Walking on Sunshine

by Jennifer Stevenson

  Then I picked up my cell and texted the three of them—my aunt and uncle and Cousin Joe. I know what you did. We’ll talk about it after the show. I was willing to absolve Verlette of conspiracy. She was too dumb.

  But what would I say to them after the show? I was nauseated. They hadn’t just taken the photo. They’d lied about it, loudly and elaborately and self-righteously. They’d accused Baz of horrible things.

  Then the next wave of ugliness hit me. Why had Baz gone along with the frame-up?

  I wished I could throw up.

  I didn’t dare. Not in makeup, not with the curtain going up in minutes.

  I’d been betrayed by so many trusted people, I couldn’t even get angry.

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach by everyone I loved.

  I found my phone on my makeup table and called Max again.

  “Sorry, but we’re gonna have to rewrite the playlist again.”

  SOPHIE

  I delivered my gift to Yoni’s dressing room and slipped out to my seat. Lately I had been taking eighth-row seats on the aisle by the side emergency exits. I was to regret that tonight.

  Yoni’s mood was down in the opening part of her show. I didn’t wonder. When they started “So High” as the second song, I thought, Something went wrong with her new boyfriend, and when she didn’t fly in that number, I knew it. The band members looked at each other a lot during the first part of the show.

  She sounded sad, so sad.

  The great room filled up with a sad, edgy energy. The first five rows of audience members were crying, or throwing their programs at one another or the stage. I started crying.

  Then someone seized me by the arm and dragged me from my seat into the aisle.

  It was my father.

  He pulled me through the emergency side exit into the relative quiet of a service corridor.

  “You cannot hide from the caul,” he said. “You will never be able to run away again.”

  I opened my mouth to shriek at him.

  He threw me from him, and then—put his hand into his coat pocket. “Quiet!”

  My voice stopped in my throat.

  “Come outside now,” he said.

  I had to follow him. My legs wouldn’t let me run away.

  We walked along the corridor until it let us out into a small parking lot. My father pointed. It was deep night out here. The lake lapped at the edge of parkland, and a bicycle path wound among trees, out here behind the big concrete theater building.

  We followed the path along the water to a circle of big white limestone slabs. It would be a perfect place to bring a boom box for a picnic and dancing.

  When I was in the circle, he said, “Stop! Stand there.”

  My legs stopped before I wanted to. I almost fell over.

  He came toward me in the circle. He kept looking over his shoulder at the trees in one spot.

  I looked down. On the grass, in the dark, someone had made a smaller circle inside the stones, off-center, near a dark spot under some trees. I bent down and touched it. My fingers came up damp and white. Spray paint.

  “Don’t move!”

  Then came that dreadful paralysis that Papa had put upon me in his suite yesterday. I swiveled my eyes around as best I could. This spot was deserted. A quarter-mile away ran the expressways, bright, busy, oblivious. A hundred yards away was the back door of the theater. No one would come out of that door until the show was over and the staff was sent home, around midnight. Nearer was the bike path, but not so near that a jogger might hear what we said. And past the path was a stone wall only an inch high, and a drop-off into the lake. This can’t be good.

  Only faint light came through the trees from the parking lot.

  Then my father leaned down behind one of the stones a moment.

  Harsh light burst out, blinding me from four directions. I squinted. Outside the circle, I saw now, stood lamps mounted high on tripods, glaring into the circle.

  My father approached me. “Good. Now you will summon your friend.”

  “Bon chance,” I tried to say. No sound came from my throat.

  “Ah. Sorry, I’m still learning to use this thing. You may speak, daughter.”

  “And say what?” I spat. “If you think I would—” He gestured at me. “Gghk!” My throat was seized by an invisible hand.

  “How much is enough?” he muttered.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t raise my hands to my throat.

  He took the caul out of his pocket and frowned at it, squeezing it in his hand.

  My blood drummed in my ears. My arms hung, useless, at my sides.

