Die and Stay Dead

by Nicholas Kaufmann

  “I’m guessing she didn’t take that well,” Bethany said.

  “About as well as I expected,” I said. I filled them in on the rest of it—Reve Azrael’s lair under the city morgue, the Prometheus Arch, and the fire. I didn’t tell them what Reve Azrael had said about the power being mine, not Stryge’s. I still didn’t know if that was true or just a ruse.

  “We tried to find you,” Bethany said apologetically, “but the trail went cold at the FDR Drive. All we found was this. It still works.” She took my cell phone out of her pocket and handed it to me.

  I felt like I was seeing a long-lost friend again. “Thanks.”

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” Bethany asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Gabrielle snickered. “I bet you are, Casanova.”

  Surprised, I raised my eyebrows. “What?”

  Bethany glared at Gabrielle. Then she turned back to me and said, “You’ve got lipstick on your neck.” She pulled a white cloth handkerchief from her pocket and passed it to me.

  Embarrassed, I rubbed my neck with it. The handkerchief came away with a smear of red. Damn. I must have looked like a fool sauntering in here like that. I stuffed the handkerchief in my pocket. I was pretty sure Bethany wouldn’t want it back.

  “After I got away from Reve Azrael, I went to see Jordana,” I admitted.

  “No kidding,” Gabrielle said, still grinning.

  “Why?” Isaac asked. “Why didn’t you come back right away?”

  “I had questions that needed answers,” I said.

  “Did you get them?” Bethany asked.

  “Not exactly,” I said. I thought again about how I seemed to lose my will around Jordana.

  “All I want to know,” Gabrielle said, “is whether that bitch Reve Azrael is finally dead.”

  “I wish I knew,” I said. “She could be. It was a hell of a fire. Revenants make damn good kindling.”

  Gabrielle steeled herself before asking her next question. “What about Thornton’s body? Did it—did it burn, too?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see his body anywhere,” I said. “But there’s something I need to tell you. Something important.” She looked at me, curious, waiting. They all did. I took a deep breath, hoping they wouldn’t think I’d lost my mind. “I didn’t see Thornton’s body, but … I saw Thornton.”

  Gabrielle knit her brow in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “He was there,” I said. “His ghost, or spirit, or whatever you want to call it. It was him, in wolf form. He led me out of the catacombs to safety. There’s no way I would have gotten out of there without his help. Trust me, I know how this sounds, but—”

  Gabrielle cut me off with a chuckle. She wiped a hand under one eye, smearing a tear against her cheek.

  “He’s okay,” she said, relieved. “Even dead and gone, he’s okay. I knew that, or I hoped it was true, but to have proof…” She broke down, covering her face with her hands.

  “Calliope tried to tell me Thornton’s spirit was following me, but I didn’t believe her,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention it to you. But after this, I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Hell yes, I want to know,” Gabrielle said, laughing and crying at the same time. “I’m such a fool. Things have been turning up around my apartment for weeks now, things that were important to both of us. I thought I was losing my mind.” She pushed up her sleeve and looked at the brown leather bracelet around her wrist. “He’s been with me all this time, and I didn’t even know it. But what is he doing here? Why isn’t he on the other side?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But there’s something else. I don’t know how to explain it. At one point, Thornton passed through me and I—I saw something. It was like I was somewhere else for a moment. I saw Calliope and Thornton. She was in a trance. He was whispering things to her, and she was writing them down in the notebook.” I turned to Isaac. “We know Calliope could talk to the dead. We know it was the spirits who warned her about Arkwright’s plan. But we never stopped to ask who those spirits were. I … I think it was Thornton. I think Thornton is the one who warned her. I think he’s the one who set all this in motion.”

  The others didn’t speak. They stood around the table in stunned silence for a moment.

  Finally, Gabrielle said, “I don’t see why you’re all so surprised. It sounds just like him. Still trying to save the world, even after he’s dead.”

  “Thornton,” Bethany said, shaking her head. “Even now, he keeps surprising me.”

  “Join the club, hon,” Gabrielle said. “Now you know why I wanted to marry the man.”

