The Silver Glove

  Could I really walk past that thing, I mean stride past it like the woman I was made up to be, as if it were nothing but urban transport?

  I patted my wig and took a good grip on the paper bag (I guessed it was supposed to hold whatever I’d been in the shop to buy). I threw out my chest and swung into what I hoped would be a convincing stride over the tile floor, snapping along with a real power-walk that made sounds like gunshots.

  Wobbling past The Claw in my incredible heels, I held myself in a grip of iron so as not to turn and look. Would an investment counselor on her way to hobnob with economists from Washington even notice a miserable bicycle in a hotel hallway? She would not.

  As I passed it I heard a faint, tingling sound: the sound of the thin metal spokes vibrating slightly as the front wheel turned, following my progress, probing, questing after me.

  Then I stepped onto the blood-red hotel carpeting and swept through that lobby as fast as I could on those heels, pretending like mad that I was hurrying toward something instead of running feverishly away. I think I was half-flying on the high I had gotten from making it this far.

  I stiff-armed the revolving door and emerged into the open air.

  From the top step of the hotel entrance I saw Ushah. She stood in front of The Makeup Stop, glaring around in frustration.

  I froze. She would look right at me, she would see through me—

  The door of the shop opened and Barb’s mom looked out, said something. Ushah smiled and answered.

  I might have stood there forever, frozen, watching with my breath held, but the hotel doorman caught my eye. He must have seen something he took for a signal—a flash of desperation, I bet—because he solemnly opened the door of the taxi at the curb and held it for me.

  Somehow or other, a few seconds later I was sitting in the backseat of that cab, heading down the street. I craned my neck and stared fearfully out through the back window, but I saw no signs of a pink-wrapped Indian witch racing after me on The Claw.

  12

  The Demon Shrink

  WHEN I LIMPED INTO THE APARTMENT in those torturous high heels, I found Mom in her room. She had taken down a suitcase from her closet and put it on her bed, and she was busy stuffing things into it at random—pages of manuscript, a couple of blouses she had previously laid out for ironing, her bedside clock, a half-full glass of water.

  Worse, she was wearing her carpet slippers—the carpet slippers I had given her for Christmas. When she’d unwrapped the slippers she’d turned red and protested plaintively that she wasn’t old enough for carpet slippers, for crying out loud. Then she’d spent the rest of the day trying to apologize to me for having thoughtlessly rejected my good intentions along with my gift.

  I’d accepted her apology eventually, despite my hurt feelings—those slippers had been very carefully chosen for their warmth and rich design, and I’d have loved for somebody to give me a pair—but I’d noticed since that she’d never worn them.

  Until now. Which was about as clear an indication of her mental state as you could ask for.

  I persuaded her that she wasn’t going anywhere for a while, got her into the kitchen, and fed her what was surely her first food of the day. Then I parked her in front of the TV and I checked out the telephone answering machine. My one hope was that Gran had called.

  She hadn’t. Several irate or puzzled authors had—clients of my mom’s—and her lawyer, and some friends wanting to know how things were going. That was all. I decided I would call Mom’s office in the morning, in case Gran had tried to contact me there.

  I sat up most of the night in Mom’s room, watching her sleep by the jumpy light of the TV screen and dozing off myself now and then, but not for long.

  Having failed to locate Gran, I could see only one way left for me to go: to tackle Brightner directly. Myself. Of course if I did, I might never see my mom, waking or sleeping, zombie or alive, again.

  On the other hand, that was a sure thing if I did nothing at all.

  So next morning I ate as much Grape Nuts as I could get down, spooned some into Mom, and headed for school early. Which gave me a chance to hang around by myself, cold and scared, while some of the boys played with a football in the street and girls stood in little knots gossiping and giggling. For all I had in common with any of them today—including my friend Megan, who only came early to watch her latest crush pass the football—I might have been a Martian.

