by Josh Lanyon
“He was on the TV!” A small boy in a white shirt and black shorts pointed at me.
—nowadays opinion is divided.
Magistra Alizon shook her head and put her finger to her lips. The children quieted.
“What is the tenth precept?”
They—and I—dutifully recited, “In our silence lies our safety.”
“What you’ve seen this morning you will not speak of.”
They chorused, “Yes, Magistra.”
She pointed at the row of tetherball poles, and the children dispersed, screaming. She said to me, “They’ll blab the minute they get home.”
“I know.”
“Where are you trying to go, Cosmo?”
“240 Carson Street.”
She considered, reached up, and drew a perfect rectangle. The rectangle expanded. For a moment the door was outlined in silver blue, the same color as my living room. “The Goddess goes with you.”
“Blessed be, Magistra. And thank you.”
I stepped through the door and entered my living room. The door faded behind me.
At last. I could have fallen to my knees in gratitude for the safety and sanctuary of my own home.
The room—in fact, the whole house—appeared to have been ransacked, but that was not the result of a police search. That was me preparing for the movers on Saturday. Framed paintings and prints stuck out of a large cardboard box. My bronze and black Boulle clock sat on the cerejeira veneer and mahogany coffee table. A rainbow of French farmhouse toile pillows spilled from a plastic trash bag next to the fireplace.
Pyewacket, who inhabits the body of a Russian blue cat, lay on the back of the gray velvet curved sectional. He twitched his tail and hissed at me.
“Don’t start, Pye,” I said. “I’ve had a hell of a day and it’s only lunchtime.”
He lifted his lip, showing his fangs.
“Yes, and had I realized I’d be out all night and half the day, I’d have left kibble for you.”
I went into the kitchen—ignoring Uncle Arnold, who glared and tried to speak to me from the mirror in the hallway—and considered its state of disarray. Cupboard doors open, shelves mostly empty. Drawers were pulled out, some cleared, some not. My collection of antique Wedgwood black basalt bowls and basins were stacked on the table next to a small army of fragile crystal cocktail glasses. A pile of wooden forks and spoons with carved, painted faces lay on a sheet of bubble wrap.
I snapped my fingers, and the bubble wrap rolled up like a window shade, folding the wooden utensils into a tidy bundle. I pointed, and one of the flattened cardboard boxes leaning against a table leg and the box sprang into shape. One by one, the black bowls rose from the stack and floated gently into the box.
While the box filled, I opened a can of Friskies Paté.
“Do I tell you how to live your life?” I muttered, scooping the food out.
The vet told me it’s one of the worst things you can feed a cat, but try telling that to a three-hundred-year-old Familiar. Pyewacket also has a taste for vodka, so I keep the drinks cabinet locked. At least he doesn’t smoke. Indoors.
I poured some kibble into a small Khokhloma bowl and put the plate of cat pâté on the floor. Pyewacket trotted in, pointedly ignoring me, and delicately savored a bite. I left him to it and went into the bedroom—also a disaster area of half-filled boxes and half-emptied drawers. I started another couple of boxes, phoned Uber, and went into the bathroom to shower and shave.
I needed to search Seamus’s shop as soon as possible, but it would have to wait until that night, after the rehearsal dinner. For one thing, crime-scene personnel would surely be inspecting every inch of the Creaky Attic, searching for clues. For another, I could not afford to disobey John when he might possibly notice. He expected me to be at the new house, and at the new house I would be. ASAP.
A hot shower and my morning prayers helped a little. I felt cleaner, anyway. The negative psychic energy of jail, though invisible, is a tangible thing. Like ashes on your skin or grime beneath your nails. It was a relief to rinse all the aggression and fear and grief away, and my prayers calmed and focused me.
Yes, my situation was rather grim. Okay, hella grim. But as the ninth precept states: Until the worst has come to pass, the past anticipates all possibilities. Or, as the mortals have it, never say die.
