Mr. Real (Code of Shadows #1) (3 page)

After Karen finally had to go, Alix lay awake for a long time, wishing she had somebody close by to talk to—like on the phone with actual human voices, not just tweeting or texting.

She’d had a few local flings. One with a hunky carpenter she’d hired for the kitchen had lasted a month, but that had fizzled badly; she’d blown him off twice, though the second time wasn’t her fault. Anyway, it wouldn’t be cool to call him. During the month they were together, she’d pressed him for information about Aunt Veronica. He hadn’t grown up in the area, but he’d told her about the witch rumors, and the crows and clouds of smoke that reportedly hovered over the house way back when. From the photos Alix had found, Aunt Veronica had been a bright-eyed, button-nosed old woman with gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore thick scientist-looking glasses too big for her face and walked with a cane. It was hard to imagine her commanding clouds of crows and marking up the basement floor with symbols.

There were drawings, too. Alix’s favorite was a framed nude of her aunt done in blue pencil. The piece wasn’t large—the size of a placemat maybe. It answered the question of why she walked with a cane: her leg was deformed and fitted with a brace. The artist had depicted her as beautiful in spite of it, or even because of it, like the leg had a fun and outrageous personality. Alix loved that drawing on every level. The picture was simply signed ‘Max’—the name of her longtime companion. Max had loved Veronica very, very much, Alix decided.

It made her mad that the townspeople had such a low opinion of Veronica. Had her elderly aunt felt lonely for female companionship? Did she feel weird shopping at the Red Owl, knowing people were whispering about her? Was she reluctant to get her hair done at the town salon? Sometimes when Alix thought along these lines, it inspired her to work harder to make the place beautiful, like every inch of woodwork she sanded was a blow in the name of women who were seen as lacking in some way. Women who were seen as
less than
other people.

Still, she couldn’t help but think that if either one of her sisters had inherited the place, they would’ve made friends by now. Jackie would’ve joined the church choir and Jennie would be busy teaching Sunday school and meeting other moms. And they would wear proper outfits for errands into town. And never make spectacles of themselves at the townie bar, drinking beers and dancing wildly by the jukebox. Sure, Alix had made acquaintances, like Benji the barista at Bean Central, Malcolmsberg’s lone coffee shop, the Lings, who owned the Chinese restaurant, and Ginny, the nice Red Owl cashier. But there was nobody Alix could call on the phone.

No way would she phone her parents—they’d tell her to come home and invest in a church choir robe and a book of tater tot casserole recipes.

And no way would she leave.

Except now she felt scared, lying there all alone.

She turned over and scratched Lindy’s head. People had given up on poor three-legged Lindy—she was about to be gassed when Alix rescued her from the pound. Alix loved Lindy so much, it scared her to even think about her dying. Sometimes she joked about Lindy being the dog version of a loser to soften the fierce, sharp edges of her love for her.

“Good girl,” she whispered.

Alix lay there, alone in the darkness in her occult aunt’s house with her sledgehammer, her under-confident 1950s rifle, her computer, and her phone.

She stroked a finger along Lindy’s ear, which was just long enough to flop over. “I wonder what Hardass Paul would say about this?”

She snickered softly.

What the hell, it was still a good joke.

CHAPTER TWO

The porch stood empty the next morning. Alix felt vaguely disappointed, but she reminded herself that the necklace had taken about a day.

She could barely concentrate on sanding the woodwork in the kitchen; she kept popping out to the living room to check the porch and make sure the web cam’s record light was on.

And then, that afternoon, when Alix looked out the window for the umpteenth time, there they were. The boots, the belt, and the clutch. Right there on the porch.

Like magic.

Slowly, Alix opened the door. Lindy ran out and sniffed the boots, then sauntered down the steps and out to pee on the grass.

Lindy hadn’t even barked! Lindy always barked like crazy when the mailman or delivery people came. Even a squirrel setting a paw onto the clearing around the gravelly circle drive was occasion for a bark-fest. Which also suggested a magical cause, rather than a human one.

