“The view, can you recognize it?” Livia asked, turning her phone to Finnegan.
“Probably!” Finnegan peered in to a panoramic series of pictures on the smartphone. As Livia flipped from beach-scape, boat dock to high rises in the distance, she watched Finnegan’s face for a moment of recognition. The Jericho Beach bicycle and running trails wove around a collection of public parks, volleyball courts and overpriced restaurants capitalizing on the view. A series of statues, with bronze figures in various emotional states flickered on, then off the screen.
“Finnegan?” Livia asked.
“Those statues are by her door. Yes… I know what to do!” Finnegan yanked his cell phone out of his pocket and opened his Uber app. Once Ahmed’s blue Toyota ambled up, Finnegan yanked both Raynar and Livia’s hands along for their first Uber ride.
“Thanks, Ahmed!” Finnegan said, waving the idling driver off.
“Be swarthy, my friend! Call for Ahmed! Five stars!” Ahmed waved cheerfully off and trundled away for his next potential fair. Finnegan inhaled the sea air into his lungs and held it. Turning this way and that, he clucked his tongue and moseyed off toward the towering condominium, where Delilah and her daughter lived.
“Don’t know why I’ve been strapped to my Pub all these years, a breath of sea air and a couple of good applications on my telephone and I’m doing as fine as a Georgia peach at harvest time.” The Leprechaun reached for the door handle and pulled.
Clunk.
Finnegan pulled.
Clunk.
The smirk descended from his face.
“Never had a door do this to me before. What kind of magic halts a door’s progress, eh?” Finnegan gazed at the slender gold handle, peering into the glass double door to the foyer inside. Livia giggled.
“Don’t let it get you down, Finn. Computer magic… it’s full of trickery.” She patted the leprechaun on the shoulder and pointed her finger up and down the line of names on the intercom panel.
“Aha!” She plunged her index finger into a button. A gong sounded.
“I can see why you keep her around now, eh Raynar?” Finnegan whispered.
“Liv’s like a freaking multitool. Even flies jets! It’s great!”
Livia cleared her throat and glared at Raynar and Finnegan with narrow eyelids.
“Hallo?” A voice warbled across the intercom. Livia nodded to the intercom. Ray shook his head. Finnegan shoved both hands in the air.
“Yes, hello! I’m Reverend Mauthisen’s personal secretary and he forgot to leave me the travel documents for his and Ms. Micheva’s trip. May I pop up and grab a photocopy, please?”
Livia set her hand to her hip, shaking her head at the two men whose mouths tied their tongues in knots. The voice on the other side of the line mumbled, moaned and then cleared her throat.
“Ma’am did not tell me anyone would come today.”
“Yes, I know. They’re Africa and I can’t get the Reverend’s personal phone line. Please, do be a dear, one girl to another.”
The line went dead. A buzz filled the air around the box and Livia swung the door open.
“Gentlemen, after you.” Livia swept her hands in a tight curtsey, waiting for the men to traipse into the foyer.
“See? Multitool.” Raynar grinned.
“Useless. You’re all useless.” Livia groaned, as the elevator doors closed around them.
At the end of the hall, Delilah’s door hung as thick and wide as a drawbridge sealing a castle shut. Finnegan and Raynar stood in front of it, feet exactly thirteen inches from the door jamb. No knob graced the metal door, but a pull-handle rested in the recess of the brightly coloured affair. Finnegan shoved his hands in his pockets.
He smelled the ochre and soot of iron. Raynar puffed up his chest, reaching for the door, then pulling his hand back. Livia leaned against the wall beside the door, hands around her chest.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
Both men shook their heads.
“How are we going to get in if no one will open the door?”
“You do it.” Raynar pleaded.
“Me?! Boys, please! What’s wrong with you two. Finnegan’s face is whiter than the whole of Ireland.”
“Gypsy magic. The flat’s rife with it. Can’t you smell it?” Finnegan grunted, buttoning his peacoat all the way up.
Livia sniffed at the air.
“All I smell is the scent of cowardice and laundry detergent.”
“I can’t touch that door.” Raynar said.
“You’re gonna have to do it for us, sweetness.”
