Chapter Fourteen

 

When I left Gideon’s classroom, I found a now-familiar figure hovering outside the Humanities building.

When I say hovering, I mean exactly that.

Ambrose’s GramMa was floating in the air about six feet above the ground. A ring of gaping students, faculty, and security stood below, mostly taking video on their cameras.

GramMa ignored them, her glowing gaze fixed on the building entrance.

“Holy fuck,” I said, ducking back into the building. I started back the other way, and ran almost immediately into Gideon.

“Now what?” he demanded.

I sprinted past him, throwing over my shoulder, “I’d stay inside if I were you.”

“Why thsould I?” he called after me.

I didn’t bother to answer. I didn’t know if GramMa posed a danger to other witches. She clearly had no interest in her mortal audience, which was good news. Not entirely good news, since she was sure to make the evening’s headlines. But better her than me. Despite her strength, she was so erratic and unfocused, I believed the only way she could harm another witch was if she somehow got the drop on them. And that seemed increasingly unlikely given that she shed signal like a telephone transformer about to blow.

I burst out the doors on the opposite end of the building, ran for the blossoming trees, and snapped my fingers.

I landed, out of breath and rattled, in the alley behind Blue Moon Antiques.

I mopped my forehead, opened the rear entrance, and stepped inside.

“We did have something like that,” Blanche’s soothing voice reached me from the showroom. “An Italian Regency apothecary chest. But we sold it earlier this week.”

The prospective customer murmured their disappointment.

“However, we have a lovely little Georgian corner cabinet you might be interested in?”

My cell phone began to ring. John’s photo—taken on Glas Maol during our honeymoon—appeared. I pressed the green button.

“Hey!” I said way too brightly.

There was a pause, and then John said neutrally, “Hey. Can you get away for lunch? I think we need to have a chat.”

“Oh.” I didn’t quite like the sound of that—I think the lack of his usual warmth warned me this was not a casual invite. “Am I in trouble?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been happier.” His voice was pleasant enough, but my heart sank.

“It…could be difficult to get away right now.”

“Try.” He sounded less pleasant. “I’ll see you at home in twenty minutes.” He hung up.

At home?

That was not good. The privacy of our own home meant he anticipated raised voices and things being said that we might both regret.

“Cos?” Ambrose said from right behind me.

I managed not to yelp, but I can’t deny that by then my nerves were shot.

I turned. “What’s up?” I was smiling, but it must not have been very convincing because he hesitated.

“I’m sorry, but I have to leave. Mrs. Beverly phoned. GramMa sneaked out when she was using the restroom.”

I let out a long, weary breath. All at once, I felt very tired. “Yes. I know. She was at San Francisco State just a little while ago. They have her on video. Flying.”

He went so white, I thought he was going to faint. I grabbed his shoulders. “No, no, no. Don’t do that. We don’t have time for that.”

“What are we going to do?” he whispered.

I opened my mouth, but the words of reassurance he desperately needed—that I desperately needed—were not there. I shook my head.

He swallowed hard, said, “Were you able to talk to the Duchess?”

It was hard to speak over the lump in my throat. I had left message after message on an answering machine that might never be played again. My father wasn’t answering either, and that, I thought, was the worst indication of all. Once again, all I could do was shake my head.

“I don’t know what to do.” He sounded hopeless.

I didn’t know what to do either. It was hard to imagine things could get much worse, but still I had a dreadful feeling they were about to.

I said briskly, “Listen. I think the best thing is that you go home. She’s bound to show up there eventually. When she does, give her the Star Crystals in some tea, like we discussed. Don’t worry about coming back here. Don’t leave her alone. I’ll see if I can get you some help.”

“Er…sorry to interrupt,” Blanche said apologetically. “Ambrose, dear, your—your grandma is here to see you.”

Ambrose let out a sound alarmingly close to a shriek, and brushed past me and Blanche.

Blanche gazed after him in wonder and made the avert sign. She looked at me and shook her head.

“GramMa, what are you doing here?” Ambrose’s fearful words were followed by the indistinct but querulous tones of his grandmother.

I said, as though everything were perfectly normal, “I have to meet John for lunch. I should be back by…”

Blanche was gazing in the direction of where the voices of Ambrose and his grandmother could be heard growing steadily louder.

“Maybe one,” I said. “Maybe two. I’m not sure.”

Blanche turned to face me, her eyes—one blue, one green—wide behind today’s star-shaped glasses. “Cosmo, what is going on?”

“It’s all under control,” I assured her.

“It is?”

“Yes. Or…maybe not. No. But it will be.”

Blanche was shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”

Me neither, and I, at least, had most of the facts. I gave up on the pretense that if we just carried on, we could weather the storms brewing around us.

