The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told (52 page)

“Don’t guess. It makes you sound—”

“Stupid. Yeah, I know.” I chose the next words with care. She was still gripping the cane. “How did you know?”

“That’s probably the first smart question you’ve asked all day.”

Given that the rest of them had to do with lawn care, a thing she generally despised, this wasn’t hard. “Does that mean you’ll give me an answer?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

I waited her out. Have I mentioned she loved to talk?

“I’m the crone,” she said at last.

“And that makes me the maiden?” I couldn’t keep the bitter sarcasm out of my voice.

“You?” Neither could she.

Having retreated back into the realm of idiocy, I waited, cheeks burning some. “I guess that’s a no.”

“Big damn no. You think I’ve taught you how to tend a garden all these years for nothing?”

No, because you’re a sadist
. Smart me, I didn’t say it out loud. She rapped my knuckles anyway.

“I’m getting old,” she continued.

I didn’t point out that she’d
always
been old.

“And I’m getting tired.” She sat down again. “And the damn pipe keeps going out.”

“Gran—”

“There was another mother,” she said at last. “And the maiden, which is definitively
not
you, so get that thought out of your head.”

It wasn’t in my head any more. “Another mother?”

“The mother,” she told me quietly.

“What happened to her?” Because it was pretty clear that something had.

“She died.”

Thanks, Gran. Guessed that. “When?”

“When I was younger.”

“You weren’t the crone then?”

“Damn well was.”

“What
happened
?”

She shrugged. “War,” she said at last, her eyes gone to blue. “She lost her son.”

“Lost him?”

“He died.”

“And she couldn’t have another one?”

“No.”

I frowned. “The kids are special, too?”

“The children are the mother’s. They define her. She always has two.”

“How did he die?”

“I told you. Pay attention. There was a war. He was in it. He didn’t come back.”

“And she died?”

Gran nodded quietly.

“Her daughter?”

And shrugged. “Her daughter buried her mother.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Then what—”

“It’s been a long time,” Gran continued, “since there
was
another mother.” She got up again. “Better that I talk to her, since you’re so useless.”

“Gran, Maggie’s—”

She rapped the porch with the cane tip. “You going to get out of my way, or am I going to have to go through you?”

I got out of her way, and trailed after her like a shadow. I
liked
Maggie. I didn’t want to subject her to my grandmother without offering a little cowardly moral support.

Gran snorted at the grass. Emptied her pipe on it and shoved said pipe into her apron pocket. Then she marched up the walk, which was short, and knocked on the door with her cane. It opened. No one was behind it. I hate it when Gran does that. Then again, I hate it when she does anything that defies rational explanation.

She walked into the small vestibule. It was littered with the debris of two children; coats, boots, shoes, a smattering of dishevelled and empty clothing, a dirty stroller. “Margaret?” she shouted, standing in the center of the mess as if she owned it.

Maggie came out of the kitchen, frowning. Connell was on her hip. She saw me, and the frown sort of froze.

“This is my Gran,” I told her.

And lifted. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said, extending a hand. Her left hand; her right hand was full of baby, and she had nowhere to put him down. Mags is pretty practical.

Gran took it in that iron grip of hers, but instead of shaking it, she turned it up to the light, as if to inspect it. The frown that Maggie had surrendered, Gran picked up. “This won’t do,” the old woman said, in as stern a voice as she used on the racoon who had the temerity to inspect her garden.

“What?”

“What’s this ring?”

“Detritus.”

“Good. Take it off.”

Maggie shot me an ‘is she sane?’ look. I shrugged.

“It’s a wedding ring,” Maggie told Gran.

“I
know
what it is. Why on earth are you wearing it?”

Maggie shrugged. I knew the shrug. It was nine tenths bitterness and one tenth pain, and I personally preferred the former.

“You aren’t the wife,” Gran said, in her most imperious voice. “You’re the mother.”

“Funny, that’s what my ex said.”

Gran ignored her. “This is the boy?” she asked. I started to say something smart, and thought better of it. At his age, it was hard to tell.

“This is my son, yes.”

“And the girl?”

The ‘is she sane’ look grew a level in intensity. “My daughter is in the backyard digging her way to China.”

Gran nodded, as if the answer made sense. Given that she’d raised me, it probably did.

“Well, he looks healthy enough.” She pushed past Maggie, and Maggie looked at me. I shrugged. Gran made her way to the sliding doors of the kitchen and took a look out. “So does she.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“Give me the ring,” Gran said.

