Of Delicate Pieces (21 page)

He zeroed in on her name tab. “Ms. Portiere, am I supposed to understand what you mean?”

She tapped her feet on the floor, but Jonas saw nothing but cheap carpet. Then, he felt something shift beneath his feet. An invisible force yanked at him trying to pull him down. His mind iced in panic and he scrambled to lift his feet to the chair.

The woman searched the space around him, dissecting something he couldn’t see. “What is your interest with Astor? My family has cared for Astor’s records since its founding.” She jutted her chin as though expecting him to know what this meant.

He didn’t.

“The
original
founding.”

Was there any other kind? He cursed in his head, looking around the library and then back at her.

“Tell me why you’re here.”

“Because of a friend.”

It wasn’t quite a lie. Could Alex be the reason he was sent here? The thought made him remember he had a heart; it even struck a beat or two. Or that was his fear affecting him because the ground was trying to suck him down.

“Are you a Havilah?”

“Thank goodness, no.” He knew enough about his hometown history to understand that the Havilahs were either unlucky or plain cursed.

“Are you from the Eskers?”

This woman sure did know a lot about Parrish. “Why, do I seem like a lunatic?” He looked like one, grasping the table in front of him to prevent himself from being pulled down onto the ugly carpet. The force coming from the ground acted like a vacuum.

She spread her arms wide. “To enter a gifted territory, yes, you might be mad. And is that what they’re saying the Eskers facility is for now? The mentally challenged?”

“I was born in Parrish. I grew up there. I died there. That’s all I got.”

His voice remained calm but inside his mind raced. A gifted territory. What would happen to him? Why was he sent here? He worried less about the repercussions of breaking a supposed law and more about what he’d do if the spirits he trusted had set him up. If he did not have this group to fall back on, this so-called alliance of revolutionaries, where would he go? What would he do? He’d never go back to Eidolon. He’d put his eggs in one risky basket, and now that basket dangled over a cliff. Damn it. He wouldn’t allow his brothers to be right about him.

He couldn’t stand it any longer. He let go of the table, and he fell forward. He smacked his face on the table before crumbling down to his knees.

Ms. Portiere perched on the edge of a table promoting a tween book club. “How did you come to find yourself here?”

“I wandered into town about an hour ago.”

“Coincidence?”

“I guess so.” But he didn’t even sound like he believed that.

“This friend you mentioned, talk about her again.”

“Why?”

“Because the only thing stopping me from sounding the horns is my curiosity.” Ms. Portiere straightened her glasses and squinted at him.

The magnetic pull sucked his stomach to the floor. He rested his cheek on the ground to respond. “She’s a newbury, too.”

“What does this place have to do with her?”

“I’m not sure. That’s why I wanted to know more about the history.”

“There’s more. You aren’t telling me everything.” Ms. Portiere raised her brows so high they disappeared under her gray bangs.

Jonas couldn’t share who sent him, but when it came to Alex, he could go on for days.

“My friend, we grew up together. She’s gotten loads of attention since she died because she looks like someone named Sephi Anovark.”

Ms. Portiere pressed her hands together like a prayer. “It’s true, then? The resemblance is strong? I wish I could travel to see it for myself.”

“You know who Sephi is?”

“You’re asking that of one of the gifted? She is our greatest treasure.”

He tried to shake his head, but the suction from the floor yanked him too hard. “I don’t know much about people like you.”

“People like me,” she repeated. “They pollute your mind early in death, don’t they?”

He saw the opportunity, and he grabbed it with shaking hands, preparing his questions. He never liked jigsaw puzzles or word problems, and this task felt too much like both. The Havilahs were hunters. If Astor was gifted, of course he’d need to run away. End of story. What’s the big mystery?

“What’s the connection with Parrish? Why did the founder of this town leave when he could have inherited Parrish?”

“Astor came to us for help. He was a Havilah and he hated it. That godforsaken family couldn’t see past their fears. Astor Havilah had no special talents, but his daughter did. She was taken from him, Havilah or not, because she showed early signs of being gifted. His family imprisoned his daughter, one of their own, with the intent to sell her into servitude. Astor and his wife left Parrish so when they had more children, they would be safe, and to bring some retribution to his family.”

