"Hey Clay, I got your call," Mary Cavaliere called out. "What about Knox? Is he OK?"
Mary had a very short list of friends in Evergreen Harbor, but somehow steady, reliable, down-to-earth Clay French and tree-hugging stoner Knox Greenburg were both on it. So, when Clay had called and said Knox needed help, Mary hadn't asked for details. She'd just hopped on the next city bus and headed for the Caboose. The train-station-turned-tavern wasn't the only place in the Harbor to hang out and get a drink, but it was their place.
"He is definitely not OK," Clay replied. "You remember that girl he was seeing, Shannon?"
"The one he kept saying he was going to introduce us to but hasn't," Mary nodded. She had teased Knox a few times about his maybe-imaginary girlfriend who lived in another city. "What happened, did she break his heart?"
"She died," Clay said grimly.
"Madonna!" Mary gasped, the sudden shock making her Amorosan accent more pronounced. "What happened?"
"I guess it was a mugging or something," Clay explained. "He's pretty messed up about it. Missy's in with him now, trying to comfort him."
As Mary followed Clay into the lounge, she reflected that she wasn't supposed to be here. The more people she interacted with, the more likely someone would realize that Mary Cavaliere wasn't Mary Cavaliere at all. It was even possible they would recognize her as Mariah Huntley, the infamous ex-gangster wife of Miranda Goth, daughter of musical superstar Cassie Goth. There'd been enough paparazzi at the damn wedding, to say nothing of the news coverage of the Alto family's attack on the newlyweds.
She was in hiding from gangsters. She was supposed to be lying low and maintaining minimal contact with people. That hadn't worked out, and "minimal contact" had turned into making friends.
Mary wasn't supposed to be here, but she was, and she was going to help a friend.
"Shannon was just so... so... in tune, you know," Knox was saying sadly, as Mary sat down across from him. "Like she was just so connected to the world... like spiritually connected to the Real World, not the whole soulless corporate grind people think the world is."
"Oh Knox, she sounds really amazing," Missy said soothingly.
The usually vivacious, but currently subdued, redhead was Clay's girlfriend. She was one those 'strangers are just besties I haven't met yet' people. It was really her fault, Mary thought, that she wasn't doing the whole 'minimal contact' thing. From the moment Mary had met her at work, Missy had just effortlessly pulled her into this circle of friends.
"What you had must have been so special," Missy continued.
"It was," Knox said sadly. "When we were together it was like... like we were one soul."
"I'm so sorry, Knox," Mary said, her voice (and her accent) thick with emotion. She knew just what Knox meant, about being one soul with the person you love. The idea of losing that had featured heavily in her newer nightmares. "It sounds like such a useless thing to say, but I really am sorry."
"Thanks, Mar," Knox said. "I really appreciate you just being here."
"Of course," Mary said, while thinking minimal contact be damned. "You just let us know what you need."
"Anything at all," Missy added. "We're all here for you."
"I just don't understand how this could happen," Knox cried. "I mean, the cops said it was a mugging. How could someone do that? Kill her... for what? For money?"
"There are bad people in the world," Mary said. She knew. As Mariah, she'd seen what poverty and desperation drove people to do. She'd seen what greed and cruelty could do, too. She forcibly reminded herself that Mary Cavaliere hadn't lived on the streets, hadn't been a gangster.
"Maybe it wasn't that," Knox said. "Maybe... maybe it was the protest. You know... maybe those evil land developers wanted to silence her!"
"Easy there buddy," Clay said. Clay worked an office job at the Evergreen Development Company. He and Knox didn't always agree about the whole evil land developers idea.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mary saw her wife, Mandy... in Evergreen Harbor, her name was Mandy... coming in.
"Knox, I'm so sorry," Mandy said. "I know it hurts. You love her. So, it's OK for it to hurt."
"Yeah... I loved her," Knox sighed.
"Come here," Mandy said softly, gently pulling Knox to his feet and into a comforting embrace. "You love her... even when she's gone, you still love her."
She'd experienced more than her share of loss, Mary thought. So she knows what to say... or maybe being comforting and kind just comes naturally to her.
"Yeah... I love her," Knox smiled weakly. "I do. I love Shannon Charm."
"Shannon Charm," Mandy breathed. Mary saw her eyes briefly widening with shock.
"Yeah, great name, don't you think," Knox said, slouching sadly back to the couch, too lost in his own grief to notice Mandy's reaction.
"Yeah," Mandy nodded. Mary watched something come over her wife's face, something terrifyingly familiar. Something she hoped their new friends, rightly focused on Knox, didn't see either because it wasn't a look that went with the persona of Mandy Cavaliere. It was the kind of mysterious look that sometimes came over the face of Miranda Silveroak-Goth when things were getting really weird.
"Knox, I'm sorry but I need to pull Mary away for a minute," Mandy said softly. Glancing at Missy and Clay, she added, "We'll be back as soon as we can."
Clay nodded back at her. "So, Knox... you wanna tell me more about those evil land developers?"
-------------
"What's going on?" Mariah asked. Standing outside the Caboose, she didn't feel like Mary Cavaliere anymore. She felt more like Mariah than she had in months.
"Shannon Charm," Miranda replied. She definitely wasn't Mandy right now. "I knew someone named Shannon Charm at school. There can't be two of them."
"At school back in Henford?" Mariah asked, but as much as she hoped so, she already knew what Miranda's answer would be.
"At the Academy, in Glimmerbrook," Miranda said.
"So, Shannon Charm was a witch?" Mariah breathed softly.
"Not just any witch," Miranda said seriously. "The Charms are one of the Old Families. Old blood and old magic going back more than a thousand years. You don't just walk up to a witch of the old blood and stick a knife in them."
"Ummm... I mean, you can. Carla B did it to you," Mariah disagreed softly. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could still see Carla with the Altos' tough guys behind her, blocking their way.
"Well, first, the Goths aren't an Old Family and, second, Carla knew what she was doing," Miranda said firmly. "She was ready for me and she brought a bunch of guys... and we still got away."
"Yeah, we got away," Mariah nodded. Barely, she added silently. For a moment, she imagined she could still feel her wife's hot blood against her hands, could almost see her lying, bleeding on the cobblestones of an empty Tartosan street.
"I just don't believe that some mugger in Windenburg could kill Shannon Charm," Miranda said. "There's something more going on. I can feel it."
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