So Many Secrets ~ Chapter Seventeen

Chapter 17

Natasha Nikoslav would make the world’s shittiest poker player. Every expression crossing her face was a wide open door that reminded him of the lonely kid cast in a movie, the one who was always shown staring through a window, watching other kids play.

Still, he tried using her unease to he and Jessalyn’s advantage—Jack the discomfort, jack the fear—shocked when it made him feel like a dick, being deliberately curt and indifferent.

Like when Rob offered her something to drink. She quickly refused any booze, but those strange eyes of hers lit when she spied the pop that had to be there for the spoiled moppet; old school orange and cream soda. Then the moppet had clapped—“You’re sharing mine?”—so besotted her face shone. It was tough not to smile.

Yet he didn’t.

“Thank you.” Natasha toasted Robyn’s small, plastic cup. “We’ll be careful not to drink too much, though. All this soda is so sweet it’s like syrup.” She caught his eye then, tried sharing the joke, a reference back to the coffee he’d teased her about in the gallery.

He knew he was being an asshole when he didn’t grin back, and hid a wince when her face crumbled, wondering what she’d done wrong.

Fuck, he hated being a cop.

The realization hit him like a sucker punch and his hand clenched around his tumbler of ice water (no hard stuff for him either; the Undercover Section’s psychologist had been all no-bullshit during his compulsory assessment: “And steer clear of any substances for at least a year. One pulls the trigger for all.”).

So he drank his water, and on his left Sabrina guffawed over something her flouncy husband had said. Beside him Rob grinned, relaxed and enjoying it.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d relaxed and enjoyed…anything.

“You don’t want to be the shit of society,” Steve had said, and now he looked ’round the table, coldly aware that he, like the Tsarina, was also outside gazing in. “’Scuse me a minute,” he muttered, and dug out his phone, sought Steve in his list of contacts.

A new text message froze him, again from that unknown number: Can I call u?

He sucked his teeth. By the letter of the law, he and Sondra had been barred from all contact. But since when had either of them ever bothered with the letter—or even the spirit—of the law? He typed When? and, feeling like the entire table knew he was trembling, raised his gaze.

The Tsarina wore her upside down smile and an expression that could almost be construed as compassion. He looked away, annoyed and suddenly longing for Sondra’s razor-like grin, all teeth and mischief and no cryptic agenda.

Yet again he sensed the Tsarina felt slapped. This time, though, he resented it, resented them all, really, and it was with something teetering on desperation that he raised the number for his brother. Shoot some pool tomorrow? You’ll get drunk, I’ll stay sober, and I’ll hand you your ass.

A spate of silence elapsed but within it he could still imagine Steve snort, then: Bring a wad of twenties jumped onto his screen and he grinned, checked to see if Sondra had replied too.

No.

His heart trip-hammered and he jolted when Sabrina knocked him in the ribs. “Textin’ your sweetheart, badass?”

“Yes,” he said simply, and was pleased to throw her off her game.

“Well,” she said, blinking. “No more swapping gum with the likes of you, then.”

He laughed and wasn’t exactly sure why he shot a smug look over to the Tsarina—although maybe it was because she looked so shocked to hear that someone who looked like him actually had a girlfriend.

Steve’s voice scolded from memory. “Try showering.” Okay. Fair enough. Maybe he could drop the cliché look of a narc.

Sabrina said “How ’bout you, Natasha? You on the market, or off?”

“Oh…neither.” The Tsarina clutched the moppet like a human shield. “I’m...not really in the space for a relationship right now.”

“Oho! Now thatsounds like a story.” Sabrina’s grin was all zeal. “We’ll go for beer this week and you’ll tell me all about it.”

The way the Tsarina opened, then closed, her mouth…Owen had never seen anyone so clearly at a loss for what to say. Not that he blamed her. He knocked Sabrina back in the ribs. “I should recruit you as an interrogator.”

“Don’t bother.” She helped herself to more olives. “I’ve always preferred criminals to cops.”

Welcome to the club. He checked his phone again yet noted, from across the table, how speculatively the Tsarina reassessed Sabrina. He eyeballed her. What the hell was her game? Any ideas he landed on slipped through his fingers like he was trying to hold light. Case in point: he and Jessalyn had deliberately trotted her into the studio tonight with the storybooks on full display.

The Tsarina had glanced at them then away without so much as a glimmer of anything—no recognition, no discomfort—in those big, golden eyes. And he’d watched for it, ruthlessly staring until Rob had looked at him funny.

She had never seen those books before.

She had never seen that Facebook profile of the dead Sleeping Beauty, either.

And, according to that Albertan cop, she’d been the one victimized, again and again. People throwing rocks because they were superstitious? Of what? What the hell could one obviously socially awkward woman be doing to generate venom like that? He stared at her, brow jacking when one of her hands rose as if in response, self-consciously covering skin exposed by the fancy dress she wore, one more thing that set her apart: being pitifully overdressed for a casual dinner party. She didn’t have a clue. So what the hell is your story, Tsarina? And who’s this cousin puppeteering your strings?

“Who’s ready for dessert?” Jessalyn asked.

He’d barely tasted—or ate—dinner (carb overload. Way too much fat) and Natasha Nikoslav had taken only slavish portions too. More evidence of her shredded nerves, because anyone who could pack away the potato chips and perogies he’d seen in her shopping cart (and gulp down kid pop, of all things) could eat way more than she’d barely pecked at.

“So many leftovers!” Jessalyn exclaimed. “I knew I should have invited C.C. My dad,” she added, for Natasha, who nodded in what looked like increasingly petrified silence.

He, though, frowned. “Isn’t the Lieutenant still teaching out in Ottawa?”

“Quit out of the clear blue last December,” Jessalyn replied. “Moved back out here, but not to Vestemere this time.”

“Wait. He lived here before?”

“Well, ’course, Owen. How do you think Robbie and I met? But this time C.C. bought a house in Cascadia. He always did prefer it to here.”

“Cascadia?” the Tsarina blurted.

Everyone blinked at her volume.

“I…” She looked mortified. “D-didn’t you mention what a beautiful tourist town it is?” she stared at him, openly pleading, face bone white and hands fretting in a way that was now synonymous with her.

A spear of pity shot through him. “Yeah,” he relented. “Like Jessalyn said: who wants plain little Vestemere when they can have lakeside Cascadia?”

“Amen,” said Sabrina and another voice—Thank you—landed like petals in his ear. He jerked a look to the Tsarina. Had her mouth moved? Surely it had. Still, goosebumps raced the breadth of his shoulders and, as her upside down smile scurried away, his cell hummed. He pulled it out.

The screen said 11

Sondra. Calling at 11. He sent a thumbs up, hoping that was neither too hot nor too cold, and his gut fluttered. What would she say? What would he say? He glanced at the time. 9:32. Christ, let this agony be over.

Yes, please. More petals settling in his ear, and again his eyes shot to the Tsarina.

His view was obscured by Rob, rising to clear dishes. Natasha leapt too, but Rob took her elbow, gently steered her back down. “You’re our guest,” he said quietly. “Just sit.”

Owen squinted. How many times had Rob baled her out tonight? And for what? His old buddy had never been a flirt in the past. In fact, back in high school he’d often said “How the hell do you do that?” when Owen had picked up girls. Yet something about the Tsarina compelled him to play Prince Charming. Because she was beautiful? (which she was, but only in an untouchable, regal sort of way). Or was it that graceful body? Those huge, sunrise eyes? Or maybe all that soft, silvery hair kissing ’round her chin. Or was it—

“Thank you,” she said.

—was it that accent that generated all sorts of mystery?

“Tonight has been lovely,” she added, and panned a look specifically to Sabrina, who raised a tumbler also filled with candy-pink kid-pop.

Owen’s mouth quirked.

“Beer and that back-story this week,” Sabrina replied, and rolled a few more olives off the picked-over appetizer platter, placed them on her dessert plate. “I want to hear all about the rat bastar-er-bad guy.” She amended, and reached out, tucked Robyn’s hair behind her ear.

The little kid literally glowed, fawned over by two blonde queens, one a Joan of Arc warrior, the other a seeming fairytale maiden.

Antonio flounced out of his chair, bowed to the Tsarina.

Jesus. Another character.

“Anytime you are ready, Cara, your chariot awaits.”

Aha. An opening. Owen cleared his throat. “Don’t you two live out of town?” He feigned confusion. “I can take Ms. Nikoslav back into Vestemere with me.”

The Tsarina’s sunshine gaze became big. “I…oh…”

“That okay?” On came his billion-watt smile, yet inside…Tell me no. Was it the cop in him talking, or the part of him that hated cops talking? Either way—What I’m doing isn’t okay, Tsarina. I’ve acted like a prick to you all night. So tell me no. Make any excuse not to let me take you home.

“O-of course.” She inclined her head, all decorum and manners.

Fuck. He caught Jessalyn’s eye, perturbed to see she looked pleased. He should be pleased too and yet…where was all that adrenaline he’d once felt when he’d worked undercover?

And what the hell was with all this guilt?

***

Gravel growled under tires on their way back to Vestemere, the only sound till at last he spoke around the vee that could go east to Rob’s new development, or west back into town. “That little girl sure thought you were some sort of celebrity,” he remarked.

A smile as faint as the dashboard light found her mouth. “She’s so sweet. I…” A glance. “I don’t have much experience with children. Do you?

Okay. So this was making conversation. He shrugged. “I’ve actually lost count of how many nieces and nephews I have.” Which also made him feel like a dick, come to think of it.

“That sounds lovely,” she said. “Having them, I mean, not forgetting them. I mean…oh, damn.” Her gaze rapidly stole away, out her window, and he got the sense she wanted to stomp a frustrated foot. “That sounded judging,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Fret-fret-fret, fingers knitting this way and that. “’S’okay.” He lifted a shoulder. “I probably should keep better track of them. They might need to bust me out of a nursing home someday.” He tried a smile.

She did too, but it was diluted by her enormous eyes, luminescent and uncertain in the dashboard darkness.

He cocked his head. “Those were some disturbing portraits in the studio,” he tossed out.

“Yes,” she replied.

Agreeing, but just to be polite. He pursed his lips. “Especially Jessalyn’s mother.”

“Yes,” she echoed.

Jessalyn hadn’t labelled any of the portraits as her mother. Not tonight. So…was the Tsarina still being polite? Or… “What was her name again? Edith? Eileen?”

“Elayna.”

Oh, Ms. Nikoslav. You are a shitty poker player. He pulled into town and with one glance he could tell her wide eyes knew what she’d just done.

“Oh!” She grabbed the dash as they dipped over a rut on her street.

Shit! Right where he’d written Ma-HAY-lo in the grime, on top of that cop’s preachy Bible verse.

“Sorry.” She swiped the dust from her palms. “Th-that startled me.”

Oh, for…he needed to end this. To show his hand. She was shaking so bad her damn seat vibrated. “Ms. Nikoslav—” He pulled up to her curb.

She popped the door, hopped out. “Thank you for the ride.” All the words ran together and she tried glancing at him—so polite!—but her gaze barely grazed his phone in the console. “And good luck—er—I mean good night! Good night,” she repeated and fled up the sidewalk, skirt fluttering in a way that reminded him of a surrendering flag.

He watched her. “Tsarina, what the hell sort of trouble are you in?” He’d been about to ask her. To offer to help her.

“No one’s thrown a rock at her in months” haunted his ear all the way home where his computer screen waited, a dead blue glow on the kitchen table. He flopped down, checked the time (under an hour till Sondra. He made sure his phone was fully juiced), then awakened a site he’d unearthed as per that stiff-necked cop’s edict: “Google Echo Creek Suicide”:

Alberta Unsolved

His request to join the forum had been accepted late this afternoon (username Night Crawler—who else could he be?), and now he was an active member of a subcategory group that was, indeed, called Echo Creek Suicide.

