by Douglas Rees
That was a strange day. The house was absolutely quiet. We were waiting for something, and we didn’t know what.
Turk came home, and brought me some assignments.
“Weird stuff at Vlad,” she said. “I don’t know what. Feels bad.”
“Did you see Gregor or Ileana?” I asked.
“She was around, he wasn’t,” Turk said. “And your buddy Justin was following her around like a lost puppy. You know, jenti are jerks. All of ’em.”
And she went upstairs.
It wasn’t half an hour later that the doorbell rang. Just because I felt like I could do it, I walked all the way from the couch to the door, and opened it.
Gregor nodded to me.
“Have I your permission to enter?” he said in high jenti. “Rest beneath the shadow of my wings,” I said, and let him in.
He gave a half smirk at my words and said, “May I see your cousin?”
Now, here was a challenge. Going upstairs. What an adventure.
I hobbled up the first few steps.
“May I help you?” Gregor said.
“I got it,” I said. “Thanks.”
Turk’s ladder was down.
“Turk, you have company,” I said. “Gregor.”
“What do you want?” came Turk’s voice.
And Gregor went up.
Up went the ladder.
I went back downstairs.
It was strange to think of Gregor in my house. We never saw each other except at Vlad and the mill.
From the living room, Mom and I listened to the sounds of their voices.
“It sounds like they’re fighting,” Mom said.
“That’s what they do,” I said.
After a few minutes, Turk called down, “Cuz, get up here.”
“Excuse me,” I said to Mom, slowly pushing myself onto my feet. “I think I have to go defend Turk’s honor.”
As I went up the stairs again, Gregor whisked past me, bowed to Mom, and opened the door.
“Safety to all here,” he said. “Please to stay inside tonight. There will be fires.”
He slammed out the door.
Turk gave me a look of pure anger as I crept up the ladder.
“He marked me,” she said. “Without my permission. He just came up here and said, ‘I have been meaning to do this,’ reached out his damn claws, and put something on my cheek. Do I have a mark?”
“No,” I said. “It’s invisible to anybody but a jenti. Anyway, so what? Ileana marked me without my permission. It saved me from being beaten to a bloody pulp by Gregor.”
“Yeah, I know all about that,” Turk said. “But here’s the difference, Cuz, nice and simple so you can understand it: That kind of thing might have worked last winter, but now it doesn’t. So why would he do it?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” I said.
“I did. I said, ‘What the hell was that about?’ He said I’d marked him already. Some damn fool thing like that. Then I told him to get out, and he left.”
She started pacing back and forth.
“He was just trying to claim me, that’s all. Claim me like I’m his property. I’m nobody’s thing, damn it.
“He said we’d open the center on Halloween just to show my stuff,” Turk went on. “Said he’d go to jail if he had to. I told him I don’t need anybody to go to jail for me. Especially him. I do not need anybody.”
“Lucky you,” I said. “Listen, next time you have to vent, you come to me. I’m not quite up for all this climbing yet.”
And I got up and went back to my couch.
That was a quiet night. Inside the house, I mean. Turk didn’t come down to dinner, and none of the three of us had much to say.
Outside, though, we heard sirens rushing up and down the streets, and through the windows we saw dull red glares come into the sky, flare up, and die. The smell of smoke came in through the closed doors.
Once, not far off, we heard wolves howling.
“They should impose a curfew,” Dad said once.
“Who’s going to enforce it?” I said.
If the Mercians and Burgundians were going to fight it out for control of New Sodom, it would take more than the gadje of New Sodom PD to stop them.
But they weren’t fighting. Not yet. Not quite. Each side was testing the other, checking out its defenses. Splitting up the town. That’s what the fires were about—ash wood for Burgundian fires, oak for Mercian. Fires set on street corners or in the middle of intersections. Then, in the darkness, someone watched to see who came to put them out, and whether new fires were started on top of the ashes of the old.
I couldn’t see how the Burgundians could lose. There were about ten of them for every Mercian, and the Burgundians were the jenti who could fly, or turn into wolves. Some could do both. The Mercians turned into selkies. In a stand-up fight, things could only go one way. But was that how the jenti fought their wars?
I went to bed and lay there listening to the sounds of New Sodom slipping into the kind of violence it hadn’t seen for centuries.
Over what?
Somebody must know, but there were no answers to be found in that darkness. There was only smoke, and more smoke, making everything darker.
23
I had a crazy dream. I was walking around in New Sodom, and it was now, but it was also then, and it looked like I imagined New Sodom must have looked, with log houses made with overhangs, and muddy streets, and a long rickety bridge leading to Crossfield. So I walked on, and started to smell smoke. I wondered what was burning, but I couldn’t see any flames. There was just the smell. I followed it, and came to one of the two-story cabins. The invisible smoke was coming from there. I figured there might be someone inside who needed to be rescued, so I ran to the front door and pushed it open.
Inside were Ileana, Justin, Gregor, Turk, and pretty much everybody else I knew. They were all sitting around a woman in old-fashioned clothes who had to be Mercy Warrener. She was typing away on a laptop, and when I came in, she waved.
