Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Eighteen:
Growing Pains

Withhold not correction from the child:
for if thou beatest him with the rod,
he shall not die.
Thou shalt beat him with the rod,
and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
― Proverbs 23:13-14

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? No, seriously, if God were all-powerful and all that shit, could he make angels so tiny that an infinite number of them could dance gracefully in an infinitesimal space without stepping on each other’s toes? And if they twirled, would the infinitely delicate fabric of all their tiny skirts billow out to follow that asymptotic curve known as the Witch of Agnesi? Parametrically, it would be: x = 2a tan θ, y = 2a cos² θ, or in Cartesian coördinates: y = 8a³ / x² + 4a². And could all those tiny dancing angels sing the calculus of infinitesimals as they danced in chorus? Were there no limits to their collective audacity? ‘We’re here! We’re here! We hear! We hear!’ Is reciprocity a divine attribute? Quid pro quo? Tit for tat? If life is but a dream, was she always dreaming?

Jackie woke with a start? Was she sleeping? Dreaming? How could sleep be triggered without blood in her veins and breath in her body? Was it only a habit, the boring repetition of an obsessive-compulsive tic? Did she have circadian rhythms? Was she a morning person? A night owl? Did it matter? Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast. But was it? She didn’t feel rested particularly, just the same. What time was it, anyway? She glanced over at the clock beside her bed, which glowed, although it hardly mattered, since whatever ‘light’ she used for vision didn’t follow normal rules, except it did, sort of. When she closed her eyes, she couldn’t exactly see, although she could still sense things going on around her, exactly how she didn’t know. And there! There something wasn’t right.

She flitted to where the disturbance was, and there was a man open before her, using a tool of some sort to lever the screen from an open window. A woman lay sleeping in the room, and the window was open for air. Jackie wasn’t outraged so much as ticked off, because this was her territory. She didn’t like his mind at all, so she fixed it for him, so that he dropped his pants, stepped out of them, and started masturbating frantically, ejaculating almost immediately, and then knelt under the window and began to lick up his own emission. Then she called the police, and told them she’d seen a prowler, told them where it was, and waited until the cruiser arrived, turned on its alley and takedown lights, and clearly videoed the man’s pale ass in the air as he kept licking, now frantic when he realized that he was now displayed. As the officer exited his vehicle, she left, content that the would-be rapist now had a different problem, fetishistic exhibitionism, which would have him in reparative therapy for a good long time, or until his aggressive impulses were gone. As an afterthought, she reached back and added a compulsion to brag about his past exploits, whatever they were, which ought to take care of justice as well, without requiring her to soil her own mind by dipping into his.

Looking around her, she could feel many thoughts and feelings in the air, but had a special sensitivity to thoughts and feelings of a sexual nature, and so saw something of her mother’s temptation. Within the radius of a mile, or more if she stretched a bit, there were more men masturbating than she could shake a stick at — she almost laughed at her ‘happy’ metaphor — and quite a few women. One didn’t have to tempt or seduce anyone at all, although she supposed that taking an active part would have its charms. There was more than enough sexual energy being thrown around to keep a dozen succubi replete with no effort at all.

When she thought about it, though, it didn’t seem like a very productive way to make a living, as a sort of mosquito tapping into a communal artery that was freely available, so she supposed that Lilith was engaged in a type of helpful commerce, because she added ‘value’ to the transaction by embellishing the rough act with dreams, the teasing seduction, the affirmation of prowess, and perhaps even the smash and grab that made off with the entire package in a transformative change. Or was it Lilith who’d drained him dry at all? Toward the end, when she’d become Lilith, at least in her mind, was it Lilith, or was it Jackie herself, who’d delighted in sucking down her own energy, and in watching herself die and be reborn? She knew that she was much more powerful than her sisters, at least the two she’d seen at the convention, Jane and Mary. Was it because she’d embraced her change, had wanted it before her encounter with Lilith, as her angel Sam had seemed to say?

