He nodded a good morning. “I know you have work to do, but we need to talk.”
“I don’t know that I do have work this morning. Fred and Ivanka didn’t expect me back, so I’ll probably just be in the way. Where do you want to go?” She needed to get out of the flat and away from the lingering scent of the dream. She didn’t know as much as she would like to about all this supernatural stuff, but she knew enough to realize there was more to the dreams than reminiscing about her ancestors. Winifred and Rebecca were sending a warning. Who was the soldier bent on taking her out? Henry wasn’t a good candidate, though she didn’t have any valid reasons for ruling him out. There were hundreds of shades trapped up in those mountains. Any one of them could be waiting for her to return.
Dušan walked past her toward the courtyard entrance onto Zajčeva without speaking and without motioning her to follow. His assumption that she would pad along behind him without knowing where they were headed irritated the shit out of her, but her worry for Faron overrode her need to tell him so. She walked in his footsteps on the six or so inches of snow accumulated overnight. He led her to a café under the Triple Bridge, down a set of icy stairs. Sliding into the river on her ass wouldn’t be the best way to start the day, so she kept a death grip on the iron railing as they descended below street level. Of course he would prefer a damn-near chthonic bar to a brightly lit coffee house.
He nodded at the bartender and raised two fingers when the man looked up from drying glasses behind an expanse of black marble and polished chrome. Dušan sat at a table near a window looking out over the river. She sat across from him facing downriver toward the market. She was still wary of the water, but it was less terrifying now that she knew there were gods of much darker realms.
The bartender brought two cappuccinos on metal trays with tall skinny glasses of water and a ceramic ramekin filled with sugar straws. Neither of them had spoken on the walk over or since they’d entered the bar, and she was not going to be the one to break the silence. He called the meeting; she was willing to wait for him to lay out his agenda.
He ripped the tops off three straws as she watched over the rim of her cup. He stirred and set the spoon down and finally looked up at her.
“Tell me what happened at Faron’s apartment last night.”
“I assume you know or we wouldn’t be here.” She took another sip of her coffee, trying to become her own calm river, glassy water hiding the angry turbulence below.
“Lichtenberg called me late last night after he got back to his apartment.”
“And what did our little gray man tell you?” She set her cup on the saucer and waited.
“A bloody heart in the kitchen seems like overkill. Do you think it was for Faron or for his girlfriend?”
She jerked back. “Why the hell would anyone leave something like that for Ivanka?”
“Why would they leave it for Faron?” He took another sip of his coffee syrup and kept his gaze leveled at her.
She had the overwhelming need to look away but refused to give him that. At least his eyes were still bottle-green and amber and not the cavernous, star-filled ones he had revealed at the farmhouse.
“I don’t know.” She had no clue beyond the handful of people who were “in” on her secret. Who else could possibly know what she and her son were capable of? There were probably more people like Vesna who could see auras. The dead, gods, and demons could also see her coming a mile away. Maybe it was the same with Faron.
“I think you need to send Helena away.” He continued to look at her. It was a game now between them. She wouldn’t be the first to flinch.
“I don’t see how Helena could’ve possibly done that. Without me, she’s not even vapor.”
“That is not the whole story of what Helena can do.” He glanced away at a man opening the door to the bar and peeking in to see if they were open. Jo had won their staredown, but only on a technicality.
“What do you mean? Like she can be solid when she isn’t with a Voice?” If that were true, then what was the purpose of being burdened with this particular set of talents?
“No. I am certain Helena can possess people. Either on her own or with the assistance of her mother’s witchery.” He looked down at the rings the milk foam left as he finished his coffee.
“Fuck.” Was anyone ever going to tell her everything? How many things did Gustaf know that he hadn’t shared? How much had Helena continued to omit from the nature and reason for their relationship?
“Jo, there is so much you do not know.” The look of pity on his face finally pierced her façade.
“No shit. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for Helena or you and whatever carrying your goddamned god genes has done to Faron. I didn’t ask to know about all this shit, and I sure as hell didn’t ask to be kept in the dark by all of you who knew exactly what you were doing fucking around in my life like it’s entertainment.” She leaned back and pushed her cup and saucer away, barely stifling the impulse to shove the lot of it straight into Dušan’s lap.
“It is not entertainment.” He was still calm, and his words were even.
She leaned across the table at him. “What the fuck is it then?”
“It is war. One that has been going on for a very long time.” He leaned back in his chair, looking resigned.
“I think it would be best for me and our son if you tell me everything. Uncovering these tidbits as you and Gustaf and Helena see fit doesn’t give me much to work with.”
A group of women clicked through the bar to a table near them.
“I think we should go somewhere else then. This is not a story that needs to be overheard.”
