by Vance, Ramy
“So, darling,” my mother said, turning to the very closed and locked library door, “I don’t suppose you have a key?”
↔
Several weeks ago my friend (David Dewey, but I’d always know him as the “Old Librarian”) was murdered inside the Other Studies Library—the same friend whose late-delivered letter gave me just seconds’ notice of my mother’s arrival—and if I had only gotten there a few minutes earlier, I might have been able to save him. Add that to my list of nightmares.
Part of the reason why I couldn’t get to him in time was because I had been locked out of the damn building. My solution had been to break the thick, stained-glass paneling that outlined the oak door.
After that I vowed I’d never be locked out again—and in the middle of the night (and with Egya’s help)—we carefully removed the paneling as a secret entrance. Egya was good with his hands, and if I hadn’t known where the two latches were, there was no way I’d get in. But I did and, carefully pulling them, I removed the paneling and shimmied inside. Given that the entrance was only about ten inches wide, I had to hold my breath. Definitely something I could do, especially with a sports bra (which I didn’t have on now, but still managed, anyway; girl problems persisted even after three hundred years).
My mother, on the other hand, could have the greatest sports bra ever created and still her ample bosom would be too much for such a narrow passage.
I knew that—and still let her struggle before snapping my finger and saying, as if it were an afterthought, “I can unlock the door from the inside.”
She glared at me, the side of one breast pressing no doubt painfully against the door. “Really, darling, we’re stooping to this level of passive aggression?”
Indeed, we are, Mother. Indeed, we are.
↔
As I held the old oak door open for mother, I started to wonder for the first time why I was being so hard on her. I mean, outside of it being funny watching her try to get that hour-glass-shaped body of hers through a crack in the wall. Still, I was being hard on her for no real reason, wasn’t I? So far everything she was doing seemed to be on the up-and-up. She’d been (relatively) nice, helped save Justin, got us out of a bind …
Was I being a bad daughter?
Despite all that, my Spidey-senses were going nuts. (And before you ask—I don’t actually have a Spidey-sense or any kind of preternatural warning system. I’m just a girl, standing in front of her mother, doubting every word, action and intention … you know, normal family stuff.)
Once inside, I disabled the alarm. Not that it was much of an alarm—this ancient building has too many creeks and groans; a state-of-the-art alarm system would go off every thirty seconds. Or maybe that was just what the school board said to avoid the cost. This alarm was more of the for-show-only variety, which was strange given how valuable the artifacts in the museum were.
I accounted the lack of security to be chalked up to three things: one—humans still haven’t grasped the power of magic and talismans imbued with magic; two—items identified as truly powerful were sent to maximum security facilities; and, finally, three—the powers that be realized that if an Other with either their superior strength or a willingness to burn a bit of time would break in here no matter how much security the library could install.
So in other words, this place lacked security because humans are ultimately cheap and lazy.
Hey—I get it. I’m one of them. Now.
My mother walked inside and scanned the old room. “So this is where you work now?” She sounded disappointed.
“Part-time job. Pays the bills. Keeps me busy.”
“Darling, you have more money than sense. A perk of being alive longer than the bank system.”
“Fine—then let’s just go with ‘keeps me busy.’ ”
“Justin should keep you busy enough.”
I bit my tongue, not saying anything. I wasn’t going to let her get to me.
“Unless he doesn’t …” she added, a hint of a question in her words.
Clamping down on tongue now.
“Which is a shame. A boy like him should be plenty enough. But if he isn’t, he isn’t.”
Tongue has been severed clean off. Mouth bleeding profusely. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll choke on my own blood.
“Perhaps you should consider that Egya fellow. He seems like he would be a jolly good time. Besides, him being an ex-were makes you two—”
I don’t know why the mention of Egya set me off, but it did. I got in my mother’s face and said, “What’s the game here? I thought we were here for the amulet, not so you can give me dating advice.”
“Can’t a mother do both? Besides, you clearly need it.”
I crossed my arms. “How do you figure?”
“Because I practically challenged Justin’s manhood—and nothing. One little mention of Egya and”—she squeezed my cheeks—“all this.”
Pushing away my mom’s hands, I growled, “It’s not Egya, Mother, it’s you. Come on—let’s get this damn amulet and get the hell out of here.”
I’d let my mom touch a nerve, despite knowing to be on guard for just that. But the truth was, Justin and I were taking it slow. I liked to call it “1950s dating,” because even though I lived (or unlived?) through the ’50s I never got to enjoy the wholesome courting—sharing milkshakes, holding hands on the beach, going to Under the Sea–themed school dances, randomly breaking out into song and dance—the kind of stuff you saw in the old Elvis Presley movies.
I know dating in the ’50s wasn’t like the movies. People were just as horny then as they are now. But I liked the romantic idea of it—and Justin, to his immense credit, didn’t seem to mind. Well, I’m sure he did mind … he’s a boy, after all, with raging hormones. If he wasn’t a little bit frustrated then there’d be something wrong with him, just like Mother implied.
