by Douglas Rees
“You want another driving lesson?” Turk said.
I told her what the voice had said.
“Whoa,” she said. “Who are these guys? And how do they just show up out of the blue? I don’t like it, Cuz. I do not like it.”
“Well then, you’d better come along to the meeting,” I said. “Make sure I’m all right.”
“I’ll make sure you don’t give away the farm,” Turk said. “If these guys are talking about paying for space, there’d better be somebody there who knows what space is worth. And that’s me. No offense, Cuz, but you’re too much of a kid for a guy like this to take seriously.”
“You’re a kid,” I said.
“I’m a pro,” Turk said. “And this is the kind of work I do. Come on.”
After we reached Squibnocket, we ended up at the edge of the business district. The address was in a neighborhood that was mostly warehouses and small industrial businesses in long one-story buildings that faced away from the street. It was quiet now, because everything was closed for the night.
“This can’t be right,” I said.
“Sure it can,” Turk said. “This is just the kind of place to get a cheap rent.” And she drove down the alley that ran between two of the long lines of low buildings.
We stopped in front of the last door.
It was an ordinary glass door next to an ordinary shop window. There was a sign over the door that said COMPREHENSIVE INSURANCE. But the space inside the shop was empty.
“What is this?” I said. “I must have got the address wrong.”
Then the door swung open and a dapper little gray-haired man beckoned to me. I was pretty sure he was jenti.
“Mr. Elliot? Please come in,” he said.
It was the voice I’d heard on the phone.
Turk and I got out of the car.
“Oh, I’d assumed you’d come by yourself,” he said.
“We’re partners,” Turk said. “Co-owners. I’m Turk Stone, the artist.”
“Oh. Well, please come in,” the little man said. He didn’t sound happy.
He held the door open and we passed by him and into the shop. Then the door slammed behind us, and a gloved fist smashed the side of my head.
“Wait, no! He’s marked,” the little man said. “And leave the girl—”
“Arthur, shut up,” another voice said.
I saw figures wearing black hoods blocking the door, grabbing Turk, grabbing me.
And then the blows came, and kept coming until I couldn’t feel them anymore.
21
I woke up the next morning, but I didn’t want to.
My eyes fluttered open, then closed, then open again. I raised my head, looked around, but nothing made sense. I didn’t know where I was.
Turk cursed. Her voice was rough, as if she’d been screaming. A lot.
Mom came over and took my hand.
“Cody,” she said, and started to cry.
“Where are we?” I asked.
It really hurt to talk.
“Oh, thank God,” Dad said.
“Hospital, Cuz,” Turk said. “They let us go when they were done with you.”
“Turk drove you here,” Mom said.
“I called the cops as soon as I was away from that place,” Turk said. “But they haven’t found anybody, of course.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“There were six of them, not counting that little bastard who let us in,” Turk said. “One of them picked me up like I was nothing. Put some kind of a sack over my head and held me while they did you. I screamed, for all the good that did. Then they threw you out, shoved me in the car, and drove off. I called your dad and asked where to take you.”
Turk’s face was like a map of the world, all different colors. They’d knocked her around, too. I couldn’t guess how I must look.
I hurt everywhere, and I was afraid to try to move.
“How bad am I?” I asked.
“The doctor says they were very careful with you,” Dad said. “Nothing broken. Nothing permanent.”
Then he sobbed, and stopped himself.
Mom cursed. An amazing curse. A jenti couldn’t have done it better.
“Cody,” Dad said, trying to keep from crying, “what are you involved with? What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
There was a sound in the hallway, and we all looked toward the door.
“May I come in?” Gregor asked.
“Yeah,” Turk said.
But he didn’t move until I croaked, “Okay.”
Then he walked over to us stiffly.
“Mom, Dad, this is Gregor Dimitru. Gregor, these are my folks, Jack and Beth Elliot.”
Gregor bowed to my mother. Then he took Dad’s hand.
“Rest beneath the shadow of my wings,” he said.
His accent was thick the way it was when he was angry.
“You are all right?” he asked Turk. “No one told me you were hurt. No one—”
“What do you want?” Turk asked.
“This morning I received a phone call,” Gregor said. “It was in class, so I did not answer it. But I do not get phone calls, so I listen when class is over. Someone I do not know tells me you are here, and I come.”
“And why would someone tell you?” Dad asked in his lawyer voice.
“Because I help with the center of arts,” Gregor said. “And because of what I am.”
“And what exactly would that be?” Dad asked.
“I am a noble of Burgundy,” Gregor said. “Of the Dimitru-Dracul line. Do you know what that means, sir?”
“Not yet. But you’re going to tell me,” Dad said.
Gregor wasn’t intimidated.
“It means that I have power among the jenti. This attack on these two was a warning to them, and an insult to me. A very great insult.”
“Back up,” Dad said. “Why would anyone do this? What’s really going on?”
But just then Ileana and Justin came in.
Ileana looked like a queen. A very serious queen. She looked around the room, took us all in, then came over to my bed and said, “Dear Cody, I am so—”
But Gregor had leapt on Justin and was holding him against the wall.
