10. The Shadow
10
THE SHADOW
Cold has seized
Song bird’s wing
Ice is King.
— FIONN, “NEWS OF WINTER”
“ I still think he followed you there,” Reina said for the tenth time as we passed through the tunnel driving into the north side of Neahkahnie Mountain.
It was cloudy and cold when Reina and I started for the coast, following the highway through Astoria, then winding down the 101 to Manzanita.
She had stumbled in about an hour or so after I had returned, equally disenchanted by her conquest when his thoughts revealed a fetish for Latina women as well as the fact that he was a regular donor to an anti-immigration group (“He thinks we should keep sticking us all in cages!” she had announced the moment she walked in). And so, we had both gone to sleep early in the peace of the spells I’d cast and the smoke from Reina’s good sage, unsatisfied with the world outside but maybe a bit more comforted by each other.
Today, however, we had both risen sometime past ten, groggy and thoroughly hung over. After popping a couple of aspirin and stopping for coffee on our way out of town (coffee was the only thing I missed about Portland other than Reina), we made our drive in relative silence, letting the patter of raindrops on the hood of Reina’s Beetle take the place of conversation.
It wasn’t until we got lunch in Astoria that Reina started to feel a bit more chatty.
Specifically about my stranger and the fact that he seemed to be turning into a bad penny.
“I don’t know,” I replied for what was also the tenth time. “I couldn’t get a read on him.”
“That’s the other thing,” she said. “Since when can’t you get a read on someone when they touch you? It’s always chaotic, but have you ever not Seen what someone was thinking or feeling under a direct touch?”
“I was wearing clothes,” I said weakly. We’d already been over this several times.
“Which shouldn’t have been doing anything if you were having an episode through your shoes and the pavement and everything.” Reina shook her head as we exited the tunnel. “You don’t think he has anything to do with Penny’s death, do you?”
“No, why would he?”
Reina shrugged. “It’s just all a little too pat, isn’t it? This weird man shows up, saves you from an attack, Penny dies, and then he saves you from another. Maybe he’s the one causing them. Maybe he knows something about Penny.”
“Penny was an isolated old woman who barely knew five people in the village,” I said. “There is no way she has something to do with a snooty professor.”
“And the attacks?”
I swallowed. “I’ve had them plenty of times before.” But rarely this bad . And never this close .
I didn’t need to say the words out loud for Reina to hear them.
“Let’s just get to the house,” I said before she could answer my thoughts. “We have enough to deal with today than to add more fuel to the fire.”
The plan was to go straight to the house, where Reina would help me cleanse the death that was waiting to greet me. That would likely take most of the day. At some point, I’d drive Gran’s car to Tillamook to collect the body and sign whatever paperwork was needed for its transfer to the local crematorium. Then I’d figure out the next steps of dealing with her estate, then go up to speak with my mother before I went back to Boston. I could organize a memorial service, sale of the house, or whatever else it was that Penny wanted from there.
We’d never talked about a will or anything like it. Gran was so private—I couldn’t imagine her disclosing any of her private affairs to a lawyer, even. I was hoping something in the house would clue me into what needed to be done. A handwritten letter or even a musing I pulled from a couch cushion would be better than nothing.
Reina’s Beetle shook against the gusts of wind coming off the Pacific as we rounded Neahkahnie Mountain. Over the bluff lay Manzanita, the tiny beach town where I had lived with Gran since I was twelve. Sets of white-capped waves stretched toward the horizon, where the slate blue water met gray clouds with almost no perceptible difference between them. Gran’s house was at the bottom of this mountain, at the juncture of rolling dunes and a jetty of sharp boulders.
Reina turned onto the winding gravel and dirt road that led to the secluded one-story house with its weather-beaten shingles and old white trim. Nestled between old-growth evergreens and the Manzanita trees after which the town took its name, the house occupied the most private spot on the north end of Manzanita Beach, hidden to all but those who knew exactly where to find it. Gran wouldn’t have had it any other way.
I shivered as the car parked under the carport beside the Prius. I had never quite understood how Gran was able to afford an oceanfront property like this, but she had been here as long as I could remember. This was where I had been conceived, up against a thick cedar by the driveway. I had felt remnants of the energy—my energy—when I had bumped into the tree, a few months after my father died. Once Sibyl had sent me back after the funeral, I had done the rest of my growing up here without her, raised by an aging Irish seer with a strict hand and a talent for making everyone who came into her home feel perfectly and utterly at ease.
Gran was solid and focused, a woman so different from my mother it was hard to imagine they were related, were it not for the obvious energetic bonds the two shared. That I shared as well.
Or had.
Reina followed me up the slippery, moss-covered walkway to the porch.
“You ready?” she asked as I took out my keys.
