Sirens

by Janet Fox

  I went back to Lou; I could do nothing for her. She was deathly pale but breathing. She was cold. She was still. She needed blood, and that I couldn’t supply. I took her hand between my two and held it.

  “I’ll be right back,” I whispered. “I have to make sure he won’t come back for us.” I touched her cheek; she was so cold. I placed the gun on the table, next to her right hand.

  I went to the door, opened it, and stepped back into the night.

  The front had brought cold air, and I shivered. The mansion burned in front of me; it would burn for days. But it wasn’t the mansion or even the fire I cared about now. I turned toward the dock.

  The grass gave way to rough sedge and then rocks as the shrubs closed in around me, a thorny thicket; I pressed my way through until the water glinted ahead, and I knew I was close to the dock.

  The dock was a massive rectangle that pushed out into the sound. Even in the dark its shape stood out. Cold wind whipped my hair, which I tucked back behind my ears. Branches tossed by the wind flashed back and forth between me and the open dunes that led to the dock.

  I’d remembered it, the small boat tied to the dock, the last time I was there. But now there was no boat.

  At least not along the length of the dock that I could see by the light of the buoy, which swept past at thirty-second intervals, illuminating dock and water around. On the second sweep, I scanned again, thinking I’d missed something. On the third sweep I saw them out on the water.

  Shadows—two figures, in a boat, standing. Wrestling. The boat rocked, and then nothing. Dark.

  I ran down to the dock. The water, stirred up by the storm, washed in a noisy slam, slam against the dock and the beach, and drowned out all other noise.

  I watched the buoy; the fourth sweep of light approached, coming, coming…the boat again, but only one man standing, looking down, straightening, lifting his head, and then darkness.

  Oh, Teddy. Or was it Connor?

  My heart slowed as it counted the endless beats while the light moved over the restless water. The wind whipped cold mist against me, the waves pounded the dock, and then the light back again, again, and…

  Nothing. Empty water. I ran to the end of the dock, chasing the light that swept past, over black water that chopped and washed over the piers. The next light. Nothing. And the next and the next after.

  Had I dreamed it? One had gone under as surely as one had won.

  But then, where was the survivor?

  I turned and ran back up the dock, and back through the brush to the lawn and the greenhouse, and thrust open the door. Lou was still breathing shallowly, still lying like death, but not yet dead, and I clasped her hand. I feared for her and for me if I should lose her. She was so far gone. I wanted to bring her back. I leaned over her so that my lips almost touched her ear.

  “Danny Connor won’t hurt you anymore,” I said, even though she couldn’t hear me. “Teddy got rid of Danny. I think we’re all right.”

  I had to believe it, but I was wrong.

  The door opened behind me and I turned, and it felt like slow motion, like I was in some moving picture. Jo Winter, star.

  “Is she dead?” Danny asked, pointing at Lou with the muzzle of the gun.

  “Almost,” I said, my voice cracking. “Thanks to you.”

  He grunted, and then he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He was soaking wet from head to toe. His clothes were muddy and torn, and his nose was bleeding and swollen, broken. He was a wreck. Behind him, the fire reared up, flames leaping.

  “Where’s Teddy?” I asked.

  “Gone.” His voice was raspy, his steel eyes brightened. “No one breaks Daniel Connor’s nose and gets away. No one.”

  My heart sank, and tears filled my throat. “The water? Is he in the water?”

  Danny sounded puzzled. “I was in the water.”

  “But…what happened?” I had to know about Teddy. “Is he dead?”

  “When she”—he pointed the gun toward Lou—“when she began to bleed, I didn’t know what to do. And then I saw him and I ran to the dock. Where I last saw him.”

  “Saw who? Teddy?”

  Connor drew up. “Stop saying his name.” He turned and I caught the expression on his face. I thought, He’s insane, completely insane. His eyes were bright and blank and wide, and his face contorted with rage and fear.

