“That would be unlikely.” He cocked his head. “Though you do have that potential in you, Tamara. Big does not matter. Small does not matter. Conviction is all that matters. You know this, I think. Mr. Chang trained you well.”
My jaw dropped. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s go see Victor, shall we? Before we find out what I might be capable of.”
Lesson 46: Check your blind spot.
22
Our footsteps echoed as I followed Vlad through the parking garage. It was by far the quietest place I’d been in New York City. The garage looked unremarkable at first and too dark to make out much more than the shapes of cars. I caught rich odors of grease and fuel.
Closer to the elevator, where the light was better, I could see the garage contained a collection of vehicles. Large trucks and a couple of Land Rovers shone under spotlights. Several nondescript automobiles lined a far wall. Occupying a place of honor under bright gallery lights, a couple of shiny motorcycles sat together with helmets hanging from their handlebars. Beyond them, in the darkness, I could just make out the silhouette of a good sized boat. “If I remember correctly, you’re missing a dinosaur replica and a huge penny.”
“I beg your pardon?” Vlad said.
“This is the Batcave, right?”
“It is not.”
I shrugged. “My boyfriend was into comics. I’m guessing you aren’t.”
“I am not.”
I recognized Victor’s white limo. It sat between two more limousines, one black and the other silver. Everything was shiny.
Far off to my left, I saw the car collection’s crowning glory. It was one of those sports cars that are slung so low, they look like potholes could destroy them. It shone under spotlights. Brad would have loved those cars. He loved machinery of all sorts. (Then it occurred to me that, in the end, machinery had not loved him back.)
Vlad pushed the button for the elevator, a narrow cylinder made of ornate brass. I asked him if his boss planned on having a yard sale soon.
Vlad studied my face for a moment and said, “I suspect you are a leetle funny.”
“Just a leetle,” I replied.
Vlad and I squeezed into the little elevator and I could smell his aftershave. It was too heavy and reminded me of the few cabs I’d been in.
I pressed against the wall of the elevator car. I wanted to make sure I didn’t accidentally touch Vlad’s hand and get another impromptu bullshit reading.
As the elevator rattled and shimmied up one floor, I thought of Brad shaving. When he was fresh from the shower, his cheeks were smooth as a baby’s. I loved to hug him tight and kiss his chin and smell that faint scent.
Brad bought his shaving cream in a cheap can from the Dollar Holler. Lime. When I thought of Brad, I could almost smell the lime. I made a mental note to buy myself a cheap can of shaving cream, just for the soft and safe memories.
Then I looked up into Vlad’s eyes and made up Lesson 47.
Lesson 47: when you’re in the presence of someone who might be a real mind reader, try to do math equations. Dividing by seven is good. Fractions are helpful. Failing that, you might try thinking of dead kittens. Try to think of anything else so you don’t think about sex.
Which you will. Bad news: No matter how much math you do, when you stand next to a clairvoyant and you know it, your mind goes to what you don’t want them to know. Prepare to be embarrassed and hope they can be discreet.
From the outside, the building had looked like an anonymous hulk. The floor above the garage was not just a dark warehouse. The second floor reminded me of the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
I had never stayed at the Waldorf, of course, but in my first days of exploring New York, I had walked into the lobby. I’d hoped to see the train car on the track beneath the hotel. Presidents had taken the secret trolley to the hotel for privacy and security. A tourist website reported that it was rumored the artist, Andy Warhol, had fabulous, drug-fueled parties down there.
It seemed too weird and specific a detail to be coy about. Did Warhol have parties on the secret train car beneath the Waldorf Astoria or not?
I never found out for sure. The lobby looked too luxurious and the patrons had the air of wealth and privilege. The place was too rich for me to breathe the air. I walked in, saw the huge chandelier and turned around immediately, feeling too out of place and undeserving to stand around gawking at fancy marble columns.
