The Forgotten Locket (17 page)

She twitched her lips back and forth but didn’t say anything.

Dante reached out and touched her knee. “It’s all right. The key is safe. And the River Policeman says you can talk now without it.”

She exhaled as though she’d been holding her breath the entire time. “Oh, good. I knew you could help me.”

“What can I do for you?”

Instead of answering, Valerie tilted her head until it almost touched her shoulder. She waved her hand in front of Dante’s face. “Can you see me?”

Dante didn’t blink. “The River Policeman can see everything.”

She hiccupped a breath, and suddenly tears filled her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. She pressed her hands to her chest. “Then you can see my broken heart?”

Dante nodded gently.

“It’s not fair,” she said, her voice small and sad. “I did everything I was supposed to. Everything he wanted. But it wasn’t enough.
I
wasn’t enough. In the end.” She twisted the edge of the belt of her bathrobe into a knot.

“On the contrary, I think you might have been more than he could handle.”

“It’s been forever since I’ve seen him.” She frowned, and the twisting motion of her hands turned to ripping. “He only comes to see me now when he needs something from me. I don’t like that. I don’t like that he just takes and takes. He used to give me gifts, you know. Bring me special things.” Her face brightened through her tears. “He once gave me a doll. It was pink and silver and it had the letters
L
and
A
on the chest. He told me it stood for
l’ amore,
which means
the love.
I loved it so much I didn’t even care that the dolly didn’t have a head.”

I felt myself turn to stone. That had been my doll once upon a time. Zo had stolen it from me and returned the head as a horrible surprise gift. He had given the rest of the doll to Valerie as a token of his love? A shiver ran up and down my arms like tiny spiders.

“Go on,” Dante said, though with a slight quiver to his voice. “What else?”

“He used to sing to me all the time, but now he hardly even talks to me. I miss hearing him sing,” she sighed. She hummed a few bars of “Into the River,” and I whimpered in pain. The darkness drew a little tighter inside me.

“Valerie,” Dante warned.

The music stopped and she sat up even straighter. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll be good. I promise.”

“Thank you.” Dante took her hand in his. “Tell the River Policeman exactly what you want him to do.”

She looked down at their joined hands and a tear slipped down her cheek. “I want him to fix my broken heart. I want him to make everything all better.”

“How can he do that?”

“By arresting the Pirate King.” A scowl of hate pulled at her face. “You must make him pay,” she growled, squeezing Dante’s hand until her knuckles were white. “Make him hurt. Make him leave
her
alone”—she jerked her head in my direction, but Dante didn’t move—“and make him come back to me.”

Dante lowered his head. A stillness surrounded him, spreading wide to include Valerie, Orlando, and me. When he spoke, his words seemed to echo through the small room. “I promise you, I will stop him. I will keep him away from Abby.”

“Oh, good—” Valerie began.

Dante interrupted, holding up his hand. “But—”

Valerie bit down on her lip.

“But I will
not
allow him to return to you either.”

“What!” Valerie shouted, recoiling back, her fingers snapping into claws.

Her anger rolled off Dante’s calmness. “He is dangerous. And when I stop him, I will send him to prison. That is what a policeman does. That is my job.”

“But we belong together! I belong to him—”

“No!” Dante’s stillness shattered. “You belong to no one but yourself. His claim over you is broken. You must not give in to him again.”

“But I miss him,” Valerie said uncertainly. “The last time I saw him, he asked me to tell him a story.” She rubbed at her eyes. “The stories are so loud in my head, and they don’t all have happy endings anymore.” She leveled a serious look at Dante. “I don’t like stories that don’t have happy endings.”

“What story did you tell him?” I asked. “Was it a story like you used to tell to me? Maybe one about the Pirate King and the River Policeman?” I knew Valerie’s stories were a strange blend of fantasy and fact, prophecies within plots, because it had been partly her stories that had helped me save Dante from certain destruction.

Valerie ignored me and directed her answer to Dante. “I wish it had been. I like those stories the best; they are exciting and adventurous and bloody. No, the last story I told him was about the Pirate King and the Flower Girl. I didn’t like her story.” She shook her head. “The Pirate King didn’t like it either, but I can only tell the stories that want to be told.” Valerie twisted her fingers together in agitation. “It’s the saddest story I know.”

“And you don’t like sad stories,” Dante said gently.

“No, I do not,” she agreed regally.

“Will you tell us the story?” I asked, leaning forward.

“I’m not going to tell
you
anything,” she sneered in my direction.

“Will you tell me?” Dante asked.

The look she gave him was soft and humble and happy. “Oh, yes. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” She patted the floor next to her. “Come closer. This is a story that wants closeness.”

Dante slid forward, but when Valerie sighed in exasperation, he moved even closer.

Jealousy nibbled at me at the sight of the two of them together. I knew it was silly to feel that way, but I still left my seat and knelt next to Dante on the floor.

Valerie glared at me and pressed her lips together.

“She stays.” Dante’s voice left no room for negotiation. “Now, tell the story.”

Valerie shifted on her seat, her hands flitting from her lap to her knees and back again. She bowed her head and mumbled something under her breath.

“What was that?” Dante asked. “What did you say?”

She turned away, her gaze traveling over the glass bottles and sealed containers on the shelves surrounding us. Her fingers twitched and trembled.

“Do you need your dollies?” I asked quietly. “Would that help you tell the story?”

She whipped around to stare at me, hot smears of red on her face. “I don’t need
your
help at all! I can tell the story all by myself.”

Orlando stood up from his seat and walked to the counter, rummaging through the boxes and bottles that were still scattered on the surface until he found a small something he folded into his palm.

