This Eternity of Masks and Shadows

by Karsten Knight

  Cairn offered a sheepish smile as she kicked the wetsuit behind a rock. “Who needs to wait in line for the women’s bathroom when an island is one big litter box, am I right?” She winked at the woman as she passed them. “I know you get it.”

  As Cairn approached the dock, she blended in with the stream of guests that were funneling into the greenhouse on the island’s eastern edge. Sound enveloped Cairn the moment she stepped inside the massive glass structure. Several hundred guests milled about, filling the space between rows of grape trellises and other fruit-bearing plants. Starlight filtered through the panels overhead, bright and unobscured this far from the mainland. The cavernous space felt more like a small aircraft hangar.

  Many of the guests had congregated by the eastern exposure, and Cairn couldn’t blame them. The windows overlooked the waves as they hypnotically lapped against the shore.

  Cairn snatched a glass of amber-colored mead off the tray of a passing server. She had yet to spot Senator Ra, but she wasn’t worried—they had set up a giant stage against one wall, and there was simply no way the politician would forgo the opportunity to make remarks on his wife’s big night. Besides, Cairn still wasn’t sure how to approach him. Should she walk up and casually say, “I hear you and my mom murdered a child together two decades ago. How are things going otherwise?”

  As Cairn scanned the room, she noticed a small gathering listening intently to a striking twenty-something man in a tuxedo as he gave a presentation. He had curly dark hair pulled up into a bun, angular yet handsome features, and an olive complexion. “Believe it or not,” the young man was saying, “the delicious nectar in your glasses comes from these little guys.” He patted a plastic cube next to him, and Cairn recoiled when she got close enough to see its contents: a honeycomb writhing with bees.

  “After they collect the nectar from flowers”—he gestured around the greenhouse—“they store it in their honey stomach and bring it back to the hive, where it’s passed mouth-to-mouth between their friends. As each bee chews it, the moisture evaporates and the nectar gradually gets more viscous, until it becomes the thick syrupy honey that you’re all familiar with.”

  One of the women in the crowd seemed taken aback. “You’re telling me that we’re drinking bee vomit?” She eyed the glass in her hand warily.

  “Fermented bee vomit,” the presenter corrected her with a wink. “So while as the mead-maker I can take credit for the fermentation process and the essences I infuse it with to make different flavors, it’s these hardworking creatures that you really have to thank for getting drunk tonight.”

  Some members of his audience looked disgusted, but most of them raised their glasses and cheered. Cairn wondered how often these people got out of the house.

  Before Cairn could become too ensconced in the bee lecture, the crowd closer to the stage parted and suddenly there he was—the most powerful man in the state. While Senator Ra had aged since the photograph with her mother nearly twenty years ago, he had never lost his boyish charm. He radiated life, captivating the large group of sycophants who’d gathered around him and laughed at all the right cues.

  One of Ra’s hands gestured animatedly with a glass of mead. The other circled the back of a stunning young woman with the willowy build and striking cheekbones of a runway model. The senator’s second wife had to be fifteen years his junior.

  As Cairn edged closer, she started to pick up bits of what Ra was saying. “… And the mayor had the nerve to say to me, ‘I’ll sign off on that bridge the day that the sun shines out of my ass. So I held up my hand”—Ra’s fingers shimmered with a brilliant light, to the delighted gasps of the people around him—“and I said, ‘Drop your trousers and I can make that happen.’”

  The group exploded with laughter. After they finally quieted down, Madison Ra cleared her throat. “Darling …”

  The senator gave her a bashful look. “Tonight isn’t about my frivolous political anecdotes—that’s what the other three hundred and sixty-four days are for. No, tonight is about my incredible wife, Madison, and the hard work she’s poured into making Ambrosia Nectars a reality.”

  Madison beamed out from under her Jackie O. haircut. “All profits from every bottle sold will go toward providing transitional housing for the homeless, a topic dear to my heart. I’d also like to toast the real artist behind Ambrosia: my genius mead-maker, our very own god of bees, Aristaeus.” She gestured across the crowd to the young man Cairn had seen explaining the hive, who had since donned a beekeeping suit over his tuxedo.

