Bijou Read online

  Putting his fingers to his lips, he turned and waved his rickety arms at the Quantum Saloon. Then he signed that I was to follow him, and deciding at this action was better than none, I obeyed, dragging Zoe behind me. She was sensible enough not to speak, but she pulled heavily on my arm. Bruce, however, came tamely behind us as we crossed the street, nearly run over by a three ghosts on skate boards, and stood at the smoky mouth of the Quantum Saloon.

  Stepping up onto the sidewalk, I looked around. Near us, the ghost of a very large man balanced on a tiny bicycle, his wind breaker jacket trailing in a wind I couldn’t feel, as if he were in motion somewhere, but not in this universe.

  I hesitated. The doorway of the bar was a big round hole. I thought of Alice and her journey to a sort of mathematician’s hell. I wondered what rules applied here. Were they as arbitrary and dreamlike as Wonderland?

  Just as I thought this, the letters above the door blurred and changed from green to yellow. Now they read: Wonderland Cafe.

  The idea twisted my gut. Could I, a Novak with a generous dose of the family genes, be altering this Hell? I stood rooted, thinking of the implications. Zoe tugged my hand.

  Before I could stop her, she spoke to me. “Mom, c’mon, let’s go inside.”

  At the sound of her voice, the fat ghost on the bicycle cringed and slapped his hands to his ears. A cacophony of sound exploded throughout the square. Siren shrieks, moans so low and loud they shook the sidewalk like an earthquake, and horrific screams drilled into my brain. Pain shot through my eardrums, and I covered my ears, after drawing Zoe close to me. Looking at Bruce I saw his jaw tense in pain.

  Zoe squeezed her eyes shut. The clamor lasted 30 seconds, although it seemed like an hour. Finally the hullabaloo died out until we could take our hands off our ears to hear the odd howl or wail in the distance.

  Now I understood Dad’s admonition about speaking in Hell. Zoe looked up at me, her face tormented as she blamed herself. I held my finger to my lips a took a step in the direction of the Wonderland Cafe.

  The next moment I heard someone shout my name. I tensed, waiting for the shouting again, but nothing happened. The ghosts near us looked in the same direction.

  Squeezing my hand Zoe pointed, a look of joy on her face. Jonah ran toward us, threading his way through the throng.

  "Zoe!" he called out as he approached, and our daughter ran toward him before I could stop her.

  "Daddy!"

  At the sound of her voice, the riotous screeching began again, and we all had to cover our ears. Picking Zoe up, holding her, Jonah looked fleshy and real as he brushed past me and ran inside the cafe.

  Bruce and I followed him through the yawning doorway. Beyond was not the crowded smoky interior of city bar that I expected, but a cavernous dark room, a solid shiny floor under our feet, the dome of the fruit-shaped building around us, and a line of dim blue light encircling us where the walls met the floor. It was as if we had entered Klaatu’s space ship. Around the perimeter was the bar, ghosts lining it, bartender spirits pouring drinks. I wondered what liquor was served in Hell.

  We stood in the center of the place. Around us were tables, every seat occupied by a spirit talking, laughing. Drinking. What else was there to do in the City than drink, I wondered. The thought saddened me. Is this what I had to look forward to when I died?

  Putting Zoe down, Jonah turned to me. He gave an amplified sigh. "Why did you bring her here?"

  Zoe folded her arms and pouted. Jonah started to go through his pockets, as if he were looking for his Drum tobacco. He seemed to notice Bruce for the first time. “So you’re Bruce, the nephew. You sure have grown.”

  Jonah would have considered the growth to be more in dimension than in height, but he didn’t say so directly. He squinted at Bruce for a moment. They had met only once, at our wedding ten years ago, when Bruce was seven.

  Bruce gazed at him without expression. It gladdened my heart.

  I faced my dead ex. “Listen, Zoe is old enough to start learning the family talent. Besides, she is better than I was at her age. Besides, you’ve encouraged it, speaking to her across the Veil.”

  His eyes narrowed in that way I hated, like he was going to say something unkind. Zoe’s hand slipped from mine, and from his. We faced each other like angry elk.

