The Headless Cupid Read online

  When they got to the room that Molly had chosen for Amanda, David sat down on the box he’d been carrying to catch his breath. It was a small room but interesting, with dormer windows and a ceiling that slanted in all directions. Amanda looked around, blank-faced and cool-eyed as ever. David couldn’t begin to guess if she liked the room or not.

  He remembered then what he’d been about to ask before they started upstairs. “What did you mean—‘not exactly’?” he said. “It’s either a crow or it isn’t. How come it’s ‘not exactly’ a crow?”

  Amanda unwrapped the beach towel, and the crow sidled across its perch and pecked viciously at her fingers. “It’s not exactly a crow,” she said, “because it’s actually a familiar spirit. I don’t suppose you’ve heard the term before, but this crow is my Familiar.”

  Chapter Two

  DAVID DIDN’T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA WHAT AMANDA WAS TALKING ABOUT when she called the big black crow her Familiar. So, for a minute he just nodded, hoping she would go on talking long enough to explain. But instead she just stared at him with her lips going down and the end of one eyebrow going up.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of a Familiar?” she said, finally.

  “Well,” David said, “I think I’ve—it does sound kind of—” He stopped and grinned, “—familiar.”

  Amanda’s lips flickered and flipped back down. She sighed. “That’s an entirely different meaning,” she said. “A Familiar is something that looks like an animal or bird, but really what it is, is a spirit. It’s a spirit that lives with an occult person and is her contact with the world of the supernatural.”

  “The world of the supernatural?” David said. “What kind of supernatural?”

  “Different kinds,” Amanda said. “I’ve just begun to study, see, and I haven’t decided yet what I’ll specialize in. I have this friend, Leah, who’s been studying for years, and she knows practically everything about the occult; but she’s mainly interested in straight witchcraft. I haven’t decided for sure. I’m considering different things.”

  “Like what, for instance?”

  But just then Amanda noticed what Esther was doing. She had arrived, finally, while they were talking, and leaving the train case in the middle of the room, had gone directly to the crow’s cage, near the window.

  “Hey, get away from there,” Amanda said.

  David noticed then that all ten of Esther’s fingers, plus the end of her nose, were inside the bars of the cage. She was saying something to the crow, but David couldn’t hear what.

  “Get away from there,” Amanda yelled again. She jumped across the room and jerked Esther away from the cage. Esther stared at her with round eyes. “He’ll peck you,” Amanda went on shouting. “He’ll bite the hell—” She caught herself and then went on. “You want your eyes pecked out?” She turned to David and shrugged. “Kids!” she said. “I’m just not used to them.”

  Esther ran to the other side of David and looked around him at Amanda. “Is that new sister going to throw things, too?” she asked.

  “No,” David said. “She’s not mad at you. She just didn’t want the crow to bite you.”

  “He didn’t bite at me,” Esther said.

  Amanda made a snorting noise. “Listen kid, when that crow bites, he doesn’t just bite at you. Look.” She stuck out her hands. “See there, and there, and there.”

  There were several red scabby places on Amanda’s hands and fingers. David looked at the crow. He certainly didn’t look very friendly. He sat hunched over on his perch with his head pulled back into his shoulders and watched Amanda constantly with angry yellow eyes. Every time Amanda made a move toward him, his head would twitch forward and his beak start to open.

  “How come he pecks you if he’s your familiar spirit?” David asked, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Amanda seemed to have a whole collection of cool expressions, and the one she gave David right then was one of the longest and coldest. “Because—” she said, and left a long silence that somehow managed to sound more insulting than words. “Because, I’ve only had him a few days. Leah says that I just haven’t had time to establish communication. It takes time to establish communication, and it also takes the right kind of ceremonial rites. I’ve just started on them.”

  David crouched near the cage, and the crow slid closer, opening his beak in a very threatening way.

  “Where did you get him?” David asked.

  “In Santa Monica, just a few days ago. Just the day before I had to leave to come up here. It was very strange the way it happened.” Amanda leaned forward and her eyes widened and flashed. “See—” she went on, glancing around in a secret furtive way and then dropping her voice to a tense excited whisper, “the weirdest part was that I’d just been reading this book about Familiars, only a day or two before, and then I just happened to go into this pet shop right near where my father lives, and as I walked in I heard a loud squawk, and I looked up and there he was looking at me—watching me wherever I went. As soon as I saw him, I had a strange feeling—almost like a vision—and I knew I had to have him. So that evening I told my dad about it, and he handed me the money to buy him—just like that.”

  David was fascinated. Watching Amanda’s face as she talked about the crow was like watching one of those stone faces carved on mountains come alive, amazingly dramatically alive. David had been so busy trying to catch all of Amanda’s expressions—mystery, suspense, excitement and several secretly significant looks that he couldn’t quite interpret—that he’d almost lost track of what she was saying. He didn’t catch on to the fact that he was supposed to respond until Amanda repeated, “He just handed me the money—just like that.”

  “He—he did?” David said. “How much did it cost?”

  “About forty dollars.”

  “Wow.”

