Darkness Falls

  “But—” My eyes widened in distress beneath my big, black bouffant hairdo. My Texas hairstyle. “Miz Barker, that’s almost a thousand acres!”

  “No, Miss Whitstone,” said the widow. “It’s almost two thousand acres.” She started to look worried—there was probably no way I’d agree to buy two thousand acres.

  “Oh goodness,” I murmured, taking another Lorna Doone. In fact, county records had shown that her parcel was 1,967 acres, give or take a couple feet. Farmland around here had once gone for as much as sixty-five dollars an acre, but that was before the drought of the last five years.

  The widow fidgeted nervously with her paper napkin, her gnarled knuckles stiff with arthritis. She was probably only around sixty, and I marveled that she’d packed a whole life into that brief amount of time, with a beginning, a middle, and now an ending. With no children or grandchildren, no spouse, she was planning to move to Oklahoma and live with her younger sister, also a widow.

  “Goodness,” I said again, working sums with my fingernail on my own napkin. I inhaled. “Miz Barker—at thirty-seven dollars an acre, that’s, oh my goodness. That’s seventy-four thousand dollars!”

  She tried not to look exhilarated. I imagined that she was picturing herself arriving at her sister’s house, several battered suitcases holding all her worldly possessions, and being able to proudly say that she was not here on sufferance, on charity. She had an inheritance, and she could contribute her fair share.

  “Edford offered me fifty dollars an acre,” she said, which I knew was an outright lie. I could argue her down to probably thirty-five an acre. I took another cookie and dunked it in my coffee. Lorna Doones were dang good.

  “Well, you see, Miz Barker, I really only need about five acres,” I said again. “Old Shep doesn’t hardly get around anymore.”

  “You could do a lot with two thousand acres,” she said. “I’d rather it go to you and your mama instead of Edford or some old oil company who wants to break it all up.” Awl kumpneh.

  I gave her a weak smile. “My cousin says—” I began, but she cut me off.

  “Your cousin is a smart man,” she said. “With all kind of business sense, I’m sure. But this is between you and me. Woman to woman. I won’t lie to you: This land hasn’t been good to me. It needs new blood. It needs you and your mama, come to bring new life to it. I’m ready to sell, ready to live in Greer’s Pass, Oklahoma, and never have to mess with this land no more. But it’s got to be the whole parcel. And it’s got to be fifty dollars an acre!”

  She drew herself up, her gray, thinning hair pulled back into an indifferent bun. Her face was wrinkled and leathery from sixty years of the Texas sun. She was definitely gouging me on the land price, but I liked the widow Barker. I grinned at her.

  “Miz Barker, I do believe my cousin Sam is goin’ to blow a gasket,” I said. “But I have money from my daddy, and this is my mama, after all. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna take your whole parcel—and I’ll give you…” I faltered, then reached for my resolve and swallowed visibly. “Forty dollars an acre!”

  Widow Barker did the math quickly in her head. Almost $80,000. More than she’d hoped. She held out her hand. I shook it. And that was how I acquired almost two thousand acres of the south-central Texas oil field. I paid $78,000 and change, which was a huge sum in 1956. And I sold it for a truly astronomical amount in 1984. And I never have to worry about money again, for as long as I live, which is saying something. Unless mankind goes back to the barter system. In which case I’ll be screwed.

  The widow Barker, I assumed, went to Oklahoma with her nest egg and lived out the rest of her days probably feeling a tad guilty about the killing she’d made off the little girl from Louisiana. If she ever knew that oil had been found oil on that property just two years later, I never heard from her about it.

  And my “cousin” Sam did in fact blow a gasket.

  “Forty dollars an acre!” Incy shouted, slamming his whiskey glass down on the Formica table. “You were supposed to go up to thirty-five, at the most!”

  I’d laughed at him, tucking my hair under a rubber swim cap covered with big plastic flowers. It was damn hot here, and the motel pool beckoned. “I have the money; it’s still taking candy from a baby, and you know it’s worth umpteen times that much.”

  “Maybe,” he said darkly. “If there’s oil there.”

