“You could say that.” Lussi wasn’t sure how much she wanted to reveal. She needed to hear more. He hadn’t earned her trust yet. He’d earned this meeting, but that was it. “You’re not a ghost, are you? Because if you are, you have to tell me. It’s a rule.”
“Do I look like a ghost?”
“I’ve never seen one.”
“I’m not a ghost, no. Were you expecting a spectral visitation today?”
“Just curious,” she said. “A lot of weird shit has been happening lately. Tell me, though, why you would want to help me? You don’t even know me. I could be a terrible person. The type of person who steals a coworker’s lunch out of the fridge.”
He lowered his head, closed his eyes. “I’m just somebody who used to be where you are—confused, scared. Trying to make sense of things.” He fixed his gaze on her. “You’re in a stronger position than I ever was. Maybe you can even do something about it. You’re asking the right questions, at least.”
It was close to noon. She would have to return shortly. She owed Fabien an explanation. And she owed her coworkers an explanation, too, before somebody stumbled upon the blood-spattered art department.
“Let’s hear it, then,” she told him. “The Cliff’s Notes version, preferably.”
* * *
—
Frederick–aka Fred, aka Peter—had attended a Jesuit seminary, but the priesthood wasn’t for him. “A professor suggested I try publishing, thought I had an eye for parsing the texts,” he said. “Turns out he’d been in the army with Xavier Blackwood. He slipped him my resume. The timing couldn’t have been better—they were starting a religion imprint under their nonfiction banner, Swan Creek.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Not long. I’ve been told I have a baby face.” He grinned. Not even a smile line around his eyes.
By the end of his first week at Blackwood, he said, he sensed a strangeness. The other employees were detached, distant. When he smiled at them, they looked away. “I thought maybe they didn’t like brothers,” he said with a laugh, although it was clear to Lussi he wasn’t kidding. “Publishing is a pretty white industry. Of course, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”
Lussi thought of the one Black guy in sales at Broken Angel. That was considered a diverse workplace.
“Took a while for the other employees to embrace me. After that initial bumpy patch, I started to feel more like a part of the company. Can’t say I ever fit in, but as you’ve no doubt guessed, Blackwood-Patterson takes square pegs and fits them into round holes.”
“This bumpy patch at the beginning. Were you, how do I put this…were you hazed?”
Frederick was silent for a moment. The honking and the sirens and the shouting continued in the distance. Finally, he fixed his gaze on her. “Alan.”
The maintenance man had the run of the building. He had a key to every office. Of course—
“You know who I’m talking about then,” Frederick said, reading her expression. “I’m hesitant to say anything, because I don’t like telling tales out of school. That man has a wicked streak…but I don’t think he’s the root cause of what’s happening in that building.”
Her sense of relief withered and died.
Frederick looked to the sky, which had grown overcast. The deluge of precipitation had slowed to a trickle. Lussi wondered if anyone had returned from the funeral reception yet, and if they could pick her out of the crowded area.
“Do you know the story behind the bars on the building?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Just that they might repel evil spirits. If you believe in that sort of thing.”
“The East Village used to be known as Little Germany,” Frederick said, gesturing around them. “Almost every old building in this neighborhood was either built, owned, or rented at the time by first- and second-generation German Americans. Like all immigrants, they brought their own folklore…including curious beliefs about iron and silver. Those two metals were said to be uniquely suited to repelling ghosts and other malevolent entities.”
Industrialist Theobold Ottomar Wagner constructed the edifice now known as the Blackwood Building in the late 1800s, he explained. Wagner, being a superstitious man like every other rich prick, paid top dollar to protect himself and his fortune from enemies both real and imagined—including ones of the supernatural persuasion. “The rich live in constant fear of being destitute,” Frederick said. “As they should.”
“You’re saying that spirits can’t break into the building,” Lussi said. “Because of the iron.”
“I’m saying Theobold Ottomar Wagner believed that.” He fixed his gaze on her. “And if there’s any truth to the folklore, it also stands to reason that the bars could trap evil within the building. I worked there for two and a half months—didn’t even make it to ninety days. The evil that I felt…” He shook his head. “I started digging into the building’s past, looking into strange accidents and disappearances. Asking questions. The wrong questions, apparently. They let me go.”
“You believe evil has a physical presence that can be trapped.”
“The Church’s Catechism says that evil is the absence of good, and that—”
“Not the Church,” she said. “I asked what you believe.”
Frederick reached into the inner pockets of his trench coat. Lussi tensed until she saw him produce a book wrapped in kraft paper. He passed it to her. “Do not bring detestable things into your home, for then you will be destroyed, just like them.”
He tipped his cap to her and was gone before she could stop him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The emergency vehicles had departed by the time Lussi returned to the Blackwood Building. The door was closed and Gail wasn’t at the front desk. “Anyone here?” Lussi yelled in the lobby, her voice bouncing back from the upper reaches of the atrium. No response other than the echo of her own voice. The reception must have still been going on. No telling how long the literati would hold court if there was an open bar.
