The Shadow Constant

by AJ Scudiere

  Reenie declared the so-called bed—a pile of quilts and bedding the two of them would now be sleeping on—was calling to her and crashed upon it. Standish had taken that hint and declared that he, too, would go to sleep. Evan wanted to doubt him, and probably had looked at him oddly or suspiciously, because by the time he walked back down the hall, the old man’s shoes, jacket and cell phone were sitting right outside the door to his room.

  There could be no clearer “I want you to trust me” message than that. And while Evan wanted to trust him, he couldn’t. Just like he couldn’t go to sleep. He sat on the hard wood floor in the hallway, propped in an unused doorway and trying to nod off, easily jerking awake at the tiniest noise. Afraid that someone strange had slunk in, Evan would snap upright and check all the doors. Sometimes he walked slowly up and down the hallway, reluctant to make a creak, but wanting to check just the same.

  So mostly he sat and watched the dust play in the afternoon sun filtering through the big windows in the room at the end of the hall. He considered scrapping everything. Was the business really worth this? Was Reenie’s family home worth his family? He had no clue when he came here that things would get this ugly, that the family he was trying to build would be put in jeopardy, and that trying to dovetail those two families together would be so difficult.

  With a deep sigh, he contemplated actually trying to sleep, but the sigh brought a strong odor with it. Frowning, Evan went downstairs, following the acrid smell. Just as his feet hit the bottom floor he swore once, loudly. Then again. If that didn’t wake people, this would: at the top of his lungs, he yelled, “FIRE!!” breathed deep and yelled it again.

  Then, pulling the gun from the waistband of his jeans, he raced out the back door. Two figures were disappearing over the hill down to the barn. With the sun in his eyes, he could only make out their silhouettes. But he ran, crested the same hill, and came to a stop.

  Planting his feet and sighting the best he could over his heaving lungs, he began pulling the trigger.

      

  Kayla jolted upright at the same time Ivy did. Unable to say what had wakened her, she only knew that it was something powerful. She'd have doubted herself had Ivy not bolted from her own sleep even as Kayla came awake.

  Evan's voice tore through her confusion. "FIRE!"

  She smelled the truth in Evan's yell, watched as Ivy followed some invisible guide to the door to the room.

  Still fully clothed, both of them came completely alert as they skidded into the hallway and nearly ran into Reenie and Reginald Standish, both also sliding out their doorways in their socks. In seconds, they were down the staircase, Kayla grabbing at the older man's arm as he slipped a step and struggled to stay upright. But no words were exchanged, and the four of them were working in tandem even before they all hit the ground level.

  "Flour!" Reenie yelled and Ivy ran out the already open back door, shooting to the Overseer’s to raid the kitchen. Kayla and Reenie went in different directions, each returning with a fire extinguisher. They'd been required to maintain a certain number in order to open the museum. Though the canister was heavy in her arms, now Kayla was glad they had to have them on hand, and that they’d been obligated to run drills. She'd also learned that the aged hardwood of the house was going to be slow to burn.

  As she came sliding into the front room, she saw Standish heading out the front left window where he'd raised the sash and pushed the screen through to the porch. Far too spry for a man of his apparent age, he climbed out just as Kayla heard a series of gunshots.

  For a second, she froze, then she registered all the information. Though the shots reverberated through the old house, they came from the northern field. Ivy was heading toward the south, and staying closer. The shots had come a greater distance than Ivy could have traveled. But –

  "Evan!" The canister Reenie held slipped several inches before she re-gripped it, her heart catching in her throat the same as Kayla's.

  It was Kayla, unable to reach out to her friend, pulling the pin on the canister she held, who comforted Reenie they only way she could. She spoke from belief. "It's Evan shooting. Not the other way around. He'll be back in a moment." Then she aimed the nozzle with her left hand, holding the clamped trigger and supporting the hefty mass of the extinguisher with her right, and started killing the thick orange flames that snuck through the leaks in the doorway.

  Reenie, pulling her own pin, started through the window, heading to the front where the flames were heavier. But Standish stopped her. Reaching through for the extinguisher, he told her "go" and Reenie instantly capitulated, bolting out the back and pulling her own twenty-two from the waist of her jeans as she disappeared over the porch, her sock-clad feet eating the distance.

  The deep and continuous swoooosssshhhhh of the second spray canister assaulted Kayla's ears through the thick old wood of the front door. Kayla hit the small flames that tried to escape into the house, to get away from the heavy assault coming at them from the front, and took in all the details. For all the smoke that was made, the wood had burned very little. Evan would want to repair it rather than replace it. There were places where the formerly straight lines had been hollowed away but not many.

  For the first time Kayla feared leaving. This was her home, and suddenly she had changed; she was no longer just helping until Reenie and Evan were ready to run the place on their own or just getting lost in building the Whitney Device. This was hers and she was going to defend it, with her fire extinguisher, with her brains, and with her gun again if necessary.

  "You can open the door!" Reginald Standish called from the other side. So she wrapped her hand inside her shirt and quickly grabbed at the knob, twisting and yanking it before it could burn her through the fabric.

