"He said the keris is beautiful, probably worth a lot, and in good shape, but he couldn't date it."
Noel nodded. "How is he?"
"Great. The shop's been kicking this month."
"But how's he doing?" He looked up, and I noticed his eyes had softened, carried now a warmth reminiscent of melted chocolate. Ah, normal. There it was.
"Really, he's great." I hesitated. "He misses you, though."
"Well," he said. "I miss him."
The barman appeared. He regarded the keris with vague interest, then left us with full glasses of red wine. I took a sip as Noel unsheathed the blade. He turned it over once. Twice. "What made you fly all the way to Europe for this thing?"
"The empu ... he was following me around Betheny and--"
"Hold on." He leaned forward. "Following you? In Betheny?"
"Around the university. He nailed a book about Javanese weapons to my office door after I won the keris at the Block."
"Did you call the police, have him checked out?"
"No, it didn't make me that nervous. I felt more intrigued than anything. Besides, Garrick likes him."
"They met?"
"Yep. Sri Putra visited the shop." I'd leave out the possibility that he might've followed me there. "I've never seen him, though. Just his weird black hat at the auction. He bid on the keris, too," I explained. "My guess is that he left that book for me afterward to teach me something about the blade."
"Why would he?"
"I don't know," I said. "To be helpful? That's partly why I'm here, to understand all of that. And the notes."
"What notes?"
"Two notes at my office. The second one invited me here."
"So, the one you found today makes three?"
I paused in the act of ripping off another hunk of bread. "You saw that? And here I thought I was quick."
"You were. He didn't notice." He smirked. "Did you bring those notes with you, by any chance?"
"Sure," I said, my hand already rummaging through my coat pocket. I handed him all three notes, then watched as he considered them in turn.
"So you didn't have this empu meeting set up? You weren't in touch with him about coming?"
"Nope. It was all pretty last minute."
"Guy makes a lot of assumptions."
"I guess so." Noel, I noticed, liked green olives. I chose a black one, popped it in my mouth.
"Don't you think it's a little reckless, flying over here to meet up with someone who's been following you around?"
"Well, it's not like I wanted to at first."
"But you did."
"I did. My father bought the ticket."
"What if I hadn't been here? What if you'd run into that Italian ass without me?"
I rolled the olive pit around in my mouth. "What if I had?"
"Not all men are nice."
I knew he meant this word, nice, as a reference to us, because I often said that he was one of the nicest men I'd ever met--a compliment that was both true and safe. But the use of the term now made me bristle--as if I were a naive five-year-old who needed a warning about men with candy.
"Didn't you find it odd that he was in that apartment, acting like he belonged there?" he asked. "Empus don't generally live in Italy. Maybe that guy's some con artist, empu posing--"
I laughed, and because I was still irritated with him, it erupted from me as a rude guffaw. "If you'd taken more than a semester of Italian you might have understood that guy when he told you he's the landlord," I said. "Besides, your own grandfather met the man. The empu is Javanese. And I saw the keris Sri Putra bought at Time After Time inside his apartment--an apartment overstuffed with Indonesian culture, I might add."
"I don't like this," he said.
"I think you're overreacting."
"I think I'm underreacting."
He studied me for a minute, then pulled out a magnifying glass and bent over the blade. I breathed, slow and silent. It was Noel's skill at centered observation that made him so adept at finding treasures and conveying details in his art, but I always felt a little itchy when he turned those eyes on me.
"I know why my grandfather couldn't tell you much," he said after a while.
"Why?"
"The luks, first of all. Luks are the--"
"Curves of the blade, I know. I learned that all on my own. The Internet, see, isn't such an evil thing."
"You're entitled to your opinion," he said with a crooked smile. "Did you read, on your Internet, that the luks are always an odd number?"
"Yes. Garrick said this one has eleven or thirteen."
"The luks are ambiguous here at the end," he said, marking the blade's length with his fingers, rounding the tip. "It looks like it has twelve. That can kill the value."