Livia cocked her head to the side. A thin cloak had been thrown off her lover’s face and gave her a vision of his mask-less inner demons. She peered at the door, inspecting it by inches as if to divine the lay lines and curse words used to incite a riotous fear inside the two men.
Livia knocked. “Hello! It’s me! From the intercom!”
She pressed her ear near the door and shut her eyes. Rustling feet padded softly within, frames of music and the muffled wind of a popcorn maker wafted in the penthouse flat. Livia stepped back as Delilah’s domestic Marcy pulled aside the door. Marcy’s cheeks flushed with a rosy pink, which nearly matched the fluffy pink of a bathrobe she’d wrapped around herself. Livia smirked as she saw the large gold embroidered ‘D’ upon its’ wide, luxurious lapel.
“One girl to another?” Marcy asked, weaving from slippered foot to foot. Livia smiled and nodded.
“When the cat’s away, it’s our turn to enjoy ourselves. She’ll hear nothing from me. Ooo, do I detect the scent of lavender bath water? What a treat!”
Marcy moved aside. The men made no move to enter. She looked them up and down, and turned back to Livia, who stood in the tidy flat’s foyer.
“I can take it from here, Marcy. You go enjoy your bath. The popcorn waits for no woman! I’ll close up when we leave.”
Marcy grinned and sauntered off to grab her popcorn, and wine glass, before popping off to Delilah’s own bathroom, where the sound of gurgling water trickled to the ear.
“Are you still afraid, gentlemen?” Livia grunted, pursing her lips.
“Baby doll, you need to look for a charm, or a small bag… something with power. Delilah would have charmed something to act as a barrier, with it functioning, we can’t get in. It’ll be near the door.” Raynar spoke softly, wringing his hands with every step Livia took around the space. She padded around, careful to gauge her surroundings and inspected the lines of picture frames, the copious mirrors and the wall separating the kitchen and living area from the foyer. Livia jostled open a small console table which sat underneath a series of jewelled coat pegs on the wall.
“She’s a promiscuous woman, you said?” Livia whispered back.
“Incredibly.” Finnegan said.
“Total nympho.” Raynar droned.
“Found it.” Livia grimaced, pulling a thin pink vibrator from the back of the console drawer. Someone had taken a sharpie marker to it, writing a variety of symbols, and words Livia couldn’t understand. Unscrewing the bottom, she pulled out two batteries and plunked them down in the console drawer.
“I need to wash my hands.” Livia grunted, as she set the vibrator back down in its’ place. Raynar lunged into the flat and took both of Livia’s wrists, bringing them close to his face and blowing on her palms.
“Evil be gone.” He whispered, shutting her fingers over her palms. Livia’s back reared straight. A thin blue line of smoke curled from her fingers and tickled her nose with a liquorice-anise aroma.
Finnegan’s foot dangled over the threshold of the doorway. He winced and tried to put his foot down.
“Oh my giddy aunt”, he whispered, putting his heel on Delilah’s carpet.
“I’m… alive?” Finnegan opened his eyes and hopped all the way in the flat.
“I’m alive!”
“Ah, yes. Why wouldn’t you be? It’s a flat, not a dragon’s lair.” Livia said, perusing the mail and random papers on
a tray in the kitchen.
“You and I have separate definitions of dragon, my dear girl.” Finnegan panted, walking into the middle of the flat and watching the Pacific Ocean surf rise and curl gently over the grey sand of Jericho beach.
“Found their rental car reservations… She bought a one way ticket for Caleb… Accra, Ghana. What on earth? It seems the rental car is to be returned to a place in Nigeria? They insured it for off-road travel…”
Livia droned on, repeating details she found on printed copies of travel documents and shuttle services to the airport. Raynar smelled the air, sweeping his mighty head from right to left and back again as he inspected the flat. His face, which had been a mask of timid neutrality began to morph in an eery disquiet.
“Finn, you feel it?” He asked.
“She’s only armoured her bedroom and boudoir.” Finnegan nodded, both palms raised and exuding a fine gold mist into the recycled air. On a valet stand inside the open bedroom door, Caleb’s watch sat atop cufflinks, and a pocket square.
“What kind of mother doesn’t protect her kid?” Raynar rumbled, walking toward a door with a pink stained door jamb.
