“All right then,” Dr. Fludd said. She seemed relieved to be dealing with a silly girl rather than a religious nut. She looked calmly between the twins and said, “Can one of you tell me exactly what you think happened at your mother’s store?”
“We don’t know what happened,” Daphna said. “We didn’t see what bit her.”
“But you told Agent Conrad it was a bat.”
Daphna didn’t know how to explain this, but her brother did. “Any reason is better than no reason at all,” he said.
“Evelyn traveled all over the world,” Dr. Fludd replied, following another tack after taking a deep breath. “Is it possible she brought back some kind of exotic animal that bit her? Maybe something she wasn’t supposed to own? Or perhaps your father had? He was also a world-traveler.”
Dex and Daphna shook their heads.
Dr. Fludd hung hers. She looked like she was on the verge of breaking down. Her face was so tight, her shoulders so tense.
“The new Stopgap,” Dex suddenly said, “it’s not real, is it?”
“No,” Dr. Fludd admitted, looking up, surprised. “But the announcement has worked to calm fears. Shots were fired on the Canadian border this morning, and we nearly had a catastrophe. Instead, people are going home.”
“Maybe to die,” Daphna said.
“Maybe to die,” Dr. Fludd agreed. “Or maybe to live. We’ll be administering placebos until the cure is ready. I see you don’t approve of our methods,” she observed. “But the news bought me some time. Precious time. I have a couple of dead teenagers just like you that might yield some useful information.”
Paling, Daphna looked at Dex, who nodded.
“I will stop this thing,” Dr. Fludd insisted. “I will stop it dead. Somehow. I will not be thwarted.”
“You’ll stop working when you die,” Dex said.
“That’s right.”
Dex didn’t like the way this woman said ‘me,’ and ‘I,’ all the time, but he made no comment on it. She did seem to be in charge of the race for a cure. The pressure had to be enormous.
No one spoke for a while. All Daphna could think was, Teal. Dex watched her sadly.
Finally, Dr. Fludd said, “May I ask a question?”
The twins nodded. They were out of the city now.
“The tracker we hid in your shoe, Daphna. How did it wind up in a hotel room in Buenos Aires, at the scene of a murder?”
Dex and Daphna exchanged glances again. No reasonable response seemed possible, so they both gave the only one they could: “We don’t know.”
“But it can hardly be a coincidence that this connects you to two of these crimes.”
“What?”
“I explained, at your house—you mean you didn’t hear me?”
“Hear what?” Dex asked.
“About the attack on your—on Evelyn Idun.”
“What?” Daphna demanded. “What attack? I saw her when she died.”
“I don’t understand,” Dr. Fludd said. “There haven’t been thirty-three attacks by these organ thieves, there have been thirty-four. Your Evelyn—she wasn’t murdered of course—but she, her body that is—it was attacked in the hospital morgue. She was the first one.
“When the bug turned up in South America, I assumed you’d somehow managed to get to the scene of the latest killing in the days after I came to your house—to find out what it might have to do with her. Otherwise, I—I don’t understand.”
Neither twin tried to help her understand. Daphna was incapable anyway. Dex just closed his eyes and tried to erase this bit of information along with everything else that was happening now.
“A web camera in one case caught a glimpse of the killer,” Dr. Fludd continued, looking between the twins as if searching for an opening.
“We know that whoever it is wears protective barriers over his entire body, which suggests to us he thinks the victims have the disease. This turned out to be incorrect, in every case but Evelyn’s. Thus the targets appear totally random. Please tell me now if you know anything else that connects them.”
“We’re sorry,” Daphna said, her eyes somewhere else, a somewhere else where what she’d just learned had happened to Evelyn wasn’t true, wasn’t even possible. It didn’t matter that Evelyn was safe and sound in Heaven. This was—a desecration. “I—I found the bug and just threw it away,” Daphna lied.
“Into a garbage truck,” Dex put in.
