Die and Stay Dead

by Nicholas Kaufmann

  I watched drops of rainwater stream down from the top of the cherub’s head. They disappeared before reaching his face. Odd. I looked closer. A slight seam ran around the perimeter of the cherub’s face, along the hairline and under the jaw. Was it a result of the casting process, or something more? Holding my breath, I gripped the bronze face and pulled. It slid off the statue like a mask.

  “I found something,” I called to the others.

  But what exactly had I found? There was no switch or button beneath the cherub’s face, only a flat bronze surface. At its center was a round hole, roughly the size of a baseball. I poked a finger inside. It was shallow and rounded at the back, as if it were made to hold something spherical.

  Gabrielle floated into the air behind me and peered over my shoulder.

  “People are going to see you,” I said.

  “You sound like Isaac,” she said, hovering. “If anyone sees me, let them gawk. What do I care?” Her arrogance made me nervous, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue. I nodded at the hole in the cherub’s head. “Any idea what that is?”

  “If the door’s locked,” she said, “that must be the keyhole.”

  “The other monuments didn’t need a key.”

  She shrugged. “This one does.”

  I jumped down to the pool basin. Gabrielle floated down next to me, ignoring Isaac’s angry glare.

  “If we’re looking for a key,” I said, “it’s got to be something that fits into that space, something round like a ball. But from the size of the hole, I’m thinking it’s something too big to carry on a key chain.”

  “Could it be hidden somewhere else on the fountain?” Isaac asked.

  I shook my head. “Only a fool would keep a key right next to the lock. But it’ll be stashed somewhere nearby, I’m sure of it. Hidden but easy to get to in a pinch.”

  We split into two groups to search the surrounding area. Bethany and I went east toward the Boathouse. Isaac and Gabrielle went west toward a long, cast-iron bridge that spanned the lake. I suspected he didn’t want to let her out of his sight.

  Bethany and I followed a path that traced a bend in the lake. Wet, dead leaves squished under my boots. I’d grown used to the rain after being drenched all day, but with the sun down it was getting colder out. I shivered and lifted the collar of my trench coat around my neck. Bethany took out the glowing charm and used it as a flashlight in the dark. She shone it on the path and the leafless trees around us, but we hardly knew what we were looking for. I was certain the key would be as hidden as the keyhole. Inside a hollow tree or under a random brick in the path, maybe. Someplace only the person who’d hidden it would think to look.

  “Kind of like old times, huh?” I said.

  She looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  “You, me, stumbling around in the dark looking for mysterious objects. It’s weird the things you feel nostalgic about.”

  She smiled briefly. “We’ve only known each other a month. That’s hardly long enough to start feeling nostalgic.”

  She was probably right about that, but she’d been my first partner on the team, before I even knew there was a team. She was still the one I felt the most comfortable with. The one I felt the closest to, even when she was infuriating. Which was always.

  “This is pointless,” she said. “We don’t know what we’re looking for. For all I know, we could have passed it already. Did Jordana mention anything about a key or what it might look like?”

  “No, nothing,” I said. “I don’t think she knew.”

  “Huh,” Bethany said. “So there’s something Jordana doesn’t know. Imagine that.”

  She continued up the path, but I stopped for a moment, watching her. Why couldn’t she just give it a rest? Why did she have to keep picking on Jordana? Except, I knew it wasn’t really about Jordana. It was about me. On some level, I’d known that all along.

  “Did you expect me to wait for you?” I called after her.

  Bethany stopped walking. For a long moment, she stood with her back to me.

  “You turned me down, remember?” I said. “You told me the timing wasn’t right. Did you expect me to wait?”

  She turned around. “Yes,” she said. Then she sighed, her shoulders slumping. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. This is all new to me.”

  I walked up to her. “It’s new to me, too.”

