The Silver Glove (11 page)

“Oh, those?” she said casually. “Mere shavings from the soul, totally harmless, of course.”

“I'll bet,” I said, with a shudder. I was glad she couldn't see me. “How do you—make it come out of the people?”

“The food is very special food, you see, not just wholesome and good-tasting! While our guests sleep, they dream. They dream their fears, and flying from them, they fly out of their bodies a little. The part that flies out, the fear, is gathered by my husband so that the lucky sleeper wakes refreshed and relieved of all this fearfulness. He brings great peace to so many troubled souls this way.”

In a pig's eye, I thought. Could she really be innocent in all this? I wanted to think so. That would mean that at least I had
some
chance of persuading her to let me go before Brightner came back from Buffalo or ice-skating or wherever he was.

“He's sure got a nice deal worked out,” I said. “He chases other women while you stay here and run things for him.”

She laughed. “Of course, this is the way things are. Men, even great men, even such men who have found their destined mate and partner, even they have this urge to pursue other ladies. It has happened before, but it is Ushah he does not leave, and so Ushah stays with him. All the others he puts away, one after the other.”

“All?” I said, horrified all over again. “How many are there?”

“Oh, I don't even bother to keep count,” she said airily. “It doesn't matter, as I told you.”

Like heck it didn't! I was talking with the number-one wife of Bluebeard. And he was after my mom. After, nothing—he had her! The rich spice smell was making me a little sick to my stomach; or maybe it was just fear.

I shouted, “Well, whatever he
usually
does with his—his ladies and those other poor people, he won't get away with it this time!”

“Oh, my poor husband,” she mocked. “To have you so angry with him! He will explain to you when he comes, and then you can apologize for these rude things you are saying. Luckily for you, he will be in a very good mood when I tell him how you came by all on your own, after hours, when there was no one around to notice if you got yourself locked in the spice pantry.”

I heard her walking away. I yelled after her, but she didn't come back.

Well, there was some comfort: she might have poor Dirty Rose down there in the basement, but she didn't have Gran. She'd have boasted of it if she did.

On the other hand, she did have
me
. I had to find a way out of the spice pantry.

I started by checking over every inch of it in the pitch-darkness. There weren't a whole lot of inches. I even pulled down some of the spice buckets and climbed up the shelves to try getting a window open. There was one, tiny and gritty-silled, but it was completely painted over and jammed shut. It wouldn't budge. I tried for a long time.

Eventually I conked out. I remember feeling hopelessly convinced that I would never see the light of day again, except past the bulk of my deadly enemy, Dr. Brightner.

I woke up very thirsty and with a runny nose and eyes that itched like crazy. I was allergic to something in here. Sitting by the locked door, I sniffled like a baby, shaking and scared. I couldn't even tell what time it was. My watch has little luminous points on it for the hours, but they need some kind of light bouncing off them to show up. In that hole of a room—well, if not for the absolutely overwhelming smell of those spices, you could have used the place for a sensory deprivation experiment.

I wasn't going to be found looking all wet and runny, like a little kid, by piggy old Brightner; not if I could help it. I began hunting through my pockets for something to blow my nose on.

I found something. I found the silver glove.

As soon as my fingers closed on that soft, crumply leather, I had to smother a shout of laughter: what a jerk I was! What a relief that Gran wasn't here with me to
see
what a jerk I was!

The first thing I should have insisted that she teach me about the glove was to remember, in a pinch, that I had it! Which is not something that comes naturally to a person raised in a world that doesn't believe in magic (or wearing gloves just for pretty, for that matter). For example, when tough kids start following you in the park in New York, the first thing you think is not likely to be, gosh, have I got my magic glove with me?

You panic.
I
had panicked. It was now time to get unpanicked and try seriously using my head.

I put on the silver glove and I whispered to it, “I need to get out of here! Help!”

The glove seemed to hug my hand like a promise.

