by Carol Wolf
“Well,” she said in greeting to the two big thugs we’d met before. “Got yourself cleaned up already?” And with no further hesitation she threw herself at the smaller of the two, the sly-guy, one fist launched at his face, the other hand held low. He raised his hands to protect his face, at the last second she dropped her fist and reached for his throat and bore him back into the wall of the restaurant, holding him there with the weight of her body, while her right hand went to his belly. When she touched him there he flinched back, pressing himself into the wall. Yvette, the graduate of nearly four years in juvenile hall, for a crime she did not commit, was doing fine, so all I did was prevent big henchman guy from butting in.
Yvette spoke in a voice I’d never heard, laced with fury and power. “You feel that?” She jerked her fist in his belly and he cried out, biting it off as she leaned into his throat. “That's my knife. You got a knife? What, no knife at all? Then what do you think you’re doing, attacking two ladies in the street?”
Big henchman jerked in my grip. I bit down just enough for my teeth to puncture his skin, and he became very still.
Yvette continued, “Now, here are my choices. I can cut your belly open and leave you here to bleed out. I can cut a little lower—no, I see, you don’t like that at all. Well then I can point it higher, here, and aim up, where the blade is just long enough to maybe reach your heart.” She brought her face close to his and snarled, her eyes huge. “Or I could just cut your throat. Now, I never want to see you again. Which do you think is my best choice?”
Mr. Sly Guy Jerk did not express an opinion. It is possible that he couldn’t actually speak, because her left hand still held his throat. She waited a moment, and then, lightning-fast, she cut her right hand across his belly and let him go. He shrieked and collapsed, clutching himself as though to hold together his innards and staunch his blood. In fact there was no blood, but Yvette was already walking away.
I released the henchman's head from my jaws and leaped after her, and changed, stepping back onto two feet just as we reached Philadelphia and turned the corner. Yvette was wearing a rather pleased smile.
‘What was that? Did you have a knife?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t do more than scratch if you use the back,” she said with a smirk. “But it takes them a while to figure it out.”
I lengthened my stride to keep up with her, and started to favor my bad ankle. “You could have let me handle it.”
She looked at me, eyes wide. “It's my town too!”
So we spent the next couple hours taking it in turn to paint the two primed walls, and helping Ariadne move shelves, unpack boxes, and set up displays. Before we left, we both had job offers to help her get everything set up, at least until the store opened officially on Saturday.
Yvette chattered away as we worked, asking question after question until Ariadne finally suggested that more work would get done if she held all her questions until our breaks. But she was smiling, and Yvette took no offence. By the end of the next day, Yvette had parlayed part of her pay into violin lessons.
It was a great pleasure to have somewhere I had to be every day, and work that needed doing. It got me out the apartment, where Richard's scent brought up memories in every room. It filled the days, especially since we worked late every night because there was so much to be done. Part of our pay that week was dinner, taken out from one of the local restaurants just a few steps away. It was pleasant, and on top of everything, we were being paid.
Ariadne was realizing a dream in opening her own music store. Her excitement and passion made her pleasant to be around. She was courteous and grateful, and that made her easy to work for. Yvette kept arguing for more ethnic and tribal instruments, and Ariadne heard her out. But it turned out she’d been teaching music in town for a lot of years, so even in the days before the store officially opened, people wandered in to congratulate her, to sign up for lessons, to arrange to rent instruments for band classes in summer school, or sign up for the local music camp that Ariadne helped to run. Some of them stayed to help for awhile, as there was still plenty to do. Yvette finally got her way by offering to teach the drum class she wanted. I took no part in these discussions, but I enjoyed them in my own way.
By Friday night, Ariadne had offered us both permanent positions. Yvette filled out the paperwork then and there. I had to tell Ariadne my wallet had been stolen.
One big problem with a fake I.D. is that you can’t just go down to the DMV and get a new one, and they’re hard to replace, especially in a town where I didn’t know who to ask where to get one. I called the World Music store in Costa Mesa and asked Madam Tamara to ask Curt to tell his cousin Elaine I needed my wallet back. Now. When I called back the next morning, Tamara told me that Elaine would give me the wallet if I drove up and got it from her, or I could wait until she had time to drive down and give it back to me. There were several other possible choices, and I thought about that before I gave my answer.
“Do you think it's a trap?” Tamara asked when I didn’t respond.
“Probably,” I said. “Where did she say I should meet her?”
“It's up in Calabasas. Wait.” After a moment, she read me the address and the directions and I copied them down with a pencil stub on the side of a piece of junk mail Ariadne had thrown away.
Then she told me, “I have arranged a meeting for Monday night. I expect you to be there.”
“A meeting?”
“You agreed it would be best if you call your demon publicly, so that all may question it.”
I remembered suggesting it. I didn’t remember agreeing to do it. “It's dangerous,” I said.
“Yes. We will take all possible precautions.”
Tamara had never seen it, the thing that Richard had become. I’d known I might have to call him again. We’d talked about it. But I had seen that thing, and I didn’t want to.
“You’ll be there?” she insisted.
