Friday, 9 a.m.
Jane was snoring softly when I pulled the drapes closed to create an ambience of night and safety and went down to help open Bloodstone. I had watched over her for two hours, and though she didn’t move, or wake, she seemed to soften and loosen as she slept, her brow smoothed in true slumber.
As Jubal, Isaac and I opened the store safe and the locked cabinets, setting out the wares for display, I described Jane’s condition to them and told them I would be staying close today. I babbled an apology about the spring line, jabbered promises to do twice the work once Davie was found, and knew I sounded demented. They were silent, letting me talk. When I ran down, Jubal came over to me, took a display rack from my hands and pulled me into his arms.
“We’ll take care of the spring line and the store, honey-bunch. It’s under control. You just take care of your family.”
“You’re going to have to quit calling me that,” I said, and I burst into tears. He let me snivel into his shirt, leaning into him. He held me while I cried until my tears dried themselves. I rested against him and sighed with comfort.
“Better?”
“Yeah.” I stood away, hands on his shoulders, and met his true blue eyes. “Thanks. I know you guys will handle the spring-line designs. That won’t make me feel any less guilty, though. I’m going to get some things from the back and take them upstairs. I can do some work up there, which will make me feel better. When Evan comes, will you send him up?”
“Sure. If you want to work, take the polished bloodstone up and string some sets. A bit of advice?” Jubal didn’t wait to see if I listened. “If you don’t jump that cop’s bones soon, your head will explode.”
“Jubal’s right,” Noe said. I hadn’t seen her come in. She was bent over a display and stood upright, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “He has a nice ass. You should jump him and get it over with.”
I laughed shakily and squeezed Jubal’s shoulders. “You guys are shameless.” To Noe I said, “You say every man has a nice ass, and you’re all but married to the green-logger.”
“Smitten. Not married. Not dead. Do the guy and get it over with. You’ll feel better.”
I rolled my eyes and unlocked Bloodstone’s front door before going to the workroom. Some comments were not worth a reply, and some would only make me blush, so I retreated. Better part of valor, and all that.
In the back, I pulled boxes marked in Jubal’s strong block print, BLOODSTONE HEARTS, BLOODSTONE BEADS, and MISC. STONES—GREEN. I gathered a fourth box containing findings: clasps, various silver and gold spacers, leftover pearls and stones from other projects, things I would need. While I worked I heard the first customer come in, the bells over the door tinkling, and registered the sound of voices speaking, though I didn’t catch the words. On top of my pile went a final box of jumbled jump rings, spacers and green glass beads, a tool kit with several kinds of pliers, stringing supplies, needles and thread, scissors and a few odds and ends. While I worked, my thoughts turned to the ornate key I had tucked into my pocket. To keep it safe, I strung it on a thin length of leather and hung it around my neck. If I ever found what it opened, I wanted to have it handy. Arms full, I was ready to go back to Jane.
Lugging the boxes up the stairs, I entered the loft. The first thing I saw was that the draperies had been thrown open. The logs blazed merrily in the fireplace, and the trundle bed had been put away. My bed was empty. I almost dropped the boxes as I whirled, taking in the apartment with a fast pirouette.
Sitting at the kitchen table was Jane, her head bent attentively forward. Across from my niece, her back to the tall windows, was Aunt Matilda.
My mouth fell open. Emotions tumbled across themselves as they raced through me. Shock, anger, relief, gladness, hatred. Jane nodded. “This is so cool,” she said. “It’s like a computer game.”
Jealousy wrapped itself around me. A red haze tinged my vision.
Before them on the table was a tin box painted with a stained-glass rendition of an angel. Beside it were three boxes of Tarot cards, and a deck of Tarot cards laid out in the Ha-gall Spread. Seven cards in three vertical rows, two cards to the left, two to the right, and three down the middle, with three across the bottom as if the upper seven rested on them.
Fury bubbled up in me. Without looking, I found a place to set the boxes and moved toward the kitchen table.
Aunt Matilda’s voice, melodic and soothing, said, “The Hagall Spread is a tool for revealing the path of spiritual growth in difficult situations. It is a favorite of mystics and those confronting a major life challenge.”
Neither looked up at me as I approached. I focused on the open tin box to the side and fought the desire to grab it to me. It was mine, and my mother’s before me! It had been in my trunk. Aunt Matilda had gone through my things. I gathered my growing anger about me like armor.
