Rituals (26 page)

Avery could see Faye preparing to be heroic. Joe would have been doing the same, but he had dropped to the floor right after he kicked the door open, cradling a foot that was probably broken. Marlowe, Dara, Amande, and Myrna stood behind him, thunderstruck by the sight of a man erupting in flames.

Wrapping one arm around Faye to keep her from rushing to Willow's aid, Avery used the other arm to yank Joe to his feet. “Go, go, go…go now…go!” They were all leaving the house together, and she didn't intend for any of them to be on fire when they got out.

Her eyes were screwed shut against the fumes and rising heat, but she knew Faye and Joe were with her, because she had a solid grip on them. And she knew without looking that Amande and Dara would be right behind her, keeping Myrna safe, because that's who they were. Marlowe seemed to have a talent for taking care of himself, so she guessed he'd be with them, too.

There was no help for Willow. The laws of thermodynamics said that he was doomed, and Avery had never seen anyone successfully break them yet.

***

The swelling roar of the fire that was consuming Myrna's home nearly drowned the sound of approaching sirens. Amande, Myrna, and Dara scrabbled out of the room on their hands and knees, just in time to see Willow roll over onto his belly and peel the black hood off his head. He was too stunned from Faye's blow to do more than raise his torso and prop himself on his elbows. His white locks, no longer sleek, fell into the dirt and gasoline that coated the old wooden floor.

Faye leaned on Joe's shoulder with both arms wrapped tight around her daughter. Myrna stroked Dara's tear-stained cheek. Avery was using her broken and burned hands as best she could, gently palpating Joe's injured foot.

As the man who was neither Marlowe nor Langley watched her work, he slid off his wig and let a shoulder-length mane of gray-streaked hair fall to his shoulders. Or, rather, to her shoulders. The freed locks framed Toni's face, still partially obscured by several layers of theatrical makeup.

She gestured at Joe's wounded foot, saying, “That wasn't necessary. I had things under control.” Opening her hand, she displayed a collection of slender metal tools arrayed on her palm. “I'm a magician. Harry Houdini kept files and…other things…on him at all times, and so do I. I could have gotten the door open, and you could have spared yourself some time at the orthopedist's office.”

Then the tools vanished. It is possible that they went up Toni's sleeve.

Chapter Thirty

Youth is a state of mind. If Faye had ever needed proof of that adage, she had it now. She and Amande lurked beneath a tree near the lakeshore, watching Myrna push Sister Mama's wheelchair down an uneven sidewalk and park it by a concrete bench. Myrna's head was high and she was full to the brim with energy. After setting the chair's safety brake and brushing the bench free of leaves, she solicitously helped Sister Mama stand and walk a few steps. The stricken woman looked overjoyed to sit someplace that wasn't a wheelchair. As she relaxed on the bench, she didn't look so stricken after all.

Myrna bustled around, fetching Sister Mama's coffee cup and spreading a shawl over her knees. Judging by the way she treated her friend like a treasured elder, one would think there was a huge difference between the ages of eighty-one and eighty-six. Maybe there was.

Faye was startled to see Ennis standing a stone's-throw away, watching the same scene. He met her eyes, and she could see that he'd known they were there the whole time. He walked over as if to speak to Faye and Amande, but when he got there, he paused. Silent, he watched the two women a moment more.

At last, he said, “They're doing better.”

“Once Dara convinced Myrna to throw away the candy that was making her sick, she started looking stronger every day.”

Ennis nodded in response to Faye, but he kept looking at the friends, sitting on a park bench and talking. “Not just Myrna. Sister Mama. She's doing better, too.”

“I'm glad,” Faye said. Then, though she didn't know why she said it because she didn't wholly believe it, she added, “You must have been taking good care of her.”

“No. I wasn't.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I was letting that bastard help me with her medicine. Miss Myrna's, too. Willow made friends with me a while back, right out of the blue. I was never sure why, but it was good to have somebody to talk to. And he knew a lot about root medicine. He told me what tinctures to give Sister Mama because I don't know shit about roots. I listened to him. And I was happy with what those tinctures did, because they made her quieter. She slept a lot. Life was easier that way. I hate myself for being happy about that.”

Amande was eyeing him, but she didn't say anything.

“I want you to tell me something,” he said.

Faye couldn't tell whether he was talking to her or Amande, but Amande didn't seem to be answering him. Wondering what Ennis was going to ask, she said, “Okay.”

“Did Sister Mama have something Willow wanted? Do you think he might have wanted her dead, too? Like Tilda and Myrna?”