Lilith, of course, had said nothing, but who was being the grownup here, Lilith — who’d left her free to make her own way in the world without any sort of coercion that she could see, and in fact seemed remarkably happy to see her sometimes, considering all in all — or herself, petulant, whiny, even churlish at times, sulking when her mother didn’t behave exactly as she wanted her to behave? If she had been her Mom, she would have smacked herself more than once, and felt perfectly justified. She’d been holding herself up as the paragon of virtue, and had mentally labeled her Mom as the ‘Bitch,’ but the only one of the two of them who’d really been acting like a bitch had been herself, injecting herself into what had evidently been a private conversation between her Mother and her friend Sarah, and jumping all over her Mom without bothering to find out what had been going on. Sarah was much older than she was, despite her apparent youth, and probably felt more comfortable with her Mother, a fellow ‘Oldie,’ — if not quite on the same scale — than Jackie did herself.

Then, thinking of her mother, she thought for some reason of Blake’s poem, The Tiger. Her angel Sam had been quite careful to refer to the Creator and the Maker, but her mother had dismissed ‘that pathetic little volcano godling’ as something contemptible, and she wasn’t at all sure any more that they referred to the same thing. Lilith was indeed a type of tiger, fierce and proud, and ‘What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’ Could Lilith’s ‘pathetic godling’ have been her Creator, or was there some subtle difference? Sam had referred to ‘his friend Vishnu,’ but if Vishnu existed, why not Adi Parashakti, the Goddess, Divine Mother — to whom Lilith had also referred, at least indirectly — as the Supreme Being and ground of all reality. In the Upanishads, the Trinity, Lord Brahma, Lord Vishnu, Lord Shiva, and all other Gods worship Her, and indeed without the power of Adi Shakti the Gods Themselves can neither move nor speak. Even the Three Supreme Gods, Trimurti, are as nothing without the Tridevi, their Consorts and Goddesses, Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Parvati, all of whom have multiple Aspects, and in fact Parvati, Goddess of Destruction, of preparing the way for making all things new again, is often depicted wearing a tiger’s skin, as is Kali, one of Parvati’s most terrible incarnations, and so subsume its essential nature. Was Kali, was Parvati? Were all these women Lilith? Or was Lilith them? What was she, herself, if not Lilith made new again, free of bondage?

And then she woke again, recursively. She’d been sleeping on the couch, one of her books lying open in her lap, papers and four- by six-inch note-cards scattered on every flat surface around her. They were covered with some small fraction of the Ten Thousand Names of God.

In the distance, she heard the police cruiser responding to her call.

“Hello, Mother,” Jackie said, when Lilith looked up from the bar where she was sitting, surrounded, as usual, by a small coterie of male admirers.

She frowned slightly and waved a negligent hand, causing the men’s eyes to unfocus and their faces to go slack. “Come to carp and criticize, as usual, dear? Or do you want something else?”

“No, Mother. I’ve come to offer my help, if I may, but I have no idea what that help might consist of, or even if it might be useful to you, but I owe you my….” She’d almost said ‘love,’ but stopped herself in time, “…gratitude and loyalty.”

Lilith smiled with no particular enthusiasm, but at least she wasn’t sneering. “How much have you guessed?”

“Not much,” she admitted, “but I suspect you have a powerful demon in captivity, ‘on ice,’ so to speak, trapped within the matrix of a large diamond, probably the large yellow diamond that ‘went missing’ recently.”

Lilith visibly preened, so pleased was she, her natural beauty becoming more radiant, so much so that every activity in her club came to a standstill, with every male staring at her, jaws slack, and spittle drooling from the mouths of several. “How clever of you, Daughter, but then blood will tell… eventually.” The last word dropped a bit, and she looked somewhat less sanguine, and most of the men shook themselves slightly, as if they had been dogs coming in out of the rain, and then tried to think of what they’d been doing before.

“I confess that I have no idea who it might be, however.”

“Not to worry, dear. There’s no reason you should, since he’s been absent from the world for more than twenty thousand years. He was a boring little twit to begin with, Mastiphal, one of many self-styled ‘Princes of Darkness over the ages.’ ” She rolled her eyes. “Spare me,” she sighed, “the pretensions of petty pretenders.”

“If you’ll pardon my ignorance, who’s Mastiphal.”

She smiled, “You mean, apart from a ‘metal’ band from Gdansk? Or was it Katowice? Poland, anyway, a dreary place, entirely appropriate for Mastiphal, who was a dreary fellow as an angel, and even less appealing as a demon, although the two words are completely interchangeable. Fancied himself the Demon of Slander and Lies, which I suppose are very grievous sins in Halacha, but they have tabloid celebrations of his domain at every supermarket checkout stand these days, along with candy and chewing gum. How are the mighty fallen….”