A long list of chatter was queued up under the heading, the first bullet entered by a user called Avenger911: How does someone hang themselves AND cut their own stomach open?

DevilMadeMeDoIt replied: Possible to maybe cut 1/2-way thru, but evisarated????

“It’s eviscerated, moron,” Owen muttered, and wondered how many of these online gumshoes knew how often real cops cruised these sites, hunting for posters who seemed to know more about cases than had ever been revealed to the public, often adopting usernames and joining in discussion just like he had before he’d left for dinner. Suspects???? he’d asked, adding all the question marks to sound just as histrionic and eager as the rest of them.

Answers now waited beneath his query, a tidy row:

Avenger101: Hey, Night Crawler! IMHO Local family into witchcraft did it.

DevilMadeMeDoIt: Greetings, Night Crawler. NOT witchcraft. Satan worship. Ask any local.

Like that Bible-thumping cop? “I’ll pass,” Owen murmured, and kept reading.

Grace02: Welcome, Night Crawler. No devils, no witches. Local family just into their ethnicity like EVERY OTHER FAMILY out in the boonies, all Slavic home-cooking and healing with old-fashioned mustard plasters and homemade fraises.

“And massages?” Brow quirking, he read more of Grace02

As for suspects, the vic ran with a whole posse of hooligans who liked torturing cats and terrorizing farmers with cattle mutilations. Strong chance the hanging/gutting was just grandstanding gone bad, but agreed—NOT a suicide.

Not a suicide. His gaze wandered back to ‘terrorized’.“No one’s thrown a rock at her in months,” he quoted grimly, then sat back. “Why’d they stop, Tsarina? Why’d they hurt you at all, but also—why’d they stop?” He scrolled back up the screen. Hanged and gutted? Jesus. What the hell did any of this have to do with Hasloms—or with fairytales, for that matter? “More like horror novels,” he muttered, and clicked on Echo Creek, Alberta, a blue link in the Alberta Unsolved forum.

It re-routed to a Wiki page with a short, generic description of a hamlet comprised of—“Four hundred people?” he sputtered on a laugh. Vestemere must feel like Vancouver to the Tsarina. He read the short list of ‘Local Businesses’, saw Head to Heal listed right under—“Full stop,” he breathed.

Haslom Explorations.

Tongue clucking, he clicked the link. A website filled the screen:

Haslom Explorations, formed in 1979, is a subsidiary oil company operating beneath our flagship corporation, Haslom Enterprises, founded by Vincent Haslom of Vestemere, British Columbia, Canada.

Vince Haslom, Rob and Sabrina’s old man. He’d died shortly after Owen had completed his first year as a cadet, one more funeral he had not come home for. Chewing his tongue, he clicked on the name.

A raft of links came up. He picked ‘Business Insider’ at the top.

Vincent Haslom raised eyebrows in the business world when, upon his death, he left the bulk of his estate to an oil exploration company he founded in eastern Alberta. This, opposed to naming either of his two surviving children, Robert and Sabrina, in his will. Sabrina Danini (nee Haslom) would go on to contest said will and ascertain 51% of the shares comprising not only Haslom Explorations, but also the larger Haslom Enterprises. Currently, Ms. Danini presides as CEO of the company.

“Ha! Go, Sab.” Owen grinned but wondered—what tiny infraction or ripple of defiance had caused Sir Vincent of the House of Haslom, (as Steve had always called him) to have a temper tantrum big enough to slice his own kids from his will? “Hope you spun in your grave when it wasn’t even your son, but your lowly daughter who trumped you in the end, you disapproving old bastard.” His grin became a full-blown smile. Sabrina Danini, scoring a coup d'état.

And landing a subsidiary company, Haslom Explorations, in the Tsarina’s home town.

His grin trickled away and he tracked back to 51%. Haslom Explorations, Haslom Enterprises. Wealth upon wealth. And had he not just speculated about motive with Jessalyn yesterday? “Sex or money,” he’d said, and here was money. A whole vault of money. He sat back, satisfied. To hell with superstition and hokum and definitely to hell with that messed-up cop who should probably be pounding a pulpit somewhere instead of wearing a badge. Dollar signs always won out, and now a new question emerged: how were the Nikoslavs linked to Haslom Explorations and its millions of dollars in oil revenue? ’Cause they damn sure had to be.

His cell hummed and he jumped. 11:11. Sondra. He scooped it up, unable to—childishly, he knew—even look at the screen. “Hey,” he said, more breathless than he liked.

“Hey,” said Rob.

Owen slumped back in his chair, eyed the clock again. 11:12. “What’s up?” he asked, too sharp, yet…she’d said eleven. Get off my damn phone, Old Man.

“Message left on Jessie’s cell from an unknown number,” said Rob. “Voice all raspy, like a 90 year old pot smoker.”

Owen’s lips jerked, an involuntary grin.

“Said ‘See you in Vancouver, Princess.’”

“Meaning our fairytale villain is attending her show in the city?”

“Sounds like. So I have a proposal.”

Owen flinched at how much, in that single sentence, Rob sounded like his ice-veined old man.

“Name a price for how much it will cost me to send you along.”

“Like a bodyguard?”

“Exactly like a bodyguard.”

“Free.” After a lifetime of ignoring him, it was the least he could do.

“Bullshit,” said Rob crisply. “I’ll pay you at least what I pay you per hour to work for me now. I don’t give handouts, Owen, and I don’t expect them, either.”

Jesus. Where had this version of Rob Haslom come from?

The name Vincent Haslom glowed on his computer screen.

“I’ll have Jessie arrange a room for you. We’ll cover all your expenses.”

Including a trip up the coast to Edgewood, Sondra’s rehab? He checked the time again. 11:17. He tapped his foot, but really, there was no way he could have missed her call; he’d have heard the bump on the line. “I…yeah, Old Man. Happy to help.”

“I’ll text the details.” Rob sounded terse. Wrung out. “He worries,” Jessalyn had said, and as Owen hung up he glared at the name Vincent Haslom.

“You the reason Rob’s fretting himself into an early tomb, you cold-hearted old prick?” Not that Rob shouldn’t be worried about the fairytales, but…his gaze lingered on Vincent Haslom. That nasty old bastard had breathed arctic venom, and Owen had seen Rob on the receiving end of it more than once. In fact, he remembered speculating with Steve (privately, never around Rob) that Vince Haslom could probably kill a man and never break a sweat. “Kill a man,” he muttered now, and shrank the screen. “As in hang and gut him?” When had that so-called suicide taken place? Had Haslom still been living and running his own oil company in eastern Alberta? He revived Alberta Unsolved and Echo Creek Suicide.The armchair detectives had meticulously recorded all dates, but dammit! When had Haslom died? He surfed the internet—and slumped. “Nope.” Vincent Haslom had been poking up daisies for years by the time the suicide happened, but…

But when he’d plugged in murder + Vincent Haslom, an older article, archived from a 1980’s newspaper appeared upon internet eternity. “Well, holy shit,” he said.

Detective Corporal Cory Chandler investigates missing Haslom Explorations oilfield exec, draws criticism for calling in psychic

The article went on to describe how a Haslom employee suspected of defrauding the company had vanished out on the Alberta prairie. Old Vince Haslom claimed no clue as to where the missing person was, but had been quoted as saying: “Yet I’m pleased that my company bank balance will no longer be breached.”

“Jesus, what a prick.” Owen re-read the short piece. Cory Chandler—who’d been a lieutenant by the time he’d met him, (and went by C.C. to his daughter, Jessalyn), had to have been desperate to call in a psychic. “Poor bastard.” Owen had worked with other cops who’d called upon psychics when a misper was gone and there were no leads in sight. The hopelessness was always palpable at that point, and no one dared disbelieve that maybe, just maybe, the psychic would actually be able to deliver.

And sometimes they did.

An uneasy tremor seized his spine and he glanced at the clock. 12:21. His shoulders sank. No Sondra. No follow-through. Typical addict. He turned back to the computer—had C.C.’s psychic found that misper? Or had it been a miss and had Chandler become obsessed, like some cops did, with nailing Vince Haslom? Was that why he’d originally moved out here?

And how the hell had he felt when his daughter fell for Rob, the son of his modern-day Moriarty?

His cell buzzed, startling him. Sondra’s unknown number. “Hey,” he answered, no longer nervous. “Funny how my clock doesn’t say eleven.”

“There’re eyes everywhere here, Night Crawler.”

In rehab. A pang of guilt clapped his lips shut.

“You…how are you?”

Tired. Lonely. Confused as fuck. “Still got a pulse.”

“Are you suspended?”

Was she asking? Or wishing? “No. Voluntary leave.” Voluntary resignation, really, but he couldn’t tell her that. It would either give her too much satisfaction or too much guilt and he didn’t want her to feel either. “You protect her.” The psychologist, the one with whom he’d had that mandatory appointment, had made the observation. He’d bristled. “I turned her in, didn’t I? Set her up myself?”

The shrink had reminded him of a little crow, beady dark eyes and no blinking. “Yes,” she said. “But now the guilt burns you alive, Officer Brophy.”

Sondra said “You still in the city?”

“No,” he replied, and perversely wanted to leave it at that. Make her drag more out of him. Instead he cleared his throat. “I’ve…come home for a while.”

“To Vestemere? That’s…Jesus, Owen, really?

What the hell did that mean? That he was soft? Being a baby? He clenched his teeth. “I’m working a case,” he bit off, because dammit if he wanted to be a cop he still could, be.

Unlike her.

“Thought you just said you were on leave.”

“It’s a private matter.”

“So you’re freelancing?”

More judgment and, unlike even the Tsarina had managed earlier, there was no apology in her voice. No self-censure. Just a superior ‘Well that can’t miss’ tone. Christ. Why had he agreed to this call? “For a friend,” he said, that and no more.

He should have known better. “And your friend…he clean?”

Why? Would you want to score dope with him if he wasn’t? “Squeaky.”

“You sure?”

“We can never be sure, Sondra, can we?”

Now there was chastened silence. He liked it. Sat in it until she said, in a small voice “What…uh…what are you investigating?”

“Threats. Vague, but violent.”

“From?”

Good question. “There’s a suspect, but…” But Natasha Nikoslav acted more like a vic than a victimizer.

“But what?” Sondra probed, for like always, she could seize his tone too. Could hear his uncertainty. “What do you know about your perp?”

‘That she’s scared’ was the obvious answer. But…that she’s lonely, was what he thought. He frowned. “She’s mysterious,” he said.

“Ah. A she.”

The jealousy there was so ripe it gave him a visual: the orchard fruit, swollen and falling off the trees in the fall.

“So play her, Brophy.”

Ah, dammit. Here we go.

“Play her like you played me. Use your hands, Owen. That sexy mouth. Use your—”

“You played me too, if I recall.”

Silence. It shrunk into itself, creating a vacuum. Suffocating. His shoulders twitched and he said “It’s not just a her. There’s a him too.”

“A couple? Hard to play them both, Night Crawler.”

No kidding.

“But you’ll find a way. You…you are a good cop, Owen.”

Was he? How could he trust her assessment?

“So you know what to do. Play them. Play them both.”

It was unsettling how much it sounded like an order. “Sondra—”

“Gotta go. Night-watch will be around soon. I’d get my ass tossed for just having a phone, much less talking on it.”

“And you don’t want to get tossed?” Hope ballooned in his belly. She wanted to stay? To get better?

“Do I have a choice?”

The balloon popped and it was his turn to fall into chastened quiet.

“But…it was good to just…to hear you, Owen.”

“Yeah,” he rasped. “Sondra—”

“Gotta go.” The line went dead. He clutched the phone, kneading his temples till his computer screen flashed.

A new line had just been entered beneath his question, Suspects???? on Echo Creek Suicide.

ThirdEye20/20: Instead of making up what you do not know about the Nikoslav family, perhaps one of you brave warriors should find the spine to just ask them what happened.

