Chapter 18
The cottage embraced her with soft lamplight, soft music, and the chintz chair she already thought of as hers. She looked for the fairytale book, but it must have been put away by Jakob, who met her at the door with grape soda and a bag of Hawkin’s Cheezies. “Because you starved yourself during dinner,” he said.
She tore the bag open. “Owen Brophy had Second Kings Thirteen and Seventeen scribbled in the dust on his dashboard.”
“Ah, the policii has decided to burn us at the stake. Wonder if he’s willing to throw himself on the pyre?” He took a Cheezie.
“He calls me Tsarina,” she said darkly, and squeezed past him, opened her bedroom door where she could hear Shoes, yowling. “Poor baby!” She scooped her up. “How could you leave her locked up alone?”
“You’re asking a person who despises company why I would let another creature be?”
“And you knew Owen Brophy was policii. You knew from the start.”
“It’s more shocking that you didn’t.”
“What,” she squinted at him, “is wrong with you?”
“A full forensic assessment of things, I’d suspect. So your Sea-Eyed Knight is reading his Bible. Perhaps he’d be wiser to start praying to whatever God he believes in.”
A wintry tingle met her nape—was that a threat?—but the memory of the Knight Crawler’s Shadow, that hypodermic needle jabbed into his arm, chased it away. “Owen Brophy’s God is far more unconventional than you’d find in any religion,” she said.
Jakob shrugged. “Aren’t most of our Gods?”
The chilly tingle returned and a tremor waged war in her fingers as she held a Cheezie out to Shoes, who licked ravenously.
Jakob grinned. “Like matka, like daughter.”
She pinned him with a look. “The Knight Crawler is investigating us, bratranek.”
“And that surprises you too? He’ll be the one shocked when he discovers you’re a hermit instead of a harlot. For a policii he certainly hasn’t a talent for mysteries.”
“Whodunnits.”
He squinted.
“Police officers, they use colloquialisms. They call mysteries whodunnits.”
“Really. How—”
“Do not say banal.”
“Unimaginative.” He grinned, all teeth.
She rolled her eyes. “And anyway, Brophy…I can’t tell if he’s a cop pretending to be a criminal, or a criminal pretending to be a cop.”
“If that’s the case, perhaps I can like him.”
“Jakob!”
“Natasha, so what if he’s investigating us? What can he do? We’re not doing anything illegal. And as for where he lands on the spectrum of criminal versus cop…maybe he doesn’t know either. Maybe that’s why he seems so murky.”
“So he’s murky to you too?”
“I haven’t wasted a lot of time checking.”
She stuck her hand into the Cheezies, crunched and chewed. “He…” She examined her fingers, fuzzy with orange Cheezie dust. “I…can hear him. Like I hear you. Not always, but…enough. And he’s not psychic.”
He said nothing.
“Jakob, why?”
He tilted his head, pensive eyes and a smile strangely…sad. Then it was gone. “I can’t answer that, Natasha.” Up went his shoulders, then down.
She examined him. His eyes were still smudgy like they’d been when his Shadow had spoken to her at the dinner party. She placed a gentle finger on his cheek. “Tell me why you look like someone beat you up.”
His expression immediately changed, exaggerated, and intentionally wounded. “I am handsome in my own way, Natasha.”
She jacked a brow. “You are too handsome for your own good and you are painfully aware of it.”
“On the contrary—it’s never caused me a moment’s discomfort.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“I’m irresistible. I could bed your new friend Sabrina…” He snapped his fingers.
“Reign in your ego! She’s devoted to her pirate.”
He laughed. “Devotion is for nuns and priests, not for blonde sex addicts with legs up to their necks.”
“You will behave.”
“The things I do for you.” He flopped onto the sofa.
“I am indebted to your sacrifice.” She flopped down too, jammed her hand back into the Cheezies.
“Junkie.” He grinned, sidelong eyes still underscored with…what was that? The soot of sleeplessness?
“I am worried about you, Jakob Michael.” This she said in Czech, pronouncing his name Ya-chob Mah-hay-lo like their Baba used to.
“Worrying is not your job, Natasha Noreena,” he replied in English.
“Ne. It is my privilege.”
Again that quiet, sad smile. It stole her voice a moment, then—“What have you found in Cascadia?”
“An inkwell like you’ve seen.”
She swiveled fully to face him.