“The kind we Fae hate. On the wall.” Finnegan whispered, walking to a line of photographs of Delilah and a girl whose costume, hair colour and posture morphed with every increase in size. In one picture, Delilah and her toddling daughter wore matching-styled red ballgowns, a tiny tiara perched on her daughter’s soft dark curls. Delilah’s tiara bled rubies and shone with diamonds, woven together in a thicket atop her own graceful curls. In another, Delilah’s daughter had grown half a foot, her hair hidden under a hijab and skin tanned and bronzed with the sun and cosmetics. Delilah’s hair was swept under a brilliant peacock coloured scarf, she held her daughter’s hand and looked the demure lady in a place which reminded of Morocco, Libya, Egypt. In another, the girl glared at the camera, her tiny sari and brown hair faded in comparison to the grandly embroidered one Delilah wore. Each picture was a lesson in masquerade, perfectly positioned and planned to reach a particular response from the men who were given them.
“Poor kid. What you want to bet Delilah’s using her to con rich paramours?”
“Do you know how much the aristocracy and the wealthy would pay to have a bastard remain secret? She could con them again and again, work half a dozen men in the same room and they’d pay.” Livia said, rubbing her hands on her trouser legs.
“Especially if she’d slept with them for years.”
“What does my son see in this woman?” Raynar whispered, leaning against a chaise long propped a few feet from the girl’s bedroom door.
“I’ve been pondering that question for years, mate.” Finnegan groaned, lifting both hands to the door.
“It’s a normal door. Naked. Not even an anti-malice charm. It’s like she wants her daughter open to any and everything.”
“But why?” Raynar asked.
“Can’t fathom. A woman with as many enemies as Delilah ought to protect her child. Her own bedroom’s locked tighter than the Queen’s Inner Court.”
Livia reached for the girl’s doorknob and gave it a twist. The door swung open and revealed a bedroom painted a soft lilac, grey and pink sheets pulled militantly up the bed and dressed with matching pillows, and five stuffed toys. A bookshelf displayed equestrian ribbons, ballet and music certificates and a lacrosse trophy. The awards and certificates were made out to ‘Lily Micheva’, ‘Arya Patel’, ’Lilith Micheva’, ‘Abigail Zion’, ‘Mandy Ivanovina’ and an ‘Elizabeth Crawley’. Finnegan whistled.
“No wonder I can’t remember the girl’s name. Lily, maybe? No, doesn’t sound right.” Finnegan winced.
Raynar stood with his hand wrapped around a single picture of a pre-teen girl with bright turquoise hair and wild purple eyeliner circling a pair of dull cerulean eyes. She tugged at the crisp white collar of a school uniform, its’ burgundy sweater sleeves pulled up her pale, freckled arms. The girl’s slender nose and nude painted lips sung to the ancient Viking. A pit opened in his chest, consuming his heart and an entire lung. The air stripped from his dry lips.
A line of crimson burned around both eyes.
The vacant stare in the girl’s face unfurled a single, terrifying story. Delilah’s daughter had already been scoured, emptied and destroyed. The human in the picture was a being without purpose, without clarity, without will. She was a caricature of a rebellious pre-teen girl, a statement made by copying make-up tutorials and browsing the hair care aisle in the wrong side of town. He set the picture frame down amidst farewell cards from cultures across the globe and put his hand to his mouth.
No child deserved to live empty, devoid of belonging and a sense of permanence or place. Livia shut the door and watched the two men exhaust themselves on the tragedy resting in the grave to a girl who existed once, but now only in the trappings left from lifetimes of a conniving mother’s financial pursuits.
“Pretty girl. Must be blonde, under that dye. Look at her roots.” She said, taking Raynar’s empty hand. He jolted.
“Um… how old is she?” Raynar rasped, his voice a tight and thin string being plucked by a saw blade. Livia noticed his hand was shaking, and held it steady in both of hers.
“Don’t know. Funny, just like her name, you know? I can’t remember.” Finnegan said, putting his hand to the wood of the door.
“Yes, it's my Pub! I can feel my Pub! My glorious Pub!” Finnegan hugged the door, eyes shut against a welling relief to be nearer home again. Raynar’s eyes were transfixed on the girl’s empty-faced portrait.