“The Knight of Swords is the significator card you have chosen. While it isn’t seen, and is hidden beneath the center card, it influences and directs all the other cards and they must be interpreted by its strengths and weaknesses. The Knight is a fearless and skillful warrior, a tornado, unfettered by emotion or material concerns. A card of action, indicating one able to boldly take on challenges that others consider terrifying or insurmountable.”
“Challenges? Like my gift?” Jane asked.
“Indeed. The Knight of Swords is a person who inspires fear and awe through the purity of his purpose and the intensity of his intellect.” Aunt Matilda didn’t look up from the cards, but her voice caressed, as if no one in the world existed for her in that moment but Jane.
“Does it have to be a guy?”
“Oh, no. A woman may be this Knight, for she is one who accepts quests, missions of great importance, fraught with danger. The desire to save David is such a quest as a Knight of Swords might accept. She is one who is outspoken, who speaks frankly. Your choice of this card represents your heart and your purpose. It may portend the swift initiation or conclusion of a conflict. A decisive invocation of force.”
“You will not do this in my house,” I said. Fury rose in me, a slow, steady swelling of power. “You will not.”
“It’s Aunt Tyler. She’s the Knight of Swords.”
I stopped, caught in the trap of Jane’s pronouncement.
“Ah. Then you were not thinking of yourself when you chose the Knight?”
Jane shook her head.
“I see. This card, the Two of Wands, represents the core or central issue of your current situation. When reversed, like this, it is indicative of the erosion of power and influence. Not knowing what to do, being caught off guard, hamstrung because of past decisions. Loss of interest, clarity or faith in a venture.”
“She’ll never give up on Daddy!”
“But do you fear that she will?” Aunt Matilda asked.
Jane’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes.”
“Stop this. Stop it right now,” I said.
As if I hadn’t spoken, Aunt Matilda tapped a third card. “This card represents something you did, or fear you did, to bring the situation about. The Page of Coins, reversed. This is the dark essence of earth, such as a chasm. Unfavorable news from outside. Irrationality, failure to recognize obvious facts, coupled with a decision to do nothing in the face of great need. Wastefulness, lack of focus.”
My hands curled into claws. That she would dare to go through my things, find my mother’s Tarot, my mother’s hated cards, and do a reading with them. That she would dare!
“There was that phone call,” Jane said. “I heard the message. Daddy said it wasn’t important, but I knew he was afraid. And I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t make him tell me.” Tears gathered in Jane’s eyes.
“Stop this,” I said.
“Could you have forced him to talk?” Aunt Matilda asked. “Even if you had known what was going to happen?”
A red haze grew, closing in from the edges of my vision. Jane sobbed once. Aunt Matilda went on, inexorable. “Stop this.” I spoke so low my words were a hiss of sound.
“The card here represents your beliefs, impressions or expectations.” Aunt Matilda almost smiled. “Ten of Swords. Ruin, crushing defeat. Sadness and desolation in the aftermath of catastrophic and total collapse. A decisive conclusion brought about through the swift and merciless application of overwhelming force working against you. Someone took your father. You believe it was your fault, but it wasn’t. It would have happened no matter what you did.”
“I should have stopped them.”
“Stop this now!” I shouted, fighting the urge to fling the cards from the table.
Aunt Matilda didn’t even look up, her voice still speaking in the cadence she fell into when she read the cards. “You wanted me to come, Tyler. You wanted me to help her. I am here.”
“Not like this.” I heard the fury in my voice and, beneath it, pleading. And I hated the sound of it.
“Why not like this?”
“It isn’t right. The Tarot is evil.”
“There is nothing evil in the Tarot except that the Holy Roman Church outlawed it centuries ago. Though I love the church, the pope and bishops made an error when they banned the Tarot. They feared it, they feared that God spoke through the gifted and the cards, and not through the church only. They feared loss of worldly power and authority, should God speak through any means but themselves. So, just as the ancient bishops outlawed scripture the common man could read, they banned the cards and crystal balls and silver cups and candle, the tools of the gifted and the charlatan alike. They dictated that scripture would be only in Latin, that men be the only priests, and made our use of our gifts a heresy.”
Aunt Matilda raised soft gray eyes to me. There was kindness there, a kindness so deep and pervasive I felt it enter me and soothe, as if a candle had been lighted in the dark. As if a huge hand had stroked me once and settled my ire. “God does not speak through the cards, Tyler. Nor does the devil, though either could if the heart of the quester was open to them. Only the psychic speaks through the cards. Only the pope’s fear made it heresy. And only your fear, and your mother’s fear before you, makes you tremble.”