I’d wanted to feel like a real New Yorker but, at the Waldorf, I felt like I was naked except for being draped in Iowa’s state flag. I thought the concierge might check to make sure I was wearing shoes. I didn’t belong at the Waldorf Astoria and I was sure everyone knew it. As I followed Vlad through the warehouse’s second floor, I felt like I was back in the lobby of the Waldorf.
I mentioned that, to appear cool, you should look bored. Don’t let your jaw go slack or allow your eyes to widen. Look like nothing can surprise or impress you. I didn’t manage it that night, but maybe you could.
The place was divided into vast, dark rooms. (The word room seemed too small a word for what I witnessed.) I passed a music room that seemed to house two of every musical instrument. A Noah’s Ark for brass, percussion and woodwinds, it was as if they stood ready to fornicate to repopulate the Earth if all other instruments were carried away in a flood.
Several rooms were stacked and packed from the floor to the high ceilings with cardboard boxes. I glimpsed markings on the sides of the cartons that read: MREs.
Farther down the corridor was a gymnasium. A room to the left was filled with weights, treadmills and gymnastic equipment. The training mat took up the dimensions of a tennis court, four times the size of Mr. Chang’s dojang back in Medicament.
To the right stood another room dedicated to swords. Vlad paused and turned on a light. Three spotlights high in the ceiling lit the polished hardwood floor in broad, glowing circles. One wall was decorated with swords of many shapes and sizes. There were spears and knives, too. “The Blade Room,” Vlad said. “Perhaps the most important room for you.”
“I’ve never touched a real sword with an edge,” I said. “Just kendo and wooden practice swords.”
“My favorite is the pata.” Vlad propped his umbrella by the door and walked to a rack. He pulled out a short sword. It did not have a hilt. Vlad put his hand into the handle and a metal sheath protected his hand and wrist.
“The pata is a gauntlet sword,” Vlad explained. “It is an Indian invention, traditionally used in pairs, one for each hand.”
The light from the Blade Room leaked across the corridor. Dueling pistols hung crossed at the barrels on the wall at the gun room’s entrance. That was quaint. Then I spotted the display of rifles and automatic weapons. This was not a museum collection. Decorated, array and display weren’t the right words. This was a fortress and that was an arsenal.
“This building is a storehouse for many supplies,” Vlad said. “The complex is four buildings in all. Together, we call these warehouses the Keep. They form a square and take up the block.”
“How long has it taken Victor to put this together?”
“Several lives and his lifetime.”
“What do you mean, ‘several lives?’ Do you mean, like, past lives?”
“Heh. No.”
I felt the strong suspicion that Vlad might be incapable of lying. However, in his obsession for truth telling, condescension crept into his voice, too. He seemed immune to my dirty looks, blissfully unaware of his ability to offend.
As we climbed a spiral staircase, he continued, “Things cost money. Some things cost more than money. On the top floor, there are objects that hold power from a long time ago. It costs lives to dig things up that are buried very deep down. When these items see sunlight and moonlight again, there are people who would kill to get those things.”
“Thanks for the tour,” I said, “but I’m in a hurry to talk to Victor. There’s a doctor in Queens who’s going to get away if we d
on’t do something about it. He has done terrible things.”
Vlad shook his huge head. “Terrible. It is much easier to find the energy of evil after it has taken life than to divine its purpose before it strikes. Evil is always striking, a hammer to an anvil, but we know not where the blows will next fall.”
“Let’s just call the cops. An anonymous tip.”
“Victor will have other ideas.”
“Why?”
“Because he is the smartest of us.”
The hallways on the third floor were narrow and all the doors were closed. The light was just as dim and the air was cold. A space as vast as the Keep seemed impossible to heat.
Vlad seemed to know his way through the maze, but I couldn’t understand how. I just followed his broad back and hoped he could find his way while I pulled out my phone.
Soon, the hallway ahead brightened. When I looked up from my cell, we were on a narrow metal catwalk high above another large space. We had crossed the boundary from one warehouse into a connecting warehouse.
