Alice sat and thought for a few minutes, staring into nothing across the parlor and listening to Sibelius on the CD player — a dark wintry symphonic poem full of wind and snow and wolves ghosting through the shadows of the Finnish forest. She always chose music to mirror her mood, reflect her heart.
Good thing Caroline is shaping up so well. If I can get her to keep a lid on that quicksilver impulsiveness, I'll leave the House in good hands if I lose the next one.
God, she'd been feeling bleak lately. At least it hadn't gotten bad enough for Piaf. Yet.
The man sitting in the other chair hadn't brightened her mood any. Not that it was his fault. The House seemed amused and unusually relaxed, far from its usual tension when she'd let a man inside the sacred walls. She studied this latest incarnation of Daniel Morgan, shook her head, and lifted one eyebrow. "So you've decided to come over to the Dark Side?"
He blinked.
"The dye job."
"Oh." He nodded, brain swerving to catch up with her non sequitur. "Skin color sure affects what people see, doesn't it? But you've known that all your life. It's a strange feeling."
Alice snorted. "Tell me about it. When I was in ER training down to Boston, I lost count of the number of times that well-meaning idiots tried out their high-school Spanish on me. After all, I'm small and dark, but I don't look Black. One guy even tried Tagalog — thought I was a Filipina. Nobody expects First People nurses in a white hospital. 'Cept maybe near a big rez, like the Navajo."
She squirmed a bit in the soft leather of the big Eames chair, adjusting a pillow that kept pressure off her aching shoulder blade. Cold front coming through, she thought.
Atropos lifted her head from where her calico coat artistically mirrored the Bokhara rug, blinked lazily, stretched, and strolled across the floor, tail up in a friendly crook. "Mrr?"
A request for lap space, since Kate wasn't available. Alice shifted again and acquired a vibrating heating pad with gently kneading paws. The cat's purr seemed to radiate calm and soothing, and she melted into a boneless puddle of warmth. Sometimes the cat and the House carried their bond to extremes. Sometimes, just sometimes, the result brought comfort.
Alice settled one hand on the cat's back and smoothed silky fur, shaking her head. Atropos was awfully young to manipulate humans so well.
"So. Mummified, eh?"
"Mummified. Plaster dust, cobwebs, eye-sockets staring at the door and jaw sagging. Creepy scene, deliberate stage setting, you walk through the door and you're looking right at the hole in its chest, splintered rib ends, like they'd chopped the heart out with a hatchet. And the rats had left the body alone. I know there were rats. I saw them."
Alice wrinkled her nose at that, the nurse taking over from the witch for a moment. Rats spread too damn many diseases for her to like their position in the natural balance of life.
Still . . . "I can think of two, three reasons they'd avoid a corpse. Poison's one — some rats learn the smell of poisoned bait and won't go near it. But I can't work up a scene where that makes sense. To check reasons two and three, I'd have to feel the corpse, smell the air, generally poke around." She paused and listened to the cold arctic moon glinting on icy firs, flutes and piccolos and strings.
She stirred again, and grimaced. "Can't do that." She lifted her right arm straight out in front of her, the opposite side from the wound. Her hand trembled to a halt before it rose six inches above her shoulder. She settled that hand back on cat fur and tried her left — it couldn't even make shoulder height, and the dull ache woke up into deep throbbing pain.
"I can't go climbing around in abandoned buildings. Can't even change a goddamn IV bag without a CNA to help me. Damn fools at the hospital still waste Medicaid dollars having me work a regular shift. I just carry a clipboard around and look important."
Daniel looked like he'd started to think about feeling sorry for her, and she glared at him. He gulped and let Sibelius fill the silence between them.
Oh, the physical therapy helped. Her range of motion had almost doubled, both arms, and she could carry that clipboard now. A couple of months ago, she couldn't.
Kate had lost almost as much. Physically, that is, not counting Jackie in the balance. If that child counted as a loss, and if she hadn't been lost ten years ago. Or more. But Kate had started out so strong that she was still tougher than the average man. She could make her way around in that ruin, probably better than Daniel could. Brace up the floor joists and nail down new stair treads while she was at it.