“Listen, Blanche. Forget what I was saying about lunch. When Ambrose and Grand-mère leave, I want you to get rid of any customers who haven’t already fled. Left. Customers who haven’t left. Close the store and go home.”

“Go home!”

“Yes. Go home. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come back to work.”

“Safe?” Blanche repeated blankly.

“Yes. Don’t come back until then.”

“But—”

“We’ll call it a snow day.”

“But it’s not snowing. It’s not even raining today.”

“It’s snowing somewhere,” I asserted. “You just enjoy your extra day off. I’ll talk to you soon. I hope.” I pushed out the back door, started running, and snapped my fingers.

 

 

There was no sign of the limo outside our townhouse when I arrived home two minutes later.

That was good because I wanted to speak to Bridget privately.

Bridget O’Leary is our housekeeper. She was a church lady friend of John’s mother, and so she’d come highly recommended by Nola, but she was also a witch and—though neither of them has ever admitted it—one of my mother’s spies. That sounds like a criticism, but in fact I don’t have many complaints when it comes to Bridget. She’s a wonderful housekeeper and has the lightest touch with pastry of anyone I’ve ever known. Plus, I’ve come to believe she doesn’t tell Maman everything.

Anyway, Bridget being a part-time church lady herself, I was kind of hoping she might have some suggestions regarding Ambrose’s GramMa.

I opened the front door and was relieved to hear the sound of Bridget vacuuming upstairs. My relief didn’t last long.

“I appreciate that that you’re on time,” John’s voice said from over to my left.

To which I brilliantly replied, “You’re here!”

He didn’t bother answering, continuing to set cartons of food out on the table in the raised dining alcove. We don’t use the alcove a lot. The house has a formal dining room, which we use for dinner parties, but mostly we eat at the kitchen table or on the patio by the pool. The choice of the alcove—his attempt to find neutral ground?—made me more uneasy.

I joined him, saying, “The condemned man ate a hearty meal?”

John gave me a sardonic look. “I got you the Gladiator salad.”

That was actually nice of him. I loved the salads at Heroic Italians.

“Thanks.” I sat down at the table and popped the plastic lid off my salad. The scent of Italian prosciutto, spicy salami, and smoked mozzarella made my mouth water. I had thought I was too nervous and worried to eat, but I realized I was hungry. Maybe condemned men really did eat hearty meals?

John sat down across from me, unwrapped his OMG, and took a huge bite. He chewed, swallowed, said, “I know you didn’t have time for breakfast, so eat and then we’ll talk.”

I nodded. This clear indication of John’s obvious restraint was just making me more nervous, so I had to force myself to keeping eating.

As efficient as any machine, John ate his sandwich, drank his sparkling water, and then folded his arms, preparing to wait politely for me to finish.

I pushed my salad aside. “That’s all I want. Just tell me what I’ve done now.”

He eyed me steadily, seriously, then took out a folded square of printing paper. He unfolded the paper and showed me the composite drawing the police sketch artist had made after Eddie Darquez’s death.

“Bergamasco thinks this looks like you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t think it looks like me. The mouth is all wrong. Do you think it looks like me?”

John said, “It doesn’t matter what you think or I think, because we both know it is you.”

I said nothing.

John took his cell phone out, pressed a couple of buttons, and faced the screen my way. In silence he watched me watching a few seconds of what appeared to be a YouTube video of a tall, skinny man with dark hair, running away from an elaborate sea-themed play structure. The tiny crew of the play structure hurled plastic shovels and buckets after the fleeing man who, fortunately, did a pretty good job of concealing his face.

“Bergamasco thinks this also looks like you.”

I said shortly, “Bergamasco seems to have a lot of time on his hands. Maybe you should give him some real work to do.”

John did not bother to reply. He pressed a couple more buttons and showed me yet another YouTube video. This one featured an elderly woman with a long white braid and white eyes, floating through the air, screaming invective in some unintelligible language. It was like an obscene version of Our Lady of Fátima.

I swallowed, said, “I suppose Bergamasco thinks that looks like me too?”

John continued to let the video play as he said, “As of half an hour ago, there were forty-two different versions of this on social media. In one version, a man starts to walk out of the building in front of her but ducks back inside. Bergamasco hasn’t noticed him yet.”

The tiny, tinny voices on the video continued to marvel at the floating woman.

“You can’t blame me for that!” I protested. “I don’t have any control over what other…other people do.”

“This isn’t about blame—”

“Isn’t it?”

His eyes narrowed. “Calm the hell down, Cosmo. Unless you want Bridget to hear this too.”

I laughed—which did not go over well. The lines of John’s face tightened, and his eyes got that funny yellow sheen.

