Deadly Violet - 04 (24 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Around midday
– the sun about as high in the sky as it was going to get – the whole bunch of us went to help Lehman Willets move house. He could have done it magically, of course. Simply clicked his fingers a few times, and spirited his possessions from his basement over to the guest cottage at Martha’s place. But, rehabilitated or not, he still has a few annoying bees in his bonnet. And this, apparently, was one of them. He wanted to do this the traditional way.

So we headed into the commercial district, Martha showing up in a big four-wheel drive pickup that she’d either hired or conjured into being. And we started gathering the man’s stuff.

There wasn’t too much of it, when you first looked. His camp bed, which he no longer genuinely needed. The big iron kettle, set over the fire that keeps him warm. His precious turntable on its tall black plinth – he had no actual jazz albums in storage, making them pop out of the thin air whenever he wanted a new one.

But then, of course, there were his books. All of them hardbacks, all of them on the subject of magic, and many of them huge. Several hundred of them. Quite a heavy load.

And it turned out Willets saw his role in this whole business as a matter of simply standing there, waving his hands about and directing operations.

“Moving house
– it’s a landmark in your life,” he kept on saying. “One that ought to be forever treasured in your memory.”

“He’ll remember it when he gets my chiropractor’s bill,” Cassie grumbled, staggering past me with a massive crate.

But we got everything loaded up, and pushed out through the winter sunshine to the lower slopes of Sycamore Hill. And within another hour, the books had all been placed on shelves, the record player was exactly where the doctor wanted it, and the kettle was whistling on his brand-new stove.

The doorbell chimed. Judge Levin and Fleur, his wife, were standing on the porch. I knew how much the judge had been looking forward to this day.

They’d brought a housewarming gift, one that I recognized instantly. It was the finest piece from the collection of scrimshaw in his study. The depiction on it was of John Paul Jones’s ship, the Ranger, capturing the HMS Drake in 1778. You could almost see the ocean swirl, and hear the canons roar.

Willets shook his head and held his palms out, waggling them.

“No. I couldn’t possibly –“

“Refuse this,” the judge finished for him loudly, “without causing myself and my good wife the gravest possible offence.”

And he shoved it into Willets’s hands.

It wound up at the center of his mantelpiece. And we took turns admiring it, then went out for a stroll.

There was a lot of open ground off behind Martha’s house, the whiteness covering it thickly. The eight of us headed out across it, leaving it plowed up behind us.

There were branches on the trees ahead of us that were almost bent double from their burden. And the rows of houses down below looked like tiny models, their roofs painted white.

Birds were out, and wheeling around. A jackrabbit went skittering past. The sun was shining brilliantly, reflecting off the snow and making you feel warmer than you ought.

The kind of day, in other words, when you get reminded what it feels like to be a couple of decades younger at this time of year. And that infected Cass and Lauren more than the rest of us, as it turned out. Because somehow
– don’t ask me how – a snowfight started up between them.

Judge Levin laughed uproariously at the spectacle. That is, until one of the snowballs flew wide of its mark and hit him squarely on the neck.

His face reddened and his eyeballs bugged. He stretched both arms out, muttering a spell.  And a huge globe of the white stuff, some four feet across, started rising from a drift in front of him.

Fleur hurried across and dragged his arms down, and the giant ball disintegrated.

“Enough of this, okay?” she suggested. “Let’s go watch the skaters in Crealley Street Park instead.”

So that was what we did.

There were about fifty of them out there on the frozen surface of the lake, whirling around and pirouetting, brightly colored hats and mufflers everywhere you looked.

Beyond them was a big wide slope which dozens of kids with sleds were leaving tracks across.

Excited toddlers, bundled up like parcels, were chasing yapping little dogs in circles through the whiteness
– or perhaps it was the other way around. And there were big old conifers around these parts, snow mantling them like ermine on the shoulders of an ancient race of giants.

Lauren looked surprised at how fast this place had recovered. That was something else she hadn’t known about our town. She drank in her surroundings, and I noted how much more relaxed her face was starting to become. So I caught her attention, and then held her gaze inquiringly.