  I shrugged. “Oil, natural gas—this place is loaded with it. You saw the reports. Besides, I liked Widow Barker. We made a deal, woman to woman.”

  “I should have been there.” Incy poured himself another tumbler of whiskey and pushed his cowboy hat farther back on his head. With his dark coloring, he still looked foreign, out of the ordinary here, but he’d gone all out with the clothes and the whole Western persona. I’d forbidden the spurs or the longhorns welded to the front of the car. A girl has limits.

  My hand stilled. “Why? Because I don’t know how to buy property?” My eyes met his in the mirror.

  He paused. “Of course you do,” he said. “But you got taken. You let that woman gyp you—”

  “Innocencio,” I said, using his favorite name, the one he would always answer to no matter what his public name was, “I was not gypped. I made a deal. I knew what I was doing. I think it’s fine.” I let an edge into my voice, which I hardly ever did with him.

  He blinked, seeing that he’d pushed me. Then he smiled easily and stood, helping me wrap the towel around my shoulders.

  “Okay, Bev. I’ll back off. You know I just want to help, right? I mean, I got the parcel right next door for thirty-three an acre. I wanted you to get a good deal, too. You know it’s just because you’re my best friend. It’s you and me. Right?” His eyes twinkled, and the corners of his mouth turned up irresistibly.

  I smiled. “I know. But you don’t have to worry. You just have to show up at the courthouse to be my witness on Thursday, when we close the deal.”

  “I’ll be there!” he said cheerfully.

  “With no spurs,” I clarified, and his face fell. And then he had gone out and fleeced the local bar patrons in a long night of poker. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now it seemed to me that he couldn’t stand not taking advantage of someone, not leaving the person with less than when they’d met. He’d really been sore at me for not cheating the widow out of money after I’d already cheated her out of land she didn’t know there was oil on.

  “You just don’t have the killer instinct,” he’d said as we left the courthouse after signing all the papers.

  “I have the moneymaking instinct,” I said with a smile.

  He shrugged. For me, it was about having spent several hundred years having to rely on men; to own property, have a business, work land, be physically safe. Having to depend on a man, even a man you liked or loved, was not a comfortable feeling for me. My father had died when I was ten, my first husband after eighteen months of marriage, and then I’d spent decades being a servant in various households just so I would be protected, not have to suffer all the risks and limits of being a woman on my own.

  Hence my drive for money. Here we were in the twenty-first century and, clearly, for some women, relying on men was still a necessity or a choice. But it wouldn’t be for me. Ever again.

  For Incy, it was about winning, besting someone. Even the people he seduced were about the challenge, not about love or like or even just chemical attraction.

  We were both about control, but in different ways and for different reasons.

  “Oh no,” said Katy. “Let’s not.”

  Incy glanced over at her. After his outburst in the hotel room, the idea of going out in public with him had seemed ill-fated at best. But I needed time to figure this out, figure him out. I needed to know more about what he’d been doing. In the end I’d decided that I’d already been in mortifying scenes with Incy, and if this evening went south, loudly, it wouldn’t be the first time.

  I wasn’t thrilled with him driving, but he was sober, if a
bit off-kilter, and I admit I didn’t want to risk him being in a cab. Not that cabs automatically set him off. But I just had a feeling. Not a strong enough feeling to write him off, leave again. Not yet. I still wanted to work this through, to help him. Instead of seeing him as hopelessly lost, I saw him as flawed and uncomprehending, the way River no doubt saw me.

  So we’d gone out to dinner and it had been fine—we’d practically closed the restaurant, with waiters not living up to their name as we lingered over drinks and dessert and more drinks and then more dessert. Incy had been his old self, charming, even sweet, and blisteringly funny. There had been much fun and laughter. I’d felt better by the time we were done, with Incy back to normal. And Cicely had loosened up after being mad at Boz and me back at the hotel.

  But now we were debating going to Incy’s new favorite bar, a place on the edge of town called Miss Edna’s.

  “Can’t we go to Den again?” Katy asked.

  “Don’t be a stick-in-the-mud,” Incy said with a new snide edge in his voice. “Strat called. He’s meeting us there after his sports experience is over.”

