Omens Page 15

  So I was footing the big bill for a cab to Chicago. And where was I going? To pay a visit to Niles Gunderson.

  Madness, of course. But it was the only avenue of investigation I could see. He must have been off his meds when he came to the house. By now he'd be back home, on his regime and lucid. With my new look, a little role-playing, a few shadows, and a lot of luck, I might be able to convince him that I was an old friend of Anna's looking for her phone number. I'd tried calling of course but he wouldn't answer. Maybe because he didn't recognize the number.

  When I reached the apartment, I knew the "few shadows" part of the equation would be easy. A week ago, I'd have said Gunderson's building was little more than tenement housing. Now, having seen actual tenements, I knew better.

  It was just a tired building on a tired street, filled with people who looked equally tired, trudging along without even a glance my way. Inside, the building was quieter than I might have expected. Darker, too. Hence the shadows. It was like walking into a tunnel, gray and gloomy and empty, with dark walls and irregular lighting.

  As I made my way up to Gunderson's fifth-floor apartment, I began to think that maybe this desolate place wasn't exactly where I wanted to meet a man who'd tried to kill me.

  This was crazy. Bat-shit crazy. With every step, I thought of new and more colorful descriptions of my decision to visit Niles Gunderson. But I kept walking.

  His door was at the far end of the hall. I gathered my courage and knocked. As I did, I noticed something on the floor. A splash of red.

  Blood.

  It took only an eye-blink to tell me it was just a plastic poppy, the kind you wear at Remembrance Day, though we were about as far in the calendar as you could get from November 11.

  I made a face and rubbed my nose. The building smelled of garbage and cooked food, but I'd just caught a whiff of something worse.

  I knocked again, louder now. Still nothing.

  My gaze tripped back to the poppy and stayed there, as if glued to the sight.

  It's a damn poppy. So what?

  But even when I looked away, I could feel the poppy niggling at me. A clue? I snorted. If a dropped poppy could tell me anything, I'd need to be Holmes himself to figure it out.

  I rapped again, but by now didn't expect an answer.

  There wasn't a dead-bolt keyhole. I looked down the hall. All clear. Couldn't hurt to try. As I reached for the knob, my gaze caught on that damned poppy again. I stopped and pulled my sleeve over my hand. Then I turned the knob, testing the door before I...

  It opened.

  I glanced around. Then I pushed open the door and slipped inside. As I did, the smell hit me.

  Death.

  It smelled like death.

  I chastised myself for being overly dramatic. No matter how sheltered one was, it was hard to reach the age of twenty-four and not know the smell of decay, if only a dead mouse in the basement. Judging by the state of Niles's apartment, a rotting mouse or two would probably go unnoticed for a while.

  Yet I knew the smell didn't come from dirty dishes. Or even dead mice.

  When I walked into the kitchen and saw Niles Gunderson--slumped back in his chair, mouth open, eyes closed, two flies feasting on an open sore on his chin--I didn't think, Oh my God, the poor man is dead. I thought, Shit, there goes my only source.

  After the shock passed, I did think of how pitiful he looked, how old and how broken. Twenty-two years ago, he'd been living the American dream. Son of immigrants. College educated. White-collar job. Wife. Three kids. House in the suburbs. Then Death paid a visit and decided to stick around. One child savagely murdered. Another dead by his own hand. Finally, Death claimed even his wife--the only person keeping him from the final descent into ... I looked around. Into this. Dead in a filthy apartment. No one to notice. No one to care.

  I suppose my next move should have been to call the police. Or flee the scene. But if no one had found Niles yet, they weren't likely to in the next few minutes. Besides, there was no sign of trauma, other than that wound on his face, which seemed like a shaving nick that the flies had taken advantage of.

  This all sounds remarkably calm of me. Yet I was not calm. Something was wrong here. Seriously wrong.

  It was like that discarded poppy niggling at me. A steady whisper snaked past. Pay attention.

  I rubbed goose bumps from my arms and found a phone in the living room. I didn't use it to call 911. I just wanted Niles's phone book, which I found beside the phone.