He walked up to the bar to pay, and the two of them went back out into the snowy city. If she hadn’t been following in Dušan’s wake cursing his every footfall, she would’ve stopped and enjoyed the transformed old town. The castle hill was dressed in white, and all the terra cotta rooftops of the buildings surrounding the town square had been muted by the same blanket of snow. The central city looked like a holiday card or a Currier & Ives painting from a tin of rock-hard Christmas cookies.
Dušan led her back to her own building and across the courtyard to the always-closed accountant’s office that was catty-corner from her shop. He produced a single key from the pocket of his peacoat and opened the door.
“When did you take over the lease for this place?” The interior was spotless and barren. Had there ever been furniture in there? Of course there had been.
“Years ago. About the time you and Faron moved into the building.” He flipped a light switch at the back, and two rows of recessed cans flooded the room with cool light.
“Were you spying on us?” That she had been so oblivious to Gustaf’s and Dušan’s observation of her was infuriating. She was tired of being angry, but it was the only emotion that filled the hole inside her.
“Not you so much as Faron. I was unsure if or when, or even how, his talents might emerge, and I wanted to be able to slip in quietly to observe.” He brushed his hand along a shoulder-height ledge running from the front to the back of the space on the wall it shared with Goran’s antique shop. “It’ll make a fine, if small, gallery.”
“Wait. You were here as this accountant person before?” She’d never seen anyone in the office and had only seen the “open” sign displayed once.
“You have seen my true face. Do you think I am only capable of wearing one mask?” He watched her, waiting for a response or a reaction.
She was tired of playing this game but refused to lose. “Of course not. You’re probably the guy I buy milk from at the market and, fuck, you’re probably Gustaf, too. I’ve never seen the two of you together.”
He laughed. The warm peals rang against the bare walls and floor. It pushed her thoughts back to the exhibit at the university where they’d first met. He’d been talking to some elderly pa
tron who had a stick jammed up his butt and was complaining about the gratuitous nudity on display. Dušan had laughed like that, genuinely amused and still somehow not condescending. When she caught his eye she had assumed it was because an American was an unusual sight at such a gathering and she exuded some kind of poise and artiness, not because she had a flashing sign over her head that screamed, “supernatural baby vessel.”
“It wasn’t that.”
“You fucker, you can read minds.” She stepped back toward the door. He had no business rooting around in her head. He’d messed it up enough in there already. And she was doubly pissed at herself for not catching it before.
“Not all the time. Only when your thoughts are especially focused and loud.”
“Then what was it? And do not lay some crap on me about being young and enchanting. I will slap you again.” She turned and leaned against the wall, the toes of her boots lined up perpendicular to the planks in the floor.
“Yes. I could see you were different and perhaps troubled by it. I’ve always been a sucker for troubled.”
“You realize that’s gross, right? I have now gone from supernatural baby vessel to wounded wildebeest.” Maybe she should stop him before he made it worse.
“I know you will find it hard to believe, but it is not in my nature to jump into the beds of mortal women.” He stood in front of her, toe to toe.
The woodsmoke and petrichor of his cologne drifted over her, or maybe that was just him. “I do find that hard to believe.”
“It is true. You are not the only lover in my long existence, but you are unique. Faron has no siblings.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Neither. It simply is.”
“Nothing is ever simple where all of this is concerned.” She waved her hand above her head, indicating all the woo-woo stuff she now swam in.
“That is true. I believe Faron exists to take the discarded mantle of the white god. My counterpart or shadow, so to speak.”
She took a deep breath. “Faron is a god, too?”
“Not yet, but if he chooses it, the way is open.” There was an unexpected sadness in his words.
“You don’t make it sound like a party.”
“It is not a party. I chose to live in this world because there are few who follow the old ways. If I did not pretend to be human, I would have very little to do.”
“That seems to be the way of things.” Where was all of this going? And what about his wife? Where did she fit into all of this?
“Do not let the fairy stories fool you. It is much rarer than you think. Marija has not joined me here, and she will not. She has aged, as mortal women do, and cannot stand to go out in public with me. If Faron chooses to become what I believe he is supposed to be, he will not only outlive you but also everyone he ever knows.”
“Is that why you stayed away?” His words twisted in her gut. This was the conversation Rok refused to have with her before he disappeared. How many times had he buried the people he cared for? Rok wasn’t a god, but his lifespan made it very difficult to be human.
“You see then.” Dušan put his hand on her cheek. “There are moments when I did feel something like love for you, Jo, and for Faron, in my way.”
“But you didn’t want to watch us die?”
“Even gods have their weaknesses.” He stepped closer to her, close enough she had to stand, her back pressed against the wall.
“When I saw you in the mountains…” He leaned in and kissed her on the mouth. It was warm and familiar and wrong. So wrong.
She pushed him away gently. “I was bewitched or hexed or whatever. Surely you could see that?” She wasn’t hexed now, and she wasn’t going to let herself be enchanted by what had been between them before.
