by Patricia Bow
After that she slept.
§
The window rattled. Amelia flung off the covers and rolled out of bed on the side next to the wall. A cold white light seeped around the edges of the curtains.
Something was out there. What would Mara do?
Check it out. That’s what she’d do.
Amelia crawled around the end of the bed — although she was pretty sure Mara wouldn’t crawl — and across the room to the window. The frame rattled again, and something made flicking noises on the pane. Her breath came short and her throat tightened.
Here goes...
She reached up and pulled one curtain open. A raging whiteness filled the window. Snow! No, blizzard. She stood up and looked out. Couldn’t see the buildings on the other side of the street. The streetlights bounced in the wind.
One good thing, even the Assassin would stay under cover today. Wouldn’t he?
Then Amelia thought: Mara. Is she out in that?
She glanced at the ceiling. Then pulled on jeans, socks, and a sweater and headed out. The apartment was silent and deserted. The clock in the kitchen said nine-thirty. She let herself out, careful to leave the deadbolt off, and ran up the stairs to 3A. The door was locked, and there was no answer when she knocked and called.
The roof, then. But would Mara be on the roof in a blizzard?
Sure she would.
Amelia was halfway up the dim back stairs when the door at the top swung open, letting in a steel grey light, a wave of snow, and Simon.
“No, she’s not there.” He shook snow off his jacket. “And neither are her clothes.”
“Clothes?” Amelia retreated down the stairs.
“I was lying awake last night, thinking,” he said as he clumped along the corridor, shedding snow at every step. “Trying to come up with answers to a lot of questions. Like, how did Mara get up on our roof with no clothes on? So I went up to look for the clothes. No luck.”
“Maybe she threw them over the side.”
“I’m checking that now.” He thumped down the front stairs.
“Wait!”
He didn’t wait, but Amelia (coated, booted, hatted, gloved, and scarved) caught up with him three minutes later. He was wading through drifts of snow in the alley beside the Hammer Block, scraping at the hidden pavement with his feet. She watched as he shuffled from one side of the alley to the other, eyes squinted against waves of blowing snow.
“If we don’t find Mara’s clothes, that won’t prove anything,” she said. “Somebody could have taken them.”
“But if we do find them, that proves something.”
“I’ll start on the other side.”
They met at the back of the building next to the dumpster, having found nothing but a few empty beer cans. Then Simon spent five minutes trying to reach the bottom rung of the fire escape by jumping. In his heavy boots and parka he missed by several feet. Amelia did no better.
“But Mara’s taller, and I bet she can jump higher.” She thought of the run last night. Now, it seemed like another dream of flying. “A lot higher.”
“Maybe.” Simon led the way back up to the apartment. “So here’s the theory: Mara sneaks into the building in the afternoon — it has to be then because the front door’s locked at night — and up the back stairs to the roof. No, wait a minute. The door to the roof was bolted on the inside.”
“So she must’ve come up by the fire escape.”
“Okay. Then she gets undressed and throws her clothes over the side. Somebody finds them and takes them away. She waits in the cold like that until we find her.” He gave Amelia a look. “That’s crazy, but at least it’s possible.”
“Why are you so worried about things being possible? I mean, weird things do happen.” They were back in the apartment now, shedding their boots and coats.
“Yeah, but things don’t happen for no reason,” Simon said. “Even the weird things. They’re just harder to figure out.”
“Like, about the Assassin?”
“And like about Mara. Yes.”
“Mara’s strange, she’s not weird.” Amelia headed for the kitchen. Her stomach was grumbling for food. “I’m more bothered about what’s happened to her. She could be dead!”
“I bet not.” Simon opened the refrigerator. “Why else would the Assassin visit you last night?”
“Of course!” Amelia laughed. “He must’ve been looking for her. It means she’s alive!” Then she frowned. “But she could be hurt, and freezing, out in this weather.”
“We could call the police.” He carried eggs and milk and cheese and bread to the kitchen counter. “Ask them to search.”
