Shimmer: A Novel (8 page)

“Fallon Maguire,” Fallon said, stepping forward to offer her hand.

“Liana Walker,” the young woman said with a wide smile as she took Fallon’s hand in a dry, warm grip. Whereas Barrett’s skin had seemed to blur before Fallon’s eyes, Liana’s seemed almost feverish to the touch. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

Without releasing Fallon’s hand, Liana said, “Logan, is Fallon someone Ambrose should meet?”

Logan rolled his eyes. “Real subtle, sis,” he said as he shifted the backpacks on his shoulders. “But, yes, it’s fine. She knows.”

“Wonderful,” Liana said, descending the remaining step and taking Fallon’s other hand in hers as she gazed into Fallon’s eyes.
Intense,
Fallon thought.
Can’t say Logan didn’t warn me.
“What can she—? Oops, sorry, Fallon. Talking as if you’re not standing right here in front of me. What have you experienced in your life?”

“I—” Fallon’s jaw had become unhinged.

“Let’s save it for Ambrose,” Logan suggested. “And do this once.”

“Fair enough,” Liana said. “I am getting ahead of myself. Logan. How’s Barrett.”

“Smug as ever.”

“Besides that?”

“Sitting outside the house, waiting.”

“Stalking,” Fallon amended.

“If you want to get all technical about it,” Logan said. “But he’s not stalking your friend, he’s…”

“What? Stalking what?” Fallon asked.

“Logan’s right,” Liana said with a fragile smile. “Let’s do this once, with Ambrose. We may not have a lot of time.”

“Your family has a real flair for the dramatic,” Fallon said, but her stomach was starting to twist into knots. She had the sensation of standing over a trap door, waiting for it to fall away and drop her into the dark unknown. All that was missing was a hangman’s noose around her neck. But if she were to believe them—Logan, specifically—then it was Chelsea not Fallon herself who was in danger.
So why am I so nervous?

Liana led them back into the house, with Logan bringing up the rear and closing the door behind them. Fallon noticed boxes waiting to be unpacked scattered around the foyer, dining room, and living room before Liana steered them toward the downstairs office, also littered with boxes, dozens of them, brimming with old, leather-bound tomes. Of all the rooms she’d glimpsed since entering the old Kemper home, the downstairs office had the best furniture-to-packing-box ratio. Here there was a mahogany desk, three burgundy leather armchairs, and two towering bookshelves. Between the boxes of books, leaning against the desk, shelves, and walls, were several ornately framed paintings.
Nightmares captured on canvas,
she thought.

Before giving the dark collection the closer inspection it deserved, she turned her attention to the old man absently filing books on the shelves with a muttered commentary meant for his ears alone. His full head of hair and bushy eyebrows looked like wild tufts of cotton. He wore a rumpled dress shirt with a blue, checkered pattern tucked into equally rumpled khakis and, improbably, blue and white Nike running shoes.

“Ambrose,” Liana said. “We have company.”

“Company, you say?” Ambrose—Logan’s great grandfather—looked up, and blinked a few times as he focused on Fallon. “Ah, yes. But we haven’t met. I’m sure of it.” He placed the moldy old tome up on the nearest shelf, paying no mind to the location. “No, I would never forget such a lovely young woman.”

“Thanks,” Fallon said, feeling the first tinge of a blush creeping up her neck and cheeks.

He dusted his palms against his rumpled khakis before offering his hand. “I’m Ambrose,” he said. “Ambrose Walker. Delighted to make your acquaintance Miss…?”

“Maguire,” she said. “Fallon Maguire. I have English Lit with Logan.”

Ambrose clasped her hand in both of his. His palms were cool and soft with a texture that made her think of rice paper. Peering out of a prodigiously wrinkled face, his watery blue eyes seemed out of place. They were youthful and vibrant and ever so aware as he stared at her with unexpected intensity, almost as if he could judge her character with nothing more than focused concentration. He smiled and released her hand. “Welcome to our new home. Please excuse the clutter. We’re settling in.”

“My room’s much worse, and I’ve lived there for years,” Fallon said. She indicated the paintings propped up around the room. “But your taste in artwork is kinda… dark.”

Ambrose flicked a glance at Liana. “Hmm. So I’ve been told.”

Fallon approached a painting of a scarred landscape littered with fish heads, which had swarms of insects carrying what looked like gray, bloated organs. “This one looks like a Bosch.”

“Good eye,” Ambrose said, beaming.

