This Eternity of Masks and Shadows Page 4

  Cairn noticed a dark spot in the ice wall, a blemish in the otherwise pristine Arctic blue. It was a frosted glass panel, obscuring a human-size shadow within. As she approached, the door whisked open.

  Cairn stumbled back in terror. A monster loomed within the shadowy recess of the enclosure. She backed into the desk and nearly toppled over it trying to get away.

  But when the silhouetted figure remained motionless, she peered closer.

  She had been frightened by a costume.

  To her credit, the mask had been designed to inspire fear—a helmet of grays and blacks, textured to resemble a coral skeleton and punctuated by two dark eye sockets. Walrus tusks framed the jawline.

  The dark suit that clung to the mannequin was sleek and form-fitting, with a lightweight armor plating the torso and thighs. The legs tapered down into a pair of half-calf combat boots.

  “Oh, hell no,” Cairn said, before running out of the room.

  When Cairn awoke the next day, she was lying on the lair’s floor, though she couldn’t remember falling asleep there. She groaned as she peeled her face off the fake ice and stretched her stiff limbs.

  The previous night came back to her in flashes. It had all been too much to handle at once—the secret lair, the combat uniform. She’d attempted to sleep in her bed, but inevitably her racing thoughts had compelled her to return to the secret room, overthinking it all until her brain short-circuited and she passed out.

  Squall was still perched on the desk, rigid with delight as he watched the fish endlessly circle the aquarium. Cairn ran a hand over the lynx’s fur. “There are three of us living in this house and somehow you are the most responsible one.”

  Cairn reluctantly exited the lair with Squall tucked under her arm. Upstairs, she found the couch empty, her father nowhere to be found. He probably dragged himself back to his office at the university, unwilling to spend more time in their home then he absolutely had to.

  After Cairn refilled Squall’s water dish, she downed a handful of aspirin to quell the aches in her joints. Eventually, the haze dissipated from the previous night, and she remembered the number she’d copied from her mother’s landline.

  With trembling fingers, she pressed the call button and waited with bated breath, expecting the voice of her mother’s lover to answer.

  After three rings, a man picked up the phone—but his greeting was not one Cairn had expected. “Dr. Talia Themis’s office. How can I help you?”

  Cairn hung up without saying a word. A quick online search of the doctor’s name failed to return many results, but it did provide a few revealing pieces of information:

  Dr. Themis was a psychiatrist.

  And she also worked as an adjunct professor at the same university Ahna had attended.

  So her mother had been seeking help from a mental health professional before she died. Somehow, this hurt Cairn even more than the possibility of her mother having an affair. If Ahna had been struggling, why hadn’t she turned to her daughter? Why hadn’t she said anything?

  Regardless, one thing was clear:

  Talia Themis likely knew more about what was going through her mother’s mind in her final days than Cairn did.

  This time, when Cairn called back, she didn’t hang up after the doctor’s receptionist greeted her.

  “My name is Cairn Delacroix,” she said, “and I’d like to make an appointment.”

  Columbia

  District Attorney Tane Makoa paced the observation deck of the Custom House clocktower, sullenly staring down at Boston’s streets five hundred feet below. He was still reeling from a brutal loss in court. Tane had been prosecuting Taranis, a Celtic thunder god who moonlighted as a real estate developer. By all accounts, the defendant had summoned an earthquake to destroy a row of homes when their owners refused to sell. Despite an abundance of well-documented threats, the jury ultimately acquitted him. Tomorrow’s papers would spin the verdict as the failings of an overconfident prosecutor, but Tane suspected juror intimidation was to blame.

  Tensions between gods and mortals were escalating, and Tane knew the worst was yet to come. The violence worked both ways, too. Just last week he’d been handed a case of a mortal zealot drugging minor gods and branding them with a crucifix.

  Tane, himself, had played a role in the city’s fractious mortal-god relations. Tonight, he would put an end to that—and turn the tables on his blackmailer.