“Ray, let’s go. Caleb needs us.” Livia tugged at Raynar’s hand.
“Captain, if you please.” Finnegan swept into a low courtly bow. Livia rolled her eyes, tutted and put her hand on the doorknob.
“Finnegan’s Pub, please.” She said, twisting the knob as a hubbub of party music rocketed into the bedroom. Thrown into the middle of the Pub, Finnegan, Livia and Raynar stumbled to their feet. An uproarious congregation of voices rose in celebration. Finnegan jumped on the nearest chair and threw his arms to the ceiling.
“I’m back!” The leprechaun yelled.
Glasses raised, creatures of all manner of magical, mystical and cultural affiliations roared. Crowding around his makeshift perch, the throng peppered Finnegan with a desperate cacophony. He pushed his palms out, eyeing the ghostly blur of Colin madly pouring pints, a line of shots and cocktails from the bar.
“I can’t give them any more free drinks, Finn!” The ghost warbled over the din.
“Right! You two!” Finn pointed at Raynar and Livia, as a grubby grey door waddled into the mixing crowd.
“Close as I can get, you can take it from there! Find Caleb! Bring him back with all his bits!”
Raynar and Livia dashed through the door, a half-empty pint glass veering past their heads.
“Start a queue, you buggers!” Finnegan yelled. “And stop throwing my glasses, the lot of you!”
“No cuts!”
“Hey! There was beer in that!”
“My drink!!”
“I was here first!”
“No, me! You want a lift to the Mall! I’m on business! Me first!”
“I’ll sleep with you if you get me to my date!”
Finnegan doffed his coat to the ground, rolled up his sleeves and got to work.
Chapter 8
Driving through Accra with a society dame like Delilah should have been an exercise in futility, air conditioning and perfume. A blazing city of fine villas and grubby shanties, the capital city of Ghana bustled with german cars, and cell phone company paint jobs. As Caleb drove their rented Land Rover through traffic, he felt the swell and flow of a row of ants working together toward a grand nest of future plenty. Almost there. Caleb felt the traffic like the arteries of a heart, pushing and flowing in a cacophonous accord. Window down and hair swept up in a colourful kente scarf, Delilah looked the image of her mother. Caleb shoved the car into an opening in a roundabout and hit the
gas.
His lips pursed up in the planned chaos of the roadworks. Charani came to mind, with her tanned skin and greying curls swept up in a bright headscarf leaning over the cooking fire and stirring a pot of supper. The forests and glens of Eastern Europe were quieter then, if one knew the right places as most Romani did. Try as he might, Caleb couldn’t picture any face but Charani’s when he thought of his mother. There was no blonde waif in his memory, no wonder-eyed new mom holding on to her precious bundle of joy. He saw the harrowed eyes of his father. The sweep of Raynar's ancestral blond hair cut short under the uniform cap of a military chaplain. He saw Charani in her layered skirts, Delilah hopping along beside her mother or rushing with the other children after the ponies. Charani’s husband Vano was a fair man to his people and a scoundrel to the rest. He was as dashing as he needed to make off with goods and supplies, slithery enough to disappear and stalwart enough to chase no skirts but that of his own gypsy woman. By the time Delilah came along, Caleb had forgotten what cities looked like. Then, when Delilah was a teenager and Caleb's father came back for him, he would forget all but the thrusting and wanton music, the rustle of trees overhead and the face of Charani leaning over a boiling pot throwing wild herbs into the stew.
A restaurant selling Red-Red and fried Tilapia wafted its aroma across the road with an aged electric fan. Caleb felt the memory of his days in the caravan die to a pristine and clear hope of future plenty.
The traffic stopped and street sellers rushed the cars with cell phone cards, toothbrushes, water, food, candy, maps, any and everything a person could sell hand to hand. Delilah bickered with her head out the window, waving Cedis in her hand and nattering with a seller over price.
“Twenty!? Aah, I could get four paintings for twenty at the market!”
“But you have to drive! Twenty is a good price!”
“Fifteen, final offer!”
“Twenty.”
“Mmh!” Delilah thrust herself back in the car and shrugged, waving the seller away. He grinned and tapped at the window.
Son of Abel (The Judge of Mystics Book 1) Page 7