The Shadow Men

“Are you two sure I can’t get you another cup of coffee or another drink?” the waitress asked.



Jim looked at Trix, who shook her head. “We’re good, thanks,” he told the waitress.



But this time the woman didn’t go away. She hesitated before speaking.



“Are you waiting for someone? It’s just, you keep looking at the door.”



Jim stared at Trix a minute, running his forefinger over the rim of his coffee cup. Then he started to stand. “We’re going,” he said. “I’m sorry we took up the table so long.”



“No, no,” the waitress said. “No one’s waiting. I just wondered if you needed anything.”



“Jim,” Trix said, staring at him. “Let’s … please let’s just get another cup of coffee. A little while longer, okay?”



He glanced at her and then the waitress. “All right,” he said, sitting down. “Decaf.”



Trix asked for a cappuccino, and when the waitress left them alone, she slid back her chair. “I’ve got to use the bathroom,” she said.



“Hey,” he said as she started to walk away. “One more cup and then we go.”



Trix froze, looking back at him. “And then what?”



Jim stared at his empty cup. “Maybe we wake up in the morning and it’s all back to normal.”



“Like Scrooge?” Trix said, and it was obvious she did not believe it for a second. “Yeah. Maybe.”



She headed off toward the back of the restaurant, where a sign painted on the wall pointed the way to the restrooms. Jim fiddled with his cup until the waitress came and refilled it with decaf. As she walked away he poured a little cream and took a sip, flinching at the burn of the hot liquid.



“May I sit?”



Jim glanced up, startled to find an old woman standing beside the table.



She smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m always doing that. My friends tell me I walk on cat feet. I didn’t mean to make you jump.”



“No, no, I’m fine,” he said, studying her.



Once she would have been considered tall for a woman—especially in her youth, which must have been sixty years gone, at least—but now age had stooped her so badly that she had lost several inches. Deep wrinkles lined her face with the gentle scars of time. And yet her eyes were a kaleidoscope, hazel flecked with gold, bright and alert and full of humor. She wore her white hair to her shoulders, unlike so many women of advanced age.



“Can I help you with something?” he asked.



She smiled. “Quite the contrary, Mr. Banks. May I sit?”



Jim frowned and glanced toward the bathroom, then focused on the woman again. He was unsettled now. “What’s that supposed to mean?”



Now she looked … cross. The perfect word for the disgruntled expression on the old woman’s face. “You’re being quite impolite, James. Or is it Jim? Yes, I suspect it is. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? It’s rude not to offer an old lady a seat, Jim, especially when she’s already asked for the courtesy.”



He shook himself and half stood, nodding. “Yes. I’m sorry, please sit down.”



Quite the contrary. Did that mean she meant to help him? He stared at her as she settled into the spot Trix had vacated in the booth.



She laughed softly. “Ah, yes. Now you’re thinking, ‘The old hag doesn’t look especially magical.’ Or something like that. Though perhaps not ‘hag.’ Not from you.”



He started to protest and glanced toward the back of the restaurant again.



“Don’t worry. Trix will be along in a minute or two. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, but it couldn’t be helped, I’m afraid. It’s been quite a busy day. A young man in Jamaica Plain needed to prove that his great-great-grandfather had never deeded a piece of property to the city that … well, never mind. I had to guide the young man to the original deed, and the hundred-year lease, which was all the city had.”



Part of Jim wanted to laugh in her face. It was such a cliché, wasn’t it? The wise old woman, like some kind of Gypsy fortune-teller. But she wore a jacket and skirt ensemble that must have cost seven or eight hundred dollars, easily, and her haircut hadn’t come cheaply, either. This was no sideshow crystal-ball gazer.



A scam, then? Had Trix set him up somehow?



But the instant he had the thought, he pushed it away. Trix’s anguish was genuine, and so was her hope. Which left only one possibility.



“Jesus,” Jim whispered, staring at the woman. “You’re for real.”



