The Conjuring Glass (2 page)

I could have my pick
, Penny thought wistfully.
Anything but this
.

The bus followed Dogwood’s short Main Street and turned with it in front of an elderly looking school building. Then it was gone.

“Stuck here now,” Penny whispered, feeling small and lost. Moisture stung the corner of her eyes and she wiped them away before Miss Riggs, or the growing number of gawkers gathering at porches and storefronts, could see her tears.

“What?” Miss Riggs regarded Penny again with those sharp, hawkish eyes.

“Nothing,” Penny said, and followed her to a rundown white VW Bug sitting alone at the curb a block away.

The woman arrived at her car a block ahead of Penny, and stood holding the passenger door open, tapping her foot impatiently.

Penny controlled the impulse to turn and run the other direction, all the way back to San Francisco if she could manage it, and walked a little quicker, sliding into the back seat of the Bug and cringing as Miss Riggs closed the door behind her.

“Little Red,” Miss Riggs said unexpectedly, startling Penny from her thoughts.

“Huh? What?”

Miss Riggs did her sigh again, it was a sound Penny was learning to loath, at once theatric and weary, and shot Penny a cross look through her rearview mirror.
I don’t know why I even bother trying
, her expression said.

“Susan says your nickname is Little Red.”

Penny nodded, surprised, and a little irritated. Little Red was her mom’s nickname for her, and no one else ever used it. She didn’t even know anyone else knew about it.

Penny was born prematurely, and had been small all her life. Her mom called her petite, which didn’t sound like a bad thing to her. The kids at the group home called her pipsqueak, runty, or the ginger hobbit.

Little Red had always been just between Penny and her mom, and coming from Miss Riggs’ mouth, it sounded more like an insult.

“I can’t hear you nod, you know,” Miss Riggs snapped, though she could obviously see her in the mirror. “The polite response would have been ‘Yes, Miss Riggs.’ A little elaboration would have been nice as well, since I’m
attempting
to get to know you.”

Penny bit her lips, cutting off the first reply that came to mind, and forced as polite a response as she could manage once her anger began to ebb.

“Yes, Miss Riggs, my mom called me Little Red. I don’t like other people doing it though.” She ended on a sharper note than she’d intended, and decided to keep her mouth shut from then on before she got herself into trouble.

The silence held for a few minutes before Miss Riggs broke it again. “Susan is anxious to see you. She jumped through a number of hoops to get you out of that orphanage, you know.”

All feigned friendliness had left her voice. It was dust-dry and sharp as a whipcrack.

“She didn’t have to,” the woman was quick to add. “She agreed to be your godmother when you were a baby, but she doesn’t even know you.”

Penny bit her lips again. She didn’t trust her mouth at that moment.

“Susan is generous to a fault, and there never has been a shortage of people willing to take advantage of it.”

Penny could hold her tongue no longer.

“I didn’t want to come here,” Penny shouted. “I didn’t ask for my mom to die, and I didn’t ask for anyone’s help!”

Penny took a savage satisfaction in Miss Riggs’ stunned expression. Her eyes were open so wide it looked like they might fall out of their sockets. Her mouth stretched so tight it almost vanished.

Penny knew she should stop, she was probably already in trouble, but she couldn’t. The words kept flowing, bitter water from a broken dam.

“Who are you anyway? If Susan is so anxious to see me, why didn’t she come get me? Why did she send you?”

For several tense seconds Miss Riggs offered no reply. There was no sound at all except the unhealthy-sounding rattle of the old VW Bug as it sped over rough country pavement.

Penny turned away from the pinched face reflected in the rearview mirror, two conflicting emotions battling in her head, making her want to scream. She was ashamed at her outburst; she didn’t like other people seeing her lose control. But a deeper part of her relished the shocked expression on Miss Riggs’ face and was not a bit sorry.

Penny watched the field outside her window. The orange dusk had deepened to a violet twilight. Downtown Dogwood was at her back now, though she could still see the school building when she craned her neck to look back. She hoped the ride would end soon.

