Falling Stone

by Amy Stilgenbauer

  “Moira...get out of my head,” she forced herself to say, trying to fight it down.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” She shouted, letting go of Jaclyn’s memories and leaving them to spiral through the air between the two women.

  Jaclyn didn’t answer right away. Moira was the type that should be left to stew. If she saw someone rise to take her bait or challenge her, she simply fought back all the harder. Jaclyn actually liked this about her because she was patient enough to wait Moira out. Having a cooler temper really did come in handy with such a person.

  Instead, she studied Moira, trying to get a clue to her moods and motives. The Underland witches, she had learned, were fond of simple glamours: changing their bodies to seem children or ancient depending on the day. Some of them probably were ancient. The Fates, for instance, likely came with the place and she knew Calu was Roman. Real Roman, not just from Rome, but more of the went to the Colosseum when it had all its walls intact sort. The way that they presented themselves from day to day, though, often held a hint of their true feelings. Whether the caster was aware of it or not. Magic was like that.

  Today, Moira looked older, but not elderly, more like 50, and her eyes were green instead of their usual pale sepia. If her hair had been blonde instead of a dyed looking jet black, she might have resembled Jaclyn’s mother. Jaclyn had to wonder if the resemblance had been intentional, something scraped from Jaclyn’s memories to hurt her. She decided to ignore it. ‘What do you want, Moira?” She asked.

  “I want to know where you get off?” Moira replied, angry as ever. “Henry Danvers has been set for awhile now, you know.”

  She stooped over and picked up the book at Jaclyn’s feet. Butterscotch hissed again, but let her by. For a second she clutched it to her chest like a protective mother, breathing in as if smelling the leather and vague vanilla scent coming off the pages. Then she turned to Jaclyn, flipping open to a page with Henry’s picture. Next to it, in Aisha’s fine script handwriting that clearly belonged to another age were the words: Car crash. Hastily scribbled next to the words, in Moira’s print, was today’s date. “If you bothered to ever check or pay attention to more than your own daily agenda, you would realize that the girls and I put a lot of work into these things.”

  Jaclyn nodded, trying to remain cool and appear unmoved by Moira’s outrage. “I’ll make sure it’s still a car crash then.”

  “What about the date?”

  “It’s only 48 hours, Moira, for goodness sake. You act like I gave the man immortality.”

  “Which is not within your power to do, I hope you remember.” She huffed and turned away. “We’ll see how Calu feels about all this.”

  Jaclyn rolled her eyes, then immediately felt childish for doing so. She turned to Aisha, who had been watching the whole exchange with a silent smirk. “She acts like he’s some kind of secret all mighty authority. I took the man down with a bar of iron. Not even a big one. Maybe it’d be different if I had been swinging it at his head, but...”

  Aisha just smiled in her childlike way. It always gave Jaclyn the impression that she knew more than she let on. “Don’t worry about Moira. Worry about Henry Danvers.” Then she stood and walked from the room as elegant as any dancer.

  6.

  Mr. and Mrs. Kauffman didn’t speak to Raymond when he stopped by the table to check in and bring them their wine. Since he had taken over the restaurant, he had grown used to the jovial elderly couple and their animated discussions about the Cleveland Browns and Mrs. Kauffman’s beloved purple martins, but not even bringing up these subjects could move them to speak. The pair simply stared forward, blank, troubled expressions on their faces. Mrs. Kauffman looked close to tears.

  Raymond poured the wine, tapped their glasses with his index finger, and excused himself to get back to the kitchen, when Mrs. Kauffman began to sob. He stopped, taken aback by this. “Mrs. Kauffman?”

  “Oh, it’s too awful...” She cried. “I can’t get the image out of my head.”

  Mr. Kauffman reached for his wife’s hand. He looked strained, as though he were fighting back strong emotions of his own. “I’m sorry, Raymond. We just...had a bit of a scare this afternoon.”

  “What happened?” He asked, hoping it wouldn’t seem like he was prying. Already, in the back of his mind, he began concocting something cheerful he could toss into the dessert.