Or something wrong with me.
OK, Kat, you’re freaking yourself out. It’s about doing this relationship right. Taking it slow. Because slow is safe.
But slow was a lie.
Late at night, when all the nightmare demons came knocking on my door, I knew what the truth was … and it’s not that I liked the idea of a wholesome relationship worthy of a Norman Rockwell painting. The truth was I didn’t want to get serious with Justin because I didn’t want to tell him that I was a vampire, ex- or not.
↔
My mother had already confirmed that the amulet wasn’t in any of the display cases in the Other Studies Library, so that left the archives.
The archives were situated in the basement level that, much like the first floor, was nothing but shelves and card catalogues. But unlike the first floor, very little of the cataloguing was actually on any computer database. Most of the stuff was still in boxes that weren’t properly marked, the only tagging still in the original language of the donor. And since most donors were Others, that meant that most tags were still in elvish, orc, dracoon, wendigo and a whole host of other Other languages. Made me feel not so embarrassed about slipping into archaic English from time to time.
That was where I came in—my job was to modernize the whole operating system. A bit of a miss-hire, I know, since I was far from modern, but hey, at least I could read elvish (long story—let’s just say I was briefly married to an elf prince before the Civil War, and he was a real asshole).
Seeing the task before us, my mother sighed. “Where do we start?”
“With whatever you can tell me about the damn thing.”
↔
My mother’s details were far too vague to be considered “details.” She did know what it looked like—even provided me with a picture. What I saw was an inverted bulb with a wide neck. Within it was what looked like the Ancient Egyptian Key of Life … and something else.
“The Key of Life,” I said. “That symbol has been tattooed on practically every hippie with an interest in mythology. The other symbol, however, is strange. It looks as if the bulb was trapping t
he key—”
“Or maybe the bulb represents the world’s sky, which houses all life?” my mother offered, her voice betraying her excitement. I had never known my mother interested in the occult or symbols or anything other than enjoying the vampiric life and all it entailed. Maybe being human also leveled up your curiosity, too. It sure hadn’t for me.
“OK—the sky. What cultures use that symbol for ‘sky’?”
“I don’t know, darling. That’s more your thing than mine.” She gestured vaguely toward the library surrounding us.
So her curiosity only goes so far, I thought.
“Far enough to risk my life for it,” she said.
I clamped my lips shut, willing myself to stop with the out-loud narrative.
I turned the picture over, round and round. But I just didn’t know, and my knowledge of semiotics was basic at best. The only reason I knew more than the average person was because I’d been around longer to see them. Key of Life and a, what? Sky, earth, trap? Which religions saw the sky as something that holds all life? The answer—all of them. But not all of them had practically built their entire dogma around it.
“Islam,” I said, snapping my fingers. “They saw the night sky as being the emerald city—Qa—and given where its roots are, I could see early Islam sharing its symbology with Ancient Egypt.
My mother gave me a dubious look and for a moment I thought she was going to challenge my assessment. She didn’t, thankfully. She just nodded and said, “So where is Islam and Ancient Egypt in all of this?”
↔
We must have gone through every box donated by jinn, jackal-guards, ifrits, nasnas and ghouls, but we turned up absolutely nothing. Not only did we not find the amulet, we didn’t even find anything that remotely looked like the symbol. Sure there were plenty of papyruses with the Key of Life inscribed on them, but nothing with that bulbous symbol on it.
“There’s nothing more you can give me other than this picture?” I asked in frustration.
My mother shook her head, tired. “All I have to go with is that it looks like that and it was donated to this museum.”
“And how reliable are your sources?”
“Source,” she corrected me. “And quite reliable.”
I tilted my head. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because he’s the donor,” my mother said matter-of-factly.
I slapped my head on my forehead. “And he is …?”
She blinked in confusion, waiting for me to finish. “He is … what? I don’t catch your meaning.”
“Is he an Other?”
My mother shook her head. “Was, darling. He was. He’s one of us.”
“An ex-vamp?”
She cringed. “Darling—vampire. The shortened version of what we are is so … base.”
“Were, Mother,” I fired back, mocking her tone. “We’re not vampires anymore.”
“You know my meaning. Anyway, he is an ex-vampire. Dostarious, to be exact. Interesting fact about him … he and his twin were turned at exactly the same time. Seems the Buities like the idea of turning twins. You know, they were born together, should die together and then rise together. Quite the sense of humor, the Buities—Andre and Adela. You remember them. He’s a handsome Italian baron and she’s … well, she had the right kind of assets to keep him interested—”
I tuned my mother out as I looked up Dostarious’s name, amazed that my mother simply didn’t think of mentioning his name before—and frustrated that I hadn’t thought to ask. My mother wasn’t stupid. She omitted this little gem for a reason.
Damn. No Dostarious. He probably donated anonymously—most donors did not want anything tracing their donations back to them. Most magical items weren’t very powerful, but they still had unusual effects, and Others—already distrusted—didn’t want to be the ones responsible for accidently turning your cat into a frog. Or worse.
