The mail was scattered on the futon where she’d dropped it when she came upstairs. A fat envelope with brightly swirling foreign stamps caught her eye on the way out the door. Her name and address were written in Rok’s slanted hand. He’d remembered her birthday and taken the time to send a gift from wherever he was — somewhere in the Middle East, given the Arabic on the customs form. She paused at the door holding the slim package. Her disappointment at her friend’s departure had ebbed, but the hurt over how much he had hidden from her still stung, even after Dušan’s revelation of the heartbreak of the long-lived.
The paper and tape gave away easily to reveal a small box and a letter. She couldn’t face his words just yet, so she laid the letter back on the futon to open the box. A medallion on a silver chain was nestled in a wad of crumpled paper. The image was worn and faint, but the horns of a bull were still decipherable. The reverse was worn smooth, as if it had spent a lifetime against another’s skin. She set the box on top of the letter and fastened the chain around her neck. A clear image of Rok at a counter sliding the package across zipped through her thoughts and was replaced just as quickly by an aching cold and the sensation of her own limbs floating out from her body. She really needed to ask Jackie or Gustaf about the side effects of being a Voice or a Portal, or if something else was causing the new intrusions.
She locked the door behind her and made her way to the courtyard where Vesna, Ivanka, and Reka waited for her with Fred. They’d been joined by Goran and Gustaf. Vesna had been generous with her invitations. Niko would laugh at Jo’s poaching prospects for the evening, but she knew who she wanted in her bed and it wasn’t a nameless, faceless person to keep her warm.
“I winsch da ois guade zum Gebuatsdog.” Gustaf extended his hand to her.
“Thank you.” Gustaf: guaranteed to be awkwardly formal.
Chapter 23
The muffler of snow banks and still-falling flakes spotlit by the street lamps left Jo feeling as if she and her companions had stepped out of the courtyard into a different city. Familiar landmarks on the pavement had disappeared, and people weren’t venturing out in the streets. The few they passed were rushing home with their heads down against the cold.
Vesna must have promised Niko a crowd to get him to open the gallery on a night like this. His loyalty to Jo was as amorphous as his affection had been. He would never have offered to host a party for her unless a significant amount of cash was going to pass over his bar.
Forty-four. There wasn’t anything significant about it as a birthday, other than it was her first as a Voice. The jury was still out about whether that was a reason to celebrate.
No one offered to speak on the walk or to break the spell of the silent street. They hugged the river embankment until they reached the Dragon Bridge to turn north toward the former squat. Jo felt the water moving alongside them, its icy run echoing in her veins. She needed to think of things besides lost friends and previously forgotten gods if she was going to work herself into any kind of celebratory mood. She reached out for Ivanka and Vesna and took them both by the arm, walking on to the gallery between her dearest friend and her son’s love.
Light cracked out into the frozen air through the gallery windows and onto the snow-covered central courtyard of Metelkova. Footprints had tamped down the first of the snowfall into a compressed gray lawn. The party had started without them. PJ Harvey’s driving guitar and voice followed the light out to reverberate off the concrete and steel of the old Army barracks.
Vesna rushed ahead through the door. “Down by the Water” abruptly ended and was quickly replaced with The White Stripes’ cover of “Jolene.” At least it wasn’t a stupid party hat.
Jo smiled at the faces connected to the clapping hands gathered to wish her well until she looked behind them. A new mural, Igor’s work, took up the entire back wall of the gallery. Jo walked toward it, and the crowd of friends, still clapping, parted as she moved through them to stand in front of the painting.