“I am going to buy myself a dog, Warrener. A large dog. Then I am going to tear out your throat and feed it to him. The rest of you, I will send to your friends. That will be my answer to the Mercians.”
“Let go of him, Gregor,” Ileana said.
Justin didn’t even try to fight back.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I deserve it.”
“What?” I croaked.
A couple of nurses came in to tell us to shut up.
Dad went over and closed the door to the room.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m a lawyer, and that’s my son in that bed. And I want answers now.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the door. “Cody, Turk, I’ll start with you. What’s going on in Crossfield?”
Neither of us could talk for long. We took turns filling Dad in on the mill, the break-in, the scratches over the storeroom. I told him about the Dumpsters. Turk covered the help from Ms. Vukovitch.
“Thank you,” Dad said. “Now, which of the three of you can explain most quickly why my son and my niece have been beaten?”
“He can,” Gregor said, looking at Justin. “Ask him now, while he still has his throat.”
“Mr. Elliot, I’ll tell you everything I can,” Justin said. “But I don’t know all of it. I’m new in the Mercians. All I know for sure is they don’t want the arts center to open. Partly it’s because it’s in Crossfield. But I’m pretty sure there’s more to it than that. There has to be. Otherwise, this would never have happened.”
“And what exactly is a Mercian, Mr. Warrener?” Dad said.
“A kind of organization some of the old English jenti families belong to,” Justin said. “You have to be invited to join. They asked me just a couple of months ago.”
“Co
ngratulations,” Dad said. “Now, apart from beating teenaged children into unconsciousness, what are the activities of this group?”
“It’s just supposed to keep an eye on things,” Justin said. “Make sure nothing bad happens in New Sodom. Back in the old days, they were the jenti militia. Now it’s more of a social group. Like the Masons.”
“So this social group that seeks the betterment of New Sodom decided that an arts center represented a threat to the community, and that the way to prevent its opening was to put my son and my niece in fear for their lives, is that correct?” Dad said.
You could tell he was furious by how calm he was.
“It’s not really like that,” Justin said.
“Cody didn’t put himself in that bed,” Dad said. “And Turk did not do that to her own face. Which leads to the question, what did you do to help bring this about? Were you one of the ones who beat them up?”
“Of course not,” Justin said. “But what I did was just as bad.”
“So you knew it was going to happen,” Dad said.
“No,” Justin said. “But—somebody—asked me for Cody’s cell number, and I gave it to them. I didn’t know why they wanted it.”
“Still, you could probably guess it wasn’t to invite him to your next meeting,” Dad said. “Unless that was one of your meetings, of course.”
I didn’t feel sorry for Justin, but I could see he was practically falling apart.
“Tell him the rest, Warrener,” Gregor said. “You are leaving out the best part.”
“You tell him,” Justin said, and hung his head.
“I will explain it,” Ileana said. “I am the highest here.”
She was so tiny and so beautiful, and she was acting like I wasn’t even there.
“Mr. Elliot, you know that there are old hatreds between the jenti and the gadje of New Sodom,” Ileana said. “What you do not know about, because we do not speak of them to outsiders, is the hates between the jenti, and how old they are. Justin descends from a line that goes back to the Kingdom of Mercia, which was in England more than a thousand years ago before it disappeared. Gregor and I descend from the Burgundians, who disappeared on the Russian steppes five hundred years before the Mercians were lost to history.
“The last Burgundians made their way to Mercia, looking for refuge. It was refused them, and they were forced to leave, and take their chances among the gadje of Europe. No one knows why anymore, but this cruelty the Burgundians have never forgotten.
“Then, over a hundred years ago, the Burgundian jenti began to arrive in America, along with other central Europeans. We found New Sodom, a place where gadje and Mercians were living together in peace, if not in love, and we stayed. This time, the Mercians could not drive us out, because we came in such numbers. And we did not try to force them to leave, because we feared they and the gadje would combine against us.”
“Fascinating, Ileana,” Dad said. “But what does it have to do with anything?”
“It has this to do with anything, Mr. Elliot,” Gregor said. “I have put that mill in Crossfield under my protection. The Mercians know this, and they wish to prevent it.”
“Why?” Dad shouted. “What is so damned important that my son is lying beaten half to death? What matters that much?”
“That I do not know,” Gregor said. “But there is something more than an old grudge at work here. Some deeper thing.”
“Well?” Dad asked Justin.
“I don’t know what it is,” Justin said.
“Do you think you might be able to find out?” Dad said slowly, trying to hold his anger in.
“Nobody’s going to tell me if I just ask ’em,” Justin said.
“Let me tell you something without your asking,” Gregor said. “You Mercians crossed a line last night. You beat a marked gadje. That is an unforgivable insult to our princess. To all of us. If you want war, you shall have it.”
“No,” Ileana said. “I forbid that. It is true what the Mercians did was despicable. But we must not go to war over it.”
“What mark are you talking about?” Dad said.
