His wife, on the other hand, while the same approximate height, was quite slender with a prominent nose that made Romeo wonder, at first, if perhaps she was Greek. The shift dress she wore, in keeping with her husband’s wardrobe, did nothing for her. If anything, her dress emphasized her lack of curves as much as her husband’s clothes revealed the abundance of his own.
Romeo nodded at the couple, who smiled back at him, then at Calico and Angus. Cassidy gave them all a little wave.
“Back behind you here,” Joel continued, causing Romeo to shift in his seat, “are Urban Halifax, Casper Johnson, Mitchell and Susan Herceg, Amos Patil, and Prudence Song,” he said. As their names were mentioned, each one either waved, nodded, or both.
Urban sat coolly at the back table, long-limbed, bespectacled, and bald. His skin reminded Romeo of the color of chestnuts, and his eyes were nearly black. His thick-lipped smile and slender face seemed at odds with one another, competing for attention.
Casper and Mitchell were both blonde. Casper, his hair darker and disheveled, reminded Romeo of a young Axl Rose, while Mitchell stood a good five or six inches taller, with hair as pale as the moon, and deep-set blue-green eyes that shined. The lines in his face seemed to indicate he was a frequent smiler, but also that he had been through hard times.
A myriad of tattoos covered Casper’s bare arms and calves, and the shorts he wore looked as though he had ironed them right before their meeting. His pale grey tee shirt read Jicama Rocks in big, spiky emerald-colored letters.
Mitchell, on the other hand, had chosen a three-piece suit, navy pinstriped, with a burgundy shirt and white tie. If the colors weren’t so saturated, Romeo would have guessed the man was attempting a patriotic look.
His wife, Susan, thick in the hips and narrow in the chest and shoulders, reached only as high as his chin. Her dark, thick hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore a tracksuit, as though perhaps she’d been jogging before arriving.
Prudence and Amos, holding hands as they stood together directly behind the couch, smiled brightly as they waved. Amos’s teeth glowed against his dark bronzed skin, deep brown eyes, and thick, wavy hair. From where he sat, Romeo could detect a small gap between the man’s two front teeth. He was neither thin nor chunky, and his attire – khakis and a plain white button down shirt - were nondescript, at best. Several pens stuck out of the top of the man’s breast pocket, and for a moment, Romeo thought of the nerd movies he’d watched as a teenager.
Prudence, on the other hand, looked like she could fly away at any moment.
Her hair was pulled back into a configuration of loops and ringlets, and she wore her eyeliner winged out in a purple glory. Her lips reminded Romeo of Clara Bow, and her cheekbones, high in her thin, round face, glowed with a shimmery substance he couldn’t quite name. She wore a pale pink dress covered in sparkles, with a full skirt and a pair of larger than life butterfly wings attached to the back of it. Baby blue half-leggings and a pair of brilliant green cat-face shoes completed her outfit.
Somehow, on her, it didn’t seem crazy at all.
“Well, that’s everybody,” Joel said, interrupting Romeo’s thought process. “We’re a ragtag group, but we do what we can, and we’re good at what we do.”
Calico let go of Angus, and he stood on the couch between them, looking at Prudence. “You gots green cats on your feet,” he proclaimed with a giggle.
The woman smiled, nodding. “And butterfly wings, too. Want to see,” she said softly, earning a vigorous nod from his son, who quickly jumped down and ran around to the other side of the couch. Romeo watched as the woman carefully got down on her knees to let Angus feel the wings, and watched as his son pet them a few moments.
“Why come,” his son asked, his eyes getting big. “I like it, but… why come so many colors?”
“Because sometimes, I think people need to just have fun,” she said. “Including me, because sometimes my job isn’t so fun. But I can wear what I want, so I do.”
Angus nodded, apparently okay with the young woman’s logic, and touched a hand to her shoes. “They have real whiskers!”
Romeo smiled.
If nothing else, his son was becoming enamored with a flying Chinese cat woman… and that was enough to brighten his day, in spite of the interruptions the meeting may have caused with his plans for a family dinner.
As if reading his mind, Mario spoke up. “Room service will be here for all of us within the next few minutes. I asked it be brought up between eight and eight thirty.”
Romeo looked down into Calico’s eyes and shrugged as she smiled at him. He could see the exhaustion splayed across her features, and wished they could just dine alone.
Well, he thought, apparently we’re having our Valentine’s Day dinner alone as a family tomorrow instead.
Thirty Two
Vancouver, Washington… February 14, 2025
Jason flipped off the television, stunned.
Had the president just come out as a born-again believer? Had he truly heard him right? A man who had, for some time, been quiet about his beliefs, visiting a number of churches and synagogues, both, in the time since he was nominated, then elected?
Everyone knew that in recent years he had changed, but none had come outright to suggest that it had been related to a paradigm shift, or a conversion experience. They just knew he’d been better for whatever had occurred in his life.
Jason exchanged glances with Me’chelle as he carefully moved ol’ Sylvester over, giving them room to sit together.
Sylvester had no good reason to be on the brand new couch, anyway; they had sacrificed a new television for a better couch, and Jason, for one, was glad. Who needed a new television every time the technology changed? They’d had theirs since 2014, and it still did just fine.
