The sower of discord

Standing inside the bank, you could hardly tell it had ever been a church. A row of teller stations followed the right wall, locked behind overlapping plates of inch-thick bulletproof glass. There was a single camera suspended from the ceiling in front of each station, and another on the wall behind each teller. To my right were a set of four identical desks and chairs used to open new accounts and resolve other business. In the center were the standing desks with the deposit slips and big boxes of pens plastered with the company logo. You were encouraged to take one. So I did.

A round woman in a red tweed jacket came and asked if I needed any help and I showed her the keys I’d found in Kell’s purse, and she took me to the back, through a swinging half-height door to a standing computer station where an unusually tall man with pencil-thin eyebrows checked my ID. I gave a tight-lipped smile and said nothing as he led me into a steel-lined room to one side of the big vault at the back. I was led through a steel cage, which the tall man shut and locked behind me, and then to a closet-sized nook, like a dressing room or voting booth maybe, one of several in a line, and asked to wait. After a few minutes, a different man came with the long metal safety deposit box and left it on the standing counter at the back. There was no chair. He shut the curtain on his way out and I slipped the key into the lock. It went in smooth.

My hand lingered on the lid for the longest time.

Detective Hammond had asked the desk clerk to change my release time by three hours. Anyone keeping tabs on me would think I was still in the clink. Hopefully. Then he had me wait with a patrolwoman — the same African-American lady in the tight uniform who had come to fetch me from the holding cell. She didn’t say anything and I got the sense she never would — to anyone, if she could help it. She had a permanent dissatisfied frown, as if the whole world were one big disappointment and she wanted nothing to do with any of it. But she helped me all the same, and I was grateful for that.

After a short silent wait, Hammond came around with his car, and I climbed in the front and slid down so as not to be seen. Sometimes it pays to be small. He asked a few questions on the way, which I didn’t answer. But I did flip him off as I walked away. I circled the block a couple times and changed direction suddenly. I can’t say I was a master at losing a tail, but it certainly didn’t seem like there was any way someone could be following me without being spotted.

It took me the better part of an hour to make it to the bank. And there I was. Hand stuck on a metal lid. Unable to move. I think I stayed like that for at least a minute or two. Finally, I took a long, slow breath and lifted the top. The joint at the back creaked once. Inside was a fancy red hand towel with gold stitching at the ends. It was thick and soft, like something a rich man would keep in his bathroom, and wrapped in a long bundle. I lifted it. It was heavy. I pulled back the cloth as if peeling an apple and pulled out the dagger.

It was cold. I mean, you’d expect something made of stone and metal to be cold. But it stayed cold. It never warmed next to my skin. It was beautiful, too — in an absolutely brutal sort of way. It was so crude and yet so elegant, like the carved “venuses” they find buried in the ruins of prehistoric Europe. It was bigger than I expected. No one would confuse it for a letter opener, that was sure. It looked more like a snub spear than a dagger. The blade was roughly triangular and stained faint red. There was a sharpened ridge that ran halfway down the center on both sides such that if you looked at it straight on, it made the shape of an uneven cross. But I didn’t see any joints. It seemed to be carved from a single piece of stone. The edges were irregularly chipped, presumably from use, which made it appear serrated, like a snaggle-toothed shark.

The metal hilt was twice as long as the blade and looked like it had been crafted much later, although it was clearly ancient as well. It was one long chunk of tarnished copper alloy, turquoise-hued and speckled in flaws. The handle was wrapped in straps of cracked leather. The crossguard, if you can call it that, was pair of faces — a bearded man and wild-haired woman — twisted in anger. They were carved crudely, one on each side, facing opposite directions, like an arguing couple who’d never see eye-to-eye.

You could just tell. It was wicked. The sower of discord.

I wrapped it back in the towel and put it in my bag and closed the box and locked it and pulled back the curtain. I waited for the gate to open with my heart pounding in my ears.

I had no idea when they would descend on me.

It could’ve been at any moment.

