by Duncan, Lex
His voice was hollow when he spoke. “His name was Fabius Serafini.” He closed his eyes again. “He died a very long time ago.”
“I'm sorry,” I replied, because that's what you said when dead people were brought up in conversation.
“Don't be.”
“I'm not sorry, then.”
That earned me an almost-smile, that brief quirk of his lips that could have been a real smile if widened a smidge more. “Thank you,” he opened an eye. “Tell me about your friend.”
“You want to hear about Rosie?” No one wanted to hear about Rosie, or if they did, they never asked. Orphans dying of Faustian Syndrome tended to be sensitive subjects, spoken about in hushed tones on the far side of the room so that no one else could hear you gossip. Poor little Stacy. She didn't ask to be born possessed. She's so brave. Did you know her mother was a junkie? Yes, it's true. She overdosed on a mix of demon blood and heroin. How sad.
Dante stretched, long and lazy like a cat, the hem of his shirt riding up to offer a glimpse of his stomach. I tried not to look. Not when he was so relaxed around me for once. “If you're willing to divulge such information, that is. If not, that's your prerogative. I'm simply curious.”
I told him everything. Once I started talking, I couldn't bring myself to stop. I told him her full name (Rosemary Elaine Barrett), her favorite color (yellow), how she dreamed of being a comic book artist, how she loved old movies and lemon ice cream. When I ran out of trivia, I launched into the heavier things. How she attacked me when we were kids, how she nearly ripped my arm off a few weeks ago and accused me of sleeping with her pastor. How she went into remission on her fifteenth birthday. That was a good year.
“And then we stopped having good years,” I said, picking absently at the velvet cushions. Dante hadn't said a single word. He just listened. As always. “She was admitted to the sanatorium awhile ago. She stayed home from school the day Mother Arden made the call, and when I got back, she―...” A lump formed in my throat. I forced it down. “She was passed out in the bathroom. Blood everywhere. She'd scratched at her arm so much that you could see the muscle. It was awful.”
Having realized I was done, Dante allowed himself to speak. “I'm sorry.”
“Don't be.”
“I'm not sorry, then,” he said.
“Thank you.” I heard myself laugh. It sounded bitter. I brought my knees to my chest and hugged them close, stared into the fire until my eyes stung.
Sometime between all this staring, I fell asleep. When I woke up, the scent of smoke and spice filled my nose and a pleasant warmth had settled over me like a security blanket. I felt groggy. The blissful kind of groggy that came with a good night's rest.
And then I opened my eyes.
I was still in the TV room. Which meant...
Oh. Oh my God.
That warm fuzzy feeling wasn't a blanket. It was Dante. It was his arm, wrapped around my waist. It was my fingers, twisted in the fabric of his shirt. It was my head on his chest. It was the way we fit together, the rhythm of his heart in my ear...
No. I couldn't enjoy this. No, no. I needed to get up. I needed to go to school. I needed to not enjoy this!
“Dante,” I whispered, poking at his chest. “Wake up!”
Slowly but surely, he did as he was told, and when he saw me―saw us―the realization of what we'd done kicked in. His eyes widened. “Beatrice?”
“Yeah, hi,” I shoved his arm off and got to my feet. Dante Arturo and I slept together. We slept together. Granted, it wasn't in a romantic way, but still! We slept together! This was bad. This was really bad.
Bolting upright, Dante clasped his hands together and stared into the ashy remnants of last night’s fire. If I knew him, and I'm pretty sure I did, he was probably thinking about how he'd avoid me for the rest of the week until the awkwardness blew over. Or maybe I was projecting.
“What time is it?” I asked, trying to forget the way I felt before. “Do you have a clock in here?”
He pointed to the desk.
I checked the time. 10:15. “Headmaster Vance is going to flip.”
In a single jerky movement, Dante stood, turned, and charged out of the room. “Get dressed. I'll take you.”
“Dante,” I tried to grab him before he ran off, but he was too quick. And here I thought I was embarrassed. He was so mortified that he wasn’t even going to let me touch him.
