SHADOWS

by Jonathan Nasaw

  She cast her eyes up to the underside of the loft, then pointed to the ladder. "Go ahead," she whispered back. "I'll be up in a minute."

  He darted over to pick up a leather bag—like a doctor's, but bigger—on the floor next to the bed, then started up the ladder, climbing as nimbly as a monkey with his one free hand. When he was out of sight, she bent over the bed. "Daddy, what's going on?"

  But it was no use—Daddy Don had lost touch again. It had been happening a lot lately. "What?"

  She sighed, stroked his stubbled cheek lightly. "Never mind, Daddy. You comfortable? Need anything?"

  Another stoned smile; the eyes lost focus. Martha lowered the bed back to a gentle lean, tucked the pillows tighter around him, and clicked both side rails into place. She could hear the breath rattling in his chest as she started up the ladder. She climbed slowly, stalling. She missed Daddy Don so bad—somehow it seemed almost like she'd have missed him less if he were already dead.

  The man was looking out the back window. She crossed the loft, trying to tread lightly on the wooden platform—she knew from experience how loud footsteps in the loft sounded down in the living room—and had just grasped the beaded pull chain hanging from the overhead bulb when he wheeled around. "No, leave it off."

  She froze. "What's going on?"

  "Your life may be in danger." He took a step toward her; the light leaking up from below made it look as if he were shining a flashlight under his chin. A surefire effect when telling ghost stories, but not terribly reassuring under the circumstances.

  "Is somebody out there?" Martha took a step back, dropping the chain.

  "Don't know. But let's not silhouette ourselves, shall we?"

  The pull chain tapped the bulb, swung back gently toward her. Martha fought a rising panic. "Who are you? What are you doing here? And what happened to Dirtbag?"

  She took another step back as he started toward her again. "I've already told you my name. What I'm doing here is trying to keep you alive. And if by Dirtbag you are referring to the pungent gentleman in the motorcycle jacket who was passed out in a chair when I arrived, I took him by the seat of the pants and the scruff of the neck and tossed him out the front door."

  "Are you a cop or something?"

  A modest chuckle. "Hardly."

  "Who's after me? The man who tried to kill Selene?"

  The man's eyebrows shot up. "Precisely."

  "Did she send you?"

  He shook his head.

  "Who then?"

  He smiled—an unfortunate effect given the eerie underlighting. "Your father."

  Martha's eyes darted downward involuntarily, as if she were looking through the floorboards at Daddy Don.

  "Not him," said the stranger, following her glance. "I'm talking about your real father." Then he clucked his tongue and slapped his forehead with the flat of his palm. "Oh! But of course. How stupid of me. You don't know who your real father is, do you?"

  Numbly, she shook her head as he crossed the loft toward her, opening his kit bag as he approached. With his face only inches from hers he stopped and peered into her eyes; she could not tear her gaze away. "Would you like to know?" he whispered. His breath was sweet and coppery, a little rank, but oddly comforting, almost familiar, as he reached into the kit bag and pulled out a loose-leaf notebook with a black silk cover. "Recognize this?"

  "Selene's Book of Shadows." Her voice wasn't working, but her lips had moved to form the words.

  "There's a letter hidden under the inner lining. Why don't you take it down to your room—you'll probably want to read it in privacy," suggested Len Patch thoughtfully.

  * * *

  Martha sat cross-legged on her bed with the thick loose-leaf closed in her lap. Through the closed door she could hear Len conversing softly with Daddy Don. It occurred to her that although the book was as familiar to her as a childhood friend, she had never actually looked into it. She passed her palm thoughtfully across the silky black cover as a toddler memory surfaced…

  Lying on her stomach playing with her plastic Little Pony doll on the floor of Selene's big house in San Francisco. Selene sitting on the rug nearby, gluing a new cover onto her book. Something iridescent, magical to a three-year-old, with a hint of rainbow like Little Pony's mane and tail.

