Zen and the Art of Vampires (17 page)

“The man with the knife.” I ran my hands through my hair again. “I told you it was complicated.”

“Honey, that's not even close to the word I'd use for it.”

There was a knock at the door and an inquiry.

“Occupied! Be out in just a minute!” Magda shouted at it, then turned back to me. “What can I do to help?”

“Oh, god love you,” I said, filled with appreciation. I gave her a swift hug. “Bless you for not pestering me with a thousand and one questions. I need money, mostly. I don't have anywhere to stay and haven't eaten since yesterday—”

“Say no more,” she said, digging out a money belt. She handed me a handful of cash. “I'm afraid that's all I have. I was going to cash a traveler's check in the morning. Is that enough?”

I counted it quickly. It was about a hundred dollars in euros. “It's more than enough,” I lied. “Thank you so much.”

“Husbands and lovers and Karls with their wives aside, I think you really should go to the police,” she counseled. “If people are being murdered in front of you, you have to do something about it. You can't just run away.”

“I am going to do something,” I said, mentally girding my loins. “I'm going to go to the only person who can help me.”

“Karl?” Magda guessed. “Alec?”

“No. Kristjana.”

“Is she a lover, too?” she asked hesitantly.

I smiled. “No, she's a woman who runs the religious cult I mentioned earlier. Kristoff said she'd try to kill me, but I think I know a way around that.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but pounding on the door halted her.

“Magda? Are you in there?”

“Denise!” Magda hissed.

I spun around in the tiny bathroom. It consisted of a sink, toilet, and mirror, with a tiny window that would be impossible for more than one of my legs to fit through. “Crap! I have to hide!”

“Here. Put this on and hide your face,” Magda said, shoving the wig at me before turning to bellow at the door. “Just a second! Give a girl a chance, for cripe's sake.”

“Are you all right?” Denise called, her voice filled with suspicion. “Who are you talking to?”

“I popped my zipper, if you must know, and this lady is helping me get decent.”

I hurriedly stuffed my hair back under the wig and draped the long tresses around my face.

“You ready?” Magda asked, her hand on the door lock.

I nodded and dipped my head.

Magda unlocked the door and shoved her way out, pushing herself directly in front of Denise, acting as a human screen for me. “Just the person I need. I think I have something in my eye. Do you see anything?”

Through the wall of hair hanging over my face, I could see Denise trying to get a look at me over Magda's shoulder, but the latter adroitly stepped to the side and blocked her view. I hurried into the little room I'd used before, counting to twenty before poking my head out. I just caught the sight of Magda whisking Denise back into the main room. I sent her another mental thanks and shucked my flimsy outfit.

Someone spoke as I left the room.

“What? Sorry? I'm . . . a bit light-headed. Do you speak English?”

The man, who wore a reproduction Viking outfit of leather and wool, carrying a huge tub of ice cream, nodded. “English, yes. You sick?”

“Just need a breath of fresh air. Is that the way out? Great. I'll just get a little air and then get back to the show. It's great so far,” I said as I hurried out the door to freedom.

I was about a block away when I was grabbed from behind.

“Gotcha!” Magda said, laughing when I clutched my chest. I seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, looking around for anyone else.

“I'm coming with you. You don't think I'd miss meeting Alec and Karl and your murderous husband, do you?” She grinned. “This is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me, and I'm not going to miss one single moment of it!”

“You're insane.”

“I know, but it's better than being bored, don't you think? Where are we going?”

“The library.” I gave Magda a very stern look. “You really should not be getting involved in this.”

She whapped me on the arm with the bottle of water I'd given her earlier. “I already am involved. You're wanted by the police, you know. And I helped you escape. That's aiding and abetting or something like that, so I figured as long as I'm in it for that, I might as well have some fun out of the whole thing. Why are we going to the library? Is that where the murderer is? I've never seen a murderer up close. Are you sure it's safe?”

“I don't know where Kristoff is,” I said, somewhat bemused by her enthusiasm for something that seemed so horrible to me. “And honestly, I don't want to know. There are some . . . er . . . people in the library. Magda . . .”

I stopped outside the window that I had used to leave the library, biting my lip as I considered the woman standing beside me. I didn't quite know how I was going to explain the ghosts and the whole bit about being a Zorya.

“What? If it's about me being here, don't worry. I told Raymond that I needed some time to myself, and that I'd see him tomorrow.” Dimples burst forth on her cheeks as she grinned. “Since we've been going at it rather fast and furious the last few days, I think he was only too happy to get a decent night's rest.”

“It's not that I'm worried about. It's . . . well . . . do you believe in life after death?”

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Do I believe in what?”

“Ghosts. You know, spirits of people who have died but, for whatever reason, haven't made it to heaven or hell or whatever afterlife you believe in. That sort of thing.” I watched her closely, worried she'd regret helping me.

To my surprise, she didn't scoff at the question. “As a matter of fact, I do believe in it. When my grandmother died, I knew the exact moment even though I was all the way over in California, and she was in Maine. She woke me up in the middle of the night, and said she loved me, and she wanted me to be happy. In the morning, when I woke up, I thought I'd had a dream, but later my mom called to say Grandma had died at the same exact time I saw her. So yes, I believe in spirits.”

