Glimmer (23 page)

He’s way more jazzed about my future than I am.

Chapter 32
MARSHALL

After Elyse leaves I stay on the floor, where she told me to sit, for a long, long time. I stare at the doorway where I saw her walk away from me without looking back, and after a while I can’t even picture her quite as clearly, and I can’t remember if she was wearing my khaki jean jacket or just had it tied around her waist. I sit there, still and silent, eyes closed, ignoring my rumbling stomach and the TV blaring from downstairs. I probably look catatonic, like Dan.

Eventually the sun comes up and two birds start chattering outside my broken window. I don’t know how much time has passed before I’m aware of the burning pressure of rough carpet branding my left cheek and realize I must have fallen asleep.

Light-headed and cranky, I stagger downstairs.

I can smell the kitchen trash from the living room. Bill’s still parked on the couch, chugging generic beer, his eyes glued to a baseball game on ESPN.

“Dad, let me make you some eggs or something.”

“I’m good.” He raises his beer can, a self-mocking salute. “Breakfast of champions, right?”

I shrug. I decide I might as well take out the trash now—since he can’t leave the house, I’m the only one who can do it—but before I can get two steps toward the kitchen, he calls behind me, “Where’s Elyse?”

The question makes my chest ache all over again. I turn back. “Gone.” And maybe it’s not fair, but suddenly I’m pissed at Bill for making me say it out loud. For being so checked out, he didn’t know. “Didn’t she walk right by you? Didn’t you hear the door slam?”

“I, uh . . . must have dozed off.” Bill glances at the pyramid of empty cans on the coffee table, then up at me, a troubled look spreading over his face. He sets his can down, smoothes his AC/DC T-shirt, where it was riding up his belly, rakes his fingers along the back of his neck like he’s trying to comb his hair, which long ago fell out. You can tell he’s trying to will his way into sobriety, into Concerned Parent mode. He pats the couch cushion next to him. “Hey, buddy, sit down. . . .”

I really don’t feel like explaining, but I sit next to him and grab a double handful of popcorn from the bowl. It’s so stale and dry, it tastes like little pieces of confetti, but I don’t care. Then I reach into the cooler at Bill’s feet and crack open a beer. What the hell.

Bill meets my eyes and sighs, as if to say,
We both know I don’t have the moral high ground to stop you.
“So what happened?” he prompts. “You two had a fight?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Son. Let me give you some advice. . . .”

I can’t help it, I snort. Maybe it’s more like a snicker, even. Guess there’s something about a bleary-eyed, drunk dude in torn sweats offering me advice that just pushes my buttons. Bill looks away from me, clearly hurt. Apparently I couldn’t cry to make myself feel better, but I can laugh to make someone else feel shitty. “No offense,” I add, though that ship has sailed. “It’s too late for advice.”

“No, it’s not.” From his urgent tone you’d think our lives were in danger. But then again, his relationship with my mother was his life. “If you’re both alive, it’s never too late. Call her. Go after her. Apologize for whatever stupid-ass thing you did.”

“I tried, okay?” I gulp down the cold, bitter liquid. It tastes foul. Fine with me. “Hey, why are you assuming it’s all
my
fault?”

He gives me a look. “Come on, Marsh . . . I know you.”

I blink. Ouch. My own father thinks I’m a jerk. “Know what? You
don’t
really know me all that well. I’ve changed.”

“If you say so.”

Passive-aggressive Bill strikes again.

The thing is, I can’t really argue with him. Because knowing someone means you know who they were in the past. Anything else is just a glimmer of possibility, a distant hope, and probably wishful thinking. He’s judging me by my past actions, not my words. That’s fair. Which only makes me angrier. I can feel my fingertips turning to ice, my pulse pounding. “Why don’t you just say it? You think I’m an ass.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, because a nice guy like you would never straight-up call his son an ass. Well, I didn’t turn out
nice
like you. I make a lot of mistakes, yeah. But I make a lot of smart decisions too. At least I do something.” I fold my arms. Am I really going to say this? “Not like you with Mom. You never even asserted yourself at all. You just followed her around while she did magic.” Until magic killed her.

He snorts and reaches for the popcorn bowl. “You don’t know shit about my marriage.”

“Yeah? I know that if
you
had died, right now she’d be in some cave in New Zealand doing magic. Not sitting on this sofa remembering how great you were.”

“She wouldn’t have to sit here.” Bill stands, but he’s had so many beers, he stumbles and has to pull up his baggy sweatpants. “Because she wouldn’t need your help to get out of this goddamn town. I never thought you’d grow up to be so selfish.”

“Maybe you raised me to be selfish.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means why didn’t you ask someone else for help, Dad? Other than me. You couldn’t, because Mom was the only other person you were close to. You didn’t have a friend in the world.”

“You and Eva were my world. We gave each other all we ever needed.”

