by Bryan, JL
When the sermon was over, Reese took Peyton down the last steps and introduced him to the preacher. Up close, Peyton could see the young man’s ears and nose were stippled with old piercing scars. Crap, that’s how my chin’s going to look when I take out this labret stud, he thought.
“Peyton’s interested in pursuing discipleship,” Reese said.
“That’s great to hear,” the preacher replied, pumping Peyton’s hand. “You should meet Director Ferguson,” he added as the balding, sixtyish man walked up to them.
“Peyton, this is Mr. Ferguson—a great leader and a great boss, too.” Reese smiled at the old man, who took her elbow, pulled her close, and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Mr. Ferguson, this is Peyton. I think he’s ready to join us.”
“Is that right?” Ferguson’s grip tightened on Reese’s elbow as he looked Peyton over. “Why is that, Peyton?”
“Reese has shown me some incredible things,” Peyton said.
“Has she?” Ferguson’s voice had a small note of jealousy, Peyton was sure of it. “And what did you think?”
“I thought that your group must know things that nobody else does,” Peyton told him.
“You’re interested in knowledge, then.”
“Yes.”
“Hm.” The balding man nodded his head. “Discipleship is rigorous. It requires a sponsor who can give you personal attention. An initiated disciple.”
“I will sponsor him, sir.” Reese turned toward her boss, casually slipping her elbow free.
“You will? This is a serious responsibility, Reese. It’s not a weekend project. Or an excuse for a fling.” His bland face turned sour on the last word.
“I understand that, sir.”
Ferguson looked between them, then snorted and turned away. “Do it, then. Teach him. Get him ready for his initiation.”
“I will, sir,” Reese said to Ferguson’s back. Ferguson approached a fairly cute brunette woman and kissed her on the cheek, then shook her young husband’s hand. “That’s Deena and Matt from youth outreach,” Reese whispered.
“What’s this big initiation?” Peyton asked.
“It’s when they put the power inside you,” Reese said. “After that, you won’t be the same. You’ll be on top of everything, all the time.”
“Like you?”
“Just like me.” She took his arm and led him up the stairs with the rest of the departing congregation, smiling at him nonstop. “I’m so proud of you, Peyton. We’re going to have so much fun together.”
Peyton hoped so. He didn’t want to take the cult seriously—he just wanted to learn whatever secrets they knew and get the hell out. And maybe sleep with Reese along the way, if the girl would ever do it, before he inevitably got back together with Cassidy. Peyton and Cassidy had broken up three times in the past, and it never lasted more than a few weeks, usually not more than a weekend.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
After her shower, Cassidy collected Ibis from the living room, where he’d been passing time by helping Allie take her sculpture apart in anticipation of a new, bigger tree.
“Maybe we should drive, Ibis,” Cassidy said. “My leg’s cramping up.”
“You said it was just around the corner.”
“It’s a long corner.”
Ibis laughed, helped her down the front steps, and escorted her to his car. The driveway stretched along one side of the house, then widened to a big parking pad in back to accommodate so many roommates and their guests.
Ibis approached a black BMW sedan, crammed in alongside Barb’s twelve-year-old Plymouth Breeze, Allie’s pink Jeep Wrangler, and Stray’s Vespa scooter. The BMW had a rental license plate.
“Don’t tell me you rented this to impress me,” Cassidy said.
“This is what I have. I’m between cars.” Ibis opened the door for her. “Just moved into town, you know. Didn’t need a car in New York.”
“Sounds awesome.” Cassidy took his arm and eased herself down into the seat, and he closed the door gently, keeping an eye out for her bad leg. Her fingers found a row of buttons on the side of the chair and she pushed them at random, until the chair was giving her a back massage.
“I figured I’d practice driving on a rental until I got used to it again,” Ibis told her as he backed out of her driveway. “I’m pretty rusty.”
“Maybe we should have walked,” Cassidy said, as the car lurched backwards into the road. A rusty pickup truck blew its horn and swerved around them.
