The Edge of Reason

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “So to reiterate Angela’s question … what do we do now?” Richard asked Kenntnis.

  “What I told you. Resume your lives. Do your jobs, but be alert for activity from our foes. Between the coven, the golems, the assault on my building, and that thing in the church, it’s pretty clear that the fabric of reality is pretty stretched and thin here in Albuquerque. There may be incursions.” He looked back down at the stack of clippings and his shoulders dropped as if he was too weary to bear their weight. “I’ll figure out when and how we tackle these. It would be so helpful to have Cross, but he shattered late last night.”

  “Cross? Shattered?” Weber asked plaintively.

  Kenntnis looked at the older cop. “You don’t want to hear that part of the lecture yet. You’ve got enough to chew on.”

  “I can’t believe we’re just going to lie low,” Angela interrupted, preparing to resume the argument.

  Richard crossed to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. It was a rare and pleasant experience to look down into a woman’s face. “Kenntnis is right,” he said. “We’re not ready to take on Grenier, and the work we do is a worthy role for the Lumina. We hold back the darkness.”

  There was no warning. Suddenly Angela’s face was pressed against Richard’s chest, wetting his shirt with her tears. “I’m afraid they’re going to kill you,” came the muffled, tear-choked words.

  He laid his cheek on the top of her head, feeling the crisp spring of her dark curls against his skin. “Won’t happen. I’ve got you … all of you, watching my back.” Looking at the others, he gave them all a smile that froze and shattered when he met the blazing fury in Rhiana’s gaze.

  Angela stepped out of his embrace and rubbed furiously at her cheeks. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m tired. I get weepy and silly when I’m tired. I need to go home.”

  “I’ll take you.”

  “I can give you a lift.”

  Richard and Weber stopped and looked at each other. Rhiana whirled and walked out of the office. Angela watched the younger woman go, then looked back at the two men.

  “I think I’d better drive myself.”

  She hurried out and Richard suspected that she was going to try and catch Rhiana. He hoped she succeeded and that she would be able to smooth over the clash of hormones and attraction. It was a hell of a situation.

  Kenntnis’s voice interrupted his reverie. “Would you please just fuck that girl so we can lose the psychodramas.”

  Richard stiffened. “Putting aside that she is underage, that is unbelievably sexist and offensive.” He could hear in his voice the echo of three hundred years of Yankee ancestors, and he knew he sounded like a prig. He hoped the underlying fear wasn’t also showing.

  Amusement deepened the creases in Weber’s face. Kenntnis looked exasperated. “I really, really wish you were an ignorant flatfoot.”

  “Hey,” said Weber. “Watch it.”

  “Apologies,” Kenntnis threw to Weber. “How about this? A more typical male.”

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  It was strange to be back in school. Kenntnis had insisted, pointing out that sorceress didn’t constitute an acceptable career choice, and Rhiana had acquiesced because it was tough to refuse when the man provided her with room and board, bought her a car and paid off her student loan. The corner of a textbook gouged her shoulder. Rhiana shifted the backpack, and admitted that she didn’t actually mind that much. She loved the play of numbers. They almost had weight and mass, like crystals of jet all sharp-edged and glittering.

  The sandstone paving the quad shone golden in the setting sunlight. Rhiana cut through the Student Union building. The scent of coffee and hamburgers elicited a growl from her stomach. She wished she didn’t have this late class, but Kenntnis always had a dinner waiting when she returned to the penthouse. She fought back the impulse to get a snack, but decided she’d better stop at the bathroom before class.

  Her fingers ached and tingled as the warm water flowed across her cold hands. She pulled free a paper towel and rubbed vigorously, feeling the rough paper catch on hangnails. She needed to get a manicure.

  She dug through her backpack for a hairbrush and lipstick. The brush scratched and massaged her scalp and tugged free minute tangles as she swept it down through the mass of her hair. Maybe Richard preferred short hair like Angela’s? Maybe she should drop by his apartment? He hadn’t come around for the past three days. Rhiana tried to think of anything she might have done or said the last time they met that would have kept him away.