  I used my sleeves again when opening it, even if logically I knew there was no way they'd be dusting a phone book for prints after a natural death. The book was falling apart, many of the numbers faded, people who'd passed out of the Gundersons' lives years ago. The only recent entries were for health care workers and pharmacies and delivery services. Except one. A recently changed address and phone number for "Anna." His daughter.

  I made a note of the number and then flipped through the book. Nothing grabbed my attention, possibly because that niggling feeling kept drawing me back to the kitchen. Finally, I closed the book and pocketed my note. One last look. Then I was leaving.

  I rounded the corner. Niles Gunderson was upright in his chair, staring at me. Flies covered his chin. Maggots crawled from his mouth. And his eyes--he had no eyes, just empty sockets staring--

  My hands flew to my own eyes, palms pressing against them, brain stuttering, some part of me screaming, "See! I told you something was wrong!"

  I took a deep breath and let my hands fall away, and when they did, I saw Niles as he'd been before--slumped back in his chair, dead. His eyes were closed. No maggots. Not even any flies.

  Something moved to my left. I jumped so fast my feet tangled, and I grabbed the counter. A dark shape stretched across the kitchen floor until it covered Niles, and I turned to see a shadow coming through the open balcony curtains. There, perched on the railing, was a raven. It flapped its wings, and the shadow retracted to normal size.

  I slowly walked to the balcony doors. The bird sat there, watching me. It cocked its head.

  "Shoo," I whispered. "You aren't supposed to be here."

  As I said the words, I saw the little girl from my dream, shaking her fist at the raven as it perched on a flayed, eyeless corpse.

  The bran know better. They aren't supposed to disturb the dead. It's disrespectful.

  The raven opened its beak and croaked. Then it spread its wings and swooped at the window, talons out. It hit the glass, claws scraping, and let out a raucous caw.

  "Ewch i ffwrdd, bran!"

  I heard the words the little girl had spoken, and it took a second to realize they came from me, shouted so loud my throat hurt. The bird let out a noise, almost like a hiss. Then it pushed back from the window, twisting in midair before flying off.

  I stood there, staring after it. When I swallowed, my throat ached, and I remembered saying the words. Shouting them. Standing in the kitchen of a dead man, shouting.

  I got out of there as fast as I could.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  If the Romans could have fortified their cities the way the human brain fortifies itself, we'd still be wearing togas. The mind is an amazing piece of biomachinery, really. A serious threat presents itself at the gate and up fly the walls, standing firm in the face of earth-shaking revelations, ideological bullets, and plain old logic.

  I retreated from Niles's apartment, still in a daze. I wandered until I found a coffee shop. Then I holed up in the corner, slurping caffeine until I found the strength to make sense of what I'd just experienced.

  By the time I finished my drink, I'd decided the hallucination of Zombie Niles and the raven weren't important. What mattered was that I'd broken into an apartment and found the body of a man who'd publicly threatened me. I had screwed up. I'd thought I was capable of handling this on my own, and I so clearly was not.

  When I left my apartment for my Monday shift, I noticed curtains move across the street. Rosalyn Razvan, watching me.
They closed when I glanced up, but I stayed there, looking at the house, considering...

  Gabriel Walsh should be at the bottom of my list of potential investigative partners. But under the right conditions and with an insane amount of caution, he might be exactly what I needed. Except I'd already rejected his offer.

  While neither my dad nor James had Gabriel's shark instinct, they'd introduced me to men who did, and I'd learned a few things. If I wanted to work with Gabriel, I had to let him win me over. I couldn't crawl back or the balance would be forever skewed.

  After my shift, as I walked to the psychic's door, a black blur shot from behind a parked car. The cat. I hadn't seen it since the night of the raven attack, and I was relieved that it was obviously fine.

  "Warning me not to venture into the witch's lair?" I said as it raced past me.

  The cat leapt onto a porch rocking chair. It stretched on the gingham cushion, purring as it got comfortable.

  "Okay, not a warning. Unless you're her familiar lulling me into a false sense of security."

  I swore the cat rolled its eyes.

