Who By Water

by Victoria Raschke

  “They think they want to know. Those things are all just barely ripples on the surface of an unfathomable sea.”

  “UFOs?”

  “I only deal in what’s of this planet. That’s enough.”

  She laughed. It was more than enough.

  Leo continued. “Dabblers. They dismiss old gods even as they experience gooseflesh when they walk into a place of power. They dismiss the darker things as monsters under the bed or things that go bump in the night. Knowing would be too much for most people to bear.”

  “Werewolves, vampires, and whatever else there is – all that is really out there?”

  “Yes, but not as they are imagined and romanticized by novels and movies. Old magicks are not pleasing to modern eyes.”

  Jo let out a long slow breath. Her morning wasn’t really improving. “Thank you for the lesson. I think. But that’s not why you’re here.”

  “Maybe partly. There is much you don’t know and that worries me. Vesna says you are headstrong.”

  Jo laughed again. “That was polite of her.”

  “She did not use ‘headstrong’.”

  “I bet. So why are you here?”

  “The doll needs to be recovered and returned to the well.”

  “Have you been in the basement of the museum? The well is as dry as this shop. They excavated around it and the stones are stacked in a well-shaped column lit from within. There’s no mortar, just gaps. There’s no well there really.”

  “It isn’t quite that literal.”

  “Okay. So the first problem is, where is the doll?”

  “Good question. Does Maja have any news?”

  “No. Not beyond the fact the dead of Ljubljana have no truck with any of the Roman sites since the well was excavated.”

  “That says we’re on the right track.”

  “Yes, but not where it is or who stole it.”

  “You have a hunch though, I can tell.” He leaned toward her and put his clasped hands on the table, his elbows just off the edge.

  She could smell the church on him, incense and wood polish, like it was coming out of his pores. “Do you think being able to talk to dead people increases your sense of smell?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You. You smell like incense and beeswax. It’s almost overwhelming.” And it inspired thoughts she should not have about a man of the cloth.

  Leo leaned back and laughed his cello laugh.

  Jo blushed, and felt angry with herself because of it. “What’s so funny?”

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with being able to talk to dead people. I think that’s just you. Vesna said—”

  “Vesna seems to have said a lot.”

  “She did, but you should know it was all in kindness. To her, you are family. Maybe more so now, but she’s worried.”

  The angry knot in her stomach loosened slightly. “I just don’t like the idea that I am such a topic of conversation. If you want to know about me, I’d rather you just ask me.”

  “Vesna felt the need to warn me you might be…a temptation.”

  “Did she?” The knot tightened right back up.

  “And did you not just allude to such things?”

  “Thinking of them and acting on them are very different. I do have some fucking self control.” She flounced back against her chair.

  “As do I.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands together in his lap.

  She sighed. “So there.” She looked up at him. “I do suspect someone. Tomaž. He and Helena were sleeping together. And he and Maja. Maybe he just became unhinged or needed to cover his tracks or something.”

  “Sex, power, money. We humans are fairly predictable.”

  “Is that always it though?”

  “For people, pretty much. For gods and monsters? It’s usually just power. Or vanity.” He leaned back. “I’ll send someone to his home and see if the doll is there. If it is, I have means to have it removed and returned.”

  “How will they know if it’s there? I imagine he won’t have it sitting out on the coffee table with the latest issue of Assholes Quarterly or whatever he reads. But I could go. They know me.”

  “No. You should stay far away from them, for your own good.”

  She bristled and thought about Ivanka, still curled up in her bed upstairs. With her son. She had every reason to go and get this sorted out as quickly as possible. “You can’t go. Jesuits don’t go door-knocking like Jehovah’s Witnesses. Don’t you think that would tip him off?”

  “I’ll send someone.”

  “Whatever. I’ve got stuff to do today anyway, including another funeral and picking my aunt up at the train station.” She was up to her eyeballs in this. Why couldn’t he trust her to do something as simple as doll reconnaissance?

  “Do you still have the stone?”

  She felt for it in her skirt pocket and produced it, holding it out to him on the flat of her palm. She wrapped her fingers around it and put it back. It had become her equivalent of a security blanket.

  “Keep it with you. If something malevolent is hanging around it will alert you.”

  “How?”

  “Depends on the thing.” He looked at her for long moment. Enough to make her skin warm again.

  “What?” What was the purpose of hiding things from her now?

  “Please promise me you won’t do anything foolish.”

  Jo finished the menu plan and taped the prep list to the front of the reach-in cooler. She dragged the market bag out of the office. A quick trip to her usual vendors in the Saturday market, then she could go boot Faron and Ivanka out of her flat so she could shower and dress appropriately. Gregor was going to drive the five of them to Žale. They’d be a little squished but it wasn’t far and no one really wanted to take the bus out there.

  She walked down Breg and crossed the river at the Cobblers’ bridge. She preferred walking through Staro Mesto on Saturdays. Prešeren Square was a crush of tourists and locals on foot and on bike, usually being serenaded by at least two street musicians not playing the same song, or even the same type of music. Pushing through all the buskers and selfie-stick wielders was not her idea of a good time. She was on a mission, in and out.

