Black Swan Rising

by Lee Carroll

  “We spent the night talking, Rebecca Ruth Bader Ginsburg Jones.” Two could play at the middle-name game—especially when one of us had a mother who had really wanted her daughter to grow up to be lawyer. I ducked before Becky could hit me again—she hated her middle names even more than I hated mine—but instead of hitting me she grinned.

  “I knew you didn’t spend the night sleeping. What did you talk about? He’s not married, is he? Does he have a rich hedge-fund-manager friend? Has he ever thought of investing in a promising indie rock band—”

  “Damn, Becky, I completely forgot about that producer who was coming to your show last night. What happened?”

  Only one thing could distract Becky when she was on the scent of a potential romantic interest, and that was the band’s future. “He was definitely interested, only he thought we needed to be a little less hard-core. Tone down the shoegaze vibe a bit. Fiona and I both agree that’s no problem, but Jay’s going to take some convincing . . .” Becky happily chattered on about the band’s prospects while I squeezed past her into the bathroom, washed up, and changed into jeans and a turtleneck sweater. I was careful not to let her see my neck, but when I surreptitiously checked out the marks in the mirror, I saw they had almost faded. When I touched them, I felt a strange thrill course through my body—as if my carotid artery had become an erogenous zone directly connected to my . . . well, to my other erogenous zones.

  As I came out, Becky was still nattering on about the details of the record contract. “I’m really happy for you, Jay, and Fiona,” I told her, giving her a quick hug. “It sounds like the band’s taking off.”

  As we walked down the stairs—Becky bouncing in front of me—I thought to myself that here was one thing that had not been touched by the demons of Despair and Discord. Will Hughes showing up to give me an alibi for last night was another stroke of good luck. Maybe Oberon wasn’t right about everything going bad—and if he wasn’t right about that, maybe he wasn’t right about Will Hughes.

  Hughes and Kiernan were standing in the hallway when we came down, locked in a stony silence that dampened even Becky’s spirits for a moment. She quickly recovered herself though. “Where’s Jay? Jay!” she shouted into the kitchen.

  “Your friend said he was going upstairs to practice,” Kiernan said. “He said to remind you that you have an appearance later tonight at the Music Hall in Williamsburg.”

  “That’s not until after midnight. I’m not going to miss seeing the lair of the infamous John Dee—hey! Did you know that’s the name of a famous Elizabethan magician . . .” Becky happily chatted with Detective Kiernan while wrapping a scarf longer than her body several times around her neck. She winked at me as she shepherded him out the door.

  “I think your friend is giving us some privacy,” Will said as he held the door open for me.

  “I’m not sure Becky knows the meaning of the word.” I set the alarm code and locked the door behind me. “But she will probably talk Detective Kiernan’s ear off by the time we get there.”

  I realized when I saw the detective’s car parked in front of the house, though, that we weren’t likely to get much privacy jammed into it. Will apparently thought the same.

  “Why don’t you follow us,” he said to Kiernan as he held his hand up in the air. The Silver Cloud instantly appeared. I saw Becky’s eyes go wide and knew she’d be dying to ride in the Rolls, but she beamed at Detective Kiernan instead. “Is this an unmarked police car? Does it have a police radio? Can I see how it works? Can we put the siren on?”

  Will opened the door of the Rolls for me while Becky got into the detective’s car. The minute I slid into the plush gray interior, though, I wondered if I was making a mistake. There was a smoked-glass barrier between the driver and the backseat that hadn’t been up when I was driven uptown yesterday. The door closed with a heavy hermetic clunk that sounded as final as the lid of a sarcophagus coming down, and the car glided down Jane Street silently. Hughes was a good two feet away from me and he made no move to touch me, but I felt engulfed by his presence. The world outside retreated.

  “So,” he broke the silence after a moment, “how was your day?”

  It was such an ordinary, mundane question that I laughed—and worse, the kind of laugh I have when I’m surprised, which comes out like a snort. “Eventful,” I finally managed to say. “I met Oberon, who doesn’t appear to like you very much.”

