Bijou Page 6

  On my tiptoes, I could just see through the bay window. Shadow draped everything, shock and adrenalin amplified the sounds, and I knew someone was hurt, and cringed, jumping down as I saw again the silver flash—a gun barrel?

  Running for the car, my heart bursting, a burning bulls eye on my back as I ran, knowing Mark could be aiming for me right now. I had to get Sawyer out of there. I had led him in there, into a trap with two maniacs. They were probably awake, sitting in the dark, waiting for a ghost.

  I gasped back a sob. How stupid could I be, getting Sawyer mixed up in this? Fumbling at the door handle, I considered what to do. Go back, burst in, try to scare them? If they panicked they might shoot. Call the police—no, and get Sawyer arrested?

  There was another way. My hands turned to ice as I started the car. Only one other way. I had no choice but I was afraid, more afraid than I had been when I talked to Mae, more afraid than I had a right to be.

  Sobbing, I started the engine and drove down the street, trying to keep from flooring it and arousing suspicion. If I timed it right, I would make it, get Sawyer out before Mark and Maddy knew what violent and terrifying manifestation had fallen upon them.

  I drove carefully along the deserted boulevards of Quantum City all tucked up in bed, oblivious to the threat coursing beneath their pleasant middle-class streets.

  My hands left a sheen of sweat on the wheel. I had not done this in many years, and never alone. But I knew how. And I remembered the way like I recalled every mole and freckle on Zoe’s face. It took ten minutes to arrive at my destination. I had not seen a single soul the entire way.

  The Sanatorium on the southern end of town had stood vacant for years as the Quantum City Historical Society and developers feuded over its fate. Enveloped by what had once been well-groomed grounds, ages ago it housed TB patients. Now the building, columns and tall windows rimmed by stained brick, stood empty.

  Following a curving street, I parked across from the old building, turned off my motor and waited for my heart to settle. You can do this, I told myself. You are the only one—Ivy’s voice, distant but shrill, understood that in my veins far more spirit blood flowed, moved endlessly to touch and bleed on the shores of Hell.

  Thus only my father and I could portal-jump. Four portals to the Hidden Realm, the Land of the Dead, where Phantom City stood, remained in Quantum City. One still open, here in the lower reaches of the old Sanatorium. One other, never closed, in the creepy old bomb shelter of the old Novak house.

  I could enter here, come out there within a blink of time. But it was dangerous. We heard tales of people who vanished, never emerged. No one knew what happened to them, or if it were really true. It was simple enough to enter the Land of the Dead through a portal, and return the same way. But to cross-travel between two portals, bypassing going to the Land, was tricky indeed.

  My heart raced, and as I got out of my car, I thought I heard specters hissing nearby, static on a radio. Wraiths gathered near portals, it was said. Again, I could sense dozens of them around me.

  Crossing the street, I followed a chain-link fence enclosing the property, trying to stay out of the street-lamp glow. I passed a sign: Vineyard Realty. Luxury Condominiums Fall 2013! Lease now. Going fast!

  I halted, staring. Vineyard Realty. Jack Easton was everywhere. I smiled to myself to think about the reports of hauntings and manifestations that would infest the properties. But a shadow of doubt gnawed at me, as I slid through a place in the fence where it had been bent. Was it a coincidence Jack Easton was buying portal locations? After all, he had been married to Ivy. What did he know about the family proclivities?

  But there was no time to ponder this. Running up the circular drive, I darted around the building’s west side, where vines hung blackly and the smell of mold burned my nostrils. There, a side door, unlocked, I hoped.

  I pushed, but it didn’t budge; I went around the building, ducking under rhododendrons and pushing through cotoneasters. At the rear of the building was a covered porch where cars could pull up, ambulances, depositing the sick. This doorway too, locked and bolted. NO TRESPASSING.

  Despairing, my legs withering from panic, I dashed along the gravel drive leading to a loading dock. There was my answer. The loading dock door was not closed all the way. A narrow gap along the bottom, looking awfully small, gave a slotted entrance into the dark bowels of the building.

  Above me, empty windows loomed. A ghostly sycamore—white bark so haunted—stood off the driveway, mirroring the one in my old side yard. Oh Sawyer, hang in there. I am coming to get you. I will get you out.

