“Warning me not to venture into the witch’s lair?” I said as it raced past me.
The cat leapt onto a porch rocking chair. It stretched on the gingham cushion, purring as it got comfortable.
“Okay, not a warning. Unless you’re her familiar lulling me into a false sense of security.”
I swore the cat rolled its eyes.
I laughed. “Fine, I’ll willfully interpret your reappearance as a sign of good fortune, meaning I am indeed making the right choice.”
I gave the cat a pat and rang the bell. The harsh buzz was oddly out of tone with the Victorian surroundings. The tinny voice that followed was even more jarring.
“Hello?”
I looked around and found a speaker hidden in the ivy.
“Hello?” the woman’s voice said again.
“Rosalyn Razvan?”
“Yes.”
“It’s—” I started to say Liv Taylor, then remembered that she knew who I was. “Olivia Taylor-Jones. You wanted to speak to me?”
“Six o’clock.”
“What?”
A metallic whoosh, like a sigh. “I’ll speak to you at six o’clock. It’s by appointment only.”
“I’m not looking to buy a reading. Your card just said you wanted to speak—”
“Six o’clock. No charge.”
The speaker clicked off. I looked at the cat.
“Any more advice?”
The cat started cleaning itself, leaving me to retreat across the road.
• • •
Seeing the cat made me decide to take a step I’d been avoiding. I went to the library and I researched “black cats and luck,” as well as every other odd thing that had happened.
I’d wanted to forget these so-called omens. Brush them off and tell myself they meant nothing. Except they did mean something. All my gut-level interpretations of the omens matched the folklore.
In America, we see a black cat and think its bad luck. In other places, particularly Britain, they’re considered good luck. Kill a spider? Bad luck. Stir with a knife? Causes trouble. See a cat wash its ears? A sure sign of rain.
Which only proved that someone had indoctrinated me with this folklore at an early age, and now it was popping back up because I was remembering my past life with Pamela Larsen, the woman who’d put all that nonsense there in the first place.
What bothered me most was the poppy. It turned out they were a death omen. I’d seen a poppy outside the door of a dead man . . . before I knew he was dead. Maybe there’d been no poppy. Maybe I’d smelled death and manufactured the illusion.
Next I looked up the word “bran.” It was Welsh for raven. So I was guessing that whatever the little girl in my dream said—the line I’d regurgitated at Gunderson’s apartment—was Welsh. I had no idea what it meant. I typed a few variations into online dictionaries, but got nothing. I’m sure my phonetic guesses were nowhere close to the real spellings.
Why was I dreaming of a girl speaking Welsh and how had my dreaming brain known that bran meant raven? Back to Pamela Larsen. Her maiden name was Bowen. Plugging that into a search told me my maternal grandmother’s name was Daere Bowen. That was Welsh, and from the unusual first name, I was guessing she was a recent immigrant. So Pamela may have spoken some Welsh and taught me. Young children are amazingly quick to pick up language.
I did come across something else in my searches. I accidentally typed Walsh instead of Welsh. Not surprising—Gabriel was still on my brain. Turned out the similar spelling wasn’t coincidental. Walsh was a very old Irish name meaning “foreigner.” Quite literally, a Welshman. It meant nothing, of course, but after hours of researching omens and portents, I couldn’t help but see this as a sign that I was on the right path, considering him for the role of investigative partner. Or I was just desperate to believe it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
When I rang Rosalyn’s bell at six there was a car parked in front of her house. A little old lady opened the door, and I extended my hand to introduce myself, but she walked right past me, her gaze distant, lips moving, as if talking to herself. She carried on down the walk and climbed into the passenger seat of the old Buick. After a moment, she got out and went around to the driver’s door.
“Okay,” I murmured. “That’s not a good sign.”
A grumble sounded behind me. “I tell her not to drive right after hypnosis. If she keeps that up, it won’t be the cigarettes that kill her.”
I turned and thought, Snow White’s mother. I don’t mean the one from the modern telling of the fairy tale, the kindly queen who pricks her finger and wishes for a daughter, only to die and be replaced by the evil stepmother. My memories are of the real Grimm’s fairy tales and others where Cinderella’s stepmother cuts off her daughter’s toes to fit in the glass slipper and the Little Mermaid kills herself after her prince chooses someone else. Even when I learned the modern ones, I preferred the brutal and macabre old versions. I always wondered why. Now, knowing who my real parents were, I suppose that was another question answered.
In the original telling, the jealous witch who persecuted Snow White was her real mother. When I looked at Rosalyn Razvan, that’s who I saw. She had black hair, cut in a bob, with a perfect frosting of white. Elegantly tweezed black brows. Bone-china skin. Ruby red lips.
I knew she was Gabriel’s great-aunt, but she only looked in her late fifties. He’d inherited his height from her side of the family. She was a few inches taller than me. Military posture. Sturdily built with wide hips and ship-prow breasts.
She had blue eyes, like Gabriel, but hers had more color. I’d say more warmth, too, but warm wasn’t a word to describe Rosalyn Razvan.
“Your mother owes my nephew money,” she said.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”
“He worked for her in good faith, and she hasn’t paid her bills.”
“That’s what he says, and she doesn’t deny it, so I guess it’s true.”
“And you take no responsibility for your mother’s debts?”
“Considering that I didn’t know Pamela Larsen was my mother until after she incurred those debts, the answer is no.”
“If you pay him—and I know your adoptive family can afford to do so—then Pamela Larsen will repay you. Gabriel says she’s eager to renew a relationship with you. She won’t want to start by mooching off her daughter.”
