Angelfire

ELEVEN

DOC

^“Got a minute?”

I looked up from the table where I was grinding herbs to paste and found Colleen in the doorway of the Preserve’s little apothecary shop. It seemed to me that I often saw Colleen in doorways, as if caught between coming and going. I gestured for her to come in.

She hesitated but entered, nodding to my two assistants, who variously filled containers with homemade remedies or folded bandages, some of which would accompany us on our westward journey, some of which would go to their own infirmary.

She came to stand close beside me, leaning as if to peer into my mortar, and said, “Can we talk someplace private?” “Certainly.”

I picked up the tray on which I worked and carried it to the back room, calling back over my shoulder for her to come help me. There was less light here, but it was private, as she had requested.

“Light me that lamp, please?” I nodded at an antique copper oil lamp that sat on a shelf across the room.

She fetched it without hesitation, lit it, and brought it to the counter where I had set my tray of herbs. She dipped her head toward the preparations, then wrinkled her nose. “What is that?”

“Wintergreen,” I said. “Good for rashes and abrasions. Is that what you came to ask of me so privately?”

“No. How’s the leg?”

“It will serve. Colleen, what is it?”

The room darkened, the oil lamp spat, and we breathed in harmony while she watched me play at being an herbalist. I did not prompt her again. She would speak in her own time.

Finally, she said, “I fell asleep, if you can believe it. Right after supper. Just now woke up.”

“It has been a draining day for everyone,” I said. It certainly had been that for me-and sobering. I glanced at her sharply. “You are not ill?”

“Huh? Oh… no. Nothing like that. It was just… I had a dream.”

“Yes?” I hoped it was nothing like my dreams.

“I dreamed of being cornered in that little cave in the mounds. It reminded me of something I’d forgotten.” I stopped crushing leaves and gave her my full attention. “I remembered what the tweak said just before the attack.”

“What he said? As I recall, he was barely coherent.” “He was coherent enough to know what changed him.” I shrugged. “The Source changed him, of course.” “No, not the Source. The tweak said, ‘He did this.’ ” “Did …?”

She put a hand on my arm and shook it. “Tweaked him. I thought he meant Cal at first, because he was looking into the cave when he said it, then I realized he was talking about Enid. I’d forgotten it until the dream put it back in my head.”

“Perhaps you dreamed that as well?”

“No, Doc. I didn’t dream that. I remembered it. Don’t you remember? ‘The music burns,’ he said.”

I struggled for memory. “Vaguely, I recall… You are saying…?”

The look in her eyes chilled me. “That Enid’s music does more than attract refugees.”

I watched Colleen pace the lounge. In the silence that always follows disclosure, six pairs of eyes followed her, only to drift away when the meaning had fully penetrated. All but mine.

Enid seemed to sink beneath the weight of the revelation. He was a deflated man, cornered, his eyes wary.

It was Mary who first looked his way. “Were you aware of this, Enid? That your music… had this effect?”

Colleen stopped pacing and made a gesture that brought to mind a scarecrow in a high wind. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know!”

“Colleen,” I said softly, and she moved away to a hearth-side chair, where she sat, folded up.

Mary seemed not to have noticed her. She moved to Enid and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Enid?”

He nodded, eyes still on the rug between his shoes. “I knew… I knew my music could do … stuff like that. I just didn’t know how bad the leak was.”

“The leak?” Cal repeated.

“Sometimes,” Magritte said softly, “neither of us is real strong. When he gets shaky, I hear the Storm. When I get shaky, there’s leaks.”

“We’ve seen no evidence of it here.”

“It don’t happen here. It happens out there.” Enid canted his head to the wall. “Everywhere I go, I leave a trail of tweaked shit. Mostly rocks and trees. Sometimes animals.”

“And people,” muttered Colleen under her breath. I think I may have been the only one to hear her.

“Tweaked trees,” repeated Goldie.

Enid glanced at him. “You seen ’em.”

Goldie nodded. “Uh, yeah, and followed them here. Wow.”

Enid looked as if he might cry or rage. “I swear to you all, I did not know about those people.”

Beside him, Magritte hovered solicitously, hands fluttering toward him like frightened birds. She was the only flare not sequestered in the caverns tonight. The others were weakened, and it was feared they might be able to hear the Source whisper to them even through the veil of music. Mary McCrae was taking no chances.

“How long?” asked Mary. “How long has it done this?” “Always,” Enid said. “Ever since the Storm. In here, I’m safe. And things are safe from me. That’s why I’ve stayed.” “But you went out time after time,” Mary said. “Why?” He looked up, finally meeting her gaze. “Because you

needed me to. I figured the good I did outweighed the bad.

If I didn’t have Magritte, it’d be worse.”

