by Zeller, Jill
“Those phials he has? Relatives, right? Well, relatives include mothers, as well as grandmothers and great grandmothers.” Rising, Dom straightened her pants. “Women make the best Bijou, did you know that? Anecdotally-speaking, of course. I mean, our Bijou is the best. Lasts the longest, even stronger than a man’s Xtra.”
She watched me, as if she could see Hollis’s Bijou coursing through my body. I wondered if she knew Sawyer’d had some too.
Her gaze, black and piercing, traveled over my shoulder. “Ah.” She raised a finger, as if ordering us to be silent. “Here come the first.”
A smell preceded the fresh ghosts, skin in hot sun, hair just washed. They came hand in hand, and my heart tumbled to see two teenagers, hand in hand, walk through the open kitchen door. Car accident? Suicide pact?
They saw Dom, then me, and then Dad. Their eyes were round and worried, wondering what the score was; this wasn’t what they had expected. The tunnel and the light, maybe, and relatives, but not three strangers.
They drifted past. I made no move to stop them and neither did Dom. I wondered how she planned to get their souls. She would have to act fast.
I quickly turned my gaze back to Dom, and saw a look of irritation and impatience draw lines around her mouth. She was badly in need of Xtra. Somehow, I had to deal with her, keep her away from Sawyer and somehow get help to him.
“Annie, he’s not breathing very well!”
Zoe’s voice. I heard Agnes’s sobs. Anger shifted my feet. “Oh fuck you, Dom. Fuck you. I’m not going to let you have him.”
She moved when I did. But I was quicker. As I saw her come at me, I jumped to one side. She bowled into me, and I seized the wrist of the hand holding the stiletto.
We fell against an overturned table. The stiletto scraped my cheek. I slammed her hand back against the rim of the table. Again. And again.
She didn’t even scream. But she didn’t drop the knife, either.
Outside, close from the driveway maybe, a car honked, several times. I heard a voice, and my heart did a leap.
“Annie, are you here?”
“Mom! You have to come! I think he’s arresting!”
That’s what comes of being the daughter of a critical care nurse, I thought. Pushing away from Dom, I rolled, hopped to my feet, and came to Sawyer’s side.
“Annie!” Jack Easton’s voice sounded through the window. “What do I do with all these boxes?”
I couldn’t think about that now. Sawyer’s pulse was very fast, his breathing shallow. Agnes’s t-shirt was soaked through. Oh my god I can’t lose him.
Grabbing Agnes, I forced her to look at me. “You call 911 right now. Zoe, hold this on the wound.”
My daughter obeyed me. Agnes gulped, swallowed, and pulled out her cell phone.
I kept my hand on Sawyer’s neck. As long as he had a pulse and was breathing, I was OK, but he was in severe hypovolemic shock and Zoe was right; he could go into respiratory arrest any minute, followed closely by cardiac arrest.
The doorway darkened. Dom stood there, holding her knife. Agnes gave a muffled scream. “Mom! What are you doing?”
“Get away from him, Agnes.” Dom’s voice, low and growling. “I’ll help him. I’m a doctor.”
I nudged Zoe. “Hold on,” I whispered. “But stay behind me.”
“Sure, Dom, come on.” I stared at her, and felt a smile quivering on my lips “Help him.”
A smile, not a happy one, tugged one corner of Dominique’s lips. She fell to her knees, her stiletto in her right hand.
“I want to see how it’s done. Bijou Xtra. I want to know if they know when you snatch their soul from their bodies, when they are still saveable. Show me.” I leaned close to her, bringing my face near to hers. I could smell her breath, sweet and hungry.
“This is how your father did it.” She had a tiny bottle in her hand, wrapped in a lacy handkerchief. I didn’t know where she drew it from; her hair maybe. Around her neck? “That tree, out there. The olive oil. Just for this. Not for your everyday Bijou, like Ivy thought. But for Xtra. The only such tree existing in the western hemisphere.”
The tree the sparrow haunted, singing the sun into the sea. I waited, praying my hunch was right. Praying I was wrong about Dad, about why he stayed so close to Dominique all this time. Not just to keep an eye on Zoe and Bruce to be certain they were OK, but another reason, a life’s work of reasons.