  Her first stop was at Zsofia’s stall. The tall Hungarian woman always gave Jo a good price on local fruit and a few things imported from Italy. October brought apples, old varieties she’d never encountered in the States. They were small and tart and good for cooking. It was time to make more apple butter and some chutney for cheese and chutney tea sandwiches. She bought a few kilos and covered the bottom of the roller bag with open cardboard baskets. The apples’ sweet, earthy fragrance perfumed the bag and flooded her senses. She had a flash of lying under the apple trees at Dušan’s family’s farm. He had spun some folklore yarn about fucking in the orchard being good for the fertility of the trees, and she had wound up with rotten windfall in her hair. And Faron. She suspected the trees were doing just fine.

  Zsofia took the folded euros from her and nodded thank you. Onward. One more stop, to Josip to put her meat order in for the week. He’d bring it early Monday. She had a standing order with Jakob, her milk guy, so she waved at him across the crowded cobbles. His untidy dreadlocks bobbed as he waved back.

  She wove her way back through the shoppers and the many merchant stalls selling flowers and carved wooden trinkets. The crowd, the cobbles, the air itself buzzed with the Saturday-ness of its existence. There was a minor chord running beneath the thrum that Jo hadn’t heard before. The hair on the back of her neck stood up and she felt a need to get inside as fast as she could. Her heart was racing and sweat prickled at her hairline. She’d never had a panic attack before, but if this wasn’t a panic attack, something was coming for her and she needed to get away now.

 
She moved as fast as she could without actually running or knocking anyone flat in her haste. The market bag bounced on the cobbles, threatening to pour her apples out into the street. The safety of her building’s courtyard had never seemed so far away from the market. When she finally got there, her hands shook so badly she couldn’t get the key in the lock. She stopped trying and rested her forehead against the cool wood of the door. She took a deep breath. And another. Her hands still shook.

  A polite cough behind her startled her almost out of her clothes. It was the mystery man from the apartment upstairs.

  “I did not mean to start you.” His English was heavily accented. German maybe. He took the key ring from her hand and unlocked the door. He held it open with his arm while she maneuvered her market bag inside.

  She was still shaking. Her shirt stuck to her back with sweat. Inside, away from the scents of the river and all those people, the sour smell of her own fear was overwhelming. She stammered a thank you and wiped her sweaty palm on her skirt before offering to shake her neighbor’s hand.

  “You looked to be in distress.”

  She nodded. Words were hard to form, but her breath was less ragged now.

  “Sit. I will get a glass of water for you.” Her rescuer disappeared into the kitchen of her shop and returned with a tall, skinny glass of water.

  She reached for it with her trembling hand.

  “Perhaps it is better if I set it on the table for you first.” He put the glass in front of her and took the chair opposite. “I hope it is not too forward of me to ask you what has frightened you so.”

  She shook her head no. She took a sip of water, then downed the glass. “I don’t know. I was in the market and there was this sound.”

  He nodded and waited for her to continue.

  She had no idea why she was talking to this man. She’d seen him maybe a dozen times in the ten years she’d lived in the building. He was always leaving and he rarely acknowledged her with more than a polite nod. But once the words started, they just kept spilling out.

  “It was like a dirge, but played just at the edge of my range of hearing, and so fast. Like insect wing beats or a the pulse from a techno dance club from the street.”

  He nodded. “The dead. They know you are here now. They have been waiting.”

  Her breath stopped. “What?”

  “Jolene Wiley, you are a Voice of the Dead, are you not?”

  Chapter 21

  “Who the fuck are you?” She rose and spoke in one fluid recoil.

  He looked at her without surprise, still seated. She tried to focus, but her mind was racing. Who or what had she let into her shop?

  “I am friend,” he said, “not foe.” He continued to sit, hands clasped on her table in her shop, moving neither toward her or away.

  She lowered her gaze. “Can you prove that?”

  “I can explain it. Please sit.”

  “I think I’ll stand, thank you.”

  “As you wish.”

  She nodded, watching him, not blinking. She slid her hand into her pocket for the well stone. It was cool, unaffected by this man’s presence. She relaxed a little inwardly but kept her guard. Trust but verify.

  “My associates and I have an interest in you and your ability.”

  “Your associates? What are you, a fan club?”

  “No.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “I am Gustaf Lichtenberg.”

  She sat down. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “There is no reason for you to know it, despite the fact we have been neighbors these many years.”

  She was chastened. “You seemed to like keeping yourself to yourself.”

  “I do. As do you.”

  Fair enough.

  “Much has happened in the last week, and I am certain these events have been difficult for you. It is not in my nature to interfere, but there is much at stake.”

  She sighed. She got the distinct impression that a task or two had just been added to her woo-woo to-do list. “What do you want or need of me?”

