And there she was. My mother, Huguette Elder, standing — no, looming — over Ted’s prone body. She was glowing like some giant firefly, the light bright enough to hurt my eyes.
“Mom?”
She didn’t turn. Didn’t even acknowledge me. That in and of itself was not unusual, though I would have thought that at this particular hour, she would have done me the courtesy of a nod or even an angry wave to leave her alone.
Meanwhile Ted lay flat on his back, his head resting on a pillow as though he were talking to a psychiatrist. He was mumbling on and on about his car, his driving, road rage and my mother’s incessant concern that some driver would one day pull out a shotgun in response to Ted’s ubiquitous one finger salute.
“Aaachooo!”
Ted’s sneeze scared me so badly that I let out an “eeep!” and nearly tripped as I furiously backed away from the bed. Remarkably, neither of them reacted to my apparent lack of manliness.
“Hellooooo?” I looked at both of them with frustration. They were ignoring me, plain and simple. Which might have been fine at any other time, but was not fine when they woke me at three in the morning.
“Hey!”
Nothing. I was getting ticked off now. In fact, I was on the verge of storming back to my room when a stray band of neurons fired deep within the void that is my skull.
Why was my mother glowing?
I tiptoed around her, my left foot slipping on a stray item of clothing. Ted’s room was a mystery at the best of times, so I tried not to hammer my toes off some stray table leg.
Having navigated my way around the room, I turned to face my mother.
It was eerie. She was glowing. Just as strange, she was talking, but no sounds were coming out. (What do they say about looking a gift horse in the mouth?). Worse yet, Ted seemed to be answering her.
Then the rest of the neurons in my skull fired, all at once.
Fearstone.
I coughed, then started to laugh. I couldn’t help it.
My mother. Ted’s greatest fear was our mother. And I thought I was the only one.
I glanced one more time at the remarkable golem before me, an identical duplicate of Huguette Elder, right down to the way she stood, as though anchored to the ground. Then I marched into the front hall, and grabbed the fearstone off the table by the door. It was easy to find, seeing as how it was glowing like a child’s night light. But moments after I picked it up, the glow disappeared. The light from Ted’s room also disappeared.
Strange. I had hoped that Sol’s suggestion would succeed in muting the power of the thing. Apparently not.
I had also assumed that since the stone had not affected me, it would not affect Ted. For some reason that thought had comforted me in recent days. If magic couldn’t affect me or my family, we could remain a bastion of sanity from the insanity around us. But if he was affected, then magic had inserted itself even further into my reality — a situation which I found extremely uncomfortable.
I stood by the door to his room, looking down on Ted’s now calm face, a faint snore rising from the bed.
Magic was real, and posed a threat to those close to me. It was a disturbing thought.
CHAPTER 15
While I blew most of Saturday on my mercy mission for Jamar, I was hoping Sunday would prove a better day, with the BBQ at Clay’s house. If nothing else, it seemed unlikely there would be another crazed witch launching home appliances at me like cruise missiles.
Clay and Harper lived on the Credit River Valley in Lorne Park, a suburban neighborhood in Mississauga that had once been a resort community for Torontonians. Before that, the valley was the home of the Mississauga band of the Ojibwa tribe, and before them, the Iroquois.
The Iroquois of the day would not have known what to make of Lorne Park now. The neighborhood was a nice one — fairly upscale. In Clay’s case, quite a way upscale. His lot was seventy five or eighty feet wide, by three hundred deep. I was impressed.
Ted whistled.
“Nice. This is your boss’ place?”
“You don’t remember the house?” My mother sat in the back, and always gave you the sense she was peering over your shoulder. “We used to visit when you were children. The four of us.”
The car was silent for a moment. Wasn’t often that any of us made reference to my father. After a quarter century, even the dearest of family can begin to fade in the shadows of time.
“Why haven’t we been over since?”
“Oh, Harper offers to have us over every year for Thanksgiving. Just didn’t seem right without your father. I see her all the time, though.”
I could understand that. I was old enough to know many of the things we had done before my father passed away. Visiting certain parks, skating at a neighborhood rink, weekends at a campground north of the city. They had somehow become hollow places without him.
The driveway was long enough that I was able to pull in behind Clay’s White Yukon and still leave room for two or three more cars behind me. There were several cars already parked along the road, a few pulled over so far that they looked as though they were about to slide off the shoulder into the ditch. We exited the car and my mother handed Ted a bottle of wine and a platter of crudites, still disgusted that neither of us had brought so much as a bag of chips.
Like a lot of the older properties in the area, the Jarvis house itself was relatively small. It was a chalet bungalow, brick exterior the color of goldenrod. Tucked well off the road behind a canopy of ash and maple, none of the trees shorter than thirty feet tall. A stone walkway led from the driveway up to a pair of welcoming black doors with window cut-outs to let some light in. To the right of the doors the roof overhung a patio, well-worn wicker furniture suggesting this was a familiar leisure nest for Clay and Harper. A pine wreath hung from the door.
I knocked. Just a habit — I can’t stand the sound of doorbells. Call me a freak.
Moments later the door swung open.
“Darling, thank you for having us over.” My mother hugged Harper and kissed her on both cheeks. To my knowledge she has never been to Europe, however the cheek kissing thing seems as popular among French Canadians as anywhere across the Atlantic. I’m convinced they’re checking to see if you’ve washed behind your ears.
Harper stood an inch or two shorter than my mother, but where Mom was solid and matronly, Harper was slim. Elegant.
“Darnell.” She took my hand and I kissed her cheek lightly.
“And this must be Theo.”
I snorted, and Ted gave me a short jab to the ribs. Very few got away with using our real names. Theodore in particular was touchy about the whole thing.
He gave her a quick kiss. “Where would you like me to put this?”
“Did you boys cook for us?”
My mother snorted. “Yes. That would be the day. We would be bringing toast and bacon.”
Somehow I felt like I had gotten in trouble again. What the hell did I do?
“Well, come in. Make yourself at home. Clay’s on the back patio, and he’ll be delighted to see you.”
I spent most of the first hour with Clay, being introduced to at least two dozen customers and friends. Pask DeMarco was there, as was Helen Findlay from Sun Consulting. The others were a blur of faces and names.
An hour later I was tending the barbeque under the watchful eye of my mother. Ted had somehow scammed his way into serving drinks, and seemed intent on doubling up every shot he offered out. One of Clay’s nieces was starting to laugh just a little too loudly at Ted’s jokes.
“They managed to put you to work here too?”
Wow. Kara. I had been watching for her for the past 30 minutes, and she still managed to sneak up on me. No wonder Clay and I had been mugged.
“Hey.”
There was an awkward pause, then I realized that introductions were in order.