Did John know his detectives were going around informing people that I was the number-one suspect? I couldn’t believe that, so John must not know. And yet how could he not?
Sergeant Pete Bergamasco’s rough-hewn features flashed into my mind’s eye.
Was Bergamasco keeping that information from John? Or worse, had Bergamasco given instructions that I was to be viewed as the prime suspect?
The first, I could easily imagine. The second… I wasn’t sure. It probably wouldn’t require Bergamasco pointing out the obvious to make Detective Kolchak and company view me as the boy most likely to.
I selected my outfit for the evening—black jeans, lavender shirt, boots, and bracelets of silver and steel. There would not be time to return home before the rehearsal started. By then my Uber had arrived.
“The rehearsal dinner is tonight, so I won’t be back until tomorrow,” I told Pyewacket. “After all, you’re not trapped here. There’s always the pet door.”
His meow was loud and rude.
* * * * *
John found us the house on Greenwich Street.
I say us, but the house would not have been my first choice. I liked it well enough. I can appreciate early modern architecture with its open floor plans and large windows—and the steep, terraced back garden was a promising tangle of overgrown shrubs and gnarled trees. Truthfully, I would have happily lived anywhere John chose.
And that was fortunate, because he was not particularly flexible.
Probably that was because, at forty-five, he had basically been on his own for the last twenty years. He was not used to considering anyone else’s wishes, barring Uncle Sam’s, and he was very much set in his—well, he had strong opinions. That was all.
About everything.
Fortunately, our taste was mostly compatible, at least as far as furniture went. John liked what he considered to be “antiques,” and my Hollywood Regency tendencies were close enough for him. He didn’t exactly give me carte blanche in decorating our new home, but he thought he did, and that’s the first step.
I had painted the walls of the master bedroom the palest shade of powder blue and the ceiling and trim cloud white. The ceiling was decorated with small silver leaf stars, several concealing recessed lights.
John originally said the stars were “Hm…different,” but then decided he liked them.
“Your eyes turn that exact shade of silvery gray when we make love,” he’d said.
Now I knew that all those unexpected, wildly romantic comments were not John. They were Andi’s love spell.
So far the only furniture in this room were the black and bronze Victorian antique four-poster that had brought us together and a 19th century wedding armoire with carved love birds, flowers, and acanthus leaves. The armoire was a gift from my great-aunt Laure d’Estrées. It was an incredibly generous gift. Not for its material value, though that wasn’t anything to sneeze at, but for the blessing of our union this particular gift implied.
In fact, I think it was only the Crone’s tacit approval that brought the Duchess around.
Did everyone believe I had cast a love spell on John?
I sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. Was I wrong to go ahead with the marriage? Probably. Probably the honorable thing was to break it off.
And how would I explain that?
I wouldn’t be able to.
But it was most likely the right thing to do.
And I was pretty sure it would kill me.
And it would hurt John deeply. Maybe only in the short term, but in the moment, pain is pain. I couldn’t bear to harm him.
And what if it wasn’t necessary?
What if he did grow to love me? What if we could be happy together?
After all, I had not cast the spell. Was it so wrong to try to preserve our happiness? To try to make it real?
I chewed absently on my knuckle, my thoughts unproductively running in circles.
Should I? Shouldn’t I? Yes? No?
A short, wrought-iron staircase led from the bedroom to a half-loft lined with bookshelves. I’d planned on painting the loft cloud white with powder blue accents today, but I found I didn’t have the energy.
Instead, I rose, wandering through each room, aimlessly checking out the plastic-wrapped furniture that had been delivered so far. We had picked several things together. A French hand-carved hanging vitrine with double glass doors for the bar area, a set of four Chinese rosewood nesting tables with inlaid mother-of-pearl for the loft, and a large Italian Toleware six-candle chandelier with thirty-two yellow porcelain roses for Jinx’s room. Or, as John preferred to call it, “the other guest room.”
John’s relationship with his young half-sister was problematic.