  I held up my hand. “Truce, huh? We need help. We came out of desperation. Mae is making a misery of the entire neighborhood. People may be killed soon unless I can find out from Justin Nash what happened to him.”

  Zoe took one of Jonah’s hands. It broke my heart to see her standing between us, holding hands as she had done when Jonah was alive. Jonah gazed at her, and I could see how he loved her. What a shame he had been such a rotten dad while he was alive.

  “And I seemingly had to come to find you,” I continued, angry thoughts pushing through careful barriers in my mind. “You promised you would find Justin and get back to me.” So like him, broken promises, one after the other. I felt my forehead grow warm like it did when I was about to lose my temper.

  Glancing at Zoe, Jonah tucked his chin and looked at me. “Annie, I have been looking.” His jaw was tense. “Let’s sit down over there.”

  A table near us had just been vacated. In fact, I noticed, several nearby tables emptied as we stood arguing, as if we carried some kind of plague.

  “Mom, they’re afraid of us,” Zoe whispered. Nodding, I sat down in a cold metal chair, Bruce on one side, Zoe on the other. Jonah slid into a chair next to her. I wondered if we would get service here. I couldn’t really see how all the ghosts were getting their drinks. What would alcohol taste like in Hell, anyway?

  Jonah rested his elbows on the table. “I have been trying to find that baby.” He glanced at Zoe.

  “She knows the whole sad story,” I said.

  He rubbed his eyes. If a ghost could look exhausted, he epitomized it.

  “I’ve looked everywhere for him. He’s just not here, Annie. It’s weird. Wherever I ask about him, people give me a blank look, as if they can’t even think.”

  Disappointment washed through me, a familiar feeling. Jonah looked at me sadly, seeing my reaction. My being disappointed by Jonah was a theme of our marriage.

  What would we do now? Mae was going to blow the lid off Quantum City if we didn’t find a way to exonerate her from any guilt in baby Justin’s death. There was another way, but I didn’t like it. “C’mon, Zoe. You’re about to meet your grandpa.”

  Getting up, I moved through the tables. Behind, Jonah followed, a curse under his breath.

  Frederick Charles Novak and Jonah Manon had never met in life, but if they had, I had no doubt that they would have despised each other. Jonah had heard enough complaints from me about Dad that he had already formed an unflattering opinion about the man. Dad was imperious, selfish, strictly disciplined, a womanizer, and prone to cold-shouldering anyone, including his daughters, who did not live up to his impossible expectations. He was also insecure and harder on himself than anyone else.

  He died when I was 19 and away from home at nursing school in San Francisco. A freak accident, in a parking lot. A car backing out knocked him to the ground. The hospital released him, but he died during the night of a head bleed. Ivy found him. The Novaks had by this time occupied the little ranch home of Ivy’s. Frederick was staying with Ivy after a fight with his new wife. Ivy and I sometimes speculated that his wife was the one who backed into him, but we couldn’t prove it.

  I had never summoned him, nor sought him in my few trips to Hell. He’d tried to get Ivy’s attention with random hauntings, but she ignored him. We both felt betrayed by him after he left my mother for yet another woman. My father practiced serial monogamy, overlapping the women, meeting the next one while still married.

  Zoe gripped my hand as we re-entered the square. I had no idea where in Hell Dad would be residing, but I had no doubt he wouldn’t be far away, probably enjoying some small level of celebrity in Phantom City environs.

  Stand
ing still in the continuous stream of partying ghosts, I set my mind in order and sent out the summons. A green mist formed around me and funneled outward, engulfing ghosts around us who stopped to stare at me as if I had shouted Dad’s name. I had never summoned in Phantom City before; my wish became visible as the green fog dividing, fingers stretching down gaps between buildings.

  Waiting seconds, then minutes with no reply, I wondered if he really were here. Or if he would bother to answer. A summons from me would be hard to resist, but a Novak could resist a Novak under any circumstances.

  Glancing at Zoe and Jonah, who both gazed at me curiously, I shrugged. There was no point in repeating the summons here. The green cloud would still be traveling across the face of the City and might not have reached him yet.

  All green mist was out of sight. After another five minutes, I told myself, I would send out another. Then, I heard the distinct sound of a telephone ringing, somewhere to our left.