"I don't really care about its value. I won't sell it."
"But you'll travel thousands of miles to learn more about it. I don't get that. Why?" He leaned back, and then he laughed. "Don't tell me--he talked up magic and stardust, didn't he?"
I pursed my lips.
"And you believed it!"
I tapped my foot on the floor, counted to ten.
"Come on. What did the proprietor and chief storyteller of Time After Time tell you about the myths and legends of the mysterious keris?" he asked in a mock-spooky voice.
I leaned close. "He said the keris can decrease inhibitions, make a person not call the police when they should, fly off to Rome at a moment's notice and--most nonsensical of all--endure their friend's insinuations that they're an idiot incapable of separating fact from fantasy."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to." I pushed the plate back at him. "Maybe you're still hungry. The olives are particularly ... nice ... don't you think?"
"Huh." He took an olive. I watched him chew and refused to blink when he watched me right back. "Did he tell you to sleep with it under your pillow? That a nightmare tells you if the keris is good or bad?"
"No," I lied.
"What did he plant in your head? Did he find a man in the blade?"
I said nothing.
"Did he mention the hole?"
"He said the hole makes the keris powerful," I conceded. "Like a window for future events or--"
He snorted. "Thought so."
"All right, Boy Wonder," I said. "What do you think?"
"Batman, please. Boy Wonder was just a tool," he said, and I smiled despite myself. "Expert opinion? The aperture doesn't look man-made. See the blemishes?" He passed me his looking glass, and I peered through it at my blade. The streaks looked exaggerated, and the hole seemed rough edged and marred with flecks of rust. "That reads like neglect, not empu intention."
"How old is it?"
He tapped his fingers on the table. "I'd say seventeenth century."
"What else? Why's it always warm?"
"Because the room's warm. Look, whatever he told you, it's not magic metal. It'll be room temperature."
"It feels warm to me."
"Then you're imagining it."
"What about the stain?" I turned the blade over, pointed to the skid of my own blood married to the metal. "I cut myself. That's a blood mark that won't come out."
"How did you clean it?"
"Soap and water. Then Garrick used something at the shop."
Again, he examined the blade with the glass. "I don't think that's blood."
"Trust me on this, it is," I said.
"It looks like part of the design to me."
"It's not."
He chuckled and tucked away his magnifying glass. "Is there anything more I can tell you in my professional capacity, or are you through with me?"
"I'm through with you. Want me to buy your ticket back to Paris?" My gut knotted when his expression blanked. Ah, hell. Over the line. Damn line. I never knew for sure where it lay.
I tucked the keris back where it belonged, then found the plastic sack. I'd bought more than a guidebook at the airport shop. It wasn't wrapped, but did that matter
at a time like this? I set the small bag between us. It gaped open. "For you," I said. "Plastic-bag wrap is in vogue this year, you know."
"What's this?"
"Santa time."
He shook his head. "I don't think so."
"It's okay that you don't have anything for me. Come on."
"I do have something for you." He tossed his napkin on the table. "It's buried under a heap of clothes."
I pushed the bag closer, persisted until he reached in and pulled out a leather-covered book. He looked through the pages, some lined, some blank. My muscles tensed when he said nothing.
"It's an art journal," I said.
"Thank you." His smile seemed ... sad. "I haven't been drawing."
My mood wilted a little more. "Oh. Bad gift."
"No," he said. "Perfect gift. I haven't drawn, but I want to. I will."
"No time?"
"Something like that." He reached out and brushed his hand over my cheek. "You had a hair near your mouth," he explained. "Friends help friends prevent hairballs, you know."
I turned my head, and noticed that the television couple still writhed together on the table.
A WIDE WINDOW and pair of rose curtains framed a segment of the city in my suite, a plush sage settee sprawled before it. The unconventional bed--two doubles separated by an inch or two but united by a single headboard--boasted a lavish display of pillows. The air carried a hint of lemon, a fan's quiet purr. Kit had done well. I'd bring her back some good chocolate, enough to keep her blood sugar humming into the new year.
