Opening chapters of The Oddclock, sequel to Bloodwood. The Oddclock is in the publication process.

1
The Spinner

The old elms in the park blocks swayed in the wind. Street lights pushed into their branches, making the green leaves glow like the crowns of forest kings. Beneath the trees, in the darkness beyond the light, a group of homeless kids stood in ragged silhouette, their dogs and backpacks with them, the cherry tips of their cigarettes burning in the dark.

Michael stood at the glass doors in the front hall of the Portland Art Museum, sipping coffee and surveying the scene. The trees were pretty and it was a nice night, but he did not envy the kids. Soon the weather was going to turn cold and rainy, and the kids would be miserable. He took another sip of scalding coffee and wondered if any of them would try tagging the walls later. It never bothered him when they did. He simply went out with his flashlight, banged on the fence and sent them running. Once he even called one of them over—a scrawny guy with bad acne and a green camo coat—and gave him ten bucks for food or beer or whatever and told him to get gone, go back to class.

Michael sighed and turned away, flashlight swinging at his side. As he passed through the cavernous front hall, footsteps echoing, he glanced at the standing signs. The larger ones touted an exhibit of paintings from Europe. The smaller placards had pictures of clocks. Clockworks, they read. Join us on a journey through time. September 1st – 15th.

It was an okay exhibit, in Michael’s opinion. It featured a bunch of clocks and watches and other things from way back when. At least it was different than the paintings they sometimes showed. It was funny: he had never had opinions on these things until he started the job. Now he was developing a few, though for the most part his thoughts remained tied up with football statistics and his criminal justice coursework. Sometimes he tried to understand his girlfriend Annette’s moods too, but she was crazy and he loved her anyway and had learned to just shut up when she was in a mood.

He walked on, whistling, noting the columns of moonlight coming through the high upper windows in the hall. As he moved through the museum, faint ticking sounds reached his ears and grew louder. He meandered through one hall and then another and took a left into a large room.

The ticking multiplied into a symphony of bounding, echoing ticks. The effect was strangely soothing. It reminded him of a toy windup box his Nan had put by the bed when he was a kid. He flipped on his beam and shined it around. White clock faces and black numbers appeared and evanesced behind the glass. Above, a plum-colored midnight sky shone through the skylights. Michael looked around. Nothing was out of place. Then again, nothing ever was.

He moved deeper into the room. Every morning one of the interns wound a number of the clocks for atmosphere. It sounded like half of them were slowing, running out of juice. In the middle of the room he yawned and stretched his arms wide. Earlier he had done sixty reps on the bench, and sixty push-ups on top of that, and his arms were that good kind of sore where you knew you’d worked it. He put his arms down and wandered to a small glass case sitting on a pedestal. An old silver pocket watch lay inside.

Had he seen this particular display before?

Strange. He thought he knew every piece in this entire warren of a building. Kinking his head to the side, cracking his neck, he read the plaque.


“The Spinner,” as it is called, was crafted in London in 1870 by the little-known clockmaker, Graham Wells. It is so named because of its unique but baffling balance wheel, an inner cog that functions like a pendulum, maintaining constant time. The Spinner’s wheel spins three times faster than similar watches. By the normal laws of physics, it should not keep regular time. Yet it does. No one has ever satisfactorily explained the anomaly, least of all the clockmaker, who disappeared from public life shortly before his fortieth birthday and checked himself into a mental institution. Legend has it that Mr. Wells, who was known to work for days on end in his shop on Lambeth Road, fell ill with a mysterious malady that caused rapid aging. Why he checked himself into the institution is unknown, but the obscure legacy he left behind is nearly as mysterious as the man himself.


Michael frowned. That was actually some interesting stuff. Crazy old man holed up in his shop—

He turned his head to the side and went still, listening intently to the darkness behind him. He had been on the job five months. It was supposed to tide him over until he could finish his degree, propose to Annette and apply with the police. So far he had seen two rats in the basement, confronted a drunk pounding on the front doors, and caught the taggers, but had never heard a rumbling pipe or building creak that was out of place. Not, that is, until now.

He listened carefully to the silence between the ticks, waiting for the quiet alarming noise he had heard to repeat itself. There were the ticks and then, there, he heard it again, a noise that should not have been there, a tap tap and something else, something soft.

A footfall, he realized.

The back of his neck stiffened. Slowly, he put his coffee on the floor and turned around. Like funhouse mirrors, several tall glass cases stood between him and the door.

There came more footsteps and a man stepped out from behind a display.