Dominique held the handkerchief in her hand, unscrewed the top of the very, very tiny bottle, smaller than any of the Bijou phials. Under my fingers, Sawyer’s pulse became irregular, with pauses between the beats. I saw his chest stop moving.
“Hey!” From Bruce, who was now sitting against the wall. “Look at this!”
I didn’t dare turn my head. Dom kept her eyes on the drop of oil poised on the opening of the tiny bottle.
Then I saw them, rushing past my vision, gray clouds and shapes, accompanied by an icy smell. Out in the kitchen, Dad yelled, “Wow! My god. Hello, all of you!!” Then his voice faded, but he was still talking, and I heard Jack Easton exclaiming and cursing. Jack could see them, too, because he no doubt had ingested some of their souls.
Wraiths, coming through the open portal. Coming through the open portal drawn by the presence of their Bijou in Jack Easton’s car, parked outside the driveway. Tears burned in my eyes as I thanked whatever force or being or power had told Jack not to take the Bijou to the VA hospital as I had told him to, but to bring all of the Bijou Sawyer and I had moved out of Dominique’s house here to me.
Tears blurred my vision. I started CPR on Sawyer as I lost the faint beat of his pulse. Dom watched me, smiling like a little girl waiting for a gift. A terrible thought crossed my mind. That if I stopped CPR, and killed Dom right now, then Sawyer’s soul would be safe forever.
But he would be gone. Gone from Agnes and gone from me. I had lost everyone I loved, except Zoe and, I realized with a shock of truth, Ivy, the sister who tormented me most of my life. I wasn’t going to lose Sawyer too.
Counting compressions under my breath, I pumped. If I stopped compressions I had four minutes until irreversible brain damage, less, probably, because Sawyer’s circulation had been compromised for some time now anyway. It would take only seconds to grab the box cutter lying at my side and slice it across Dom’s throat.
I pumped, and pumped, thinking, staring at her throat. I could do it. Everything would be over, done with. The horror of Hollis’s and Baby Justin’s deaths wouldn’t happen to Sawyer. Poor Ivy. She didn’t know what she had. Pump. Pump. I could end it now, with one swipe of a blade. Pump. Pump.
The handkerchief soaked up the oil. It looked like ordinary everyday cooking oil, odorless, colorless. Deadly. Dom did this, bare-handed. Was she immune to its powers, after all the souls she had eaten for over a hundred years?
What about her soul? Pump. Pump. Did she even have one, or was it a mosaic of everyone she had destroyed, glued to her in one suffering, screaming mass? The thought of it terrified, repulsed me. Pump. Pump. Go on. End it. Now. Pick up that cutter and kill her.
But I couldn’t do it. I knew that. I wanted to kill her but I was unable to kill. I was a goddamned healer. I was supposed to keep people alive, or if I couldn’t do that, ease them into peaceful death.
Pulling the handkerchief taut, she started bringing it close to Sawyer’s mouth. My heart broke in pieces, a thousand of them, sprinkling down, a shattered mirror. Hatred replaced it, stitched everything back together in a Frankenstein map of scars.
Sitting back, I lifted my hands away from Sawyer’s chest.
Dom faltered, glanced at me. Her arms quivered. She brought the handkerchief closer, closer, to Sawyer’s pale lips, pale like pearls.
“What are you doing?” Agnes’s voice pounded through my head. She seized my arm. “You have to save him. Mother! Stop it!”
Agnes’s hand snaked out, grabbed the handkerchief from Dom’s grasp. I heard it rip. A rigor of hatred dug deep into Dom’s face and s
he slapped her daughter hard, knocking Agnes into me.
Three minutes. One of them gone. Two minutes. I could only hope Sawyer’s heart still beat, struggling to circulate what little blood he had left.
Dom’s finger’s shook as she struggled to hold the torn handkerchief. I thought I could see a blaze of silver forming, running from above her left eye and streaking back into her hair. Faint lines grazed her porcelain skin.
I heard the siren. They would be here in time, I hoped. My hand felt the box cutter. I held it tightly, its cold metal comforting somehow.
Agnes was not through with her mother. Over her father’s body, she launched herself at Dominique. She grasped Dom’s hair and yanked. Dom’s fist thudded into Agnes’s face, but the girl didn’t let go.
