by Jason Winn
“How do you get outside?” asked Hector. “This place is very confusing.”
Yes, well that’s by design. “I prefer the term intricate. Now, unless anyone else wishes to start a fight in here, I’ll continue.” She reached for a black and gold box in front of her and opened it. “This is why I asked you all to meet me here today.”
Contessa removed a plastic bag smeared with purple residue mixed with broken glass and held it up for all to see.
Louis Preen gave the only audible reaction, a grunt. Everyone else stared in silence.
“Should I take that to mean that no one knows what this is, except for Mr. Preen?” asked Contessa.
“Looks like a travel shampoo container,” said Dmitri, “maybe stepped on.”
“It’s Moonmilk, you idiot,” said Max, not bothering to look over at Dmitri.
“So what?” said Leo Molden. His father, Max, put his arm on Leo’s forearm to shut him up. Contessa concluded that Leo was there to listen, not talk.
“The young Molden is correct,” she said.
“I don’t get it,” said Hector. “Ours is different color, yours is different color, his,” he nodded to Max, “is different color. You’re making purple now, good for you.”
His smugness was getting to Contessa now. She took another puff of her cigarette. The smoke wrapped around the bag and carried it right in front of Hector’s face. The bag floated in front of him, wrapped in white smoke. Hector drew back in his chair, apparently unaware of Contessa’s parlor tricks.
Want to play the game? You need to know the players, or should I say opponents, young man.
“That, my dear Ruskie, is not from any of us. Congratulations, you are not color blind.”
Contessa let the bag fall into Hector’s lap. “Open it.”
Hector opened the bag as the cloud that had delivered it disappeared.
“Smell it.”
Hector buried his nose into the bag and took a deep breath.
“And, what do you smell?”
Louis piped up. “Plums.”
Max’s head snapped over to Contessa. His eyes showed a prey’s fear. “Is it?”
“Yes,” said Contessa, “the Rose Widow is back. We tested this with one of our customers who used to buy from her.”
Hector threw the bag on the table with a shrug. “Rose Widow, who is that?”
“The only reason you’re making money,” said Leo.
Contessa smiled at Max’s frown. He looked like he wanted to take a belt to Leo, who just couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut. She knew that sort of youthful flair, wanting to look tough in front of the grown-ups. Corrado had been like that once, with his father. But that had ceased, once the boy quietly realized that Don Morano hadn’t died of natural causes and there was a reason all the big men with crooked noses came to kiss her hand. All she had to do was give him that one knowing grin to tell him he could sit next to her, or sit next to his father. Corrado had rightly taken the former option.
“She controlled everything from the East Coast to the Midwest,” said Contessa. “What she didn’t control directly, she managed through distribution agreements.”
“So why not just go back to the old way of distributing her product, if it is so good?” asked Hector.
The group fell silent.
“What?” asked Hector. “This is simple. I don’t like making this stuff so much, but the money is good. Yes? And besides, it is not illegal. What are the cops going to do, arrest me for selling electrified milk? Please.”
Still no one spoke.
“Can I have her number then?” continued Hector. “I think she can do business.”
“Be our guest,” Max finally said.
“She’ll kill you on sight,” said Contessa. “She disappeared almost ten years ago, and the cartels today were built on a bloody civil war between her old network partners. Most of her old friends are dead...because of us.”
Contessa let the words drift in the air, along with her smoke.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” said Hector. He was smiling again.
“You can stop lying to us,” said Leon, “we know you killed Cooper.”
Contessa sighed. This bickering over Cooper was getting them nowhere. He was dead and gone and she didn’t care.
“As most of you can imagine,” said Contessa, “this presents a significant problem with our respective businesses. If the Rose Widow is back, she will not take kindly to our Moonmilk dealings. If someone has taken over her operation, then it is only a matter of time until our customers abandon us for them.”
“What’s left of the customers,” Max grumbled.
“Mine won’t even call me anymore,” said Louis as he sat back and crossed his arms.
“That’s a shame, dear,” said Contessa. “Have you tried their totems? All of mine switched to those years ago.”
Louis jerked in his seat and looked away. “That’s what I meant. It’s like they’re all gone.”
Contessa could see that the kid was lying. This pleased her. After a little more prodding, Cedric had told her that Nancy Mosby’s granddaughter, Madison, had stolen the totems and struck out on her own. The only reason Louis even had a seat at this table was to give Max and Hector the notion that Louis still had some hold on the DC market.
“Well,” said Contessa, “you know my respect for your mother and father is unshakable. Their disappearance was unfortunate. And you know that if any of their former customers came to me, I would send them straight to you. We must stick together in the face of this new threat. Lest we all be left without customers.”
“Did I hear you right?” asked Max. “All of your customers are gone?”
Louis nodded.
Max turned back to Contessa. “Do you think it might be related to the other disappearances?”
“If it were one or two,” said Contessa, “I would say yes. However, all your customers vanished at the same time, yes?”
Louis nodded again. “Right after my parents went missing.”
“Then that’s it,” said Hector, “DC is a dead market, no?”