“I am Susan’s sister. Her older sister,” she said, regaining her calm, if disdainful, tone. “Though she so seldom chooses to take my advice that it hardly matters.”

“The reason I was blessed with the thankless chore of fetching you from the arms of orphanhood,” she continued in that same dry, hateful tone, “was because she had to work today. Since I did not, she took advantage of my
very limited
generosity.”

The car slowed, and for a moment, Penny thought the woman was going to stop and let her out right there, in the middle of nowhere. Instead, they turned a sharp left at a sign that read Clover Hill Lane and started up a steep gravel path. Penny ignored the pinched and frowning face in the rearview mirror and peered through the windshield, straining at her seat belt to see the climbing road.

Something red and furry leapt from the grass, landing on four legs in the center of the gravel road. It paused there as the twin beams of the car’s headlights fell over it, and turned to face them.

“Look out!” Penny said, but Miss Riggs ignored her and drove on. Penny clamped her eyes shut, not wanting to see what would happen next, waiting for the fatal thump as the little car’s bumper hit the animal, but the thump did not come. She opened her eyes again and spun in her seat, scanning the road behind them. The angry red glow of the car’s rear lights revealed nothing. No dead or injured animal lay in the dust and gravel. No live animal sprang back into the grass to escape them.

Penny faced forward again, her heart still racing a little, and the house at the top of Clover Hill came into view.

Susan

To Penny, who had only ever lived in apartments in San Francisco, the house on the hill looked like a mansion. It was two stories tall, topped by a peaked attic that towered above everything and regarded the wild countryside with a single round window like an eye.

Penny wondered how far she’d be able to see from that window. Their apartment in the city was on the ninth floor, but in a place where every building is tall, you can never see far. Penny determined to make an exploration into the attic, if just for the view.

She wondered if her mom, who had apparently grown up in this town, had ever viewed this same countryside from such a high place. As always, the thought of her mom brought her tears back to the surface, dousing her natural curiosity with grief.

Miss Riggs pulled parallel to a stone pathway that ran through a slightly overgrown lawn to the house’s front porch, and Penny grabbed her bag, pushing the door open and sliding out onto the dusty driveway.

The Bug was in motion again almost immediately, giving Penny barely enough time to shut the door and jump back a step. With a single, quick wink of her brake lights, Miss Riggs descended the winding driveway, and was gone.

Penny lingered for a moment on the first stone of a path through the grass, taking a longer, more thorough look at the house. Absorbing the sense of this strange new place that was now, for good or bad, her home.

It was well aged, if not neglected, its dull white paint peeling in a few places. Shuttered windows were open on the ground floor, their curtains fluttering in the evening breeze. A light shone from one of the second
‐
floor rooms, and Penny saw the silhouette of a woman through the drawn curtains. Then the shape moved away, and for a moment Penny felt very alone.

Penny shifted her view upward and regarded the dark attic window. It really did look like an eye, she thought, dark and watchful. It felt as if someone was watching her from that high window. Watching and waiting.

Penny shivered, but the sudden chill came from a gust of cool wind blowing over the hill, not fright. A year ago, that watchful attic window and the unknown darkness behind it would have frightened her a bit, but not now. She had changed a lot in the last four months, she realized. There was no fear, but her curiosity came back strong. She wanted to look down on the world from that high, dark place.

It crossed her mind that this curiosity was a bit morbid, but Penny decided she didn’t care. She was allowed to have a few morbid thoughts.

Adjusting her view to the front door, Penny started down the walkway, toward a porch that spanned the entire width of the house, and two tall hedges that framed the steps. A porch swing swayed silently in the breeze, and wind chimes hung by the front door tinkled a discordant melody. The steps creaked beneath her as she climbed them.

Then she stood, bag in hand, facing a closed door that was far scarier than any dark attic could ever be. She felt more alone than ever, standing at the dividing line between her old life, and a new, unimaginable one.

The tears she’d fought hard against all day finally came.

Footsteps sounded from the other side of the door, and before Penny could lift a hand to wipe away her tears, it opened.