Grumbling, I went to get dressed. Aralia met me halfway. She was wearing a black night gown, the lacy kind of thing you saw in those lingerie commercials, and had a steaming cup of coffee in her hands.
“Have you seen Dante this morning?” She asked. “He looks like he's about to implode.”
I snorted. “He'll live.”
“I should hope so,” she sipped her coffee, looked at me. Her brow lifted. “Shouldn't you be at school?”
I rubbed the goosebumps from my arms, tasting the salty sea air on my lips. “Overslept.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Aralia said. She gave me a push. “Go on, then. Wouldn't want to miss to any more of your lessons.”
“Wouldn't want that,” I replied. We parted ways. She went off to do whatever she did in the morning and I changed out of my pajamas, then went to meet Dante downstairs.
He was already in the car.
***
We pulled up to the high school exactly ten minutes later. Given how he was acting, I expected him to just push me out of the car at full speed and drive away, but he didn't. He parked, undid his seatbelt, and got out.
“What are you doing?” I asked, hustling after him. He strode toward the school with long, purposeful strides. Strides I had to jog to keep up with. “Hello? Earth to Dante.”
He opened the door and waited for me to go inside. “I'm saving you another week's worth of detention.”
Mercifully, the main lobby was empty. An appearance by Dante Arturo was sure to raise some eyebrows, so the less people around to see him, the better. His scuffed oxfords clicked across the floor as he walked, coat flapping at the backs of his legs. This detective-on-a-mission strut he had going on was cool and all, but he was going the wrong way.
I put my hand on his arm. He stiffened. “Hey,” I said. “The headmaster's office is upstairs.”
Coming to a hard stop, he turned to the heavy wooden staircase to our left and kept walking. I rolled my eyes. Men. You accidentally fall asleep on them once and they treat you like the plague.
“I know you're embarrassed and everything, but you don't have to be an ass about it,” I said.
“I'm not embarrassed,” he replied shortly. “What we did was extremely inappropriate and it will never happen again.”
“You make it seem like we slept together!”
He gripped the banister, staring at me over his shoulder.
I sighed. I didn't want to say what I was about to say, but he gave me no other option. “You make it seem like we had sex. There, is that better?”
He stomped up the stairs. The noise echoed in the high ceilings. “No.”
A stack of books came stumbling down past us, teetering and tottering with each potentially disastrous step. A pair of familiar legs and a pair of familiar arms accompanied these books, as well as a flash of familiar auburn hair.
“Woops!” The stack of books said, swaying clumsily into Dante. “Sorry, I can't really see what I'm doing.”
“Ms. Hayworth?” I asked. She was going to break her neck.
“Beatrice?” She peeked around the stack and smiled. “Hi, could you―”
“Sure,” I took some books off the top. Cromwell’s diaries. “What are you doing with these?”
She balanced the remaining volumes on her hip and tucked a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. Her face was red with exertion. “It's a long story. The mayor called, can you believe that? He wants these. All of them. He wouldn't say why, but it's got to be important, right? The mayor doesn't call for just anything, so―”
“The mayor?” Dante interrupted
.
Ms. Hayworth's head swiveled over to look at him, all slow and dramatic like in the movies. She gaped.
This was my first glimpse of Dante as a celebrity. I knew him as Dante the Normal Person, but Ms. Hayworth knew him as Dante the Demon Hunter, resident famous guy and shadowy vigilante who may or may not have been the Anti-Christ.
“This is Ms. Hayworth,” I told him. “She's the librarian. Ms. Hayworth, this is Dante Arturo. The weird guy from the newspapers.”
Ms. Hayworth only blinked. Didn't say anything. Just held her books. Blinked.
I jabbed her lightly with my elbow, hoping to move this conversation along. “He's not going to bite. I don't think.”
Unless, of course, she was into that sort of thing.
Dante ignored me and held out his hands. “May I?”
