MORTAL COILS (5 page)

The
kitchen door swung open a crack. Linda poked her head inside. “There you are,”
she said to Fiona. “Stuff’s piling up out here.” She flashed a not-so-friendly
smile, then vanished back to the dining room.

Fiona
undid her sopping apron, and underneath her dress was soaked and clinging to
her skin. She shivered.

The
kitchen door slammed open and Mike walked in, fuming. “Fiona, what—”

The
urgency in his face drained away as he looked her over. His eyes bore into her.

“I’m
going,” she said, and her gaze dropped to the floor. She instinctively hunched
over and folded her arms over her chest. Gooseflesh rippled over her body. “I
just finished the back room.”

“There’s
no rush.” Mike’s voice was calm, almost sweet now. He sidled closer. “I really
want you to think again about the hostess position. The hours are better. Pay’s
better, too.”

Fiona’s
cheeks burned and the hair on the back of her neck prickled.

“She
said she wasn’t interested,” Eliot said, and stepped in front of her. “How many
times does she have to say it?”

Fiona
saw he held the steel spatula, the sharp edge angled at Mike’s face.

Mike’s
smooth features rippled with emotion—amazement, anger— then settled into a
serious glare.

“Back
off, squirt. I’m talking to your sister.”

“Don’t,”
Fiona whispered so softly she barely heard herself.

Eliot
knuckles whitened around the spatula handle. He took a deep breath, then took
one step closer to Mike, who towered a foot over him.

“No,”
Eliot said. “You’re done talking.”

They
stared at each other for a long time, then Fiona couldn’t take it anymore. She
stood tall, moved next to her brother, and, although it took every ounce of her
nerve, locked gazes with Mike.

“I
said no once already,” Fiona said. “I meant it.”

Mike
took a step back. For a split second, it seemed he was almost scared . . . of
them both. He snorted. “Okay, whatever. Just get out there and get the tables
clean. We’ve got customers waiting.”

He
turned and stormed through the swinging kitchen door.

“Thanks,”
Fiona whispered to her brother.

Eliot,
trembling, said nothing and went back to the dishes.

Fiona
noticed her hands were balled into fists and she relaxed. She felt like
throwing up. She’d never stood up to anyone like that before. Neither of them
had. Maybe fifteen was going to be a more interesting year than she had
thought.

3

BROKEN
TEACUP

Eliot,
Fiona, and Great-Grandmother Cecilia sat at the dining room table. They all
pretended that nothing was happening . . . even though something most certainly
was.

The
sun was low in the sky and amber light filtered through lace curtains. The
polished wood of the table gleamed, and the white porcelain tea set was orange
in the twilight.

Fiona
had changed into her gray sweats after work and had her nose buried in Isaac
Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, working on tonight’s
essay.

Cee
squinted through her thick glasses as she wrote a letter to her cousin in
Bavaria, scratching out the words with a fountain pen.

Eliot
couldn’t focus. He kept replaying the confrontation with Mike in his head, and
adrenaline shot through his body as he imagined himself punching that creep in
the face.

Mike,
though, wasn’t the only factor that made work impossible tonight. There were
two other things.

Encyclopedias
lay opened before Eliot. He had been researching Newton’s mental breakdown in
1675, but much of the text had been crossed out with a black marker. Eliot
inferred these redacted passages dealt with Newton’s interest in alchemy.3

3.
To what extent Newton pursued alchemy is unknown as his notes on the subject
were destroyed in a laboratory fire. Although occult scholars claim he made
breakthroughs in this area that led to later discoveries in mathematics, no
evidence substantiates this nor any of the more fanciful legends of his
Faust-like bargains with higher powers.

Sometimes
seeing the zebra-striped pages made him so mad he wanted to throw the sullied
books across the room.

That
was Grandmother’s RULE 55 in action.

   
RULE 55: No books, comics, films, or other media of the science fiction,
fantasy, or horror genres—especially, but not limited to, the occult or
pseudosciences (alchemy, spirituality, numerology, etc.) or any ancient or
urban mythology.

Eliot
called this the “nothing made up” rule.

Grandmother
called the stuff “brain-rotting candy for simple minds.”

Honestly,
with all the juicy bits blacked out, how was he supposed to write a good essay?
At least she could have just drawn a line through the offending text, so he
could see what it was all about.

RULE
55 and Mike’s bullying, however, were part of the ordinary weirdness that was
his life. But the thing really bothering all of them tonight was not.

Grandmother
walked into the dining room from the kitchen. Her face was a mask of
concentration, and her gray eyes looked as if they were staring at something
miles away.

Her
usual graceful stride was tense, as if she were waiting for something to spring
from the shadows. But that was silly. Nothing ever scared Grandmother.

Still,
her mood was infectious, and Eliot felt the skin along his spine crawl.

Grandmother
stopped and cocked her head as if listening. She then smoothed both hands
through her short silver hair and said, “I’m going to check the basement and
side doors.”