“God.” Michael stepped backward. The man wore a bowler hat and a Halloween mask that looked like a skull. He halted abruptly, as surprised as Michael to find someone else in the room. Eyes glittered through the holes in the mask, gauging Michael.

“Stay where you are.” Michael unlatched the radio on his belt. The man walked forward, carrying a polished black cane with a small skull for a handle.

“Leave it alone. You don't need to do that.”

“I said stop, man! Hands up where I can see ‘em.” Michael kept his eyes on the guy, eased the radio from its holster and lifted it towards his lips.

The man raised an arm and pointed it. He had a gun.

Michael went still.

“Down.” The man gestured with the gun.

Michael raised his hands, bent at the knees and placed the radio on the floor, keeping his eyes on the man.

“Kick it off to the side where you can’t reach it,” said the man. “This isn't about you.”

Michael kicked. The radio slid smoothly out of sight into the darkness. “It’s cool, man. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Likewise. I don’t want to hurt you, but...” He shrugged.

“I don’t want you to hurt me either.”

“Then we understand each other. Lie down on your stomach and put your hands on your head.”

Michael did as he was told, lacing fingers behind his head. The floor was hard, the marble cold against his cheek. From the corner of his eye he could still see the man’s shoes, the tip of his cane. The shoes were black leather with narrow toes—or maybe they were boots. The leather was high quality, and the shoes had been cared for but were still scuffed in places. The shoes approached, passed, and stopped at the very display Michael had been examining—the Spinner.

Michael could tackle the man from behind. Should he? He could see the back of the man’s pants: pin-striped suit pants. The guy wasn’t paying attention. He could do it if he did it now. Right now.

He stayed on the floor. He was being stupid. The guy had a gun. That was a rule: if somebody else had a gun and you didn’t, you did what the other guy said. There was no need to risk his life for stuff he didn’t care about. Still, though—

Glass shattered, bouncing on the floor like a shower of bright raindrops. Michael turned his head, squeezed his eyes shut. He heard the guy grab the silver watch from among the glass. No alarm had sounded.

“Up,” said the man.

“Huh?”

“On your knees. I’m sorry. Vous semblez comme un gentille personne. I wish I didn’t have to do this, but I can’t have you calling the police.”

“Man, please.” Something small and cold pressed the back of Michael's neck. The small skull of the cane tapped his cheek.

“Up,” the voice repeated.

Michael’s heart beat rapidly. “Don’t do this, man.”

“One…”

“Alright!” Michael pushed to his knees.

“Two…”

Michael straightened his back.

A heavy blow struck his head. He slumped to the ground, a shade falling across his vision. Before he lost consciousness, he saw in his mind the park blocks and swaying, bending green of the trees.

So pretty.

Sounds faded. Footsteps receded in the background as Michael sank deeper against the floor, into darkness.

Nearby, dozens of clocks began chiming midnight.

* 

“Time,” Max heard his dad say, “is what clocks measure. That, at least, was Einstein’s view of the matter. And history, that fascinating subject that I am sure you are all thrilled to learn about, is what gets made as time passes.”

Max stopped outside the door to his dad’s study. It was a cool Friday morning in September and he had just come down from his room, on his way out the door. In the study his dad, Dr. Mayhem, sat in a chair with his feet on the desk and was speaking, apparently, to himself. An empty plate with egg scraps and toast crumbs lay next to his feet. Max leaned a shoulder against the door frame and raised an eyebrow.

“Are you giving yourself lectures now?”

Dr. Mayhem looked up, all spectacles, wild silver hair and blue eyes. He was a history professor at Eliot College in Portland. Around him, the study was chaos: books and yellow notepads lay in disarray on the coffee table; the golden globe of the world hadn’t been dusted in ages. Pictures of Max’s mom, Emily, stood on the mantle. She had passed away when Max was two.

“Ah, good morning, Max.” Dr. Mayhem smiled. “No, I am not lecturing myself, although I’m sure I would be enlightened by what I learned.” Dr. Mayhem raised a hand to show Max a small tape recorder. “I’m merely recording a few thoughts and, I must admit, practicing my opening comments for classes next week.”

“I see. You might want to say the word ‘time’ with more dramatic emphasis.”

“Thank you. I will take note. Are you off to work?”

“Yeah. Soon. Going to meet Lydia for coffee first.”

“Well, pass my regards to Miss Witherton.”

“I will.” Max straightened up.

Dr. Mayhem tilted his head and paused. “Anything?”

Max did not have to ask what his dad meant by ‘anything?’ What Dr. Mayhem had meant was, had it happened? But Max had been avoiding discussing the infamous ‘it.’ In fact, he was doing his best to avoid thinking about it at all. It was bad enough he’d woken up every morning since his sixteenth birthday with dread in his stomach, bad enough he was scared to go to work every day.