As dark as the first warehouse had been, this space was very bright and warm. The floor below us was part farm, part jungle. Several workers wearing what looked like Hazmat suits worked in a glass greenhouse. All the light was artificial and I had to shield my eyes.
“What is this place? Are you growing plants for drugs or something?”
“Some of the plants are medicinal. Most are for food. This is the Greenhouse.”
“Why?”
“Contingency plans. Enough to feed a small army. I can tell the truth about the past and the present. Sadly, the future is not my specialty. We hope we won’t need all these…” — he waved his hand in a vague way that suggested to me he had no interest in the project below.
“No roses down there,” he said. “No room! I wish there was room for roses. If the end comes, I want roses. I want light pink roses.”
I looked at him skeptically. “Pink? For a big bruiser like you?”
“Pink roses represent admiration, gentleness, sweetness and joy.”
“Is that you?”
“I would like it to be me,” he said. “Many of the others in the Choir, all they can think of is Death. They would surround themselves with bouquets of black roses. The black rose is the death rose. Death is our business, but we are still alive. We should remember and enjoy.”
Knowing he would tell the truth, I asked Vlad what rose he would recommend for me.
He answered without hesitation. “For you? I would give a dark red rose. Dark red roses convey unconscious beauty. There is time enough for black roses later.”
I don’t think Vlad meant to creep me out, but that, “unconscious beauty” thing made me self-conscious. The “black roses later,” remark sounded pretty ominous, too.
When we left the catwalk I gave one last glance behind me. The Keep’s contents suggested the Choir Invisible — whatever they were up to — expected a war. The workings of the Greenhouse somehow scared me more. Growing food in secret in the middle of New York City was too Bond villain for me.
Sam spoke of the apocalypse and the concept obviously terrified her. I wondered if Victor, with his vast stores, would welcome the end of the world as we know it (whatever form the end might take). If the end came, Victor could be a king.
Lesson 48: Lots of people dream of the apocalypse. They ache for it but they don’t understand the totality of their fondest wish. They imagine remaking the world according to their own rules (except everyone wants their own rules.) They imagine the sweet pleasures of shooting guns all day at zombies that don’t shoot back. Or maybe they predict they will shoot up to heaven while they mock the boss they hate for being trapped among the damned.
Everybody loves escapism, but when Armageddon really hits, no one escapes. Especially not people like you and me.
23
The third building on the tour was a vast windowless library. Tall wooden shelves bowed under the weight of thick, old books.
“You like?” Vlad asked.
“Haven’t you people ever heard of a kindle or an iPad? It would save a lot of trees.”
“These books are not for sale anywhere. They are the fables and legends and myths and forgotten religious texts of history. We are working on putting them all online for faster reference. Victor believes the secrets to winning the war might be hidden here somewhere, perhaps in a leather scroll of ancient spells, crumbling and cracking.” Vlad shrugged. “Most of it is probably a bunch of bullshit.”
“Boolsheet,” I echoed Vlad. “Dude, I love the way you express yourself.”
He glanced my way. “I might be offended, thinking you are mocking me. However, I can see when you are telling the truth. I amuse you. I am pleased.”
“Yes. You’re Louis C.K. and Chris Rock put together.”
“Now you are being disingenuous, but in a lighthearted manner. I am not offended. I prefer Jon Stewart. He has an appreciation for the absurd and he is always trying to tell the truth as he sees it.”
As we came to the center of the library, the longest table I’d ever seen stretched back into the library’s gloom. It was built of dark wood and surrounded by leather chairs.
All but two chairs were empty. An Asian guy a little younger than me wearing wireless headphones tapped furiously at his laptop. He appeared to be so engrossed in whatever he was doing, he didn’t look up.