  I kind of wished I’d come late rather than early; except that watching Mom pad around in the despised carpet slippers was too awful. My only comfort was the silver glove, which I wore.

  I handed in a forged note from my mom for my missed Monday, and ghosted through my morning classes with only one thing on my mind: did I really dare walk into Brightner’s office and demand my mom’s reflection back?

  At lunch, Barb sat down with me. “You get home all right? You should have heard the fuss that weirdo made! My mom couldn’t figure out what it was all about. She finally threatened to call the building security man, it being way past closing time by then anyhow. You got all that stuff I lent you?”

  I handed over the borrowed clothes. Barb gave me a neat package in return. “Here’s yours. I threw it all in the washer last night when I got home. Smells like curry in there now.”

  “Barb,” I said, “you’re great.”

  Barb said, “What now?” She looked at the glove on my hand and raised her eyebrows. “Going to see somebody?” she said.

  “Going to try,” I said.

  “I’d keep you company,” she said, looking away from me, “but I can’t. Brother’s in real trouble this time, and my mother’s busy. There’s a big buyer coming in today. I got to go mind the store soon as I finish lunch.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, with a sinking heart.

  “You know I’d come with you,” she said, very intense. “I would. But Brother—”

  “Don’t apologize, it’s okay,” I said, wishing hard that I had a brother or a sister to help me, even a brother or sister who also kept getting into serious hot water and disrupting my life.

  “Who’s apologizing?” Barb snapped.

  Lennie walked by. I called him, thinking maybe I could ask him to hang around in the hall outside Brightner’s office when I went in there, as a sort of witness, I guess.

  He stopped by our table but didn’t sit down. “How’re you doing?” he said in a funny, stiff way.

  “Awful, Lennie. I could use a favor,” I said.

  He shrugged and looked away. “I could have used one yesterday. So long. Some guys are waiting for me.”

  And he walked away. If anybody was waiting for him, I didn’t see them.

  It’s amazing how even in the midst of the greatest crisis of your life, a thing like that can hurt your feelings. “What’s the matter with him?” I said indignantly.

  Barb gave me a look. “Somebody was supposed to read something of his in English class yesterday, remember? Only somebody didn’t show up, and Lennie had to read it himself. The way I hear it, it was not a raving success, and he threw up afterward in the boys’ room. Nerves, you know? Some people are real sensitive that way.”

  “Oh, God.” I groaned. “I was locked in the spice pantry by a witch at the time! How in the heck can I ever explain that?”

  Barb poked my shoulder comfortingly and got up. “You’re smart, you’ll work it out. Listen, I gotta go. Call me, okay? At the store. I want to know what happens. And you can hide out there again if you need to.”

  But we both knew I wouldn’t, not now that Ushah knew about The Makeup Stop.

  “Hey,” she added. “You got that little mirror I gave you?”

  I did, tucked away in my shirt pocket, with the flap buttoned for security. “You need it back?” I said.

  “Nope. Just keep it by you, and don’t you dare lose it!”

  She left. I sat there alone, wondering if anybody could help me. No use even asking Megan. And who else was there? Just me, dumb and desperat
e on the fringes of crazy things I didn’t understand, let alone expect anybody else to jump into with me.

  So: I might as well go after the Demon Shrink at sixth period, when, according to the schedule posted on his office door, he was free. Who could tell, maybe the silver glove would fly off my hand and dive down his throat and choke him while he was busy laughing at me!

  Right after lunch I saw him in the hall talking with one of the science teachers. He saw me, too, and he didn’t so much as blink, just went on chatting with Miss Bell. Flirting, if you can believe that! I believed it, and from the look on Miss Bell’s face she believed it too, and didn’t mind a bit.

  Maybe he already had his eye on another “bride.”

  The trouble with deciding definitely when you’re going to do something is that the time comes. On the way to my doom I stopped to take a drink at the fountain in the fourth-floor hallway, which gave me a chance to see if anybody was around. Who knew what kind of trap Brightner might have set for me?