I pressed my ear against the door and listened. Something had wakened me, and pretty soon I heard it again: running steps, shrill curses in an accented voice, and great thumpings on the walls. What was Ushah up to? And did I really want to know? I imagined her beating the dust out of those poor, lost shadows.

“—Dirty creature!” she shouted as she passed the door in a rushing swish of fabric. Then came another screeched curse. Whatever it was about, the fuss seemed to have taken her out of the immediate vicinity.

Not daring to breathe, I turned the doorknob slowly with my gloved hand. The latch slipped softly free without even a click. In a burst of confidence, I opened the door and stepped out of the spice pantry into what seemed by comparison to be wonderfully cool, fresh air.

The kitchen was still empty, lit only by daylight from one window. Afternoon light—I checked my watch. I had slept for something like fourteen hours! A black sleep from those black-magical spices, so here it was Monday afternoon.

On Mondays lots of restaurants in New York are closed. Ushah was probably alone here, and for the moment not nearby. I could hear the sounds of muffled pursuit not far off.

Good—whatever was running from Ushah, it would help keep her busy while I checked the office upstairs for signs of Gran. Which I meant to do immediately, before I could really think about it and chicken out.

First, though, I had to be sure there was a way out of this place. Shutting the spice pantry door softly behind me, I headed for the side door, which was still shut and locked. The silver glove would take care of that, I was sure. The doorknob turned slowly, but it did turn.

Increasing noise from below: I ducked behind some crates stacked in the passageway, my heart hammering. Ushah was making such a racket herself that it would take more than a thundering heartbeat to get her attention. I hoped.

A small animal streaked up the stairs. Ushah came dashing after it, waving a mop and screeching. She cornered the creature—it was a gray cat, all puffed up and spitting with fear and rage—at the door to the pantry.

With her back to me Ushah moved in on the cat, snarling softly, “When I find which one let you in—oh, such stupid people! Feeding you on the sly, hey? Telling each other how you will keep mice away. ‘Health inspector' means nothing to them, I have to think of everything! Well, you won't steal food here again!”

The cat ducked an Olympic-powered whack of the mop and tore back down into the basement with Ushah pursuing in full cry.

I gathered my nerve for a quick run upstairs to the office—and a prickling sensation rolled through my sinuses. I grabbed my nose and pinched it hard—too late! I was blown backward by an enormous sneeze.

In the one second of silence that ensued, I clambered to my feet and made a break for the alley door in a crash of toppling crates. Flinging open the door, I tore out into the light of a clear, late New York afternoon.

I couldn't do anything for Gran here now. Or for myself, either.

I am a fast runner. I ran.

“Stop,
thief
!” shrieked Ushah, the Bride of Brightner. That voice would have turned a charging bull, and for a second it turned me, or my head anyway, while my feet kept flying.

Out of the doorway behind me, soaring over the tumbled crates, came a fury in pink. She sat sidesaddle on a bicycle that spun madly down the alley after me, glittering with a light of more than polished chrome.

I knew The Claw when I saw it.

Never have I run like that. Never, ever, have I dodged and slid and zipped so madly and dangerously through the narrowest gaps between people and cars, and trucks parked two-deep in the narrow crosstown streets.

The bike darted behind me, leaping obstructions like a skeleton horse, skidding on its tires as it sped on my trail carrying Ushah in her gossamer pink sari. Like some colorful Indian fantasy of a western witch on her broomstick, she flew after me on a bike that she didn't need to pedal with her daintily slippered feet.

Her face was the snarling face of Kali.

Now I knew who had flown the killer kite in Central Park when Gran and I rode the flying carpet!

Ushah sat the jumps like an equestrienne champ and screamed like a banshee, “Thief! Thief! Stop, thief!”

God, the unfairness of it—she, who helped her husband steal people's souls, calling
me
a thief!

For once there was some justice in this world. New Yorkers are cautious about getting mixed up in other people's business. People turned to stare but nobody tried to stop me. I zigzagged like a streak of lightning, heading for the only sanctuary I could think of.