  Martha slipped off the hand-sewn black silk dust jacket. Sure enough, there was the old rattlesnake-skin cover Selene had glued on so painstakingly years before. It was dull and cracked with age now, and starting to peel back from the original canvas-covered cardboard binding. She could just see the corner of the one-page letter Len had told her about, peeking out from under the snakeskin; with trembling fingers she pulled it out.

  The cream-colored paper was soft as tissue, white and threadbare where it had been folded. Carefully she carried the letter over to her white wicker desk, carefully spread it open across the glass top. The lavender ink had faded to a nearly illegible gray; she switched on her tensor lamp and twisted the flexible gooseneck until the light was blazing directly down onto the letter.

  April 5, 1976

  Darling Selene,

  Know I love you. Know I appreciate everything you've done for me. I've either lost my mind or found my path. Please believe me when I tell you I have my reasons. Perhaps someday I'll be able to tell you.

  My original plan, insofar as I had one, was to drop clean out of sight—less painful for all concerned. I did call Connie a few minutes ago. It was as awful as I thought it would be, but this much we agreed on: she and Don will raise Martha as if she were their own child. I know this will work out for the best. You know how hungry they've been for one. They'll give her everything I couldn't—wouldn't. And as her godmother, I know you'll always be there for her too.

  As you know, I've never told anyone who the father is. It seemed irrelevant. Wasn't his fault anyway—I told him I was on the pill. And now Connie's told me she and Don don't want to know and don't want Martha to know either. I agreed—I had another reason for keeping his identity to myself anyway. Martha's father was the lover—more than that, the one true eternal love—of my dearest friend in the world, the woman I've always thought of as my one true eternal love, and even though all I wanted was his sperm, and those lovely WASP genes, I couldn't take the chance that you'd think I was trying to steal him from you. How could I, Selene, when I know that Jamey Whistler is yours, marriage or no marriage, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, until death do you part. If then.

  So why am I telling you now? Because I keep getting these scary thoughts about all the bad things that could happen down the line, some tragedy involving Connie and Don, or Martha comes down with some hereditary disease, or any one of a billion possibilities where somebody might need to know the identity of Martha's father. And if something happened to me before that (not very farfetched), the secret would go to the grave with me.

  But enough of borrowing trouble—sufficient unto the day and all that… So for what it's worth, to whom it may concern, etc., etc.: James Whistler is Martha Herrick's birth father.

  Please keep this letter somewhere safe, and please keep our secret unless something dire happens. Tell the most noble ladies I love them all to the extent I am capable of loving. Tell them to pray for me. You pray for me too.

  Your other eternal lover,

  Moll

  The look on Martha's face when she emerged from the back room was everything Aldo could have hoped for. She marched straight to Daddy Don's bedside. The old biker was asleep, breathing so shallowly that she had to stare at his beard intently to see any movement whatsoever. She touched him lightly on the cheek.

  "Daddy Don?"

  He opened his eyes. " 'S happenin', Sugaree?" Stoned.

  "Is Whistler my father?"

  "Beats the shit out of me. Ask your Aunt Connie." And he nodded off again.

  Her back was to Aldo, but he saw her fingers clench as if they wanted to grab the old man and shake him awake—which was not part of Aldo's plan. He stepped forward and whisp
ered into her ear, "You read the letter. Do you have any doubt?"

  "Not really." She squared her shoulders and turned. Their faces were only inches apart.

  Good-looking kid, thought Aldo. Then he remembered her in the hot tub, and smiled inwardly as he stepped back. Little birds—give them room and they'll come to you.

  And sure enough: "Thanks for letting me know the truth," she said. She led him away from the bed, into the kitchen area on the other side of the pillars. "You said Whistler sent you to protect me. Then he must know now."

  "Now, yes." Aldo had his story prepared; he hoped it was seamless. If not, he was ready to do some quick stitching. "I don't know if you know, but he's been in hiding since this all started. When he learned Selene was looking for him, he contacted her. That's when she told him about you, asked him to look after you. When he asked her for proof, she told him about the letter in the book in the trunk. He sent me to check it out, and in any event to take whatever steps were necessary to see that you were protected."