“Does she own any property?”

“Yeah, a big plot near the road coming in from Buffalo. Across the highway from Tilda's land.”

Faye heard Amande take in a little gasp. Ennis gave her a sharp look.

Faye could see he already had his answer, but she told him anyway. “Marlowe wanted that land. I'd bet on it. Marlowe doesn't seem to have done anything illegal himself, but we think he told Willow to do whatever it took to make his development happen. Willow decided that the easiest tactic was to kill everybody in the way. Tilda and Myrna, for sure. Probably Sister Mama, too, because Willow had to be the one who made the soporific sponge. Avery's chemist friend found opiates on it, and she says he may kill himself with overwork because he won't rest until he figures out what else Willow put on it. In the end, he went after his own wife, along with Myrna and the two of us. Joe and Avery, too, because they got in his way. There's no way he'd have gotten away with killing us all. He must have just cracked.”

“I threw away the medicines he told me to give Sister Mama a week ago, when he got arrested. Look at her now.” He nodded at Sister Mama, laughing with Myrna. “She can walk a little. She's talking again. She's talking a lot, actually. I don't think there ever was a second stroke. Goddamn that man for using me to hurt her. And other people.”

This time Faye was sure he was talking to her daughter.

“I threw the rock at Toni's window. It was stupid. Willow had filled my ears full of how evil Toni was. He'd looked her up on the internet and she scared him. He knew she was getting ready to expose him and Dara as fakes. I thought he was my friend, so it wasn't hard to get me all riled up against her. The only thing that makes me better than him is that he set fires to kill people he didn't like, and I threw a stupid rock. And I buried some lemons under the porches of nice ladies that never did me any harm, because I wanted to hex them into selling their property to Gilbert Marlowe. I didn't think about hurting anybody. I just didn't think.”

“Are you going to stay here?” The tone in Amande's voice said she actually cared about the answer to her question. Her face gave away nothing.

“I got to. I can't leave Sister Mama to be taken care of by somebody who won't even do the piss-poor job I've done. And I got to get her to teach me about roots and herbs, while she still can. While I'm at it, I have really got to figure out what part of her business is legal. Opium poppy juice? It's a miracle the Feds haven't already come to get us. And I don't even want to think about what would happen if they found out about the home brew. Mostly, I've got to learn what Sister Mama knows, while she's still here. How'm I going to keep her work going when she's gone, if I don't understand it?”

“You'll have to start by figuring out how to keep people out of her garden,” Faye said. “Willow stole licorice from you, for sure, plus all the stuff he put on that soporific sponge. God only knows what he put in the tinctures your aunt and Myrna were drinking.”

“I'm looking into electric fences.”

Amande laughed out loud.

“No, seriously. I am. I don't think anybody but my great-aunt understands what some of that stuff can do. She told me one thing that's gonna make both of you laugh. I know how Miss Tilda made her séances…special. All these years, Sister Mama's been a big help to her. More than either of them knew, actually.”

Faye tried to picture Sister Mama slipping through the secret staircase entrance to help Tilda fake metaphysical magic. She couldn't, so she asked, “How was she a big help?”

“Sister Mama said that she steeped calming herbs in oil, and that Miss Tilda would rub them on her crystal ball and let the warm lamp underneath spread the essences around for people to breathe.”

“I remember that!” Amande said.

“Sister Mama was quick to say that using her oil wasn't cheating. Tilda never cheated. She'd grown up helping her father fool people, and she hated it. Hated it. She believed she had real talent.
I
believe she did. But my aunt's herbs helped her put people in the mood, and Tilda didn't consider that cheating.”

“What about the incense?” Amande asked. “Did she make that, too?”

“She did, and that's the part that'll make you laugh. Sister Mama made it out of wild lettuce sap. We were about to run out of it when Tilda died. Sister Mama was too sick to tell me how to make more, so I looked it up on the internet. And you know what? Wild lettuce sap's perfectly legal, and it's got an awful lot in common with opium juice. I
really
got to put up an electric fence.”

He'd been right when he said they would laugh.

“So those things we saw during Tilda's séance weren't real?” Amande asked.

“Maybe they were and maybe they weren't, but you were flying high when you saw them. No doubt about it.”

When Ennis laughed, his whole face came into focus.

“I'm not sure there's any reason Miss Myrna needs to know that,” he said.

Nodding at them both, a quick agreement for Faye and something slower for Amande, he said, “I need to go now. I need to see if either of those two ladies need anything. I'm all Sister Mama's got, and Dara can use some help keeping up with Miss Myrna. Dara's got a show to run, and she'll be doing it by herself from here on out.”

