Still

by Camilla Monk

  Pretty much all shops were closed, and tourists were getting scarce. I wanted to find a place to sit, unwind, and use what little data I had left to find a cheap guesthouse that would let me check in even in the middle of the night. I hurried down a narrow street, along cracked façades and ancient sculpted doorways, scanning my surroundings for a bench, or just steps. I eventually found myself standing on a wide avenue, crossed it, and kept dragging my feet in vain.

  I eventually settled for the ledge of a rectangular fountain in front of a tall building whose façade was decorated with ancient Roman mosaic—naked dudes doing stuff like working the fields and . . . carrying a tiny boat with smaller naked dudes in it. Remember kids, don’t do mosaic when you’re high. I retrieved a mini cake and my Pepsi bottle from their plastic bag and set the bottle between my feet, before tearing the cake’s wrapping with my teeth to start my picnic. Contrary to the wrapping’s claims, that filling was anything but chocolate, but the cake was otherwise okay. Good value.

  There were no sketchy bodyguards on my trail after all—not a soul, really, save for the occasional car speeding down the street—and at last, I allowed the tension accumulated in my muscles to dissipate. I took out my phone in between cake bites, wondering if Lily might text me in the wake of this disastrous night. There was nothing. It was better this way, but I was left with an ache, a void inside me I couldn’t place and that no amount of soda and junk food would fill. I checked Facebook as if a notification from my dad would solve everything. There was none, of course, and it’d been a while since I’d felt so low, so lost. I closed the app and loaded Yaytravel.com instead, narrowing my search to the cheapest—and likely sleaziest—hotels in Rome.

  A flash of black at the edge of my vision had my fingers pause on the screen. My head slowly whirred left. A black Mercedes had just stopped on the avenue, barring access to the street. I watched it from the corner of my eye, expecting it to either turn or park along the other cars in the street. The engine stopped.

  I gripped my phone with clammy fingers, trying to look chill even as I darted looks left at the Mercedes. The rear doors opened and two men came out. I didn’t recognize their faces from that far away. But the dark suits, the heavy and determined stride, those were all too familiar. I casually tucked my phone as they walked toward me. Braced my feet against the pavement.

  Breathe . . . Now.

  I lost sight of them for a millisecond as I shoved my phone in my pocket and exploded forward. Soles immediately clattered on the cobblestone in response. They were coming after me. I raced down the street, fueled by a panic that damn near gave me wings. It was really happening. Montecito and Lucius had actually sent their goons after me. All because of Faust? Because I was their only link to a crazy hobo trying to get near their table? My skull hurt; I couldn’t breathe over the din of my thoughts.

  The sound of heavy steps slamming the pavement grew closer. Tires screeched somewhere ahead of me. A black SUV pulled up to block the other end of the street. I ran—faster than I ever thought I could—but the searing pain in my chest and legs told me I couldn’t keep this up much longer. I blinked frantic eyes at the cold façades looming over me on the right and the low wrought iron fence running to my left. A length of black tarp covered most of it, advertising the renovation of the Mausoleum of Augustus. I had no idea what it was, and I could barely make out the shape of trees and ruins beyond it. All I knew was that I was running fast toward a dead end and that the men racing after me couldn’t be more than thirty feet away.

  I veered left and covered the distance to the fence. If eighteen months on the street had taught me anything, it was how to efficiently climb any obstacle when security guards showed up, and it was time to rise, shine, and take off. Fast. I leaped, gripped the iron bars, and propelled myself over the flat railing. The landing was rough. I yelped when my knees hit dirt and cutting gravel, and I went rolling down a light slope leading to a courtyard. The dark silhouettes of construction vehicles surrounded me, silent beasts guarding a massive circular building I could now see more clearly through the shadows of tall cypresses.

  Behind me, the fence clanked under the powerful grip of Katharos’s gorillas. I scrambled up and ran toward the mausoleum, my heart pounding in my throat. If I could hide inside, maybe they’d give up, unless they wanted to draw the neighborhood’s attention with flashlights. I slipped into an ajar iron gate and dashed straight into the building’s gaping mouth, a pitch-black passageway that swallowed me whole.

