by Gregory Ashe
That damned kiss.
She needed the box. So she walked to the study door and knocked and pushed it open.
Her father sat in his shirtsleeves, his necktie hanging lying limp like a noose in the moments before execution. Coarse, gray stubble covered his cheeks and neck, and his eyes had fallen to the back of his head. He had one hand over his mouth, like an overgrown child holding back a scream, and in the other hand he held a pistol. When he saw Irene, he hesitated. The pistol wavered, as though dragged by a river current, and then dropped.
George Lovell covered his face and wept.
Irene hurried forward, dropped to one knee, and put her hands on the sides of her father’s head. He shook with each sob.
“Father,” Irene said. “It’s ok, Father.” She pulled his head against her.
He cried for a moment more, and then he pulled her arms away and drew back. “Irene, please forgive me. You must—please, you must—tell me you have it. Tell me you know where it is.” He gripped her arms.
Irene winced and tried to pull free. “Father, you’re hurting me. Let go.”
He dropped her like a hot coal, stood, and knocked his chair back. “I’m sorry. Irene. Please.”
Irene stood as well, massaging the red marks of his fingers, and moved to stand by the door. She put her hand in her pocket. The silver handle of the revolver was cool and solid.
“I don’t know where it is,” Irene said. “The Children have it, Father.”
His breathing sharpened. “What? Impossible, Irene.”
“I saw it, Father. They have it.”
“I’m telling you, Irene. We don’t have it.”
The words lingered in the air with the smell of pipe smoke and leather.
“You’re helping them,” Irene said.
“I’m not going to stand here and explain myself to my daughter.” He stood up straighter, pulling at his collar, his face reddening by the second. “What I’ve done, I’ve done for my family, Irene. For you. You should remember that and be grateful.”
“Those things—those spiders, the golems—that was you.”
“Don’t be foolish. I’ve done everything I could to keep you out of harm, but you insisted on running around with Harry Witte and his troop of fools. If you’d listened to me for once in your life—”
“You know Harry.”
“I know who he is, Irene. Now. Where is the mask? Who has it?”
“The Children,” Irene said. She had forgotten about the revolver. She had almost forgotten how to stand. “I saw the spiders take it.”
“Impossible,” her father said. He yanked at his collar again, and this time the collar popped off. He held it for a moment, staring at it, like Columbus spotting land, and then tossed it on the desk. “Impossible.”
Irene barely heard him. He had known. He had known about Harry, about the mask, about the spiders and the golems. He had known they were real. He had never told her. He had known about the Children.
He was one of the Children.
Not some poor man tricked into helping them. Not a patsy, not an innocent. He was one of them.
George Lovell had moved to the fireplace. The hearth was cold, but he looked into the ashes, one hand smoothing wrinkles from his forehead. He might as well have been a stranger, some grizzled man who had broken into their home seeking a bit of warmth. Irene’s finger trembled against the revolver’s trigger. One shot. One loud, explosive shot, and the stranger would be gone.
“Why did you come here?” her father said. “What do you want?”
“Help,” Irene said. “I thought you could help me.” She swallowed a giggle at the ridiculousness of it and bit the inside of her cheek.
Father gave a disgusted shake of his head. “You can’t take a damn thing seriously. Fine, Irene. We’ll help each other. What do you need?”
“The box. I thought you might know how to find it. Who might have it.”
“Well I don’t,” he said. “But—” He paused and took a step toward her.
Irene’s hand tightened on the revolver. One shot. A shot loud enough to knock her life down like a house of cards. That’s all it would take.
But she didn’t fire.
George Lovell never noticed. He was still talking. “I think I have a way to find the box. Come with me.”
He pushed past her and started towards the back of the house. Irene followed him. She stumbled over a step in the darkness. She collided with a small stand and sent its porcelain vase and silk flowers to the floor. The crack ran through the house. The sound snapped something in Irene’s head. The sound of a continent shifting.
