Chapter Thirty-One
I was in my room, not the Indian-bedspread palace Jonah and I had shared, but my room, my old bedroom at home. Lavender walls, Barbie house I had dismantled and remodeled, rocking chair I painted red and black, cloying odor of Opium, cologne my mother once loved, that I had spilled behind my desk and could never, no matter how much washing or incense I burned, eliminate. Ivy said my room smelled like a brothel.
Damn, Ivy had promised to take me to the mall. I shot out of bed, ran through the door, pounded on Ivy’s, Get up get up, you lazy. You’re supposed to take me to the mall.
No answer. Opening the door, pushing it open wide, I saw the sheets of her empty bed spilling to the floor. The window she climbed through was closed. She always closed it when she left.
“Ditched again, huh?” Dominique’s voice behind me, soft, needling. How did she get in here?
Whirling around, I came at her, furious. Furious at Ivy for abandoning me again and again, especially after my mother died and Dad said you have to watch out for Annie. You have to take care of her.
Raising my hand, I slapped Dominique across the face, but my hand swept through empty air. Alone, in Ivy’s room, on the Persian carpet her mother, not my mother, had left her when she died, velvet under my feet. Ivy never took care of the rug. It was always dirty, bits of grit dug into my heel.
“Always a bit late, aren’t you? For everything.” Dominique still spoke to me, but now I couldn’t see her. I dashed down the hall, thundered down the stairs; brilliant sunshine streamed in through the living room windows. Outside, a pasture spread across mild rises to the fence marking the cemetery. Mae was buried there, in that cemetery.
Wait a minute. I shivered, shook my head and rubbed my eyes. You didn’t know Mae and Dominique the day Ivy was supposed to take you to the mall. You didn’t meet them until 3 years later.
A cold bar of steel went through me, top to bottom. Cold and trying to scare me, but it was steel. I could use that steel right now. Hollis’s Bijou gave me steel. I turned around, breathing deeply, and the bright room faded, as if clouds drove overhead. I could hear the faint buzzing of the black stars now, and shadows raced across the floor.
Rents scored the fabric of the couch and the matching chairs near the window; between them dust furred the pedestal table-top. The smell of mold rose into my nostrils. Another time jump; it was my past, this time, not someone else’s.
But that wasn’t right. I stood in the old Novak house, alright, but the house had taken a walk on the wild side, run to Hell, so to speak. Outside, the Hell-sky ruled the weather. Inside, time did its bit to hurry age and destruction.
“Do you want to see Zoe?”
I spun around. Dominique stood in the entry; directly behind her was Dad. Over his shoulder I could see the stairs running up to the second story; along its walls, photographs, me, Ivy. Other Novak relations. But something wasn’t right. Some of the portraits were missing.
“Where is she?” I forced myself to remain where I was, even though my fingers itched almost painfully, wanting to scratch deep scars in Dom’s perfect skin.
“Downstairs. Why don’t you come down?”
“It’s OK, Annie,” Dad began slowly.
“Shut up, Frederick.” Dom turned sideways, her white hand flowing in the grayness toward the cellar stairs. “Downstairs. She wants to see you, Annie. So badly. It’s a shame you took so long to get here.”
Moving closer, without a choice about it because she and Dad still partially blocked the opening from the living room, I kept my gaze on Dom. As I got closer, I could sense a vague distress, anger or frustration, in the way Dom stood, around the edges of her words. She wore perfectly-creased gray wool slacks, a shirt the color of charcoal. Her hair was down, ran onto her shoulders like an over-sized drape. But there was something about her mouth, like she was hungry and fighting it, lips dry and tongue slavering. I understood then, as I walked past her, that she had not expected me to be here. That she thought I would never find her and now she was angry because she was afraid.
This idea of seeing Zoe in the cellar was a trap but I didn’t care. I needed to see that my daughter was OK. As I brushed past Dad, my elbow glided through his arm. He’d stuck his hands in his lab coat pocket and his elbows stuck out. Hair silver like sun on sea, skin the color of the sand, he watched me. Did he look a bit sad? Guilty maybe?
