Chapter 72

A week passed. Then, two. A third rolled by just as quickly. Each day was slow in both arrival and passing, like houseguests who took forever to arrive and then had to be forced out the door. Oswald spent those days going about business as usual: smiling for the public, killing traitors in private. Edward did the same, coveting Isabella yet never slacking in his work. Yet the empty chair, the lack of jewels, and overall darkened atmosphere hung between them like mist. The absence was impossible to ignore, yet neither man could speak of it. Edward tried to avoid thinking of his lost friend simply because that, combined with his love's death, would have put him off paperwork for days. Such behavior could only cripple Oswald's empire, and that would not do. Oswald's reason for silence was more personal. He did not speak of Ruby lest her harsh words ring in his ears, their last meeting sour in his mouth.

"You just couldn't stand the fact that Edward fell in love with someone else...what if Ed and I start dating?...Are you going to have me killed, too?"

Oswald swallowed hard. Tried to break the cycle of sorrow. Attempted to focus on the present. It wasn't an easy pill to swallow, but each day diluted its bitterness. Bruce Wayne had been right: Ruby was an adult. If she wanted to come home, she would. Besides, she had left the door open for communication. That aided his trip for recovery, and Oswald was certain that he would visit - or at least call - sometime soon. But not yet. Until he could muster up the courage, he made do with letters. One a day. Every day. By the tenth delivery, the guard had stopped asking questions.

Overall, life went on.

Until one day, it came to a grinding halt all over again.

She came on a busy day, when most of the bodyguards were out with Oswald. She came when she was certain that Ruby wasn't coming back, at least not right away. She came when she knew she'd find Ed in the house.

"No rest for the wicked?"

Edward looked up, and started. Barbara Kean strolled into his study as though they were two friends about to head out for lunch. Her hair was pulled back, and she was dressed in a black fur coat. Edward wondered what Ruby, who got queasy at the sight of raw meat and couldn't stand to watch movies where animals were killed, would say about such an outfit. The reminder that he wouldn't know stung Edward like a hot-tempered wasp. Barbara held up her gloved hands. "Relax." She perched on one of the seats in front of the fireplace. "I'm not here to get revenge for you loppin' off Tabby's paw." She brushed an imaginary speck of dust from her skirt. "Though I am surprised to find you back at work and not tracking down who really did kill your lady love."

"That's because you don't see the full picture." Edward replied, drawing a square into the air as if completing a diagram. "The mayor has many enemies. These enemies understand that I'm a fundamental part of this operation, especially with..." He paused, swallowed hard. "With Miss Sinclair taking leave. They weaken me, they weaken him. That was clearly the intent of killing Isabella." Ed cleared his throat, straightened. "Also, I have spies all over the city. Soon enough, whoever killed Isabella will reveal themselves." He grinned malevolently. "And I will strike." He turned to his files, searching for the ones required for the forms he was filling out.

Barbara shook her head, her blue eyes filled with something akin to pity. "Poor blind baby. It's always hardest to see what's right under our noses."

Edward straightened, his back to her, with a puzzled expression.

Barbara let out a false cough that sounded suspiciously like 'Penguin'.

Edward slowly turned around, an amused twist at the edge of his mouth. "...Did you just fake-cough Penguin?"

Barbara shrugged, smiling coyly. Edward laughed. "Needless to say, that is...absurd, on a number of levels."

"Really?" Barbara asked. "All a crime requires is means, motive, and oppurtunity." She gestured to the luxurious dècor around her. "And your beaky little buddy certainly has the means and oppurtunity."

"But no motive." Edward retaliated blankly.

Barbara grinned. "Oh, I would say he had the oldest motive in the book."

Edward glanced up from his work, without facing her.

"Rich men want it, wise men know it, the poor all need it-"

"Love." Edward replied. "What does that have to do-?" He stopped. Silent. No, frozen.

Barbara slowly rose from her seat, grinning. "And the penny drops."

The geology store, Jasper's Jewels, was perfect at midday. No customers, at least for a while. Small and quiet, surrounded by gems, it was no different from being in her amethyst cavern.

Ruby sat on the stool, a magnifying glass held in place by a third hand. The other two worked under the lamp's brightness. One, clad in rubber, carefully polished an emerald the size of an apple. The other slowly crawled across the gleaming, green surface in search of cracks. So consumed she was by her work that the slamming door chased a yelp out of her. She straightened, blushing with fury as her coworker laughed. "Merc!"