Ms. Hayworth looked down at her books, then back up at him. “Oh, you don't have to. They're awfully heavy.”
“I insist.” He smiled a smile that would have charmed the pants right off her if she were wearing them instead of a dress. Pulling out the big guns already.
Unable to resist, Ms. Hayworth surrendered her books. She stared at him and he stared back, smiling that stupid smile. Poor Ms. Hayworth. She was done for.
“Anyway,” I said. My stack was getting heavy. “Where are we taking these?”
Turning away from Dante, Ms. Hayworth cleared her throat and started down the stairs. “My car. I―uh, I'm taking them to the mayor's office during my lunch break.”
Dante's smile faded. He was back to normal Dante. Thank God. Famous Dante was too out of character for my taste. “Was that a specific request?”
I wanted to ask why he was so curious, but for once, I refrained. It was clear that he was fishing for something. What that something was, I didn't know, but if I kept my mouth shut long enough, I'd figure it out. That smile, the books? All part of his ploy. And it was working.
“It was, actually,” Ms. Hayworth said. Now that she was talking about work, she was more relaxed. Less...infatuated. “I was told to bring them to his office in person. No shipping, no boxes. He just wants the books. All thirteen—well, twelve of them.”
“You're missing one?” Dante asked. We stepped down the last stair and Ms. Hayworth hurried to open the door for us.
“Yeah,” I answered in her stead. “The one from 1800.”
“1800?” He lifted his books up to inspect their spines. “Are you positive that's the one that's missing?”
“Yep.” We followed Ms. Hayworth to her car. She popped the trunk and we deposited the books inside. “Why?”
Turning the charm back up to eleven, Dante looked Ms. Hayworth dead in the eye and asked if he could go with her to the mayor's office. She hesitated. In turn, he offered to take her to lunch. Anywhere she wanted to go. His treat. She blushed, and that's precisely when I knew she'd agree.
She did.
Mission accomplished.
We went back inside.
“Is that it?” I asked.
Ms. Hayworth nodded. She kept glancing at Dante when she thought he wasn't paying attention. That would have worked if he wasn't always paying attention.
He clasped his hands behind his back, speaking to her and looking at me. “If you'll excuse us, Ms. Hayworth, I need to speak to the Headmaster on Beatrice's behalf.”
Glad all that flirting didn't affect his memory.
“Of course,” Ms. Hayworth stepped aside, swept her arms toward the staircase. She hadn't stopped smiling since he asked her to lunch. “He's that way.”
Dante bent at the waist in a slight bow. “Thank you.”
I waited until we reached the second floor to open my mouth. Frankly, I was proud of myself for waiting so long.
“What are you up to?” I asked. The locker-lined hallways were empty as well, but it was only a matter of time before the bell rang. Dante had to be gone before then.
“I don't trust Michael Bishop.” He slipped his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I never have. Those people found at that warehouse were not murdered by human hands. That much is obvious.”
“Why would he lie about that, though?” It was a stupid question. The mayor was a politician. Worse, he was a politician in Stone Chapel. They all lied on basic principle.
“He's covering something up,” Dante replied matter-of-factly. We stopped a few feet from the Headmaster's office. “He and I have never gotten along. He's tried having me arrested multiple times for various things. Traffic violations, disturbing the peace. Nothing that would hold up in court.”
This was shaping up to be some serious detective movie material. The lone hero versus the corrupt authority figure. A gray, rainy city where crime raged unabated. Sprinkle in a few cover-ups and wrongful accusations and you had yourself a hit. “You'd figure he'd be more grateful that you do his job for him most of the time.”
Dante sighed. “Yes, well, he just so happens to hold a…popular opinion about me.”
“That you're the Anti-Christ?” I guessed.
“Yes,” he said dryly. I’m sure being called the harbinger of evil all the time got a little stale after a while. “It doesn't matter. What matters is why he wants those Diaries.”
“What's so special about the missing one?”