  Katy sighed and looked out the Caddy’s window. I was in the front seat with Incy; Katy, Cicely, and Boz were in the back.

  “It’s just not that fun, man,” said Boz, sounding tired. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then straightened up. “Hey, let’s go to the bar at the top of the McAllister Building! It has great views, lots of Boston’s dumbest and richest, and a jazz combo.”

  “That sounds fab,” I said. A jazz combo > another bass-pounding club.

  “No,” said Incy stubbornly. “We can go there anytime. I want to go to Edna’s. I want Nasty to see it.”

  “Oh, that’ll go over well,” Boz muttered. I glanced back at him and he rolled his eyes at me.

  “What’s Edna’s?” I asked.

  Incy smiled and patted my hand. “It’s a really special place,” he said. “You’re going to love it. I’ve been dying to take you there.”

  “So to speak,” I said, and he laughed.

  “And Strat’s meeting us there,” he repeated.

  “It’s really interesting,” said Cicely. “It’s a whole new experience.”

  “Maybe you could drop me off at the hotel,” Katy said.

  “No!” Incy snapped, stepping on the gas. “You’re so ungrateful! I found this amazing place and you want to crap on everything I do! You just want to tear me down! You can’t stand that I’m better than you!”

  Not again. I gave Boz a WTF expression. He answered with a pained one. Cicely was looking bored, examining her fingernail polish.

  “Better than me!” Katy began angrily. “At what? Pissing standing up? Listen, you wanker—”

  “And here we are.” Innocencio slammed on the brakes and cut the lights before I even got an impression of our surroundings.

  “Where’s here?” I asked. “Incy, where are we?” I looked out the car window and saw that we were apparently in a movie set of a “bad neighborhood.” Yes, I would prefer to avoid bad neighborhoods. If I got shot or knifed, I wouldn’t die, but it would still hurt just as much as for humans, and it would be damn traumatic. We’re not superheroes. We don’t have Spidey strength, and we do have all the normal pain receptors. We can still get mugged and robbed and assaulted in various harrowing ways.

  Incy smiled at me and took the keys out of the ignition. “A little place I know in Winchley.”

  Winchley. A long time ago it had been a thriving middle-class community with shops on the first floors of the buildings, and apartments above. I had no idea what street we were on, but when I thought of Winchley, I pictured a sunny day, a straw-strewn cobbled street, horses and carriages and street vendors. That had been back in… like, 1890 or so.

  I looked around. Winchley had fallen on hard times. Some neighborhoods look worse than they really are, and some neighborhoods are worse than they look. This was a neighborhood that would get a truth-in-advertising stamp. We were surrounded by dark, brownstone-type three-and four-story buildings, many of which looked burned out or were boarded up with graffiti sprayed over the plywood. Chain-link fences crossed empty lots full of trash, and several sections of fence had been knocked down. Even the streetlights had been broken or shot out. In the darkness, I saw the occasional glowing tip of a cigarette.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked.

  “We’re visiting Miss Edna,” Incy said. He popped the lock on his door and slid out.

  “This bites,” Katy said.

  Cicely made a face at her. “Then stay in the car.”

  Katy snorted. “And be in it when it’s carjacked? I don’t think so.”

  “Come on!” Incy said, bouncing impatiently on his feet.

  West Lowing crossed my mind like a shooting star. People didn’t even lock their cars at night. Everyone knew everybody else. One day I’d been at work and saw a car parked outside. There was a GPS inside it and an iPod mounted on the dashboard. The windows were rolled down, no one was around, and I made a bet with myself that the car would be about a pound lighter when its owner came back. But though at least twenty people walked by, and a bunch of cars passed it, when the owner came back, all her stuff was still there. It had been weird.

  My car door opened and Incy stood there, holding out his hand. Incy had always been a roller coaster, swinging from bliss to anger to sadness with the ease of a pendulum. This felt different. More… malevolent. Not just cheerfully selfish and thoughtless but controlling and dark. Had he changed so much since I’d been gone? Had he always been like this and I’d chosen not to see it? For the first time it occurred to me that my desire to help him was naive, even self-serving. As I knew very well, one had to want to be helped. Though Incy had said that he was glad I was back, to help him be a better man—still, we all know that I’m not one thousandth as wise and patient and giving as River.