  I could still hear the men running after me, skidding on gravel just like I had seconds ago, while I rushed into a second circular courtyard. I fumbled my way through the ruins, overwhelmed by the scent of damp stones long reclaimed by ropes of ivy and bushes of weed. My legs shook with every step, every panting gasp. The adrenaline pumping in my system was no longer enough. I stumbled, fell to my knees, and this time, I didn’t get up. I crawled among the remains of a collapsed wall, and curled there, my teeth gritted so hard I thought they might shatter.

  They entered the courtyard seconds after me, their steps slow and cautious on the uneven ground. Shadows crept toward me, closed in on me. I stopped breathing, willed myself invisible when they glided mere feet away from my hiding spot, and the shape of a gun barrel caught a trickle of moonlight. Oh shit . . . shit . . . shit . . .

  “Emma.” Lucius’s baritone rose in the courtyard. A soft, dangerous thrum I could feel raising the hair on my forearms. “I know you’re here.”

  A shadow detached itself from the wall, and I picked up a hint of woodsy cologne. I gripped my knees with quivering hands, listening, trying to gauge how close he was. I managed a croaky exhale when I realized he was now shuffling away from me and toward the center of the courtyard. He vanished, his inky frame merging with that of a round building—the cold heart of the mausoleum.

  His voice slithered along the ancient brick walls. “We have more in common than you think, Emma. I, too, was once an insignificant roach. I was not born a free man.”

  But you were born an asshole, I thought, holding onto the thin hope that he’d keep searching the tomb rather than the ruins outside. I couldn’t see his men anymore, but the faint echo of feet crushing gravel behind me had me shrink to a microscopic ball against the ruins of the wall shielding me.

  “But Lady Montecito picked me up from the dirt, and she gave me everything a man could dream of,” Lucius went on, probably unaware that he sounded like the brainwashed follower of a cult. Also, this was getting weirdly personal, and I prayed, prayed he wasn’t about to lose the few marbles he’d left. He came out of the tomb through a door I hadn’t noticed in the dark, and suddenly, he was closer than ever. Close enough that I could make out the strangely smooth skin of his hands, sculpted by moonlight like marble. I sucked in a panicked gasp.

  Lucius’s voice grew ominously louder as his moonlit profile came in sight. “Your presence here in Rome is no coincidence, Emma. You have a purpose to fulfill.”

  You’re not wandering aimlessly. Lily’s voice echoed softly in my mind, mingled with his. Had she been fed the same kind of bullshit by Lady Montecito—No . . . I remembered now, what Lily had said: Dante would explain it so much better than me.

  Meanwhile, Lucius still believed he might coax me out Barry White style. “There’s no need to hide, Emma. Come with me, and Lady Montecito will reveal the secrets of the table to you. Be one of us.”

  Hang on, hang on, hang on . . . The secrets of the table? My shoulders hitched, or perhaps it was my legs, jerking imperceptibly. Whatever it was, it made the earth whisper under me. Lucius went still. His head turned slowly. His fingers twitched, and I thought I saw something. I was no longer certain I could tell dream from reality through the curtain of my terror, but I thought I glimpsed a fleeting curl of smoke, swirling around his wrist as he moved.

  He flicked his hand, beckoning his henchmen. Their footsteps ricocheted around the mausoleum’s barren walls, growing nearer. Blood roared to my temples; they were moving to
trap me.

  “Step back,” Lucius ordered them. “I will handle this.”

  The next words he spoke were a hurried whisper, mumbled in a foreign language I could make no sense of. Yet I sensed the urgency vibrating in the deep bass of his voice, raising the hair on my nape. Instinctively, I knew I was listening to a prayer. Then the words died as Lucius went quiet.

  I waited, every cell of my body in a state of suspended terror. He raised his arm, and one single thought detonated in my brain: he must have a gun, too, and he was going to shoot me. But his hand was empty, his fingers curled over thin air and a thin ribbon of ink-black smoke. Maybe I was hallucinating this too, the way the smoke seemed to expand around his wrist, until it became a wide black ribbon that stretched and spun gracefully in the air, guided by his hand. What . . . the . . . ever-loving . . .?