“God, Irene,” Father said. “You’d think you’d never been here before. Your mother loved that vase.” But he kept walking.
He led her into the cellar. Irene followed down the rough stone steps. The air was chillier here, and she was glad of her coat. A single electric bulb—Father was still having the new lights installed throughout the rest of the house—sizzled to life and illuminated the large underground room. A few wine racks took up one corner, while rows of shelving filled with food—potatoes and onions and wilted cabbage, flour and sugar and butter, and on and on—filled the rest of the cellar.
“Damn,” George Lovell said. “Wait here a moment, Irene. I’ve forgot something.”
She leaned against one of the shelves. The late hour had finally caught her. Father trotted up the steps. It took a moment for her to realize what was wrong. And by then, it was too late.
Irene was waiting for the sound when it came. The cellar door shutting. Then the lock being set.
She didn’t even bother to go and check. Instead, she let herself sink to the ground and rested her head against a sack of flour. She didn’t feel like crying. She felt like a woman who had been on a long voyage and somehow ended up right where she had started. In other words, she felt hungry and cold and frustrated. And a bit chagrined.
But mostly, sleepy. And with the feeling that solid ground wasn’t quite as solid anymore.
After a time—an hour? Ten minutes? Irene didn’t know—she stood up and brushed dust from her coat. There were, after all, only so many minutes that a woman could spend staring up at peach preserves without getting bored. The rows of glass jars sparkled in the electric light. They had been Sally’s work, the peaches, and seeing them made Irene feel as though she’d swallowed all the pits on a hot summer day. She climbed the stairs and checked the door. Locked, of course.
She set the tip of the revolver against the lock.
Then she hesitated.
Would it explode?
Since the more technical aspects of revolvers—such as their likelihood to explode when jammed up against a lock—were beyond Irene’s expertise, she pocketed the revolver and went back down the stairs. She made a circuit of the cellar. Aside from a cobwebbed barrel at the back, marked Wheat, and a mummified loaf of bread on a top shelf, there were no surprises. Irene wondered about the bread, though. Had it been intended for a dinner and then forgotten? Or had it been hidden on purpose, promised and then taken away, the only kind of punishment that Sally—or perhaps, Irene’s mother—had the power to inflict?
There was something funny, Irene supposed, in the fact that she was going to die in a cellar. A suffragette, a woman with a college education, freed from the tyranny of the household, and she was going to die and be buried down here like that damned loaf of bread.
Or perhaps her father would let her live. That would be a serious mistake on his part.
Irene swept the bottom step clean and sat so that she could watch the cellar door. She balanced the revolver on her lap.
Now, the waiting.
It took some time before Irene noticed the change to the light. The electric bulb buzzed like a bee in a bottle, and the light surged and waned. Perfect. Simply perfect. The bulb would go out, and Irene would be trapped in the dark. Perhaps that had been Father’s plan all along.
As though answering her thoughts, the bulb flared one last t
ime, hissed like a cheap kettle, and died.
Irene leaned her head back and closed her eyes against the dark.
Yes. Perfect.
But when she opened her eyes again, Irene realized she could make out the shape of the closest set of shelves. They were nothing more than a charcoal smear against the rest of the darkness, but she could see them, and that meant she wasn’t in total dark. A pale, sourceless light began to grow, and Irene’s eyes adjusted, until she could make out the far wall of the cellar and the wine bottle offering salutes from the racks.
After a time, the light steadied. And then a dark-haired woman stepped out of the cellar wall.
Irene sighed. “I was looking for you.”
Marie-Thérèse, even for a dead woman, looked a bit worse for the wear. She was still a diaphanous figure, translucent and filled with a cold glow, like sunlight off a patch of ice. She wore the same white dress, although now the hem was ragged and blackened, as though she had been dragging it through the mud—or, perhaps, as though it had been burned. Lines of fatigue marred Marie-Thérèse’s face, and she cast a backwards glance at the cellar wall.