The cat leapt onto a porch rocking chair. It stretched on the gingham cushion, purring as it got comfortable.
“Okay, not a warning. Unless you’re her familiar lulling me into a false sense of security.”
I swore the cat rolled its eyes.
I laughed. “Fine, I’ll willfully interpret your reappearance as a sign of good fortune, meaning I am indeed making the right choice.”
I gave the cat a pat and rang the bell. The harsh buzz was oddly out of tone with the Victorian surroundings. The tinny voice that followed was even more jarring.
“Hello?”
I looked around and found a speaker hidden in the ivy.
“Hello?” the woman’s voice said again.
“Rosalyn Razvan?”
“Yes.”
“It’s—” I started to say Liv Taylor, then remembered that she knew who I was. “Olivia Taylor-Jones. You wanted to speak to me?”
“Six o’clock.”
“What?”
A metallic whoosh, like a sigh. “I’ll speak to you at six o’clock. It’s by appointment only.”
“I’m not looking to buy a reading. Your card just said you wanted to speak—”
“Six o’clock. No charge.”
The speaker clicked off. I looked at the cat.
“Any more advice?”
The cat started cleaning itself, leaving me to retreat across the road.
• • •
Seeing the cat made me decide to take a step I’d been avoiding. I went to the library and I researched “black cats and luck,” as well as every other odd thing that had happened.
I’d wanted to forget these so-called omens. Brush them off and tell myself they meant nothing. Except they did mean something. All my gut-level interpretations of the omens matched the folklore.
In America, we see a black cat and think its bad luck. In other places, particularly Britain, they’re considered good luck. Kill a spider? Bad luck. Stir with a knife? Causes trouble. See a cat wash its ears? A sure sign of rain.
Which only proved that someone had indoctrinated me with this folklore at an early age, and now it was popping back up because I was remembering my past life with Pamela Larsen, the woman who’d put all that nonsense there in the first place.
What bothered me most was the poppy. It turned out they were a death omen. I’d seen a poppy outside the door of a dead man . . . before I knew he was dead. Maybe there’d been no poppy. Maybe I’d smelled death and manufactured the illusion.
Next I looked up the word “bran.” It was Welsh for raven. So I was guessing that whatever the little girl in my dream said—the line I’d regurgitated at Gunderson’s apartment—was Welsh. I had no idea what it meant. I typed a few variations into online dictionaries, but got nothing. I’m sure my phonetic guesses were nowhere close to the real spellings.
Why was I dreaming of a girl speaking Welsh and how had my dreaming brain known that bran meant raven? Back to Pamela Larsen. Her maiden name was Bowen. Plugging that into a search told me my maternal grandmother’s name was Daere Bowen. That was Welsh, and from the unusual first name, I was guessing she was a recent immigrant. So Pamela may have spoken some Welsh and taught me. Young children are amazingly quick to pick up language.
I did come across something else in my searches. I accidentally typed Walsh instead of Welsh. Not surprising—Gabriel was still on my brain. Turned out the similar spelling wasn’t coincidental. Walsh was a very old Irish name meaning “foreigner.” Quite literally, a Welshman. It meant nothing, of course, but after hours of researching omens and portents, I couldn’t help but see this as a sign that I was on the right path, considering him for the role of investigative partner. Or I was just desperate to believe it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
When I rang Rosalyn’s bell at six there was a car parked in front of her house. A little old lady opened the door, and I extended my hand to introduce myself, but she walked right past me, her gaze distant, lips moving, as if talking to herself. She carried on down the walk and climbed into the passenger seat of the old Buick. After a moment, she got out and went around to the driver’s door.
“Okay,” I murmured. “That’s not a good sign.”
A grumble sounded behind me. “I tell her not to drive right after hypnosis. If she keeps that up, it won’t be the cigarettes that kill her.”
I turned and thought, Snow White’s mother. I don’t mean the one from the modern telling of the fairy tale, the kindly queen who pricks her finger and wishes for a daughter, only to die and be replaced by the evil stepmother. My memories are of the real Grimm’s fairy tales and others where Cinderella’s stepmother cuts off her daughter’s toes to fit in the glass slipper and the Little Mermaid kills herself after her prince chooses someone else. Even when I learned the modern ones, I preferred the brutal and macabre old versions. I always wondered why. Now, knowing who my real parents were, I suppose that was another question answered.
In the original telling, the jealous witch who persecuted Snow White was her real mother. When I looked at Rosalyn Razvan, that’s who I saw. She had black hair, cut in a bob, with a perfect frosting of white. Elegantly tweezed black brows. Bone-china skin. Ruby red lips.
I knew she was Gabriel’s great-aunt, but she only looked in her late fifties. He’d inherited his height from her side of the family. She was a few inches taller than me. Military posture. Sturdily built with wide hips and ship-prow breasts.
She had blue eyes, like Gabriel, but hers had more color. I’d say more warmth, too, but warm wasn’t a word to describe Rosalyn Razvan.
“Your mother owes my nephew money,” she said.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”
“He worked for her in good faith, and she hasn’t paid her bills.”
“That’s what he says, and she doesn’t deny it, so I guess it’s true.”
“And you take no responsibility for your mother’s debts?”
“Considering that I didn’t know Pamela Larsen was my mother until after she incurred those debts, the answer is no.”
“If you pay him—and I know your adoptive family can afford to do so—then Pamela Larsen will repay you. Gabriel says she’s eager to renew a relationship with you. She won’t want to start by mooching off her daughter.”