“Nope. Nothing to report.” Max clapped his hands together. “Anyway, I should get moving. I’ll see you later tonight.”

“Have a good day!” his dad called after him.

“You too.”

Max walked toward the door, hesitated, and went into the bathroom. Their three-story house on Forty-fourth and Knott was a rickety old place. It had been built in the twenties and the spacious bathroom had remnants from that era: blue and white tiles; a claw-footed tub. Max put his hands on either side of the sink and examined himself in the mirror. Over the past eight months he had gained another inch and now stood at a lean six-feet-one. He had a long straight nose below gray eyes that looked a touch too serious for their age. His sandy-brown hair, once short, had again grown past his ears. That day he wore black converse, jeans, and a navy-blue T-shirt with 1. e4 c5 across the front: the numerical expression for his favorite chess opening. He spied a bottle of mint mouthwash, sloshed a capful in his mouth, spat green in the sink and made a face.

Recently he had learned a funny thing. Girls—women, even—found him attractive. All he had to do was smile and they smiled back. It was new but certainly not unpleasant. He sniffed his armpits and, satisfied nothing offensive hid there, left. At the door he grabbed his keys and shrugged on his new pea coat before heading outside.

Dr. Mayhem’s archaic, white VW van sat in the driveway. Max’s faded-yellow Volvo station wagon was next to the curb, skateboarding stickers plastered on the back window. Max had worked all summer to save enough for the car. At the end he had not had enough money, but Dr. Mayhem had generously offered to split the cost and called it a birthday present. Max had been driving it for two weeks and already loved having wheels. It beat the heck out of cadging rides and skateboarding all over the place.

He got in, slid a stick of cinnamon gum in his mouth, put on music and pulled out, leaving Knott Street’s gnarled trees behind. As he drove he cranked the music—Mephisto: melodic, eerie, bass-heavy electronica—and tried to drown his thoughts and the low-level fear in his belly. He went down Thirty-ninth and soon came to Hawthorne, an arts district marked by cafes, the Bagdad Theatre, and phone poles cluttered with rain-dampened fliers for bands.

Max parked on a side street and walked until he came to a crooked old Victorian with a porch, and a bay window hung with a neon ‘open’ sign and strings of white lights. Another sign out front read Black, White, and Gray’s: Books, Coffee. It was nine o’clock and Lydia was supposed to meet him out front, but she was not there yet. Max glanced back at the shop.

Over the summer he had come to know the place pretty well. His dad’s girlfriend, Miss Black, was one of the owners. Last spring, she had offered Max a job slinging espressos. It had taken awhile to master the lingo and espresso machine, but he had soon learned he had quick hands and even, to his surprise, a certain flair for drawing ghoulish monkey faces and hearts in the latte foam.

Fingers tweaked Max’s ear.

“’S goin’ on, Maximilian?”

Max started. Lydia stood in front of him. “Hey! How’s it goin’?”

“Stellar, spaceboy. How are you?”

“Eh, you know, not bad,” said Max as they hugged.

He pulled back, looked at her. It was not quite accurate to say that Lydia Witherton was his best friend, because they did not see each other or talk all the time, but with the exception of Dr. Mayhem, she knew Max better than anyone else. Their parents had been friends for longer than Max had been alive, and the Withertons had known Emily Mayhem, Max’s mom. Lydia and Max had grown up together. There were old pictures of the two of them, preschool-aged, cutting tunnels in the blackberry bushes in Max’s backyard and building forts in Lydia’s apple tree. Now they were entering their junior years of high school.

With green eyes and raven-black hair tucked behind her ears, Lydia wore sunglasses atop her head, jeans, and a fitted wool sweater striped in shades of purple. Max squinted. Something was missing. “Where’d all your earrings go?”

“It’s soccer season, Max. I can’t wear them when I play.” Lydia was a varsity forward at Saint Anne’s, an all-girls school. A hole pierced her nose; others dotted the rim of one ear.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s against the rules. Plus, I want to keep my ears for a while, thanks. All it would take is an errant finger to rip out an earring and the side of my head would be a bloody, gory mess. My brains would seep out in a gelatinous mass.”

“So, not a huge loss.” Max grinned.

“Oh ho! Buddy, you’d better be glad I’m not in a punching mood.”

Max put his hands up. “No, trust me. I’m glad you’re not in a punching mood.” He rubbed his chest, remembering the last time she had hit him. “Seriously.”

