Dark Star (4 page)

He was after my mother, all right. He might not have proof of who she was—but he had his suspicions.

Still, I wasn’t about to tell him that.

“You’re getting a divorce,” I said.

“I thought you’d already figured that one out. Not really fortunetelling.”

“I’m getting there,” I said. “Here. Card forty-nine. Inverted Anchor. You’re feeling lost. You’re probably one of those people who mostly has couple friends, and they’ve all taken her side. And she’s getting the house, too, huh?”

He crossed his arms. “You didn’t get that from the cards. You got that from looking at me. Are you planning a career in law enforcement?”

“Here, the cross cards. Forty-five, Sign of Brothers. Crossed by The Warrior and The Prisoner.”

He leaned forward. “Meaning what?”

This part was easy, a Knowing so clear I wouldn’t even have needed the cards. “You didn’t start out wanting to be a cop. You followed in your father’s footsteps. You probably wanted to be something totally ridiculous, like a football player, or a rock star.”

“Baseball player.” His lips twitched.

“Another score for the fortuneteller.”

“You’ve got good intuition, kid,” he said. But he was giving me a look. A look that meant I was playing it a little too straight, and he was already suspicious of my mother, and he was well-armed with brains and his own common sense. It was probably not a good idea to give him any ammunition.

“Now the terminal cards,” I said. “Sign of Lovers. Sign of Swords.”

I bit my lip. That meant—

Well. I didn’t really know what that meant.

The cards had been helping, up to this point. Sense and feeling coming into alignment, thoughts taking shape within me. My Knowing had formed an image of this man, Detective Mickey Wyle, who had spent his boyhood summers fly fishing in Canada, whose eyes still saw past the dirt of city streets into the northern half-light of autumn, who went to bars with his cop buddies but rarely drank. But these two cards felt strange when I pressed my fingertips to them, and abruptly the world around us came into close focus. Details sharpened. I noticed the touch of gray at his temples. I saw the dust that floated in the light pushing in through the blinds. I breathed the deep, earthworm scent of soil that dwelled beneath the smell of the house—the smell of alleys at night, the smell of graveyards.

I wouldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t tell him there was something chasing him, something like a voice in the dark, or that I could see that he hadn’t slept in three days and it had nothing to do with the wife he didn’t want to go home to. That it was possible he wouldn’t live very long.

I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know why he was really here, in this room, with his rumpled clothing and quiet stare. And suddenly I was a little frightened. I didn’t know what it meant, but—He knew.

About Mom. About us.

Some part of him knew.

I couldn’t say that. So I went for the obvious answer. Lovers and Swords. Not a difficult leap, though an incorrect one. “You caught her cheating,” I told him.

“Way off the mark,” he said, but he was smiling, a little. He ran a hand through his hair, leaning back against the cushions of the sofa.

“She was too successful. You’re threatened by strong women.”

He grinned at me. “Now you’re just stabbing in the dark. But nice try, kid.”

I was flustered, so I didn’t say anything, just picked up my cards and began shuffling them idly.

“My turn,” he said. “And I won’t use any cards or fortunetelling.”

“Somewhere you’ve got a file on my mom. It probably tells you everything you need to know about me.”

“I don’t need a file. You’re easy to read.”

I frowned, watching him warily, but kept my silence.

“You’re close with your mom,” he began.

“Wow. Impressive.”

He ignored me. “Protective of her. It’s just the two of you, so you think you need to look out for her. You worry that I mean her harm—but I don’t. And I think you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say I believe your mother is a very gifted individual.”

The front door eased open.

“Mom!” I called, jumping up and running to meet her, to warn her, before Detective Wyle caught her off guard. She tilted her head at me when she entered, frowning slightly. Mom was in the habit of dressing brightly during the day to contrast with her nightly attire, and today she wore old blue jeans with a rosecolored belt and a vivid pink tank top—but over it she wore her dark H&H Security coat. Very official looking. She yawned into her free hand as she looked at me.

“We, uh, have a visitor,” I said.

He was already at my side, leaning against the door frame and giving my mother a lazy smile.

“Entertaining kid you’ve got here, Mrs. Whitticomb. I’m thinking of recruiting her.”

I could see the storm brewing behind her eyes, and took a step backward.