  We all turned, as did all the ghosts around us. This time, however, they did not clap their hands over their ears. Then they began to point toward the sound.

  A tall, narrow five-story building painted bright yellow shouldered in between a mosque-like structure and another building resembling a church. Before it was a red telephone box.

  Ghosts began to gather around it. Zoe looked up at me. “That’s him, Mom. Got to be.” She ran toward the box and I had to follow, not liking her to get very far from me.

  Ghosts parted as I approached, pulled open the door, and picked up the phone. Zoe came inside with me. Waiting outside, Jonah with one hand on his elbow, looked worried and Bruce looked around with happy awe.

  “Dad?”

  “Annie! So nice to hear from you. What are you up to? What are you doing here?” Dad’s voice was excited, as if he really was happy to hear from me. It was so unlike his usual careful, halting speech.

  I quickly explained what I needed, leaving out any reference to Bijou, Xtra which I really wanted to ask him about. “Can I come to see you? It’s too hard to explain it all over the phone.”

  “Certainly.” His voice moved through my head, as if I were wearing stereo headphones. Zoe tugged on my jeans pocket.

  Turning, I looked through the phone box window and saw Dad standing just outside it, wearing the loose-collar button-down blue shirt and baggy trousers that were his signature uniform in and out of the lab. It was shocking to see him looking fit and fresh like the last time I saw him alive.

  Slowly I edged past Zoe and stepped outside. Jonah stood several feet away, smoking, watching. “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hello, Annie. Come with me, I’ll take us back to my Lab.” His voice was halting again, almost stuttering, an affliction tolerated by his lecture audiences because of his brilliant mind.

  He walked away and we followed. Curious ghosts stepped to one side, whispering, pointing. I wondered if Dr Frederick Novak entertained some notoriety in Phantom City.

  Back to my Lab. I followed Dad, Zoe holding my hand and atypically gone mute, Jonah weaving behind us as if pretending he didn’t belong. Bruce brought up the rear.

  Walking for fifteen minutes through winding streets followed by a posse of ghosts, we emerged in yet another square. This place was more like an office plaza, ghosts lunching while sitting on concrete berms, walking with briefcases and backpacks. Dad led us between the columns of a Greek-revival style structure, only the columns were all painted absurdly strange combinations of red polka-dots and lightening figures.

  We entered a broad atrium. A staircase circled along the outer walls, and this we followed. Two flights up, Dad stopped before an old-fashioned wooden door with frosted glass. Words on it, emblazoned with gold, proclaimed:

  Frederick C. Novak Ph.D. Atomic Illusionist.

  I didn’t ask what that was about. Careers in the afterlife can take the shape of anything in the imagination. The room we entered, Zoe, Jonah and I, was a very large office cum laboratory. Floor-to-ceiling windows curved long the exterior, giving not a view of Phantom City, but the tops of trees, like looking across the jungle canopy. The occasional large-winged raptor rose from the trees and floated down again.

  A series of counters, complete with sinks, measuring machines, mixing machines, and machines that appeared to do nothing at all, filled the room end to end. In the center stood a circular table or stand, around which was a series of stools. The center of the table was inlaid with jade-colored glass, and on it stood a wire rack holding numerous large amber ampules.

  I was instantly drawn to the ampules. I heard Jonah draw in a breath, and then the door closed behind him. Bruce walked straight to them, mouth open. “Wow.”

  That told me my hunch was true. This was Bijou in its raw form. How it came here, and why Dad had it, was information I was dying to know.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Atomic Illusionist

  Dad turned to look at me, thumbs in his belt-loops. “How’s Ivy? Is she doing OK? How is she feeling?”

  “Not good, Dad.” I had to tear myself away from the fascination of the Bijou. I wondered whose they had been. “This haunting of Mae’s is wearing on her. I’m afraid she is going into relapse from all the stress.”

  “I try to check on her, but she ignores me.” Dad looked younger to me, his hair, salted with gray, short in a buzz-cut, seemed to fill in with brown.

  I didn’t comment on the fact that he never checked in on me. He hadn’t even acknowledged Zoe. And Zoe herself, Miss I-Like-Everybody-I’m-Not-A-Bit-Shy seemed afraid of him as she placed herself a little behind me.

