Not that I was going to tell Ms. Call-Me-Kendall Loring any of this. I made a big show of being absorbed in my work, and she eventually took the hint and went on back to her booth.
Leaving the Ming vase on the table, I shoved the ceramic goddess back into the storeroom and locked the door.
Behind the counter, Jane was absorbed in pulling up type fonts on the computer. As a freelance artist, she mixed aesthetic commissions with commercial ones and was always looking for ideas. She told me she hadn’t sold a thing since Christmas except for a Valentine poster, so money was tight for her. I saw that she was totally oblivious to me, and no one else was around. Two seconds later, I was a copy of the ceramic goddess.
Talk about boring. I watched all day, but the only time it got halfway interesting was when Mr. Fong paused to admire the vase again and asked Jane if I’d meant to leave it out like that. “Isn’t Laurel afraid someone will walk off with it?”
Jane had missed our earlier comments about the worth of the vase and gave an indifferent shrug. “She’ll probably come back and put it away.”
Shortly before closing time, I shifted back into my own shape.
“Oh, there you are,” said Jane. She closed her sketchbook, logged off the computer, and began totaling up the day’s meager receipts. “I thought you were going to help me out on the counter.”
“Sorry,” I said, making a dash for the restroom. Although I could somehow see and hear in my changed state, I didn’t feel hunger, thirst, or any other bodily needs. The instant I changed back, though, my bladder felt like it was going to pop and I was ravenously hungry.
Kendall Loring was on her way out as I helped Jane lock up. I hadn’t realized she was still in the store.
As she pulled on her gloves and tightened a blue wool scarf around her neck, she gave me a hopeful smile and said, “Could I buy you supper?”
“Why thanks, I’d love that,” said Jane. She was busy setting the burglar alarm and didn’t realize the invitation was meant for me alone.
A blast of icy March wind stung my cheeks when we stepped outside and waited for Jane to turn the key in the lock. I managed a fake smile of regret. “That’s awfully nice of you, Ms. Loring, but I have to read a book for a school report. Thanks anyhow. You and Jane have fun.”
Sitting here in my dark, icy prison, the memory of her sour look gives me my first smile since I’d been locked in.
“YOU missed a good meal, Laurel,” Jane said when I got to the store this morning. “Best steak I’ve had in ages. And Kendall’s so interesting to talk to. We must have rattled on for two hours.”
Didn’t take a genius to know who did the rattling. By the time their dinner was over, Kendall Loring had probably heard everything Jane knows about Dad and me.
Once I’d finished my usual Saturday morning chores, I put the Ming vase back on my photography table and fiddled with the camera some more. When I was sure that all the dealers in the store knew the vase was there, I draped an old tablecloth over it to look as if I was trying to disguise it. Because Saturday is our busiest day, it was almost noon before I found a safe time to shift into the shape of that ceramic goddess. At least it was more interesting than yesterday. More people in and out. Martha Cook sold a nice Sheraton-style china cabinet, and Jimmy Weston finally unloaded a large gilt-framed mirror that he’d been switching from store to store for several months.
Thomas Fong came by to lift the cloth on the vase and run his hand over it enviously.
“Careful you don’t rub the scales off that dragon,” Neva Earle teased as she passed him on her way out of the store.
At one point, I thought I had spotted a shoplifter when a woman took a needlepoint cushion from a nearby stand while Jane was away from the counter and brazenly walked out of the store with it. She brought it right back, though, and I realized that she had a swatch of upholstery in her other hand and had merely wanted to see if the two colors matched in natural light.
I was so busy watching her that I didn’t realize that someone had approached from the other side until a heavy cloth was thrown over me. A moment later I was wheeled out to the sidewalk on a dolly and shoved into the back of the van. The cloth slipped enough for me to see a pair of female hands cushion the Ming vase in a cardboard box beside me, and that was it, until those same hands unloaded me at the storage facility and locked me inside.
