Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

Meredith suddenly realized that she was being supported on either side by Mrs.

Flowers and their sixteen-year-old, Ava Wakefield. The mobile was on the cement floor of the basement. She must have actually started to black out. Several of the younger kids were screaming Matt’s name.

“No — I–I can stand up alone…” All she wanted in the world was to go into the darkness and get away from this horror. She wanted to let her legs go slack and her mind go blank, to flee…

But she couldn’t run away. She had taken the stave; she had taken the Duty from her grandfather. Anything supernatural that was out to harm Fell’s Church on her watch was her problem. And the problem was that her watch never ended.

Matt came clattering down the stairs, carrying their seven-year-old, Hailey, who continually shook with petit mal seizures.

“Meredith!” She could hear the incredulity in his voice. “What is it? What did you find, for God’s sake?”

“Come…look.” Meredith was remembering detail after detail that should have set off warning bells in her mind. Matt was somehow already beside her, even as she remembered Bonnie’s very first description of Isobel Saitou.

“The quiet type. Hard to get to know. Shy. And…nice.”

And that first visit to the Saitou house. The horror that quiet, shy, nice Isobel Saitou had become: the Goddess of Piercing, blood and pus oozing from every hole. And when they had tried to carry dinner to her old, old grandmother, Meredith had noticed absently that Isobel’s room was right under the doll-like old lady’s. After seeing Isobel pierced and clearly unbalanced, Meredith had assumed that any evil influence must be trying to travel up, and had worried in the back of her mind about the poor, old, doll-sized grandmother. But the evil could just as easily have traveled down. Maybe Jim Bryce hadn’t given Isobel the malach madness after all. Maybe she had given it to him, and he had given it to Caroline and to his sister.

And that children’s game! The cruel, cruel song that Obaasan — that InariObaasan had crooned. “Fox and turtle had a race…” And her words: “There’s a kitsune involved in this somewhere.” She’d been laughing at them, amusing herself! Come to that, it was from Inari-Obaasan that Meredith had first heard the word “kitsune.”

And one more additional cruelty, that Meredith had only been able to excuse before by assuming Obaasan had very poor sight. That night, Meredith had had her back to the door and so had Bonnie — they had both been concentrating on “poor decrepit old Grandma.” But Obaasan had been facing the door, and she was the only one who could have seen — must have seen — Isobel sneaking up behind Bonnie. And then, just as the cruel game song told Bonnie to look behind her…

Isobel had been crouching there, ready to lick Bonnie’s forehead with a forked pink tongue…

“Why?” Meredith could hear her own voice saying. “Why was I so stupid? How could I not have seen from the beginning?”

Matt had retrieved the BlackBerry and read the web page. Then he just stood, fixed, his blue eyes wide. “You were right,” he said, after a long moment.

“I want so much to be wrong…”

“Meredith — Shinichi and Misao are Inari’s servants…If that old lady is Inari we’ve been running around like crazy after the wrong people, the hired muscle…”

“The damn note cards,” Meredith choked out. “The ones done by Obaasan.

They’re useless, flawed. All those bullets she blessed should have been no goodbut maybe she did bless them — as a game. Isobel even came to me and changed all the characters the old lady had done for the jars to hold Shinichi and Misao. She said that Obaasan was almost blind. She left a tear on my car seat. I couldn’t understand why she should be crying.”

“I still can’t. She’s the granddaughter — probably the third generation of a monster!” Matt exploded. “Why should she cry? And why do the Post-it Notes work?”

“Because they’re done by Isobel’s mother,” Mrs. Flowers said quietly. “Dear Matt, I truly doubt that the old woman is related to the Saitous at all. As a deity — or even a powerful magic-user named after a deity — and undoubtedly a kitsune herself, she surely just moved in with them and used them. Isobel’s mother and Isobel had no choice but to carry on the charade for fear of what she’d do to them if they didn’t.”

“But Mrs. Flowers, when Tyrone and I pulled that leg bone out of the thicket, didn’t you say that the Saitou women made such excellent amulets? And didn’t you say that we could get the Saitou women to help translate the words on the clay jars when Alaric sent the pictures of them from that Japanese Island?”

As for my belief in the Saitou women, well, I’ll have to quibble a little here,” Mrs.

Flowers said. “I couldn’t know that this Obaasan was evil, and there are still two of them who are gentle and good, and who have helped us tremendously — and at great risk to themselves.”

Meredith could taste the bitterness of bile in her mouth. “Isobel could have saved us. She could have said ‘My fake grandmother is really a demon.’”

“Oh, my dear Meredith, the young are so unforgiving. This Inari was probably installed in her house when she was a child. All she knows at first is that the old woman is a tyrant, with a god’s name. Then perhaps some demonstration of power — what happened to Orime’s husband, I wonder, to make him go back to Japan — if indeed he went there? He may well be dead. And then Isobel is growing up: shy, quiet, introverted — frightened. This is not Japan; there are no other priestesses here to confide in. And you saw the consequences when Isobel reached out to someone outside of the family — to her boyfriend, Jim Bryce.”

“And to us — well, to you and Bonnie,” Matt said to Meredith. “She sicced Caroline on you.”

Scarcely knowing what they were doing, they were talking faster and faster.

“We have to go there right now,” said Meredith. “Shinichi and Misao may be the ones bringing on the Last Midnight, but it’s Inari who gives the orders. And who knows? She may dole out the punishments as well. We don’t know how big her star ball is.”

“Or where,” said the old woman.

“Mrs. Flowers,” Matt said hastily, “you’d better stay here with the kids. Ava, here, is reliable, and where’s Jacob Lagherty?”

“Here,” said a boy who looked older than fifteen. He was as tall as Matt was, but gangly.

“Okay. Ava, Jake, you’re in charge under Mrs. Flowers. We’ll leave Saber with you too.” The dog was a big hit among the kids, on his best behavior, even when the younger ones chewed his tail. “You two just listen to Mrs. Flowers, and—”

“Matt, dear, I won’t be here. But the animals will surely help to protect them.”

Matt stared at her. Meredith knew what he was thinking. Was Mrs. Flowers, so reliable up until now, going somewhere to hide alone? Was she abandoning them?

“And I’ll need one of you to drive me to the Saitou house — quickly! — but the other can stay and protect the children as well.”

Meredith was both relieved and worried, and clearly Matt was too.

“Mrs. Flowers, this is going to be a battle. You could get hurt or be taken hostage so easily—”

“Dear Matt, this is my battle. My family has lived in Fell’s Church for generations, all the way back to the pioneering times. I believe this is the battle for which I was born. Certainly the last of my old age.”

Meredith stared. In the dim light of the basement, Mrs. Flowers seemed suddenly different somehow. Her voice was changing. Even her small body seemed to be changing, steadying, standing tall.