  Getting on my knees, I bent to look inside. Deep black awaited. Odors of decay, dampness, dust, came flowing out. Like going into a grave, I thought, a tomb. Lying down on my back, I slithered through, crushing my breasts and butt against the opening of concrete and metal, but I made it, rose to my feet, glad I had worn jeans.

  Complete darkness, except for the faintest outline of a closed door. Don’t be locked. It wasn’t. The ghosts were on my side.

  Faint streetlight lit my way. I had come into what had been a kitchen, I believed; metal counters lined the walls, shelving suspended over three huge sinks. Dust and debris crunched under my feet as I moved toward a half-open doorway at the rear of the kitchen. Complete blackness, a constant flow of aroma: dark forest and murky river, the stink of Hades.

  A corridor led to a stairwell, barely visible in the faintest starlight. Starlight that should not have been here, glittering from another place altogether. Without a sound, I stepped into the lowest levels of the old hospital, drawn by the smells.

  Another corridor. I followed it through the building as it traversed the entire length. Walking under wrapped conduits, I passed storerooms locked behind steel doors. And always the odor drew me, as a hungry woman toward a kitchen reeking with the promise of food.

  I could see a little. At the end of the corridor, another stairwell led up. To the left, a half-open door. The stench was strong here, not foul, but effulgent, of things decaying but regrouping to grow again, a murky soup, the soul of the Land of the Dead.

  Going in, I saw the portal: a luminous arch hanging in the center of the empty concrete room. The portal was always here—buildings were drawn to its locations, certain buildings where a lot of people die, or there is strong fear of death and annihilation. Thus the Novak bomb shelter.

  My feet wouldn’t move. Fear wracked me, dried my mouth, shook my hands. You can do it! Only you. Sawyer needed my help. Zoe waited for me at home, Pepper at her side, fretting with worry. Mae threatened uncontrollable violence to the citizens of Quantum City. And Ivy would laugh at me, taunt me, call me a wimp and a loser.

  That was enough. Ordering my thoughts, I saw the bomb shelter where I had imprisoned myself, my dolls and trucks numerous times, fleeing imagined nuclear attack and chemical warfare.

  The veil was glass. Pressing cold fingers into melting ice, I pushed my body through. Frigid air coughed into my mouth; nipples crinkling, feet numbing, stumbling, I fought to stay upright. Dark forest, swift, steaming rivers roared, and I knew what it was like to be buried alive.

  Chapter Seven

  Bijou Xtra

  Breathing becomes a commodity, not a necessity to survival, once you are dead. I pushed myself through the clinging earth, willing my lungs to hold the stale air I gulped as I went through. A moment longer, and I would breathe again, the moldy air of the old bomb shelter underneath the Novak house.

  The earth’s pressure subsided as my eyes ballooned and my face burned. Gasping air tasting not of cold and damp, but warmth and lint, I felt cloth or curtains on my skin. Opening my eyes, I saw light filtering through a slatted door very close to my face. Had some previous owner turned the bomb shelter into a closet? And heated it?

  But as much as I wished this were true, it wasn’t and things were far worse than I had thought. A temporal anomaly had flung me out of my trajectory, and landed me in someone’s closet. Frozen, I knew I had to wait
only a few minutes for the veil to reset itself and the portal to manifest long enough for me to get out.

  I would be safe in the heavily-clothed closet as long as no one needed a coat or a beaded gown, which itched my cheek as I steadied myself on the multitude of shoes under my feet. I hoped that if someone were in the room outside, they had not heard my gasp for air as I emerged.

  But I heard a door open and close, footsteps on a carpet, the sigh of springs as someone sat on a bed. I was in someone’s bedroom! There was the snap of a box opened and the sound of jewelry poured in, then a click as the box was closed again. A sigh, impatient, followed quickly by another one, exasperation. The sigh of a young girl.

  Barely breathing, I leaned toward the slats and saw legs, black tights, heavy Doc Martens, a lacy skirt, also black. Moving up to the next slat, a tunic with red buttons, straining over a buxom figure. Up to the next, my heart blistering by now, hot with the knowledge about whose bedroom I was in. I had been here before, more than 17 years ago.