“Bullshit. I needed friends. A
home.
I was a kid, and I didn’t know what I was missing. But you should have known. You two took me all over the world, and what do I remember? All my memories are of hotel suites with us in them. Like our own cozy little space pod. Nothing could touch us. No one could even see me. And because of that, I never thought of reaching out to anyone else either.” Until I met Elyse. “I’m not saying it was right that I didn’t help you break out of here. But I
understand
it. For once I didn’t
want
you to drag me away to the next place.”

His eyebrows sink down sadly, and the knuckle of his right index finger finds its way between his lips. “I knew you needed a home, but your mother needed to travel for her work. If she had one true love it was magic.”

“Then why are you so hell-bent on remembering her?”

“Because I loved her, you dumb kid.” He turns away from me, drunk tears in his eyes. “I loved her, even if I came second. That’s what love is.”

“Well, that’s very moving, Dad. Too bad you were so busy being in love with a dead person, you didn’t notice your son turning into a monster.”

Maybe I went too far, or maybe he’d just had enough, because he turns from me and walks away. I can hear his bare feet clomping around on the kitchen linoleum and figure he must be getting more snacks, when a shaft of sunlight illuminates a strip of the carpeting and the front wall.

“Dad?” I hear the back door creak open. “What are you
doing
?”

I race into the kitchen, but he’s already stepped outside onto the back porch step, into the brilliant sunlight. He throws out his arms in front of him and mutters something, and I hear him sigh.

Then his body crumples and he collapses on the wooden deck with a sickening
thud
.

Chapter 33
ELYSE

The bus is half empty and takes an hour to get to the hot, loud, crowded train station. The people look startlingly different here. Different from Summer Falls people, different from me. So many more shapes and sizes. So many dark jackets and scuffed shoes. Their skin and hair look dull, as if they’ve never seen the sun. There’s a sadness weighing each and every one of these people down—I can feel it emanating from their cores—yet they seem to move faster than I do, with an energy I’m unused to seeing. Their faces look sharper, more alert. Tougher. It’s a whole new world, just like that first morning, sun and grass and dandelions. Only this new world isn’t beautiful. It’s gritty, gray, and ugly. A man in an overcoat leers at me, then goes back to whispering about concert tickets to anyone who’ll listen. The dank corners smell like urine. I disappear into the crowd, just another anonymous traveler with sunglasses and a backpack. No one knows who I am; no one cares. I couldn’t have asked for more.

I scan the Arrivals and Departures. There’s a coach to Denver leaving in an hour. Whatever. Sure. Fine. I present my pass, buy a bag of chips, and don’t eat them. On the train I listen to music on my headphones until I get sick of playing the same old songs over and over. I leave the headphones on as a “Do Not Disturb” sign. The last thing I want to do right now is talk to anyone. Eventually I fall asleep, and someone has to tap me when we arrive.

It’s late, after nine. There’s a motel across from the train station, but it’s got no vacancies. The bald guy behind the counter tells me to walk ten blocks to a Radisson. It has revolving doors, like in the movies.

At the front desk, I attempt to register for a room. It’s going well until the glossy, black-haired clerk named Clarissa asks, “May I have a credit card, please?”

Credit card? “Um, I’ll just pay, if that’s okay. You know, with money.”

“I’m sorry, we need a card for incidentals.”

Incidentals. I don’t even know what those are.

The other clerk, a bored-looking blond boy, looks up. “Ris, it’s okay. We can turn off pay-per-view in her room, and she won’t have a tab for room service, but we can do cash.”

I thank him and hand over a staggering $109 for the night. I feel like I got mugged.

“Room nine-oh-nine has a river view,” he says, “if you stand on your tiptoes. Here’s your key.” He slips me a flat envelope. Too flat for a key.

I open it and see a single plastic card, like a credit card. Huh?

“Something wrong with your key card, miss?”

“Key card,” I mutter, feeling like a prize idiot. “Um, no.”

“One more thing, did you do valet parking? Because—”

“I took the train,” I say.

Clarissa purses her lips and
mmm
s softly under her breath. I wonder what sort of theories and judgments are brewing in her head: train, cash, doesn’t know what a key card is. Clueless hayseed in over her head.

Or maybe I’m just judging myself again. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.

In the hotel room’s shower I wash off the grime from the train and put on clean clothes, feeling a little surge of panic at how quickly my supply of money
and
clean clothes is being depleted.

I lie on the enormous bed and flip through TV stations. Cop shows. Courtroom drama. Shows about families, always with a tinny laugh track. The channels are endless, but the offerings are disappointingly familiar. I bet Marshall isn’t watching TV right now. I bet he’s working on a spell, doing something important. I miss him.

He crossed a line. You have to have standards. Limits. You can’t just let people do anything to you.

I pull the music box out of my bag, wind it up, and open it. Of course I can’t use it, even if I do have more memories left. I can’t do magic. It’s not one of my gifts. Maybe I don’t even trust magic, really—it feels, on some level, like a lie. A manipulation. But taking the box away from Marshall was spiteful, and I’m not proud of that.

