“May I sit?”
Jim glanced up, startled to find an old woman standing beside the table.
She smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m always doing that. My friends tell me I walk on cat feet. I didn’t mean to make you jump.”
“No, no, I’m fine,” he said, studying her.
Once she would have been considered tall for a woman-especially in her youth, which must have been sixty years gone, at least-but now age had stooped her so badly that she had lost several inches. Deep wrinkles lined her face with the gentle scars of time. And yet her eyes were a kaleidoscope, hazel flecked with gold, bright and alert and full of humor. She wore her white hair to her shoulders, unlike so many women of advanced age.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked.
She smiled. “Quite the contrary, Mr. Banks. May I sit?”
Jim frowned and glanced toward the bathroom, then focused on the woman again. He was unsettled now. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Now she looked… cross. The perfect word for the disgruntled expression on the old woman’s face. “You’re being quite impolite, James. Or is it Jim? Yes, I suspect it is. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? It’s rude not to offer an old lady a seat, Jim, especially when she’s already asked for the courtesy.”
He shook himself and half stood, nodding. “Yes. I’m sorry, please sit down.”
Quite the contrary. Did that mean she meant to help him? He stared at her as she settled into the spot Trix had vacated in the booth.
She laughed softly. “Ah, yes. Now you’re thinking, ‘The old hag doesn’t look especially magical.’ Or something like that. Though perhaps not ‘hag.’ Not from you.”
He started to protest and glanced toward the back of the restaurant again.
“Don’t worry. Trix will be along in a minute or two. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, but it couldn’t be helped, I’m afraid. It’s been quite a busy day. A young man in Jamaica Plain needed to prove that his great-great-grandfather had never deeded a piece of property to the city that… well, never mind. I had to guide the young man to the original deed, and the hundred-year lease, which was all the city had.”
Part of Jim wanted to laugh in her face. It was such a cliche, wasn’t it? The wise old woman, like some kind of Gypsy fortune-teller. But she wore a jacket and skirt ensemble that must have cost seven or eight hundred dollars, easily, and her haircut hadn’t come cheaply, either. This was no sideshow crystal-ball gazer.
A scam, then? Had Trix set him up somehow?
But the instant he had the thought, he pushed it away. Trix’s anguish was genuine, and so was her hope. Which left only one possibility.
“Jesus,” Jim whispered, staring at the woman. “You’re for real.”
When the Oracle of Boston smiled in delight, it took a dozen years off her face. “Oh, excellent,” she said. “It’s refreshing to meet someone who just dives right in. Saves time as well.” She held out her hand. “Veronica Braden.”
Jim shook her hand, not at all surprised by the firmness of her grip. He took a ragged breath, only then realizing that he had stopped breathing for a moment. The hours that had passed since this afternoon when he had woken from his nap had been a long nightmare, but Trix had been right to chide him for his doubt. The impossible had turned his world upside down and ripped away all that he loved. He would waste no more time with what was possible and what was not.
“You make it hard enough to meet you.”
“I enjoy the… tradition of the process.”
“So, can you find them?” Jim asked, a heavy question. “Do you know where they are?”
“Ah,” Veronica said, arching a brow, kaleidoscope eyes alight with secret knowledge. She smiled, and Jim knew she harbored secrets. “Those are two different questions. Finding Jennifer and Holly is not the same as knowing where they are.”
Jim put a hand over his mouth as though afraid the wrong words would come out. The waitress arrived with Trix’s cappuccino. She glanced at them oddly, but Jim gestured for her to put the cup down and she did, casting a curious look over her shoulder as she retreated once more. “I don’t understand,” Jim said quietly.
“You will.” Veronica touched his hand, and her hand was cool. Then she picked up Trix’s cappuccino and drained half the cup in three long sips.
“That was-”
“She won’t have time to drink it,” Veronica said, sliding her chair back. “Come along.”
As the Oracle rose, the illusion of vitality dropped away. She moved stiffly but with a kind of imperious air; perhaps she had earned it. Her hand shook as she gestured toward him. “Pay the bill, dear. And leave a nice tip for your server. New girl. Only been here a few weeks, and she needs the reassurance as much as the money. Terrible job, having to smile at people all the time.”
Jim obeyed, sliding the cash from his wallet and tucking it into the faux-leather binder in which the bill had arrived.
“And here she is now,” Veronica said, her voice an aged rasp.
As Jim put his wallet back into his pocket he looked up to see that Trix had frozen in the middle of Abruzzi’s, staring at Veronica. Other diners had started to turn to watch the scene unfold. Jim noticed that some people-staff and regulars-seemed to be very studiously avoiding looking at them at all. He wondered how many times they had seen Veronica Braden arrive here to help people in need. People in pain.
“You came,” Trix managed, fighting back a sob. Tears slid down her face, and she did not bother to wipe them away. “I wasn’t sure you were even still alive.”
“If not me, then someone else,” Veronica said, ignoring the eyes upon her. “Now, come along, Trixie. We don’t have all night.”
Cruel Mistress
In the old days,” Veronica said, slipping into the Mercedes’ front passenger seat without asking Trix if she minded sitting in the back, “we’d have had to wait until morning. All the shops closed at a decent time then. Life was less frantic. Now people want twenty-four-hour everything. TV, takeout. Clothes shopping. Things are changing.”
“What do you mean?” Jim asked. He held the passenger door open, watching as Veronica made herself comfortable and then sat motionless with her hands folded in her lap. The only real sign of effort was the woman’s subtle sigh.
“Shopping,” Veronica said. She looked up at Jim, eyes twinkling, then glanced over his shoulder at Trix. “Oh, you’re coming, dear, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” Trix said. She got into the back of the car, glancing at Jim and trying to communicate something with a frown, a sharp nod.
“What shopping?” Jim said, and he thought, Is she really just a crazy old lady after all? Out here on the busy Boston street, the woman seemed somehow smaller than she had in the restaurant, and less convincing.
Veronica closed her eyes briefly, resting her head back against the seat as if asleep. But the frown was not at home on a relaxed face. Her hands twitched a little in her lap, and Jim leaned sideways to look in the rear window. Trix, sitting in the backseat, was watching Veronica with her mouth slightly open, whether in awe or fear he couldn’t tell.
Veronica opened her eyes so suddenly that Jim took a small step back. “Copley Place,” she said. “There’s a mime artist on the library steps as they pass. Holly wants to stop and watch, but Jenny’s in a hurry to get into the mall and find somewhere to eat. Jonathan holds her elbow and whispers something to her. Something Holly can’t hear. I think she’s a little spooked. Jenny’s missed that. What kind of a mother am I? She puts one arm around Holly’s shoulder.
“But Holly’s fascinated by the mime, and his silently moving mouth. She rubs her ears, as if she’s been swimming and maybe got water in them. But she can still hear the pigeons and the traffic, and a bunch of children across by the church are singing a song she hasn’t heard before. The mime opens and closes windows in thin air, as if he’s peering through from somewhere else, and he smiles at her. She smiles back. He’s not so scary.”