I walked through the smartly decorated lobby toward the front, which is when I noticed a familiar face sitting in one of the chairs off to the side. He didn’t seem to have any business. He was just waiting. His face was still gaunt. His clothes were still pressed sharp. He had the same hat, the same thin tie, the same polished alligator shoes, the same skull-topped cane. He smiled at me as I passed and tipped his hat politely, like we were members of the same church who just happened to pass each other at the supermarket or something.

I stood a little straighter and pulled the strap of my now heavy bag further up my shoulder and stepped out the front door and walked down the street for one block, two blocks, five blocks, half daring anyone to jump me right there in broad daylight. But no one did. No one even looked at me. They passed with their faces in the screens in their hands, or laughing with the person next to them, or lost in the worries of tomorrow. I was just some Asian chick with flower-print Keds and one eye that was a tiny bit crooked. No one noticed me at the train station either. I glanced at every face I passed on the steps to the platform. I wanted one of them at least to scowl or gasp or do anything that suggested they might understand something here was very, very wrong. That I shouldn’t be carrying what I was carrying, certainly not in some ridiculous lavender bag. That such a thing should even exist!

But no one made eye contact, except for one guy in jogging clothes who almost ran into me as he hurried to the gym or whatever. But he looked away just as quickly, before the word sorry even escaped his lips.

I waited on the platform. The heavy bag had slipped a little on the walk and I pulled the strap back up my shoulder. A man in jeans and a sport coat stood behind me to one side, and I had visions of him leaping forward to push me in front of the train and snatch my cargo, so I wandered further down, and I kept moving like that, turning every ten feet or so like I was just impatient to get where I was going.

The train came and the people sitting on benches got up at nearly the same moment and waited for the doors to open. I let them pass and stepped on board after, ready to jump back through the doors at the last second if need be. I stood in the same spot, never budging, for the entire trip out to Brooklyn Heights. The sun was getting low in the sky as I stepped up to the street again. It shone yellow-orange between the buildings and right at my face and I had to squint. No one looked at me as I zigzagged between blocks toward my destination. No one called me a silly girl. No one shrieked at the evil I carried. There was just the people and the city.

I stopped in front of the lot and looked at the formidable black-and-white sign that completely filled the temporary wall in a repeating pattern down to the corner and around the other side:

WATCHTOWER

Apex Partners, LLC

The wall had been erected to keep pedestrians like me from wandering into the construction site. The building inside, visible over the top, was barely more than a skeleton. Steel girders crisscrossed to a height of about five stories. They were bare at the top like the ridges of a spine, ready to accept the weight of more levels. It seemed the building was going to be a kind of twisting oval shape. A large crane rose from the center and dangled its hook above. No one was working. The entire structure was completely silent. It was a crime scene after all, and two strips of yellow caution tape had been stretched across the plywood door built into the wall. It didn’t have a lock or anything — there wasn’t even a handle — and I pushed it open and ducked under the tape. It swung shut behind me.

Standing on the other side, I was a mere three feet from the sidewalk, but it seemed like I had passed into another world. The whole of the city faded to background noise. I saw a backhoe, several pallets of materials, two large trucks for hauling, a cement mixer, and off to the side, one of those temporary offices for the foreman or whatever that looked like it had been made from a shipping container. Anything that might have been easily pilfered — nail guns and table saws and hand tools — seemed to have been removed. There was nothing left that didn’t require heavy machinery to lift and carry.

I walked forward and saw the slab with spires of rebar where Lyman met his end. You couldn’t miss it. Orange cones surrounded it, along with three wraps of caution tape. The sides of the metal bars and most of the base were still covered in dried blood. I looked for a moment before walking into the husk of the oval structure, just as it got dark enough to trigger the automatic floodlights. They clicked on and I looked all around, to every nook and shadow. The hollow, concrete-walled basement dropped two floors into the earth. Lines of rebar poked from the floor and walls. The space was only navigable via a network of wood planks the workers had laid between square gaps in the concrete. To the right and toward the back corner, exactly where a structural pylon was supposed to be poured, there was an open dirt pit that descended even lower.