It was clear that Dr. Fludd did not believe this, but she didn’t challenge the twins. She just sat in her seat, evidently sinking into despair.
“Any chance you didn’t hear me mention the ten million dollar award for coming up with the cure?” she asked. “I don’t care about money—I have plenty—but if you helped, you could certainly—your inheritance is still—”
She could see from the twins’ expressions that this tack was useless as well.
There seemed to be nothing left to say, so no one said anything for a long while.
Finally Dex said, “Ah, where are we going, exactly?”
Just then, the ambulance came to a stop.
“We must be at the airport,” said Dr. Fludd, perking up just slightly. “We’re going to fly you back to the lab at OHSU and run some tests,” she explained. “You’re hardly the only ones who’ve been exposed to the germ and not gotten infected, but you were there at the start. It’s worth a shot taking a closer look at you.”
The doors opened just then, and at the sight of the man who’d opened them, Dr. Fludd reacted as if she’d been electrocuted. He was an older man in a foreign-looking suit, very short, very bald, but also obviously quite vigorous. He was much older now, but the twins recognized his dead face at once. He had the cold, calculating eyes of a killer—and he also had a gun.
Dr. Fludd looked at the twins as if she’d never seen them before. “How are you—?” she gasped. “What do they want with—?” But then she turned to the bald man and screamed, “No! I won’t let you do this to me again!” Then she actually threw herself at him.
With a deft step to the side and a swift, compact swing of the gun, the man knocked Dr. Fludd unconscious. He caught her before she fell out of the vehicle and laid her down at the twins’ feet. Neither had moved.
Dead Face pushed the doors all the way open and waved them out. The twins could see they were, in fact, at the airport. They were actually sitting on a runway. A small private plane was visible just over Dead Face’s shoulder. Its engines were running.
The hatch was already open.
CHAPTER 28
on wings
The interior looked less like an airplane cabin than a rich person’s living room. The walls were paneled in what appeared to be actual wood, and the floor was covered with plush red carpet. There were only half a dozen seats, all leather, oversized, and wonderfully soft. Baskets of snacks sat on each—bags of crackers, scones, and tiny tangerines. The twins tore into them at once. They had no idea when the last meal they ate was. In fact, they had no sense of time left at all. They were living in an extended dream-state. Nightmare-state.
“Durante’s?” Dex asked with a mouthful of scone. The last time he’d been in something so nice was the gazillionaire’s limo. Durante. There’d been no time to process the man’s gruesome demise. Dex didn’t think he deserved such a fate, even if he’d brought it on himself.
“Could be,” Daphna said, shuddering to think about what had happened at that museum, “but something tells me it’s not.”
Durante wasted his life, she thought. All the money in world couldn’t buy him peace. She hoped he had it now. She hoped maybe the Book of Maps wasn’t totally useless. She hoped it could somehow lead him to his family in the light.
Family…
There was a large flatscreen on the wall. As the plane began to taxi, Dex pushed a button on his armrest and it came on. The President was speaking from the Oval Office.
“—Fellow Americans,” he was saying, “we are all aware of the difficult and challenging times we face
in the current crisis. I come to you at this hour to ask for your help. I come to you to at this hour to ask for your calm, for that is the help we so desperately need. I hope by now you have heard the news that a new Stopgap has been developed at Oregon Health Sciences University by Dr. Roberta Fludd’s team. It is already calming fears in our troubled Northwest.
“We have also learned that Dr. Fludd expects to have both a permanent vaccine and cure developed within days, so once again, all citizens are urged in the strongest possible terms to remain calm. It is natural in times of crisis, when information is scarce, to cling to rumors, however outlandish. I ask you not to focus on occult or doomsday scenarios.
“There will always be those who use fear for their own personal gain. These towers that are stirring up religious tensions will not succeed in dividing us when we most need to be united. This is a problem of science, and science will—”
Daphna turned the screen off just as the plane left the ground.
