by Brenda Drake
I remove the rest of the things from my pockets and place them on the counter and gather up my wet clothes. When I come out, Oyá takes the soaking bundle, her eyes briefly going to my neck. She nods and heads to the back rooms.
The smell of something floral and spicy fills the apartment. I ease down the hallway the opposite direction as her, steadying myself with my hand on the wall.
Marek is on the sofa, already back from the bedroom and wearing a blue robe, a blanket draped over his lap. He sips something steaming from a big pink mug. I sit down beside him, and he covers my legs with the plush material.
He turns to face me and places a gentle hand on my shoulder as he inspects my neck. “I’m sorry that happened—” A rush of emotions choke off his words and his eyes gloss, his hand slipping away from me.
“I’m fine.” I stare at a colorful abstract painting of a tiger on the wall, trying not to cry.
Oyá strolls out from the kitchen and places another pink mug in front of me. “Tea. Drink. It will warm you.”
“Thank you.” I pick up the mug and take a sip. There are so many questions in my head, I’m not sure which one to ask first, so I just throw out the first one that comes to mind. “Are you a goddess?”
“In your words that is what I am,” she says. “My people call us orishas.”
Marek places his mug on the coffee table. “How do you have magic? I thought it was taken away from all gods and goddesses.”
She lowers the mug from her mouth. “It was. Ages ago. Our power was put into a talisman.”
Marek stares off at something across the room.
I can’t tell what he’s looking at, maybe nothing, maybe everything. I stop trying to guess.
“Right,” I interject. “And that talisman was broken into six pieces. Hidden away.”
“Your ears have heard the story?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But you—you made those swords appear and rode a hurricane. Last I checked, that’s magic. And we’ve seen another god with power.”
She puts down her mug and leans back against the cushions. “The rumor is that someone has recovered two pieces of the Divinities Keep. They’re called Parzalis. As each piece is put together, the gods and goddesses whose powers are held within those parts receive some of their powers back. When it is whole again, our magic will be returned to all of us.”
“So your power was in those two pieces? Those Parzalises.”
“That is correct,” Oyá says.
Marek snaps out of his trance on whatever it was across the room. “How did whoever it was recover them? Why didn’t the keepers of those pieces prevent it?”
“All the gods have been searching for Keepers since the birth of the talisman. A god we haven’t been able to identify has gotten lucky as of late.” She gives Marek a quick glance before continuing, “When they find one, the god kills the Keeper, then follows the progeny on their quest to moving their piece of the talisman and steals it. And, usually, another murder follows.”
“Why even move the Parzalis if it’s safely hidden?” My frustration is evident in the tone of my voice.
The pain throughout my body is subsiding.
Oyá just smiles and shakes her head as if I didn’t give my comment much thought. ”When one passes from this world to the next, we take our memories with us. Adam carried the location of where he hid your family’s Parzalis with him. There are creatures in the between place who steal these memories and bring them back to the god or goddess they are loyal to. You mortals believe that from death to what you call Heaven happens in a blink of an eye. But in reality, it takes many night skies for the spirit to arrive in the next life.”
Oyá pauses, picks up her mug, and takes a long sip. She places the cup back on the table, her eyes landing on Marek. “That is why you must move what your family has promised to protect. For its location is compromised. It is my assumption that you have not but a fortnight before a creature makes it to this realm with its whereabouts.”
“Fortnight?” Marek asks.
“It is about two of your weeks,” she says.
Marek and I don’t say anything, and the silence stretches on for longer than what’s comfortable. I’m not exactly sure what to think. It’s like glimpsing in the rearview mirror, watching my perceived reality growing smaller. It doesn’t seem possible that we’ve only been in Rome for a few days. It feels like a lifetime.
I remember what both Sid and Ares mentioned, and I decide I need clarity. “I was told that there’s a war between gods going on. What are they fighting over?”
She puckers her lips before answering.“Wars are usually fueled by different beliefs. One side wants to return to the days when gods and goddesses were worshipped. The other is fighting to leave things as they are. Then there are those who haven’t decided one way or the other.”
Brows pushing together, Marek leans forward. “What god or goddess wouldn’t want power?”
“There is always an imbalance where power is concerned,” she says. “Less powerful immortals would be dominated by more powerful ones like in the days of old.”
“That makes sense,” I say, downing the rest of the tea and placing the mug on the table. I feel good. I rub my arm, noticing the deep tears in my skin have healed and are only red marks now.
What did she put in that tea?
“Why did you leave your homeland?” Marek asks.
“Gods and goddesses,” she says, “or divinities, if you will, sense the magic pulsing over Rome. It draws us to it.”
An extended sigh releases from me. “What’s this energy everyone keeps talking about?”
Her eyes hold mine for a quick pause. “No one knows. All I know is it’s coming from you two. I sensed it. That’s how I found you today. In ancient text, this seducing energy is the sign that the war between gods is here. More immortals will arrive in Rome before the week is out.”
“It’s an immortal convention.” Marek snickers, resting his hand on mine. It’s his way to remind me I’m not alone.