“But then we’d have to tell them everything! And we can’t!”
“Then think of Mara on the roof in her birthday suit. If anyone would be okay in a blizzard, she’d be the one. I’m making a cheese omelet, want some?”
Amelia felt better with a stomach full of cheese omelet. “You really aren’t such a kid anymore, are you? Sounds like you’ve worked out all the answers.”
He flushed but pretended to be cool. “No way. I’ve just started asking some of the right questions.” He swallowed a forkful of omelet. “Like, where does the Assassin come from, really? And does Mara come from the same place?”
“You think ... not Earth.” She put down her fork, not hungry anymore. “You sound like Ike. This isn’t possible.”
“It’s not im possible. You know what Carl Sagan said.”
“Who’s Carl Sagan?”
He stared at her, mouth open, then rolled his eyes up and sighed. For Simon, that was an explosion. “Carl Sagan,” he explained in his most patient tone, “was a great scientist. He figured out that there could be intelligent life on a million planets in our galaxy alone.”
“Okay.” Amelia sipped her juice. “And what are the odds of them turning up here?”
“Um, I don’t know. Probably much lower.”
“Do you believe in magic?”
“’Course not!” He laughed. “You don’t, do you?”
“I don’t know.” She thought of her run with Mara through the streets last night. That had been magic, while it lasted. But had the magic only happened in her head?
“The thing that really gets me is the blue light you saw in the cave.” Simon looked at his watch, glanced at the phone, and reached for more toast. “I think you saw something there.”
“Well, of course I saw something! I just don’t know what. Or why. Or how.”
“They’re all tied together — the blue light, the cave, the Assassin, Mara. I think we should go back and really search that cave.”
“I think so too.” She rapped him on the wrist. “Why do you keep looking at your watch?”
“Oh, no reason.”
The phone rang. Simon shoved back his chair and lunged across the room.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A VOICE ON THE PHONE
Ike was on the line. “Any calls?”
“Not yet. Is the Independent out?”
“Yeah, it came out ten minutes ago. People will be calling any time now. You stick by the phone.”
“That’s what I’m doing.” Simon glanced across the room to where Ammy was eating toast and watching him. It had occurred to him that she still didn’t know he and Ike had published an ad about her ring. Considering how touchy she was about the thing, it might not be a good idea for her to find out by answering the phone. “I’ll stick by it, you bet. So, you’re not mad anymore?”
“You going to let me in on the secret?”
“What secret?”
Ike hung up.
“I wonder if Mara knows how to use the telephone?” Ammy said. “I’d better stay close in case she calls.”
“Don’t worry. You can go watch TV or something.” Simon cleared the dishes from the table. “I’ll get you if she calls,” he said casually over his shoulder, from the sink.
“I don’t feel like TV.” She joined him at the sink and picked up a dish tow
el — without even being asked, he thought approvingly.
“I guess I should admit I was wrong, too.” He fished a mug out of the suds and scrubbed at a tea stain.
“’Bout what?”
“’Bout you. You’re much nicer when you’re thinking about somebody besides yourself.”
“When have I ever been not nice?”
He was still trying to figure out if she was joking when the phone rang. He dropped the mug into the suds with a splash and leaped, but Ammy, two steps closer to the phone, got there first. “Ad?” she said. “What ad? Today’s paper? But we didn’t.... Oh.” She listened. “I guess we did.” She sliced a look at Simon. “No, this is the right number. What did you lose? A gold owl off a charm bracelet. No, that isn’t what we found. Sorry.”
She hung up and crossed her arms at him. “So. Whose bright idea was it?”
“Um, both of ours.” Her mouth opened; he rushed on. “Look, it’s not like it’s really yours. Somebody else lost it, and it’s probably valuable, and it’s only right —”
“But that’s for me to decide! I bet Ike’s got some silly plan. I thought you were too old to be playing games like this.”