  Dominique Cantini was young—14, 15? The portal had slammed me back to a place I had been only once, but that stayed in my memory with sharp detail.

  Paisley fabric draped the walls. In the corner, a sundae of cushions mounded under a filmy curtain of red and gold. To the right of this, a scattering of perfume bottles, jewelry, scarves and brushes covered a white antique dressing table. The room smelled of unnamed fragrances evocative of a Syrian harem.

  Movie posters adorned the walls above her bed; The Mummy, Highlander, Portrait of Dorian Gray. When I had accepted Dominique’s invitation to come to her father’s apartment back then, I didn’t know the significance of the works chosen.

  Shivering, I prayed the veil would open soon. Please, open soon! But as if it wanted me to make a discovery, or be taught a lesson, it stubbornly remained invisible. But what about Sawyer? I raved at it. He needs my help!

  The door opened again. I pressed my hand to my mouth, shaking with terror. Memory was cruel, and although Dominique might remember the day she found the temporal ghost of her old enemy in her closet one day when she was fifteen, she might never tell me about it. Through the slats I saw her father, Joseph Cantini, enter the room.

  Dr. Cantini was a small man, as was his daughter. Removing his black-rimmed glasses, he sighed in the identical way of his offspring, and shoved a hand through his razor-straight granite hair. In a short-sleeved red shirt and jeans, he was a casual man in the lab, I recalled my father complaining. Not professional. A hotdog. Bent the rules in every experiment.

  But this night—how I knew it was night, the veil would not tell me, but it was—he sat beside his daughter and sagged, as if he were depressed. Neither spoke a word.

  Without looking at him Dominique put her arm around him. Nice dutiful daughter. So unlike the girl who aimed her car at cats running across the street or in art class drew portraits only of dead people. But I forced myself to silence when I saw him duck his head under her arm, pull her toward him, and plant a very un-dad-like kiss on her lips.

  A grimace parted my lips, of disgust, sorrow. No wonder she was so weird. Her dad abused her!

  Even more distressing, I saw her answer his kiss, push her breast into him, fold her leg over his knee. Tears singed my eyes. Oh, god, he had her completely in his thrall. A willing victim.

  Closing my eyes I turned away. I couldn’t watch any longer. Please open, release me from this horror, I begged the veil, any soul listening, get me out of here!

  Hearing Dominique whisper, I turned back to hear.

  “What happened now?”

  Not the words I would expect from a daughter accepting inappropriate advances from her father. Looking through the slats, I saw Dr. Cantini slash the hand that held his glasses through the air.

  “He followed me to the changing room,” Dr. Cantini said, his voice dusted with a vague eastern-European accent. I remembered my dad saying that Joseph’s country of origin varied depending on whom he was speaking to. “He demanded I tell him where I was from, and he had the gall to ask about you! Where you were born, who your mother was.” Again, he shoved both hands, glasses still clutched in one, through his hair. “He knows, Dominique. He knows!”

  Dominique laid both hands against his cheeks, gazed steadily at him. “Did he ask about Bijou? Did he?” I could see her hands pressing, distorting his mouth and eyes. I felt my mouth drop open.

  “Not directly.” Dr. Cantini’s voice was still petulant. “But he implied he knew what we were here for. To anyone listening, it would sound as if he were accusing me of being a spy. That would be very bad, ma chérie, if the FBI came to this house.” His lips curled in a hesitant smile—he was making a joke.

  Dominique pushed one hand back through his hair, a caressing move, I thought. “Then there’s nothing to worry about. He can’t do anything.” Pulling his face toward hers, she kissed him again, long and hard. Nausea warped through me.

  But Joseph would not be placated. After the kiss, he got up, paced the room, stopped to look at a chaotic array of photographs on Dominique’s scarred mahogany desk. “Yes there is something to worry about. If the FBI came here, looked into our background, they would find out about you. There would be no explaining you to them.”

  Rising to stand beside him, Dominique’s hand slid along his back, rubbing, massaging. “But it would be simple. We have a birth certificate. One that shows Dominique Marie Cantini, born September 16, 1972. Remember how easy it was to fake—and best of all stolen from the Novaks themselves.” She laughed, a laugh speaking of age and reason, calculation, as far removed from the laugh of a teenager. “Born here, in the United States. In 1972. Isn’t that a riot? Don’t you think that’s funny? Exactly 100 years later! To the day!”