  It went too fast for panic to even register in my brain. The smoke ribbon hissed above my head and sliced through the remnants of a column like butter, snapping it cleanly in half. Several tons of granite hit the ground with a shockwave that ripped through me from the bottom up.

  Fear returned to me like a whiplash, and at last, my legs remembered how to move. I scrambled to my feet and tore across the courtyard, away from him and his goons. Forget guns. That shit was magic, and nothing made sense anymore. All I knew was the all-powerful fear of death, and the instinct to run as long as my body could. But I was too slow, and my feet too heavy when the shadowy ribbon drew a wide arc above me and whistled down, fast as an arrow. All I could do was shield myself with my arms as the smoke whip hit me full-force.

  I kept my eyes squeezed shut for a whole second, expecting agony that wasn’t coming. When it became obvious that I was still alive, I mustered the strength to turn a fraction and peek at Lucius through trembling forearms. He stood transfixed, watching the smoke dissipate in the air around me. His brow jerked. Furrowed. A second of complete daze ticked between us until his shocked expression disintegrated into a hateful snarl, and he pounced.

  I leaped and ran, feeling his feet stomp the ground behind me. His goons came from the sides to block my escape, emerging from the shadows once again. The ruins were spinning around me in tune with the wild beat ramming against my ribs. No way out. Lucius, his terrifying smoke ribbons, the guns . . . there was nowhere left to run, nowhere to hide as the two men lunged at me. I glimpsed their suits, tried to shield myself, to crawl away, even as their hands tightened around my arms, threatening to break the bones there.

  I never knew I could scream so loud. The sound ripped out my throat, burning everything in its wake, amplified by the gigantic walls of the gutted mausoleum. “Help! Someone help me! Aiutami! Aiutami!” I arched against their grip and howled at the top of my lungs, kicking blindly to ward off Lucius as his men dragged me across the courtyard. My hair came loose, and through the blue curtain, I glimpsed Lucius’s fingers, reaching for my neck. I coughed a whimper, unable to escape his touch, like dead branches wreathing around my throat. I think he tried to squeeze, but he snatched back his hand just as fast as if he’d been burned. A growl of surprise rose between us—his.

  Lucius’s eyes grew wide. He took a step back, holding up his hand that had just touched me. His skin . . . Holy fucking shit, his skin was . . . rotting, peeling off dried-up bones and tendons. My lungs constricted, pumping for air in vain, but I couldn’t breathe through this absolute terror. “Don’t get near me! Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!”

  I kept straining against his goons’ bruising grip, howling in vain for help that wouldn’t come. My head, my ears were buzzing painfully, so loud I couldn’t hear my own screams.

  It always started like this. A wave that washed over me, twisting my insides. The hands clawing at my arms became a stone embrace. Lucius was still staring at his decaying hand, gripping his bony wrist with the other one. A trickle of moonlight glistened, reflected in the white of his eyes. Time had stopped.

  I stopped believing it was real around the age of seven—not long after my mom told me Gabriele had returned to Italy and she wasn’t sure when he’d return. I didn’t cry. I wasn’t the kind of kid who cried, and my mom wasn’t the kind of parent who cared anyway. I waited, and as months passed and Lily and Richard became a part of her life, I stopped believing. At some point, a kid shrink from Bellevue taught me the difference between child’s play and hallucinations. Once I understood what that word meant and what happened to people who had hallucinations, I never told anyone about mine again.

  But tonight, my heart was drumming out of control—everywhere at once in my body. Because it was real. I knew, deep in my bones, as sure as I’d seen Lucius’s magic smoke and rotting hand, that time had truly stopped, and that it wouldn’t last.

  I forgot to be afraid. Long-buried reflexes came back, from a simpler time when this frozen world was no nightmare, but my playground. I let myself go limp and slip out of the gorillas’ lifeless grip. I fell on my ass without disturbing a single speck of the gravel in the mausoleum’s courtyard. Inert as a statue, Lucius still held his ravaged hand. His eyes were wide open, but he wasn’t seeing me as I raced out of the ruins and toward the wrought iron fence. I hoisted my body atop the railing for the second time that night. The landing on the sidewalk was rough, but I barely felt the pain in my knees; I was free.