That was when I realized why Detective Rigdon had mentioned the name, Watchtower. I recalled seeing something about the project in passing on the news, one of those stories that pop up and fade away — like the one about a giant mural that appeared out of nowhere on the back of a retail center. Construction of the Watchtower building had been halted because of what had been unexpectedly unearthed just under its foundation. The workers hit something really old and weren’t sure what it was and university people were called and now there was a fight between the developer and the historical society and the city over what to do and who would pay for it. We get those things in China all the time, too, only there it’s a lot easier since the government takes control of everything and does whatever it wants.

I saw a partially-finished platform above me and to the left, and I climbed the bare concrete stairs as high as I could go so as to get a better look. I stood on the edge and looked down three stories. In the center of the square dirt pit there was an old tree. It sprouted from the floor in the middle of a kind of stone vault. The tree was bounded by a circle carved into the floor. It’s bare branches were wide but blunted, and they ended in round and uneven nubs, as if the sprouts had been trimmed each year to keep them from filling the space. There were no leaves, either on the tree or the floor. Instead, there were candles, dozens of them, unlit and resting inside nests of old wax. In fact, so much wax had accumulated, it seemed doubtful that the tree had ever been cleaned of it, that when one candle was done, it was simply replaced with another, and that the wax melted into cup-shaped nests, where it either overflowed and ran in dribbles and cooled into waxy stalactites that hung from the branches, like sinewy arms, or else it fell in drops and collected on stalagmites on the floor. In a few places, the two had met to form narrow pillars.

When lit, I’m sure that tree was an amazing sight, an altar to light and life. But it was dark now and stained with dust and centuries. Several of the branches had snapped and lay on the ground like severed limbs amid shards of shattered wax.

I think I stared at it for a good fifteen or twenty minutes, wondering what it was for, before the birds finally came to let everyone know where I was. The whole city. Those who knew what to look for, anyway. I heard the flock approach from down the street, like a speeding motorbike. The sound got louder and louder until I was awash with flaps and tweets and the staccato caws of the ravens, which turned twice around the structure before settling on the crisscrossing girders above me. They chirped and cawed and chatted with each other like an audience before a concert. Even as they shuffled about, I felt a thousand eyes on me, shifting and stirring and watching my every move.

Then the rats came. Up from exposed pipes and gaps in the foundation. They crawled up and over the rebar, scouring every inch of the basement for the feast they were sure was coming.

I shivered and turned to the open lot. I wanted to get it over with, but no one was there. Just trucks and dirt and pallets of wood and drywall, tarped and chained. I reached into my bag and took out the tarot cards I’d collected: The Devil and The Fool. I added the third to the stack, the last card from my reading with the chef, the one I’d slipped into my back pocket and left there. I slid them back and forth, one over the other. I sat on the edge of the platform and let my feet dangle over the side. A sea of rats churned below. There were roaches as well, but not many. The rats were eating them.

The stone vault buried in the earth had walls of cut stone slabs, which appeared to be adorned with a continuous mural, faint with age, that moved clockwise around the space. I could see a great darkness out of which a few faint stars appeared. I saw the dome of the earth under a tangled conflagration of dark figures bearing swords and pikes and standards. I couldn’t tell who was friend and who was foe, nor was there enough detail even to tell if the combatants were human. One group emerged victorious and they stood, weary, in a staggered formation with one figure at the center, raising a lighted staff.

My eyes stopped on the last segment as the birds chattered restlessly over my head and flitted back and forth between perches. I saw the northern hemisphere of a crude earth, like something from an old map, with a dusky band separating night and day on a tilted axis.

“Once the earth was covered in darkness.”

The voice, accented and resonant, penetrated the din of the animals. Its owner stood on the floor below me, still in his fantastic coat. He appeared to be alone. He pointed to the murky darkness at the beginning of the mural.