“Ileana marked me the first day of school last year,” I said. “To protect me. It’s supposed to mean no jenti can touch me.”
“And now we see how much it means to the Mercians,” Gregor said. “That was your mark, my princess. If you think this is not worth fighting over, what do you propose to do instead?”
Ileana bit her lip. Then she said, “Justin, you must tell the Mercians that my mother, the Queen of the Burgundians, demands a meeting with them.”
“Ah, a meeting.” Gregor sneered. “That will solve everything.”
“I’ll tell them,” Justin said.
“Princess, my people will not be satisfied with a meeting,” Gregor said.
“Your people are my people, Gregor,” Ileana said. “We are all my mother’s subjects.”
“We will see whom they follow now,” Gregor said.
“Do nothing, Gregor,” Ileana commanded. “We will settle this.”
Gregor came over to my bed.
“I will avenge this crime,” he said. But he was looking at Turk when he said it.
She looked away, and Gregor left.
“Justin, we must go,” Ileana said.
“Right,” Justin said. “I’ll set things up.”
“So that’s it, then?” Dad said. “You kids just walk away and go on playing your jenti games?”
“Mr. Elliot, it is no game,” Ileana said. “There is great danger in New Sodom now. More than there has been in three hundred years. And we do not know why. We must find out before there is blood and fire.”
Then she looked at me. There were tears in her eyes. Her hand reached itself out, but she snatched it back.
“Come,” she said, and left, with Justin behind her.
“Cody, can you, for God’s sake, explain any of this?” Dad said.
I realized then how little my dad really knew about my life in New Sodom. About his own life here, really. I’d have to teach him fast.
“Let’s start with marking,” I said.
22
I came home from the hospital two days later. Mom set me up on the couch in the living room, where she could keep an eye on me and bring me stuff.
I didn’t do much except lie around and wish I were dead. Inside and out, I’d been so thoroughly beaten up that there was no place left that didn’t hurt.
But things can always get worse, and the day after I came home from the hospital, they did.
It was on the front page of the New Sodom Intelligencer, the local paper:
TOWN COUNCIL TAKES NEW SODOM OUT OF 17TH CENTURY
In a place as old as New Sodom, some funny old laws can turn up. One that has recently come to light involves Crossfield.
Crossfield? Yes, that Crossfield.
It seems that, back in the day, some long-gone town council thought it would be a good idea to let anyone who wanted it claim abandoned land there. In the words of the act, “When it shall hap that a farm or steading of any sort shall be left untenanted for the time of three yeares, and no owner be writ down in the towne records, whoso shall tenant it and build thereon a cabin or a wigwam, and plante corne, and dwell for seven yeares upon it, shall have possession of said farm or steading so long as it shall please him. To keep or to sell, to leave unto descendants, and to do all things that may be done with a farm or steading.”
Now, before you rush over to Crossfield and start throwing up your wigwam, there are two things you need to know: (1) some kids actually tried it, staking out the old Simmons Mill just as though it were still 1676; (2) when the town council found out about it, they repealed the act.
“It was just one of those crazy things that happen,” said town council member Watson Waters. “That and some half-bright kids who thought they could get away with something.”
But why would kids want to take over an abandoned mill anyway?
“We heard that they wanted to s
tart some kind of a half-baked arts center over there, even though no arts group in New Sodom wanted anything to do with it,” Waters said. “We’re not sure what they were really up to.”
In any case, with the kids gone, the act repealed, and police tape around the outside of the Simmons Mill, it’s pretty clear that whatever it was won’t be happening anytime soon.
“Can they do that, Dad?” I said. “Can they just take it away from us?”
We were sitting around the living room that morning, me, Mom, Dad, and Turk. I was doing a lot better and was dressed to go out, even though I wasn’t going back to Vlad yet.
“It depends,” Dad said. “Certainly there’s an argument to be made that whatever changes they made to the act don’t apply to the Simmons Mill. But ultimately, the town can claim eminent domain, and probably make it stick. On the other hand, there’s such a thing as just compensation. If they take something away from you, they have to pay you the fair market value. On the other hand, you’ve staked your claim but you haven’t completed the seven-year term that would make it yours. So they could probably claim they didn’t owe you anything. It’s a very interesting question.”
“Interesting enough to take to court?” Turk asked.
“No,” Dad said.
“Ah, yes,” Turk said. “Leach, Swindol and Twist. Complications with the town. Wouldn’t want those.”
“Turk, do you really think it would be a good idea to go ahead with this?” Dad asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, that’s a point of view,” Dad said. “Personally, I don’t give a damn whether New Sodom has an arts center or not. My only concern is that you two not get hurt in some damn fool jenti war. If those overeducated idiots want to fight about who did what to whom back in the Middle Ages, let ’em. But they’d better leave us alone.”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” I said.
“Neither can I,” Mom said. “Anyway, Jack, what kind of safety can we have if our neighbors are killing each other?”
Turk didn’t say anything.
“In any case, there’s nothing I can do that will make this situation better,” Dad said.
And he got up and went to work.
Turk went to school. I could tell she was furious with Dad.