Like a lot of shops in New York, The Makeup Stop has a locked street door. You ring and wait to be let in.

Not me. I whacked the door handle with the silver glove, flung myself inside, and slammed the door behind me. I stood panting in the pretty little mirror-walled boutique which belonged to the mother of my friend Barb. With Ushah's screech building up outside as she came zooming after me, I dove past the counter and between the print curtains into the back room.

Barbara jumped up from a little desk wedged into a corner where she had her looseleaf notes open next to her math text. She is the only person I know who actually starts her homework when she gets in from school instead of waiting as long as possible.

“What?” she yelped.

I could only point behind me and shake my head frantically, having no breath to utter a single word.

Barb yanked open the warped plywood door to the tiny bathroom just as the bell over the front door gave, if you can imagine it, a furious tinkle. I fell into the minuscule bathroom and slumped down on the toilet lid, trying to get some air into my lungs and not die of the cramp in my side.

I was safe for the moment, assuming Ushah couldn't just smash her way in, demolishing the flimsy bathroom door to get at me.

Barb was somebody I used to play horsey with, running around on the roof of her little brownstone apartment building with one of us holding a length of clothesline in her mouth for bit and reins. When it came time for the other one to be the horse and do her paces and chase outlaws and all that, well, whichever one of us it was would chomp down on the same damp place in the rope without flinching. We were that close.

I shook with relief. I may actually have passed out for a minute there. The next thing I knew, Barb was yelling in my ear.

“Hey,” she said, “hey, Valentine, who is that crazy woman? What's going on? You look wrecked, girl!”

“Is she gone?” I gasped.

“She's backed off for now,” Barb said. “Come on out of here. This place was not designed for two.”

I tiptoed fearfully out into the back room, peeking past the curtain into the shop. “Where is she? She didn't just
leave
!”

“She's hanging around across the street,” Barb said. “Look from here, can you see her?”

“I don't want to see her,” I moaned.

Barb gave me a critical look. "You better tell me what's happening, quick, before my mom comes back.”

“Got anything to eat?” I said, looking longingly at the little half-fridge next to the desk. “I'm dying of thirst, too.”

She handed me a diet soda and a wilted ham sandwich, which I gobbled.

“Okay,” she said. “Why is that lady so hot on your trail, anyway? One thing I've learned the hard way, it's just like they say: what goes around, comes around. So why is this person coming around after you?”

“Honestly, Barb, it's not my fault! I didn't do anything to anybody!”

“Okay,” she said. “So who did what to you, then?”

Not really knowing how or where to begin, I blurted, “It's Brightner. It's all Brightner's fault! He's a creep, a creepy, lousy, dangerous creep!”

“Yeah?” said Barb. “He make a move on you, or what?”

I was about to say, a move on my mother, and me, and in a way even my Gran, but it sounded so
gross
. Also a certain amount of caution held me back. It was a lot of years since Barb and I had played horsey.

So I temporized. “It's a secret, Barb,” I said. “A super-saturated-seven-times-secret.”

This was a formula we'd used as kids for our spy games. Barb grinned and said, “Double-defended and never revealed.” Our countersign!

Well, after that, I had to tell her the whole thing. I mean
all
of it.

Barb said, “Huh,” and, “Uh,” and other things like that, which ran a gamut of expression from total disbelief to thoughtful consideration by the time I got through.

She looked me up and down and shook her head. “You don't look any crazier than usual, but that is some story: Valentine and the Demon Shrink! Tell you one thing, though, from personal experience: that lady was all set to bite my face off.”

“What did you say to her?” I said. Barb is so tall and so smooth- and self-possessed-looking that she can pull off a lot of things I wouldn't dream of even trying.

She said, “Well, she came running up after you and set to screaming at me through the door, which did not make a good impression. I screamed back that we're closed, which we will be, at least until Mom gets back.”

“She was running?” I said. “On her own two feet?”