For a long moment they only stood and faced each other—Penny outside with the troubled ghost of her old life lingering at her heels—and the woman, her mom’s childhood friend, staring down in such stunned amazement that Penny was afraid she’d simply tell her to go away and slam the door in her face.

Would Miss Riggs have left her at the wrong house just out of spite?

Then the woman smiled and spoke.

“You look so much like her. It’s good to see you again, Penny. I’m Susan. Susan Taylor.” She held out a welcoming hand. “Come in.”

Penny did not take the offered hand, but she did step inside, and the caged feeling she feared did not come when Susan closed the door behind her. This place was not like the group home. This place was a real home.

She felt a peace in this house, and a strange familiarity—as if she had many pleasant, but forgotten, memories of it.

“She never came back to visit after the two of you left,” Susan said, stirring sugar into a mug of heavily creamed coffee. “But she wrote a few times a month.”

“Can I have a cup?”

Susan gave her an uncertain look. “Aren’t you a little young?”

Penny only shrugged. Coffee was a newly acquired taste for her, one she’d picked up in the group home. After a week’s worth of sleepless nights in a strange bed, she’d gone through her lessons in a constant state of exhaustion. She’d started drinking coffee to stay awake during classes, and had grown to like the taste.

After a moment’s consideration, Susan fetched another cup. “Cream or sugar?”

Penny shook her head, and accepted the mug with a word of thanks.

“No problem, kiddo.” Susan resumed her seat across from Penny.

“How long were you friends?” Penny spoke more to fill the silence than any desire for Susan’s childhood stories, though she was anxious to hear more about the past her mom never shared with her. She had heard her mom mention Susan’s name more than once, but there was nothing in those passing referrals to suggest their friendship was anything more than casual.

“Since before we started school,” Susan said. “We were best friends until she moved away.”

Something new occurred to Penny, a line of thinking she’d given up long ago. Her mom’s life before Penny was an untouchable subject in their home, everything from her long-past childhood to Penny’s absent father. All she had known before the caseworker found Susan, Penny’s unknown godmother, was that her mom came from a small town, and that Penny’s grandparents had died before she was born.

She knew nothing about her father. The only evidence she had that the man had even existed was a single, grainy picture scavenged from an old photo album. Her caseworker could find out nothing about him. His name was even missing from her birth certificate.

Penny wondered just how much Susan did know, and how much of her knowledge she’d be willing to share.

“Penny?”

Susan’s voice startled her, and Penny realized she had been on the verge of sleep, despite the coffee.

“Sorry, I’m just a little tired.”

Susan drained her coffee mug in one long gulp, then stood and scooped up Penny’s bag. “There’s a room for you upstairs.”

Penny resisted the urge to grab her bag from Susan’s hand. She’d learned to guard her possessions jealously at the group home, even viciously when necessary. But she reminded herself that this woman was neither a bully nor a thief. For now, unless Susan gave her reason not to, Penny would try to trust her.

Their footsteps echoed up the staircase. A few portraits hung from wood plank walls on the landing, but the single bulb light fixture hanging high above offered too little light to make the faces out.

The second
‐
floor hallway was long and narrow, with a window at the far end looking out on the night. There were three doors, evenly spaced, on each side.

“Five rooms and a bathroom up here,” Susan informed her. She pointed to the far room on the right. “That’s my room, if you need me. The bathroom is behind us on the right.”

“Where do I sleep?”

Susan stopped halfway down the hall, and pulled a rope hanging from the ceiling. The creek of old springs sounded, and a sliding ladder descended from the attic door above them.

Penny followed her up the ladder, emerging into darkness, then blinked as light assaulted her eyes. When she could see again, she was surprised into a smile, her first in many days.

The dust of empty years covered every surface of the attic, but other than that, it was not what Penny had imagined. Not a cluttered graveyard of dusty old furniture, cardboard boxes, and castaway cloths.

“Nice,” Penny said, and she meant it. She climbed the last few steps into a fully furnished and decorated bedroom. “I like it.”