The Crimson Brand

by Brian Knight

  “That depends,” said Ronan shiftily. “On what you think it means.”

  Then the mirror clouded over, and he was gone.

  * * *

  If Ronan’s short surprise appearance had been a pleasant one, then the surprise that waited outside for Penny certainly wasn’t. She hadn’t thought there was a person in the world she wanted to see at her birthday party, or anywhere else really, less than Miss Riggs … well, maybe Rooster … but the scene she found on the front porch after her chat with Ronan made Miss Riggs’s visit seem almost jovial.

  Katie’s father, red-faced and arguing, stood at the foot of the steps with Michael. Katie was between them, her face bright red, staring down at her feet. Michael had a hold on her left arm, her father her right. She looked like she wanted to find a deep hole to fall into.

  “You knew she wasn’t allowed,” her father boomed at Michael. It was an impressive shout; Zoe jumped back at the sound, her back thumping against the wall behind her. Ellen looked appalled. Penny felt like slinking back inside. “You went behind my back ….”

  “Father, you’re being stupid!” Michael was in full voice too, he leaned protectively over Katie. “You’re punishing Katie because ….”

  “Because she disobeyed me!”

  “Stop it, both of you!” Katie shrieked, pulling free from both of them. She rounded on her father, and Penny thought that if they were giving out prizes for loudest shouts, Katie would have taken second place at least. Her father reached for her but Katie slapped his hand away and ran for Michael’s Jeep. “I hate you!”

  The silence that followed was perhaps more excruciating than the high-volume discussion had been.

  Michael glared at their father, unblinking.

  Mr. West stood where he was for a moment, perfectly still, staring at the place where Katie had been, his hand still hovering as if to grab the air in front of him. Then he turned and watched Katie climb into the passenger seat of the Jeep. At last, his gaze settled on his audience on the porch.

  Michael snorted in disgust and stalked off toward his Jeep, leaving his father standing alone.

  Zoe was wide-eyed and angry, chewing on her bottom lip as if afraid of what might happen if she allowed her mouth to open.

  Jenny’s mouth was open, but she seemed beyond words. Her jaw worked up and down for a moment, as if she were trying to force speech, but nothing happened so she closed it and, a little weak in the knees it seemed, stepped to the nearest chair to sit.

  Susan’s face was unreadable, but her brow was creased with deep lines that looked alien on her usually smooth face. Penny thought a storm might be brewing behind those lines.

  At last, Mr. West broke the silence.

  “Didn’t you even think to ask me if she was allowed to come over?” His voice was hoarse from shouting. He gave Penny the shortest of glances before ignoring her again. “You know how I feel about … them.”

  “She never did anything to you!” Zoe shouted and advanced on Mr. West, but Ellen stopped her with an outstretched arm.

  Of them all, Susan alone seemed calm, but Penny had seen the expression on her face before, just once, when she’d caught Penny sneaking to see Tovar the Red’s show the year before.

  Susan’s still face was a thin mask, barely hiding her wrath.

  “Honestly, no. It never occurred to me that you would be childish enough to hold on to your ridiculous grudge this long.”

  Mr. West seemed about to reply, but Susan pointed a single finger at him, and he held his tongue.

  “You had your say. Now you get to shut up and listen to me.”

  His eyes went even wider, and the flush began to drain from his cheeks.

  “I also never thought you’d be childish enough to punish two innocent children, one of them your own daughter, because of a bit of foolishness that happened fourteen years ago. Something neither of them was a part of.”

  Michael’s Jeep growled as he tore down the driveway, throwing up a rooster-tail of gravel and dust. Mr. West seemed to be grateful for the diversion. He watched his children until they dropped out of sight.

  When he faced his audience again, he avoided Susan. His eyes fell on Penny instead.

  Penny had no words. She felt tears pushing at her eyes, prickly and hot, but resisted them. She wouldn’t let herself cry in front of this … this man!

  Again, he seemed about to speak, and again Susan stopped him.

  “The only two words you’re allowed to say to Penny are happy and birthday.” She stepped next to Penny and put an arm on her shoulder. Penny had never been so grateful for an invasion of her personal space. “But I think you’ve already ruined any chance of that for her.”

  A moment later Zoe was on her other side, almost vibrating with anger, her arm on Penny’s other shoulder.

  Mr. West regarded them for another moment, then stalked away.

  * * *

  Most of the happy had left Penny’s day.

  When the party was over, Susan had no objections to letting Penny help clean up and put things away. Not much later, a van arrived and a uniformed man installed their new satellite internet. Afterward they all seemed content to continue the afternoon’s silence while watching a movie that had been on Penny’s wish list for weeks. A phone call from Zoe’s grandmother broke the trio up before the movie ended. She’d changed her mind about Zoe spending a second night at Penny’s, and Zoe mumbled moodily under her breath while she hurriedly packed to leave.

  Penny paused the movie while Susan drove Zoe home, taking advantage of the unexpected alone time to reacquaint herself with The Aikido Student Handbook, remembering her old lessons and exercises, and missing them. Maybe she could start again; Dogwood didn’t have any dojos or Aikido instructors, but she could try to do it alone.