  His laugh was dry and quiet. “My assigned task is only to observe, but in this case, I felt the need to intervene. At least to the extent that I am able.”

  “Observe?” She smirked. “What are you, my Watcher?”

  “No. We are not the Council or the Talamasca. Though both Mr. Whedon and Ms. Rice made us slightly uncomfortable with the uncanniness of their depictions.”

  Yet another layer. This gift of hers was like a goddamned onion.

  Her neighbor continued. “There are always some who take it upon themselves to police the police, so to speak. People like you, like the Kos family, and like your old friend; people who have access to a great deal of power. We want to be sure that your interest remains in helping humanity, not in enslaving or destroying it.”

  How should she respond to that?

  “This is a great deal of information to assimilate. There is more, but it can wait. The task at hand is to recover the Roman doll. It must be reunited with the entity it was created to hold.”

  “Leo told me about the doll. He’s–”

  “He’s very foolish. If for any reason you come across the doll, you must secure it immediately and bring it to me. Brother Kos has greatly underestimated the situation.” There was irritation in his voice, but he was trying to mask it.

  “If the situation is that bad, why involve the newbie? I mean, let’s be honest, a week ago I didn’t have a clue about any of this crap, and now I’m up to my eyeballs in it. I’m not sure I’m your girl, Gustaf.” She leaned back in her chair. “Besides, Leo all but told me to stay home and knit.”

  “Your answer lies within your question. You are in it now. None of us can rest until this business is settled, but the greatest danger now is to you.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Your gift is unique. You are a channel between this world and the next. If the entity wishes to fully return to this world, you will be the door.”

  She shifted uneasily in her chair. “And what happened in the market?”

  “The dead are interested only in their own problems. This is no different. This entity is an anomaly, unwelcome in the next world as it is in this. To prevent its breaking through, the crossing is closed and the dead are forced to remain in the space between. What you heard was the unquiet dead making their displeasure known to the only person who can hear them.”

  She dropped her head to her chest. What the ever-loving fuck could she have done to deserve this?

  “Ms. Wiley, are you unwell?” He reached out, but she looked back up and drew back before he could touch her.

  “I would rather you didn’t. I’m still not sure what or who you are.”

  He dropped his hand and nodded curtly. “Perhaps you should ask Brother Kos about me. I assure you he will confirm that my associates and I mean you no harm. Unless of course, you intend harm.”

  He said it with a tone of finality that made her shiver. So there was a sheriff in town. It just wasn’t Leo. All of this new authority in her life was making her itch. She doubted that her “new friend” was missing her discomfort.

  “I have been watching you and your family long enough to recognize that you are not one to, shall we say, conform? I can assure you, we have no desire to bend you to our will. That is not my purpose. But please understand: there is a line, and action is swift whenever it is crossed.”

  “And my not bringing this doll to you, that would be crossing the line?”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Not as such.”

  “Then what would be?”

  “Using it for personal gain.”

  “I don’t even want to be in the same room with Creepy Barbie.”

  “Good. Then you understand me.” He stood to leav
e, turning back to her before reaching the door. “Ms. Wiley, I know you don’t think much of this intrusion into your life.” He knew about events that occurred beyond his presence, of that she was sure. “You are more important than perhaps you know. I sincerely hope you will undertake this endeavor with the caution it demands. I would hate for our acquaintance to be unnecessarily shortened by your demise.”

  Who talks like that? Wouldn’t a simple “don’t get your ass killed” do?

  He turned to open the door.

  “Wait. Who did you mean by ‘my old friend’?” Was Gregor a werewolf or something? She was past the point of being surprised.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Clearly or I wouldn’t have asked you.” Maybe she and her neighbor could go back to nodding politely when this was over. Maybe she could have her werewolf friend ask him to move.

  “I suggest you ask Mr. Zorko how old he will be on his next birthday.” He closed the door softly as he left.

  Infuriated by yet another person in her life who refused to simply answer a bloody question, she got up to lock the door behind him. She wished she could to sit back down to take all this in and ponder what the fuck would happen next, but she had a market bag full of apples to put away and a funeral to attend.

  Jo stood with Damijan, Vesna, and Frédéric in front of the white marble Napoleon monument in French Revolution Square. The gold face of a French liberator looked out over them as they waited. Every gust of wind sent a new parade of gold and orange leaves swirling through the roundabout in front of them. The buzzing that had driven her from the market earlier still hung in the air, less menacing now she knew what it was. Her dress and hair blew around her in the stiff breeze. Vesna handed her a hair tie without saying a word. Jo took it from her and tamed her mane into an unruly bun at the nape of her neck.

  Gregor’s car pulled into the parking spot closest to the silent group. He got out and opened the back door, ducked out of view into the back seat and reappeared with a wreath of burnt orange and burgundy flowers. The trunk popped open with a flick against the fob in his hand. While he was moving the wreath, Jo and the others played a short round of “no, you, please” over the front seat. Vesna settled it, opening the front passenger door and practically pushing Damijan inside.