Donn's Legacy, page 21
I parked in front of a wide brick building that could have been a nursing home if it weren’t for the tall security fences that ran along the edge of the parking lot. Inmates dressed in orange pants and heavy brown jackets milled around a large shadeless field on the other side of the barrier. Beyond them, the building bent in an L and stretched on for quite a ways. Whether it was the guard towers, the razor wire, or just the general aura of the place, an uncomfortable tension squeezed my chest.
The check-in procedure did nothing to calm my nerves. The visitor’s form they asked me to fill out reminded me of the patient history forms at hospitals, which I mentally bumped out of the number-one spot on “Mac’s Least Favorite Places to Visit” list in favor of this experience. After a metal detector and a full-body pat down, I stashed my phone and purse in a small locker and sat down at my designated table to wait for Gabrielle.
The last time I’d seen her, straight black hair had fallen to her waist, and only a few sprinkles of white had hinted at her age. She’d preferred simple floor-length dresses, as long as they had pockets, and always struck me as someone who had somehow slipped through a portal from a world with a lot more magic and mystery than our own.
The woman who approached the table now had ultrashort gray hair with barely any black left at all. She wore bright orange scrubs, plain black shoes, and no jewelry. Only one thing about her was the same: piercing green eyes that lit up when they met mine.
“They told me you were here, but I didn’t believe them,” she murmured in her softly accented, melodic voice. “I thought there had been a mistake.”
I stood up on shaking legs. “Are we allowed to hug?”
“If you like,” she said.
After a moment’s hesitation, I stepped forward and pulled her into a quick embrace. Out of instinct, I inhaled, expecting to detect the lingering scent of nag champa. Her skin smelled clean, like Ivory soap, but nothing like her shop.
Nothing like the old Gabrielle.
We broke apart and mirrored each other’s movements as we took our seats on opposite sides of the rectangular steel table.
“Your hair,” I said. “It’s so short.”
She ran a hand over her nearly shaved head. “My ends kept splitting, and it was impossible to manage. It’s easier this way.”
“It looks good on you.”
“Thank you. You’re looking well. So much like your mother, as always.” Gabrielle stared at me, eyes wide with wonder. “How are you?”
Inexplicably, the question triggered a rush of emotion. I opened my mouth to answer but had to quickly close it again as my eyes filled with tears.
She stayed silent as I cried myself out. It took a few minutes, and when I finally raised my head to look at her, she was sitting calmly with her hands folded on the table in front of her. Her eyes glistened, but I was the only one who actually needed to wipe any tears away.
“I’m sorry,” I said at last. “I don’t know what that was.”
“Don’t worry about it. I hear it happens all the time.”
I glanced around at the other tables, but nobody else was crying. Maybe they were here often enough to get used to it.
“Do your other visitors bawl like babies when they walk in the door?”
“I haven’t had any,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Oh.” The guilt I’d felt on the drive up here roared back to life. “I didn’t know.”
She shrugged. “My attorney is here regularly, which is more than some can say.”
“How’s that going?”
“We have reached an agreement. I will plead guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter, in addition to conspiracy to commit a felony.”
“So there won’t be a trial after all?”
“No.”
Relief flooded through me. Deputy Wallace had predicted this outcome, but I’d still envisioned Gabrielle’s fate being decided by a jury. I had been terrified by the prospect of having to testify against her. Not only had I found the bodies of both her accidental victims, but I had been the one to stumble onto the stash of secret audio recordings that incriminated her in a multistate burglary scheme. I’d given the details of those discoveries to the authorities multiple times but never from a witness stand.
And never in front of my mother’s oldest friend herself.
“Have they already sentenced you?” I asked.
“We have agreed to five years in prison, with the possibility of parole after three.”
“Wow.” My mind raced. “So you could be back home in just a few years? What will you do? Donn’s Hill is changing a lot, but I can help you look for a place to reopen the store—”
She held up a hand to cut me off. Her eyes were cast downward onto the scratched-up table. “Mackenzie, I can’t return to Donn’s Hill when I’m released.”
“What? Why not?”
“Can you really not understand why?” Her voice broke, and her shoulders shook gently. “How can I rejoin that community after all the damage I have done? Penelope has been more generous to me than I deserve. Would I repay her kindness by forcing her to see my face on a daily basis? No. I love Donn’s Hill, but part of my penance must be that I can never go back.”
I could hardly speak around the lump in my throat, but I managed to choke out, “Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. I have a long time to decide. By then, it might be time to go home, back to Spain. Who knows?”
Tears spilled down my cheeks once more. I felt so naive. Of course she wouldn’t come back. What was she supposed to do, buy the Oracle Inn back from Penelope so she could turn it into a bookstore and séance room again? And five years was a long time. Even more could change between now and when she got out of prison.
Time didn’t stop just because she was gone.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
I didn’t specify what I was apologizing for. Not helping cover up for her crimes? Maybe a little bit. But mostly I was sorry I hadn’t moved to Donn’s Hill sooner, that my mother hadn’t lived long enough to help Gabrielle when she needed it, and that there was absolutely nothing I could do to turn back the clock and change any of this.
