The Immortals

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  She sat down beside him on the glowing step. The red light from below flushed her pale cheeks with color. Despite the foot of space between them, he couldn’t help remembering what she’d felt like in his arms. He fought a sudden desire to feel that way again.

  “The captain seems smart,” he offered. “And not just because she thinks I’m innocent. I’ve got a good feeling about her.”

  Selene merely nodded.

  “You really don’t like cops, do you? That’s why you didn’t tell them you were a private investigator.”

  She shrugged.

  “You’re not really an official PI, are you?” he asked gently.

  After a moment, she shook her head. “I don’t have a license. But women come to me. I try to help them.”

  Theo’s imagination churned. She must have been the victim of abuse at some point. That would explain why she spent her time tracking men, why she seemed so vulnerable yet so impenetrable, why she didn’t believe the cops could be trusted—even why she told the Persephone abduction tale with such passion. Suddenly, her behavior didn’t seem so crazy. “I didn’t tell them anything about you… or us.”

  “Good. I have a history in this town,” she said. “I sort of like to stay off the grid.”

  “What happened?” He had to ask, although he suspected the conversational topic was off limits.

  Selene remained silent for a long moment, but then, to Theo’s surprise, she began to tell him. “There was once a policewoman with the NYPD who was so good that other women clamored to join just to be like her. On her first street patrol, she chased down two bank robbers, leaving her fellow officers in the dust. Tackled them both simultaneously, handcuffed one, and knocked the other unconscious. Then, after a year, they decided to pair her with a male partner. Charles Augustino. Chaz.” She wrinkled her nose. “First day out, they responded to an assault call in Hell’s Kitchen not far from here—a prostitute and her john having it out on the street corner. She insisted she’d been underpaid. The john swore up and down he’d never slept with her in the first place, that he was the victim of extortion. Each claimed the other had struck the first blow. Woman had a black eye and a bloody lip. Chaz handcuffed her anyway.”

  “For what?”

  “Prostitution’s illegal, even though most cops don’t bother arresting the women. But Chaz pushed the prostitute up against his cruiser. The policewoman saw his hand linger between the prostitute’s legs and then he grabbed her ass. When the woman spit in his face, Chaz slapped her, hard, and she collapsed onto the roof. So the policewoman pinned her partner to the ground and twisted his arms around her baton. She told him to apologize to the woman, and he refused. So she turned him around, stood him up, and broke his jaw with her fist.”

  “She sounds like a hero.”

  Selene shrugged. “As he fell, he hit his head on the car’s fender. She hadn’t meant to kill him. But she wasn’t sorry she had.”

  Theo let out a low whistle.

  “By the week’s end, she’d been discharged from the force and indicted on charges of second-degree murder. But she disappeared before they could catch her.”

  “And this policewoman was…” You, Theo thought. Go on, admit it.

  Selene met his eyes. She paused for a moment, as if deciding how to answer. “Cynthia Forrester.”

  “I see.” “DiSilva” was simply the Italian version of “Forrester”—they both meant “of the forest”—and the name “Cynthia” was, like “Selene,” an epithet of the Greek Moon Goddess. If she’d gone through the trouble of changing her name, her story was even more complicated than Theo’d imagined. “When was this?”

  She looked away again. “Nineteen seventy-three.”

  “Oh” was all Theo could say. What he’d taken to be a confession now seemed like a lie. He’d been sure Selene was the policewoman in the story, but if she’d been a cop in 1973, she’d be over sixty by now. Impossible. Once again, just when he thought he’d begun to understand her, she defied comprehension. Maybe someday I’ll crack the mystery, he thought, stealing a glance at her profile. Despite the bandages, she looked even younger than usual. As if the night’s tragedy, which made Theo feel very old indeed, had only rejuvenated her.

  “Now you see why I don’t trust men,” she said. “Or cops.”

  You can trust me, you know, he wanted to say. But for once, he held his tongue.