I took a deep breath. My Sight was still dulled from the night before, but as I stood on the threshold of my childhood home, something inside me perked up, like a startled cat from its sleep.
“Everything okay?” Reina looked around suspiciously.
I swallowed. “Yeah. Just jittery, I think. The house seems to recognize me.”
Not the actual house, of course, but its history. Or the history all of us had left here.
I unlocked the door, and we walked inside. Immediately, I froze and dropped my duffel to the ground.
“Good lord,” Reina breathed, eyes wide as she stared into the house. “Do you feel that?”
I glanced at her. “You do?”
Reina shuddered. “I…not like you do, I’m sure. But I definitely feel something. The energy is…wrong, no?”
I peered inside. It had only been a few days since I’d received Sybil’s telegram, but the house felt like it had been uninhabited for much longer. Gran was an assiduous cleaner, and a few days shouldn’t account for the visible layer of dust coating all the hard surfaces, including the wood floors. The air was heavy and stale. The light felt wrong.
Then I realized why.
The memory descended like a bat. Or maybe it wasn’t a memory at all. A shadow fell from the ceiling, heavy like a mantle, carrying with it something that was real and yet wasn’t. In the back of my mind, an unintelligible male voice chattered with a thick English accent, taunting and insidious, but muted, as if covered by a thick blanket. A glance at Reina told me she couldn’t hear that, exactly, but she sensed my reactions and the fact that something here was very wrong.
I took off a glove and reached out a bare hand so I could See whatever she did. Her eyes widened and then squeezed shut with mine while we both listened as hard as we could.
Give it to me give me the Secret I will not wait I need it where is the ssssssec ? —
The blare of a telephone yanked Reina and me out of our mutual terror, and both of us shrieked.
“Goddess.” I pressed a hand to my thundering heart.
Reina swore under her breath. “What the hell was that ?”
The phone rang again. The shadow seemed to have disappeared, but I was still spooked. I’d maybe heard that phone ring twice since I was twelve. No one had this number.
“You’d better get that,” Reina said.
She brought in my bag while I crossed the room and picked up the antique gold handset. “Hello?”
“Hello.” The voice was male, but noticeably not English. “Is…is Penelope Monroe at home?” He sounded Irish, a lot like Gran.
No, it wasn’t the voice I’d just heard, but it was yet another mysterious stranger. And I’d had just about enough of them.
“She’s deceased,” I said, a bit too sharply. Goddess, that hurt to say it out loud.
There was a long silence.
“Oh,” said the man finally. “Oh, my. I’m…I’m so very sorry.”
“Thanks,” I said shortly. “Is there something I can help you with? I’m her granddaughter.”
“Her granddaughter?” he repeated in the same tone as if I’d announced I was Penny’s pet unicorn. “Penny had a granddaughter? She had a child ?”
I scowled as I drew a heart into the dust on the console, then rubbed it away. “That’s correct. And you are?”
“Oh, ah. Just an old friend. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Before I could reply, the line went dead. I stared at the handset for a moment before replacing it in its carriage, then blew away some of the dust that had gathered from the top of the phone.
The phone was just one item of Gran’s treasures. The dust, though. It really was strange. She was as protective over her hoard of antiques as a dragon. What had happened in the last months that had made her neglect everything this way? The Venetian blinds over the picture windows facing the ocean were drawn too—something she never did because she loved to watch the tides.
I wondered who had closed them.
“Who was that?”
Reina’s voice shook me out of my daze as she re-entered the house carrying a cardboard box.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Someone looking for Gran. Irish, sounded like. He hung up.”
I didn’t explain why it was so odd, knowing Reina would read it in my thoughts anyway.
“That is strange,” she agreed with my memory. “Yet another strange event.”
I didn’t answer, and she dropped the box, which contained some of her preferred saining materials, on the couch, then squeezed my shoulder in sympathy. Sympathy laced with fear flowed up my arm while I stared at the phone again.
“Did you feel anything on it when you picked it up?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s as clean as ever. You know she was really good about that.” I looked up at the ceiling, where the shadow I thought I’d Seen before had disappeared. “Let’s get started.”
Reina picked up a piece of copal and a lighter. “You sure about this?” The doubt in her voice was clear.
I understood why. There were questions, of course, and the house could reveal their answers in ways a coroner couldn’t. An autopsy would reveal the approximate cause of death, but on a good day, my touch in the right spot could tell me the truth of it.
As I looked around the familiar spaces, the murmurs rose again.
Give me the Secret I need it I will not wait where is itttttt ? —
I shivered. My instinct was to clean it all immediately. Make this house the haven it once was.
But in that moment, I knew it never could be. Its warden was missing, and what used to be a haven was now it was just like any other house. A stack of wood. A collection of things.