But Kate still didn't feel comfortable with magic. Couldn't smell it and taste it and feel it slippery under her fingers. Couldn't, or wouldn't. Didn't want to. In spite of the fact that wood and stone went out of their way to please her.
And she weighed about a hundred pounds more than either Daniel or Ben. Walking on rotten floors, climbing stripped-out stairs with a bad hip. Scratch that idea.
One choice left. Alice gritted her teeth and nodded. "I want you to show Caroline the place. She's going to have to touch things, leave fingerprints and stuff. How much is it going to cost me to burn that death-trap flat once she's through and out? Think of it as a community service."
Daniel cocked his head to one side and studied her face, lips working as he thought for a moment and then another. "You care if the cops know it's arson?"
That made sense — start the fire fast and hot, multiple origins, then the firemen would just concentrate on containing it and protecting nearby buildings. They wouldn't send men inside a place that was already a minefield waiting to kill the unwary. Save the city the cost of condemning it and tearing it down.
Send men inside . . . Alice shivered.
God, she hated the thought of firemen dying in that dump. She knew too many of the local volunteers. They'd never admit to being heroes, but they'd strap on a Scott air pack and go in anyway, risking their lives to check the place from cellar to attic, making sure nobody had been sleeping in there with a careless cook-fire or candle.
Caroline might make rude jokes about the lack of a Haskell conscience, but the witches didn't risk innocent lives. Not if there was any other way. Guilty ones were a different matter.
"Forget I asked. She's half Morgan. Give her a crash course on not leaving evidence behind. You okay with that?"
Daniel nodded.
"And tell Ben to watch his step with young master Gary's lady-love. If that old pirate has a problem with dangerous women, take it up with me. Any family that's still spending Sir Henry Morgan's loot has no business being touchy about a few laws here and there. From where I sit, I'd think some proven survivor genes would look good on a Morgan balance sheet."
Daniel grunted and shook his head. "Well, Gary sure seems to think that girl looks good on a sheet. Don't know about his balance. I just hope he can keep his grades up, as well as . . . other things."
"Back off. That young man knows about her past, and he has his head on straight. He doesn't act like he's thinking with his dick, unlike some Morgan men I've known. If he believes he can trust her, maybe you should examine your own motives."
Daniel didn't look happy. Too bad. But Gary wasn't the major problem.
"Jackie Lewis, eh?"
Kate's daughter carried her father's name. Kate never had changed hers when she married Lew Lewis — some ways, the Rowley women were nearly Naskeag, nearly Haskells. They were matriarchs in that line, not patriarchs. They never left any doubts who ruled a Rowley household. Would the kid have turned out better if she'd carried the Rowley name herself?
Names held power. Haskell women never gave up theirs, and most times kept the father's name a secret. Caroline only knew about Ben because she needed to. Needed to know that handsome devil Gary was her brother.
Jackie Lewis. "No chance it was another girl? Big blondes aren't that scarce."
Daniel had kept his mouth shut, not wasting energy debating the impossible. Now he shook his head. "Big red blotch on her left biceps, not a tattoo. Birthmark. You've seen it a hundred times. One man I talked to got a real good look at it — she picked him up and slammed him against a wall four or five times. Pissed off because he didn't have more than a couple dollars in his pocket. She damn near smashed his head in."
Alice sighed, shook her head, and spent a few moments on rubbing cat ears. Must have been hot weather. The kid usually wore long-sleeve shirts, kept that blotch covered up. Just like Kate didn't want anyone staring at her belly and the scars. "This summer? After June? No chance it was last year or the year before?"
"Nope. Guy is a drunk, brain pretty well pickled, but he remembered he'd just scored a case of beer from a concession tent at the music festival. You know, down along the riverfront. She took the beer. That, he remembered. Hit him where it hurt."