“It’s … nice,” she conceded, with an awkward smile. “It’s … pretty.”

Her shoulders lifted as the cold bit into her, but her smile stayed in place.

“God, I never thought I’d use
that
word about this place.”

Then she turned around in a slow circle, a fresh layer of comprehension seeming to descend on her.

“It’s what you fight for, right?” she asked me, recalling the lecture that I’d given her at Martha’s.

And I hadn’t meant to shrug, but did so anyway.

And then told her, “It’s all we’ve got.”

It began to snow again come evening, thousands of flakes passing by the streetlamps like enormous swarms of amber moths. But we were comfortable and warm by then, having recently finished a meal at the best restaurant in town, courtesy of the Levins. And now we were headed to our next location. Willets kept on asking where, but we refused to tell him.

We finally stopped outside
Nadine’s
, the basement bar on O’Connell Street. There was a large sprig of holly above the door. And a chalked sign beside it which read,
Have Yourself a Jazzy Little Xmas with Ray Mack and his Quintet.

“Nadine started putting music on a couple of months back,” Cassie explained.

And Willets was the ultimate jazz nut, so what better way to welcome him back into society?

The place
– which was packed – fell silent when we walked in. Two adepts
and
the doc into the bargain, walking unannounced into an ordinary bar? I’d have expected no less. But we’d reserved a table at the front and, once we’d gotten settled, people calmed down and started returning to their own conversations. Nadine herself – all multi-colored, punkish hair and cheerful professionalism – came across and took our orders.

Then the Landing’s finest saxophonist came out on stage with his group and began the first set. Willets became lost in the music, his prematurely gray head nodding to the beat.

And he was the first to his feet when they had finished up, nodding and applauding loudly.

“Not ‘Bird,’” he confided in my ear, when I got up next to him, “but not bad either.”

Cass went past us, mumbling something about ‘needing fresh air.’

Which puzzled me. This room was busy, and belowground. But
Nadine’s
was spacious, well ventilated, and by no means stuffy. So I gave it another minute before following her quietly up. I was thinking of the child that she was carrying, and hoped that there was nothing wrong.

When I pushed the front door open, I couldn’t see her anywhere. I took several steps further out, following the trail her boots had left behind. And finally caught sight of something.

She was in a shadowy alleyway across the street, some thirty yards along. And she didn’t look as if she was alone.

Someone had his arms around her. Somebody was …

My whole body shivered when I recognized precisely who it was.

Quinn Maycott?

Then I saw how faint his outline was, and figured out the rest.

I was about to start heading in their direction, when an unseen hand took a firm grip of my shoulder.

“What do you think you’re doing, Ross?” asked Lehman Willets, very quietly.

I gawped around at him, figuring out something else as well.

“You
knew
–?” I began angrily.

He gestured for me to keep my voice down.

“You knew about this?” I hissed.

“He came back to her not long after the funeral,” the doc confirmed. “And yes, I sensed it.”

I was shaking once again, but with amazed anger this time.

“She’s had this … this whole Patrick Swayze thing going on for
months
, and you didn’t think to tell me about it?”

Lehman’s eyelids narrowed.

“Judging by the way that you’re reacting, I’d say I was right not to. What exactly is your problem?”

Exasperation flooded through me, and I gestured at the entwined couple.

“In case you haven’t noticed, he’s dead. She isn’t.”

“And?”

“It’s not natural, for heaven’s sake. Fooling around with the departed? Nothing good can come of that.”

Willets returned my gaze tiredly, thrusting his hands in his pockets.

“Remember how she was when she believed that he was gone?” he asked. “The awful grief and the despair? Would you like to see her that way for whole months, or even years?”

No, I course I wouldn’t. And I felt my thoughts begin to blur.

“You know as well as I do, Ross, that if there’s one person in this whole town who deserves any chance at happiness, anyway that she can get it, then it’s that young woman over there. So keep on being what you’ve always been to her, a friend. Leave her be. Let her enjoy this special moment.”

We could hear the band start tuning up for the second set, downstairs. Willets cocked his head in that direction, then went back inside.

I’ll give him this much credit. He didn’t stand there waiting, and he didn’t hold the bar door open for me. He was trusting me to do the right thing, certain that I’d follow him back down.