A dare. His gut knew it, and his neck suddenly crawled with the unmistakable sensation of being watched. He whirled even though he could navigate this kitchen where he’d grown up even if he was blindfolded—and was fully aware that there was no window behind him.

Still.

Palming his nape, he re-read the dare from ThirdEye20/20. ‘Ask them’. “Okay. Challenge accepted,” he rasped, and shut the computer down.

Then he checked all the doors and the windows, made sure they were locked.

©bonnie randall 2005

So Many Secrets ~ Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Her Shadow tombstone stayed with her and she could not find Jakob. The ruse shop he’d rented was locked up and dark. He didn’t answer his cell. She called him

—Answer me! Where are you?—

but no reply and Shadows chased her all over Vestemere, hissing through the canopy of blossoms shading her street. “Now you’re dead,” they whispered, and she unlocked the rental cottage, sealed herself inside, dead-bolted the door then scooped up little Shoes. “Here, dítě,” she said and fussed, feeding the kitten, readying the new litter box. “See your fancy new bed?”

The kitten scabbered up her pant leg instead, sharp little claws biting her leg until it settled upon Natasha’s shoulder. Wincing, she extracted the kitten’s claws from where they kneaded her skin, stroked her downy fur till she purred. “My cousin has trapped me here in Vestemere,” she told it. And the Knight Crawler and Heart Face knew she was lying—but had no clue, yet, about what.

And someone else (or one of them?) wanted her dead.

Why?

Shadows surged through the room, shades of green that made her squint. “Sickened?” she deciphered. God knew it was exactly how she felt.

But the green deepened, murky. Tinged yellow and brown. Pus, she thought, like free association, then swallowed nausea back as a stench—that’s infection. That’s rot—wafted through the cottage. “Not sickened,” she breathed, and knew, instinct forming the word— “Jealousy.”

The odor, and color, deepened then fled, and Natasha inhaled deeply, chasing the smell from her nostrils, and reasoning: “My Shadows are just my own intuition. So all of this, the jealousy, the danger—all of it is something I already know.”

Her nose began to trickle as if her body agreed. She brushed the blood away. “So I know. But what do I know?”

The cottage was sunshine and soft colors and quiet, no Shadows forming to fill any answers.

Stroking Shoes, she moved to a spear of sunshine poking through the front window, let it warm her. “What is jealousy?” she muttered, analyzing. Jealousy…well, jealousy was a child’s emotion, was it not?

She relaxed a wee bit. Jakob was not childish. Settling onto the sofa, she kept on. Jealousy. It was also “…insecurity,” she said. “And Jakob, insecure?” Out rasped a humorless laugh. “It would do him well to try a little humility sometime.”

A Shadow breezed through the cottage, her Baba, rotund tummy shaking in a belly laugh. For of course she too had known Jakob.

Buoyed, Natasha felt a grin tease her lips. “Jealousy is also competition. And sourness. And…and bitter.”

None of which applied to her cousin, the epitome of confidence (Ahem. Try arrogance), disdain and, far from bitter, Jakob’s world view instead was a grim sort of amusement—on a good day—and weary defiance on most others.

And beyond that… “He loves me.” She knew it. Felt it.

So then why had her Shadows shown him taking responsibility for her tombstone?

She called to him.

He did not answer.

She kept calling till velvet night clasped the streets and Vestemere drifted to quiet. Cuddling Shoes, she waited. And waited.

Jakob did not come home.

—Where are you?!—

No response and midnight crept by. Then one o’clock. At two-thirty she went to her room, Shoes clasped close as she shoved a bureau in front of her locked bedroom door, then pushed an armoire to cover the window. Her tombstone was the last thing she saw before her eyes could no longer fight and she drifted…

Sunshine assaulted her cheeks alongside a rap on her door. “Kava!”

Coffee. Jakob! She leapt up, Shoes emitting an indignant mew. “Hush, baby,” she muttered and, after the briefest hesitation, plugged her iPod into its dock—turned it just loud enough.

Her cousin waited outside her door, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand, its creamy sugar smell sweetening the air. “Why are you playing music?”

“Where were you all night?”

“Where was I? Where were you? I called and called. Looked and looked.”

She gaped.

“Have you learned how to toss the black curtain you spoke of, Natasha? The one you saw out at Haslom’s when you rescued your creature?”

“No.” Her hands began shaking.

He stared. “It’s what I saw.”

“Not...not from me. I can’t…I don’t even know what that is, Jakob, much less how to do it.”

He gazed at her. “You’re not lying.”

Damn it, she was sick of people being shocked that she, who’d never made a habit of lying ever, was not lying. “Thank you for your faith.”

His nostrils flared and several seconds ticked past before he said, slowly, “I’ve sensed someone in Cascadia, the neighboring town, the one your Sea-Eyed Knight Crawler—”

“—told me was a better fit for your venue. I know where you mean.” Her heart pounded. “Who is it?”

He shook his head. “I sensed the presence there, not an identity—”

“Dammit, Jakob! Don’t lie—”

“I’m not. This person…they block our communication. The black curtain. I did try calling you, over and over.”

“I have a phone. So do you.”

“I don’t want a record of calls occurring between us.” He looked away.

A cold weight formed in her belly. “Why?”

“Kava,” he said, and held the mug out.

“Jakob—”

“I fixed it for you, Natasha. How you like.”

Was he pale? Sweating? Her eyes narrowed. Was he…scared? “Bratranek—”

“Natasha…it has occurred to me: Maybe I should not have stopped your idiot Railey from coming for you.”

Her pulse thundered. Why? And why had he stopped her in the first place? She swallowed, switched tracks back to what she knew. “Listen,” she said, “I think Owen Brophy and Jessalyn Haslom—”

He shook his head, the gesture impatient. “Wait,” he said, and reached out, set her coffee upon a side table. Then his palm flashed, fingers splayed, an offer of their strongest form of connection.

Her gut lurched. “What?” she whispered.

“I…I can’t tell you better than I can show you. I don’t have the words for how this…this person I sense in Cascadia makes me feel.”

Her belly flip-flopped but she faked brave, struck his palm with her own.

Shadows howled, a blinding gale sucking her backward like one of those ruptures in a dream, the ones where you plummeted off a sharp ledge, startling, last minute, awake.

Except she did not startle herself out and instead began drowning within that same tide of infected stench—It’s envy! Resentment!—from before. “Jakob! What is—” ‘This’ she couldn’t choke out. Bitterness burned up her throat.

“It’s who we seek,” he rasped. “It’s what’s inside them.”

Hate. Being in its Shadow was like being trapped within the warped glass walls of a prison the inmate had locked themselves in, purposely setting themselves apart out of a sense of superiority. Out of contempt and deep scorn for all others. “Suffer!” Natasha heard their voice whisper, and she shuddered from the black sense of purpose and malice underscoring the cry. And then….and then she felt the thing’s pleasure as a blade struck and blood ran. As a fire lit and flesh melted.

As a kitten cried out when a nail was shot through its small, helpless foot.

“No!” She jerked her hand away, cradling it as if it too had been mutilated by—“Sadism,” she gasped. “This…this person we’re seeking. A sadist.”

“Ja.” Jakob’s nose poured and he sounding winded, as if he’d just ran. “No compassion, Natasha. No…nothing.” Up came his palms, empty and reflecting his words.

She cast about, found a tissue box, shocked that her nose was not bleeding too. “Bratranek—”

He waved her off, tissues pressed to his face. “This…creature,” He grimaced as little Shoes wound ’round their ankles. “This animal,” he re-labelled. “Is far more unhinged than I thought.”

Her breath rasped. “So…what do we do?”

A war appeared to fight on his face. “I…I don’t want you to be unsafe.”

Really?Her tombstone Shadow leapt between them.

“But can…can you do one small thing?”

Only a small thing? Her shoulders sank and tensed, both at once.

“Jessalyn Haslom invited me to the dinner party she’s planned. Tonight. She wants us both there.”

“So you’ll go—”

“No, Natasha. You’ll go. I’m—”

“—going back to Cascadia.” She read it without effort and alarm raced, painted electricity under her skin. “Jakob—”

“I can make it different, Natasha. I know I can make it different.”

So…dogged. It scared her. She’d heard him determined before. And God knew he could be stubborn. Even vindictive. But this…she examined him, tried reading. This was different.

He grasped her hands. “I promise, the safest place you can be tonight is at that party.”

“But you said Rob and Jessalyn’s house was—”

“Dangerous, ja, but Natasha…please.”

Now desperation? What was this? “Jakob,” She shook him. “Tell the truth.”

“How much truth do you need?” He wrenched his hands away, flashed his palm in reference to what he’d just shown her. The bitterness. Hatefulness. Sadism. She shuddered. He softened. “Natasha…trust me. Trust when I say I’ve seen…even more.”

And she’d seen more too. He, crouching next to her grave, knowing it was his fault she was dead. She lifted her chin. “You’ve seen more,” she echoed. “So how much danger, exactly, am I in?”

“None if you let me return to Cascadia while you stay behind, play the enchanting newcomer.”

“But—”

“Natasha, please. And if you still want to leave after I swear,” he held his hands up, surrender. “I will call Railey O’Brien myself.”

***

He ignored any protests that since he was headed back to Cascadia she did not have a vehicle to get to the dinner party at Haslom’s. “Trust me, Natasha,” he repeated, wearily, and said he’d arrange for a ride.

Which he did—at seven sharp, a pirate appeared at her door; long, straight hair and hoops in both ears. He wore paint-splattered jeans and a sash, scarlet muslin, wrapped ’round his waist. “Buongiorno, Ms. Nikoslav! Antonio Danini, your chauffeur and guide!” Out swept an arm and he folded himself into a low bow, peeking up at her and beaming.

“I…hello. It’s—”A pleasure? A lost bet she didn’t know she had made? An alternate universe, maybe? “—it’s been quite an adventure I’ve had here in Vestemere already,” she said. Jakob had told her to play the enchanting newcomer, hadn’t he?

The pirate—Antonio—bounded to his feet, teeth radiant and eyes dancing. “Life is a waste if it’s not some form of quest,” he announced, and promptly offered his arm. “Shall we?”

Did she have a choice? And couldn’t life just be TV shows and potato chips and her new kitten at her feet? Did it have to be a quest?

Antonio Danini drove the way he looked, and Natasha tried, as discreetly as possible, to clutch the door handle in a way that did not look too obvious. “Salute!” he cried, as they crested a hill, then gunned the engine as they shot down, tires spitting gravel.

Good grief. If Rob Haslom’s killer did not murder her too, then surely she would meet her maker on this hairpin road with this maniac behind the wheel, believing he was on some sort of quest.

—Jakob? Do you see this?—

Her cousin’s laughter was his only reply, yet for a moment she glimpsed him and gasped, the sound swallowed by another of the Pirate’s joyful hoots. Jakob’s eyes...raccoon dark. Bruises? And his cheeks were so sallow.

—Jakob, what has happened to you?—

She saw him frown, puzzled, then

—I am laughing at you, Natasha. That’s what’s happening. You charm and delight me—

Mysterious tears pricked her eyes and

—Beloved cousin—

he said

—I just…adore you—

‘Beloved’. That word sizzled any others to ash in her throat and “Antonio, can we turn on the stereo on?” she asked brightly, earning a “Huzzah!” along with a blast of music loud enough to erase any further communication between her and her cousin.

She clung to the dash as he cranked the wheel, hit the brakes—“For effect!” he exclaimed—then parked, wheels squealing. Opening her door, he gallantly ushered her out, an old-world hand upon her back. They traversed the porch she’d crept over in the dark, and when he threw the door open he said “Our guest, safe and sound!”