I don’t find the amusement in his statement. I’m too worried. My brain is too cluttered with information and questions.
I gather up the nerve to ask, “Which side did you choose?”
“Neither choice will affect my people. They have remained faithful to us, and we will not treat them any differently should our powers be fully restored. But when it comes down to it, I will join the side with the morals that match my own.”
Oyá tosses her throw blanket aside and stands. “Your clothes should be dry shortly. Then you must go. It is best to keep to yourselves. Do not travel with others, especially those with powers.” She stares down at Marek. “Finish your task. Hide your Parzalis.”
When I was younger and didn’t know how to swim, I would hold on to the edge of the pool, going hand over hand around it, watching Dalton and our friends play Marco Polo. I’d taken lessons, but still, I was scared to venture out into the middle. Dad tricked me. Brought me out to the deep end and said before letting go, “You’ll either sink or swim, kiddo. Which is it going to be?”
That’s precisely what Oyá is doing. Dropping us in the middle of the vast city of Rome and seeing if we’ll sink or swim.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The sun over Rome is almost entirely gone, a blue hue blankets the buildings, and the lights are golden blossoms in the distance. I stand on a balcony of a quaint hotel, waiting for Marek to return. A cool breeze rolls over my skin. The bruises all over my body have almost vanished, only a hint of them remain. Oyá healed me.
It’s our fourth night in Rome. Before crossing over the Tiber into the Trastevere neighborhood, Marek and I stopped in a library so I could use the public computer to send a message to Dalton through his Snapchat, letting him know I was okay. We also Googled Elena Kristoffer Prevot and found nothing. The decoder was useless. It just gave us a bunch
of numbers and translated the name into Phoenician.
The door handle jiggles. I step back behind the wall next to the balcony door, a part of me saying it’s only Marek, the other part scared it’s someone else. Someone dangerous.
“It’s me,” Marek calls from inside the room. He’s unloading items from a shopping bag and placing them on one of the beds when I come in from the balcony. “Take a seat. Thought we’d have a picnic. I got meats and cheeses. Some fresh bread. And...” He pauses, reaching inside the bag. “This.” He pulls out a classic glass bottle of Coca-Cola.
I overexaggerate my excitement and sit on the bed and ask, “Do you have a bottle opener?”
“Shit. I didn’t think of that.” He places his finger on his chin. When he goes for his belt, I raise my eyebrows.
He removes it from his waist and uses the buckle as a bottle opener, then hands me the cola.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said.” I take a swig from the bottle, the sweet fizzy drink reminding me of home, making me miss Dalton. “About your grandfather’s games. Which ones did you play?”
He tears a piece from the loaf of bread. “Well, you know about decoding messages and espionage tactics. We did mazes, puzzles, chess, and solving things like riddles and anagrams. He was really into fitness.”
The smell of soppressata, a sort of salami, teases my nose, and my stomach grumbles. He slaps a few slices on the bread and tops it with a piece of Asiago cheese. He offers me the tower of yumminess, and I gladly take it.
“What kind of puzzles?” I open my mouth wide and take a bite.
He fixes himself an open-faced sandwich. “Crosswords, Picross, logic, and math puzzles.”
I swallow and take a swig from my bottle. “Did you ever hear your grandfather mention an Elena? Maybe she was a family friend?”
“Not that I know of.” He goes to take another bite and stops. “Oh wait. Anagrams. He always used names. First, middle, and last. And I would tease him that they were all old women’s names. Probably all his ex-girlfriends.”
I put my sandwich down on a napkin and grab a pad of paper and pen from the nightstand drawer. “Okay, let’s try it.”
Marek retrieves the slip of paper with the name on it from the silver canister and rereads it.
Elena Kristoffer Prevot
I stare at it. “So how do we do this?”
“We make words from letters in the name. Then put them together until it’s a sentence that makes sense.”
“Got it.” I study the names so hard my eyes start to water. “There’s ‘off’ or ‘offer.’”
“No. That’s too easy. Those letters line up in the name. My grandfather would scramble them. Those words are to throw off someone other than me trying to solve it.”
Just in case, I write them down on the paper anyway and spot more words. “‘Top,’ and there’s ‘life,’ ‘stone,’ ‘star,’ ‘plate—’”
He laughs. “You’re doing it wrong. Once you use a letter, you can’t use it again. ‘Life’ is good. My grandfather was attached to sayings about life. Here, let’s separate the consonants from the vowels.”
I scribble the letters down.
AEEEEIOO FFKLNPRRRSTTV
“Oh, yeah, that’s so much better.” I’m not even hiding my sarcasm.
“Well, we have ‘life’ so let’s take that out.”
AEEEOO FKNPRRRSTTV
“My grandfather would include ‘sport,’ too. Used it all the time. He did that so I’d be able to solve this. If he made it too hard, this would take forever. Remove the letters.”
I rewrite the remaining letters.
AEEEO FKNRRTV
I’m getting annoyed that I haven’t come up with any words. Squinting at the letters for so long is causing my vision to blur.
