by Camilla Monk
I blinked. “Um, I was told to stay outside.”
She flashed me a flawless white grin. “And miss this opportunity? My heart would break for you. Come.”
I had a hunch there was no heart to break under that shiny shawl, but she was right about one thing: why miss the opportunity? I shrugged off my backpack and dropped it against the wall. “I don’t suppose pics are allowed?”
“No,” Lucius replied, the single syllable cutting the air between us.
I raised my hands in surrender. “No problem.”
I went in after the two of them. Lily and Dante looked up from their notes as soon as they saw us. I read surprise on both their faces, but it was quickly overshadowed by a sort of quiet deference. Montecito was definitively the boss around here. She walked to the table and caressed it slowly, trailing her fingers across the mysterious inscriptions as if they were braille. “Have you made any progress?” she asked, without looking up.
“The table has been scanned entirely,” Dante recited, his shoulders straight. “We’re running the results against our pattern recognition algorithm to isolate new words or sentence structures. We’re starting to get leads, but the circular structure is making things . . . more difficult.”
She raised her head to look at him, and she did that frown again, that made no wrinkles on her skin. “Why?”
Lily stepped in. “It’s all scripto continua, and the language could be even more ancient than we first believed. The pattern doesn’t fit our current data, and as a result, we’re not entirely sure where the text starts.”
I gazed down at the rows of concentric circles of signs engraved in the stone. No space anywhere, no break. Just letters spinning around without a beginning or an end. I blinked hard, but the letters wouldn’t stop whirling before my eyes. Faster and faster. My heart was beating loud in my ears, and I felt lost, as if the room were expanding around me.
It was happening again. My chest heaved with the need to throw up as the silent wave washed over me. Across from me, Lady Montecito stood lifelessly, her gaze absent. Lucius might as well have been his usual stoic self, but I knew better. Lily’s fingers hung frozen midair as she showed something on the laptop to Dante, who had turned into a statue.
Air rushed through my nostrils in frantic intakes. Breathe. It won’t last. Old memories flashed in my brain. I saw a young Lily, petrified mid-stride in Central Park, still among the iridescent bubbles she’d been blowing a second before. I knew what would happen if I tried to touch her. Nothing. There’d be no warmth to her skin, no wrinkle in the folds of her lab coat. I knew all that, but couldn’t stand the silence, the indescribable void in the absence of time. I took a trembling step toward her, leaning on the table. “Lily,” I whispered.
“Em, no!”
Lily’s horrified squeak erupted before I even realized my hand was resting flat on the stone. I stared wide-eyed at my splayed fingers and the signs engraved in granite underneath, my heart beating all over my body. Time had resumed flowing, but Lily’s voice was a distant echo, and I felt so far away, so immensely alone before Chronos’s Table. When I managed to look up at last, the surgical light above blinded me. Beyond the glare, I saw Lady Montecito, staring back at me, Lucius’s shadow standing guard behind her. I blinked frantically, my gaze flittering from Lily’s shocked face to Lady Montecito’s impenetrable features.
I didn’t feel his presence—I hadn’t even seen him move in the first place. Yet Dante was here, behind me. My eyes snapped to his gloved fingers, wrapped loosely around my wrist.
“Please don’t touch it, Emma.”
I jerked my wrist free and staggered back, gasping for air like I was swimming my way out of a bad trip. “I-I’m sorry. I just . . . spaced out, I think,” I said with a forced laugh that did nothing to smooth the lines of worry on Lily’s brow.
I raked a hand through my hair. I wanted out of there. I needed to think—away from them. “Do you know where I could find some water?”
Dante’s face lit up. “Oh, we have a kitchen; just go back to the open space, and it’s the door across from the meeting room.” Clearly, he wanted me a mile away from their table.
That worked for me. I gave Lily an awkward smile. “All right, I’ll just go get myself a glass of water while you finish.”
“Okay. Take your time. We shouldn’t be too long, and meanwhile, you can also check the private collections if you want.”
“Second floor, right?”
She beamed. “Yes!”
Lady Montecito tilted her head at me. I felt my insides coil in response. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Emma. I hope to see you again very soon.”