“But why do you need him, then?”

“Moi? Need? Not likely, but I thought he might spare me some trouble, and if he doesn’t agree, he can go right back into his little bottle.”

Jackie felt like rolling her eyes and making a ‘smart’ remark, but rather renewed her resolve to be better than she was, usually. “All right, then how might he be ‘handy,’ if that’s a better word.”

“Mastiphal’s one grounding in reality was that he hated Sansanvi, who’s gone rogue of late, and is killing innocents. If he undertakes to take rid me of Sansanvi, I’ll set him free, to save myself the trouble of more personal involvement.”

“But is this Mastiphal that powerful?”

She actually laughed. “You’ve been listening to Semangelaf, I see. Don’t be swayed by his puffed-up little masculine ego and self-aggrandizement. Those three little twerps were errand boys, back in the day, and haven’t much improved themselves, having started out as hit men who preyed upon women and children, for the most part.” She sneered in contempt. “I was married to an Archangel for two thousand years, remember, Samael, one of the seven Regents of the World. I was Empress of the Realm of Death, and as Mictecacihuatl reigned alone as Queen and Goddess of Mictláan, the Underworld, for another two thousand years. Mastiphal was, in very fact, one of the great Princes amongst the angels, although not nearly of Samael’s measure.” She smirked, then winked laciviously. “In more ways than one.” She smirked again, in slightly better humor. “He was Mosachiel, of course, the ‘Chosen One of God,’ before he changed his name. He thought it sounded too Jewish or something.” She was obviously unconcerned with his opinion.

Jackie didn’t know what to say. “Unh, what do you mean by ‘innocents’ and Sansanvi?”

“I mean the nasty little toad is killing people who haven’t done any particular harm, of course, including quite recently your sister Jane, who was too weak and unassuming to hurt a fly, which is of course an enticement for vicious thugs and cowards like Sansanvi.” She spat on the floor to underscore her disgust.

“He killed Jane?” Jackie was stunned, trying to reconcile her formerly-comfortable view of the world to an intrusive reality that seemed monstrous and vile. She could hardly believe it, ‘Jane?’ “But I knew Jane.”

“He did, seeking to curry favor from someone higher on this week’s totem pole, I suspect, although of course he didn’t consult me, since he undoubtedly worried that I’d snuff him out without the slightest hesitation. Bullies rarely confront the source of their fears.”

Jackie didn’t take long to make up her mind; she didn’t have that many relatives to spare, and she’d liked Jane, despite her quirks, and she’d promised her safety, trusting in Semangelaf’s lying words. “Could you teach me something about diamonds, Mother?”

She smiled in what appeared to be genuine pleasure. “Of course, Jackie. You have only to ask, but you already know most of the trick of it, since it’s almost the same as concealing your aura, but you do it to someone else, and stuff them elsewhere than behind their own eyes.” She rose from her stool and walked toward her, reaching up and plucking something from the air as she came toward her, which turned out to be the two apparently flawless deep blue cut diamonds she pressed into her palm. “Having two is better,” she said, “because you have two chances at the trick, and they usually feel smug after having escaped the first time, and so fall easily to a second try. If that one fails, flee like all Hell is after you, because it will be.”

Jackie stared at them. They felt almost heavy in her hand, about the weight of her keyring, including her car key, the clicker, the key to their apartment, a tiny Swiss Army knife with a tiny nail file and scissors, and a fancy decorative key fob, which happened to be a pretty brass rose that Frank had given her. “Unh, how much am I carrying around here?”

Lilith raised one perfect eyebrow. “Who cares? Around three ounces total, at a guess. It’s difficult to trap a relatively powerful spirit in anything much less than an ounce or so without a lot of practice, so these two have plenty of room to play around with.” She paused for a moment, then added, evidently amused by Jackie’s hesitation, “They’ve never been claimed by anyone, dear, and my hands are the only ones to ever touch them, aside from the diamond cutter, since I picked them up on the shores of a lovely riverbank in South Africa, and that was almost twenty thousand years ago, so you needn’t worry about being caught with them. Whatever anyone else might think about their value, they’re worth considerably less than your life. Now let me show you how it’s done….”

