by Zeller, Jill
It sickened me to ask these questions. It felt like asking a serial killer exactly how he mutilated his victims. But I had to know. “What are its special qualities?”
I heard him snort. “You have to ask? With a name like Virilia?”
Of course. Viagra made from spiritual essence. When I turned back to face Jack, I saw Baby Justin hovering over the bedside table, his soul taken eleven years ago still in use. I wondered how long Bijou lasted. Forever? And I wondered about the blend Dom used, and how long dead those people were?
Jack was looking younger. His skin, eyes, even hair, softened and smoothed, and he looked at me in an almost lascivious way. Cocky. Virile. “That crazy scene at the old VA. I wished I’d tanked up before I went there. Couldn’t keep up with those girls.”
My heart clamped around my throat and my feet took me straight back to Jack. I stood over him, trembling. “What scene at the VA? What happened?” Jonah took Sawyer and Agnes to the VA portal. Then then image printed on the note flashed into my brain:
V
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cross Words
Sighing, Jack pressed both hands on the bed. He looked not so much younger as better, healthier, alive, glowing. I couldn’t name what I was seeing and feeling. It was as if Jack Easton had, upon ingesting pure soul, gotten from it an inner light. In his case, virility, and for others? Spirit, charisma, excellence?
Healing? A spear of grief went through me again, thinking of Ivy and her chronic disease. Could Bijou heal? With this came a terrible choice. Destroy one person to save another. Exploit one precious soul so that another may live.
Jack was speaking. I sank to the bed beside him. Pepper sat in front of me, keeping her gaze pinned on Jack. Baby Justin hovered behind us, bobbing up and down.
“You know those old buildings, up the road from the new VA, right? Where the kids party all the time. Dom wanted to go up there.” He looked at me, spread his hands. “Honestly, Annie. Zoe and Ivy weren’t there. They weren’t with Dom, anyway.”
I watched him as he spoke. Not for the first time I wondered what he really knew about Dominique Delphine.
He continued, “Well, those old barracks aren’t there anymore. They burned down last night.”
Jeezus. “What the hell happened?”
“The kids started a bonfire. I don’t know how the first building caught. But somehow a spark or something got away from them, even though the fire was on gravel and dirt, a place where they had built fires before.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But never in summer. They held these raves or whatever it was this time of year before, but no one had built a fire. Music, dancing, Ecstasy.” Jack smiled. “Lots of cute girls up there.
“Anyway, I had never seen so many people. There must have been hundreds of them. But wouldn’t you know, of all people I ran smack into, Sawyer Webster showed up with his daughter.”
My heart leaped then fell in a heap. They got through the portal safely, but landed right into the middle of Mae’s wake. Agnes must have been in heaven.
Now Jack wouldn’t meet my gaze. He stared across the room to where Baby Justin hovered near the drapes. “He seemed pretty angry about something. When he saw me with Dominique, he started yelling, something about her being a murderer, liar, fiend, god knows what else. I could see he wanted to strangle her, but I know they used to be married and she was Agnes’s mother, and the poor kid was standing right there seeing her father go ballistic.” He moved his head back and forth, as if his neck hurt. “I had to intervene. People were giving us looks, you know, curious, scared. Dom, though, she stood there and took it, without a reaction. She’s a cool one.”
Oh yes. Cold as death, that one.
Jack sighed. “So, I grabbed him. We scuffled some. By then the fire was getting out of control, police were already pulling in, firetrucks behind. Kids started scattering, running away.”
Jack stopped, rubbed his chin. I could see golden stubble on it. Getting up, he started toward his bathroom. Pepper and I followed. “And then?”
Jack shrugged, stared at his face in the mirror. “So, Sawyer got arrested. He’s in jail, I think, unless he posted bond.”
My hands itched to grab Jack and slam his head into that damn mirror. “So how come you’re not in jail, too?”
“That protection order. He violated it. Again.”
So that was why Sawyer didn’t answer my phone calls. “Where’s Agnes?”
“Dom was going to take her home to her place in Piedmont.”
Worry crawled up my spine again. “And you didn’t see Zoe, or Ivy. At all?”
Resting his hands on the vanity, Jack shook his head. “No. And that’s the truth, Annie. I’m sorry. I don’t know where they are.”
