Our Lady of the Various Sorrows (Voices of the Dead Book 2)

by Victoria Raschke

  “Pretty fucking effective warning.” They walked back out to the landing where Leo stood with Ivanka, Faron, and Vesna. As she left the kitchen, she caught a confusion of scents underneath everything. Something out of place, old leather and orange blossoms.

  The neighbors were poking their faces out of cracked-open doors. None of them were going to get much sleep.

  “I called the police.” Leo tucked his phone back into the recesses of his cassock. How many pockets did that thing have?

  “Did you ask for Marta?” Jo wrapped her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck and wound an elastic around it.

  “As soon as I gave the address, the operator asked me to hold.”

  Apparently Zajčeva ulica 2 wasn’t the only address on Investigator Klančnik’s special attention list.

  Marta arrived with Gustaf and the same uniformed officer who’d photographed the graffiti at the shop. Gustaf didn’t look too pleased to be beaten to the scene by Leo, but he hid it well except for the little dark cloud hovering over his head. He was immaculately, if predictably, dressed. Gray pants, gray sweater, charcoal overcoat with a few snowflakes melting on the shoulders. His clothes matched his eyes and hair; even his skin had a gray cast. He looked faded standing next to Leo in his black wool cassock, his hair still mostly dark. These were her supposed protectors, a tiny gray man and a literal giant of the Church. There was a comedy sketch in there somewhere, but not tonight.

  Marta shooed most of them to the entranceway downstairs. It was getting crowded on the landing. She went inside with Faron and the officer, then called Gustaf in after a string of swears sifted down the stairwell to them.

  Jo went back up and leaned against the door jamb listening to Marta instruct the officer to take photos of everything in the kitchen. Faron and Gustaf stood in the hallway, though they hadn’t noticed she’d returned. She reached her hand out to the opposite jamb on the side where the door closed and met the lock, then pulled it away with a start.

  She’d seen Rok, opening the door, keys in hand, over and over again and then a flash of Matjaž standing in the door, his hand on the jamb where hers had been. Where the fuck had that come from? When had Matjaž ever been to that apartment? Maybe she had brought a vestige of him the night she’d pounced on Rok after she and Matjaž had had their moment in Tivoli? She definitely needed a further debriefing with Gustaf. He needed to come clean on all the shit Voices were capable of, because this piecemeal crap wasn’t working.

  Gustaf turned, saw her in the doorway and joined her on the landing. “This is not good.”

  “No shit.” She hadn’t even processed how angry she was at him for leaving out the dangers of being a door for shades to fuck their way back into the world.

  “Faron and Ivanka cannot stay here until it is determined who left this grisly calling card for them.”

  “That thought had already occurred to me.” Ivanka could go back to her aunt’s with her sisters, and Faron could stay with her. But she doubted that’s how it would pan out. Faron wasn’t going to like the idea of being separated from his girlfriend, not after this. “We’ll figure something out.”

  Gustaf stepped closer to her and lowered his voice. “I do not think it is a coincidence these things — here, the teashop vandals — have occurred now that Dušan Črnigad is in Ljubljana.”

  Jo had not connected the two. This wasn’t Dušan’s work. She was sure about that, but she would have been hard-pressed to come up with a concrete reason for believing he wasn’t involved. Dušan, even with her new information about him, was always at arm’s length. This was visceral and personal in a way he didn’t seem capable of, at least not outside of the affair that had produced their son.

  Their son.

  When was the last time she’d even thought those words together? Faron had always felt like hers alone.

  “I don’t think it’s Dušan. Something else is going on here.”

  “Perhaps.” Gustaf looked dubious of her pronouncement.

  “Look, Dušan came to warn me Faron might be in danger.” This wasn’t exactly what she’d imagined that danger would look like.

  Gustaf looked up at her, startled. “You’ve seen him? I thought you only returned this evening?”

  “He came to Tolmin.”

  “That is interesting. What else did he tell you?” He looked expectant. She had no intention of telling him everything, not until she got what she needed out of him.

  “Maybe we should meet with Dušan, and he can fill you in?”

  He stepped back. “Perhaps. Yes, that would be best.”

  Marta joined them on the landing. “Ms. Wiley, you seem to be unable to stay out of trouble.” Her expression was hard to read but registered somewhere between darkly amused and exasperated.

  “It would seem.” She’d love nothing more than to stay out of trouble, especially the kind of trouble that spilled over onto the people she cared about.

  “I’ll leave Officer Kovač here until your son’s roommate returns. The rest of you can clear out.” She turned to go back into the flat and stopped. “Any idea who would leave this kind of thing for your kid or his girlfriend?”

  Jo shook her head. “I’d like to know, though.” This was way beyond kicking someone in the shins.

  Jo had been right about separating Faron and Ivanka. Vesna offered her flat to them. She could sleep on Jo’s futon. She watched as Faron and Ivanka had walked back to Zajčeva ahead of her and the others. Faron held his girlfriend’s hand, and Jo sensed a glow between them, a soft pink light that bounced back and forth at their shoulders. She really needed some sleep, in her own bed. Alone.