“I got your message,” she said. “I’m CCing everyone.”
I wanted to say, “But don’t you smell the fire?” but I couldn’t. I just watched Mercy Warrener typing and everyone else smiling at us, while the smell of the smoke got stronger and stronger.
Then there was a rush of heat, the roof started to crack, and I looked up. Flames were spreading across the ceiling, reaching down for us.
“Everybody out!” I shouted.
And I woke up.
I just lay there trembling for a while. Then I reached over and turned on my light.
Morning was starting to come into the sky. I could hear Mom and Dad getting up.
I was too tired to move, but I did it anyway. I was going to go to school today, just to see what was happening. I staggered to the bathroom and ran the shower over me until my heart started beating and my eyes were open. I felt a lot better afterward, and I got dressed and went down to breakfast.
Mom and Dad were sitting closer together than usual. They kept touching each other, and Mom put her hand on my arm every couple of minutes.
“Cody, do you really think you should go to school today?” Dad asked.
“Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen,” I said. “And I feel sort of okay.”
“I’d better check on Turk,” Mom said, and went to invade the attic.
She was back in one minute.
“Turk’s gone,” she said.
Turk had taken her clothes, her sleeping bag, and her car. She’d left a note, and her inflatable Scream.
The note was for me.
Hey, Cuz,
This scene is getting too bogus. I’m out of here. Thanks for trying. You were almost human.
Always Leave First,
Turk
PS Say so long to Bat Boy for me.
When I showed it to Mom and Dad, Mom started to cry.
“How could we not have heard her leave?” she said between sobs. “That ladder makes a
huge thump when you drop it. And you can hear her car two blocks away. We should have woken up and stopped her.”
“I don’t think she used the ladder,” I said. “I think she went out the window and climbed down the oak in the front yard. And if she was worried about the car waking us up, she could just have pushed it to the end of the street before she started it.”
“Anyway, we couldn’t have stopped her, short of physical force,” Dad said.
“It was physical force that drove her away,” Mom said. “Damn them all.”
But Mom was wrong. Turk hadn’t left because of what had happened to us in Squibnocket, or because of what was going on now. She was too tough for that. She’d left because it looked like the center was going to happen after all. And because Gregor loved her and she loved him. None of that went with her misunderstood artist pose. So she’d driven off, and left me tied up in the tree house again. I wanted to kill her.
“We can’t even file a missing persons report for twenty-four hours,” Dad was saying. “By that time, she could be a thousand miles from here in any direction. I know a private detective who does good work. He can probably track her down. That way, we can keep tabs on her, at least. I don’t know about bringing her back. She’s sixteen. There are states where she could declare herself an emancipated minor. It’s not like we hold a lot of high cards.”
“I’m not sure she should come back,” Mom said.
I left the room. Right then, the last thing I wanted was to know where Turk was. I got ready for school, and just before I left the house I stuck Turk’s note in my pocket. I was sure to see Gregor, and when I did, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time answering questions.
Since I didn’t have Turk to take me to school, I waited for the limo. My ride to Vlad was even more luxurious than usual. The car was empty except for me.
When I got to school, the parking lot was almost empty. The campus seemed almost deserted. There seemed to be a knot of people coming and going around the student center, so I went that way.
There was a burned-out oak fire beside the entrance, and an elaborate red, purple, and gold banner flying over the door. The design looked ancient, medieval, maybe. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed to be a bloodred dragon outlined in gold.
Inside, Gregor had turned the place into a command post and was running his forces from it. It wasn’t just kids standing around talking in small groups and pointing at laptop screens. There were adults there, dangerous-looking Burgundian jenti who seemed to be waiting for orders. And they were all wearing swords. Some of them were carrying crossbows.
Clearly, Mrs. Antonescu’s meeting with the Mercians hadn’t gone well.
“Duke Gregor is busy,” Ilie said as I came in the door.
“My old buddy,” I said. “I always knew he’d make good.”
“It is his war rank,” Ilie said stiffly. “Among us, dukes assume their titles only in times like these.”
“Don’t you have any grown-ups you could take orders from?” I asked.
“Gregor’s father is in Europe,” Ilie said. “Gregor is the next in the chain of command.”
“Well, congratulations on conquering the student center,” I said. “What’s your next move, an attack on the library?”
“The duke will secure a base of operations,” Ilie said. “Then we will advance as directed. You should go now. You are not one of us.”
“Right. When you get a chance, give this to Duke Gregor,” I said, handing Ilie the note, and I left.
I went toward the classics building across the empty campus. Vlad had the feel of a Crossfield mill. Something was dying.
“Elliot, wait!” a voice behind me called.
I turned and saw Gregor walking toward me with quick steps. He had the note in his hand.
“What does bogus mean in this context?” he said, catching up to me. “I know the word, but it does not seem to fit.”
“For God’s sake, Gregor,” I said. “All it means is that Turk’s taken off the way she always does. Her note’s an excuse, not an explanation. Deal with it.”
“Deal with it? I have nothing to deal with,” Gregor said. He crumpled up the note and threw it away. “For the first time, Cody Elliot, I feel sorry for you, having such a person in your family.”