Because he’d known there’d been a chance otherwise? Knees still quaking, she looked ’round the room, gaze stopping, and locking, on the Knight Crawler. His incredulous expression was matched only by a thought, which she caught:

—Now who the hell is this guy?—

He swung his gaping face to Rob and

—Old Man, what kind of company have you been keeping since I’ve been gone?—

She heard this too while Antonio bounded into the kitchen, blousy shirt blooming and collapsing like billows. Tucking a giggle behind her hand, she watched how the Knight Crawler stared as he planted kisses, right cheek then left, upon Jessalyn—who looked completely unfazed by his presence. Peeking around him, she said “Welcome, Natasha! Sit, be comfortable. Antipasto shortly. Robbie, get her a drink, please?”

Blue Eyes rose from his seat and grinned, tongue clearly in his cheek as he caught her eye. “I don’t know how we could all introduce ourselves to you any better than this.”

“I—”

“Hello,” said a small voice at her knees.

She looked down.

A tiny, raven-haired girl in a fussy, frilly dress ogled her with enormous, near colorless eyes. “Are…are you a queen?” she asked.

Natasha’s face flamed, white hot, and she could hear with complete clarity, the Knight Crawler, laughing.

—Not a Queen—

he thought

—A Tsarina—

She fried him with look. Stupidni man. Czechoslovakia did not even have a monarchy.

Rob said “This miniature is our niece, Robyn.”

Natasha looked back down and, to her bemusement, Robyn grasped a handful of her skirt, tugged it. “Did you forget your crown?” she asked, hushed.

Oh, Lord. Could the Knight Crawler please just shut up? She wished his brother, Steven, was here. He’d been gruff yet so sweet when she’d met him. He’d tell Owen Brophy to back off, to quit laughing at her.

—So tell him yourself, Natasha—

She scowled, internally, at Jakob too.

—How, exactly? You owe me HUGE for this, bratranek—

He grinned, and still his face was so peaked. She frowned, concerned, but—

“I know!” said Robyn, and bounded out of the room.

“Who knows what she’s got in mind,” said Rob, and took Natasha’s elbow, led her to a seat. “Thanks in advance for being a good sport,” he stage-whispered, then was knocked askew as Robyn returned, crinolines billowing, and saying “Look what I found!”

She had a plastic tiara gripped in one chubby fist, all peeled silver paint and garishly glittering rhinestones. “You can wear mine since you forgot yours.” She was breathless. Beaming.

Oh, dear.

Across the table, Owen Brophy’s sea-eyes danced with delight. Bastard. She’d like to mash the crown tightly down upon his unkempt head. Instead she crouched, eye-to-eye with Robyn. “You are so kind,” she said. “And I would be honored to wear your crown, but—” She took it, arranged it atop Robyn’s curls. “It looks so much more fetching on you.”

The child gawped at her, rapt. “Does fetching mean beautiful?”

“Yes, Sweetheart.” She melted. “Fetching absolutely means beautiful.”

Robyn’s feet looked as though they might sprout wings around the frou-frou on her socks, carry her up and away. “I would like to sit on your lap,” she announced, and pushed Natasha to her chair.

“Cara! Cara!” The Pirate rushed forward, aghast. Rob pulled an ‘I-told-you-so’ face.

Natasha waved them both off. Robyn smelled of Crayola and cake frosting and when she hoisted her up the child turned her wee face, beamed at her. “I am glad you’re here,” she said, and wriggled her little body, got comfortable.

“Me too,” said Natasha, surprising herself.

A willow, long legs, spiked silver hair, and the same oddly uncolored eyes as the child approached then, stuck a hand out. “Sabrina Danini,” she said.

“Mama,” Robyn supplied.

Sabrina kissed her on top of the head then handed her crayons and paper before reclaiming Natasha’s attention. “I’m his sister.” She pointed to Rob. “His wife.” Her aim shifted to the Pirate. “And I used to steal kisses from him on the school bus.”

Her finger singled out the Knight Crawler, who grinned. “You molested me,” he told her. “And if I did then what I do now, I’d have charged you.”

What? Confusion claimed Natasha’s brow, but then Rob said “I’ve always wondered, Old Man: how does parking in Vancouver work for cops, anyway? Civilians like me always get dinged with a bank account worth of tickets. So are you guys exempt, or what?”

Wait? A cop?

Brophy laughed. “I have a whole fistful of parking tickets, my friend. But thanks for the illusion of asylum.”

Natasha disguised astonishment by ducking behind little Robyn, and Shadows whirled ’round, locking together like puzzle pieces. First the needle and lighter she’d seen in the grocery store. Then the crack-cocaine pipe too. They were joined by new images: a shield on a chain ’round his neck. A stack of paperwork on a metal desk amid a sea of others, some occupied by people in plain-clothes, others by men and women in uniform. “Policii,” she blurted, and stared. “You…you’re a police officer?”

He squinted. “You didn’t know?”

How could she have? Wait. Had Jakob known? Was that why he’d laughed when she’d said Owen Brophy thought she was a prostitute? Why he’d ignored her when she’d tried, so frantically, to tell him about his late night visit to fake looking at the bathroom tile?

—How could you have been so blasé about policii coming to our house?—

He did not answer, and she cocked her head, took in Brophy’s long hair and tattoos anew. “So...you’re undercover?”

Sabrina laughed. Rob did too, and Natasha’s face burned. Why—why—did she always say the most awkward thing possible? “I-I’m sorry.” Her gaze sought the table. “That was thoughtless.”

“Oh, please.” Sabrina guffawed. “It was true.” She tugged Owen’s ponytail. “Natasha, this guy used to be the cleanest cut cutie you’ve ever seen. His Mommy used to show all us girls back here at home pictures of him in his uniform. We’d get all weak-kneed. Now he’s all inked up and badass.”

“As opposed to all spiked-up and smart-ass?” Owen Brophy, the cop. A policii! said, grinning.

Sabrina yanked his ponytail again and he snaked a hand out, jabbed her ribs. She squealed and Natasha watched them, seized by a sudden rush of unheralded, and inexplicable, envy. Sparring like that. Teasing and being teased. What would that be like? She peeled her gaze from them and cuddled Robyn, feigned interest in what she was drawing. “What are you working on, sweetheart?”

Robyn’s chubby hands lifted, revealed pink, fluffy flowers on her page. “Pretty?” she asked, and leaned back, tiny face warm and glowing.

Natasha stared. Peonies. Her heart pounded.

—Settle—

Jakob interrupted.

—Remember: she is a dítě, Natasha—

A baby. So of course she saw peonies. For Robyn, like all little children, was just as psychic as Jakob believed everyone would one day be. “Th-they’re lovely, honey,” she whispered, and peonies at once blossomed everywhere. On the table. On the floor. One was tucked behind Sabrina Haslom’s left ear. Why? To remind her—again—that Owen Brophy and Heart Face were sleeping together? It seemed so improbable now that she’d listened to him and Blue Eyes. Brophy clearly loved Rob the way she loved Jakob—like a bratr.

“Natasha.” Jessalyn set a plate of antipasto amid the peonies. “For the record, my dad C.C. doesn’t look like a cop, either.”

Choreographed. The Shadow word was back and chased the peonies away, leaving behind only Robyn’s childish replications. “Really,” she replied. “Two police officers?”

“Yes.” Jessalyn grinned. “You’re surrounded.”

She was not being playful. Concentrating, Natasha called:

—Jakob? Help me!—

He replied:

—You are fine—

‘Fine’? Fine was a limp word. A useless word. A lie told world-over whenever anyone said ‘How are you?’ Straightening, she felt Robyn’s sweet weight shift with her. “Well, this is a first for me.” She attempted to match Jessalyn’s brightness. “I’ve never met a police officer socially before.” This she aimed at the Knight Crawler.

His face was as remote as the carvings in Jessalyn’s gallery.

Rob, though, grinned. “Yet you’ve met cops non-socially? You have a lead foot, Natasha?”

“Yes. I mean no! I…” She panned a rapid look back to Brophy but his stoic silence dried the words in her throat and the truth: I am a recluse who has no idea how to have dinner with anyone other than Jakob and Railey bit at the back of her throat.

Once again Jakob replied:

—You also dine with the Shadows you call upon whenever you’re lonely—

Natasha swallowed, shamed and pathetic. Jakob knew that sometimes she surrounded herself with a past that made her feel less alone?

—Just settle, Natasha—

he called

—Be yourself. You have an ally in the sister—

In Sabrina Danini? She shifted, faced her. “I…I have only met police officers when I’ve had to report something,” she said, overcome suddenly, by a need to explain.

Yet again it was Rob, not Sabrina, who replied. “Really? You have a lot of crime in your little town?”

Shadows of pick-up trucks peeled through the kitchen, teenagers hurling eggs and tomatoes from their windows. She looked away but more Shadows, darker ones, seeped out of the walls. Other teenagers, these ones with masked faces and whispering voices. One held a red brush. Don’t show! she cried and “C-crime?” she echoed, old terror quivering in her throat. “Yes. Sometimes.”

Know what I tell people who live in high-crime neighborhoods?”

Owen Brophy. She carefully gave him her gaze.

“I say move.”

Was he being facetious? Compassionate? And where was Choreographed? She searched, but could not see its Shadow anywhere. “You…you sound like my cousin.”

“Jakob called Echo Creek a toilet,” chimed Jessalyn. “If all the crime is why then maybe you shouldmove.”

“I…” Aha! There was Choreographed, drifting between Heart Face and the Knight Crawler.

But then Rob spoke and Choreographed shrank as though scared. “When you own a business, picking up and moving isn’t as easy as you two seem to think.”

The edge in his voice made Natasha feel grateful for warm little Robyn on her lap.

Rob faced her. “Forgive me, Natasha, but I did screen you—and Jakob—when I agreed to rent to you.”

thought, Owen Brophy’s, landed in her ear

—You did, Old Man?—

and with it came his feeling: pride. The Knight Crawler was proud that his old friend had taken precautions.

Again this did not jibe with someone who, in turn, was also bedding his wife. Natasha gnawed her lip and Rob said “Natasha owns a massage clinic. Head to Heal. Clever name, by the way—”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“—and, as a business owner myself, I know I couldn’t pay so much as our mortgage if I just up and disappeared from my community.”

Natasha gaped. Rob got it. Unlike Jakob, unlike Railey, unlike Jessalyn and the Knight Crawler…Rob Haslom, a near-stranger, got it.

“Not to mention sentimental connection,” voiced Sabrina, and plucked an olive from the antipasto platter, popped it into her mouth.

“You’re waxing sentimental?” Owen Brophy jacked a brow.

“Just talked about swapping gum on the bus with you, didn’t I?” She stuck her tongue out.

The Knight Crawler, to Natasha’s astonishment, blushed beneath his so-called badass beard. Then Sabrina turned to her. “Are you sentimental about your little town?”

“I…” She sat back. Echo Creek had been so many dark things over the years, but special…?

A Shadow materialized, her Baba, tiny yet so round Natasha never used to be able to get her arms fully around her. “Well…yes. Yes,” she repeated, more emphatic. “I live in the same house my grandparents and I moved into in town once they got too old to work on the farm.”

“Your grandparents raised you?”

Rob again and his tone was still sharp, bewildering her. “Yes,” she repeated. “My matka—Silva—passed when I was just…” She gestured to Robyn. “And as for my father…” A blush, but also a smile, seized her face. “My father does not know there is a Natasha. Mama…well, let’s just say commitment wasn’t exactly her thing.”

Jessalyn laughed. “Sounds like you, Sab.”

Sabrina sniffed—“There are worse people to sound like”—then winked at the pirate. “Don’t listen to this commitment-phob stuff, baby.”

“I would not dream of it, Cara.”

Natasha beamed, enjoying them. Enjoying this.

“So…” Rob’s brow was knit. “Don’t you want to know your father?”

Jessalyn tsked. “Judge much?” she scolded, yet kissed him on the head. “Forgive Robbie, Natasha. He’s a traditionalist.” This she paired with the first real smile she’d offered since their introduction on the sidewalk outside the rental cottage, as sweet as the scent of the blossoming fruit trees.