When the Oracle of Boston smiled in delight, it took a dozen years off her face. “Oh, excellent,” she said. “It’s refreshing to meet someone who just dives right in. Saves time as well.” She held out her hand. “Veronica Braden.”



Jim shook her hand, not at all surprised by the firmness of her grip. He took a ragged breath, only then realizing that he had stopped breathing for a moment. The hours that had passed since this afternoon when he had woken from his nap had been a long nightmare, but Trix had been right to chide him for his doubt. The impossible had turned his world upside down and ripped away all that he loved. He would waste no more time with what was possible and what was not.



“You make it hard enough to meet you.”



“I enjoy the … tradition of the process.”



“So, can you find them?” Jim asked, a heavy question. “Do you know where they are?”



“Ah,” Veronica said, arching a brow, kaleidoscope eyes alight with secret knowledge. She smiled, and Jim knew she harbored secrets. “Those are two different questions. Finding Jennifer and Holly is not the same as knowing where they are.”



Jim put a hand over his mouth as though afraid the wrong words would come out. The waitress arrived with Trix’s cappuccino. She glanced at them oddly, but Jim gestured for her to put the cup down and she did, casting a curious look over her shoulder as she retreated once more. “I don’t understand,” Jim said quietly.



“You will.” Veronica touched his hand, and her hand was cool. Then she picked up Trix’s cappuccino and drained half the cup in three long sips.



“That was—”



“She won’t have time to drink it,” Veronica said, sliding her chair back. “Come along.”



As the Oracle rose, the illusion of vitality dropped away. She moved stiffly but with a kind of imperious air; perhaps she had earned it. Her hand shook as she gestured toward him. “Pay the bill, dear. And leave a nice tip for your server. New girl. Only been here a few weeks, and she needs the reassurance as much as the money. Terrible job, having to smile at people all the time.”



Jim obeyed, sliding the cash from his wallet and tucking it into the faux-leather binder in which the bill had arrived.



“And here she is now,” Veronica said, her voice an aged rasp.



As Jim put his wallet back into his pocket he looked up to see that Trix had frozen in the middle of Abruzzi’s, staring at Veronica. Other diners had started to turn to watch the scene unfold. Jim noticed that some people—staff and regulars—seemed to be very studiously avoiding looking at them at all. He wondered how many times they had seen Veronica Braden arrive here to help people in need. People in pain.



“You came,” Trix managed, fighting back a sob. Tears slid down her face, and she did not bother to wipe them away. “I wasn’t sure you were even still alive.”



“If not me, then someone else,” Veronica said, ignoring the eyes upon her. “Now, come along, Trixie. We don’t have all night.”



Chapter 5 - Cruel Mistress



IN THE old days,” Veronica said, slipping into the Mercedes’ front passenger seat without asking Trix if she minded sitting in the back, “we’d have had to wait until morning. All the shops closed at a decent time then. Life was less frantic. Now people want twenty-four-hour everything. TV, takeout. Clothes shopping. Things are changing.”



“What do you mean?” Jim asked. He held the passenger door open, watching as Veronica made herself comfortable and then sat motionless with her hands folded in her lap. The only real sign of effort was the woman’s subtle sigh.



“Shopping,” Veronica said. She looked up at Jim, eyes twinkling, then glanced over his shoulder at Trix. “Oh, you’re coming, dear, aren’t you?”



“Of course,” Trix said. She got into the back of the car, glancing at Jim and trying to communicate something with a frown, a sharp nod.



“What shopping?” Jim said, and he thought, Is she really just a crazy old lady after all? Out here on the busy Boston street, the woman seemed somehow smaller than she had in the restaurant, and less convincing.



Veronica closed her eyes briefly, resting her head back against the seat as if asleep. But the frown was not at home on a relaxed face. Her hands twitched a little in her lap, and Jim leaned sideways to look in the rear window. Trix, sitting in the backseat, was watching Veronica with her mouth slightly open, whether in awe or fear he couldn’t tell.