“Thanks, Gregor, old pal. That means a lot,” I said.
Three jenti suddenly swooped out of a cloud and flew low over our heads. Then they angled away toward Crossfield.
“Gregor,” I said, “tell a dumb gadje what’s really going on.”
“I tell you again, I do not know everything that is going on,” Gregor said. “I know only that it is so important to the Mercians that the stupid arts center not open that they are prepared to risk everything in New Sodom to prevent it from doing so. That makes it precious to the Burgundians. To me and my men, at least. So the center will open on Halloween. Then we will see what happens. But I think what happens will be war.”
“A war over Turk’s junk?” I said. “Anyway, what do you mean, war? You guys are gangs, not armies.”
“Jenti do not fight gadje style,” Gregor said. “We are quicker and subtler. And very fierce. War is what it is.”
“Turk wouldn’t like you using her stuff this way,” I said.
“Turk is gone,” Gregor said. “And the Burgundians did not choose this fight.”
I went to my first class and found I was the only person there. Even the teacher was gone, and there was no substitute. It was like that all over Vlad. Of the teachers I knew, only Ms. Vukovitch, Mr. Shadwell, and Mr. Gibbon were at work. They all looked grim, and none of them had much to say to me.
I hung around until the end of the day, then found that the limo service had stopped running. Just stopped. So I had to drag my beaten-up self home, which took a long time.
Which gave me a lot of time to think.
I didn’t want to quit. As far as I could see, quitting would only make everything worse. Quitting would be admitting that I was wrong when I wasn’t. And even if, after I quit, the jenti stopped giving me the silent treatment, even if Justin and Ileana came to make up, they would still be wrong, and I would still be right, and I would have to act like that wasn’t true. But without other people, it was a stupid idea. I wasn’t an artist. I didn’t need an arts center any more than I needed a cruise ship.
Turk might have been a pain, but at least she’d wanted the center. Now no one did. No one but me, and I’d wanted it for other people. For Mercy Warrener, and Ileana, and, though I hated to admit it, I’d wanted it for Turk.
I kept thinking about Turk’s art sitting in the cold dark of the mill, maybe for years, and the wigwam lost there, lost and useless. Unless it went up in flames as part of some jenti battle.
I finally turned the last corner and started up the street to my house. As I climbed up the steps, the door opened and Mom met me.
“Cody, you have company,” she said in a loud whisper.
“I do?” I said. If it was Ileana, or even Justin—
“Yes,” she said. “And I have no idea who they are.”
24
In the living room there were seven kids who looked sort of like jenti but weren’t. They were dressed in black and their skin was pale, but they were shorter than jenti, and some of them were wearing sunglasses indoors. Jenti never do that.
They were sprawling on the floor like they hadn’t figured out how to use chairs.
One of the girls, who was fat and had her hair roached up into a terrific Mohawk, got up.
“Cody Elliot, we presume?” she said.
“That’s me,” I said.
“My name is Gelnda,” the fat girl said.
“Hi, Glenda,” I said. “’S’up?”
“Gelnda,” she repeated. “We are the Daughters of the Crypt Poetry Slam Collective of New Sodom. These ladies are War, Famine, and Death. The tall guy over there is Hieronymus Bosch, and the other one is Basil IX. The one over there under the coffee table is Pestilence.”
I saw a pair of long legs sticking out one end of the long brown table by the sofa, and a lot of long, frizzy brown hair coming out from the other end.
“I’m practicing,” Pestilence said. “For being in my coffin.”
“We are here to be part of your opening,” Gelnda went on.
“Whoa,” I said. “How did you hear about it?”
“My mother is president of one of the groups you contacted,” Famine said. “I heard her talking to another president about it.”
“We think it’s a valid idea, and we want to be part of it,” Basil IX said.
“We will read our stuff,” Hieronymus Bosch said.
Pestilence wriggled out from under the table and rolled to her suitcase-sized purse.
“We’re serious writers,” she said, and held out a thick sheaf of papers.
It was a huge pile of poems, and the way she held it out to me was kind of timid and in-your-face at the same time.
“There are others,” Gelnda said. “Musicians. Artists. People like that. We all know each other. We need a place.”
“Better than the Screaming Bean,” Pestilence said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We could have used you.”
The Daughters looked like I’d just slammed the door in their faces. They were looks of real pain.
Pestilence stuffed the poems back in her purse.
“Yeah, right,” she said.
“They always do this to us,” Gelnda said. “We’re not surprised.”
What she said didn’t make a lot of sense, but I knew what she was talking about. I’d gone to Cotton Mather High, the gadje school across town, for a semester last year. Guys like these were a joke to the rest of the kids. A mean joke, from what I’d seen. It’s dangerous to be different in high school.
“No, really. You sound perfect,” I said. “Only there’s a slight problem. The jenti are getting ready to kill each other, and from what I hear, their war’s going to start at that building. It’s going to open on Halloween. But all hell’s going to break loose when it does.”
“That would explain a lot,” Basil IX said.
“The sirens. The fires,” Hieronymus Bosch added.