He spoke to Diejuste with all the love he still harbored for the Jane inside her. “You are a benevolent spirit.” Tears sprang to his eyes. The hair on his hands crackled in the circle of her power. But he persisted. “Stay good.”
She blinked. In that instant, for only that instant he believed in himself and in his power to change the world. And that was all it took. The pain receded. Her aura dimmed.
Diejuste’s eyes strayed to his bag but she said nothing. Instead the little girl and ancient goddess turned back to Lucio, still being battered with her power and Orin’s kitchen arsenal. Junior stepped away. He watched Diejuste take a deep breath and felt the heavy power thin. Orin stopped his barrage. Lucio fell to his knees, wiping blood from his face.
Junior took baby steps away from the three.
“Lucio,” Diejuste said. “Use your power, Lucio. Is there bad karma here?”
Lucio was reluctant to answer. While all eyes were on the brownie, Junior slipped back into the bedroom. He heard Lucio grunt a noncommittal reply.
“My god did not give you this gift.” Diejuste’s voice was soft. Junior almost couldn’t hear her as he slipped into the closet. “Do not be mad at Bon Dey.”
Lucio laughed. “What kind of creepy goddess takes the form of a little girl?”
Orin made a rude noise and Junior felt a burst of power. A very different power than what Diejuste had been giving off.
“Hey, man.” Lucio whined. “Why’d you have to do that? I was having fun staining it.”
“I’ve got places to be.” Orin’s voice got louder. “I’m sorry we were rude, Diejuste.”
“Not entirely your fault, Brudda Orin.”
“We’ll just clean up.” The voice disappeared on the last word and came back for a second, “..cio, get the couch in pla . . .” before disappearing again.
Junior paused at the sudden silence. The gentle power he’d felt a moment ago pervaded the entire apartment. Then Orin’s voice returned.
“It was nice to meet you, Junior. Good luck wi . . .” He trailed off.
Lucio laughed. “Man, that disappearing thing is weird. I feel a little badly about all the times we’ve done it to your sister. Where did he go? Can boogeymen disappear?”
Diejuste answered. “Only when you are afraid, my friend.”
“Really?” Orin asked. “How does that work?”
Junior heard the question but he didn’t stick around to hear the answer or to be found. He knew he had to take the box away. So he closed the closet door with a snick.
And found himself in the closet of the overnight room at St. Ignatius’ community center on the north side of the city.
6
The Nun
Junior peeked out of the closet door at a small room featuring dozens of overlapping rugs and a half-dozen cots. Two teenagers clung to each other on one of the cots. Tears traced mascara down the girl’s face but if the guy was crying, Junior couldn’t see. He seemed a little older and had his face buried in the girl’s bottle-black hair.
“Sister Sue is dead.” The girl moaned it quietly.
“I know, JT. I know.” The guy murmured in response like she’d said this fifty times already.
JT sat back. She wasn’t a small girl, but she was dwarfed by the giant sweatshirt enveloping her. Her eyes were icy. “She was meeting with Leo today.”
Junior perked up at his last name though JT was probably referring to some guy’s first name.
The guy looked away. “JT, someone else will meet her.”
“Shig,” JT forced the guy to look at her. “Sister Sue was fixing things. Leo doesn’t want it fixed. Sister is the only one who could have changed her mind.”
Her. This Leo was a woman. Could they be talking about Junior’s mother? Kathryn Leo was a growing power in the city. But what didn’t she want fixed? What did she have to do with a nun? The brownies had said Dee killed a nun. Or just mourned for her. Junior couldn’t remember which.
“What can we do about it now?” Shig kept his voice low. He spoke with an Hispanic accent but his face hinted at Asian ancestry. “The sister can’t help us anymore. No one can help.” He stood. “I have to go.”
“NO!” The girl screamed it and they both looked at the door to the room.
“Leo is meeting with King. I have to be there to back him up or he’ll think something’s going on.”
“Something is going on.”