“What games are these?” Celeste breezed into the kitchen with a sheaf of advertising flyers under her arm.
“Simon!” Ammy waved her dish towel. “Thinks he can do what he likes with my stuff.”
The phone rang. Celeste picked it up, flyers still under her arm. “Hammer. Hello, Vern. What can I do for you? Your car? What would I be doing with your car?” She listened, while her eyes flicked from Ammy to Simon. Then she muffled the receiver against her sweater. “Did either of you put a lost and found ad in the paper?”
“No!” Ammy flared.
“Um, yes,” Simon said, “but not about a car. We found something small.” He held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart.
“We found something small, Vern,” Celeste told the phone. “Oh — I see. No, smaller than that. Sorry.”
She hung up and dumped her flyers on the kitchen table. “It was small, he said. A Volkswagen. Now, what’s this valuable thing you found?”
After Simon finished explaining, and Ammy dug the ring out of her pocket and handed it over, Celeste looked at it from all sides, rubbed the stone with her thumbnail, and handed it back. “Unusual,” she said.
“Valuable? Who knows? But you’re doing the right thing.”
She made a pot of orange-flavoured tea for the three of them, and then went back down to Boomer Heaven, which was closed for New Year’s Day — a chance to catch up on work for tomorrow’s sale, she said.
Simon tried to convince Ammy that the ad was not a stupid idea. “I mean, that ring may have nothing to do with what happened the first night — the blue light, and the thing that you say happened but you forgot —”
“— that we all forgot, because you were there too —”
“— but suppose it does?”
“If it does, d’you really think whoever owns it is going to phone up and claim it?”
“Well —”
“He’ll come crawling in my window in the middle of the night, that’s what he’ll do!”
“We don’t know that he crawls. He probably walks, like any other person.”
They answered calls for the next two hours. Most of the callers had lost wallets, or cell phones, or keys, or kittens. Some, like Vern, had elastic ideas about the word “small.” About every fourth call was from Ike. “Nothing yet,” Simon kept telling him. Mara did not call.
At one o’clock Ammy was propped on the windowsill, brooding out at the blizzard — which was wilder and thicker than ever — and Simon was sitting on a chair by the phone, leafing through a catalogue of robotic airplane models, when the phone rang again. He picked it up.
§
Turning from the window, Amelia saw Simon’s head go up. His eyes darted at hers.
“Mara?” She was halfway across the kitchen, hand out, reaching.
He shook his head and covered the receiver with his palm. “I think this is it.” He held the receiver towards her and stepped away from the phone. She wondered why he didn’t want to take the call himself. Would’ve expected him to hog it.
“Hello?”
There was a hissing sound on the line. Then a voice: “You have what is mine.” Then the hissing sound again.
Amelia’s arms went all gooseflesh under her sweater. Funny voice. A voice with no colours in it, no ups and downs, each word like a separate little bar of lead. “Uh ... can you describe it, please?” She tried to catch Simon’s eye. He was rummaging in a drawer.
“It is a ring.” A pause, and that hissing again. “It has a stone.” Hiss...
What’s that sound? Amelia wondered.
“The stone is marked.” Hiss...
Amelia rubbed a chilled arm with the hand that wasn’t holding the phone. “Ah — it — yeah. Uh...”
Simon waved to get her attention. He had pushed aside the clutter on the fridge door and was writing something on the white surface with black marker.
“Uh — y-you said the stone is marked,” she said as Simon continued to write. “What mark?”
Hisss... “The eye of wisdom. The claw of strength.”
“Well, that ... that could be it.” Her stomach felt like she’d swallowed cement. “But there could be more than one ring like that,” she said, though she doubted it. “What colour is it?”
The line went hiss... hiss... She thought: That’s his breathing. Her heart thumped.
“Bone.” Hisss...
“Ah!” She nearly laughed. “Sorry, that’s not —”
“And blood.”
“Oh...”
Simon poked her in the shoulder. She looked at the fridge door. “TELL HIM TO MEET YOU. TOWN HALL SQUARE BY SKATING RINK,” it said.