  VEEK

  As I meditated alone in Jake’s botánica, I prowled that mysterious fence for hours. The enemies were out there, so powerful that they made a joke of my self-made barrier. Yet they stayed outside. I sensed their restraint.

  For the first time, I relaxed enough to pause and sniff through the fence. They waited, immensely large persons blazing with light, like the lights that tried to force their way through Mme Vulcaine. But her lights only visited her. These spirits were made of light. Behind my fence, I was small, a candle facing many suns.

  For the first time, it occurred to me that they meant me no harm.

  I put my hackles down and stood, dumbfounded at their good will.

  In the moment I realized this, Jake was there, opening that gate that shouldn’t be there, reaching for me, embracing me. I wanted to weep, but there was too much light. My tears boiled away. Jake led me outside to greet them, face to face with all those towering, blinding, friendly smiles.

  o0o

  When I came back to myself, the summer day had faded. Street light from Clark Street came in through the cracks in the drapes over the botánica’s front window.

  I was thirsty, I was exhausted, I needed to urinate, and—soon Yoni’s concert would begin. I had barely time to prepare.

  I made a phone call to Mme Vulcaine. Then I showered. Remembering Sophie’s advice, I armored myself in fresh clothes from the skin out: buff linen trousers, a dull persimmon-colored linen shirt, silk socks, brown wingtips like those Sophie’s father wore, and a gold-buckled crocodile leather belt. After some hesitation, I put on also a gold signet ring which I had not worn since the family sent it to me after my father’s death.

  I felt better in clean clothes and the ring of my birthright.

  I stopped at a liquor store. I brought my briefcase, too, though first I backed up my tablet to the cloud. With my pockets bulging and my briefcase heavy with printouts and the tablet, I called a cab to take me to the concert. I didn’t want to risk losing any of my luggage on magical flight. And . . . I had a witness I could not afford to lose. I made the cabbie drive slowly, though my every nerve screamed that time was running short.

  The concert had started when I arrived at the Arie Crown Theater. I closed my eyes, feeling for Sophie. She was near, but she was very unhappy. The singer wailed with grief, and her audience wept with her, and somewhere among them, my Sophie was even more miserable than when I saw her last night. I circled the back walls of the theater, keeping away from rows of unhappy audience members.

  Sophie was not here.

  I fished for her. Flesh of my flesh, where are you? Come to me.

  She couldn’t come to me. She was trapped somewhere. I sensed it.

  I shut my eyes and let the dog in me take over. Sniffing, I moved to a door, pushed through it, loped down one corridor and another, and pushed through crash bars, out into the night air.

  She was near. I heard her voice, only a few words—then nothing. My panic increased. I ran toward the sound. There were bright lights. Her father was speaking. He sounded more insane than ever. Now I saw them standing in a blaze of light—why? I saw him brandish what must be my birth caul in her face. She stood so stiff and still that I knew he must be holding her there. I knew she was afraid.

  I forced myself to be calm, to remind myself of my plan. I set down my briefcase and threw off al
l my clothes.

  I shifted shape.

  SOPHIE

  I couldn’t breathe. I began to wonder if my papa would really kill me. My pulse thundered in my ears. The world blurred.

  Out in the darkness beyond the ring of light, beyond the ring of stones, something moved. My eyes rolled in my head, the only part of me I could control. As that movement passed a spot between stones, I saw the lights fall on a great black dog. It raced around us, round and round the circle. Why was it running in circles?

  I went weak, as if I were slowly leaving a dream.

  Suddenly the dog burst into the circle and leaped at my father.

  My papa was not at all alarmed. He pointed at the dog and cried, “Down!”

  The dog actually turned in mid-air. It fell to the ground, rolling and snapping.

  Papa pointed. “Down. Be still.”

  The dog crouched at his feet.

  “Now show me your true form. Not that old man. I know that’s a disguise.”

  The bright lights dimmed.

