Hearts of Darkness (8 page)

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Authors: Kira Brady

BOOK: Hearts of Darkness
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“Missed you.”
Kayla opened her eyes from a deep sleep. She lay in Desi's bed, in Desi's tiny apartment. The faded patchwork quilt was the same one Desi had as a child.
Her sister lay beside her.
Kayla smiled. “Where did you go? I thought you had left me.”
Moonlight spilled onto the pillow from the open window, bathing Desi's face in a pale, milky glow. “Come with me,” she whispered.
“Oh, yes.” Kayla tried to raise her hand to smooth Desi's braids, but her arm wouldn't move. Something wasn't right. Her sister was with her; surely that was a good thing.
“Forever,” Desi said.
“Yes, forever.” Kayla smiled at the thought.
Desi's eyes were darker than Kayla remembered. Flat black instead of twinkling mahogany.
Kayla wanted to pull up the blanket to warm her suddenly cold arms. “It's been so lonely without you, sweet girl,” she said.
“You must find it,” Desi said. “Come.”
A knocking started from somewhere outside. Desi's lips thinned. Her eyes narrowed.
“What is that?” Kayla asked.
“No time,” Desi said in a voice lower than Kayla remembered. “No time, my Kayla. You must find it. Blood will out.”
“Blood will what?”
The knocking got louder, like hammers upon tin. Kayla imagined she heard the ruffle of feathers.
“No time,” Desi hissed. “Let me in—”
Kayla tried to turn her head to see where the noise was coming from, but her neck wouldn't move. The hammering became a thundering inside her skull, like Athena's birthing pangs. She winced under the assault. The edges of the room began to blur.
“Desi?” she asked.
Her sister looked sorrowful. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“Desi?” Kayla started to panic. The thundering sounded like cannons, bursting through her eardrums.
She woke with a start.
Her window was a mass of black feathers. Huge wings brushed the pane, again and again, blocking out light as the crows dove, trying to break in. Their beaks pounded against the glass,
rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat
. Her heart jumped in time. It was like a Hitchcock movie. With each swoop, they pinned her with their beady black eyes.
Fear seized her. She held her breath, praying the window wouldn't break. The crows screamed. Macbeth's witches, weaving spells of terror.
She swallowed and forced herself to move. Quickly, before she could change her mind, she jumped out of bed and ran to the window. She pulled the shutter closed and secured it. Moving to the other side of the white dresser, she shoved it with her back and shoulder until it shifted across the floor and barricaded the window. It was only particleboard, but it would have to do.
“Peck through that, suckers,” Kayla said to the unseen assailants still cawing outside. She wiped her forehead with the sleeve of the T-shirt she had slept in. It was an old one of Desi's, the Soundgarden logo faded from washing.
Desi—
She spun to the bed, but it was empty. “Desi?”
No one answered in the empty room.
She let out a breath. “Only a dream.” But it had been so vivid. She could have sworn she could reach out and touch her sister. Goose bumps broke over her skin. The dark bedroom seemed suddenly menacing. She flipped the light switch. The bulbs flickered once, buzzed angrily, and died. From the dresser Kayla grabbed a candle and matchbox. The matchbox read
Butterworth's
, and Desi had ten more like it scattered around the apartment. She must have spent a lot of time in the club. Kayla lit the candle, and it sputtered in a phantom breeze. The tiny wavering light was too weak to fight back the darkness.
Here among Desi's things—her clothes that smelled like gardenias, her childhood teddy bear, her framed photos showing Desi hamming it up for the camera—the truth came home.
Desi wasn't coming back.
Kayla choked back a sob. “Buck up, girlfriend,” she muttered to herself. “If you can't survive staying in Desi's apartment without going crazy, how are you going to find the truth about her death?” The last word caught in her throat, but she ruthlessly pushed on.
After Hart left, she had knocked on every door in the apartment complex asking for information about Desi. No clues. It seemed her sister had spent little time at home. Disheartened, she returned to Desi's apartment and crashed. Too little sleep and too many emotional hits. The clock on the bedside table was dead, but her windup watch gave the time at 11:30
PM
. She'd slept for six hours. Jet lag hung from her brittle bones like lichen.
The crows had reminded her of all she would prefer to forget. Dragons. Thunderbirds. Werewolves. Weapon-toting thugs who were madder than a hatter. Why couldn't that part of it have been a dream?
She gingerly picked her way over to the bed, hardly wanting to look at it—the memory of Desi's face cut deep. After setting down the candle, she pulled the blankets on the bed, gripping the quilt with white knuckles. She whacked her pillow against the wall to smooth the lumps. She reached forward to grab the second pillow, and froze.
There was an indent where a head might have rested.
Kayla hadn't used that pillow. No one had recently.
“I don't believe in ghosts,” she said out loud. It was reflex. Hart said they did exist. Wraiths, he called them. Ghosts and electricity don't mix, he'd said, and now the lights were out and the clock broken. Evidence, maybe. Hard to call him a liar with her heart jumping in her chest and her hair standing on end. Her rational half wanted to dismiss his entire story, but her instincts warned her to stay alert. She couldn't afford to ignore him just because she didn't want it to be true.
Her hands shook. She carried the candle into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. The reflection in the mirror above the sink was pale and thin. Her eyes were red. Her skin sallow.
She glanced at her palm where Hart's message was now blurred.
For a good time.
Right
.
It was late, but perhaps there was still an hour or two left to hunt down leads. She pulled her phone out of her pocket to search the Internet, but it was dead. Great. She went into the living room and was surprised to find a phone book and a pile of bus schedules beneath the coffee table. It seemed like Desi had had to resort to old-fashioned methods to get around in a city with unreliable electricity. Butterworth's seemed like her best lead. It was located in Pike Place Market; a bus could get her there in half an hour. She would snoop around and see if anyone had talked to her sister before she died.