I’m not proud of leaving Liz behind either.

What the hell
am
I proud of?

Other than my pride itself, which is the reason I deleted his phone number from my phone and why I won’t call information now and get it back.

The laugh track on TV blends with “America the Beautiful.” Is this why I left town, to be alone in this hotel room I can’t afford, watching the same inane shows I could have watched at home?

Maybe I should just give up and go back. The only person who’d be disappointed in me is Joe. He said he was just giving me a little push with the dreams, but he was
so
thrilled about my leaving town. . . . I remember his oddly tender look as I crossed the invisible line that separated Summer Falls from unincorporated county.

I blink. The line out of town. That was the same line Elizabeth couldn’t cross, even when the sheriff tried to force her. Why couldn’t she? I’d spent enough time working with Marshall to know it had to be magic. Yet what were the odds that these two strangers, a mild-mannered young occultist and a non-occultist street person, would be bound up in the same magic spell?

I pull out the Preston House brochure, remembering the old photos in it. But there’s no clear picture of W. P. Preston’s face—of course there wouldn’t be. He’d make sure of that. My eye’s drawn to the famous shot of President Coolidge and his wife relaxing in the Prestons’ backyard. Then I zero in on Mrs. Coolidge. Her neck. My hands rush to my own throat, to the hard ruby pendant. I reach into my bag and dig out Marsh’s Swiss Army knife. I slide out the magnifying glass and check out Mrs. Coolidge’s necklace. It’s the same . . . the one Grandma Bets passed down to Mom. Was it a gift from the Coolidges to the Prestons? If so, then why did Grandma Bets have it?

Well, it could have just appeared in the antique store after Mrs. Preston’s death.

I run the magnifying glass over Mrs. Preston’s image. Her profile looks so familiar.

And why was that homeless woman helping to support Grandma Bets in the wedding photo? Why would a random acquaintance go out of her way?

Because she wasn’t a random acquaintance. She was family. Probably Grandma Bets’s own grandmother. Elizabeth Preston. Who still looked the same after a hundred and twenty years, thanks to thousands of other people’s unwilling sacrifices. Including her descendants.

Including me.

I’m descended from the Prestons. Liz never bought the house that is now the B and B—she grew up in it.

And if I’m descended from an occultist, that means I was born with at least a touch of his talent for magic.

Excited, I turn off the TV and wind up the music box. I don’t have candles. Even if I did they’d probably set off the hotel’s smoke alarm and I’d be fined the rest of my money. But the book didn’t mention candles specifically—the flames were just for concentration. And I remember the words he said. Not words. Sounds. The spell itself.

I lie on the hotel bed, open the box, and stare as the baseball player begins revolving around a single point. Then I’m staring at the halo around him, and soon after, I jump into amber waves of grain.

—

“Hey.”

The guy startles me so much, I drop my book into my locker, the book I just fished out of there. The blue-and-green journal.

“Don’t you remember me? It’s Marshall.”

Now that I’ve gotten a better look at him, I do remember seeing him before. Those intense eyes, the playful mouth. “You stayed at the B and B, right?”

“Yeah, just last week. Now my parents are renting. They really liked it here, for some reason.” His mouth looks downright devious now. Hard to look away from those ink-black eyes. “Anyway, the thing you asked about.” What thing? I asked this boy about something? When? My hands clutch the book, but I don’t want to open it here. Not here. Not safe. “The house we’re staying in, it has . . . protections.” What’s he talking about? “If you play your cards right, I’ll let you come over tonight.”

“Excuse me?” I know my voice sounds a little snobby, but seriously, I’ve gotten less ridiculous come-ons from football players. Aren’t out-of-town boys supposed to be more subtle?

“You seem stunned and overwhelmed by my generosity,” he says, deadpan. “Women often are. Don’t worry. You can pay me back in any number of—”

“Are you crazy?” I cut him off. “Why on earth do you think I’d want to set foot in your house?”

He leans against the lockers, his brow wrinkling in confusion. “Because it’s safe . . . ? Hey, you’re the one who asked me to . . . wow, you don’t even remember, do you?”

I shake my head. But now he’s got me, I’m intrigued. “Hold on.” I pull open the book. It parts to the middle, the first open page bookmarked by a pen. Quickly I page back, watching the dates, until a week has slipped by in reverse. I spot his name, read the whole entry. His story checks out. I flip back to today. Quick as lightning, my hand scrawls
, Marshall, safe house.

He leans forward, arms crossed, an amused smile playing on his lips. “Did you just write about me in your diary?”

I snap the book shut, hug it to my chest. “None of your business.”

He leans even closer, the devilish smile spreading to his eyes. “Can I write my address and phone number, so you don’t forget me?”

“I don’t let other people write in it.” Not that anyone’s ever wanted to before.

Marshall nods, clearly not the slightest bit taken aback. “Eight-six-three Finch Street,” he says, backing away. “Come over tonight.”

“Maybe,” I whisper.