The Seventh Life of Aline Lloyd

by Robert Davies

  We talked about it over dinner and Aline seemed strangely calm. Instead of dire warnings and a demand for utter silence, she told me her circumstances made things different from what they had been before and with those changes, a door opened. I asked her if she really meant what it seemed; if there would come a time when my sister could be told and taken through a similar process so that she would understand, but Aline would only say it depended on the need and an inescapable scenario demanding Vienne’s inclusion into our bizarre and unbelievable secret.

  There were no precise conditions or events that would require such a thing, Aline said, but it was something we would think about. The idea became more immediate when Aline suggested another visit to Montreal once the holiday season died out in January.

  “I know you want to tell Vienne about all this,” she began, but I cut her words short.

  “I’m not big on lying to my sister, Aline, but I understand why she can’t know.”

  “Not right now,” she replied with an odd and unexpected smile, “but one day, you may have to tell her.”

  “I don’t understand what that means.”

  It was one of the many moments when my ignorance, and a process not complete, created for Aline another test of her patience, and she looked at me for a moment while she considered her response.

  “This is all new to you,” she began, “and I know perfectly well how strange and unbelievable it must seem. But you must trust me, Evan; I have been here before and I know what could happen if these things were revealed.”

  “Like it was when you brought the hammer down on Renard?”

  “No,” she replied at once. “It was enough to frighten him off, but that’s all; he doesn’t know what this is and he never will.”

  “I’m standing right in the middle of it and I don’t even know what this is!”

  “At the proper time,” she said softly, “you will.”

  “I watched a fire burning without logs, and when I called Renard there wasn’t much left of him; you simply aimed a thought or two and he ended up a quivering blob of shit on the floor! Is there anything more you could say to top this?”

  “Yes,” she said with a smile. “A lot more.”

  There is a difference between deliberate silence and the inability to speak, and that distinction was never clearer to me than it was in that moment. Despite all that had happened in the months before—indescribable effects of a supernatural power I had to experience for myself to know was no illusion—there was more. I thought I had done well adjusting to a tidal wave of stunning revelations that, if published to the world, would change everything we thought we knew about the paranormal and shake more than a few of society’s cultural foundations into rubble. Was there anyone else who stood alone in such a place, forced by the evidence of personal experience, and struggling to reconcile the irreconcilable? Aline rails at the use of the term but in my singular corner of reality the only word that crept into every analysis I could make in my private moments was “magic.”

  She said “I’m not a witch” because the image points to a contemplation of good and evil as a function of religious conflict—God’s power battling Satan and his servants who follow the occult code, for example. Faith has nothing to do with it, she insisted, lecturing me that magic and witches were convenient excuses for terrible acts to protect the soul. Sometimes, she said after a long pause, a chance to lash out at the devil by burning one of his minions at the stake was the only course. How beautifully ironic, I thought, knowing she could do those things many would associate with covens and malevolent practitioners of the dark arts, yet she was dismissive of the idea as reality. Still, I held a question in need of an answer if only to rationalize events that were, at their core, irrational. It was a question I would rather have avoided but such a chance was long gone and it hit me in a single, powerful blast:

  What do you do when you discover magic is real?

  I bathed in a strange sensation of belonging, at least as far as I can be allowed to borrow the term, since I was not a target for the horrors she could inflict. It felt a bit like being a civilian on a battlefield; neither a belligerent for this side or the other. I stood beside Aline, accepting my assumed role as companion to a sorceress and grateful for the distinction; if others tested her or threatened to expose what she could do, it was they who would pay the price. I suppose it brought a certain calm in knowing the bad people who walk in cities and prey upon the ordinary or weak would find something else if they looked and saw vulnerability. The two rough boys in Glasgow found that truth the hard way, but Aline made it more than clear there would be no frivolous use of it and only as the last of possible resorts. No carnival ride indeed.

  They paused as I described that quiet conversation, and in one of her occasional moments of thoughtfulness, Mo signaled for a question. Because it was late in the night and we were getting tired, I said in a snotty, combative tone, “Hit the brakes, everybody; Miss Persimmon missed something!” She ignored the insult quite surprisingly and pulled a chair to sit directly between us. It was abrupt and unexpected because the suits always stayed on the other side of the table, and she waited a moment, looking at me while she formed her questions. “I know you won’t…or can’t,” she began, “but in that time—after she first showed you—did you ever consider running?” I laughed a little and asked her if it would have made any difference.

  Mo nodded with an unusually understanding expression and said, “Others might’ve tried, but I wanted to know why you did not.”

  The message was poorly concealed and I knew she meant Aline’s influence. Were my thoughts invaded and controlled so completely, she wondered, that any chance of breaking free was an unreachable goal? She wasn’t asking to test my resolve or tempt me with the possibility; Mo was simply fascinated by my choices and from them the clearest declaration of love and no possibility of betrayal. I think she changed a little that night and I lost some of my disdain for her in the process. There were moments when Mo saw more than Burke, Halliwell, or even Berezan ever could, and a single, almost imperceptible nod told me she understood.

