My Wicked Enemy

Her coffee was long gone, even though she clutched her empty cardboard cup, and she still had a splitting headache. In an hour, maybe less, she’d be prostrate, unable to do anything but lie in a darkened room and wait for her
episode
to fade. The outside clamor wasn’t helping. She wasn’t used to the noise or the sheer number of people around her. Carson rarely spent time in public. Almost never. By herself? Absolutely never. Even if she weren’t being followed, she’d be keeping her arms in close, her empty coffee cup almost touching her chest. On edge and at sea no matter what. Now she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stay on her feet long enough to make it back to the doorway where she’d spent the night.

More than anything, she wanted to go home, take a shower, and curl up in her bed, in her room, in her house and feel safe. Her longing for the familiar brought a lump to her throat. She couldn’t go home. Ever. Instead, she knew things she wished she didn’t and had seen things she wished she hadn’t. Yesterday she’d been living in a Tiburon mansion with the staff of fifteen it took to look after Álvaro Magellan. Today she was in San Francisco with a hundred dollars and clothes that used to belong to someone else.

The light changed. For half a breath, no one moved. Two cars and a bike messenger zoomed through the intersection on the red. Normal, everyday people surged forward, and Carson went with them. The man following her crossed to the opposite side of the street. Halfway down the block, the crowd thinned. Carson stopped outside a jewelry store and stared at the window. But she watched his reflection in the glass, not the display, trying to think what to do.

The tall, muscled, long-limbed man in faded jeans, an old T-shirt, and cowboy boots looked too scruffy to work for Magellan. She wasn’t one of the paid staff, but she worked for Magellan, too, just like everyone else in the house. Álvaro Magellan took on the
yes, sir
type. But the words
yes, sir
would never pass this guy’s lips. His jeans were pale along his thighs and white at his knees. A twoday growth of beard shadowed his cheeks. He had the kind of dark hair that probably lightened several shades someplace with a real summer. A haircut would not be amiss.

The shop window didn’t reflect the color of his eyes. He was too far away for that, but she could see him slouching against a wall like a Calvin Klein model. Her pulse slowed enough for her to breathe through her nose again. Her headache got worse. She took a few steps along the display window but moved her head to keep his reflection in view. For all she knew, he was some lowlife looking to snatch her purse. If she was lucky, that’s what he wanted.

She moved to the next store, pretending interest in a series of porcelain cats. She didn’t see Mr. Cowboy Boots’s reflection in the window anymore. Maybe he’d settled on someone else’s purse.

The proprietor of a sidewalk display of Long-Life Happy Balls held out a hand and circled the chiming metal balls around his palm. She looked up to acknowledge him, but his face vanished behind streaks of orange. Her skin prickled in a wave from the top of her head to the backs of her legs and along her neck. Cantonese pitched and rolled in her ears, and for an instant she understood the words. Then the meaning flashed out of her head, and all she heard was the impenetrable rhythm of a language born on the Asian subcontinent. Cantonese was dying out in China, displaced by Mandarin. But here, in cities like San Francisco, with Asian populations that immigrated during the gold rush and after, Chinese meant Cantonese.

Traffic sounds whirred in the background, horns blared, wheels rolled over asphalt, engines accelerated. Carbon particulates gave the air a sharp scent. Pigeons cooed from eaves, and she heard the Doppler shift of conversation and tinny vocals from iPod earbuds as people flowed around her. Music from one of the open shop doors floated over the noise. She concentrated on breathing, but her headache didn’t recede.

“Well, well, well,” said a voice behind her. The words were soft and mellow. “If it isn’t Magellan’s witch.”

Her symptoms vanished in a single instant of clarity. The streaking colors, the distorted sounds, the chill in the pit of her stomach blinked out of existence. Her thoughts cleared. She was miles from home. In San Francisco. In Chinatown. Half a block past the intersection of California and Grant streets and about a mile from the doorway where she’d spent last night. If she were to keep walking, she’d end up in the bay. Magellan knew she was gone, but he didn’t know where. He couldn’t. He’d never imagine she could make it all the way into San Francisco on her own. He thought she was helpless. Yesterday, she left everything behind, her purse, her clothes, her books, and her medication. All she took was the cash she’d snatched from the drawer on her way out. Today, a stranger was following her. He wasn’t one of Magellan’s suits. And he wasn’t a purse snatcher because he knew Álvaro Magellan’s name.

