This wasn’t the last warning she would receive. It seemed the more she learned to control her power, the more her teachers worried she would turn it against them. They barred her from learning spells and making potions. They would allow her an ordinary mortal education, but she would not become a witch.
So it didn’t come as any surprise when Ms. Milton, the school founder, called her in. “We’ve decided it would be in everyone’s best interests if you continued your education at another institution,” Ms. Milton said. “Your parents have been notified.”
Renee had hoped when she came home to Rampart City she might have the normal life she had craved. She still had one year of high school left and then college, though she had no idea what she might study. If she couldn’t become a witch, then maybe she could be an archivist like Mom, though the idea of sitting around a cave three hundred days a year didn’t hold much appeal.
Any hope of normalcy ended when she saw that woman in the Brass Drum. The moment the woman stepped into the bar, Renee felt a chill run along her spine. From her time at Milton, she’d discovered ordinary magic had an intoxicating effect on her body, to give her a mild sense of euphoria. The magic that radiated from the woman, on the other hand, made Renee’s stomach churn as if she were about to throw up.
It wasn’t just this feeling that had her worried. As her power had developed, she’d also learned to tap into psychic abilities. This had helped her greatly during exams as she could sometimes see the right answers before she marked them on her papers. In this case, she saw only a scene from the Apocalypse, with bodies in the streets and buildings turned to charred hulks.
Renee knew this woman was evil. Not evil on the scale of a serial killer or even Hitler, more like on the scale of Satan. Whatever she wanted in the Brass Drum, it wouldn’t be good for the people of Rampart City.
Renee supposed she should go home to discuss this with Aggie, but she needed some time to digest what she’d seen. She was on her fifth cup of coffee when she realized Louise had fallen asleep, her head on the table. Renee saw it was well after her midnight curfew. She was too big for Aggie to use the belt on her anymore, but Aggie would give her a stern lecture. Worse yet, Renee still didn’t know how to describe what she’d experienced at the Brass Drum.
After she paid the bill, she carried Louise out to the car. Her friend remained asleep all during the short drive back to Dr. Earl’s house. There were no lights on at the moment, which Renee found odd. Louise’s mother usually left the porch light on. Louise still wasn’t awake, so Renee carried her friend into the house and up the steps to Louise’s bedroom. She took off Louise’s shoes and then pulled the covers up to her friend’s chin. Renee paused in the doorway and admired how much younger Louise looked when she slept. This brought back the memory of that dream of the girl in the black dress who had looked so much like Louise’s mother.
Renee felt someone touch her shoulder. She spun around and struck a defensive pose Ms. Chiu had taught her, only to find Aggie there. She didn’t need to be somewhat psychic to see something had Aggie terrified. “I need you to drive to the Plaine Museum,” Aggie said.
“The museum? It’s a little late—”
“Renee, please, there isn’t time. We have to hurry. I fear something terrible has happened.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Please Renee, just go.”
“All right. What about—” she didn’t get a chance to finish before Aggie disappeared in a flash of white light. If Renee had had the time she could have siphoned enough of Aggie’s magic to vanish herself to the museum as well, but Aggie had told her to drive there, so she supposed there must be a reason.
Renee took Louise’s purse from off the nightstand. Then she hurried back to the car and stomped on the accelerator. The car’s engine roared, but Renee didn’t feel the happiness she usually felt at this. The look on Aggie’s face mingled with what she’d felt at the Brass Drum to tell her that something awful had happened, something that involved that evil woman.
She made it to the museum in five minutes, which was probably a record. No police cars had followed her, the police too busy this late at night for speeding tickets. She fumbled in Louise’s purse to find her friend’s badge. She soon realized she didn’t need it as someone had smashed open the museum’s doors.
Inside, she nearly threw up her five cups of coffee at the sight of two security guards sprawled on the floor; a black metal spear stuck out of both of them. She staggered back a few steps before she collected herself. Whatever Aggie had wanted her to come here for, this wasn’t it.