Bruce brushed past me, stepped over Sawyer’s legs, got behind Dom and threw his arms around her. Lifting her up, he dragged her backward and slammed her against the far wall.
Wraiths coiled around her, a swirling mass of gray shadows. All that Bijou. All those years. Thousands and thousands of souls poured through the open portal below us.
The siren blared in my ears, went silent. I heard voices outside, Jack Easton and others.
I had to rearrange this scenario before the police got here. I didn’t recall how Agnes had framed her father’s situation, but I didn’t want anyone arrested, especially not Dominique.
“Bruce, take her into the kitchen and sit on her, if you have to. Agnes, get that stiletto and hide it.” Bruce obeyed; keeping his hold on Dominique, he carried her backward through the kitchen door. Wraiths followed, like rusty nails to a magnet.
Agnes wiped the tears from her eyes and picked up both the stiletto, and my box cutter. I gave her a grateful smile. “Everyone, it was the meth freaks. Mark and Maddy. They stabbed Sawyer and ran off.”
Behind me two paramedics carrying equipment, a man and a woman, came through the front door. Moving away, giving them room to work, I answered their questions. Zoe cuddled with me, as we sat leaning against the wall, watching the EMTs do their magic. Oxygen. Good. The ECG showed a rapid sinus rhythm. Good. IV slipped into his right arm with wide-open saline running. Good.
Agnes sat beside me. I held both girls, feeling their warmth and life, watching wraiths milling around the hall, flooding the kitchen, more and more flowing through the basement doorway.
One of the paramedics looked up, around. “What is that, smoke?”
I shrugged, so did the girls. The EMT seemed to accept there was no explanation, wiped her eyes, and went back to work.
A police officer walked past me. Stopping beside us, he knelt down. His blue eyes were friendly, but he didn’t smile. “Hello, ma’am. Would you like to tell me what happened here?”
Bruce came in from the kitchen, leaned against the open door. I could see fresh blood seeping through his t-shirt. “Sir, my nephew is injured, too. Could someone take a look at him?”
A moment later, two more EMTs came down the hallway with a stretcher, parked it next to Sawyer. One of them walked up to Bruce and politely asked him to sit on the floor.
Joy filled me seeing Sawyer’s arm move, and then be gently restrained by one of the paramedics. But anxiety swirled underneath. I wanted to get up, walk into the kitchen, see what had happened to Dominique, but I didn’t dare. The policeman would follow me or worse, ask me to stay where I was.
Then Dad appeared in the doorway; I could see the kitchen walls through him. He looked at me, and he was smiling.
“Did she get away?” I said before I knew it.
Dad shook his head as the officer asked, “Did who get away?”
Turning my gaze back to the cop, I said, “The girl. Maybe I better tell you what happened.” I laid out my tale of Mark and Maddy, who didn’t really exist, but the cop nodded as if he had seen them, as if the neighbors had reported kids hanging around our old place.
Agnes pointed toward the kitchen. “She ran that way, and the boy through the front door. I’ve never seen anyone move that fast.”
Impatience gnawed at me as I politely answered questions. What had happened to Dominique? Where had she got to? Was she alone in the kitchen, planning her escape? Dad had drifted away again, surrounded by wraiths.
“Pepper!” Zoe sprang out from under my arm, ran over to hug the big dog who trotted toward us along the hall. The policeman turned and flinched.
My heart filled with joy seeing my daughter and my big dog together again. Pepper had just come up the basement stairs, followed by Mae and Jonah who floated near me. Mae’s lips parted at the sight of Sawyer being lifted onto the stretcher.
“That your dog, ma’am?” The policeman started to rise.
“Yes.” I got to my feet, Agnes beside me. “She’s harmless. She just looks mean.”
I touched one of Sawyer’s feet as the paramedics rolled him past. I didn’t think he felt my touch, I wanted to go with him. Someone needed to go with him. “Please,” I said to policeman. “This is his daughter. She should go with him to the hospital.”
Officer Ryder nodded, and Agnes, giving an apologetic look to Bruce, followed them out the front door. Mae trailed after Sawyer, but Jonah hovered protectively near me. “Find Dominique,” I whispered.
“What was that ma’am?” Officer Ryder asked as Jonah floated away.
“I’ve got a sore knee.” I flexed my right knee.
“Are you injured too, ma’am?”