My joints aching, I leaned against the bathroom doorjamb, trying to think. Baby Justin floated between Jack and me; I saw Jack’s eyes dance nervously.
“Jack.” I swallowed, yearning for sleep and ending and oblivion, but I hadn’t found my daughter yet. “Did you notice anything else weird at the party? I mean, almost, hallucinations, what might have been ghosts?”
Jack ran his finger along his lip, stared at me from the mirror. “I don’t know. The kids were seeing stuff, talking about ghosts. I thought they were all high.” I could see that Jack saw them, too. Wraiths. Exiting the portal. But if he didn’t want to admit it to me, that was OK. I had all the confirmation I needed. The portal was open. How, I didn’t yet know. I didn’t want to know. I had to believe Zoe was still alive and unharmed. I had to.
“Jack, I need you to take me home.”
I saw a look of annoyance cross his face, followed hard by relief. At least, he was thinking, he could get rid of me. As we walked to his car, Baby Justin trailing, he said, “So you were going to tell me about your evening, too?”
I eased into the leather seats of his fancy sports car. Pepper barely squeezed into the tiny back seat. “Let’s just say I took a bike ride and went camping and leave it at that.”
I almost dropped off to sleep a couple times as Jack drove us through the night valley. But nightmares swirled through my head, bringing me awake every time with a jerk of fear. All of it centered around Zoe and Dom. Sleep would have to wait.
As we came down Juniper Street, a crazy fantasy seized me, that Ivy and Zoe would be home, waiting for me. I could sweep my baby into my arms and hold her and smell her and listen to her. Ivy would look strong and well, and be sassy like always.
The house was dark. Ivy’s car was not in the driveway beside mine. My legs felt like lead and tears burned behind my eyes. Pepper heaved out and stood beside me, her tail wagging slowly, almost dejectedly.
I leaned in the passenger window. Jack gave me a sideways smile. “Good luck Annie. I hope you find her.”
Baby Justin floated between us. Jack licked his lips. “By the way, you said you maybe could help me with—this.”
Nodding, I smiled at Justin. “Yes, well, I haven’t figured that out yet. But I could prioritize that better if my daughter were back with me. You might be able to help me with that, Jack.”
His eyebrows came down and he worked his lips, still trying to smile. “I hear you.”
As he put the car in gear, I backed away. I didn’t watch him leave as I went into the house and checked Zoe’s bedroom and she wasn’t there, and the smell of her, and her animals and books, mismatched pajamas flung on the bed, a half-eaten bagel on the floor, all brought me to my knees, and I cried while Pepper licked my face.
After minutes of falling apart, I gathered my bits together and checked Ivy’s room. It too was vacant, smelling thickly of incense. Then I picked up the phone and called the police.
Sawyer sat beside me as I drove him to his place to get a few things. He had already posted his own bail, and was standing in front of the police station, leaning against the wall, smoking. He told me Agnes was gone, and but oddly, or maybe not oddly, he didn’t ask me a thing about the tunnel, or wraiths, or where I had gone to.
> When I turned in the direction of the High School, he looked at me curiously, then leaned back and closed his eyes. Fumbling in my jeans, I found the number of Bruce’s locker, and it opened with an echoing metallic scream. The outside covered hallway was deserted, and the smells of school, magic marker and spilled soft drinks, floated around me.
The inside of Bruce’s locker was as I expected: a mess. Not a single textbook was in evidence, but several zombie paperbacks, packs of gum, crumpled napkins, a half-eaten and moldy bagel sandwich, a pair of underwear, deodorant, and a paper sack stapled closed.
This I pulled out, ripped open, and found a small glass bottle with a cork stopper. It was an amber color, like Dad’s ampules, and the liquid inside was unmistakeably Bijou. Hollis Bettencourt’s Bijou.
Instantly I sensed him hovering nearby, alerted by the sudden whiff of burning and smoke.
“Be patient, Hollis. I am going to give it back, but not quite yet.”
Oh, the literalness of ghosts. He seemed to accept my ambiguous answer and floated away for a distance, but not quite out of sight. And he followed as we drove home.
