The Night Shifters (22 page)

But now my
feelings couldn’t be more different. I realized now that the
popular girl must have lived not far from where I did, otherwise
she wouldn’t have gone to my school and she wouldn’t have been able
to walk home from my house. She might have lived in a nicer house,
but it couldn’t have been all
that
much
nicer – not in
this
zip code. And
maybe that had been the problem. Maybe it was her own background
that shamed her. I was too young to figure that out then – I
watched her until she was gone, feeling discarded and
unworthy.

But this
time, as Blue walked away, I kept my eyes on that broken window. I
let the tears flow, because somehow I knew she would see them, even
though she wasn’t looking at me anymore. I wanted her to see them,
to feel satisfied about it, to think she had dealt me some
crippling emotional blow. Because I wanted her to go away.
Apparently I couldn’t just ask her to go, couldn’t reason with her,
plead with her, argue her into it. Blue was only willing to leave
me alone if she could draw blood, first.

Well,
touch
・
Mission
accomplished. I thought the cost was worth the outcome, but I
wouldn’t know for sure until I went into the house. I wasn’t done
yet, not with Memory Lane, and not with the bleeding. The popular
girl’s rejection had hurt; at the time it seemed like the worst
thing in the world. But it was just playground stuff.

“Mom?” I called
through the broken window. “Can the Night conjure you, too?”

How I wished it
could. And how I hoped it wouldn’t, because seeing her again,
hearing her voice and feeling her hand in mine would undo me for
good. Once that happened, the Drivers could run me down, Camilla
and Nostradamus could toss me into the pool of black manna, and I
wouldn’t care – because my real mom was gone forever, past that
veil we only get tiny glimpses of in our dreams. And a glimpse
wouldn’t be enough.

“Mom?” I called
again, and was glad when there was no answer. But something did
seem to call me from that house. I knew it had never looked this
bad in real life, yet it really was my house. It was as if the
Apocalypse had occurred and I had survived to make my way home
again. I was glad to see it, even in its shattered state. I went to
the front door and tried the knob. It pushed open, even though the
knob was locked.

Our old lock had
been faulty. I used to have to slam the door several times before I
could get it to engage properly. That had been a nightly ritual – I
couldn’t go to bed until I was sure it was secure. But Mom had
often forgotten to check it; many times I had come home from school
and pushed it open this way. I would sigh and scold Mom about it
when she got home from work.

She worked at the
main office for Cartwright School District. She was really tired
when she got home, so I always got supper started. Hamburger
Helper, Tuna Helper, mini pizzas made from biscuit dough – quick
recipes we cut out of magazines. We sat in the family room and ate
off trays, in front of the TV. We loved the classic movies. That’s
how I knew who Sir John Gielgud was. Though I sometimes got him
mixed up with Sir Ralph Richardson.

From the
front hall I could see into the living room. Empty shelves gathered
dust near the arcadia door. I could see our tree through the glass,
but it was bare of leaves, stripped of the false faerie lights. The
sewer smell had disappeared, now the house just smelled
musty.
What’s
left?
I wondered.
Are any of our old
treasures still here?
I
walked down the front hall, on the tile my mom had polished so
faithfully, and peeked into the family room.

The TV was still
there. Our old couch was, too. In one corner, a broken TV tray
gathered cobwebs.

I sat on the couch
and remembered one day when I had gotten home, not from school, but
from work. I started supper – by then I was a better cook. I didn’t
have to tell Mom I had quit school, I had done that two years
before. She didn’t reproach me. She said I could always go back
later. She said that’s what she did, after I was born.

I was going to
scold her about the lock. I made supper, but Mom didn’t come
home.

“Car wreck,” I said
aloud. I waited until 1:00 a.m. for Mom. I called her work, but
they had been closed for hours. I couldn’t drive there because I
didn’t have a car.

Just after
1:00 a.m., a policeman came to the door, and that’s how I found out
how it happened. I already knew she was dead. I knew it when she
didn’t come home for supper, because Mom
always
came home. So I had already been crying for hours when the
policeman came to the door. I think that rattled him. I opened the
door, and looked him in the eye, and he knew that I already
knew.

Memory settled
around my crystal heart and squeezed tight. One more blow, and it
might shatter.

“We had a nice
house, Mom. We had flowers, and a Faerie Tree.”

I folded my hands
in prayer and let the tears flow unchecked.

Someone pounded on
the front door. The policeman had arrived with his burden of
news.

* * * * *

“I already know
what happened!” I yelled at the door. “You don’t have to tell me
again! Go away!”

“
Hazel?”
someone called. He sounded familiar. He
didn’t
sound like the policeman.

Get up
, commanded the
voice in my head.
Answer the damn door.

I obeyed the
voice. After all, it hadn’t steered me wrong yet. But when I saw
who was standing on the doorstep, I almost ran. His polyester pants
and short-sleeved shirt were bursting at the buttons and his pocket
protector was jammed full, but when he said, “Hello, Hazel,” I
froze. This wasn’t Nostradamus’s voice. This high, nerdy whine
belonged to the one and only Bernard Clifton. This time, it
really
was
him.

This was the
guy I had met in college. Junior college, to be exact, despite the
fact that Bernard’s dad was wealthy enough to pay for a good
four-year college. This was the guy who bragged that next year he
was going to ITT Tech. Probably in his whole life, no one had ever
dared to call him
Bernie
.

“Why are you here?”
I asked. He didn’t belong in the City of Night. This version of
Bernard belonged to some earlier time, right after Mom died, when
he had come to my house to confront me. The memory was playing
itself out before my eyes, word for word, moment by moment. Mom
died, and Bernard came to see me about it.