Natasha clung to it, smiling back, Home once again a Shadow floating all around, but then—

“’Tasha?” Robyn craned ’round on her lap.

Home shone on her small face. “Yes sweetheart?”

“Look at my picture now. I made you.”

Natasha looked and “Oh!” A stick figure floated over the peonies, canary yellow hair and its mouth….an inverted U. She reached out, touched a self-conscious finger to it.

“Your smile is all upside-down,” Robyn said. “Did you know that?”

Of course. Jakob had told her so a thousand times: Even your smile looks like a broken heart, Sestranek. She always brushed him off. But today…today the observation unlocked an invasion of tears.

“Do you like it?” Robyn, leaned back, tiara poking Natasha’s chin.

“Y-yes, sweetheart. I love it. No one…no one has ever drawn a picture of me before.”

Across the table she could hear Owen Brophy:

—She’s touched. For real. She’s not lying—

while Robyn obliviously beamed. “Papa!” She thrust the picture toward the Antonio the Pirate. “Make this a frame like your pictures.”

“Si, si!” Antonio glowed, doting, yet Owen Brophy’s next thought was another Natasha caught:

—Jesus. What a spoiled little princess—

Tsking, she cuddled Robyn closer. Spoiled? Or loved? Surely that must be a difficult line to draw as a parent. She scowled—Cranky Knight Crawler!—then startled when he flinched as if a fly or a moth had batted wings too close to his skin.

Jessalyn said, “Since you’re already looking at pictures, Natasha, how about mine? You didn’t get to see much in the gallery.”

“Oh. I…” she cast about, for Shadows, but the only thing she fastened on was Rob’s cajoling, open-hearted smile.

“You did say you’d be a good sport,” he reminded, eyes twinkling, then “Sab, watch the stove.” He rose.

“Yeah,” chimed the Knight Crawler, also standing. “Stir the pot, would ya?”

Sabrina snapped a dishtowel at his rear and Natasha marveled at her easy pluck. Robyn latched onto her hand. “Me too,” she said.

“Cara,” The Pirate wagged a finger. “No touching in Auntie’s studio.”

Owen Brophy jacked a brow

—Finally this kid gets a rule—

Natasha frowned—What a crank!—and squeezed Robyn’s hand. “We will be on our best behavior, right?” She followed Brophy’s broad shoulders as he trailed Rob and Jessalyn down a windowed annex off the kitchen. The same rockabilly beat from the other night became louder and louder until the windowed hall opened into an immense, glassed-in studio. Natasha drew a gasp. No wonder Jakob had picked up on Rob’s wish to sell. She imagined trying to heat this place during one of her eastern Albertan winters and a Shadow of digits—her bank balance rapidly draining—flashed in front of her eyes.

Jessalyn led them all to a grouping of canvases in the corner. “My Painted Ladies,” she said.

Recognition seized Natasha by the throat and a name—Elayna—swirled, a Shadow over a face she knew, she had discovered it in a photo years ago, buried deep within a trunk of things that had once been her mother’s. Except…shrinking away, she recalled the picture her mother had hidden, a picture Natasha had known, instinctively, to never ask anyone about—not Baba, not Jakob, and clearly not Silva, long dead and unable to reveal why, why, she had gouged its eyes out, leaving only rough, unseeing circles behind.

“’Tasha? Your hand is all slippery.” Robyn slid her small palm away.

“You look startled Natasha,” added Jessalyn.

“I…” How many times would she feel grateful for the silky way Jakob had taught her to lie? She flitted a vague gesture to the portraits. “These are paintings?” She contrived shock, yet barely needed to; Jessalyn’s artwork didn’t look like paintings. More like photography.

“Jessie’s style is photo-realism.”

Natasha nodded, another deliberately enthralled movement, then “Show,” she murmured, under her breath.

Eager Shadows broke through the portrait of Elayna and raced together to form her Shadow, stepping out of the canvas to say “What are you doing here?”

Natasha glanced surreptitiously around, gauging the past her Shadows had formed:

An upscale dining room, candlelight and gardenias on the tables. “Well?” Elayna demanded, then another Shadow materialized.

Natasha choked upon shock.

Silva, her mother, strode up to Elayna—then promptly pasted a slap ’cross her face. “Stupidni woman! You said you’d stay away from him! Now your selfishness, your lust…” Silva’s teeth flashed, ferocity. “Walk away. Let him be. Raise that spawn in your belly without him like you promised you would!”

Natasha’s gaze raced back to where Elayna held her cheek, eyes full and glistening. “But—”

“This is about more than just you!”

Natasha’s tombstone reappeared beside Silva.

“I too see the future,” Silva’s eyes also became shiny. “Except not like him. He’s blinded by what he feels for you, so he doesn’t see my child, my beloved, hurt by your lust. By your selfishness.” She clutched the top of the tombstone. “You knock poison dominos over with your greed, Elayna. And I told you so! Now stay true!”

“Natasha?”

The Shadows sucked themselves back into the portrait, and when Natasha turned, Jessalyn was smiling, albeit quizzically. “You’re so intense,” she said. “To my artist’s eye, that must mean you’ve picked a favorite.”

She glanced back at the portraits and her belly hit her shoes. There, dangling from Elayna’s pinkie, Jessalyn had painted a stiletto, the stiletto, the one she always saw buried in Blue Eyes’ chest. But it’s symbolic! The thought careened wildly. Isn’t it? Just symbolic?

“Natasha?” Jessalyn prompted.

“I….” She rapidly assessed the other paintings, surprised when one didarrest her; an Asian woman, delicate curvature of eyes set within a porcelain face. She had her hands cupped like Natasha’s did when she called forth her Shadows, a ball of light floating atop her curved palms. “Her,” Natasha pointed and knew, beyond a doubt, that the woman in the portrait was psychic.

Jessalyn beamed, one of her rarely real smiles. “Why?” she queried, soft.

“Because…” she’s my sister. “She makes me feel…” Normal. “…at peace.”

“Ha!” Jessalyn shot a fist in the air. “See, Robbie? I knew someone would love her! Natasha, I met her in Vancouver and she—”

“—was reading tea leaves and tarot cards on the street,” Rob broke in, dry.

“Really?” Natasha laughed, spontaneous. Her painted sister hid—in plain sight—behind fakery and props? It was something Silva would have done. “And did she tell you your future?”

“I don’t know.” Jessalyn grinned, impish. “What she told me hasn’t happened—yet.”

Rob made a scoffing sound. Jessalyn shooed him off. “She said: ‘Your family is about to get bigger. Much bigger’.”

Owen Brophy laughed, the sound surprising Natasha; she’d forgotten he was there. “Sounds like maybe we all better leave early tonight, eh, Old Man?” He jabbed a playful elbow at Rob, who blushed like a schoolboy. Natasha watched them.

The Knight Crawler was not sleeping with Heart Face. It was plainer than any Shadows she’d ever seen. He loved Rob. Relief swept through her and landed in her knees, weakening them as she gazed at sweet Blue Eyes. Your friend is true.

‘Stay true.’

“It was all hokum, Jessie,” Rob said.

Again his wife brushed him off—though her expression was more bemused than belief. “She described what she could do, called it ‘Calling in the Light’.” She put this in air quotes. “Her portrait is my idea of what she described.”

Calling in the Light. The opposite of calling forth Shadows—a better sort of opposite. Natasha stared at the Asian psychic. “How much?” she asked, impulsive she knew, but Jakob could loan her the money if this canvas was more than she could afford.

“Oh…” Again Jessalyn’s expression was genuine—but this time a grimace, not a smile. “The Painted Ladies sell as a collection, Natasha. And I’ve already had a bid from a gallery.” She looked apologetic.

“But…” Natasha’s shoulders drooped, and when Sabrina’s voice carried from the kitchen—“Soup’s on!”—disappointment kept tugging her gaze back to her Asian sister. ‘Calling in The Light’. There was a lesson there, and somehow it reminded her of what Baba used to say whenever Jakob would scoff at Natasha’s Shadows, how they were limited by only showing the past: “Ah, but the past, my Beloveds, the past is all we can really rely on for truth. For the future…the future changes shape just like wine poured from flask to glass. A shifted breeze, a kinder or harsher tone…anything can alter it.”

Including whether one called for Shadows or Light? Natasha regarded her tombstone as the others walked through it, unaware. “Show light,” she mouthed.

The stone flickered, dates becoming smudgy, indistinct.

Relief made her heart pound. She glanced up, focused on the Knight Crawler’s broad back. “Show Light,” she whispered again, and at once his Shadow turned, faced her.

“I can help you,” it said.

She recoiled.

—But…you’re all broken—

For his image held a peony in one hand yet a cleaver in the other. A hypodermic was stabbed in the crook of one arm.

Still, his Shadow glanced down, flicked all these things off as if they were trivial. “So are you,” he said then, and jutted his chin back at her.

Natasha looked down, startled to see that her limbs were all mottled by bruises from rocks. That her skin dripped scarlet from being painted with a red brush.

“Maybe we can help each other,” said Brophy’s Shadow, then turned, melted into his body, walked away from her.

©bonnie randall 2005

So Many Secrets ~ Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

Owen stared at the Tsarina’s cold cup of coffee. “She’s lying.”

“Really?” Jessalyn squatted over a splotch of blood and mopped it up with a rag. “Remarkable conclusion, Officer.”

“I don’t mean she’s lying about being here under false pretenses. That much is obvious.” He looked around. What had the Tsarina seen that had made her do that fret-fret-fret thing with her fingers? All the gallery held were spot-lit paintings on the walls and sculptures on podiums. “I mean she’s lying about that Facebook page. It isn’t hers.”

Jessalyn gawped. It irritated him. “Didn’t you see her face? She was scared shitless.”

“Because she was caught.”

No. She was afraid. The image there, the Sleeping Beauty, it had horrified her. He’d seen it in her enlarged eyes. Heard it in the tiny breath she’d inhaled, the way it had whistled.

“So then why didn’t she say something?” Jessalyn rose, the wash water in her bucket sloshing and tinted light pink.

“Would you say something?” He looked away from the bucket, from Natasha Nikoslav’s blood. “To two total strangers?”

“If I was that scared? Maybe. Unless…think she’s covering for somebody?”

“The ‘cousin’ you mean? Why? Sex or money?”

“What about love, cynic?”

Love? An image of Sondra crawled through his memory: handcuffs on her wrists, resentment on her face. “Love,” he conceded, and checked his phone.

No missed calls, no new texts. He put it away. “You were going to tell me about the cousin before the Tsarina surprised us by inviting herself over.”

Jessalyn laughed, then “Jakob Michael Nikoslav,” she announced in a lamely affected Slavic accent. “Shows up in the Okanagan wearing Armani when every other man here wears Levis and…well, Levis.”

He listened.

“He called me Elayna.”

“So?” He shrugged. “He’d just met you. He messed up.”

She lifted a brow. “Follow me, Officer Brophy.”

He trailed her to where the elegance of the gallery conceded to the antithesis of silk walls and glossed floors; in the back room paint was spattered on concrete and everything smelled like turpentine. “Jeez.” She dumped her wash bucket into a muck sink then promptly propped the back door open. “We’ll get high in here.”

Sondra’s devil’s grin whistled in, whistled out.

“Owen Brophy,” Jessalyn moved then, to a covered canvas, grabbed the edge of the sheet. “Meet Elayna Chandler.”

The sheet hissed as she yanked it off and….Greedy eyes. It was the first thought that struck him as he faced the portrait, the woman there. Her eyes. So hungry. Unsatisfied. The rest of her (albeit circa 1985), was lovely, even wholesome, but those eyes…. Gluttonous, he thought and Sondra invaded his mind yet again.

And again he cast her away.