The dog whined, but after a few more attempts to jump back in between them, gave up and headed into the kitchen. Jason could hear the dog’s collar hitting the edge of his water dish, and sighed as he clasped his wife’s hands and held them, still reeling from the president’s speech.
How long had they, as a couple and a family, prayed for this? That a president would rise up and be strong for Jesus Christ, and stand up for what he believed. That, though the decisions were far from all his, he was a praying man; a man who sought God’s heart and will for the nation, and for the people who risked their lives everyday on its behalf.
Their sparkling cider and chocolates, once forgotten, came to mind. In silence, he moved to collect them from the refrigerator, retrieve a couple of wine flutes, and pad back toward where his wife patiently waited.
By the time he returned, she had exchanged the sounds of the television for their new Soundweaver, the clarity of the music making it seem as though Valeri Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic were playing Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade in their living room.
He smiled.
It had been a long time since they had truly had a block of time to themselves, and with Charlotte and Clayton over at the Iglesias’s for a Valentine’s Day party, Jason was glad for it.
“Here we are,” he finally said, setting the glasses, and then the cider and chocolates down before resuming his place on the couch. “That was some speech, wasn’t it?”
“Totally flabbergasted at first, gotta admit,” she told him, smiling. “But can we process that later, and concentrate on us now? After all, it’s a holiday, it’s the first time we’ve been alone together for more than ten minutes when we’re awake in close to a year, and there are other things to talk about.”
He couldn’t argue with her there.
He’d even gone for cider instead of root beer for this occasion, to be fancy. And accepted one of the unopened boxes of chocolates Mark had brought to church, and brought it out for the evening, though he knew they would probably take their time sampling it over two or three days more.
Me’chelle moved to open and pour the cider as Sylvester moved back toward them, floundering at their feet, his grey
ing tail gently wagging as Jason scratched his ears a moment.
“What I want to know more about is what Masao has found,” his wife said, surprising him.
He hadn’t thought she was paying much attention to what was happening with their search for the origin of the mirror anymore. Every time he’d invited her to come along for research, or a conversation, she had turned the offer down. Maybe there was more to it than he thought, after all.
“That makes two of us, and likely many others, my Love,” he told her, accepting the flute of cider she handed him. They toasted quickly before sipping the fare and continuing their conversation.
“I mean, what with the news that Timothy – the Timothy – was the person who formed this mirror we’ve all been kind of perplexed over and even, dare I say it, charmed by, is….” She let the words trail off.
Charmed?
He hadn’t quite seen it that way. Were they becoming obsessive about it, or was it merely that their interest had been piqued?
True, they needed to know more about it in order to decide what to do with it; true, they needed to keep it covered, they now knew, to prevent others from coming through, but still, even if a person didn’t pop through, an animal could, or something thrown in its direction that inadvertently moved and shifted through time.
Why, twice now, Paloma said they had found objects sitting nearby… both since they’d found the compartments. One, some sort of toy, and the other, a half-wilted bouquet of wildflowers.
Either someone was trying to tell them something, or the mirror was becoming more active than they realized it would. It didn’t help that the protective sheet they’d had over it for the years it’d been in the attic accidentally got left off: that’s when Paloma had found the flowers. She’d gone back upstairs to make sure they’d covered it, and there they were.
And so, just to be curious, they purposely left the covering off for three days before going back upstairs to set things right. And when they returned, there was a small wooden horse – or, at least that was their best guess as to what it was – a couple of feet from the mirror’s edge, as though it had been thrown in a fit.
It was both stymying and humbling to think about.
That a mirror created in the first century AD, somehow, had survived so well, and its unique qualities stayed under the radar of most of the population of the world at any given time, and, especially that of the government was a miracle in itself.
“For that bit of news to get out to the public, or even to go beyond our circle, I fear would cause a catastrophe. Who knows what someone might do with it to alter the properties it contains purposely, or analyze in order to see if they can replicate and improve upon it. But somehow… I just don’t think it’s something replicable, I mean… if it were, wouldn’t someone else have… figured it out by now,” he finally replied, gently prying a honey chocolate from the box that now sat between them.
“Well, whatever it is, I just-“
Sylvester interrupted with a wild fit of barking; something that rarely happened anymore, and headed toward the back door. Jason motioned for Me’chelle to stay where she was as he moved to grab a poker from the hearth and follow the dog.
He heard sudden running, and pulled the phone from his pocket, telling it to dial 911 with an intruder alert.
Technology these days, he thought as he moved closer to the back window. Sylvester was now running back and forth at the sliding door, still barking, and Jason heard a second set of shoes moving in the darkness now, too. The phone transmitted his message and informed him that help was coming.
A live operator asked if he were there, and he held the phone to his ear. “Yes, I’m here. All I know is that at least two people are, or just were, on my property,” he told the woman on the other end. “Close enough to the house to hear, but not close enough to be caught in the spotlight.”
“ETA of three minutes, Sir. Stay inside, and we’ll sweep the neighborhood before showing up at your door,” she said again. “I will call you back when they are ready.”