She sat in Gail’s chair. From the front desk, she could keep an eye on the door. Better to check out Frederick’s book here, than to get lost reading it in her office and have someone surprise her.
She fished the wrapped book out of her jacket. It would have been nice if Frederick had given her some hint about the book, but he hadn’t. She’d come across a fair number of occult texts in her day. They were a staple of horror fiction. Real-life occult books always disappointed, though. They were less repositories of forbidden knowledge and more repositories of bad writing.
Lussi unwrapped the book. It was a cracked black leather hardback. According to the gold lettering on the cover, it was…a Bible? This was the “detestable thing” he’d warned her not to take home? She hadn’t expected the Egyptian Book of the Dead, but this was the literary equivalent of receiving a sweater for Christmas.
The title page indicated it was printed in 1924. The interior pages were in remarkably decent condition for a book over sixty years old—no yellowing, though the gilt edges had been mostly rubbed off. Still, it was impressive. Lussi had mass-market paperbacks from the late seventies that had already fallen to pieces.
There was a clatter above her head inside the ceiling. It almost sounded like somebody was kicking boxes around in the attic.
“You’re not a ghost,” she said loud enough so the not-ghost could hear her. “You’re just a raccoon. So shut up—I’m trying to read down here.”
The noise stopped.
She fanned the pages. Nothing out of the ordinary about it. She hadn’t been wrong about him—he had wanted to protect her, but not with a pagan doll. With a Bible. If he’d only told her what it was, she could have saved him the trouble—Lussi had a Bible at home. It was gathering dust, but she had one. She really, really didn’t need a second copy.
The sou
nd of the locks disengaging woke her, as if from a deep sleep. “Shit, shit, shit,” she said, stuffing the Bible into her jacket. She sat up straight, crossing her hands on the desk. No, in her lap. No, on the desk. She did her best to wipe the guilty look off her face as The Raven entered.
The editor in chief spied Lussi and went straight for her. She was clutching a book in her hand, waving it in front of her face as if to dispel some unseen evil. “What happened in here? It smells like a campfire.”
“Does it?” Lussi said. She sniffed her shirt. It smelled faintly of smoke.
The Raven slapped the book down on the desk with a thwap. “And what is this?”
Lussi picked it up, a trade paperback that felt cheap in her hands. A Cannibal in Manhattan by Tama Janowitz. In small type in the corner, it said, ADVANCE READING COPY. NOT FOR SALE. Lussi slapped her forehead. “This isn’t…”
“The galleys you were supposed to be watching for?” The Raven said, removing her gloves. “I found that on a vagrant’s blanket down the street, on top of a pile of used books. It was the only copy, so Lord knows what happened to the rest. I had to pay him seventy-five cents out of my own pocket. Wait…is that blood in your hair, Lussi?”
* * *
—
After The Raven heard what had happened to Stanley, she insisted Lussi take the rest of the afternoon off. “I’ll make sure we get a cleaning crew in here to take care of the art department,” The Raven said. She ran a finger over the desk, leaving a clear trail through the buildup of dust and dirt. “Maybe they can tidy up the rest of this place, too.” She told Lussi not to worry about the galleys. They were replaceable. Lussi’s suddenly fragile sanity was not.
Lussi did not mention Frederick.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When Lussi entered her apartment, she tripped over a stack of books inside the entryway, sending them flying. She picked herself up off the carpet—the deep shag had cushioned her fall. She’d been meaning to take the books to the office to fill out her bookshelves. Anything to free up space in her apartment without actually getting rid of any books. In her next apartment—preferably not on Satan Island—she would invest in proper bookshelves. No more hand-me-down plywood shelves from the curb. Trouble was, no amount of shelving would ever be enough. She worked in publishing—when she returned home and brushed her hair, books tumbled out.
Lussi shrugged off her coat. She laid on the living room couch and was immediately pounced on by her tabby.
“Not tonight, Radcliffe,” Lussi said, giving him a tiny scratch behind the ears. She set all twelve pounds of him down onto the carpet as gently as she could. Radcliffe stood on his tiptoes, peering over the couch at her, examining her. Did he smell the blood in her hair? The cat remembered he had somewhere important to be and shot off down the hall.
“That’s right,” Lussi said. “Go paw at Casey’s door.” Her roommate had taken the train to Philly on Sunday to see her boyfriend. She wouldn’t be home until later in the week.
From the couch, Lussi had an unobstructed view of the city—the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Twin Towers. She couldn’t see the Blackwood Building from here but it loomed over the entire city in her mind, casting a long, sinister shadow.
The dark side of life had always fascinated her. It may have started with Oma’s stories, but the first real imprints on her brain were in stark black-and-white: Dracula. The Mummy. Frankenstein’s monster. Some of her fondest memories from childhood were of watching those old Universal creature features with her dad on Saturday nights. It was a thrill she’d also found in the short stories of Poe and Lovecraft. At no point, however, had she ever believed any of the supernatural stuff was real. She never worried there was a monster under the bed—though, if there had been, it would have ruled.
At least that’s what she thought at the time.