She turned back to the Hagall Spread and tapped the next card. “This card at the upper left represents the spiritual history, the things you’ve learned, or in this case, the things in the spiritual world that are affecting this situation. Six of Coins represents success. But when reversed it indicates insolence and conceit with material things. Overconfidence, bad investments and imprudent handing of acquired wealth. Contempt for those less fortunate. Thievery has precipitated the current crisis.”
“I am not afraid,” I said.
Without looking up, she said, “Your mother was. She gifted you with her fear. I know. I often read the cards for you, and have seen you reading your mother’s journal.
“Jane, the card at the upper right represents the metamorphosis of the spiritual situation, and how your knowledge will evolve. The Ace of Coins is fortuitous. The seed of prosperity and material gain, perhaps as yet unseen. A new foundation from which to turn your dreams into reality.”
“I only want my daddy back,” Jane said. “I want to help him.”
“Then you must focus on the practical, understand the dynamics of the natural world. You must search for a gift, or document or inheritance, or an unexpected opportunity for physical achievement. That is what the Ace of Coins is trying to tell you.”
Instantly I thought of the heavy key and the gold.
“The card at the left of the lower line represents the person or qualities that will sustain your spiritual journey. The Two of Cups signifies love, the perfect harmony of union, in romance, friendship—”
“Or my daddy?”
“Or your father. A deep and palpable connection radiating joy and contentment. A great concordance or pledge of fidelity.”
“He’ll come home then.” Jane’s face lit up from within. “He’ll be safe.”
Aunt Matilda didn’t respond to Jane’s plea. “The card in the middle of the lower line represents the qualities that you express in this circumstance. The Ace of Swords, reversed. So many reversed cards.” She sounded pensive, anxious. “The seed of defeat—perhaps as yet unseen.”
Jane’s face plummeted. “I’m going to cause him to die!”
“Hush, child. Study the cards. Let your mind open and focus your gift. The cards are only a tool helping you to understand what you already know. This card may represent how you could be used to prevent disaster. Your Knight of Swords must be prepared to face a challenge, to meet it with the invocation of force. Ace of Swords suggests reason and intelligence misdirected or cast aside, an action that may result in injustice and falsehood. An excessive power abused. It may suggest new ideas or information with dangerous implications.”
Aunt Matilda’s mouth pulled down. “Your aunt is your protection, your Knight. Yet you are the one they want. You are the one they were waiting for. How did they know about you? And who are they?” She shook her head to clear it.
“The card at the right of the lower line represents the person or qualities that will reveal spiritual knowledge. Knight of Coins, when reversed, is your enemy. He is molten magma, slow to action even in the most urgent circumstances. A thinker, a planner, a force of nature that cannot be diverted from the wrong path. The voice of duty and honor utterly divorced from reality. He brings death.”
Aunt Matilda gathered the cards and shuffled them with a whisping sound, three times as she always did. The image overlaid the one from childhood, from the one visit I had paid to the Low Country when I was a child. Aunt Matilda shuffling cards, then turning the deck to face her, paging through the deck one by one as she turned each card upright. The silence in the loft built as I tried to mesh all my feelings, weave my fears into something manageable. It all kept slipping, like silk yarn through my fingers. Jane finally looked up and watched my face.
“My mother thought the cards were evil,” I said. That one thought out of all the others was paramount. Mama had hated the cards. Therefore I should hate them, too.
“Did she write in the journal why she feared them?” Aunt Matilda asked, her voice soft as cat’s feet across my mind.
“No. There are whole years when she didn’t write anything in it.”
She almost smiled. “Your mother was young when she married. Sixteen. Giselle and your father seemed to be very happy at one time. Seeming to be in tune with each other in mind and heart and purpose. Then your father disappeared. He packed a bag, took the car and left. He went to New York with no warning. No word. No explanation. And your mother lost contact with him, that fine and wondrous mental touch they had shared.
“The police became involved. They found the hotel where he stayed the first night he was in the city. His things were in the room. The bed had not been slept in. He was gone. Vanished.
“Giselle read his cards, over and over. And each time, they said the same thing. He was lost to her. He never came home. We never heard from him again. He never contacted his parents, who died in heartbreak before they turned sixty.” Aunt Matilda put the cards aside and folded her hands, staring at them. “She so feared the truth of the cards that she ran away from them. And because of her fear, you went through your time of gifting alone. I hold myself responsible for that, responsible for the impairment and degradation of your gift. It bloomed deformed because you were alone and afraid. Giselle passed her fear to you, and from you to Jane, had I not come.”
