Divah

by Susannah Appelbaum

  “Is my father in danger?” she asked quietly. “What will happen when the Gates open?”

  “Hell, and all its coagulated souls, will have free passage here upon this mortal sphere. It is unthinkable. Your father’s job is to prevent this from happening. He is an expert scholar and well prepared.”

  “But the demon carriage … the thing in the basement.”

  “There are always demons on the earth, causing mischief. Low-grade infestations, keeping scholars busy. How do they get here? They escape from Hell, or are called by incantations and allies through human error or bad judgment. Much in the way angels walk the earth, so too do demons—stretching back to the beginning of time. Angels, demons, and, yes, humans, are wrapped in an eternal embrace. The Divah has very powerful spies and allies in place already. But she still has not succeeded in opening the Gates of Hell. That, Itzy, must never happen.”

  “Why not?”

  Ava blinked. Finally she said, “Well, Itzy. Then we are doomed.”

  “If the Gates are in Paris, why is the Divah coming here?”

  “Oui.” Ava turned to Luc. “Seems our friend, Luc, invited her.”

  29

  “What do you mean, Luc invited her?” Itzy asked, wide-eyed.

  “That painting?” Ava said, pointing to the book on the floor. “The one of Marie Antoinette you just so successfully examined?”

  Itzy nodded.

  “Luc painted it.”

  “I’m sorry?” Itzy scoffed. “What?”

  “Tell her,” Ava commanded.

  “I painted it,” Luc said simply.

  “You painted Marie Antoinette’s portrait?”

  “Many times over. I was her—um—favorite artist.”

  “Just how old are you?” Itzy demanded. She thought of his comment in Grand Central about his friend who painted the ceiling. At the time, it had seemed preposterous.

  Luc shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  “So she’s back from Hell for more?” Itzy asked, turning to Ava.

  “Something like that.”

  Ava looked between the two of them and cleared her throat.

  “The Divah has been known by many names throughout history. Many you would recognize from your history books. Many more, while thoroughly evil, have left no scholars behind to write of them and are lost to history. Divah is the ancient Persian word for ‘demon,’ you see. Before she was Marie Antoinette, the Divah inhabited the body of a young nun in the fifteenth century who brought about the Spanish Inquisition—a deadly witch hunt created by her lies. We’ve charted her earlier incarnations, and each time she appears, the world is ruin and ash. She is banished, she regains her strength, and through the help of her servants and acolytes, she returns in a different form for more.”

  They were finishing their tea, and Itzy was picking halfheartedly at an apricot scone.

  “What are you afraid of, Itzy—really afraid of?” Ava’s eyes narrowed.

  Itzy thought of the creature in the basement, of that last evening with her mother. There was only one thing.

  “The dark,” she whispered.

  “Best stay away from it then.”

  Ava’s bangles jangled as she walked briskly to the room service cart. She lifted the gleaming dome from the center. Beneath was a large cabbage on a silver platter, a weak, anemic green.

  “Your deepest, darkest fears are where your demons lie in wait.” Ava continued. “And demons have powerful arsenals. They have the gift of foresight; they can speak in tongues. They are great mimics and master manipulators—they can and will say anything to get what they want. They will hurl your innermost fears and secret vices in your face. Demons kill, and demons possess. They’ll even summon the dead to their aid.”

  Ava lifted the cabbage and measured its weight in her hand thoughtfully. “We hunters are exorcistes. We have in our arsenal one sure thing: the exorcisme—a messy, unreliable discipline subject to the idiosyncrasies and failures of each scholar. But there’s another, newer way to stop a demon in its tracks.”

  Ava walked to the balcony and threw open the door. A night wind caught her vivid red hair, sending it whipping around her face like a flame.

  “Come,” Ava commanded.

  Luc held out his hand to Itzy, and she joined him on the terrace, her heart rattling in her chest.

