Martin Greenberg: Crime Spells

Jennifer, the human child she’d stolen? She was so young-but, then, time moved much more slowly in the Fae realm.

Mike held Addie’s gaze. “I want to know what happened, Addie. And I want to know why.”

“No.” She’d made up her mind about that upstairs, and it’d stay that way. She understood, too, that there was someone else she would have to tell. Someone else to whom she owed that story first.

They left Mike standing there on the walk, staring after them.

Jennifer joined them half way down the block, keeping a fair distance as they walked into the sunset. She seemed to be gathering the nerve to say something.

Addie braced herself for a tirade. For rage. For grief. But the girl didn’t show her any of those.

“Did you know my mother?” she asked.

And, somehow, that was worse.

Addie hated Faery. Everywhere green and in bloom, in colors so bright they hurt her eyes and sounds so sharp they hurt her ears. They gave her a room of her own, and she supposed she should be grateful.

They gave her new terms. Do what they told her. Obey the letter of their laws. And there were so many laws to learn. It took up all her time. She had no treasures-other than her own company.

Until the day Jennifer knocked on her door, carrying a brown paper-wrapped package, and asked what had happened and why.

Addie started slowly, with Hot Corner Fred. Not that she expected Jennifer to understand or to forgive her, but because it felt important to say she hadn’t done it for kicks. Or for any more power than power over her own life.

She told Jennifer about the smell of fresh paint in the living room of the dark, still house. Parents asleep in their bedroom with the door cracked wide enough to hear a crying child. The infant with the strawberry blonde curls and pink-flowered pajama set, asleep in her crib.

The rhythm of the child’s breath held her in thrall for what seemed like forever but couldn’t have been more than a minute or two-until the little one scrunched up her face and waved her arms.

She had to move then.

Five long minutes to recite the spell she’d been given to hush the baby and the space around her so she wouldn’t wake. To wrap her in a blanket and replace her with a homemade doll made of scraps and sticks. To do as she’d been ordered: keep from bolting long enough to witness the poppet come to life. She watched the doll assume the glamor the Fae had charmed into it. Take on every detailed characteristic of the baby who belonged in that crib.

She brought the baby to the Fae. God, but he looked like the devil. She expected him to smell like sulfur. But he smelled like green. Like crushed grass.

He took the child from her arms. Never tell a soul , he said. No one may find out. Those are the terms. On pain of a fate worse than death .

Then, she went back to the place she shared with Fred. He’d been killed, just as the Fae promised her. She stepped over his body to get her things. She left and never looked back.

Addie finished the story, her last word echoing off the walls.

“Thank you,” Jennifer said.

Addie took a deep breath and blew it out. “I never even knew what the Fae wanted you for. At the time, I didn’t care.”

“He told me he wanted to be a father.”

But she’d had one. She’d had human parents.

The way the girl looked at her, Addie could tell she had so much more to say-all of that rage Addie expected and feared the night the Fae had come for her, it lurked below the surface. It would come out eventually. And Addie would bear it.

Jennifer gave her the brown paper package.

The mirror inside looked the same as the one the girl had handed her a million years ago.

“I want you to have it,” Jennifer said.

Addie waited until the girl had gone and then some, afraid to look, afraid of what she might see.

In the wee hours that night, she took the chance.

In the looking glass, she saw her kitchen. The table set for tea. And Mike, gazing back at her. She couldn’t hear his voice out loud, but she heard it in her heart.

“I’m working on a way out for you, Addie,” he said.

She couldn’t think of one that didn’t involve making a deal with a heavy price, the kind she’d never want him to pay. Because she loved him. In whatever twisted way she was able, she loved him. She had nothing of her own here to hold onto, but she could hold onto that.

She wanted her life back.

If he was going to help her get it, she’d give him everything she had. That’s what you did with high stakes, with people you loved. The people you treasured.

Mike would have to hope for both of them. It had never been and would never be her strong suit, even now.

Despair was her particular magic, after all. She’d find a way to use it.

Nobody is immune to Glamor.

No In the ten years she’d had the talent, Darla had never come across anybody who had seen through it, far as she could tell. Old, young, men, women-it fooled everybody, every time.

Not that she’d need it here: Fifteen feet away, the widow Bellingham snored fully dressed upon her bed. The old lady had put down a bottle of very expensive champagne earlier at the party, and Darla could probably could bang a Chinese gong and not rouse her, but still…

She opened the last drawer of the jewel box, her movements slow and careful. The smell of cedar drifted up from the intricately carved wooden box, which was probably worth more than Darla’s car.

Ah. Here we go…

It was an oval pin about the size of a silver dollar. Inset into the platinum were thirty-some diamonds, fancy yellows, the majority of them a carat or so each. Not worth as much as clears and nowhere near the value of the intense pinks or fancy blues encrusting the pieces in the top drawer, of course, but that was the point. These were good stones-good but not outstanding-and with what she could get from her fence, plenty to keep her going for six months.

One-carat gems of this grade were easy to move.

She limited herself to a job every three or four months, enough to keep her below heavy police radar-or at least it had done so for eight years.

Truth was, it had been almost too easy. Never a really close call. At first, it it had seemed a grand adventure, but it wasn’t long before it turned into just a part-time job, no more exciting than shopping for fruit at New Seasons Market. Go in, pick out the organic apples you like, leave-without paying-and take a few months off, ta dah!

Disappointing in a way how easy it was, though certainly better than working for a living…

Six or seven million in fine jewelry here, and that was just the daily-wear stuff. The really good pieces would be in a bank vault somewhere.

Darla wrapped the pin in a square of black velvet and slipped it into her jeans pocket. She slid the jewelry box’s drawer closed.

As always, she was tempted to clean the box out, but she knew better. Unique pieces were hard to move, worth only what the loose stones would bring, unless you wanted to mess around trying to find a crooked collector, and that was risky. This particular pin? It might not be missed for weeks or months. The top drawer stuff sure; the bottom drawer? Maybe the widow would never even notice. When you could go in and plunk down a million bucks for a brooch or a necklace without having to look at your checkbook balance? A pin worth a couple hundred grand? Shoot, that was practically costume jewelry.

So, she’d take just the one piece.

The perfect crime, after all, was not one where the cops couldn’t figure out who did it; it was one the cops never even heard about.

Darla uttered the cantrip just before she pushed open the stairway door into the apartment building’s lobby. When she stepped through, she looked the same to herself, save for a slight bluish glow to her skin that told her the Glamor was lit.