Jane slipped her hands under the table and wiped sweat off her palms, trying to quiet the cold shakes. This was a hell of a strange way to meet Gary's family, and he wasn't even here to back her up. Wasn't anywhere. How would this brown-skin girl with kung-fu-master calm and too many muscles react to someone taking potshots at her brother? Jane wasn't armed, not even a knife, and it made her feel like she was walking around naked.
Her reflexes checked the food court exits, three of them in three different directions, busy evening in the student union but nothing dangerous in sight. No uniforms in particular, either kampus kops or the real kind. And she had her back tucked into a nice, safe, defensive corner so nobody could sneak up on her. They'd done a funny dance over that, both of them going for the corner chair, before this Indian girl with Gary's nose and eyes and cheekbones stopped, gave a crooked half-smile, and waved her in.
The girl . . . Caroline . . . put down her double-shot espresso and sighed, relaxing, as if she'd been needing that all day. Apparently a caffeine addict.
And a lot calmer than she ought to be, facing someone who'd admitted to shooting at her brother. Facing someone who'd damn near ambushed her in a dark alley. The calm of a person who didn't live with fear, who felt confident she could deal with whatever came along. Jane wondered what it felt like. She concentrated on trying to match it.
Now that brown face focused, tilting a little to one side, shaking her head, weighing what she saw. "You aren't anything like I imagined. I mean, Gary described you as somewhat . . . vivid?"
That almost made Jane smile, easing a bit of the tension in her jaw. "Costume party. If people see green hair, orange hair, and the Technicolor Goth clothes, that's all they see. They never see the face. Student grunge is the same thing — faceless. I could be wearing a mask."
The girl was easy to talk to, just like Gary. But that calm felt almost like the eye of a hurricane, a deceptive quiet centered on waiting violence. This girl could be dangerous. She was seductive, not sex but trust, almost magical. Jane had to remind herself to watch her tongue. It didn't help that the girl looked so much like him, felt like him in so many ways.
Speaking of which . . .
"How come you're so hard to see? Gary's like that — nobody notices him unless he wants them to. I have to stare at you, and even then you fade away."
"Defense mechanism. Chameleon blood mixed into both families. 'Cause we're all so good-looking, like that Beatles song. Plus, I'm a witch. Most of Stonefort's strange, you know. Pirates and dragons. Rings of mysterious standing stones straight out of ancient Wales. Shape-changers and witches and haunted houses. Better get used to weird stuff if you're going to hang around with us."
Then she chuckled. "Actually, it's just a body-language trick that anyone can learn. Nothing magic about it. Certain postures and moves, your eyes see me, but your subconscious decides I'm not important and sends your brain on to something more interesting."
She said it all so casually, it almost slid right past. And then she faded again. Jane could see the chair and the next table right through her. If she squinted and stared real hard, the girl was still there. It made Jane's head hurt. Chameleon, as if Caroline's skin and clothes changed color to match her background.
And then she was back, solid, eyes narrowed and lips thinned down. "So how did you find me, then? Makes a girl curious."
Jane swallowed and unclenched her hands in her lap, forced her shoulders down, trying to hide how tense she felt. This girl did the good-cop/bad-cop routine as a solo act. Set 'em up and knock 'em down. Keep the suspect off balance, groggy. And the good-cop made it so easy to talk to her.
"I read Gary's email and knew you'd be searching for that doll thing. I helped him crack the password on the computer files. I staked-out the gym, and still nearly didn't see you. Did you find it, find the doll?"
Caroline nodded, Jane wasn't sure at what. "Read his email? Does Gary know you can do that?"
"Oh, yeah. Hacker game, practically a CompSci course, crack the system. I showed him mine, he showed me his. We used different back doors, campus UNIX has holes like a Swiss cheese. That boy's slick."
A half-smile flitted across Caroline's face. "Slick as a seal, yeah. Great endurance, too."
Jane felt the start of a blush touch her cheeks, first time since she was eight or nine. This girl was his sister?
Caroline grinned at the look on Jane's face. "Esthetic appreciation — the guy's a hunk, no question. Besides, I didn't know he was my brother until last spring. That makes a major difference in how you look at a man."
Then she turned serious. "You said you shot at him. 'Shot at' rather than 'shot.' You want to talk about it?"