  Then abruptly her frowning image shifted and what stared back at her was her, but a Rhiana dressed in a gown shivering and glittering with diamonds and silver thread. Her hair floated as if blown by an unseen breeze and jewels sparkled in the black tresses. Her lips were redder, her eyes greener, the blush in her cheeks as rich and vibrant as a rose petal. The brush fell clattering into the sink. Rhiana gripped the edges of the counter so tightly that her knuckles went white, and gazed and gazed at the vision. She was scared, but mesmerized.

  The image of a perfect Rhiana shivered and dissolved into component colors. The colors swirled and surged through the glass. She had seen this before, but what coalesced from the colors was not the nightmare creatures from the trailer. It was an achingly handsome face, dark skinned and green eyed, and very familiar. It was the face of the man from the Carrow’s parking lot. He smiled warmly and fondly at her, and lifting a hand he beckoned to her.

  Rhiana fled, forgetting both brush and backpack. Behind her the glass of the mirror silvered and went dark, offering no reflection.

  An ache in her throat and a sharp stitch in her side pulled her out of her run and down to a walk just in front of the doors of the library. She gulped down air, bending over her knees until her heart stopped racing. Her first instinct was to run to the car and rush to Kenntnis to seek help. But she’d left her backpack holding her books, and those physics texts cost the Earth. And he wasn’t like the monsters even if he had come out of a mirror like they did. And she’d seen him before and nothing bad had happened.

  Straightening, she pushed back her hair, feeling the moisture from the sweat that hugged her hairline. She started back toward the Student Union building. He flowed out of the shadows of the courtyard. He held her backpack. Against his preternatural beauty and inhuman grace the canvas bag looked as incongruous as a cigar in an angel’s mouth.

  “You forgot this,” he said and his voice was low but with an overtone of bells carrying the soft words farther than a natural voice could carry.

  Rhiana took it numbly. His smile enfolded her. “We need to have a talk some time. I can give you the answers to all of your questions.” And he stepped back into the shadows and was gone.

  Richard was in the zone, the beating of his heart providing the metronome for the music. The muscles in the backs of his hands and forearms tensed and stretched as he reached for the chords and his fingers flew across the keys for the runs. Next to him, Susanna, her face tight with concentration and the effort of holding the violin tucked beneath her chin, attacked the strings with her bow hard enough to make her muscles flex and flare. A strand of long blond hair was caught in her lips. Bob Figge nodded his gray crewcut head, keeping the count as he sawed away at the strings of his cello. Lee Titlebaum played his viola with a gentle smile. Even the most passionate music failed to pierce his superior calm. Mozart’s quartet swirled in the narrow confines of Richard’s apartment, undaunted by poor acoustics. They danced toward the climax, four bodies and four minds linked by music.

  And the phone rang.

  The perfect blending of sound faltered. “No,” Richard shouted. “The machine will get it!”

  They recaptured the link. Ignored the dissonance of the blaring telephone. Three rings and it was over, and they still had seven measures before the end of the quartet. The final chords wound into a perfect resolution. Richard lifted his hands from the keyboard of the big Bösendorfer. Susanna pulled the hair out of mouth and laughed from sheer
joy. Figge frowned and tapped his bow on the page, resting on his music stand. Lee gave his soft, superior smile as he wiped his hands with a perfectly starched handkerchief.

  “Come on, Bob,” Richard said encouragingly. “That was good.”

  “They best we’ve ever played it,” Susanna added.

  Titlebaum pulled a pocket watch out of his vest pocket, snapped it open and checked the time. “Eight-thirty. Can we risk an encore?”

  With a regretful head shake Richard closed the cover on the piano. “Better not. I don’t need a noise complaint. I barely got to stay here what with the fire and all.”

  Figge looked around the apartment. “You’d never know anything happened.”

  “Yes,” said Richard. “They did a good job on the repairs.”

  “Besides, we’ve got snackies,” caroled Susanna in her little girl’s voice, and she headed into the kitchen.