  “Oh, it’s too awful,” Mrs. Kauffman repeated, a little calmer now, her eyes locked on Raymond. “A man crashed into the big oak out in our field this afternoon. I don’t know how he survived. I don’t believe he did. No matter what the police said.”

  Raymond’s frown deepened. The Paint-Berlin area was a small, interconnected community. He didn’t know everyone, but close to it. “Did they say...?” he began, bracing himself for a too familiar name.

  But Mr. Kauffman was already off and running; his powers of conversation having returned with just a sip or two of the wine. “The whole thing caught fire too. Burned up the whole area. Thousands of dollars worth of crops. Not to mention the tree and eight martin houses.”

  Mrs. Kauffman looked further pained when he mentioned the bird houses.

  Raymond didn’t know what to say. He imagined Mr. Kauffman would be speaking a bit more reverently if it was anyone they knew. Still, he felt a twinge somewhere in his stomach that said there was more to this. An intuition his mother would call it. It was a skill she had always been on him to develop as a boy, but though he never had, it was strong enough.

  “Did they say who the man was, Mr. Kauffman?” He managed to force out this time. The words sounded a touch more frantic than he meant them to thanks to the speed they were delivered, but the Kauffmans didn’t seem to notice.

  “A New York reporter,” Mrs. Kauffman said, her voice dropping to a whisper.

  “Probably one of those reality show types trying to exploit the Amish again,” Mr. Kauffman added with a scoff, not bothering to lower his own voice.

  “No,” Mrs. Kauffman said. “The police made it sound...”

  “Excuse me,” Raymond said, abruptly turning from the couple. “I really should be getting back to the kitchen. Wine’s on the house since you’ve had such a rough afternoon.”

  He sped away from the table and into the back before they could respond with the usual “oh no, we couldn’t possibly”s. In the kitchen his line chefs were hard at work. They looked up at him, but when he hurried to his office without acknowledging them, their expectant expressions turned to confusion. Under normal circumstances, he would try to check each dish and add his own personal magic touches to the presentation before they went out, but his mind was elsewhere. The feeling in his gut was getting harder to ignore. It did more than twinge now. It writhed. Something very bad had happened to someone he knew.

  It rarely got this bad. A few months ago, he and his mother had confronted a monster in Detroit. He felt nothing then. The last time was Halloween, when his niece Jaclyn had been stolen off to the Underland. That night he had gone into the hospital thinking his appendix was bursting. He sat down, took a few deep breaths that helped little, and finally dialed one of the few people he knew would understand: his sister.

  After four rings, he sighed, ready to give up, when he heard a morose female voice on the other end. “Hello?”

  “Cerise!” Raymond exclaimed. He muttered a few thank yous under his breath. She had not been in the habit of answering since Jaclyn’s disappearance.

  “Hello, Raymond,” Cerise replied, her tone still sad, but a little warmer.

  “I...I’m having a feeling.”

  He felt like a little boy again. The first time he had gone to her about it, afraid to tell their mother. How Cerise had laughed and picked at him. “Ray-Ray has a bad feeling?” she had mocked, but after she saw how serious he was, she immediately changed into a helpful counsel, guiding him through interpretations and possible meanings. He would never tell her as much, but even after he had told his parents about the abilit
y, he still preferred discussing it with Cerise.

  “I’m going to need more information than that,” she said.

  Raymond was quiet for a while trying to think of a different day to compare it to. He didn’t imagine Cerise would react well to any mention of Halloween. “It’s strong. Like my stomach is going to burst.”

  “Like in Alien?”

  “Cerise, I’m being serious.” Though he had to admit it was nice to hear her joke again.

  “So am I.” She paused. He could hear her taking a few steadying breaths. “When did the feeling start?”

  He told her all about the Kauffmans and the car crash. “For some reason I keep thinking of that food critic, you know, Henry Danvers?”

  “Henry Danvers? Heavens, why? Isn’t he the one you hate?”

  “He was in here earlier today, doing a column on food in the area.”

  “I thought he said Ohio-”

  “He did,” Raymond cut her off. He didn’t want to think about the fact that Henry even being in Ohio was all his fault. If he hadn’t written that letter, he probably never would have come.