“One speck of a vast empire which persists to this day. You can see it whenever the night sky is not obscured by clouds.” He looked up.

“What happened?” I asked,

“Mankind rebelled and threw off the shackles of the dark in a great cataclysm that lasted a thousand years.”

I looked at the scene of the conflagration, like a great battle.

The chef motioned to the black stillness at the beginning of the mural. I hadn’t noticed before, but there were faint shapes hidden in the darkness, behind the marks and scuffing — snarling, grasping, tentacled things with wings as large as mountains.

“That is why they covet it so. They know the earth stands as a beacon to the other realms, a scion to the singular truth that evil can always be defeated.” He turned to the other side, to the tilted earth. “But although mankind rejected the dark, we were not strong enough to embrace the light, which is why our planet rocked and turned crooked on its axis and now spends half its days in light and half in darkness. And there she has spun, for millennia, waiting for us to pull ourselves up. Or to fall back down.” He put his tattooed hand back in his coat.

“It’s a nice story,” I said.

“Alas” — he stepped closer to my perch — “most of it is false.”

I stood again and looked down at the tree. “What was that?”

“A beacon, once. And a sanctuary. Built when the Dutch still commanded this place, built to overlook the island across the river. There used to be many such places. The tree was lit when darkness fell, so our allies beyond would see and know we required their aid, and they would send a champion.”

He was looking at it. “He will destroy it soon, now that he’s discovered its location. As soon as his agents have secured the property, he will hack it to pieces. To isolate us. And to deny us shelter from the coming storm.”

“You let her be taken,” I said.

It took him a moment to respond. “Yes.”

A lump sprung up my throat. “Why?”

“Any answer I give will sound cruel.”

“How could you just stand there and let it happen?”

Another voice came. “Don’t listen to him.”

Bastien. He walked up the metal stairs at the back of the open structure and stood opposite the chef on the platform below. My perch was above and between them.

“Don’t listen to him,” he repeated. “He’s lying.”

“And you.” I glowered.

He held up his hands. All his rings were identical now: thick metal bands. But not steel or silver. Platinum maybe, or some kind of hard metal.

“I know it looks bad. I do. But it’s not what you think.”

“It can’t be.” I laughed. “Because I have no idea what to think. Not anymore.”

I looked between the two men. One of them was a talented deceiver.

Well, that wasn’t true. They were both talented deceivers. But one of them was also an agent of genuine menace, while the other was just a giant prick.

Or maybe they were both allies. Or both foes. I had no idea anymore.

“Cerise,” Bastien urged. “Just listen to me for a sec. Please.”

“No. I’m not listening to either of you.”

I lifted the seventh tarot card, the final draw from my reading. I showed them the 2D bar code on the front. I held it out like a talisman.

“I had a lot of time to think in jail. And I’m listening to this.”

I clutched the other two cards in my left hand. I was certain they were us. The set of three. I was pretty sure I was The Fool. That was no big stretch to figure out.

I pulled out my phone and loaded the app.

“You don’t think he can manipulate that?” Bastien accused. “How do you think magic works? You can’t always see — ”

“STOP!” I yelled. “Stop talking.”

The birds seemed even more agitated now. There was more shuffling, like the rustle of racehorses right before the bell. But it was the rats that sent a cold, slithering shiver down my spine. They weren’t moving. They had stopped. They were frozen and looking right at me.

I expected some retort from the chef, but nothing came. He was as calm as the tree in the vault below, as if all of this were a scene in a rehearsal, that none of it really mattered, that we were just going through the motions and he was waiting for his turn to read from the script.

I scanned the tarot card. There was a beep and an image filled the screen. An androgynous figure in long robes stood behind a table that held all four suits: a wand, a sword, a pentacle, and a chalice, as if they were all his tools and he could draw any of them he chose. He looked directly at the viewer, resolute but calm, without fear or menace. His belt was the snake eating its own tail. His right hand raised a candle lit at both ends. His left hand was lowered toward the earth. Hanging over his head like a halo was the symbol of infinity. Bright blooming flowers burst from the base of the card, while above, the crackling glow of ethereal power turned the stars and planets to his will.