  Over tea and coffee and pastries from La Chantilly they discussed their lives, books they were reading and movies they had seen. Titlebaum taught at the law school. Figge taught history at Highland High. Susanna worked at an upscale jewelry store, and kept auditioning for the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. The general rule was that you auditioned five times before you got hired. Richard hoped she’d make it.

  They were disparate people brought together out of a love of music, but they never managed to socialize outside of their bimonthly jam sessions. Titlebaum had a wife and two small children. Figge was a dedicated bachelor who liked his privacy. Susanna spent her time working, practicing and caring for her elderly parents. And Richard was a cop.

  As Richard shut the door behind them a little after nine o’clock he mused that he knew a lot of people, but seemed to have few friends.

  And whose fault if that? You’re the one avoiding intimacy.

  For a brief instant a kaleidoscope of faces whirled through his mind—Rhiana, Angela and Weber, and faces from his past—Danny and Brett, Sarah, Blythe, Rachel, Sal and Mario.

  Richard shook his head to dispel the visions and the physical reaction and the sudden wave of utter loneliness. The red message light blinked on the phone. He called voice mail and started loading the plates and cups into the dishwasher.

  At first there was just the sound of soft, desperate breathing. Then his mother’s voice began to speak. “Richard … I can’t lose you … .” He had to strain to hear, her voice was so soft and broken. “You must be good. I can’t lose you to Hell.” Hysteria edged the words. There were more of the panting breaths punctuated with barely audible sobs like whimpers.

  The call ended and the blank voice of the voice mail server began. “Press seven to …”

  Richard didn’t bother to delete the message. He started dialing home, and then abruptly stopped. It was 11:30 in Rhode Island. His parents would be asleep by now. It didn’t take much to imagine his father’s anger if Richard woke them. And a call would betray his mother. He would phone tomorrow after Robert left for work.

  Dinner was over. Rhiana ate in solitary state in the dining room. Kenntnis was away and Cross had taken a plate down to his shelter in the alley because it seemed likely he would shatter again before the night was over. Rhiana returned to her room, and pulled out her books to do her homework.

  The tips of her fingers met something other than physics books. Frightened, she jumped up and grabbed a penny. Holding it at the ready she grasped the backpack by the bottom and upended it. Among the books was a velvet-covered scrapbook. Rhiana flipped back the front cover with her toe.

  On the front page in flowing script was her name—Rhiana. Inside were pictures of her, from babyhood through high school graduation. From the angles and distance they seemed to have been captured with a telephoto lens. Playing on the swings at the park near their house. In her little pink tutu at the dance recital when she was five. Digging in the wet sand at the beach at Zuma when she was eleven. The final picture was her high school graduation. Hundreds of pictures detailing a life. Her life.

  In the back was every clipping from every L.A. newspaper that had ever mentioned her, from the L.A. Times to the local Van Nuys neighborhood rag—pitching for the girl’s softball team, winning the state science fair, receiving the physics scholarship. Every tiny victory carefully recorded. Nothing like it had ever been kept in the Davinovitch household.

  Rhiana hugged it to her chest.

  It was probably fanciful, but it seemed to Richard that the endless rings as he called home to Newport sounded hollow and distant, as if underlining the fact he had traveled far from home. The voice mail system picked up.

  “Hi, Mama, what are you up to? Call me on my cell. Love you.”

  He had sought privacy on the front steps of the building. A strong wind howled through Tijeras Canyon and moaned around Albuquerque’s few tall buildings. Richard pulled his coat closer around him. Maybe I did abandon her, he thought as he stowed the phone. Maybe I should have tried Rhode Island’s various police forces instead of moving so far away.

  But the lack of an answer or a callback was really starting to worry him. It had been two days since her tearful, cryptic call and he had yet to reach her and she hadn’t returned any of his calls. He pulled the phone back out, jiggled it nervously on his palm, then hit the auto dial for his sister Amelia. He didn’t think there was much hope of reaching her. His eldest sister was a surgeon at Mass General, but he preferred to start with her. Pamela was a defense attorney in Newport and she viewed Richard’s new career choice with disapproval. In fact she’d made him feel as if he’d joined the Brown Shirts. They hadn’t talked much in the past few years.