I say young, but Jinx—Joan—was twenty-five. Only four years younger than myself. Which didn’t change the fact that she and John were often at loggerheads. He seemed to think that although he had not lived at home for the last twenty years, it was his job to police her. And, no surprise there, Jinx resented it—and him.
Anyway, ever the model of efficiency, John had already moved in a bunch of furniture and boxes from his house. Mostly winter clothes, a couple of nice military lithographs, an antique map of Scotland, his LP collection—which seemed to largely consist of Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald—and boxes full of official-looking folders and files. I had long ago figured out I was marrying a workaholic. In addition to the large master suite and two guest bedrooms, John and I were each going to have a home office.
I moved to the box window of John’s office and gazed down at the hedge-lined empty cul-de-sac that formed a parking area in front of this row of townhouses. My heart jumped as I saw that the cul-de-sac was not empty. John’s silver-blue Range Rover was parked beneath the cedar trees, and John was striding up the sidewalk.
At some point he had managed to shave and change clothes. He looked dapper but forbidding.
I left the window, hurried downstairs, and shot out the front door, crossing the small blue porch in two steps. I met him in front of the neighboring townhouse, currently empty while under renovation, and surrounded by scaffolding and tarps.
“Hey, you’re early,” I said. “It’s only two.”
John’s expression changed, but not in a good way. Not only did he not look happy to see me, he looked like I was the worst news he’d had all day.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “Kolchak and Iff came to interview you about forty minutes after we spoke, and you still weren’t here. They went by your place, and you weren’t there either. What is going on with you?”
“N-Nothing,” I stammered. “Nothing’s going on.”
“Cos.” John was looking at me like—well, I did not like that look. The suspicion, the alarm. “You have to talk to them. I can’t— You can’t—”
I said quickly, “I know that. I intend to talk to them. I want to talk to them. They must have just missed me. Or-or maybe I was in the backyard when they stopped by. I’m not avoiding them.”
That last was even true. I wasn’t avoiding John’s detectives. They were least on my list of worries.
He didn’t believe me. I could see it in his eyes.
“If there’s something I should know about Reitherman’s death, for both our sakes, you need to tell me.”
I gaped at him. “If— There’s nothing to tell. I—”
From somewhere overhead drifted the faint notes of “Clair de Lune.”
A shadow fell across John’s face. He glanced up, his expression changed to astonished horror, and he shoved me back very hard.
I nearly fell, managing to catch myself as I stumbled away from him. Not far enough away. Something heavy struck my left shoulder and knocked me to my knees. As I went down, I heard a terrible noise. Like every chord known to music smashing into each other, a scary movie soundtrack. I crashed onto the pavement, thinking I’d either been shot—or a house had landed on me.
Chapter Seven
The gritty feel of warm cement beneath my cheek, the smell of dust and wood. The coppery taste of blood.
From overhead I could hear, “Cos? Cosmo? Can you hear me?”
I hadn’t lost consciousness, not entirely. Not for more than a few seconds. I was mostly stunned, mostly disbelieving. My confused recollection of cartoon classics led me to believe I’d been hit by an anvil. Or maybe a safe.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was the note of fear in John’s voice. I tried to pull myself together, rolling over and blinking up at his white face as he bent over me.
“It’s okay,” I croaked. “I’m okay. You’re okay.”
“You’re not okay. Jesus Christ. You were nearly killed.”
“Was I?” That was alarming. I tried to sit up. His hand landed on my chest, pressing me back on the hard, hot pavement.
“No,” he said quickly. “Don’t try to move. You may have broken something.”
“Like what?” I guess I was pretty scattered because I was thinking he meant I’d damaged the sidewalk or a ladder.
“Your arm. Your back. It’s a goddamned miracle it’s not your skull.”
“Oh…” I lifted my head again. My clothes were filthy, covered in dust and splinters. “What thing?”