And he looked very
pleased with himself. “How are you holding up?” he asked.

I felt sad,
and lonely, and guilty, and grieved, and none of that was any of
his business. But I couldn’t say
fine
, either,
because that was so obviously untrue it was ludicrous. Even if I
had wanted sympathy from Bernard, he had never been the sort of
person who offered it – he didn’t seem to know how. He told me once
that there are only two kinds of people in the world, the ones you
control, and the ones who control you. “I’m a controller,” he said.
“You’re gonna find that out.”

“I’ve got no reason
to find that out,” I tried to tell him. He just laughed. I didn’t
take him seriously, because by then I already knew school wasn’t
going to do it for me. I didn’t belong there. Bernard did.

Once I attended an
art show at the college library, mostly because I didn’t have
anything better to do. I wore a little black dress, even though
there wasn’t anyone I really wanted to impress. But it wasn’t a bad
show, I had a good time –

–
Until
Bernard showed up. He followed me around as if we actually knew
each other, like he thought we were friends or something.
That
really
made me
uncomfortable. He had never shown me anything but contempt, and he
definitely wasn’t my type. Apparently he thought there was a heck
of a lot more between us than I did, because he finally he cornered
me near the bathrooms. “You need to marry me,” he said.

I laughed, because
I thought he was kidding.

But he didn’t laugh
with me. “It’s the best offer you’re ever going to get. You’d
better jump on it. You’re cute now, but that’s not going to
last.”

“You don’t even
know me!”

“I’ve known you for
two years!” he insisted.

I hadn’t even
noticed he existed until the first year was almost over, and then
only because he smelled so bad. I usually avoided talking to him –
and when I couldn’t, I always regretted it.

So I didn’t try to
argue with him; I just walked away from him. I thought that was the
end of it.

Now here he
was on my doorstop, offering his
sympathies
.
“Are you sorry
now
that you didn’t
accept my proposal?” His eyes practically twinkled. “Because if you
had, you wouldn’t be living in this dump right now and you wouldn’t
be working at that rinky-dink little book store. What are you
earning, Hazel, minimum wage?”

This certainly made
my amnesia seem more attractive. “You don’t even know me,” I said,
for the second time. “We talked, like, maybe three or four times
between classes!”

“
Oh, I
know
you just
fine
.” His
smug tone was spoiled by anger that obviously had been burning long
and deep. “Miss Hazel
AAA
, too good for
college, too good for
me
, too good for the
whole damn world. But you’ve got to live here anyway, don’t you.
You’ve still got to pay the bills.”

He hooked
both thumbs at himself. “I just got hired by
Motorola
, and I’ll be doing software applications for them;
they’re paying me
sixty-five grand
a
year.” He punctuated his next remarks by stabbing a chubby finger
at me. “I just bought a house in
Paradise Valley
. Where are you going to be living, Hazel? Is
this
the miserable little hovel
you’re
going to call home?”

I have to admit,
his tirade was shaking me out of my grief, mostly because it was
astonishing. My mother had just died, it was the worst thing that
ever happened to me, dwarfing all other sorrows. I’m not claiming
to be an expert on relationships, but if I wanted someone to marry
me, I wouldn’t try to convince them to do it by rubbing their noses
in grief and desolation. That’s just me.

But Bernard wasn’t
trying to woo me, he was here for revenge. He would keep this up
all Night, if I let him.

“
I’m
not
sorry I said no, Bernard. I don’t like you and
you don’t like me. That’s all the reason I need not to marry
you.”

He snorted. “That’s
no reason at all, you dumb little bitch. You’re history, I’ve got
better stuff to do with my time.”

He wheeled and
stomped away from me, kicking an old can out of his path as he made
his way back down the drive. He strutted like a man who had just
triumphed over his worst enemy, vindicated himself with perfect
panache. I felt just as relieved to see him go as I had been to see
Blue walk away. Another happy customer. It struck me as funny that
in both cases, my tormentors had to feel that they had humiliated
me before they would get lost. And I didn’t feel the least bit
humbled.

But I had to admit,
I was shaken. The memories had power.

Vacation was
over.

And yet...

Somehow, the sight
of Bernard moving away from me ignited a spark in my heart. I was
happy to see his back; I would be even happier if I never had to
see him again. But that wasn’t the way things worked around here.
If you wanted good stuff to happen, you had to put up with some bad
stuff. Other players had their own agendas, no one could avoid
them. Probably me least of all.

I didn’t want to be
allies with Bernard/Nostradamus. The last time I followed him down
my front path, weird things had happened.

But good
things happened too. I could stay in that house; it really was mine
if I wanted it. And I
did
want it. I could
revisit old memories. But the memories that lived in that ruin were
mostly sorrows.

As Bernard trucked
down the road, he seemed to grow taller and thinner.

What the heck... ?
My
curiosity stirred like a young cat fresh from a nap.

Now I
had
to follow him. From a safe distance, of
course.

“Later,” I told the
house. “We’ve still got business. We’ll tidy you up, somehow.” I
shut the front door behind me, making sure the lock engaged
properly. By then, Bernard was about a hundred yards ahead of me. I
ran after him, careful to keep close enough to the shadows to hide
if he suddenly turned around.

He never did.
Bernard walked full steam ahead, making astonishing progress for a
guy his size. If my memories of him were accurate, he had always
walked with too much confidence, as if he didn’t believe anything
could ever knock him down. Not even diabetes.

And he
really
was
getting taller and slimmer, though
his bulk was still impressive.
This
Bernard
made the old one look like a slacker. I had to jog to match his
pace. And the longer I followed him, the more I became convinced
that he wasn’t Bernard anymore.