She smiled and squeezed my hand. “You have nothing to be sorry for. And I’m so happy you’re here. Please tell me everything that’s going on in your life. How is Striker?”
“Spoiled rotten, especially since we got back from New Mexico. Graham feels guilty for taking her on such a long car ride, so he’s been giving her even more treats than usual.”
“I wish they would allow animal visitors,” she said wistfully. “I would love to see her sweet face.”
I reached into my pocket for my phone before remembering it was locked up outside the visiting room. “I’ll mail you some photos,” I promised.
“I would like that. And how was the trip? Did you get to show Graham where you grew up?”
“I did. In some ways, it was really nice. But it was also…” I sighed, unable to find a word to describe all the ways things had gone off the rails.
“I imagine it was difficult to relive those memories.”
“No, that’s not it. Things just felt… wrong there. Last month, I saw signs in everything, and all of them pointed me back home. I convinced myself that going to New Mexico would let me find the answers to all my questions. I thought I could figure out who Horace really is and get strong enough to beat him at his own game. And now I know who he is, but I’m no closer to actually finding him. And—”
“Wait.” Gabrielle held up her hands to stop me from speaking. “You know who he is? This psychic who pretended he died in my attic?”
I nodded. “His real name is Anson Monroe.”
“Anson Monroe? Not that old Seattle mystic.”
“You knew him? My mom was working with him to find a way to walk the astral plane.”
“Yes, she told me all about it. He had several students but wasn’t able to help any of them cross over. She was bitterly disappointed. Apparently, he never managed to do it himself but thought a younger person could be more successful.”
“Well, did you know he moved to New Mexico after that?” A hard lump formed in my throat, and I had to work to push the next words around it. “Or that he killed her?”
Gabrielle looked as stunned as if I had just slapped her across the face. “What? How?”
“The same way he killed Elizabeth Monk and an astronomer named Camila Aster: by luring her out into the cold and leaving her there to die.”
She stared at me for several silent seconds before slowly shaking her head. “I don’t believe it. Upset as your mother was that she couldn’t reach the astral plane, she spoke glowingly of Anson. He was like a father to her. What you’re describing—multiple murders—that’s a serial killer. I don’t think Anson would be capable of something like that.”
“But you never even met him,” I argued.
“True.” A troubled look crossed her face. “And I suppose we don’t even know what we’re capable of doing until the moment arrives.”
I said nothing. We had strayed dangerously close to a truth that I had to carefully avoid acknowledging whenever I thought of or talked to Gabrielle: technically, she was a killer. We sat in an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes before she found another subject.
“Have you seen him again?” she asked. “Anson or Horace or whoever he is?”
“No.” I touched my necklace. “Either because he can’t get through my protections or because he hasn’t been trying. He’s powerful. I didn’t really appreciate how powerful until I started astral projecting. He can travel through the astral plane so easily, but I can’t even leave my own…” I trailed off, alarmed by the sudden look of horror on Gabrielle’s face. “What?”
“Don’t ‘what’ me.” She glanced from side to side and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “How did you do it? For God’s sake, tell me you’re not using those flying ointments. They’re poison, Mackenzie.”
“I haven’t— Wait. You believe me? That I’ve done it?”
“If you say you have.” She frowned. “Have you?”
After having to explain my experiences and defend my instincts to everyone else, it was so refreshing to be taken at my word that I nearly burst into tears again.
“I did,” I whispered, voice cracking. I cleared my throat and told her about my midnight walks with Camila, walks that couldn’t extend much past the Primrose House property line. “It’s exhilarating. I would do it every night if I could just figure out how. But I feel like I should be able to go farther. Horace did. I mean, I don’t know where he was when he was visiting me last month, but I assume he was in New Mexico, and—”
Gabrielle clucked her tongue. “Assumptions can be dangerous under the best of circumstances. In the psychic realm, you can’t afford to guess. How far would you say you’re able to travel?”
“I don’t know.” I pictured the three stories of Primrose House and estimated the size of the yard. “A hundred feet?”
“How do you know Horace wasn’t that close each time he astral projected to you?”
I stared at her. I’d assumed Horace had arrived in Donn’s Hill just before he killed Elizabeth. Was it possible he’d been nearby this whole time? Had he been lurking somewhere in town, waiting for me to leave so he could target Elizabeth while I was gone?
No. That couldn’t be right. I would have felt him. I would have sensed—
My blood went cold.
Horace’s location hadn’t been the only thing I’d made an assumption about. Since Elizabeth’s funeral, I had been sure I could feel another psychic’s energy. I was positive I could sense someone the way Grey sensed me. My evidence was the way I felt around Stephen: he had so much verve, he was practically magnetic. Whatever his mood, it was contagious. It spread through the air to everyone around him.
But what if that was just charisma? After all, I felt the same way around Kit. When she was laughing, I was laughing.
And here I sat, mere feet from the most powerful medium I had ever known, and I felt… nothing. No waves of psychic energy rolled off Gabrielle. The truth slammed into me with so much force that all the air left my lungs in a single rush, and I had to gasp in a replacement breath.
Horace could be in this room with me right now, and I would never know it.