John kept me pinned in place while he felt for his phone with his free hand. “That fucking…thing. I think it might have been a-a piano…” He thumbed the number for emergency services. “Yes, this is Commissioner Galbraith. I need an ambu—”
I grabbed his hand. “No, wait, John. You don’t.”
He spared me a harassed look. “Lie still, Cos. Let me—”
“No, but don’t.” I pushed his hand aside and sat up. “Don’t call them. I’m fine. Really. It was a what-do-you-call-it? A glancing blow.”
He said incredulously, “A glancing blow?”
“Yes…” Hands shaking, I hastily brushed bits of metal and ivory from my hair, my shoulders, my sleeves.
Past his shoulder, I could see the wreckage. It looked like someone had dropped a wooden box from high overhead. I could make out ebonized cartouches and bronze hardware in the chunks of satinwood. Black and white piano keys, scattered like broken teeth, were strewn across the black asphalt of the parking area.
This pile of kindling was all that remained of a 19th century Broadwood upright piano.
I thought I knew what had happened, but it was only more bewildering.
The voice on the other end of the phone continued to squawk alarm.
John hesitated, his expression doubtful, worried, but maybe he realized that this kind of publicity—any publicity—was the last thing we needed right now. “Cancel that,” he said crisply, and pocketed his phone.
“Cos, are you sure you don’t need an ambulance?” He took me carefully by the shoulders, scanning my face. “I thought—I thought you were dead.” Even now he was shocked by the memory.
I shook my head. “Nope. If you want out, you’re going to have to jilt me.”
His formidable brows drew together, but instead of answering, he said softly, “You cut your lip.”
I swallowed, reading the dark intensity of feeling in his amber eyes. Yes, the love spell had been removed, but he did still feel something for me. It was right there in his gaze.
He cupped my chin, tracing his thumb against my bottom lip. “Jesus, Cos,” he whispered, and then he bent his head and kissed me. A careful kiss, as light as the brush of an angel’s wing. I believed in that moment that if I had been dead, his kiss would have brought me back to life.
But owww. My lip did sting, since he pointed it out.
I winced, John drew back, and I licked, tasting b
lood. “I bit it, is all.”
He offered his hand. “Can you stand?”
“Yes…” I took his hand. My scraped palm stung, but his hard, warm grip centered me.
John threw another uneasy look at the scaffolding overhead. “I don’t understand how this could happen.”
Let it go. Let it go.
“I don’t know, but I’m okay. Really. It mostly missed me.” I used my free hand to push up from the pavement, but I was shaking so badly, I nearly fell back on my ass. John lifted me onto my feet, steadying me.
“Mostly?” He frowned at me, then once again stared up at the taped windows and empty scaffolding. “Where the hell did it come from?”
I had no answer.
“It can’t have been an accident. No one accidentally pushes a goddamned piano out a window.”
No. It had not been an accident.
My gaze was irresistibly drawn to the broken pieces of the piano from Seamus’s shop.
Someone had tried to kill me.
Whether it was that realization or I’d been hit harder than I knew… I reeled dizzily, and John’s face changed. He caught me and swung me up into his arms. Just like that. As if I weighed no more than a kid.
“Hang on, sweetheart,” he said.
Sweetheart.
It was a bit embarrassing and at the same time ridiculously comforting. I let my head drop on his shoulder. “Sorry,” I mumbled into his collar. “Low blood sugar. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“Yeah, I think it’s a little more than skipping breakfast.”
It was silly. I really was okay… But it was so nice to be in his arms, nice to know he really was worried about me. And he was. I could hear the fast, energized pounding of his heart. Battle stations ready.
“I promise I’m not the swooning type.”
“I know. I’ve got you.” He easily carried me up the two steps to our porch, shouldered open the door, and brought me inside. The house was pleasantly cool and dim after the blazing sunshine of outside.
“Hey, carrying me over the threshold,” I felt obliged to point out as he adroitly managed to avoid falling over the tumbled stack of wedding presents next to the door.