“Dumbass redneck!” shouted the driver, a scruffy man in a denim vest and Confederate flag cap.
They survived all the way to Ali Baba, the little restaurant tucked into a wing of the Variety Playhouse, a popular neighborhood bar and music venue. Cassidy sat across from Ibis and studied his handsome face while they ate tabouli full of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, hummus with warm and crispy pita bread, and dolmas, rolled grape leaves stuffed with rice and herbs.
“These are the best things in the world.” Cassidy held up a dolma. “If I had to pick one food to eat for the rest of my life, it would be these.”
“They’re good,” Ibis agreed. “Perfectly made.”
“What about you? What food would you pick?”
“Just one for the rest of my life?” Ibis acted as though he were giving it serious thought. “Dates, stuffed with almond paste and rolled in honey, with a pinch of cinnamon.”
“Whoa, can I change my answer?” Cassidy asked, and he laughed. “So where else have you lived? You’ve said Mali, Morocco, and New York.” She was deeply curious to find out—he seemed to grow more exotic and interesting the more she learned about him.
“I studied in Cairo for a while, and in Constantinople a few years later.”
“You mean Istanbul?”
“Right.”
“I’ve never gone anywhere like that,” Cassidy said, feeling jealous. “It must be amazing to see all those ancient places, all that history.”
“Most of it forgotten now,” he added with a sad smile. “The Mali Empire, for example—six centuries ago, it was larger and wealthier than any kingdom in Europe, with beautiful cities like Gao and Timbuktu, the southern port of the Sahara caravan route. You would go into the market and see great piles of sweet melons and cucumbers, meat roasting over fires. Mosques, schools and libraries grew in the cities. Thousands of manuscripts from across the world were collected and copied in Timbuktu. Knowledge was treasured, preserved, and cultivated.”
“This is where you’re from?” Cassidy asked.
He nodded. “The cities are small today, wrecked by wars and swallowed by desert, the caravan trade lost to ocean shipping. More than one great city has vanished and left nothing behind. Timbuktu and Mali were once words spoken in awe in the capitals of Europe and the Middle East—today, who knows anything about them?”
“So you grew up in the ruins of the old cities?”
“In the ruins?” He looked confused for a moment, then smiled and shook his head. “It must be past your turn to speak. Where are you from, originally? Tell me about your travels.”
“My travels?” Cassidy snickered. “I was born in the exotic realm of Doraville, not far from the ancient ruins of the old General Motors factory. I have walked the distant shores of the Florida panhandle, and once Barb and I drove to New Orleans. As far as I know, that’s the western edge of the world.”
“There’s more beyond that, I promise you.”
“I don’t believe it. You’ll have to show me.”
“I’m ready. When do we leave?” Ibis asked.
They smiled quietly at each other for a moment. He touched her hand, and she let him take it. His touch was warm and strong.
“After a life like that, how did you end up here in Atlanta?” Cassidy asked.
“Who says anything has ended? I’m here now. The rest of the world will still be there tomorrow.”
“Oh...” Cassidy began to worry. “How long do you usually stay in a place?”
“A mon
th, a year, several years, a lifetime. Until it’s time to move on.”
“What do you think about a lifetime in this city?” she asked. “Seems like a boring place for someone like you.”
“No city is boring. Some are more pleasant than others. It depends on the people you meet.”
“How are the people you’ve met here?”
“So far...” Ibis looked her over. “Impressive. Fascinating. Very pretty.”
Cassidy laughed. “What’s fascinating about me?”
“Does your family live in this city, too?”
“Yeah, my brother, my mom...and that’s about all there is. Dad died a long time ago.”
“You have no grandparents? No cousins?”
“Not that I know of. I guess I have grandparents in Ireland, if they’re still alive. All I really know about them is that my mom’s mother was insane and my dad’s parents hated my mom, and so my mom and dad ran away to America to be together. It’s kind of a beautiful story. But then he died, so it’s not really beautiful at all.”