She plunged ahead into the main gallery to witness an even more gruesome sight. Dr. Earl lay on the floor, her clothes ragged and bloody. As Renee stepped closer, she saw a patchwork of cuts, stab wounds, and bruises on Dr. Earl’s back. The most serious of these was a deep cut about halfway up her back that still bled heavily.
Aggie knelt beside Dr. Earl. She looked up at Renee. “Take her out to the car so we can get her to the hospital.”
“Can’t you do anything for her? A spell or potion—”
“No, my magic isn’t strong enough, not against hers.” Renee was about to say something, but Aggie held up a hand. “Hurry, dear. She doesn’t have much time left.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll join you later. There’s something else I must do.”
Renee bent down to pick Dr. Earl up; she tried to be careful not to do any more damage to Louise’s mother, though just about every inch of her seemed cut or bruised. She almost dropped Dr. Earl when the woman’s head suddenly jerked upright. Her eyes turned to Renee and in them Renee saw pure terror. “Louise? Where is she?”
“She’s home. She’s safe.”
“Good,” Dr. Earl said, and then her head sagged onto her chest.
As Renee began to drag Louise’s mother from the museum, she looked over her shoulder to see Aggie scoop something up into a bag. The pieces of dark red metal might have looked like so much modern art except for the helmet with the gold plume that seemed to have survived intact. Renee’s eyes widened and she looked down at Dr. Earl with new understanding.
She hurried to drag Dr. Earl to the car and lay her on her side across the backseat to aggravate the cut on her back as little as possible. Once behind the wheel, Renee floored the accelerator. In the rearview mirror, Renee saw that Louise’s mother was still breathing, somehow still alive despite her injuries.
Though she had no proof, Renee knew who had been responsible for those injuries. Then she thought of Louise asleep so peacefully in her bed. For the rest of the trip to the emergency room, Renee tried to figure out how to tell her best friend that her mother was dying.
Part 3
Chapter 16
All her life Louise had been a heavy sleeper. Mom said that when she was a baby, Louise hardly ever cried during the night; she usually slept the entire way through. As a child she usually fought Mom about when to go to bed, but once she was down, she stayed down. When she slept over at Renee’s house, which happened frequently until she went to college, Louise would often not wake up until late the next morning and find herself back in her own bed.
In college this became a problem, especially after a night of drinking in the dorms. Several times she woke up on the floor of a living room, dining room, or even the bathroom to find she’d missed her first class of the day. One time she awoke to find someone had taken a magic marker to her face; they’d drawn whiskers on her cheeks and written “Ratface” on her forehead, a nickname that had stuck until she transferred to Berkeley. Her roommate at Northwestern told her, “You’re lucky no guy’s stuck his dick in you while you’re sleeping.”
This would have been hard to do because when fast asleep, Louise curled into a tight fetal position. Renee said she had sometimes tried for hours to pry Louise’s arms and legs away from her body. “I’m not sure what we’d do if there was a fire,” Renee said once. “I guess we’d have to carry you out or you’d sleep th
rough the whole thing.”
There was one time Louise had woke up in the middle of the night. This happened when she was seven years old, shortly after Becky had left them. Louise and her mother still lived in the house they’d shared with Becky. Louise stuck her head into Becky’s room to find it empty, the bed stripped bare, the closets empty, and the vanity cleared that morning when Mom shipped the rest of the stuff to Becky’s new apartment in Washington D.C.
Louise hugged her stuffed turtle Slowey closer to her chest as she stared at the empty room. Then she heard heavy footsteps in the hall behind her. Like a nightmare, she found she couldn’t move as the steps came closer. It soon became clear from the metallic sound that accompanied these footsteps that they weren’t human. She wanted to call for her mother, but she couldn’t make any sounds. She could only knead Slowey’s plush body with her terrified fingers as the footsteps closed in.