  Oh, heavens. Connor had gone mad, and he had a gun. The other gun lay at Lou’s side, just far enough to be out of my reach

  “Why don’t you go away and leave us alone?” I said in a whisper, my voice trembling.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. His voice took on that familiar tone of haughty disdain. “Which makes you such a mystery, Josephine. That you could be so sharp and yet so dull, all at once.”

  My back went stiff. I turned to face him fully, my left hand still tight around Lou’s, my body protecting hers. “Then please, Mr. Connor. Enlighten me.”

  “I possess her, don’t you see? She’s mine. And therefore, I can dispose of her as I wish. And you.”

  My stomach was in knots. “And me, what?”

  “Ah, Miss Winter. Jo. Revenge is sweet, as they say. You are Teddy Winter’s sister. And he was disloyal to me. He killed Patrick.” Connor swallowed hard. “Your brother took something very precious from me. It’s only fair that I return the favor. And he would’ve turned me in. When I gave him everything.” He sighed. “I would’ve given you anything.” Connor waved the gun in the air. “And now, look,” he said, and turned toward the house so that now I could see in the firelight the tears that streaked down his cheeks. “Look. You’ve destroyed everything. Everything that meant anything to me, you have ruined.”

  “I didn’t start the fire, Danny,” I said, my voice quiet. “Lightning struck the electric pole.”

  He smiled, but it was a twisted smile. “You did start the fire, Jo, just not that fire. I possess you just as I possess her.” He gestured toward Lou.

  My body went icy with fear. “You don’t own me, Connor.”

  “No? Pity. Because I’ll have to kill you.” A great crash came from the house as part of the interior collapsed. He turned, and I heard his intake of air. “You did this,” he whispered. “One way or another.” The madness again, consuming him as the fire consumed his entire world. “You and your brother. You, siren, you bewitched me. And Teddy still haunts me. It’s time to put an end to it. It’s high time I made you both pay.” He turned, raised the gun, and aimed it at my heart.

  I would’ve died trying to defend Lou, but instinct made me lift my hands in a fruitless gesture.

  Danny Connor went rigid, his eyes widening with horror, and he backed toward the door of the greenhouse, his free hand groping for the knob. I was fixed on the gun in his hand that now waved wildly.

  “No,” he said in a whisper. “It’s not possible. I’ve killed you. With my own hands! Stay away from me!”

  Gripped by madness, he looked past me, past Lou, into the darkness.

  And then I sensed Lou, who lifted with inexplicable strength from the table behind me, and held the gun I’d left for her in her shaking right hand, pointing it past me, just past my shoulder, aiming at Danny, the gun wobbling so that I grabbed her hand.

  I grabbed her hand and lifted it, because in that moment I knew what was not right. It was not right to kill Danny. He didn’t see us there, right in front of him in the greenhouse. He wasn’t aiming at us any longer. He was aiming at the ghosts of his own making.

  It was not right to let her kill him.

  I knew that and lifted her hand so that when she fired, glass shattered around Danny’s head, breaking the bleeding light from the burning mansion into a million burning, crimson, starry fragments.

  Danny stumbled wide-eyed, backward out of the greenhouse, into the wet grass, toward the mansion. From deep inside came a thunderous crack, as if an explosion, and Danny turned and raised his hands and ran toward the house, dropping the gun as he ran. And then he
fell to his knees, kneeling before the burning ruin, and he keened, a high wail that, despite whatever I felt about him, despite all his offenses, broke my heart: Daniel O’Banion O’Connor grieving the loss of something he loved more than his own life. All his possessions, all that collection of things that told the false story of who he was, that made him something, that gave him a history and a purpose. And when the wall tilted in a slow sway and then fell, full, onto the miserable figure of Danny Connor, I gasped, “No!”

  The flames seemed to spring out of the grass.

  But I saw something else through the flames. The house was in ruin and beyond it, in the court, before the mocking cherubs that frolicked in the fountain, there were trucks spouting water and men running and shouting, moving this way and that, and I thought, Charlie. Charlie had come back for Lou and me.

  I turned back to Lou. She lay pale and still, far too still. I touched her cheek, and it was cold. She was dead, I was certain, and the gun had fallen from her hand to the floor.