“Sometimes I think you’re flowering, Max, coming out of your shell.”

Max bowed. “Thank you, Lydia.”

They went into the shop, a bell jingling as they walked through the door. The front room had once been a living room, but was now a coffee shop half full of people absorbed in laptops or books. A threadbare, pumpkin-orange couch sat against the wall and small wood tables stood throughout. Estevan, another barista, stood behind the copper espresso counter, which shined like a new penny. Working on his third bachelor’s degree, he was known to offer obscure philosophical quotes to anyone who would listen. He had put on some mellow old blues music and was tapping moist espresso grounds into the knockbox. Max would take over for him in an hour. Beyond the front room, the house opened into a maze of towering bookshelves and dusty maroon carpets. A few customers browsed the aisles. Miss Black was nowhere to be seen, but Rosalyn, a cashier in her forties who owned six cats, rang up someone at the register by the stairs.

Max ordered espresso; Lydia, chai tea. Estevan gave them their drinks wordlessly and snuck Max a meaningful look. He waved away the cash when Max and Lydia tried to pay.

“Thanks, man,” said Max.

Estevan darted his eyes at Lydia.

Right, thought Max. They went back outside and took seats on the porch swing. There was a moment’s silence while they sipped their drinks, swinging on the bench.

“So, what’s new with you, anyway?” asked Max. Scents of clove and ginger wafted from her tea. “I haven’t seen you since my party.”

“You know, the ushe.” She pronounced it to rhyme with rouge. “There’s soccer. And school’s coming up, of course. Oh, I tell you I finally started therapy?”

“Therapy? What do you need therapy for?”

“Well, I don’t need it,” said Lydia. “But after what happened last winter, I thought it would be a good idea. It turns out I have trust issues with men.”

Max felt an inner jolt. “I hadn’t realized… I thought you were over that…”

“I am and I’m not. If a psychopathic blood-drinker kidnaps you, it leaves marks, apparently. Anyway, it’s not just that,” said Lydia. “It’s the whole Underverse. I love it and I always will, but I’ve only recently begun to realize how strange our lives are—”

“Lydia, keep it down. We can’t talk about that here.”

“Oh, Max, be calm. Nobody can hear us. We’re fine. Besides, Miss Black’s in on the gig. Speaking of the Underverse, have you—?”

“No.” Max cut her off abruptly. “Nothing.”

An awkward silence ensued.

At least it was awkward on Max’s end. He stared ahead and sighed, conscious of Lydia’s sharp scrutiny. He had been expecting this. He’d known they would have eventually started talking about the Underverse and about, well, him, but had hoped for a regular conversation first. Recently, however, it had dawned that hoping for such things was pointless.

The thing about Lydia and him—the thing that was so messed up about Max’s life in general—was that their parents were members of the Xenopus Society, a secret organization full of academics and other weird types who studied a thing called the Underverse. And the Underverse, as Max understood it, was basically a hidden world that existed within their own. Normal people, people Max envied, did not know about it. The Underverse was full of preternatural stuff like lycanthropes or vampires—both rare, difficult to find—and other creatures and people with preternatural abilities, such as darklings, shifters, and telekinetics.

More than anything, Max wanted to ignore the Underverse. Every time he became involved with it, he got into serious trouble. Last winter, the Society had investigated a hidden vampire town in a cold, remote part of Canada. Max had nearly died and Lydia had been kidnapped by a twisted old vamp named Sam. They had come through the experience with minimal injuries, unless you counted psychological stuff, but afterward Max had sworn off the Underverse forever. The problem, he learned soon thereafter, was that he would never be free of it. The problem was that he, Max, was as much a part of it as anything.

Earlier that morning, when his dad asked if it had happened, and when Lydia had almost asked the same thing, they had literally wanted to know if Max had read anyone’s thoughts. Max Mayhem, sixteen, skateboarder and regular guy, was supposed to become a telepath, and he was not looking forward to it.

The notion of telepathy was still relatively new. He had grown up thinking he was fairly normal, but his worldview had changed last winter when he learned that his mom, Emily, had been a mind-reader who likely passed the genes to him. The telepathy had not manifested in her until she was sixteen. If it manifested in him, it would likely be at the same age.

That was why fear had lurked in his belly since his birthday. That was why he was frightened to go into work each day. He was scared of reading someone’s thoughts. Far from anticipating such a thing, he dreaded it. Some people would have viewed it as cool, a gift, a power. Max viewed it as an illness, an intrusion, a curse.

What was more, telepathy was dangerous. It had killed his mom. The aberration that allowed her to read minds had also given her brain cancer at twenty-seven. He loathed it for that reason more than anything: it had taken her.