“If half of that is lies,” she said, not directly to Dex, but rather to the screen, “it’s a safe bet the other half is, too.”
She found the button on her armrest that released her seatback. Despite the dread creeping over her, a smile settled on her face when she found it tipped back almost flat, though it was gone the instant she let her mind relax.
Her body was attacked in the morgue.
No, she couldn’t face that.
Dex lowered his seat as well. “I have no idea when the last time I slept was,” he sighed, choosing to ignore everything he’d just heard on TV, lies or not. “Days,” he guessed. “Months. Could be years for all I know.”
Daphna wanted to say something in return, but she couldn’t manage even a simple agreement. The twins fell silent as they both attempted to will themselves into unconsciousness. But despite being exhausted, neither fell asleep. Instead, they listened to the rush of wind over the wings and felt the vibration of barely perceptible turbulence.
“Dex!” Daphna suddenly blurted, sitting up. She’d almost forgotten he didn’t know. “In Heaven! I saw Mom! And Evelyn! They’re angels! With wings!”
Dexter looked at her with wide eyes, but he made no comment on this news. He was too amazed.
“I’m sorry,” Daphna suddenly said.
Dex looked away.
“I deserved it. I wanted to stay with them. I thought I was over being selfish. Obviously, I’m not—not remotely. It’s like I’m defective or something.”
“You’re not defective, Daphna,” Dex said. “It’s not your fault.”
“What do you mean?” Now Daphna’s eyes were wide.
“It’s how—angels are. They see the bigger picture, so the little things don’t worry them so—”
“Doesn’t sound angelic to me,” Daphna said, “and letting your brother get murdered is not a ‘little thing.’ I think Mom and Evelyn were worried about it. Besides, I’m pretty sure just being there didn’t make us angels. You see wings?”
“Anyway,” Dex said, “being there had something to do with it. And I think when you come back, when it wears off, you feel too human.”
“Is that your way of saying sorry for trying to knock my block off?”
Dex half smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.” Then he asked, “What happened?”
Daphna hesitated a moment, then said, “Dex, Heaven is a library. Mom and Evelyn were talking to me. They were trying to tell me something important, but I couldn’t understand anything they said. But to tell you the truth, I think they were telling me I shouldn’t be there.”
“That grid,” Dex said, finally seeing it for what it was. “Books?”
Daphna nodded. “We shouldn’t go back,” she said, though it pained her even to think it. “We could get changed forever, and we might not try to help any more—or be able to if we did.”
“Is that what we’re doing, Daphna, helping?”
“I don’t know. We’re trying.”
The twins let this hang there between them for a moment.
“So, Mom and Evelyn,” Dex finally said, “they made you come back?”
“No,” Daphna admitted. ‘Not exactly.”
“Why, then?”
“I saw the Eye, Dex.”
“Oh.”
After that, there was nothing to be said. The twins lay back down in their seats and suffered through an uneasy silence until at last, mercifully, they fell asleep.
CHAPTER 29
what was next
Dex was in the Clearing, his secret place in the woods of Gabriel Park, lying on the leaves and staring at the sky. The world looked upside down, but it was long before it actually became so.
Daphna was in the light, walking hand-in-hand with her mothers, chatting and laughing. She had wings. She was happy.
But the twins were being drawn out of sleep. Slowly, they opened their eyes.
The plane was on the ground, and the hatch was open again. Dead Face loomed over them. He didn’t seem to have spoken, which meant his mere glance had dragged them back to reality.
Groggily, Dex and Daphna unfastened their belts and shuffled off the plane behind him into a warm, breezy, almost sweet-smelling night. A black car with darkened windows sat just alongside the plane. Dead Face climbed into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition. Once again, no one else was there, no one to make sure they didn’t run for it.
But they’d come to learn what was next.
Daphna put her hand on the door latch, but turned to her brother before lifting it. “Dex,” she said, “I don’t have a whole lot left in me. I keep telling myself that, and soon it’s going to be true.”