Jackie felt a little odd, as she was parking her car beneath their apartment building as if it were an ordinary day, as if nothing had changed, as if her head might not explode. She had ready-to-hand a matched pair of gems worth many millions of dollars, tucked away in a tiny extra-dimensional quasi-universal oubliette that followed her around like an invisible balloon on an cosmic string, another trick that Lilith had shared with her. She tried to think of them as life-preservers, which made it a little easier not to feel excited, and to consider them a ‘loan’ from her mother, not a gift, but it was difficult to take her mother’s casual perspective on them, having worked for a living for her entire adult life. When she’d worked as a waitress, there’d been times when a three-dollar tip had been the difference between the street and having a roof over her head, and here she was walking around with a outlandish fortune in her really-truly foxy pocket.

She walked over to the elevator, but didn’t press the call button. Instead, she extended her perceptions to ascertain her privacy, then flashed upstairs to the bathroom in her bedroom.

She could feel Frank and Hank in the living room, so flushed the toilet, purely for the sake of the familiar sound and warning, then walked out into the main room. “Hi, Sweetie. You too, Hank. What’s up? Made any progress on the method?” Frank’s diorama was plainly visible on the coffee table, so she imagined that they had.

Frank looked up. “I was wondering when you were going to wake up from your nap. And we have. It turns out that there are several spots in which ‘jumpers’ could possibly have been placed to bypass both the alarms and the video circuits, so we want to make a trip back to check them out. Want to come along?”

“Of course. Just let me grab my purse.”

At Pearlmutter’s, the same young man they’d worked with before was in a tizzy. It seemed that the thieves had had trouble unloading the stones, since they were ‘too hot to handle,’ and just the day before had shipped them back to Pearlmutter’s by special courier from Antwerp, along with a polite note apologizing for the mess. They’d just arrived, and the owners were going through the inventory list at that very moment.

“Well,” Jackie observed, “I was hoping that someone would drop a dime and let us know where they were, but never expected such quick service.”

Both Frank and Hank glared at her.

“What?” she said. “Did I break some obscure sleuthing rule? It must have been in the fine print, because I never noticed it.”

This time, only Frank glared, while Hank looked puzzled.

“Well, if you’re going to be snippy, I think I’ll go to lunch while you guys work. A carrot and raisin salad would be nice, I think.”

Both men groaned, and Frank said, “Cornmeal might be better for you.”He dug in his trouser pocket and handed her a coin. “Here’s a dime; I’ll give you a ring later.”

This time, she glared at him….

Once outside, she stepped into a shadow and went insubstantial, flitting back up to Pearlmutter’s offices where she arranged Frank’s props ready to be ‘discovered’ inside the walls, and then flitted back to the car. Lilith had been very amused by Jackie’s plan, and had arranged the temporal displacement on her own, since she saw having a ‘source’ in the police department as possibly useful, and Jackie had pointed out that the quondam owners of record were as safe a place to stash her gemstones as any, until and if she needed them again.

All in all, she thought, it was a good compromise. The local police had at least some bragging rights, since the crime was ‘solved’ and the jewels recovered. The Chief and the Mayor could both hold press conferences and subtly imply that they’d been ‘closing in’ on the culprits, and this was what had forced them to abandon their plans to sell them in Antwerp, a major center of the international diamond market. Lilith had her captive angel/demon back, and he had in fact agreed to seek out Sansanvi for retribution in exchange for his freedom. But most importantly, the Compact had been preserved intact, which Jackie felt privately was at least part of the reason Lilith had agreed to Jackie’s scheme, because Dr. Emrys had left a few too many clues behind that pointed to supernatural causes. Not that Lilith would ever admit to any part of a mistake. She decided not to tell Sarah that Emrys, alias Merlin, former Magician to King Arthur’s Court, quite possibly the most powerful Druid and Sorcerer on Earth, and her current group counsellor, had been involved in the diamond caper, because it was family business in the first place, and because it might be detrimental to her progress in her group, as well as that of all the others.

So now, all she had to worry about was how to maintain a loving relationship with a mortal man without either killing him or destroying his manhood, and of course staying out of the way of Sansanvi. She wasn’t too terribly worried about that, though. After all, with millions of Lilith’s children alive in the world, what were the odds against Sansanvi finding her?