I picked out the one thing I understood from the litany of words. “I would never hurt Jane. Never.”
“Of course not. But you are now her Knight of Swords. Only you can bring her father home. And you are much less than you could have been.”
Jane looked up at me with something odd in her gaze. I recognized it as sympathy. As pity. The look stung me to my core. “I don’t need the damned St. Claire gift to bring Davie home,” I said.
Aunt Matilda finally lifted her head. “Don’t you?” She turned back to Jane. “I am here to help you with your gift. Your father asked me to come when it was your time. And I am here.”
“Davie asked you? Davie asked you to come for Jane?”
When Aunt Matilda didn’t answer, but simply handed Jane the deck of cards again, I turned and strode from the loft. On my way out, I grabbed coat and boots, gloves, scarf. I passed Evan Bartlock at the doorway. I didn’t know how long he had been there. I didn’t ask. I didn’t care.
The red haze of anger was gone, but the specter of jealousy still danced within me.
Evan Bartlock was silent for the first few miles. I didn’t look his way or speak, even after I turned off the tertiary road onto what was little more than a trail, concentrating on the serpentine, two-rut path that wound up the steep side of a hill. Gunning the motor and applying the brake, I ground the four-wheel-drive transmission, maneuvering the deeply grooved snow tires into the melting muck.
Near the midpoint of the hill, we dropped into a deep hole in the pseudoroad and Evan’s head hit the Fiberglas hardtop with a dull thump. He sent a look that accused me of hitting the hole on purpose, so I hit another one. He laughed. “You like doing this to me, don’t you? Showing me what a weak, wuss of a city boy I am and what a tough broad you are?”
“Tough broad? That’s an out-of-date, derogatory term left over from the fifties.” He laughed again and I felt some of the anger melt away like the snow beneath the tires. I couldn’t help it. I stuck my nose in the air. “I’m more like a goddess, Diana perhaps. A huntress, a woman who can outdo any man.” A grin pulled at my lips when he shook his head.
Evan knew I was taking out my temper on the Geo and he didn’t feel the need to try and talk me down from the rage or calm the ruffled feathers of the distraught little female. He even let me drive while I was mad, which was something that even Jubal had never let me do. I relaxed my shoulders and neck and slowed the SUV’s mad rush up the hill. “Yeah. Guess I do like showing you what a city boy you are.” I pulled into a small clearing that was level, more or less, and pulled up the hand brake.
Evan dropped his hold from the support grip over the door. His knuckles were suspiciously white. “So. You want to hear my news while we walk or while we’re still warm and comfy in this matchbox of a vehicle fit only for midgets and grade-schoolers.”
I laughed then and felt the last of the rage slip away, as he had maybe intended. “Midget is not PC. Neither is broad. Tell me now.”
He settled deeper in the worn seat, one knee against the door panel, one against the gear shift. “The cops took some papers when they searched David’s house. Financial papers. A will and life-insurance policy, among other things. They both name Tyler St. Claire as beneficiary.”
I looked at him, startled. “Davie bought a life-insurance policy? Not my brother. He hated those things. Said he had too much money to need life insurance. That was for poor folk like me. How much?”
“You didn’t say anything about the will.”
“I know about the will. I was there when it was drawn up. In the event that something happens to him, I gain custody of Jane and, for a nice fat fee, act as executrix of his estate until she’s old enough. Twenty-one, I think, or maybe it was twenty-four, I don’t remember.” I scrunched up my face, trying to remember, and tapped the steering wheel. A moment later, it all came together. “Spit and decay! The will and the policy are motives for me to do away with my brother. The estate money alone is a small fortune for me.”
“The policy was signed one week prior to David’s disappearance. You have motive. If you hired some thugs, you could buy both means and opportunity. You’re the one who received the two phone calls about David, one likely made by a female, possibly you, calling your machine from Asheville. You have the most to gain by his death. Even if they never find his body, you may be arrested for his murder.”
One fact blazed through the litany of my possible crimes, and it nearly made me founder. I put my head against the steering wheel, against the back of my hands. My voice so hostile it was lost beneath the breeze outside the Tracker, I said, “My brother is not dead.” Quietly I sat back, unhooked my seat belt and slid from the car, emotions I couldn’t even name simmering within me. “I’m Jane’s Knight. I’m going to find my brother and bring him home.” I grabbed my walking stick, slammed the door and started up the hill, GPS unit and Davie’s card in one hand, my walking stick in the other. Evan followed.