  Here came Mrs. Denby, tick-ticking down the hallway from the assistant principal’s office in her high heels with an armload of files. I winced. My feet still ached from yesterday. I would never feel the same way about high heels again.

  “Hi, Mrs. Denby,” I said loudly, and she blinked and sort of shook her head—looking for my name in it among all the others, probably—and said, “Oh, hello, Valentine.”

  Not the person I would have chosen to be the last one to see me before I stepped into the monster’s lair, but she would have to do.

  I clenched my hand in the silver glove and knocked on Brightner’s door.

  “Come in, Tina,” he called from inside. Reading my mind again! Or at least sensing my presence before he saw me.

  I choked down my fear, concentrating instead on pure indignation at being called by my baby-name, and I walked into his office.

  There he sat, leaning back in the beat-up swivel chair with his hands behind his head. Mr. Casual. On a cleared place on the scarred oak desk, a smouldering cigar butt was parked in a glass ashtray shaped like a pear.

  “Hi,” he said. “I thought I saw trouble in your face when I was talking to Miss Bell. What’s up? Tell me about it. I’m the guy to talk to.”

  He absolutely took my breath away, coming on all solicitous like that. After everything that had happened! Funny, though—I hadn’t noticed before: he had warm brown eyes in his hound-dog face.

  He looked—homely. Friendly. Sympathetic.

  All of a sudden I felt so funny and confused that I knew I had to get down to business fast, while I still had some idea of what I’d come in here for.

  “My mom went ice-skating with you on Saturday night,” I challenged.

  “Is that what you think she did?” he said, reaching for the cigar butt and taking a good puff at it.

  “She did. And she came back weird.” I meant this to be an accusation that would jar the truth out of him. It came out weak and childish.

  He nodded at the chair facing him across the desk. “Sit down, Tina.”

  With the door open behind me, what could happen? I felt dizzy. I sat.

  He lounged on his side of the desk like a comfy old walrus, tapping ash into the glass pear. “Do you think if your mom goes out it means she doesn’t care about you?”

  “No.”

  Now I was annoyed. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people who have a system to explain everything a kid does or says, even if the kid happens to be acting and speaking out of their own life and not anybody’s system. When my mom went out, what it meant to me was that she was living her own life, which was fine with me. If she lived hers, then I had a good argument for living mine.

  Besides, going out made her feel good, and when she felt good she was a lot nicer to live with. I was not about to go into any of that with the Demon Shrink. Since he was so smart, let him guess.

  Not him. He cruised right on with his theories. “Is it like when your father left? Do you think it’s all your fault? Do you think your family broke up on account of something you did?”

  “I never thought that about my father,” I said. Did I ever think that? No, I told myself fiercely, don’t let him distract you with this junk!

  He said, “I imagine there’s some conflict for you about your mother’s, ah, social life. Here she is telling you to stop and go at the same time, since of course she wants to be sure that you learn how to handle yourself with boys but not get in too deep for your age. But for her, it’s all go, right? It would be, for an attractive woman like that.”

  “Don’t talk like that about my mother.” I croaked. There was something incredibly nasty about the way he was just strolling around in what he imagined my life with my mom to be like.

  And I sure did not want to have him sit there and discuss how attractive he thought my mother was, which felt like an icky sort of intrusion into Mom’s private life. I had expected to be scared, but this guy was also making me feel a little sick.

  He smiled. “Have some candy,” he said, edging the dish toward me across the desk. “It’s just fennel seeds coated in sugar and food coloring. A little sugar wouldn’t hurt you; you look washed out.”

  Never take candy from strangers, my mom had always said. My poor mom.

  “You’ve got her reflection,” I said, bringing the conversation back to basics. “She’s hardly a person at all now. And all those other people’s shadows—what are you trying to do, anyway?”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to talk about her.”

  “That’s not what I said,” I muttered woozily.