I shook my head. “Old injury. Fell off a bicycle.”
The police seemed happy to let Zoe and myself leave the house. We went through the kitchen, stuffed shoulder to shoulder with wraiths, and into the backyard.
I inhaled the clean, late air of the day. The sun laid golden film on the brick fence and edged the slender olive tree leaves. The little bird had flown away. As we passed through the kitchen, I glanced at Dad, who shrugged as he hovered in the empty refrigerator space. Not only did I want to know what happened to Dominique, but I wanted to hear Dad’s side of things, his version of his wives’ deaths. But not with the cops around.
I still felt alert, awake, fit and ready to cycle another hundred miles. This Bijou was certainly vibrant; I wondered how anyone slept while using the stuff. Jack Easton still looked fresh and happy from his dose of Bijou earlier. But more than anything, I was dying to know what had become of Dominique. Where the hell was Jonah? What was taking him so long? Zoe was cranky for lack of food and Pepper needed water.
Jack ambled over and stood next to me. He smiled and nodded as a cop came out the back door and walked through the mob of wraiths huddled and hanging on every square inch of our garden. I wasn’t sure Jack could see them, but I knew he could still see Baby Justin, who sat on the top of the back fence, watching us with his sweet, baby eyes.
“I’m sure glad to see you here,” he muttered. “I got word that the destination had changed. He was very convincing.”
“Who?” Where the hell is Jonah?
“You know who.” Jack glanced at Baby Justin. “He told me not to take make the delivery to the VA, but bring it here instead. I’m glad I listened.”
“Me too.” Jack smelled like pomegranates. “So, now what?”
I tried to remember what I had told him, but that was before I’d taken Hollis’s Bijou, which greatly clarified the mind. Something about a great deal of money, we would make a killing with all that Bijou. All he had to do was go pick it up from the little canyon behind Dominique’s house and bring it all to me. I let him believe we were going to go into business for ourselves, cut Dominique out of the deal.
“First, we leave everything where it is until the police have left.” Jonah arrowed toward me, after coming through the wall of the upper story between my old bedroom window and Ivy’s. Jack was starting to say something, but instead I listened to Jonah tell me that Dominique was upstairs, imprisoned by the tightest woven wall of wraiths he had ever seen. He couldn’t even get past them, but was able hear Dominique trying to reason with them about letting her go.
“Which room are they in,” I asked, not caring that Jack Easton stood right next to me. What did I care what he thought?
“That one up there.”
He pointed to Ivy’s old bedroom. How fitting, I thought. And maybe not just a random choice. Not for the first time I wondered how Ivy was faring at the hospital, and with a glum sinking, wondered the same about Sawyer. Please let him live. Please.
“I’m thinking of paying her a visit.” I pushed away from the wall, and walked up the back stairs into the kitchen. Dad was busy at the counter, setting up what looked like a ghostly lab, beakers, burners and flasks. The condiment rack of family Bijou glittered on the old table, which he had set upright. It was a massive, heavy table, impossible to get through the doors, which was why it was still here five years later.
“Dad. Time for you to explain.”
Dad turned. He wore his ghostly lab coat; it had taken on a greenish tinge. He floated near me. “I’m sorry about the way I treated you, Annie. But I had no choice.”
“Uh huh. So what about my mother?” I looked at the phials in their metal rack, bright and pretty. “Which one is hers?”
Dad touched one of the phials. None of them were labeled, but I was sure he knew which was who. “And Ivy’s mother Samantha is here. And my first wife, before your mother Rita, Annie, is here.”
I had to digest that, and bile rose in my throat. There was one before my mother? Jesus.
Dad saw the disgusted look on my face. “That much is all true. I’m not exactly proud of my serial monogamy. And it’s true, I’m afraid, about Dominique.” He shrugged, and looked quiet embarrassed about it. “But I swear she pursued me. Sure I thought Mae was beautiful, and I liked her a lot, but I would never—you have to believe me.”
Oddly, I did. It was a habit of womanizers to blame the women, claim they were the seducers. But in the case of Dominique, I totally believed she came after Dad. After all, he was a Novak, and he knew all about Bijou Xtra.
“Did you know our olive tree was so special?” I looked out at the little tree, its gray-green leaves, in the still dusk, like the tines of slim platinum forks.