The Book of Blood and Shadow Page 13

  It wasn’t until I stepped through the double doors that a new set of images surfaced in my mind’s eye, images lodged somewhere in my brain from an old AP Psych slide show, or maybe a late-night horror movie, doctors in white Frankenstein coats looming over gurneys, electrodes dangling from their clawed hands, padded rooms, straitjackets, lobotomized zombies drooling, all hope abandoned.

  Building C wasn’t a fright show. But it wasn’t a tea party, either. Past the reception desk was another set of double doors, which buzzed loudly as the guard ushered me through, then locked again behind me. Yellow walls gave the corridors a sickly tinge. An older woman with thick gray hair knotted into a braid brushed past me, clutching her gown and murmuring something about preparing for a date. I smiled politely, because that’s what you do; I smiled but then looked away, because that’s who I am. It was impossible to imagine Adriane’s parents making their regal way through here, Mr. Ames in his custom-tailored suit, Ms. Kato in one of the silk kimonos she claimed had been handed down through the women in her family for two centuries, though Adriane had once confided that her mother’s old-country ancestors were fishermen and fieldworkers, and the silk kimonos, rather than being smuggled over on a 1950s steamer with the young Grandma Kato, came special order courtesy of a Newbury Street “exotic wear” boutique.

  It was impossible to imagine Adriane here.

  She had a private room and, if you ignored certain problematic elements—the door that locked only from the outside, the metal grate across the window, the call button installed over the bed—it looked like a motel room. A cheap motel, of the kind no one in Adriane’s family would ever be caught dead in, but it was better than I’d expected. So was she.

  She sat on the edge of a blue armchair, shoulders back and neck erect with that annoyingly perfect dancer’s posture. Her sleek black hair was brushed and pinned back with her favorite blue rhinestone barrettes, and despite the tank top and yoga pants—an ensemble Adriane had always been able to pull off with the panache of an undercover starlet caught in the famous-people-are-just-like-us section of some celebrity tabloid—her skin was impeccably powdered, her lashes curled, her lips glossed to a healthy pink and turned up in a faint smile. So it had all been a bad joke, I thought, crossing the room—bad but brilliant, hiding in this place, leaving me alone and afraid. “You suck,” I said as my arms went around her. “You suck and I hate you, and why didn’t you call?” I squeezed tight, feeling, for the first time since that night, like I could breathe again.

  She didn’t hug me back.

  “Okay, maybe I don’t actually hate you.”

  It’s not that she wasn’t hugging; it’s that she wasn’t moving. I let go.

  It was the eyes I should have noticed, the eyes beneath the pale silver shadow and delicate liquid liner. They didn’t track me as I took one step backward, then another, retreating to the doorway; they barely blinked.

  “Oh, aren’t you popular, Adriane?” a loud, cheerful voice said behind me. “Three visitors in one day, how nice!”

  If Adriane thought it was nice—if Adriane thought—she didn’t let on.

  “You can go on in,” the nurse told me. “She doesn’t bite.”

  “Does she … Is she …” If I couldn’t formulate the question, it seemed unlikely I could handle the answer. I changed course. “She looks good.”

  “Doesn’t she?” The nurse beamed. Her round face practically glowed. It was obscene to look so healthy in a place like this. “Her mama comes in every morning to put her together.”

  That didn’t sound like Ms. Kato, who was nobody’s “mama.”

  “Stay as long as you want,” she said. “Just try not to upset her.”

  “So you mean—Can she hear me when she’s like this?”

  Her meaty hand came down on my shoulder. “She’s in there,” she said. “It’s like I told your friend, all she needs is time to heal.”

  “My friend?”

  “The boy who always brings such beautiful flowers.” She pointed to a vase of yellow roses beside Adriane’s bed. Adriane hated roses. Though Chris always bought them anyway, unable to comprehend there was any other option. “He told me to say hello to you, if you ever came.”

  “To me? How did you even know who I am?”

  “He showed me a picture,” she said. “You’re prettier in person, though.”

  “What was his name?”

  She hesitated. “Let me think, I’m not sure I—” She grinned. “That’s it, Chris. His name is Chris.”

  It felt like the room temperature had dropped twenty degrees. “What did he look like?”

  She waved a hand. “Oh, you know. Good-looking kid. Brownish hair. I think.”

  Once she was gone, I threw out the flowers.

  Then I sat on the bed and tried not to think about why someone was going around calling himself Chris and carrying a picture of me, or whether he was still here, lurking in the parking lot, waiting. I forced myself to smile, and I talked to my only remaining friend.

  “This is weird,” I said. “Don’t you think this is weird?” I felt like an idiot. “The memorial service was crap. But I guess everything is. This was supposed to be our year, remember? L’année mémorable.” The year to remember. I leaned forward. “You want to know a secret? Your French accent sucks ass.”

  I paused, not sure what was weirder: delivering a monologue, or pretending that we were having a conversation by leaving spaces for her to respond, as if maybe, given the chance, she eventually would.

  “You want to know another secret?” I said. “A real one?”