I hedged. “Well, if I don’t show, you’ll know where to ask after me.”
There was a silence on the line. Then she said, “You are a lot of trouble.”
“I know.”
A short laugh. “Go well, wolf girl. The Lady speed your way.”
It occurred to me, as I hung up the phone, that if I didn’t show, Tamara and all those power raisers who were there on Monday night could have that healing sing for her mother. And that might be the best thing that could happen.
I stopped by Ariadne's in time to help her and Yvette put up the sign, “Amadeus Music Store,” over the front of the shop, which was officially opening today. I told them my wallet had been found and I was going to go and pick it up. Ariadne gave me a smile and told me to hurry back. I was beginning to like her. Yvette gave me a look of suspicion laced with concern, and made a crack about getting out of working just before the opening. Yeah, I liked her too.
So on a bright sunny Saturday morning I headed across the greater Los Angeles basin down the 605, then up the 5 to the 101 toward Calabasas, enjoying the tiny clouds drifting across the sky from the northeast, until I came to a stop on the 101 just beyond downtown L.A., staring ahead at a long back-up of red brake lights on my side, and an empty freeway going the other way. Always a bad sign. After creeping along for a few minutes, I tried the charm that Richard taught me, for clearing the traffic.
“Does it work?” I’d asked him, Both hands on the wheel, I sketched the sign with my fingers and pronounced the charm.
“Does it matter?” he said. “While you’re doing the charm, the roads may clear.”
Just as he said that, traffic had picked up, and I glanced over at him and grinned, and he smiled in return. You would not believe the sweetness of his smile. The illusionist never got that right. I should have bitten him harder.
As I crept along in second gear I wondered what, if anything, would answer, when I called up the demon on Monday. But then, if I was about to walk into another trap set by the evil vet, and I was caught or killed, then I wouldn’
t have to worry about that in any case. I was prepared for another attempt to capture me to relieve me of my demon. If that happened, I decided, I was going to have to take care of the evil vet, and I was prepared for that. It was about time. What I was not prepared for was what would prove to be the fight of my life.
The traffic picked up a bit while I was thinking about what was ahead. As I shifted into third I smiled and pronounced the charm again. After all, it couldn’t hurt.
As the freeway began to climb out of the L.A. basin, we passed steep hills with their tops flattened, and little oases of pink houses with red roofs on top, and spiky stands of palm trees. As it turned out, the accident that was holding up the traffic was on the other side, so my side didn’t have to squash down into fewer lanes to pass by. As the speed of traffic accelerated to its usual tearing speed, I joked to myself that Richard's charm really had worked. The next set of hills were only sparsely built up, and further along there was actual open space up the steep slopes of a range of mountains. Not the forested mountains of home, but still enough space to rest the eye and make me think about how much I missed the pleasure of running for hours.
I got off the freeway and stopped to check the directions I’d gotten from Elaine by way of Tamara. I turned south and headed down the road into the hills. Here, every flat place seemed to have been scraped level and built up, right to the edge of the steep, brush-covered hills. From a distance the hills looked fuzzy, as though they were covered with green-grey brush. Closer to, the spiny bushes all seemed to be aspiring to become trees, and stood a lot higher than I do, in either form. Along the canyons and the seasonal creeks, and in green patches that marked springs or sinks, ancient oaks and sycamores grew, probably the same ones that stood there since before California was a state. Modern houses pressed up alongside old ranches with falling down fences. Bridle paths and hiking trails wound the uncultivated hillsides. Side streets were called after creeks, bobcats, coyotes, referring to sightings many years in the past.
Tree-covered hills sloped into tree-covered canyons watered with streams that were still running in early May. I hadn’t seen country this beautiful since I’d come to Los Angeles. The wooded hills would smell of drying grass, of dust, of misty mornings and cool spring nights. The web of tiny lives would unfold before me with every step as I crossed foraging trails and hunting trails, telling their stories to me with my every breath. I promised myself that one day I would wander here for a day or a week or longer, until I knew every fold of earth, the view from every height, and every sweet little critter who lived there.
I drove down into a valley where the dwellings grew closer together, and everybody's territory was marked by fences. At a crossroads a trendy bar and restaurant with a sculpture garden terraced into the slope marked the center of town. I turned right and counted three mailboxes, and pulled over.
Elaine's house had a huge wall made of steel panels around it, articulated and painted to look like some kind of artistic statement in sheets of metal, but the prevailing message was clear: do not try to come in here. You are not wanted.
A heavy, lopsided gate of the same material had been shoved open across a rutted, sparsely-graveled drive, probably in invitation. Instead, I parked outside the fence, as far to the side of the road as I could, locked the car and left it there. First rule of walking into a trap, leave your transportation outside of it.
Inside the gate a broad lawn needed cutting, and a wide border along the fence planted with native California plants had run wild, fighting for space and light.