It wasn’t spring yet, nowhere near, but some of the trees were in early bud, with rounded, red leaf tips thrusting at the sky. In the day’s warmer air, squirrels chittered and bobbled along branches and capered from tree to tree. A feral cat, black with one white ear, sat behind a root, watching for a mouse. It tilted its head our way and dismissed us as unworthy, tail twitching.
Following a hard, silent climb, we reached the corner stob of the property, the iron almost buried in the loam. It matched the GPS coordinates on the scrap. Breathless, looking firmly to the west for the next marker, I asked, “Do you think I’m responsible for Davie’s disappearance?” The trees thinned out and the rise of the hill became sharper. It was going to be a difficult climb. I could hear Evan’s breathing just over my shoulder, raspy with effort.
“No. I don’t.”
“Why?”
“Gut instinct. Intuition. Insight and perception. All those things.”
I fought a smile, determined to give him nothing. “Sounds suspiciously like St. Claire gifts.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“You trust them, those gifts you said you didn’t have?”
“Yeah. And that really sucks.”
I laughed and looked back at him. His face was rueful, green eyes soft, lips parted for the heavy breathing the hillside required. Something clenched deep inside of me, a trill of heat, like liquid fire over rocks. Ashes and spit…. Shocked at my sudden raw need, I looked beyond him.
Over his shoulder the cat gathered himself and leaped. He landed and leaves flew. The cat settled to its meal, too hungry after the snow to play with its food first. One white ear twitched when it drew blood. Much like Evan Bartlock could devour me if I let him get any closer. If I’d been Aunt Matilda, I would have called it an omen.
I faced west and started along the property line to where the far marker should have been.
We hiked until after one, checked out two more pieces of property to no avail, then piled into the Tracker and headed back to town. We were hungry, tired, blistered by sun, wind and leather, and were ready for a break. A mile from the shop my cell phone rang. I downshifted and flipped open the phone. “Tyler.”
“What’s the good of being psychic if you can’t tell when trouble’s happening?”
“Jane?”
“You better get back here fast, Aunt Tyler. The cops are here and Aunt Matilda is getting pissed.” The connection clicked off.
I closed the phone, tossed it in Evan’s lap and gunned the little motor. The Tracker clawed its way up a long hill, rounded a corner and slid into a parking slot on the street. I was out and running before the engine stopped, Evan right behind me.
In Bloodstone, Jubal was helping two clients, Noe was ringing up a third, and Isaac was opening a display for a fourth. Aunt Matilda’s imperious tones floated down the stairs, which I took two at a time.
“I have no idea what my nephew did for the government, Mr. Wiccam, and unless you have proof to the contrary, I suggest you cease such baseless innuendo and slanderous speculation.”
I skidded to a halt at the tableau in my loft. Aunt Matilda, arms akimbo, faced down a group of three men in my kitchen. Jane stood behind her, scowling. The Tarot cards were scattered on the table to their side. Evan lifted me like a child, hands beneath my arms, and set me aside so he could see better. I showed great restraint by not cuffing him.
“Your nephew has approximately eighteen-point-two-million dollars stashed in offshore accounts,” Adam Wiccam said. “Far more than he made working as a government employee. And roughly two times what was missing from special government accounts when he disappeared.”
“We’ve had our eyes on David St. Claire and his sister for years,” Harry Boone said to Wiccam, his voice self-important.
“My guess is, you’ve been watching Tyler with the smaller of your two brains,” Aunt Matilda said.
I smothered a laugh and walked into my home. I’d never seen Aunt Matilda do battle, but I was impressed already. She had once been a buxom woman, now withered to a bundle of sticks and sinew and large wags of fatty skin. But there was something of the warrior in her, something fierce as she faced down the men, and something of the courtesan, the actress and the femme fatale in high choler. Though she must have seen me, she didn’t look my way, holding their attention with fierce eyes.
“I don’t trust you, young man.” She focused on Harry, her head reared back. Throwing out her hands, flesh wobbling in soft bags along her arms, she said, “Your aura is a dark brown where it rests against your skin, the somber shade of a deceiver and a swindler. I sense malfeasance in your soul, a darkness that removes you from God.” Her tone dropped, sonorous and deep. “Hidden sin follows you. Old cruelty.”
