“Amity Street,” I said, answering Nick’s question about our destination.“Amity Street,” I said, answering Nick’s question about our destination.
“The Poe Homes?”
I didn’t answer. The housing project they’d built for blacks in the nineteen-thirties had been named for the man who had lived next door. I briefly wondered what he would think about that.
“Tell me why we’re going there in the dead of night, please, just so I can be prepared.”
“I told you, I’m looking for spirals on some of the older buildings in certain parts of town. I just need to check out 203 Amity Street.”
He cocked his head sideways. “The museum is closed, and there’s no way you’re breaking inside.”
I said nothing, not wanting to lie or explain. Nick was silent for a lot of the ride, finally speaking just as I turned onto Amity Street.
“It’s actually Edgar Allan Poe on that video, isn’t it?”
I pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. When I said nothing, Nick looked out the window at the brick façade of number 203. His expression was full of wonder as he put words to thoughts that seemed impossible. “Poe was in that pawn shop, and you think the spiral has something to do with how he got there.”
It wasn’t a question, and Nick seemed to take my silence as confirmation. I wondered if his easy acceptance of the inexplicable would ever extend to me, and then I put that thought out of my mind immediately.
He touched the window, still lost in thoughts of Poe. “He only lived here with his aunt and cousins for a couple of years, you know, early in his life, after he got himself expelled from West Point.”
“Why do you know so much about Edgar Allan Poe?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Nick shrugged. “He’s part of Baltimore’s history, and I know my city. I know, for example, that this house was scheduled for demolition in the 1930s, and it took some serious sleuthing with old maps for the Poe preservationists to prove that this had been his house.”
“And now it’s in the middle of the projects,” I said, peering through the window at the low brick buildings that surrounded the old row house which was now the Poe museum. I started the car and Nick looked sharply at me.
“What are you doing? I thought we were searching for spirals.”
I shook my head. “Like you said, it’s the projects, and you’ll follow me in if I go, so …” I shrugged.
He looked at me for a long moment, and then I heard rather than saw his smile as I pulled away from the curb. “You’d care if something happened to me.”
I scowled. “You’re a human being. Of course I care.” I steered the car back toward the river, taking side streets through older neighborhoods.
“So, were you born in Baltimore?” he finally asked me.
“I was,” I said, careful to keep my voice neutral and my eyes peeled on the road.
“Have you always lived in Fells Point?”
“I’ve lived all over,” I said, “but I moved back here about ten years ago. What about you?” I asked, because people liked to talk about themselves. It usually made them forget to ask questions.
“I grew up in Bolton Hill. My parents still live there,” he said. “Are your parents still in Baltimore?”
I shook my head. “They died a long time ago,” I said. “My grandmother raised me, and I inherited the building I live in from her.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Any siblings?”
“No.” I didn’t elaborate.
He was quiet for a long moment before he finally said, “That must be rough – being alone.”
“I’m used to it,” I responded.
“I’ve got a huge family if you want to borrow any of us for holidays and family reunions. We’re pretty good at them.”
I stopped at a light, my heart suddenly constricting uncomfortably in my chest. Nick heard the silence and turned to face me. “Too much?”
I nodded. “Too much.” I exhaled a sigh. “I don’t know you, Nick, and you don’t know me.”
“I want to, though,” he said quietly.
“You can’t,” I said, even more quietly.
He blew out a breath. “George said you’d say something like that.”
My voice was sharp. “George? What did he say?”
Nick hesitated for just a moment, as though he didn’t want to say the words out loud. “He said you had lots of reasons for being alone, but none of them were good enough to keep me away if I really wanted to get to know you.”
“Really.” My tone was hard. “Why are you here, Nick?” I didn’t look at him, but could feel his gaze on me.
“You’re mysterious and interesting,” he said, “and I’ve never been able to resist an interesting mystery. The fact that you’re beautiful too – that’s actually just annoying, because it’s so damn distracting.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So you want to … solve me?”
He scoffed, “Hell no. Digging for clues is as much as I could ever hope for.”
I cocked my head to the side and glanced at him. He met my gaze unselfconsciously, and his eyes seemed to dance in the streetlights.
“Got any other suggestions of places to look for a spiral?” I turned my gaze back to the street.
His smile was slow and easy and held no discernable intention or expectation. “The older, the better, right?”
“Pre-Civil War would be best,” I said with a grimace.
“Pratt Street then,” Nick said confidently.
A familiar shudder went through me, and Nick raised an eyebrow.
“Someone walk on your grave?”
I gave him a side-eye glance. “You have no idea.”
I parked the car in the lot near my place and we headed to Pratt Street on foot, scanning the bricks of old buildings for spiral shapes on our way. Nick explained the history of Pratt Street and the locations of several known slave markets along it.
“Have you ever heard of the slave jails?” he asked when we got to the corner of Pratt and Howard.
“There was one right here,” I said quietly, “called a slave pen. They finally tore the building down in the 1930s.”
Nick scowled. “I’ve read some of the archives from before the Civil War. Some guy advertised that owners could check their slaves in to be fed and ‘housed’ for twenty-five cents a day.”