“I’ve tried forcing my Shadows to see through it.” He jacked a thumb to his face. “And the pressure was so great I blackened my own eyes.”
So not sleeplessness. “You…you need to stop.”
“Or figure out a new way.”
The winter chill reclaimed her neck. “Could…could the psychic we seek be Cory Chandler? He’s in Cascadia.”
Jakob’s eyes widened, surprise in his expression. Meaning he didn’t know Chandler was there? Or was surprised she knew too? Or had it not occurred that Jessalyn’s ‘C.C.’ could be psychic as well? Also—“Is it impossible to believe he could want to hurt his son in law?” she asked. “Aren’t most murders committed by family members?”
“Whodunnit?” he echoed softly, but it was a mere parody of banter. She had made him uncomfortable. Why?
Her Shadow tombstone appeared beside the coffee table. She looked away from it. “What do you know of Vincent Haslom?”
Jakob squinted.
“The Huntsman,” she blurted then blushed, embarrassed by her own melodrama. “He’s Blue Eyes and Sabrina’s father.”
“And as wicked as a villain in a fairytale?” Jakob asked, dry.
Her cheeks felt bright pink. “Yes.”
“Because you saw the past.”
Yes,” she said again. During dinner she had seen…“Watch,” she invited, and held out her palm.
Jakob touched and a young Sabrina Haslom sprang forth, all chin out and attitude. The blades of a voice filled the room too. “Shiftless. Stupid. Worthless. You’ll amount to exactly what you are, Sabrina. Nothing. You are nothing.”
The Shadow Sabrina did not flinch, and Natasha heard Jakob’s murmur of admiration.
“No,” she said. Could he not see that, stoic or not, every word had ripped a hole in her Shadow? Jagged gouges, bullet deep.
“Of course I see,” he answered. “But look at that smile.”
Sabrina’s grin was brilliant. Defiant. Yet her teeth and gums dripped blood as though she’d been chewing on razor blades. Natasha withdrew her hand. “The Huntsman,” she repeated, no longer embarrassed by the analogy. “That’s appalling.”
“That’s life,” Jakob replied.
She blinked.
“I am not being intentionally callous. It’s just that the Hasloms are not the only people raised by an abuser.”
That didn’t dilute it. Couldn’t dilute it. She tucked her hand back into the Cheezies. “Haslom would hurt—or be party to hurting—Rob.”
“You believe a parent would kill their own son, Natasha?”
The doubt—or maybe it was dismissal—in his tone was annoying. “I know it,” she said. “You didn’t see how he’s damaged them. But his Shadow cast a pall all night long. I could hear him—but more importantly, they could too. Blue Eyes and Sabrina are not psychic, yet they still hear him, Jakob, every minute. Every day.”
“Abuse will do that, Natasha.”
She rose, too rapidly, and Shoes squeaked and bolted. “I want to see more.”
“Of Haslom’s father?”
“Ja.” She headed for the front door.
He stood too and, backlit by the soft lamplight looked, curiously, like a silhouette. Like a Shadow. “It’s dark out,” he said. “I’ll come.”
“Ne.” The refusal, reflexive, took them both by surprise, and she could not explain why she both needed, and wanted, to go alone. “I…Vestemere is not a ghetto, Jakob.”
“Echo Creek is not a ghetto, either.”
Catcalls, both memories and Shadows, reached into the cottage. The walls dripped scarlet from the red brush of paint.
“Natasha,” Jakob said softly. “Please. Just call your Shadows from here.”
“I…no.” She glanced out the window.
Moonlight glowed and all the tree boughs cast real shadows, delicate Chantilly lace all over the street. The word Home rose up out of the sidewalk. “I…I need to go out.”
“And what about Owen Brophy?”
She whipped back. “What of him?”
“He’s investigating, remember? Aren’t you afraid he’ll see you traipsing around after dark?”
“He’s otherwise occupied.” “Texting your sweetheart, badass?” Sabrina had asked, and his reply, a simple “Yes” had strangely made it feel like all the air left the room.
“Natasha—”
“I’ve seen my tombstone,” she said.
Now all the air left this room and his eyes were wide. “You’ve—”
“You and Railey were beside it. You’d come to tell me goodbye.”
His mouth opened but no sound emitted. He shook his head yet this too was silent. Eons slid by before “No,” he rasped. “That is not future. You don’t even see future.”
