Rufus nodded. “I thought as much, but with what happened last week…” He trailed off, and both of them were silent. Sariel nodded, thinking about how Quain used Moyenne to attempt to steal one of three Plaques de la Pensee, the most sacred objects in the Croyant world. Who would have imagined bewitched Moyenne could walk into the Castle of Gaerwen and almost take it, just like that? It was such a simple plan no one was prepared for it. Only Quain had magic that strong. If Quain got his horrible hands on any one of the plaques, he would only grow stronger.
Now, belatedly, the Croyant were on high alert, listening and feeling for everything. The fact that Brennus managed to get the okay for Rufus to leave his post in Edinburgh showed how worried the Council was about any strange Moyenne behavior. With the plaques, Quain could harness their power and not only the Croyant but the Moyenne would pay—and pay for letting that happen. If Quain managed to convert more Croyant, to exert more influence on more Moyenne, life would change for everyone. He would first take land, resources, using his power to grip countries tightly and force everyone to work for him. And Moyenne thought bad presidents and prime ministers and dictators were awful. Wait until they got a load of Quain.
It didn’t help that Quain had assistance from Kallisto, a sorciere once deep in the Croyant, and deep into Sariel. Even now, sometimes Sariel would awaken at night from a deep, sound sleep and hear her repetitive, ugly thoughts: power, need, steal, want.
“So, you going to take her home or what?” Rufus winked and then drained his goblet. “Or did you have some wee plan that I interrupted?”
“You felt that, too, did you? You do know me too well.”
“I felt you in the air, lad. I could hear you all the way in Edinburgh. She is very tempting. But you’re right,” Rufus said. “Best to put her back where she belongs.”
“Would you mind taking care of her car while I take her home?” Sariel asked.
“Why not?” Rufus said, reaching out and putting a hand on Sariel’s chest. “Give it to me.”
Sariel closed his eyes and brought forth the image of the car he’d taken from Miranda’s thoughts. An old, light green Volvo station wagon. Rusted through and through, paint chipped, but with brand-new tires, a present from her mother, June, on her last birthday.
“Got it, bro,” Rufus said, taking his hand away. “I’ll put it right back in her garage. Not a foot on the odometer.”
“Thanks,” Sariel said. “You can stay, right? This won’t take much time.” He stood and pushed in his chair.
“Of course.” Rufus poured himself some more wine. “I’m not hitting the air again tonight. Fabia’s on alert. I’ll head back tomorrow morning.”
Sariel put his hand on his brother’s arm, and then walked over to Miranda. She was curled up on the couch, sleeping soundly, not one dream in her mind. Sitting down on the couch, he pulled her limp sleeping body to him, breathing in her soft skin and hair. For a moment, he wished Rufus was wrong. What would it hurt to keep her here?
Don’t mind me, Rufus thought. 1 can get a hotel room, you are quite clearly a desperate man. What would Mom say?
Sariel laughed and shook his head. Their mother, Zosime, a telepath herself, had somehow managed not to go insane when the boys were teenagers. What she must have heard seeping through the bedroom walls. This simple business with Miranda would seem like a children’s show.
Not looking back at his brother, Sariel held Miranda tightly against him, and thought them home.
Pressed against Miranda, Sariel sifted through her memories and found her home, an apartment on Lombard. Three rooms—no, four rooms—third floor. He waited until he was certain, even the dark pumpkin color of her dining room walls familiar, before he pushed them both from an embrace on his couch to an embrace on her bed. Sariel breathed out, looking around. Yes, this is what he’d seen. This window exactly, the view of the Bay Bridge and the East Bay, Oakland and Emeryville laid out in lights on the slowly graying horizon.
Gently, he laid her back on her bed, pulling a soft, loose blanket over her. He’d take the particular memories from her of the bar, his house, the healing of her ankle, and she’d wake up in the morning imagining she’d had one hell of a night. A rare, temporary blackout from one very strong, potent apple martini. For a few hours, confused and fuzzy, she’d expect a call from a friend, asking, “What was up with you last night?” or “Man, you were the life of the party.” Or she’d wait for a strange man to call and say, “I can’t wait to see you again.” But those calls would never come, and she’d eventually forget about forgetting.