And, sure, I was going to do that. He had made his case.

But I paused and took one final glance across the street, and suppressed a low sigh.

What with once-maniacal adepts who’d become reformed, homicide cops who shouldn’t even be here, and now the ghosts of boyfriends past, this was already turning out to be one hell of a peculiar Christmas.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The Greenwood Sanatorium lay on the very edge of that district of town, separated by some parkland from the rest and pressing up against the borders of the forest. It had been built in Victorian times, a massive Gothic structure with a number of smaller outbuildings. Snow lay heavily on its cupolas and spires, its buttresses and dormered window ledges, with the moonlight gleaming off it.

The place had been in constant use ever since it had opened. Because the truth of the matter was, using magic helped drive some of this town’s inhabitants crazy every year. And the effects of other people’s spells pushed several more over the edge. The staff were specially trained to deal with that.

There were a few dangerous patients. They were kept in cells the adepts had enchanted with a Hallow’s Knot, so that they could not conjure their way out. But the vast majority of them were not a threat, and were allowed to wander the long, echoing corridors at will, and even venture out across the sprawling grounds.

That only applied during the daytime, though. When evening fell, the doors were locked. There was supposed to be no way of getting out.

But Millicent Tollburn – who had been here since the summer months – had found one. She’d snuck down into the basement, gone past the roaring furnace, and then crawled up the chute where the coal was delivered …

She was smeared with blackened dust from head to toe. And was dressed only in a cotton nightgown, her feet bare. But she didn’t seem to notice that. She was mumbling to herself. She stumbled onward through the snow, her hair wild and her eyes enormous in her grimy face.

She knew that there was no way to escape. The tall iron fence around the property was far too high, and it had sharp spikes at the top. And a Hallow’s Knot protected it as well. The fact was, she had no idea what she was doing. But she’d felt compelled to come out here.

Her mind had crumbled. Memories of her previous life were gone.

The doctors had tried to explain it to her, several times. How she had teamed up with an evil creature called the Shadow Man, Cornelius Hanlon. And with his help, she had attempted to destroy this town. People had died, apparently, or else been overcome by awful transformations.

And it hadn’t been her fault, the doctors had assured her. She’d been ill when she had done all that. She seriously needed help.

They’d done their best. They had used therapy on her, drugs, hypnosis. But with every month that passed, her grip on her surroundings had grown weaker. She could not distinguish which was fact and which was not fact any longer.

She gazed out at the yellow lights of distant houses. Had she really wished to hurt the people there? It seemed incredible.

The darkness and the moonlight were making her slightly nervous. And the snow around her gleamed so brightly that it made her eyes start stinging. She put her hands to her face, and they came back wet with tears.

But she suddenly remembered where she had been going. Millicent got the best grip on herself she could, and headed for the spot.

To the rear of the grounds, there was a little pond, circled with dead brown reeds. Its surface was frozen. And the wind was being channeled through the nearby trees in such a way that it had cleared away the layer of snow. The exposed ice gleamed like a mirror.

Millicent stopped at its edge and stared down at her own reflected face.

“Hello, again,” she told it. “Are you going to help me this time?”

She paused, listening. Then her thin features scrunched up unhappily.

“That’s not right. You promised that you’d get me out of here.”

She tipped her head, listening to the response. And her expression became horrified.

“You want me to do
what
? But no, I couldn’t possibly! I –”

A fresh flow of teardrops began sliding down her dirty cheeks.

“How can you ask that of me?” she groaned. “It’s too much! I cannot do it! No, I
won’t
!”

Then she turned and fled in the direction she had come from.

But the face remained there on the ice.

When you looked a little closer, you could see it wasn’t her reflection. Similarly sharp-angled, but not genuinely the same. The eyes were green instead of turquoise. And the mouth, which began to move again, was slightly wider.

“Not ready for me yet?” it asked. “Well, I’ve already been patient such a long time. I can manage it a little more.”

The lips twisted into a thoughtful smile.

“You’ll be back, my dear.”

The woman bared her teeth.

“And I’ll be waiting.”