  He studied me a minute. Then he leaned across the desk and spoke quietly to me, seriously. “Your mother’s safe. Couldn’t you tell that when you saw her skating with me? That’s why I showed her to you. She’s safe and she’s happy.”

  “You’re lying!” I said. Now we were on the subject, and that was the best I could do!

  “You saw her,” he insisted calmly. “She was smiling, wasn’t she? Think back. How did she look?”

  “It doesn’t matter how she looked! You put a spell on her, that’s all. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  He pursed up his lips as if he was really considering what I’d said. “I’m sure a smart kid like you knows,” he remarked, “that it’s very common for a child of divorced parents to have all sorts of fantasies about any man who seems likely to replace their real dad.”

  A wave of dizziness washed over me. I shook it off. I said, “That’s a lot of crap and you know it!”

  “Is it?” he said mildly. He squashed the butt of his cigar out in the ashtray.

  “Tell me how many kids like that make up fantasies about people’s shadows being stolen—old people, street people, for cripes’ sake—people who could disappear and everybody would say, oh, that’s too bad but of course it happens!”

  “Disappear?” he said, with this lazy smile that made me twist inside. “Who said anything about disappearing?”

  “Then what is going to happen to them?” I said.

  “Something fine and grand,” he said expansively. “A new life. A fresh start in a new place. Isn’t that the American ideal?”

  “What?” I said, bewildered. “What good is a fresh start to a bunch of old people and homeless?”

  “Oh, not their worn-out bodies,” he said, flipping one thick paw in the air to dismiss this worthless notion. “Surely your grandmother figured this out and told you? I’m only taking spirits, souls, which I’m going to install in new bodies. Strong, new bodies; strong and young.”

  That was the kind of thing necromancers do, Gran had said.

  “And dead,” I whispered. “Dead bodies, right?”

  “Clever girl,” he smiled. “Right at the moment, yes. But not for much longer. That’s the whole idea.”

  “Whose dead bodies? Where?”

  “All right, I’ll play,” he said, fishing a fresh cigar out of his breast pocket and clipping off one end with a little silver clipper. “S
uppose there was a war going on, somewhere else, somewhere far.”

  A war, Gran had said, taking up all the energies of Sorcery Hall.

  “And suppose one side had a lot of casualties and was running out of recruits. That side might hire a very talented recruiter to go and find some new fighters. The very talented recruiter could be somebody very skilled, somebody who knew how to patch up dead warriors, bodies that have fighting strength and skill built into their nerve-paths and muscles and that aren’t actually used up yet, just—damaged. Suppose he could get them up and moving around again, using souls lifted out of other bodies—old bodies, sick and crazy bodies.”

  “You can’t,” I said, feeling a little sick and crazy myself.

  “Who said anything about me?” he said, shooting his eyebrows high in surprise. He lit the fresh cigar. “I’m talking about a figure out of fantasy, like a top-grade wizard from a role-playing game. I’m talking about the greatest necromancer ever seen. That person could do it. You bet he could.”

  I swallowed, thinking of Dirty Rose. “They wouldn’t fight,” I said. “Street people won’t fight in anybody’s stupid war!”

  “Sure they will.” He actually chuckled. I have never heard such an evil sound in my life. “They get a quick fix for the major kinks in their miserable minds: first-rate therapy, absolutely free!

  “Then they’ll wake up totally disoriented in their new bodies, and before they can even think about it they’ll be hustled into battle. The bodies, warrior-bodies, will know what to do automatically. Fear will do the rest. Men-souls, women-souls, it makes no difference—fear makes hard fighters. They’ll fight so well that I’m sure this recruiter I’m talking about will get a contract for a return trip. There are lots of souls here on your pretty earth, enough to man even a really, really long war.”

  He’s really saying this, I thought, with Mrs. Denby’s footsteps clicking by in the hall, as they did just then. But why not? If she did happen to overhear what he was saying, she’d probably think it was just some weird kind of therapy going on in the office of the new school shrink.