On the nightstand next to her bed, an answering machine blinked furiously, flashing 15, 15, 15 over and over again. Sariel closed his eyes and felt for them, his mind moving into the jumpy bumble of digital voices. Dan. Dan again. Roy— did she get home all right? June—Miranda’s mother. Her sister, Viv, who wondered when Miranda was going to get her butt over to visit. Greta Smith from the Holitzer Grant Committee.
Suddenly, he opened his eyes and shook his head. What was he doing? He had no business listening to her messages and no business sitting by her on her bed. By now, he should have taken her memories and thought his way home to Rufus, who would read him the riot act and then drink him under the table.
Miranda moaned lightly and pulled the blanket tighter, turning onto her side. Sariel stood up and walked to her dresser. On top of the slightly dusty wood were pictures of an older woman—June, he thought as he picked up the frame—and a man he was certain he recognized. But how could he? It was impossible, but there was the memory of being in a room with other people, listening to someone talk, telling him a secret. And one of the people in the room was Miranda’s father… Steve. Or did he just pick up an image of this man? But both notions were impossible. Sariel knew that Steve was dead. Could pick it up from the photo itself. Steve’s dead. Miranda had lost her father, just as he had.
But he couldn’t think about his father.
Sariel put down the photo, his fingers grazing jewelry, a brush, letters, a loose piece of paper, the handwriting faint in the darkness.
Picking up the paper, he walked to the window, dawn pushing at the eastern sky, busting open the gray. It was an untitled poem, written in longhand, lines scratched out, words scribbled in.
When I was four,
I flew in the backyard,
hovering over the patio
for minutes in my white Keds
and aqua shorts while
you admired me.
Later, as I ran inside to tell her,
our mother told me I had been
only dreaming under the hot sun,
but for years afterward, I used
to be able to see the truth of my first flight
in your black eyes, the yes of my magic
in your…
The poem seemed to trail off, and below it, Miranda had written: Flying! Ha!
Turning to look at her on the bed, he wondered if the poem were true. Writers always made up stories, but this story felt real. Had she flown? Sometimes, Moyenne had flares of ability that died away and disappeared by adolescence. They were wildly successful poltergeists, their bad energy heaving around plates and books until they grew up and learned to control their anger. They burst into other realities they later thought were dreams, trips to heaven and hell that they explained later as a terrible experience of acid reflux.
Maybe Miranda had truly been able to fly but believed what her mother had told her. It was only a dream. Just like Miranda had said earlier, “It’s my dream and I’m going to forget it anyway.”
That’s why Sariel felt sad for Moyenne—all the magic in the world always cast as insanity, ghosts, hallucination, miracle, or dream. They couldn’t let it in, for better or worse. And when magic finally did penetrate their ordinary world, it was something flukish, a one-time thing they imagined would happen over and over again, like Lourdes or the vision of the Virgin Guadalupe in Mexico City. Millions of desperate people wanting magic, pilgrima
ging to a fixed place when all along, it was everywhere. All they had to do was look closely, carefully, stop talking.
Sariel put the poem back on the dresser and walked back to Miranda. He sat down in the warmth of her blankets and put his hand on her soft, curly hair, closing his eyes and feeling the heat of her memory. There was her run up the street, the meeting, Sariel’s home, his story. Just below his fingertips was her surprise at seeing him in the corner of the room, her approval of his looks, smell, smile as he hugged her tightly and brought them to his house. The lush relaxed warmth of her resting on the couch, her body heavy with the potion. Everything about their one and only night together was right under his fingers, burning to be set free.
Chapter Four
Miranda woke up. And she remembered. For the first moment of consciousness, Miranda stopped breathing, waiting for her next thought and then her next. She thought: daylight, bed, blanket, body. She felt her breath rising and falling, her steady pulse in her ear. She wasn’t hungover. No headache, no nausea. But last night was still there. In the corner of her mind—a memory too bizarre to unfurl completely—was the strange spiral of the night before. That memory wasn’t supposed to be there, lurking like a dark dog on a rug. Sariel had told her he’d take it away because she couldn’t know, shouldn’t know about his magic world. There was the protocol, the end of the world as she knew it, Quain, Brennus, and big trouble for Sariel.