  * * *

  Erickson Arkwright had a fragment of the Codex Goetia. So did we. That left one last fragment to be found. It turned out Isaac, Bethany, and Gabrielle had been hard at work trying to find it while I was gone. On the whiteboard, they had crossed off all the clues we already deciphered. Only two were left.

  Three hidden pieces

  Eternal voice and inward word

  Erickson Arkwright

  Mariner lost at sea

  Beneath the monuments

  Look to the Trefoil

  The Angel of the Waters

  Codex Goetia

  “Who is the Angel of the Waters?” I asked. “Is it a person, or another monument?”

  “We figured that one out while you were with Jordana getting your, um, questions answered,” Gabrielle said, suppressing a chuckle.

  “The Angel of the Waters is a reference to the Gospel of John, in which an angel blesses the Pool of Bethesda and gives it healing powers,” Isaac said.

  He opened his laptop and turned it to face me. On the screen was a photograph of a tall, two-tiered, bronze fountain that stood at the center of a wide, circular pool of water. At the top of the fountain was the statue of a winged woman. An angel. The fountain looked familiar to me, though I couldn’t place it.

  “The Angel of the Waters is also another name for the statue on top of Bethesda Fountain in Central Park,” he said.

  Of course. Now I recognized it. You could see Bethesda Fountain from the highest windows in Citadel, especially now that it was autumn and the trees had shed their leaves.

  “So the fountain is the third monument,” I said. I looked at the whiteboard again. “What about the last clue? Look to the Trefoil. What does that mean?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Isaac said. “We haven’t had any luck figuring it out.”

  “What’s a trefoil, anyway?” I asked.

  “A plant with three leaves, like a clover,” Bethany said with a shrug. “But for some reason Calliope capitalized the word every time she wrote it, as if it were a name. We don’t know why, or what it has to do with the Codex.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” I said. “Now that we know where the third fragment is, maybe this trefoil thing doesn’t matter.”

  “I doubt that,” she said. “Everything Calliope wrote down has mattered so far.”

  Isaac closed his laptop. “We were about to head out to the fountain when you showed up.”

  “Before we go, we need a plan in case Arkwright shows up again,” I said. “He has a nasty habit of being one step ahead of us.”

  “If he shows up, we’ll deal with him,” Gabrielle said.

  “He’s got the Thracian Gauntlet,” I reminded her. “That thing can kill from a hundred feet away. Even with a mage on our side, Arkwright still has the advantage.”

  “Two mages,” Gabrielle corrected me. “I’m every bit as powerful as Isaac now. Let Arkwright try to come at us. I’ll make him wish he’d died with the rest of his doomsday cult buddies.”

  Isaac’s face clouded. “You may be powerful, Gabrielle, but you’re no mage. You’re still at risk of being infected.”

  “So are you,” Gabrielle pointed out. “I know you mages pride yourself on supposedly being immune, but there have been plenty of mages who have turned.”

  “That’s different,” he said. “It takes de
cades of study and experience to be able to carry magic inside you safely. There are no shortcuts, Gabrielle.”

  Gabrielle sighed, exasperated. “I’ve got a handle on it. Now, are we going to keep talking about this, or are we going to find the last fragment before Arkwright does?”

  Isaac crossed his arms and glared at her. Even if the conversation was over for now, it was clear he wasn’t finished talking about this.

  “Arkwright is faster than any of us,” I said. “He’s got a long-range weapon he doesn’t have to come out of the shadows to use. We’ll be sitting ducks. I’d feel better if we had Philip with us.”

  Those were words I never thought I’d say. Especially after learning what he’d done in his past. I still didn’t know how I felt about him. Philip was dangerous and unstable at the best of times, but his strength and speed were a huge advantage. He could see body heat in the dark, and we already knew he could survive a direct blast from the Thracian Gauntlet.

  But Isaac shook his head. “Arkwright’s going to set his plan in motion at midnight tomorrow. We don’t have time to wait for Philip. We’re going to have to make do without him.”

  “You still haven’t told us where he is,” Bethany pointed out.