I wasn’t sure the feeling was mutual, and my T-shirt still clung to the cold sweat dampening my back. I stepped back and stole one last glance at the table before I let Lucius open the lab’s door for me. I tried not to look at him as I slipped out, but I could feel his eyes on me, digging holes in my back. I didn’t need to turn around to know that he was looking at me.
At least the Coke was free. After I was done sipping my can in the silent kitchen reserved for Katharos employees, I hopped down from my bar stool and tossed the empty can into a bin standing across the room. Em Nielsen scores a three-pointer from thirty feet! A nerd with tortoiseshell glasses walked in on me moonwalking to celebrate. Awkward. I took my backpack and strutted past him with a challenging look, smirking to myself when he averted his eyes.
Despite the sugar rush, the unease crawling under my skin wouldn’t subside as I dragged my feet back to the hallway. I was unraveling. Fast. Counting my nightmare back at the Residenza, this was my third hallucination in less than twenty-four hours. Also, Faust . . . okay, possibly fourth. I closed my eyes as if a second of darkness would somehow untangle this complete mindfuck. What if he had been real? What if he’d really been stalking me and he knew stuff I didn’t about Katharos? I caught my reflection in the glass wall lining the hallway, and I felt sick to my stomach just seeing my taut features and the mess of blueish strands hanging limply in my eyes. Hey Em, why don’t you check your own fucking Facebook instead of desperately trying to find something wrong with Lily’s life?
I grabbed my phone from the pocket. Of course, there was no message, because this whole trip was a disaster, and the problem wasn’t Lily’s unresolved issues with her grandpa’s death, Dante’s smothering presence, or even Lucius and Montecito being pretentious douchebags. The problem was me, crashing into a picture where there was no place for my mentally unstable ass.
I reached the elevator and waved my badge in front of the screen to open the doors. My phone vibrated with an incoming text. Lily.
Joining u on 2nd floor in 15mn.
My hand reached for the ground level button anyway. Hesitated. Lily was trying hard to build a bridge from the wreckage that was our childhoods, even though she didn’t have to. Didn’t I owe her at least a proper goodbye before I vanished for good? I sucked in an unsteady breath and punched two. The doors closed, only to sigh open seconds later, revealing the same sort of marble extravaganza I’d seen in the lobby. The soles of my sneakers squeaked on the checkered floor of a long gallery. Light poured from the floor-to-ceiling windows I’d seen from outside, bathing sculptures and broken crockery displayed in glass cases.
Sitting on a chair at the other end of the room, a guard watched me take cautious steps among reclining nymphs and naked athletes. The room itself was actually even more impressive than the treasures it contained. I gawked up at the cupola looming above my head. Specks of rainbow-colored light rained on the walls from a giant crystal chandelier. Definitely worth a pic. I reached into my hoodie pocket for my phone, but the guard saw it and shook his head. Aw, come on...
I kept going, thumbs hooked in my pockets, gazing absently at Katharos’s treasures. I stopped in front of a marble piece, intrigued. A naked, blindfolded guy knelt at the feet of another, whose body was half-covered by a loose toga. The naked one clutched a dagger in his hands directed at his own chest.
Art wasn’t really my thing, but there was something gripping about the man’s straining muscles, his grimace of despair while his counterpart towered over him and just coolly watched him killing himself, it seemed. I risked a finger to trace the curls in his beard, the delicate knot of the blindfold in his short hair.
“A unique piece.”
I snatched my hand away and swiveled around. Lady Montecito stood in front of me, her smile etched on skin that seemed made of the same smooth alabaster as the statues around us. I pressed a hand to my racing heart. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to touch it.” My eyes darted to the guard’s chair. He was staring straight ahead with an obvious effort to give us some privacy.
Lady Montecito waved my apology off. “Feel free to.”
“Thanks. I take it Lily and Dante are done?”
Her smile grew impish. “Not quite, but to tell you the truth, I find technical details terribly boring.”
“Same here,” I admitted.
She trailed the back of her fingers down the blindfolded man’s cheek, the corded muscles in his neck. “Do you know who he is?”
I shook my head.
“Faustus.”