The driveway led up to the house around a circular bed of ancient rose bushes, their trunks as thick as young trees, just coming into bloom. The house had been ultra-modern a couple of decades ago. It looked like a lot of glass cubes stacked on top of each other, overlapping in places, leaving gaps in others. These floor-to-ceiling windows were blocked out with shades or curtains or screens against the California sun. The front door stood behind a patio made up of huge squares of rough concrete, in a cave created by the overhanging cubes of the second story. Fat-leaved plants in big brown pots lined the sides of the cave all the way to the glass door.
You cannot just ignore a trap. If you stay away from it, the trapper will become more wily, and try and find a way to drive you into it when you are most unwary. You have to defeat the trap, destroy it, and drive out the trapper. To do that you must first identify the trap, suss out all its workings from the buried chain to the straining spring to the deadly, pointy teeth. When you can see the trap in its entirety, you can drop a stone in its mouth, make it snap on itself, dig it all out, and throw it in the nearest lake. But leaving a trap unsprung in your territory is just foolishness.
I stopped at the edge of the drive. I didn’t like the look of the cave. I didn’t want to enter the house. Limited space limits choices. And before you walk into a trap, you want to know where all the doors are, so you can get out. So, I stopped at the patio.
A dozen or so people used this walk every day. Elaine used it frequently. Cousin Curt had been here recently. Elaine had crossed this way, either going or coming, just a short while ago. I was just going to back-track her, to see if she was outside or in, when the front door opened and she slipped out, snapping the door shut quickly behind her. Obviously she didn’t want me inside the house either. The evil vet hurried out of the cave and started along her previous track, beckoning me. “Come this way.” She pulled on a cardigan over her work shirt as I caught up with her. Her jeans had fresh stains. She’d euthanized a dog earlier that morning, a big tired old fellow who was sick with cancer, and hadn’t changed her clothes. Poor old guy. There's a lot to be said for an easy death, except the lack of choice.
I caught up with her. “Nice place,” I said.
“It's my parents’.”
“Where is my wallet?”
Tension spiked off her. If scent were color she’d have been spouting rainbows. “Uh… I have to…”
“All right,” I said agreeably. “I can wait.”
I followed her around the side of the house, lengthening my stride to keep up with her, and limping just a bit on my bad ankle. In back there was another, bigger patio, bordered by pool chairs and palm trees. Orange and lemon trees alternated in big wooden planters along the fence. And of course, there was the big blue pool, smelling of chlorine, where not a leaf or insect marred the perfect, stinky water.
Elaine waved me along, walking so fast I broke into a jog to keep up, and changed from her right side to her left. My adrenaline started pumping as we passed the pool. I wondered if I should just throw her in now and save time. Elaine had washed her hands thoroughly with an astringent soap, since her morning's appointment bringing death to a dog, and more recently with a soap tinged with lavender, but she had missed a trace of the gun oil on her fingers. I couldn’t see where she was concealing a gun on her at present. The pockets on the cardigan weren’t big enough, and should have swung more heavily when she moved with a couple of pounds of pistol in it. She might have just been cleaning the gun before putting it away. Then again, she might have it hidden somewhere out here, ready to hand.
If she shot me again, I might have to bang her head on the concrete a few times before I threw her in the pool. I didn’t think she could shoot me, since I was ready for her. The woman still didn’t know how fast I could move. But if she made me move that fast, I swore she was going to be awfully sorry.
The evil vet led the way across the pool area, which no one had used in a long time.
“So, did you bury my wallet under a tree or something?” I wasn’t expecting an answer. I was just talking to see her reaction. Like poking a snake with a stick. “Look, I don’t care about the cash, I just need my I.D. Or don’t you have it?”
“It's just—you have to see something.”
I stopped walking. “I do? What would that be?”
“It's here.”
The far side of the pool was fenced with high wooden boards that had once been painted dark gre
en. She dragged open a groaning lopsided gate, and held it for me. “Just through here.”
“My wallet is just through there?”
Elaine met my gaze briefly, then looked away into the field beyond the gate. “Go on,” she said. “In there.”
Through the gate I glimpsed green grass and the neatly spaced trees of an old orchard. “Why should I go in there?”
“Just—there's somebody waiting for you.”
“Has she got my wallet?”
She still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’ll give you your wallet when you come out.” The tension on her body reached a new height. I took one step toward the gate just to see if it could rise any more, but she seemed to have topped out.
I raised my head and opened my mouth a little. There was almost no breeze, and the air that was stirring came from behind and to the right. Curt had not come this way. Elaine had been through the gate earlier. She pulled it open a little more, invitingly. I smiled at her. I thought I’d better take a stroll around the perimeter of the orchard, outside the fence, before I walked through that gate.
A voice came from behind me. “Thank you, doctor. I’ll take it from here.”
I spun hard. My third oldest stepbrother, Finley, dropped lightly over the orchard fence onto the patio and stalked toward me. His eyes were already turning gold.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I grow bigger when I’m angry. I grow smaller when I’m scared. Another problem with fear is that you freeze, and you lose track of your surroundings as your attention telescopes on the threat coming at you. Time speeds up as you slow down, and you find yourself clutching at opportunities that have already slipped out of reach. “You little bitch. Where have you been? You are in so much trouble!”