And they hadn't held a festival last year, or the year before. This summer had been the first. Damn.
She raised her eyes from calico ears. "I thought you saw her body."
Daniel shrugged. "I saw a body, in a security monitor, view from twenty-thirty feet." Remembered pain twisted his face. "I wasn't in any condition to step outside and check closer. When we compared notes, the time and place were right for her, just by the corner of Tom Pratt's carriage house and the fire well underway. You'd both heard shots, full-auto rifle. Kate said it was an AK. And what I saw wasn't likely to be getting up and walking away. Face down, exit wound took the back of the skull right off. Messy enough to show even at that distance."
"Ugh. You never mentioned that before."
"Didn't think it would help any."
And the DA's forensics team had found blood there, a lot of blood, fragments of skull, brain tissue, DNA tied matches from Kate's trailer, and that ancient Browning automatic that Jackie had stolen. Ballistics match to the bullets from Kate's shoulder and hip, Alice's back. Shell casings back on the gazebo trail had matched, too. But no body. Pieces of a puzzle, forming a picture Alice didn't like.
She gave up on trying to find a comfortable position, gathered Atropos in her arms, and stood up. She paced over to the window and stared out, thinking. The view didn't improve her mood — that damned white Ford Explorer was back, under gray skies that threatened rain.
As soon as she noticed the car, it rolled off, slow and insolent, leaving a sense of cold menace behind. Third or fourth time she'd seen it, and it always rolled away before she could walk up to it and ask what the hell was going on. And mud blurred the license plate, so she couldn't ask Kate to run the tag. Kate . . .
Alice sighed. "I don't think it'd be a good idea if you told Kate about this. It's too easy for a drunk to toss disconnected memories all together in one stew. I've seen 'em in the ER, twitching with the DTs and claiming a fresh broken arm was a war-wound from the Tet Offensive. Vietnam. We don't know, and she's just starting to recover."
"Me talk to Kate? Not likely." He glanced at the floor under their feet, as if looking through into the cellar. "Ben and I usually avoid coming within a mile of that woman. She's nowhere near as dumb as she looks, and she's known both of us as long as you have."
As if on cue, the stereo hiccuped with a loud snap and the lights flickered for a moment. Muted curses rose up from under their feet. Then something large thumped the floor. Kate's voice came up, muffled: "You still got lights up there?"
"Yep."
"Okay. I'll try to keep it that way." The rest of what she said dropped off to a private mumble, of which Alice only caught ". . . cantankerous old bitch . . ."
Alice didn't think her lover was talking about a female dog. Daniel had jumped up at the sound and now looked rather nervous. Alice had to smile — even Morgans got trapped by "out of sight, out of mind" on occasion.
He'd known Kate was working in the cellar, known she wouldn't come out until Alice was through talking with her "client" and sounded the all-clear. Kate might suspect a great number of things, but she could go miles out of her way to avoid knowing them and having to put on her cop hat.
At least where Alice and the Morgan girls and witching were concerned.
Daniel shifted nervously from one foot to the other almost like a small boy who needed to pee. "I think I'd better be going. When do you want Caroline to see that corpse?"
"As soon as possible." She glanced at her watch and shook her head. Too late for today. "Tomorrow morning, first thing. She'll get in touch with Ben and meet you in town. I showed her your message. She already knows what's going on."
"Ummm. That message was private, 'Eyes only' stuff."
"These days, Caroline is my eyes. Just like with Gary, you've got to learn to trust the kids. You, me, Lainie, Maria, we've spent years winding them up. Now we have to turn them loose and let them run."
He didn't look satisfied. He did look like he wanted out, wanted to put that measured mile between him and Kate.
She opened the door for him, parlor to kitchen, giving the house word that she was through with this man and he could leave. Peggy and Ellen Morgan looked up from the kitchen table and their chaos of basket materials.
Cute kids, Peggy still thin and neuter at eight, Ellen a precocious thirteen with curves that were starting to get dangerous. They looked about as different as two girls could and still be obvious sisters — Ellen with dark blonde hair and olive skin, Peggy with hair nearly Indian black and pale freckled face. Mixed Welsh and Native and Italian genes could do that sort of thing.