“You want me to tell King I’m in love with a Division girl?”
“No. I don’t want you to go at all. Walk away from all that bullshit. Shig, walk away or you’ll never see me again.”
“I can’t walk away. I know all our suppliers and dealers and anyway no one can walk away from King. He’d—”
She cut him off, turning away. “Kill you. I know.”
“No, JT.” Shig wanted to grab her. Junior could see how much control it took for him to keep his hands to himself. “King wouldn’t kill me. He’d kill Tiza. He’d kill my little sister.”
“And Kathryn fucking Leo will kill both of you if you don’t walk away! You’re too important to King.”
Junior gasped. Neither of the kids noticed.
Shig lost the battle with himself. He grabbed JT’s shoulders and pulled her into him, whispering, “I have to go to this meeting.”
“You don’t love me!” JT struggled against Shig’s hold but she didn’t have enough fight in her. She collapsed into him and eventually her lips found his and they forgot about the world around them.
Junior took advantage of their distraction. He was confident their fear would hide him even if they weren’t entirely caught up in each other, but still, he tiptoed from the closet to the door on the far side of the room. A peek through showed all the people in the next room were gathered, almost huddled, on the far side of the large space. He slipped through the door and closed it behind him.
The cement-floored room had rows of chairs stacked against the wall to Junior’s left. Short rectangular windows high on three walls let in enough daylight that the fluorescent fixtures weren’t needed. Nevertheless, they were all on, half of them flickering. The central area of the basement stood empty except for a few small herds of plastic folding chairs while a pair of ping pong tables were shoved against the third wall to Junior’s right. He spotted a door on the far wall with sunlight fighting its way through the panes. That door was blocked with yellow police tape.
The only activity in the basement centered around a rickety folding table where a clutch of older white folks in conservative slacks and skirts gathered around an electric coffee urn. They were somber, quietly trying to figure out how to turn the heater on.
One woman with a cloud of white hair floating over her batted at the backs between her and the table. “Just leave it. Sister Sue was the only one who knew how anything worked around here.”
“Now, Carol, we’re all upset.” A gentleman in all black, possibly a priest, led her away to a gathering of folding chairs nearby where they sat and talked quietly.
Fear came off the mourners like a gale force wind so Junior walked into the basement with no fear of being seen. He looked around and quickly found a third door on the far side of the ping pong tables. He opened the door to find stairs. It was the only out, so he took it. Four steps up, he reconsidered and returned the basement.
Only one of the parishioners even glanced his way as he crossed the room. The man shivered and whispered to his neighbor, “It feels like she’s still with us.”
Junior passed beside the crowd and ducked under the folding table. He followed the black cord of the urn down to the plug and stuck it in the outlet. A celebration and congratulations all around engrossed the little group and not one head turned when he opened the door this time and headed up into the atrium.
Junior crossed through the few mourners and police in the muted atrium. He didn’t leave. Instead he went through an open door and took a seat in the empty crying room at the back of the nave. He had a clear view of the doo
r to the basement, yet was well out of the way of the people passing in and out of the open front door to the church. He was also protected from the chill wind blowing in. He would wait until Shig came up and then follow the boy to the meeting between this King and his mother.
Junior had never attended a church or synagogue or mosque or anything when he’d been growing up. His mother had told him his grandparents were religious but he didn’t know what god they followed. He and his mother had gone to the zoo every Sunday morning until he was old enough to work. She wouldn’t let him miss school, so he had to work weekends. He missed the zoo.
The view from the crying room window was peaceful. Rows and rows of dark wood pews faced a matching podium and marble altar. Candles had been lit around the altar and on the matching sideboard table behind it. The sideboard held what looked like a small gold model of a house. Above it Jesus hung on a simple wooden cross. His feet were crossed and pierced with a square-headed spike, as were each of his hands. Painted blood, bright red against strangely pale skin dripped from a gash in his side.