“Yes she’s sane.” I added. “Mostly.” I held out my arms for Connell, and Maggie slowly handed him to me. He was pretty substantial, and he was squirming, but he wasn’t angry. Yet. Hands empty, she looked at my Gran, and then looked past her to me. She took off the wedding ring slowly, twisting it around her finger as she did.

Her expression made it clear that she was humouring the old lady for my sake, and I’d owe her. Given that I took care of her lawn, I figured we were even. Stupid me.

Gran took the ring and held it up to the kitchen light. Snorted, moved toward the sliding glass doors, and held it out to sunlight instead. She swore a lot. Closed her fingers around the ring, as if exposing it to light at all was a sin.

“What’s wrong with the ring?” I asked.

She opened her fist.

And I saw it up close, for the first time. It looked different than it had when it had been a flash of gold on Maggie’s finger. It was bumpy, but gleaming, more ivory than golden, and its pattern was a twisted braid.

“Not a braid,” the old woman said, pursing her lips coolly. “A spiral.”

“A . . . spiral?”

“This was fashioned,” she continued coldly, “from a Unicorn horn.”

Maggie stared at us both as if we were insane. But she didn’t immediately reach out and grab Connell, so insanity of our kind wasn’t immediately dangerous.

“It’s a binding,” Gran continued quietly. “And part of a binding spell. I’ll take it to study, if you don’t mind.” It was like a request, but without the request part. She marched out of the kitchen, ring once again enclosed in her leathered fist.

When she’d also slammed the front door behind her, I looked at Mags. “Sorry,” I said.

“That’s lame,” she replied. But she rubbed her finger thoughtfully, looking at the white band of skin that had lain beneath the ring for years. “She’s a strange old woman,” she added.

“Tell me about it.”

After the loss of the ring, things changed with Maggie. I didn’t notice it all that much at first, which gave Gran several opportunities to wax eloquent about my intelligence. But shedding the ring, she seemed to shed some of her helpless, bitter anger. She wasn’t as constantly tired. She even helped with the yardwork, although it took much longer with her help than without it, because Connell could crawl into everything, and Shanna insisted on helping too.

Connell discovered that dirt melted when you put it in your mouth. He wasn’t impressed. Maggie picked him up with affectionate disdain, helped him clean out his mouth, and put him down again; he was already off on another spree of discovery.

She became happier, I think. Stronger.

And then, one day, when the Winter had come and everything was that white brown that snow in a city is, she invited my grandmother over. I came as well.

We sat down in the kitchen—all meetings of import were to be held there—around a pot of dark tea. Too bitter for me, it seemed perfect for Gran. Maggie herself hardly touched it.

She said, “I know I’m biased,” which was usually the signal for some commentary about her children, “but sometimes it seems to me that my children are the most important thing in the world.”

“It seems that way to all mothers,” I said. “About their own children.”

But Gran simply nodded. Quietly, even.

“Was that ring
really
made from a Unicorn’s horn?”

“What do you think?”

She shrugged. “I think that once I was willing to let it go, I was happier. But there are a lot of men—and women—who could make money telling me that.”

Gran nodded. “Too much money, if you ask me.” Which, of course, no one had. Before she could get rolling, Maggie continued. She chose all her words carefully, and she didn’t usually trouble herself that way.

“I feel,” she continued softly, “as if, by protecting them and raising them, I’m somehow . . . preserving the future.”

Again, not uncommon. But something about Mags was, so I didn’t point it out.

“That I’m somehow helping other mothers, other sons, other daughters.”

Gran nodded broadly, and even smiled.

“Which makes no sense to me,” Maggie continued, dousing the smile before it had really started to take hold, “because it isn’t as if other mothers aren’t doing the same. Protecting the future.” Smart girl, Mags. “And it isn’t,” she added, with just a hint of bitterness, “as if other children aren’t dying as we sit here drinking tea.”

“We aren’t the arbiters of death,” Gran said quietly.

“What in the hell are we?”

“You’re the mother,” Gran replied. “I’m the crone.”

“And the crone is?”

“Knowledge. Experience. Wisdom, which usually follows. Not always,” she added, sparing a casual glare for me.

“You said I was the mother.”

“You are.”

“For how long?”

“Good girl!”

Gran can be embarrassing at times.

“Who was the mother before me?”

The old woman’s eyes darkened. “You’re the first one in a long time.”

“Why?”

She spit to the side. “If I had to guess,” she said, with just a trace of fury, “I’d say those damn Unicorns have been up to no good. Again.”

“You mean there were other mothers?”

“Like you, but not as strong. I should have known,” she added. There is
nothing
worse than Gran when she’s feeling guilty.

“What happened to the last one?”

“She failed.”

“How?”

“Her son died.”