  Cringing, I suppressed a moan. My birthday! Same month, same year, same day. Why would Dominique want the same birthday as mine?

  “They’ll see through it.” Joseph shook his head—I could see his shoulders slump as he wrapped his arms around himself.

  Straining to see, my foot slipped off a shoe, making a small noise. Freezing in place, thinking, what would happen to me if I were discovered and killed in a time anomaly. Would all the traces of my life vanish, including Zoe?

  But Dominique and Joseph did not seem to hear. I saw Dominique’s straight black hair sway as she turned, one hand on Joseph’s back, the other moving, close, I couldn’t see exactly, near his neck.

  “No, they won’t.” Her voice chilled me. “I haven’t come all this way, my dear husband, all these long years—and you know how many, or do I have to remind you—not to turn tail and run.” She gestured with her right arm and I thought I saw a flash of silver in her hand—something long and needle-like. “Bijou works for a time, especially my formula, or maybe I am just lucky, as you like to say.” Her right hand went back to Joseph’s throat.

  “No, ma chérie,” Joseph’s voice was tight. “You are my wife, a skilled chemist. The Bijou is pure, when you make it. Lasts longest, fewer re-dosings.”

  “That’s right.” Dominique’s left hand moved up and down his back. “But with the Novak recipe for the special Jewel—when I get that, what shall I call it? Bijou Supreme? No, sounds too much like gasoline. Bijou Crown, Bijou Extraordinaire. No, I have it. Bijou Xtra, without the ‘e’.” She nuzzled his neck –husband! My god what is going on here! And continued. “When I have the method for getting my Bijou from a living person, and here is the man who can give it to me, living here in his this gray, soul-less place, on top of four portals. Four!, Imagine. Controlling four portals to Tartarus! Joseph, immortality.”

  “It’s too dangerous. I tell you, he knows who we are, what we are planning.” Joseph stepped backward, as if to get away, but she was quick—her hand moved to the back of his neck, the other pressing a stiletto against the pulsing beat of his carotid artery. Why didn’t he knock it away? He was bigger, stronger than she. But he stood like a frozen rabbit waiting for the jaws of death.

  “None of that matters.” He
r voice flowed like ice down my back. As she spoke, I saw, from the corner of my eye, the vertical shimmer, brightening, of the veil opening for me in the closet corner, just behind a red down jacket. But I wanted to hear what she was going to say. I knew I had to leave, danger of discovery increased with every moment I remained, but I hesitated.

  “You know what will happen if you fail, Joseph.” Dominique’s voice went silky, almost as if she were seducing him. “You came here with me, agreed to pose as my father, get close to Novak. He has the formula we need. Only the Novaks know how to get the soul of a living person. It’s easy to get them from the dying—the soul loosens its grip, cutting ties, lying there for the picking like a ripe peach plucked from the tree. But a living soul—boundaries, borders to cut through. It must be coaxed, teased from its embedded sanctuary. Only Frederick Novak knows how to do that.”

  My heart thundering in my ears, surges of adrenalin set my fingers and toes on fire. The veil intensified to the glare of a small sun, and now was my chance, I had to leave. A Delphine could see the veil as sure as a Novak. To the ordinary person it might be an unfocused blur, blinked away. But Dominique and Joseph—if he were a Delphine, which I was certain he had to be—might notice the glint of light in Dominique’s closet.

  Her voice rolled through my head as I edged toward the veil and put my hand in to keep it open a few seconds longer. “You will get the recipe, Joseph, my darling. And when you do, we will have a Novak to supper, her first, you see. We will try it out on her, the Novak, because her soul will be like steel, everlasting. And her father will suffer as he watches her die.”

  The veil sucked me in, pulled like a spider off the wall into a vacuum. I tumbled through, hit my head on cold cement, a whirring singing in my ears, up and down a discordant scale.

  On my hands and knees, I fought to keep from retching. Cold, dampness filled my nostrils, and the room was totally, completely pitch dark. Not a glimmer of light anywhere.