Jessalyn watched him. “Thoughts on my mother?” Her twisted smile let him know that her artist’s eye was attuned to his misgivings. “I paint what I see,” she added. “Even though sometimes it’s not the most flattering angle.” She tossed the sheet over the portrait again. “G’night, Elayna.”

Owen suppressed a rogue chill, for it was like she’d just blinded the woman on the canvas.

And Jessalyn flicked a brow at his obvious unease. “Here’s the bigger question,” she said, and reclaimed the wash bucket, stowed it under the sink. “How could Jakob Michael Nikoslav, a stranger who couldn’t have been much more than an infant when Elayna died, how does he know her?”

Owen shook his head, gaze revisiting the sheet over the canvas. It reminded him of a ghostly cloak from an old horror movie, one that covered a piece of furniture in an abandoned old mansion.

“Or, more importantly,” Jessalyn continued, “since there’s no real way Nikoslav could know Elayna—why has he made it his business to find out about her?”

He pulled his gaze from the sheet. “Because you’re an artist and he’s a collector? Maybe he hasn’t researched her, he’s researched you. You are a bit of a celebrity.”

She scoffed. “That doesn’t explain Natasha’s Facebook page.”

True. “Have you ran the names Jakob and Natasha Nikoslav past the Lieutenant?”

“No. And I will, but don’t hold your breath, Owen. C.C. may be my Dad but he is still a cop: always happy to get information. But when it comes to giving it…?”

Christ, he knew that drill.

“And when he does share he’s not always truthful. Her, for instance.” She directed an elbow back to the ghostly covered Elayna. “He’s made her sound like something out of a fairytale—pun intended—but what do you see when you look in those eyes?”

Gluttony. Greed. Sondra. “I…” He cleared his throat. “I see a woman with secrets.”

“Yeah? Well, I see a self-centered bitch. So who knows what she was once up to—or with who.”

Jesus. This was her mother.

And again her artist’s eye was on target. “If you’re expecting sentiment, Owen, don’t. Elayna died in childbirth.”

“For you?”

“Yeah. So C.C., or your Lieutenant if we must, was both Mom and Dad to me. Elayna’s nothing more than a myth he’s created. And nonetheless…I still see what I see.”

“You see what you see,” he echoed. “Yet you’re telling me you didn’t see fear with Natasha today?” He wouldn’t call her Tsarina in front of Jessalyn again. The unkindness in the treble of her laugh when he’d said it the first time…well, it had awakened that unwanted shard of guilt.

Yet now she looked troubled. “Yes,” she said. “I did see it. Maybe…maybe I just didn’t want to.”

Why the hell did that make him feel relieved? “So then is she an accomplice or a dupe?” he asked. “The fairytale connection can’t possibly be a coincidence.”

She nodded. “And not only that, but she didn’t run to her cousin’s shop when she left here.”

Oh?

Jessalyn shrugged. “I know the place he’s leased is that way.” Up went the elbow again, her curious way of pointing. “But I could see her through the window—she ran into the park.”

“Huh.” His brows climbed. “You’d think someone who’d just been found out would beat a path to her partner.”

“Or away from him if he’s the one scaring her.”

Jakob Nikoslav. He needed to meet this guy. “What does Rob think of him?”

“Robbie…” Jessalyn blew out a breath. “Robbie thinks what he always thinks: that no one should be convicted without a trial.”

That was Rob. Owen smiled. “How’d he ever end up with a cop’s kid?”

She lifted her nose and again he had to admit that sometimes she was cute. “He needs me,” she said.

Ha! Who needed who? Seemed to him she needed Rob—his buddy gave her a kinder, gentler take on the world than the one she grew up with. Christ. His grin dwindled. If he and Sondra had kids, how warped would their world view be? He didn’t want to think about it. “But you are going to tell him I plan to look into the Nikoslavs, right?”

She frowned and clamped her lips shut. He scowled. Goddamn it, cute or not, she could be a brat. “Jessalyn, you’re putting me in a position here.”

“He worries.”

He sighed. “Okay, here’s the deal: I’ll dig, but if I find out anything I am telling your husband.”

“And if you find nothing?”

“Then this can stay between you and me.”

Her little face glowed like a beacon and it made him laugh. He could never imagine being attracted to someone like Jessalyn Chandler-Haslom—but he could totally see why his buddy fell hard for her. “I gotta go.” He tweaked her nose. “Your Robbie thinks I’m doing the tile on the rental and he needs me back at the development ASAP. But I’ll find time to make some calls.”

He was beginning to take the back roads as recklessly as Steve, who lit a smoke when he arrived at the job site. “I just got back from starting on the tile you avoided this morning,” said his brother. “You’re welcome.”

Owen pulled a face. Steve squinted. “Looked like a knife fight went down in that bathroom.”

“Oh?” His mind flashed to the stabbed Sleeping Beauty. Fairytales often end violently. “That right?”

“Yeah. You met the woman who lives there yet?”

“Uh-huh. Couple times.”

Steve nodded. “She came home with a nose bleed that made it look like she’d been stabbed. I scared the crap out of her because she wasn’t expecting me. Felt bad.” Another drag, more squinting. “She’s good looking.”

‘Good looking’? That was it? No scathing indictment of her quirks? Was Steve slipping?

“—although she should probably see a doc for the nose thing.”

Yeah. Probably.

“And she does a funny thing with her hands.” Steve fret-fret-fretted them just like the Tsarina.

“’Cause she’s nervous,” Owen replied.

“Nah.” Steve waved this off. “She’s worried, not nervous. She’s used to people treating her like shit.”

A lick of shame seared his face, but—“How the hell do you know that?”

Steve regarded him, fingers pinched on the filter of his smoke. “Because I know people, Mr. Policeman. And I didn’t have to go to cop school or climb down some rat hole to live with the shit of society in order to learn things.”

Owen let this slide.

Steve said “This Natasha—she was all uncertain when she talked to me. Like she was afraid she’d say the wrong thing and—”

“—and make you suspicious?”

“No, Officer. Make me mad. Somewhere in her past some prick’s used her as a punching bag. Guaranteed.” He tossed his smoke to the ground, smashed it under his boot. “She gave me these.” He lifted a bag set next to his thermos.

Cookies, dotted with chocolate chips and smeared with frosting.

“Want one? She said she just baked them yesterday.”

And did she wash a few down with coffee turned to syrup with cream and sugar? “I don’t eat crap.”

Steve grunted and stuck his hand in the bag, pulled a cookie out and stuffed it, whole, in his mouth. Chewing, he said “You might want to take a long, hard look at Natasha while she’s here. Maybe shave. Consider showering.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Because I look like I need a woman?”

“No, because you’ve got a woman. And she’s poison.”

Owen stared, unable to stop his jaw from dropping. He’d never told his family about Sondra. He’d never even implied there was a Sondra.

Steve snorted. “Jesus Christ, Owen. Didn’t I just say know people? Well, I sure as hell know my own brother. Whoever the piece of ass is who’s got you chasing your own tail might be someone you wanna put in your rear view mirror. Unless you like being the shit of society. Which I also know you don’t. Now get your shit together and get to work.” He rooted for another cookie, shoved it in his mouth, and stomped away.

Owen stomped too, and as he fastened a tool belt ’round his waist and hooked a nail gun to a compressor, he texted. Law enforcement was a small world and, between fastening plywood to floor joists, he shot inquiries to anyone he could think of who might know a cop covering Echo Creek, Alberta.

Turned out a guy in Narco knew an RCMP member who was friends with another cop posted out in a village named Viking, some forty k away from Echo Creek. Owen decided to place the call from in his car on a coffee break, cranking the air conditioning and chugging water. God, it was hot. He’d forgotten how the heat here at home was so different from out on the Sunshine Coast. There trade winds off the ocean cooled things off. Here the sun settled in the Okanagan Valley, baking and blistering everything even though, strictly speaking, it was still only spring. He trickled water down the back of his neck (maybe he should consider a haircut) and called the Albertan cop named Kinney—who answered with a voice garbled as if he were talking around a sandwich. Owen grimaced, but introduced himself, engaged in the obligatory pleasantries (during which Kinney confirmed he was eating a sandwich), then said “Echo Creek and a massage clinic called Head To Heal. Heard of it?”

A small pause was overtaken by the whine and zing of saws beyond Owen’s car. Then—“How does a cop from B.C. know if there’s been trouble at Head To Heal again?” asked Kinney.

Again? It was intriguing enough to roll with a bluff: “The owner, Natasha, is out here. She told me.”

“Oh for—” An expletive followed, then—“Can’t that woman just suck up the punk-assed pranks and scrub the damn eggs and tomatoes off her door?”

A knee-jerk retort—why the hell should she have to?—came straight from the ingénue cop he once used to be. What he said instead was “Why’s that place such a target, anyway?”

Kinney didn’t reply and the choir of saws grated again, harshly chewing up silence. Owen was about to repeat himself when, at last, “Because people are superstitious.”

“About massage clinics?” This he issued lightly, but that word—superstitious—prickled the damp hair on his nape. ‘Superstitious’ lived in the same camp as folklore, did it not? And as fairytales?

“Ever work in a community where the locals have been since the pioneer days, Officer Brophy?” asked Kinney.

“No.” Vancouver’s ever-growing population consisted of residents whose roots in the city were often as shallow as the ports in the harbor. “Vancouver’s about as cosmopolitan as it gets.”

“Yeah, well Echo Creek’s not. And sometimes people with long ties to the Old Country and culture…well, let’s just say they’re wary in a way maybe the rest of us should be.”

Owen sat back, squinted. Was it his imagination, or did Kinney seem to be scratching up awful close to what felt like bigotry? Or…was he just pissed off that a small-town cop seemed to be excusing a harassment crime like vandalism—when that was probably the only thing of substance he had to investigate? Lazy bastard, he thought and “What makes locals so superstitious that they throw eggs and rocks at Natasha?”

“Rocks? She said rocks? I know damn well no one’s thrown a rock at her in months.”

Jesus Christ, they really did throw rocks? He’d been embellishing to try to tease out more info. What the hell kind of backward prairie hicks were these people—including Kinney—out in the Tsarina’s ‘eastern Alberta’?

‘Help me’, her voice answered, out of memory’s ear, what he’d been so sure she’d said to him back in the gallery. Yet when he’d looked at her, her lips had not moved so he’d chalked it up to an over-active imagination. But now…? Now he chased away the same shudder he’d felt when he’d first thought he’d heard her. He reached out, flicked his A/C down to low.

Kinney said “Grab Natasha Nikoslav’s hand, Officer Brophy. Then call me back. Tell me why you think people are prickly.”

What the hell did that mean? And why did it conjure an image of the Tsarina’s eyes, wide and scared? “I was taught as a kid never to grab a woman,” he returned, dry. “A message reinforced back when I was in the Academy.”

A sour bit of silence ensued and all Owen heard was the odd zing of a nail gun. Then— “Second Kings, Chapter Seventeen, Verse Thirteen—heard of it Officer Brophy?”

“Unless it’s in the Criminal Code of Canada, then probably no.” Still he used his finger and, in the dust on his dashboard, wrote 2 Kings 17:13.

Kinney grunted. “And incidentally, Natasha Nikoslav hardly leaves her house—but there is one person she follows like a lost cur.”

Now the Tsarina was a dog? This too pricked his temper.

“She out there in B.C. with her cousin?”

“Yeah.” Owen straightened. “Why?”

“Scoff at the Bible, Brophy, but tell me this: d’you think murder’s evil?”

What the hell—evil? And the Bible? Who the hell were the Feds recruiting these days? Priests? “You trying to say that Jakob Nikoslav—”

“—Antonovich! Jakob Michael’s legal name is Antonovich, and yeah, I’m saying Google Echo Creek Suicide. Then tell me how anyone offs themselves that way.”

Echo Creek Suicide. He noted this too.