  And then something moved just out of the corner of my eye, in the shadows at the back of the greenhouse.

  Teddy?

  Then Charlie was there by my side, and others, too, and they lifted Louie onto a stretcher and out into the night before I could react. Charlie had his arm over my shoulder and was leading me out of the greenhouse when I stopped him.

  “Wait. One second.”

  I turned and ran to the back of the greenhouse.

  “Teddy?” I whispered into the darkness.

  Nothing.

  Then a rustle from my left, and I spun.

  But it was only the Venus flytrap, swaying a little, its gaping mouth open, waiting, hungry, beautiful, deadly. And beneath it, a poppy.

  Not a living flower, but a silk scarf with red poppies, wrapped and tied around a bundle in a shape so familiar that I put my hand to my mouth and found it hard to breathe. A French silk scarf with a poppy pattern, wrapped around three boxes of medals. I’d last seen these things in my room in the mansion that now flamed and smoked and smoldered on the other side of the lawn. I had no idea how they would have gotten here, like this.

  And folded and inserted into the knot of the scarf, a single sheaf of journal paper. A single last page.

  “Teddy?”

  It would have taken a multiplicity of actions so brave, so right, they could only be accomplished by a hero.

  “Jo?” It was Charlie, come up behind me.

  I picked up the scarf. “Something I forgot,” I said, my voice breaking.

  How could I tell him it was Teddy? Would Charlie understand? Maybe someday, but I didn’t think he’d understand today.

  I peered into the dark recesses of the greenhouse, as if the plants could tell me, but I saw nothing. Just the Venus flytrap, mouth open, nodding.

  And then I thought about Louie. Dead, I was certain.

  I clutched the scarf and its contents tight to my chest. “Let’s go after Lou,” I said. “She needs us.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Lou

  It was while I was dead that I realized that I was the levitating girl.

  And I was the disappearing girl. Not Jo.

  I found that very funny, and I tried to laugh, but laughing was impossible in my state. Unlike levitating, which seemed more possible with every passing moment.

  Now, Detective, I think you can see why I couldn’t be a suspect. I was dead when it happened.

  I thought this story was all about her. All this time! I thought it was Josephine Winter, Star Girl. Star of my brother’s life. Star of something, that’s for sure. All this time, and the story is about me, Louise Moira O’Keefe.

  Why me? You may not believe it to look at me now, buster, but I’m a nobody. I’m just an Irish girl from the Lower East Side who found a guy and became his moll. I don’t have what it takes. Not like Jo. She’s smart, I could see that right off. She has that magic that sends out waves, and people believe. People will flock to her like she’s some kind of siren.

  And Teddy. Why, he was the nicest guy. He was there the whole time, letting me know it was all okay, that help was on the way, but even if it didn’t get there, that was okay, too, you know? Teddy was a bit of a puzzle, but that was Teddy.

  Which was why, while I was dead, and realizing all this stuff, I made the decision, and said as much to Teddy. I was levitating all right, but so what? I decided. I was not about to disappear.

  No, sir.

  It was quite a day for me, the day I died. First, that I wasn’t someone’s any old possession. And then, that I wasn’t gonna disappear.

  CHAPTER 52

  JUNE 10–11, 1925

  Thurston’s trick of levitation…is a particularly uncanny piece of work….

  —Review of Howard Thurston’s magic show, The New York Times, September 9, 1919

  Jo

  The hospital was white, white and quiet, after all the dark and flames and noise. Charlie and I sat in a bright, white hallway, waiting, watching the nurses with their squeaky, squishy shoes walk by, their overlong crisscross-strap pinafores over blue uniforms and thick white cotton stockings exuding old-fashioned comfort.

  I leaned against Charlie, my head nodding despite the light and the hard wooden chair, exhausted by the combination of too little sleep and too much emotion. Every time the double doors at the patient end of the hall opened I started, until Charlie wrapped his arm around me so that I could nestle my head in the crook of his arm, filling my nose with his scent, soothed by the warmth of his body against my cheek.