“How about ‘take’?” I ask.
“Okay, remove it and let’s see what we have.”
EEO FNRRV
Marek stretches his arms over his head. “I need a break.” He goes to the bathroom, and I continue shuffling letters around until I have “for” and “never.”
I straighten and bounce a little on the bed. “Marek! I got it,” I call.
life sport take never for
The door opens, and he hurries over. He leans over my shoulder, some sort of chemical still scenting his skin. Probably something used to keep the Trevi Fountain waters clear.
“Right here.” He points out two of the words. “Flip them. It’ll make more sense.”
“Okay.” I rewrite the words.
life sport never take for
And I write:
Never take life for sport
“You got it.” There’s excitement in his voice. He pats my shoulder, and his hand lingers there.
“What do you think it means?” I ask, trying to ignore the fact that all my attention is zoned in on where his hand is and it’s making my pulse flutter.
“I don’t know.”
I hop off the bed and spin to face him. “Of course. We’re in Rome. Life for sport. It’s the Colosseum.”
His face lights up. “You’re right.”
“We can go tomorrow.”
“Sounds like a great plan to me,” he says.
After we pack the food back into the bags and clean up, I take a shower. The courtesy robe is like a plush hug. I crawl in the bed closest to the balcony and listen to the shower run in the bathroom. Marek’s growing on me.
When this is over, and we’re back in our ordinary lives, will Marek and I stay in touch? More importantly, can we go back to being normal teens and possibly even go on a date? Who knows.
The door opens, steam rushes into the room, and he comes out wearing the other robe, hair wet. He pads to the bed across from me with a confident walk that I’ve noticed before but not really appreciated until now.
Yeah, I would date him.
Alone in the room with him, enjoying an Italian picnic, drinking Coca-Cola, and solving an anagram, I almost forgot all the stuff going on outside this hotel room. I flip onto my back and stare at the ceiling.
The room grows dark when an outside light somewhere turns off. I can’t sleep. Not with everything that’s happened the last few days. Not with Marek sleeping in the bed next to mine. And definitely not with the skeletons from the catacomb and the beasts at the fountain haunting my dreams.
I sit up and turn on the lamp on the nightstand. Marek sleeps with the pillow over his head, so I know the light won’t bug him. I grab one of the magazines from inside the drawer and flip through it. The articles are in Italian, filled with the hotel amenities and things to do around Rome.
It sucks that Marek had us dump our phones. I’m bored out of mind without it. Want to torture a teen? Throw away their phone. I could be checking my social media right now. Or catching up on the YouTube channels I follow. I angrily turn a page.
“Perfect.” I land on a page with a photo of the Trevi Fountain.
Pinching the glossy paper, I toss it over. The Colosseum dominates both pages. If I were here in Rome as a tourist, it would be on the top of my list to visit. I drop the magazine on the nightstand, turn off the light, and resume staring at the ceiling.
I roll over to my side, and my eyes blink—close, open, close, open, close.
…
Birdsongs float into the room, sun teases my eyelids, and the smell of coffee fills my nose. I smile but still can’t open my eyes. Marek must’ve woken early and gotten us coffee. He’s always so considerate.
I sit up and stretch my arms over my head.
“Your boy shouldn’t be leaving the balcony unlocked while you be in here alone.”
A man’s voice with an Irish accent startles me. I scramble back, hitting the headboard hard. The man is tall with dark auburn hair and a beard. He’s so tall he barely fits in the small chair acro
ss from the bed.
The man laughs. “You be as scared as a mouse with a kitten on its tail, that you are.”
“Who are you?”
“Settle down.” He takes a sip from a to-go coffee cup, his green eyes sparkling with amusement. “I brought you a coffee.”
I don’t move. My eyes search wildly around, trying to find an escape or a weapon.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Perhaps,” the man says, “I should have changed into something less threatening before visiting.” He begins to morph. His hair slowly grays and thins until it’s bald on top. The taut skin covering his muscles moves until it’s sagging and wrinkled. Ears and nose grow longer. He shrinks, his clothes now a bit too big for him. The green eyes that were just sparkling a few moments before are now dull with age under bushy gray brows.
“H-how did you do that?”
“I be one of the lucky gods. Me powers are restoring.” He places his coffee cup down on the tiny circular table. “I come because of a promise made to a woman I admired.”
“Answer me. Who are you?” I try to make my voice sound commanding, but the shaky words give my fear away.
“My name is Lugh,” he says, picks up the other coffee cup, and carries it over to me. “Here. You slept poorly last night.”
I’m in a daze and not sure why I take the cup from him, but I do, and it’s almost too hot to hold. “You were watching me?”
He vigorously rubs his nose, his droopy lids almost hiding his eyes. “You make me sound perverted. I’ve merely been trailing you since your arrival in Rome. I was across the way. Could see you through the window.”
“Trailing me? What for?”
As he lifts the cup to take another sip, his hand shakes, not because he’s nervous, but because he’s now as old as sin and seems to be aging to the grave by the minute.