  I laughed. "Fine, I'll willfully interpret your reappearance as a sign of good fortune, meaning I am indeed making the right choice."

  I gave the cat a pat and rang the bell. The harsh buzz was oddly out of tone with the Victorian surroundings. The tinny voice that followed was even more jarring.

  "Hello?"

  I looked around and found a speaker hidden in the ivy.

  "Hello?" the woman's voice said again.

  "Rosalyn Razvan?"

  "Yes."

  "It's--" I started to say Liv Taylor, then remembered that she knew who I was. "Olivia Taylor-Jones. You wanted to speak to me?"

  "Six o'clock."

  "What?"

  A metallic whoosh, like a sigh. "I'll speak to you at six o'clock. It's by appointment only."

  "I'm not looking to buy a reading. Your card just said you wanted to speak--"

  "Six o'clock. No charge."

  The speaker clicked off. I looked at the cat.

  "Any more advice?"

  The cat started cleaning itself, leaving me to retreat across the road.

  Seeing the cat made me decide to take a step I'd been avoiding. I went to the library and I researched "black cats and luck," as well as every other odd thing that had happened.

  I'd wanted to forget these so-called omens. Brush them off and tell myself they meant nothing. Except they did mean something. All my gut-level interpretations of the omens matched the folklore.

  In America, we see a black cat and think its bad luck. In other places, particularly Britain, they're considered good luck. Kill a spider? Bad luck. Stir with a knife? Causes trouble. See a cat wash its ears? A sure sign of rain.

  Which only proved that someone had indoctrinated me with this folklore at an early age, and now it was popping back up because I was remembering my past life with Pamela Larsen, the woman who'd put all that nonsense there in the first place.

  What bothered me most was the poppy. It turned out they were a death omen. I'd seen a poppy outside the door of a dead man ... before I knew he was dead. Maybe there'd been no poppy. Maybe I'd smelled death and manufactured the illusion.

  Next I looked up the word "bran." It was Welsh for raven. So I was guessing that whatever the little girl in my dream said--the line I'd regurgitated at Gunderson's apartment--was Welsh. I had no idea what it meant. I typed a few variations into online dictionaries, but got nothing. I'm sure my phonetic guesses were nowhere close to the real spellings.

  Why was I dreaming of a girl speaking Welsh and how had my dreaming brain known that bran meant raven? Back to Pamela Larsen. Her maiden name was Bowen. Plugging that into a search told me my maternal grandmother's name was Daere Bowen. That was Welsh, and from the unusual first name, I was guessing she was a recent immigrant. So Pamela may have spoken some Welsh and taught me. Young children were amazingly quick to pick up language.

  I did come across something else in my searches. I accidentally typed Walsh instead of Welsh. Not surprising--Gabriel was still on my brain. Turned out the similar spelling wasn't coincidental. Walsh was a very old Irish name meaning "foreigner." Quite literally, a Welshman. It meant nothing, of course, but after hours of researching omens and portents, I couldn't help but see this as a sign that I was on the right path, considering him for the role of investigative partner. Or I was just desperate to believe it.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  When I rang Rosalyn's bell at six there was a car parked in front of her house. A little old lady opened the door, and I extended my hand to introduce myself, but she walked right past me, her gaze distant, lips moving, as if talking to herself. She carried on down the walk and climbed into the passenger seat of the old Buick. After a moment, she got out and went around to the driver's door.

  "Okay," I murmured. "That's not a good sign."

  A grumble sounded behind me. "I tell her not to drive right after hypnosis. If she keeps that up, it won't be the cigarettes that kill her."

  I turned and thought, Snow White's mother. I don't mean the one from the modern telling of the fairy tale, the kindly queen who pricks her finger and wishes for a daughter, only to die and be replaced by the evil stepmother. My memories are of the real Grimm's fairy tales and others where Cinderella's stepmother cuts off her daughter's toes to fit in the glass slipper and the Little Mermaid kills herself after her prince chooses someone else. Even when I learned the modern ones, I preferred the brutal and macabre old versions. I always wondered why. Now, knowing who my real parents were, I suppose that was another question answered.