Then her mother’s face loomed over her; her eyes gave Louise a low-powered Glare. “Louise? What are you doing out of bed?”
In the moonlight from Becky’s window, Louise noticed something about her mother. She had a blanket wrapped around her body. Beneath the blanket, her body seemed much bulkier than usual, as if someone had inflated her like a balloon. “Mommy?”
Mom knelt down, her face level with Louise’s. She brushed Louise’s hair away from her face and smiled, though Louise could tell there was pain in that smile. “Yes, baby, it’s me. What’s wrong?”
“I miss Aunt Becky.”
“I know, baby. I miss her too.”
“Why did she go away? Doesn’t she love us anymore?”
“Of course she does. She needs some time away from us.”
“Is she going to come back?”
Another parent probably would have lied then and said Becky would be back any day now. Mom wasn’t the kind of parent to lie even to spare Louise’s feelings. “I don’t know. I hope so.” Mom took Louise’s hand and squeezed it. “Come on, baby, let’s go to bed.”
Before she fell asleep, Louise turned to her mother and asked, “Mommy, why are you wearing a blanket?”
“I’m just a little cold, baby. Goodnight.” When Mom bent down to kiss her forehead, Louise felt something hard press against her arm, something much harder than a blanket, a sweater, or any other article of clothing. She wanted to ask about it, but Mom was already pulling away. As Mom walked away, Louise heard the heavy footsteps accompanied by the metallic sound she’d heard in the hall.
“Mommy, I hear it! It’s a monster!”
Her mother turned to her, her teeth visible as she smiled. “No, baby, it’s just me. Try to get some sleep.”
Louise remembered this as she felt someone shake her. She kept her eyes closed to hold on to those memories; there was something important about them. They were part of something, a puzzle she hadn’t figured out yet, that she didn’t know she was even trying to solve.
“Lou, wake up,” Renee said. “Come on, you have to get up.”
“Why?” Louise mumbled.
“There’s been an accident. At the museum.” Renee punctuated this with a sob. “It’s your mother. She’s hurt. Real bad.”
Louise’s eyes flashed open and in one motion she sat up and grabbed Renee by the shoulders. “What happened? Is she—?”
“I don’t know what happened.” Renee sobbed again. “She’s not dead, but she’s in really bad shape. I tried to call, but you didn’t answer, so Aggie said I should go get you and take you to the hospital. The car’s still running.”
Louise didn’t bother to change from the clothes she’d worn the night before. It occurred to her as she ran down the stairs after Renee that she didn’t remember going home or to bed. At the bottom of the stairs she realized she didn’t have her purse either; if they had to go to the hospital someone was sure to want to see her ID. “My purse—”
“It’s in the car. Come on!”
As Louise climbed into the passenger’s seat, an eerie sense of calm descended over her. She thought of practical matters, such as: did they have Mom’s health insurance card? Had anyone called Dr. Pavelski? Would Louise have to donate blood for a transfusion?
Renee was still crying; Louise thought maybe it would be better if she drove. As she stared out the windshield and braced herself for a crash, Louise wondered if she’d gone into shock or if it was simply because she had been roused from sleep. “What hospital is she at?”
“St. Joseph’s,” Renee said. She spun the car in a hard left turn and then gunned into a straightaway like a racecar driver. St. Joseph’s had been the hospital where Louise was born; would it be the hospital where Mom died?
This thought was enough to cut through the haze in her mind like a winter breeze. Mom was dying. She might already be dead. The next time Louise saw her might be at a funeral parlor as she made arrangements for Mom to be cremated and scattered in a garden on the grounds of the Plaine Museum.
“Mom, I know you love the museum, but come on,” Louise had said when Mom told her last year after a breast cancer scare. “Don’t you think that’s a little morbid?”
“The museum is my home,” Mom said. “More than anywhere else it’s always felt like home to me.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be buried in Parkdale? With your parents?” Louise had visited her grandparents’s graves every year to put a flower on them along with her mother. She supposed in the back of her mind she had assumed she would one day do the same for Mom and her child would do the same for her, right on until Doomsday.