“I’ve seen Blue Eyes and Heart Face’s future for weeks,” she reminded.
“Ja, but…”
“But what?” Shoes was mingling ’round her ankles. She crouched and Jakob did too, eyes locked on her face.
“Natasha, are you sure it’s future you see? Or…is it fear?”
She cocked her head.
“Manipulation,” he said. “Like the ink that covers our Shadows.”
She ignored the cold clasp of a chill. “You believe my tombstone is just an attempt to frighten me off?”
He nodded, brisk, but she could see his pulse, hammering away in his neck. She lifted her chin. “Then he—and you—must think I’m a threat.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “You are definitely a threat.”
She narrowed her eyes.
He gazed steadily back. “How many time have I said you are stronger than you know? And this person—who clearly has what your Gregory called preternatural abilities too—not only can he or she manipulate your Shadows, they can also see all you can do.”
“But what can I do, Jakob? I’m locked to the past, as you’ve always reminded me.”
“Yes, and of what did Baba always remind me?”
That the past was where terror is. She remembered. That, and—“That's why we race blindly into the future. And yet—”
“—and yet the past is all we can really rely on for truth.” He recited it with her. They stared at one another.
“What,” she said quietly, “has our quarry done that he does not want me to expose?” And how was her mother—her mother! Who’d slapped Jessalyn’s Elayna!—how was she connected?
Were they all connected?
The pale Shadow of Sabrina Haslom resurrected itself in the soft light, all indistinct grays before fading through the door.
“Natasha.” Jakob inserted himself between her and the entrance. “In the morning—”
“In the morning I may well take you up on your offer to call Railey. Right now…” Right now a pull she could not explain was crooking a finger, drawing her outside.
***
The evening was a cocoon of velvet perfume and more Chantilly shadows, swaying as they echoed the breeze in the trees. She cupped her hands as she moved from one puddle of streetlight to another. “Show,” she whispered.
A swath of silence fell over the street, so complete it inhaled even the scent of the fruit trees. She froze, gaze tracking every direction.
There.
A figure was forming in the dark, walking out of the night.
She squinted. Rob Haslom? She caught a breath, but…no. Not Rob. This man had features more Patrician than Rob’s, and age had licked silver dignity at his temples. Vincent Haslom. His Shadow, drifting out of the past. Natasha stayed still as a crow flapped its wings from beyond him then flew through his face, caw lancing the night as it emerged through his eye. He kept moving and she held her breath as he strode past her, fine shoes clipping on the asphalt. She followed, keeping to the sidewalk while he walked down the middle of the street. “For the rules do not apply to you, do they?” she said, then turned when he turned, emerging into a neighborhood of cookie-cutter two-storeys, circa 1944.
Haslom paused before one where a slick sports car was parked in the driveway. “Owen Brophy,” she mouthed, and to her left another Shadow appeared beside Haslom.
Blue Eyes, cowering as his father sneered. “Brophys,” he spat. “Blue collar trash.”
Rob’s gaze jerked up from his shoes. “Owen and Steve are my friends!”
Vincent Haslom wore an expression Natasha had seen all over Echo Creek. Scorn. Disgust. She bristled, but Haslom did too and “You embarrass me,” he told Rob, then kept walking.
Natasha tracked him, but out of the corner of her eye could still see Rob’s Shadow, hanging back on the street, his bewilderment and longing hanging there with him. Her heart clenched. His feelings were so much worse than the same emotions she felt back in Echo Creek. For at least she knew why she was hated. But Rob…Why doesn’t he love me? he thought, and the question drifted out into the night, floated after the Shadow of his father, who she glared at.
“Bastard,” she snarled and followed him too, block after block, hesitating only when he breached the border of streetlights and appeared to be heading out into the formless darkness beyond town. She forced herself forward, balking as a wrought iron fence came into focus, a barrier to a queue of pallid shapes she recognized, squares and rectangles. A few crosses. A graveyard.
Haslom’s Shadow passed through the wrought iron, and she hurried along the fence line until she found the gate. Then she trotted, rushing to catch up to where he had gone, feet dodging where the ground covered bodies.
His Shadow halted next to a stone adorned with more Chantilly lace shadows, and her heart sank. Vincent Haslom was not scheming to kill his own son. He couldn’t scheme to kill his own son. She neared his grave and, standing close to his Shadow, could see how his skin bore tell-tale discoloration. Noted how his eyes had sunk in, two great tombs.