The man, half a year younger than she, was leaning on the wall for support as he laughed. Mercury, her new boss's son, was not handsome by any means. He was short and skinny, with a round little belly that adolescence had refused to burn away. He had an even weaker chin than Ruby, with very round cheeks and a crooked nose. His eyes were small and close-set. To make it worse, his hairline was receding despite his age. Not handsome, but merry. Heaven knew Ruby needed some merriment in her life these days.

Setting down her emerald, Ruby calmly waited for Mercury (no doubt the elemental name had cost him endless bullying in childhood) to calm down. When he eventually did, she smirked. "Play some more Dungeons and Dragons with your friends today? Or did you just go to Starbucks?"

"Hey, doll, you insult me!" Merc put his hand over his heart. "I spend each and every one of my days with craft and wit!"

"By doing what, then?" Ruby's smirk widened.

"By playing D&D," Mercury winked, "and going to Starbucks!"

Ruby held up her hands. "Oh, wow."

Chuckling, Mercury reached into his sweatshirt's pocket and extracted a paper bag. "Here; I brought you a brownie."

As if on cue, Ruby's stomach rumbled. Chuckling bashfully, she accepted the treat with a nod. As she took the first gooey bite, Mercury walked past her and deposited his backpack into the broom closet. "Any customers today, Curly?"

Ruby gulped down the chocolatey mouthful and wiped her lips clean. "Yeah, six. In order, they bought half a pound of carnelians, a sapphire ring, a quarter pound of white river pearls, a chunk of holly blue agate, garnet earrings, and an egg-sized piece of sardonyx. In total, we made," she checked the cash register, "six hundred and forty-three dollars in total. So, overall-"

"Not bad." Mercury pistol-shot her as he emerged. Crashing in the stool next to hers, he sighed. Emptying his pockets of a newspaper, he dropped it on the desk. "The fliers you handed out last week really helped. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll make it past the bills this month."

Ruby bit her lip, not wanting to get her new friend's hopes up in vain but not wishing to leave him in the dust. She attempted a middle ground. "We'll do our best." Shrugging, she added. "That's all we can really do."

Mercury ran a hand through his thin hair. "I don't suppose you could ask your friend Mr. Wayne for a little extra dough, can ya?"

"No." Ruby said firmly. "Absolutely not. It's already bad enough I had to stay a week later than I'd said. If I came knocking on his door asking for money..." She shook her head. "No. Just no."

"Why?" Mercury insisted. "It's not like he can't afford it."

"True," Ruby's voice grew brittle with repressed anger, "but friendship is based on equity. If I start asking him for money, well, then, it'll all go downhill from there. I'll ask him for more and more stuff, and soon enough I won't be his friend, but a leech!"

"Okay, okay, jeez!" Mercury held his hands up like a barrier. "Cool it, cat. I didn't mean to ruffle your feathers."

Ruby sighed. Ran a hand through her hair. "It's...it's fine, Merc. Sorry. I just...ah, I don't know." She sighed. "I guess my nerves are just scrambled, you know?"

"Yeah, I know." Mercury leaned back in his stool. "When Pops couldn't afford college for me no more, man, I was down in the dumps. I'd sorta been glad, 'cuz I'd only gone to shut him up and make him happy. But I still felt bad that I couldn't be what he wanted me to be." Mercury's eyes, normally a soft hazel, darkened. "Eventually, though, I got over it. I learned that nothing I do could ever make him happy."

Ruby said nothing. When Horace had passively mentioned his nephew's laziness that day in the market, she had assumed his description had been exaggerated. But now she knew better. Mercury, while a fun and good-hearted individual, was hopeless when it came to work. Lacking a college degree and the impulse to work, he spent his days doing little other than what he pleased. Ruby worried. What would happen if he kept up this behavior indefinitely? He could not, lest he wanted to end up either in a gang or on the streets.

But any talk of real work only caused Mercury to clam up, so Ruby decided to shift the discussion into safer territories. "Did you know that the emerald is a variant of the beryl mineral?"

The mist slowly lifted from Mercury's eyes. "For real?"

"For real." Ruby confirmed. "And its color is due to traces of chromium and, sometimes, vandium. And it has a hardness of 7.5 on the Mahs scale so..." Her eyes spotted something by chance. Something in the newspaper. Her heartbeat picking up, Ruby set the emerald down. Mercury frowned. "Hey, babe, you okay?"

Ruby, barely breathing, seized the newspaper that Mercury had brought it. Held up a small section to verify. Mercury's hand landed on her back. "Doll?"

She didn't answer. She couldn't. All she could do was process the announcement in the bottom-right corner:

Famous model Opal Sinclair, aged 48, miraculously gives birth to a healthy baby girl.