  Directly beneath the Custom House’s observation platform, one of the tower’s iconic clock faces glowed brightly against the skyline. Both of its massive hands, made of copper-plated redwood, pointed vertically to the numeral 12. Midnight had arrived.

  And so had Columbia.

  Tane had seen the goddess materialize out of thin air before, but it never failed to unsettle him—even though he was a deity himself, a Māori forest spirit with his own arsenal of supernatural abilities. Watching Columbia teleport was like watching a drop of ink diffuse through a glass of water, only in reverse, obsidian tendrils coagulating until a humanoid form took shape.

  Columbia emerged from the undulating darkness, clad in crimson armor that contoured to her tall, muscular body, with a classical gown draped over one shoulder. A Roman war helmet shrouded her head, and a plume of eagle feathers bisected the top like a mohawk.

  But the item that commanded Tane’s attention was the gleaming saber sheathed in the scabbard at her side.

  Tane steeled himself, but his voice still quavered. “Punctual as always.”

  The helmet cloaked all but Columbia’s predatory smile. “One of the perks of being me is that I don’t have to waste away in traffic like the rest of these Plebes.” She swept an arm out over the network of taxis and cars dotting the streets below.

  “What’s with the costume?” Tane asked. “You’re a few weeks late for Halloween.” While he’d seen her wear the uniform in news clips, she’d always arrived at their clandestine meetings in civilian clothes. Clearly, the goddess was spiraling deeper into her delusions of grandeur.

  Columbia scoffed. “Oh, you’ve got it all backward, my little orchid. What you’ve seen before is my costume. The same way that all this”—she gestured with disgust at his bespoke suit, his ascot tie, his polished leather brogues—“is yours. We all wear them, putting on artifice the way we want the world to see us, the way it benefits us. You’re just finally seeing me as I truly am.”

  At last, something we can agree on, Tane thought darkly. He took a swig from his tumbler of scotch for courage, then launched into the message he’d summoned her here to deliver. “I’ll cut to the chase: I’m out. You and your bogeyman can threaten me all you want, but I will not be your slave anymore.”

  Columbia tsk-tsked. “Need I remind you that I could lay your entire miserable career to waste with a single headline? If the city finds out about the atrocity you and your little fraternity committed on that island, you won’t be able to land a job dispensing soap as a bathroom attendant.”

  “I am prepared to answer for my sins. Maybe I’ll finally sleep well for the first time in nineteen years.” He leveled a finger at her. “Coercing me into altering Sedna’s autopsy report was the final straw. She was the very best of us.”

  “Sedna was an errand girl for that blind whistle-blower. She couldn’t see the bigger picture, so while her elimination was regrettable, she was long overdue for a nap in the ocean.” Columbia glanced at her gauntlets. “Besides, if you ask me, she wasn’t a particularly competent ocean goddess if she couldn’t even breathe underwater. No gills, really?

  Tane began to tremble. It was clearer to him than ever that this woman needed to die.

  Fortunately, the forest spirit had prepared a backup plan in case this meeting went south. On the ledge above, just out of view, he’d planted a sprout of a unique species of ivy, one of his own design that he’d spent the last month perfecting. As he concentrated, the vines took root in the tower’s granite facade. A single tendril unfurled and wove itself into a slipknot.


  The makeshift noose descended silently toward Columbia’s head. The vine glistened with a poison that could kill a person simply by contact. Just a few more inches and it would slip around her neck, one of the only exposed areas on her armor-plated body. Even if she managed to teleport away, the toxin should stay with her.

  But then the roots above dug too deep into the building. A small handful of granite crumbled and rained down on Columbia’s helmet.

  In one smooth motion, she drew her saber and swept it in an arc overhead. It sheered through the vine above her like butter, and the slipknot landed harmlessly at her feet.

  Tane recoiled, preparing for the next swing of the sword to take his head.