“Your mother says her own mother was crazy?” Ibis asked, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “In what way?”
“In a way that she never said, but it must have involved some pretty intense abuse, the way my mom hates her,” Cassidy said. “Not that my mom ever talks about it much.”
“And your father’s family? Why didn’t they like your mother?”
“I guess because they were kind of upper class, at least for the middle of Bumblefuckenny, Ireland. And Mom’s family weren’t, they were like social outcasts compared to Dad’s family.”
“Why would they be social outcasts?”
“I don’t know! You try getting details out of my mom. Kieran and I have only been trying our whole lives, so good luck.” Cassidy pulled her hand from his. She didn’t want to talk about her family. “I don’t really have to be at work for another hour, but we can walk over there and get started on Count von Wildcat.”
“We can save The Count for now,” Ibis said, standing up with her. “We should go back to your house for a minute.”
“We should?” Cassidy wondered about his intentions. “Why?”
“I’ll show you when we get there.”
“Oh, you’re so mysterious and cool. Here, I’ll get the check.”
“Mine.” He dropped a pair of twenties on the little tray with their tab, which left their elderly server about a thirty-five percent tip. Cassidy had waited tables before, and her brain still did the calculation instantly. “It’s a down payment on The Count.”
They made the quick drive back to Cassidy’s bright yellow house. Ibis opened the trunk and took out a very old and worn leather satchel before accompanying her inside.
“What’s that?” Cassidy asked as she opened the front door. “Let me guess. It’s the one piece of mysterious luggage you’ve taken with you all around the world for your whole life. It contains all your secrets.”
“No,” he said. “I’ve only had this one for about two hundred years.”
“Whatever.” Cassidy led him upstairs. Stray and his band were blasting away in the basement, while Allie and her boyfriend Whitley assembled the new, much taller Christmas tree in the living room.
“Looks good!” Ibis said.
“It’s awesome! You’re awesome! I love you!” Allie shouted at Ibis, standing and pointing at him with both fingers. She looked sweaty, and so did her boyfriend. It looked like they’d both had ecstasy for breakfast.
“She’s very friendly,” Ibis said in a low voice while waving back at Allie.
“That’s what landed her a pair of boyfriends.” Cassidy led him into her room and closed the door against the loud din downstairs. She felt a little nervous, a little excited, and just a touch scared to have this new guy in her room, though she didn’t plan to do anything serious with him. If he happened to feel like kissing her and maybe touching her with those long fingers until she had to go to work, she might just go along with it.
Instead of reaching for her, he untied a leather knot on the satchel.
“My second guess,” Cassidy said. “Handcuffs and whips.”
“Try again. Here’s a clue.” Ibis handed her a few sheets of standard printer paper. They appeared to be photocopies from the inner pages of a small book. Each page featured a row of symbols made mostly of straight lines cross-hatched with each other. Several of them had been highlighted in yellow on the photocopy. “The original book was too delicate to bring with me,” Ibis told her.
“I have no idea what this is.”
“Amazing.” He shook his head.
“What? It’s just a bunch of stick figures with no heads.”
“They’re ogham symbols,” Ibis said. “It’s the ancient writing of Ireland.”
“How did you know I was Irish?”
“It was a long and difficult investigation, a lot of plot twists and red herrings, a lot of witnesses turning up dead along the way,” Ibis said. “First, I looked at your red hair. Then I noticed these freckles on your nose.” He touched the tip of her nose, just where her father used to kiss her. “Finally, I asked around and discovered your name was ‘Cassidy.’”
“It was possibly a stupid question,” Cassidy said. “Okay, so translate it for me.”
“These are all words related to healing, health, life, and growth,” Ibis told her. “Do you have paint?”
“What color?” Cassidy reached into an overflowing box of paint brushes, mixing trays, X-Acto knives, and acrylic paint tubes. She hadn’t painted much recently, and had always preferred pencil or ink, anyway.