Carson turned, and Mr. Cowboy Boots smiled at her with a friendly, open grin. “Every girl just loves to be called a witch,” she said. “Thanks so much for the compliment. Really.” Close up, he was even better-looking than she’d thought. “Who are you?” she asked. “And why are you following me?”

“Hm,” he said with another friendly smile, but drawing out the sound so it was plain he was going to lie. “Nikodemus.”

“No last name?”

“No.”

The pain came back, throbbing again, along with the sensation that her hair was electrified. When he said his name, his eyelids lowered halfway, but his gaze moved from her head to her feet and then back, at last, to her face. She’d been around men enough to know that, among other things, his perusal was a sexual assessment.

Nikodemus
.

Nikodemus. What a crock. She tightened her grip on the scuffed black purse she’d pulled out of a bin at Goodwill. Her knees shook. Her body felt like it might just float away. He
was
good-looking, she hadn’t mistaken that. He also wasn’t what she expected of someone with a name straight from one of Magellan’s papers. His eyes were gray with a hint of blue. His jeans fit tight around lean hips and thighs. Probably Nikodemus wasn’t his real name. The name was probably his way of convincing her he knew Magellan. Another shiver streaked through her. He was dangerous. That much she knew. She pushed past him, heart pounding.

“Where are you going?” he said to her back. “That’s pretty rude, you know.”

She took maybe three steps, and there he was, walking backward on the sidewalk in front of her so she had to look at him and everyone else had to get out of his way. Her breath caught in her lungs, and the deficit made her light-headed.

“Sweetheart,” he said, extending his arms wide. His voice invited her attention, begged for it in a beguiling tenor. “Why are you walking away?”

She kept walking but dug in her purse for a dollar. Her fingers shook. If anyone was watching and she gave him a dollar, maybe they’d think he was panhandling her instead of deliberately meeting up with her. She looked for money in the bottom of her bag, her fingers brushing the object nestled at the bottom, and she flinched. The little figurine felt hot. “Whoever you are, go away.” Her voice trembled, too. She found a dollar and stopped to extend it to him. The paper quivered in the air. “If you’re a friend of Álvaro Magellan, I don’t want anything to do with you.”

He clutched his chest with both hands and pretended to stumble. “A friend?”

“Quit bothering me.” She glanced around like she was looking for a police officer. “Take this. Go away. Please.”

He smiled. Despite the scruffy appearance and too-long hair, his teeth were white and even. “Thanks.” He took the dollar. “Carson.”

When he moved his head, she noticed he wore a star ruby in one ear. The cabochon winked like an eye in the shifting light. She froze, arrested by the thought of the gemstone watching her.

“Don’t you think we ought to talk about what you’re doing here? All by yourself?” he said.

“No. I don’t.”

“I do.” He must have been six-three at least, which made him a foot taller than her. The odds were against her. Considering her headache was shifting toward the debilitating, she wasn’t going to outrun him, let alone win a physical struggle. He leaned toward her. “Magellan is number one on my hate list, Carson. If he’s on yours, too, we really need to talk.”

Her knuckles hurt from squeezing the strap of her purse. She stared up and into his face, a lot farther up than she expected. “Not here.”

He smiled. “I’m starving,” he said. “How about that restaurant across the street?”

Five minutes later, Carson was staring at a menu, with no idea what any of the words meant. She had no connection to the culture that understood spring rolls or General Tso’s chicken or ma po tofu. Magellan never ate out, and, therefore, neither had she. Sometimes the staff ordered out, but she never got invited. She lived in a no-woman’s land. Not exactly on staff, but definitely not one of the family, either. She sat on the chair facing the wall, but perched sideways because she wasn’t stupid enough to put her unprotected back to a door she couldn’t see. The dim light in the restaurant eased her headache a depressingly small amount.