I knew I had instructions to cleanse the place immediately. But Reina was right—too much was happening out of the ordinary. Before I put Gran and her home to rest, I first needed to learn its secrets.
I thought of the strange box hiding in my closet at home.
The stranger who seemed to show up at the most opportune times.
The shadow that loomed and the man on the other end of that phone call.
For the first time, I wondered if some of this house’s secrets might be Gran’s. And if I could bear them once they were discovered.
“Let’s do my bedroom at least,” I said, stripping off my gloves. “And then I can sleep tonight.”
Reina cocked her head. “You sure? I have until four. We could probably do more if you want.”
“I’m sure. But I think you’re right. I think there is more going on than I want to admit.”
Beyond the windows, the ocean called to me with its cleansing brine and salty air. I needed to replenish before I could deal with the heaviness of the house.
“Let’s get started,” I said. “Then we can walk into town and get some food before you leave.”
The clams and chips at the Sand Dune Pub were exactly as I remembered: razors fried to a crisp, with thinly sliced French fries perfect for sprinkling with vinegar. Reina and I enjoyed them in silence while I ruminated on the sinister babbling that had chased us out of the house after we had sained my old bedroom. I didn’t want to talk, knowing she would easily be able to read the contents of my thoughts as she liked.
Unfortunately, while mindreading makes for good empathy, it also makes for confusing conversation. Especially when only one of us could read the other’s mind without touching.
“So, who do you think he is?” Reina asked after a long drink of her iced tea.
I frowned. “Do I need to say it out loud?”
“Yes. You aren’t saying it in your head either.”
I sighed as I flicked a fry back and forth like a miniature rapier. “Well, obviously he was her murderer.”
“Cass, you don’t know that.”
I dropped a piece of clam into the basket of fries. “This from the person predicting a grand conspiracy on the way here. Are you telling me that you trust that voice? I know I have nowhere near your abilities of mindreading?—“
“And I can’t See anything in the past, which was clearly where he was speaking from,” she argued back. “What’s your point?”
I scowled. “I know what I heard. Maybe he wasn’t there, but I felt something more. Something nasty. A spell, maybe, or at least the remnants of one.”
Reina was quiet for a long minute. Then she drained the rest of her tea and set the glass on the bar with a thud.“Cassandra.” Her fingers touched my bare knuckles and flooded me with support, tranquility, and…eventually, agreement.
“See,” I said quietly. “You felt it, too.”
She pulled her hand away and picked up a fry, though she took an extra-long time to eat it.
“Reina, just say it.”
She looked up. “Say what?”
“Whatever it is you’re mulling over. You know I can’t tell the way you can, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my lunch holding your wrist.”
Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Sorry. It’s just…”
“Just what?” I dipped a bit of clam into my ketchup.
“Your stranger…he’s British, right?”
You meet a strange British man—twice now—and then you hear a similar voice in the house a week after Penny’s death?”
I stared at my half-eaten clams. I couldn’t lie—the similarities had occurred to me. “I—I don’t know, exactly. His accent is odd. Sometimes it sounds like a Downton Abbey character. And sometimes he almost sounded like Gran.”
“So maybe he’s Irish? Like the guy on the phone?”
I shook my head. “That wasn’t him. And he isn’t the one whispering all that nonsense in the house either. He was in Boston when she died. Or at least, when I think she died, if Sibyl sent the telegram the same day she Saw it happen.”
I didn’t have to touch her to know what she was thinking. The question was written across her face: But how do you know?
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t get that feeling from him.”
“I know you like him?—”
“I don’t like him. It just doesn’t make sense. He saves me twice from chaos, but murders my grandmother?” I shook my head. “The guy is kind of a jerk, but I don’t think he’s that kind of jerk.”
And yet, I couldn’t lie. Reina was right to be suspicious. There was something suspect about the green-eyed man’s sudden appearances in my life, alongside the strange box and Gran’s demise.
I remembered the warmth of his hand on my wrist. There was one thing about my abilities—they revealed the truth of a person’s essence immediately, even before their conscious thoughts and feelings. The man had been many things. Arrogant, irritated, even a bit sullen at times.
But evil? Murderous?
No, I hadn’t Seen that.
“He didn’t do it,” I said again, willing her to See my conclusions. “He might have something to do with all of this, but he’s not a killer. I know that much.”
Reina’s shoulders relaxed, but I didn’t think she was completely convinced. “So, what’s your plan now?”
I picked up a piece of clam, then put it back again. This conversation was ruining my appetite. “The medical examiner in Tillamook is expecting me this afternoon, so after you leave, I’ll drive down to claim the body. It’s only been a few days. Maybe she’ll still carry some traces of…whatever happened.”