“That's going to make things a whole lot easier,” I said, and tapped on the window. Marta appeared. I gestured toward the lock, watching Magda.

Marta transformed herself into a solid figure and flipped open the lock. Magda's jaw dropped.

“Did she . . . is that . . . ,” she stammered, pointing at Marta.

“You can see her? Oh, good. I wondered if other people can see them in their solid form. I guess only Zoryas can see them in their normal state. Come on, I don't want anyone to see us loitering out here.”

Magda followed me into the window, watching with complete astonishment as Marta, smiling, faded back to her normal translucent self.

“Where'd she go?” Magda asked in a whisper.

“She's here, but in a low-energy state. You can't see her without this,” I said, holding up my wrist. The stone had switched into lantern form and was glowing with a gentle silvery light. “I'm a Zorya. They're someone who takes dead people to their final resting places. Or some dead people—I'm not quite sure about all the details. But the upshot is that there are fifteen ghosts here, sixteen if you count the horse, and I'm supposed to take them to Ostri. I don't suppose you've ever heard of it?”

Magda, uncharacteristically silent, just shook her head, her mouth slightly ajar as she looked around the main room of the library. Several of the ghosts were seated at a table, bent over books, alternating between solid and transparent modes in order, I assumed, to save energy.

“Who are they?”

“That's Karl and his wife, Marta. They're the first ghosts I met. Ulfur is over there at the computer with a young woman whose name I don't know. That's his horse eating the potted plant. The rest of the people are from Ulfur's village. Their village was wiped out by a natural disaster sometime in the mid-1800s, from what I can tell. Don't bring up the subject of pigs or chicken.”

She pursed her lips for a moment, then nodded. “What are they doing?”

“Researching, hopefully. Hello, everyone!” I raised my voice in order to cut through the murmur of conversation. “I'm back, and I've brought a friend. This is Magda. She's new to all this, like me. Have you found anything out about Ostri?”

“Ulfur did,” Ingveldur said with pride, beaming at him. “In a book about mythology. Show the reaper, Ulfur.”

“I don't know how helpful it will be,” Ulfur said, gesturing to a distant table where a thick book had been placed. He escorted us over to it. I glanced at the book, but it was in Icelandic. “This is an entry for Ostri. It includes alternate spellings, and the etymology of the word, but has little about the meaning. It just says that in Basque and Iberian religions, Ostri was used to refer to heaven. The word changed over time, and later came to mean the Christians' concept of God.”

“Hmm. It doesn't say anything about where it is?”

He shook his head.

“Crap. Was there anything about it online?”

“Not much more than what's in the book,” he answered, going back to the terminal. “Dagrun found similar references to Ostri, but no specifics about how you get there. The information on the Brotherhood, however, is very interesting.”

“Oh, really?” Magda and I crowded around the computer terminal.

“What's the Brotherhood?” Magda asked as I scanned the screen.

“The religious group who maintains the Zoryas. Is this their Web site?”

“Yes.” Ulfur watched me as I read the page.

“That is interesting,” I said.

“What's interesting?” Magda asked. “All I see is Brotherhood of the Blessed Light, a list of cities, and a Web page counter. There's not much there to be interesting.”

“I find it interesting to know that the Brotherhood evidently has branches or churches or whatever they call gatherings of their members in all of the major cities of the world, including seven U.S. cities. And I don't think that's a Web page counter,” I said, a chill feeling gripping my stomach.

She looked again. “Then what's it counting? People it's helped? Spirits, I mean?”

I shook my head slowly. “I think it's the number of vampires they've . . . er . . . cleansed over the centuries.”

“Vampires!” Magda said, plopping herself down in a chair. “All right, spill. I want to hear everything, right from the start.”

I gave her an abridged version of recent happenings while puzzling over the starkness of the Brotherhood Web site. As Magda noted, there was nothing there other than a symbolic moon, the name, a list of major cities, and a somber number.

“You're married to a vampire,” she said, looking a bit stunned.

“Yup.”

“And the other man, the one you said didn't kill the other Zorya, he is also a vampire.”

“So Kristoff says, and I really don't know why he'd lie about Alec.”

She thought about that for a few minutes. “You slept with a vampire. Did he . . . you know . . . dine?”

I blinked in surprise at the question. “Kristoff says yes, and I suppose he'd know, but I'm not convinced, not absolutely. There was nibbling going on, but I don't recall anything out of the ordinary.”

“Wow,” she said, looking at me with something akin to awe. “That's just . . . wow. I really want to meet this Alec. Not that I'll take him from you, because one, you're a friend, and I wouldn't do that to a friend, but mostly because it's clear you guys have some sort of a connection.”

I dropped my gaze, unwilling to follow that thread.

“One thousand, one hundred and eighteen,” Magda said, her attention returned to the screen. She let out a low whistle. “That's a lot of vampires.”

I thought of Kristoff's girlfriend. That, too, was an uncomfortable line of thought. “Yeah. Did you find out anything about the history of the Brotherhood?” I asked the young woman named Dagrun.

“Not much.” She tapped a few keys and pulled up a Web page that appeared to focus on mystical societies. There was a brief description of the Brotherhood, with reference to reapers lighting the way of the dead, but nothing specific or even helpful.

“Well, pooh.” I gnawed my lip for a few seconds, then sighed and said, “I guess we're going to have to go to the source for information.”