I walked to the cellar door, laid my hand on the handle. Dom and Dad hadn’t moved from their positions near the living room entry. Past them, I could see through the cut-glass of the front door, a shifting shadowy light—the inside of this glass pyramid or what ever it was.
“Why my house, Dom? Why make a replica of my old house inside your private suite of Hell?” I had to know. It pleased me, in a contemptuous way.
Dom moved her head from side to side, as if she liked the feel of her hair gliding across her neck. “I thought you would feel most at home here. And me, too. This is where I met your Dad.”
The realization that she was telling the truth sent a sickening rush through me. Dad didn’t move, nor even shrug. I swallowed the bile climbing up my throat. “So, Dad, when Mae turned you down, you settled for Dom, huh? Oh well, I suppose she’s much better at blow jobs.”
Dad opened his mouth, his chin jutting out, as if he were going to reprimand me, but thought better of it, perhaps. I left them, then, taking the basement stairs down into the cool, muddy, moldy safety of the basement, a place I loved to play and hide.
“Mommy!” Out of the gloom my daughter appeared, in dirty pink capris and a camouflage aviator jacket.
Falling to my knees I tried to draw her inside myself, holding tight, gluing her warmth and aliveness to me forever to never ever let her go. “You’re alive, you’re alive.”
“Of course I’m alive.” She pushed away, looked at me. I could tell she had been crying, but not recently. “Oh Mommy. I missed you.”
“Were you scared, baby?”
Her lower lip stuck out, and she shook her head. Not a very successful lie, but I let her own it. “My brave girl.”
She leaned into me again, whispered in my ear, “Can we get out of here now?”
Inhaling her Zoe-smell, I sighed. “Yes. We can.”
“It’s about time someone showed up.” Agnes’s voice sounded from a dark corner under one of the filmed windows. “Bruce doesn’t feel very well.”
Shit. Making my way through the shadows, Zoe’s hand in mine, I found Agnes and Bruce sitting on rusty lawn furniture. Bruce got the chaise lounge, and he lay with his eyes closed, looking very pale. The dressing that had covered his dog bite had been pulled away, the sutures ripped away, covered with clots. “What did that bitch do to him?”
Agnes knelt beside us. Cobwebs filmed her black hair, her makeup had been worn off and smudged. She had been crying too. “She offered us all a ride, in that big shiny old car of hers. After the police came to the rave. She said she could get us out of there before we got busted. She and Bruce’s mom were arguing about something—”
“Did you hear what it was about?”
Agnes’s eyebrows came down with impatience. “Something about a portal. I think she threatened to kill her.”
“Who threatened who?”
“Bruce’s mom threatened my mom.” Agnes’s nostrils flared. “I wish they would kill each other and get the fuck out of my hair.”
“Watch your language, kid.” I felt Bruce’s pulse. Fast, but regular.
Bruce opened his eyes at my touch. “Oh, hi Aunt Annie. What’s happening?”
“Not much.” I turned back to Agnes. “Were they arguing about how to keep the portal open? About whose blood they would use?”
Agnes’s eyes widened. “Yeah. That was it. Ms. Olds wanted to give my mom her blood. How crazy is that? She even pulled out this box cutter and was going to open her wrist. That was gross.”
I moved my face closer to Agnes. “Did your mom cut Zoe, or you?”
Shock, followed by disgust, rolled across Agnes’s face. “No. How creeped-out is that? Mom didn’t cut anyone. Not then, that is. Not really.” Sorrow fell across her eyes, and she looked at Bruce. Her lips quivered.
“You don’t have to tell me. I already know what she did, the bitch.”
“Language, Mom.” Zoe pressed next to me.
I had the picture of Dominique’s movements up to a certain point. She took Ivy and the girls back to her place in Piedmont. Probably fed the girls, but locked Ivy in that bedroom. Maybe by then Ivy couldn’t walk at all and Dom didn’t want to be bothered with her. Then Dom drove to the hospital in the morning, got Bruce released, drove him up to the VA—.
My scenario spun to a halt. Not the VA. Why waste time on that lousy remote portal when she had one right in the middle of Quantum City? My stomach tilted and the bile climbed upward again. I looked at the bomb shelter, the metal door safely shut. The simulacrum Dom had constructed in Hell of my old house would not mirror Bruce’s blood spilled on the floor of the real house in Quantum City.