She sensed Vesna at her side and Leo hovering behind her, his height casting part of the swirl of spray-painted images in shadow. Her image was there in the center, pot in hand, pouring darjeeling into the river of tea she stood in. Her dark blonde hair drifted out around her like an underwater crown. Behind her were the faces of friends and family. Vesna, Gregor, and Leo stood, arms linked behind them. Rok and Faron were clinging to a mountainside waving. Ivanka, Fred, and Reka were lined up in front of Renegade Tea each holding a plate of fantastical food. Swirls of color moved between each snapshot of the people she loved. Above those faces a storm cloud of dark grays and blues hovered, releasing snowflakes onto the scene below. Some of the flakes were images — logos from bands she liked or who had played at the teahouse, a tea bag, a medallion with a bull’s head, lilies and carnations, stars, skulls and bones — all raining down on her and into the river of tea. The storm cloud was made of wings and eyes hidden in the billowing curves.
Jo stumbled back away from the wall. Leo caught her arm when she tripped over her own boots.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it? Igor finished it last night.” Vesna was beaming with pride at her birthday surprise.
“Did you tell him …” The question died on her lips. Achelous’ face, the face she had first seen that morning at the spring, was hidden in the current of the dark river.
“I asked him to do a birthday mural for you. I think he and Niko discussed where it could go.”
Jo realized Leo was still supporting her, and she planted her feet underneath her.
Igor joined them in front of his artwork.
“Vse najboljše.” He kissed her on both cheeks.
“Thank you. The mural. It’s …” She reached out and touched the painted medallion that matched the one around her neck. “How did you know?”
“Know what?”
Vesna raised an eyebrow at Jo, warily awaiting an answer.
Jo fished Rok’s birthday gift out of her dress and showed it to Igor. “It came today in the mail.”
Vesna’s eyes went wide.
Igor shrugged. “Hmm. I remembered you wearing one before. Must have been someone else.” He picked up Vesna’s hand and kissed it. “Would you like a drink or something?”
Vesna nodded, and Igor disappeared through the crowd toward the bar.
When he was gone, Vesna visibly crumpled.
“Vee, what the fuck is going on?” Jo tucked the medallion back into her clothes.
“So much for ignoring it.”
“Ignoring what exactly?”
“He’s a seer, too. Not auras like me. He sees the future, but he won’t talk about it. It shows up in his drawings and murals. I knew it when I saw him the first time at the shop, but I didn’t want to admit it, either.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” It was a rhetorical question. She’d figured out nothing in her life was untouched by, untainted with, the woo-woo crap she had fallen into. That Vesna was firmly bound in the same net hadn’t occurred to her. Helena was right; she had been a shitty friend.
Leo coughed above them. “Let’s discuss this later. We’re here to celebrate tonight.”
Faron and Gregor emerged from the crowd, and her son threw his arms around her. “Happy birthday, Mom!”
“Thanks.” She hugged him back. Maybe it was better to continue to take the day as a pause in everything. How many quiet days would they get?
Gregor leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Happy birthday, love.”
A few bars from “Whatever Lola Wants” slid through the strains of Sinéad O’Connor’s “Just Call me Joe,” surely Niko’s idea of a joke, blaring through the gallery speakers. Helena’s tall form stood by the bar right next to her brother, Matjaž, getting a beer. Helena smiled her dazzling smile, but there was a sadness in it that caught Jo off guard. Even the quiet days weren’t.
Matjaž turned and walked toward the
three of them looking out over Jo’s party. He handed Jo a beer bottle emblazoned with one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
“Happy birthday, Jo.”
“Thanks. It was sweet of you to come.” She took a sip from the bottle.
He nodded and turned to talk with some of Niko’s friends clustered in the corner.
“So, it’s your day, what would you like to do?” Leo, leaned down to ask the question in her ear. The music had gotten louder over the din of people talking and drinking.
Her thoughts were spinning with the mural, and Helena, and Rok’s cryptic gift. She wanted to be alone, for a few moments, to catch her breath and fashion a fake party face. “You know what? I’d really like a cigarette.”
Leo shrugged. “I’m not a smoker.”
“Reka is.”
Jo found her at Faron’s table with Ivanka and their friends. Jo tapped Reka on the shoulder and asked if she wanted to go outside for a smoke.