  Amanda shrugged. “My dad has lots of money. And he understood exactly how I felt about the crow. He always understands about my interests, like the occult and everything. And right after we bought the crow, we went to the travel bureau and exchanged the ticket Mom had sent me for one a day earlier so I could spend some time with my friend, Leah. We decided not to call Mom and tell her. I just took a taxi from the airport right to Leah’s house, and then this morning I called and told Mom to pick me up there instead of at the airport.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “I heard Molly talking to Dad about it at breakfast this morning, right after you called.”

  Amanda leaned forward. “Did you? What did she say? Was she mad?”

  “I don’t know if she was mad. She seemed kind of worried.”

  Amanda narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t say anything.

  They were on their way back downstairs to get another load of boxes and suitcases when it occurred to David to wonder where Molly was. He’d seen her run into the house, but he hadn’t seen her since. It was strange she hadn’t come up to help Amanda move into her new room.

  “Where is Molly?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Amanda said, and David noticed that she’d switched back to her usual stoney face. “Off somewhere being mad, I guess. We had a little argument, you might say, on the way here.”

  David just barely stopped himself from asking, “What about?” because it occurred to him that Amanda might say it wasn’t any of his business. But he needn’t have worried, Amanda seemed eager to talk about it.

  “See, in the first place,” she said, “my mother hates Leah, who is my very best friend. At least, she doesn’t like me being friends with her. Leah has been my best friend for two years, ever since my parents got divorced and my mom and I moved into the same apartment building with Leah and her mother. But my mother has always been against our friendship.”

  “Why?” David asked.

  “Who knows?” Amanda said. They had reached the driveway, and Amanda was sorting out the things that were left there. The ones she was going to carry from the ones David was going to carry. David was getting all the boxes of books. “She never comes
right out and admits that she hates Leah. She just mentions that Leah is older than I am, and that she is too wrapped up in the supernatural, and other things like that. And she doesn’t like it much that Leah never talks to her.”

  “She never talks to your mother?” David asked. “How come?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing personal. I tried to tell Mom that. It’s just that Leah doesn’t have much use for adults. She doesn’t talk to her own mother, either.”

  David almost forgot to listen for a minute because he was busy thinking about that—about someone who never talked to her own mother. But Amanda was going right on.

  “Anyway, my mom was mad because my dad let me come early and stay overnight with Leah. She said she was worried about me arriving at the airport alone and getting a taxi by myself—but that’s stupid. I always ride in taxis alone when I’m staying at my dad’s. I’ve done it hundreds of times. Anyway, I had to go to Leah’s because I’d left a lot of my stuff there.”

  David said, “I heard Molly say yesterday that she was going to stop at the apartment on the way back from the airport, to pick up your stuff.”

  “Sure, for a few minutes. But that would have been all. I wouldn’t have gotten to see Leah at all. So my dad and I just changed the plans a little.”

  David nodded.

  “But that wasn’t what we were mainly arguing about,” Amanda went on. “Mostly we were fighting about my clothes. She didn’t want me to wear my occult outfit today.”

  “She doesn’t want you to dress like that?”

  “Oh, usually she doesn’t say much about it. But she really had a fit today. Because I was coming here, for the first time and everything. She said I’d scare you kids to death.”

  “It didn’t scare us to death,” David said.

  Amanda snorted. “Of course not. And it didn’t matter a bit to her how important it was to me to wear my ceremonial robes today. See, today is a very important day for certain kinds of magic. Leah found out about it last night when she did a special ritual about the right days for contacting Familiars. We found out that I had to wear my robes and observe all the taboos and everything today, or I might never make contact with Rolor.”

  David opened his mouth to ask, but Amanda answered before he could. “Rolor is the name of my Familiar. It’s a word of Power from an old magic chant about crows.”

  “Rolor is the crow’s name?” David asked.

  “Yeah. But I haven’t started calling him that yet. I’m waiting until we establish communication.”

  “I’ll bet you called him some other things when he bit you,” David said.

  Esther had finally reached the driveway, so Amanda started loading everyone up again. David had a second box of books, and Amanda had a suitcase and another cage. There wasn’t anything small left so she gave Esther two of the books out of David’s box. It was just as well because this box was even heavier than the first one.

  When they got to the top of the stairs, David saw Blair and Janie coming down the hall from his room. They were just strolling along until Janie caught sight of Amanda. Then her face lit up like a switched-on computer, and she whizzed into Amanda’s room dragging Blair behind her. By the time David tottered in after them, Janie was going full blast.

  “Hello,” she was saying. “I know who you are. I’m Janie Victoria Stanley, and I’m six years old, but I’m very mature for my age. You’re Amanda Randall and you’re twelve, and Molly is your mother so you’re our sister now and—”

  “Shut up, Janie,” David said, and for a minute she did.

  Amanda turned to David with a look he was beginning to recognize, although it still puzzled him. How did she manage to look so bored and disgusted without so much as twitching a muscle in her deadpan mask?

  “What is it?” she asked. “A talking doll?”