“Miss. I never married,” she corrected. “As I’m sure you know.” She clenched a fist. “Audrey, how exactly have you been entertaining?”

“Um … I gave Mickey a reading.”

“I thought we were sticking with Wyle,” he said.

“Mickey is less threatening,” I told him. “My mom’s a little vulnerable right now. She turns forty next month.”

She sounded strangled. “Audrey. Room. Now.”

Oh well. I already had a talk in store. I gave her a quick salute, then leaned in close to whisper. “Be careful, Mom. He’s totally on to you.”

Over the years, Mom had been interrogated by the police on a number of occasions.

It was sort of inevitable, given her choice of careers. In the past, she’d always managed to explain away her activities with her connection to H&H Security. She even had a couple of friends on the force—or acquaintances, at any rate; Mom wasn’t very big on friends. She tended to laugh off the idea that she’d be caught. Cops were far too pragmatic to believe in Morning Star, she told me. And maybe she was right. She’d never been arrested. She’d never been charged. Detective Wyle had been the first to even truly suspect her of anything.

“He’s a pain in the ass,” she’d told me, after the first time he’d questioned her. “But I can handle him.”

Personally, I’d always thought Mom rather liked being able to fool everyone. She didn’t have to wear a costume, I’d argued once. It would be easier if she just saved the city in obscurity. Her response had been to tell me that Morning Star wasn’t a costume, it was an identity. Part of who she was.

It hadn’t begun that way. Not intentionally. It hadn’t even been an outfit at first; it was just a bulky sweater with a star on it that some great-aunt had knitted her one Christmas.

“I wore it ironically,” Mom had told me. “And because I didn’t care if I ruined it.” She had ruined it, too. She’d thrown it away after it became nothing more than a tattered, bloodstained rag, but by then, more than a few witnesses had seen a teenage vigilante running around wearing an eight-pointed star.

“And thus a legend was born,” I’d joked.

That, apparently, had been the wrong thing to say. Mom had gone quiet and had never finished the story.

But that didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy playing with fire. I’d seen her snickering over newspaper articles that mentioned her alter ego a few too many times to think otherwise. I just hoped she was right and she could handle Detective Wyle. I felt a touch of apprehension. There had been no malice in him, but that didn’t make him harmless.

An hour passed before he left. I slogged halfheartedly through my homework and watched the green numbers of my clock blink upward. Tink called to inform me that Greg, although not undead, was a terrible kisser, and she was gravely disappointed my reading had failed to reveal that.

I laughed, momentarily distracted. “Rejected him already? You work fast.”

“What can I say? I know what I want.”

“Too bad what you want changes by the hour.”

“We can’t all be Gideon, pining stupidly for the same girl for three years. That boy needs a good kick—”

I shushed her, listening to the movement below me. Downstairs, the hall door opened. Footsteps sounded in the entrance. I crossed to my window and shifted the blinds with my fingers. Outside, on the walkway, Detective Wyle shuffled toward the street. He turned, once, looking back at the house. Then he was gone.

Which meant—

“Audrey!” When my mother wanted to, she could really bellow. I supposed the superstrength extended to her lungs. “Down here, now!”

“Uh, I’ll call you back. I have to go get yelled at,” I told Tink, then hurried downstairs. Mom was in the sitting room, curled up on the sofa, drinking cocoa and appearing for all the world as though she couldn’t actually rip both my arms off or dangle me upside down.

“You forgot a coaster,” I said, pointing at her mug.

She rolled her eyes at me but dutifully slid one of the ceramic coasters beneath her cup. “We really should examine your priorities.”

“Gram loved that table.”

“Gram bought it at a garage sale for two dollars. Nice try distracting me, though. Since it didn’t work, why don’t you explain to me why I just spent several minutes talking to Detective Wyle about my ‘deeply intuitive’ daughter.”

“Deeply intuitive—without an ounce of common sense.”

That was Leon.

I turned. I hadn’t noticed him in the room—but then, it was possible he hadn’t been there. He had this annoying habit of simply appearing, without bothering with nuisances like doors or asking permission. And though he was only three years older than me, he seemed to think being a Guardian meant he knew more about the world in general than I ever would.