“Well, maybe that’s why there are two of us,” said Dex.
Daphna actually smiled at this. The twins got into the car and were relieved to find no one waiting for them there. A wall separated them from Dead Face, which was also good.
The car began to move, and swiftly. It wound its way out of the airport and onto a highway, which it followed for a while through the night-draped countryside.
The twins did not talk, but rather just sat there watching a dark blur streak past the windows, wondering where in the world they were. A while later, the scenery changed. They were driving along a gently curving river. Bridges supported by stone arches crossed it in fairly close succession. Everything looked peaceful.
Daphna took the Aleph out of her pocket and opened it. She had nothing in mind, but they had a chance to find—something. Phantasmagoric light filled the back of the limo, and Dex and Daphna looked into it.
They saw exactly what they wanted to see, even if neither realized it: the President. He was just unclipping a microphone from his tie and stepping away from his desk in the Oval Office. TV cameras were being wheeled out.
“Goddamn it!” he screamed at a group of uniformed men and women remaining behind. “I want that cure! And I want it now!”
“Calm, huh?” Daphna said.
“Let’s find Dr. Fludd,” Dex suggested, and then there she was, but she was young. She was in an apartment, crying, packing a suitcase. A man with a great big cleft in his chin was trying to stop her.
“We can get through this, Robby,” he said softly. “You need a break. You’ve been working yourself to death. Robby,” he said again, this time taking her hands. “Let’s get married.”
Dr. Fludd burst out crying. “They threatened to kill me!” she sobbed. “And when I said, ‘Knock yourselves out,’ they said they’d kill my family. They said they’d kill everyone I knew. They said they’d kill you!”
The man went pale.
Now Dr. Fludd moved to the bathroom and began indiscriminately dumping the contents of drawers into an overnight bag—bottles and creams, a curling iron.
“Robby,” the man said, but nothing more.
“I won’t let them do this to me,” she snarled through gritted teeth. “I’ll focus on stem cells. I’ll be the best in the world. And one day, I will make them pay!” With this, she swung her bag into the
mirror, shattering it.
What came next was a series of images, all of Dr. Fludd, all in one lab or another, all of her bent over charts or graphs or test tubes or microscopes. As the images flashed, she grew older. It was like watching one of those little flipbooks kids make at school on the corner of their notebook pages. Crows feet formed at the corner of her eyes. Her body thickened up a bit. But her hair, her beautiful hair, remained the same.
Suddenly, the flickering stopped, but there was one more scene: Dr. Fludd, as she looked today, was hurrying down a city street carrying a box full of lab equipment. Then she stopped, abruptly, in front of a storefront window and looked at the display. It was a baby carriage. She started to cry.
“Lilit,” Dex said, and then they saw the monster. He was once again on that volcano, standing at the crater while glowing lava seeped down the mountainside below him. He threw something in.
The car hit a bump, causing Daphna to drop the Aleph. She quickly picked it up, ready to look inside again, but Dex had his face pressed to the window.
They’d entered a city, a city that looked like none they’d ever seen. The car was moving down a narrow road flanked by large, blockish, closely spaced buildings. They all looked stone, and built in a style they could only consider—old. Really old. And not American. Some kind of huge obelisk, like a mini Washington monument, loomed in the distance in front of a large domed structure. But before the twins got a good look at them, the car turned down a side street.
They bumped along for several blocks on an even narrower street, then stopped in front of a non-descript metal garage door in the side of a random looking building. The twins exchanged curious looks as the door began to lift.
They pulled in and stopped. Just an empty garage, not much bigger than their car. The door closed behind them, leaving them where it seemed they’d always be: in the dark.
CHAPTER 30
in charge of secrets
“This is creepy,” Daphna said, starting to get worried. She gripped the Aleph, ready to flee, but suddenly there was the sound of a motor, though not in the car. Underneath the car. The back of the limousine began to rise. “Dex, let’s go!” Daphna cried.
The Book of All Things Page 9