“Oh, shit….” Jackie said calmly. It was three o’clock in the morning, and she hadn’t been dancing at all — worse luck — and there was a man in her bedroom who looked exactly like Sam, but didn’t have the same feel about him, and the look on his face was grim. “You’d be Sansanvi, then.”

His eyes narrowed in suspicion, then he grew more hostile, saying, “Die, Jezebel! Whore of Babylon!” and advanced towards her, hands outstretched ad menacing, unconsciously mimicking a thousand film clichés.

“Aren’t you mixing metaphors, Sannie? You don’t mind if I call you ‘Sannie,’ do you. It seems less formal, and a girl should never invite a man into her bedroom unless they’re on friendly terms, don’t you agree?” She did her mother’s trick of shielding her aura, shrinking her essence into a tiny point, which only momentarily confused him. “Of course, you weren’t invited, were you, Sannie? which makes you a Peeping Tom and home invader, all of which are crimes under New York State law for which you can be sentenced to serve a sentence of not less than six months nor more than…. Eeep!” His hands upon her ætheric body were cold, colder than ice, even as far away from it as she was, so she shed it, like shrugging out of a négligée, allowing it to drop away as she slipped his grasp and fled through the walls of the apartment and deep into the warm and welcoming Earth.

Sansanvi followed close at her heels, shouting incoherently, reaching toward her with fell purpose.

Jackie kept up a running commentary, absurdly pleased that she didn’t need to breathe, and so had plenty of time for gibes. “Jezebel was a proud Princess and Queen, Sannie, the daughter of the King of Tyre, whose only ‘sin’ was defying the treacherous Jehu, who came into Jezreel to murder her, but was too chicken-hearted of her royal sanctity to actually touch her, so had eunuchs do the dirty deed on his behalf, which makes perfect sense, since two eunuchs make ten times the man he was, the sniveling little coward.”

His eyes widened, a little crazed, actually. “Blasphemy! Jehu was annointed of the Lord!”

“What? By Elisha? Not hardly. Even Elisha, another pusillanimous oath-breaker and vicious pig, didn’t dare blaspheme to that extent, but rather had a servant perform the sacrilege, so as not to soil his own pasty little hands and thereby tempt the Lord. Elisha was a filthy little spy who did everything by proxy, sitting at the center of his little nest of assassins and saboteurs like a bloated spider in his web, even less of a man than you are, Sannie dear, who sees fit to sneak up on women in their chambres intimes to murder them, one more candy-ass failure in a long line of effete stumble-bums and utterly beneath contempt. I have to thank you, though, Sannie-boy, for allowing me to feel precisely the courage of Jezabel when she denounced Jehu as a lying traitor. Jezabel was, for all her imputed faults, a woman of valor, Eshet Chayil, plotted against by worms and slandered by pimps and murderers, and you, I see, are a lot like Jehu, can’t get it up without playing the bullyboy toward women. What’s the matter, ‘Little’ Sannie, did those big bad angels make you take it in the ass?”

By now, Sansanvi was in a perfect froth of rage, almost sputtering as he shouted, “Slander! Infamy! Die, you vicious bitch! Cunt!” and finally managed to grab her with his clammy hands, hands as cold and strait as death, and began to squeeze.

Chilled to the core, she reached down and out for warmth, that fiery warmth and love that lies beneath the waking world she’d touched when she’d rescued Sal from the sociopath DeBauck, his captor, then reached again, deeper, deep within the Source of Love that was the Salmander’s natural home, and hers, and began to swell with power. “Sannie, Sannie, Sannie, what am I going to do with you?” With a sudden surge, she washed over him, enveloped him within her ocean, surprising him with the sudden reversal of their rôles, drowning him, subsuming his pathetic essence within her primal feminine power, devouring him, squeezing him, wringing him out like a dishrag, reducing him to his primitive size, no longer puffed up with self-important rage but wilted small in fear and terror, less than a grain of sand, of dust, until he was itsy-bitsy enough to spit out into one of her diamonds, still floating within easy reach, in which strict durance she left him, rattling around within a reticule which pierced him through and through, a fine mesh of covalent atomic bonds. Those bonds, as it turned out, were more powerful than even an angel’s strength, at least on an atomic scale. On this pinhead, at least, there was only room for one to dance.

