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“Lucas,” he corrected. “Or you know, if you ever just want to go for a drink or a coffee, that would be fine, too.” Her true reaction must have shown on her face because he flushed red. “Or not. Yeah…sorry. Bad idea.”
“I have your card,” she said, holding it up. “If I think of anything, I’ll call.”
“Yep.” His expression had flattened, and the warmth had left his eyes. “You do that.”
“I will.” She was putting on her sweetie magnolia voice, she suddenly realized. “Goodbye.” She waved and smiled and ducked inside, pushing the door shut hard behind her.
Nate and Sylvia, 4B
Still clutching the knob, Kelsey leaned her forehead against the door, taking a deep breath.
“Are you all right?” The woman’s voice from the stairs behind her was so unexpected, she almost screamed for the second time that morning. “Oh honey, I’m sorry,” the woman said as she spun around. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay,” Kelsey said, making herself smile. The woman was older than she was, probably in her late forties or early fifties with streaks of silver-white in her curly black hair. But she was beautiful. Her hair fell past her shoulders, and her eyes were a rich, luminescent green. Her creamy skin was barely lined around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, as if she smiled a lot, and Kelsey could see no trace of make-up. Right now, she looked worried. “I’m fine,” Kelsey promised.
The woman smiled. “I’m not sure I believe you.” She offered a delicate, blue-veined hand with intricate silver rings on every finger. “I’m your neighbor, Sylvia Berman. I live in—”
“4B,” Kelsey said with her. “I’m Kelsey.” She shook Sylvia’s hand, and a comforting warmth flowed through the connection between them. “I got the brownies. Thank you so much.”
“You’re so welcome.” She looked past Kelsey to the street door, worry coming back into her eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, I was just a little spooked.” She looked back at the door, too, feeling a shiver. “Apparently a homeless woman was murdered in our alley last night.”
“Murdered?” Sylvia was still holding her hand. Now she started backing up the stairs, drawing Kelsey with her.
“Did you or your husband hear anything?” Kelsey said. “There’s a detective outside.”
“No, we didn’t hear a thing,” Sylvia said, cutting her off. “Come on. Let me make you some tea.”
Asher looked out the window of his apartment at the city below, the usually-gray streets still glittering white under their frosting of snow. His body felt strangely heavy—tired, he realized, bemused. He reached under his thick
sweater to rub his shoulder where the succubus had clawed him. The gashes were almost healed, but the joint still ached. His night in a mortal body had taken its toll.
He went to his desk and flipped on all three monitors before collapsing into his rolling leather chair. His apartment was the entire top floor of what had once been a factory near the docks. The floors were bare, scraped wood, and most of the walls were windows. A few shabby chairs and a couch were set in a semi-circle to one side, and the computer set-up took up the center of the front wall. The rest of the room was filled with rows and rows of bookshelves, millennia of dispassionate research into the human condition. Every shelf was stuffed full, and loose books and papers were scattered in piles across the floor.
He pulled the wireless keyboard into his lap and tapped out a name. The center screen filled with links: Jacob Marlowe, Artist. The man he had pretended to be had been born in Vidalia, Georgia, home of the sweet onion. He had been educated at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Since coming to the city in his early twenties, he had become steadily more successful as a painter, no household name but important, a talent collectors knew and watched. The angel clicked a thumbnail labeled “Gifts of the Magi.” The right-hand screen filled with the image of a pretty but frazzled-looking woman in a ragged housedress and apron with a baby on her hip. She was standing on the steps of a rundown shack in what looked like a swamp—the background was all gnarled, dark trees hung with Spanish moss. A gleaming white Cadillac was parked in the black dirt yard, and three men in suits were walking toward the woman, one white, one black, one Asian. The white magus was holding out an open briefcase full of cash. The black one carried a large, obviously full department store shopping bag. The Asian carried a human skull with a crown of gold-plated thorns hidden behind his back. The baby, dressed in nothing but a sagging diaper, was hiding his face against his mother’s shoulder, and her face was fearful and sad. Asher smiled, touching the screen before he clicked the image away.