I desperately needed to sleep. Sawyer fell asleep waiting for me to get the Bijou from Bruce’s locker. He followed me inside, and collapsed on the couch. I made my way down to Zoe’s room, Pepper following, and sank into her bed, inhaling her, and sending urgent, ether messages to her that I was coming for her and Ivy. I wasn’t going to let them down.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Piedmont Portal
I dreamed of Jonah lying beside me, holding me as I wept. We were in our old house in Seattle, in our bedroom, while Zoe slept in her bedroom down the hall. The walls were draped in colorful Indian bedspreads, under our bodies indigo sheets of silk. We were on a waterbed, and water began to seep underneath us, sucking us down through suffocating linens.
Waking, I gasped. Pale light filtered through the window. Zoe’s stuffed dragon stared me in the face.
And I felt a heavy warmth behind me, an arm draped over me, just like Jonah’s in the dream. Pale hairs dotted the arm lying on me, not the dark ones of Jonah. Turning slowly, under the protective arm, I saw Sawyer asleep next to me, crowded into Zoe’s little bed with me.
Looking at his sleeping face, a scrape on his chin and a new bruise darkening his cheek beside the older one from the day before, a pleasant fondness filled me. I touched his forehead, his hair.
He opened his eyes, a faint smile moved his lips, and he leaned in and kissed me.
I wanted that kiss to last forever. I wanted to say folded in his warmth for eternity. But it was not to be.
We broke apart. Sitting up, I pushed open the curtains. I could see the wall of the next house, a screen of trees. It looked early. “What time is it?”
Sawyer sat up beside me, swung his legs over the side, consulted his phone. “5:15. We got a grand total of 3 hours of sleep.”
“Good. It’s still early.” As I slid out of bed, he grabbed my hand, pulled me back to him. He looked so worried and serious, that I began to fret about what he wanted to say. Was he leaving? Had he washed his hands of me? By sleeping with me, was he being polite before the big brush-off?
He said, running his hand up and down my arm, “Annie. I’ll make the coffee. You take a shower. Then we are going to see Dominique.”
Happiness rushed through me, and I couldn’t help smiling, the first smile in many tortured hours. I kissed him again, tasting salt and sweetness, and getting up, hopped over Pepper’s sleeping form and ran to the bathroom.
I knew I would find Zoe. I knew it. She would be OK and I could have Dominique arrested and keep her from her Bijou and watch her turn into dust. I almost felt like singing as the hot silky water poured over me.
Coming out of the shower I dressed to the smell of coffee. My mind filed through a dozen scenarios for dealing with Dom and getting Zoe and Ivy out of there, all of them unfolding without me getting my daughter back. All depended on Zoe being at Dominique’s house. My elated mood began to deflate, took a darker turn when I looked at the upturned milk crate that was Zoe’s bedside table. The bottle of Hollis’s Bijou was gone.
I didn’t have to go far to find it. Sawyer leaned against the kitchen counter, his coffee cup in one hand, Hollis’s phial of Bijou in the other.
He said, “So this is the stuff everyone is fighting over.”
A chill traveled up my neck, threatening to choke me. Swallowing, I nodded, casually picked up the coffee Sawyer had poured for me. “That’s it.” I watched Sawyer as he turned the bottle, holding the neck in his fingers, looking at it in the light. It was hard to tear my gaze from the glinting beauty of it, but I had to see what Sawyer was thinking.
I couldn’t tell. His face relaxed, he tilted his head, examining the phial. Then his gaze shifted to me. “Some day, Annie, you will tell me what this is, and why you are involved. I want it to end, whatever it is. I want my ex-wife in jail where she belongs.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak; my breath flowed from me, a dying breath, the last shifting bits of air. Then more poured in, my diaphragm moved. Nodding, I took the bottle from him, stuffed it in my pocket.
We were on the road by six. We took my car, because we needed Pepper with us, and there was more room to bring everybody back home safely: Agnes, Ivy and Zoe. We didn’t say much; I thought about the kiss of this morning, how good I felt waking from my dream to find Sawyer there. I hadn’t asked him why he came to bed with me, because I thought I knew.