  “Look, I’m not heartless,” Bethany said. “I’m happy for you that you’re learning about your past. Really, I am. I wish I knew half as much about where I came from. And I know I’ve been acting like an ass about Jordana. It’s just that it’s all happening so fast. I didn’t think I would lose you so quickly. Or that she would be so…”

  “Beautiful?”

  “Tall,” she said.

  I shook my head. “You’re not losing me. I’m not going anywhere—”

  She raised a hand to stop me from saying more. “Everyone leaves eventually. So let’s call a truce, okay? I’m just going to wish you good luck and stay out of it. Just don’t ask me to call you Lucas. Because even if that’s your real name, it’s not who you are to me.”

  I looked at her, the rain running down her face. There was nothing for me to say, but a thousand things I wanted to.

  Bethany looked past me then, her eyes widening in surprise. She lifted the charm to point its light behind me. “Look.”

  I turned around. Behind me, a flight of concrete steps led downhill to the underpass of a pedestrian bridge. Its round, brownstone archway was nearly obscured by the dead, brown shrubbery that hung over it like cobwebs. A lamppost next to the stairs was affixed with a sign that read TREFOIL ARCH.

  “Look to the Trefoil,” I said.

  We descended into the dark underpass. The glowing charm showed us brick walls and a low, wooden ceiling that slanted down at forty-five-degree angles at the sides. There was another arch at the far end of the underpass, different in shape from the one we’d come in through. This one had three lobes, almost like a clover’s leaves. A trefoil. Hence the name.

  A raspy voice came from behind me. “Spare some change?”

  I turned around. A homeless man with a long, tangled beard and filthy clothes sat on the floor, his back against the wall. I hadn’t noticed him when we came in.

  I shook my head. “Sorry, pal.”

  “Rainy night,” he said. “You want to stay under my bridge, you gotta gimme some change.” He made a strange braying noise, then laughed. “Three billy goats gruff.”

  Bethany pulled some change out of her pocket and handed it to him. His thick, dirty fingers closed quickly around the coins.

  “God bless you,” he said. “This’ll help me get a hot meal.” At that moment, an empty forty-ounce bottle of Olde English 800 rolled out from behind him on the floor. He looked at it and sighed. “Busted.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Just do us a favor: Keep an eye out and make sure no one else comes in here?”

  “Okay,” he said. “But if you two are looking for a place to get your freak on, the public bathroom’s gonna be a lot more private.”

  “Just keep a lookout,” she said.

  He stood up, balancing himself tipsily against the wall. He went to stand in the archway with his back to us. “All right, I ain’t lookin’. Just make it quick. And keep it down. Don’t wanna hear none of your nasty business.”

  Bethany walked to the center of the underpass. She stood on her toes and knocked on the angled part of the wooden ceiling. It sounded hollow.

  “It’s a drop ceiling,” she said. “There’s empty space inside.”

  “Enough space for the key?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But the notebook mentioned this place for a reason.”

  I noticed a plain wooden panel set into the ceiling, lighter in color than the rest of the wood. I knocked on it. It, too, sounded hollow, and the panel jostled slightly in its frame, as if it weren’t fixed in place. I pushed it, and the panel lifted. I gave it a shove, and it
fell inside the dark space above it.

  “I think I found something,” I said. “Bring that light over here.”

  “The fuck you two doing?” our drunk watchman demanded, turning around.

  “Just let us know if anyone is coming,” I told him. He turned back again with an annoyed grunt.

  Bethany shone the light up into the hole. I stretched to reach in as far as I could. I felt around and touched something cold, hard, and rounded. I pulled it out. It was a crystalline sphere, although it wasn’t quite as round as I thought. Instead of smooth curves, the surface was comprised of many identical, equilateral triangular faces. Bethany shone the light into it. The sphere absorbed it somehow. No light came out the other side.

  “It’s an icosahedron,” she said.

  “A what?”

  “A fancy word for an object with twenty sides,” she explained. “It looks like it’s made of glass or crystal, but I’ve never seen anything with this kind of light absorption capability.”

