Selena stepped out of the shower, picked the heavy silk robe off the wing chair in the living room of her suite at the Alcazar, did not put it on, but trailed it behind her like a tiger’s pelt as she padded barefoot across the Persian carpet—it was all reds and greens and golds, as was the suite itself.
She stopped in front of the heavy redwood cabinet that served as the bar. There was a mirror behind it, reflecting the crystal decanters and the silver champagne bucket.
And Selena herself, looking back at her.
She considered her body, well-shaped neck and head—a perfect cameo—a long-dead lover had once described her that way—he died too, as they all eventually died—the curved perfection of her alabaster body, her breasts heavy and full and rounded, the rosebud nipples, the rounded belly, the dark fragrant shadow beneath...her thighs her legs her calves...she had been gifted with a body that drew lives to her...men and women...and she loved them equally and with the same intensity...
Which was not at all.
They floated above her body or bore her weight beneath her and she felt...nothing.
Nothing.
Only the tedium of pretending.
Sighing, crying out, gasping.
All a lie.
They never reached her core.
They never would.
She waited until they were spent, droning in sleep, gone to the world, and she would sit up and look at them sleeping and think how easy it would be to cut them, how sweet it would be to end that fat snoring pig—like Tessio—with a hard-held pillow...and then she would get up and go through their luggage and files and papers...and make plans for them. She had made some plans for Tessio, but they needed work. He was going to be a challenge, but well worth it, if she handled him just right.
But tonight, she had the locket back. And that would have made her life complete, if, on her way to her suite, she hadn’t looked down into the atrium where the long bar was, where all the people were gathering for afternoon cocktails.
But she had.
And there at the bar was Jack Redding, and next to him was Clete Redding. They were leaning together, talking loud over the crowd noise, close and intense, sharing two large beers.
And then a bartender arrived, with a sheet of paper, a bill she supposed. And she watched as Clete Redding turned around on the barstool and looked hard at five men in a banquette who were toasting him with their champagne glasses. She knew them—Tessio’s son, Anthony. Sergio Carpo, who had once run his rough red hands up under her skirt and defiled her with his fat tobacco-stained fingers, breathing in her ear, saying vile things, this in the lemon tree orchard next to the alligator lagoon at the bottom of Tessio’s estate. And Sal Bruni, who ran the Cuba trade.
She watched as Clete Redding crumpled the bar bill up and threw it to the ground and sent a bolt of sizzling hate back to the men in the banquette.
In a way she admired him for that, even as she filed it away. She stood and watched this ugly exchange for a full five minutes, frozen in place, her lungs full of ice and panic flooding through her body. Both Reddings, Clete and Jack.
Here right now.
Hunting her.
Hunting her here in the Alcazar.
* * *
Selena sat down on the end of the bed, held the locket between her breasts, her hands folded almost in prayer. She closed her eyes and went away for a few moments, fighting for calm.
Would they come for her? Were they riding up in the guest elevators right now? Were they striding down the carpeted hall under the crystal chandeliers? Were they now at the door, about to knock? If they were, what would she do?
They were both armed, she could see that from the atrium balcony, heavy guns at their belts. If she tried to fight them—use the little Colt—they’d kill her where she stood.
If she let them take her...
But how could they take her?
In this place, in this time, she had committed no crimes, at least none that they would know about, and none at all as Aurelia DiSantis.
Clete Redding was a rogue cop, a very difficult man, but Tessio ran him, and she was under Tessio’s protection here. Unless they intended to kill her outright—and if they did Tessio’s rage would be volcanic—they would have to arrest her.
On what charges?
The younger one, Jack, had no powers here, and Clete? Did he even believe that Jack was his grandson? Falling through time to land here? Even if Jack had managed to persuade him of that, which was wildly improbable, there were still only two choices open to them: confront her here, and possibly kill her. Or arrest her and charge her with...again, charge her with what?
They had nothing.
And even if they took her to a police station, Tessio would know at once, and he would send his lawyers, and she would be free within the hour.
And Tessio would jerk Clete Redding’s chain very hard. She had Tessio in the palm of her hand, literally, and while her power over him lasted, he would do anything she asked.
So, for now, for this night and the next few days, she should be still, she could stay safe under the protection of Tessio Vizzini.
That would work, for now.
The single point upon which this entire framework turned, the thing that was the most acute threat to her existence, was Jack Redding, and the fact that he had somehow followed her into the Shimmer, down the Long Hall and now he was here, in 1957. He was the anomaly, he was the piece that wouldn’t fit, he was the crack in the mirror.
Removing him would not affect the time membrane in any way that would matter to her, because he shouldn’t be here, because he never was here.
But if he were to be erased now, in 1957, would that affect her life in the future?