A fox watching for hounds.
But when Marie-Thérèse turned back to Irene, she offered the same smile and said, “I’ve been busy, Irene. It’s good to see you again.”
“Harry said you were driven out of the church. How’d you get here?”
Marie-Thérèse pulled back her hair, and now Irene noticed silver mixed with the dark strands. The silver strands of hair glowed brighter than an electric filament. One more advantage to being dead, Irene supposed. Even gray hair looked beautiful.
“I was not driven out,” Marie-Thérèse said.
Irene tapped her lips.
“Very well,” Marie-Thérèse said. “Perhaps I left not entirely of my own design. As to how I came to be here—did you really think I could be kept out of the home of one of my descendants?”
With a prolonged eye roll, Irene stretched out her legs and lifted the revolver, aiming it at Marie-Thérèse.
“I don’t think this would hurt you,” Irene said. “But then again, I’m terribly bored, so I don’t particularly care.”
“Be thoughtful, child. I’m here to make you an offer.”
“Another?”
“Irene, you have not told me where the mask is.”
“I haven’t been able to find it. As you said, I’ve been busy. Your visions led us right into a trap. Or was that not entirely of your own design either?”
Marie-Thérèse was silent for a moment. The strands of silver in her hair shone like starlight. Then she said, “I was . . . misled.”
“Did your father lock you in a cellar too?”
With a surprisingly human snort, Marie-Thérèse shook her head. “He sent me to a nunnery.”
“You don’t seem particularly religious.”
“Appearances are deceiving, child. The dead are far more religious than the living. We have the most to lose, after all.”
“Did you like being a nun?”
Marie-Thérèse burst out laughing. “No. Not at all. I left the convent and married. I was not meant to be a bride of Christ, I think. I was not meant to be a wife at all, at least, not the way men wanted.”
“You should have been a suffragette.”
“I would have rather liked that, I think. The dancing, especially. And the skirts.”
“I’ll be sure to invite you the next time I go out.”
“You won’t go out again, child. You know that. Your father has thrown himself in with the Children, but he is not the only player. A man with big eyes and a big stomach, but without the skills or resources to be of value. He knows this. He is not a fool. He also knows that to keep his place with the Children—and to keep his wealth, his status—he must recover the mask. The mask is everything now. Dagon is restless. The Children hear him stirring. Your father will give you to the Children as a sign of his good will and faithfulness.”
“But the Children have the mask,” Irene said, gesturing with the pistol. “I saw those spiders take it.”
“The spiders did indeed have it, but the problem is that those spiders, in spite of their size, still have the brains of bugs. I had sent an agent to intervene and recover the mask. There was a struggle.” Rage flicked across Marie-Thérèse’s face like a lightning stroke. “My agent turned out to be less faithful than I had hoped.”
“So who has the mask? Where is it?”
“My agent, true to the American spirit, has decided to put the mask up for auction. The Children will be there. As will the two bands of thugs who have been squabbling over the mask.”
“Why not go get the mask back, then?” Irene asked. She paused, then laughed. “You can’t, can you? All this show, and you can’t get the mask back. You might as well be a girl hiding under a sheet. Boo!” Irene laughed again.
“Boo indeed,” Marie-Thérèse murmured. Her eyes were huge and dark, swallowing up the cellar’s light. “As you have so eloquently pointed out, I am . . . limited. Particularly now, without access to certain resources.”
“The cathedral.”
“In part. This is why I have come to offer you a deal, Irene. The same deal I made to you when we first met. The deal that I offer you as one of my blood.”
“And what do I get out of it?”
“You will not die here, alone, in this cellar. You will not be given to the Children to be used in their rites. You will not see Dagon rise to take the River Throne. Three things, I offer you.”
“I’ll pass.”