  “You don’t know that it was him.”

  “How many big shot reporters do you think come around here?” He couldn’t ignore the feeling. It was getting stronger the longer he talked to his sister. He leaned back in his chair and pressed a hand over his stomach to quell the pain. “There’s one other thing...but you can’t tell mama.”

  “Raymond, I’m a fifty-three year old woman. I’m not going to tell on you to our mother.”

  “I’ve been seeing a girl.”

  “And...?”

  “She told me I wouldn’t have to worry about Henry’s review. At the time I thought she meant it’s because the food we serve is good. Just some empty flattery, but...now...”

  “Raymond Mooreland, don’t be an idiot.” She sounded so much more like herself; better than she’d sounded in almost a year. Raymond appreciated it. He wondered if he should do this sort of thing more often, if it would help bring her out of her melancholy. “Some girl is not likely to go that far. What’s she going to do, jump in front of his car? Run it off the road herself? If so, you should probably end things as she sounds a little dramatic, even for a mid-life crisis.”

  “She’s Underland, Cerise.”

  Silence.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  The silence continued until an automated voice kicked on. “The call has ended...”

  Raymond hung up and sat back with a sigh. He knew he should have expected such a reaction, but now his suspicion was confirmed. His stomach started feeling better the minute he mentioned her. Now he knew. The man who crashed was Henry Danvers and Moira was somehow involved.

  7.

  Butterscotch pounced on Jaclyn’s feet surely assuming they were rodents trapped under a blanket. Hazy with sleep, Jaclyn tried to move away, but this only encouraged the cat, who began pouncing with extra vigor and determination. Grumbling, she sat up and pulled Butterscotch in to her chest. At first the cat resisted, but then resigned to her fate, she plopped her paws on Jaclyn’s shoulder and meowed once plaintively.

  Jaclyn smiled to herself before setting Butterscotch down again. “That’ll teach you to attack my feet.”

  Butterscotch meowed in reply. Jaclyn thought she sounded offended.

  “Right, I know, 48 hours are up.” She climbed out of bed, extraditing herself from the volumes of folklore and mythology she had fallen asleep amidst. “He can wait a few minutes yet.”

  She gathered up the books, returning them to the shelf where they belonged; each leather volume pristinely placed with exactly the same spacing so they looked more decorative than actually used. Calu had loaned them to her; she was supposed to study them, but for some reason, she didn’t want anyone to think they had ever been moved. The Fates would probably mock her at the very least. She rarely missed her old life among the Harvest witches, but those three, especially Moira, made her feel as if she were back in high school.

  Taking a deep breath and scratching the top of Butterscotch’s head, she gathered up her cloak and made her way from the room.

  “Hope you’re ready, Henry Danvers,” she muttered. Butterscotch meowed plaintively once more in response. Jaclyn took that as a negative sign.

  *

  Not even Jaclyn could hide how much the apartment impressed her. It was polished from floor to ceiling to the point of sparkling. The books, mostly cookbooks, were arranged even more fastidiously than her own. A bowl of wax fruit was the only item on the counter: no bills or discarded junk catalogs. The windows barely seemed present at all. Jaclyn was sure they had killed their fair share of birds. The bed was made, the pillows fluffed and arranged. If she had been here on a different sort of errand, she would have assumed that the apartment was a show model. Certainly not that it was occupied by a divorced food critic.

  What she didn’t find any sign of, however, was Henry. She made her way carefully through each room, but found nothing. She was beginning to doubt that he even lived here at all. Maybe, she thought, he had managed to dupe her somehow into thinking he lived at a different address. She counted the possibility out the moment it occurred to her. She was new at the work of soul collection, but she wasn’t that new. Locating a person was basic stuff. She had been doing it on her own since the year began. He would have to be quite powerful to evade her and she hadn’t detected an ounce of magic on him.