“Hmm.” Contessa tapped the bottom of her chin. “I may know someone who used the Preens from time to time. I could reach out to her.”
Louis perked up at the idea of getting back at least one customer. Contessa had no intention of handing over the contact information of Jessica Golga, the Beltway Witch. She was probably already using Madison and would have no interest in wasting her time with Louis’s substandard product.
“But,” said Contessa, “I can’t for the life of me remember where I put their number. You’ll have to give me some time to find it.”
Louis’s face sank.
Max stood and reached across the table. Hector recoiled, his hand reaching for something under his shirt. Max grabbed the plastic bag and sat back down. He stuck his finger into the bag and pulled back a purple-stained finger. He smelled it.
“Was this made with a storm brewer?” he asked.
“There’s no question about it,” said Contessa.
“Then this person has to go. If our clients find this out, and with their insistence on secrecy, we could all be dead.”
This was the heart of the matter in Contessa’s eyes. She needed the group to figure it out though. Too many of the sorcerers who needed Moonmilk insisted on absolute secrecy. What good was a Moonmilk brewer who put out a lesser product and knew their identity?
“Then we go find this person,” said Hector, “and kill them. Why is everyone acting like this is so complicated?”
“Because,” said Louis. “If we take out this new dealer, their clients will come after us, because their supply has been cut off.”
“Not if we can copy their product,” said Hector. He sat back with a grin.
Exactly. This was the conclusion Contessa was waiting for. She would play the old absentminded fool while the New York and Baltimore cartels tore DC apart, looking for Madison. Once Madison was dead, she would call in her people to w
ipe up the mess and take over the market with the Rose Widow’s product. The best part was the rift between Hector and Max. Each would die before he let the other succeed.
Chapter 10
The ladder was mercifully dry and Madison had no issue descending the twenty feet into the Shiloh Library. Her feet found a concrete floor. Blue light emanated from crystals that protruded from what looked like flowerpots, nestled in the walls. That seemed to make sense to Madison—no need for electricity in a place you wanted to keep hidden.
She took a moment to look around. The space was about the size of a two-car garage, with a door set in each of the light blue walls. There was a stillness that made Madison feel safe and comforted, a peaceful sanctuary from the world. The only sound came from the rain pelting the shack’s roof above.
Madison’s mind went blank. This was it—the place Reese had unknowingly given his life for, the place people wanted to kill her for. If she thought about it any longer it might overwhelm her and bring on a flood of emotion. She didn’t need that right now. There would be plenty of time later to come here and cry.
Next to her was a small table. This must have been where Grandmother put the glasses when she ventured in. That way she was sure to see them and remember to take them out with her. Madison took the glasses off and placed them on the little table.
She examined the doors. They were made of a heavy-looking metal, like the kind at the back of the old Sky Garden Family Buffet restaurant. She wondered why those were necessary. Wasn’t Grandmother the only one who came down here? What the hell did she need doors for?
Madison decided not to question the Rose Widow’s logic and picked a door. In her head, she knew it would be locked.
Shut up, she told herself and turned the knob. The door opened. Relief flushed away the anxiety. She caught the words “fire proof” on the side of the door and realized these were a safety precautions: should a fire break out in one room, it would not spread to the others. Pretty smart, Grandma.
Inside was more bright blue light. This room was too big to see the other side. Rows and rows of white cabinets and drawers, seven or eight feet tall, filled the room. The scene reminded Madison of museum archives she’d visited once on a field trip, where precious and delicate artifacts lay nestled in special drawers. She immediately wanted to just start opening every one and touch and feel everything. Instead, she walked down one side of the room, looking down each identical row. She stopped counting aisles after fifteen. There must have been twenty more.
“Holy shit.” Her legs began to shake at the wonderment of what lay inside the drawers and cabinets.
How long had it taken to acquire everything in here? And the question surfaced again: how was it all hauled up and down the mountains and brought down here? Had Langston teleported everything? Probably not. He had made it clear that he never saw the place. Had he lied about that? Or, was he tricked into doing it? Maybe Grandmother had erased his memory or something. Anything seemed possible once you watched a guy disappear and reappear behind you.
Calm down, Madison.
Her heart raced at the thought that Nancy Mosby had spent a lot of time here, her secret place. What had she done down here? Where had she gone to get all of this stuff? Had it been from all the world travel she and Madison’s grandfather Roy had done?
Madison knew she was going to have to spend a lot of time here. She needed to familiarize herself with the place. She needed to understand everything. If she was truly to become the Rose Widow, she would need to have an iron grasp of all things magical. Nancy Mosby had had a lifetime to do that; Madison had only been at it for six months.
Beginning her study now didn’t make sense though. Sarah was finishing up a batch of the base compound for Moonmilk. The little teenaged blonde would give her a good scolding if she had to carry the heavy buckets of the raw base compound down the storm brewer in the basement. Madison needed to be there to help finish it. She needed to figure out how and when she could be away from the home base for a few weeks and get lost in all the new treasures.
She decided to pick one cabinet at random and see what lay inside. She had to move quickly, as the twins were assumedly still standing out in the rain and there were three more rooms after this one.