“It’s freezing.” Reka handed her a lighter and her pack of cigarettes.
Jo tucked them into her coat pocket and wended her way back through the throng of well-wishers and out into the courtyard.
The weather had driven everything inside for the night. The courtyard was quiet except for the bass line of 1980s punk pulsing from the gallery. Jo stepped into a protected corner and pulled a cigarette from the pack. The lighter struggled against the wind but finally caught the paper and tamped tobacco. One benefit of being cold all the time was not feeling any more chill outside than inside. Maybe a little, since she had to take her glove off to smoke.
How many of those faces inside knew what she was? How many of them had spent a night with her and only showed up for Niko’s questionable DJ skills and a few drinks? How many people were missing because of her? She hadn’t answered any of her questions before the surge of music indicated someone had opened the door to join her in her illicit birthday smoke.
Veronika appeared from behind the corner.
“Sorry, I was trying to get out of the wind. I didn’t realize you smoked.” She held out Reka’s pack.
“I don’t.” The girl brought her hand to her face.
A flash of bright pink scarf ran between them from the under the cover of a nearby table. “Stop!”
A shower of brown dust fell over Jo and the person wrapped in the flashy scarf.
Jo dropped her cigarette into the snow as her body seized, throwing her head back and onto the ground. Every nerve ending was open and screaming. Air came into her lungs and seared all the way down and out again before stopping. The child’s wailing at her side blocked out any other sound. Jo’s heart muscle tensed in her chest. This is what dying felt like, to burn to death inside her own body.
——
Faron looked around for his mother. She’d been gone too long. He went to look for Reka and found her at the bar getting another drink.
“Did Mom give your cigarettes back?”
She shook her head. “No big. I’ll get them later.” She took her beer from the bartender and headed back to the table.
Leo towered above the crowd, his head bent down to listen to Gregor above the noise. Faron made his way to him.
“Hey, have you seen Mom?”
“Not since she went to smoke.”
“She hasn’t come back.” She could take care of herself, but too much weird shit had gone down for Faron not to worry about her.
“Let’s go get her. She shouldn’t be pouting at her own party.” Gregor motioned toward the entrance.
Faron opened the door to a child’s screaming audible above the music from inside. The three men rushed into the courtyard trying to locate the source.
They found Veronika on her knees in the snow cradling her sister Ana’s writhing body the best she could. She kept repeating, “I’m sorry.” A few feet away, Jo’s body lay in the snow. She wasn’t screaming like Ana, but her eyes were wide and unseeing in fright. Her muscles bowed her body into an arc on the snow, only her shoulders and heels touched the ground.
“What the fuck did you do?” Faron pulled Veronika from her sister onto her feet and shook her.
The girl was hysterical. “I just wanted to make her hurt. Make her pay for what happened … I didn’t know Ana …”
Leo put his hands on Faron’s shoulders. “Faron, let her go. She can’t help us. Go find Goran.”
Faron let go of Veronika, and she collapsed to the ground and scrambled back to Ana still twisting in agony.
He stood there staring at her, anger taking away any rational thought.
“Faron. Go get Goran.” Gregor turned him back toward the gallery.
Leo and Gregor knelt beside Jo’s body as Faron took off at a run.
——
Jo stood across the courtyard watching Faron, Gregor, and Leo interact with Veronika. Leo stepped past the two girls in the snow and knelt beside the body she had been in seconds before. Gregor got on his knees on the other side. When he touched the body’s face, it crumpled back onto the ground, and she could feel a warmth like the sun shining on her through a car window.
Helena was next to her, without any Sarah Vaughan fanfare.
“Jo. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize Veronika had figured out anything this advanced.”
“Veronika?”
“She’s been working as a lackey for my mother. It’s a long story. I didn’t realize she had any real ability.”
“What was that?”
“I have no idea what she thought it was supposed to do, but I don’t think it was supposed to kill you.”