Strangely enough, Jane did. Maybe Caroline was a witch. Anyway, Jane sipped at her own coffee and cradled the hot cup in her hands, relishing the warmth after hanging around outside the gym all day and freezing her buns, and talked, words flowing like water.
Told about that damned phone call and the “cop” word and running away in panic, told about the night meeting at the memorial bench, told about that fucking automatic going off. About how her finger must have slipped, or maybe she'd lived without trust so long that her hand ran on autopilot. Talked too damn much, and couldn't make herself worry about it. Easy to talk to.
Caroline held up her hand, palm out, stopping the smooth flow of words. "What brand? Who made that pistol?"
Jane blinked. That question seemed straight off the wall . . . "Granados. Spanish, .25 caliber."
The girl nodded. "Trash. Look, throw that thing in the river and get a real gun. Aunt Kate warned us that most of those .25s are pot-metal junk. Zinc castings or recycled aluminum beer cans. Once you get some wear on the bastards, the safety starts to lift the hammer from the firing pin and then slips. Might fire, might not. Besides, if you had hit him, you'd just have made him mad. Never buy any pistol between a .22 and a .38 Special. Bigger is better, just like with a man."
Surreal girl. Here they were talking about shooting at her brother, and she wanted stopping power? "But it fired twice . . ."
"Bad secondary sear. That's the internal thingie that catches the hammer after one shot if you're still holding the trigger back. Keeps the 'semi' in semi-auto. You're lucky it didn't dump the whole magazine in one burst. Like I said, toss that piece of shit in the river. Trust me, Aunt Kate knows guns."
"I've already done that." Caroline took this whole thing so calmly, talked off at an angle to the subject, talked about gun quality rather than danger to Gary, offered advice, it was easy to trust her. Good psychology, defused the bomb. If she'd poked at it straight on, it could have looked like starting a fight. Dana had taken Jane to a shrink who worked like that. He'd nibbled at her problems from the edge.
Caroline lifted an eyebrow, as if those thoughts had been scrolling across Jane's forehead. "Fair warning — Morgans and Haskells, both families, we make it easy for people to trust us. It's like we broadcast some kind of drug. Gary's a nice guy, he likes you a lot, so go ahead and trust him. Just, be careful with the rest of us. Morgans have been living off misplaced trust for centuries."
She could say that right out loud, and Jane still felt the calm and trust. Witch. How long did the drug last? What was the hangover going to be like?
Caroline drained the last of her espresso, pushed back her chair, and stood up. "Hey, let's go find that boyfriend of yours."
"You can find him?"
"We can find him. You're coming along, girl."
"But I shot at him!"
That strange half-smile twitched Caroline's face again. "Hey, one thing you want to keep in mind with Gary, with all of us — we've got twenty generations of pirates in our blood. Real pirates, cutlasses and cannons and gore foaming crimson from the scuppers and throw the losers to the sharks. Danger junkies. Hell, the Morgans still have four bronze cannons mounted on their roof. And they keep 'em loaded. So he's likely to think popping a couple of rounds past his ear was just sex play."
Then she heaved her backpack across her shoulders, picked up her other bag, turned and headed across the food court, dragging Jane along in her wake. It felt weird. Tina had been big, strong, pushy, tried to take command in any situation. This girl just did it. And something in Jane let her do it. Because it didn't feel at all like Tina, not mean and cheap and selfish. This girl was helping.
Dangerous. Trust was dangerous — Jane had learned that lesson well. The Sweeneys.
Thinking about them brought the shakes back, and she walked faster to try and stay within the eye of Caroline's hurricane. Memories of pain . . .
Some dipshit walked past, smoking, even though the whole Union was a smoke-free zone. Jane felt her shoulders tense up, her chin duck into her sweatshirt collar like a threatened turtle pulling into his shell.
"Does anyone in Gary's family smoke?"
Caroline stopped short and turned, studying Jane's face. Again she seemed to see too much there, because her lips thinned and she shook her head. "Just Aunt Kate. She's my family, sort of, not his. You won't have to meet her if you don't want to. But she's polite about it. She won't shove a cigarette in your face."
Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn. How the hell did she read that? Gary figured it out, but he saw the scars. The hallway went blank for an instant, and she saw . . .
And then the memory vanished. She felt hands warm on her cheeks.