“Aunt Matilda as gypsy queen,” Evan whispered into my ear. “Ever seen her?”
I shook my head no.
“Very theatrical. I saw her go into it once when I was visiting years ago. A state tax man was giving her heck and she started telling him about this little perversion he had with his toy poodle. The guy turned and ran.”
I squirmed. The description was uncomfortably close to what Jane had done to her pediatrician. My niece watched the conflict with wide eyes.
“And you, young man.” Ignoring Wiccam, she turned to the third man, Detective Jack Madison. “You stand at the apex of light and dark. Death stands square in your path and at your right hand. You have much to lose or gain from your decisions today. You also have an unfortunate tendency to slovenliness and overeating, like a bovine at pasture, grazing without thought. If you are not careful, you will grow fat like your uncle. I foresee a lifelong struggle for you.”
Her eyes closed a moment before her lids popped open. She speared the detective with her eyes and sniffed at the air around him. “I suggest you get that nagging issue of blood looked at. It isn’t cancer yet, but it will surely develop into that dread disease should you continue to procrastinate.” Madison took two quick steps toward the door, his face paling, then suffusing with what almost looked like relief.
“As for you,” Aunt Matilda finally faced Wiccam. Her eyes widened and she retreated a pace, one hand on the Tarot cards scattered on the table. A subtle change came over her, a drawing in, a gathering of forces. She gripped one of the crucifixes that dangled around her neck. “You are earth and fire flowing together,” she said, using the tone she employed only for readings, “darkness and burning. One who has chosen the shadow path, the path of darkness. Your life and choices are utterly divorced from reality.”
The words were familiar but for an instant I couldn’t place them. Then I remembered. Jane’s reading. The Hagall Spread. A chill crawled down my spine on little insect feet. To Aunt Matilda’s side, Jane wavered on her feet. Her eyes closed slightly, face going slack.
“You bound the Ace of Swords with lies and earthly chains. You seek the King of Cups to do him harm, but you seek in vain. The Knights battle against you and the Queen of Cups binds you.”
“What does all that nutty stuff mean?” Evan whispered in my ear.
I shook my head. I had no idea. “Gibberish.” But I didn’t really believe that. It almost made sense at the edges of my mind. It meant something to Aunt Matilda. And I was afraid it meant something to Jane, too.
Without looking, Aunt Matilda reached out and picked up a single card. “This is for you.” She held the card out to Wiccam. It was Death on its white horse. “You do battle with the light. Blood will spill. Death will come with darkness.”
“That’s enough,” I said, shaking the insect of fear off my shoulders. I wasn’t sure why I was so disturbed, but I wanted to put this farce to bed fast. “I don’t know what you guys want, but you’re scaring my niece.” Jane’s eyes opened at that and she blinked slowly. “Say your piece and get out,” I said.
Wiccam turned to me and bared his teeth in a smile. He knew me. Instantly. He knew my gift, the holes in it, the wall around it. He came toward me fast. I thought for a moment he might hit me. Instead he strode on out the door and down the steps. After a moment, Boone and Jack Madison followed. And they were gone.
Aunt Matilda fell into a chair at the table, her head in her hands. “Oh, merciful heaven. What awful souls.” She wrenched in a deep breath and sat straight, still the melodramatic woman I remembered from my youth. She began gathering her scattered cards.
Jane moved around the table until she could see both Aunt Matilda and me. “Say something,” she demanded. Aunt Matilda pressed her lips together in a tight line. “Say it. He has a wall, like Aunt Tyler’s,” Jane said. “He’s creepy and mean.” Jane looked at me. “He wants to kill you. He wants to do bad things to you and he wants to make a baby with you. And he can’t decide which he wants more.”
The stool beneath my backside was too hard, too circular, too flat. Whoever designed seats like this either had no concept of human anatomy or had a wide sadistic streak. Ignoring my discomfort, I switched on three tumblers, each polishing bloodstone beads for the Valentine’s Day sale, and secured an unfinished, irregular-shaped bead in the drill press. Checking the position of the bit, I slowly rotated the wheel, lowering the wet drill. Even through the ear protectors, the sound of drill and tumblers created a cacophony of high-pitched, grinding, whining noise. Damp bloodstone dust blew into the air, bouncing off my eye protectors and respirator. The drill punched through the stone, and I pulled the particle-mask/air-filter off my sweaty face.