Miranda flung her arm out and closed her eyes. Great, I’ve gone insane, she thought. Maybe I am going to be a great poet after all, remembered for all time. A Poe, Plath, Stevens. Brilliant and nuts.
Sitting upright, she stared at herself in the mirror over her dresser. She hadn’t changed. She was still the same person who woke up in this bedroom every morning. Wild red hair, pale face. Alone.
Blinking, she looked at her reflection, hoping some little bubble would appear over her image, providing a telling caption: After a bad night, Miranda Stead wonders who slipped her a mickey, or, Finally accepting her degraded mental health, Miranda Stead calls her therapist.
Pushing away the blankets, Miranda saw she was still wearing her green dress, but her high heels were by the side of her bed, slightly scuffed, but neatly lined up. She leaned over and grabbed one, a memory (or hallucination) of how Sariel took them off flicking through her body. She could almost feel him touching her ankle, the warmth spreading up her calf, knee, thigh—her ankle! She reached down and touched the bone, almost wincing as she did, but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. Not one bit. She was fine.
“Shit,” she said, picking up her phone and dialing Dan’s number.
“Hello.” Dan’s voice was muffled.
“It’s me. What happened last night? Did I drink too much?”
“Miranda?”
“Did I dance on the tables? Eat raw oysters? Pound back boilermakers? Did I talk to some guy? Did I leave with anyone? Did I go into an alley and buy drugs? What did I do?”
She heard Dan turning in his bed, the swish of sheets in the phone. He yawned, holding the phone away from his mouth.
“Sorry,” he said. “God, I’m tired. I called you twice last night. Where were you?”
“That’s what I’m asking you!” Miranda said impatiently, standing up and walking around her room, her ankle feeling better than ever. “I think I was abducted.”
“By aliens? That’s not your usual genre, but I’m sure someone would publish it.”
“Dan, I’m serious. This isn’t about writing. Something weird happened. Or I hit my head, stumbled home, and had the strangest dream of my life.”
“So,” Dan said. “Tell me about it.”
Miranda paced, looking out the window toward the bay. She didn’t know where to start. When she left the bar? With the guys chasing her? Those two things had been real. She knew it. But then things tilted, veered into abnormal. Like, where were all the people on the street? Where was her car, for one thing? The parking lot, for another. Oh, that’s right. The vortex. She’d just tell Dan about the vortex and how the whatchamacallits, the Believers of Three made it, thinking intensely to scare away the ordinary people. Then she’d just sail into a long discussion of Sariel and his hot, healing touch. What about Quain and his evil plot? Sure, that’s what she’d do. Then Dan would drop her books from his list and tell the poetry world she’d finally gone off the deep end in a rocket-powered barrel.
“It was crazy, that’s all I can say. I must have walked into another bar or something and someone gave me that drug.”
“The date-rape drug? You aren’t supposed to remember anything after taking that.”
“Okay, then. Something like LSD. Mushrooms. Mescaline. Pot brownies.” Miranda sat back down on the bed and put her head in her free hand, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t know. When did you call me?”
“About eleven-thirty. Then again at twelve. You didn’t get the message?”
Miranda looked at her machine and the blinking red 15. “Which one?”
“Which one? The one from Greta Smith. From the Holitzer. You got the grant. A Holitzer! Do you know what this will mean for your career?”
Miranda tried to feel happy, willing herself into a good feeling, needing to push away the memory of her wacked-out dream with Mr. Magic Hot Ass and his healing hands. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure forth the forty thousand dollars she’d get as well as the book sales Dan would eke out from the announcement. But all she could see were Sariel’s cracked amber eyes.
“That’s great,” she said weakly. “Wow.”
“Don’t get too excited.” Dan sounded disappointed. “You might have a stroke.”