Max hadn’t known these things until recently. Dr. Mayhem had always carefully avoided talking about Emily or giving out too much information. Then, last Christmas, Dr. Mayhem gave Max a stack of letters Emily had written while she was in the hospital, when Max was two. The letters were solely for him and had become his most treasured possession. Emily explained who she had been and the possibility Max might be like her. On Emily’s instruction, Dr. Mayhem had withheld the letters until Max was fifteen, so he could have a normal childhood. But now everything was out in the open, and since his birthday Max had been anxiously awaiting and dreading the moment he knew would come. And it would come. He knew the ability was latent in him, lying dormant, because at the vamp town, he had briefly peered into the vampire Sam’s mind, even though he hadn’t realized until afterward what he’d done.

“I think you need a therapist more than I do,” said Lydia, snapping Max from his thoughts.

“No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do: somebody to help with your denial issues. You can’t go around not talking about stuff, pretending like it’s not going to happen.”

“Lydia, I never asked for any of this. All I’ve ever wanted is to be—”

“Normal. Yeah, you’ve told me a hundred times. And I know you didn’t ask for this, but, Max, the thing you don’t realize is that your dream for a normal life is a chimera.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“One definition of a chimera is that it’s a kind of dragon. But the other is that it’s an illusion, something that doesn’t exist. According to my mom, that’s what a normal life is. Everybody’s got something that’s screwed up. It’s just that what’s screwed up for us is a little different than it is for everyone else. Besides, like I’ve said before, you wouldn’t want to give all this up so you could have a more regular, boring life.”

“Yeah, well, like I’ve said, maybe I would.”

“Shut up. You wouldn’t. I think I’m going to start calling you the eighth dwarf. You’re Dopey’s brother, Mopey.”

Max smiled a little. The conversation ebbed and the swing drifted, Lydia’s shoes trailing, Max’s feet firmly on the ground.

“So, what’s up with the therapy stuff, anyway?”

“Eh.” Lydia shrugged. “It’s not a huge deal. It’s just that after the kidnapping and after I broke up with that guy last winter, I went on a few dates—”

A familiar pang swooped through Max.

“—and, I don’t know. It’s not like I was scared. But a few times when I was alone and we tried to kiss—”

“Yeah, okay, I get it.” Max tried to push the kissing image from his mind. “It was uncomfortable for you. You were afraid to be close. So now you need to talk with somebody and figure out how you can whatever, trust guys or whatever.” Max had rolled a gum wrapper into a tight ball. He flicked it at the ground and didn’t want to be with her anymore. He puffed his cheeks with air, blew out. Lydia put a hand on his shoulder. He looked at her, noticing the fine soft hairs on her neck.

“Max.”

He shrugged out of her grip and stood. The swing swayed sideways. “I’m sorry. It’s just I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I’m sorry about all the stuff last winter, everything we went through. I know how bad it was. And I know we’ve known each other forever and that you think of me as a brother and all, but some of this stuff I just can’t hear about. I have to go to work.”

“Max, stop it. You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I? The thing you don’t get is that you can’t always have your cake and eat it too.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. You figure it out. You always do this to me.”

“Do what?”

He flung out his arm, indicating the street and the wider world, as though the gesture somehow explained everything. Lydia stared at him and looked to the side and swore, quietly. “Max, seriously, I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while, okay? It’s just that this is super complicated for me.”

“Talk about what?”

“Us. Idiot.”

He felt as if he’d been slapped awake. His scowl vanished. He did not know what to say. She had never said anything like that, never articulated the idea of an ‘us.’

A car honked from the street. Max ignored it, trying to figure out how to respond. The car honked again, twice, insistently. Max glanced and saw a black Audi convertible parked next to the sidewalk, its top down, a younger guy in the driver’s seat. He beckoned to them.

“There’s a guy beckoning us,” said Max.

Lydia looked and briefly covered her eyes with her hand. “That’s Zane. He’s been giving me rides. Max, wait. Stop!”

Max had his hand on the doorknob.

“Quit jumping to conclusions! It’s not what you think. Zane’s nineteen and he’s the assistant coach and he’s been giving me rides to practice, alright? I asked him to meet me here, but he’s early. I would have asked you for a ride but I knew you had to work today. And anyway I shouldn’t have to explain this to you!”

“Then don’t,” said Max. And he turned his back and walked into the shop, leaving her open-mouthed on the porch.