Heart racing, Alix grabbed the stuff and called Lindy back in. She raced to her computer and checked the web cam footage. At 02:41:06, the porch was empty, at 02:41:07, the belt, boots, and clutch were there. They seemed to materialize, but you couldn’t tell for sure—the porch was white, and the accessories were white. Somebody could have flung the stuff up there really fast. Why hadn’t she taped at a lower speed? Karen would never accept this as evidence.

Alix checked the jpeg; the outfit was knocked out of the image, with only pure white nothingness where the stuff had been. Alix couldn’t even find the things on the Marley’s site anymore. Maybe they’d taken down the page.

A shiver rushed through her. What other explanation could there be?

Then she realized something else: the items appeared exactly 24 hours from when she’d saved and clicked on them—to the
second
. She could tell from her computer history. She checked the timing on the necklace thing, and as far as she could tell, it was the same deal.

Twenty-four hours. That seemed
very
magical!

A new test: she selected an old wooden barrel. It was so giant that it would be easy to see what was going on. She put it on her desktop and clicked on it a bunch of times at 2:58 pm.

The next day was a Thursday.

At 2:40 pm, she was in position, peering out the window behind a camouflage screen of plants, with a perfect spy-view of the porch. And the sledgehammer. And the cam running on time lapse.

At 2:58, she saw a pulse of brown. In the next instant, the brown spot expanded out from the middle, practically exploding out.

Exploding out into a barrel.

And there it sat. A big, old, weathered, wooden barrel.

She stayed there, staring, not breathing. A barrel had just materialized before her eyes. She crept to the door and opened it slowly.

Lindy went out and casually sniffed it, and then bounded down the steps and into the yard.

The barrel was cool to the touch, much cooler than the muggy August air. Alix recalled that the majorette boots ensemble and the necklace had felt cool, too.

Her heart pounded.

Back inside, she reviewed the footage, which showed it all: a brown dot exploding outwards into a barrel. She forwarded the clip to Karen, and got her on the phone.

“This is just…whoa,” Karen said.

“I know! Whoa!” Alix said.

“Maybe I was wrong. Could this be magic? I mean, assuming you’re not messing with me here. ‘Cause April Fool’s day is past—”

“I swear,” Alix interrupted breathlessly. “I watched it with my own eyes. Out of thin air.”

“Wow. What if it really
was
those floppies you converted?”

“I think it was. What other connection does my laptop have to Aunt Veronica?”

Karen hissed out a breath. “Maybe she found some way to computerize occult commands. The computer as we know it today is based on everything being either one or zero, and look what we’ve made from that—the whole Internet. Maybe your aunt developed some voodoo interface with reality. Some kind of conversion. Those 1980s computer geeks got into some weird stuff.”

“An occult computer program,” Alix whispered.

“And then you come along and dump all that freak code into your modern laptop and fire up some kind of magic. Oh, now I’m dying to look at that code again. But wait!
Don’t
email it.”

“Oh my god—the smashed machines in her computer room!” Alix said. “And the padlock on the door? And the writing on the floor? And remember how it smelled in there? Like it hadn’t been opened for years?”

“She didn’t want that stuff getting out.”

“Because she knew it was powerful,” Alix said. “I have a magic computer. I can have anything in the world.”

“Okay, hold on. Let’s think and not act.”

“But the magic needs one more test, just to be sure,” Alix said. “For the next thing, I have to choose something that doesn’t technically exist. Or something that would be impossible to get, to make sure it’s really magic. Like, a unicorn. That would be the ultimate test to prove it’s magic.”

“No. Stop—”

“Right, it has to be something I want,” Alix said. Her new white boots were fabulous; so was her ruby necklace, which she was currently wearing with her faded black MonkeyDemon tank top. The barrel, not so much. “No wonder Lindy didn’t bark.”

“Don’t order anything else until I’m there. I’m back in town Sunday. I’ll drive out and we’ll test it together, okay? You don’t want to change the course of history or whatever. Changing the course of history is way easier to do than you think. In fact, shit! If this is what we think it is, you have the potential right now to call up something that could destroy us all. You could rip the fabric of the universe.”

“Are you stoned right now?” Alix asked.

“That’s irrelevant,” Karen said. “I’m being serious. This is no time for a Crazy Alix caper.”

