by Amber Kizer
“Sure.” I wasn’t convinced the organizational system worked.
Nelli switched on the television. “Will it bother you if we watch race practice? Uncle Gus got me hooked when I was a kid.”
“No, it’s fine.” I didn’t realize that the world revolved around a left-turn axis until the calendar hit May and the semis hauled in cars. Snazzy buses brought in teams and drivers. Everything in town became about the Indianapolis 500 race. Black and white. With a teasing smile, I asked, “So, how is Bales?”
Nelli’s blush started in blotchy red at her collarbones and moved north up to her plump cheeks. “He’s amazing.”
“I think he likes you. A lot.” I picked up another pile. Patient. Patient. Kid.
“I like him. I think I love him.” Nelli ducked her head and focused intently. “But I need to see this through. Make it right before I can move on.” She waved her hand.
“Nelli, you know you can’t make it right, don’t you?” I looked around the room. “There’s no logic to Nocti evil. They have no boundaries. You didn’t do this.”
“I know, but my office should have caught on sooner. Forty years, Meridian. Forty!”
“And you’ve worked there how long?”
“Four.”
“Uh-huh. And you’ve known about us for three months? You didn’t let kids go there, right? Didn’t send the elderly there?”
She put down a stack and looked at me squarely, seriously. “I don’t want to alarm you. But there is no other explanation for all of this.” She spread her hands to encompass the room.
“For goodness’ sake, what are you talking about?” I half expected the CIA to come storming in.
“There had to be someone in the children’s services office who knew. Someone on the inside who helped. Maybe more than one person. This is a long line of cases.”
I nodded. “It makes sense. Maybe several? This is a lot of years of no one noticing, which means they were really good at hiding.”
“Or there were lots of people in on it and they didn’t have to hide.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe that most people would let this go on. Do you?” Watching how torn up Nelli was about this abuse of power, I couldn’t imagine the majority of people feeling differently.
“You can’t imagine the things I’ve seen. People in my job have to let a lot of things that bother us go. If we don’t add up the little bits and take stock occasionally? Refocus our energies? I can see blind eyes being turned.”
“That’s sad.”
“Sad is my job on a daily basis. It’s not the cartoon channel.”
I nodded. “But you make a difference, right?”
“Not to any of these kids.” Nelli spread her arms wide and brushed the tops of the piles with her fingertips.
“You can’t think of it that way.” I shook my head.
“Hard not to.”
“So who helped the Nocti? Do you have any theories?”
“I don’t know. I need to dig, but I wanted to make sure you were okay with me pursuing it.”
It could be dangerous. Tens’s voice echoed in my head. He’d tell her no.
“That’s standard too. Hard to take children away from a drug dealer and not see a gun or two.”
I shuddered. “Delightful.”
“Nah, mostly it’s boring paperwork.” She smiled.
I’m not sure I believed her, but maybe she needed me to. “Bales has your back, right?”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know everything. Not the supernatural stuff, not about you or the Nocti.”
“Does he love you?” I see it in his eyes when he thinks you’re not watching, but do you know?
“Maybe.”
“Then we’ll need to tell him. So he knows what he’s up against. It’s not fair to keep him in the dark.”
“You’d let me share?” Nelli’s eyes watered.
“Of course.” At this point, we needed all hands on deck. Especially if Ms. Asura had an alliance of her own and was moving toward us again. “You don’t have to do this—to try to unravel who the Nocti are or figure out which children were Fenestra. You can give us the papers and we can take over.”
“This is my job.” She shook her head. “Besides, it’s the moral right. My department is there to rescue kids; someone failed them, so now it’s my turn to see it through. But I don’t know who to trust.”
“Let’s start with a list. Who’s been in the office longest?”
For the next several hours, we made a list of everyone who was in Nelli’s department that she knew and what she knew about them. We agreed she’d tell Bales, and if we needed to have more of a discussion, we would.
When her cell rang, it was her boss. “Okay, yes. A funeral? That’s a good idea. Yes, okay, I’ll let you know. I’ll be down shortly.”
While Nelli talked, I watched cars on the TV turn around the track at furious speeds. One at a time, the cars spun; then the screen filled with men and women wearing headsets and jumpsuits directing the action. There were bright colors, lots of sponsor names, and logos. But other than recognizing a few of those, I really had no idea what I was watching. This is a sport?
“Howie’s cremains are ready for me to pick up. Since we aren’t sure who he is, no one can find his relatives. Should we hold a funeral for him?”
“Something official?” The idea of standing in for a family that loved him and would remember him pleased me. “We could do it ourselves in Auntie’s plot.”
“That’s not technically legal.”
“Not like she’s there. Who’s going to know?” I asked. I glanced at the clock as Tens drove down the driveway. “Nelli, try not to worry so much, okay? We’re going to do right by the kids—we will, but it might take us a while.”
She hugged me goodbye, already on the phone with Tony to see if he could officiate Howie’s burial.