She thought not. There had been very little contact between the two of them. The world he had existed in would be greatly changed, but not hers, since he had only been a part of hers for a very brief period. And how much larger would the rip be if the solution to the problem of Jack Redding’s existence was the death of his grandfather, in the right here and right now?
Clete Redding’s death should mean there would never be a Jack Redding to trouble her, either in the future, or here in this time.
However, since there actually was a version of Jack Redding here now, it would be the cautious and sensible thing to kill him too, just to be on the safe side.
Yes there would be ripples, reverberations, changes that would affect the future in noticeable ways. But not her future.
The membrane of time was too dense and too immense to be affected by the little death of one ordinary little man and the death or nonexistence of another little man. There would be a tiny rip in the membrane, but it would soon mend, and the larger universe would navigate the endless mazes of time as it always had, as it always would.
There were Rules controlling time. She had found that, while she could go back in time, she could never go forward, never get past the Present Time, which for her now was the moment she had broken in on Jack Redding and that lady cop at the beach house She couldn’t break that barrier, see what was going to happen in 2020 or 2030. It was as if Time was creating itself with every new second, and that on the other side of Right Now, there was only Nothing Yet.
But the Past, that was different.
The Past was always there, and she believed that the Long Hall would go on curving into a pale blue infinity and the Shimmer would never end.
Selena went deeper into the calm, and she thought about how the deaths of Clete and Jack Redding might be made to happen, and, in a little while, she had her answer.
* * *
At peace with that decision, she lay back on the satin cover of the king-size bed, held the gold locket close to her heart, and let it take her away, let it take her back.
Above all she remembered the light, that golden afternoon glow that filled her bedroom as the sun moved across Jackson Square and a jasmine-scented wind stirred the curtains.
The sunlight turned all the white things in her bedroom, her four-poster bed with its linen comforter, the dresser covered in lace, the stone fireplace, it all turned from pale white into liquid gold as she lay there listening to the music coming up from the square, a small band playing, horns and a guitar, a woman singing a song that was new that very year, the “Saint Louis Blues.”
And that soft afternoon there were the familiar voices in the other rooms, soft and gentle, loving cadences, and the faint tinkle of glasses touched.
Beatrice and William, Bea and Will...and the locket Will had given Bea in 1909, on their second anniversary...how many years ago now...she was five now, five this golden afternoon—that she remembered very well because of the cake they had made earlier in the day, the white cake with five glowing candles.
So now it was 1914 and there was talk of trouble far away in the East, wherever that was, Chicago or New York maybe, and the people in the street were gathering together in the square or strolling along under the galleries of the Pontalba Apartments, talking right underneath her windows, looking at wrinkled newspapers and arguing about someone called the Kaiser and somebody named Sarajevo and it was all too confusing for a little girl to understand.
She held the locket in her hands and sometimes she put it in her mouth and bit it... The locket comforted her, the locket was soothing and warm, and tasted of skin salt and it smelled of Bea’s perfume—Bea wore it between her breasts on a chain of thin gold and when she leaned over to kiss Selena good-night it would swing out in the glow of the oil lamp on her night table and she could smell Beatrice’s scent.
This was Selena’s Home Dream, and she went back to this place whenever she could, but she needed the locket to take her there. Without the locket she could not open the memories. They remained elusive, dim, shadowy.
And the locket had a way of slipping away from her, of falling through rips in the fabric of time—she would have it in her hands—and then time would ripple and her memories would fade—and it would be gone from her—and it seemed that much of her existence in this web of time she was trapped in was spent in an eternal chase for that eternally receding golden locket.
It was the only key to the few memories of happiness she had ever known. It was a drug and a torment to her, and the Shimmer had condemned her to this never-ending hunt.
But she had found it again.
And now, with the locket once again in her hands, it was all rich and dense and perfectly present, and the blissful dream-memory went on for timeless days and endless nights, a never-ending sequence of golden afternoons and soft aromatic nights, with the gliding moon or the golden sun shining in through the curtains, and the music floating in from Jackson Square...
* * *
Selena lay on the bed in her suite at the Alcazar and felt the first tremors of the dark thing coming... Her chest tightened and she tried to turn away from it, to go back into the dream, but she could not, not this final time...and now came the hammering on the door and the angry voices and the sound of shattering glass and then the fearful voices, and her mother screaming, screaming, and then, suddenly, silence.
And now—as always—she could never stop this no matter how often she faced it—the black shape bursting into her room, ripping apart the gauzy fabric of her dream—the thin darting wiry black figure with the knife, a shadow against the sunlight, a silhouette only, and the blade stained with red shimmering up in a glittering arc in the sun...and then swiftly down, piercing her belly—the wild black thing shrieking at her and the knife shimmering in the golden light—pain, pain, pain—and then a great white light filling the room...and then...the Shimmer...and the Shimmer took her away...and she never got home again.