For a moment he stood just inside the door and shut his eyes, trying to control himself. He knew she would not follow him. She was too proud. He knew he was being reactionary too, and stupid and unreasonable and immature, but he could not help it. He heard Lydia storm down the stairs. A car door slammed.

He gripped an imaginary ball, fingers out like claws, and closed his hand into a fist. He felt like putting it through the window. Why did this always happen? Why couldn’t he be cool? And why couldn’t she just … he struggled to find the words … what, be in love with him?

He snorted, once, out through his nostrils. Yeah, right. Stupid. Everything was stupid sometimes.

Unthinking, he grabbed a copy of the Bridgetown Times, the local paper, because it was the nearest thing at hand, and sat down heavily on the pumpkin-orange couch. He still had forty minutes until his shift. He opened the paper to a random page, wanting only to hide his face, but a headline caught his eye.

Museum guard released from hospital
A Portland Art Museum guard who was assaulted during a robbery Tuesday night has been released from the hospital after being treated for a head wound, a Saint Joseph’s Hospital spokesman said Thursday. According to the police department, Michael Bettis, 28, was surprised by an intruder entering an exhibit of clocks just before midnight. Bettis told officers that the intruder wore a “skull Halloween mask,” forced him to the floor at gunpoint and then broke into a display to steal a rare pocket watch. “Then he had me rise to my knees,” said Bettis, “and the unexpected part was that he apologized before he hit me and I blacked out.” Police believe it was the perpetrator himself who dialed 911 after the attack . . .


Max frowned, noting the photo of the thing that had been stolen, an old silver pocket watch called the Spinner. Had he heard of it before? It reminded him of something that Professor Cornelius, his dad’s good friend, had made—

The front bell jingled.

Max looked at the door, for a moment expecting Lydia, but to his horror, saw the guy from the car, Zane. He looked like a west side prep school type: tall and athletic with a head of blond-streaked brown hair that managed to look both messy and styled at once, like some GQ whatever. His brown calves were sculpted, and he wore faded-red shorts and a slim, green shirt with Adidas stripes running down the arms. Max thought Lydia might come in behind him, but the door shut. He looked at Zane and found Zane returning the stare.

Max instantly disliked him.

Zane assessed him with a dispassionate, flat-eyed gaze, eyes a color Max couldn’t place. Muted-gray; green; hazel: changeling eyes. He held Max’s gaze too long. Max couldn’t or wouldn’t look away, he wasn’t sure which. Zane broke the stare and went to the counter to order coffee. Max felt he’d just been evaluated, categorized, relegated to some pecking order, and dismissed as a person unworthy of further consideration. If the exchange had happened in any other context, Max would not have let it rile him. As it was he found himself crumpling the paper in his fist. He looked out the window. Lydia sat in the Audi’s passenger seat, arms crossed, an obstinate tilt to her chin. She was furious.

Good, Max thought savagely.

Scowling, he stuffed the paper in his coat pocket, grabbed his cup and stood. Stupidity all over again. He wound his way through the tables, intent on heading to the back garden where employees could take breaks. Zane stood at the counter with his back turned. As Max passed, he looked out of the corner of his eye, saw Estevan hand Zane a steaming cup and Zane turning. For a quarter second Max locked eyes with Zane, and in that horrible moment, it happened. Max had the sick sensation of being jerked out of his own body, flying up an arcing tight tunnel and accelerating blindly downward as if riding the drop of a roller coaster. He landed in a dark place clouded with images and an alien voice, saw himself standing vacant-eyed and wobbly a few feet away. Something sparked, wanted to headbutt the Max standing there, send him sprawling into the tables. Something masterful eclipsed the impulse, controlled it, dismissed it.

I’d kill you, man.

Whether Max heard or thought the words he could not say. All he knew was that they were not his own. He saw Lydia—or a figment of her, a half-formed thought—and dark serpentine thoughts gliding through the murk, following her.

Max wanted to throw himself in front of them and step on them but before he could he was out, expelled, riding the roller coaster backward and falling away from Zane only to find he was himself again and had just spilled hot espresso on his jeans and shouted “DAMN!” so loud the entire coffee shop had gone quiet and was staring at him.

A blues riff ambled in the silence.

Max stared around.

“Dude,” said Estevan.

“Max?” Miss Black stood on the stairs.

Max’s chest heaved.

“Fine. I’m fine.” He felt as if he spoke from a far off place. “Sorry. Sorry, I just spilled my drink.” He picked up his cup and threw it in the trash, trying to hide his shaking hand. People returned their attention to their own things. Conversations resumed. Zane frowned, as if trying to decide whether Max was mentally ill, and poured half and half in his coffee.

