Something Magic This Way Comes (35 page)

But the sound of Jane’s voice echoed through Elise’s phone. Her mother must have reached the lobby.

I checked the charms placed around the windows, wondering how long they would offer protection. A few days, perhaps, now that the shadows had found me.

I found a bag of miniature marshmallows, which I softened in the microwave and dropped into the chocolate.

Elise talked into the phone.

“I’m okay, Mommy. Yes. The man upstairs. Mr. Smith. I’ll wait for you.”

She hung up and sipped her chocolate, then wiped her mouth daintily with the napkin. “Will they be back?”

“Not tonight.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Possibly. But we’re safe for now.”

“Meaning not for always?”

I looked at her, trying to find the light that had surrounded her in the alley. But in the incandescent bulbs of the apartment, she looked as mortal as anyone else. Rather thin. And perhaps a bit pale, but that was understandable. “You’ll be fine, once I move away.”

“Where are you going?”

“To another city. Maybe another country.”

“Will they still find you?”

“Yes. I’ll just move again. I’ve done it many times.”

“What are they?”

What to say? How much to reveal to this child with green eyes and a secret name? Perhaps she had faerie blood in her from some long-ago ancestor. It wasn’t unheard of, as I very well knew.

“I call them the Old Ones. They have other names. They’re one of the
tuatha
, which is an ancient word for tribe.”

“Tribes? Like the Native Americans my teacher told me about?”

“Sort of.”

“Is there more than one tribe?”

I glanced at the shelves around the room, crammed with books and journals and maps, every bit of research and detritus I had collected in order to find the tribes who practiced peace and love and beauty.

“Once there were many. A very long time ago.”

“But not any more?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What happened to them?”

I pressed my fingers against the heat of my untasted mug of chocolate. “They died.”

“How come?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Were they bad, too?”

“No. They weren’t.”

“Why are these Old Ones after you?”

“They want me to play music for them.”

She pointed at the Steinway. “Is that your piano?”

“Yes.”

“Will you play for me?”

Normally, I would have refused. But it had been years—years!—since I’d played for an audience. None of my lovers had ever heard me play, though all of them had pleaded and teased. None of my neighbors, either, for I soundproofed my walls and closed the windows and placed the charms of silencing.

And none of my people. Not since that terrible war, when I’d realized the horror of my gift and fled, burying myself among mortals, denying myself immortality, suffering the misfortunes only mortals can suffer.

I sat at the Steinway Grand, pushing my tuxedo tails out of the way and poising my right foot over the damper pedal, the left over the
una corda
.

My fingers pressed into the opening notes. The Steinway returned rich tones as I played
legatissimo
, blending one note into the other like pulling a bow on a cello.

War, violence. I knew Liszt didn’t intend that. The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was a piece of joy, a delight of the composer with his country’s native songs.

I moved into the
friska
, struggling to keep my fingers gentle. The tremendous speed of the piece offered me no challenge. The lightness terrified me. A trickle of sweat loosed itself from my scalp and rolled past my ear. Under my hands, the Rhapsody became a eulogy to war, an ode to bloodshed.

But Elise felt none of my angst. When I was done, she clapped with delight. “That’s the clown music!”

“What?”

“That’s what they always play at the circus when the clowns come out.”

I looked at her. “I’ve never been to the circus. I don’t know how to play for clowns.”

“You’ll have to go, then.”

“It won’t help. I know only how to play war music.”

“I bet it will. Haven’t you heard about the kittens?”

“What kittens?”

“The ones in the experiment. They grew up where everything had lines that only went from side to side. The ones like the mountains against the sky.”

“Horizontal.”

“Yes! The kittens had to live like that for weeks. Then the scientists put them in a regular room. Guess what happened?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“They ran into everything that went up and down. They couldn’t see the watchacallem lines.”

“The vertical.”

“Right. They could only see what they were used to seeing.”

My hands played the opening notes of the
friska
.

Could one learn to
think
vertically?