  His musings were broken when, surprisingly, Amelia picked up her phone.

  “Richard, what a surprise.” Her voice was deep and husky and she had a habit of interrupting her words with hesitations that should have been annoying, but ended up endearing and fascinating.

  “Sorry, I haven’t called for while. Things have been … well, a little hectic out here.”

  “Papa said you got a promotion.”

  “Yes.” The cold seeped up through the soles of his shoes, burning the tips of his toes in the thin dress socks. He walked in place, trying to warm up.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We missed you at Thanksgiving.”

  “I just couldn’t leave. I’ll come at Christmas. How are Brent and Paul?”

  “They’re fine. Paul wants to take up hockey. We’re negotiating.”

  “Which means he’ll be picking a different sport,” said Richard, and couldn’t help smiling. His eldest sister was formidable, and would be more than a match for an eight-year-old’s tantrums.

  “What is that noise? I can hardly hear you.”

  Richard moved into the alcove by the front doors. “The wind. Is this better?”

  “Much. So, what’s up?”

  “Have you talked to Mama recently?”

  “Last week. Why?”

  “How did she seem to you?” Richard asked.

  “A little hyper, but I’d rather have her bouncing than depressed.” Richard agreed with the sentiment. When depression hit, Alannis Oort tended to dull the pain with alcohol and pills. It was one of many reasons why Richard tried to keep his Valium bottle closed. “Is something wrong?” Amelia asked.

  “I don’t know. She left a message for me a couple of nights ago, and she seemed very agitated and upset. She was crying and talking about … well, about me going to Hell. I keep calling, but I haven’t been able to reach her.”

  “Oh dear. She’s been very active at church chairing some fundraising committees. Maybe it’s been too much for her.”

  “You need to tell Papa,” Richard said.

  “You tell him. She’s calling you.”

  “I’d feel like I was betraying her.”

  “Oh, Richard, don’t start. Papa isn’t the enemy. She isn’t easy.”

  “And he doesn’t help.”

  The front doors opened and Detective Joe Torres l
ooked out. He spotted Richard. Joe’s jaw thrust out pugnaciously and set his jowls to wobbling. He pointed theatrically at his watch. Richard nodded at his temporary partner and tried to focus on what Amelia was saying.

  “Look, let’s not have an argument. I’ve got rounds in five minutes. Was there anything else?” Amelia asked.

  “No, I was just worried.”

  “If you don’t want to talk to Papa, then talk to Pamela. At least she’s in town.”

  “Yeah, okay. See you at Christmas.”

  “Take care, Richard, love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  He hung up the phone and stepped back into the building. The overheated air was suffocating after the clean cold of the wind, and it carried the faint smell of sweat generated by fear, despair and grief.

  “We should have been rollin’ ten minutes ago,” grunted Torres.

  They were partners for the week as the captain and Weber tried to work out permanent assignments. So far it didn’t seem to be a rousing success. Torres made fun of Richard’s contemporary Castilian Spanish rather then the archaic Castilian mixed with Spanglish spoken in New Mexico. Ridiculed his East Coast accent, and his reluctance to curse. Torres’s own profanities had the quality of poetry as he tried to fill every sentence with vulgarities.

  “Sorry,” Richard said, and ducking his head, he followed Torres toward the back doors and the parking lot.

  Worried thoughts chased one another through his head. They had attended that church Richard’s entire life. Not every church was evil. They had been created to foster Kenntnis’s vision of a loving God. Some still served that mission. There was nothing to indicate Grenier was behind his mother’s erratic behavior.

  “You’ve been spying on me!” Rhiana pushed the outrage, hoping that her secret pleasure over the scrapbook didn’t show.

  She was in a deserted bathroom on the seventh stack of the library tower. It was late in the day. She wouldn’t be discovered.