"Oh, Christ!" Caroline's face hung close in front of hers, almost kissing range, eyes wide. "I didn't mean that literally. I'm sorry."
Calm flowed through those palms. If this was witchcraft, Jane wanted more of it. Just as addictive as crack cocaine. She felt the shakes fade down and leave.
Caroline seemed to read that, too. "Look, you need to meet Aunt Alice. Her house, it's old, it shelters, it protects. It's a woman's house. Women are safe there, have been for hundreds of years. Nobody asks questions. But if you want to talk, she listens. She listens a lot better than I do. I'm just learning. But mainly, you'd be safe there. Guaranteed."
She stepped back, taking those warm and calming hands with her. "I just told you to be careful about trusting me. Trust Aunt Alice. Trust Aunt Alice. Trust Aunt Alice. 'What I tell you three times is true.' That's programmer language, isn't it, as well as Lewis Carroll?"
Jane nodded, her tongue frozen. Then arguments trampled across her thoughts, like they always did, arguments that needed someone as strong and giving as Dana to fight them, the self-doubt and fear that had ruled her life since Mom and Dad declared war on each other and any innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.
"Alice Haskell? Stonefort? I can't go there, can't leave. I've missed too many classes already. I can't drop out. You don't know what school means to me."
And again Caroline seemed able to read her thoughts from her face. That wry smile and head shake said she'd heard too many people trying to dodge medicine that would help them. How old was this girl?
"It's hard to find trust again, isn't it? Once someone has stolen it from you? That's why the Haskell Witches learned to make trust easy. Morgan men learned the trick to get in close and rob you blind, Haskell women learned it to bring scared women home to safety. And here we end up with the two families mixed together. I wonder what the hell Mom thought she was doing . . ."
Another head shake, and she chewed on her lower lip for a minute before smiling. "Outpatient clinic. Gary can bring his car up here and take you there on weekends. He'll tell you about Aunt Alice, about the Haskell House. Don't just take my word for it. Which reminds me — we still need to find that boy." She fished at the neck of her sweater, pulling out a silver chain and then a pendant.
Silver. Dragon. Red jewel. Shit! "That's Gary's! You tricked me! You have seen him."
A trap. The alley cat took over, Jane was backing away, shoulders sliding along the wall, eyes and feet frantic for the nearest exit. She felt the jaws snapping shut around her and she didn't have a gun, she didn't have a knife, she'd been a fool thinking she could trust some stranger . . .
"Easy, easy, don't panic." Caroline had slid in front of her, she'd left enough room to pass her, didn't block the way, didn't close the trap, but she held the pendant out so Jane could see it clearly. "There are five or six of them, all a little different, Morgan dragons. This isn't Gary's. It's mine."
The silver dragon grabbed her attention. It twisted around its stone, twice around, head and open jaws tucked into the center like a coiled snake and holding the blaze-red jewel. It curled clockwise, just like Gary's. She'd seen his glowing on his chest when they lay in bed together. It had looked so old, so beautiful, so precious, so mysterious with the stone that seemed to pulse its own light rather than reflecting. She could see it like a photograph in her head. The left front paw curled down on this one. Gary's curled up.
It wasn't the same.
She slumped against the wall, shaking again, chilled enough that her teeth chattered. Here she was, swept downstream in the spring ice-out, drowning, someone threw her a rope, and she saw it as a snake. Something brown swam into the blur in front of her, Caroline's face, and water glinted on her cheeks. Rain from the hurricane raging around the calm?
Tears looked strange on that strong Indian face. "Fuck. My first solo, and I'm blowing it. Something as simple as a goddamn Morgan dragon . . ."
Off the wall again. "Solo?"
Caroline pulled herself together, almost looked like grabbing bits of her brain out of the air and stuffing them back into her head. "Solo. Like a student pilot. I've done the takeoffs and landings and cross-country and pulled out of a faked engine failure and all that, but I've never flown alone. I've always had Aunt Alice in the other seat, ready to save my butt. Save the kid we were trying to reach. I'm screwing up."
Jane forced herself to straighten up, back braced by the cold wall behind her, and reached out to the girl in front of her. They ended up in a hug. "Not you," she whispered. "Me. Broken safety, just like that gun. Same reason I ran away from Gary. Hair trigger, go off at a touch. Hint of trouble, smell of a trap, I'm gone. Wild animal. It saved my ass out on the street. I've got to learn to turn it off."