The label read: The Magician.

Fuck.

What the hell did that mean? They were both magicians!

I blinked once — just once, I swear — and there they were. They didn’t bother with the ski masks this time, and they were in robes rather than street clothes. The heavy off-white strapping was wrapped tight around every inch of exposed skin. There were five, and each held a two-edged sword with a dull, charcoal-colored hilt above a white blade. Or maybe the blades weren’t white. Maybe they were just brightly reflecting the floodlights above. Either way, when held before their robes, they almost seemed to glow. They had surrounded us, seemingly in an instant.

The chef yelled suddenly and angrily to the air. “Even still you sacrifice your pawns! Coward! Show yourself!”

I heard laughs, human laughs, amid the now-quiet shuffling of the birds. The rats, seemed to quiver, as if bursting with energy, like a dam about to break. Their whiskers twitched as their black eyes stared. Then a man’s voice rose over the din, but amid the low drone of caws and chirps, it was impossible to tell where it came from. It fluttered on the air like any other pair of wings. It seemed to be whispering, but I had no idea what it said.

Bastien grabbed me from behind. I hadn’t even heard him come up the stairs.

“You need to get out of here.”

The monsters broke formation at once and I was sure we were dead. It would only take them moments to reach us. But no sooner did they lift their feet than the chef pulled both hands from his pockets and thrust his fists to the sky. The floodlights quit and the chorus of birds broke and feathers swirled around us as their owners leapt from their perches and dived and swooped and weaved in and out of the skeletal tower. It was chaos.

I ducked. It was dark now, and I could barely see. But then neither could my attackers. I ran down the steps, and Bastien followed.

“Cerise!” he called.

We reached the bottom and a strap-covered face broke through the feathers, almost as if by accident. It seemed surprised, giving Bastien time to push me behind him. The bright sword with the charcoal hilt rose and fell against Bastien’s hands. I heard the clang of metal and was certain it would call others to our location. I saw blood run down Bastien’s wrist. But his rings had stopped the attack. The robed monster swiped his sword free, taking one of Bastien’s fingers with it, and he screamed. It seemed whatever magic he had wasn’t enough to protect him.

The rats came then. They broke upon the severed finger like vultures, and in a moment, it was covered in a squabbling ball of fur and whiplike tails. So help me, I could hear the crunch of their teeth on bone.

“Cerise!” Bastien thrust out a bloody hand. He was on one knee, grimacing. “Give me the dagger!”

I looked at it. I looked at him.

“Cerise! Please!”

And then it happened. I don’t even know how really. I don’t remember thinking it. All I remember is that sword raising in the air and the thought that if Bastien died, I’d be alone. I definitely don’t remember doing it, although I can recall that it was done. I looked down and there it was, in my hands. I had plunged the dagger two-handed into the monster’s back. It went in easy, far easier than Samir’s little blade. It went in easy like the key of the safety deposit box sliding into the lock. As if the blade fit. As if it was supposed to fall exactly there, into that thing’s chest. Into its heart, which I felt quiver and stop in vibrations through the copper hilt.

The sword fell. The body slumped free of the dagger and fell over the side into the pit, where it was greeted by the shrieking of the rats.

I think if my mind had been there, I would’ve thrown up then, given what I saw. But it wasn’t there. It was far away, because that was the exact moment I knew. It was almost as if, in using the blade, I had been allowed to know. I knew that everything that had happened — Lyman, Kell, Bastien, everything — happened for one single reason. The sequence of acts and reactions played forward in my mind like the memory of a dream, both instant and long. Kell humiliated. The shock of pregnancy. One lover seemingly abandoning her. Another getting murdered. The suspicions of the police. The strange coincidences that kept her alone and on the run. The discovery that her best friend had lain with the man she loved. The death of the man who loved her — who might have saved her, had she let him. Her terrible, terrified face as she was kidnapped. Her beatings and tortures, bloody-lipped and drooling amid tiny sobs. And finally, after there was nothing left of her life to destroy, the brutal slaughter of Kelly Ann Sobricki, who died with the knowledge that her unborn child would die with her.