Mary shook her head. “Why, Enid? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You might not have let me go out. And you needed me to go out. They needed me to go out, the folks I’ve brought in. You gotta understand, Mary, I didn’t know about these guys Colleen’s talking about. I mean, I seen ’em. And I knew my music… did stuff. But I didn’t connect it all.” He closed his eyes, his face gray. “Shit, no, that’s not right. I just didn’t want to. Didn’t want to know.”

Beside the fire, Colleen made a soft sound that was either a moan or a growl.

“How did this happen?” Mary asked.

“Howard,” Goldie guessed.

“Howard,” Enid agreed. “I s’pose you could say I got some contractual difficulties.” He glanced over at Cal, eyes pleading. “I was hoping maybe you could help out, being a lawyer and all.”

Calvin stirred, a look of incredulity on his face. “You’re serious? A contract you signed with your manager is making your music… backfire? When Goldie said Magritte was protecting you from your manager, I had something a little more… physical in mind.”

Enid sighed. It was a sound that seemed to come up from the pit of his soul. “When I was hungry, barely scraping by on gig money, Howard and I made a gentleman’s agreement. Handshake deal. He did real well by me-got me choice gigs. Great gigs. I played at Legends, man- Buddy Guy’s club. This was no small shit. He got me seen by people-the right people. So, I signed an exclusive with him. He got me a recording deal with an outfit called Primal Records. Also exclusive. I gig when Howard says ‘gig,’ and if Howard doesn’t say ‘gig,’ I don’t. You follow? According to the contract, if I play without his say-so, there’s repercussions.”

He laid a subtle stress on that last word, and I could not help but think what a strange word it was, at once bland and full of threat. And, in this case, most descriptive. I could almost see the twisted consequences of Enid’s art ricocheting through an equally twisted reality, finding circuitous paths to unexpected victims.

Repercussions.

“But how can you be sure it’s the contract?” asked Mary. “Maybe it’s coincidence or something completely unrelated.”

Smiling what was not at all a smile, Enid reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and fetched out a thin sheaf of papers. Without ceremony, he crossed to the fireplace and tossed them into the flames. Then he put his hands in his pockets, leaned his shoulder against the mantel and watched them burn. We watched with him.

When the pages had completely blackened, Enid picked up a fireplace poker and stirred them to ash. Then he turned, reached into his jacket pocket a second time, and pulled out an identical sheaf of papers.

“When I left Chicago, I left this behind. I mean, with all that shit going down, who’s gonna think to take along a damned contract? But while we were on the road, I opened up my guitar case and there it was, lying on the bottom, all neat and tidy. I’ve tried tearing it up. I’ve tried throwing it in the river. I tried burning it three times, sayin’ prayers and singin’ hymns all the while. I’ve even had Mags try to get rid of it. It comes back. Every time.”

Cal was nodding, and I could see the lawyer mask slip into place and his eyes become winter landscapes. He held out his hand. “Let me take a look at it.”

While the others hovered over the document, speaking in hushed voices, I slipped over to Colleen’s chair and perched upon the arm. “May I ask,” I said, “why you are so much about the discovery of secret treachery?”

She turned her head enough to see me, but her eyes met mine only for an instant. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’re not cynical enough.”

“Oh, yes. I’m such an idealist, such a Pollyanna. Always, the rose-colored glasses.”

“You are an idealist. You see people the way they want you to see them. You buy their hype.”

“Ah. Do I?”

She sat up straighter and met my eyes. “You do. It’s an endearing quality, Viktor, but stupid, and will probably someday get you killed. And it’s not just you. Goldie is hot for that cute little flare, and Cal’s hot for the Source, and he looks at Mary McCrae as if she were… I don’t know, Joan of Arc and Mother Teresa rolled into one. Somebody has to keep a straight head.”

“And that would be you, yes?”

“Somebody has to.”

“And how do you see them, boi baba?”

“As they are. I see them as they are.”

“Vitsishye glaz choozhoi da nyeh vidishyeh svoy,” I said. “What?”

“A proverb of old Russian grandmothers: ‘The eye that sees all things sees not itself.’ ”

“Yeah, well, I know a few proverbs myself, like: ‘Trust no one.’ And: ‘If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.’ ”

“Ah. And I suppose it’s because you are such an untrusting person that you are marching off into the heart of darkness with the rest of us?”

“I’m marching into the heart of darkness, as you put it, because it improves the odds. I’m not good with people, Doc, but I’ve got damn good survival skills, which have really come in handy lately, wouldn’t you say?”

She was right, of course. She had skills that very much increased the odds of Cal getting where he needed to go and doing what he needed to do. I could not help but contrast them with my own, which were conspicuously lacking.

Even Colleen’s dream had reminded her of something that now might be of use. It had reminded me only of a lesson I had learned most recently from my failure at the mill-that while I might be an asset in a medical emergency, I could be a liability when the goal was simple survival. An unpleasant truth. And despite Colleen’s belief to the contrary, my glasses were not rose-colored enough to disguise it.