Max felt dazed, as if he had been struck in the head. Miss Black walked over, face creased.

“I think I need to run back to my house to change.” Max could not look her in the eye.

“Take all the time you need.” Her frown did not leave. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine. It was an accident. Actually, Miss Black, you’re right. I’m not feeling well… I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do my shift today.”

“Why don’t you call in twenty minutes, let me know how you’re feeling?”

“Thanks. I will,” Max said, but already knew he would not return.

Miss Black smiled curiously, still frowning. Max couldn’t think. He had to go, get away from these people.

“I’ll… I’m sorry, Miss Black. I’ll call,” he said, and fled the shop. On the porch, he paused with his hands on the rail, felt winded and dizzy. What had that been?

He’d just read Zane’s mind, but that was not what his mom had described in the letters. He went down the stairs in a daze and realized he was passing the Audi and that Lydia, confused and angry, was looking at him.

“Max, what are you doing?”

He stopped and stared. “I don’t know.” He squeezed his eyes shut, touched two fingers to the spot between his brows, opened his eyes and approached the car. “Lydia, come here for a second. Please.”

“Max, seriously—”

“Just two seconds.”

Frowning, Lydia brought her face to his. Max cupped his hand behind her head and brought his lips to her ear. “This Zane guy, he’s not good,” he whispered. Her hair smelled familiar. She still used that good-smelling shampoo. “Be careful.”

He pulled back. He did not know why he had whispered. Lydia looked at him with mounting puzzlement, but must have seen something convincing in his face, something she trusted, because she nodded. “Alright. Seriously, though, Max, you’re freaking me out. Are you okay?”

Behind Max, the shop door opened. He glanced and saw Zane. He turned back to Lydia. “I really don’t know,” he said.

Then he did something he had never done. He swooped in and kissed her, quickly, on the mouth.

Lydia’s jaw dropped.

“I have to go,” said Max. And he was off, taking long strides up the street, Lydia’s silence trailing behind.

2
The Bishops

The brick-red house on the corner of Seventeenth and Taylor was a two-story affair. It sat above the street and had a slanted, overgrown lawn filled with patches of lavender wildflowers. Old birch and maple trees shaded the east side of the house, and a whimsical, round porthole window looked onto the street from the second story. Despite its charm, the place was forbidding. The darkened windows, maybe; the no solicitors sign; the bars on the screen door.

Whatever it was, Henry still thought it looked like a rich man’s palace, especially compared to where he had come from. He took a final drag from his cigarette, dropped it, and ground the butt under the heel of his motorcycle boot. His black, road-dusted Kawasaki sat on the street, engine cooling. He ran a hand through his long, copper-red hair, which fell to his shoulders, and looked at the gray, overcast sky.

What kind of place always had gray skies?

And rain. He had heard about the rain. He already missed the California sun but supposed he would have to get used to it. He still could not believe he had done it, driven 900 miles on his bike in two and a half days—straight up from Los Angeles. It had been a hell of a trip. In his mind it was already a blur of wide blue sky, traffic lines, the rumble of his bike, and parched brown landscape that had turned green in Northern California and become even darker and greener when he entered Oregon. He had done the trip on two hundred dollars, most of the money his own. His mom had said she would chip in more, but as usual her extra cash had been drunk up in vodka and lottery machines.

The first night he’d paid for a room at an oily motel with burnt-out A’s in the flickering pink vacancy sign. Last night, already low on funds, he’d pitched his army-green tent in a gold-colored field behind a rest stop. That morning he’d washed up in the restrooms, the tap water tasting metallic with his toothpaste, and ridden the rest of the way through Oregon.

Now he was here. It was shortly before noon. He was hungry, dirty and fatigued, but he was not tired. If anything, he was amped, maybe even nervous. He had wondered about this moment more than once. Mostly he had thought it would never happen. Now it was about to and he was not sure what he was going to do or say. Should he say anything? Or should he punch the guy in the face, walk out and disappear forever? What were you supposed to do when meeting the man who had sired you, if you had never met him and half hated him for being gone all your life?

The only good thing Henry could say about his dad, the man awaiting him in the red house, was that he had sent money like clockwork, twice a year, all Henry’s life. In the early years Henry had seen more of it. His mom, Mindy, who received the checks, had not been as bad then, but around seventh grade her after-work drinks had become before-and-after work drinks and her boyfriends had grown dirtier and meaner and for the past several years, Henry had seen less and less. He did not completely blame her. He hadn’t made things easy. He’d yelled, stolen, called her names, deliberately picked fights. It hadn’t always been that way. They had gotten along better before Lonnie—

Henry checked himself, stamped down the ugly dirty feeling that threatened to flood up. He didn’t think about that. That was something you never thought about. That was buried like it never happened.