I must have slept because that thin line of light beneath the door is even thinner now. Sunset, and I still haven’t come up with a way out of this predicament.
“I could turn into water,” I mutter aloud to myself. “Run under the sill and onto the pavement.”
Like a whispered thought came a soft “No!”
My own subconscious telling me what I want to hear? I’ve been afraid to try liquids. Too amorphous. What if couldn’t hold it together and soaked into the ground? What if there’s a storm drain right outside this door, and I’m swept down to lose my identity in dirty water before all of me seeps past the sill?
A moment later, I hear a vehicle stop outside and voices. A key turns in the lock. Before the door rolls up, I drop my blankets, push my way deeper into the locker, and shift into the shape of a cardboard box tall enough to see over the other boxes.
As light floods in, I see for the first time, an upright, five-foot-tall wooden bear identical to one in the store. They must have stolen it when they took me. I focus my attention on the two women. They’re silhouetted against the sunset, and I can’t immediately make out their faces.
“Where’s the goddess?” one of them says, taking a step closer.
“I left it right there,” says the other one.
“You idiot! You brought that stupid bear.”
The other starts to protest when suddenly the bear gives a tremendous roar. To their horror, it lurches forward and swipes its claws at the woman in front.
Terrified, both women bolt screaming down the alleyway.
The bear drops to all fours, growls menacingly, then stops and turns toward me. I concentrate on being cardboard. I think cardboard thoughts and try to give off a cardboard smell.
The bear laughs and says. “It’s okay, Laurel. You can come out now.”
A shimmer of fur, and there’s Kendall Loring.
I stare at her, stupefied, and slowly shift into my own shape.
“I see you didn’t think to wear a coat either,” she says. “Come on. Let’s see if they left a cell phone in the car.”
I’m too stunned to argue and just follow her meekly out to the car, where we find a purse and a cell phone. When the women get up the nerve to return, we’re locked inside the SUV with the heater going, and Kendall’s called the police. They bang on the windows and threaten us with seven kinds of hurt until a police cruiser pulls up outside the gate and an agile young patrol officer climbs over the gate and demands to know what’s going on.
Neva Earle tries to bluster her way out of it, but she and her accomplice sound crazy when they start raving about a bear, and besides, I’ve identified the lacquered chest that she stole from the store last week.
The police take us down to the station to sort it all out. Kendall tells a convincing story of how we saw them take the Ming dynasty vase from the store and followed them. They don’t think to ask where Kendall’s car is or how we got past the locked gate. The vase and the chest are enough for them to charge Neva Earle and her partner, and the nice young patrol officer drives us both to Kendall’s apartment.
That’s where I learn that she’s my cousin. My grandmother actually had two daughters, not one as I’ve been told.
“My mom was a shape-shifter, too,” Kendall says, “only our grandparents were horrified and so scared of her that she ran away from home when she was sixteen. Your mom was only four at the time, and maybe they never told her she had an older sister. When I finally got Mother to tell me her real name, her parents were dead, and no one knew what happened to your mom. One of the neighbors thought she’d married a man named Hudson. Do you k
now how many Hudsons there are?”
I shake my head.
“Thousands,” she says grimly. “From Alaska to Florida. Two years ago, though, Mother was on eBay looking at jewelry for our store in Detroit, and she spotted this.”
She hands me an oval cameo brooch, set in gold and rimmed with garnets. White on pink, it’s carved with the profiles of three women. Nothing I’d ever wear, I had assured my dad when I asked if I could put it on eBay along with some other pieces of antique jewelry. I think it fetched around $300.
“It was my grandmother’s,” I say.
“I know. My mom recognized it.”
“You came here because of a brooch?”
“Mother’s gone,” she says simply. “I suppose you could say she drowned. She was dying of cancer, and last summer she just merged into Lake Michigan. I have no other family.”
She won’t beg. I can see that.
“Okay,” I say at last. “But you have to teach me how to do animals. I can’t keep myself from wilting when I’m a plant, so I’ve been afraid to try a living form.”