Another painting, in the surrealist style, had a tall, grotesquely thin golden man, in the foreground of a barren landscape, facing a vibrant blue sky dotted with white, puffy clouds and circular holes which revealed other landscapes. One such hole spilled a stream of brackish green water and a mass of suckered tentacles. “And this one looks like a Dali,” Fallon said. She glanced at the others and shrugged. “Don’t recognize the others.”

“Bruegel, and Grunewald,” Ambrose said.

“They’re fine reproductions, except…”

“You think so?” Ambrose inquired playfully, one bushy eyebrow raised dramatically for effect.

She was missing something.
Inside joke maybe,
she thought. “I’ve never come across any of these particular works—the Bosch or the Dali, anyway—in any art books or online galleys. I’m sure I’ve never seen either of them before.”

“That’s because they’ve never been exhibited anywhere,” Ambrose said. “Not publicly.”

“But how…”

“Private collection.”

“Whose?”

Ambrose cleared his throat and spread his hands.

“Wait… They aren’t reproductions? They’re—originals? But that’s—they must be worth a fortune.”

“Possibly,” Ambrose said. “Probably. But I have no intention of selling them. They have sentimental value.”

“Wow,” Fallon said breathlessly. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then why not tell us why Logan brought you to us today?”

Logan cleared his throat. “She, um, mostly brought herself,” he said, then hefted the backpacks. “I’m just the pack mule.”

Ambrose chuckled and patted Fallon on the arm. “Ah! The take-charge type. Good. That will serve you well, Ms. Maguire.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Fallon said, grinning. “Logan was being chivalrous. And, please, call me Fallon.”

“If you’ll call me Ambrose,” he said and she nodded agreement. “You wish to learn more about yourself?”

Fallon nodded hesitantly. “I want to know what’s happening.”

“I sense layers within you, young lady,” Ambrose said. “More than you know.”

“That’s me, the Onion Queen,” she said dismissively.

Ambrose ignored the quip and raised his hands to either side of her head and then, almost as an afterthought, asked, “May I?”

Fallon looked from his left hand to his right and back again. “Depends,” she said. “What are you proposing?”

“He wants to perform a kind of psychic phrenology,” Liana provided. She crossed the room, sat in one of the burgundy armchairs, and folded her hands in her lap.

Fallon addressed Ambrose. “You want to be psychic friends?”

“Phrenology,” Ambrose said, hands still poised mid-air.

“He wants to read you,” Logan explained. “By feeling the shape of your skull.” He grinned wryly. “To see if you’re ripe.”

Fallon looked at Ambrose uncertainly. “I bet you’re giddy in the produce aisle.”

“I’m quite serious about this.”

“Will it hurt?”

“I’d be surprised if you experienced any pain.”

“Not quite the assurance I was hoping for,” Fallon said. “But… okay.”

“Thank you,” Ambrose said and gently placed his fingertips on either side of her scalp, just above her forehead.

“Wait,” Fallon said. “You don’t read minds, do you?”

“Certainly not through my fingertips,” Ambrose said. “Rest assured, there is nothing emotionally, physically, or psychically invasive about this… procedure.”

“Then… how does it work?”

“Wish I knew,” Ambrose admitted with a twinkle in his eye. “May I proceed?” She nodded. After taking a deep breath, Ambrose closed his eyes in concentration. Every few seconds he inched his fingers across her head, a fraction of an inch at a time, until they had crossed over the crown and descended to the nape of her neck. With a sigh, he dropped his hands to his sides, opened his eyes and leveled his watery blue gaze at her again. “Interesting,” he said softly. “Extremely interesting.”

Her scalp tingled. She resisted the urge to press her own palms against her head, but couldn’t suppress the shudder that rippled down her spine. “Care to share?”

He scratched the gray stubble on his jaw for a thoughtful few moments, then turned his gaze to Logan. “First, tell me the circumstances of your meeting.”

Logan mentioned that he’d sensed a connection with her across a crowded classroom and initiated contact. Fallon frowned at him, perturbed.
As if I’m an extraterrestrial life form.
She decided to interrupt. “I thought Logan looked familiar, but couldn’t figure out how or why. Later, I found his portrait in my dream journal. An image I drew two weeks ago. Two weeks before meeting him for the first time today.”

“Hmm,” Ambrose said. “Prescient dreaming. Go on.”

Logan snapped his fingers. “She said that Barrett looked strange.”

“Blurry,” Fallon corrected. “Hot… but blurry.”