Veronica opened her eyes so suddenly that Jim took a small step back. “Copley Place,” she said. “There’s a mime artist on the library steps as they pass. Holly wants to stop and watch, but Jenny’s in a hurry to get into the mall and find somewhere to eat. Jonathan holds her elbow and whispers something to her. Something Holly can’t hear. I think she’s a little spooked. Jenny’s missed that. What kind of a mother am I? She puts one arm around Holly’s shoulder.



“But Holly’s fascinated by the mime, and his silently moving mouth. She rubs her ears, as if she’s been swimming and maybe got water in them. But she can still hear the pigeons and the traffic, and a bunch of children across by the church are singing a song she hasn’t heard before. The mime opens and closes windows in thin air, as if he’s peering through from somewhere else, and he smiles at her. She smiles back. He’s not so scary.”



“What is all this?” Jim asked. “What are you doing?”



“I’m giving you what I can of your wife and daughter before they went,” Veronica said. “Now, if you’ll just …” She raised and lowered one hand, an almost dismissive gesture.



“Trix, I don’t like—”



“Jim!” Trix snapped from the backseat. If her voice had been angry or impatient, he might have argued. But Jim could see that she was crying.



“Jenny’s hungry. She’s got lunch on her mind. But Jonathan sees what Holly really wants. He knows even as they pass the bookshop, and Holly slips away from her mother, pressing her face to the window. There’s a display of fairy books there. She already has some—she has three of them—but there are two others she’s always wanted. I’ll get us a table, Jonathan says, and Jenny smiles at him and nods. I won’t be long. She follows Holly inside. The smell of new books, coffee from the Starbucks upstairs in the shop, the sound of gentle conversation at the counter. Pages flip, books thump closed. Holly is already past the counter and at the kids’ section, and she has a book in each hand, deciding which to read.”



Veronica fell silent and her expression slowly changed. Gone was the gentle smile as she relayed Holly’s supposed behavior earlier that day. In its place was something like resignation.



“What happened next?” Jim asked, because he did believe, really. It wasn’t that he knew the story, but the subtleties were accurate: Holly’s delight at the fairy books, Jenny’s eagerness to get her daughter fed before shopping, Jonathan’s surprising perceptiveness for a guy who’d never wanted kids. She couldn’t be making this up.



“A book falls from the shelves,” the old woman said. “Jenny reaches for it, wonders, Why the hell did that one tumble, there’s no one to push it, there’s no reason—And then …” Veronica looked up at him again, and for a second there was a smile in her eyes. “Jonathan is back at home. The falling book is on its shelf, and your wife has never touched it.”



Jim breathed heavily, trying to process what she had said, and what she was still saying. “I don’t understand.”



“We must go there,” Veronica said. “That’s not always essential, but it can help. You need to feel the place to know it.”



“Copley Place?” he asked. The old woman nodded, and in the backseat Trix was looking at him expectantly. Jim pushed the door closed and stood alone on the street for a moment, cold, getting damp again from the fine rain. It’s where they were headed when I last saw them, so why the hell not? he thought. But as he got in and started the car, he knew there was more to it than that. He would go because Veronica had suggested it. And she knew.



The old woman sat quietly beside him as he drove, hands still crossed in her lap, and he adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see Trix.



“You all right?” he asked. Trix caught his eye and nodded. She even offered him a smile that said, Yes, fine now. He thought of standing on that traffic island pleading with the patterned cobbles for help, and the rain, and the long wait in the restaurant while Veronica dealt with some other city emergency.



“So what makes you the Oracle of Boston?” he asked. He heard an intake of breath from the backseat.



“Long story,” Veronica said.



“Well, it’ll take a few minutes to—”



“And private.”



“Right.” Jim pressed his lips together and flicked on the wipers. The rain was growing heavy again, and Boston’s evening streets demanded his attention. Dueling taxicabs jockeyed for position as they took couples and friends out for the evening. Other cars lined up at traffic signals, pedestrians dashed across the streets, and horns erupted here and there as impatience settled and tempers flared. You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience, he’d read somewhere once, and he leaned on the car horn for no reason.