Shadow Train (6 page)

The tapestry her mother worked obsessively on day and night was suspended in front of her, the fabric held taut by a huge wooden frame. And the part of the picture her mother had been embroidering was now covered in blood.

Violet sat in a chair in front of the tapestry, gripping her wrist.

“I—I didn't do it!” she stammered as Maggie hurried over to assess the situation.

Her mother's half-eaten New York strip steak sat on a plate nearby. The steak knife lay discarded on the floor near her feet. Even without picking it up, Maggie could see blood on its edge.

“Let me see,” Maggie commanded, gently taking Violet's injured arm and pulling her fingers away from it. A thin stream of blood drizzled from the wound, and Maggie felt her stomach turn.

“Oh, Mom!” she shouted, and she grabbed the linen napkin off the table and hurried to bind up the cut.

“I wasn't trying to hurt myself, Maggie. I swear! I fell asleep—I—and when I woke up, I was bleeding.”

“Mom . . .” Maggie began, but she didn't know what to say. She wanted to chastise her mother. In the long progression of Violet's mental illness, this was a new low. But what was the point in yelling at her? Violet had never understood or cared how her erratic actions affected Maggie, and anyway, the priority now was to get her medical attention.

“We have to get you to the clinic in Benton,” Maggie sighed. “I'll get my purse.”

“No! Just call Master Chin.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “He's an old kung fu teacher, Mom. Not a doctor.”

“He's a healer, and he's better than anybody over in Benton,” Violet said defiantly. “And anyway, I'm not leaving. I have too much work to do.”

Maggie couldn't keep the disdain out of her voice. “Work? On what, the tapestry? In case you didn't notice, Mom, it's ruined. Just like my night.” She tried to swallow the bitter thought:
Just like all my nights, trying to take care of you.

At the mention of the tapestry, they both glanced at it. This design was huge. It was by far the largest tapestry her mother had ever undertaken, and she had been working on a small section in one corner when the “accident” had happened. As Maggie stared at the bloodstained cloth, a bizarre realization struck her. The scene her mother had been working on was of a young man lying prostrate in an alleyway. Violet's blood had stained the canvas in such a way that it looked like the blood was seeping from the body, onto the ground beneath it. The design wasn't ruined, Maggie realized with morbid fascination. Quite the opposite—the blood had completed it.

She knew from overhearing conversations between her mother and Master Chin that the scenes depicted in the tapestries sometimes seemed to reflect things that were really happening in Middleburg or things that were going to happen. And she didn't care to imagine what ramifications this image might hold.

Maggie studied the creepy scene for a moment longer and then blinked and shook her head, as if trying to dislodge the image from her mind. “I'll call Master Chin,” she said.

* * *

Zhai sat in the flickering candlelight in Kate's train car. They'd finished the dinner she'd prepared on her new electric stove, talked for a while, and then Zhai had shown her how to load the dishes into the dishwasher he'd had installed as a surprise while she was staying at Lily Rose's. He'd had the whole place decked out while she was away.

When he'd flipped a switch and the lights had come on (thanks to the gas-powered generator) her sudden, awed intake of breath was captivating. She squealed with delight when he turned on the faucet of the new sink and water flowed through it from a well he'd had drilled. She was thrilled with the stove and the small refrigerator, too. In her little living room section, he'd placed a Bose iPod SoundDock that played romantic music throughout their meal. He'd had a bathroom installed, complete with a shower, and there was even a 3-D HDTV mounted to the back wall of the car connected to a satellite dish affixed to the roof.

She'd been especially delighted with the television set, but they hadn't turned it on yet tonight. Oddly enough, the only thing that fascinated Kate more than the TV was the dishwasher. As it churned away quietly in the kitchenette section of the train car, she kept glancing over at it with a look of wide-eyed, childlike amazement on her face. She hadn't really believed him when he'd told her it was a machine just for washing dishes.

“To think!” she said. “'Tis a wonder, truly!”

