Still

by Camilla Monk

  I mentally swiped right and followed Faust.

  “What do you think?”

  I squinted my eyes in the dark, scanning the cracked plaster façade of the house Faust had stopped in front of. “Not bad.”

  “It’s the oldest building in the street,” he noted with evident satisfaction.

  It showed. The reddish paint had seen better days—and its share of tags. The first floor looked much older than the upper ones, with its worm-eaten wooden door encased in a massive stone arch. But it was kind of cool.

  Faust produced a set of ancient iron keys from his inner pocket. They tinkled softly as he unlocked the front door. “Follow me.”

  Once we were inside, a musty hallway led to warped wooden stairs. A dusty chandelier hung from a vaulted ceiling, and a few mailboxes seemed to have haphazardly been tossed onto the wall, to see if any would stick. One of them was painted with a single, messy F. I treaded carefully behind Faust, cringing when the steps groaned under our weight.

  “We’re almost there,” he said as we passed the third floor. The building might have been minutes away from crumbling to dust, but the residents’ doors were freshly painted a bright azure blue, and a heady scent of eucalyptus laced the air. The landing’s antique tiling had been scrubbed clean not long ago.

  Once we reached the fourth and final floor, Faust waved his cane in the general direction of the wall. Tucked between two regular blue doors with name tags was a narrow plywood one. “The one in the middle’s the bathroom. Don’t worry, I’m the only one to use it; the other tenants have their own. I have a washing machine too if you need it. Just remember to sit on the lid during the spin cycle or else it bounces all over the place.”

  “Okay . . .” I noticed a bronze charm nailed to the door and shuffled closer to inspect it. “Why do you have a winged dick on the door?”

  “It’s a fascinus, for good luck. Give it a stroke before doing your laundry to prevent dye transfer.”

  “You’re insane,” I stated, but I could feel the corners of my lips curling even as I said this.

  “Superstitious,” Faust corrected while reaching up with his cane to hook it into an iron hoop dangling from the ceiling. An attic hatch creaked open and vomited a wooden ladder. Faust bowed and motioned to it. “After you.”

  I inspected the dusty steps. “You live up there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Renting or squatting?” If an angry landlord was going to show up with a shotgun in the middle of the night, I preferred to know it beforehand.

  Faust’s brow bunched in that brand of boyish confusion he seemed to cultivate. “Neither.”

  “So, you don’t pay rent?” I insisted, casting a wary glance at the dark mouth of the open hatch.

  He shrugged. “Why would I do that?” With this, he grabbed the rungs and climbed up. I followed him and caught a flash of glassy yellow in the darkness above. An impatient meow confirmed Faust’s earlier claim that he did indeed have cats to feed. I hauled myself all the way up into a darkened attic, where I could make out the shadows of a bed, shelf-covered walls and mostly . . . mess.

  “Where’s the light?” I asked, feeling a tail brush my legs.

  “Give me a second.” The hatch slammed shut, and Faust glided past me, perfectly at ease in the night where I fumbled and groped. I registered the click of a switch and light burst from a colorful Tiffany lamp hanging above an antique canopy bed. My lips quirked when I noticed the blue and red duvet where Spiderman jumped among skyscrapers.

  “A Marvel fan?” I asked teasingly.

  He blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “Your sheets.”

  He shrugged. “They’re blue, right? I got them from a neighbor. Her grandson didn’t want them.” He ran a hand over his beard with a chuckle. “He thought he was too old for them. If he only knew . . .”

  My smile wavered from an ache in my chest I couldn’t place. “I just thought they were cute.”

  He gave a happy nod. “Blue like your hair.”

  “You know?”

  “Yes. Silvio told me.”

  “Ah.” Good thing he couldn’t see my grimace. I was no longer really afraid of Faust, but I couldn’t ward off a prickle of unease at the idea that Silvio had been watching me from his gangsta Uber. Was he Faust’s servitor? Some kind of stoic henchman doing his evil bidding?

  The dark lord thankfully cut through my sinister musings. “In any case, make yourself at home.”