Everything that happened, all of it from the very beginning, wasn’t a riddle needing to be solved. It was a curse — a curse so powerful that even an innocent man, guilty of nothing but lending a stranger his phone in a coffee shop, had his bones broken. He was punched and kicked over and over until Lyman’s goons were satisfied he was telling the truth and he really didn’t know anything about Kell or the dark treasure she’d stolen.

I looked down at the weapon in my hand. The blood on it disappeared into the blade.

Étranger was right. It was destruction incarnate. With no effort, it took everything from Lyman Raimi. It teased him with everlasting life. It swallowed his fortune in the act of being found. Then it disappeared from right underneath him, from his very home, before abandoning him to his death. Then it turned to my best friend. And it ended her, too. In the worst way. Painfully. Helplessly. And utterly, utterly alone.

And now it had come to me.

That’s what it wanted, I think. To be wielded in sin. To be bargained in greed. To be stolen and loved. Over and over and over. To betray. To deceive. To kill. And with each vile, covetous act, to build into a great storm, stronger and stronger, until finally whole nations fell before it.

Why had I not given it to Bastien? Why had I not let him defend himself? Is it because I wanted for myself? Its power was like a tempest daring you to subdue it, to turn it to your will, but I didn’t know how.

I held it in my shaking hand. I tried so hard not to think of those I cared for, of everyone I loved. I was terrified that merely bringing them to mind would reveal them to the evil in my hand. But in having the thought, the inventory came. I couldn’t stop it, and their faces flashed before me.

Mom & Dad.

Uncle Wen.

The Suleiman family.

Kai.

My God, Kai.

I kept seeing his face. His smile. His eyes on the pillow next to me, watching me sleep, like all he wanted to do was stay there forever.

I started hyperventilating as Bastien pulled me to my feet, bleeding badly and clutching his hand to his chest. I didn’t even remember falling. But I had. I was on my butt. He pulled me up and all the warmth in his face was gone and I had no idea if he was just scared or if it was all another enchantment.

“Cerise . . .” His voice was haggard. “Give me the dagger. Give it to me. Cerise!”

He reached for it and I pulled away.

Was the curse starting already? Could it work that quickly? Before I even had a chance to catch my breath?

It wasn’t that its magic made false things true, I realized. Everything that was had always been. And yet I knew, if I hadn’t been cursed just then, things would’ve somehow been different. That’s magic. Real magic. The power to unfold the world as you want it without changing a thing.

I tried to pull away, to run, when I felt the warm spray across my cheek. I felt Bastien pull hard against me, as if he were stopping me. But when I turned to look, I saw that he wasn’t pulling. He was falling. His head had been severed from his body, just like Lyman’s driver. It rolled away. And then the rats came.

I shrieked and turned and ran —

Right into someone’s chest, like a wall. I felt strong arms encircle me. I was held fast by a steady hand. Another raised a gun. A really, really big gun. It was aimed right at the sword wielder. The shot rang out and the bullet struck a passing crow, which didn’t have time to squawk before being obliterated on the wing. And the things kept coming, as if they knew they had nothing to fear from so crude a mechanism. My savior wrapped both hands around my waist and pulled me, still clenching the dagger with white knuckles, down the stairs to the lot. There didn’t seem to be an escape. They were nearly on us when the animal swarm broke out in all directions — blindly and wildly, like an explosion. The force knocked our attackers to the ground, and the chef appeared, hands in his coat. He didn’t seem afraid, just annoyed — like he’d arranged a big dinner party and no one had showed. He walked down the steps after us as the monsters got to their feet.