  "But I spoke to Selene last night—she didn't say anything about any of this."

  "Whoever is behind all this has cast his nets widely. Perhaps she was afraid the line wasn't secure. Was there anything at all unusual about the call? What did she tell you?"

  "Just that everything was okay, that she'd be back in a couple days."

  It was all Aldo could do to keep his inward grin from spreading outward.

  "But now that you mention it," Martha continued, "she did keep asking me if I was okay, if any strangers had been around. I thought she was talking about the guy who set the fires."

  "There you have it," said Aldo. "She was probably trying to find out whether I'd shown up yet, without tipping anybody off that I was coming." He could see in her eyes that she'd bought it, that she was leaning his way: time to pull out the props and drop her into his lap. "But now here I am. And if I fall down on this job, if I let anything happen to Whistler's daughter, he'll have me skinned for seat covers." He'd almost said have my guts for garters, but seat covers was better—more Californian.

  Whistler's daughter. Martha liked the sound of that. "So what do we do first?"

  "Obviously, the first thing to do is get while the getting's good." A phrase he'd heard on the radio this afternoon, in reference to American troops in Mogadishu.

  "But I can't leave Daddy Don," she whispered, peering around a pillar to be sure he was still asleep.

  "As long as you're here, he's in danger too."

  "I guess I could call Carson—that's his partner. He could be over in like five minutes."

  "Make the call and then we're out of here. We'll make a big show of leaving by the front door, so if there's anyone staking the place out, we'll draw them away with us before he gets here. Daddy Don will be okay for five minutes, and this way we won't be putting your friend Carson into jeopardy as well."

  "But then they'll be following us."

  They. Us. Aldo couldn't have been more pleased. "And we'll lose them, too," he assured her. "The shadow hasn't been born yet that Len Patch can't shake."

  CHAPTER 4

  « ^ »

  After her initial comment about the gentlemen of respect whose names ended in vowels, Moll had made no further reference to the subject, other than to assure Selene that with Gianni—again the sign of the bent nose—living in the penthouse, hers was far and away the most secure apartment building in New York.

  So when Moll offered to have a car take them to Kennedy—Moll was just going along for the ride—Selene assumed she was talking about a cab or a car service, and was totally unprepared for the streeeetch limo waiting for them at the curb on Friday morning. She was about to ask Moll how much this was going to cost, but stopped when Moll greeted the driver familiarly as he came around to open the door for them.

  "Hey Joey, how's it going this morning?"

  "Any morning's good when I get to drive you, Miss Montana. You know I'm a fan."

  "Well bless your heart. And be sure to thank Gianni for me."

  "Aah, you know it makes him happy when he can do something for you."

  "Well thank him anyway." She slid in after Selene.

  "I have to ask," said Selene as the limo pulled out into traffic. "Who on earth is Gianni?"

  Moll replied in the voice-that-was-not—Il capo di capo di tutti

  capi—then asked the driver to roll up the partition. "Got to get in a little girl talk, Joey."

  "No problem, Miss M."

  "You've gotten so good at telepathy," said Selene when the glass was up. "It's coming through so clearly now. And in Italian, yet. After all these years of work, it's still hit or miss with me."

  "It'll come," replied Moll.

  "When?"

  "With menopause."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Sure. There's a lot of other good stuff that comes with it. Orgomancy, for instance. Can't even start learning that until after the change. Remember the part in Enfernelli where she talks about not being afraid of the crone?"

  Selene nodded.

  "Well she ain't talking about some other crone over in the next county, Selene—she's talking about the crone you're gonna turn into some day. Listen up, dearie—the crone is the toughest aspect of the Goddess to love. She ain't young and gorgeous like Persephone, she ain't regal like Maeve. But her magic is the most powerful magic of all, and it doesn't have diddly to do with good or evil or belief or unbelief. 'Mother of Darkness, Mother of Night, witchcraft neither black nor white."