He inhaled through his nose and looked at the red house again. Picking up his helmet and the blue nylon duffel that held all his worldly possessions, including his tools and a laptop, he walked up to the front porch. There was an intercom in place of a bell. He hit the button. Static flared and ceased.

“Yes?” said a voice.

Seconds passed. Henry stared at the intercom.

“Hello?” the voice said.

Henry cleared his throat. “It’s me, Henry. I made it.”

“You’re here?” A pause. “I’ll be right up.”

The intercom flared and shut off. Henry tightened his grip on the bag. Normally he ran cool when it came to nerves, except when he got mad—that was like cold and hot at the same time—but for some reason his jaw had gone tight. He watched through two small glass panes in the door as a man’s silhouette came down the hall. A second later the door opened and there, on the other side of the screen, was his dad. He glanced at Henry with dark-brown eyes—eyes Henry had seen staring back at him in the mirror every day of his life—and then unlocked and pushed open the screen door.

For a long second neither spoke. For years Henry had hated this guy’s guts on principle, but the guy wasn’t what he’d expected. Not at all. Even though his dad, William, had sent money, Henry had always pictured someone with a gut and a beer: a lazy lush he’d punch in the face, hard, before taking off again. But this guy was trim and business-looking, his face young even though his black goatee was peppered white and gray. He was clean too: head bald, shaved to a shine with a razor. He stood a shade taller and leaner than Henry and wore black leather shoes, black jeans, a white shirt unbuttoned at the neck, and a round black watch. Even though his face was young, his eyes were old. Henry knew the look. Once you’d seen the black heart of the world your eyes went a certain way and didn’t turn back.

The longer they looked, the stronger Henry felt he had seen this man before. But that was impossible. He’d never once met his dad. Before Henry could speak, William offered his hand.

“I’m William.”

Henry stared at the hand.

“Henry,” he said.

William nodded and kept eye contact—like he was soaking up Henry or something—and dropped his hand.

“Come in.”

Henry gave William a sidelong glance and entered slowly. His first impression was of stillness. A narrow hall stretched ahead into a kitchen. On the left expensive brown leather furniture sat in a living room, and on the right a staircase led upstairs. Somewhere nearby a grandfather clock ticked. Henry became aware of the road grime on his skin and the grease under his fingernails. The ripe stench of the cigarette he had smoked filled the hall.

“Put your things anywhere,” said William.

Henry set his gear on the stair landing and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“How was the ride?”

“’s alright.” Henry looked around.

“Hungry?”

Henry shrugged. “I could eat.”

“Chinese?”

“Whatever you’ve got’s good.”

“Have a seat or…”

They looked at each other. It was awkward. William, whoever this guy was, he was trying. And what was up with his own shyness?

“Take a look around if you like,” said William. “I’ll be right back.”

He went into the kitchen. Henry let out a slow whistling breath. Strange stuff. On the ride up he’d run through dozens of scenarios, but he hadn’t pictured…whatever this was.

He went into the living room, conscious of the heavy thud of his boots. The place had a salty smell. Up front it was dark because the drapes were closed, but at the far back was a dining area with gray-green light filtering through French doors. Beyond them laid a deck canopied by lush, overhanging trees.

Nice place, but again not what he’d expected. The walls were hung with art—looked like stuff from all over the world: African masks and paintings and things—and there was even an old, dusty red violin. A couch and two button chairs sat across from each other. Centered between them like a coffee table was an old black chest with newspapers and travel books on top: Prague; St. Petersburg; Cape Town.

Henry had known William made money as some kind of antique dealer, but had always imagined pawn shop junk, nothing that would buy a house like this. He kept looking and realized there were no pictures of people. Well, that was that question. Part of him had always thought William had another family somewhere, but no, the guy lived alone.

In the kitchen the microwave dinged and silverware clattered. Henry picked up one of the books, set it down, turned to the front window and stopped.

That was a little … different.

A grandfather clock stood in a dark corner by the drapes, its pendulum quietly ticking. Next to the clock a coat rack was hung with long wool coats and a hat. What were those hats called? Bowler hats? At the base of the rack, like a cauldron, sat a big copper pot filled with umbrellas and canes. Henry picked up what had caught his eye. One of the canes: a long, polished black thing whose handle was a miniature ivory skull.

A ring of words in cursive script ran below the skull.

From a Queen to her Bishop ~ Van Dyne

A Queen to her Bishop?

“That was a gift.”