Mom shook her head and looked down sadly at her teacup. “I don’t think so.”
“Why that garden? What’s so special about that place?” The garden in the northwestern corner was the subject of a rare disagreement between Mom and Megan Putnam; Megan had wanted to pull up the garden for benches or something like that, but Mom steadfastly refused; she employed The Glare until Megan backed down.
“Louise, please, this is important to me. Just promise me that you’ll respect my wishes.”
It was one of the rare times when Mom seemed on the verge of losing her composure; her lower lip trembled slightly as if she were about to cry. Louise reached across the table to take her mother’s hand. “If that’s what you really want, Mom, of course I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
Despite how old Mom looked at times, despite the pills and the visits to Dr. Pavelski, Louise had never really thought it would happen. Not now. Not before Louise ever got a chance to make her a grandmother, to prove she wasn’t a screw up, to make her proud.
She found Renee shaking her again. “We’re here, Lou.”
“What?” Louise looked out the windshield to see the emergency room for St. Joseph’s. “Oh, right.”
As if by remote control she lurched across the parking lot and followed Renee into the waiting room. Aggie was there; she looked haggard and much older. She leaped out of her chair to wrap Louise and Renee in a group hug.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” Aggie said.
“Sorry? Is she—?”
“No. She’s in surgery right now. I’m afraid it doesn’t look good.”
“Did you call Dr. Pavelski?”
“Yes, dear. She’s in there with them.”
“OK.” Louise had never thought much of the doctor, but Mom trusted her and at this point that was all that mattered.
She let Aggie lead her over to a hard plastic chair, where she could do nothing more than stare at the floor. Renee sat on one side and Aggie on the other; both of them put a hand on her back. “What do we do now?” Louise asked.
“We wait,” Aggie said.
“Someone should call Dan,” Louise said. She hated herself for how she continued to think so damned pragmatically at a time like this. “And Becky. She should know too.”
“Yes, you’re right, dear. Renee can call Dr. Dreyfus. I’ll call Rebecca.”
“Are you sure she’ll talk to you?”
“Don’t worry, dear. I won’t give her a choice.”
***
The cocktail parties were the worst part about D.C. Since she’d grown up around Rampart City, Becky could live with the horrible traffic, the crime, and even the smell from the Potomac. These soirees, though, she found unbearable.
The representative from the 4th District in Michigan came up to her to introduce an older man identified as the head of an oil company. Becky knew he wanted to drill for oil in Yellowstone National Park and had allied himself with a bloc of conservatives led by the gentleman from Michigan to make it happen. “Ms. Beech, it’s been so long,” the oil man said.
“Yes, it has.”
“You’re looking extremely lovely this evening.”
“Thank you.” Becky looked around for her “date,” who was in actuality her assistant. She saw him across the room, where he chatted up another man, a page for the senator from Vermont. While she pretended to listen to the oil man schmooze so he could pitch his terrible idea, Becky subtly tapped a button on the gold bracelet around her left wrist. The assistant perked up like a dog being shocked by an invisible fence.
“I just think the national parks model is outmoded,” the oil man said.
“Excuse me,” Becky’s assistant said. “There’s an urgent call for Ms. Beech.” He handed a phone chip to Becky.
“Thank you, Michael. Excuse me, gentlemen.” She hurried away and used her large frame to clear a path to the ladies room. It wasn’t until she was safely ensconced in a stall that she breathed a sigh of relief.
She had never wanted to be a congresswoman. She hadn’t even wanted to be on a school board. She had always felt comfortable behind the scenes, the power behind the throne, as she had been for Napier for ten years.
When she’d come to D.C., it was as a junior assistant to the new congressman for Rampart City’s district, who just so happened to be Napier’s nephew Ryan. “He’s going to need someone with experience in playing dirty,” Napier said. “There’s nowhere dirtier than this town.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 81