  David grinned. Janie was very small for her age and doll-faced cute looking. She had dimples and roundish blue eyes and long curly eyelashes, along with some other characteristics that Amanda would be finding out about before very long—like being a lot smarter and louder and more obnoxious than most six-year-olds. David was sure that Amanda was going to find out some of these things almost immediately, and he was right.

  “What’s that thing in the cage?” Janie burst out again after being quiet for about one minute. “What’s in the two little cages? What’s wrong with your hair? What’s that thing sticking to your forehead?”

  Janie always asked questions faster than anybody could possibly answer them. Amanda didn’t even try.

  She did say, “It’s a crow—and stay away from it,” and “A snake and a horny toad—and stay away from them, too.” But then she quit answering altogether and started putting clothing away in the dresser. Janie gave up after a while, sat down by Esther near the crow’s cage, and started telling Esther all about crows. She told Esther what crows ate and the sounds they made and what scarecrows were for. That was another of Janie’s habits. If she wasn’t asking questions nobody could answer, she was answering questions nobody had asked.

  Amanda just went on putting things away. Finally Blair came into the room from where he’d been standing near the door. He leaned against the dresser and smiled at Amanda. Amanda glanced at him and then looked away, but after a second she looked back. It was hard for most people to keep from looking at Blair, particularly when he smiled.

  Blair was blond and blue-eyed like Janie, but with a different kind of face. Molly said that Blair had the kind of face you very seldom see on a real person. She said that she was going to stop trying to paint Blair’s picture because no matter what style she tried to paint him in, he always ended up looking like an angel on a Christmas card.

  After Amanda had looked at Blair several times she said, “Who are you?”

  Blair’s lips moved, but nothing loud enough to hear came out.

  “Doesn’t that one talk?” Amanda asked David.

  “Blair talks,” David said. “Just not very much.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Amanda said.

  “He and Esther are only four years old,” David said. “They’re twins.”

  “Yeah,” Amanda said. “I heard there were twins.”

  When they started back down for the last load of Amanda’s things, they made all three of the kids come too, so they wouldn’t be alone with the crow. Only one small suitcase and one box of books were left to carry in. The last box of books was the biggest.

  “You sure have a lot of books,” David said.

  “I know,” Amanda said. “Most of the ones in that box are a part of my supernatural library. You know—about black magic, spiritualism, astrology, witchcraft and stuff like that.”

  “Wow!” David said. Taking out some books for the twins and Janie to carry, he started having the good, slightly excited feeling that a library always gave him. Magic had always been one of his special interests, and he’d read lots of books on the subject, but he’d never seen most of the books in Amanda’s box. The first two he picked up were called Haunted Houses and Modern Witchcraft. The cover of the witchcraft one had a picture of a blackish-red night sky with a pale moon crossed by thin snakey clouds.

  “Wow,” David said. “Could I borrow some of these?”

  “Well,” Amanda said, “I’ve never lent any of those books except to Leah. Besides, you don’t seem like the type really.”

  “What type?”

  “The supernatural type. What sign are you, anyway?”

  “What do you mean—sign?”

  “Huuh!” Amanda went. It sounded like a combination between a snort and a sigh. “Sign! Of the Zodiac. Your astrological sign!”

  David shook his head.

  Amanda snorted again, unbelievingly. “When is your birthday?” she asked with the kind of exaggerated patience that some adults use when they’re explaining something to a kid. When David told her it was the second of October, she nodded knowingly. “That explains it,” she said.

  She picked up the last suitcase and s
tarted up the stairs. David came next with the box, and behind him the little kids each carried a couple of books. But even with the top layer of books out, the box was very heavy. David got as far as the landing before he collapsed.

  “Go on,” he said. “I’ll be along in a minute.” He slid the box onto the landing and then sprawled on his back beside it.

  But Amanda sat down on the step above the landing and, of course, the kids stopped, too. Blair and Esther sat near David, but Janie stepped over his head, just missing his ear, and arranged herself on the stair above, next to Amanda.

  “Don’t you just love our new house?” Janie said. “It has a name. It’s name is The Old Westerly Place. Did you ever live in a house with a name before? We never did. And it has sixteen and a half rooms.”

  David groaned. “It does not,” he said. “It doesn’t have that many rooms.”

  “It does too. I counted them myself. Yesterday I counted them. Didn’t I, Tesser?”

  “Well, you must have counted all the porches and bathrooms and everything then,” David said. “Bathrooms and porches don’t count.”

  “Bathrooms do too count,” Janie said. “I counted them. And there are sixteen and a half. Don’t you just love our new house? Don’t you, Amanda?”

  In the silence that followed David pushed himself to a sitting position. Amanda was staring at Janie with her chin on her fist. “New?” she said at last. “New house? It looks practically ancient to me.”

  “I know,” Janie said. “It’s extremely ancient, and David says it has secret passages and hidden treasures and ghosts, even.”

  Amanda looked at David.

  David shook his head at Janie, thinking “you blabbermouth” but not saying it. “I didn’t either” was all he said. “I only said that it was the kind of house that might have things like that.”

  “And David’s been looking for them,” Janie interrupted, “with a yardstick.”

  David stood up and started to pick up the box but Amanda sat still, not getting out of the way. “With a yardstick?” she asked.