  Opening a drawer in his closet, she came upon a series of torn photographs. At first, she thought the tearing had not been well executed because Henry was clearly visible in most of them. As she examined them further, however, she realized that Henry had kept himself in tact in all of the pictures. The person he had been trying to remove was a pretty brunette in her late twenties. She was curvy, with dazzling blue-grey eyes and a flawless dark olive complexion. Jaclyn thought, for a moment, that she had seen this woman somewhere before. Of course, she hadn’t met her. Prior to becoming Death, Jaclyn had never been to New York City and prior to 48 hours ago, Henry had claimed his ex-wife alive and well in Queens, so it wasn’t from gathering her soul either. No, she hadn’t seen this woman in person, but her likeness was far too familiar.

  She wracked her brain, trying to find the answer, quickly cataloguing through movies and television shows she had seen in case the woman was an actress. Then it came to her like a bolt of lightning. She hadn’t seen this woman, but she had seen her face in one of Calu’s books. It had been attached to an Etruscan noble lady then, but it was unmistakably the same face. Puzzled, Jaclyn shoved one of the photos in her pocket and continued her search for Henry.

  She had all but given up on finding him at the apartment, when she heard a voice, what sounded like the muffled grumbles of a man waking up, coming from the pantry. It seemed odd, but remembering the state she had woken up in, a food critic accidentally falling asleep in his pantry didn’t seem all that implausible. She went over, ready to confront him, but when she reached for the doorknob, she heard Butterscotch hiss. A jolt ran through her and she stepped back, opening the door with a spell instead of her hand. As the knob turned, iron handcuffs snaked out and latched themselves on the air where her wrist would have been.

  Butterscotch hissed again in the back of her mind and Jaclyn began to feel rage boiling over inside her. She wanted to hiss herself. “Bad move,” she muttered. “I had planned to be lenient...”

  The longer she stared at the iron handcuffs, the more she wanted to burn the apartment down. The door itself was already starting to smolder as she glowered at it. All except the area around the handcuffs, of course.

  Luckily for the other residents, a knock at the front door broke her concentration. “Mr. Danvers?” an elderly female voice called out. “Mr. Danvers are you in there? I smell smoke...”

  Jaclyn opened the door and smiled down at the short, plump woman. “I’m afraid Mr. Danvers is not here,” She said, turning on the charm. “Do you know where he might have gone?”<
br />
  The woman’s eyes clouded over looking dazed. “I...smelled smoke,” she repeated.

  “Yes,” Jaclyn replied, trying to make her voice as slippery as possible. “You don’t have to worry about that now. Just tell me what you can about Henry Danvers...especially...where he might be.”

  A long silence followed. Jaclyn was about to give up, remembering what people always said about New Yorkers not knowing their neighbors, when the woman spat on the ground. Jaclyn's eyes widened.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” the woman said tersely. “Henry Danvers is a rat bastard.”

  “Oh?”

  “What he did to that beautiful wife of his...I wish we could get him thrown out of the building. I tried...”

  Jaclyn started to ask what he had done, but the woman didn’t need prompting. She was on a roll and there was no stopping her.

  “I’m old fashioned. I know that. Not so old fashioned as to think there’s no good reason for a divorce, mind you, but to kick a woman out onto the street with nothing because she can’t give you no children. That’s a sick thing. That is a sick thing.”

  “H-”

  “Had an agreement all drawn up. Claimed she knew she was barren and the whole relationship was a fraud. Doesn’t give her a dime. Just kicks her out in the middle of December without so much as a day to find a place to stay. Dear Alice was an angel too. Maybe a little short tempered...sleep talker, but she always said ‘how do you do?’ and made me cookies. Henry never cared for her cooking...When I took her in, I said, ‘Alice dear, you can cook whatever you want.’ and what do you know, everyday...”

  “Ma’am. He told me he wanted time to make things right with her,” Jaclyn interrupted, speaking louder and more forcefully than she liked, so she be heard over the woman’s own words.

  The woman scoffed. “Ain’t a making things right bone in that man’s body. He had plenty of chances, but every time I talked to him, offered to give him Alice’s new address, he always said ‘That’s not how my life is supposed to go, Mariel. I’m supposed have two children and they’re supposed to be great men...’ and all manner of such nonsense, like he’s some kind of fortune teller.”