“Uh ... we ... I.... Uh, meet me in the town hall square. By the skating rink.”
Hiss... “Yesss.” Hiss... “Now.” The line went dead.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EYES LIKE DIAMONDS
Amelia dropped the receiver on the floor with a clatter and sat down hard in the chair. “Now. He wants me to meet him now.”
Simon scooped up the receiver, tapped the hook switch, and dialed again. “Ike? Guess what?”
Amelia took a minute to get her breath. It felt like she’d hardly been breathing, trying not to make a noise: hiding like a rabbit from a snake.
“See you downstairs,” Simon said into the phone. He hung up and looked at Amelia.
“I’m scared.” She didn’t feel the least bit embarrassed about saying it.
“He scared me too. That’s why we’re bringing Ike and Celeste.”
“Why would we —” she began hotly. Then changed her mind. As she headed to the coat closet and started pulling on layers, she said, “Well, okay. After all, we don’t know what this guy is. He could be a child molester or a con man or something.”
But Celeste wasn’t in the store. “Left for Elora fifteen minutes ago, to meet a seller,” her helper said. “She’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“We can’t wait an hour,” Simon said. “He’ll be gone by then.”
Ike fell into step with them as they came out of Boomer Heaven. The front of his parka bulged. “Camera,” he explained. “Zoom lens. Got to keep it warm.”
“Wait a minute,” Amelia said breathlessly. They were slogging through ten inches of snow. “Wait — what are we going to do? I can’t just hand the ring over!”
“No, you should stall him — as long as you can,” Ike panted. “So I can get a good shot!”
“But I don’t” — she gasped — “don’t want to give it back.”
And then it was too late. They reached the corner of Barth’s Drugstore, next to the town hall square. Ike stopped, and Simon and Amelia walked out into the square.
“What about Ike?” she asked.
“We can’t let him see Ike with us, or he’ll never get the shot.”
The s
pace in front of the town hall was white and wild. Snow devils eddied as high as the roofs. The only building around the square that showed any sign of life was the doughnut shop on the far side. The square was deserted except for the two of them and a dark figure that sat at one of the concrete chess tables beside the skating rink. Amelia stopped.
“I see him,” Simon said. “Don’t be scared, I’m with you.” His voice trembled. Amelia let the “Don’t be scared” remark pass. She didn’t think she could speak.
The man turned his head and watched them come. Amelia shaped her mouth into what she hoped was a confident smile. From here he looked nothing like his voice. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this.
She stopped behind the chair on the near side of the chess table, just beyond arm’s reach.
“Sit.” His voice was deep and husky, but there was no hissing.
“No, thank you,” Amelia said.
“I can pay.” He opened his hand and a toonie slid into the snow on the table.
Amelia blinked at it. “Pay?” Her mind was too busy with the man’s looks to pay attention to what he was saying.
“For the ad,” Simon muttered behind her. “If confirmed, the owner pays for the ad.”
“You have what is mine,” the man said.
“Uh ... yes.” Her right hand clenched and she resisted the urge to put it behind her back. The ring nestled warm in her palm. Strong, it told her. Strong and fearless.
He was strangely dressed. The clothes were not strange in themselves; in fact, he was better dressed than anybody she had seen in Dunstone yet. He wore a dark grey suit with a waistcoat of iridescent satin, grey rippling into green and purple when it moved, like a grackle’s head. A silky, dusk purple tie was tucked into the waistcoat and a silver chain looped across it. She glanced down. Glossy black leather shoes showed at the bottoms of knife-creased trouser legs.
And that was all. No overcoat, no scarf, no hat, no gloves, no galoshes. Snow settled in heaps on his shoulders and the wind tore his hair. And yet he didn’t look cold.
Dark hair, glossy, with the same iridescence as the waistcoat. Pale face with gaunt bones. Long, slightly smiling mouth. Eyes...