  Will shook his head and looked out the window. I could see from his reflection in the opaque glass that he was frowning. “No, he blamed me for Marguerite’s decision to become human.”

  “But Fen doesn’t dislike you. She said Marguerite asked her to watch over you.”

  “Did she?” he asked, turning his head in my direction. His eyes flashed silver in the dark of the car. He leaned toward me and I felt the tug of that silver thread that connected us pulling me toward him. Without any visible motion on his part he was suddenly next to me, his hand in my hair, his body pressed against mine. I felt his lips graze my cheek and drift to my ear. His breath was warm against my neck.

  “Did Oberon tell you not to see me?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “But Fen said I would see you. She said I didn’t have any choice about it.”

  I felt Will’s hand freeze on the collar of my sweater. He pulled back and looked at me, his silver eyes glowing red now. I was so startled by the transformation that I pulled back too.

  “And is that how you feel?” he asked. “That you have no choice?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that, but then I didn’t have to. The car had come to a stop. Someone knocked on the window. Hughes powered it down and Detective Kiernan stuck his head in.

  “We’re here,” he said, scanning the interior of the Rolls as if looking for contraband drugs or dead bodies. “I think you’ll want to see this, Ms. James.”

  I’d been so under Will Hughes’s spell that I hadn’t even thought to ask what he hoped to gain by bringing Detective Kiernan to Dee’s shop. Once he saw that it was covered in the dust of years, he’d dismiss my claim that I’d visited a functioning antiques store just days ago.

  “This place looks abandoned,” Kiernan said as I got out of the car. “Are you sure this is where you were the day of the burglary?”

  I walked up the steps to the glass door. The gilt letters glinted in the light from the streetlamp, the words despair and discord seeming to wink at me. “Yes, this is it,” I said, sighing. “I know it doesn’t look like it was open three days ago—” I shut up when my eyes adjusted to the dark and the interior of the shop became visible. Yes, the shelves and counter were empty, but they were no longer covered with dust, nor was the counter broken. The brocade drapes, which had been torn and shredded yesterday, hung clean and whole.

  Becky pushed me aside so she could see in. “Yeah, he must have cleared out after the burglary, but hey, what’s that on the floor? It looks like a scrap of torn canvas. Look, Detective Kiernan, don’t you think that looks like a scrap of canvas?”

  “It could be a scrap of old newspaper,” he said. “It’s not exactly a cause for a search warrant.”

  “No need,” Will Hughes said. “I’ve put in a call to the landlord . . . ah, here he is now.”

  We all turned to find a stooped, balding man hurrying up the block from the direction of Hudson Street, a cell phone clamped to his left ear, a ring of keys jangling from his right hand.

  “I would have rather contacted the landlord myself,” Kiernan muttered.

  “My apologies, Detective. I was just trying to help out. I’ll let you take it from here.” Will moved aside as the landlord, who introduced himself gruffly as Lochan Singh, unlocked the door and switched on the light. I looked in vain for any sign of the dust I’d seen two days ago; the shelves were polished clean. The only sign of what had been on them were pale circular shadows on the red velvet where watches and brooches had been. I startled when I found an eye looking back at me. One of the lover’s eye brooches still lay on t
he cloth, its painted eye gazing implacably into my own. I took a step closer to it, bent down . . . and reared back when its long-lashed lid blinked. I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone had noticed my reaction, but everyone was watching Kiernan, who was kneeling on the floor examining the scrap of canvas. I turned back to the brooch and stepped to my right.

  The eye followed my movement.

  A trick left by Dee, no doubt. Okay then, I thought, maybe it was a trick that could be turned against him. I checked to make sure that no one was watching, then I backed up to the shelf and palmed the brooch into my jeans pocket. I had a second’s queasy image of the eye squelching, but banished it. Then I turned back to the group around Kiernan. He was just lifting the scrap of canvas off the floor with the end of a pen. He laid it on the counter.

  It was the corner of a painted canvas, not part of the painting, but an edge where the artist had tested out his palette. I recognized those lilacs, mauves, and honey yellows right away. They were the colors of Pissarro’s snowy field in France.