  I slid to my knees, and all was darkness.

  o0o

  When I awoke, Veek was there. He and my father stood quite nearby, looking at a paper. I was sitting on the ground, propped against one of the big white slabs of limestone, beside a pile of sacks. The sacks smelled of spray paint and fresh plastic.

  “Sign here. And here. Turn a little more toward the light, please,” my father said. My head thundered with pain. “It’s a good thing I let you dress yourself again, eh? You will not mind my saying that you are so dark-skinned, your face will be hard to distinguish in the video.”

  “Show me the caul,” Veek said.

  Papa looked at him shrewdly. “Very well.” He took his hand out of his pocket.

  Instantly Veek grabbed it. They both held on. My father struggled greatly, but Veek kept his hand on it.

  “Get outside the circle, Sophie,” Veek panted.

  My father opened his mouth, and Veek reached out and clutched his throat.

  I scrambled up, climbed the back of the limestone slab, and hid behind it, watching the two of them struggle.

  At length Veek flung my father away from him.

  They stood face to face. Papa brandished the caul. His hand was shaking, but he pointed it at Veek. “Stand.”

  Veek stood, his hands slack at his sides. Oh, no!

  “Daughter, bring him the paper.”

  Veek said, “Stay, Sophie! I’ve made a boundary around the circle. Stay outside it and he can’t command you.”

  “Bring it!” my father cried.

  Carefully, experimentally, I breathed. I lifted my hand. I walked a little way around the outside of the circle, until I could see both their faces in the harsh light.

  “It works, Veek,” I said.

  “How?” my papa demanded. “I can hold you here forever.”

  “I’m the guardian of Montmorency,” Veek said. “I choose to protect her.”

  “But this commands you!” my father said through his teeth. He held out the caul in his fist, squeezing it. “It draws on your own power and defeats you.”

  Veek stood absolutely still. Was he struggling? He seemed mesmerized by my father.

  I groaned.

  Papa relaxed. “This, Sophie, is the difference between the aristocrat and the halfbreed guttersnipe. I am trained to use power. I have learned to tap into it when I can. You,” he said to Veek. “Have you sought power? Or have you run away from it? Where do you get so much power? I know your eyes. You are a man who hides from power because you are convinced that power belongs to someone else, never to you. And if you find it, you use it in the dark.”

  You have no idea, Papa, I thought.

  My papa shrugged his shoulders and put the caul casually back in his pocket, though he left his hand there.

  “Now you will tell me how you have lived so long.”

  “Veek, don’t!” I said.

  “Soyez tranquille, daughter, I won’t hurt him.” Papa walked around Veek, who stood motionless. “I have natural gifts in this direction,” he boasted. “See? I will use your strength against you again. Tell me, did you learn the tricks of vodou from your mother’s family? Who’s that fellow with the top hat, the skeleton man?” Veek said nothing. Papa pulled the caul out of his pocket and pointed it at him. “Tell me his name!”

  “Baron Samedi,” Veek said levelly.

  My papa cackled like a proper villain. “Baron Samedi! He will have to bow to me when I am the vicomte, for I’ll outrank him! And did he make you young forever like this?”

  “Yes,” Veek said.

  Papa cackled some more. “Come, Baron Samedi, and grant me more power!”

  “No!” Veek blurted.

  “Ah, you fear him? Excellent. I own your power and now, through you, I will own his! I command you, M’sieur le Vicomte, to bring the Baron here to me.”

  I clutched my head. Merde, merde, merde, merde, merde.

  “Very well.” Slowly, Veek nodded. “I have some questions for him, myself.”

  “Veek, no!” I shrieked.

  But Veek walked to the pile of plastic sacks, picked up a can of spray paint, and brought it back into the light. He bent and carefully sprayed something on the grass.

  I circled the stones, peering. Oh, Dieu, it was the veve for the Baron.

  My papa fidgeted, muttering, agitated, gloating. With his phone he took photographs of the thing Veek was drawing.

  Veek stood. His expression changed. I could sense the fear in him.

  “Veek, no,” I whispered.

  My papa went still.

