Free Medusa's Web by Tim Powers

sign.”
    â€œGood. It’s almost the end of the month, and you get the job of sorting through the bills and writing checks, at least for the utilities and taxes. Nobody’s attended to that lately. I was doing it for a while, but—”
    â€œIt was a mess,” put in Claimayne. “I had to call all the creditors and apologize.”
    Loudly speaking over his last few words, Ariel said, “ Bring the checks back here. Claimayne and I are on the account, either of us can sign them.”
    â€œAnd I’ll probably have to apologize to everybody again,” said Claimayne.
    â€œBack here?” said Scott.
    â€œAunt Amity has an office behind the Chase bank on Sunset,” said Ariel, “till the end of the year, anyway. Next door to a tax accountant. Claimayne, give Scott the key.”
    Claimayne rolled his wheelchair forward, and his pale face was strained in a frown. “One of us should be with him; we can bring the key then.”
    â€œOh, for—give him the key while you’re here, and not . . . you know, off distracted somewhere. He’s going to be busy all day on the roof and in the basements anyway.”
    After a pause, Claimayne smiled at Scott and hitched around in the wheelchair to reach into a pocket of his dressing gown, shaking his head. “She’s so alpha, ” he said. He pulled out a bracelet-sized ring with a lot of keys on it, and he selected one and worked it off the coil. “Don’t lose it,” he said. “I’m only fairly sure we have a spare.”
    â€œRight.” Scott took out his own key ring and threaded the new key onto it.
    â€œI’d take gloves,” said Claimayne thoughtfully, “up on the roof. It wasn’t far from the heater that my mother set off her grenade.” He smiled. “There might be bits of her still around.”
    â€œI wouldn’t be surprised,” said Scott quietly.
    Ariel gave him a sharp look, but only said, “So go get the ladder out.”
    â€œOkay,” said Scott, “what does the heater do, exactly, that’s wrong? And have you got some tools? A socket set, a voltage meter . . .”
    THERE WERE TWO BATHROOMS on the second floor, and Madeline had chosen the one with a shower rather than a bathtub. Now, in fresh jeans and a brown corduroy shirt, she sat down on the bed in her room and unsnapped her leather valise.
    In among her account book and dozens of blank astrologicalcharts was the envelope the lawyer had given her, and she slowly tugged it free of the other papers.
    Her aunt Amity had asked that it be passed on to her.
    â€œI think you did mean me,” she whispered, “at least partly, when you typed my name.” She held the envelope up to the light from the window and was able dimly to see crisscrossed lines inside. “Am I your way out of the tomb? Your guide?”
    Scott and I were the children of your deceased husband’s adopted brother, Madeline thought, but after our parents disappeared, you raised us, an eight-year-old girl and a thirteen-year-old boy, as if we were your own children.
    Madeline stroked the edge of the envelope.
    When Scott set one of the uphill garages on fire with a makeshift rocket launcher, and when I was playing in your car and got it into neutral and helplessly rolled backward onto Vista Del Mar Avenue and collided with a UPS truck, you quickly forgave us. And when Scott and I found the envelope full of spiders and confessed to having looked at one, you didn’t yell at us at all. After you put them away, you took us out for ice cream so we’d feel better—though it pained you to walk on your bad foot, even with a cane—and you assured us that we’d feel better soon, and that any nightmares we might have would pass, which they mostly did. Now I wish we had admitted that we tore up the Oneida Inc one and replaced it with one that Scott drew. I’m sorry we kept that from you, when