Onyx Webb 8

by Diandra Archer

  No answer was required. Olympia did as she’d been instructed and set about gathering the items on the list, which wasn’t all that hard since she lived in New York—what could a person possibly not find in New York?

  The answer was holy water.

  Olympia went to St. Peter’s, St. Patrick’s, St. Andrews—all with no luck. She even went to the Archdiocese of New York and came up empty.

  Eventually, Olympia checked the Internet and discovered a recipe for do-it-yourself holy water. Fine. She’d do it herself. How hard could it be? The answer was damn hard.

  For starters, Olympia needed consecrated salt since it turned out you can’t make holy water without making salt water first. Fortunately, Olympia already had the salt. All she needed to do was consecrate it, which required reading a specific benediction from the book of Solomon:

  “The Blessing of the Father Almighty be upon this Creature of Salt, and let all malignity and hindrance be cast forth hence from thee.”

  Next, the instructions said to get natural water that had been dipped by hand from a crystal-clear lake, stream, or river.

  Screw that.

  Olympia went to the fridge and retrieved a sixteen-ounce bottle of FIJI Water she’d bought from the Kosher Marketplace on Broadway on the Upper West Side. How much more natural could you get than a bottle of water from Fiji? Coming from a Jewish market had to be a bonus.

  Next, per the instructions, Olympia sprinkled the now consecrated salt into the FIJI Water while reading the words:

  “I exorcise thee, O Creature of Water, by Him Who hath created thee and gathered into one place so the dry land appeared, and… blah, blah, blah… who livith and reigneth unto the Ages of the Ages. Amen.”

  This was followed by still more prayers and then finally the purification of the water and cleansing of impurities and removal of demons. Olympia figured that at $7.95 a bottle, the water should not have any impurities, so she skipped the reading for that part. Removing of demons, however, seemed like a necessary step so she did that reading.

  Finally, it was time to conclude the ritual.

  Olympia added the last of the salt into the water and read the final prayer, which included comments about lurking enemies, the casting out of serpent’s venom, the dispelling of demons, sicknesses, blight, and protections against unwanted attacks.

  Next, Olympia took the black fabric and covered every mirror in the house and laid a line of salt across the floor by the front door. It seemed to Olympia she’d seen this done by Sookie in an episode of True Blood to keep Eric Northman from entering her house—which made no sense because Nathaniel was a ghost, not a vampire.

  Whatever.

  Then, per Stormy’s instructions, Olympia hung ropes of garlic over her doors and around her neck—along with the St. Michael’s medal and the gold cross.

  This was followed by the sprinkling of the holy water in the sign of a cross in front of every entryway, window, and at the foot of her bed—since Nathaniel seemed to enjoy standing there to watch her sleep.

  The final two steps involved placing the various crystals and energy stones around the apartment, followed by the lighting of candles and incense.

  Olympia did not do the smudging of sage around the apartment. She’d tested a small smudge on the wall and found it almost impossible to get off. Getting rid of Nathaniel was important, but she damn well wasn’t going to spend $2,000 to repaint the place.

  Now, it was time to address Nathaniel.

  “Listen up, sugar. I love you to death, but enough is enough,” Olympia said loudly, remembering Stormy’s advice to be confident and show no fear. “I don’t want to sound mean, but this is my house, not yours. It’s time for you to move along, sugar. Go on to the next place, wherever that may be. We can’t both live under the same roof. Do you understand? I need you gone. It’s time. I love you, but you need to go.”

  Olympia touched her cheek and was surprised to feel tears streaming down her face. She was doing the right thing, wasn’t she?

  Yes.

  She had no choice.

  Finally, per Stormy’s instructions, Olympia grabbed the bell off the dresser and rang it once. “Be gone, Nathaniel.”

  Olympia rang the bell a second time. “Be gone, Nathaniel,” she repeated.

  Then she rang the bell for the third and final time and collapsed in tears on the bed.

  CRIMSON COVE, OREGON

  JULY 10, 2009

  Noah flipped on the switch for the sign that had been installed that afternoon and waited to see what happened. What happened was the same thing that happened the previous three times—the sign came on, flashed a bit, and then went dark—along with every light in the restaurant.

  “It looked really nice for a moment there,” Ellen said. “What does the B&G stand for again?”

  “Bar and grill,” Noah said for the third time. In Portland’s Pearl District, the letters B&G would have required no explanation.

  “Why didn’t you just spell it out?” Ellen said. “Wouldn’t it have been a good idea to let people know it’s a restaurant?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Ellen,” Noah said. “People will be able to tell it’s a restaurant just by looking at it.”

  “I don’t know,” Ellen persisted. “The gas station has a sign that says gas station, and the pharmacy says pharmacy on the front of the building.”

  The front door of the restaurant swung open and the sous chef, Carlos, walked outside with a metal bowl filled with moist breadcrumbs, which he was kneading with his free hand. “I’m telling you, that fuse box is from, like, the stone age. I’ve never even seen glass fuses before.”