I didn’t pay the computer guy too much attention because of the ghost who sat across from him. Some ghosts can fool you. This one was obviously a misty wistful. He was an old man with a long white braid that reached to his waist. He appeared to be sleeping. I noticed those details later. The first thing I noticed was that I could see the chair through him. I hadn’t seen so transparent a ghost before. His body was like a thin fog captured in a man-shaped glass mold.
Lesson 49: When you see something you haven’t seen before and it’s really weird and disturbing, your brain drops out for a moment, like a slipped gear. You blank out and it takes a minute to adjust.
All those movies where people meet an alien for the first time and they hardly react? Yeah, that’s a bunch of crap. When the laws of the universe get rewritten before your eyes, take a minute to breathe deeply, down into your belly so you don’t hyperventilate.
When the unexpected happens and it’s so unexpected that it’s beyond my capacity to be cool, sometimes it helps me to say, “This is really happening.”
Of course, the rules of the universe were not rewritten before my eyes. The curtain was pulled back on how it really is.
“This is really happening,” I said.
Imagine if your high school homeroom class suddenly reached up and all their faces were masks. Now imagine they all pulled their masks off at once and — pop, pop! — two rabbit ears emerged on each head and their faces were all rabbit faces with little pink bunny noses twitching. See that? Feel that? The shock of physics and facts changing fast is a little like that.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” That was Victor. He must have been reading my face because, like I said, my mind was a blank for a few seconds.
“Hamlet,” I said. “That’s Hamlet.” When the earth turns sideways, hold on to the anchors you trust to right yourself.
Victor came toward me, his arms out for a hug. “Another daughter joins the Choir.”
I stiffened, but instead of hugging me, he took me by the shoulders and gave me a brisk, fatherly kiss on each cheek. Someday I hope to take the gesture gracefully. It’s one of those European customs which will take this girl from rural Iowa a few years to get used to.
He stepped back and looked me up and down. “So, are you ready for your orientation? Do you know the origin of the term, the Choir Invisible?”
“It’s from a George Eliot poem. It means ‘the dead.’”
Victor’s eyes widened in surprise.
“You ruined his, ‘Welcome to the War’ speech,” Vlad said.
; “Vlad.” Victor gave the big guy a look that meant shut up.
“Pity,” Vlad said. “It is a good speech.”
“I took it for granted that Iowa schools teach Shakespeare,” Victor said. “I didn’t know your poetics education would be so extensive.”
“It’s not.” I held up my cell phone. “I checked my auxiliary brain. The Choir Invisible was either George Eliot or a reference to a Monty Python sketch. I took a shot.”
Victor burst out laughing and the guy on the computer glanced up from his screen. His gaze slid over me as he checked me out. When he caught my look, he reddened and went back to his screen.
“So?” I asked. “Why George Eliot? Was he like you? A part-time poet and founder of a secret paramilitary organization for his day job?”
Victor grinned wider. “I guess you only had time to scan your google search. George Eliot was the pen name for a wonderful English novelist. Her real name was Mary Ann Evans.”
“Okay. Why the Choir Invisible, though? For your…er…organization’s name, I mean.”
“An excellent question that gets to the root of our most honorable quest to save humanity.”
“That’s a line from the speech,” Vlad whispered in my ear.
“The Choir Invisible,” Victor continued, “does not simply mean, ‘the dead.’ When the author refers to the Choir Invisible, she speaks of living on past death through her words and deeds. The poem is a plea to be counted among,” he quoted, “‘those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence.’”
“So she doesn’t mean immortality like living forever? Like the way most people want it?”
“There are several kinds of immortality,” Victor said. “If you aren’t lucky enough to have been born a god, the next best is to live on through your benevolent actions. Each member of the Choir Invisible protects the secret of the Unseen and the structural integrity of the walls between worlds. If we live forever, it is likely only as heroes.”
“Also from the speech,” Vlad whispered to me.
“Got it, Vlad.”
The Haunting Lessons: 1, 2, 3, 4, I Declare a Demon War (The Ghosts & Demons Series) Page 11