The phone clicked off, and there was nothing more he could do but repocket it, then grab Sylvester by the collar and guide him carefully back to the living room. Fifteen jittery minutes later, his phone rang to inform him that an Officer Ortiz would be knocking at the door within a minute.
Jason and Me’chelle moved toward the entryway even as their bell was rung, and opened it, allowing the man inside.
A sturdily built man with green-grey eyes, Officer Ortiz already had a notebook in hand, and a bruise building on the side of his face. “Well,” he said once they were all seated in the living room, and he had declined refreshments, “we were able to apprehend one man, and he has agreed to give up the address of the other two who were with him; apparently a couple of teenagers who were with some sort of project.”
“A project in our back yard, though,” Me’chelle asked, pushing back the blonde and brunette weave Tawny had helped her with the day before. “That makes no sense!”
“Well it might when I tell you someone paid them to attempt to gather information on you and some of your… not sure if its family or friends or both,” the officer continued, looking down at his notes. “An Edward and Paloma Stuart, and a Mark and Eugenie Jeffries?”
“But what….” Jason closed mouth before he said something he’d regret.
How much, if anything, had the intruders heard of their conversation about the mirror, and was this even connected?
“Did they say who was paying them,” he asked instead, to which Officer Ortiz shook his head in the negative.
“Either don’t know, or won’t say. Maybe one of the other two will disclose something. We’ve looked them up by name, so maybe you can tell us if you know any of them?”
Jason looked to his wife, and in silence, they nodded together. “Alright… go ahead,” he said finally, once consensus had been made. “IF any of them sound familiar, at least we might have some clue as to what’s going on. We didn’t even tell anyone we’d be home tonight. We were supposed to be at a party, but declined.”
“Well, the young man we’ve caught so far is a twenty year old named Dennis Traylor; those with him, he says, were…” The officer paused a moment to check his notes again before continuing. “One Abdul Fakhoury and a Tessa Rubio.”
“Abdul and Tessa,” Me’chelle blurted before Jason could stop her. “And… I know the name Traylor from somewhere, but… Abdul and Tessa, are you sure?”
The officer jotted something in his notebook before replying. “So at least one of you knows this… Mr. Fakhoury, as well as Miss Rubio?”
“We both do; Abdul’s father works for Jason, and Tessa… well, she was just a baby when we married. They both were. I had no idea the two families were even in touch. I haven’t heard from the Rubios in….” Jason watched her face as she thought.
“She hasn’t seen them in at least ten years that I know of, but we at Rutherford Research, we had the older Rubios as clients a couple of times since then,” he said, finishing for her.
“Rutherford Research?”
“Yes, I am the proprietor and Edward, Malik – he’s Abdul’s father – and I have worked together there for years.
“I see,” the officer said, jotting down even more notes. “And do you recall what it was they wanted research for? Perhaps it’s pertinent to why this trio were here this evening.”
“To be honest, I’d have to call and ask Edward, since he was the primary person taking care of both of those cases,” Jason told him, reaching for his cider.
“Well, in that case, much as I hate to interrupt yet another person’s evening,” Officer Ortiz said, “I’m afraid we have a call to make.”
Thirty Three
Paris, France… February 22, 1707
Louis stormed past his guards and down the steps as he heard the horse-drawn gig arriving.
The letter he had received from James Francis Stuart had been simple, at best, and embarrassingly appalling, at worst. W
ith immediate haste, in the event that Mary was not aware of her son’s utter stupidity, he had decided it was in her best interest to send a letter requesting her presence immediately.
He could hear Françoise Charlotte and a few of the workers’ girls chattering nearby as he passed the head of the first fountain, walking toward the stables to greet the women he had been expecting.
Mary and Louisa Stuart had agreed to come on Louisa’s condition of a party. Had she not been family, and among the most beautiful available women he knew, he would have laughed at the absurdity of it. But given the circumstance, he had agreed.
After all, if James Francis got himself killed, she would need to have, at least, a willing suitor. Who would be king, if she did not? Rumors were that she had snubbed more than one man who had taken interest in her, and Louis, for one, would not stand for that type of behavior; not in his palace.
“Bienvenue,” he said, greeting them as they were handed down from the carriage. “Thank you for coming. J'espère que vous avez passé un agréable voyage, en dépit des circonstances?”
“Oui,” Louisa said, tilting her face toward him as she brushed off the skirt of her blue and white striped dress. “Considering the circumstances.” She held her hand out, waiting for his arm, and he offered it, and then offered the other to her mother, Mary, who shook her head.
With a shrug, he allowed the refusal and, leaving the groom to tend the gig and horse, and to staff who would bring their luggage in as time allowed.
“So,” he said a few minutes later, as the trio walked slowly toward the palace, “I have received some rather… disturbing news from young James Francis, and… were you aware he was on his way to London?”
“Oui. We were. We have recently learned this, as well,” Louisa said as they moved toward the stairs. “And please believe we are concerned, also. This does not bode well for him, or for the family, unless Anne’s heart turns. And, let us be honest,” she continued, a sad smile trembling on the corners of her lips. “I do not think this will happen.”
The Angels' Mirror Pack 2: Books Four through Seven Page 52