  Senator Ra goosed his wife’s hip flirtatiously. “I have to keep making the rounds, but Madison is going to lead you on a tasting in my absence.”

  A server had converged on the group and distributed fresh sample glasses. “This mead is infused with lavender and cardamom …” Madison was saying as the audience oohed in unison.

  Senator Ra started to migrate to the next group. Cairn sensed that this might be one of the few opportunities to catch him alone, so she drew in a deep breath and stepped into his path. “Excuse me, Senator,” she said. “Can you spare a minute for a young voter?”

  The senator, smooth as ever, flashed his disarming smile. “Always,” he replied. “Even when it’s not an election year.”

  “I just wanted to say how much I admire you for being one of the first gods to publicly embrace your identity. It must have been a gamble for someone running for public office.”

  Ra spread his hands. “How could I expect the people of Massachusetts to trust me if I continued to conceal such a crucial part of my existence? Washington is plagued with enough secrets, and now more than ever, mortals and gods alike need a beacon to navigate these dark, uncertain times. Besides, the only difference between me and you?” He snapped his fingers and a small flame briefly levitated over his thumb. “I don’t need a lighter.”

  Cairn feigned a smile, though she was certain every word he’d just spoken had been a canned speech he’d offered verbatim to hundreds of constituents before her. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “The reason it hit so close to home is that my mother was a goddess.”

  “Really?” Ra’s eyes dipped to study her face, and she saw the wave of calculations happening as he attempted to decipher her ethnicity. It was a look she’d been getting her whole life. Ever the diplomat, Ra at least had the sense not to ask her flat out. “And she’s living a more private life? There is no shame in that. The world is not always the most forgiving place.”

  “Lived,” Cairn corrected. “She recently passed away.”

  Ra touched her elbow. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “I think you might have known her,” Cairn continued. “Her name was Ahna Delacroix—but you might have known her as Sedna.”

  And just like that, the mention of her mother’s name sent cracks spiderwebbing through Ra’s practiced veneer. His hand stiffened on her arm. The corner of his left eye twitched almost imperceptibly.

  Then his façade repaired itself. “That is the saddest news I’ve heard in some time. Ahna …” He breathed the name and closed his eyes. “I didn’t know her well at university, but she was a kind soul. Everyone thought so. I wish we’d kept in touch over the years, and it pains me to know I’m too late to correct that.”

  Lies, lies, lies. But the biggest one of all: she didn’t buy for one second that this was the first he’d learned of her mother’s death.

  The senator was already stepping away, another group to schmooze in his sights. “If there’s anything at all I can do for you during this difficult time, don’t hesitate to call my office.”

  “You could tell me what really happened on that island,” Cairn called just loud enough for him to hear.

  Ra paused in his tracks. He turned back to Cairn, mouth agape. He looked as though he’d seen a ghost.

  His wife saved him in that moment, sweeping in and planting a kiss on his cheek. “Darling, the Nethercutts are demanding a photo op.” Madison Ra only then noticed that she’d interrupte
d something. Her gaze landed on Cairn. “Honey, who’s this?”

  The senator’s brain finally reestablished connection with his mouth before Cairn could speak for herself. “An engaged young citizen. Keep an eye on this one.”

  Then he was gone, diving right into the next pod of fawning donors.

  “Careful,” a familiar female voice purred behind her. “In two or three years, you’ll be just his type. Maybe two or three weeks.”

  Quinn Cypress, the journalist who’d trespassed on the crime scene at the bog, had appeared at Cairn’s side. The woman wore a scarlet turtleneck dress, sleeveless to expose her chiseled arms. She’d traded her camera for a snifter of mead.

  “You certainly make the rounds,” Cairn said.

  Quinn raised an eyebrow. “I could say the same about you—only I imagine this time I’m not the one whose name is missing from the guest list.”

  Cairn pursed her lips. “Blame a girl for crashing a party with passed hors d’oeuvres. What brings a newswoman like you to a party like this? Aside from the free cheese and oysters.”