Or would it? Had she bled poor Bruce, tore into his wound, let it drop to the floor of the bomb shelter and then brought everyone through the tunnel to Quantum City?
For whatever reason she needed to have all three children, revenge or loathing or sociopathic self-aggrandizement, she had used Ivy’s child for the opening. For now, they were all safe.
“OK, you all wait here. I’m going to check something out.”
Zoe didn’t want to let go of my hand, but I told her to stay and guard her cousin, and she obeyed me.
The bomb shelter door opened for me, and inside an unpleasant metallic stink met my nose. I knew that smell, and in the dimness I couldn’t see the concrete floor, but I could feel the stickiness. Fighting back the bile again, I approached the portal. It stood wide, but it did not open into the sunny backyard of my youth, but into blackness. I could smell earth, though, as if freshly dug, like for a new grave.
I stood there a minute. I had hoped I could get the kids safely back to the land of the living by taking them through the portal myself, but it was too dangerous. Dominique was playing a dangerous game herself, but I couldn’t see how to stop her. My original plan wouldn’t work now that the ingress for the newly dead had changed location from the VA Hospital grounds to the old Novak place.
Tiptoeing back across the blood-stained floor and into the cellar, I looked at my little trio and wondered how I could keep them safe. There was one way I could destroy Dominique, but would I have time?.
I knelt beside my daughter, where she sat on the floor beside Bruce. “Zoe, you don’t happen to have Ivy’s box cutter, do you?”
“Sure.” She pulled it from her pants pocket and handed it to me.
“Thanks, baby.” I kissed her, hugged her. Leaving her again to go upstairs was about the same as cutting off my arm, but I had to do it. “By the way, where did you get that cool jacket?”
“Agnes lent it to me. This place is cold.”
I looked at Agnes, who shrugged. “Can’t let a little girl freeze to death.”
“Thanks, Libra.”
Agnes gave me a crooked smile, then looked quickly away. “I’m freezing my ass off, now.”
I took off my fleece, after taking out the amber phial and handing it to Zoe, and gave it to her. “Wrong color for you, but warm.”
Taking it, she spread it over Bruce, slid one shoulder of it over her own. This was a good kid, I thought, trying so hard to be a punk.
I didn’t feel the cold. Maybe it was the Bijou, but I felt better without the cumbersome jacket. Slipping the box cutter into my belt, I climbed the stairs and tried the door.
It was not locked. All my hair stood up on alert, but I opened it slowly and listened. The humming star-noise was more muffled now, and I could hear voices coming from the direction of the kitchen.
Stepping out into the hallway, I noticed everything was dimmer. Through the glass of the front door, I could see only a dull grayness, as if we were enveloped in a brown cloud. The buzzing might be softer, but I could feel the house quivering as if a hundred freight trains rumbled right past the front door.
This was a boon to me. I could approach the open kitchen doorway without being heard. Even so I walked carefully, because the floor was coated with bits of plaster and dirt. Stopping in the dimness just outside the kitchen, I listened.
“Freddie, you promised, when we made our deal, that you would give me an advance if I asked.” Dominique’s voice was wheedling, but firm, a spoiled girl who would not give in.
“I never said that.” Dad spoke rapidly, a sign that he was distressed.
“But you need me to be strong. You can’t do this alone. If I fail you, it will be your fault.”
What a bitch. I resisted doing the ‘gag me’ gesture of sticking my finger in my open mouth.
“You should have thought of that. You should have come prepared.”
A silence followed this. I couldn’t hear over the throbbing if they were moving around or not. Then Dom’s voice sounded alarmingly close, as if she were just inside the opening. “I did. You remember. We ran into some issues with Cerberus.”
“What was I going to do, let myself become a dog biscuit?” Dad almost never showed a temper, but he was more upset than usual. “I had to throw something at it to distract it.”
A snort from Dom. “Brilliant idea. If you had only waited a few more minutes—”
“I didn’t see that option, at the time.”