Which is all to say that Others were happy to get rid of their magical items—and to do so discretely. Dostarious seemed to not be an exception.
“Can you tell me anything about Dostarious?” I asked, interrupting her little monologue about the Buities.
“Dostarious? Only that he and his sister hate each other. Shame, really—in the fifteenth century they were the finest alchemists anywhere. It was said that even skinwalkers would go to them for help with their potions and—”
“Hold on,” I interrupted, looking up. “What did you say?”
“Skinwalkers—you know, Native American Shamanic Others … incredibly nasty, if you ask—”
“No, no—before that.”
She paused. “They were the finest alchemists—”
“Of course,” I said, standing up and slapping my forehead with the palm of my hand. I walked over to the reference books. “And you didn’t think to tell me about Dostarious before?”
“This is your expertise, darling. It’s not like you asked …”
I have to give her that one.
“Thank you.”
Dammit. Still, I thought, making sure it was firmly in my head, my mother isn’t stupid. She didn’t tell me about the alchemist Dostarious for a reason. But given how obviously desperate she is to get the amulet, I can’t figure out what the reason could possibly be …
I found the book I was looking for and flipped through it until I spotted the symbol. “That inverted bulb—it’s not the sky, it’s the alchemy symbol for …” I held out an image of an inverted jug (for lack of a better word) and showed it to my mother. It matched the symbol on the drawing. “Death. It’s not the sky that is trapping the Key of Life … it’s death.”
“Interesting …” my mother said, and the tone of her voice said she was telling the truth.
“Interesting, indeed, Mother,” I said, guiding her to the shelves that dealt with alchemy. Had to keep her looking while that interest was still piqued.
↔
Even though we had narrowed down our search, it still didn’t mean that it was easy to find. It took forty-three boxes, a crap-load of sifting through oversized Ziploc bags and two papercuts—both mine—before we finally found the amulet.
Well, half of it, at least.
↔
“Shit, balls, shit, shit!” I growled.
“Language, darling.”
“Fine—manure, testicles, scat, poo!”
“Darling—”
I threw the box I’d been holding onto the floor, not caring when its contents spilled. “Don’t ‘darling’ me. We have exactly half an amulet, which means that I’m no closer to you leaving, am I?”
I shoved the amulet at my mother. It looked like the picture—if someone had ripped it in half. My mother looked at it, feeling its grooves along its edge where it had been torn from its twin half. “This is designed to be two pieces,” she said, less as an observation and more like a statement that she’d already known.
I gave her my best what-aren’t-you-telling-me look as I pulled the amulet out of her hands.
“I knew it was two pieces, darling. I just expected them to be together.”
Something occurred to me, from when I was trying to tune her voice out. “You said they were twins?”
“Who?”
“Dostarious and whoever the other guy is …”
“Girl. Or to use your modern twang: gal. Not all twins are identical.”
“Do you think it’s possible this gal has the other half?”
If my Psychology test was on the best display of passive-aggressive behavior, I’d ace the course.
“I suppose anything is possible. I will have to make enquiries.” She reached into her purse and pulled out her cellphone. Then, sighing as if she just discovered that housekeeping didn’t turn down her room, lifted the screen and said, “No signal.”
No Signals for the Past
We stepped outside so that my mother could call her “people”—whoever they were. The first rays of light were starting to shine—we had spent the night together in the Other Studies
Library’s archives. Not the first time we’d spent hours in a basement together—but if I was lucky, it would be the last.
Once outside, she tried to casually take the amulet from me—something I was definitely prepared for—but I held onto it to get a closer look and see if I could come up with any ideas as to what it was or how it worked. For something that was supposed to answer life’s biggest question (in this GoneGod world, at least), you’d think it would have speakers or something. At the very least some instructions.
My brain was also itching at another mystery. Truth was, there was something fishy about the whole thing that I couldn’t quite place my finger on. My mother was nonplussed, walking just far enough away that she could have a private phone call, but not too far away that I couldn’t listen in if I wanted.
I didn’t. Either she’d find Dostarious’s twin—an ancient ex-vampire by the name of Lizile, according to Charlie—or she wouldn’t. As she dialed whomever she felt comfortable enough to wake this early in the morning, I checked my own phone. Reconnected to the network, it buzzed three times back to back, indicating that I had two missed calls from Justin and one from Egya. No messages, and judging from the evenly spaced-out times they called, I guessed they were just checking in on us.
I thought about calling back, but it was so late—well, early, by now—they had to be asleep. Or trying to sleep. Either way, I figured it best to give them a few hours before calling.
So I put my phone and half an amulet in my pants pockets (1970s chinos, gotta love the pocket space!) and watched as my mother talked on the phone, pacing back and forth in that nervous little waddle of hers. Her movements reminded me of when I was a child and she’d walk up and down our little cabin when she was nervous about something.