  THE sky surrendered to heavy overcast and a lonely drizzle when Aline decided to sign the paperwork for a new custodial service Margaret wanted to try out. We drove up in the afternoon to sunbreaks along the coast sending beautiful rays of gold and yellow in cheerful swaths across the highway. For once, I had the presence of mind to pull my phone from a pocket and click photos out the window with the intent of sending them to Vienne, and in that brief second or two, I felt different somehow: content and at peace with the world for the first time in a long time. Aline just smiled and I know she could feel it by remote inside my thoughts, but I didn’t care in the slightest. When we parked and scurried against the gathering wind a new surprise waited—another change moment.

  No one noticed them until I turned from inspecting new sweaters on one of the shop’s floor display tables as a pale, balding man in his mid-forties stood with hands stuffed inside his pockets at the checkout counter. Another walked slowly along the racks, pretending to look at Helly Hansen foul weather jackets and a third figure stood quietly behind and to the first man’s left. Aline appeared from the back office, and she looked at me immediately.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Lloyd,” the older one said as he offered his card. “My name is William Marsden. May we have a moment of your time?”

  One of them stepped lightly between us with an extended palm. It was abrupt and awkward but he smiled and said, “You’re the American lad!” I tried to move around him but he grabbed and shook my hand vigorously, if only to distract and short-circuit any move I might make toward Marsden. Aline just smiled and motioned them toward the office. At once, Marsden paused and gestured toward one he called Kevin.

  “We don’t need to trouble Mr. Morgan with all this; could you look after him for a moment?”

  It was clear what that meant, but my racing heart and heightened senses were more powerful than his false considerati
on.

  “It’s no trouble at all,” I said with as even a tone as I could manage, and Aline finished the thought.

  “I would rather he stayed.”

  Marsden returned the automatic smile bureaucrats practice because they’re taught and believe the appearance of civility in an otherwise contentious or distasteful setting is an important behavioral distinction separating them from the unwashed masses.

  “Ah. Well, Mr. Morgan is certainly welcome to join and observe!”

  The poorly hidden note was meant to imply I had no authority or particular standing in the matter, and I followed them to the shop’s office where Marsden and one of his men waited until Aline closed the door.

  “Now then,” he began, but she cut him off immediately.

  “If you want to discuss Andre Renard’s visit, please have the courtesy of beginning it without a lie, Mr. Burke.”

  I expected him to fumble for a response, or to show at least an understandable degree of confusion, but his expression changed as though somebody had pushed an unseen button when the suddenly needless pretense dissolved. I watched closely but he was neither angry nor even embarrassed. Instead, he showed only relief and I didn’t know enough to realize why.

  “We would arrive here at some point, I suppose,” he said with a smile.

  Aline just looked at him, and I noticed her eyes never blinked.

  “Alan Burke,” he said at last. “I won’t waste your time with department names or mysterious, hidden offices for which I am responsible because you’ve never heard of them.”

  “I’ve heard of Special Branch,” I said at once, but Burke only smiled.

  “A necessary fiction to ensure the cooperation of your local constabulary. We are representatives of Her Majesty’s government and that is really all I’m at liberty to reveal. May we proceed?”

  I wondered how much time and contrived cat-and-mouse had been averted when Aline tore away Burke’s “William Marsden” façade from the start, forcing the process ahead without a goofy charade. Burke seemed just as happy about it, and he held out a palm until the other man filled it with a small notepad. Burke thumbed through it for a moment until Aline nodded, and then it was his turn.

  “Inspector Renard had a very interesting tale to tell,” he continued, “very interesting indeed.”

  “I’m sure he did,” Aline replied, “but I wonder how you came by it, Mr. Burke?”

  “Oh, we are provided with lots of interesting things, Miss Lloyd, but I’m not certain its origin can make any meaningful difference here.”

  “Hurd,” she said suddenly, “and he told…a military officer called Halliwell.”

  Burke’s face went blank. He stared at her for a moment and there was only a slight pause until the clawing, screeching sensation of fear swept through my mind again when I realized she was inside his—and transmitting it to me in a shared thought so real it felt like my own. It was the first time Aline had let me see and feel the thoughts of another through her—an unnatural and frightening eavesdrop that brought a shiver up my spine. She looked at me and I nodded very slightly to signal I understood, but Burke seemed like a man suddenly unable to speak his own language. It went on like that for a few moments, and I know Aline sat quietly so he would know who and what he was dealing with. At last, the sensation eased and I could no longer feel his thoughts.

  It must be said Burke is hardly the image of an imposing physical presence, but his intellect is powerful and it shone when he recovered so quickly. Others would likely have cut and run, hoping to plan another way, but not Burke. Instead, he placed his hands once more into his pockets and that “cold oatmeal” smile of his returned.

  “We didn’t believe his story, by the way,” Burke said with a new, more familiar tone. “But now it would seem Detective Inspector Renard’s fantastical narrative wasn’t so absurd after all, was it?”

  “I didn’t ask him to start all this, Mr. Burke,” Aline said. “Those things in Brugge happened but Renard misunderstood.”

  “What was it he misunderstood, if I may ask?”

