The Shadow Men (10 page)

But the instant he had the thought, he pushed it away. Trix’s anguish was genuine, and so was her hope. Which left only one possibility.

“Jesus,” Jim whispered, staring at the woman. “You’re for real.”

When the Oracle of Boston smiled in delight, it took a dozen years off her face. “Oh, excellent,” she said. “It’s refreshing to meet someone who just dives right in. Saves time as well.” She held out her hand. “Veronica Braden.”

Jim shook her hand, not at all surprised by the firmness of her grip. He took a ragged breath, only then realizing that he had stopped breathing for a moment. The hours that had passed since this afternoon when he had woken from his nap had been a long nightmare, but Trix had been right to chide him for his doubt. The impossible had turned his world upside down and ripped away all that he loved. He would waste no more time with what was possible and what was not.

“You make it hard enough to meet you.”

“I enjoy the … 
tradition
of the process.”

“So, can you find them?” Jim asked, a heavy question. “Do you know where they are?”

“Ah,” Veronica said, arching a brow, kaleidoscope eyes alight with secret knowledge. She smiled, and Jim knew she harbored secrets. “Those are two different questions. Finding Jennifer and Holly is not the same as knowing where they are.”

Jim put a hand over his mouth as though afraid the wrong words would come out. The waitress arrived with Trix’s cappuccino. She glanced at them oddly, but Jim gestured for her to put the cup down and she did, casting a curious look over her shoulder as she retreated once more. “I don’t understand,” Jim said quietly.

“You will.” Veronica touched his hand, and her hand was cool. Then she picked up Trix’s cappuccino and drained half the cup in three long sips.

“That was—”

“She won’t have time to drink it,” Veronica said, sliding her chair back. “Come along.”

As the Oracle rose, the illusion of vitality dropped away. She moved stiffly but with a kind of imperious air; perhaps she had earned it. Her hand shook as she gestured toward him. “Pay the bill, dear. And leave a nice tip for your server. New girl. Only been here a few weeks, and she needs the reassurance as much as the money. Terrible job, having to smile at people all the time.”

Jim obeyed, sliding the cash from his wallet and tucking it into the faux-leather binder in which the bill had arrived.

“And here she is now,” Veronica said, her voice an aged rasp.

As Jim put his wallet back into his pocket he looked up to see that Trix had frozen in the middle of Abruzzi’s, staring at Veronica. Other diners had started to turn to watch the scene unfold. Jim noticed that some people—staff and regulars—seemed to be very studiously avoiding looking at them at all. He wondered how many times they had seen Veronica Braden arrive here to help people in need. People in pain.

“You came,” Trix managed, fighting back a sob. Tears slid down her face, and she did not bother to wipe them away. “I wasn’t sure you were even still alive.”

“If not me, then someone else,” Veronica said, ignoring the eyes upon her. “Now, come along, Trixie. We don’t have all night.”

Cruel Mistress

I
N THE
old days,” Veronica said, slipping into the Mercedes’ front passenger seat without asking Trix if she minded sitting in the back, “we’d have had to wait until morning. All the shops closed at a decent time then. Life was less frantic. Now people want twenty-four-hour everything. TV, takeout. Clothes shopping. Things are changing.”

“What do you mean?” Jim asked. He held the passenger door open, watching as Veronica made herself comfortable and then sat motionless with her hands folded in her lap. The only real sign of effort was the woman’s subtle sigh.

“Shopping,” Veronica said. She looked up at Jim, eyes twinkling, then glanced over his shoulder at Trix. “Oh, you’re coming, dear, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Trix said. She got into the back of the car, glancing at Jim and trying to communicate something with a frown, a sharp nod.

“What shopping?” Jim said, and he thought,
Is she really just a crazy old lady after all?
Out here on the busy Boston street, the woman seemed somehow smaller than she had in the restaurant, and less convincing.

Veronica closed her eyes briefly, resting her head back against the seat as if asleep. But the frown was not at home on a relaxed face. Her hands twitched a little in her lap, and Jim leaned sideways to look in the rear window. Trix, sitting in the backseat, was watching Veronica with her mouth slightly open, whether in awe or fear he couldn’t tell.

Veronica opened her eyes so suddenly that Jim took a small step back. “Copley Place,” she said. “There’s a mime artist on the library steps as they pass. Holly wants to stop and watch, but Jenny’s in a hurry to get into the mall and find somewhere to eat. Jonathan holds her elbow and whispers something to her. Something Holly can’t hear.
I think she’s a little spooked
. Jenny’s missed that.
What kind of a mother am I?
She puts one arm around Holly’s shoulder.