  Quickly I elaborated on what I had told him on the phone. “Mae has become a Gray Lady.” Dad shook his head as I continued. “Those kids are keeping her tied to the living, and it’s been made worse by the publication of her book of poetry. But we can’t find any more evidence anywhere about what really happened at Baby Justin’s house. His mother, Dixie Nash, is dead. I really don’t want to talk to her, and I doubt she would heed any summons of mine.” I moved toward the round table, touched the highly polished wood. It felt like silk. “But if I could talk to Justin, hear it from his lips, it might guide us to a way to prove that Mae was innocent.”

  As he pondered this, Dad stroked his chin. “Let’s hope his name is in the Book of Innocents. That way, we can locate him easily.” Walking away from me, Dad went through another door. I followed, but it was hard to keep my eyes off the phials filled with swirling rainbow liquid, like motor oil in puddles.

  Another room opened before us. A huge empty room, similar to the one we had just left, only this one was occupied by a table holding several heavy books. Dad picked one up, opened it, and began thumbing the pages.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. Dad had his own copy of the Book of Innocents? I wondered what other ancient tomes were here.

  He must have felt me staring, because he glanced up, forehead wrinkled. “You will find, when you get here, my dear, we Novaks enjoy particular privileges.”

  Nodding, I watching him sift through the gold-rimmed leaves. “Last name Nash, correct? How old?”

  I told him, and he ran his finger down the page. Frowned. “That’s odd.”

  “What’s odd?”

  He was silent a long time, tugging his ear in the way he did when trying to puzzle out a particularly difficult theorem. “He’s just not listed. How long ago did he die?”

  Leaning over Dad’s shoulder, I read the very long list of children whose last name happened to be Nash, and who had died very young. Jubal, June, Juxa—Juxa? No Justin Nash. Not even a Justin Nash with a different middle initial, which was good because just then I realized I didn’t know Baby Justin’s middle name.

  Leaving the Book of Innocents open to the Nash page, Dad fingered the vellum pages. He gazed across the room, into some other place. I waited as long as I could stand it.

  “Why wouldn’t he be in the Book of Innocents? He was a baby, for Christ’s sake. He was only four months old. How could anyone be more innocent than that?” M
y voice was rising, and Zoe squeezed my hand.

  Dad shook his head, still not looking. “There’s only one explanation. I don’t like this. Not at all.” Turning abruptly, he paced back into his lab. I followed, frustration baking inside me.

  “Dad. You have to tell me what you are thinking.” Each word came out with emphasis. Finally he looked at me.

  “It’s heinous, vile. Annie, someone took this boy’s soul, and used it for Bijou.”

  I stared at Dad, and heard Zoe draw in a sudden breath. “Who? Who would do such a thing?” But as the question burst from my mouth, I had the answer.

  “Dominique.” I whispered it, but Dad started as if I had screamed it directly into his ear.

  “Dominique Delphine?” Dad gazed at me in shock. He turned several shades of blue.

  I debated telling him about my inadvertent time-warp visit to Dominique’s bedroom of several years ago. I wondered if he knew about Dominique and Joseph, and what they were planning. Instead, I nodded. “She’s been back in Quantum City lately. I’m not sure what she’s doing or looking for. She has no friends or family there.”

  Dad’s face went a sickly shade of green. “I’ve heard rumors. Lots of transit between the veils. And old portals being opened up again.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t tell him about my using the shortcut from the Sanatorium to our old house to rescue Sawyer. “Dad, why would someone, a living someone, be anxious to own portal land? There’s a guy, Ivy’s ex, actually, and he’s bought two properties on the closed-up portals. The old VA hospital site, and the Sanatorium. And he’s trying to buy our old house, but I’m going to put a stop to that.”

  Shaking his head, Dad pressed his lips together. “Jack Easton?”

  Again, I nodded. In my calculations, Dad and Jack Easton could have met sometime before he married Ivy.

  Dad closed on me, and his face resumed a more palatable color, if a little pale. “Be careful, Annie. Jack Easton has connections with very wealthy people. I can only imagine that he is trying to make a lot of money selling Bijou.”