Marie-Thérèse stood and stalked towards Irene. “Don’t be foolish.” The pale light flickered, like a candle tipping over, and Irene’s hand was sweaty on the revolver. “You can’t do anything from here. Your friends will be hunted down once the Children have the mask. You will be another meaningless victim to the Children’s lust for power.”
“Then sweeten the offer.”
“What? What do you want?”
“This pays for all,” Irene said. “It cancels our previous deal. Cian will remain healthy, and I am absolved of finding the mask.”
Marie-Thérèse paused. The light in the room had wrapped itself around her like skeins of yarn until she stood at the center of darkness. For a moment, something fluttered behind her translucence, like a cloud passing over the sun. Irene felt all those peach pits in her stomach tumble around as though she’d been doing somersaults.
And then Marie-Thérèse held out her hand. “Agreed.”
Irene pocketed the revolver. She stood, but she didn’t take the other woman’s hand.
“It is all right to be afraid,” Marie-Thérèse said. The compassion in her voice was surprising for its sincerity. “The old nun who first taught me these secrets told me that knowledge is a burden. The things you have seen, the things you know, men and women were not meant to know. This knowledge, these secrets, the old nun called them la sagesse des larmes. The weeping lore.”
“I’m not afraid,” Irene said. She reached out and took Marie-Thérèse’s hand. “And I’m not weeping.”
And then the world became a wall of white.
At some point during the night, something large and fuzzy had crawled into Cian’s mouth and died. A rat, perhaps, with a bad case of mold. Or an especially mobile piece of that awful-smelling Hun cheese. Whatever it had been, it had plastered itself to the back of Cian’s throat and was now trying to kill him by smell alone.
Cian groaned, stretched his legs, and immediately regretted it. The movement sent him tumbling off the too-short sofa, and he landed face-down on the rug. The headache lurking behind his eyes sprang forward and started hammering at his brain.
“Morning, big boy.” Sam’s voice was bright and cheery and loud. It had all the charm, at that moment, of an icepick to the ear. “I was wondering if you were going to go ahead and die, or if you thought you’d linger a bit longer.”
Cian spoke into the rug.
“What was thought?”
�
��Kill me,” Cian croaked. Then, in a stroke of genius, he added, “Quietly.”
A soft thud came near Cian’s head. He managed to turn and saw a glass of water and two aspirin. He took them, drank the glass of water, and dropped back to lie on the rug.
“I didn’t have any decent poison,” Sam said.
“Please don’t talk.”
“But I have so much to tell you.”
“Please. I’m begging you.”
“I suppose, if you don’t want me to tell you, I could find some other way to let you know. A song, maybe? Or maybe a message conveyed by drum? I read somewhere that’s how the Indians send messages. I tried my hand at the trumpet once. Well, not so much tried my hand at as stole and played for a few hours, but you get the idea. I could go find a trumpet and see if I still remembered something—”
“Sam,” Cian said.
“Yes, Cian?”
“Please.”
“Cian, this is very important. I take things like this very seriously. We can’t all spend our nights getting sloshed beyond redemption.”
Cian groaned again.
“Sam,” Pearl said.
“Pearl, good morning. I just got home and I was telling Cian that I have wonderful news, important news.”
“Pearl,” Cian said. “He’s being very loud.”
“Come tell me in the kitchen, Sam,” Pearl said. “Quietly.”
“But—” Sam said.
“Now, Sam. You’ll have time to torture them later.”
Sam grumbled and followed Pearl out of the room.
Cian thought, for half a second, about naming Pearl for sainthood. Then the headache took a sledgehammer to his right eye, and Cian struggled to keep from emptying his stomach.
It was not a promising way to start the day.
After a half an hour, though, the aspirin massaged away the worst of the ache, and Cian managed to sit up, finish the glass of water, and not vomit. He considered all three major accomplishments. From the kitchen came Sam’s voice punctuated by Pearl’s soft laughter. When a few more minutes had passed, and Cian was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to die, he got to his feet and made his way to the kitchen.