“It’s one thing to accept that you’re…different from most people. I do accept that.”

I said bitterly, “Why, thank you.”

“But with acceptance comes an expectation that you’ll, at the very least, try to be discreet. This is not discreet.” He stuck his finger in the face of the composite sketch. “This—” He held his phone up. “Not discreet.”

“I told you about that.” I nodded at the composite sketch. “You know why I went there.”

“Yes. It was a bad idea then. It’s a worse idea now.”

“I know it. I knew it then. But it’s done. I can’t undo it.”

He shook his head. “And what about the park? What was that? The witnesses claim you dropped out of the sky and landed on the play structure.”

“Well, clearly they’re mistaken.”

“Really?”

“What do you want me to say? Obviously, the official version has to be that they’re mistaken.”

“Okay. And are all the witnesses who caught Our Lady of the Screaming Meemies on camera also mistaken? Because that’s going to be a hard sell.”

I jumped up from the table. “That wasn’t me!”

John also rose. “But you were there.”

“So were plenty of other people! Clearly.”

“You are involved in this. Don’t lie to me, Cosmo. You know who this is.”

I tried to match his cold, controlled tone. “How does that— Knowing who she is doesn’t make me responsible for her actions. Why are you putting this all on me?”

All at once he was visibly, unmistakably angry. “Because overnight the entire city has turned into spook central, and you’re at the center of all of it.”

It felt so unfair. He wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t right either. Yes, I was involved, but it wasn’t like I was to blame for any of it. Well, maybe Eddie. I did feel to blame there. But the rest of it? The rest of it arose from my trying to stop worse things from happening.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m trying to be careful. I’m trying to be discreet, as you put it. Some of this is just…being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“And some of it is you putting yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time by playing detective.”

I spread my hands. “All right. Yes. If you say so.”

“Thank you. I do say so. Because it’s the truth.”

“I’m-I’m sorry.”

“Sorry is not going to fix this. You’re going to have to come up with something more than sorry. Because as more people figure out this is you, it’s only going to get worse.”

I stared at him. “Why would more people figure out that any of this is me?”

John gazed at me with disbelief. “Because it is you. Because it looks like you.” He held up the sketch. “This is you, remember?”

“Yes. I remember. Is Bergamasco going to— Does he want me arrested?”

“That’s the last thing anybody wants.”

Was that actually an answer? I wasn’t sure.

“Does Bergamasco think I-I’m a murderer?”

“No. I told Pete why you were at Darquez’s apartment. I told him what happened.”

I repeated faintly, “You…told him?”

John’s brows drew together. “I didn’t tell him you’re a…a witch. Obviously.”

“You didn’t?” I felt weak with relief.

“I’m not crazy. No. I did not. I explained why you went there and what happened.”

I said doubtfully, “And he believed that?”

“Yes. The forensics backs it up. There was no sign of struggle. The only witness to the actual accident said you were speaking to Darquez from inside the apartment.”

I said slowly, “The little boy across the way.”

“Yes. The kid said Darquez tried to flip you off, lost his grip, and fell.”

I absorbed that for a moment. “But then if Bergamasco knows I didn’t kill anyone—”

“That doesn’t explain how you came and went without security cameras picking up your image, or the fact that you seem able to transport yourself across town in the blink of an eye, or the fact that ever since I met you, a lot of very weird stuff has been happening around town—and you’re usually in the vicinity.”

“In fairness, weird stuff was always happening. You people just never noticed.”

“Well, we’re noticing now, and it’s a problem.”

It was a problem. If John didn’t have such a high profile in the community—if his work was not connected with law enforcement—it would be different. But because John lived in the spotlight, the spotlight was on me as well.

My heart began to thump against my ribs in that sickening fight-or-flight response. I tried to say calmly, “Then what are you saying? What is it you want? You said you would never walk away from our marriage again. Do you want me to leave? Is that it?”

“Saints preserve us!” Bridget exclaimed—and John and I both jumped.

She stood at the foot of the stairs, prim and proper in her gray skirt and white blouse, seemingly mild as milk though the gaze she turned on John was as black and hard as agate.

“Here I was thinking it was one of these home invasions we hear so much about. I never heard the two of you come in at all, at all.” The at all, at all was laying it on thick, but Bridget is Irish and does have a little bit of a lilt.

John looked from Bridget to me and back to Bridget. I wondered if he was starting to suspect that Bridget too might not be exactly what she seemed.

He folded the sketch back up, thrust it in his pocket, picked his phone up, and pocketed that too.

“Of course I don’t want that,” he said gruffly, and kissed my cheek. “We’ll talk this out tonight.”

He turned and went out the front door without a backward glance.