  I clutched the poppy scarf and its contents.

  I must have been dozing when the voice woke me. “You’re the one brought in Louise O’Keefe?”

  A nurse with gray hair pulled back tight under her cap stood in front of Charlie.

  “How is she?” he asked, his voice husky. He cleared his throat.

  “She’s doing fine, now. You got her here in the nick of time.”

  I shifted, and Charlie stood. “Can I see her?”

  “Are you family?”

  “I’m her brother,” he said. He pointed at me. “And this is her cousin.”

  I nodded, biting my lip and standing.

  The nurse narrowed her eyes slightly. But she didn’t question. She studied a clipboard and made a note, and then said, “All right. Follow me. But she’s sleeping, and I don’t want her disturbed.”

  We trailed the nurse down the white hall to a door that opened into a ward with large windows at the far end that let in the pale natural light of early morning. There were maybe twenty beds in the ward, all but a few filled with still-sleeping patients; Lou lay in the bed third from the end.

  Her auburn hair framed her face like a cap and her eyes were closed, but I could see that the color had returned to her cheeks and lips and she was breathing softly. Her left arm was bandaged up and over the shoulder.

  “She lost a lot of blood,” the nurse whispered, “but the wound was clean and should heal nicely.”

  Charlie wrapped one arm around me. As I watched Lou’s chest rise and fall I thought about what Danny Connor had done to her. About what girls like Lou suffered for the security of a relationship, or for what they thought was love. About what Melody had said about a girl’s choices today: that we still had no real choices; that if we step too far out of line, somebody’s going to yank us back.

  Now that I knew where Melody was coming from, why she said that, and now that I knew how much Louie had been willing to sacrifice, I had to rethink. Is a girl’s—a woman’s—new liberation in this wild decade—our freedom to wear what we like, our freedom to party all night, our “flapperness”—is it real freedom? Did we expand our choices, or have we just changed the shape of our confinement?

  Louie. This is your story. You survived Danny Connor. You did what you had to for Charlie, sure; you thought you were in love, sure. But when the time came, you made the right choice.

  The nurse tapped on Charlie’s shoulder, signaling that it was time for us to leav
e.

  She stopped us in the hall outside the ward. “Because it was a stab wound, the police need to speak to you. Someone’s been waiting down at the front desk.”

  Charlie nodded. His white shirt was stained with Lou’s blood, and then I realized that my black pants and sweater were covered with dirt and ripped in places. I longed for a hot bath and sleep.

  We made our way down the stairs to the main entrance of the hospital. A man in a suit leaned against the front desk, chatting with the nurse. When he saw us, he straightened and pulled a pad and pencil from his pocket.

  “I’m Detective Smith,” he said. “This is more excitement than we usually get out here in Great Neck.”

  He asked questions, glancing back and forth between Charlie and me, mostly questions about how long we’d known Daniel Connor, why we were at the house, what had happened. I told him I was Connor’s guest; Charlie said he’d done odd jobs for Connor for several years. Did we know why he’d stabbed Louise? No, perhaps a lover’s spat, Charlie ventured. What about the fire? I saw it start, I told him, from a lightning strike.

  He asked about the men—Neil Shaunnesy and Ryan McMann—and for the first time I realized I’d never heard their last names. Charlie said he thought they’d been lost like Connor, fighting the flames, inside the house, that that’s where we’d seen them last.

  We told Smith the truth, for the most part; we just didn’t tell him everything.

  Detective Smith seemed satisfied, although he warned us he might have to ask more questions at a later date, and he offered us a ride.

  Charlie and I looked at each other. “Can you take us to Manhattan?” I asked.

  Smith glanced at his watch. “I’m off duty anyhow,” he said. “Sure. Where to?”

  I turned to Charlie; he shrugged. “What about your aunt and uncle?” he asked.

  I pursed my lips. “There’s something I want to do first.”

  I gave Smith the address, and he seemed surprised. “Pretty classy neighborhood.” He looked us up and down.