Lainie had started them on basketwork; it looked like sweetgrass for training. Easier than ash splits for young fingers weaving, harder to weave well because soaked ash would hold a form after it dried out while sweetgrass drew its strength from structure and technique. The girls were trading off, Ellen working up a basket around one of Lainie's smallest wooden forms, Peggy braiding cured sweetgrass into twine.
But they worked quietly. "Hasn't Aunt Elaine taught you the song to go with that? That's how you wake up the magic in your basket. Songs for sweetgrass, songs for split ash, songs for porcupine quills and beadwork and the dyes of root and bark and berry, special songs for special patterns in the weave. Aunt Elaine is just as much a witch as I am."
Ellen frowned. "What's magic about a basket?"
"Everything is magic, Daughter of Questions. A chant and way of weaving baskets that makes your load of clams or potatoes seem lighter, keeps fresh fiddleheads from wilting in the sun, protects dried meat and fruit and meal from the damp — that's important magic.
"If the proper song for splitting ash and weaving it makes your fish-trap catch more fish, the family eats. Do it wrong, people go hungry. That's magic that makes a difference. Naskeag witchcraft isn't about flying around naked on a broomstick under a full moon or casting warts on your rival's nose. It's about the tribe surviving."
The outside door bumped open, Caroline using her butt as a third hand because the regulation two were full, and she slid bags of groceries into the mess on the kitchen table. Soaking wet paper bags of groceries on the edge of ripping, wet footprints across the floor, wet jacket shrugged off and hung dripping behind the stove, wet Caroline. She looked about as pleased with her condition as a drenched cat. Alice blinked and stepped to the window — now it showed a lead-gray sky, pouring rain, stiff gusts of wind.
An hour ago, the weather had been sunny and clear. Clouds had crept up behind the hills and pounced and started to leak all over the place while she was talking with Daniel. The stereo had masked and blended with the rush of raindrops on the roof. Maine weather. If you don't like it, wait five minutes.
Caroline stood there, dripping and smelling of wet wool, looking from Alice to Daniel. Alice didn't care for the way the girl's eyes narrowed and her lips pinched. "Bit of news on the car radio. Big fire up in Naskeag Falls — the old Paramount Hotel. Looks like arson."
Daniel met Alice's gaze and shook his head, with a side-glance to his daughters and back. "Guess I won't be going back to the big city for a while."
Alice nodded, message received, no need for details in front of innocent young ears. Like, you won't go back there until the dye wears off your hide and your hair grows out brown again. And you can show different papers to any nosy cops.
Funny how people could develop a verbal shorthand, almost telepathy, when they had enough shared experience. And Alice had known Dan Morgan since they'd been kids, Morgans and Haskells plotting out how they'd run the world when they grew up, known him a hell of a lot longer than most couples stay together.
Hell, if she hadn't been a Haskell witch and lesbian she might have married him. She might not be fishing in that pond, but she knew a good catch when she saw one. The two of them didn't need to waste a lot of words.
Shit. Someone heard about Daniel asking questions all around the alleys. Someone who understands forensics and doesn't want to leave evidence hanging around.
Someone who doesn't have any little twinges of conscience when firefighters rush into a burning building.
Alice grunted. Two ritual sacrifices, Aztec stuff, they had to be related. Why destroy the evidence up there and not out at Kate's stone circle? Who hated Kate that much?
That white Ford Explorer was getting on her nerves. The Peruvian brujo had driven a car like that, midnight blue Suburban but all those Detroit monsters filled the same Bad News niche in the ecosystem. Same windows tinted next thing to black. Same sense of lurking menace, like a coiled viper staring you in the eye. Dammit, she'd killed that bastard.
Or Kate had. Without Kate's strength, without her roots deep in Stonefort and that old circle, Tupash would have won. He hadn't expected Kate.