A lady walked up the aisle between the pews. She gripped the front pew and touched one knee to the ground before going to kneel by a statue of a woman in blue robes fronted by a fire hazard. The lady crossed herself and selected a long match to light yet another candle. Junior was caught by the statue’s eyes. Mary’s face held a look of sublime peace and happiness. It would have warmed Junior’s heart. But the face was turned away from the pews. The statue Mary’s gaze rested on her son.
What kind of mother felt peace while her child bled?
Junior dropped his eyes to the square bundle in his satchel. Wrapped in blue to keep the darkness in. Perhaps the box still worked on him, even through all the fabrics. He should feel peaceful here, right? Wasn’t that purpose of religion? To bring peace and purpose to a world of chaos?
The box took away peace. It made everyone in the bar angry. It made a benevolent god think of going bad. Shig was already afraid that King would kill him and his sister. And Junior was thinking of bringing this box within spitting distance of that meeting?
No. He had to get rid of the box before he found his mother. He’d take it back to the bar. He should never have taken it in the first place.
He stood up. After one last look at the crucified boy and his mother, Junior left the crying room and the church. He jogged down the front steps past police and mourning parishioners. He spotted the train tracks running overhead just a few blocks east of the church and crossed the barricaded street to head that way in search of a station.
Just a few yards south of the church, he passed an old three-story house with mismatched Craftsman accents on the porch. The front door stood open. Junior stopped, waited a moment to see if anyone came out, and when no one did, climbed up the porch to close the door. Instinct took over when he got to the door and he closed it with himself on the inside.
The foyer opened on a generous common room. A rustic entryway console table featuring a tall back with hooks for hats and scarves created a focal point. Instead of holding winter accessories, the back featured a crucifix hung above a magnetic white board indicating which residents were IN or OUT. Sr. Sue had a green magnet in her OUT square. Srs. Deb, Carol, and Mary were all OUT. Sr. Melanie was IN.
Junior signed the guest book on the table beneath the call board and cross. He looked around the main floor a bit, peeking in the small chapel to the left of the common room. Then he took the stairs up and found himself drawn down a carpeted hall on the third floor to a door with a poorly hand-stitched sign that read ‘God loves Sr. Melanie’. Junior heard a voice murmuring inside.
“Come in.” Presumably Sr. Melanie called.
Junior turned to tiptoe away down the hall. But he stopped. He smelled oranges. He pushed the door open and stepped inside a small bedroom. A small sink had been installed beside the door. It was littered with orange peels picked clean. A white medicine cabinet was fixed on the wall above the sink. Junior ducked his head instinctively but there was no mirror. There were no mirrors in the room at all.
A whitewashed door beyond the sink hinted at a closet and Junior noted the escape route. A faded pink sweater hung from a hook on the door. The bed sat against the far wall under a ceiling that was angled steeply overhead. A casement window by the pillows flooded light on a small woman.
“Come in,” presumably Sr. Melanie repeated. She lay propped against pillows with a rosary tangled in her fingers and a small bible open in her lap. “I’m just old. Old isn’t catching.”
She was as wrinkled as a Shar-Pei and the same colors as one, too. Wisps of white hair graced some of her head. She looked at him, one little bent finger holding her place at the bible verse. Something about her gaze disturbed him.
And then he realized it was because she was looking at him. She could see him.
She persisted. “Hello there.”
“Hello, Sr. Melanie.”
“Laney, please call me Laney. Come in.” It was a lot of words and she coughed a bit.
Junior went over to the sink as he spoke. “Would you like some water, Laney?”
“I would love some, young man. Thank you.”
Junior turned with the water glass to see Sr. Laney looking him over. He felt absurdly self-conscious. His appearance didn’t typically concern him since nobody ever saw him. For the second time that day he found himself trying to fix his hair.