  The SUV I’d seen earlier had moved. It was now parked right in front of the Mausoleum’s closed gates—waiting for Lucius and his men to drag me screaming inside, I realized with a wave of nausea. Perhaps for the first time in my life, it fully dawned on me that I was gliding at the edge of my own future. They could have taken me, or maybe I’d have managed to free myself, and I’d have found refuge among the steel skeletons of construction engines. Would I have lived? Or died? It had taken a jump into the twilight zone for me to rediscover this curse of mine with the eyes of the child I’d once been.

  For the first time in thirteen years, I stood wide awake outside time.

  Inside the SUV, a petrified driver sat behind the wheel, his head tipped as if to check something in the street. It almost felt as if he were watching me through the tinted windshield. I caught a flash of blue in his mirrored aviators—my hair. I frowned. There was another shape moving too.

  Behind me.

  Blood turned to pure ice in my veins. I swiveled around, and I saw him. Moving. I stepped back on shaky legs. Oh God, I wasn’t alone. I was no longer alone, and it scared me more than anything else ever had. He was walking in the middle of the street less than a hundred feet away. His gnarled cane hit the asphalt with every step, like a pulse, a familiar clatter. Tap, tap. I took in the steel toes, the worn coat. The mess of blond curls and the empty eyes. Faust waved at me, and I was seconds away from pissing myself in complete terror.

  He grinned. “Emma! It’s as if time stops every time we meet.”

  Holy . . . ever-loving . . . fuck. I wanted to scream, but the sound was trapped at the back of my throat; all that squeezed out was a breathless gasp.

  His face fell. “I thought you’d find this one funny.”

  Oddly, it was only after he said this that the full weight of the situation hit me. It was like getting whipped by a hundred live wires; my brain shut down and my legs went into survival mode. I spun on my heels and exploded forward, past the SUV—away from him.

  I registered his puzzled shout behind me, the only sound in the absolute silence. “Emma . . . are you running from me?”

  Hell yeah! I pushed beyond the burn in my muscles, racing down the deserted street in the opposite direction, as fast as my legs would take me. I had no idea how much distance I covered. Buildings were flashing past me, and there was a crossing ahead. An engine roared to life somewhere behind me as the traffic lights blinked green. Time was flowing again, slipping fast through my fingers as the reflection of Katharos’s SUV glided in darkened windows and gained on me. The lights switched to orange, then red. I ran, spurred by the threatening rumble of the engine, growing ever closer. But it was too late already.r />
  The driver hit the gas and veered left. The sleek black body drifting toward me became my entire world, and I knew I just wasn’t fast enough. Tires screeched as a red minivan barreled from the right and smashed the brakes to avoid the SUV. I couldn’t process any of this, couldn’t find a way out of this slow-motion nightmare. I raised my arms to shield myself from the impending crash. My heart skipped a beat, and I saw myself, the cars, the lights, and the buildings as if that single second had been shattered into a hundred shards flying in all directions.

  The SUV’s bumper grazed my knees. I felt the heat of the grille against my skin where my jeans were torn, but the impact didn’t come. I wobbled backward, my entire body shaking so hard it was a miracle I could still stand on my legs. It was happening again. Behind the windshield, in the driver’s gloved hands, the wheel had stopped spinning.

  I risked a look at the frozen minivan. The rear door was open, allowing me a glimpse of the passenger inside. I just saw his coat—his face was partially hidden in the shadows. His fingers were wrapped around the cane, his voice soft and eerily calm as he asked, “Emma, can I offer you an Uber?”

  I thought: fuck no—screamed it inwardly, in fact—but there was no denying that I stood inches from a three-ton SUV about to paint me along the white line. I figured it was one of those moments when the fire looks effectively safer than the frying pan. I breathed in, breathed out, and bolted to the minivan. I flung myself in the backseat next to Faust—I’d have ample time to question my life choices if I survived to see the dawn.