  “Relax,” Columbia purred. “You know I’m more subtle than that. It’s purely ornamental.” Still, she brandished the saber in the soft glow of the moonlight. “Do you know why this steel—and that of my armor—is crimson? I infused it with my own blood so all of this could travel with me. Quarts upon quarts of my life force siphoned off over the course of several sittings. I am accustomed to sacrifice.” She sheathed the blade. “What I’m saying is that I much prefer for people to shed their own blood.”

  Tane opened his mouth to respond, but the world tilted around him. The tumbler slipped from his hand and shattered on the tile floor. He blinked rapidly and stared at the remnants of scotch pooled around the shards of glass, then glared accusingly at Columbia.

  She held up her hands in defense. “It’s not what you think—it’s not poison. Well, I guess technically it is. Have you heard of Nocturne, the party drug? It’s a fast-acting sedative that’s all the rage among the kids these days.”

  The forest spirit didn’t respond. He had collapsed against the safety bars, a glaze descending over his eyes like a milky curtain.

  “In theory, you could curl up on the floor and wake up in the morning a little foggy, but otherwise unharmed.” She paused, then repeated, “In theory.”

  He knew he should fight to stay awake, but he was tired, so very tired. If he could just close his eyes for a moment …

  He lost consciousness and dropped to the deck, not even reacting when he landed on the broken glass.

  But then Tane’s eyes shot open. Without a word, he rose to his feet, awkwardly, stiffly, as if he were a zombie relearning to use his body. He cricked his neck and turned methodically to look at an item he hadn’t noticed before: a pair of white feathery wings. He casually slipped the straps over his shoulders.

  “They always tell you to follow your dreams,” Columbia said, though she knew Tane couldn’t hear her. “The problem is that some dreams are nightmares.”

  Now more certain of his limbs, the sleepwalking Tane stepped up onto the railing. He glanced back at Columbia with unseeing eyes. “It’s time for me to soar,” he announced cheerfully.

  Then he gracefully pitched himself off the railing, wings bristling in the wind before he disappeared from view.

  Even thirty floors up, Columbia could hear the dull thud that followed.

  She cast a final look down at Tane’s broken body splayed out face-down in the bed of a gravel truck below, his blood already seeping into the cargo. Then she dematerialized, just a dark wisp of vapor carried off by the harbor wind.

  The Songstress

  It was Friday night, and as the temperature plummeted out on the streets, Boston’s trendiest nightclub was just heating up.

  Located on the roof of a luxury tower in the Seaport neighborhood, the Coconut Grove drew patrons of all ages, from young professionals barely out of college to wealthy investment bankers blowing off steam after a long day in the Financial District. Some came to drink whiskey, listen to jazz, and pretend they were living in the Roaring Twenties. Some came for the spectacular city views, or to soak in the starlight filtering through the club’s panoramic glass dome.

  Others came here for more personal reasons.

  Cairn lurked in the back of the club, watching from the shadows beneath one of the Coconut Grove’s palm trees. She had shown up every weekend for the last month. Each time, she listened as Delphine performed her set.

  Each time, she left before Delphine finished her final song.

  Tonight, the songstress took the stage in a form-fitting sequined dress, her hair pulled taut above a flapper headband and a teal peacock feather. She was breathtaking. At the tables surrounding the stage, men and women alike leaned forward, holding their breath in anticipation. For a moment, the club remained silent except for the clatter of ice cubes in someone’s highball glass.

  When the band began to play and Delphine launched into song, Cairn could practically hear the collective lovesick sigh from the audience.

  A rattling noise made Cairn jump, but it was just the Coconut Grove’s resident mascot. A lone jaguar wandered laps around a fenced-in metal track that wound through the vegetation above. The spotted cat peered curiously at Cairn with its big yellow eyes, intrigued, then disappeared up the track into the palm fronds.

  After the first song, Delphine sat down at the piano. Her fingers hovered over the keys. “I’m going to slow it down for this next one,” she said. “It’s an old ballad that’s been on my mind a lot recently.” Then she began to sing:

  I fear it might be dusk for us

  The writing’s on the wall.

  I thought I knew you intimately

  But as it turns out, not at all.