  Susan returned home just as she was putting her book down, and they finished the movie in near silence, exchanging only a few words for the remaining hour.

  Susan seemed upset, too. Her cheerful manner, usually quick to bounce back, was absent for the rest of the night.

  Penny excused herself to her room, considered trying to read again, but decided to wait a while and try to get Katie on her mirror. She fell asleep while she was waiting and didn’t wake again until well after dark.

  Her first panicked thought upon waking was that there was something important that she was supposed to have done and forgotten about, and while she pummeled her half-awake brain in search of the forgotten thing, she remembered Ronan’s brief visit with her before the party ended and the unexpected present waiting for her under the back-porch steps.

  Penny jumped out of bed and lowered the ladder to the hallway. It descended smoothly and silently; she’d made a habit of keeping it well-oiled to cover her nighttime jaunts. She walked as quietly as she could down the stairs to the bottom floor, not wanting to wake Susan.

  But Susan was already awake.

  “Who else could have done it? Who else would have?” Susan kept her voice low, obviously not wanting to wake Penny, but all the calm was out of her voice now. The one person who could make her lose her cool, apparently, was her sister. After a few minutes of silence on her end, Susan spoke again.

  “You weren’t looking out for anyone. You did it to cause trouble. You and that ….” It seemed she couldn’t find the right word or simply wouldn’t allow herself to use it. “That man has had it in for her since the day she showed up. You never gave her a chance either.”

  More silence, then Penny thought she could actually hear Miss Riggs shouting from her end of the line.

  Susan forgot about keeping her voice down. “You narrow-minded ….”

  She called her sister a word Penny had never heard her use before, then hung up.

  Penny stayed put on the landing between the second and third floor as Susan stomped from the living room into the hallway, where Penny could see her shaking with barely contained anger, then onto the front porch. She closed the door quietly behind her.

  Penny waited
a few moments to make sure she wasn’t coming right back inside—she didn’t want Susan to know she’d heard the argument—then crept down the steps to the hallway and hurried to the back door.

  The night beyond was silent, moonlit, cool, and Penny let herself enjoy the peace of it for a few seconds before dropping to her belly in the grass and reaching into the darkness under the steps in search of some unknown, and likely exotic, item.

  She found it quickly and was relieved when her hand was back in sight.

  Ronan had left her a stone, mottled gray and strangely textured, shaped like a large egg.

  Marveling that just when she didn’t think Ronan could get any weirder he always somehow managed it, Penny crept back inside, and, after checking that the hallway was still empty, hurried up to her bedroom.

  In bed, she examined the strange egg by the light of her lamp. It was heavy, felt solid, and when she shook it nothing rattled inside. It was too rough to be soapstone and too bland to be valuable.

  Trying unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn, Penny put the egg in the drawer of her bedside table and nestled under her sheets.

  She’d be able to ask Ronan about the weird egg the next day, and maybe he’d even give her a straight answer or two, though with Ronan you could never count on straight answers, only hope for them.

  She’d also have to talk to Zoe about the argument she’d overheard through the kitchen window before Miss Riggs had stormed out of the party and, if she had time, start trying to confirm her suspicions about her mom and Susan.

  It seemed unlikely in some ways. If Susan and her mom had been Phoenix Girls when they were younger—probably her aunt and Katie’s aunt, too—then Susan would know what she was up to when she left the house for hours at a time to visit Aurora Hollow. She would have said something, let Penny know she was a part of the secret, wouldn’t she?

  With that question in her mind, Penny finally drifted to sleep.

  Chapter 5

  Memories

  Penny awoke with the rising sun the next morning, a plan of action swirling around in her sleepy head. She was looking for her past, her family’s past—and where do people store all the old stuff that no longer fits in their day-to-day lives?

  In an attic, which was not an option in this case because that’s where Susan stored Penny and her things.

  Or the basement.

  This house had one; she knew that because of the furnace grate in the living room floor, but she had never explored it.

  She checked her clock. It was just after six, so Susan would be sleeping. Sunday was the one day she could sleep in, so she usually took advantage of it.

  Penny dressed quickly and put her mirror in her pocket. Bright sunlight outside or not, the second floor hall was always dark; the fixture on the landing between floors only ever succeeded in throwing long, creepy shadows. Penny descended quickly and quietly, peeking first into the kitchen, then into the living room for signs of life from Susan.

  Both were empty, but something in the living room caught her eye. Sitting on the end table next to Susan’s chair lay the package her sister had dropped off during the party the day before. It was open, the flaps sticking up at jaunty, inviting angles.

  Come here, Penny. See what’s inside. You know you’re curious. You know you want to.

  Penny was curious but turned her back on the package and walked to the mostly unused utility room. It was one thing to search the basement of her own home, her mother’s childhood home, even if she wasn’t sure that Susan would approve; but she had no right to see what was in that box. That was Susan’s business, not hers.