In a blink, a black car crashed through the barrier wall. Its tires spit dirt as it swung to a hard stop in front of us. The chef’s hostess was at the wheel. She looked like she knew what she was doing there, too. She had leather gloves and everything. The engine roared like a great cat. My savior threw me into the back as the chef climbed into the passenger’s seat. The strapped men closed the distance in another blink and were reaching for the car as its spinning tires caught something solid under the dirt and we were propelled onto the road with whiplash force.

I shut my eyes. I could see bit of Bastien being carried away in beak and maw. There was nothing of him left. It was like he’d been erased from the world. One hand went to my mouth. I started shaking. I watched the man Dench clean his gun next to me, like it was just another chore he had to do. I was aware that my left ear was still ringing so loud from the shot that I couldn’t hear anything out of it. The chef wasn’t even looking at me. It seemed like he was pouting, like things hadn’t gone his way and he was mad at everyone.

“What the hell?” I yelled in between gasping breaths.

I felt so cold. Not like cold in my hands and feet, but cold inside. I was shaking. I knew I was going into shock, but I was panicking didn’t know what to do. And still I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go of it. Even though the muscles of my hand burned, I clenched it tight.

Dench turned to me expressionless. There was nothing. He was stone cold. It was eerie. The car roared down the street, turning left, then right. I saw the signs for the freeway to Jersey.

“Bastien . . .”

I pressed my free hand to my ringing ear. It hurt. I coughed. I had bile in my throat. I wiped my mouth. I coughed again and cried in slurping sobs.

“You lied to me!”

Finally the chef turned. “We could not afford a lengthy courtship, if only for your sake.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I have been doing this a very long time. No one accepts the truth or falsity of grand claims, like evolution or magic, on reason and argument. Especially not from a stranger.”

“But you could have said something!” I leaned forward and grabbed my scalp through my hair. I was angry. Furious. I wanted to choke the smug bastard. “This is my life! I’m not an ingredient in — in one of your stupid recipes!”

He stayed calm. He was always calm. “If I had come to you on the street that day and told you of the dagger, of its curse, of the Lord of Shadows and his Nameless gods, what would you have said?”

“Ugh.” I sat back. “Fine! Be right. You’re always fucking right.”

“Yes,” the hostess whispered from the front. She totally got it.

Etude scowled at her.

I could see my faint reflection in the dark glass of the car window. “Kell . . .”

I sniffed. I doubled over and started bawling. I clutched my stomach and bawled and heaved. I dropped it then. Finally. It hit the floor of the car with a thump. It seemed so harmless.

“It’s started already. Hasn’t it?”

He nodded.

“I’m afraid it will take everything from you. You will watch, powerless, as all you hold dear withers and dies like flower in winter. And then it will consume you as well, and so be passed to another, and another, and another. And with each passing, the storm of ruin will grow.”

“Did you know?” I looked up. “Did you know what was going to happen?”

He shook his head. “I knew only that the mark of Death was upon you, not how or why.”

I sniffed again and wiped my nose.

“I . . . I — So . . .” I looked around in confusion. “So, I mean, what happens now? I mean. What do I do? Where . . . Where can I go?”

My lips turned and I broke down in earnest. I was bawling. I had a hand to my mouth and I could barely talk.

“I can’t go an — anywhere, can I? It’ll find me. Wherever I go, it’ll follow. I’ll hear about Uncle Wen or something and I’ll go home and I’ll find out Kai is married and has a kid and is all happy and he’ll pass me on the street and not even recognize my face and while I’m there, there’ll be a freak fire at the restaurant and my parents will burn to death in front of me while I scream helpless on the road.”

I covered my mouth, if only to stop the words from coming out, words that did not feel like my own.

The hostess gave a worried glance to the chef. “Do something.”

“I am,” he said to her indignantly. Almost too indignantly, as if being scolded by her actually hurt, as if she were the only one who could do it.

“The young lady and I made a bargain.” He turned and looked out the window. “And now I will honor it.”

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery in order until the book is released in early 2018. You can start here: I saw my first dead body the summer we moved to Atlanta.

Sign up here to be notified when the book is released.

The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

cover image by Daniel Zrom

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