  Another pause.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. You know how we were going to have this amazing time in Paris, the four of us? Swimming in the Seine, or whatever? It was never going to happen. It was about a million times too expensive. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to you. Or why I didn’t just tell you. I guess I was waiting for the right time. Or, you know, for a miracle.” I laughed, sort of. “I’m not sure this counts.”

  This wasn’t right. It wasn’t what I should be saying; it wasn’t what I needed to say.

  “I miss you,” I said. “I need you. Please.”

  But that wasn’t right, either. It felt fake, like I was acting for a hidden camera. Reading a horrible script for a horrible TV movie, the kind that starred actors from canceled sitcoms who were one botched audition away from a life of hemorrhoid commercials and dinner theater. It bothered me that I couldn’t fill in Adriane’s half of the conversation. I knew her well enough. I should have been able to invent her. And not just her—grieving people were supposed to see ghosts, hear voices, hallucinate. Where were my visions? Where was my crazy?

  “I’m not going to give you some big speech about how you have to be strong and get through this, or that there are all these people who love you and need you back. Blah blah whatever. But you were there, Adriane. You saw what happened. You know who did it.”

  Maybe it was my imagination. But I thought I saw her pupils skid toward me. I was sure I saw a muscle twitch at the corner of her mouth.

  “Do you remember?” I said. I sat on the arm of her chair. I took her hand. “Who hurt Chris, Adriane? What happened to Max? What happened?”

  She screamed.

  She didn’t move, she didn’t change her expression, she didn’t look at me, she just opened her mouth and screamed, like an Adriane-shaped car alarm, and though I stroked her hair and held her hand and apologized, again and again, for saying the thing that should have been left unsaid, she wouldn’t stop. It was only when the friendly nurse rushed in, followed by two decidedly less friendly orderlies, and they grabbed her and jabbed a needle in her arm that she turned human again—then passed straight through human to animal, thrashing and bucking against their grip, her screams now mingled with grunts and growls, guttural, embarrassing noises that I didn’t want to hear, and finally, a howl that faded to a moan that faded to a sigh as the drugs washed through her veins and she dropped onto the bed, her ey
es closed.

  “It’s not your fault, honey,” the nurse told me once the orderlies had strapped Adriane down and gone on their way. It was a kind lie.

  “Bye, Adriane. Get better, okay?” I said lamely, leaving her wrecked and helpless, the same way I had left the Hoff last time I’d seen him. Then, I’d gone straight from the Hoff to Chris, because that was home, and that was safe. But that was gone.

  When I got back to the house, which had to happen eventually as I had nowhere else to go, my mother was still at work, but my father must have been there, somewhere, because he’d brought in the mail, dumping mine on the kitchen table. Atop the pile of junk was a letter from Chapman Prep, delighted to inform me that, in recognition of my excellent academic record, the scholarship committee had decided to grant my request for funds to cover the upcoming senior-class trip to Europe.

  I’d asked for a miracle; I should have been more specific.

  17

  At night, I translated the letters from Chris’s desk, searching for something. Anything.

  The formula is difficult, but results are near. The girl does not shy away from difficult work. She may be stronger than you expected. She fears nothing. But her situation grows more dire. The mother is a constant problem, always demanding more. The girl is desperate to get their property back. But the Emperor will never bend. Soon she will need other options. I cannot meet you at the normal place tonight. But I can be there tomorrow, at dawn.

  14 December 1598.

  Is there no other way? I understand your urgency, but I ask again that you reconsider. You may need her, but surely you no longer need me? She still has not guessed she is being watched. She will be at the gates of the Jewish quarter tonight, as planned.

  19 December 1598.

  Make your threats. I have nothing to fear from you. I will tell you nothing more. I can threaten, too. Approach me again, and I will see she knows all.

  19 January 1599.

  Whatever I was looking for, I never found it. And Chris, whom I knew less than ever, was still gone.

  18

  That was a bad week. It began with Adriane and ended with Dead Brother’s Birthday. My mother had a cache of Xanax hidden in a tampon box for just such an occasion, and my father stored a fifty-two-year-old bottle of Glenlivet in his bottom desk drawer, though maybe the well was running dry, as the year before I’d caught the unmistakable scent of eau de pot seeping out from under his locked office door, presumably something he’d confiscated from a student, back when he had any. They each had their own rituals regarding Andy’s grave, my father hitting it somewhere around midnight, drunk enough to howl at the moon; my mother, whose good intentions always exceeded her capabilities, would show up the next day with a tranquilizer hangover and fresh peonies for penance. Which left the whole day clear for me.

  I liked the cemetery. A bike path curled around its western edge, and as kids, Andy and I had pedaled furiously past the graves, racing each other out of the danger zone, daring each other, especially in that dusky hour before dinner but after dark, to hop the fence and chase the ghosts. But in the light of day, the Chapman cemetery was the kind of place you had to work hard to be afraid of. It was too sunny and bucolic, too institutional, with its freshly cut grass, its manicured hedges, its perfectly aligned and well-tended graves. I liked it there more than I should have, especially when I had it to myself, and Andy and I could be alone.