  The balcony was unlit, but Itzy saw all she needed by the city’s glow. Across the park, massive apartment buildings rose up against the slate sky like gravestones. Ava placed the head of cabbage on a worn wooden shelf, part of a much larger apparatus. It fit perfectly into a crescent-shaped lunette in the center. She lowered a similar worm-eaten board, locking the cabbage in place.

  “With the Divah’s return comes the New Reign of Terror.” She shouted against the noise of the turnwheel. A honed blade gleamed in the low light, jerking upward with each rotation, clanking noisily. “It will put the Old Reign to shame.”

  Luc watched impassively, but Itzy felt his grip on her hand tighten.

  “Wow—where do you get one of those?” Itzy asked.

  The blade had reached its apex, and Ava steadied herself, staring up at the massive guillotine. She turned to Itzy and Luc, her eyes wild. “As Marie Antoinette was led shackled onto the wooden scaffolding before all of Paris, she stood before the jeering crowd, her hair as wild as her eyes were calm. Her last words were a promise. ‘Je reviendrai,’” she said.

  I’ll be back, Itzy thought.

  “Don’t blink,” Ava warned.

  And in an instant, it was over. In a straw basket at Itzy’s feet lay the severed cabbage, neatly sliced in two. When she bent down to retrieve it, she noticed the basket was stained with something dark and rust-colored.

  “The demon’s head is cleaved from its host, dispatching the fiend back to the Underworld. The invention of the guillotine was a turning point in the hunt for demons. Our salvation.”

  “Not very practical, is it?” Itzy whispered to Luc.

  “The blade that killed Marie Antoinette that day in the Place de Grève has never been found,” Ava said. “All of Paris shook, it was said, as the demon was sent back to Hell. It rained ash and bone dust for thirteen days.”

  Looking up at Luc, Itzy saw a tear in the corner of his eye.

  30

  Itzy removed the DO NOT DISTURB sign from her aunt’s doorknob, shouldering her Leica.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got it from here,” she said, turning to Luc.

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather see you safely inside,” Luc answered.

  “I saw him leave, Luc,” Itzy sighed. She regretted telling him and Ava about the doctor now. She was dead tired and her ankle ached.

  Itzy stared up at him, annoyed. Luc stared back at her.

  “Oh, all right then,” she snapped. She took the key from her pocket and unlocked the door—holding it open in a grand gesture for him to pass.

  “The doctor is not to be trusted,” Luc said.

  “No kidding,” Itzy mumbled.

  “Whew—mind if I open a window?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Itzy followed him into the living room and frowned.

  “Flies,” he said, waving his hand in front of his eyes.

  Itzy looked around. Flies were circling sluggishly in the center of the room. A few were large, like horseflies, angry and chaotic. Luc threw open the balcony doors, dispelling them.

  “Where are they coming from?” Itzy asked, but Luc had disappeared down the hall toward her aunt’s rooms.

  Itzy wandered after him along the hall. It was crowded with art and lit from above. A framed black-and-white photograph caught her eye. It was a candid photo of a younger Aunt Maude sitting at an outdoor table in a sun-drenched garden. The photographer had apparently interrupted Maude’s breakfast, which sat half-eaten on a plate before her, but instead of wearing her habitual mask of irritation, her aunt was laughing—staring brazenly into the camera—her reading glasses askew atop her head. This, however,
was the least startling thing about the photograph. For the garden, Itzy recognized, was her parents’ garden in Brittany. And sitting beside her aunt, fingers sticky with jam, was a child.

  Itzy wracked her brain for a memory of that day, but there was none.

  “Let me take a look at that ankle,” Luc called, his voice reaching her from the master bath. Itzy tore herself away from the image of herself as a young girl.

  “How did you know about my ankle?” Itzy asked.

  Luc leaned against a marble-topped sink, dark bottles of iodine and ointments arranged beside him from the medicine cabinet.

  “The whole hotel knows about your ankle, Itzy,” he said, a slight smirk evident at the corner of his mouth.