  Then Veek prayed in Kreyol. Jake hadn’t taught me this one. Well, he hadn’t needed to, had he? Jake could talk to Samedi any time he liked. I shivered, remembering the mighty presence that had animated his failing body, that had seized my hand and Veek’s, and the enormous voice that had commanded us.

  The air changed.

  “Finally,” said that voice again.

  All the hairs stood up on my arms and scalp.

  The Baron’s voice was coming from my father’s mouth!

  I climbed over the stone between me and Veek. I wanted badly to hold his hand.

  “Stay outside the circle, Sophie,” Veek said, not taking his eyes from my father—who was not my father.

  My papa’s tense face relaxed. Even his bones appeared to move, as if to make room for someone larger. His eyes grew dark.

  I walked across the circle and came to stand with Veek. When I touched his elbow, I saw his lips twitch.

  “Welcome, lord,” Veek said. “Here is rum for you.” He took a pint bottle out of his trouser pocket, unscrewed the top, and handed it to Papa—to Samedi. “Here is smoke for you.” He took out a cigar and handed it over.

  Samedi drank the rum. He bit the end off the cigar and touched it to his tongue. Smoke came. I watched, fascinated, as he turned the cigar and put the other end in his mouth. The cigar burned.

  Then he looked at me.

  BAZ

  The stage manager found me stage right, ten minutes before the curtain. “Baz, she cut the flying.”

  “What?” I’d been lugging the harness around with me, which was paranoid but not dumb.

  “She moved the flying number up to the first half and cut the actual flying.”

  I nodded, as if it was perfectly normal for a headliner to cut the biggest special effect in the show.

  I locked the harness in my roadcase anyway.

  I had a bad feeling about this.

  The artist formerly known as Prince had been known to rewrite his playlist half a dozen times during the show. He also paid a full twenty-piece band to stay handy in case he decided at the last minute to add a number he hardly ever did.

  Yoni wasn’t like that.

  Something was up.

  Fearing the worst, I went to the wings to watch the show.

  The first act fucking killed me.

  Since she’d cut the flying in the second number, I had nothing to
do. I stood way back in the wings stage right, behind chorus dancers and wind machines and fog pot operators, watching her tiny glittering form walk listlessly around, singing the saddest songs on her playlist. I didn’t have to look at the monitors to know how the audience was taking it. Not five feet away from me, one of the roadies was having a break-up fight with his girlfriend, one of the dressers. They were in tears.

  Further back in the stagehouse, Yoni’s aunt and uncle snarled at each other.

  One of the house dressers was hiding behind the main rag, curled into a ball.

  I decided to give Yoni until intermission to turn that frown upside down. If she didn’t, I would be reluctantly compelled to—I didn’t know what. Something. Probably apologize. That had been known to get her attention before.

  Then I saw the stage right house fog pot operator stand up, turn, and blunder through cast and crew toward the stairs to the trap room. His face was terrible.

  I took off after him.

  VEEK

  Samedi looked at Sophie.

  My heart leaped into my throat.

  She chirped, “You are the one who spoke to us through Jake, when Jake was dying. I held your hand.”

  Le bon Dieu protect her.

  Samedi nodded. “Who is this horse I am riding?”

  “It is my papa. He wanted to summon you so he could take your power. Me, I don’t think you will allow that,” she said, swaggering a little closer to him with her head on one side.

  I was dizzy with fear for her. Would he kill her? Or squeeze her and pull her out, like a concertina?

  The lwa smiled.

  I realized suddenly that Samedi was enjoying Sophie.

  She was just his sort.

  And by now I knew him too. After all, I’d spent eighty years sharing a boxcar and a bottle with him.

  I put one hand over Sophie’s mouth, the other arm about her waist, and moved her bodily behind me. “What do you want me to do, lord?” I said loudly.

  His eyebrows went up. He drew on his cigar and blew a smoke ring. “Now you ask.”

  “Now I ask. I’ve given up everything, as you bade me. Now what do you want me to do?”