  I mumbled a “thanks” and set out to explore his treasure cave. Spanning at least a hundred square feet, Faust’s attic was crammed full of the most bizarre junk collection I had ever seen. Here, a couple of store mannequins watched over old furniture—classy stuff with chipping gold leaf. There, he kept stacks and stacks of books and yellowed magazines—I wondered if, or how, he’d read any of them—but also toys, a rusty red bicycle, and some examples of terrible taxidermy—the raccoon standing on his sideboard was especially wrong, with glass eyes bulging out of its misshapen head. Hardcore stuff.

  Faust tossed his coat on a ragged velvet armchair, disturbing the pair of orange tabbies sleeping there. “Pay no attention to the mess; I’m overdue for a spring cleaning.”

  “When was the last one?” I asked, inspecting the many DVDs, CDs and even VHS lining his shelves.

  “When I installed the kitchen, I think. I needed to make a little room for the stove.”

  Indeed, I spotted a fridge, a porcelain sink, and a massive pink cooking range tucked in the corner of the room. I raised an eyebrow at the rusty burners. “Either you really love retro stuff, or you bought that thing in the sixties.”

  Faust sighed. “As I said, overdue.” He went to search a cupboard for a bag of cat food. All it took was the faint rustle of paper for a bunch of cats and kittens to come out from under a wardrobe and his leather couch. The tabbies got up from their armchair too, and within seconds, half a dozen tails twitched and twirled around Faust’s legs, escorting him toward a set of dingy windows at the other end of the room. He opened them with his free hand to reveal a balcony where a plastic bowl and a litter box sat among potted plants.

  I followed him. “How many cats do you have?”

  “I’m not sure. They come and go. Sometimes they follow me home, sometimes they don’t.”

  I leaned against the iron railing and gazed at the sea of tiled roofs below while he fed his little pack. You could even see the fountain from up here, gleaming like a diamond in the dark.

  Faust stepped away from the carnage, allowing the cats to huddle around the bowl. He grabbed a watering can from the floor with a happy sigh. “Now, a little water, and we’re done.”

  I watched him bend over his plants and water them lovingly one after another. Crystalline drops ran along star-shaped leaves and hairy buds, before collecting in dirty porcelain plates underneath the pots. I squinted my eyes. “Hold on, is that . . .”

  Faust held up his can with a guileless grin. “We’re facing south. Good sun all day long for good weed. Now come back inside, I’ll roll you a 100% organic blunt.”

  My gaze shuttled between the cats eating at my feet and Faust’s jovial expression. “Thanks, but I didn’t come here to get wasted.”

  He gave me a sad little boy look. “But it’s nice mild sativa. It won’t make you sleepy. It’ll just help you unwind.”

  I wavered. It’d been a while since I’d smoked, and now sounded like a weirdly appropriate time to do that. “Okay . . .”

  Once we were back inside, Faust went to the sideboard and moved the raccoon aside to take a rusty biscuit box. I inched closer to watch him as he retrieved smoking paper, filters and a smaller box that was evidently his stash. He opened it and took a long sniff at the greenish lump inside. “Perfect. I call it ‘Faust’s peanut butter kush.’”

  I leaned to smell it too. “Not bad. Definitively hints of peanuts.”

  He dropped a generous pinch in the paper, and his fingers worked with practiced ease, tucking the filters in, an
d rolling two joints. He handed me one and felt near the raccoon’s tail for a lighter. I watched the end of the blunt shimmer red and took a puff. I exhaled a cloud of potent and vaguely earthy smoke. I pursed my lips in appreciation. “Dank stuff.”

  Faust drew on his own blunt with a blissful smile. “I wouldn’t settle for less. Now, wait a second. I know what we’re missing.” Pinching the joint between his lips, he went to open a seventies turntable sitting on a wooden stool. He felt for a box of old vinyls sitting underneath, his fingers flipping through them fast before he picked one.

  “How do you know which one you chose?” I asked, watching him delicately lower the stylus to the record.

  “Magic.”

  “And apart from magic?”

  He handed me the cover with a wink. A long-haired dude with a lot of chest hair was smiling stupidly under the title. I had no idea Umberto Tozzi looked like that. I inspected the worn paper as the first languid notes of Ti Amo rose in Faust’s attic. Someone with way too much time on their hands had pierced tiny holes in a corner of the cover, probably with a needle. Braille. I handed it back to Faust. “I am a little impressed.”