  “Are you going to be a buzz kill, too?” Incy asked me, then laughed. “Not Nastasya! Nastasya can keep up with me!” He gave me a loving look. “You and I are a pair. Bread and butter.”

  I used to think so, too, without question. Now, not so much. At all.

  I got out of the car.

  Cicely was already standing by Incy, her hands shoved in the pockets of her fur coat. It was starting to snow, and a deep, bitter cold had fallen on the city. This had been the coldest and snowiest Massachusetts winter I could remember. Katy and Boz, both looking like they’d just bitten a lemon, got out, too. Incy clicked the car locks and then quickly waved his hand, muttering something.

  My eyes widened. “Incy. Are you doing magick?”

  Innocencio laughed. “Just a tiny thing. We want the car to be here when we come back, right?” Without waiting for a reaction, he swiftly headed down a dark alley. Of course. God forbid we should go have fun without being in a horrible neighborhood replete with a dark alley.

  “Nastasya, come on,” said Cicely. “You’re going to love this.”

  I had almost always loved the stuff Incy came up with. He’d shown me more good times over the past century than I’d had in the three centuries before that. Why was I hesitating?

  Maybe because you don’t have your head in the freaking sand anymore, said my snide subconscious. Oh, and who asked you? I said back just as snidely, and hurried to catch up with Incy and Cicely.

  I made it to the end of the alley without getting accosted. We arrived at a tall brick warehouse that had one lightbulb trying to light a gray metal door and not succeeding. I heard no music, felt no heavy bass vibrating through the walls or the ground.

  “Oh jeez, is this, like, rock climbing or something?” I asked.

  Cicely sighed. “Yes. We’re all about physical fitness.”

  There was a small black keypad by the door—you could hardly see it. Incy punched in a code, and the metal door clicked and swung open.

  Inside was a tall, tall, tall, narrow black-painted stairway and nothing else. Pink lights glowed at the top of it. Now I heard music tumbling do
wn the steps toward us.

  “Is this a brothel?” I asked. I wasn’t judging. I had made a fortune with my brothel during the California gold rush, but you know, come on. Why were we here?

  “No.” Incy gave a secretive smile. “Not really.” He started up the stairs.

  “Not really?” My eyebrows rose.

  “It’s not,” said Cicely, and followed Incy.

  It was on the first step that I felt it: darkness. I stopped, one foot on, one foot off. Incy was sprinting up the stairs. Cicely had followed him, leaving a jet stream of Dreams by Anna Sui in her wake. Boz and Katy almost ran into me as I paused, quieting my senses.

  I looked up the staircase. Tendrils of darkness—dark magick—were coiling down toward me in the dim light. I glanced back at Boz and Katy.

  “What?” Katy asked. “Let’s just get it over with.”

  “What is this place?” I asked again.

  Boz rolled his shoulders. “This stupid place Incy found. I don’t even get it. It’s incredibly boring.”

  “Well, let’s just go get a drink at least,” said Katy, motioning for me to get a move on.

  Dark magick beckoned to me, whispered for me to come up, come up….

  “So… do you guys feel that?” I asked casually.

  “Feel what?” Boz looked around.

  “Uh, the um… darkness?”

  Katy frowned. “Yeah. It’s not lit in here.” The “duh” was implied.

  “I feel the coldness and the likeliness for my cashmere overcoat to pick up fungus or worse,” Boz said.

  I nodded, took a deep breath, and started to climb the steps, feeling that this place held the clues of what was going on with Incy. This was the thing that was different about him. This was what had affected him and had not yet affected me.

  What awaited me at the top? With each step I felt the weight of darkness, of Terävä, of people making choices for power. The air around me buzzed with magick that felt uncontained, uncontrolled. Two months before, I probably wouldn’t have felt it, the way Boz and Katy seemed to not feel it now. I’d learned a few small-scale protection spells, and I said them now under my breath, over and over. Had no idea if they would work.