“Are you all right?” The divot between Gabrielle’s eyebrows deepened. “You look pale.”
“I’m fine. I just need to think.”
My mind raced. Horace had appeared to me three times. Once at the Franklin cabin beside Lake Anam, once in the attic suite at the Oracle Inn, and once in Elizabeth Monk’s day spa. He could have been anywhere in The Enclave and reached Elizabeth’s shop, and there were plenty of places to hide in and around the inn. But could he have gotten anywhere near the cabin without us knowing?
It was too unlikely. Maybe he hadn’t been all the way in New Mexico, but he hadn’t been in the same building.
“Okay. Maybe he was closer than I thought. And maybe—” My fingernails scratched the metal tabletop as my hands curled into fists. Anyone I had mentally cleared of being Anson Monroe based on not getting a feeling from them could still secretly be the old psychic. But Gabrielle couldn’t help me with that. There was only one thing she might be able to do for me. “Maybe I don’t know what name he’s wearing around Donn’s Hill, if he’s even still there. But there’s got to be a way to go farther in the astral plane, right? That much I know for sure.”
She exhaled loudly through her nose. “Well, there’s a reason the lore around flying potions exists. Conventional wisdom, such as it is, says that the living body is like the anchor on a ship at port. It keeps the tide from carrying everything away. You’re strong enough to have an anchor chain of one hundred feet. Anson—if he truly is Horace—must be nearing a hundred by now. If he’s been studying the craft since he was your age, he’s had decades to forge a chain. His would be far, far longer than yours.”
“There’s got to be a shortcut, though, right? Some way I can catch up?”
“I don’t know. None of us, no matter how strong our gifts, can know everything. But I do know this. Everything has a price, and everyone must pay it. I bought my power—my strength—through a lifetime of practice. Time is the most valuable currency, even more than natural talent.” Her eyes darkened. “If you want to find a shorter path, I fear the price would be very, very high. And I don’t think you would be willing to pay it.”
A buzzer sounded, jolting me half out of my seat.
“Time’s up,” one of the guards called.
Gabrielle stood. “Thank you so much for coming. It means the world to me.”
“I’m really glad we could talk. Can I come visit again?”
“I hope you will.”
We kept our goodbye short; the looming presence of the prison guards made loitering feel like a terrible idea. I watched her walk away from the table with more spring in her step than when she arrived, and I resolved to visit her at least once a month, if not more often.
When I collected my things from the visitor lockers, a voice mail message from Deputy Wallace waited on my phone. I tapped the button to play it with some trepidation. For all I knew, she was calling to give me a well-deserved lecture about how insensitive I had been the day we cleaned out Elizabeth’s shop.
Her message was short. “Will you be home later? I have something for you.”
My mind ran through a few possibilities. What did she have? Something of Elizabeth’s? Something from the coast where they had spread her ashes? None of those things sounded like something you would give a friend unless you were willing to forgive their jackassery, which gave me the courage to call Wallace before pulling out of the parking lot.
“Hey, I got your message,” I said when she answered. “I won’t be home for a few hours. Are you working today? I can come down to the station.”
“No, I’m off. I’ll just meet you at your house.”
Excited as I was to see her again, any curiosity about what she was planning to bring me was quickly swept away by the things Gabrielle and I had talked about. As I drove, I tapped a thumb impatiently against the steering wheel. I wanted to be home, sitting with a notepad on my turret window seat. I desperately needed to be able to draw a big fat vertical line down the middle of a sheet of paper and organize my thoughts into what I knew for sure versus what I could only assume to be true.
Gabrielle was right. It wasn’t safe to operate on assumptions. But until I could be home with a pencil in hand, I would have to do my best with my easily distracted brain. I thought about what I knew as I headed back to Donn’s Hill.
First, I had Horace’s real name: Anson Monroe. I didn’t know how far he could travel or how he managed to erase sixty years from his face in the astral plane, but if I had more time to practice, I was sure I would be able to do both things too.
I was also certain Horace was behind the jewelry box Camila found in the desert. There was absolutely no way a box could look identical to the one Horace had sent me to find and have runes matching the ones on his ceiling. That was an assumption I was willing to make.
Thanks to Stephen, I also knew what those runes meant. Invitation. I felt—but wasn’t sure—that Horace had done something on a level I hadn’t even known was possible to make those runes attract his victims. Whether it was luring Camila out of a yurt, drawing Elizabeth into the woods, or getting my mother to stop her car on the side of a desert highway, he had figured out a way to work some kind of twisted magic in the waking world.
Six months before, I would have called it impossible. Magic was for storybooks. Even Gabrielle said witches were just misunderstood psychics. But everything we did—speaking to the dead, divining the future, walking through dreams—would all be dismissed as pure nonsense by the Mackenzie Clair who had lived in Salt Lake City.
Yet here I was.
Deputy Wallace’s black SUV sat in front of Primrose House when I got home. I parked Graham’s Geo and walked around to meet her on the wide covered porch by the front door. I still wasn’t used to seeing her out of uniform. Her Levi’s, cowboy boots, and Carhartt jacket made her look more like a rancher than a law-woman, and for the first time since I had met her, her black hair fell down her back in loose waves.