This
was her evening security check of the building. It was part of her duties as
manager and perfectly normal. Telling them she was doing it, though, like a
warning, was not normal.

“Of
course,” Cee said. Her smile fluttered to life; she set her pen down and laid
her trembling hands together. “I was just going to pour the tea. Should we wait
for you?”

Chemical
analysis of Newton’s remains shows high levels of mercury, which may have been
caused by his alchemy experiments and may account for his aberrant behavior in
1675. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 3: The Pseudo
Sciences, 8th ed. (Zypheron Press Ltd.).

Grandmother
marched to the front door, her boots clipping over the hardwood.

“No,”
she called back. She opened the door, paused, and said, “Eliot, eyes back on
those books.”

Eliot
looked down immediately.

He
heard the door close and the dead bolt lock.

Nothing
scared Grandmother. Nothing. And the only other thing that ever put a dent in
her totally-in-control armor was when Eliot and Fiona asked about Mom and Dad.

Eliot
never thought of himself as an “orphan.” Orphans were kids like David
Copperfield who lived in state-run gulags. He and Fiona had family, a home, and
neither of them even remembered their mom or dad.

But
every time they asked, Grandmother would patiently explain that there had been
a terrible accident at sea. That it happened when Eliot and Fiona were babies.
Grandmother and Cecilia were the only close family, so naturally they took them
in. No, there were no pictures. Everything had been aboard the ship that sank.

Whenever
Grandmother told them this story, her smooth features scrunched together and
lines wrinkled her forehead—not so much in pain, but as if it were physically
exhausting for her to form the words.

But
that paled with whatever was getting to her tonight. The look Eliot had seen in
her eyes, well, the only word he could think of was sharp.

Fiona
looked up from her books at the same time as Eliot, and they glanced at each
other. She was thinking the same thing: something was wrong.

Eliot
shrugged. Fiona bit her lower lip.

Cecilia
took a jar from the tea set and measured out four spoonfuls—her own special
mixture of chamomile, stevia, and green tea—into a strainer. She set this over
the open teapot and poured steaming water through. The teapot had a spiderweb
etched into its white glaze.4

“Did
anything different happen today?” Cee asked nonchalantly. She handed Eliot his
cup.

4.
“Baba Jaga poured fouled river water, boiling hot, until it spilt from her
teapot. The stone pot was coarse and covered with web lace and venomous
spiders. ‘What are you making?’ the lost little girl asked, her eyes wide.
‘Tea, babushka.’ Baba Jaga smiled showing the points of her teeth. ‘Sweet tea
for my sweet morsel.’” Father Sildas Pious, Mythica Improbiba (translated
version), c. thirteenth century.

“What
makes you ask?” he said. Grandmother’s 106 rules had meticulously been
engineered to eradicate anything interesting, and therefore different, from
their lives.

Cee’s
smile vanished for a moment, but immediately came back. “No reason, darling.”
She handed Fiona a steaming cup. “Making conversation, that’s all.”

Every
night Cee asked, “How was work?” Or once in a great while, “Did you have a nice
day?” That was just making conversation. This wasn’t.

And
yet, something different had happened: the old man with his violin, then Fiona
and him actually standing up to Mike.

“Just
another day,” Fiona replied as she examined the leaves swirling in her cup.

Cee
nodded, accepting this, and drank her tea, one gulp, two, three, and it was
gone. That was the way she did it. The hotter the beverage, the faster she
seemed to drink.

Fiona
didn’t want to tell Cee, and Eliot felt the same way. Talking about their bully
boss would just upset her.

But
there was more to it than that. That moment when Eliot and Fiona had stood up
for themselves, they were a lot more than nearly fifteen-year-old geeks. They’d
been strong. And if they told anyone about it, maybe the magic of that instant
would vanish in a puff of smoke.

Eliot
took a sip of his tea. It was sweet. Bits of green-tea leaf whirled around like
stars in a galaxy.

Fiona
set her hand on his arm and nodded at Cecilia.

Their
great-grandmother sat transfixed staring into her empty teacup. Her hand
trembled violently and the cup slipped.

It
fell to the hardwood floor, bounced, and hit again—shattering.

“Oh,
dear,” Cee said, blinking. She rose from her chair. “What a butterfin—”

The
front door opened with such force that it slammed against the wall and shook a
cloud of dust off the nearby bookshelf.

Grandmother
stood silhouetted in the doorway, her long, slender arms hanging loosely at her
sides, hands open.

“Do
not move,” she said.

She
stepped into the light. Her face was cool and collected, but her gray eyes
darted back and forth surveying the room. “There are fragments everywhere. I
will get them.”

She
moved to the table and knelt, plucking up the largest shards. Bits of tea
leaves clung to the inner curves of the broken cup.

Oddly
Grandmother wasn’t just picking them up; in her left hand she cradled them,
assembling the base and part of the sides until she held a razor-sharp ceramic
lotus.