Madison decided to open a shallow, wide drawer, in the middle of the tenth row. The smell of cedar wafted up from inside. She let out an audible gasp as she was greeted with a honeycomb of segments. Inside each segment was a small bird or rodent, each nestled on a bed of parchment paper.
Dead mice and birds, Grandma? Where the old Madison would have recoiled and slammed the drawer shut at the morbid sight, the new Madison studied them. There was something here, something deeply important.
Were these animals used for ingredients? Maybe for special potions? Visions of the ever-stylish Nancy Mosby trading in her designer outerwear for a black cloak and dawning a pointy hat came to mind; as she cackled over a smoky cauldron; adding tail of mouse, wing of sparrow and eye of newt.
Or, were they something else? Madison could hardly see the use for what looked like taxidermied animals. She recognized a few, some robins, a sparrow, two blue jays, a chipmunk. She’d seen things like this in the mansion, but they were bigger trophies: the bearskin rug, deer heads hung on the wall, the bobcat in the library; but those were all hunting prizes. Were these from other hunting expeditions? No, Nancy Mosby wasn’t keeping a bunch of dead animals locked in her super vault because she shot them with a BB gun.
One thing that caught Madison’s attention was that all of their eyes were shut, as if they had died sleeping. Madison poked one of the chipmunks. Nothing happened. So, she decided to pick up the little creature and examine it closer. It was limp, but dense in her hands, as if the little guy was a beanbag. She pulled it up to her face.
The tiny thing spasmed and jumped out of her hands. Madison shrieked. She looked up and down the aisle to see the chipmunk’s ass fly around the corner, out of sight.
“Shit!” Madison ran after the thing. She had no idea if this was a bad thing or not.
Damn thing probably farts lightning.
Madison wound up and down at least ten aisles, each time just missing the little brown blur. It chirped and squeaked every time she got close enough to grab it, before bolting away from her.
“Fine, run off! There’s no food down here,” she shouted. “I guess you’ll just die...again.”
Breathless, Madison gave up the chase and walked back toward the open drawer. She had a thought that the chipmunk would return to somehow liberate his drawer buddies and the place would be full of wildlife, but to her relief everyone was right where she left them.
So these come alive, and run away from you? Maybe these were collected because they were magic, not because they had any applicable use.
The thought was disheartening, and Madison realized that not everything in here was something she could use. The Smithsonian had millions of specimens in storage like this, only a tiny fraction of which were interesting to everyday people. The rest, in Madison’s opinion, were just rocks, or leaves, or duck feathers. They were only interesting to a handful of scientists and historians.
Like a child that sees how the magician pulls the rabbit, or in this case, chipmunk, out of a hat, Madison’s expectations fizzled. It was going to take forever to figure out the practical use, if any, for each of the seemingly thousands of items in the Shiloh Library.
The Smithsonian of magic. That was cool, but it wasn’t as cool as Langston’s assertion that the library was more powerful than a nuclear bomb. Magical chipmunks weren’t going to kill anyone. Were they?
Maybe he spreads plague. The thought chilled her blood.
A chirping came from the end of the aisle. Madison turned to see her new tormentor looking at her from around the corner.
“Oh you’re back? Well come over here so I can step on you for making me run all over the place.”
The chipmunk straightened up and started walking toward Madison. S
he furrowed her brow. No way.
“Turn around!”
The chipmunk did a one eighty. Its tiny tail fluttered back and forth.
Okay, that’s kind of cool.
“Come here.”
It started walking toward her.
“Run.”
The little guy broke into a sprint and skidded to a stop at the heel of her boot. Madison knelt down and reached to pick him up. To her surprise she felt him, or her—how do you tell with something this small?—jump up into her hand. Hoping he wouldn’t jump at her eyes, Madison pulled him close. This time she noticed a scent, where there hadn’t been one before. Did chipmunks sweat? It was a sweet aroma, like cinnamon.
She inhaled and as she did, her eyes closed and she was looking at herself. She shrieked, and the smell of bad breath filled her nose. Then she was falling and falling away from the giant version of herself. The floor flew up to meet her and the wind was knocked from her lungs. Arms and legs flew into motion against the cold concrete floor. After a second, her feet found purchase and she was flying down a hallway of tall, white walls. It felt like she was running fifty miles an hour, as if she was on a motorcycle. She turned and was met by another hallway, sprinting toward the end. A woman, who sounded kind of like her, shouted something about food and dying again.
Madison opened her eyes. The chipmunk stared back at her.
“Chipmunk drone, eh?”
The collection of dead, or whatever they were, animals suddenly seemed more appealing. The possibilities seemed endless. Madison fought the urge to start opening drawer after drawer to find what lay inside. She felt a burst of energy. She placed the chipmunk back down where she’d found it and watched while he stretched out and stopped moving.
Madison assumed that the parchment-looking paper had something to do with the animals’ stasis. Then she noticed something white, under the parchment. She pulled back the crinkly brown paper with her fingernail to see an index card beneath. Gently, she pulled it out, careful not to disturb the chipmunk drone.