CHAPTER 15
Juliet
With the portfolio safely stashed in my closet and Fara sleeping in the hall, I spent the predawn hours tossing and turning. I relived my reunion with Kirian over and over again, then watched him die at Ms. Asura’s hands, unable to save him. When we’d returned to the glen from rescuing the littlies, his body was gone. Could she be telling the truth? Was he not really dead? Can he be alive and still appear at the window? Logic told me no, but my heart wanted to insist on the impossible.
The aromas of frying dough and percolating coffee drifted through the cracks of my window and up through the floor. I stretched, my injured foot pinned down by a warm furry stomach, with Custos draped across the foot of my bed. Mini curled over the top of my head like a crown.
I gingerly placed my feet on the carpet and realized the cut was much better. Custos whined. Magic?
“Thanks, guys, it doesn’t hurt so much.” I petted her head and moved toward the window to inhale the fresh scents of early morning.
I checked out the street below. We were in the dawn time when the earth is lit with layers of maroon light like a red onion. I turned and saw the shadow of a man, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, his arms and legs crossed as he leaned against the brick building across the street. Watching. Looking up at me. It seemed as though he stared up at me for a moment before disappearing out of my sight. I hurried toward my bedroom door and flung it open.
Fara tumbled in. Wide awake, she bounced up, reaching inside her boot to pull a knife free while speaking a torrent. When I didn’t understand her, she repeated her question in English. “What happening?”
“What are you doing?” I glanced down and saw the pallet she’d made with her bags and a knitted blanket.
“You okay? Where you going?” She moved around my bedroom, checking the corners, behind things.
Without thinking, I answered honestly, “There was a man across the street. He was staring up here.”
She didn’t wait for me to finish my thoughts; instead she raced downstairs and outside the house, the chains off her neck and in her other hand. Custos bounde
d after her. I ran back to my window in time to see her run down the alley and into the shadows.
Don’t get hurt. Please come back. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.
I don’t know how long I waited for her to return, but Tony kept snoring in his bedroom. I hadn’t heard his five a.m. alarm go off yet.
“Anything?” I asked as she came back inside. Thank goodness you’re okay. If anything happened to you because of me—
She shook her head. “Tell me what you saw.”
“A man, athletic frame, taller than me maybe. He had a baseball cap on, pulled low.”
“Any writing, symbols, or anything?”
He leaned like he’d been there awhile. I squinted, trying to remember. “Maybe white squiggles, the letter z or something. I don’t know.” I blew out a frustrated breath. “Was it Nocti?”
“Maybe, but they don’t usually watch; they kill. Unless there’s a plan we don’t know about. I’ll have to think about it, speak with Tens.”
My stomach flipped. “Do you have to talk to Tens? I really don’t want Meridian to know I overreacted. Again.”
“He’ll keep quiet.” She pursed her lips.
I scanned the pile by my door. “What were you doing sleeping in the hall?”
“My job.”
I stared at her quizzically. “How is that?”
“They have to get past me to get to you. How are you going to sleep well wondering if you’re … What’s the word for weakened?”
“Vulnerable?”
“Yes, that’s it.” She nodded, repeating the word several more times.
“Oh.” I’d never had anyone sleep between me and danger before. I was always the one sleeping at the dragon’s mouth to protect the littlies from punishment at DG. I protected, not the other way around.
“You think you can go back to sleep now?”
“No.” I shook my head. I need to bake. “You can tell me more about Iran and your family.”
She shrugged and followed me into the kitchen. We spoke of everything and nothing and long minutes stretched when we didn’t need to talk at all.
Several hours later, Tony joked, “I’m living with a couple of mice—you two are so quiet.”
Fara and I didn’t mention he’d slept through the excitement as he dug into his four-cheese omelet, cinnamon rolls, and hash browns.
“Sorry.” I knew he wanted me to chatter incessantly like the girls I watched shopping in the streets below us, but keeping to myself was more than habit; it saved me beatings. Hard to break that reinforcement. I nibbled on sourdough toast and marmalade preserves.
“My English is no good.” Fara smiled at him with a teasing glint and popped a piece of melon into her mouth.
Tony kissed us both on our foreheads and held up the cell phone. “You call me anytime with anything, okay? Anything at all.”
“We’ll be fine. We’re going to Nelli’s to sort files.” And maybe find out more about my parents. “Then we’ll see you at the cemetery for the boy’s funeral,” I said.
“Still. Call,” Tony said as he slipped out the door.
“He is very worry about you.”
I didn’t know how to reply, so I evaded with a question of my own. I ran soapy water in the sink. “What do you usually eat for breakfast?” I asked Fara. Whether someone picked leftover pizza, ice cream, or fruit, these choices told me everything. I knew people by what they put in their mouths. I needed to know her.
She shrugged. “What-even.”
“Whatever?” I asked.
She dipped her hands into the water to wash with a noncommittal shrug.
Frustrated, I accused Fara. “I don’t think your English is as bad as you want me to think it is. It’s a convenient excuse so you can listen to me and not have to answer my questions or so you can change the conversation easily.”
“Uh, maybe,” she said, her eyes cast down.
“See. How can we be friends if you lie to me?” Let alone have the intimate partnership Fenestra and Protectors need. That I watch Meridian and Tens have every single day.
“I’m not lying. You speak fast and use words I don’t always know.” Fara blanched.