“Well, the ‘hot’ part wasn’t germane,” Logan said, showing mild resentment.

“Depends on the context, hot shot,” she said, smiling. “And on who’s initiating contact.”

Ignoring their playful verbal jabs at each other, Ambrose nodded seriously. “A sensitive. I suspected as much. And yet, there is more. Much more.”

“More what?” Fallon asked.

“Potential.”

“Meaning, what? I have a very big head?”

“A most unusual head,” Ambrose said. “Not the outside, but what I sense within. Something special.” He turned to Logan. “She’s a wonderful find, Logan.”

“I’m eighteen,” Fallon said angrily. “Not some ancient artifact on display in a museum. Can you guys stop talking about me as if I weren’t here?”

“I’m sorry, Fallon,” Ambrose said graciously. “Please forgive us for being… unusual.
In umbra ambulamus
.”

“Run that by me again.”

“It’s Latin,” Logan explained. “He said, ‘We walk in shadows.’”

Ambrose deposited himself in the armchair beside Liana and beamed at Fallon. “
Ingenium ad magnitudinem habemus,
” he said, shaking his head in incredulity. “I say that a lot around here, but with you…”

Fallon frowned again. “This stuff is confusing enough in my native tongue. Could you…?” She turned to Logan for help.

“‘We have the capacity for greatness,’” Logan translated. “One of Ambrose’s short but sweet pep talks.”

Ambrose pointed at Fallon. “With you, my dear, it is
not
, as Logan says, a pep talk. It is, rather, a prediction. I sense two things about you, Fallon Maguire. First, that you are unbound. Second, that you may be a… catalyst for our kind.”

“What does that mean… exactly?” Fallon asked. Without realizing it, she had assumed a defensive posture, arms crossed, leaning back from the conversation. But she couldn’t decide if she was afraid to believe what the old man had to say, or more afraid not to believe him.
Maybe ignorance really is bliss,
she thought nervously. Battling her ambivalence, she placed her hands on her hips and hoped the not-so-subtle change in body language made her appear more self-assured… if she could somehow manage to stop nibbling at her lower lip for five consecutive seconds.
Note to self: forget career as professional poker player.

Ambrose steepled his fingers. “Let me ask you a question.”

“Sure,” Fallon said with a wry grin. “Why not?”

“Do you believe something extraordinary has happened?”

“Here?”

“With your dream journal?”

Fallon glanced at Logan, not for guidance or confirmation, but for assurance. Remembering the face she had drawn. The face she’d seen in one of her dreams. And now, looking at his face and making the mental side-by-side comparison. Slowly, she nodded. “Unusual.”

“Fair enough,” Ambrose said. “Can you rule out coincidence?”

“An impartial observer or—?”

“You,” Ambrose said quickly, interrupting. “In your mind. There are no impartial observers here.”

“No,” Fallon said. “Not coincidence. It’s more than that.”

“Good,” Ambrose said. “That is the first step. You see, Walkers don’t believe in coincidence.”

She flashed another look at Logan and smiled. “So I’ve heard.”

“Fallon, before you can accept,” he said, “you must believe.”

“What must I accept?”

“Your potential, of course,” Ambrose said. “I would be lying if I told you I knew what that potential was. I sense that it is there, that it is vast, but not what shape it may take.”

“You said I was unbound, and a catalyst,” Fallon reminded him. “That has to mean something.”

“Hmm,” Ambrose said as he looked off into the distance.

He’s hiding something,
Fallon realized.
But what? And why?

Liana spoke softly. “Tell her, Ambrose. The child has a right to know.”

“I’m not a child,” Fallon said defensively. She sighed.
So much for casual, self-assurance.
“Please. I mean, stop treating me like a child, okay? I want to know—I
need
to know what’s happening to me.”

Logan stepped forward. “It’s because her—”

Fallon grabbed his arm and glared a warning at him. “No, Logan. Don’t try to protect me. I’m not made of glass, okay?”
I’m not my mother.
“Just—let him speak.”

Ambrose nodded. “Unbound is how we speak of one of our kind who has no… limitations.”

“Somebody with potential.”

“Yes,” Ambrose said. “In the truest sense of the world. Has Logan told you he is a douser?”

Fallon nodded. “Yes. And that Barrett is hyperactive.”

“He has hyperacuity and hyperaesthesia,” Ambrose corrected. “These are abilities that manifest in our line. Paranormal talents, so to speak.”