More silence. I thought I saw a shadow move toward the doorway. I shrank into a convenient shadow. “That is why you have to help me now. You have plenty over there, I can see. And I am impressed at your skill. Especially at concealing it all from me.” Another silence. I had a nauseating vision of Dom pressing her body against Dad and running her white finger along his cheek. Or some other body part.
“These are my family. I can’t let you have any of it.”
I checked myself before I drew in a sharp breath, and might be overheard. Bijou. She’s trying to get him to let her have some of the family Bijou! The nervous, stressed look on her face as I walked past, the edginess of her words. She needed a fix!
I wouldn’t have to slit her throat as long as Dad grew some balls and didn’t let her get into his Bijou. Since he was a ghost, she would have little power over him; she couldn’t kill him all over again, or consign him to a more hellish section of Hell. All she could do was wheedle. Or get Cerberus to come back to chew on him a little.
A long silence followed. Could Dominique seduce the ghost of her former lover and force him to give her what she wanted? I had heard stories of ghosts seducing the living, but never the other way around. I would give away even my own safety to get a look at whatever was going on in the kitchen right now, except that he was my father and I needed to stay alive to keep Zoe alive.
“Why are we here?”
Shock bolted through me at the sound of the words in my ear. I whirled and thumped my elbow into Sawyer.
Relief swept through me. I hissed, “Oh my god. How did you do it?”
He whispered, seeming to realize we needed to be unheard. “I just copied you. Caught a flying star.”
I gave his arm a squeeze, then froze as I saw alarm cross his face, followed swiftly by fury.
I brought up my elbow and whirled, but Dom was too fast and ducked my attempted blow. She kicked my groin, and I fell to one side, gasping at the spear of pain that went through me.
Sawyer was on her, slammed her against the far wall, his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t resist as he pressed his forearm against her throat.
The paralyzing pain was easing away, much sooner than it would have if not for the Bijou Xtra. I leapt to my feet and threw myself at her, but the flash of something in her left hand caught my eye, and I skidded to a stop.
She held her stiletto toward me. Sawyer had not seen it.
“Sawyer get off her! She has a knife!”
Fear electrified my body. I made a grab for her hand, but the blur of her move, as she stuck the stiletto into Sawyer’s ribs and pushed and pushed.
He did not let go. It was as if he didn’t feel the blade burning into his body. My mind went crazy. Kidneys, mesenteric artery, bowel. Let the blade miss them all. I could still save him. My nails drilled into Dominique’s flesh, but she didn’t let go.
Then Sawyer did. I saw him blink, watching Dom’s expressionless face. Then he pulled away, his arm dropped to his side as Dom pulled the blade out.
He stumbled against the opposite wall, but did not fall. Dom pushed from the wall, aiming the bloody stiletto at me. I tried to kick it from her hand, but she was too fast and grazed my ankle with its tip, as sharp as shark’s teeth.
“Fuck you, Dominique!”
Turning my back, I grabbed Sawyer, eased him to the floor, forced him to lie down. Yanking my tank top over my head I pressed it against the wound, brought his knees up.
He said nothing, watched me. I prayed for Hollis’s Bijou to save him, to clot torn vessels and mend tissues and kill bacteria. His face had gone pearly white, filmed with sweat.
I heard Dominique approach, saw her clean black heels peeking from under the wool slacks. I waited, my shoulders cringing, for the feel of her stiletto entering my cervical spine. Would I even feel it? Would I even know I was dying?
But it never came. Beside me, she got to one knee, her hand reached out to his neck. I slapped it away, but she grabbed my wrist, shoved me to one side, and felt for a pulse.
I sat back, keeping my hands on my balled up tank top, now soaked with warm blood. Was she really going to try to save him? Had she thought better of killing her ex-husband, her daughter’s father? Did she still love him? My heart thundered in my chest. I couldn’t believe it.
And I needn’t have even wasted time entertaining the idea. A smile played across her lips as she nodded to herself. “Good. Very good. In another five minutes he’ll be ready.”
“Ready for what, Dom? What the fuck are you talking about?” A chill raced up and down my spine. If only I could lift one hand from trying to keep Sawyer alive and get to the box cutter in my pocket. Her neck was so white and close.
“Ready to become Bijou Xtra.” She glanced over her shoulder at me, her mouth primly gleeful. “I was running low, after all.”