  Isaac sighed. “I sent him to get something for me. Something we may need if things don’t go according to plan.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nightclaw,” Isaac said.

  Bethany and Gabrielle both sat up straight in their chairs.

  “You can’t be serious,” Bethany said.

  “I thought nobody knew where Nightclaw is,” Gabrielle said. “Do you?”

  “No,” he said. “But I know someone who does. Aiyana, the Goblin Queen. She was appointed Nightclaw’s guardian and protector. She’s sworn to secrecy about its resting place. But she and I have a history. She owes me. She won’t turn Philip away. I just wish it wasn’t taking so damn long.”

  “What is Nightclaw?” I asked.

  Isaac shook his head. “Nothing you need to worry about right now. I’d prefer to focus on finding the last fragment before Arkwright does.”

  “Fine,” I said. I didn’t like being brushed off, but when Isaac didn’t want to talk about something, you couldn’t get it out of him. I pulled my waterlogged Bersa from its holster. I ejected the magazine from the handgrip, emptied the chamber, and began field-stripping the pistol. If we ran into trouble, I wanted to be ready. “I’ll need ten minutes,” I said. “And some gun oil.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Bethesda Fountain wasn’t far from Citadel. We walked to it down the long, concrete path through Central Park’s Literary Walk. On either side of the path stood statues and busts of famous poets and authors, their names carved on the statues’ bases—Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Fitz-Greene Halleck. The only name I recognized was William Shakespeare. Even amnesiacs have heard of Shakespeare. My gun, freshly cleaned, oiled, and reloaded, sat in the holster at the small of my back. If Erickson Arkwright made another appearance, I planned on putting a bullet in his head before he had the chance to unleash Nahash-Dred on the world. Provided I could catch him. The son of a bitch was fast.

  Leafless elm trees flanked the path and formed a skeletal canopy above us. Sheets of rain poured down as the sky grew dark. I looked at my watch. It was almost six p.m. Was Jordana on her way home now? Was she already there? My cell phone sat in my trench coat pocket, worrying me with its silence.

  The weather had kept people out of the park, save for a few brave tourists in plastic ponchos determined to get their money’s worth from a trip to the big city. They didn’t pay us any attention. The orange construction vests worked their magic.

  Bethesda Terrace, a two-level structure of sandstone and Roman brick, overlooked the fountain plaza below. We proceeded down the terrace’s wide, granite stairs into the enclosed arcade underneath. Here, under the thousands of colorful, hand-patterned tiles that lined the ceiling, more park visitors huddled to wait out the rain in their sopping wet coats. They chatted among themselves or on their cell phones, ignoring us as we marched through the arcade and out through the archways into the open-air plaza.

  The rain shimmered on the brick pavement. Puddles splashed under my boots. At the far end of the plaza was Bethesda Fountain. The water had already been turned off for the winter, leaving the pool basin empty, except for the rainwater that had collected there and was seeping into the drains at the base. The fountain itself rose twenty-six feet into the air in multiple levels. At the bottom, two rows of short, stone pillars rose from a pedestal to support a second, smaller basin. Above that, four bronze cherubs posed around a central column. At the top stood the eight-foot-tall statue of the Angel of the Waters. She wore flowing robes, her wings outstretched as though she were just touching down atop the fountain. One hand clutched a lily. The other pointed down at the pool basin below.

  Past the fountain, a fence and some metal barricades separated the plaza from the rain-battered waters of a lake. Off to the left were the distant skyscrapers of Central Park West, their windows glowing beneath the darkening sky. To the right, the lights of the nearby Boathouse restaurant shimmered softly through the rain.

  I felt a sudden sense of déjà vu. I’d been here recently. But when? It hit me a moment later. Just a few days ago, I’d been looking at the Boathouse from the opposite side. Only a few hundred yards northeast from here was the Alice in Wonderland statue, and Biddy’s lair beneath it.

  I snapped my fingers. “I know why Calliope was in the park when Biddy kidnapped her. She was doing the same thing we are. She must have figured out there was a fragment under the fountain and came to get it. But Biddy nabbed her before she could. That’s why she had the knife with her, too. She brought it for protection because she knew she was being followed.”

