Nightwing (7 page)

Her friend the Chinese man had made Raven angry—very,
very
angry—and that frightened him. He’d seen Raven’s temper, though he couldn’t remember when. He thought it was in Egypt, a long time ago, but he wasn’t sure.

He had to find a way to warn Willie and Frank. Perhaps he could use the mirror. He hadn’t realized Willie could see him in it, or that he made a reflection, until she’d turned around and called him Dr. Raven.

He remembered he was a doctor, but he wasn’t Raven. The thing that had his body was Raven. He knew he was named for an old man he couldn’t remember, Jonathan William Edward Raven. His family and friends had called him something other than Jonathan; he just couldn’t remember what.

His mother had shown him his name in the family Bible. He couldn’t remember her face or how old he’d been at the time. He could only remember her soft voice, her lily-of-the-valley scent, the soft stroke of her fingers in his hair, and a dusty beam of sunlight glinting on the gold-edged pages of the thick, heavy Bible spread across her lap.

Last night he’d remembered she was dead, that she’d died a long time ago. He remembered visiting her grave in the Stonebridge churchyard, remembered throwing his arms around her headstone and howling with grief when he’d seen her name etched in the stone, eroded by time and weather:

Mary Rachel Elizabeth Kincaid Raven, Cherished Wife And Beloved Mother, Born March 17, 1824, Called Home To Heaven January 9,1879.

His mother had died of shock and grief five months after he’d been murdered in Egypt. He’d died in August of 1878, only he wasn’t dead. He knew that now, though he had no idea how. Raven was the one who was dead. He knew that, too, and it terrified him.

He heard Willie murmur in her sleep again, heard the quilts rustle around her. He crossed the dining room and stood behind the couch looking at her, saw her brow furrow in the pale moonlight pooling through the window facing the porch.

Last night he’d remembered Willie, too. Not as the grown woman she was now, but as the bright little girl she’d been with orange freckles and copper pigtails. She’d come in the summer when he did, with her brother, Whit, a surly boy with red-gold hair but no freckles. They would stay with the old woman who used to live in the house. Their grandmother. He remembered her, too, and realized she was dead now. He’d wept for her and for his mother, but mostly he’d wept for himself as he’d wandered the house remembering.

He used to trail Willie and Whit along the beach while they played pirates, paddled in the shallows, chased crabs along the dunes with sticks and hunted starfish in the tidal pools. He’d take off his boots, his socks and his vest and roll up his sleeves. He’d race across the beach with them and splash in the waves, savoring the feel of the wind in his hair and the wet sand squishing between his toes.

He’d kissed Willie once when a starfish stung her, gently on the tip of her pert little nose. He’d tasted sand and the salt in her tears, smiled as she’d sniffled and rubbed what must have felt like a tickle to her, then held his breath when she’d cocked her head to one side and squinted up at him. Could she see turn? Did she see him? He’d held himself perfectly still as she’d raised her nail-bitten, sand-caked fingers toward his face, but she’d patted the air a good six inches to the left of him.

The old woman had seen him before she’d gone away to the hospital in Boston to have the cataracts taken off her eyes. She’d had lovely eyes, green as the sea on a still, cloudy day, until the lenses had thickened and turned her eyes filmy and dim. He’d come in the winter, several times, he thought, when the sea was gray and heavy and the shutters were fastened against the cold.

He’d come once at Christmas, when the tree was up and twinkling with lights in the living room, when the house smelled of holly and bayberry and cinnamon. The old woman was in the kitchen making jelly from cranberries she’d picked herself before the bog had frozen over. She’d seen him in a corner watching her, smiled and wiped the thick magnifying glass she needed to read labels on jars and cans and said, “Well, there you are, Johnny. I wondered if you’d gone for good this time. Come taste the jelly and tell me if it needs more sugar.”

Johnny. That was his name. That’s what his mother and the old woman named Betsy had called him. Johnny. Oh, God. Thank God, thank God. He felt almost whole knowing his name.

He remembered tasting the jelly. He hadn’t swallowed it because he couldn’t. The old woman, Betsy, had held up a spoonful. He’d touched his upper lip to the still-warm jelly and smacked his lips, silently, of course, for he could make no sound. Betsy had laughed, pleased, and talked to him while she filled blue half-pint jars with thick, red jelly.