“All the time?” I wanted to splash water at her.
“No?” She stopped.
“How. Slow. Do. I. Need. To. Talk?” I asked sarcastically.
She glared at me, her skin shades of cinnamon and cocoa powder, her eyes bittersweet chocolate drops.
“That’s a universal expression.” I wiped the omelet pan until the towel grew hot in my hands under the friction.
“You’re being silly,” she said. “What I eat? How important is that?”
“You’re being arrogant.” Food was one way I knew how to categorize people.
“Why?” She stopped, frowning.
“Because you waltzed in like I was having a party and you’re a few minutes late.” My life was hell on earth and where was she?
She tossed a dish into the sink, throwing soapsuds up. “I don’t—”
“Don’t. Don’t say you don’t understand.” I smacked the counter.
“I was going to say that I don’t intend to be arrogant. Do you think I wanted to wait? Don’t you think I asked about you? I knew where you lived, and I knew every lash of the belt and every casually thrown insult. I knew the moment they took you from the church, from Tony, the minute you were alone and scared. I came as fast as I could. No lie.”
I stopped. The fire in her eyes drained the anger in mine. “So tell me. Please?” I asked, deflated.
Fara gazed out the window as if she saw something very different than the streets of Carmel. “My baba, he didn’t care that I was a girl. I was supposed to be a boy. They think only boys can be one of them. But he believed my destiny was with you, with an Amordad. He knew to train me. To teach me. To be what I needed to be. His family hated this. They wouldn’t speak to him. They wanted him to apologize to Ahura Mazda. He wouldn’t. He said the Creators make no mistakes. And then he disappeared into the car of the secret police. Into the walls of a prison far from Qom.”
“What happened?” My heart beat in my chest so loud I thought she might hear it. Where is Qom and who is Ahura Mazda? Sometimes it wasn’t the wording Fara used; it was also the content that tripped me up.
She shivered. “They dumped his body in the dirt outside the prison. Called us traitors. Labeled our family unless we paid up and did what we were told. It wasn’t always this way in Iran.
“My mother remarried my uncle. He didn’t believe I could be one of the few. No girl is special! There was much discussion, negotiations behind closed doors. Everyone talked about me like I killed my father, like I brought this unholy upon us.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I’m a girl. That was reason enough. I talked to my baba about you before my tenth birthday. But no one else. They wouldn’t let me come to you. They wanted me to marry in my people. The boys … the boys are the Protectors, not the girls. We take care of them. We have more little babies to train. We do not go out and make war on Dark.” She set a clean plate in the drainer so hard it broke, but she didn’t notice.
“My soon-husband was twenty years older than me. He wasn’t a Protector, but my family had strong bloodlines and he was willing to teach me how to be a proper wife. Plus he had friends in the police. He wanted many sons. I was the third wife. The first two died in childbirth. There was no place for me in my uncle’s house. I had to marry at fourteen. Or …”
“Or?”
“Or run away and come to you myself.” She paused, drawing a deep breath.
“You ran away across the world? From Iran to Indiana?” My eyes closed at her words. So often I’d thought of running but was never strong enough. She did. For me.
“I knew your name. I felt your pain. Your humiliation. Your terror. And I could do nothing for you but pray. I prayed and I prayed. All the times I was supposed to be kneeling to learn how to be a good girl, I prayed the Creators would
send you an angel, to help you until I was strong enough to get away.”
“How did you?” Oh, Fara, I know this pain too.
“I hid in a caravan of medical supplies. I walked across the sand and hid. I worked, doing bad things, until I could pay for the container space on a ship to Canada. I snuck here to New York. I thought you were there. I thought New York was all there was of this country. Two cities—New York and Los Angeles. I was wrong.” She managed a smile.
I couldn’t let her stop. We’re more alike than I realized. I pressed, “And then what?”
“I found a homeless teen center. I stayed there. I walked streets. I learned there were other ways to make money than do what I did. I listened.” The look on her face told me Fara’s apparent arrogance was more a defensive façade than truth. I know that too.
“How old were you?” I asked, afraid to hear her answer. Too young. We’re always too young.
“I was fourteen when I left home. It took me five years to get here.” She whispered as if even saying the words broke her again.
“Five years?” So many days and hours of uncertainty, pain, and exploitation.
She’d arrived in a country alone and with nothing. Like me, only she didn’t have Tony looking for her.
“Too much time in the city of New York.” She shuddered. “It took many months to walk here. When I crossed into Indiana, I felt the presence of my father. I prayed for his help. I realized it wasn’t him, but another like us. Tens. I knew his name and Meridian’s as their van passed me on the road. I didn’t know he knew me, until he came back. He feels of family, like Baba.”
“Oh … I wondered how you’d known to come here.” I began to understand Fara’s journey and why it took her so long. My anger faded completely.
“In my dreams, I saw you near the sign of glass … Rumi’s? With a little boy.”
Bodie?
“I used the computer to see where this is. I tried to be here faster. I know you needed me.” There was an apology in her tone.
I nodded. “Just don’t act like you don’t understand what I’m saying, unless you really don’t, okay?”