  In the original telling, the jealous witch who persecuted Snow White was her real mother. When I looked at Rosalyn Razvan, that's who I saw. She had black hair, cut in a bob, with a perfect frosting of white. Elegantly tweezed black brows. Bone-china skin. Ruby red lips.

  I knew she was Gabriel's great-aunt, but she only looked in her late fifties. He'd inherited his height from her side of the family. She was a few inches taller than me. Military posture. Sturdily built with wide hips and ship-prow breasts.

  She had blue eyes, like Gabriel, but hers had more color. I'd say more warmth, too, but warm wasn't a word to describe Rosalyn Razvan.

  "Your mother owes my nephew money," she said.

  "It's a pleasure to meet you, too."

  "He worked for her in good faith, and she hasn't paid her bills."

  "That's what he says, and she doesn't deny it, so I guess it's true."

  "And you take no responsibility for your mother's debts?"

  "Considering that I didn't know Pamela Larsen was my mother until after she incurred those debts, the answer is no."

  "If you pay him--and I know your adoptive family can afford to do so--then Pamela Larsen will repay you. Gabriel says she's eager to renew a relationship with you. She won't want to start by mooching off her daughter."

  "If Gabriel put you up to this--"

  "My nephew puts me up to nothing. He is owed money. I would like to see him get it."

  I reached for the door handle to leave.

  "It's an easy matter to resolve, Ms. Jones. Ask Lena Taylor for the money. Or allow my nephew to make your claim on the proceeds of Pamela's book. It will cost you nothing, and it will free you from the shadow of this debt."

  I laughed and turned back to face her. "What shadow? My mother hired Gabriel because she's in jail for murdering eight people. That has nothing to do with me."

  "Are you sure?"

  "What? I was two years old at the time. I--"

  I stopped myself. Don't feed the crazy lady, Liv. What did I expect from a fortune-teller? I grasped the door handle again.

  "He'll be very persistent, Ms. Jones."

  "Yes, I'm sure he will, but the guy drives a hundred-thousand-dollar car. If he's in hock, he should sell it and live within his means."

  "My nephew lives within his means." There was genuine annoyance in her voice now. "He's a Walsh. We pay as we
go. We owe no one."

  "And neither do I. Which is why I wouldn't ask my adoptive mother for the money. As for the book, I consider that stealing a debt owed to the victims."

  She eyed me with the same intense appraisal I'd gotten from her grandnephew.

  "He's right," she said finally. "You have a backbone."

  "You didn't believe him?"

  She shrugged and put her hand on a pedestal table, letting her posture relax. "You're an attractive young woman. Gabriel isn't usually blinded by such things, but it is possible, combined with the equally blinding attractions of a healthy bank account and an intriguing back story."

  "So you were ... what? Seeing if you could bully the money out of me?"

  "It was worth a try. He worked for that money, and he deserves it. I understand why you don't want to go to your adoptive family for it, but I think you're a fool for rejecting the book income. Pamela Larsen is your mother. You've been damaged by that. You will be damaged more. I don't need the second sight to foresee that. Maybe you'll change your mind. In the meantime..." She waved toward an open doorway. "A reading."

  "I'm not--"

  "It's on the house."

  "Right. Let me guess. My future will be so much brighter if I paid my mother's bills."

  A harsh croak of a laugh. "That would be insultingly obvious."

  She headed into the side room. I followed. Once I crossed the threshold, I stopped to stare. To the layperson's eye it might look like a cheesy fortune-teller's room, but to anyone who knew something about the history of spiritualism, it was like stepping into a museum exhibit.

  I stopped in front of a very old reproduction of a photograph, showing what looked like tiny, gauzy-winged people in the grass.

  "The Cottingley Fairies," I murmured.

  Five photographs taken in 1917, probably the most famous "evidence" of fairies. Four were of two girls playing with little winged people. This was the fifth, without the girls. The photos were a huge sensation at the time and were taken as proof of the existence of the little people. It wasn't until the eighties that the girls admitted they'd faked the first four photographs using cutouts of fairies from a book. On this fifth one, though, they disagreed, one claiming it was another fake and the other insisting it was real.