  It was ironic. If Biddy hadn’t kidnapped Calliope, there was a good chance her stalker would have killed her that night. If he had, we never would have known about her or Erickson Arkwright or Nahash-Dred or any of it. I still didn’t believe in fate—I refused to, it felt too much like a cage—but it was hard to shake the feeling that something had gone through a lot of trouble to get our attention.

  “Her knife wouldn’t have been any match for the Thracian Gauntlet,” Gabrielle pointed out.

  True, but then, the gauntlet wasn’t what killed Calliope. She’d been cut open, her body spiked to the ceiling of her bedroom. I wasn’t ruling out Nahash-Dred as her murderer, but Arkwright still seemed the likelier suspect. But why would he kill Calliope that way when he had the gauntlet? Did he hate women, and reserve a different fate for them? It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen violent insanity and misogyny go hand in hand. Biddy had only targeted women. Was Arkwright cut from the same cloth?

  We searched the fountain slowly, methodically, keeping an eye out for hidden doors or switches. The fountain was much larger than either of the previous monuments, so we split it into quadrants: Isaac searched the pool basin, Bethany checked the cluster of stone pillars, and I climbed to the smaller basin and inspected the four cherubs. Gabrielle examined the angel itself, magically levitating to the top of the fountain.

  “Be careful,” Isaac hissed at her. “If anyone sees you…”

  “Relax, red. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.” She stepped onto the fountain in front of the angel. “There. Happy now?”

  Isaac glowered at her. I could tell he was worried about Gabrielle now that she was carrying magic inside her. I was worried, too. She’d become reckless. She’d shown us that much when she turned into a loose cannon in Battery Park and nearly got herself killed in the process. But it wasn’t just that. There were more subtle changes, too. She’d become smug, arrogant, the complete opposite of the woman she used to be. Was the magic altering her mind? If she was infected, did that mean that she would become a threat?

  No. This was Gabrielle. She was a member of the team. She’d risked her life for us more times than I could count. Infected or not, she would never tur
n on us. Would she?

  I hated asking myself questions I couldn’t answer. I shifted my focus to examining the cherubs instead. As the cold rain soaked me to the bone, I scoured the bronze curls of their hair, the folds of their robes, the hidden spots behind their knees and under their feet. I inspected the column behind them, too, where the bronze was molded into thick leaves and palm fronds. I got my wet fingers into every empty space I could, but I didn’t find anything. Isaac, Bethany, and Gabrielle didn’t have any better luck.

  “There’s got to be something,” Bethany said, frustrated. She brushed wet hair out of her eyes. “There was a way to get under the other two monuments, there has to be a way to get under this one.”

  “Maybe we should just blow the damn thing up. That would get us under fast enough,” Gabrielle said. She floated brazenly down to the pool basin to land beside Isaac. “I can do it. Just say the word.”

  “That’s enough,” Isaac growled at her. “We’re not blowing anything up. The last thing we want to do is draw anyone’s attention, especially Arkwright’s.”

  “Or the cops,” I added.

  I jumped down into the empty pool basin. Bethany was right, there had to be a way to get under the fountain. We just weren’t seeing it. I looked up at the winged statue. The Angel of the Waters. That was what Calliope had written in the notebook. It stood to reason the statue had something to do with getting inside. But what? Gabrielle had already examined it. I looked at the angel’s extended hand pointing down at the pool basin. Wait, no, that wasn’t exactly right. She was pointing downward, but not at the basin. She was pointing at one of the cherubs right below her.

  I climbed back up and began searching every inch of that cherub. He was standing with his left foot up on a small stone. I checked the foot and the stone but found nothing. The cherub’s right hand crossed his body to hold part of his robe. I checked the arm, hand, robe, and again there was nothing. Damn. I could have sworn I was on to something, but it was starting to feel like another dead end. I looked into the cherub’s face, wishing he could tell me what I wanted to know. His round, pupilless eyes stared back at me blankly. Thanks for nothing.