Kate's reactions to modern conveniences were not lost on Zhai. She also had a strange, old-world way of talking that was just as charming as her accent, and he had several theories about where she might have come from in Ireland. He knew from the Internet that there were Amish communities in Ireland, and there were convents; it was entirely possible that Kate had grown up in one of them.

So far, she had volunteered little information about how she'd come to America or what her life was like before she arrived, and Zhai respected their unspoken agreement by not asking too many questions. Still, he found her sense of wonder at the simplest things fascinating, and infectious.

“Really, Zhai, you shouldn't have done so much for me. You've turned my little home into the eighth wonder of the world!” she exclaimed, and reaching across the table, she took his hand.

He felt his heart rate increase, and he took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “It was nothing,” he said. “I still wish you'd think about staying with my family. The guesthouse is hardly ever used—” But Kate was already shaking her head.

“Thank you. You're so sweet to me, but I've never been one to accept charity. And I don't expect I'll be stayin' in Middleburg much longer. . . .”

Zhai looked into her eyes, and this time, for once, he didn't let himself look away.

“Kate, I know we don't talk about that much—why you came, when you're going back—but if you're having trouble getting home, if you need a plane ticket, I'd be happy to get one for you—round-trip, so you could come back whenever you like. Or I could loan you the money.”

Kate's smile was sad and joyous at once. “Fly on one of those big silver monsters?” she exclaimed with a laugh. “Actually, I would love it, but I'm afraid it isn't as simple as all that . . . I wouldn't leave Middleburg at all if it weren't for my family.”

Zhai nodded. “I just want to help you however I can. And when the time comes, I want you to do what you need to do to be happy. Even if that means going away from me for a while.”

Kate smiled; she looked radiant, and as always, it made him want to kiss her and never stop kissing her. He forced himself to continue.

“But in the meantime,” he said, his heart now beating out of control and beads of sweat slipping down his forehead and his sides beneath his shirt. “In the meantime,” he repeated, fighting to keep his voice steady, “I was hoping that maybe you might want to . . . to be my girlfriend.”

“I've been wondering when you'd get up the gumption to ask,” she said sweetly. “Certainly! Of course I will!”

Zhai was so delighted he laughed out loud, and Kate joined in. Her laugh seemed like music to him, and it was the most carefree sound in the world. It made him laugh even louder.

“Well, I expect you should kiss me now, don't you?” she asked.

Suddenly serious, Zhai's gaze softened and he leaned across the table. “Yes,” he whispered and his voice was steady and sure. “I believe I should.” Just as their lips were about to meet, something buzzed loudly in his jacket pocket.

“Just, um . . . just a second . . .”

He dug into his pocket for a moment before finally pulling out his cell phone. He was about to shut it off when he looked at the screen and saw that it was Master Chin. Phone calls from Zhai's kung fu instructor where rare. If Chin called, it was usually for something really important.

“I should take it,” he said apologetically, and he answered the call.

The conversation was brief. Chin was at Maggie Anderson's house, and he needed Zhai to come there right away; it was urgent.

“I'll be there soon,” Zhai promised and ended the call. “Sorry,” he said as he turned back to Kate, who was eyeing the phone in his hand. They'd had a few conversations about how cell phones worked, but Kate was still almost overcome with wonder every time Zhai made or got a call. That would have to be his next gift to her, he vowed to himself: a cell phone.

“I really have to go,” he told her. “Master Chin is waiting for me in Hilltop Haven. I guess it's something important. You can come, if you want,” he added hopefully.

“Oh, I'd love to, my dear—but if it's all the same, I'd like to stay here. I can't wait to see the dishes when they come out of the washer machine!”

Zhai laughed. “Okay,” he said. “You remember how to open it?”

She nodded.

“Thanks for being my valentine, okay?”

Kate beamed at him. “Always,” she said.

* * *

It was getting pretty late by the time Zhai got to the palatial Anderson house. He was surprised when Maggie answered his knock.

“Hey, Maggie,” he said. “I figured you'd be out with Rick.”

She gave him a mysterious smile. “Nope. He let me off the hook tonight. Come on in. Master Chin and my mom are in the sewing room.”