He took the glass over to Sr. Laney and when she patted the mattress, sat on the edge of her bed. He smoothed some wrinkles in the coverlet as she drank. He could see the churchyard from the window. The marked and unmarked police vehicles parked up and down the street didn’t look like they were going to be leaving anytime soon. Same with the phalanx of people standing around doing nothing much. He thought from up here it looked awfully peaceful for a murder scene. But he imagined these police saw murder all the time. This might be their daily routine.
Junior looked down at Sr. Laney’s bible. “Are you praying for Sr. Sue?”
Sr. Laney steadied one hand on his arm and indicated he should put the glass on the dresser. “I’m praying for her kids.”
“The gang members.”
“Yes. Those poor kids. Some of them have no one.”
“Haven’t they got you?”
“Oh no. No, I’m too old to relate to these kids. And I was raised in a nice family. I can’t help them like Sue could.”
Junior returned to the bed. “Why not?”
The woman dropped both of her hands to her bible. She took a breath to respond but then just looked out the window.
Junior looked out with her. He said, “I think they just need to know some adult still cares about them. I’m kinda messed up right now. I don’t know what to do. My mom would know the right thing to say, but I haven’t talked to my mom in forever. I’m cursed.” He said it straight out. “I’m a monster and I’m so lonely. But then today, this little girl—” He held in the sob that choked him silent. The nun laid a hand on his and he had to go on. “Look, Sister, you can’t know what those kids will think of you. There’s a girl named JT over there right now who knows that her boyfriend is going to be killed. She knows in her heart that he will be killed and there is nothing she can do about it. In fact she might be the cause. She just needs someone to listen to her.”
“I don’t know what to tell her to do.”
“Sr. Laney,” Junior began.
“Just Laney,” she corrected.
“Laney, you’re scared of dying. Really scared. And you were talking to someone about it, weren’t you?”
“Yes, young man.” She nodded. “I was talking to God.”
“What did he tell you to do?”
A grin brightened Laney’s face. “You want me to say that he doesn’t work that way. And then you will point out that sometimes you just need someone to talk to whether they answer or not. But,” her eyes twinkled, “God did answer me.”
“How did he do that, Laney?”
“
He sent you.”
Junior smiled at the thought that the Christian god would send the boogeyman’s bastard to help a nun.
She mock shoved him off of her bed and swung, if that word could possibly fit, her legs off the edge.
“If I go listen to JT, will you go see your mother?”
He blinked. “I will.”
“Get my sweater for me, would you?”
Junior took the empty water glass back to the sink. He lifted the salmon-colored sweater from its hook and helped Laney shrug into it. She took his arm then and let him help her down the two flights of stairs. At the front door, he helped the nun with her coat, a scarf, and a hat. Then he escorted her down the steps and saw her on her way across to the church.
He watched her approach a uniform for help getting up the church steps. Then Junior went back into the house. He climbed the two flights and shuffled down the carpeted hall to Laney’s little garret. He stopped at the sink to pour himself some water. Then he rinsed the tumbler and set it on the rubber mat beside the hot tap. He opened the closet door and, forgetting the blue-covered box in his bag, he stepped out into an empty bedroom in the basement of a house not too far away.
7
Leo
A twin bed perfectly made with an eyelet lace coverlet nearly filled the tiny room. A white end table and folded suitcase rack were the only other items of furniture. The closet held a couple of winter jackets. A cheaply framed poster of Chicago’s skyline on the wall gave him hope that he was still in the city.
The door to the bedroom was propped open with a stone rabbit. Junior wondered how many toes had been stubbed on the bunny over the years. He passed it carefully and made his way, ducking in the small hallway, upstairs to the main floor where he found an unlocked sliding glass door leading out to a small garden, which featured a matching stone rabbit.
He wandered through the charming little garden and out the back gate just in time to spot a girl in a green hoodie come racing onto the street. She kept shooting glances behind her. She veered to the far side of the street, temporarily slowing to toss some object under a parked Prius. He figured she’d run right by him, but when she turned away from the car, she spotted him and made straight for him.
Junior (A Wyrdos Tale Book 3) Page 4