“Am I dead?” Being dead was much less concerning than she’d imagined.
“Well, kiddo, your body is over there, and you are decidedly not in it.”
“Hmm.”
An uninviting door opened a few feet from them. Jo could feel Helena’s smile.
“I think that’s for me.” Helena sighed. “The dead, even dead Voices, don’t require a guide.”
“Where’s mine?” Would her door be more inviting? A lit arrow flashing “this way, please”?
“Do you want me to wait with you?” Helena’s voice was soothing. How did that work? Neither of them had bodies, vocal cords, eardrums, or even brains to hold a mind. How did the connection work? It didn’t really matter at this point.
“What if yours closes?” Jo could no longer open another’s door with her words. What a simple spell it had been: she said someone’s name and released them from this plane of existence. Well, she could before.
“I don’t think it will close.”
“I don’t know how any of this works.” Faron came back, Goran in tow.
“He can’t touch my body.” She would not be the choice he had to make.
“What?”
Jo reached out for whatever Helena was with whatever she had for a hand and pulled them both through Helena’s open door.
“I guess you got your wish about pushing me through the first opening.” Helena’s laugh sounded flat as they tumbled into the nothingness beyond the threshold.
Chapter 24
Jo had dragged Helena into an abyss as cold and complete as the place she’d fallen through with Dušan. Maybe falling back to his realm was the penalty for jumping through a door that wasn’t hers. She’d managed to ruin Helena’s grand exit, as well.
The two of them floated more than fell, suspended in a space beyond stars or time. There was no way to tell how many minutes or hours passed. She tried to speak to Helena, but the words were snatched away as soon as they left her.
Ravaged soldiers’ faces came to Jo in the darkness. She wouldn’t be returning to the mountain to mourn Henry’s remaining dead or to release him. There was guilt and sorrow for having found her purpose so close to the end. There were no other Voices, aside from her mother and Jackie, who could help him. One w
as too addled and, at her own insistence, too close to death. Neither had a clue Henry needed saving, anyway.
Her mother had been right. She was dead, but it wasn’t the man she had seen in her dreams who had come for her. Veronika had been giving her the evil eye for weeks and had disappeared from the Tuesday night gatherings. Jo blamed herself for leaving the girls, but she had no idea Veronika harbored such hate for her.
There wasn’t even wind whistling in her ears, but there was Leo’s discarded black cassock floating above her. It looked close enough to catch but she couldn’t grasp it. He wouldn’t have to leave the church now. Vesna would no longer have to cluck after her like a mother hen, and Gregor wouldn’t feel the need to clean up any more of her messes. Rok could mourn her, or not, and continue on the journey his long life forced him to undertake. But Faron, Faron would be alone. Alone, yes, but maybe safe, too. Everything started to run together in her mind, a cascade of images and thoughts carrying her on. Helena’s tight grasp was the only solid point.
As before, they didn’t so much stop falling as the ground rose up to meet them. The dark outlines of naked trees reaching up into a gunmetal sky, like a quickly drawn sketch, grew sharper as her eyes adjusted to the dim light suffusing the landscape. She and Helena were alone. There were no throngs of lost shades, as there had been on the previous visit. And there was utter silence, until Helena laughed.
“Jesus, Jo, what did you do to deserve this?”
Whether or not the punishment fit the crime was beyond her reasoning. She had a laundry list of trespasses in her head to work through, including taking the exit not clearly marked for her. She’d watched her however-many-greats grandmother, Rebecca, make a similar choice on a Civil War battlefield. Was she down here, too? What punishment had her whatever-great gran gotten for jumping through her own door before she was actually dead?
There was no way to tell how long they stood there. Squinting out at the dark horizon, Jo plopped on the ground. Fine, gray ash rose around her then settled quickly, without wind to disturb it. Helena sat down beside her.
Our Lady of the Various Sorrows Page 19