With a sigh, she created a new ætheric body for herself, then flitted over to her mother’s nightclub, La Calaca, a name she now realized was self-referential, representing herself in her pre-Columbian heyday as the Goddess Mictecacihuatl, Queen of Mictláan, the secret world beneath and beyond the world of life.

Lilith was sitting in her usual place at the bar, surrounded by her fawning coterie, and seemed surprised to see her, but then pleased. “Daughter mine! I see your new aura of power and delight in it. Have you come to increase it? I have many willing donors ready for you, as you can see.”

Jackie smiled, glad to see her mother’s smiling face after her struggle with the murderous angel, although she supposed — since angels and demons were the same class of creature — Sansanvi was a demon now. “No, Mother. I’m still a one-man woman, but I wanted to give you a present.” She reached up and took one of her diamonds from her foxy pocket and handed it over to her mom.

Her brows went up, and then she looked at and into it more carefully and smiled with something like joy. “My darling girl! What an utterly charming and thoughtful gift!” she said, then reached up into her own foxy pocket and brought out a velvet bag. “Although your offering is very generous, a girl should never be without a good supply of ‘prophylactics.’ Please keep at least two or three in your… purse at all times. You never know when you might need one.” She handed Jackie the bag, which was astonishingly heavy, and simultaneously tucked the diamond away in her luscious décolletage.

Jackie looked down at it suspiciously. “Is this what I think it is, Mother?”

She arched one eyebrow, perfectly, of course. “I have no idea,” she said. “Do you think it’s a five pound wheel of aged Wisconsin Cheddar? If so, I’m afraid that you’ll be very much disappointed.” She shook her head sadly.

Jackie rolled her eyes. “Mother!” she said, aggrieved.

“What? I can’t give my own daughter a little housewarming gift? You have people depending on you, dear, especially your delightful little Salamander, who needs a proper fireplace and a cheery blaze to feel his best, not that dinky little thing you’re keeping him in now, and he needs to be near you, not farmed out to your boyfriend’s distant relatives. If you’ll just think carefully about how big he is, you’ll realize that around ten feet wide and three deep will give him a few inches to stretch out and be comfortable, so of course you’ll have to have a spacious home to match or the whole architectural statement will be grossly disproportionate, a poor advertisement for Frank’s talent.”

“But….”

“But me no buts, dear. My mind is quite made up. I can’t have my own daughter running around in rags and tatters.”

“But Frank….”

“My very dear,” she shook her head sadly. “You’ll find, I think, that there are very few masculine quirks of which I am not well aware. You’ll soon discover that… Frank… has very good news waiting for you, once you get home.”

“But how….”

“Daughter,” she said with a sultry languor worthy of Greta Garbo, “do you imagine that I am not numbered among those ‘owners of record’ you prattled on about. Over half those stones were mine by modern legal title, as well as moral right, so legal counsel for LLT Holdings, Ltd, just happened to drop an appreciative note in the mail, the day before yesterday, I think….” she paused, considering, then nodded slightly, “…thanking your intended for his services. There is a small token of gratitude enclosed as well, a tiny bit more than the five percent finder’s fee usual in these matters of trust, which require a delicate sense of discretion and judgement. Mustn’t bind the mouths, you know, of the kine that tread the corn.”

“But how am I supposed to explain….”

Her glance turned instantly fierce and proud. “You’re not supposed to explain anything, dear. These trifles are yours, your sole property and trust, needed for your personal safety, and you’re a free woman, not a slave. In addition, inside that bag is another bag, much smaller, and it contains only one stone, a green diamond. Within that stone lies the sleeping soul of your sister Jane, awaiting rebirth. However much I may fault her taste, I think Jane would rather be your child than mine.”

Jackie began to weep, her tears flowing freely. “But you said she was dead! How….”

Lilith’s temper flared. “Of course she’s dead! Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said? A naked soul isn’t alive again until it’s reïncarnated in a new body, either physical or ætheric.”

“I’m sorry, Mother. There’s so much that I still don’t understand….” She was still crying, grateful and ashamed.

“Then spend some little time puzzling it out,” she said scornfully, “before wasting my time. Now get out.”

She turned back toward her admirers, who noticeably brightened, basking in her perilous regard.

Jackie turned away to flee toward home, still weeping, but snatched up the velvet bag as she left, holding it closely to her bosom — as though it were Jane indeed — as she flew.

Copyright © 1998, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2009 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah