Pomegranates full and fine

by Unknown Author

  “You make it sound like this is a break-in,” Miranda observed.

  “It is.” Tango glanced at her. “That doesn’t bother you, does it?”

  Miranda kept her expression neutral, suppressing a grin at the irony of the changeling’s question. “No.” “Good. I’ve known vampires who were willing to kill if they had to while they were hunting, but who were very sensitive about doing anything else that might disturb humans.” A snort escaped from Miranda, and Tango glanced at her again. “What?”

  Bitter irony, thought Miranda. “They must have been Camarilla, trying to cling to their humanity,” she said instead. She spun the car around a corner. “The Sabbat knows that humanity has no place in a vampire’s existence.”

  Tango didn’t reply, just looked out the window at the quiet houses moving past. Miranda bit her tongue. Poor choice of words. She drove in silence, two blocks straight and a turn to the right. She slowed down. “Which building?” she asked finally.

  “That one.” Tango peered at a medium-sized apartment building that gleamed white in the darkness. Window boxes, large potted plants and colorful windsocks were visible on many of the balconies. “Lights are off.”

  Miranda drove on. “That could mean she’s home but asleep.”

  “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  The parking lot was mostly empty. They parked and walked back to the building. “How are we going to get in?” Miranda gestured at a small bag that Tango carried with her. “You have something useful in there?”

  “Yes. Maybe.” Tango shook the bag, and its contents rattled metallically. “I got a whole bunch of stuff out of Riley’s apartment. Whether we can use it or not is another question. I was actually hoping we’d find someone like a security guard or a resident around the lobby that we could get over to the door and you could hypnotize into letting us into the building.”

  “I should be able to do that. Then what? Pick the lock on the apartment door?”

  Tango shrugged. “We’ll see when we get there. Riley had lockpicks — this sort of thing is bread and cheese for pookas. I used to be pretty good at picking locks, but I haven’t done it for....” She took a breath and blew it out again. “Maybe since the early seventies.”

  Miranda blinked. “How old are you, Tango?” “Almost sixty. There are things Kithain can do to slow down their aging.” Tango looked closely at Miranda. The inspection made Miranda uncomfortable. “You?”

  “I became a vampire six years ago.”

  “That’s longer than most Sabbat vampires last, isn’t

  it?”

  “I try not to do anything stupid.”

  They reached the apartment building. They were fortunate: a couple was just coming back from walking their dog. It took almost no effort at all for Miranda to convince them to hold the door open for the two women. They rode the elevator up one floor rather than draw attention to themselves by looking for the stairs. Apartment 210 was at the far end of the hall. Tango knocked briskly, waited, then knocked again. There was no answer. Quickly, she took a flat case from her bag and drew two thin metal tools out of the case. “Cover me,” she hissed. Miranda shifted to stand between her and the rest of the hall in case someone came out of their apartment. Tango cursed quietly; the light in the hall was poorly placed, and her shadow fell across the lock. She couldn’t see what she was doing. She started a little bit when Miranda brushed the shadow aside. “Handy talent.”

  “So’s being able to pick locks. Hurry up.”

  It took Tango a few minutes and a good deal of muttered cursing to spring the lock. The door opened and they stepped quickly into the dark apartment, quietly shutting the door behind them. Tango brought two small flashlights out of her bag of tricks and offered one to Miranda. The vampire shook her head. “I don’t need it. I can see in the dark. How did you know this was the right apartment from outside?”

  “I pretended to be interested in renting an apartment earlier today and got a tour of the building. Another floor, but apartment 10 is always in the same place on all the floors.”

  “All right.” Miranda looked around. “Who lives here and what are we looking for?”

  Tango snapped on her flashlight. “Her name is Atlanta Hunter. We’re looking for anything that might have to do with Riley or with a little girl named Cheryl, maybe her daughter. Anything related to San Francisco would probably be good, too. Be as neat as you can.” That turned out to be difficult. Every time Miranda moved and replaced something, it felt as though she had shifted it by a mile. Atlanta Hunter’s apartment was already orderly, clean — and excruciatingly pretentious. The walls of the living room were painted a very light, earthy tan shade. All of the furniture was pale, unstained wood. The upholstery and rugs had coordinating Southwestern patterns. There was Native American art on the walls and Native American artifacts on shelves and in the corners, but the kind of art and artifacts selected more for their aesthetic qualities than their character. Miranda glanced into the kitchen. It was all chrome and white tile. She went back into the living room and started going through the cabinets and shelves. Atlanta had all of the right CDs, all of the classic movies. She had a state-of-the-art video and stereo system tucked away where it wouldn’t interfere with the look of the room. There were no books. The woman’s life seemed frighteningly organized. Down on the bottom shelf of a corner cabinet, however, were a number of photo albums* Miranda pulled one out and started leafing through it.

  All of the pictures were standard tourist destinations, mostly from North America, a few from around the world. There were very seldom any people in the photos, except maybe as crowds on a New York street or other tourists snapping pictures of the Saint Louis Arch. Strangely, there were also a number of pictures of very plain rural landscapes, suburban developments and anonymous small towns mixed in with the international destinations. Many of the pictures had dates written or stamped on them. Some went back fifteen to sixteen years. Miranda took the rightmost and presumably newest album out of the cabinet and flipped to the back of it. There were half-a-dozen blank pages, but the most recent pictures, dated only the week before, were of the Golden Gate Bridge, Ghiradelli Square and cable cars. San Francisco.

  It was a link of the sort that Tango wanted. She would have to show the pictures to the .changeling. For now, however, Miranda started to put the photo album back. The other albums fell over with a noisy thump. Wincing, Miranda straightened them, then tried again. This time, however, the album jammed against something at the back of the cabinet, as if something else had fallen over. Miranda looked back into the shadows. There was another album there, small but thick. She reached in and fished it out. It was the sort of album where only one picture fit on each page and new pages were added when necessary — a brag book. It was covered in a pretty floral fabric that was completely at odds with the rest of the apartment. At least the pictures in the small album had people in them, although they were always the same two people. A platinum blond woman and a little girl. The scenes in the photographs were the same as those in the other album, one photograph per destination. Then Miranda noticed something else.

  The photographs were dated, just as the others had been. To judge by last week’s date, the latest photo was from San Francisco, although it had been taken in an undistinguished airport lounge. But the other photos covered the same range as the scenery photos. Fifteen to sixteen years. And across that range, the fashions changed, the mother’s hairstyle changed, she became almost indistinguishably older... but the girl’s face and hairstyle never altered. They were always the same.

  “Tango!” she hissed. There was no response. She looked up. The changeling was somewhere else in the apartment. Hurriedly, Miranda replaced the larger photo albums, then went looking for Tango. She met her in the hallway that led to the back of the apartment. “Did you find something?”

  Miranda simply handed her the small album. Tango’s face grew confused. “What the hell...?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn�
��t find anything else in the living room. What about you?”

  “Nothing.” Tango looked up. “There’s nothing in the master bedroom, and no sign that a little girl ever lived here at all. But the second bedroom is locked.” She tapped the album. “At least now we know we have the right apartment. This is the woman from the plane. And this is Cheryl.”

  “What do you think is in the second bedroom?” Tango snapped the album shut and pulled her lockpicks out again. “I’m going to find out.”

  The lock on the bedroom door was far better than Miranda would have expected, a key-locking deadbolt that would have been more suitable on a front door than a bedroom door. She held the flashlight for Tango while the changeling probed the lock’s inner workings. It gave her a chance to look around the back of the apartment. The bathroom was done in dark green tile and polished brass, so clean it looked like it was barely used. The master bedroom was Mediterranean blue, perfect, but without character. Pretentious and orderly, just like the rest of the apartment.

  “Got it.” Tango stood and opened the door.

  It was like looking into another world.

  The second bedroom was also decorated in blue, but a soft, powdery, pastel blue. The bed was white with a blue canopy and a thick comforter. A few favored stuffed animals resided on the fluffy pillows, but more crowded the shelves of a bookcase, the seat of a rocking chair and the top of a dresser. There were posters of horses on one wall and a few books scattered around. Behind the door was a growth chart. A table in one corner was topped with fashion dolls and doll-sized furniture. The drapes on the window were a cascade of lacy fabric. On a low vanity dresser were laid out the toys of playing grown-up: brushes, barrettes, a jewelry box, lipgloss, old compacts of blush and eyeshadow, empty adult perfume bottles, a half-full bottle of a candy-sweet girl’s perfume. A coatrack beside the vanity held a big, floppy straw hat, a grand boa, and other clothes for dress-up. There was none of the pretension of the rest of the apartment here, only the feel of a room created by a mother to spoil a precious child.

  Except that there was no child. The room was pristine, the bed unwrinkled, the deep pile of the powder-blue carpet showing the criss-cross tracks of a vacuum cleaner, unmarked by a human foot. If Atlanta Hunter cleaned this room, she vacuumed the floor as though she were painting it, backing up toward the door. Miranda felt as though she were walking into a shrine as she stepped across the threshold.

  “Maybe Cheryl lives with her father?” she suggested. “No. I don’t think there is a Cheryl.” Tango walked into the room and went to the closet, opening it. The clothes that were inside were all brand new, perfectly arranged. She opened a dresser drawer and lifted out a shirt still creased from the store. “Maybe there was, once.”

  “But the pictures? The new clothes?”

  “I don’t understand it.” She looked around. “This is the sort of room I would have loved to have as a little girl.”

  “Changelings start out as children?”

  “Of course. What did you think happened?”

  “I thought you were just sort of...” Miranda shrugged, embarrassed now that she had even mentioned it. In spite of what she had said at Hopeful the other night, she was jealous of Tango’s knowledge of the world. She felt a little bit ignorant every time she was with her. Her only real experience with other supernatural creatures was limited to Tango herself and to Solomon

  — and she didn’t dare tell the one about the other. “Eternal. Like characters from fairy tales.”

  “Maybe real faeries are, but Kithain are born and grow up just like humans. We only stop being human when we realize who we really are. Something like a vampire being Embraced.” Tango touched a set of ceramic wind chimes shaped like prancing unicorns. “What about you?”

  “What do you mean? Vampires are Embraced, like you said.”

  “No.” Tango smiled and shook her head. “I mean, isn’t this the kind of room you would have liked?”

  “I... I don’t know.” it was such a human thing to ask. She hadn’t really thought about her childhood in a long time. Miranda opened the jewelry box on the vanity. A miniature ballerina popped up and began to pivot to the tinkling sounds of a music box. Tango glanced at the jewelry box, then looked again and came over. She pointed at a piece of the child’s jewelry inside.

  “That’s the charm bracelet that Cheryl... Riley was wearing on the plane.”

  Miranda picked it up. “Cute.” Little gold charms dripped off the bracelet, and there were more in the box. Mostly souvenir charms from the cities and monuments captured in the photo albums.

  “Let me see it.” Tango reached for the bracelet. Miranda dropped it into her hand. •

  The changeling gasped suddenly and let the bracelet go. Miranda snatched it out of the air as it fell. She stared at Tango. “What?”

  Tango was holding her hand as if she had been shocked. “The bracelet is magical. Enchanted somehow.”

  “How do you know?” Miranda fingered the delicate metal. The bracelet seemed perfectly ordinary to her.

  “Changelings can sense things like that sometimes. Especially when the magic is very strong.” She blinked and shook her head. “But it’s not enchanted with Glamour, and it doesn’t feel like a mage’s human magick. There’s something... evil about it. Not the bracelet itself, just the enchantment.” She took a breath. “The bracelet feels almost like it’s alive.”

  One charm dangled apart from the others, a flat tag engraved Cheryl. Miranda rubbed it between her fingers. “You say Riley was wearing this?” Tango nodded. Miranda licked her lips. “Maybe I’ve been hanging around Tolly too long, but if magic transformed Riley into Cheryl, what better way to do it than with a charm bracelet?”