Nikodemus slouched on the chair against the wall. Heads had turned when they walked in, male and female heads, because this was San Francisco, and he had the kind of presence that made people stare. She found that disconcerting. He grinned at her, not even bothering to look at the menu. “Carson Philips, as I live and breathe.”

She gazed at him, at a loss for words. If her head wasn’t pounding so hard, she might already have figured out why he was calling himself Nikodemus. With no last name. That wasn’t a name you just picked at random. Not when that name featured prominently in the myths Magellan studied. He’d written an entire paper on the subject of Nikodemus and the rituals attributed to his worship. The thing is, this Nikodemus, or whoever he was, didn’t look all that dangerous now. He was young. Much closer to her age than Magellan’s. He looked like someone who’d be fun to be around. He looked like someone who’d be interesting to know.

“Talk,” he said.

“You must be from Harvard or Yale,” she said.

He snorted. “Hardly.”

She concentrated, but she was seeing flashes of color again. She willed them to go away. “A collector? Someone who lost out to Magellan at an auction?” She peered at his face through streaking colors. “Someone who
acquires
artifacts?”

He grinned. “No, no, and no.”

Their waitress came. He ordered in Chinese without looking at the menu. This time she didn’t get even a glimmer of understanding. The words and their meaning remained impenetrable. Carson pointed to an item that was cheap and didn’t sound too exotic. Afterward, there wasn’t anything to do except look in the teapot to check the color of the water, even though it was too soon for it to be drinkable tea. She leaned back. Nikodemus was watching her, his head tipped to one side. Her headache made her feel stupid and slow.

“Why were you following me?” she asked.

He cocked his head and looked at her like she was stupid, and maybe right now she was. She could hardly think straight. He shrugged. “You’re Magellan’s witch.”

“At least you’re not calling me something worse.” Carson threw herself against her chair and then wished she hadn’t. The sudden movement made her head hurt. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me that.”

“I think you know what I mean.”

She rubbed her temples. “Actually, I don’t.”

“Let’s see if I can clarify for you.” He pretended to think. “Carson Philips, you’re a witch.”

He sounded like he meant something more than name-calling by that, but his exact meaning refused to come clear in her overstimulated brain. She wondered if he’d read Magellan’s paper on Nikodemus. He must have. “Right,” she said. “I’m a witch about like you’re a fiend thought to have first manifested in the Gobi Desert five thousand years ago.”

He didn’t even crack a smile. “I like the weather here better.”

“Hardy har har.” She guessed he was about thirty, maybe younger. “How did you find me?” she asked.

“Why are you running from Magellan?”

“Who said I was?” Her fingers trembled, so she pressed her palms to the white tablecloth and stared at the backs of her hands. “Can’t a girl go shopping if she wants?” She sounded light-hearted, but her hands looked tense. She tried to relax her fingers and couldn’t. He knew she was running from Magellan. How? How did he know anything about her, a stranger, when she barely knew the people who lived with her? After what she’d seen, she didn’t know if she could trust their waitress, let alone Nikodemus with no last name.

“Maybe I can help,” he said. And when she looked up, she couldn’t stop the absurd thought that maybe he could. He leaned toward her. “Why don’t you start by telling me about Magellan.”

She couldn’t feel the right side of her head anymore. Staring at the star ruby in his ear helped her focus. The throbbing pain dampened. “My parents died,” she said. “I’ve lived with him since I was eight.”
Lived with him
was about all it had been, too. Álvaro Magellan had been about as distant as any person could be from a child. “He made sure I knew he had a legal obligation to take care of me. If it hadn’t been for my parents naming him my guardian or whatever, he wouldn’t have had anything to do with me. So he fed me. Put a roof over my head. Paid for my clothes. Gave me an allowance. There was a string of nannies until I was twelve, a new one every year just about, and I was constantly warned never to bother him. Ever. There were huge areas of the house I was forbidden to enter. God forbid he should ever accidentally see me.” She snorted. “I was closer to the cook than Magellan.”