She’d told him Whit was in law school and Willie was in college. On the dean’s list, she added proudly, and dating a boy her father didn’t like. Betsy told him Willie always dated boys her father didn’t like, that she’d told Whit Senior Willie did it
because
he didn’t like them. But did the jackass listen to her and keep his mouth shut? Hell, no.

The jackass had come while he was there—a big, handsome man with a ruddy face. He and his wife and Willie and Whit had come to spend Christmas with Betsy. He didn’t like Betsy and he didn’t like the house. Johnny had followed him everywhere, making him start nervously and look behind him. He and Betsy had laughed about it afterward.

He couldn’t remember his own grandmother, but he remembered Willie’s. He remembered, too, how much he’d loved her. So much that he’d wept when Betsy came back from Boston and couldn’t see him anymore. She’d tried to find him, kept talking to him and looking for him in shadowy corners and on moonlit nights on the beach. He’d tried everything he could think of to make Betsy see him; he’d stood in bright lights and waved his arms, but he hadn’t known about mirrors then and neither had Betsy.

He missed her so much his throat clenched as he sank to his knees—his forearms folded on the back of the couch, his chin on his wrists—and gazed at Willie. She made a soft little snort in her sleep that made him smile, rolled her head away on the pillow and flung one arm over her head.

The movement caused the front of her pajama top to gape, giving him a moon-silvered glimpse of soft, sweet curves. He ached to touch her, to feel flesh warmed by a beating heart. She looked so lovely and so vulnerable. And no match for Raven.

He could leave if he wanted. He wasn’t tied to this place. For the time he spent here, his will was his own. He knew that, though he didn’t know how. He’d fled Raven before, though he couldn’t remember where he’d gone or when. He could only remember that Raven had pursued him and that Raven had been angry. Very,
very
angry.

If he thought Raven would follow him without wreaking vengeance on Willie first, he’d run as far and as fast as he could from Stonebridge. But Raven’s temper was too capricious, too swift and too terrible to even think about doing that.

It was best if he stayed. Better yet if he found a way to warn Willie. He had no idea how, but he’d think of something. In the meantime, he’d protect her from Raven.

Somehow. Some way. God willing.

Chapter 7

Willie thought she was still dreaming when she woke up rubbing her nose, but she wasn’t a little girl crying on the beach because a starfish had stung her. She was sprawled on the couch in the living room, a calico tail twitching in her face, her neck scrunched beneath the purring weight on her head. The oldest wake-up-and-feed-me cat trick in the book.

“Get off, goofy,” she mumbled, giving Callie a poke.

The cat stretched onto Willie’s chest, giving her a faceful of bony little behind. Willie swept her onto the floor and struggled up on her elbows, blinking and spitting cat hair.

Bright morning sun flooded the porch and slanted through the windows in broad, dusty beams across the floor. Willie yawned, scratched her head and saw that her left foot was on the floor and her right was still propped on the doubled-up pillow.

She pushed herself all the way up, wincing in anticipation, but felt only a twinge of stiffness as she lifted her ankle off the pillow. It took most of her weight when she swung it to the floor and stood.

“Look, Ma, no hands,” she said, flinging her arms out.

Callie sat on the coffee table looking at her nonplussed, then jumped down and trotted ahead of Willie as she made her way into the kitchen. Getting there and into the bathroom wasn’t half bad. There was no pain, only weakness in her ankle, and the swelling was nearly gone. The bone was sore, and so was her fanny—Willie felt the bruises there—but on the whole she felt great. Raven was some kind of doctor.

The microwave said it was 7:32. Callie said feed me, meowing petulantly around Willie’s legs when she came out of the bathroom. Willie gave her half a can of tuna with fresh water, made coffee and headed for the stairs.

Here was the real test, of her nerves as well as her ankle. Willie took a deep breath, wrapped her hand around the banister and started upstairs. She made it without two-footing a single step or seeing anything that wasn’t supposed to be there. On purpose, she took a long time brushing her hair at the mirror, but no apparitions appeared in the glass.

Willie wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. Whatever she’d seen was gone now, but not forgotten. It was time to investigate. Beaches first. Dr. Jonathan Raven second, and third, if necessary, her sanity.