It finally hit me as I unpacked. I was sleepy. Dorothy-through-the-poppies sleepy. I attempted to calculate how long it had been since I'd had even a nap, and gave up, sinking into the delectable comfort offered by my mattress. All of my muscles cooed and sighed, Yes, more.
The phone rang. I growled at it. It rang again.
"Noel?" The door between our rooms stood ajar. "Do you need something?" He didn't respond. I picked up the receiver. "Hello?" A long pause, then,
"Maeve Amelia Leahy, is that you?"
My insides went tight. "Mom? Everything okay? Did Dad make it home?"
"I just spent an hour on this phone trying to find you, because I wouldn't believe what your father told me," she said. "You left the country, but you wouldn't come home? How much more untouchable can you become?"
My father shushed in the background: "Abby, don't."
Don't listen to her.
"Mom, I just--"
"I'm disappointed in you. In your choices," she said, and I could almost detect honest letdown in her tone, simmering alongside her irritation. Of course she'd expect me to be in Maine, even if she'd spend her time ignoring me and the reasons I'd left. There was so much she'd never forgive. That she was wrong about nearly everything had probably never occurred to her, and I'd never bothered to set her straight--at first too stunned and hurt, and finally too proud to do so.
"Hey, did you say something?" Noel came through the doorway, but stopped when he saw the phone. "Sorry, I'll go."
"No, you don't have to go anywhere," I told him.
"Is that a man?" My mother's voice cracked like thunder and brought with it a flash from my past:
A man? You disgrace this family. You've all left me, left me with--Find her! You have to find her!
Sometimes I still felt the sting of her palm on my cheek.
"Are you all right?" Noel again, and then my father. "Stop it, Abby! She went alone. Let me talk to her."
"You've done enough, Jack! And she's not alone, are you, Maeve?" More guilt. "How could you choose a man over your family at Christmas? How could you?"
It sounded like the phone knocked against something. I thought she'd hung up on me, until ...
"Sweetheart?"
"Daddy?"
"I'm sorry, Mayfly. Is someone there? Noel?"
"Yes, Dad. Kit set it up. I didn't know, but--"
Pots and pans banged in the background. I heard my father's voice through a muffled phone. "Abby, go sit while I talk," he said, then to me, "Did you get to your empu?"
"Not yet, no."
"Well. Go on and see Rome. Do whatever you'd like. Enjoy your time with Noel. Don't worry about the rest of it."
Stupidly, I nodded. "Good-bye, Dad."
"All right, Mayfly. Bye now."
Noel still stood before me. I couldn't hold his gaze for more than a few seconds. All of me felt numb.
"I need some time before we go out," I told him. "A nap."
He nodded and left. The door between our rooms closed.
I hoped for a dreamless sleep.
I STOOD ON A GRASSY knoll somewhere in Rome as cars battled for supremacy, and raced between statues of black and gray and red. I was not afraid. The keris lay across my back, and I knew what I had to do.
Find her, find her, you have to find her!
Find her, before time ran out.
"Moira! Moira!"
A huge bird hovered overhead, like a raven, but monstrous and deformed. It saw her when I did: the little girl with red hair atop a distant hill. Not Moira, but somehow, in this dream, she was. I ran hard, swerved around honking cars and frowning statues. Out of nowhere, a bus accelerated past me, headed for the crest.
"Moira!" I screamed. "Moira!" The keris on my back rattled in its sheath, and I pulled it free, ready to war with the bus.
I should've watched the bird. In one swoop, it seized the girl, clasped her in its hooked talons. I shouted Moira's name again as the black-blood speck dissolved into the horizon, and everything--the cars, the bus, even the grass--vanished.
I stood alone in a void with a long, blue shadow. My own, I knew, but sickly somehow. I don't know why I did it. I held the blade in both hands, pointed its tip toward the shadow, lifted my arms, and--
"Maeve? You all right?"