  She sat beside him on a plush pouf of a stool and allowed her ankle to be examined. She watched his exquisite face as he gently lifted up her leg, resting it on his thigh. As he pulled her faded jeans up, Itzy cringed. The dull, pulsing pain grew sharper as he pressed his fingers upon it. Looking up at her sharply, he appeared about to scold her, but seeing the look of pain upon her face, he softened.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, looking away.

  “This might sting a bit.”

  “Is that what they told Marie Antoinette?”

  Luc looked at her sharply.

  “Sorry. Seems like a sore spot of yours. What did Ava mean when she said you invited the queen to the Carlyle?”

  Luc was silent.

  Vaguely, she heard a bottle open, the rip of a bandage. As Luc busied himself tending to the dog bite, her eyes wandered over the contents of her aunt’s bathroom. Bottles of perfume and cotton swabs were lined up along a glass shelf; an old newspaper was yellowing on a nearby counter. Her body tensed as a searing pain shot up her leg, and she bit her cheek to keep from crying out.

  She thought of the photograph in the hall, her aunt’s buoyant expression. The way her glasses sat askew upon her head, a moment of uncharacteristic abandon. Her father needed reading glasses, too. In fact, he never went anywhere without them.

  Itzy’s eyes returned to the counter.

  There, on top of the old paper, were her aunt’s reading glasses.

  31

  The phone was ringing again, its jarring bell insistent in the living room.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” Luc asked.

  Itzy dragged her eyes from the reading glasses and looked at him, distracted.

  “The phone. It could be important,” he urged.

  Itzy frowned. “It keeps doing that. I think it’s broken. When I answer, there’s nothing—just static,” she said.

  “It could be your father.”

  Luc was right. Itzy jumped to her feet, but her knee buckled from a sharp pain in her ankle. “I’m all right,” she said before Luc could ask. Still, she was grateful when he offered a shoulder, wrapping his arm around her waist, and she hopped like this to the bathroom’s extension. As she reached for the phone, she hesitated.

  “Hello?” she whispered. She listened for a moment. She shut her eyes—it sounded like wind from across the world.

  “It’s for you.” She held the phone out to Luc.

  “For me?” he asked, surprised.

  Itzy pushed the phone at him, and he slowly raised it to his ear. Itzy waited—they were standing very close, and his other arm was still wrapped around her, supporting her weight. She felt herself trembling. This close, Luc’s features were flawless. Breathless, she watched his lovely eyes as a vague frown flitted across his features. A few stray flies circled overhead.

  “No one’s there—” he said.

  “It’s your conscience calling,” Itzy explained.

  “My conscience?”

  “Yeah. It says it’s time you start telling me what’s going on around here.”

  Itzy took the phone from him, replacing it in the cradle.

  They stared at each other, close, and her stomach flipped over.

  “I don’t have a conscience,” he whispered.

  “Just as I thought,” Itzy replied.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. An adorable crinkle appeared on his brow.

  “Try me.”

  Luc was thoughtful. “I don’t have a conscience, Itzy, because a conscience is something intrinsically human.”

  “What are you saying—you’re not human?”

  Luc held her glare, unblinking. His lips pouted and his cheekbones cut out at angles. But his eyes—the image of her own self reflected back in the golden spheres. Itzy suddenly felt light-headed. Her eyes strayed to the window, where she noticed many more flies were wandering between the glass panes, trapped.

  “You’re a demon, too?” she whispered.

  A tragic look passed over Luc’s face. “Itzy, I am no demon.”

  They were so close she could feel his breath.

  Not demon, not human. Where does that leave us?

  She held her breath, willing him to kiss her again.

  The moment did not come. The phone had commenced its jarring ringing again.

  “Let’s get you to bed,” Luc said, ignoring the phone this time.

  Without waiting for an answer, he carried her, cradled in his arms, down the hall to the Blue Room.

  “We’ll talk about this tomorrow,” he whispered, covering her gently with the thin wool blanket. He leaned down over her, concerned, brushing a lock of hair from her cheek.

  “I never thanked you for that flower,” he whispered in her ear. It was a miracle she could hear it over the thudding of her heart.