Wraiths followed. I could see them, floating question marks, ellipses, parentheses in the paragraph sky. Another clear, hot day, already burnishing the atmosphere to an intense, blemish-free sheen. If Sawyer noticed the flickering shadows where no clouds existed, he said nothing, just sternly judged the road, eyebrows drawn together, hands at ten and two.
I held my two hands together white-knuckled. Objects of the shimmering day took on outlines of silver, and the roar of the road made me deaf to anything else. Pepper snuffled my ear, licked my neck, and I caressed her neck. I would have my daughter, Dominique Delphine, and you would have death.
The wraiths knew, and jostled each other out of the way. I wondered what damage they could do, massed together like this, smash our car into a wall, send us sailing into a light post? I felt menace, just the same as if we were traveling a deserted Interstate and a mysterious car followed our every move. Who would they serve? Would these soulless wraiths turn on us? I needed them on my side, I thought. But how?
Sawyer turned off the freeway onto a hilly road traveling like a rope draped on the Oakland hills. Dead dry fields flanked us, the smell of baking grass came in through my open window, along with the tang of tarmac softening in the sun. The wraiths thickened; as we drove more found us every mile, every curve. I had to wonder that Sawyer didn’t notice, nor anyone seeing us pass, a lumpy fog covering the shape of our car, as if we had brought shreds of San Francisco air with us.
A moment later we were following a winding lane shrouded by drooping willows and eucalyptus; flanked by high walls and security gates. As we passed down the hill; I caught glimpses of the Bay’s tin foil surface, necklaced with the steel bridge. It would be a brilliant day for the City, too.
But I could still feel wraiths around me, dimming my sight, chilling my skin. More every time I blinked. Soon, I worried, I wouldn’t be able to move as wraiths hemmed me in. Sawyer parked crookedly in a sort of pull-over, getting so close to the stone wall that I had to climb over the gear shift to get out.
Pepper’s nails clicked as she dropped to the tarmac beside me. Sawyer started walking up the lane where it rose then hooked to the left. There, on the top of the curve, perched Dom’s domicile, pale adobe and thick beams of long dead trees, as dark and gnarled as the ones in Dante’s Forest.
I had no clear plan except to break down the door by kicking it in and grabbing my daughter and hurling a knife into Dom’s neck. But Sawyer seemed to have one as he by-passed the gate leading into her drive, foll
owed a green wall of bay laurel, then disappeared between waxy leaves the color of bile.
Pepper and I followed. A path hugged the stucco wall, arched over by twisted gray trunks. Under our feet, bare earth muffled our progress. We followed this several yards to where the wall curved to the right.
Sawyer stopped before a wooden gate flaked with peeling blood-dark paint. He was looking through a grille at whatever was beyond. Swimming pool, cabanas, private office, guest house, whatever. I stood, my arms shaking. Wraiths crowded in with us; I almost could hear them breathing, if wraiths had lungs. Or maybe it was my own quick, hissing breaths, escaping from me like a bicycle tire pricked by a shard of glass.
Sawyer stood there for the longest time. He wore the same intent expression he had on the drive over. Glancing at me, putting his finger needlessly to his lips, as if I would just stop making so much noise breathing, he pushed the latch and shoved open the gate.
A distant alarm trilled like an injured bird. My heart bolted into my throat, and I grabbed Sawyer’s wrist.
But he was already moving. He had pushed the door then ran, motioning me to follow, not into the back yard, but along the path, outside the wall. I got it then, and pounded after him, Pepper at my heels.
The ground fell away, and we slid down a ravine. The alarm sound faded, but I could still hear it. Under a shelter of eucalyptus, we came to the bottom. Above us, a rock wall. Before us, a cave.
Also covered with an iron gate. Sawyer already had some small tool in the padlock, opened it, and we entered.
Clever boy. Distracting the household with the garden gate, then entering through this strange buried corridor, smooth and arched like the tunnels. But this one led not to Hell, but to another locked door, quite ordinary and easily opened by Sawyer’s pick.
Laundry room. Empty, clean, tidy. Not a shred of dirty laundry visible anywhere. It smelled of of bleach and old shoes. Through this Sawyer led me, past storerooms barred by wooden gates; skis stacked against walls, broken chairs, rolled-up sails; odors of dust and damp concrete.