Chapter Thirty-Three
Auntie Rosa is scared.
The words blossomed in my mind as I hurried down the streets of Boston, backpack on my shoulder, dragging Magnus after me. The rain pattered on my head, my shoulder, my face.
When I was six, my aunt was hospitalized. When I went with my mother to see her, she seemed strange. As if she were sleeping, but awake. She could hear us, occasionally nodded or glanced our way as Mom talked, but other than that, there was nothing. My aunt had always been a loud woman, quick to laugh. This dormant, dead-eyed thing frightened me, and I asked my mom what was wrong with her.
She had been medicated, my mom explained, to calm her down.
“Why?” I asked. As a child, why is the strongest word in your vocabulary. It can open doors, torrents of explanations, of ideas, of facts. It’s a word that keeps things going. A perpetual motion machine.
“Because she had a nervous breakdown,” my mom said after a long pause.
“What does that mean?”
“Auntie Rosa is scared, Lou.”
And that was the gist of it. Auntie Rosa was so frightened, she had to be medicated. She preferred to be this unresponsive, sleepy thing.
“Scared of what?”
“Of everything.”
It seemed so strange at the time, to think Rosa found the world such a scary place that she had to be sedated.
A few years later, the concept was not so alien. My second foster father had taught me that the world could be a scary place indeed.
And for a while, it was. Then, slowly, I began to take control of my life. I built something around me. I had a job, a store, some friends, a dog. A daughter I could catch a glimpse of every day.
Walking like a zombie, the sound of morning traffic loud in my ears, my head throbbing, I began to feel the fear crawling back. My phone rang, and I glanced at the display: ABC. Anthony Breadknife Cisternino. I didn’t answer the phone. I had left the window open after my escape. They would break into the shop, and see that the dog was gone, that the window was open. Would they realize I’d fled?
Of course they would. This was Breadknife.
Auntie Rosa is scared, Lou.
I was good at keeping fear at bay. Fear, used correctly, is a drive, propelling you forward. If you fear something, you do what you can to stay away from it, or to fight it. But what if you fear more than one thing?
Scared of what?
Of everything.
It was probably the lack of sleep. The hangover. The aftereffects of the potion I’d drunk the night before. But terror was taking root.
I had angered a dragon, and he had a vampire working for him. A criminal warlord was searching for me. He knew where I lived, where I worked, who my friends were, who my daughter was.
And speaking of friends, one of them had betrayed me. Had taken the crystal from the box. How could I trust anyone?
My phone rang again. Breadknife.
Auntie Rosa is scared.
Suddenly, the faces of the passersby in the street seemed hostile, suspicious. Breadknife had dozens, maybe hundreds of informants. Ddraig Goch could have realized the waitress the night before had disappeared just before the burglary. Maybe there were records, an image of my face somewhere. A police car went by, and reflexively, I hid my face, sudden tears of fear in my eyes.
My palms were hot, smoke rising from them. I tried to think of Tammi, of my parents, of anything, but my mind was a jumble, I couldn’t concentrate. A flame flickered on my skin, then sizzled and died, the rain putting it out. I tried to breathe, looked around me. Did anyone notice? It didn’t seem that way. But what if someone had? What if he was calling the police right now, telling them he’d seen a girl with smoke rising from her hands?
I let the rain drench my palms and crouched by a puddle, submerging my hands in it. The water grew warm with the heat. I got up, walked away, ignoring the stares of a couple standing under a shared umbrella.
I was walking to meet Sinead, but what if Sinead was the one who had stolen the crystal?
Sinead would never do that. I trusted her with my life.
But someone had, hadn’t they? Could I really, honestly trust anyone?
When everything scares you, when nowhere is safe, the fear doesn’t propel you forward. Instead, you try to draw into your shell, like a snail, waiting for the danger to pass. For the dragon and vampire and criminal warlord to lose interest and walk away.
My phone rang a third time. It was a number I didn’t know, but I could guess who it was. Breadknife, using a phone belonging to one of his goons, trying to trick me into answering him.
My heart beat wildly in my chest, my breathing was short and quick, my vision narrowed to a small circle. Where was I going? What was I doing here? A tall building stood in front of me. I hazily recalled I needed to be here. On the thirteenth floor.
I stumbled into the elevator, picking up Magnus in my hands, trembling as the elevator rose. My phone blipped—a new text message. It’s unhealthy to use the phone in an elevator because of cancer. But I took a look anyway.
A message from Breadknife. You don’t want to run from me, Lou.
I lost a bit of time, my thoughts becoming a fractured thing. There was a glass door, on which there were letters. I tried to read them, but they swam in front of me, not making sense. The longest was Hippopotamus, which couldn’t be right.
And then the glass door opened and Sinead was holding me in her arms and talking, asking me what was wrong while Magnus jumped around us, yipping. I tried to summarize the morning adventures, but I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t talk, tears were streaming down my cheeks, and flames flickered around my fingers.
Scared of what?
Of everything.
“How are you feeling?”
I sipped from the mug of ginger tea. I let it swirl around my tongue, considering my response, wondering if I would break into tears again if I spoke.
“Better,” I finally said.
We were in Sinead’s office. I vaguely remembered refusing to enter the meeting room. I wanted a small place. A shell I could retreat to. She had hugged me while I cried, shaking, trying to speak, to explain.
“Who the hell is Auntie Rosa?” Sinead now asked.
Clearly I hadn’t done a very good job of explaining. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that someone took the crystal. And Breadknife wants it now.”
“Why didn’t you tell him what had happened?”
“What do you think he’d have done if I’d told him I lost the crystal?”
She didn’t answer. We both knew how ruthless and cold Breadknife could be. How dangerous when angry. And though he wasn’t particularly sadistic, the people who worked for him often were.
“So now what?”
“I need to get the crystal back, and get it to him,” I said. “That’s all he really cares about.”
“And who took the crystal?”
“Kane did.”
It was funny how I knew it without really thinking. The knowledge had been hiding in my brain the entire time. Waiting for someone to ask the question.
“He was really interested in the Yliaster crystal,” I said. “He asked about it several times. And there’s something he wasn’t telling me. About his sister. She’s in a coma, and he might think he could use the crystal to heal her.”
“Did he have an opportunity?”
I thought about last night. Two drunken visits to the bathroom came to mind, as well as five minutes when I had nodded off on one of the chairs. “Yeah, several.”
She shook her head. “I find it hard to believe. He seems like… a good guy.”
“Who, then?”
She didn’t answer.
“If he thought it would save his sister, he would take it, even if he was a good guy,” I said. “Besides, both of us know that supposedly good guys turn out bad.” I was exhausted from my earlier meltdown. I wished I could curl on the floor and go to sleep. But I couldn’t.
“What are you going to do?” Sinead asked.
I stood up, placing the empty mug on the desk. My body felt shaky, and the feeling of dread still clung to my gut, but hiding here would only make things worse. “I’m going to get the crystal back.”