The Shadow Constant

by AJ Scudiere

  “Someone needs to go to a distant gun fair or shop today and pick up two extras. I’m thinking a nine-mill and a twenty-two. Kayla and Reenie can take the twenty-twos—” He gave Kayla a look as she was clearly gearing up to balk. “And Ivy and I will take the nines.”

  Just then they all jumped as a doorbell chimed loudly throughout the house.

  “Jesus.” Reenie put her hand to her chest and started to stand up. Her breathing turned heavy as Evan searched the air and asked, “What was that?”

  “It’s an electronic doorbell—wireless—that I put in yesterday.” Kayla stood to answer it.

  Evan stayed with Reenie, even as he hollered to Kayla to be safe. Quickly, he motioned Ivy to the door with her. He stayed where he was, torn by not knowing what was the right place for him, but he didn’t like the waxy pale shade of Reenie’s skin or the fact that the air she was breathing didn’t seem to be soaking in. “Reenie?”

  She looked up at him, eyes brimming with unshed tears. She was fighting something, he just didn’t know what. Her voice was a whisper. “That chime was the last sound I heard before I opened the door and that man came in here. There were times when I was certain he was an idiot and I could talk him right out the door. But there were a few moments when I was pretty convinced he was going to kill me.”

  She sniffed and Evan pulled her into his arms, onto his lap. There was nothing he could do to take that away from her, no matter how much he wished otherwise.

  That was how the deputy found them.

  Officer Junior had returned, Ivy and Kayla trailing him into the kitchen. Behind the officer, Kayla motioned a zipper across her mouth, reminding them all that she wasn’t speaking. Evan was glad she’d remembered that—he might not have.

  “I’m glad you’re all here.” The officer refused the seat Ivy offered him at the table. “We did some follow-up work this morning. Given that you used the historical preservation services in town and that they knew you had this diagram, that was where we started looking.”

  Evan smiled and said, “thank you” but privately he thought the officer was acting pretty proud about a deduction any third grader who’d read some Hardy Boys mystery could make. He was not expecting any grand deductions.

  He was wrong.

  The officer opened the notebook that Evan had assumed he always carried. Apparently, today it was transporting useful things. “We found some pictures of the employees there,” He laid out three security camera photos of male employees, all wearing the same shirts and khaki pants.

  Immediately, Kayla slapped a finger on the one who’d been here last night. Evan recognized him, too. In this grainy shot, he didn’t look upset, his hair was combed and he was smiling at a customer. But it was him, no doubt. Evan said so.

  In a few more minutes, Officer Green left, supposedly to apprehend the wayward employee. Or maybe to talk to his boss about finding out what the thief was going to do with the diagram now that he had it.

  With breakfasts either finished or abandoned, Reenie stood and cleared the table. Kayla, who had silently shown the deputy to the door, now returned to end the conversation. “So who’s going to buy guns?”

  “I say we split our best shooters until everyone gets some practice in. That means Ivy and I each take one of you.” He turned to Ivy, pleased to see that she had no qualms about being named as a gunman. Evan was starting to develop a bunker mentality.

  It was Reenie who said what he wanted her to. “I think Evan should go . . . and take Kayla, not me.”

  Kayla looked a little surprised at that—as though she was shocked when Reenie expressed logical thoughts. Kayla needed to start adding up the number of times that happened and work her statistics so she could stop being so surprised by it.

  Reenie faced her. “You know mechanics better than anyone here. I’d suggest that you go together, and stick close but actually not shop together. You’ll be less obvious if you stay a little separated from each other.”

  “That’s a good point.” Kayla conceded.

  Reenie didn’t respond with “Damn straight,” but offered the sensible, “Ivy and I will stay here and work.”

  Ivy nodded. “I’ll wear my gun.”

  Evan felt bad for her. Their one employee had a PhD in Art History. She’d lived what sounded to be a traumatic life and had picked herself up by her own bra straps to make it better. In her initial interview, she’d been fascinated and awed by the opportunity to restore an actual historic plantation.