“Why are you willing to tell me all of this?”

“Because your friend needs to know. Eidolon is probably trying to poison her mind against us.”

Ms. Portiere stood and curled her finger, gesturing for Jonas to follow. He groaned with the effort it took to snake-crawl, dragging his knees and twisting his torso down a long passageway of dank smelling books labeled: Mystery A-F.

“My family descends from a gifted builder who began his work by constructing catacombs. We fled here from New England when the Cinatri family paid us to build a world for the gifted, to live with Balin Cinatri underground. My ancestor never forgave himself for encouraging us to bury ourselves, for deciding to hide instead of fighting for our rights. He sentenced himself and all the Portiere family after him to be guardians over what he’d built. History isn’t something you can run away from. Astor Havilah didn’t understand that.”

At the end of Mystery A-F, they entered an unmarked aisle, or Jonas couldn’t see the label from down on his belly. The deeper they traveled, the darker it became. These books were different. They snarled and snapped at him.

He craned his head to peer at them. “What’s wrong with these books?”

Ms. Portiere stroked the bindings with a wrinkled finger. “This is our history before the founding of Astor when we lived … ” She peered downward. “Astor knew where we were located long before 1839 because of his hunting ties. It was his idea to bring us out of the ground. A Havilah, of all people, brought the gifted into the light. To right the wrongs of his witch-hating family, he created something to protect them.”

Ms. Portiere bent down to look at Jonas. “When you mentioned your friend who looks like Sephi Anovark, your mentality shifted. Did you realize? I did. I’ve always had a knack for reading between the lines, or between the waves.”

“The waves?”

“Some members of my family are blessed with the gift of seeing the mental state of others around us. Don’t look so surprised; there isn’t much to it. If you’ve ever seen an EEG machine, it’s very much the same. Our minds use electricity to communicate, and I see the signals producing that activity. That’s how I knew you weren’t here to harm anyone. You were here searching for knowledge. I saw the gamma waves.”

“No offense, but that’s weird.”

“In my family, it isn’t. Such a small thing classifies us as
gifted
. I have always seen the waves more vibrantly than anyone else,” she said, straightening up and puffing out her chest. “When you mentioned your friend, your waves decreased to alpha. Close your eyes.”

He would do whatever she asked as long as she would turn off the vacuum hiding in her basement.

“Like that. When people close their eyes, the waves change to alpha, and yours changed the same way when mentioning the girl. Because you genuinely care for her, I will escort you out of town unscathed. I consider anyone looking out for the Anovark girl to be on our side.”

Jonas’s eyes snapped open. Alex wasn’t an Anovark. He didn’t dare share this with Ms. Portiere, not if it would threaten his safety. The pull from the ground eased, and Jonas could lift his head.

Ms. Portiere came to a stop by a black door. Jonas took a crawl back, feeling paranoid. He worried she was about to shove him into whatever waited behind it and leave him there. The door had a nasty energy.

Ms. Portiere stood over him and twisted the knob. Jonas felt his heart in his throat. She opened the door a crack, only enough for a sliver of light to seep through, and she waited, glaring at the space between Jonas and the doorframe. He slithered closer. The door swung open and the breath of the whispering books chilled the air so he stopped breathing to prevent inhaling it. It took concentration to resist something he was used to doing. He inched forward and peered into the opening, noticing a spiral of downward, twisting stairs.

“This leads to your old town? The one from the 1600s?”

“Now it’s a cemetery of sorts.”

“I’m afraid to ask … ”

“The dead reside there, but they are very much alive. Just detained.”

Detained. A fancy word for imprisoned. He was about to end up in spirit jail for all eternity, he knew it. The worst part would be when his brothers found out. He pictured Kaleb’s smirk and Jonas’s fingers tightened their grip, clawing at the rotting wood of the doorway.

“Astor founded the most foolproof underground prison for any of the spirited that came into our territories or broke our laws.”

“That’s awful.”

“Why? You don’t think spirits have their own prisons for us?”