  He went to sit on his couch and drew on his blunt with a shit-eating grin. “Then my work here is done.”

  I leaned against his sideboard and smoked under the crazy eyes of his raccoon, feeling the tension flow away from my limbs with each puff. Good stuff, indeed. I studied him through heavy-lidded eyes, half-lulled by Tozzi’s husky voice. “Just so we’re clear, are you trying to set the mood to fuck me?”

  Faust pointed to his chest with wide, innocent eyes. “Of course not!” He leaned back in the leather cushions, his features relaxing in an impish smile. “Not tonight anyway . . .”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He looked way too pleased with himself as he explained, “Well, we can assume that you’ll inevitably fall for me as I help you save your sister. Of course, you’ll try to resist our chemistry, but we’ll eventually share a desperate one-night stand, like in Highlander.”

  Yeah . . . right. I gave him a doubtful once-over. “Highlander? Wasn’t that a song from Queen?”

  Faust’s mouth fell open in scandal. He leaped from the couch and went to scour his shelves, his fingers trailing along the rows of DVDs—counting them. He paused and pulled out one that he handed me. There was a guy with a sword on the cover. Eighties stuff—no mullet, but the dude’s super intense crossed-eyed look was weird.

  “A chef d’oeuvre,” he announced, plopping himself back in the couch.

  “Ah.”

  He gave a disapproving sigh. “I can’t believe you haven’t seen it.”

  “You haven’t either,” I fired back.

  “There’s an excellent audio commentary.”

  The weed was starting to hit me, I felt both lighter and sharper as I tucked the DVD back in place on the shelf he’d taken it from—really good stuff indeed. “So, what is it about?”

  “The journey of a brave and handsome immortal warrior, from the sixteenth century Scottish plains to present-day New York,” he recited.

  “True to the source material?” I asked, fighting a chuckle.

  Faust smiled and stretched his legs. “I like to think so.”

  I considered his answer with pot-filled neurons. “But he has a sword and you don’t.”

  “Emma, I can stop time.”

  “Fair enough,” I conceded, blowing a curl of smoke. “Look, do you think I forgot why we’re here?”

  He craned his neck, eyes closed as the peanut butter hit him too. “Behind you. Top left drawer.”

  I turned to open the sideboard’s drawer as instructed. Inside, an iPad sat on top of a massive collection of ancient postcards. “Do you want your iPad or are you gonna tell me about your trip to . . . ” I inspected a yellowed black-and-white postcard of the pyramids. “Egypt?”

  He patted the empty half of the couch. “Bring the iPad. I’ll show you.”

  I settled on the couch next to Faust while his fingers fluttered across the iPad’s screen. Like his phone, it had that feature describing every icon and reading every text he touched in a fast, robotic voice. Amazing stuff. He opened a folder with dozens of scans of old papers, black and white pics, newspaper cuts. “As I told you, Silvio has been busy for the past couple of weeks,” he noted.

  I tapped the ashes off my blunt in a blue glass ashtray sitting on a stack of shoeboxes near the couch. “Meaning Katharos is after you, and you’re after them.”

  “It seems that Lady Montecito is very eager to make my acquaintance,” he admitted. “But I’m shy, and she’s not really my type.”

  I nodded slowly. “It made you laugh when I told you that Lucius said she’d show me the table’s secrets. She doesn’t know them all, right?” I watched Faust’s lips press together. “But you do. And you’re not allowed to tell because of your contract.” I concluded. Faust remained silent, but the ghost of a smile curved his lips. Bingo. Montecito hunted him to extract intel about the table from him, and he had taken an interest in Katharos two weeks ago, of his own admission—probably when he’d realized excavators were at work.

  Faust tucked his blunt back between his lips and mumbled, “Let me show you something fun.” His forefinger glided on the iPad’s screen, going through a list of thumbnails. The computerized voice dutifully recited the place and date each pic had been taken, guiding him. When the voice droned, “Adulis, Eritrea, 1910,” he tapped to open a cracked picture of a group of several men and a woman posing in a desert near some ruins. Those columns behind them looked like the front of a temple, maybe. It was your typical colonization era shit, with white guys in uniforms sitting on folding travel chairs, and half-naked black dudes standing on each side of the group—one holding an umbrella above the woman because it seemed racism wasn’t yet a thing in 1910, but slavery still was.