“Do they teach you nothing in history class?”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“It means this country's educational system is failing you.” He leaned against a locker. With his dark hair and dark slacks and serious expression, he looked like a modern day film noir star. All he needed to do now was talk faster and drink more alcohol. “I don't suppose you've ever heard of the Solstice Earthquake of 1800?”
It didn't sound like something we covered in the Local History seminar we had to take last year. “Uh, nope.”
“On the night of December 22nd, 1800,” he explained quietly, “sixty-seven people were killed in what is officially recorded as an earthquake.”
“An earthquake?” I thought those were more of a west coast thing.
“An earthquake,” he affirmed. “That's the official word. But I have reason to believe it wasn’t just an earthquake.”
I waited for him to explain what he meant and he didn't disappoint.
“While investigating the bodies from the warehouse, I noticed a strange symbol that appeared to be burned on each person's abdomen.”
“Max posted something about that on Armageddon Now,” I said, nodding.
“You know his website?” Dante asked.
“Yeah. He was the one who helped me get into hunting in the first place.”
“I see,” he said, grimacing.
Woops. Sorry, Max. “What does this symbol have to do with the mayor?”
He let the Max thing go for now, though I had a feeling the poor boy would be getting a lecture on the risks of soliciting demon hunting advice to impressionable (and very persistent) people on the internet sometime in the near future. “As if the man's insistence on denying hard facts isn't damning enough, I'd seen the symbol on an envelope two days before the discovery of the bodies. An envelope containing a letter dated December 24th, 1800.”
Two days after the earthquake.
I'd given Bishop the benefit of the doubt before, but the evidence was stacking up against him. Something was definitely rotten in the state of Maine.
“That's convenient,” I said. Max didn't mention anything about a letter. Maybe he didn't know. Maybe Dante was keeping it secret from everyone but me. The thought of knowing something no one else did filled me with a sense of pride. I was finally being allowed to sit with the cool kids. “What'd it say?”
“It was a letter from one Ms. Henriette Lawson to her uncle in England. She―”
In that very instant, the bell rang. Of course it did. I was finally being trusted with sensitive information and the freaking bell rings.
“Shit,” I muttered, pushing him toward the door. “It’s time for you to go.”
“What are you—
”
Doors began to open. Noisy chatter filled the hall, and with it an influx of bored looking students.
“Go, go, go!” Before he could protest, I shoved him in the Headmaster’s office and slammed the door behind him like he was my dirty little secret. My internationally famous dirty little secret.
The important thing here was that no one saw him.
Mission accomplished.
Fourteen
“Beatrice?”
I wondered what that symbol looked like. The one on Dante's mystery letter. Nothing I scribbled down in the margins of my English notes seemed plausible. The standard banishing/summoning seals were too obvious. Everyone knew what they looked like.
Hmm. If I were orchestrating a cover-up of a supposed “earthquake” that happened more than two hundred years ago, what would I use to throw the world's greatest demon hunter off my trail?
“Beatrice?”
What about the exorcism seal Dante drew at The Inferno? Yeah. That could work. Would the mayor know what it looked like, though? The Fifth Sacrament wasn't exactly public knowledge. But it would get Dante's attention. Maybe that was Bishop's angle. Maybe he wanted to get caught. But for what?
“Ms. Todd!”
“Huh?” I tore my gaze from my paper. My English teacher, Mr. Northrop, glowered at me from the front of the room. The girl sitting next to me giggled.
“I sincerely hope those are notes you've been taking,” Mr. Northrop said.
“Oh, totally,” I replied, smiling what was possibly the fakest smile ever formed by a human being. I edged my notebook into my lap to hide the doodles.
He stepped in front of whatever it was he’d been writing on the board. “Then you won't have any trouble telling me what I was just talking about, hm?”
Time to put my improv skills to use. “Uh, you were hoping I've been taking notes.”
Mr. Northrop sighed. Everyone loved sighing at me. Apparently I wasn’t worth a proper sentence. “What was I talking about in regards to the text, Beatrice?”