“Yes. There was something, but I do not believe your feelings regarding me were clouded by that amateurish hex, as you call it.”
“You could see it, and you didn’t tell me?”
“I am not your keeper, Jo.” He stepped back. The moment of intimacy had passed.
She wasn’t sure if she was grateful or disappointed, and that she wasn’t sure was disappointing. She pulled her coat around her and looked down. Their toes were no longer aligned. “What happened to the other white god?”
“He fell in love with a witch who had summoned him, thinking he would do her bidding like a common spirit.”
“That seems presumptuous.” And stupid. What the hell is wrong with people?
“It was, but he was drawn to the witch nonetheless. Human women do have their charms.” He smiled at her. “She drew a Portal to them, whom he possessed, and he came into the world as a mortal man.” He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.
“And the Portal, she died.”
“Yes. That is the nature of Portals. You are a threshold that can be crossed only once. Your life for the entity you bring into the world or the dead you return to the living.”
“I’ve had firsthand knowledge of being possessed by a god.”
“I am surprised you survived. Achelous must enjoy his watery existence.” Dušan laughed again.
“I figured out the dead people thing with Henry. Gustaf explained demons.”
“Demons and angels are from the beliefs of Christians and Jews, but the words work. To me they are malevolent spirits or benign ones.”
“Not benevolent?”
“It is rare that intervention in human lives by such entities is completely benevolent.”
She nodded. She’d been mucked about by enough “entities” to be wary and, yet, she was still standing there. No matter how much she wanted to disengage with him, she couldn’t change the fact he was Faron’s father.
“Do I know the person the white god became?”
“He died before you could meet him. But you know his daughter and her brother, and I believe you had the pleasure of meeting their mother.”
Jo dropped her chin to her chest. “Helena and Matjaž and Snippy.”
“Snippy?”
“Their mother. She was awful to me, and everyone else, at Helena’s funeral.”
“She is very bitter. She and Mateo were in an accident some years ago. He was killed, and she was left as you saw her. I think she believed Mateo was protected from such mundane forms of harm.”
“Does Helena know all of this? Does Matjaž?” That would explain a great deal. It would also raise more questions than she wanted to think about.
“Helena does, I am certain. I think Matjaž knows his mother is a witch, but I do not think he knows the whole truth.”
She really wanted to sit down. Or fall down. “So that was why Helena came on to me? That was why she slept with Faron, too?”
“I suspect so. I believe Avgusta wanted one of her children to assume their father’s previous role. Helena and Matjaž are not like Faron; Mateo was mortal when they were conceived. Helena is, or rather was, a powerful witch like her mother. I believe Matjaž has tried to distance himself.”
“So what was the original endgame with Faron?”
“I can only speculate Helena wanted to know how much you knew — which was nothing — so she had to suss out Faron for herself. She may have sparked his gift or he, like you, may have simply repressed it.”
“I didn’t repress my gift. It skipped me. Maybe Helena sparked mine, too?”
“Jo.” He shook his head. “You have always been what you are, as has Faron. You are both strong-willed and want to live your own versions of quiet lives. It was always there. I saw it the day I met you.”
She would think on that later. “But now what? Helena is dead, and there is only Matjaž — who doesn’t seem to want anything to do with their woo-woo stuff.”
“I have a few theories. I think Avgusta thought she might be able to somehow use you to force Helena into the N
ext without dying. The lore is there, but it is murky at best. If that did not work, a grandchild from Faron and Helena would probably have some type of gift.”
Jo shuddered. She was not ready to be a grandmother and definitely not ready to be that kind of grandmother. “That doesn’t explain Helena trying to throw me off on Matjaž.”
“Distraction. Probably for both of you.”
That was far too glib an explanation. Helena could be direct, but her scheming rarely was. “Maybe. So what do I do now?”
“Release Helena. Her door will open, and she will move on to the next world. Another guide will come to you.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Not my department. Talk to your aunt or your mother.”
“Let’s leave my mother out of this.” She hadn’t intended to snap.
“For now. You are going to have to deal with her eventually.”
“Not today.” She stood up straight and looked him in the eye. “Why didn’t you tell me the whole story in Tolmin?”
“I was unsure if you could be trusted. You were holed up in the mountains with a ghost, and from all accounts you were ‘not yourself.’ I worried you could, like your mother, be losing your grasp.”
“Not myself? Well, fuck. I’m sorry I didn’t go right back to baking brownies after I buried my friends, got Milo killed, and watched my father’s soul get eaten by a demon. I really fucking tried.”
“If it is any consolation, I think you are very much yourself, but angry and traumatized. I did not know about your father.”
“I haven’t told anyone else. Not really. I can’t think about him being torn into nothingness. And Milo. I haven’t seen his shade since that night. I don’t know if that thing got his soul, too, or if he found his door, or if he’s just out there wandering around.”
Our Lady of the Various Sorrows Page 13