This day was so bad, something had to go right for her eventually.
Right?
Right.
A shower did wonders for her confidence. She raided Desi's closet—just like the old days—and found a pair of matchstick jeans and a jade-green silk shirt. It was sleeveless with toggle buttons down the left side of her chest. Dragons, embroidered in red and gold, danced along the high Chinese collar. Bright colors and expensive fabrics, just like Desi liked them. A little makeup cheered her skin to its usual luster.
Only two crows greeted her outside the apartment. Creepy, but at least they didn't attack. She checked the ground below the bedroom window out of habit. It was clear of injured birds, even though the crows had thrown themselves repeatedly against the glass. Her mother had had an unnatural talent for patching up injured creatures. Kayla had once caught her kneeling in the flowerbed over a robin, its neck bent at an odd angle, its soft wings wriggling helplessly in the dirt. But a moment later it flew off as if nothing had happened. Her mother had seemed embarrassed.
Kayla often thought this cloudy memory had influenced her decision to go to nursing school. Her father had always said Desi was just like their mother. Kayla had wanted some connection of her own, however tenuous. Her mother was a healer in her memories. Now Kayla continued the tradition.
The crows followed her as she hopped a bus downtown, arriving at Butterworth's a little before midnight. The older red stone building had three arches marking three separate doors. Tiles on the porch spelled out
MORTUARY, CREMATORIUM,
and
CHAPEL
. The morbid décor didn't detract from its popularity, if the line out the door was any indication. She waited for twenty minutes in the cold before a bouncer let her in.
Cloyingly sweet air met her inside, mixed with the smoke of many candles and gas lamps. Shadows hovered in the depths of the recessed booths. The flicker of a match briefly lit a long silver pipe below a gaunt face and glazed eyes. Though the stage was empty, the crowd on the dance floor seemed to press closer as if straining to touch the vacant chair.
It would be tough to find anyone who knew Desi in this crowd, but she had to try. She pulled out a photo of her sister and began asking around. No one had information—at least that he or she was willing to share. People glanced at her sideways and then away, dismissing her easily. Recognition flickered in a pair of eyes, but was quickly shuttered. She got the feeling that death and disappearance were common occurrences here. People accepted it like they accepted rain for nine months of the year. It happened. They moved on.
Eventually she found two college-aged kids, tucked in an alcove, who admitted to knowing Desi.
“Beautiful girl. Smart too.” Adam put the end of an ivory pipe between his lips and bent to hold the bowl over a small lamp. He wore an old olive-green army uniform. A multitude of straps buckled up his knee-high boots. He looked barely old enough to shave, though his downy whiskers tried gallantly to form muttonchops. His cheeks expanded as he inhaled the sickeningly sweet smoke.
His companion, Caroline, wore a black dress with a bright red bustier. Her goth-black hair cascaded down her back in ratty ringlets. “She won that mythology fellowship. That's how she met Norgard, when he came to present it.”
Kayla had to lean closer to hear her over the noise. She pretended she didn't see the pipe. She was not here as a nurse, but to get information about her sister. Her tongue hurt from biting it. “Norgard endowed the fellowship?”
“Yup,” Caroline said. “He's real generous with our department. Thinks mythology is an underappreciated field.”
“Well, it is, Caro,” Adam said.
“Do you know anything about Thunderbirds?” Kayla asked.
Adam and Caroline exchanged a look. “Maybe. What do you want to know?”
“This is going to sound silly, but have you ever seen one? You know, flying. Like a real one.”
“There are lots of strange birds around here,” Caroline said.
A curl of smoke escaped Adam's lips. “A poet once wrote, ‘Old myths, Old gods, Old heroes never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call.' Do you believe that, Desiree's sister?”
She watched him pass the pipe to Caroline. “I'm not sure. Goethe said, ‘We see only what we know.'”
Adam's face lit. “Ah! A philosopher, Caro. We have us a philosopher.”
Caroline blew a smoke ring.
“And tell me, Desi's sister,” Adam said, “have you seen only what you know? A narrow viewpoint, I think.”
“You would never see more than your own arse,” Caro added helpfully.
“And Thunderbirds?” Kayla asked. She felt a little silly pressing the topic, but she needed to know.
“Ah, Thunderbirds.” Adam took the pipe back. He lounged back in the booth and studied the velvet drapes hanging from the ceiling. “There are a couple good bird-watching spots in the city at dusk and dawn. The water tower at Volunteer Park gives you a fine view of Queen Anne and the Space Needle, and, best of all, some cover. The beach at Shilshole is another place, for another kind of rare bird sighting. Look up. Stay in the trees.”
“So you're saying you have seen one,” Kayla said. “It's not some hallucination on my part.”
Adam chuckled. “Hallucination? Damn straight it's a hallucination, a trick of the light, a plane or whatever.” In the flickering lamplight, his eyes were bloodshot. She was asking about hallucinations from an opium smoker. What did she expect him to say?
“That's right,” he said more softly. “I'm just a dragon chaser, so what do I know?”
Her face must have given her away. “I just want . . . I don't know—”
“Proof?” Caroline suggested.
“You won't find that here,” Adam said. “Let me tell you something. Seattleites are an odd lot. We will be perfectly polite to your face, but if you're not from around here, you don't get to be part of the club. The club is a tight-lipped bunch, but that's what you get from a city built by Scandinavians. Now, I'm not a native either, so I can let you in on our little secret.”

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