“No, really,” she said with more energy. “I’m happy about it. I swear.”
Dan paused. “I have to tell you, though, there’s something kind of odd about it.”
Miranda took the phone away from her mouth and sighed, wishing for once that he’d stick to the point. “What’s odd?”
“Well, see, here’s the thing. Jack won a Holitzer, too.”
With all the crazy thoughts in her head, Miranda listened to Dan’s words and then the silence in the phone without really understanding what he meant. “What do you mean Jack? My Jack? Jack Gellner?”
“Yeah, um, Jack,” Dan said. “Your Jack.”
“Oh.” Miranda stared out the window, watching cars move slowly across the bridge. That would mean at the awards ceremony, she’d have to share a stage, a podium, a party with Jack, who probably won the award on bits of her poetry mixed into his now-award-winning verse. But as she sat, trying to feel something, anything, about the prize, Jack, or her stolen computer and poems, she couldn’t muster much more than a sigh. What she really wanted was to find out about last night.
“I’ve ruined it for you, haven’t I?” Dan asked. “I just thought you should know. I hope I didn’t ruin it.”
“No, it’s great. Really. I just—well, I’m still confused about what happened after the reading. What did I drink?”
“Miranda, you had an apple martini, heavy on vermouth. Like always. One. You didn’t dance on the tables or talk to guys with Harleys parked out front. Or smoke a spliff outside with punk rockers or runaway teenagers. We talked with Roy and Clara about books and music and then you left, alone,” Dan said, adding, “like always.”
She closed her eyes and waited until his last sentence died. “Then what?”
“We said good night and you walked up Geary toward your car, refusing to let me walk with you.” He paused. “Anyway, there aren’t too many bars that way.”
Miranda pushed her hair off her forehead. “Maybe I have the flu. I always have crazy dreams when I’m sick. I feel hot and kind of jittery.”
“Do you want me to come over? My mother always says menudo is the cure for hangovers and basically all illnesses. I can pick some up and be at your house in an hour.”
In his offer was the seed in all his offers to her. He offered himself over and over again, and she wondered when he would give up. Or when s
he would give in out of pity or exhaustion.
“I think I’m going to take a cool shower and go back to bed. Take some Tylenol,” she said, adding, “Thanks. I’ll call you later. Sorry for waking you up.”
Miranda hung up the phone and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, now lit with bright morning light. Everything that had happened last night had felt so real. It was more real than winning a Holitzer, which she couldn’t even think about. Images pounded against her forehead. She could see the reddish light streaming from underneath the door that wasn’t always a door, feel her ankle throbbing as she tried to escape the bar, taste the sweet drink Sariel had given her before he told her about the vortex. It wasn’t dreamlike; she wasn’t catching random glimpses of the scene. She remembered names: Brennus, Philomel, Quain. She could still smell the floor of the bar, feel the swish of velvet robes against her cheek as Brennus leaned over her. She knew she was Moyenne, ordinary, and Sariel and all the rest were members of Les Croyants de Trois, the believers of three.
No, she could recount the full narrative, except for the space of time between the street and Sariel’s home and then the time from Sariel’s couch to her bed. The rest, though, was all there, as quick to her mind as the poetry reading had been. Her night, from A to insane.
Shaking her head, she breathed in and looked up into the mirror. Okay, fine. So like she’d thought last night, this would be a poem. Or, if she was lucky, a short story. Whatever it was, she would use it. In fact, right after her shower, she was going to eat breakfast and then write for a couple hours. Maybe then she’d feel better. Maybe then some of this would make sense.
At her desk, Miranda stared at her computer keyboard, then at the wall above her computer, and then to her left, vaguely watching a tiny brown moth in the upper left of the windowpane. It fluttered, stopped, fluttered again, desperate for air. After a moment, Miranda looked back at the computer screen and typed a word, biting her lip. Could she tell it right? Did she have any language that would make sense? How could she wrap her words around Sariel’s face, his hair, his smell, his arms carrying her places? How to say it, how to make it real, show the outstanding, original, outlandish weirdness of what she remembered?
When You Believe Page 4