My eyes widened at the familiar syllable, and I tried to force a neutral mask on my features as she added, “There’s only a handful of intact pieces left in the world documenting his myth, and ours is certainly the most valuable.”
I circled the marble, the pulse in my neck steadily increasing. “What kind of myth?”
“A Roman legend dating back from the first century—probably a distant ancestor to the later German myth.” She tilted her head, perhaps waiting for some sign that I knew what she was talking about. When I gave none, she went on. “Faustus was a praetorian serving under Emperor Caligula, perhaps originating from a Batavi tribe, according to some sources.” She gave a faint snort like that detail was funny. It wasn’t. None of this was funny. I kept listening, tense as a guitar string. “Caligula was well-known for being a cruel and mercurial ruler. One day, while he was listening to a group of senators to whom he had granted an audience, he grew bored with them and ordered Faustus and the rest of the imperial bodyguards to slay those men on the spot. Faustus refused, and for this, rather than killing him, Caligula had him blinded. His wife and son were executed in the circus, and Faustus was thrown on the street to live the rest of his days like a beggar.”
I watched Lady Montecito’s long nails linger on the sculpted blindfold, a sickening weight settling in my stomach as I processed her words. A blind vet who’d lost his wife and child and lived liked a bum . . . It could have just been a coincidence. Or maybe Faust did know about the legend, and he’d kind of tweaked it and made it his own—he wouldn’t be the first to do that on the street. But I had never heard this story before in my life. I couldn’t possibly have made it up three hours ago. The realization hit me like a slow-motion panic attack.
Oh God. Oh shit . . .
That could only mean Faust had been . . . real. As real as his warning about Katharos. Had he been here before, inside their HQ? Was that how he’d heard of that Faustus guy? No, it went deeper than that. He’d been hanging around their digging site, and he knew I was staying at the Residenza. He had something to do with Katharos. Disgruntled former employee maybe? That’d explain a lot . . .
I gritted my teeth, praying Lady Montecito wouldn’t notice how stiff I was. “So, the guy in the toga, he’s Caligula? Why is Faustus killing himself?”
Her shoulder shook with silent laughter. “Oh no, you don’t understand.” She placed a hand on the second man’s powerful arm. “This is not Caligula. Allow me to finish. After his ordeal, Faustus went mad and wandered the streets of Rome until he found shelter in a temple dedicated to Cronus, the God of time.” Her voice took on a pleading tone as she mimicked the rest of the story. “There, Faustus implored the deity to grant him revenge on the emperor, but he was a broken shell of a man. He had nothing left to sacrifice in exchange for the fulfillment of his wish.”
I gazed at Faustus’s grimacing, desperate profile, and I understood. “He gave his own life,” I completed, feeling my skin grow cold and clammy. I remembered Dante’s words, minutes before Faust and I had met for the first time. Chronos’s Table. It was part of a small shrine to Cronus.
“He gave his humanity,” Lady Montecito corrected, her lips curling dangerously. “Cronus appeared to Faustus and offered him a deal: eternal slavery in his service, in exchange for Caligula’s death. One can only assume that Faustus accepted since Caligula was assassinated only a few years into his reign.”
Okay. Breathe, Em. Don’t freak out. Montecito’s tale could mean two things.
Option one: the hobo I’d fed pigeons with this afternoon was a psychotic Katharos reject painting himself in the role of an immortal slave serving the god of time—which made him even crazier than I was.
Option two: Yeah . . . no. I wasn’t going there. Not if I wanted to retain what little sanity I had left. Faust was a regular human being, with cats, and a host of issues I couldn’t solve for him. It was sad that he was blind, and he was on the street, but it wasn’t emperor Caligula who’d put him there. Two thousand years ago.
Montecito watched me decompose with a soft laugh. “You seem troubled, Emma. It’s only a legend.”
I mustered a stiff smile. “I know. I guess it’s just a bit dark.”
She crossed her arms and tilted her head at me like I was a book she was trying to read. “It’s human nature at its finest. Wouldn’t we all do the same, after all? Would you, Emma?”
“Would I . . . what?”
“Sacrifice your soul for something you truly desire.”