  “Zoom on her,” Faust instructed.

  I pinch-zoomed as instructed and damn near dropped my blunt. I stubbed it in the ashtray with a trembling hand—no need to get any higher. I was in space already, gazing at Lady Montecito’s eerily pale and smooth features, and her clear eyes staring back at me. “Okay . . .” I swallowed, clasped a hand over my mouth. “Okay. What am I looking at?”

  “The wife of Giuseppe De Ludovicci, governor of Eritrea from 1908 to 1914. Lady Emilia De Ludovicci.” He chuckled. “She was only nineteen at the time, but she already showed a keen interest in archeology.”

  I struggled to do the math, caught in the silent horror of this simple portrait. “She’s 126 years old!”

  Shrouded in a cloud of pale smoke, Faust rolled tired eyes to the ceiling. “Still a little one.”

  Right. We were probably all little ones to a guy who’d been around since the time of togas and skirts. But to me . . . somehow that pic hit me even harder than the notion that Faust was 2,000 years old , because I didn’t really have anything to anchor that belief into reality, save for an ancient marble and a gut feeling. But this was something I could see and understand. 107 years ago, Lady Montecito had sat on a chair in the Eritrean desert, and someone had taken her pic. My gaze drifted to the muscular ebony arm of the man holding her umbrella to shield her from the sun. His impassive face. Staring coldly straight into the camera lens.

  I was not born a free man.

  “That’s Lucius.” I gasped. “He was there too . . .”

  “A faithful servant,” Faust confirmed. “Or rather a slave, who entered her service during her first husband’s tenure in Eritrea. The two of them went off the grid after her husband’s death in 1915.” He closed the picture and resumed his browsing through the thumbnails until the iPad’s voice-over announced, “Cairo, 1949.” Faust handed me the tablet, which now displayed an old share certificate written in English, for a company named . . . Katharos Limited. “They resurfaced in Egypt after the war with Israel, running an antique business in Cairo. I’m sure the name will ring a bell.”

  “This is insane . . .” I
shook my head slowly, opened the gallery view and swiped through the rest of Silvio’s findings: Spanish newspaper articles dating back from 1955 and relating to the accidental death of a prominent art collector, survived by his now rich young widow—Emilia Fonseca. A certificate of death for that same Emilia, dated from 1974. London, 1978: A portrait of a short-haired Montecito—then Silvia Federicci, the owner of an antique store specializing in ancient Greek and Roman pieces.

  “She eventually returned to Rome in the mid-nineties,” Faust explained, reaching in the general direction of the ashtray while looking straight ahead, past me.

  “To marry Baron Montecito,” I completed, taking the ashtray to gingerly guide his wrist, so he could stub his joint. He gave me that silly blissful smile of his. I felt my ears grow a little hot; there was a sense of intimacy I couldn’t place about helping him like that.

  Right after I was done placing the ashtray back on the stack of shoeboxes where it belonged, he raised his palms. “There you have it: a long life, well-lived—albeit at the expense of others.”

  I chewed on one of my nails, wide-eyed, thinking of Lucius’s dried-up hand again—part of a body that should have been long-dead. What was it that Lily had called her grandpa’s field of study? Pre-Christian occult practices. Slowly, all the pieces snapped together in my brain. Thank God for the weed; it probably helped me keep my cool as I murmured, “She’s a witch . . . she’s a . . . real witch.”

  Faust winced. “I don’t like that term; a lot of mistakes were made in its name. Let’s say she’s a woman who let her interest in occult practices carry her much further than most.”

  “No shit, Sherlock! She’s fucking immortal!” I squeaked, startling a tiny black kitten who jumped from the chair he’d been sitting on and went to hide behind Faust’s feet under the couch.

  “She’s not,” Faust assured me. “Judging from what you told me about Lucius, the two of them are merely borrowing a little time, but these spells come at a heavy price.” He got up from the couch and went to rummage on the shelves covering every square inch of the attic wall. “Where did I put it?” I heard him mumble before he grabbed an antique coffee can with a satisfied huff. “I could be wrong, but I’m willing to bet she used this,” he announced, plopping himself back on the couch next to me.