She laughs and shifts into the shape of a large golden retriever and almost licks me to death before I can make her stop.
OH, and the shoplifter? The next time Jane covered for Dad, I said, “I’m sorry you’re having a rough time right now, Jane, but you can’t steal any more money, okay?”
See, the stolen items were portable, but they were also so cheap that most customers wouldn’t bother with a credit card. On Saturday morning, I watched a woman pay cash for a Blue Willow cup and saucer from Neva Earle’s booth. Jane pointed out a tiny chip on the underside of the saucer and told her it was being sold “as is,” meaning it could not be returned. Then she simply pocketed the cash.
I suppose I should have had her fired or arrested, but she’s been around since I was a baby. Besides, business is starting to pick up again, so Dad has her working more hours, and she’s gradually paying back what she stole.
Dad’s as absentminded as ever, but he’s noticed that Kendall and I are friends.
I’m still not totally convinced that Kendall’s interested only in me and not Dad, too, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. A cousin’s one thing. A shape-shifting stepmom’s quite another.
Oh, and last week? I changed into a tiger and scared Tommy Bertram so bad he wet his pants.
Wait’ll he sees my dragon.
The Trespassers
By BRENDAN DUBOIS
I was dreaming that something was chewing on my ankles when the phone thankfully rang, and I fumbled at the side of the bed and grabbed the cordless phone, and murmured something intelligible into the receiver. I looked at the bloodred numerals of the clock radio and saw that it was 2:34 a.m. A hellish time for about anything, especially a phone ringing in the dark.
The female voice on the other end said, “Sorry to wake you, Chief, but you’ve got a situation.”
I yawned, scratched at an intimate place or two, and swung around and put my feet on the carpet. Behind me my wife, Tracy, kept on slumbering. Sweet girl, she could sleep through most everything, including a Cat Five hurricane hammering at the windows.
“Go ahead. What’s going on?” I asked.
The voice—which I now recognized as one of the duty dispatchers for the county—said, “You’ve got an untimely death.”
Damn, I thought. It was Saturday morning. This meant that I probably had to kiss the weekend good-bye, even though I had earlier promised Tracy a nice drive south to visit her parents in Concord ... but with an untimely death in town, that was all done.
“Go on. Where?”
“Fourteen Mast Road. Officer Harris is there, securing the scene.”
“Fourteen? Did you say Fourteen Mast Road?”
“That’s right, Chief.”
Damn. The Logan place. Tracy shifted on the other side of the bed and then started gently snoring.
I yawned, scratched myself in another, somewhat less intimate place, and said, “All right. Tell Harris I’m rolling, should be there in about fifteen minutes. All right?”
“Absolutely,” the dispatcher said. “You want me to contact the state police?”
I hesitated. Protocol demanded that the state police be called in for something like this, especially in a small town like Salem Falls, New Hampshire, which had a three-man police department, one-third of which was on vacation, one-third of which was on the job, and one-third of which was sitting in a pair of pajama bottoms, talking to a young lady who probably wasn’t more than twenty-one years of age.
“No, that’s all right,” I said. “I’ll take care of it when I get to the scene.”
I sensed the uneasiness coming through the phone line, but she was a professional and said, “As you say, Chief.”
I hung up the phone and managed to get dressed and out the door without waking my wife or our two girls—ages eight and five—which I thought was a major accomplishment.
IN my cruiser the engine started on the third try, and I backed out to Rutland Road, where I live with my family. I flipped on the heater as I drove down Rutland, the headlights picking up the dead leaves scattered across the cracked asphalt. It was the middle of October, just a couple of weeks left before Halloween, but I didn’t see any trick-or-treaters about, just quiet homes with one or two displaying a flickering blue light in the window that either meant an insomniac or someone who had fallen asleep while watching The Tonight Show. There were also a couple of lighted displays of pumpkins or witches from those who really enjoyed celebrating this time of year, and I’m sure they were new arrivals to our fair town.