“Cancer,” she whispered. She’d seen its effects with many massage clients.
His Shadow looked at her, did a double-take. Her heart hammered until she glanced down.
An arm, a Shadow, was reaching out to him, its source a person who lay over top of her like a transparency. Then it spoke. “Vincent.” The voice was distorted, sounded far away, yet Natasha could still hear the seduction in its purr.
And Haslom did too. His cancer instantly fled, several years of age vanished too, and “Beautiful,” he replied, smiling. “There is no one—no one—like you.”
His eyes became hungry and Natasha squirmed from the intimacy, but the Shadow on top of her laughed. “No one like me?” she replied. “Oh, Vincent. My whole family is like me.”
He stepped forward. “I’m not talking about what you can do.”
“Oh really?” She stroked his face. “I thought you liked what I can do.” The Shadow fingers slipped down then, and Natasha looked quickly away, embarrassed as they caressed the bulge in his trousers.
Haslom clamped a hand upon the mystery wrist. “I’d go to jail for the things I like doing to you.”
Tinkling laughter erupted, a spray of delight that made Natasha smile despite what she saw.
“Some things are worth incarceration for, Vincent. That’s what your policii friend thinks too.”
“That flatfooted fool is no friend of mine.”
“He’s not foolish. It’s an act. A ruse, really. And his partner—”
“The psychic?” Haslom sneered, but the word—psychic—gobbled Natasha’s attention.
“He’s no fool, either,” said the lover. “It is all I can do to keep him blind.”
Haslom’s nostrils flared. “Yet you are keeping him blind.”
“Of course.”
“Though I’ve never asked you to.”
Natasha felt the Shadow shrug.
Haslom stepped near her. “I’ve never loved anyone,” he whispered. “Not my wife. Not my…I have children—”
“Yes. Two children. A beautiful, big-eyed little boy, and a spitfire sharp infant girl.”
He withdrew, gaze going flat. “I don’t love them.”
Natasha sensed his lover’s shock and with it felt a flash of irritation. How naïve was this coquette?
“I don’t know why,” Haslom continued, briskly. “And I…don’t care.”
“You feel…” His lover reached out, grasped his hand, and Natasha was shocked when she said “Show.” Then—“You feel contempt for them?”
He did not reply, but looked profoundly impatient, tongue rolling like a ball in his cheek.
“You are an unusual man, Vincent.”
“‘Unusual’?” Natasha blurted. “He’s monstrous.”
Neither Shadow heard her, and Haslom looked straight through her, eyes fastened on his lover. “I can trust you won’t tell?”
“That you love me, Vincent? Love anyone at all? How damaged are you that loving would cause you such shame?”
A scowl. “You know I’m not talking about love. I’m talking about—”
“—about the dead body who lays out in the stubble, yes I know. The one who’s all bloated and has had its eyes pecked out from the crows and the vultures who encircle the prairie.”
As she said it, the same crow that had flown through his face before swooped between them again. His lover continued “I don’t know why I want to give you that much, Vincent, but I do. I am. I’ve already stopped the flatfoot’s partner from finding him, haven’t I?”
“Yes, but how?”
She splayed her palm and it pleased Natasha that when Haslom reached for her his hand trembled. “Watch,” his lover whispered, and as their hands connected Natasha gasped.
The entire world went to ink.
“I can hide every Shadow he seeks,” said Haslom’s lover. “I can bury that body with what I can do.”
The ink lifted and Natasha looked away from the image of his lover’s bare back as she now sat astride his prostrate body. “I love you,” he whispered, but then…then the cancer rushed back, and reclaimed him, ravaging his Shadow and forcing it to disintegrate as it ate him alive.
“I love you too,” breathed his lover, now alone and walking away, through his gravestone. Natasha noted its inscription—VINCENT HASLOM, ENDLESS SLEEP—and was chilled for a moment before noting that the Shadow, his lover, was walking with a gait she knew. Was holding her shoulders in a way Natasha would never—and did not want to—forget. And not only that, but… “She said policii,” she whispered, and her heart fell, end over end, knowing that even if she were to squeeze her eyes shut she’d still recognize the face when the Shadow turned, leaving her to gaze upon Silva, her mother.
©bonnie randall 2005