I didn’t like the way she said it, the edge under the silk in her voice. And what I hated the most was that she’d hit the nail on the head. I thought of my parents, of what it would have been like to love and be loved in return like the other kids. Lady Montecito had it wrong, though; I wasn’t a bitter-ender like Faustus. I was a proud loser. “No,” I eventually replied, forcing myself to look into her pale blue eyes. “I don’t like to work too hard for stuff I want. I prefer to just do without.”
Her perfect features froze, until the corner of her mouth lifted into a smirk. “How very Epicurean.” Before I could ask what she meant by that, she looked over my shoulder and raised a delicate eyebrow. “I believe Lily is waiting for you.”
She was right; across the room, Lily was waving at me, with Dante taped to her hip like a conjoined twin, as usual.
“I’ll see you at dinner, Emma. There’s a lot more I’d love to discuss with you,” Lady Montecito cooed, turning on her heels to leave.
Discuss with me? “Hang on, I’m not … I told you I’m not staying.”
She didn’t look back, but there was steely certainty in her next words. “I’m certain you’ll reconsider.”
My first impulse was to snap back “hell no!” but my gaze fell on Lily as Montecito glided past her and I was reconsidering already. I needed to speak to Lily alone, grill her about Katharos, and try to find out why Faust had gone through the trouble of stalking me to warn me about them. If there was any truth to what he’d said about Katharos spying on me, then it meant Lily wasn’t entirely safe working for those creeps either . . .
“I’m so pumped you’re staying after all!”
I gave Lily a thumbs-up from the backseat while Dante parked his Cayenne in front of the Residenza. Back to square one. “By the way,” I asked her, as we unbuckled, “can we talk a bit more before dinner? In my room?”
She gave an eager nod. “Sure.”
Dante grinned at us. “They refilled your minibar; you two call me if you need help finding your way back to our apartment afterward.”
Lily giggled and shook her head at him. I managed a cringing smile at Dante’s subtle jab.
After we’d made our way into the Residenza under the disapproving gaze of the goat guys guarding the entrance, Lily pressed one last kiss to Dante’s cheek, her fingers lingering in his. I watc
hed her let go at last with a secret sigh of relief.
The tension in my shoulders only eased once we were in my room and I dropped my backpack on an armchair. I pulled out my phone from my hoodie pocket for a quick Facebook check. Nothing. There was a familiar pressure in my chest—the clinical sign that I felt like shit. I tucked my phone back and ignored it. Maybe he’d eventually reply, and if he didn’t . . . whatever. I’d made it without him for the past thirteen years. Tons of real orphans out there who had it worse than me.
I went straight to the minibar as Lily sat on the couch. I took out a bottle of water. “Want some?”
She shook her head, I opened it and gulped some before plopping myself in a blue brocade armchair across from her. Lily’s hands were folded on her lap. She wore a guileless smile, but she wouldn’t speak first. So, I did.
“I didn’t decide to stay because I’m comfy at the Residenza,” I told her. When she tilted her head expectantly, I added, “I stayed because . . .” I’m getting red flags about Katharos from a hobo who should write pilots for HBO. Okay, no. Bad idea to tell her about Faust. “Because you looked kinda on edge last night. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate, but just wanted to make sure you’re more or less okay before I go and resume ignoring you, Mom, and Richard for the next decade.” There. Compassionate tone and vague excuse—perfect.
Lily’s lips quirked. She looked at me like she thought I was a kitten pretending to roar. “Em, I’m okay, I promise, and I hope we can meet for drinks from time to time while you’ll be ignoring me.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said regally. Before she could enjoy that small victory though, I veered back on track. “I just think Katharos is putting a lot of pressure on your shoulders, and maybe it’s too much on top of having to fill your grandpa’s shoes every day.”
Lily didn’t reply. She leaned back in the cushions, crossed her arms, and her eyes avoided mine. It might not sound like a big deal, but it felt supremely weird for me to see her play my role. I wondered if my teachers and counselors had felt as useless and confused as I did right now when I would wall myself in the same silence. I snapped my fingers at her. “Hey, earth to McKeanney,” I said it with a playful grin, so she wouldn’t feel awkward and clam up even tighter—totally a counselor thing too.