“One that makes you think of healing.”
“Um...green?” Cassidy handed it to him.
“Good choice. You’ll want to sit down.”
“I will?” Cassidy asked. She sank to the edge of her bed, her right leg jutting out ahead of her, throbbing. Ibis stood over her and took her left hand, the one with which she did most of her drawing and all of her writing. He squeezed a blob of forest green onto her index finger.
“What are we doing, again?” she asked him.
“I want you to paint those words onto your leg,” Ibis said, pointing to the three sheets of paper with the highlighted oghum symbols.
“Seriously?” Cassidy asked.
“You tell me your life is filled with supernatural things,” Ibis said. “Perhaps you should prepare to face them instead of telling yourself they don’t exist.”
“So this is just standard physical therapy, then.”
“I’m not joking, Cassidy. Try it. Copy the symbols exactly. Be attentive, like a monk transcribing a sacred text. Every stroke of paint matters.”
“Okay. On my leg, though? This is acrylic, it blocks up your pores...”
“Your pores will recover.”
“Just so you know, this is not what usually happens when I bring a guy into my bedroom.”
“I’m glad I could offer something unique.”
Cassidy laughed, but her sense of trust in him was slipping. She decided to play along and see where it led, though. She studied the old line-words carefully, then drew back her skirt and painted them along the surgery scar on her leg, over her ruined Venus flytrap garden. She looked up at Ibis when she was done.
“Do you feel anything?” he asked.
“It kind of tingles,” Cassidy told him with a shrug, but then she felt it. The symbols radiated a kind of gentle, green warmth, like summer sun filtered through a canopy of lush trees. The energy moved inside her leg, cooling and soothing her flesh, all the way into the core of her bone. She let out a sigh.
“It’s helping, isn’t it?” Ibis smiled.
“That’s crazy,” Cassidy said. “We’re both crazy. This can’t be working.”
“How far can you bend your knee?”
Cassidy found that it was easier to raise her leg, easier to extend it and to bend it.
“It’s getting more flexible!” Excited, Cassidy pushed herself back to her feet. “It’s getting so muc
h better, Ibis!”
“Don’t get too cocky. You still need time to heal.”
“It’s stiff, but it doesn’t hurt. I can balance so much better now.” She hugged him, then remembered why she was hugging him and pulled back. “What did we just do?”
“All I did was give you some pieces of paper,” Ibis said. “What you did was inscribe yourself with ancient Irish words to focus your own insanely underused talent.”
“What talent?” Cassidy looked at the green hash marks on her thigh. “These are magic words?”
“They’re magic because you wrote them,” Ibis said. “I just thought ancient Irish would carry a little emotional heft for you, help open you up a little.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I brought you another present.” Ibis looked into his bag. He hesitated and looked up at her again. “Maybe this should wait.”
“No way, I want my present.” Cassidy held out her hand. “If it’s half as good as the last one, I might kiss you. And then I want a full explanation of all this magic stuff, with footnotes, citations, and references. Okay?”
“It’s a deal.” He brought out a zipped plastic bag holding a crumbling leather book small enough to fit a child’s hands. The front cover’s illustration had mostly flaked away, but from what remained, she thought it looked like a golden castle, possibly with a horse in the foreground somewhere. “This is a very limited edition. Probably the only edition left in the world.”
“How old is it?”
“Printed in the city of Cork, 1801, for children of Irish aristocrats. Now the last copy belongs to you.” Ibis placed it in her hands.
“What? I can’t be trusted with something this old and valuable. It’ll be broken in an hour.”
“I believe you’ll take good care of it.”
Cassidy studied the front cover through the bag. The title, written in a swirling script, in fading and flaking words that must have once glittered like gold, was Fairy-Stories and Ghost-Tales of the North.
“It’s pretty,” she whispered. “You can tell it was pretty. You’re really giving this to me?”