  “This came from one of our paintings,” I said. “I’m sure of it. If you check the canvases you have you’ll see where it’s been torn off.”

  Kiernan slipped the piece of canvas into a plastic bag, then began questioning the landlord about his tenant. The store had been leased under the name John Black just three weeks earlier. The rent was paid up until the end of the year. The only other address he had for John Black was a post office box in Astoria. I listened for a few minutes until I noticed that Will Hughes was gone.

  I hurried anxiously outside, afraid he had vanished as abruptly as he had this morning, but I found him leaning on the railing at the foot of the steps, facing the river. A bank of fog was boiling at the end of the street, completely obscuring the West Side Highway and the water beyond it.

  “Where do you think he is?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Somewhere on the river, maybe. Or underground in the sewers, or out to sea. He’s using the waterways to spread his contagion.” He turned around to face me. “Why didn’t you listen to Oberon when he told you not to see me?”

  I could have answered that he was the one who’d come to my house tonight, that I hadn’t sought him out, but I knew that wasn’t what mattered. I was glad he’d come—no, more than glad. I was relieved. If he hadn’t come, I’d have gone looking for him. “Oberon doesn’t know everything,” I answered, feeling disloyal at how peevish I sounded. “Oh, but he did teach me this.” I looked around to make sure no one was watching, then snapped my fingers. A spark flew off my thumb and leapt up into a flame.

  Will laughed at my obvious delight in my new trick, then cupped my hand in his and gently blew at the flame. Instead of going out, it flared up and I felt a surge of warmth move through my body from head to toes. The flame danced and swelled, then lifted off my hand and shot into the sky, soaring upward like a Roman candle.

  “Show-off! How did you do that?”

  “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise that if you’re ever in trouble, you’ll send up a flare to let me know.”

  “Sure. Now, tell me how you did it?”

  “It’s easy. All you have to do is put your lips together and blow.” He lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed his lips against it. I felt the graze of his fangs over my knuckles. “I have to go. Asian markets are opening soon. But remember . . . if you need me . . .” He dropped my hand. Before I could say anything more, he’d ducked into his car. The Silver Cloud had melted into the fog at the end of the street before the heat of his lips had faded from my hand. It was just long enough for me to wonder where that warmth had come from.

  Night Flight

  I was relieved when we got home that Becky had a show to do. Jay and Fiona were waiting for her on the front steps, huddled in their coats, Fiona’s Honda Fit packed to the rooftop with musical equipment. Fiona hugged me fiercely, her blunt, shoulder-length hair brushing against my face. It was bright red this week, but had been blue-black the last time I’d seen her. She seemed to have dyed it to match the faux-fur coat and thigh-high boots she was wearing.

  “Sorry for your troubles, Garet,” she said in her lilting Irish accent. She’d been an exchange student at Pratt for a semester, then stayed on when London Dispersion Force started taking off. “I went by the hospital today to see your dad. He was brilliant, all excited about some painter who’d been to visit.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell Fiona that the painter was dead. “That was sweet of you to visit him,” I said. “Good luck tonight at the show. I bet that record producer offers you a huge contract.”

  Jay, who was rearranging an amp in the trunk, groaned. Becky swatted him. I decided to leave before I got dragged into a band fight. I wished them all luck and climbed upstairs to my studio. When I dropped my bag on my worktable, I thought I heard something squeak, but, when after looking around I didn’t detect any source for the sound, I decided it must have been my overstimulated imagination. I dug the lover’s eye brooch out of my pocket, laid it on my desk, and stared at it. It didn’t bat an eyelash. In fact it didn’t move at all. Had I imagined that it had moved in the shop?

  Keeping an eye on the brooch—I didn’t like the idea of it spying on me—I reached into my bag for my jeweler’s loupe . . . and felt something bite me.

  I dropped the bag and it exploded. Orange and yellow flames shot up to the ceiling, scorched the plywood that was nailed over the skylight, and drifted down to my worktable in a shower of sparks. The fireball landed in front of me, rolled over and then stood up.

  “Lol?”