  There was some of that involved, and she’d get to paint today with an antique brush and probably spend several hours in one of Reenie’s favorite pastimes: cataloguing shit from the attic. But mostly, Ivy had been oiling a machine that wasn’t supposed to exist. She’d been driving to Cleveland to machine gears. She’d been babysitting his twenty-nine-year-old sister.

  And now he’d just asked her to strap on a gun.

  They’d cleared the table after breakfast and Kayla hopped off to research any not-quite-local gun shows or shops. No one left the Overseer’s House before Ivy headed out the door; Evan quickly grabbed her arm and stopped her. “No one goes anywhere alone until we’re all armed.”

  Ivy nodded, taking yet another thing in stride and pacing him over to the big house and up to her room where she opened several drawers in her nightstand for her clip and gun.

  Standing there in the shiny white room with all its pomp and fluff, he had to say it. “Ivy, I’m sorry.”

  She slid the clip slickly into the gun and smiled at him. “For what?”

  12

  The Old Kitchen Building

  Evan found Reenie in the old kitchen building. A bandanna in her hair, she was scrubbing the brick oven with a stiff-bristled broom. Her face looked much like the oven, a layer of soot having turned to a fine patina. She turned as soon as he walked in, hyperaware of everyone around her today. “Hey! How did it go?”

  It didn’t matter how it went. “You’re alone. Reenie, we agreed—”

  She cut him off with a word and a quick, sharp wave of her hand. “Later.”

  His frown came without his bidding; his worry strong and genuine. They had all agreed not to split up, but here she was, alone. And he’d only come here because he’d discovered Ivy alone in the attic with a notebook in her hand and dust in her hair. It was the first place he’d looked after realizing the women weren’t digging up any latrines and that the downstairs rooms had been painted and were just waiting to dry.

  What wasn’t logical was that Ivy was by herself. He’d initially figured that Reenie must be in the bathroom and he took in the scene. Piles of random things lay quiet around their employee perhaps already logged and discarded. There was clothing draped over an old, upholstered chair. There were toys carved of wood, their paint chipped, faded or rubbed away. Glass and crystal pieces nestled in clumps of newspapers from when they had last been paraded out for guests.

  Ivy smiled up from the middle, the fading sunlight coming in through the dormer window giving her a sepia look, as though she were part of the history she researched. But what he noticed next was that Ivy was pinned in to her spot on the floor. And there was only room for one person in the middle of her little kingdom. He’d asked immediately, “Where’s Reenie?”

  Ivy had sent him here, and from the reclaimed looks of the old hewn-wood table and bench seats, the ancient butcher-block counter and white enameled sink, Reenie had been here, cleaning—by herself—for a while. Which meant both women had decided to split up. “Do you at least have a weapon?”

  She shifted the broom in her hand, suddenly grabbing it with two fists and wielding it as protection. He had a fleeting image of Wonder Woman, deflecting bullets with her magic wristcuffs. Reenie looked just as tough and almost as implausible. Evan was getting ready to point that out when she leaned over and picked up a whiskey bottle.

  “You’re drinking?” Whatever the story was here, it just kept getting better and better.

  “No, I have a glass bottle to smas
h and wield. And . . .” She reached to the edge of the strings that held the apron around her waist and pulled out a long knife.

  Evan nodded. Though she was poorly armed, her expression was all badass. He had to respect that. She was here, and she was safe, and tomorrow she’d have a gun and he’d breathe a little easier in a world that was spinning away from him.

  So he took a breath and tried to grasp what he could. “Can you tell me why you and Ivy split up? I thought we all agreed to stick at least to units of two armed.”

  Reenie looked around as though she thought there might be a bug in this place, too. “Did you see Ivy?”

  He nodded, weary. There was no easy space in the middle of the triangle of Kayla, Reenie and his own need to step up and be the man.

  Reenie took her broom to the door and offered up a quick glance out. Then she turned, her eyes suddenly serious and worried. “I found Ivy’s phone. I was snooping and I know it’s wrong, but it buzzed. She had a text and she never talks to anyone. She has no friends.”