The odor of bloodstone was bitter and sharp, a distinctive scent. I often thought I could tell what stone was being drilled just by the smell, though that was surely fancy. A new shaped bead in place, I rubbed my face and reapplied the mask and ear protectors, whirling the wheel down to bore a new hole. It was mindless, numbing, backbreaking work.
For comfort’s sake, I could have stood while drilling, or pulled in a chair from the front of the shop, or even sat on a pillow. But I was feeling like a failure, a useless, washed-up, has-been. Or better yet—a useless, washed-up, never-quite-was. Yeah, that was me. Never quite was a St. Claire, never quite an athlete, never quite a singer, poet, dancer, skier, artist, never quite a success at anything except cutting and shaping stone. I felt morose, self-pitying. Ill-natured, ill-humored and worthless, that was me. The drill bit punched through. I put on another. Again and again, until I had drilled enough for a half-dozen sixteen-inch necklaces.
I was sweating profusely, so intent on my work I was unaware of the world around me. When something tapped my shoulder, I jerked, whirled, and almost fell off my stool. Grabbing a mallet, I reared back and almost hit Aunt Matilda.
“Spit and decay,” I cursed. I slammed down the mallet, turned off the drill press and tumblers, and yanked off my masks and ear protectors. “I could have killed you!” I shouted.
Aunt Matilda lifted her chin in a gesture that clearly said, You could have tried.
“What?” I demanded, hearing the sullen tone in my voice.
“You are not a failure.” Her eyes spit sparks. “You are exceptional.”
“What?” I threw the masks to the worktable.
“If you are going to project so loudly that every receiver for miles can hear, then at least project the truth.”
“Which is?”
“You were ripped from the financial and emotional protection of the St. Claire environment when you could barely toddle. You were raised by a frightened, weak-minded woman who would rather run than face down her own demons. When she died, you were left to a coldhearted, sick man who barely allowed you space to grow up in and gave you no emotional support whatsoever, and who then passed away without seeing to your education or your future. And, you survived the transition from child to gifted without losing your mind.”
“Well, whoop-de-doo. So I had a lousy childhood. This is supposed to make me feel better?” I slid from the stool to the floor and planted my feet.
“Yes. You are now a resourceful, capable young woman, a talented, though blocked, St. Claire who taught herself—by the seat of her pants—how to utilize her gifts. You are a designer of one-of-a-kind jewelry, with a successful line, a flourishing online catalogue and a financially prosperous business. You not only survived what would have stunted or destroyed most young girls, you feasted on it. You forced that barren life to give you what you wanted.” Tears gathered in her eyes with the force of her pronouncements. “You grew up, made friends who will stick beside you unto death, made a place for yourself, and learned how to love.” Faltering, the sparks of her anger died, drowned in her falling tears. She brushed them away and touched my cheek with a gentle finger, the flesh warm and wet against my cold skin. “I am proud of you. Deeply and intensely proud.”
I stared at her, this queen in a denim skirt and chambray tank top, and didn’t know what to do. Tears prickled my own lids. I backed away a step, my progress halted by the work-table against my spine.
Aunt Matilda smiled sadly and said, “You are not perfect. You have a terrible temper, a deep and abiding fear of being abandoned, and a tendency to put yourself down. You are poor at math because it bores you, and you never bothered to learn how to play the guitar your brother gave you before he left you to the callous care of that horrid Lowe man. But you know how to love.”
My tears fell, making twin tracks through the bloodstone dust.
Aunt Matilda wiped her face and took my hand, tucked it into the soft flesh of her elbow. Pulled me through the workshop to the small restroom, an unheated nook with a toilet and sink. She pushed me toward the sink. “Wash up. You look like a miner, or the Hulk after someone let all the air out of his bulk.”
Meekly I turned on the hot water, let it warm, and washed bloodstone dust off my face, arms, hands and neck. Wet bloodstone dust had coated my exposed flesh, leaving pale ovals at eyes and nose, and turned me into a greenish-reddish comic-book monster. It made my skin stiff. I really needed a shower, but that would have to wait.
Cleaner, I left the bathroom and spotted Aunt Matilda standing at my workbench. Her worn, well-thumbed deck of Minchiate Tarot was placed in the dead center of the table. To its left was her Bible, a big, leather-bound book with her name embossed in gold. To the right was my mother’s tin box, open, as if to display all my mother’s ceremonial possessions. Mama’s crucifix was draped on top.