  There stood the old man, sooty from head to toe, his only set of clothing—his nice suit—ruined. But he smiled. "It isn't too bad. Come out here and we'll soak it down to make sure there are no stray embers."

  Behind him, Ivy sprinkled flour and stomped on it as though she were performing some odd wiccan ritual. Kayla wouldn't have put that past her friend, but she didn't need to look twice to see that Ivy was covering and stomping out stray sparks. Though the door and porch hadn't suffered much, leaving a stray ember could light them up again later in the night. Ivy was already pulling her phone out and asking Kayla if she should call the fire department. "We want this checked by professionals."

  But Kayla couldn't say yes, not until . . . there they were: Reenie and Evan, arms around each other’s waists, guns hanging limply at their sides. A sharp head-to-toe check left Kayla relatively sure they were both undamaged. So she moved to the next order of business. "Can we call the fire department to come check the damage?"

  Clearly weary to his bones, Evan checked the door frame, the flooring on the porch and the surrounding areas, his heart clearly hurting. There were times when Kayla thought he knew the vagaries of the world, that he had a grasp on the machinations of man that generated war, but he couldn't understand that people might harm homes and furniture. With his own hands, he generated pieces that would survive long beyond his own mortality. For the first time Kayla saw the house as he did: an enduring testament to time gone by, to a once-glorious history, to craftsmanship almost unparalleled in the age of technology. And her heart hurt for him.

  She shifted focus, inviting them all out onto the porch so she and Standish could spray the last of the foam inward and around the frame. "The question is, if we call the authorities will we need to be concerned about anything other than a fire?"

  "Nope." He shook his head.

  Nodding, Ivy stepped away and dialed as Kayla shot the extinguisher and yelled over the resultant noise, "So you missed?"

      

  Evan grinned. "Nope."

  He hadn't laid anyone out cold, but he'd seen one of them stumble and fall, then watched as the other man stooped to pick him up. The first man, leaning heavily on the second, still moved well enoug
h. Evan didn't foresee a murder charge, but then again, there was a body buried under the floorboards of the third to last slave cabin. He explained, "I clipped one. If someone goes combing through the grass, they'll find blood, but otherwise, no worries."

  They called, waited, and took care of a few details. Kayla laid her socks over the railing to dry. The empty canisters were set aside, left out to show the firefighters. Evan went out back to comb the grass and found all but one of the shells his gun had ejected. And after washing his hands thoroughly and changing his clothes in an attempt to get rid of any lingering cordite smell, he made his way from the Overseer’s back to the front of the house.

  Unworried about the timing—the local fire department was not only volunteer, it was distant—Evan made sure everyone had the same story. Everyone agreed, realizing his version allowed for arson, but didn’t point out the gunshots and subsequent wounding of one of the offenders.

  Standish was the only uncertain link. Kayla eyed him sideways as Ivy leaned over from her seat on the bottom step and fidgeted by pulling and peeling some grass.

  “I’m in. No worries,” the older man said calmly. He clearly picked up on the unease. “Call me Reggie, my friends do.”

  Just as Evan was wondering who this man’s friends might be, Reginald—Reggie now—continued. “We need to explain my presence. The real story won’t do anyone any favors.”

  Evan nodded. “Stick close to the truth, that helps. So you’re an old friend of Reenie’s grandfather, you showed up last night, and stayed over when it got late.” Evan looked from face to face, hoping the story was close enough to real that Kayla could speak it without stumbling. They each nodded back at him, some more blankly than others. Between them, Evan was willing to bet they had maybe the equivalent of one person’s good night’s sleep. “We’re all tired because we stayed up talking with our new friend Reggie here.”

  Again, the nodding appeared contagious, moving from one head to another though no one spoke.

  “I’m going to head out and buy more fire extinguishers. The fire’s out, it wasn’t big and we don’t necessarily think it was arson. I’ll get back while the firefighters are still here, I think. I’ll let you all decide if you think they should wait and speak to me or not.”

  “Y’all,” Reenie corrected him absently, but she nodded again, looking like she was going to fall asleep while waiting for the firemen.

  Evan headed for the car and took off down the driveway. He was as tired as the rest of them, but unlike the others he had to do something. Beneath his palms the steering wheel felt more solid than the rest of his reality. And the decisions he’d been making were coming home to roost.

  He’d just left all three women with only an old man. Though they had guns, they weren’t nearby since the fire department was on its way. And though he didn’t think Reggie Standish himself posted a threat, Evan was unsure just what resources the man had at his disposal and was just as uncertain about his motive. Kayla took Standish at her own combination of face value and cold logic. Her gut instinct was always to trust, so she relied on facts more than anything. Because of that, she was often right in her decisions, usually the first to see when something was wrong with someone, not because she felt it, but because the person was statistically acting out of character. Right now the numbers made Kayla trust Standish. Evan wasn’t quite there yet.