  Evan shrugged. He’d noticed that. “I figure she’s an ex-stripper with an art history doctorate, there is no one else in her crowd.”

  “Right, but I was so excited that she had a friend.”

  “So?”

  “It was from her service provider.” Reenie leaned in. “But then I tried to make it look like I hadn’t opened her text and I screwed it up. I wound up in a huge string of photos on her phone. Of a lot of historical items here at the house.”

  Evan frowned. It wasn’t damning evidence; there were many logical explanations and only a few sinister ones. But Reenie’s next words dropped the bottom out of his heart.

  “Then I went back to erase the message.” She furtively glanced out the door again. “There’s a string of texts with a lot of those pictures on them. She has bidders on things she found in the attic. Things I didn’t know were there. Things from my grandfather.”

  “What?” He thunked down onto the bench seat, momentarily grateful it wasn’t still covered with spiderwebs and mouse turds.

  Reenie plopped next to him, looking dejected in her cute and dirty outfit. “I know.”

  This was why she’d separated herself from the woman with the gun, why she’d come out here and taken her chances with just a broomstick, whiskey bottle and poorly wielded kitchen knife.

  Evan looked at her then at the bottle. “Can I drink some of that?”

  She laughed. “I wish. I’m pretty sure it’s rotten. It wasn’t well stored. You can drink it, but I’m not responsible for you having to visit the ER because your insides are burned out.” Her smile was weak, but he was glad she could joke with him in the face of a betrayal.

  They’d wandered off topic, probably to avoid the point, but he had to get back to it. “I can see why you wanted to come off on your own, but why do you think Ivy let you?”

  “I think she’s up there, cataloging things and setting who knows what aside. I just wasn’t in the mood to start a fight. Not after that clerk came in here with the gun.”

  Evan didn’t like the pattern his thoughts were forming. “Do you think she had anything to do with that? With the missing diagram?”

  Reenie looked straight ahead, though it was clear she wasn’t seeing anything in particular. “The thought had occurred to me. I haven’t come to any conclusions. In fact, I’ve been doing a stellar job of pushing them aside.” Back in her own skin, she waved her hand around, showing off the damage she had dealt to the dirt and time that had tried to take over the kitchen house.

  Evan smiled, again glad to be off a dreaded topic. “It does look great.” Then he popped up from his seat. “Shit. Kayla just went up to be with Ivy. She sleeps in the same room as her.”

  He was three steps away, but Reenie’s hand locked on his and tugged him back to the bench and reality. “Ivy isn’t an immediate threat. I don’t think Kayla’s in any danger from her. At least . . . what’s up with the two of them?”

  Evan pushed a hand through his hair. “I really have no clue. If we were anywhere else, I’d think the amount if times she says ‘Ivy said . . .’ would be an indicator. But she’s not going to tell me what I said, and it’s only a little more often than the number of times she says ‘Reenie said,’ so I have no clue.”

  “Really? No clue. Evan, they are grown women sharing the same bed.”

  “I don’t think they’re . . .” No, it wasn’t that he didn’t think it, it was that he didn’t want to think it. He admitted at least that much to himself. “I don’t know.”

  Reenie nodded. “Is it going to break Kayla’s heart if she finds out Ivy’s turned on us?”

  He sat there, still holding Reenie’s hand in the dim glow of the old yellow bulbs dangling from the ceiling by thick wires. The walls of this plantation were strong and stable; he never doubted their ability to stand up to time. But the secrets they harbored within were going to kill them all. One way or another.

      

  Kayla sat cross-legged on the bed facing Ivy. They had a big bag spread out between them with guns scattered across the plastic as Ivy showed her how to push the bullets into the clip with little clicks, how to pull back on the slide and chamber the first round. She knew all the steps, but enjoyed watching Ivy with her smooth motions and clever hands.