  The utility room was narrow, running almost the entire length of the house. At one end sat an old washer and dryer, with an odd assortment of soaps and arcane laundry-related products on a shelf above them. A door opposite the hallway led to the back steps. At the other end stood a second door, one that she had never opened. If it turned out to be a closet, then she’d have to search the rest of the house for clues to her past.

  It wasn’t a closet.

  There was a small, square landing with a light switch and a set of steep, narrow steps that led downward. Penny tried the light and, almost to her surprise, found that it worked. A weak, dusty glow filled the narrow staircase.

  Penny closed the door behind her and descended.

  The basement felt like a dungeon. Air ducts ran overhead like thick metal snakes, and the hot-water heater huddled in a far corner, next to an ancient, unused wood-burning furnace.

  The walls weren’t concrete or brick but stone and crumbling plaster. The floor was ancient, with creaking planks, some sagging slightly under Penny’s light frame. A heavy man might fall right through. Who knew what might wait beneath the old boards.

  Rows of sturdy wooden shelves covered one wall, and perhaps a hundred old boxes—some cardboard, some wood—filled every inch. The top two rows were too high to reach, but a quick search revealed an aluminum ladder leaning against the wall next to a small army of rusty garden tools.

  Penny walked along the shelves, inspecting the lower rows. The thick dust covering most of the basement was disturbed in places, a sign, she thought, that some of the boxes had been moved fairly recently. Susan, maybe digging up a few old photos of Penny’s mom.

  No way to know until she looked for herself; and there was time probably to check a few of the lower boxes before Susan woke.

  She scanned the row before her. None of the boxes seemed likelier to yield answers than any of the others, so she chose one at random and slid it from the shelf. It was big and heavy. She was able to lower it to the floor without dropping it, but there was no way she’d be able to lift it back up to the shelf.

  It contained old paperback books and mason jars full of rocks, from exotic to ordinary: crystals of different colors, agates, chunks of common brown and green opal, fools’ gold, and more. Penny remembered the old guy at the rock and jewelry shop telling her that her mother used to buy rocks from him.

  Must have had quite a collection of pretty rocks, all the time she spent here.

  And it was quite a collection.

  Penny screwed the lid off one of the jars and tipped a handful of stones into her open palm.

  She could name a few of them—a brown opal, one that was either jade or jasper, a piece of white quartz—but most were alien to her.

  “Zoe would know them,” she said aloud and smiled. She dumped them back into the open jar, then hesitated before screwing the lid back on and plucked out a white quartz. It was tear-shaped, translucent, smooth but not polished.

  She held it up, letting the glow from the unshaded bulb shine through it. It seemed to capture the light, the milky interior shining like clouds in a bright sky.

  Was this yours, Mom?

  She expected no answer and got none.

  She pocketed the stone and returned the jar to its box.

  The next box was considerably lighter. She slid it out and set it on top of the first.

  More books and some old magazines. She fingered through them, found a few she might have considered interesting under other circumstances, and with some effort lifted the box back into place.

  The third box was more of the same, plus an old photo album. She opened it and found pictures of her mom, her aunt, and a lot of people she’d never seen. She dropped the photo album into its box and shoved it into place with a growing sense of frustration, realizing that she had no idea what she was really looking for and would probably not find it even if she did. There were no amazing revelations to be found here. Only a lot of dust and junk.

  After a moment’s consideration, she slid the third box out again and took the photo album. She doubted she’d find any answers, but she could find something of her mother’s mysterious past inside. Still images of memories she’d never shared with Penny. It was better than nothing.

  She thought about pulling out a fourth box but realized that she had no idea how long she’d been there. It could wait for another time. With th
e piece of quartz in her pocket and the photo album under one arm, Penny hurried back to her room.

  She tucked the album under her pillow and checked the time—a little past seven—thought about calling Zoe or Katie up on her two-way mirror, and decided it was a little early.

  So, what now?

  That was the problem with going to bed early. She always woke way too early the next morning.

  She put the mirror back in her pocket and walked to her wardrobe, a new addition to her room. A Christmas present from Susan, she and Penny had to carry it up the ladder a piece at a time and assemble it in her room. It was small, the left side containing half a dozen narrow drawers with a shelf above them, the right a space to hang clothes. It stood beside her old dresser, which no one had wanted to take apart and carry down a piece at a time.

  Penny selected a change of clothes.

  A nice, long shower and a cup of coffee were in order if she was going to be useful for anything at all.

  * * *

  A half-hour later, showered and fully awake, Penny sipped her coffee and cooked breakfast for Susan. As the eggs fried and the bacon sizzled, Susan walked in and greeted Penny with a wide, languid yawn.

  “Morning, Susan.” Penny was feeling uncharacteristically cheerful. Probably the second cup of coffee; she’d gulped her first while Susan slept.

  Susan yawned again to signal exactly what she thought of mornings in general.

  “You’re up and at ‘em awfully early.” With both hands, as if it were a lifeline, she took the cup Penny offered.

  Penny shrugged and flipped bacon. “Went to bed early.”

  Susan looked at her, eyes still half-closed. “I thought you’d be up half the night playing on the internet.”