“But Holly’s fascinated by the mime, and his silently moving mouth. She rubs her ears, as if she’s been swimming and maybe got water in them. But she can still hear the pigeons and the traffic, and a bunch of children across by the church are singing a song she hasn’t heard before. The mime opens and closes windows in thin air, as if he’s peering through from somewhere else, and he smiles at her. She smiles back. He’s not so scary.”

“What is all this?” Jim asked. “What are you
doing
?”

“I’m giving you what I can of your wife and daughter before they went,” Veronica said. “Now, if you’ll just …” She raised and lowered one hand, an almost dismissive gesture.

“Trix, I don’t like—”

“Jim!” Trix snapped from the backseat. If her voice had been angry or impatient, he might have argued. But Jim could see that she was crying.

“Jenny’s hungry. She’s got lunch on her mind. But Jonathan sees what Holly really wants. He knows even as they pass the bookshop, and Holly slips away from her mother, pressing her face to the window. There’s a display of fairy books there. She already has some—she has three of them—but there are two others she’s always wanted.
I’ll get us a table
, Jonathan says, and Jenny smiles at him and nods.
I won’t be long
. She follows Holly inside. The smell of new books, coffee from the Starbucks upstairs in the shop, the sound of gentle conversation at the counter. Pages flip, books thump closed. Holly is already past the counter and at the kids’ section, and she has a book in each hand, deciding which to read.”

Veronica fell silent and her expression slowly changed. Gone was the gentle smile as she relayed Holly’s supposed behavior earlier that day. In its place was something like resignation.

“What happened next?” Jim asked, because he did believe, really. It wasn’t that he knew the story, but the subtleties were accurate: Holly’s delight at the fairy books, Jenny’s eagerness to get her daughter fed before shopping, Jonathan’s surprising perceptiveness for a guy who’d never wanted kids. She couldn’t be making this up.

“A book falls from the shelves,” the old woman said. “Jenny reaches for it, wonders,
Why the hell did that one tumble, there’s no one to push it, there’s no reason—
And then …” Veronica looked up at him again, and for a second there was a smile in her eyes. “Jonathan is back at home. The falling book is on its shelf, and your wife has never touched it.”

Jim breathed heavily, trying to process what she had said, and what she was still saying. “I don’t understand.”

“We must go there,” Veronica said. “That’s not always essential, but it can help. You need to
feel
the place to know it.”

“Copley Place?” he asked. The old woman nodded, and in the backseat Trix was looking at him expectantly. Jim pushed the door closed and stood alone on the street for a moment, cold, getting damp again from the fine rain.
It’s where they were headed when I last saw them, so why the hell not?
he thought. But as he got in and started the car, he knew there was more to it than that. He would go because Veronica had suggested it. And she knew.

The old woman sat quietly beside him as he drove, hands still crossed in her lap, and he adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see Trix.

“You all right?” he asked. Trix caught his eye and nodded. She even offered him a smile that said,
Yes, fine now
. He thought of standing on that traffic island pleading with the patterned cobbles for help, and the rain, and the long wait in the restaurant while Veronica dealt with some other city emergency.

“So what makes you the Oracle of Boston?” he asked. He heard an intake of breath from the backseat.

“Long story,” Veronica said.

“Well, it’ll take a few minutes to—”

“And private.”

“Right.” Jim pressed his lips together and flicked on the wipers. The rain was growing heavy again, and Boston’s evening streets demanded his attention. Dueling taxicabs jockeyed for position as they took couples and friends out for the evening. Other cars lined up at traffic signals, pedestrians dashed across the streets, and horns erupted here and there as impatience settled and tempers flared.
You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience
, he’d read somewhere once, and he leaned on the car horn for no reason.

Veronica turned to look directly at him. “Breathe, Mr. Banks,” she said. “I’ll do all I can.”

“Why Copley Square?” Jim asked. “Are Jenny and Holly still there?”

“Nowhere near. But you know that.”

“Then we should be going where they are!”

“You understand, Jim. You’re just trying hard not to.”

“Then fucking
make
me understand!”

“Jim!” Trix said from the backseat, but fear and anger had Jim now, and such emotions combined brought out the worst in people.

“Learn patience, Jim,” Veronica said, as if she’d known what he was just thinking. “I need to see where they
were
before they went, even if you do not. I need to … taste the air. It will help me pin down their location.”

Jim scoffed but said nothing. Tears pressed against his eyes and throat, and he did his best to swallow them down. They were as useless as drops in a rainstorm. “But you’ll help me find them?” he said finally.

“I have every intention of setting you on the right path.”

Jim nodded, and a tear streaked down his right cheek. Veronica saw it. He didn’t know how he knew that, but the air in the car seemed to soften. But perhaps that was just him. The trials of driving through a busy Boston possessed him for a while, and each time he looked in the mirror he saw Trix, light splaying across her bright hair, eyes sad, face shadowed with confusion and grief.
We’ve both got to hold it together
, he thought.
And so far, she’s done more than I have to find Holly and Jenny
.