  Far off, the elevator clanged, the vents rumbled. Luc sat on the edge of her bed with his hand in hers until she fell asleep.

  When she awoke a few hours later, he was gone.

  32

  What had woken her? She struggled to remember. Perhaps it was a dream. She had the vague impression of something slipping away from her, something important. Alone, Itzy was staring at the powder blue ceiling, a phrase running through her head.

  The End of Days is nigh.

  She tried to fall asleep again, but the memory of the hairy creature from the basement kept returning to her. That, and the awful noises now coming from her closet.

  At first, she thought it was her imagination, her utter exhaustion. Her ears strained to hear it again: a faint scratching from somewhere deep inside the closet—erratic, feverish. At times it seemed muffled, to disappear altogether, only to return with new vigor, closer. At the door.

  She sat up, putting her feet on the floor, ignoring the closet.

  She would get some milk—that would help her sleep. When she was little, this was exactly what her father would do for her. As she headed for the door, the strange scratching from the closet grew more desperate, but she did not look back.

  My father went to Paris to find the Gates of Hell, she thought. No wonder he didn’t take me.

  In the small kitchen, she looked for a glass, but, strangely, none could be found. Each cabinet she opened was filled with one thing: cans—all bloated and dented. A hoard of putrid food.

  She opened the refrigerator but instantly thought better of it. Obviously, her aunt had not cleaned it out before leaving. Still, a bottle of milk caught her eye, and she leaned in, reaching for it. This was a mistake, she saw. The stench was appalling. The bottle indeed once contained milk, but now was host to a curdled mass of writhing maggots. Black flies dotted the mixture, drowning in the foul liquid.

  Itzy struggled not to gag, replacing the entire thing upon the shelf and slamming the refrigerator door.

  The phone was ringing again, and a flash of hot anger coursed through her.

  She raced into the living room and was relieved to see Luc had left the lights on for her. She picked up the receiver and slammed it down again, waiting. In the satisfying silence that followed, Itzy had an idea. She picked up the phone again, stabbing one of the illuminated buttons.

  “Room service?” she asked.

  “Good evening, Miss Nash,” came the m
elodious voice.

  “I’d like some warm milk, please. With a little vanilla, if you have it.”

  “Very good. Will that be all, Miss Nash?”

  Itzy paused, thinking of the interrupted picnic with Johnny in the stockroom. “Actually, no. I’d like some dessert.”

  “A wonderful idea. What would you like?”

  Itzy narrowed her eyes. “One of everything.” She waited, wondering if this would be met with any disagreement.

  “Excellent, Miss Nash. Will that be all?”

  “No—there’s something else.” She looked around the living room. “I need something for these flies.” She held her breath. Surely this was pushing her luck.

  “Most certainly, Miss Nash,” the voice said. “I have just the thing.”

  33

  Itzy sat on her hands on a toile couch. The delicate fabric was patterned with a detail of huntsmen in a forest. One carried a torch, she saw—another a two-sided ax. She peered at it closer. Two children were running, eyes wide with terror.

  She moved to a wooden straight-back chair.

  The flies here had quieted, congregating in the corners and the walls. Occasionally a disagreement would break out, and they would buzz in tight, angry knots, but Itzy noticed a watchful calm would soon settle upon them, as though they were waiting for something.

  “That’s right,” she said to the buzzing flies. “I ordered you up something special.”

  The doorbell rang, and Itzy jumped to her feet, and winced as pain shot through her ankle. She hobbled to the small foyer and threw open the door to the suite.

  A lone figure stood before her, the crook of his cane draped over his forearm, a black satchel at his side.

  “Good evening, Miss Nash,” Dr. Jenkins said, a thin smile curling his lips up at the corners.

  Itzy scanned the empty hall behind him desperately. The doctor reached out his arm, holding the door.

  “Might I come in?” he asked.

  Itzy stared at the doctor, dismayed.

  “I’d like to take a look at your ankle,” he continued. “I believe you have injured it.”