  They sat silently for a moment more, gazing down Broadway. The giant LED screen above the ABC Studios at Forty-fourth Street streamed breaking news footage of Jenny Thomason’s murder. Suddenly, the image of a dour man with messy fair hair and round glasses flashed across the screen. It took him a moment to recognize his driver’s license photo. He realized sitting in the most public place in the city was monumentally stupid. Only dumb luck and dim lighting had prevented anyone from noticing the “Pervy Professor.” But he feared that if he moved, Selene would disappear. So he sat there, his hand inches away from hers. Usually, he could feel a chill emanating from her flesh. But tonight, he felt warmth.

  He almost jumped when her hand slid into his.

  “You saved my life, you know.” She stared at the ABC news footage, not meeting his eyes. “So much for not taking needless physical risks.”

  “Uh—I just—” he began. But then he stopped. I guess I did. “It wasn’t exactly ‘needless.’”

  She tightened her grip. “You said yesterday that if we were being attacked, you’d run away.”

  “If I were being attacked, I’d run,” he said with a laugh. “But if you were…” He felt the smile fall from his face.

  At last, she turned toward him. For an instant, their eyes met. Then she pulled her hand from his and looked away. Here it comes. She’s about to walk away again.

  But she didn’t. She just flared her nostrils and said, “Your clothes are covered in blood.”

  “So are yours.” Her jacket had fallen open. “Holy shit, are you wounded?”

  “It’s not my blood,” she said quickly, pulling her jacket closed again. He heard an unaccustomed tremble in her voice.

  “Here.” He shrugged out of his overcoat. “You must be cold.” To his surprise, she accepted it. It was too big in the shoulders. He smiled. “You look like a little girl playing dress-up in your mom’s closet.” She drew a sharp breath. Christ, I’ve said something stupid. She probably has issues with her mother. Sure enough, she rose and started down the staircase.

  “You can’t just leave in my coat, you know,” he called after her.

  She paused for a moment, her back to him. “Then come with me.”

  Theo hesitated. If he obeyed, there’d be no denying to himself that he wanted something more from this strange woman than just help tracking down Helen’s killer. Gabriela would tell him not to be an idiot—Selene was dangerous. He’d almost definitely get his heart broken. More to the point, if today’s activities were any indication, he might get himself killed. But somehow, he still ached to follow her. Theo remembered his fear with Helen—he’d worried that she would cling too tight, demand too much. But despite the challenges she posed, Helen hadn’t shaken his own understanding of himself and the world—she’d only reinforced it. Her unquestioning adoration made him feel strong and smart. Selene, on the other hand, often made him feel weak and awkward. Yet on some level he welcomed those feelings of inadequacy: They pushed him to try harder, reach further, risk more. And that meant he wound up feeling stronger and smarter after all. Being with Selene wasn’t scary—it was downright terrifying. Not to mention intoxicating and exhausting. Yet he didn’t want it to end. Not yet.

  Theo levered himself off the stairs and fell into step beside her. Taking needless risks seems to be par for the course these days, he reasoned. Why stop now?

  Chapter 32

  GODDESS OF THE WILDERNESS

  They walked in silence up Broadway to the southern border of Central Park. Selene showed no signs of stopping. “So where to?” Theo asked finally.

  “There’s
a place in the park that I go sometimes when something like this happens. Up around 100th Street.”

  Forty blocks. All thoughts of a romantic tryst flew out of his mind. He wasn’t going to make it. His feet hurt. He’d been up for twenty-four hours. His glasses had pressed two indelible commas into the bridge of his nose. He smelled like old sweatpants. He put his hands on his hips and cracked his back. “I’d love to come, but I—”

  “Let’s take a cab.”

  Theo knew she preferred to walk. “Really?”

  “This time of night, the cabbies might be desperate enough to ignore a little blood.”

  “Well, here—” Theo pulled a rumpled tissue from his pocket and dabbed at the blood and grease on her forehead. Her eyes followed his hand, but she didn’t move away. “Sorry, I’m about to act like my grandmother, but…” He dabbed the tissue with his tongue, placed one finger on her chin to steady her head and wiped a bit more firmly, careful not to press too hard near her bruises. “Tell me if I hurt you.” She smiled, as if at a secret joke. Her eyes were very close to his. The piney smell of her filled his nostrils.