  “Magic?” I asked, keeping my voice down so our drunk friend wouldn’t hear.

  “Undoubtedly. It’s also the right shape to be the key.”

  So the same person who hid the fragments had also hidden the key here inside the Trefoil Arch. But there was one thing I couldn’t figure out. If they’d gone through the trouble of breaking the Codex into pieces and hiding them around the city, why hadn’t they tried to stop us from collecting them? None of the fragments had been guarded or moved. What happened to the person who hid them?

  As we walked out of the underpass, the homeless man gaped at the crystalline sphere in my hand.

  “Thanks for keeping watch for us,” Bethany said.

  The homeless man went back to his spot on the floor, shaking his head. “Can’t believe that motherfucker was up in the ceiling this whole time. Screw spare change. I coulda bought me some high-end shit with that. Sophisticated shit.”

  Outside, I called Isaac’s cell and told him we’d found the key. He and Gabrielle met us back at the fountain. I climbed up to the faceless cherub and inserted the crystal sphere into the hole. It fit perfectly. As soon as it was in place, the sphere erupted with a sudden, bright light that shot out across the rainy sky like a search beam. Startled and momentarily blinded, I fell backward off the fountain. Gabrielle caught me in midair.

  “I’ve got you,” she said. She floated back down and deposited me safely on my feet. “Any idea what that light is?”

  “An alarm system,” I said, blinking until my vision came back. “It’s warning whoever hid the fragments that someone’s getting in.”

  A low rumbling came from under our feet. The fountain began to slide across the pool basin, revealing a wide, round hole beneath it.

  “Why does this one have an alarm system when the others didn’t?” Isaac asked.

  “The others didn’t need a key, either,” Bethany pointed out.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But let’s get in there, grab the fragment, and get the hell out before someone answers the alarm.”

  Gabrielle offered to stay behind and keep watch in case anyone came. I could tell Isaac didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone, but he didn’t argue. Considering how powerful she was now, even he had to admit she was a good choice to guard our backs.

  I looked down into the hole. Granite steps led down into the shadows. I was starting to feel like nothing good ever came from following stairs down into the dark, but it was an occupational hazard.

  Isaac led the way down, a fireball appearing above his hand like a torch flame. At the bottom of the steps was a small chamber with another sarcophagus. Like the others, this one was ornately patterned with gold leaf and sported the imprint of a hand on its lid.

  “Would you like to do the honors?” Isaac asked me.

  Here we go again. I took a deep breath and put my hand in the imprint. The needle stung my finger.

  “Ow! God damn it!” I yanked my hand back and sucked the blood off my fingertip. That was three times now, on the same finger. It was never going to heal.

  There was a loud, familiar ka-thunk as the sarcophagus unlocked from the inside. The lid began to open.

  “I wish I understood why it only likes Trent’s blood,” Isaac said.

  “I’ve been wondering about that, too,” Bethany said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “All that matters is that it opens.”

  Inside the sarcophagus was the third and final fragment of the Codex Goetia. It was identical to the others, triangular in shape with two sides broken and one side rounded and smooth. Isaac pulled it out of the sarcophagus. Then he retrieved the other fragment from the pocket of his duster. He held the two of them close together, trying to line up their broken sides like puzzle pieces. The fragments didn’t let him finish. A bright, crackling light filled the space between them, and the two fragments jumped toward each other like long-lost lovers reuniting. They snapped together seamlessly. I couldn’t even see a crack.

  With only the one fragment still missing, the Codex Goetia was much closer to its original disc shape. I could also see more clearly the strange, geometrical patterns that decorated its face, and the demon names written in a language I couldn’t read. Six hundred and sixty-six of them now. I wondered if Nahash-Dred’s name was among them.

  “It’s astonishing,” Isaac said, staring at the object in his hand. “It’s like the Codex wants to be whole again.”

  “We should get it back to Citadel,” Bethany said. “It’ll be safer there.”