Zhai followed Maggie into the room and found Master Chin sitting with Mrs. Anderson, taping a fresh bandage on her arm.

“Zhai, I'm glad you came,” Master Chin said as Zhai entered the room. He finished securing the bandage and then stood and went to Zhai, speaking quickly. Whatever was going on, Zhai knew, it had to be urgent.

“Look at the tapestry with me,” Chin said, steering him toward the large expanse of fabric suspended within a wooden frame. It was a large swatch of heavy, off-white cloth, and about half of it had a scene embroidered onto it; the rest was blank. Chin pointed to the bottom right-hand corner of the tapestry, which had been completed, and Zhai's gaze followed his gesture. The scene depicted a person lying face down in a pool of what looked to Zhai like real blood that had soaked into the canvas.

“This scene in particular,” Chin said. “I think it might have recently taken place—or it's about to. Have you seen anything like this? Or heard about anyone injured recently?”

“No,” Zhai said, studying the picture. Staring at the image seemed to evoke a swirling of Shen energy, like a cold ball deep within his chest cavity. It wasn't the normally warm, life-affirming Shen he was used to experiencing. This feeling, he was sure, was a warning—or a premonition.

“What about the rest? What does it bring to mind?”

Zhai squinted at the part of the tapestry just above the fallen person. It appeared to depict a different scene, this one of a darkened space with a bright, arched doorway leading out of it. In the center of the dark space there was a ring-shaped object—it looked solid at first, but upon closer inspection, it appeared as if it was broken and had been pieced back together.

As Zhai stared at it, the dark room on the tapestry suddenly seemed to shift, and his eyes picked out a pattern of threads that were a slightly lighter shade of black than the others. He was able to make out the outline of a person who floated, ghost-like, above the ring. The figure was featureless, but Zhai could see that it had broad, masculine shoulders and long hair.
Raphael,
he thought instantly. As his eyes traced downward, he noticed something else that hadn't jumped out at first glance: a subtle pattern at the bottom of the embroidered room that looked like crossed railroad tracks.

“It's Raphael,” Zhai said quietly. “Or his ghost. And it looks like he's in the old rail tunnels, at the Wheel of Illusion. The ring is there too, and it's been put back together. It's like . . . like it's making him materialize.”

Master Chin nodded eagerly. “I thought so too,” the sifu agreed. “Do you still have your shard of the ring?”

“Yes,” Zhai said.

“Meet me outside the east tunnel at noon tomorrow, and bring it with you. If you can get any other shards, bring those too—and I'll bring mine as well. Perhaps there is still enough Shen in them to spark the Wheel back to life.”

“You think that's what this means? That if we get the shards back together we'll be able to bring Raph back from wherever he is?”

“I don't know,” Master Chin said darkly. “But I think it's important that we try.”

“Okay. Noon,” Zhai agreed.

“I'm coming too,” Maggie said quickly, and the guys both turned around and looked at her.

Zhai glanced at his sifu, expecting him to contradict her, but instead he said, “Good. Zhai will pick you up.”

It seemed like a surprising turn of events, until Zhai remembered the blast of Shen that Maggie had unleashed during the last battle at the tracks—the one that had sent the Obies' Black Snake God flying. She had been wearing her homecoming queen crown, and some kind of energy had seemed to flow from it, and through Maggie, with incredible force. With power like that, no wonder Master Chin wasn't too worried about her safety. Besides, Maggie had taken part in all the searches for Raphael so far. Zhai didn't know why, but she seemed just as eager to find him as any of the Flats kids were. If she wanted to come along, Zhai would be glad to have her.

He glanced at his watch. “I'd better go,” he said. “I'm ten minutes past curfew. After Li's illness and then my disappearing with those Black Snake guys, my parents get pretty jumpy when we're late these days.”

“Zhai—one more thing,” Master Chin said as he gazed at the bloodstained cloth. “Keep your eyes open for this injured person, whoever he is. If there's any way you can, try to prevent it from happening. I fear that once this event takes place, there will be no stopping what will follow.”