  Evan didn’t like leaving them alone, but they needed new extinguishers. If they didn’t have them by nightfall, there was a good chance one of the arsonists could turn up after dark and—with no way for the occupants to fight the new fire—laugh while it burned.

  The other side, whoever they were, had escalated. So Evan was out buying a shitload of extinguishers, leaving the house relatively uncovered. The fire department was none too fast. A quick check of his watch showed him it had been twenty minutes since Ivy’s call and he hadn’t yet passed the trucks on the road.

  Since the whole story wouldn’t come out, the firefighters wouldn’t stay on standby, and that meant the occupants of Hazelton House would have to fight whatever came their way by themselves.

  The old asphalt passed in rhythm beneath the equally old tires on his car. There was no good decision here. Stay and protect now or run to the store and protect against the future. Both threats were subtle and uncertain. Evan had chosen action.

  Just then, he heard the sirens in the distance and a moment later two big trucks came into view. The sirens were overkill, the fire already out. At this point the plantation just needed a good inspection. But the drivers weren’t rushing too fast, not pushing the other cars out of the way.

  Evan watched them pass, clinging to his belief that he was doing the right thing.

  Behind the fire trucks several cars had packed in, following the cleared path, staying out of the way.

  He wouldn’t have noticed, except the third car back was a shiny silver sedan. Nicer than the old beater cars and trucks folks around here kept. It stuck out, but the issue was the two men inside, both polished, both wearing gray suits. Both turned to look at him as they passed, as though they recognized him.

  26

  Hazelton House

  Kayla might not have been there had Evan not called her cell moments before the trucks rounded the corner and told her to look out. She immediately noticed the silver sedan and saw that it was out of place around here.

  The two men in suits in a single car were definitely out of the norm. Though some around here did have “suit jobs” as Kayla had always called them, this was not an area where people carpooled. Certainly not in the early afternoon on a Tuesday.

  Thanks to Evan’s warning, she had run down to the edge of the property, waving the fire trucks up the driveway as though she were a distraught homeowner.

  Directing the trucks into the long drive, she subtly turned and took note of the passing traffic.

  The two suits got a good look at her, her soot- and foam-soaked clothes, her bare feet, her likely filthy face. But they probably already knew what she looked like. Only now she knew what each of them looked like, too. And in her mind she had a catalog of their features to share with the others. She would sketch them, something she could do reasonably well.

  Kayla trudged back up the long drive, far behind the two blaring red trucks, a smile on her face.

  Once they assessed that the fire was completely out and there were no stray, burning embers about, the firefighters took notes, called the sheriff’s department, and soaked down the surrounding wood—just in case. The fire chief had come to investigate. Apparently, just the location of the fire was indicative of arson, and he had a deputy take notes as Kayla told what she knew. One bulky-clad firefighter flirted with Ivy, telling her what a good job she’d done stamping out the stray sparks with flour. He basically suggested she’d saved the whole plantation, and he’d done it with a goofy grin on his face. Kayla’s focus was pulled from her interview by the unfamiliar knotting sensation in her stomach. At least Ivy had a smile on her face, showing she understood what fell from the handsome man’s lips was utter bullshit.

  The officer droned on, asking questions that didn’t need answers. So Kayla responded with short phrases and shrugs that offered nothing of value. Sure, it could be arson. No, she didn’t know anyone who would want to burn her house. Yes, she’d been asleep when the fire started. Of course, he could wait for her brother who would be back any moment.

  The sheriff’s deputy didn’t think it at all odd that Evan had left to buy more fire extinguishers. Kayla told the man how Evan had run out the back door, thinking he’d seen someone, but that he hadn’t. The officer didn’t seem to think there was much he could do in the situation, so he confirmed that belief by doing relatively little.

  With her help, he traced Evan’s steps out the back door. She walked him up to where they could see over the small rise, deliberately planting her foot over a 9mm casing she spotted in the grass. It hadn’t been visible until she’d been nearly on top of it, but she mentally ma
rked the position so she could come back for it later. “My brother said he thought whoever it was went over the hill, but when he could see—my guess is from right about here—there was no one.”

  “Hmmmp.” Another sound of disinterest, but the man made a few notes on a cheap touch pad, searching for the location of several letters while Kayla tried desperately not to point out that a qwerty keyboard was universal and he should know where all the letters were by now. But he managed to get his few thoughts down and make a useless commentary. “If there was someone who went that way, I don’t know how we’d track them.”

  Kayla was tempted to point out several ways that one could, in fact, track people, or at least make an effort. But that wasn’t in her own best interests, so she made a noncommittal noise of her own.

  “Do you know where those woods go?”

  She honestly didn’t and made a mental note to learn it. “No. Other properties probably. Our border is just into the trees. But I don’t know if what’s back there is privately owned or industrial or even government park properties.”

  He raised his eyebrows once then started back to the house, leaving her to follow, to take her foot off the shell and trail behind him. At least he wouldn’t see it, not that this man would get suspicious if he did. If she told him they’d been taking target practice at the broad side of the barn, he’d probably nod and say, “Hmm” and ask if they could hit it from here.