The thought of confronting Gran’s lifeless body sent a new jolt of grief through my heart. But it seemed safer, somehow, than throwing myself into whatever was lurking in the house.
I swallowed. “Then…I don’t know. Gods, Rein, I don’t even know if she had a will.”
A sob escaped from my throat, and immediately Reina pulled me close to her tiny shoulders, not knowing how to comfort me other than to demonstrate that she could feel my grief, that I wasn’t alone in my sadness.
It didn’t fix everything. But in its own way, it was enough.
Before getting back into her car, Reina hugged me again outside the house. She was more open with her hugs than before, as if she wanted to leave traces of her love and kindness on my clothes for me to have once she was gone.
“I’m sorry I can’t stay the entire weekend,” she said. “I would have liked to go with you to the morgue. Smooth things over with the doctor.”
“You’ve got your own shifts to worry about. And medical school to finish. A whole life. You’ll be there when I’m done.”
At that, she seemed to look uneasy.
I frowned. “What is it?”
Reina sighed. “I meant to tell you...I...Penny and I talked about it over the holidays.”
“You and Penny talked?” This was news to me.
She exhaled. “I’m taking a year off before I match with a residency program. Instead, I’ve applied to work on a medical study in Petén. I just got word that we’ve been funded.”
My eyes shot open. “Guatemala?”
Reina nodded nervously, though her dark eyes shone. “I’m going home. And I’m going to try to find my birth parents too while I’m there. Find my tribe. Penny was right. We need to learn who we really are before we manifest. Before it’s too late.”
I blinked in shock. “ Penny told you to go?”
My grandmother, who, despite having her own life, had wanted nothing but for me to live mine here in the shadow of this mountain, where she thought nothing and no one would ever bother us. That she would have urged Reina to get on a plane to fly to an overpopulated country to work with people was incredibly out of the ordinary.
Far beyond her shallow maxim of living to live.
“It was her idea, actually,” Reina said. “She started talking about it a few years ago. Asked me what I knew of my parents when she heard me muttering in Itza’. Turns out she knew of a seer in my village. Someone who might be willing to teach me.”
Gran was big on roots. She had encouraged me to learn Old Irish for the same reason. But she had never told me to go to Ireland.
“Are you going to be all right?”
Absolutely not , I wanted to say. I had just lost my grandmother, the only real family I had anymore. Now my best friend was informing me that I was about to lose my other anchor in this world.
But at the same time, I knew exactly why she needed to go. It was the same reason I’d gone to school in Boston to study my own cultural history. As lonely fae in a world with fewer and fewer of us, roots were all we had.
“I’m happy for you,” I said, though she would know the lie for what it was. “And you don’t need to babysit me. I do appreciate the ride here, though.”
Reina could See through my lies but was too polite to say it. “Are you going to go up to Seattle?”
I wrinkled my nose. “I suppose I’ll have to. It’s not like I can call with an update.”
I hadn’t seen my mother in years. But at lunch, Reina and I had determined that if Penny didn’t have a will, everything would have to go to Sybil. Which meant I’d have to face her at some point.
“It’s going to be all right, Cass.”
“Yeah, but Gran’s not.”
“Tell me if you need anything,” she said. “I’m just a few hours away, and you don’t have to stay here tonight. Why don’t you just drive back to Portland after you’re done with the examiner? I can take a personal day this week and come back out to help you sort through her stuff later.”
I squeezed tightly, not wanting to let her go. She was right. I didn’t want to spend the night in this cold, empty house, and I certainly didn’t want to do it alone.
But Reina didn’t argue as she gave me another tight squeeze. Probably because she could also read the other thoughts, which I said aloud anyway.
“I can feel her spirit. It’s still here. It’s trying to get past that awful man, that shadow, whoever he is. I can’t leave until I figure out who he was. For her.”
She let me go and stepped away so I could see her face. “Go see her first. Collect the body, and let her tell you what happened, however she can. I can feel her in the house still, Cass, and I know you could too if you just reach past the voice. So you know she’s here for you,” she said. “Her energy is love and whatever happened there is in the past. Take solace in her presence, while she still lingers.”
I nodded. Reina got into her car and started backing down the driveway.
“I’ll be fine,” I whispered when she stuck a hand out of her window to wave.
When she turned onto the 101, I didn’t even bother going back into the house. Instead, I got into Gran’s Prius, which still smelled of the juniper sachets hung from the rearview mirror. The car was cold and clean since she rarely drove. Like me, she walked when she could, had her groceries delivered from the local store, and often talked Jerry the postmaster into picking up her hand-knit sweaters from the house instead of shipping them herself.
The distinct lack of her presence told me just how long it had been since she had driven anywhere. I pushed the ignition button and left the house to its own devices until I had some better answers about what exactly had happened to the woman who raised me.