Another biography of the artist mentioned Kelsey by name just below its description of the cancer that had killed him. She was described as an artist and illustrator, but there was no link. A brief new search produced a handful of links, about half of which applied to his Kelsey Marlowe—or rather, Jake’s Kelsey Marlowe. Most just identified her as Jake’s wife, but two were more interesting. One gave a brief biography—born in Savannah, educated there with her future husband—and showed a black and white photograph of one of her paintings, a dragon curled around a long-haired damsel in modern dress with marks of some kind up and down her arms—scars or track marks; in the grainy photograph it was impossible to tell. The other link led to an online bookstore listing for a children’s fairytale book. The cover showed a princess dancing madly in a pair of flaming shoes. Smoke curled up from her delicate feet to frame her joyful, frantic face. “Illustrated by Kelsey Marlowe,” the book description read. Both images were artful and disturbing, the work of a haunted, inventive imagination. But neither held the same spark as Jake’s painting, and neither showed the soul he had read in Kelsey’s letter. His eyes focused again on the face of the doomed princess, and he thought of the desperate joy in Kelsey’s eyes the moment she had first seen him the night before. With a distinctly human shudder, he shut down the screens.
Kelsey found herself spending the rest of the day in the Berman apartment. Sylvia made her a real breakfast of eggs, sausages, and toast with butter and honey to go with her tea, refusing to listen when Kelsey insisted she wasn’t hungry. Kelsey took the first few bites just to be polite, then suddenly she was ravenous. She ate every bite, scraping the plate with the crust of her toast—her first real meal in more than a week. “I’m sorry,” she said through a mouthful, suddenly embarrassed. “This is just so good.”
“Don’t you dare be sorry,” Sylvia said. “Here, have some more toast.”
The two women sat at a bentwood table in cozy, cushioned chairs. Kelsey told Sylvia about moving to the city from Savannah right after her marriage, about Jake’s art, about her own illustration work, about Jake’s huge, friendly, overbearing Catholic family back home, about her own dead parents—briefly on this subject, barely touching it. Sylvia never tried to pry more out of her. She just listened, refilling the teacups. She explained that her husband, Nate, was a professor of comparative religion at a nearby university. She said the two of them had met in Ireland many, many years before. “At an ashram, if you can believe it. The guru had talked some farmer into letting him set up on his farm,” she said, laughing. “Chicken tika and soda bread, meditating with the sheep. It was lovely, actually.” She described herself as a housewife and said her great passion, besides Nate, was gardening. The tiny apartment looked like a well-tended jungle with lush plants on every available surface.
For lunch, Sylvia made thick sandwiches of cold roast chicken piled high with arugula and herbs she’d grown in the kitchen under their own bank of artificial lights. “It was cancer, wasn’t it?” she said, arranging the sandwiches on pretty china plates.
“What?” Kelsey was pouring iced tea. For a moment, she could plausibly pretend she hadn’t heard.
“Your husband, Jake.” Sylvia took a step closer and put a hand on her arm. “He died of cancer, didn’t he?”
“Oh…yeah.” Kelsey concentrated on plucking two sprigs of fresh mint. “Yeah, he did.” She garnished each glass with focused care. “Do you mind if we don’t talk about it?”
“Of course not.” Sylvia gave her arm a pat then picked up the plates. “Let’s eat in the living room. There’s a CD I want you to hear.” She led her to a pair of rustic-looking rockers set in the deep bay window, surrounded by lush, trailing vines. “Nate and some of his friends have a jazz band—the Wizards of Rhythm.” She laughed. “Bless them, but they stink.”
The shadows in the room had grown long when Sylvia said Nate would be home soon. Kelsey looked at the clock. It was after four. The day seemed to have evaporated. “The three of us should go to dinner,” Sylvia said. “Have you tried the new Thai place on the corner?”
“No, I haven’t.” She and Jake had bickered playfully about trying it when the sign had first gone up. She loved Thai food; he hated—had hated it. “I should go.” She suddenly realized she was wearing the same plaid flannel pajama pants and sweatshirt she had thrown on when she first woke up that morning. She hadn’t even brushed her hair or her teeth all day. “I’ve imposed on you enough.”