“Slatter,” I said under my breath.
“What’s that?” Nick asked.
“Hope H. Slatter. He built the slave pen here. My nana … knew someone who’d been held there as a child. She wouldn’t walk down Pratt Street. Too many ghosts, she said.”
“Your grandmother Alexandra Reynolds?” Nick asked.
I shook my head. “No, Nana was my mom’s mother. She died when I was little.”
I shuddered again as we passed the site of another pen that had been owned by Joseph Donovan. There weren’t many slave trade buildings left in Baltimore, but nothing could erase the echoes of pain that infused the landscape down by the Inner Harbor.
“I’d love to talk to you about your family history,” Nick said after we’d walked in silence for several blocks.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and resisted the urge to flip the hood up on my sweatshirt. “My nana’s people were slaves. My other grandmother’s people owned them. I was too young to ask Nana for her stories, and my parents wouldn’t tell me any that they knew. The only person in my family I ever really got to know was Grandmother Alexandra, and she wasn’t easy.”
“Do you have any of their papers? Letters or photographs or anything else a Baltimore history buff could rifle through?”
I turned to face Nick. He looked so eager and hopeful, and I knew this was going to hurt. “It’s my family we’re talking about, not abstract names in a history book. They were real people with real lives, and their stories are personal and private to them. I told you about Grandmother Alexandra’s legacy to me because you asked about the building. But if you ask about her life, I’m going to say no. Who she was in her life was her story to share, not mine.”
“I’ve disappointed you.”
“I am disappointed,” I said, “but it’s not specific to you. I’ve seen too many personal letters taken outside the context of everything its author had seen, done, and lived through, scavenged to fit some historian’s version of the author’s life. The contents of those letters aren’t just facts on a page, they’re thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams. They’re private, Nick. You wouldn’t read someone’s journal just because you had the luck to find it, would you?”
His eyebrows furrowed. “If they’re dead, what does it matter?”
“Not everyone’s … descendants are dead.” I stumbled over the sentence and sucked in a breath at my own carelessness.
Nick turned and continued walking, and I fell into step next to him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
I exhaled away my frustration. It was tiring to relive. “You didn’t know you were prying,” I said quietly.
We didn’t speak again until we turned down the alley to the back of my building. “I’m trying,” he said, “to figure out how to get you and Poe into the basement of the pawn shop without getting shot, arrested, or losing my badge.”
I stared at him in astonishment. “Why?” I asked simply, because the rest of the sentence tripped over all the questions that word encompassed.
He seemed to ponder his answer for a moment as he looked down the alley at George’s shelter. “A couple of reasons,” he said as he finally met my eyes. “As much as I am dying to ask the man about his life, not to mention all my questions about how and why he’s here, it does seem pretty reckless to mess around with the universe by keeping Edgar Allan Poe.”
I snorted, “You think?”
Nick grinned at my reaction, but then his smile dimmed as he looked in my eyes. “Also,” he said, “I think you’d probably try to get Poe into the pawn shop on your own, and considering how terrified that guy Weir seemed to be, I’m pretty sure someone would get shot. Though honestly, I’m not so sure he’d survive an encounter with you.” The grin was back, and I scowled at him.
“What exactly are you saying, Officer Pieretti?”
“I’m saying,” he took the key out of my hand and unlocked my back door, then opened it and gave me back the key, “that I’m pretty sure you have secret superhero skills that nobody knows about.”
He stood too close and was way too interesting-looking to be that close. I couldn’t look away. “And you know that because …?”
Nick looked down into my eyes, and his tone shifted from playful to serious. “I saw you defuse the situation with Weir. You did it with words, and you did it with confidence. I know what kind of hatred is out there, and my gut tells me Weir is one of those ‘shoot first, justify later’ guys. But you not only saved your own life, you de-escalated the two white guys with guns. Now, you either actually are immortal, or you have the nerves of a stone-cold negotiator and the instincts to match.”
I blinked at his insightfulness, and then wasn’t sure what to do with the feeling of having been seen. It had been so long since I’d felt visible that I’d forgotten the flush of its warmth on my skin. Like standing close to a campfire on a cold night, it was addictive, but one step closer would make it dangerous. Nick saw me, and because I wanted to bask in the warmth of it, I took a step backwards, away from the flames.
“Or maybe I’m just a bartender who understands people,” I said, forcing lightness into my voice.
He let me keep the distance I’d put between us. “I’m not going to ask if you want me to hang here while George uses the facilities, because I know you don’t need my help. But if you’d like the company, I’m good for it.”
I shook my head. “Thanks for helping me look for spirals.” I stepped inside the back door. “Good night, Nick.”
He hesitated just a second, like he wanted to say something, but then he just smiled. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
I smiled back. “Dream wonderful dreams or dream nothing at all.”
I was still smiling as I closed and locked the door, and after George had come and gone with a doff of his imaginary cap and Poe was locked safely into the nest with his notebook and a new stack of books, I realized I still felt the warmth of being seen, and stepping back from the fire hadn’t diminished it at all.