I opened my eyes. My throat felt raw.
"Hey, there." Noel hovered close. "Have a nightmare?"
"Yeah." I grasped at the edges of a lingering dreamworld. "I was just about to slay my shadow with the keris."
He chuckled. "The keris and the shadow. A Wareham favorite." I pushed myself upright. "What are you talking about? Garrick never said anything about shadows."
"It's an old belief," he said. "Stab the shadow of an enemy and he'll die."
"Oh." Maybe I was still dreaming. "That's true?"
"That stabbing shadows kills people? Of course it's not true. It's a myth, like all the other stories he told you."
"I would've remembered if he'd told that one."
"Maybe you read about it in that book or on your Internet."
"I didn't." Questions about the keris mounded atop one another in my mind; I hoped I remembered them all when I met with the empu. "It's late now," he said, "and it's the middle of the night back in New York. Let's sleep and start over in the morning." I wondered who he'd be in the morning--who we'd be. "Good night."
"Good night. Noel?" He turned back to me. I twisted the sheet in my hand. "You think I'm crazy to come here, don't you?"
"A little crazy." He nodded. "But I think I'm glad." I swore he mumbled something about inhibitions as he walked back to his room. Whether he meant his or mine, I couldn't say.
Out of Time
Castine, Maine
OCTOBER 2000
Moira and Maeve are sixteen
The next day moved more slowly than even the one before, but eleven o'clock finally arrived. Moira waited again until the upstairs turned dark and quiet, then stepped outside. Ian didn't say anything this time, just touched her hand. Not hearing Maeve's name made it easier, somehow.
"I thought about you all day," he said.
Moira staved off the impulse to bow her head; instead, she met his eyes, shadowed and intense. "I thought about you, too." Some of those thoughts had lead to guilt, but everything--even her worst self-recriminations--faded at the memory of Ian's kiss.
"So?" he said. "What are we doing?"
It would be easiest to show him her
decision. Moira stood high on her toes and kissed Ian for long seconds. "My sister can't know about this," she said when she pulled back. "She'd be jealous."
"No, she wouldn't." He kissed her neck. His lips felt warm.
Moira remembered the words she had to say. "I know her best. If this is going to happen, it stays secret. Never in front of my sister. I won't hurt her that way." She let the stranger within form these words and funnel them out of her mouth, and then followed the same alien instinct and pressed her hips against Ian's. She felt only a little alarmed when he pulled her closer with his hands on her backside.
"We can meet every night after dark," she said, eager to spill all the conditions. "But you can't tell anyone, not even Michael. And when you see me any other time--at school or anywhere else during the day--you have to pretend we're just friends."
She missed the warmth of his mouth when he pulled back. "We've never been friends. And why not during the day? You don't want to be seen with me? You embarrassed of me?"
"No. Oh, no. You're perfect. You're ... charming."
Ian laughed. "I'm not," he said when Moira shushed him.
"You are to me."
He didn't argue further when she kissed him again.
Later, she snuck into bed, careful not to wake Maeve. She settled under her blankets and glanced out the window at a perfect full moon. Just as beautiful as her sister, the sun, but more ... welcoming. Touchable. And the moon never burned the eyes of people who looked at her.
Moira slept as the moon shone on in her borrowed light.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MOUTH OF TRUTH
I knocked on Noel's door the following morning to no response, and then I tried the handle. It turned, but the only thing inside his suite was his suitcase. Maybe he'd gone for coffee.
Back in my room, I opened the map, lay it on the mattress. I hovered over it, lazily stroking the keris with one hand and sketching a path to Sri Putra's with the other. Noel might not want to join me, but I intended to make my way back to the empu's apartment and get answers to my growing list of questions ASAP.
What about pizza and gelato and mangy dogs and sheets on the line? What about getting a picture for your hall? What about culture and avventura? What about--
The Last Will of Moira Leahy: A Novel Page 12