I was pretty sure the thigh-stroking wasn’t a dream.
I recalled stumbling home and struggling with my boots. The task of removing them before going to sleep seemed difficult and annoying. I seemed to have given up halfway, the left boot discarded on the floor, the right still on my foot. Pathetic.
“Mommy is disgusting,” I told Magnus.
He barked excitedly, and wagged his tail, probably already thinking of all the fire hydrants he would defile this morning.
I dragged myself to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, Magnus barking at me from below, trying to explain that I was confused, the front door was the other way. Then I returned to the bedroom, and put on my left boot. I’d remove them both and confront my socks after Magnus had his walk.
I grabbed the leash and tried to tie Magnus, but he began spinning like a deranged dreidel, excited beyond belief at the prospect of a morning walk, and leashing him became impossible in my hungover state.
“Please stand still,” I muttered with zero authority.
He stood still. A miracle. I clipped the leash on him and was about to leave, but then hesitated.
To Magnus’ chagrin, I went to my lab. There, on the counter, stood the black box and the dragon scale. Last night I couldn’t get the safe open to put them inside. Now I berated myself in anger. What if someone had broken in? I grabbed them both, went to the safe, and unlocked it, then put them in and shut it. Breadknife would come later, and I would give him the box and clarify that this was it. My debt was paid, and we were finally done.
Somewhere in my mind, the voice of a jaded, clear-headed Lou whispered that we weren’t done, not so long as he could threaten to expose my identity to my daughter and her adoptive parents. But I ignored that voice. Breadknife would leave me alone. He had promised.
Endless questions about the job popped into my mind. Who was Breadknife’s client, and what did he want with the crystal? Could it be the real Yliaster crystal? Did it hold a soul? Was that what he was after?
I reopened the safe, and took out the box. Yesterday it had seemed as if something was inside the crystal. But we had been giddy with excitement, feeling magic in the air. I wanted to look at the crystal in the morning light.
I turned the key in the lock. Opened the lid.
My heart sank.
The box was empty.
I pried the velvet out, thinking that maybe the crystal was somehow wedged underneath, but it wasn’t. Underneath, all I could see was the dark surface of the box. I looked around the lab’s floor, searching inanely, knowing I was ridiculous. The box was locked. There was no possible way it could have fallen out.
Only one explanation was possible, and it made me sick to consider. Someone had taken it last night. And the list of suspects was awfully short.
A sudden angry knock rapped on the shop’s door. I jumped in fright, my mind whirring. It was too early for a customer, and the knock was too violent to be a welcome face. This was Breadknife and his goons, coming for the crystal they knew was here. What would he do when I told him it was missing? Burn the shop? Torture me to find out its location? Tell my daughter about me?
All three, perhaps?
My recently purchased backpack was in the corner of the room. I grabbed it and quickly threw the box inside. I grabbed some of the potions in reach, not knowing if I would be able to return here anytime soon.
Then I opened the lab door. Magnus stood outside, his head tilted quizzically. Miraculously, he wasn’t barking at the door. I grabbed his leash, and walked him to the bedroom. Silently, I unlocked the window and pried it open. It squeaked noisily and I winced. It was raining outside, and I hoped the steady pattering of raindrops would mask the shrill sound.
Another knock on the door, and Breadknife’s voice hollered, “Lou, open up!”
I took Magnus in my hands, and he tried to twist away.
“Stand still, boy,” I whispered. “We’re going for a walk.”
Going for a walk were words he definitely understood. He wagged his tail once and stopped twisting. I eased him out the window, and then crawled out as well. The bedroom window led to a small alley, around the corner from the front door.
Not daring to even try and get a glimpse of Breadknife and his goons, I ran silently in the other direction. Magnus trotted after me, pausing to pee and yelping when I pulled him onward before he was able to finish his business.
Three blocks away, I took out my phone and called Sinead.
“Wha?” she answered.
“Are you home?” I asked. “I need to see you, now.”
“I’m still at HHT. I slept on the table. I feel awful.”
“I’m on my way.” I hung up and began running again, with Magnus in tow.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Auntie Rosa is scared.
The words blossomed in my mind as I hurried down the streets of Boston, backpack on my shoulder, dragging Magnus after me. The rain pattered on my head, my shoulder, my face.
When I was six, my aunt was hospitalized. When I went with my mother to see her, she seemed strange. As if she were sleeping, but awake. She could hear us, occasionally nodded or glanced our way as Mom talked, but other than that, there was nothing. My aunt had always been a loud woman, quick to laugh. This dormant, dead-eyed thing frightened me, and I asked my mom what was wrong with her.
She had been medicated, my mom explained, to calm her down.
“Why?” I asked. As a child, why is the strongest word in your vocabulary. It can open doors, torrents of explanations, of ideas, of facts. It’s a word that keeps things going. A perpetual motion machine.
“Because she had a nervous breakdown,” my mom said after a long pause.
“What does that mean?”
“Auntie Rosa is scared, Lou.”
And that was the gist of it. Auntie Rosa was so frightened, she had to be medicated. She preferred to be this unresponsive, sleepy thing.
“Scared of what?”
“Of everything.”
It seemed so strange at the time, to think Rosa found the world such a scary place that she had to be sedated.
A few years later, the concept was not so alien. My second foster father had taught me that the world could be a scary place indeed.
And for a while, it was. Then, slowly, I began to take control of my life. I built something around me. I had a job, a store, some friends, a dog. A daughter I could catch a glimpse of every day.
Walking like a zombie, the sound of morning traffic loud in my ears, my head throbbing, I began to feel the fear crawling back. My phone rang, and I glanced at the display: ABC. Anthony Breadknife Cisternino. I didn’t answer the phone. I had left the window open after my escape. They would break into the shop, and see that the dog was gone, that the window was open. Would they realize I’d fled?
Of course they would. This was Breadknife.
Auntie Rosa is scared, Lou.
I was good at keeping fear at bay. Fear, used correctly, is a drive, propelling you forward. If you fear something, you do what you can to stay away from it, or to fight it. But what if you fear more than one thing?
Scared of what?