  They entered the park at its northern tip, next to a large pond surrounded by weeping willows and spreading sweetgums. After the chaos in Midtown, it felt like stepping into another world. A raccoon froze at the pond’s edge, a fish clutched in one hand-like paw. Theo tried to move as silently and gracefully as Selene so he wouldn’t disturb it. He’d been to this pond many times—it wasn’t too far from Columbia—but he’d never dreamed of this secret, predawn idyll. Selene veered off the path to follow a narrow, rushing stream into the unlit North Woods. Theo fell a few steps behind, unsure of his footing.

  Finally, deep in the woods, Selene stopped on an outcropping of boulders beside the stream and waited for him. He peered down at the seven-foot-high waterfall below them. It cascaded between granite shoulders into a small, shallow pool of frothing white. He’d never known such a place existed in the heart of the city. Perhaps it didn’t until this moment. Maybe she conjured it from thin air, and if I were to return tomorrow, there’d be no trace of it, he mused, glancing at Selene.

  Now that they’d stopped moving, he missed his coat. He clasped his arms around his chest. Selene jumped down the surrounding boulders and crouched at the foot of the pool, staring into the shallow water as if looking for answers.

  Theo squatted beside her, elbows resting on his knees. “I’ve been tracking this cult, thinking I understand it,” he said after a moment. “And then tonight… when Jenny Thomason… God, when they put that knife in her… I realized I still can’t answer the most fundamental question of all. Why? Why murder these women?”

  A tremor slid across Selene’s face, and for a moment, Theo was afraid she might cry. Instead, she took a shuddering breath and said, “Because the hierophant believes it will make the rite more powerful.”

  “Just because it’s more gruesome? More dramatic?”

  She shook her head wearily. “You claim all ritual is metaphor. But this cult is different—they’re translating symbolic action into something real. At Eleusis, the clay vulva was just a symbol of fertility, right?”

  Theo nodded. “Yes. And the burnt offerings, the ‘sacrifices,’ were also symbolic: The ancients gave the fat and the bones to the gods but kept the rest of the meat for themselves—they never relinquished food necessary for their survival.”

  “So using actual flesh goes beyond metaphor, beyond ritual—it’s a true sacrifice—the greatest offering you can make to the gods.”

  “I remind my students that the Greeks didn’t take their religion so literally. But I guess our hierophant doesn’t know that. You’re right—he probably thinks he can do it better than the ancients did.” Theo rubbed the point of his chin, intensely thoughtful. “But why ‘empower’ the rite in the first place? They really believe they can tap into some sort of ancient juju? Helen was a scholar, not a fanatic.”

  Selene raised an eyebrow. “A scholar with a hidden lararium.”

  He winced. “I can’t help feeling somewhat responsible. I’ve always claimed Greek religion has some advantages over monotheism. But I never dreamed she’d take it so far. To think Helen would actually embrace paganism… it’s so absurd, so sad.”

  “The ancients created a civilization unparalleled for its time—maybe unparalleled for all time—and they did it while believing that immortals walked among them. Maybe Helen wasn’t so crazy after all.”

  “No, Greek civilization benefited specifically because they didn’t take their own myths literally.”

  “That’s your own bias talking,” Selene said sternly. “You like the Greeks. You don’t believe in the gods. So you think they didn’t either. That they were somehow too ‘advanced’ for something you consider superstition.”

  For once, Theo was silent.

  “Yet,” she said more gently, “when you prayed by the riverside the day we met, you spoke in Ancient Greek.”

  He shot her a surprised look. “I wasn’t praying.”

  “No?”

  After a moment, he said, “I guess after spending so many years studying the Olympians, I do feel some spiritual connection to them. God—you know, the one with the capital ‘G’—has always been a bit unknowable for my taste. So abstract. Athena and Zeus and Hermes and Apollo… they’re just human enough to make us think we have some agency in the world, and just divine enough to remind us we can’t really control our fates. Maybe you’re right… maybe the world was a richer place when mankind believed they lived in the same realm as gods. So I guess, on some level, it was a little like a prayer.” He gave a rueful snort. “You realize you’re making me rethink everything I’ve been teaching and writing about for the last ten years.”