Someone pounded on the door. “Elise! Elise!”

I pushed back the piano bench, walked across the polished floor and opened the door.

She
stood in the hallway.

My blood ran hot, then cold, and I staggered against the wall.

I knew why the shadows had come.

* * *

Jane didn’t recognize me, of course.

Her red hair was shorter than I recalled. Faint lines tracked the skin at the edges of her eyes and mouth.

Her eyes held a new stillness. But her features were as fine as in my memories of her, her skin like the petals of an ivory orchid.

I’d made love to her on a night long ago. Duty had driven me forth to sire a half-mortal child and deliver it to the warring tribe of Faerie.

But I had fallen in love with Jane even as I convinced her to love me.

After our single night together, I’d stolen her memories and fled, putting as much distance between us as I could. When the Old Ones came after me, I didn’t want them to find her.

Deliver a child to war and darkness for all eternity?

What father could do that to the child of the woman he loved?

I abdicated my role as war minstrel. Defected to the world of mortals, leaving both love and hatred behind.

But Beethoven had been playing on the radio that night.
Für Elise
. I’d commented on it, whispered the name in her ear. She must have held that one memory against everything else and named the child Elise.

Now she barely gave me a glance before pushing past me into the apartment.

“Elise!”

Her voice was sharper than I remembered. What had become of my once-joyous Jane? Had my betrayal, still buried deep in her psyche, taken the heights from her?

Had I taught her to think horizontally?

Or was I giving myself too much credit?

My gaze drank in the graceful fall of her feet, the stir of her hair at the nape of her ivory neck, her straight, taut back.

A glimpse of gold at her throat showed me she still wore the necklace I’d left with her.

Oh, God. Jane.

Elise ran to her. “Mother!”

“Baby, why’d you leave me?” Jane set the girl away from her and frowned. “What made you go outside?”

“When I went through the lobby I heard music from outside. It was very pretty.”

Jane took Elise’s hand and faced me. “She’s always been like that. Can’t say no to any kind of song. The wind. The birds. Thank you so much for taking care of her.”

“My pleasure.”

Elise stopped at the door and tugged on her mother’s hand. “Mr. Smith, will you teach me to play the piano?”

* * *

That night I poured myself a giant snifter of brandy and prowled the apartment. I was surrounded by the flotsam of a life lived through possessions because I could allow myself nothing else. Persian rugs on the floor, Rembrandts on the wall. Wedgwood crystal and pewter plates and Chinese porcelain. The Steinway. I took them with me every time I fled, leaving behind friends and lovers.

I brushed my hands along the keys in the upper register, creating a delicate tinkle that wafted through the four-room suite.

Clowns. Despite the soreness of my heart, despite the longing for Jane that had arisen again when she stood at my door, I almost laughed.

Liszt, you rascal. How had I not managed to find your humor before? It was there in the tripping grace notes, the marked accents, the rapid staccato. You’d even written it in one place.
Piano scherzando
.

Tentatively, I played the opening measures of the
friska
. But the notes were weak rather than graceful, pale instead of sweet.

Commanding myself to be patient, I moved my hands to the bass keys, shaped my fingers for A-minor. I played the scale in the Russian pattern, and then the cadences, building myself for the composition I had begun after I left Jane.

My Opus No. 1.

Jane, Jane.

A-minor wouldn’t serve me. The melancholy notes moved past sorrow and into something darker. Suddenly I was playing a Requiem. Mozart’s, arranged for piano.

I slammed my hands on the keys, drawing forth a discordant sound, bringing a bitter, warmonger’s smile to my face. Another chord, and another, and a shape began to take form. Black shadows stretched across a battlefield. Bodies crumpled everywhere, bearing stricken faces, horrified eyes, and terrible, terrible wounds plucked at by carrion crows.

I pushed myself away from the Steinway and buried my face in my hands.

I had been raised to inspire the troops. To turn idle thoughts to war. To harden hearts and sharpen blades and strengthen fists. In the darkness of the Old Ones, I labored like Vulcan at his forge.