  "Selene, my love, if you want to, you can abandon everything you've been working toward for the past thirty years because the Goddess didn't pop up in front of you wearing a fucking sandwich board every time you prayed, and you can find something else to do with the rest of your life. Needlepoint. Marriage. Volunteer work with the Cancer Society. Or you can travel; they have lots of tours designed for women of a certain age. I understand the Pyramids are a popular destination.

  "Because you see, dearie, the alternative to becoming a crone isn't staying young and beautiful. No matter what you decide to do you're going to turn into an old lady if you live. You might as well tap into some magic, get some power to go along with those gray hairs."

  "Thanks for the pep talk, Moll," replied Selene. "I'll keep it in mind. But at the moment I've got a problem that won't wait for menopause. Now is when I need some real magic."

  Moll thought it over. "Remember that first night, when you asked me to define magic?" she said after a moment.

  "Of course," replied Selene. "You quoted Crowley: 'The science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.' Why?"

  "Frankly, dearie, if your will was any stronger, you'd own the fucking franchise."

  * * *

  Compared to her last flight to the Caribbean, the nonstop from JFK to St. Thomas was a piece of cake. It even arrived on time, enabling her to catch the last Blue Goose of the day to Santa Luz without doing too much damage to her American Express card in the shops of Charlotte Amalie.

  The Goose skipped into the harbor shortly before sunset; the clerk at the Kings Frederick and Christian Arms greeted her warmly and assigned her her old room. There had, of course, been no way for Selene to call Granny Weed in advance. Her plan was to whistle up Tosh on Saturday morning and get a ride up to the rain forest, so the last thing she expected to hear when she went out onto the balcony to catch the last few minutes of the short but breathtaking tropical sunset was the clip-clop of goat hooves.

  But when she leaned over the railing and peered to the left, here came the Rastaman's cart rolling down the middle of King Street, scattering chickens and dogs. She waved; he tipped his blue yachting cap. "Good evenin', Miss Weiss."

  "And a lovely evening it is, Mr. Munger." Didn't take long to fall into the courtly rhythms of island speech.

  "Granny Weed say, if you ain' dine yet dis evenin', would you do her de honor?"

  It was one of those heart-stopping moments that even longtime witches honor by hum
ming the Twilight Zone theme in their heads: da da da dum, da da da dum. "How did she know I was here?"

  An eloquent shrug from the buckboard. "Sometin' about flyin' while sleepin'. Me ain' know more, me ain' want to know more."

  Selene changed into her safari shirt and khaki slacks and hurried downstairs; after another delightful ride beneath a sky of tropical splendor, they arrived at the dark wooden cabin by the side of the dundo track. Joe-Pie and Granny were out back; when she stepped out from behind the fire and into the flickering light of the kerosene torches planted around the little yard, the weed woman's complexion was a dusky reddish-brown.

  "Been flying, Granny?" asked Selene, opening her arms for a hug, then stepping back in mock alarm as the crone approached her. "Not going to stick me with any pins this time, are you?"

  "Ain' wearin' me bonnet dis evenin'." The two women hugged while Joe-Pie, who had been using the bellows on the coals beneath the cauldron, ran into the cabin barefoot and emerged wearing his Reeboks.

  "How's that pump working?" asked Selene as he skidded up to her, stopping just short of hugging distance and shaking hands formally.

  "Real good."

  "Too good," said his grandmother. "Last week he pump it up so hard his toes turn blue."

  "And how are you doing?" asked Selene. "You must have taken the Test pretty recently, if you saw me on my way here. It knocked the shit out of me for two days."

  "Because you ain' know shit about how to prepare it, and you take too much," replied the old woman scornfully, then called to the Rastaman. "Feed y'self, mon. Blue runner in de kettle." She turned back to Selene. "M'take just a little, fly just a little, not far—round de forest while Joe-Pie and Mr. Munger watch over me body. Saw where de most hidden tings be—dumbcane and nettle, hidey-toad to make balm for swell-toe—all sorts of tings. Last ting m'saw was you, steppin' off de Goose. Wake up, ask Mr. Munger a fetch you, ain' dot so, mon?"