“What are you doing?” I asked. Dante tilted his head at the sound of Orlando’s activity.

“Helping,” he said. “I hope.” He pulled out a square of gray fabric from a cupboard and wrapped it around a short, stout bottle filled with a dark red liquid. As he returned to the fireplace, he pulled out the cork and dropped whatever had been in his hand inside the bottle. He handed the bundle to Valerie, who took it from him with shaking hands and wide eyes.

“What is it?” she asked, breathless.

“It’s a doll made of glass. But you must be very careful with it or else it will break.”

Valerie clutched it to her chest. “Oh, I will be ever so careful. I promise.” She began swaying back and forth, rocking her doll like a baby, her eyes closed and a smile appearing on her lips.

“What did you put in it?” I asked Orlando in a low voice.

“A packet of dried apothecary rose petals. When mixed with the liquid inside, the scent will help calm her mind.”

“I remember when you used to make that for me,” Dante said quietly to his brother. “For when my dreams were unusually bad.”

I nodded to Orlando, grateful for his quick thinking and for his ability to help Valerie now and Dante then.

Valerie’s eyes fluttered open. “Even though the Flower Girl lived in a sad story, she wasn’t always so sad,” she began in a soft, rock-a-bye voice. She tucked the cloth tighter around the bottle, holding it up to her cheek. A kindness entered her face, softening it back to the familiar features I remembered. “When she was young, she was yellow and gold and light. She was as fragile as a wish made on dandelion seeds, as quiet as clouds across a summertime sunset.”

I leaned against Dante’s shoulder, lulled by the ebb and flow of Valerie’s story. Unlike the tales she told of cunning pirates and stoic policemen, this one felt gentle. The cadence reminded me a little of how I felt when I listened to Zo’s music or Dante’s poetry, but instead of summoning a dangerous darkness or a healing light, this rhythm made me think of standing on the edge of the ocean and watching the waves roll in.

“She was a mouse. Happy to be hidden, happy to nibble at the edges of life. But even though she was small, her heart was full of love, love, love.

“There was a meadow she liked to visit. A sprawling, rolling ocean of flowers and grass. She loved to dance in that meadow. But then one day the Pirate King sailed up and said that he would take her away from her meadow, from her flowers and her friends. The Pirate King said that it would make him happy to make her live on his giant pirate ship. He said that once they sailed away, she would never have to come back home.

“But instead of making the Flower Girl happy, that news made her sad. She didn’t want to leave her family. And she didn’t like the Pirate King. She didn’t like his black eyes or his sharp teeth. She may have been a mouse, but even a mouse can roar. The Flower Girl said no to the Pirate King.” Valerie shuddered with surprise and disbelief.

“So the Pirate King plucked the Flower Girl and cast her aside.” Valerie gently stroked the cloth wrapped around the bottle in her lap. “He left her in the meadow that she loved, where she withered and died, her heart pierced with a thorn and all the petals of her soul crumbling to dust.”

Valerie’s voice trailed off into silence for a moment before she finished the story.

“And after she died, the river swept her away, never to return, just like it will sweep all of us away one day.” She blinked slowly at me and Orlando, and a sad and broken smile fluttered across her lips. “Well, not
us,
of course—not anymore.” She leaned toward Dante, whispering conspiratorially. “And not
you,
either. Not unless you choose to go.”

“I’ll not leave Abby behind,” Dante said firmly. “No matter what.”

“Then I can’t promise you’ll have a happy ending to your story either,” Valerie said sadly. “You know the barriers are thinning. You know some of them are even breaking.”

“Yes, but we’re going to fix them—” I started.

“I already told you—you’re too late. Everlastingly too late.” She lowered the bottle to her lap, a little of the liquid spilling out onto her clothes. “The dreams are already escaping. Soon they will all be gone. And then nothing will be left.”

“Do you still have a dream, Valerie?” Dante asked quietly. “Or has yours already escaped?”

She looked down at the glass in her lap; the red rose petals had darkened the liquid to the color of blood. “I dream of standing still. I am tired of feeling like I’m flying when I know I’m really falling. I want to rest. I want to find silence again.” She ran her finger along the curved edge of the bottle, and when she looked up, her eyes were bright with an inner light. “People think edges are bad, but they are really there to keep us from falling to pieces. They don’t hold us back, they hold us in. They hold us together.”

I blinked back tears. This was the closest I’d seen Valerie to being back to her old self. Dante’s poem and Orlando’s potion had worked wonders. Maybe, with a little more time and a little more help, we could bring her all the way back to sanity.

“I know how you feel, Valerie,” I said quietly, knowing it was the truth. “And I promise I’ll do what I can to help your dream to come true.”

“Oh, Abby, my sweet,” a voice rang out from the front door of the shop. “You should know better than to make promises you can’t keep.”

Chapter 13

I jumped to my feet a second after Dante did. He automatically positioned himself between me and the figure who slouched against the door frame.

Valerie twisted around as well, the bottle in her lap crashing to the floor. When she saw Zo standing in the doorway, she cried out with joy.

“You came back for me! I knew you would!” She crawled through the shards of broken glass toward him.

When she was close enough to touch his knee, Zo looked down in disgust, closed the door behind him, and sidestepped her grasping hand. He stalked forward, his boots cracking against the floor, drawing a straight line from the door to Dante. And to me, standing behind him.

“Wait! It’s me. Look at me! I’m here! I’ve been waiting for you.” Valerie’s voice rang out louder and more urgently the farther Zo walked away from her. “No, please! Don’t go!”