  We went back up the stairs to the plaza. When we reached the top, the fountain started to slide back into place behind us, hiding the stairwell once more. The beam of light from the crystalline sphere shut off.

  I didn’t see Gabrielle at first. Then I turned. She stood with her back to us, her hands in the air. Facing her was Clarence Bergeron. The old man wore a long, brown coat and a fedora. He leaned his weight on the cane in one hand. In his other hand was a pistol. His two security guards, LaValle and Francisco, had their pistols out, too.

  “Well, isn’t this nice?” Bergeron said. “I had a feeling we’d meet again.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Bergeron waggled his pistol at us, the rain pouring off the brim of his fedora. “Hand over the Codex Goetia.”

  Isaac clutched the Codex tightly. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Why do you want it anyway?” Bethany demanded. “So you can add it to your artifact collection?”

  “Because I’m the one with the gun, that’s why,” Bergeron said. “Three guns, actually, counting my associates here.”

  LaValle and Francisco scowled as the rain dripped down their faces.

  “We’ve only got two of the three fragments,” Bethany pointed out. “The Codex isn’t even complete. It’s worthless like this.”

  “On the contrary,” Bergeron said. “It is very valuable to me. If you don’t hand it over, I’m afraid my trigger-happy associates and I will be forced to make a very nasty mess out of the four of you. And I do so hate the sight of blood these days.”

  “Boss, you said the vampire would be here. Where is he?” Francisco demanded, an angry sneer on his baby face. “You promised. You said he would be mine when the time came.”

  “Not now, Francisco,” Bergeron hissed at him, taking his eyes off us for a moment.

  But a moment was all Gabrielle needed to make a move. She lifted her hands from her side, green flames flickering hungrily around her fingers.

  Bergeron pointed his gun at her. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “If you think a gun can protect you,” Gabrielle said, “you don’t know who you’re messing with.”

  “Now, now,” Bergeron said. “I didn’t survive this long by being stupid.”

  He whistled. In response, dozens of figures came out of the dark. They positioned themselves along the top of Bethesda Terrace and the grand stairways on either side of it. The people huddled inside the arcade caught sight of the creatures on t
he steps and screamed, stampeding away from us. These things weren’t human. Their bodies were thin, almost skeletal, with leathery, rust-brown skin stretched tight over their bones. Their heads were bald and insectlike, with two big, black, irisless eyes and two nubby horns on their brows. They wore no clothing, only swords in scabbards that hung at their bony hips. They hadn’t drawn their weapons yet. They stayed in formation and awaited orders like a well-trained army.

  Gabrielle reluctantly lowered her hands. The green flames faded away.

  Isaac regarded the creatures with narrowed eyes. “Demons,” he said.

  “Lesser demons, of course,” Bergeron replied. “The kind you don’t need the Codex Goetia to summon. Just some blood, powdered bone, and the right incantations. I’ve gotten a lot better at summoning and binding demons over the years. I learned the hard way how important that is.”

  I looked down at the withered leg he’d shown us in Westchester.

  An old injury that never quite healed right.

  Damn. What a fool I’d been. He’d been right under our noses all along.

  “You’re Erickson Arkwright,” I said.

  The old man smiled. “It’s been a long time since anyone called me that. The last time I used that name I was hiding half-dead beneath a pile of my friends’ body parts. Waiting until it was safe to come out again. Dragging myself through their blood and entrails to the door.”

  He was getting worked up as he spoke, his anger growing. He started coughing, but brought it under control quickly. Specks of blood dotted his lower lip. When he spoke again, his tone was calm and even.

  “Forgive me. As you can see, not all the damage was external. I have a collapsed lung, and kidneys that no longer function properly. What was done to me, what I lived through, was grueling. An unimaginable hell. After enduring that, a new name was a blessing, a chance to put the horror behind me. Even a name as bland as Clarence Bergeron. But then, the real Clarence Bergeron was quite bland himself. Killing him and assuming his identity felt like doing the world a favor.”