She hadn’t gone ballistic when the first certified letter from Raven’s attorney in Boston had arrived; she’d called Whit, then she’d gone straight to the county clerk’s office, where Nancy Crocker had told her about Horace Raven and his will.

“Near as I can figure,” she’d said, “Dr. Raven’s from the branch of the family who moved down Boston way when the whaling gave out. Might have been another doctor in the family, but I b’lieve it was quite a while ago.”

Willie hadn’t dug any further, but she was going to now. First in a bottom drawer for the ankle brace left over from her tennis-playing days in college. She put it on with white Reeboks to give her ankle maximum support. Then she put on khaki shorts and a tropical-print blouse. Next she went down on her hands and knees and looked under the bed and behind the furniture.

She searched the closet and the baseboards for wires, mirrors, cameras—anything Raven could have used to project a hologram. Then she searched the rest of the house, even the circuit box, though she was sure if Jim and the boys had found anything funny in the wiring they would have told her. She found nothing. Which was exactly what she’d expected.

On her way to the kitchen, Willie shut off the air conditioner and opened the French doors. Probably not bright economically, but living in New York had given her a bellyful of artificial environments. Willie liked fresh air, even muggy, you’ll-be-sorry-later fresh air.

While she drank her first cup of coffee, she fried link sausages in a cast-iron skillet and wondered about the man in the knee boots and breeches. If she hadn’t imagined him, if he wasn’t her pirate or a hologram, then what was he? And what was the silvery shimmer she’d seen beside her bed?

Willie frowned, mixed pancakes and poured the first batch. She was just wondering if maybe she should have her eyes checked when Frank came through the French doors.

“How come you’re not flat on your back where I left you?”

‘“Cause my ankle feels great.” Willie turned away from the counter. “So great I’m making you breakfast.”

“Lemme see.”

Willie kicked off her shoe, peeled off her sock and the brace and stuck out her foot. Frank cupped her heel in his hand and turned her foot gently from side to side. She felt only a twinge, and gave Frank a see-I-told-you-so smile as he glanced up at her with a raised eyebrow.

“You s’pose Raven’s a witch doctor?” he asked.

He was kidding, but Willie wondered, even though she laughed as she put the brace and her sock and shoe back on. She was not hysterical; she’d never been hysterical. She’d seen something in the mirror. She just couldn’t explain it. Not yet.

While Willie flipped the pancakes onto a plate with the sausages and covered it with a towel, Frank warmed the syrup, and then followed her onto the terrace with plates and silverware. An already-hot wind snapped the yellow umbrella he opened to protect the pancakes from the gulls.

They came every morning from the beach to horn in on the grackles and blue jays that pecked out their breakfast on the back lawn beneath Granma’s fruit frees. While Frank and Willie ate, Callie stalked the birds, her ears flat and her tail twitching. The birds ignored her.

“The feathers are gonna fly here in a minute,” Frank predicted in a low voice.

“Not a chance. The gulls will run her off.”

“Y’know, Will, Callie looks a lot like ol’ Patches. Now, there was a gull killer. Sic ‘em, Callie.” Frank leaned forward in his chair, elbows bent on his knees. “They shit on my car every time I wash it.”

“That’s what birds do, Frank. Don’t encourage her.” Willie stacked the sticky plates and picked up her coffee. “If she gets one, I’ll just have to take it away from her.”

“It’s instinct, Will. Let her hunt.”

“I’ll let her hunt. I just won’t let her strew bones and feathers all over the house.”

“Killjoy.”

Callie dug in her back claws and launched her attack on a fat gull grooming its wing feathers, just as a huge black crow came swooping in for a landing. The jays, gulls and grackles took off in a flurry. So did Callie, streaking back to the terrace to hide under Willie’s chair.

“Some gull killer you are,” Frank said, leaning over the arm of his chair to frown at the cat.

Callie blinked up at him and meowed, her ears flat and her tail bristling. The crow gave a raucous caw and flapped up into the peach tree. The flock came back, brazen gulls and grackles first, then the blue jays.

“That’s the biggest crow I’ve ever seen,” Willie said, watching the huge black bird fold its wings on one of the lower branches and cock its head at her.

“It’s not a crow. It’s a raven.”

“How can you tell?”