  If I’d believed in some kind of afterlife, a heaven where lute-plucking angels formed the cheering squad for pickup games with dead Little Leaguers, I could imagine Andy up there bossing Chris around, showing him the ropes. But imagine was all I could do. I’d tried to believe in all of that, after the accident—believe in something. I couldn’t.

  I didn’t come to Andy’s grave to talk to him. I didn’t even bring him flowers.

  Someone else had.

  There was a fresh bouquet sitting in front of the tombstone, and not my mother’s peonies, on time for once, nor yellow roses. These were lilies of the valley, the only flowers I liked—which was something only Max had bothered to know.

  Don’t hope.

  There was a postcard beneath the flowers, facedown against the gray stone. It was Max’s handwriting.

  I spun around, half expecting to see him standing behind me, his cheeks flushed and his smile apologetic but real. There was no one. But the flowers were fresh. He had been there. Maybe he was there still, somewhere, watching me, afraid for some reason to show himself. Max didn’t know about Andy. At least, he wasn’t supposed to. It seemed inappropriate, not to mention useless, to be angry at Chris for opening his big mouth, as he must have done. But I was angry anyway. Also grateful.

  I’d given up calling, but I called him now, and this time the phone didn’t even ring. “You have reached a nonworking number,” the familiar voice told me. It didn’t matter.

  Max was alive.

  19

  CASTOREM NON PVTO DEVM INCVRIA.

  NAM SVM EGO ACTVS VEHEMENS AVLA.

  I did a quick and dirty translation.

  I did not count Castor as a god through my inattention.

  For I was violent and was driven from his temple.

  It went on like that for several lines. At no point did it say anything that came even close to making sense.

  It wasn’t signed.

  “So what are you trying to tell me?” I said, out loud.

  The postcard didn’t answer.

  On the front was a photograph of a stone statue, a cross-cradling saint on a tripartite pedestal, etched against a backdrop of pure sky blue. The caption was in a language I didn’t recognize. It didn’t make sense that he would write me a postcard in coded Latin, or that he would leave it on the gravestone of a dead brother whose existence he wasn’t supposed to know about, as it didn’t make sense that Max was alive and nearby yet hiding from me. There was only one thing about the card that made any sense to me, one thing I recognized, though I didn’t want to. That symbol again, the eye with the lightning bolt. Max had drawn it in the lower right-hand corner of the postcard, and beneath it, he’d carefully printed another Latin word, the only one on the postcard whose meaning was clear.

  Reus.

  The guilty one.

  He knew who’d killed Chris—and he was trying to, what? Warn me? Ask me for help, some kind of intercession to save him from a similar fate? For all I knew, he was passing along a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

  What kind of moron writes his SOS in code?

  Max wouldn’t have sent me a code he didn’t know I could decipher. Which meant I had to get home and get to work. I almost ran through the cemetery, eyes fixed on the postcard—not on the frustrating words, but on the familiar curl and swoop of the lettering, the confirmation that he was still in the world, and not just somewhere, but close—and that was my mistake, because if I’d gone slower, or stayed at the grave longer, I would never have slammed into Eli Kapek on my way through the front gate, I wouldn’t have dropped the postcard, he wouldn’t have picked it up and turned it over, slowly, scanning the message that Max had trusted to me.

  I snatched it back. Not soon enough.

  “What are you doing here?” I said. “Are you following me or something?”

  “That’s the second time you’ve asked me that,” he said. “So this is the second time I’ll ask you: Is someone following you?”

  I glared at him. “Apparently.”

  “Get over yourself.”

  “So?”

  “So?” He echoed my tone exactly. I didn’t take the bait.

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “I didn’t realize this was your private property.”

  “It’s a cemetery,” I said.

  “So that’s why there are all those funny-shaped rocks sticking out of the ground. Want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

  “No.”

  “Look at that, we have something in common.”

  “Any chance you’re adopted?” I
asked.

  “What?”

  “There’s no way you and Chris share the same gene pool.”

  He froze. Behind his eyes, something shifted. I’d gone too far.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I doubt that.” The teasing tone was gone; his face was a blank. Total system shutdown.

  I didn’t say anything. I knew better.

  “Look, if I told you I just felt like being around dead people for a while, you’d think I was crazy,” he said.

  But I didn’t.

  “Have you been to his grave?” I asked.

  “Just at the funeral. I had to come here the day after.”

  “What was it like?”

  “It was like a big hole in the ground.”

  He clearly hadn’t expected me to laugh. I wasn’t expecting it, either.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” I said. “I’m here, aren’t I?” For my brother, maybe. But not just for him. “I should go.”

  He shrugged and then, with a studied nonchalance, “So who do you know in Prague?”

  “What?” Just a dead girl named Elizabeth, I wanted to say. But I haven’t heard from her in about four hundred years. “No one.”

  He nodded at the postcard. “Except whoever sent you that.”

  I looked at it again, careful to keep the message side facing away from him. If the postcard came from Prague—which was too insane to even imagine—how had it found its way to Andy’s grave? “What makes you think it’s from Prague?”

  He had a nice smile. “That statue. It’s St. John of Nepomuk on the Karlův most. The Charles Bridge. I’d know it anywhere.”