  The little creature chattered away as she shook out her wings and picked lint off her arms and legs, but I couldn’t understand a word she said. She sounded angry, so I apologized for surprising her, for the state of my messenger bag—a breath mint was melted in her fiery hair, I noticed—and asked if I could do anything for her. I wasn’t sure if she understood. Hands on her slim hips, she strode up and down my worktable, looking at my soldering equipment and poking into my supply boxes. She came to a dead halt when she saw the lover’s eye, though. She hissed and flew into my lap.

  “Pretty scary, huh?” I asked. “I don’t know why I took it from Dee’s shop. I guess I thought it might come in handy.”

  She started to hum . . . or, rather, vibrate, then she flew back to the table, hovering just above the brooch, and peered into the eye. I wasn’t positive, but it seemed that the eye widened as if in surprise. Then Lol cautiously extended one pointy orange finger and poked it.

  The eye blinked and teared.

  Lol tittered and moved to poke it again.

  “Stop it!” I cried, snatching up the brooch. “There’s no need to torture . . . it.” I looked down at the eye cradled in my hand and it looked back up at me. “I think I’d better put it away until I can figure out what to do with it.”

  I had some leather jewelry boxes, which I used for my more expensive pieces, that I’d had made in Italy. I took out a red box stamped in gold with the Cygnet trademark. The interior was lined with white velvet. I placed the brooch in it carefully, snapped the lid shut, then put the box in the locked metal cabinet where I kept my silver and gold. While I did all this, Lol flew around the room investigating. She explored my bookshelves, sneezing at the dust, rummaged through my junk shelves, and spilled a coffee can full of nails.

  I decided it was best to ignore her. I went into the bathroom and took a long, much overdue shower. When I got out, I didn’t see her anywhere, but I noticed that my bedroom door was open. I went in and found her curled up in my sweater drawer in a nest of my best cashmere sweater, snoring loudly.

  I decided she had the right idea. I climbed into bed and turned the light out. For a moment I was confused by the quality of light in the room, but then I saw that it was Lol shedding her pink-orange glow like a night-light, and then I was asleep.

  I slept until noon the next day. Lol was nowhere to be found when I woke up, but I did notice that all my drawers had been rea
rranged, and there were tiny footprints outlined in talcum powder across my bureau top. When I walked downstairs, I smelled fresh brewed coffee and something buttery. Jay and Becky were in the kitchen, lathering clotted cream on scones.

  “Did you sleep with a pastry chef lately?” Becky asked me through a mouthful of scone.

  “I thought it was a hedge fund manager,” Jay muttered. “There’s a baker too?”

  “Well, someone is expressing his fondness in baked goods,” Becky said, holding up a grease-stained brown paper bag. “I found this by the front door this morning . . . with this note.” She handed me a purple Post-it. Meet me at the Empire State Building at 1:00 a.m., it read. “The Empire State Building,” Becky said. “How very Sleepless in Seattle. Whatever you’re doing—or whomever you’re doing—to deserve all this, don’t stop!”

  “I’m not doing anyone, Becky,” I snapped. “Sheesh! Tell me what happened last night with the record producer.”

  “He wants to sign us up, only Jay here has artistic reservations.” Becky rolled her eyes.

  “We already have a label,” Jay said, picking crumbs off the table. “A label that doesn’t dictate our style. I’m just not sure these guys get us.”

  “What they’ll get us is a seven-figure advance . . .”

  I listened to Jay and Becky go back and forth, debating the merits of their present label—a small indie record producer based in Brooklyn—against their new offer. It was pretty clear who was going to win the argument. Becky had been the captain of our high school debating team and was prelaw at NYU before she dropped out to form the band with Jay and Fiona. She had figures, examples, and logic on her side. Jay had only a stubborn misgiving. His replies became shorter and shorter as the argument went on. He appeared to become shorter and shorter as he slumped farther down in his chair.

  “Maybe you can talk to the producer about your ideas for the band,” I suggested to Jay. “I really love the new song, by the way. I heard it on WROX the other night. Such a sad love song. I love how you evoke the whole tradition of the troubadours and all their unrequited longing for the unapproachable love object.”