Now she wasn’t so sure. When faced with strangers warning her that her life was in danger and coworkers bleeding all over her, she wasn’t sure at all.
* * *
—
After showering, Lussi dialed Fabien on her roommate’s hot dog phone. She didn’t like to go into Casey’s bedroom when she wasn’t home, but these were extenuating circumstances.
“Hello?” Fabien answered. He sounded groggy, like he’d just woken up.
She told him she needed to talk to him. In person. She wanted to show him the Bible, which she’d left at the office out of an abundance of caution. See if Fabien noticed anything unusual about it. He was something of an expert on unusual books. The last thing she wanted to do was involve any of her friends now working at other publishing houses. They would think she was—
“Crazy? You mean like someone who dashes into traffic during an otherwise ordinary conversation, disappears into a wooded expanse, and doesn’t return?”
She apologized profusely, but he told her not to worry. “Here’s the situation, though: I’ve already left the house once today. I’m not keen to do it again. There are too many tourists out and about—it’s like they’ve never seen snow before. Hey, honey, let’s take a holiday with the kids to the city! We’ll see that big ol’ Christmas tree, take in a Broadway matinee, and let our children sit on a stranger’s lap at Macy’s.”
She switched the phone from one ear to the other. Talking into a plastic hot dog bun was not very comfortable. “How about the library on Fifth and Forty-second? The one with the lions out front.”
“Patience and Fortitude,” he said. “That’s the research branch, you know. And this is the week before finals. It will be crawling with college students on speed.”
“This is New York City. If you’re that averse to crowds, I’ve got news for you.”
“I wasn’t complaining,” he said. “Au contraire. I’m fresh out of disco biscuits.”
“Are you talking about college students or speed?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he said. She could hear the smirk in his voice.
They agreed to meet at seven. She worked for a while on her list of suspects—people who could be potentially hazing her and attacking the others. She didn’t have evidence that everything was connected, but she had a gut feeling all the activity could be traced back to one person. On a fresh page in her day planner, she jotted their names down in one column, with notes about each of them in another. What she came up with was…nothing. Xavier? Sorry, Sloppy Joe, but ghosts weren’t real. Stanley and Cal could be safely crossed out. Same with Agnes, who hadn’t set foot in the building since the day Lussi had interviewed. She crossed name after name off the list. Eventually, she laid her pen down and settled into a long winter’s nap.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
On her way to meet Fabien, Lussi took a quick detour to the office to pick up the Bible. Gail wasn’t at the front desk, but Lussi could hear someone pecking away at a typewriter upstairs. She took a deep breath in the lobby, staring up at the third floor. Her plan was to get in and get out. A covert operation. The sun had already set, and the shadows cast by the wall lamps would conceal her as she slipped into her office.
Cal emerged from the hall into the third-floor foyer. “Oh, hey, boss,” he said with a wave. When he raised his arm, his crutch fell to the side. They both watched it tumble down the spiral stairs like the world’s loudest Slinky. It came to a rest on the second-floor landing. “It’s okay, I’ve got another one,” he shouted down to Lussi.
She walked up the steps and picked up his wayward crutch. So much for being covert. “What are you still doing here?”
“Trying to make up time from this morning. The funeral was really long.”
“Catholic service?”
His brow jumped. “How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess,” she said. She was about to tell him that since he was an unpaid intern, “making up time” was a moot point. But she’d hold her tongue for now. She had more important matters
. She offered to help him down the stairs but wasn’t surprised when he declined. Definitely a try-hard if she’d ever met one.
She went to her office and opened the top drawer of her desk. It was empty. Frederick’s Bible was missing.
She heard a light knock and glanced up to see Rachael standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway lights. Lussi glanced at her watch; twenty past six. She had to be at Union Square Station in fifteen minutes if she wanted to get to the New York Public Library in time. “Hey, Rachael. I need to head out in a minute. Anything I can help you with?”
Rachael had been to St. Vincent’s to see Stanley. His wife wanted to pass along her thanks to Lussi. “Another hour or two and the hemorrhaging in his brain would have killed him.”
Lussi placed her hands over her heart. “That’s a relief. How soon will he get out? I might stop by to see him.”
“He’ll be in there for a while. Like, a really, really long while.”
Rachael explained that the pencil had drilled deep into the soft tissue of his frontal lobe. Three-quarters of an inch. It didn’t sound like much to Lussi, but it was enough to cripple his ability to speak. He could understand you—you could tell by the knowing look in his eyes. He couldn’t verbalize his thoughts, though. He couldn’t tell you his name or where he was born. He couldn’t tell you that Bush was vice president. Every answer was there. Every answer, on the tip of his tongue. Just out of reach.
“He can’t even write. There’s only one thing he can do,” Rachael said. “Draw pictures. And none of them make any sense.” She reached into her slacks and unfolded a scrap of notebook paper. “This is the one he gave me. What am I supposed to do, stick it on my fridge?”
Lussi looked it over. The horns, the fur…the teeth. He’d sketched Perky. Was this because he’d been in his office staring at the doll all night as he bled out?
Secret Santa Page 11