“Thank you for helping,” he said softly, glancing across at the old woman. “And I’m sorry about …” He shrugged.

“Oh! A thank-you. Well, that’s an even better start.”

It took another ten minutes to wend their way toward Copley Square. They passed Boston Common, rolling along Beacon Street, then cut left along Clarendon, finding a parking space opposite the First Baptist Church.

“It’s Borders, on the corner,” Veronica said. She was breathing more heavily now, and Jim noticed that her skin had taken on a sickly pallor.

“Are you okay, Miss Braden?” Trix asked, leaning over from the backseat.

“I’m fine,” the old lady said. She took a few breaths, seeming to gather herself, and then offered Jim a small smile. “When there’s a trauma to the city, I suffer a little myself.”

“A trauma to the city?” he asked.

“I’ll explain when we’re there.”

Jim glanced at his watch. Almost ten p.m. “It’ll be closing in a minute.”

“Not tonight,” Veronica said. “Tonight it will remain open until almost ten-fifteen.” She checked the side mirror, then opened the door, standing up with an audible groan.

“Jim,” Trix said as soon as Veronica let the door swing shut, “you’ve got to give her a chance. You
must
! Believe me, this is the only thing—”

“We’re here now,” he said. “This is where they came. And the things she said about Holly, those fairy books …” He shook his head. “She couldn’t know that.”

“So you’ll give her a chance?”

“It’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?” It came out harsher than he’d intended, but when he and Trix got out of the car he smiled at her, and she nodded. She knew him so well, and even with everything that was happening, she’d know that Jim would struggle to hold on to reason. Though an artist, he was also a pragmatist, an atheist, and a skeptic when it came to the supernatural or anything associated with it.

“She’ll amaze you,” Trix said. “Come on. She’s going.”

They followed Veronica along the street, and Jim was surprised when Trix clasped his hand. He took great comfort from the contact, and as he realized it was because she was afraid, he acknowledged his own fear as well.

Entering the shop, breathing in warmth and the familiar smell of new books, he wondered what they would find.

It was almost as if he had walked this way before. He had, of course, many times in the past. He and Jenny were both big readers, though their tastes differed—she loved thrillers, historical novels, and real-life stories, while he preferred biographies and science fiction. When they came into town they often spent an hour in one bookstore or another, enjoying watching Holly browse the books, buying a couple here and there, maybe progressing to the café for coffee and a shortbread, and sitting to check out their purchases. But this time was different. Veronica had said only a few sentences about Holly and Jenny being here, but the picture conjured in his mind was complete. He was walking in his missing family’s footsteps.

Breathing deeply, Jim moved past the counter and approached the children’s section.

Trix had let go of his hand as they walked through the front doors. Perhaps she’d felt the tension growing in him, or sensed that his mind wasn’t quite in the present as he tried to relive that moment, following Jenny and Holly’s path.

“Here,” Veronica said. She’d gone ahead, and as if following a guide of some kind, Jim and Trix had stayed a few steps behind. Now he saw her swaying slightly, and he reached out hesitantly, not wanting to touch her but worried that she was about to fall.
If she drops dead here, now, just what the fuck will that mean?
But she didn’t fall, and when she looked back at them he saw a strength in her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. Something was affecting her, challenging her. But she was fighting back.

“I’m not sure,” Trix said. A strange thing to say.

“Do you feel it, Jim?” Veronica asked.

He frowned and looked around at the book stacks—the splash of colors and textures, words and names jumping out at him, the spines of children’s books hinting at the stories inside, and books faced out tempting with elaborate and enticing covers. “No,” he said, not understanding what she meant, but even as he closed his mouth again he
did
feel something. He felt …

Someone passed him by, but there was no one there.

The front door closed softly, and he heard the distant jangle of keys, but when he looked back it stood open, warm-air curtain shimmering his view of the rain-slicked sidewalk outside.

It’s all so wrong!
he thought, and a nightmare he used to have when he was young struck him for the first time in decades. It used to plague him when he was sick, and he’d never been able to describe it, not even to himself. It was an impression of terrible space, so wide, so endless, that it lessened him where he stood at its heart, smothered him, crushed him down with enormity and possibility. And now it impacted again, because everything he saw and felt around him seemed, for a moment, an infinity away.

He gasped in air that was too far away to breathe. Book titles on the shelving before him blurred, and he closed his eyes to the cold, staggering thought,
They mean something else!
He stepped back and Trix stopped him, hands on his waist and her chin resting against his shoulder. He heard her breathing hard, felt her heart thudding against his back.