  Gustaf waved goodnight and took the stairs up to his flat. Leo waited with her outside her apartment while Vesna got Faron and Ivanka settled and grabbed her things for an overnight.

  Leo took her hand once they were alone. “Your hands are like ice.”

  “I’m always cold. It started the night Helena died and hasn’t gone away. I asked Aunt Jackie about it, but it seems, like too many other things, to be unique to me. Even Gustaf didn’t have an answer.” She’d gotten used to it, but it was yet another thing that marked her as changed.

  He put his other hand up to touch her face but hesitated. “May I?”

  She closed her eyes and nodded almost imperceptibly.

  He cupped her jaw in his hand. “May I offer you a blessing, Jo? It may be one of my last as a man of the cloth.”

  She nodded again. She wasn’t ready to talk about what his decision might mean, for him or for her.

  He bowed his head and spoke in Latin, ending again with an amen.

  “And what did you say this time?” She had to look up at him, way up.

  “I asked God to keep his guardians close to you and Faron.” He moved his hand to the back of her neck, almost cradling her head in his palm.

  “There was more than that.”

  “There was. I also asked Him to protect you even if He withdrew His favor from me as I break my vows to the church.”

  “Do you think your god is as petty as that?”

  “I don’t want to believe that is true, but my experience of Him has been less, shall we say, immediate than my experience of other gods of late. And their actions are indeed petty.”

  She didn’t think Dušan or even Achelous, with whom she had a tenuous relationship, were petty. Vain, maybe, but not petty. She hoped that held for Leo’s god, as well.

  “I never thought I’d be the one who had more faith in gods than you.”

  He laughed. “I never thought I’d hear you use the word ‘faith’ in that context.”

  “I’m not a worshipper, but you were right when you said I did believe in something, even if I couldn’t name it.”

  He leaned down and kissed her. It was warm but chaste, and it wrapped her in the scent of beeswax and brazier smoke. Would he
lose that when he no longer belonged to the church?

  They separated, almost guiltily, when Vesna came out of her apartment with a robe thrown over her shoulder and a bag in hand.

  She rolled her eyes at both of them. “You do realize there isn’t much you can hide from me? Your faces give you away more than your auras ever could.”

  Chapter 15

  Matjaž sat up, awakened by the bedside light when he’d rolled over. He was on top of the duvet, still in his clothes from the day. A fog started to clear from his senses. When did he get home? The last thing he remembered was leaving the National Library and walking to his car.

  He sat up on the edge of the bed, his limbs heavy and uncooperative. Where were his car and the notes he’d taken in the reading room?

  Standing in front of the mirror in his bathroom, he looked into a tired face. His hair was down, and he noticed the gray that had started at his temples had spread into his crown. He was sure he’d aged five years in the few months since his sister’s death. Every time he remembered her, it was an image of her body on the mosaic floor at the Emona house, her eyes wide and empty, that came to mind. He hoped eventually it would be images of their childhood or when he was at university and she had followed him like a puppy and flirted with his friends.

  He took a piss and came back to the sink to wash his hands. Dried blood ringed his cuticles. Had he scratched himself in his sleep? A tear-shaped drop of blood marred the left leg of his jeans, but there was nothing else. He balled his clothes up and threw them in the basket.

  The clock over the sink in the kitchen said it was almost midnight. He’d left the library at 7 p.m. at the latest. How had he lost five hours? The possibilities weren’t particularly comforting. Coming from a family like his, those possibilities were narrow and always pointed to something dark. He thought he’d done a better job of separating himself, but his recent avenue of research may have brushed him up against those things he’d prefer to forget.

  ——

  Give in…give in…give in…drifted through Jo’s thoughts. Leo had gone to spend the night at the rectory. She knew Helena would come as soon as she was back in town and alone. She’d counted on it. Now she wasn’t sure what to think. Why had Dušan asked her not to mention what was going on with Faron to Helena? Jo was really tired of feeling like everyone knew what was going on but her.

  “You’re far away.” Helena sat on the edge of the bed next to her so they both faced the window overlooking the courtyard. The blind was up, and light shining out of her window and the other flats where people were still awake cast harsh shadows on the walkway and railings.

  “Not so far. A lot has happened since I left. Shit, a lot has happened since I got back.” Jo stood and leaned against the window sill, face to face with Helena.

  “Care to share?” Helena ran her hand over the duvet, smoothing it over the edge of the mattress.

  “How much do you know? I have no idea where you hang out and what you see when I’m not around.”

  “Not much. I know your shop got vandalized.”

  “Did you see them?”

  “No, only the damage the next day.”

  “I still can’t figure out how no one heard them. You can’t even walk across the courtyard at night without everyone in the building knowing it.”

  “Magic?” Helena laughed.

  “You might be on to something.”

  Helena cocked her head. “Jo, not everything that happens in this town, or even to you, has ‘darker’ meaning.”

  Jo shrugged.

  “Now, tell me about your retreat into the snowy mountains. Did you accomplish whatever you thought you went up there to do?”

  There was a long answer to that question, which would reveal more than she was ready to share with Helena or anyone else quite yet, and a short answer that would invite more questions. “For the most part. I can at least see things more clearly now.”