  “Are you kidding?” Quinn scoffed. “Put a hundred of Boston’s rich, white elite in a confined space with an open bar, and the stories will write themselves. Reality television uses the same recipe for bad behavior.”

  Cairn gestured with her glass toward the senator, who was once again working the crowd. The rosy flush had returned to his cheeks and his mannerisms bordered on sloppy, thanks to the latest sample of mead in his hand. “Tell me then: what’s the headline there?”

  “Feckless, ladder-climbing playboy abandons first wife to marry jailbait ballerina-turned-socialite.”

  Cairn nearly spat out her mead. When she’d finished laugh-choking, she said, “That’s savage.”

  “That’s journalism.” Quinn fixed her sights on a portly older man who was close-talking a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go find out which college intern Ambassador Shipley is groping this week.”

  As the journalist moved away, Cairn’s phone buzzed inside her clutch. She headed for a quieter spot by the windows, but still had to plug a finger into her other ear to block out the din. Vulcan started chattering excitedly without so much as a hello when Cairn answered.

  “So I took a closer look at the vial your mother left you.”

  “Tell me everything,” Cairn said.

  “Two things of note,” Vulcan went on. “There was a residue inside. I couldn’t identify the substance with any registered drugs but hoo-boy was it one complicated chemical cocktail.”

  “Maybe you should lick it and see what it does,” Cairn replied. “What else?”

  “On a whim, I examined the vial itself under a microscope. Someone tried to sand a barcode off the glass but they did a half-assed job.” There was a pause. “The barcode traced back to Vesuvius Labs.”

  Vesuvius—the pharmaceutical company owned by Dr. Sibelius, the mortal scientist on her mother’s ill-fated expedition to Sable Noir.

  “Good work, Vulcan,” Cairn said. “Right now it feels like you’re the only one capable of giving me straight answers. Any chance you can figure out where the good doctor will be tomorrow morning?”

  “I’m on it.” Vulcan hung up.

  Cairn gazed sullenly out the window as the ocean waves battered the shoreline below. A dead district attorney, a lying politician, and now a mysterious vial from a scientist who, based on what Sedna had written about him, might be the least trustworthy suspect of all?

  There were so many cogs in motion, but she couldn’t zoom out to see the machine they were a part of.

  As she mulled over her next move, she became aware that she was no longer alone. Aristaeus, the mead-maker, stood a few window panels away. When he caught her eye, he smiled and nodded back toward the sea of guests. “Glad to know I’m not the only one who isn’t in the socializing mood.”

  “You seemed to be mingling just fine,” Cairn replied. “Besides, this has to be better company than a beehive.”

  “I’ll take the bees any day. I asked a group of these idiots what flavors they tasted in one of my meads.” He rolled his eyes. “One said ‘courage.’ Another said ‘the Renaissance.’ What the hell does the Renaissance taste like?”

  “Horse shit and bubonic plague?” Cairn suggested.

  Aristaeus burst out in an unexpectedly high-pitch giggle that was contagious, and soon Cairn was laughing too.

  “Antisocial, sense of humor, medieval historian—that settles it, you have to come by someday for a private tour. I’ll walk you through the mead-making process, and if you’re lucky, I’ll even let you wear the beekeeper suit. You could bring someone special?” After an expectant pause, his face flushed. “Oh boy, that sounded way more subtle in my head. Here.” He handed her a business card. It read:

  Aristaeus Kava, apiarist and master mead-maker.

  “Wait …” Cairn said. His full name had triggered a memory. As a preteen, after begging her parents to let her have just one “normal” summer where she wasn’t traipsing around the world with them to their various research sites, they’d sent her to sleep-away camp. While she ultimately realized that bunking in a hot, mosquito-infested cabin wasn’t the glamorous paradise she’d imagined, it had been a memorable eight weeks. She’d had her first kiss that summer, slipping away from her hiking group to lock lips with Todd Mills behind a boulder—until she found out he’d seduced half her bunkmates as well.