“Not that the son of a bitch was ever charged. Or even arrested. Helps when papa was a special consultant to the RCMP.”

“Wait. Whose papa? Natasha’s or—”

“Natasha’s?” Kinney’s laugh sounded a lot like the grating saws outside. “She was a teen mama’s mistake. No one even knows who her daddy is. I’m talking about Antonovich. Mihajlo Antonovich. That was Jakob’s father.”

‘Was’. Meaning deceased. And Mah-HAY-lo. Dammit, when he was a beat cop he’d always carried a notebook. Mah-HAY-lo. He wrote this too in the dust. “What sort of consultant was he?”

Kinney snorted. “Read your Bible, Officer Brophy. Then do yourself a favor: steer around the Nikoslavs, not beside them.” He hung up.

So Many Secrets ~ Chapter Fourteen

So Many Secrets ~ Chapter Fourteen

Natasha had to get out of Vestemere. Last night’s face-off over fairytales with the Sea-Eyed Knight Crawler had tangled her nerves into knots as she’d tried to reach into his mind. Could he reach back?

—Are you psychic?—

she had asked, but he had not replied, the only Shadows she’d seen were the unspoken indictments slipping silently from his mouth, words like sneak and liar hanging between them, dark and accusatory

.

And then there were the fluffy pink peonies.

This morning another one, pink and puffy, breached the patch of sunshine she stood in and drifted weightlessly, her Shadows’ symbol of love. Her lips twisted as she reconsidered the conclusion she’d drawn last night about the peonies, a conclusion she’d tried sharing with Jakob when he’d finally returned home.

He hadn’t listened. Had merely handed her the kitten—“She is a cripple”—then went to bed.

Now she batted this morning’s peony away. “Let’s see how dismissive Jakob is when I solve this mystery and leave him to deal with the outcome.” She shut Shoes in her bedroom with a saucer of milk and a litter tray fashioned out of an empty cereal box and some dirt from the flowerbed outside (where there was no juniper smelling like cat pee to be found. Imagine). She shot Railey a text—Will you come get me in B.C. if I need you?—and was grateful when a response pinged immediately:

Can I strangle Jakob Michael while I’m there?

By all means. I can’t afford that kind of bail money

Ping! Buzzkill. Say the word and I’ll come on the run

“Thank you,” she whispered, then glanced at Jakob’s empty bedroom. He’d left before she’d woken, leaving her a note saying he’d be in the shop they’d leased for their ruse. Yet even in his absence his Shadow rose up to face her, waxing and waning from child to adult, a spectrum of his history as her lifelong companion and—“Best friend.” A pang of remorse pained her and, needing to be somewhat honest, she concentrated, spoke to him:

—I don’t think I’m cut out for this, Jakob—

A reply blasted the middle of her forehead instantly, stinging like an ice cream headache

—You have no idea what you’re cut out for—

She pressed the heel of her hand to her head. “Dammit, Jakob.” She shook off the pain. “I have to get out of here. I am getting out of here.”

The Shadows tossed another pink peony at her feet.

“Yes,” she snapped. “I hear you.” By the time the Knight Crawler left last night she’d been wading in psychical peonies, so vivid she could feel the petals, slippery and cool, against her bare feet. Why? she had called. She hated when her Shadows were cryptic. But then...then Owen Brophy had folded his burly arms across that chiseled chest, cocked one blue-jeaned hip, and…and she had it. Peonies. Love. Infidelity. Which also explained why the Shadows had shown her Jessalyn’s philandering father; limited by showing her the past, her ability was trying to tell her that history was repeating itself. Heart Face and the Knight Crawler were having an affair.

It made sense. For even though Brophy had that long, slicked-back hair and scruffy face, he also had those sweetheart’s dimples—and tattoos, rough muscle, and all that bad-boy danger.

While poor Blue Eyes was just the quintessential cute boy-next-door. She scowled—shame on you, Jessalyn Haslom!—and yet, who was she, of all people, to be sanctimonious? And besides, being cheated on was the least of Rob Haslom’s worries. Last night, in her dreams, the Shadows replayed his future over and over, dead with a spiked heel in his chest.

So…was Owen Brophy his killer?

And what about little Shoes? Was the Knight Crawler so jealous, so possessive, that he’d left a warning saying he’d hurt both Rob and Jessalyn if he couldn’t have her all to himself? It tracked and yet…yet it confused her because she didn’t want it to make sense. “Show,” she whispered and she brought her hands together, formed a cup. “Prove it to me.”

swarm of toxic green and gray Shadows whorled together, and amid them a voice slithered, flat and neutral in the murk. “Kill it. I will kill it, so help me, I! Will! Kill! It!…”

Her nose spouted and she struck a hand through the air, chased the Shadows away.

Wisps of poison remained, noxious shimmers visible as she squinted, stemming the nosebleed. “Kill it?” she whispered. “Who will kill it? What is it?”

A pink Shadow surged in the sun, the baby from before, gurgling and sweet.

Kill it.

“Don’t show!” She squeezed her eyes shut. Dead babies. Dead Blue Eyes. And jealousy so lethal it turned her Shadows to sludge. She needed to touch Heart-Face. Skin-to-skin contact would strengthen her ability to see, confirm that—“She’s not just cheating on Rob,” she whispered. “She’s in over her head with someone who will...” Kill it

Owen Brophy reappeared, a Shadow with sparkling Pacific eyes and a dimpled grin hiding within his bad-boy beard. She glared at it. “I’m not the liar,” she said. “You are.”

The Shadow Brophy grinned, tossed a peony at her feet.

“Stop that! What you feel is not love. It’s possession. Obsession.”

“Duty, actually,” said the Shadow.

She recoiled. Duty? It was his duty to kill his best friend? All because he wanted his wife? “Don’t show!” she snapped, and ignored the Shadow Brophy’s indignation as she waved him away. Grabbing her cell, she fished out the business card Rob had left when they’d signed the lease for the rental.

Jessalyn’s enthusiastic “Yes!” to her invitation for coffee was so eager it took Natasha aback and the pride in her voice when she said “And can I show you my gallery?” curdled her with guilt. Still—

“Ja. Yes. Absolutely.” They set a time then she prepared a new message for Railey: Come NOW. There. All she’d have to do was hit ‘send’ and then—

Home. The word, a Shadow, swam out of the door as she left the cottage. She nodded. “Yes. Then I’ll go home. Jakob can deal with Owen Brophy. I can’t do this.”

The Shadow shrank, a pucker that reminded her of a face that looked deliberately misunderstood. She frowned and more Shadows rushed forth, a moving theatre as she took the sidewalk downtown. The past, her past, and it showed her…

Herself, curled into her easy chair like every Friday night, the TV remote in one hand, a big bowl of potato chips in the other.

Alone.

She, baking big batches of cookies and buns because Baba had never taught her how to make smaller portions…then tossing half in the trash because baking became stale with only her to eat it, and no one in Echo Creek would accept anything from her if she tried to give it away.

“Don’t show,” she mumbled.

The Shadows persisted, more memories: Her, checking her appointment book and feeling the familiar pang of disappointment when every name was from out of town because no local would let her touch them.

Alone.Home. Alone.

Her eyes stung and her Shadows shrank, mollified.

“Happy now?” she whispered.

Answering hues of turquoise and sunshine streamed down the street, wove between the lampposts and fruit trees. Home , they spelled, a flowing banner.

“Stop taunting,” she said, and entered the pet store, grabbed cat food, a pet carrier, and…she paused before a plush cat bed, adorable with tiny tulle curtains and candy-colored cushions of velvet. She snapped it up too.

“Isn’t that the sweetest?” the cashier beamed, and Home drifted from her smile. Home was the Shadow cast by a wrought iron sign that said Yesteryear's Vestemere, an antique shop where two crystal bowls, one for Shoes’ food, the other for water, waited in the window. Home swept atop the scent of blossoms down main street, and Home chased her into a park nestled in town center. “Stop,” she muttered.

The park came to life with Shadow people from the past. Many relaxed on gently sloped lawns, others danced to a jazz band on a stage in an amphitheater. Others milled amid a spray of outdoor vendors selling everything from fresh fruit to flowers to wine from the myriad vintners across BC’s Okanagan Valley.

Home.

“Yes, please,” she whispered, involuntary, and lost her gaze in the crowd of Shadow people. “And the Sea-Eyed Knight Crawler said there are no tourists here? Stupidni man.”

The Shadows shrank then, music and merriment fading to leave her—“Alone.” She sighed. “Point made.” An elegant building waited across the park, black brick, tan mortar, and Art by Danini & Chandler over the front entrance. Setting her shoulders, she went inside.

Dim lights and soft pan flutes ushered her over the threshold, and when a voice she now recognized spoke a pink peony coasted atop it. “Morning, Ms. Nikoslav.”

Why, of course you’re with her. Sneering at the peony, she faked a smile rivaling his. After all, she had dimples too. “Owen Brophy. I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

He smiled and

—I know—

he thought, and she heard him, just as plain as if he were Jakob. She fell still, real shadows and her Shadows swimming within the dim peace of the foyer. Then she set her gaze into his and

—Can you hear me?—

she asked.

He did not blink or flinch. She tried louder

—OWEN BROPHY! CAN YOU HEAR ME?—

Any other psychic, Jakob, and certainly the other test subjects in Gregory’s studies, would have flinched. Some may even have erupted into nosebleeds like she often did.

Owen Brophy did not even twitch.

Not psychic. Her hands found each other, tangled. How can I hear him without touching if he too is not psychic?

And who, if not him, had blackened last night and made her Shadows go blind?

“Jessalyn’s on the phone with a customer in her gallery.” He indicated a room partially walled off behind the counter where he stood. “You been enjoying all our quaint little shops?”

“I—” Oh, Lord—the cat supplies! Blue Eyes had been stern: “No pets.” She tightened a grip on her bags, sealed the contents inside. “Y-yes.” She tucked the bags behind her legs. “Your little town is…” Home. “…i-it’s enchanting.”

“So no huntsmen with axes out lurking in the shadows this morning?”

The Shadows? She gaped, but his sea eyes…sparkling. And there were those sweetheart’s dimples, all charm. Also…she swallowed. Tattooed muscles, bulging beneath the arms of a t-shirt pulled tight across an acre of pecs. I’d massage you, she thought, and it shocked her. Never—ever—had she misappropriated her role as a massage therapist, the one arena where she could touch people and help them, the massage oil providing a barrier that prevented the invasion of showing or reading. Yet…that chest. Warm oil. Her hands kneading…sliding…she tore her gaze away. Okay, so maybe she couldn’t blame Jessalyn entirely.

A spear of darkness, a Shadow, fell before her feet and when she looked down Blue Eyes looked back, big eyes ripped wide, and hands clutching the spiked heel in his chest. “Natasha,” he whispered. “Help.”

Blood seeped, a black pond spreading under his body and creeping close to her feet. She shuffled backward, heart hammering. Was this the past? Please tell me this isn’t past!

“Help me,” Rob repeated and, tearing her gaze from his Shadow, she looked to Owen Brophy. “Wh-where is Rob?” Her voice was a gurgle.

He hoisted a shoulder. “Working. Why? Something wrong at the rental?"

“Uh…no.” Her toes curled as Shadow blood inched closer. “I…I just thought he might come join his…his wife and I for coffee.”

The Knight Crawler watched her, eyes as cold and steady as an aimed gun. “He was at his new development when I left earlier,” he said.

“Natasha,” the Shadow Rob called from the floor. “Help me.”

Her gaze skittered from him to Brophy.

—And was he alive when you left him?—

Again not so much as a twitch. “Want to follow me back into the gallery?” he asked.

Through the blood? Over the body? Her stomach squelched.

“You okay?”

God, no. She forced herself to ignore Rob and look beyond, where Brophy led into a sanctum of silken black walls and a floor so glossy she could see her reflection, wan and pale, in it. “Do…are we expected to take off our shoes?” Her toes curled in her sandals. Would Rob’s Shadow blood be warm on her bare feet?