As he walked away, Faye gave Amande the same silent eye contact that her mother had given her long ago, when she'd been sneaking around with boys at seventeen. “Is there anything about that man you want to tell me?”

“He wanted to ask me out. I didn't encourage him, so he didn't.”

Faye's continued silence asked for more of a response, so her daughter said, “He's just a boy. I'm waiting for a man to come along.”

***

Joe began closing the open books scattered over Samuel's desk. “Are you convinced?”

“Yes. It's hard to accept that my treasures aren't what I thought they were, but you laid out the facts. You walked me through those books. You showed me pictures on your computer. You showed me lab reports from rock taken from American and European quarries. I'm not stupid. You've convinced me. It's not that I thought the people in America
couldn't
have built all those pyramids and mounds on their own. It's just that I thought that they
didn't
.”

Joe let that statement rest as he placed the books, one by one, in an orderly stack. “Now I want to explain something else and I want to ask you a question.”

“Of course.”

“I just spent two hours walking you through a bunch of research. I enjoyed myself. I think you enjoyed it, too, but my time don't come cheap. Faye's time costs even more. It should. She's the one with a Ph.D.”

“Well, yes,” Samuel said. “She—“

“Hang on a minute. I'm going somewhere with this. Faye already told you everything I told you this morning, but she didn't spend two hours doing it, because that wouldn't be a responsible way to spend your money. If you want her to walk you through this project, she can do that, but it will cost you a lot. It might be cheaper to let her get her work done, hands-off. You could use that time to take some archaeology classes, since you do seem awful interested. Yeah, you can pay her to explain every last thing to you, but it would be like paying a private tutor to make a doctor out of you. Only you wouldn't get the piece of paper that says ‘Ph.D.'”

This made Samuel laugh. “I don't need the piece of paper, but I just might take some classes.”

Joe closed his computer, stood, and shook his client's hand. “Good. If you want me to, I'll let you know next time we're doing a dig. We can always use volunteers. But here's the question I wanted to ask you. Is it maybe possible that you listened to me today, after you ignored Faye when she told you the same thing, because she's a little tiny woman and I'm not? Because if it is, you owe my wife an apology.”

Samuel had risen when Joe did, but he was still holding the Langley Object. He turned it over in his hands, studied it a bit, then spoke. “She'll get one.”

“I presume that means that there will be no trouble with her bill. It will show some hours for things we've done that are beyond the original scope of work.” He nodded at the pile of books cradled in the crook of his elbow. “Like, for instance, this conversation you and I just had.”

“Tell her to send me a bill. There will be no trouble at all.”

Joe said goodbye to his client. He thought Faye would be happy with the way he handled their accounts receivable.

***

“Mom?”

Faye took off her reading glasses and looked up at her daughter.

“I've been reading about Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” Amande said.

“It'll take you a while. She wrote the
Declaration of Sentiments
and read it at Seneca Falls. She was friends with Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott and Amelia Bloomer. She raised hell for decades in favor of women's rights and the abolition of slavery. I forget how many children she raised while she was doing that. About a billion, or so it seemed when I read her biography. She was a complicated person, and I don't agree with everything she did, but she made history. Nobody can argue with that.”

“I think there's something about her that you didn't notice, or you'd have said so.”

Faye, being the competitive soul that she was, said, “Oh, yeah? Bet me.”

“I bet you a banana split.”

“You're on. What did you notice about Elizabeth Cady Stanton that I didn't?”

“She has the same last name as your great-great-grandmother, Cally Stanton. And Cally's husband, Courtney Stanton, obviously, because she took his name. What do you know about Courtney Stanton's family?”

Faye realized that she owed her daughter a banana split. “Um…nothing. When Cally was interviewed by the Federal Writers' Project for their slave narratives, she just said that Courtney and his mother were Yankees. To Cally, a Yankee might be anybody born north of Florida.”

“New York is north of Florida. We should try to find out whether you're distant kin to one of your heroes.”

Faye blurted out, “I don't want to know.”

Why had she said that? Probably because she liked the idea of being kin to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and she didn't want mere facts to get in the way of that feeling.

“Too late. I've already emailed your cousin Bobby, the family genealogist. He's on the case.”

Faye hoped Bobby found the link Amande believed was there. If not, she hoped he hit a dead end that left the question of kinship forever unanswered. Elizabeth Cady Stanton would have fit right in with the stalwart women on Faye's family tree, and Faye wanted to always be able to imagine her among them.