Head lowered, Aunt Matilda stared at the items, her fingers clasped in front of her, her arms bare to the chill of the room. I had never seen Aunt Matilda wear a coat, sweater, or sleeves of any kind. In the Low Country, that was reasonable. Here in the mountains, in the cold of winter, it looked odd to see her standing thus, in the chill of the room.
Sensing my thoughts, she said, “I do not expect you to understand who I am or who the St. Claires are.” Her head lifted. Through the little window above my workbench table, she stared at the brick wall of the building beyond. “Some of it you won’t listen to. Some of it might frighten you. You aren’t ready yet. But I can tell you that you are a wonderful, good person. That if Davie has a chance in the world of being found alive, it will be because of you.” She turned sad eyes to me a moment before she gathered up the cards, the box and Bible, holding them close to her chest.
I wondered what she had intended to do with them. I had a feeling that, whatever her plan, she had changed it unexpectedly. Thoughtfully, she moved from the bench to the doorway. Like a pull toy being drawn by the string of her will, I followed her through the shop where Jubal and Noe were both helping customers. Neither looked up.
We started up the steps to the loft. “I can’t sense Davie,” she said finally. “I have tried to scan for him numerous times since he was taken and I get nothing. I can remember only a few times that has happened with St. Claire family members, and always when they are deeply stressed. But you, with your damaged gift and untrained mind, with your fears and trembling, you can reach him. And that is because of your love for him and his for you. I will trust this love to bring him home. And I will help as I can.”
A sense of relief washed through me as she intended it to, born manipulator that she was. But I couldn’t make myself add, “the old battle-ax,” even if only in my thoughts. Something had changed between us. I didn’t want to damage our newfound accord, or whatever it was.
“Now. As to Jane.” Her voice was hollow in the echoes of the stairwell, our feet shushing beneath us. Aunt Matilda glanced at me, lips tightening for battle. “I am willing and eager to train Jane to use and honor her gift. But I can train her only one way—the only way I know—with the Tarot as a focus and fulcrum. Not to tie her to the devil, as your mother taught you, but to open her mind, to give her young brain visuals for concepts and theories for which we have no words. If this is anathema to you, I will pack and go.”
I sighed and rubbed my forehead where a headache was starting. It hammered and sang at the fringes of my brain. “I have one question.” The words drilled into me as I spoke them, piercing the edges of my mind. I stopped at the top of the steps, one hand on the knob, my eyes on the dirty butterfly-strip bandages. There was bloodstone dust ground into the edges and into my cuticles. The dust was reddish, like old blood. Old wounds. “Why didn’t anyone come when I came into my gift? You knew about Jane when her time came. You had to have known about me.”
Aunt Matilda didn’t touch me. I was grateful for that. She shifted, the sound bright in the echoing hall. “Your uncle was dying. You had met my husband, William.”
I remembered a wizened older man who sat on the front porch, whittling, carving small animals out of swamp oak, cherry and hickory. He was a quiet man, engrossed in the wood. I had a lop-eared bunny somewhere carved by him and gifted to me. He had smiled when he placed it in my palm. The Goth bunny came to mind, the one I had used to test Jane. Had I taken the image from the carving? I nodded. “I remember.”
“Will was diagnosed with cancer. He lived with the disease for years, taking different types of chemotherapy, trying all sorts of treatments. He ate only green, raw food, organically grown. He saw Cherokee healers and shamans and European herbalists and practitioners of Eastern medicine. He drank teas and took supplements. He lived for almost ten years. But when you were thirteen, he began to decline. He was dying when you came into your gift. And I sat by his side and held his hand. Loving him to the very end. And by that, by that dedication, that love we shared, so utter and complete, I failed you.”
Suddenly I knew where the lop-eared bunny was. I could see it in Mama’s trunk, in the corner, on its side in the dark. Alone. Once again, tears fell down my face, burning where they touched my weather-chapped skin. “Teach her. I don’t know enough to help her and I have a feeling that Jane is a lot stronger than I would ever have been.”
I opened the door to my loft. The television was on, music from The Little Mermaid filling the open space. Across from the door, Jane kicked and hit an imaginary opponent. It reminded me of me, kicking at things that weren’t there. I took a deep breath. “Thank you for coming, Aunt Matilda. I didn’t know what to do for her.” I looked at my aunt, a short woman, like me, her eyes on a level with mine. And I took my fear in my hands like reins. “And while you’re here, would you teach me, too?”
Happiness suffused her face, leaving her glowing. Aunt Matilda patted my cheek once and held her hand there. “I would be honored, my dear.”