  They stashed the guns under books or pillows on the sweet bedside tables Ivy had placed there, before clearing the remaining parts and pieces. Ivy went off to get ready for bed, but Kayla stopped her. “Nowhere, Ivy. Nowhere without the gun.”

  Ivy rolled her eyes. “It’s the damn bathroom.” But she picked up the gun, tucked it in her waistband, then sighed when it sank and nearly removed her pajama pants. “It’s just the damn bathroom, and you’re here.”

  She set the gun back down and went off with confidence but also without the gun. Kayla left the door open and her ears, too. All she heard was Ivy brushing her teeth, flushing the toilet, the usual sounds, nothing sinister, and she figured Ivy had a point. So she kept the twenty-two in her hands and sat waiting, keeping what watch she could, but the old house stayed silent. Eventually the two women curled up and found sleep.

  But Kayla’s dreams were vivid.

  In them, the machine was blown apart by the historical clerk with the shotgun. Then she built another and another and hooked them up in a chain, each one turning the next, and when she woke up the next morning she had an idea.

  Armed now and allowed to wander off on her own, she left Ivy and Reenie to the job of cataloguing the attic. She left Evan to the barn and outbuildings. He’d been talking about restoring one of the slave cabins.

  But Kayla was headed back to the blacksmith’s shop to fiddle with the settings on the machine. She had a problem with one of the mathematical constants she’d worked out. Her brain on other things, she fell into her own world until Evan came in to check up on her.

  “Kayla?” He looked around the room, the question more a “what are you doing?” than a “hey, are you here?”

  Smiling, she brought her gaze up until it connected with his. “I did it.”

  “I see. But what exactly did you do?” He had to raise his voice a touch to be clear over the sound of the constant chug of metal and magnets.

  “Did you re-engineer some of the gears?” He put his hand out, but then pulled it back as it got close to the running machine.

  “Mmm-hmmm.” She turned back to the machine, watching it run, watching the link between it and the generator, and finally doing what she had thought of that morning. First, Kayla had spent her morning replacing the last wooden gears out of the original setup. Next she’d unhooked the small generator that she’d brought down to the blacksmith’s earlier. Using only the sunlight coming in through the open doorway and window, she’d linked them. And spent all her time trying to figure out how to make it work.

  Now Kayla smiled as she plugged in the light and watched it come on. “I made light.”

  “You’re like God or something.”

/>   She laughed. “I just might be.” Then she pointed. “I altered it so the gears would run longer, faster, handle more force. Then I hooked it to the generator.”

  “Huh.” Evan looked at all the pieces and then to the light.

  “I made electricity.” She stopped work for the first time that day. “I actually did. I started the machine by pushing the wheel and that runs the generator so I really made this electricity.”

  “Can you explain this, Kay?”

  She laughed. “No. No way in hell can I fully explain it. There’s no way I could ever turn this thing—” she pointed to the gear linking the machine into where it powered the generator—“this fast or for this long, but it really is running on my power. So no, I got nothing. Though I keep trying to solve it.”

  “You show this to Ivy yet?”

  She shook her head. No one had even stopped by . . . she checked her watch. Four thirty. “Not Reenie either.” Consciously, she calculated her breakfast against the time. She should eat. “I should have lunch . . . or food at least, but I don’t want to leave.”

  Her eyes were trained on the machine, the turning wheel was mesmerizing, fascinating, and exhilarating. But she wasn’t hungry. The machine was better than food. “Should we show it to them?”

  “No.”

  It wasn’t the answer she’d expected and it made her look up, but she didn’t get to ask a question. Evan dove in. “We should head back and get you some food. You should stop it. Unhook things, don’t leave anything obvious.”

  Reluctantly, Kayla did as he suggested, spending nearly half an hour taking the pieces apart and separating them into different piles. She didn’t worry about remembering what went where—she knew and she would still know fifty years from now. So she stacked things haphazardly, in a way she hoped would keep others from making the connections she’d made. She directed Evan to move things, switch things, and he did as he was told. Then he led her up the hill to find some food.