And speaking of lights, I didn’t bother switching on the overhead light bar. I knew Fourteen Mast Road quite well, knew I’d be there in less than ten minutes, and so what was the point of switching on the strobes and getting all gung ho? But I did switch on the Motorola police radio, slung underneath the dash, and contacted the same polite woman I had talked to earlier.
“County, this is Salem Falls Unit One, responding to Fourteen Mast Road.”
And her brisk voice replied, “Salem Falls Unit One, ten-four.”
And I resumed driving, shivering in the coldness of the cruiser’s interior, wondering what in hell I was about to step into, and also wondering if the fine townspeople of Salem Falls would finally purchase me a new police cruiser at the next town meeting.
FOURTEEN Mast Road was on the left side of a narrow country road, at the top of a hill that offered great views of the Montcalm Valley and the Green Mountains of Vermont, over on the other side of the border. The house was an old Victorian, three stories tall, painted yellow with white and black trim. It had a nicely trimmed lawn and a wraparound porch, and I saw a Salem Falls police cruiser parked in the driveway behind a white Ford van, which, in turn, was parked behind a light blue Volvo. It looked like most of the lights were on inside, and I was happy to see that the cruiser—operated by Officer Melanie Harris—had its strobe lights off. Nothing like flashing lights to get attention, and even in a small town like Salem Falls, it would take just under an hour for most of the adult population to know something was amiss at the Logan place.
I pulled over on the side of the road—the driveway being full—and called off one more time to dispatch, “Salem Falls Unit One, off at the scene,” heard a quick reply, and then switched off the engine. I got out and walked up a flagstone path to the porch and checked out the Ford van. It had Massachusetts plates—which got my attention—and on the side of the van was one of those magnetic signs that said N.E.G.H. with a 1-800 phone number underneath, and some odd logo with a broomstick and sheet.
I went up the porch steps, past a couple more Halloween decorations, the door opened up, and Officer Melanie Harris came out, shaking her head, a slight smile on her chubby face. “Chief, you’re really not going to believe this one—”
“Tell me what you got,” I interrupted. “Let’s start with that. County dispatch said untimely death. The fire department been called out?”
>
“I called them right after I had dispatch call you. They should be here in a few minutes.”
“Okay, go on.”
It was chilly out on the porch, and I looked through some transparent white lace curtains. I saw what looked to be three people, sitting in a living room. I rubbed my hands, and Harris looked through her notepad and said, “What we have here is Ralph Toland and his wife, Carrie. They’ve lived here just under a year. Ralph runs some sort of online financial service company, and his wife helps with the books and billing.”
“Where they originally from?”
“Vermont.”
“Oh,” I said and saw the twinkle in Melanie’s eyes with the way I pronounced the word. Years ago, during my grandparents’ time, Vermont was a state not unlike New Hampshire: solid Republican, flinty Yankee, self-sufficient, low taxes, that sort of thing. But now Vermont was just a suburb for rich New Yorkers, just like the southern part of our state was a suburb for rich Massachusetts types.
“Right, oh,” she said, referring back to her notes.
“And who’s the other guy in there with them?”
She flipped a page in the notebook. “This is where it gets ... interesting, Chief. The other fellow in the living room, that’s Josh Lincoln. He was one half of a team from the N.E.G.H.”
“The N.E. what?”
She cocked her head. “You don’t watch much cable TV, do you, Chief?”
I said, “Mostly it’s Nickelodeon or the Food Network. Look, don’t keep me guessing.”
“Sorry,” she said. “N.E.G.H. New England Ghost Hunters. Josh and his buddy Peter Grolin, they belong to this outfit that hunts ghosts, spirits, paranormal phenomena, that sort of thing. They go to haunted houses or other buildings, stake them out for the night, film their results, and it gets shown on one of those weird cable channels in the high numbers. They were spending the night here, and something happened, and Peter ... well, Peter, he’s dead.”
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