I shot him a glare. He stood near the window, arms crossed, leaning back against the wall. Like Mom, Leon gave the illusion of being totally harmless. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but he was so skinny that most of his shirts just sort of hung on him. And he was tidy, clean-cut, the kind of guy you’d expect to see at some Ivy League college, taking eight classes and sucking up to professors, not smiting evildoers. He didn’t like to go anywhere without a tie, and his white button-down shirts were always ironed. (I’d actually seen him iron them.) Sure, he looked good—I could admit that, just not to his face—but he didn’t exactly look dangerous.

Of course, even if he’d wanted to appear moody and mysterious, the effect would’ve been ruined by the dusting of flour in his dark hair. Not to mention that he usually smelled like cake and frosting, and often appeared with cookies. You’d think that someone who had shown up in Minneapolis on a motorcycle with nothing but a backpack and half a cheese sandwich to his name might not want to criticize anyone else’s life choices—but no. Leon was convinced he knew how to fix the world, starting with me. He didn’t think I had any sense, common or otherwise. And since he appeared to be cookieless tonight, I wasn’t feeling very forgiving.

I stepped toward him, giving him the sweetest smile I could manage. “We can’t all be as perfect as you, Leon.”

It took him a second. A little furrow appeared on his forehead —there was flour there, too—then he shrugged. “True. But that’s no reason not to try.”

“I hate doing things I’m not good at,” I said. “Perfection will have to remain beyond my grasp. But, hey, lucky me, I’ve got you here to show me the error of my ways.”

That actually seemed to annoy him. His frown settled into a glower. “You must have a brain in there somewhere. It’s a shame you don’t use it.”

“God forbid I disagree with Almighty Leon.”

Mom banged her mug on the table like a gavel. “As entertaining as it is listening to you two bicker, I’m still waiting on that explanation, Audrey.”

I shrugged, turning back toward her. She’d forgotten the coaster again, but I decided to let it go, just this once. “That cop knows something,” I said. “I wanted to see what I could find out.”

“Did you get anything?”

“Um … he likes fly fishing, and his favorite band is the Grateful Dead.”

Mom sighed.

“And he knows about you. I’m not sure what he knows, or how—but I think he has some idea of your abilities.”

“Another reason it was irresponsible of you to give him a reading,” Leon interjected.

“I said he knows about Mom,” I retorted. “You really think he’s going to take a teenager telling fortunes seriously? How about this: if he calls asking for lottery numbers, I’ll let you know.”

“I’m more concerned about you not taking it seriously,” Leon shot back. His eyes were fixed on me, and that disapproving slant to his mouth meant he wasn’t done with whatever scolding he had in store. I decided to cut him off before he got the chance.

“How is this even any of your business? I hate to break it to you, Leon, but tagging along after Mom doesn’t actually make you part of the family.”

He went quiet for a moment. “I don’t tag along.”

I ought to have felt bad.

When it came down to it, we were pretty much the only family Leon had. He didn’t talk much about his life before Minneapolis, but I knew his parents were dead, and so was the grandfather who had raised him. He didn’t seem to have ties to anyone else in the Cities. Though he went to college, I didn’t think he had any friends. He took his life as Guardian so seriously, I doubted he had time for them.

He’d arrived three years ago, showing up at the house one summer evening in the blank heat of twilight. I remembered that clearly; it was only a few weeks after Gram had died. Mom and I had been sitting outdoors, eating Popsicles in the grass because the air-conditioning was broken and it had been too hot to stay inside. And then Leon had appeared at the end of the drive, all puppyeyed and starved-looking and earnest, and instead of returning him to whatever pound he’d surely escaped from, Mom had let him be her sidekick. Or fellow Guardian. Or whatever.

At the time, I’d found it exciting—the way he’d appeared out of nowhere, on that night when the heat was so thick the moon was nothing but a smear in the sky above us. The way he’d walked slowly toward us, seeming nervous and confused and somehow vulnerable. How he’d introduced himself to my mother, his voice steady and strong, a confidence at odds with the wariness in his blue eyes. How he’d turned, then, and looked at me. He’d looked at me a long time, and there was a puzzled little smile on his face, an expression I didn’t understand but wanted to. And then he’d told us he knew our secrets. That he had secrets, too.