  This fragile war between

  my head and heart:

  Do I settle for a simpler love?

  Or surrender to your eternity

  of masks and shadows?

  I can’t discern what’s victory anymore …

  Cairn was so entranced by the song—and the next four that followed—that she didn’t sense the stranger’s presence behind her until he cleared his throat. “You know,” he said, “you could hear the music even better from a table closer to the stage.”

  The voice belonged to a Hispanic man in his forties leaning casually against a palm tree. He wore an ivory linen suit and his amber eyes peered at her curiously from beneath the brim of a fedora.

  “I prefer the acoustics back here,” Cairn said. “Exactly how long have you been watching me?”

  “Long enough. It’s my job to make sure all my guests have anything they desire.” His eyes flicked meaningfully toward the stage.

  “You own this place?” Cairn asked, suddenly feeling queasy. For the past six weeks, she’d used her mother’s old driver’s license to con her way past the bouncer, who wasn’t particularly attentive to detail.

  The man stepped out of the shadows and extended a hand. “Alonso Cordova.”

  “Ahna,” Cairn lied in case he checked her ID. “Impressive club you’ve got here. Plant a few more palm trees and I could almost forget we’re in a city that will probably get its first snowfall by morning.”

  Alonso reached up and ran his fingers along the jaguar track. “Growing up, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to be a restaurateur or a zookeeper. Then I thought: why not both?”

  Cairn nodded back toward the audience, which was applauding the end of Delphine’s latest song. “I imagine this is the only place in Boston where you can dine with a jungle cat.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Alonso replied. He threw back the last of his rum and held up the glass. “Can I offer you a drink from the bar? Something age-appropriate, of course—a juice box or perhaps a sippy cup?”

  Cairn blanched. Busted. She edged toward the elevators. “Would you look at the time …”

  Alonso blocked her exit. “I’m not going to kick you out. How could I fault you for wanting to hear the soul-stirring vocals of Delphine Simone?”

  Cairn narrowed her eyes. “Look, man, I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I’m not angling to be some sugar daddy’s midlife crisis.”

  He chuckled. “Oh, I’m not a pervert—just a decoy. She instructed me to distract you until she finished her set.”

  “She?” Cairn repeated dumbly. All too late, sh
e realized that the band had stopped playing, that the audience had resumed talking among themselves.

  When she turned, she found Delphine standing an arm’s length away, arms folded across her iridescent dress. The look in her watery caramel eyes could have been so many things.

  None of those possibilities were forgiveness.

  Behind Cairn, Alonso innocently whistled the melody to “The Girl from Ipanema” as he slunk off into the palms.

  Cairn’s mouth went bone dry. Her heart hammered in her chest. And in that moment, she blurted out the first words generated by her malfunctioning mind: “Is that feather real peacock?”

  Delphine’s face didn’t even twitch. “Six weeks—we haven’t talked in six weeks—and you want to discuss the authenticity of my hair accessories?”

  “In retrospect, it wasn’t the smoothest conversation starter,” Cairn admitted. “But you’re talking to me, so in all fairness, it did work.”

  “Do you think I haven’t seen you lurking back here, watching me night after night?” Delphine jabbed a finger at the stage. “Do you know how hard it is to get up there and perform and smile and keep my voice steady like nothing’s wrong while you haunt my workplace like a poltergeist? It’s been absolute agony.”

  Cairn wiped the perspiration from her brow. Suddenly, she wished she was anywhere but in the humid air of this subtropical bubble. “You stopped returning my messages. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “I stopped returning your messages?” Delphine echoed. “Cairn, you went AWOL for days, then bailed on my opening night here, even though you knew it was a huge deal for me. I had to sing to the empty chair I reserved for you in the front row, wondering where you were, or if something had happened to you. Then I found out that same night you were at some party up at Salem State.”

  Cairn fidgeted. “I needed space.”

  Delphine’s gaze hardened. “Didn’t sound like there was a whole lot of space between you and Theresa.”