Caroline held her. Jane held Caroline. Warmth crept through her body, the first non-sex touch she'd had in years. People passed, back and forth and detouring around, hall of the Memorial Union, Jane finally pushed away and noticed the sideways glances they were drawing. Screw 'em. Take it up with the campus Gay Alliance.
Not that Caroline was making a pass. Jane would know. She'd slept with Tina, slept with Cindy, a couple of other girls. Felt better than the Johns, mostly safer, nothing like what she'd felt with Gary.
Caroline shook herself and stepped back out of Jane's space and gave that wry half-grin again, the one that looked like Gary when he poked fun at himself. Sister, no doubt about it. Not quite twins, but close.
Gary. Jane took a deep breath and let it out. Another, looking for that blessed calm again. "You can use your dragon to find Gary?"
That changed the half grin to a half frown, another Gary face, Gary when he came across a problem in the code. "I think so. Normally, I could talk to him. Call it magic if you want, the Morgan dragons talk to each other. But I don't think he's wearing his. He wants to hide, from you or from his family." She paused, as if wondering how much weird stuff she could say before Jane threw another fit.
One thing might help . . . "His father is looking for him. I saw him in the dorm, I'm pretty sure he didn't recognize me. Not 'vivid' enough to notice. Father or Dad, one or the other."
Caroline nodded. "Father, most likely. Yeah, they're different people. His father looks more like him, more like me. So you know about that. Good. So Gary took his dragon off, hiding. Thing is, he wore this one for a while. Then he gave it to me. So it knows him, better than any of the others."
She closed her eyes, wrapped her right hand around the pendant, and turned in a slow circle. Then she started walking. Jane caught her before she banged nose-first into a wall. Hand in hand, a few more sideways glances from people passing in the hall, she led Caroline to a cross-corridor and then played guide-dog through the tangle of the union building and outside into darkness.
They wound their way through campus and shadow, through thin cold rain again full of the smell of fallen leaves, October in Maine, Caroline with her eyes closed and that dragon in her fist, Jane watching out for curbs and trees and fences in the darkness. Good thing it was dark, or people might have asked a question or two.
Or not. Campus, after all, Friday night, just a couple of loopy students with a beer or five too many between them.
Caroline stopped short, took a deep breath, turned to Jane, and stared through the semi-gloom where streetlight met shadow. "There's one more thing you need to know before you decide to trust us. Aunt Kate. She's a cop. Town constable in Stonefort."
A shock like ice-water splashed in her face, Jane jerked against her hand, almost broke free; but Caroline's grip held, too strong, too determined. "Cop means different things. Aunt Kate is more interested in good and evil than laws. If Aunt Alice is working with you, that's all Kate's gonna ask. But she'll stay away, if you want; you never have to see her. She has her own house."
Oh, shit. Jane started shivering, she couldn't run, caught in the trap. She lashed out with her free hand, fingernails as claws, searching for eyes, found herself spun around into a hammerlock with years of training behind it, arm around her neck, pressing on the arteries, fuzzing her brain to the edge of black. Warm breath touched her ear and she smashed backwards with her skull, aiming for the nose, the eyebrows, anything to stun, to break free. She hit nothing. Free elbow drove straight back, found nothing but air.
The warm breath again, beside her head, too close to hit sideways, "Easy, easy, easy . . . Aunt Alice won't ask questions. She doesn't believe in laws. She killed a man last spring, Gary killed a man, both slimeballs needed killing. I helped him, maybe blew up a boat or maybe didn't, lots of mean hombres on board shooting at us.
"If you want help, we'll give you help. We don't give a flying damn what you might have had to do, surviving on the street. It's what you do from tonight that matters. But you have to decide if you can learn to trust again."
And then Jane's arm was free. She spun out of the hold into darkness, tripped on some damned shadow, and fell twisting and rolling into wet tangled bushes, felt scratches burning across her skin. Caroline didn't follow. Jane could see her standing, waiting, still that eerie kung fu calm ready to welcome her back into warmth. Everything about her said that if Jane ran, she wouldn't follow.
If you run, you'll never see Gary again. These people know what you are and want to help you anyway. Just like Dana. You can run and run and run, or you can stay. And if you run away one more time, you never will get back.
Caroline waited, a shadow against the campus streetlights.