  There had been another boy there she’d never forgotten. Ari Kava had been underdeveloped for a high school freshman, painfully awkward, with big bashful eyes that stared out from beneath thick glasses and a curly mop of hair. The catty girls in her cabin would mercilessly mock him, whispering about the weird “bug boy” who seemed far more interested in the papery remains of a wasp nest or the worms beneath a log than any human interaction.

  Cairn regretted not standing up for him, but Ari had seemed unfazed by the ridicule.

  Now she gawked up at the tall, beautiful Bohemian man in front of her, square-jawed and lithely muscular, and tried to reconcile him with the antisocial teenager she’d once known, his hands always soil-stained from digging for bugs. “Ari Kava? From Camp Callaway?” She pointed to herself. “It’s me, Cairn Delacroix.”

  Aristaeus squinted at her a moment longer, then beamed with recognition. “Well, I’ll be damned. Time has been good to you.”

  “To me?” she echoed. She gave him a once-over. “The last time I saw you, you were …”

  “A scrawny friendless scarecrow who talked to flowers?” he suggested.

  “I was going to say ‘shorter.’”

  The lights in the greenhouse flickered and Aristaeus groaned. “That’s my cue to take the stage. I hate giving speeches.”

  Cairn raised her glass in a toast. “To horse shit and plague.”

  “To horse shit,” he agreed. “Seriously, swing by the island anytime, preferably when it’s less infested with windbags. I promise it will be a better time than mandatory swimming lessons in the camp lake. Think about it,” he called out to her as he disappeared into the crowd.

  Cairn shook off the spell of nostalgia that seeing Ari had brought rushing back, and turned her attention to the stage. The senator had seized the microphone, where he was prattling on about the charity his wife’s mead would raise money for.

  Beneath the facade of a good Samaritan and family man, she saw him for the stone-faced liar he really was.

  Cairn knew she wouldn’t get another audience with him tonight, so she threw back her drink and made her way for the exit.

  But this wouldn’t be the last Ra saw of her. Cairn’s gut told her the sun god was hiding more than the contents of that journal.

  After all, where there was sunshine, shadows were never far behind.

  Venom and Fangs

  The Vesuvius Labs headquarters was a glass tower in the heart of Boston’s pharmaceutical district, not far from Fenway Park. There, brilliant scientists were makin
g incredible strides to address some of the world’s most pressing medical concerns, from cancer to the Ebola virus. Even Nook’s prosthetic hand, he grudgingly admitted, had been developed by biomedical engineers at Vesuvius.

  The problem: Leopold Sibelius didn’t actually work there.

  In fact, further research showed that he hadn’t been to the headquarters since its ribbon-cutting ceremony a decade earlier. Instead, the reclusive doctor worked permanently from a satellite campus off in the rural western half of the state. It doubled as both a small private laboratory and his place of residence.

  On the hourlong drive, Cairn pestered Nook with questions until he caved and let her listen to music, compromising on a classical station—until a news bulletin interrupted the program. “Last night, the mysterious vigilante known as Columbia made her second appearance this week,” the broadcaster said. “The armored figure foiled a heist at the Museum of Fine Arts, saving seven hostages in the process. A spokesman for the Boston Police Department declined to comment—”

  Nook turned off the radio with a low growl.

  As they pulled up to the main gates of. Dr. Sibelius’s private compound, the assistant on the other side of the intercom refused to let them in without an appointment. Nook responded by slamming his badge onto the camera hard enough to crack the lens.

  Without another word, the gate buzzed and swung open, inviting them onto a tree-lined path on the grounds beyond.

  They didn’t have to wander far onto the property to find the lab. Given the size and grandeur of the Vesuvius headquarters, Cairn had expected something equally imposing and state-of-the-art.

  Instead, she stared at a single door built into the side of a grassy knoll.

  “Guess his architect wasn’t a big fan of natural light,” Cairn said.

  Nook’s good hand settled on the butt of his holstered Beretta. His eyes darted suspiciously from the hill in front of them to the pines surrounding them. “I don’t like this,” he muttered. “Normal people don’t live in fallout shelters.”