  “And what does that mean, my cryptic friend?”

  “I don’t know that I feel better, but I have a renewed sense of the order of things.”

  Helena laughed again. “For someone who prides herself on siding with anarchist rebels, you have an uncharacteristic aversion to chaos.”

  Now she knew what real chaos meant. Sexual politics and governmental corruption were nothing in the face of demons bent on destruction and gods who meddled in human lives. “You can’t have one without the other.”

  There’s no paradise without a place of suffering is what Dušan had said to her. She wanted to believe there was good and there was evil, but Dušan’s true self muddied everything to gray. He was neither goodness nor evil. He simply was.

  “Maybe. Anyway. I’m glad you got something out of it. It was frightfully dull here without you.”

  “I doubt that.” Nothing about Helena’s life, or afterlife, was remotely dull.

  “Now, there is a matter of a promise you made me before you banished me for your communing with nature or whatever you did up there.”

  “I will call him tomorrow. I did promise, and I will keep my word.” Reluctantly.

  “I think you should call him now.”

  “Helena, it’s midnight.”

  “Matjaž is a night owl. I’m sure he’ll still be awake. You did promise.”

  “I didn’t think it meant the moment I landed.” Helena’s motives were always her own, but the rush to reconnect to her brother was especially puzzling.

  “Well, it’s been hours since you got back.”

  “Jesus. Okay. But you need to take off. I can handle this on my own.”

  Helena waved like the Queen of England and disappeared without so much as a rustled curtain in her wake.

  Jo pulled her phone out of her sweater pocket and stared at the screen when she opened it. She’d replaced the picture of Faron and Rok mugging for the camera with a stock photo of a young Nick Cave looking balefully into the lens. It was meant to make her less angry at Rok when she looked at her phone, but the new picture reminded her every time that it was new and Rok was somewhere out in the world, location: unknown, return date: unknown.

  Age unknown. Motive unknown. He was family, as much to Faron as to her. And he left them the same day everything had absolutely gone to shit. Tread lightly. That was the last thing he’d said to her. She still didn’t know what it meant any more than she had the morning he said it. It was a sore spot that she cared about him too much to write him off. Their lives had been intertwined too long. Maybe for him it wasn’t so long, and it was easy to move on to whatever new person he pretended to be to hide what he was. Whatever that was. Even Gustaf didn’t know if he was an immortal or a long-lived. How did one even know the difference?

  Fuck it. She scrolled through her contacts and tapped Matjaž’s number.

  “Matjaž, hi, it’s Jo. I know it’s late–”

  “I was up. Are you okay?” He must have been asleep or distracted. Shit, he was probably in bed with someone and she’d called in the middle of all that. Though he didn’t seem the type to answer the phone if it was going to be awkward for any party involved.

  “Oh. I’m fine. You were just on my mind and, well, I guess I’ve owed you an explanation for a long time.”

  “I don’t know that you owe me anything, but I will listen to an explanation. Are you free tomorrow?”

  “I just got back into town and have a few things I need to catch up on. Tomorrow night?” She could help out with prep and disappear for service. They’d been managing without her for a couple weeks, one more night probably wasn’t the end of the world.

  Chapter 16

  Jo stood at the edge of a field, the woods thick and dark behind her. A half moon hung low in the sky, a sliver above the tree line. The sickly sweet smell of the dead lay like fog over the land. The living armies had quieted the roar of battle, though stretcher-bearers and a f
ew scavengers could be heard in the darkness, rifling pockets. She gathered her shawl against the chill of the late September night and waited.

  The first soldier rose and walked to her. His body was torn by shrapnel or ball; both were gruesome deaths. Ancient eyes bored into her from a weary, beardless face.

  “What is your name, soldier?”

  “Am I dead? Are you the angel come to take me home?” He reached out to touch her and pulled his hand back as if he’d suddenly remembered some injunction about touching creatures of heaven.

  “I am no angel, soldier. I am sent to remember you and open the way for those without mourners.”

  “Wilcox … John Wilcox.” He already struggled to remember who he was in life. It wasn’t unusual for the long-deceased she encountered, but these were newly dead men. Perhaps the many days and months of war erased a man’s name, just as wandering in the Inbetween did.

  “John Wilcox.” A door opened behind her, and the young soldier brushed against her as he passed, moving as best a broken body could.

  The others came then. Blue uniforms and gray ones. So many gray ones, and yet they had won this battle. Whatever that meant, to win at slaughter. The last man of no mourners came to her, musket in hand. His eyes glowed green but illuminated nothing.

  “And what is your name, soldier?”

  “Rebecca Wiley.”

  “That is my name.” And she knew it was her end. Her mother had told her many a Voice met her death at the end of a hard battle. A door opened behind the soldier sent to ferry her from life. It had to be hers, as she’d never seen another’s door. It was not the way.

  The green-eyed man leveled his musket to take aim. She ran toward him through the beckoning door before his musket ball could pierce her flesh. The retort rang through the trees as she slipped into the blackness beyond the threshold. There was nothing then but the sound of the wind in her ears as she fell through the void.