at her father’s lips, ready with baited breath to read the next words from his mouth.
Mason glanced at both of them. He was still holding the business card, shifting it between his fingers as if practicing a failed magic trick, trying to figure out what might have gone wrong. “He didn’t tell you?”
They both shook their heads.
Mason turned, saw his son, the cane under his arm, strolling out the door, after first opening it for an older woman. Reformed, and a gentleman? Again he wondered who Gabriel was, and what had changed him. Or was it all an act? He stared at the card, and something about it gave him the shivers. He noticed suddenly the black wasn’t all black; there was something beneath it, trapped under the dark. A coiled form, like a snake or a nest of vipers; the things seemed to define themselves the more he stared at the card; red-tinged, their scales—and the eyes, twinkling almost if you held the card just right, and away from the light.
Oddly, it felt warm to his touch.
Shelby pressed her hand to his arm, getting his attention. She said, “He wants … to ’omebak?”
“He wants to come back,” Lauren translated, sounding more hopeful than certain.
Mason slipped the card into his shirt pocket. “He wants something, that’s all I know for sure.”
“You goin’ to give it? Do what-eber he ’sked you?” Shelby asked, her voice clearer than Mason ever remembered.
“I don’t know,” he said, along with making the quick sign. A peal of laughter caught his attention. A few tables away, Pamela led a crowd of his coworkers into near-riotous laughter after some joke or story, most likely at his expense.
Mason turned back to meet the stares of his family, the looks that expressed a sense of hope, and reconciliation.
I don’t know, he signed.
“Go,” Lauren said, pointing to the pocket where he had placed the business card.
Shelby nodded, then signed: Go.
Chapter 3
Outside, Gabriel proceeded quickly to the black stretch limo where the side door opened on cue and he slipped inside. The limo launched before the door even closed and he had to steady himself before almost pitching forward onto the other man in the car.
The windows allowed in only minimal light. The seats were leather, the floors an oddly root-contoured feel. Around the ceiling hung an assortment of vines—some green, some wooden: mistletoe, hazelnut, hemlock, all entwined and crisscrossing in elegant, almost harmonious patterns, creating a patchwork living roof of foliage.
“Well?” came the voice from the seat across from Gabriel, behind the driver’s panel. A face pulled itself free of the inky folds of shade and fractured light, a chiseled face right out of the pulp comics, the rugged face of a hero with high cheekbones, a jutting chin and a broad forehead ringed with coarse red hair and tied back in a pony tail. A fine edging of a beard framed his jaw, and a perfectly manicured mustache rested under eyes of intense jade, like ancient stones set in an excavated statue of some nature god. He wore a dark suit, the mirror of Gabriel’s, as black as oil, with the exception of a tiny yellow wildflower pinned to his lapel.
Gabriel cleared his throat. His fingers traced the ridges of his wooden staff, seeking comfort there. When he spoke, his voice cracked. “I think he’ll call.”
“You think?” his employer asked.
“I … I know he will. I’ve got his interest, if for nothing else, to see what I’ve been doing. He hopes I’ve changed.”
“Oh you have, Gabriel, you have. I’ve seen to that.”
Gabriel nodded. “Thank you. But I don’t believe it’s in the way my father hoped.”
The man with the red hair sat back and gave a low chuckle. “Sons rarely please their fathers. It’s a truth he should have prepared for the day you scuttled out from between your mother’s legs.” The diminishing laugh merged with the sound of a hard tapping.
Gabriel clenched his own cane tighter as he saw the other staff, the one carried by his employer, gleaming in the green-tinted radiance. A gnarled, ancient stick with a gold-plated base and an emerald tip. His employer was tapping it against his open palm, absent-mindedly. “Tell me,” he said, in almost a whisper. “Because I do not share your optimism. What options do we have if he refuses?”
Gabriel swallowed hard. Closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. “My mother maybe, but if time is of the essence …”
“It is.”
“Then you have to go after Shelby. She’s the true