I never really sat around and thought about it, you crazy witch.

“Now you know why I was shocked to look up and find you sitting twenty feet away from the doorway.”

Jonas felt his mind shuffling through its contents, trying to remember the names of the underground cities his professors mentioned in Eidolon. He cursed himself for not paying more attention. Even with a brilliant mind, he couldn’t remember what he didn’t hear.

“Down there is where you’ll find our former
haven
,” she said, curling her nose. “Down there is where you’ll find Paradise.”

Alex found it funny how her mind dictated her weather. The temperature in the redwoods didn’t shift much, but during the fall season she walked through the California trees and shivered with the chill from an east coast autumn because that’s what her mind remembered. In Maryland, autumn smelled like chimneys, apple spice, and cinnamon, and such scents flooded her senses as she hid among the crowd on Lazuli Street. She wondered what everyone else smelled.

Alex’s friends were still working in Moribund, so there wasn’t anyone she wanted to see. Her desire to be inconspicuous caused her mind to dress her in a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses. She would fit right in at the floral shop that always projected sunlight.

Last year she hadn’t seen the floral shop—she hadn’t seen a lot of things—but in the spring, she followed a mossy stairway off Lazuli Street labeled: Olfactory Pathway. It led to the small building with a wooden sign: Olfactory Cottage. It was like any ordinary flower store, but each time she visited, something new and spectacular added itself. She’d been there over two dozen times, and now the shop could only be described as magical. Massive waterfalls crashed down from the sky to land in ponds with lily pads that hummed music. Mazes of rosebushes weaved through the yard with benches soft as pillows. Flowers sprang up in clusters varying in shapes, size, smell, movement, and emotion. The gardens stretched for miles. Balloons of rainclouds nourished the land, leaving trails of rainbows, except by the pine trees where snow clouds suspended overhead like white-gray umbrellas.

Alex already finished her requirements for the day. Her activities at the health center left her exhausted before attending Paleo’s one-on-one session though Alex questioned why she needed extra lessons about the history of afterlife science labs. The day left her tired and cold, so a trip to the sunlight was exactly what she needed.

It was a shame she couldn’t relax. Paranoia kept nudging her between the shoulder blades. Someone was watching her, but when she turned no one was there. The softness of the pressure made her wonder who would be looking at her in such a way while she journeyed through a field of pansies.

“Nice hat,” a sardonic voice teased.

She spun around, and Jonas leaped back to avoid the smack. She felt anger boiling in her stomach. “How dare you!”

“What? You look like a beekeeper.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she shrieked.

He raised a finger to his lips. Quiet. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Your brothers have been looking for you.” She didn’t care about her volume. If someone saw Jonas here, so what? That was his problem.

Jonas’s mouth had a natural curl to the edges, and it bothered Alex more than ever.

“Sweet Alex. We both know you’ll forgive me.”

She tried to ignore the fact that he seemed so happy. Whatever he was up to, he was enjoying it. “Don’t bet on it.”

“I’m not the betting kind. I prefer to make my own luck.”

“And you don’t care who you step on to get there.”

“Believe what you want, but I’m here to help you.” He grabbed her elbow and led her to a nearby bench bordered by white tulips.

“Are you allowed to be here?”

“It’s a city like any other.”

She sat down on a bench, and for the first time it was uncomfortable. “You aren’t in trouble after last year?”

He shook his head and the sunlight accentuated stubble along his jaw. She’d never once seen him with facial hair. “I’m a free spirit.”

“You don’t miss it?”

“Hours of workshops every day? Hell, no. I found something much better.”

“I don’t want to ask.”

“Good. Because I can’t tell you about it.”

“Then why are you here?” When he reached for her arm, she snatched it away. “To visit your brothers, I hope. They’re in Moribund.”

He crinkled his nose. “I know where they are. I tried to find you there first. I thought you might go to the butterfly tree.” He softened his tone. “And no, I didn’t go see them. They’d probably tie me up and force me to stay.”

“They love you.”

“No, they love the idea of having a punching bag. They want everything to stay the same because they were happy that way. I wasn’t.”