A Crazy Alix caper.

Alix felt the wind whoosh out of her.
Crazy Alix?
Karen had never called her that. Other people had, but not Karen. With a lightness she didn’t feel, Alix said, “I think
Crazy Alix
can test the occult computer program without ending life as we know it.” And then, just to needle Karen, “It’s not like I’m going to order the planet Mars to arrive at my doorstep. Though, that would sure test the magic, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh my god, don’t even say that!”

“Look, come on, I’m excited, aren’t you? Think of something for me to order.”

“Don’t mess with the magic until I’m there,” Karen said. “Do NOT.”

“So you can mess with the magic, but not me? Don’t let Crazy Alix at it!”

“You know I’m just better at this stuff,” Karen said, in a very reasonable and placating tone. “You can wait three days, right? I’ll think things through and help handle it if things get weird.”

“And I won’t.”

“Oh, come on, Alix. You’re going to act like you don’t get crazy and reactive when things go wrong? This is serious.”

Alix’s throat clogged. Is that how Karen felt about her?

“Crazy and reactive? That’s what you think?” A horrible idea came to Alix. “Is that what you thought about the Manuel incident?”

“Alix, I know your heart was in the right place—”

“Oh my god, you do!”

“Try to understand. It’s world balance stuff.”

Alix swallowed with difficulty. “I understand,” she whispered.

“I can tell you don’t. No—please—I’m sorry. I’m just freaked out about this. Can we rewind the conversation?”

“No, we can’t rewind the conversation!” Alix blurted, feeling the tears come. She couldn’t think straight in emotional situations. She didn’t understand how Karen always could.

“Alix! Talk to me.”

Crazy and reactive?

“I have to go,” Alix whispered, feeling ashamed. Karen was the one who’d always believed in her.

“I’m serious. Don’t do anything until you discuss it with me. Don’t even touch your computer.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t destroy the world. I have to go.” She clicked off and turned off the phone.

Lindy came over and nosed her lap. Alix sat down on the floor and hugged her, letting the tears dribble down her cheeks, not caring about the black mascara and eyeliner tracks that were no doubt forming.

If that’s how Karen felt, hell, why were they even friends? Sure, Alix was aware that Karen relied on her to add a sense of fun and play in her life, that she coaxed Karen out of her overly ponderous life in new ways, and even helped her connect with guys. But that was something a puppy could do. Alix had always thought that by some miracle Karen respected her, too. How could you be friends with somebody you didn’t respect?

“Screw it,” she said, wiping her tears, so incredibly tired of feeling inadequate.

She grabbed a six-pack of beers from the fridge and stuffed it into her backpack along with a bag of chips. She’d take Lindy for a walk along the bluff, Lindy’s favorite place to go. Doing nice things for Lindy always made Alix feel better when she was blue.

Thirty minutes later they reached the bluff. She drank one beer and then another, throwing sticks with Lindy and watching her chase squirrels and chipmunks. By the third beer, she was leaning against a tree trunk, staring dolefully out over the Mississippi. The river was low and lazy this time of year, surrounded by weeds and cattails. You could see all the way to the rolling hills on the Wisconsin side, all neat squares of cropland.

Crazy and reactive.

She and Karen had always been allies against the world, allies against people like her overachieving sisters. And Hardass Paul.

She’d never admit it out loud, but it still stung that Hardass Paul had kicked her out of his class those four years ago. She and Karen had been house sitting for Karen’s cousin in Oakland that summer—Alix was between jobs, Karen on break from college. Alix had spotted Paul on the street, been taken by his choppy brown hair and deep blue eyes, but mostly by the way he walked. So loose and strong and commanding—just his walk had been beautiful to her. They’d shadowed him to a martial arts school and discovered he was a teacher there. Alix had begged Karen to sign up for a four-week class right then and there. The first week she’d flirted shamelessly with Paul, who had just turned twenty five.

“He’s not going for it,” Karen had observed after class one day. “He sees you as a student, not a girl.”

“He sees me as a girl,” Alix had said. “I know he does.”

She knew because they’d had a
moment
when Paul made her take her bracelets off.