shouted into her ear through cupped hands. “I can’t take this anymore.”

  Janey let herself be led outside, and felt sorry for the kid.

  * * *

  The cool night air smelled faintly of pine needles as they walked back to Janey’s car and drove to Hammerfield Park. Intended to be a safe, family-friendly alternative to Piedmont Park, the carefully landscaped Hammerfield spent its days filled with college students, small children accompanied by watchful parents, and dogs, along with a lot of Frisbees. Squirrels more or less infested the well-maintained trees, and ducks quacked in the man-made pond.

  By night the park wore a slightly more forbidding face but, according to the Atlanta safety commission, stayed well enough lit and was patrolled by police frequently enough to afford safe passage to joggers and others out for evening strolls.

  So Janey and Tim strolled, following a pine needle-covered walking trail.

  After a few moments he tentatively reached out his hand, and Janey took it.

  “Tell me about Cary. Were you two close, growing up?”

  Tim’s grin flashed. “Well, we spent a lot of time torturing each other. So, yeah.”

  She concentrated on his voice, and as he talked about the times he used to have with Cary and their sister Lauren, she thought of Adam. Now and then, over the weeks and months, she’d found herself staring at the ring finger of her left hand. When she let it, the bareness of it struck at her like a phantom pain. Blonde hair floating around his head in natural ringlets, ocean green eyes...

  Tim squeezed her hand, and she jerked back to the present. As they walked, he turned her hand over in his own, running long, slender fingers down each fold and line.

  “Forgive me for saying so, but this doesn’t actually feel too much like the hand of an artist.”

  Janey was glad of the subject change, since she hadn’t heard a word he’d said in the last few minutes.

  “Well, uh...I work out a little.”

  “A little. Really.”

  She smiled, but took her hand back and shoved it in her pocket. A not very comfortable silence followed, until Janey said, “Hey, how’s your dad? I know he’s on a trip somewhere, but I never heard any details.”

  Tim’s face fell. “He and Mom are taking care of my aunt and uncle, up in Cincinnati. They were in a car wreck.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t know it was anything like that.”

  Tim stared off at the night sky. They came to a bench, and he moved to sit down. Janey joined him, but after a second’s consideration left a good foot and a half between them.

  “They’re all right, or at least they’re going to be. Aunt Tasneem in particular needs a lot of time to recuperate, and Uncle Sanjay’s pretty old, he can’t get around too well, even when he’s okay. So Mom and Dad went up there to help. And I’m here, until they get better.” He laughed. Short, derisively. “Or maybe longer than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s…I didn’t really plan to be anywhere. Not in any practical way, at least. Growing up, Dad always told me how important it is to get a good, steady, paying job. He said if you had that, you had no limits. As long as you had a solid base under you, you could reach for the stars. Well, I didn’t buy that. I wanted to be a writer, make my living selling stories. So...after I graduated with my nice little BA in English, I worked for a while in a bookstore while I submitted stuff. I figured, hey, every writer goes through this, getting back rejection slips, it’s just part of the game, paying my dues, I’ll get published soon enough. But...I didn’t.”

  He paused. Janey waited for him.

  “Every once in a while an editor wrote me a personal letter and encouraged me to keep writing, but by and large I got form letters. My favorite one had, ‘Dear... ’ and then a blank line, and some intern misspelled my name on it. How the hell do you misspell ‘Tim?’ Anyway, Dad kept telling me I needed to get a nine-to-five job, he said I could make money during the day and write at night. But I was bull-headed about it, and I kept on trying to live the dream, y’know? But I just…rode that plane right into the ground. I had about a week and a half’s worth left in my bank account… and then Aunt Tasneem lost control of her car. I think, probably, what happened was there was a spider in the car. She’s always been terrified of spiders. She won’t admit it, about the spider, but she was a very good driver, very safe, and in the middle of a dry, sunny afternoon she just ran off the road and into somebody’s front yard and hit a tree.”

  Tim rocked back and forth on the bench. “Now she needs a lot of help for a while, and Mom volunteered herself and Dad. So I packed up my cat and my laptop, and that’s why I’m here, because Dad can’t be, and he needed someone to run the building. So I’m in the family business. And Dad was right all along.” He sighed. “Not a very interesting story. I’m just sort of a slacker who finally saw the light and realized he couldn’t buy food with rejection letters.”

  Janey said, “Interesting stories are overrated.”

  Before Tim could reply, a shrill, rasping scream punched out of the darkness from somewhere to their right.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Janey jumped up from the bench. “Come on!” Before Tim could protest, she took his hand, and the two of them darted off the walking trail and into the trees, running toward the scream.

  Along the way, Tim said, “What are you doing? Let me call 911! Janey!” but she didn’t stop. The pines only stood in a narrow line, and seconds later she and Tim crashed into a small clearing with a fountain in the center. A brick pathway encircled the fountain and led out through a metal archway covered with ivy. A tremendous oak, hundreds of years old, stood off to one side in the clearing, and dark shapes writhed and struggled in the shadows on its far side. Behind her, Janey heard Tim say, “Yes! I want to report an attack!”

  The scream came again, a little weaker this time, and Janey rushed toward the tree. She couldn’t tell exactly what was happening, but it was obviously an assault, and she shouted, “Hey! Hey!”

  Janey reached the t
ree and rounded the far side, entered the shadow, and willed her night vision on. A college-age girl lay on her back on the ground, her head and shoulders emerging into the dim light. She wore a jogging suit, and an iPod lay on the ground nearby, smashed apart. Her attacker had torn open her shirt and ripped off her sports bra. He knelt on top of her with his back to Janey, a wiry man in black clothes, both of his hands out of sight as he clutched the girl. The girl saw Janey over the man’s shoulder and screamed again, and the man twisted around and looked Janey in the eyes.

  There was something very very wrong with the mugger’s jaw, and the length of his arms and hands, and his eyes. A stray beam of light glinted off slick, glistening spines like the teeth of deep-ocean predators.

  Janey skidded to a stop with her mouth hanging open and stifled a scream of her own.

  * * *

  “Miss Jorden!” Scott Charles shouted.

  Garrison Vessler stepped out of the hall bathroom as Brenda Jorden and Ned Fields, who’d been watching a movie in the living room for the last hour, sprinted down the hall toward Scott’s room. The walls shook with Fields’ pounding footfalls. Jorden helped Scott across the room and into the chair in front of the mobile fMRI unit. She slid the cap of sensors onto his head. Scott’s eyes stayed wide, unblinking, as he stared into another place.

  Seconds later a grainy image coalesced on the screen, with a familiar energy wave shimmering in the middle of it.

  “That’s Hammerfield Park,” Fields said.

  Vessler hit a button on his phone. “Mobile units 3 and 10. Target is located.”

  The energy wave flickered and shook on the screen. “Jesus.” Scott sounded less like a young boy than an old man. “Look at that signature.”

  A voice came over the phone. “Mobile unit 3, ETA ninety seconds.”

  Vessler stood near Scott, barking orders into the phone, when he heard the boy gasp. He turned, glanced at the screen and almost dropped his handset.

  Another signature shone on the display. It moved after the primary’s, throwing off energy like a magnesium flare, the waveform half an inch wide and dancing like a bolt of lightning. The lines and contours of its surroundings began to distort around it.