  “All of it,” she replied simply. “He is convinced I murdered his friend for no reason.”

  “Indeed he does, but it was a rather odd indictment, considering he now refuses to speak of it entirely,” Burke said with an obvious, questioning frown.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, and to my surprise, he sat on Margaret’s desk to answer the way people do when they’re about to take you into their confidence. Tedious though I now know Burke can sometimes be, the man is a cool runner.

  “Oh, we learned of his condition afterward, but by then, poor old Andre…well, he didn’t have much to say, did he?”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, but it was clear Aline’s prediction Renard would lose interest was correct, and it became one of the red flags people like Burke see better than others.

  “No one spends more than a decade collecting information to lay blame for murder, only to reverse his position almost overnight. Inspector Renard suddenly wanted nothing more to do with this so that his life could return to normal. Well…normal in the relative sense, of course.”

  “And Dumont?” I asked.

  “We thought at first Renard might’ve been telling tales, but the scans showed significant distress throughout Monsieur Dumont’s cerebral cortex and nobody can pretend something like that.”

  “So?”

  “So, Mr. Morgan, a discreet phone call to his old mates here, some of our own monitoring software there, and we saw enough to understand there was something unusual flitting about inside Andre’s head, if you’ll pardon the expression. We went over to Belgium but he refused to talk. He told us to sod off and leave him alone, in fact, and…”

  “And that’s when you saw his files?”

  “To be precise, certain functionaries in government had them already, but yes, we were given copies and that’s when the numbers began to add up all wrong.”

  Aline knew he meant Hurd. Through it all, she sat quietly listening, but it was clear she regarded the exercise as a waste of time.

  “What numbers, Mr. Burke?” she asked.

  “To begin with,” he replied, “there is the question of Claude Dumont’s injuries. We were given the MRI results and our pathologists agreed at once: there is no medical explanation for a human brain to have suffered what they referred to in the notes as a radical and abnormal proliferation of subarachnoid hemorrhages.”

  “I’m not a doctor,” she said, and Burke waited for her to finish a sentence she had no intention of continuing. I thought he might take the bait but he went right on without a pause.

  “It’s not a question of the diagnosis, Miss Lloyd; we are speaking of cause, not effect.”

  “Dumont was very agitated when he attacked me,” she replied simply. “Perhaps his brain was stressed beyond its limits.”

  Still Burke wasn’t fazed.

  “We watched the video segments, Miss Lloyd. Dumont went a bit too far in his zeal to speak with you, but that was hardly a life-threatening attack.”

  “It was to me,” she answered in a precise and even tone.

  Burke blinked a few times, but it was clear he was getting nowhere, and Aline hadn’t shown the slightest sign of weakness. He turned away for a moment but his smile was gone.

  “We can return to the injuries another time, but I should tell you our lads were very keen to hear your account of the sudden downblast of air Dumont described; so powerful and focused, he said, it seemed like…what did he say, ‘an invisible rocket engine’?”

  “Perhaps a weather anomaly,” she replied. “There’s nothing so extraordinary about a sudden wind, is there?”

  Burke waited to see if Aline would show signs of anxiety—the nervous reaction of one running out of answers—but she stared at him with an expression free of emotion.

  “It is possible the description was overstated from Dumont’s excited condition,” he said, “but there was also your unfortunate encounte
r at a Glasgow bus stop; we saw the reports of that misadventure as well.”

  “Those men weren’t looking for answers,” she answered coolly. “I have the photos of my face they took at hospital, if you’ve not seen them.”

  “We saw, and one can hardly blame you for defending yourself, but there was and remains no rational explanation for the condition in which you left them, is there? The emergency staff at West Glasgow saw something none of them could diagnose.”

  “I can’t help what they saw.”

  “But then you told investigating authorities of a blackout; a sudden dance with amnesia brought about by an understandably traumatic event.”

  “Yes?” she replied coolly, and I found myself looking at the exchange as I would a tense chess match with something on the line much deeper than pride or notoriety. I watched Burke and his knowing grin made it clear he understood Aline wasn’t going to budge. I know it didn’t surprise him and he went on as though reciting from a lawyer’s notes.

  “In each case—Brugge and the bus stop—you were in close proximity, but there’s still more. I don’t pretend to hold any sorrow for the two in Glasgow,” he said with feigned seriousness, “but even you must admit their astonishing recovery and utter lack of identifiable cause defies all logic.”

  “If you say so,” she said with a subtle shrug, but Burke was on a roll.

  “I can also tell you the emergency physician’s notes declared with absolute certainty their very painful brush with death would have become permanent had they not been discovered and treated so quickly.”

  Aline said nothing, and through the moments of awkward silence, Burke waited until it was obvious she couldn’t be pushed.

  “And now, after pouring out an amazing story better suited to a suspense film, Andre Renard comes to Denbighshire, only to spin about quite abruptly and refuse to discuss the matter further. The collection of documents filled with dots he took such deliberate care connecting is suddenly the last thing on Earth he’s willing to talk about. So, Miss Lloyd,” he continued, “there you have it, and one can easily see our dilemma, hmm?”