The thought made her belly kick over.

Brophy looked surprised. “Hope not,” he said. “I didn’t.”

The dimples. The ocean. His grin was phony yet…she smiled back, the sensation shaky on her face.

“Be true,” A new Shadow spoke from the corner.

Natasha looked and Jessalyn’s redheaded father was staring down at his feet, just like when she’d first seen him deliver this confession. “Before you know it, you’ve shattered so many lives.”

Her heart knotted. I understand, she called out, but of course he could not hear her. So

—I understand?—

this she offered to Brophy’s broad shoulders. For was that what the Shadows wanted? For her to give him exoneration?

He turned. “You say something?”

“Y-yes.” Her pulse pattered. “I said I do not understand much about art.”

A Shadow that said Liar floated out of his eyes. “Didn’t you say your cousin dealt in art?”

“Collectibles, yes. And he, not me, I’m—”

“A massage therapist. Right.”

New Shadows flickered like candle flames. Her massage table. Him, atop it. Her with warm oil….Don’t show! She jerked her gaze away, heart galloping.

He said “—and a fairytale scholar.”

“S-scholar?” Her affected laugh sounded like nervous bird chitter. “I would not use a word quite so sophisticated.”

“Why not? You look sophisticated.”

A firework flared inside and for a moment she wished he were being honest, that he looked at her and really did see a sophisticate, a person worth getting to know.

Instead of a liar. An aberration. A prostitute and a sneak. Their eyes locked and “I…I have travelled,” she said, then cursed herself when his thought

—On whose dime and what did you have to do to earn it?—

slid into her mind. What was wrong with her? Wanting admiration, even friendship, from this Knight Crawler? A drug dealer she suspected of murder? She glanced back at the Shadow of Rob Haslom, dead on the floor. I want to go home. Shakes, and tears, threatened to consume her. This place is not home. I just want to go home.

“Oh yeah? Where to?”

“P-pardon?” Could he read her?

“You’ve travelled. Where to?”

“O-oh. Well, Europe, obviously.” She wrinkled her nose. She had never been able to disguise her accent as easily as Jakob could abandon his, sounding Anglo whenever it suited him. “Mexico. Costa Rica.”

“Lucky you. You go with a boyfriend, or—”

“No!” she burst, too forceful. Still, had she traveled with Gregory? Who had never even been able to take her out in public for dinner, much less on a trip? “With my cousin,” she said. “And Railey, my friend.” A flare of homesickness threw more tears in her eyes and she felt for her phone in her pocket, ready to shoot the waiting text. “Listening to she and Jakob bicker always seems to be the price I pay to enjoy somewhere beautiful.”

His thought

—Enigma—

was another she caught and she considered the word, turning it over and over like a found dime. ‘Enigma’ did not mean ‘scary’—and was acres better than anything he’d called her so far.

“Natasha!” Jessalyn bounded out of the darkened gallery, hair a riot that looked bigger than she was. “Hello!” She beamed then turned to the Knight Crawler. “Owen, you didn’t get Natasha a coffee?” She hoisted an elbow to a coffee service gleaming in a softly lit corner, and as the Knight Crawler eased over to it, a Shadow spilled out behind him.

Choreographed it read, then the floor sipped it up.

Natasha stepped back, tightening her grip on her shopping bags, grateful for something to hold onto. Choreographed. As in they were setting her up. Why? Did they somehow know what she knew?

Jessalyn smiled. “First things first,” she said spritely, and Choreographed breezed through the gallery again. “Your number came up as ‘private’ when you called, and I need a way to get hold of you, confirm dinner party plans.” She smiled brightly.

The Knight Crawler said “Take anything in your coffee, Ms. Nikoslav?”

Smug. The word occurred without Shadows, and as she regarded him a pink peony fell onto the floor. Her eyebrow jolted at the reminder. Is your affair worth killing for, Knight Crawler? Why, how very Agatha Christie of you. “Three cream, three sugar,” she said, and when he blinked she smiled—“Yes, you heard me correctly”—and was pleased that the plucked thought unnerved him.

Not that he missed a step. “That’s syrup, not coffee.”

Sea eyed sparkle. Dimples dancing. She rolled her eyes and “I like sugar,” she said. “Real sugar, not fakery. Phoniness leaves…a foul aftertaste.” She accepted the coffee with aplomb that would make Jakob applaud, then turned back to Jessalyn. “You need my number?”

“Or how about social media?” Heart Face beamed. “I’m one of those Facebook junkies myself, and I found your profile. Can I send you a friend request?”

An immediate flurry of Shadows rushed over the floor, a dark tangle of brambles sharp with thorns and blood red rosebuds. Careful. The word met her ear like a breath made of knives and at her feet the brambles all twisted, forming gnarled words that said Danger and Run.

Why? she asked, confused, then peered at Jessalyn. “You…you found my Head To Heal page on Facebook?” It was the only social media presence she had, and hardly something to use for personal communication.

The Knight Crawler and Jessalyn traded a glance and in it she saw befuddlement mirroring her own. The word choreographed reappeared too, but this time it was written in all uneven letters, out of sync. “H-here,” she said and, mindful of Shadow thorns, moved close enough so they could see the screen on her phone. She brought up her business page, the banner photo a muscle chart, and the profile picture she and Railey in scrubs. “Head to Heal is my massage clinic,” she said, yet somehow felt as though she were covering for a lie she had not even told, a lie she needed to further justify by saying, to Brophy, “And this is Railey, the friend I told you I travel with.” She tilted the screen.

His eyebrows went up and

—Looks legit—

he thought.

She glared.

—Of course it’s legitimate, you scary, phony, cheating, drug dealing MURDERER—

He flinched and shot a glance beyond her, where Rob Haslom lay bleeding on the floor. “You hear that?” he asked.

—Yes. I just spoke to you. Are you going to show me you’re psychic now too?—

“No,” said Jessalyn. “Did someone come in?” She moved past them and Natasha sucked in a breath as she trod upon her dead husband, foot striking the Shadow spike, driving it deeper into his heart. Dizzy stars swept past her eyes as Jessalyn then turned back, announced “No one” and returned, feet making wet, sticking sounds as she tracked through the blood.

A leave of red footprints trailed in her wake, and as Natasha’s belly turned, there, in the background, the Shadow of Jessalyn’s father spoke again. “Shattered so many lives,” he said, and looked her in the eye. Tremors gobbled her hands and “Excuse me,” she managed. “My phone vibrated.” Sweating, she swiped her business page off the screen, shot the text she had cued to Railey. Come NOW.

Jessalyn held up her tablet. “Isn’t this your page?

The picture there hit Natasha in the chest, a blow knocking her breath away as a disembodied whisper

--now you’re dead—

floated out of her Shadows, reverent and solemn. Her eyes filled, tears of shock and fear, but she forced herself to examine the Facebook picture, hand rising to her chest as she felt Sleeping Beauty’s’ injury there, a dagger jabbed deep into her breastbone.

“Natasha?” Jessalyn prompted.

She could not lie. Could not, would not, lay claim to this…what was this? She stared at the dead Sleeping Beauty bearing her name. A statement? A threat? Her gaze skittered to Owen Brophy, and…

Oh, Lord, she could not tell the truth, either. He would never believe her—she could barely believe herself—after their fairytale banter last night. So—“I…I don’t use this page,” she said, and crossed her fingers, diluted the lie.

The Knight Crawler and Jessalyn swapped another quick glance and black Shadows rustled over Jessalyn’s tablet, wisps obscuring the screen to form...

A tombstone.

The Knight Crawler said “Ms. Nikoslav? Are you bleeding?”

She ignored him. The Shadow tombstone said BELOVED atop…my name. My birthday. And under it all, a death date (that’s next month!). A scream clawed the inside of her mouth.

“Natasha?”

She tried to answer, but two more Shadows appeared—Jakob and Railey, walking straight through Jessalyn and the Knight Crawler, faces ashen and Railey hissing at Jakob as they faced the tombstone. “You,” she said. “You did this.”

“I know I did it.”

Natasha’s heart stuttered to a stop then the Shadow Jakob turned. When he walked through her she shuddered from the cold.

What…Jakob what do you mean you did it?

“Ms. Nikoslav?” Owen Brophy called her name, but it sounded like he spoke through a wind tunnel. “You’re—”

The rest jumbled as everything became Shadows and there, lying next to Rob Haslom…

That’s me. With the dagger from that Facebook Sleeping Beauty picture buried in her chest, and a trickle of blood dribbling out of her mouth. Her pulse whacked and

—Now you’re dead—

said the Shadows.

“You’re bleeding,” Owen Brophy stepped in front of her, shattering the Shadows as he held out a tissue.

“I…thank you.” She reached for it and, as their fingers connected

—Help me!—

she cried, involuntary.

He balked. “Are…you okay?”

No. God, no. “I…I’m fine. I just…” She lost herself a moment in his ocean eyes, certain that this must be the way he looked to Jessalyn: tender. Compassionate. “I-I’ve had some …vision problems lately and—”

“Nosebleeds?” he supplied.

“Yes,” she whispered. She had to get out of here. Thank God she’d sent Railey that text. “My…my number.” Turning to Jessalyn she rattled it off, desperate to salvage some sort of normalcy yet knowing she sounded garbled, inarticulate.

Jessalyn frowned. “Could you repeat that?”

“I got it.” The Knight Crawler raised a piece of paper, digits scratched on it. “Ms. Nikoslav, can I help you home?”

Choreographed gusted through the gallery again and a peony, landing at her feet, shriveled and died there before her. “I…no. thank you. I’m fine. I…I may just need to lie down.” And wait hours, many hours, for Railey.

“I’ll call you for dinner?” Jessalyn was still all phony-jaunty.

“Ja. Yes. Of course.” She hurried out into the warmth of perfumed blossom air and was halfway through the park when her phone started ringing.

“Tash!”

Railey. She reeled, then sank, grateful for the park bench that caught her.

“Jakob Michael—that bastard—somehow intercepted us. I knew I should have cranked music as soon as I saw your first message.”

“What…what did he say?”

“That if I put so much as a tire on the highway he’d have someone plant dope in my car and tip off the police.”

Oh God, Jakob, why? Why?

“And he’d do it.”

Of course he’d do it. And even if he didn’t…she closed her eyes.

The tombstone waited there, behind her lids.

“I…I can’t leave, Rae.” And she could not tell her why. Could not tell Jakob, either. The last time she’d been threatened…“I regret nothing,” he had said, and she knew from her Shadows what he’d done. What he’d do again. Although… “I know I did it,” his Shadow had said in the gallery. What did that mean?

His Shadow reformed, Railey’s too. “You killed her,” she said.

Again he did not deny it, simply turned and disintegrated, swallowed by sun.

Railey, on the phone, said “What did you say? Tash, I can’t hear y—”

“I need to go Rae.” She hung up, cupped shaking hands. “Show.”

Her tombstone reappeared. Her Shadow body too, the dagger’s gilded hilt glinting in her chest. She gritted her teeth. “Show. Show me who’s done this.”

A glimmer of a face took shape—a jaw, a hairline—but an inky pall, the inky pall, dropped over her Shadows, turned them black.

Blinded. Again. “Bastard!” Jakob? Could her cousin who had once done the unthinkable for her be planning to do the unthinkable to her? "No. Please no." And Owen and Jessalyn—that word choreographed wasn’t something they’d been able to hide from her Shadows. Then there was poor Blue Eyes, his Shadow had begged her for help. He was in no position to assist her.

A Shadow wisped blackly over the pool of sun she sat in, the word Alone like earlier—except now with a whole new meaning. For her tombstone said she’d be dead in a month. Which gave her less than four weeks to keep quiet—and uncover her own killer.

©bonnie randall 2005