Seeding black flowers of war, blooms of disease, whole forests of misunderstanding.

But then I’d been sent forth to create a child. A child with my gift for music, but whose genes would add a mortal flair. After all, who better to compose the music of death than those who must—by their nature—die?

I tossed down the rest of the brandy and resumed my prowling. Outside, the shadows retreated. Waiting.

Gathering strength.

The Old Ones were on my trail, and for the first time in eight and a half years, I thought they might get me.

I drank more. I plunged into the kind of stupor I had not visited since I left Jane.

But through that stupor, one thought chased me like a hound of hell, demanding that I turn and face it, deal with it, live or die with it.

I was the only one who could save Elise.

* * *

Sunshine poured through the south-facing windows of my apartment.

The hammering of my heart separated itself from the beating in my head and revealed itself to be the sound of someone pounding at the door.

I rolled over, dragged myself to my knees.

The knocking continued. “Mr. Smith?”

“I’m coming, dammit.” I found the couch, hauled myself upright, and staggered to the door.

Jane wore blue jeans and a black turtleneck and a determined expression.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, no, I was just—” I waved a hand airily toward the piano, “composing. Come in.”

I pointed her toward a chair near the windows, where the sunshine could lie at her feet. I scooped up the brandy snifter and hurried into the kitchen.

“Coffee?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Smith. It’s about Elise.”

Her tone warned me that I might not like what followed. Abandoning my own need for coffee, I took a chair across from her. “She’s a lovely girl.”

“She is. Talented. Smart. And—” Her eyes finally met mine. “And she’s dying.”

“Dear God.”

“She’s in the hospital. She’s been sick for months. Early this morning she collapsed. Last night’s excitement was too much for her.”

“But there must be something they can do!”

“They’ve tried everything.”

Jane must have seen the horror on my face. Where I should have been comforting her, she suddenly reached across and took my hand. “She has time, still. Months! Perhaps as much as two years.”

* * *

After Jane left, I found the footprint in the magic dust I’d scattered on my balcony. Leaning over, I saw the same immense prints on the faerie dust sprinkling Elise’s balcony. In front of each pad, a deep impression of a claw.

The Old Ones had no need to rip me into pieces like Orpheus mourning his Eurydice. They’d done a much more exquisite job by luring Elise into my path and then ensuring I would never see her grow. They were the cause of Elise’s cancer.
They
were the bad thing in her blood.

There were two ways to save her. Send her into Faerie, where her disease would stop its fatal destruction.

Cure her by letting them take her into the darkness, as Hades took Eurydice.

Or I could bargain with them. Go in Elise’s stead.

Once they had me, they would make me play again.

And there would be war.

* * *

In the late afternoon, Elise came home.

I stood at my window and watched Jane wheel her from the taxi into the apartment building. I watched to make sure no shadows leaped.

Just before she disappeared beneath the awning, she glanced up. She couldn’t see me, but she waved anyway. I clenched the curtain.

* * *

Later, I sat at the piano, frowning at the keys.

What arrogance, to think that I could escape my fate. That I was destined for good, rather than evil.

Did that make me evil, or merely Evil’s instrument?

I rose and drew on my coat, prepared to make the rounds yet again to see that my charms still held. If Elise had months—maybe years!—then I would make sure she got them. I didn’t dare leave her now. She was exposed, innocent, ripe for the taking. But I would give them a greater battle than they thought possible.

As I reached for the doorknob, I heard a tremendous crash in the hallway, followed by a scream.

I threw the door open and raced outside.

Jane lay huddled on the floor just outside the elevator.

Beside her, one of the immense black urns had shattered into pieces.

I hurried down to her, but as I neared, I drew back in horror.

She lay curled into herself. Still alive, her left hand clutching feebly at the rug, her right hand pressed to her throat. Blood seeped through her fingers. She looked at me with dull gray eyes.