  “You’re welcome.” She rose from her crouch. “Now let me show you something.”

  He followed her to a low pile of rocks on the far side of the pool. There, a thin rivulet of water emerged between two stones.

  “Montayne’s Fonteyn.” Then she gestured to the larger waterfall behind them. “The waterfall’s manmade, you know, in the 1870s. That and the stream, too. But this spring is older. It’s the last natural water source left in Central Park. It used to flow into a creek, Montayne’s Rivulet, but when they designed the park, they cut it off to create the waterfalls. All the lakes and ponds and streams in Central Park are full of New York City tap water now. There’s a pump house where they can just turn it on or off. Except this one. A little bit of Montayne’s Fonteyn still finds its way into the stream up here. A last bit of the natural world.” She cupped a hand beneath the spurting water and took a long drink.

  “You sure that’s safe?”

  “You just attacked five armed men and you’re worried about a little spring water?”

  “Death by knife wound is faster than death by E. coli.” But he knelt down anyway and took a quick sip. The water tasted faintly of iron and mold. “Tastes like New York.”

  “It is New York. The very heart of it.” She stood and walked to the edge of the pool at the waterfall’s base. “Drinking from the spring cleanses your insides, but bathing in running water from a stream’s the only way to purify the body. So in you go.”

  “You can’t be serious. That water would freeze the balls off a brass monkey. I’ll catch a cold and die.”

  “You don’t catch colds from cold.”

  “True, but it weakens the immune system—” He stopped himself before his pedantry got the better of him. She’d probably read the same New York Times column he had. Too many conversations among the city’s intelligentsia devolved into recitations of articles everyone had already read. His relationship with Selene should be different. He stumbled across the boulders to join her. Kneeling, he cupped his hands, still stained with the actress’s blood, in the freezing water.

  “You have to get your whole body in. You read the classics. Don’t you understand ritual purification?”

  “Selene—”

  “You’ve been polluted by th
eir filth,” she interrupted fiercely. “Wash it off, Schultz.”

  He was about to protest further, but stopped himself. I already followed her up here. Why would I turn down the chance to get wet? The entire situation was completely absurd. Who ever heard of skinny-dipping in Central Park? But since when had Selene been anything but extraordinary?

  “Christ,” he muttered, hopping precariously on one foot to pull off his shoes and socks. Standing on his tiptoes to avoid the chill rock beneath his feet, he pulled off his blazer. While unbuttoning his shirt, he realized belatedly that he’d misbuttoned it that morning, leaving one shirttail hanging drunkenly off-kilter. Then he yanked his undershirt over his head, catching the neckband on his glasses for one embarrassing moment and emerging static-charged and tousled. Throughout it all, Selene just stood, arms folded. Her gaze was no longer stern, but he could see the tension in her jaw. Finally, he stood shivering in only his corduroys; she looked away, a hint of disgust in the flaring of her nostrils. Theo glanced down at his own bare torso. He was no longer the gangly, acne-plagued teenager he’d once been—cords of muscle defined his flat stomach—but hunched over with cold, his chest seemed concave once more. Might as well get this over with. He fumbled with the zipper on his pants and tugged them off in another stunning display of imbalance. Perhaps he should be glad Selene had stopped watching. He’d forgotten until he looked down that he was wearing his yellow C-3PO briefs, an old birthday gift from Gabriela that made him look like a cross between a male stripper and a space robot. He didn’t hesitate to doff the offending garment and splash noisily into the pool. If only it were a little deeper, he might be able to regain a shred of modesty. As it was, the water only came to mid-thigh.

  “Go on, all the way in, or it doesn’t work,” Selene said quietly. He looked over his shoulder. She still wasn’t watching him. Instead, she sat hunched over a small pile of branches. He took a deep breath. “And don’t scream,” she warned just in time.