  Tango’s breath hissed between her teeth. “That would be a very cheap, sick pun, but you might be right.” Abruptly, she held out her arm. “Put it on me.” “Are you crazy?” Miranda pulled the bracelet away. “We don’t know what it could do to you!”

  “If I’m right, I’ll turn into Cheryl.” Tango grimaced. “I don’t like it either, but this could be the only way for us to know what they did to Riley.”

  “But will you turn back again when the bracelet is off?”

  Tango looked into Miranda’s eyes. “Cross your fingers and hope.” She pushed her wrist forward again.

  Miranda swallowed. If Tango was determined to go through with this, she would help her. Quickly she fastened the charm bracelet around the changeling’s fine wrist. Tango’s eyes went wide with pain and her breath caught harshly in her throat. And then Miranda was holding the hand of a sweet-faced little girl wearing Tango’s clothing.

  The transformation was virtually instantaneous. Miranda was stunned for a moment by the speed of it. One moment Tango was herself, and the next moment she was Cheryl, the girl from the photographs. Except that both she and Tango had forgotten to think of one thing: suddenly there was an eight-year-old girl in the dark room, her hand being held by a tall woman whose features were lit eerily by a flashlight. Cheryl screamed in terror, hurling the flashlight away.

  Frantically, Miranda fumbled open the clasp on the bracelet and clamped a hand over the girl’s mouth. “Quiet!” she whispered, rocking back and forth. “Quiet! It’s all right.” She looked down at the figure in her arms. It was still that of a little girl. “Oh, shit.”

  “Mmph,” mumbled the figure. It shoved at Miranda’s hand. “It’s Tango.” Her voice was normal, but the rest of her wasn’t. She looked down at herself. “My god.” “You’re not turning back!”

  “I am, but slowly. Maybe the time the transformation lasts after the bracelet is off is related to how long the bracelet is on — the last time I heard from Riley, he had Cheryl’s voice, but his own memories. I got my own voice back right away.” She hissed. Miranda felt the changeling’s body shifting in her arms, growing larger and filling out. Tango was becoming herself again.

  “It hurts?”

  “In more ways than one.” Tango carefully picked up
the bracelet, not trying to put it on, but holding it as if it were almost too hot to touch. “We were right, Miranda. It was the bracelet... and the bracelet is alive... and there was a girl named Cheryl once.” Tango’s voice was filled with rage. “All of these charms are parts of Cheryl’s life. Someone trapped her spirit in this bracelet!”

  Miranda was stunned. “Who?”

  Tango shook her head. “I don’t know. But it happened a long time ago.”

  “The first pictures of Atlanta and Cheryl are from sixteen years ago.” Miranda growled. “If they’re all like Riley, people transformed.... Could that be what Riley got mixed up in?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Maybe.” Tango stared at the bracelet, then said bitterly, “We still don’t know what happened to Riley. They got the bracelet on him at the airport, brought him onto the airplane, and sat him right in his own seat! But someone canceled his ticket

  — no, they wiped any record of his ticket off the system. Who could have done that?”

  She was shaking, though whether from frustration, anger, anguish or just the effort of controlling her emotions, Miranda couldn’t tell. The vampire gave the changeling a tight hug. Tango hugged her back for a moment. The contact made Miranda feel better as well. How long had it been, she wondered, since she had been held? Not embraced in the course of feeding, not caressed by Solomon, but simply held? Six years? As long as since she had thought about her childhood. She closed her eyes and savored the sensation. It felt good. When Tango finally pulled away, Miranda found herself reluctant to let the changeling go. “Now what?” she asked.

  “We search the room.” Tango retrieved her flashlight. “With any luck, there’s something in here that we can use.”

  There was, and they found it under the ruffled skirt of the bed. Another photo album with a third set of pictures. These pictures, though, didn’t show scenery, or Atlanta and Cheryl. They showed other people, men, women and children — not posed, but simply candid or covert shots. The photographs were dated, and each corresponded to a photograph in the other small album. The last photograph was a picture of Riley, taken as he was getting out of a cab. Miranda hissed as the significance of the album dawned on her. “Tango! She kidnaps people, then uses the bracelet to transform them into Cheryl!”