  Noah hired Carlos, who he’d met during his time at P.O.S.H., to be the restaurant’s sous chef—and not because Carlos was the person who’d wrapped the towel around his bloody hand and rushed him to the emergency room. It was because Carlos had skills that had been overlooked by a head chef who took great pleasure in relegating talented cooks to menial prep jobs for no other reason than to make sure they paid their dues. Screw the dues, Noah thought—either you could cook or you couldn’t.

  And Carlos could cook.

  Which was great because Noah had no intention of doing the cooking—he was the head chef in name only, opting to let Carlos run the kitchen anyway he saw fit. Noah’s job was to run the front of the house and see to the service side of things.

  “We never had this problem before,” Ellen said. “Of course, Spilatro’s never had a fancy sign—just that old neon thing in the window, half of which hadn’t worked in years. But we did have a sign over the door that said restaurant on it.”

  “What’s it going to be, Noah?” Carlos prompted. “You can have the sign, or you can have a restaurant with lights and a functioning kitchen. You can’t have both.”

  Noah closed his eyes and released a breath. Buying Spilatro’s Place might have been the biggest mistake of his life. “Okay, let’s kill the sign,” Noah said. “I’ll call the electrician next week and get it figured out.”

  Though the grand opening wasn’t officially set to begin until seven, people started lining up at the door of the restaurant at six—which was a really good sign. By six thirty, there were forty people in line. By seven, the number had swelled to over a hundred, making Noah’s greatest fear—that no one would show up—a moot point. The problem now was figuring out how a staff of eight people was going to take care of this many diners.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Clay Daniels asked when he and Tara arrived at eight in the middle of the chaos.

  “Yeah,” Noah said. “Don’t order anything.”

  “We can help you clear tables if you’d like,” Tara offered.

  Noah glanced at the dining room, which looked like a nightmare episode of Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen. “Thanks, that would be great,” Noah said.

  It was a quarter past ten when Noah saw the red Firebird pull to the curb—the same Firebird he’d seen a half-dozen times driving away from his grandmother
’s house late at night over the past year.

  Noah watched the man get out of the car. It was the first time Noah had seen him close up. He was thin and scruffy, in his mid-fifties, with several days of stubble and a disheveled look, as if he’d combed his hair with his fingers.

  Noah stepped back into the kitchen and watched through the window in the swinging door as the man entered the restaurant and went straight to the counter, which had been converted to a full-fledged bar during the remodel.

  “What can I get you?” the bartender asked.

  “Can you make a Sex on My Face?” the scruffy guy asked.

  “I don’t know,” the bartender said. “What’s in it?”

  “Yukon Jack whiskey, coconut rum, peach liqueur, orange juice, cranberry juice—”

  “I’ll take this,” Noah said, emerging from the kitchen behind the bartender. “You’ll have to forgive us, but we just opened. We’re still trying to get our legs under us. How about settling for a beer this time?”

  “Yeah, sure,” the man said. “A Budweiser sounds good.”

  Noah pulled a bottle of Fat Tire Amber Ale from the fridge and set it on the bar. The man unscrewed the cap and took a long pull from the bottle. “This is a nice place. You’re Noah, right?”

  “Yep,” Noah said. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got—”

  “You know who I am?” the man said.

  “Yeah, you’re the guy who’s got my grandmother into something she has no business being involved in,” Noah said.

  The man nodded and took another sip of the beer. “Maybe so, but she’s a grown up. That’s all you know about me?”

  “I know you smoke too much,” Noah said.

  “You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

  “It’s probably best if you left,” Noah said.

  The scruffy man stood up and tossed a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. “Classy place. I’m happy for you, Son.”

  Noah placed the hundred-dollar bill in his shirt pocket, making sure it didn’t get mixed in with the rest of night’s take. He wasn’t sure what kind of tests existed for the presence of marijuana, but, if anyone knew, it would be Clay.

  An hour passed before it slowed enough for Noah to break free and find Clay, who was still playing the role of overpriced busboy. At least Clay was in street clothes and not his sheriff’s uniform.

  “I’ve got a favor to ask,” Noah said.

  “I don’t do dishes,” Clay responded, wiping his forehead.

  “No, it’s something else,” Noah said. Noah pulled the hundred-dollar bill from his shirt pocket. “Is it possible to have this bill tested for drugs?”

  “Sure,” Clay said. Clay touched the bill and then put his fingertip to his tongue. “Yep, it’s positive for drugs.”

  “What?”

  “About 99.9 percent of all hundred-dollar bills in circulation test positive for cocaine,” Clay said.

  “No, not cocaine,” Noah said. “Marijuana.”

  “Marijuana?” Clay asked, suddenly interested. “There’s been a massive increase of pot being peddled in the cove. Do you know something I don’t?”

  “Just test it, okay? If it comes back positive, I’ll tell you more then,” Noah said, handing Clay the money. “So, what, are you and Tara together? I mean like, together-together?”

  Clay nodded and smiled. “Yeah, she’s great, huh? They just don’t grow them like Tara here in the cove.”

  It wasn’t until after midnight that Noah was finally able to lock the doors and join Carlos and Ellen, who were slumped in a booth, busy downing beers in celebration of the successful evening.

  In the next booth, Clay and Tara were inhaling a plate of crunchy coconut shrimp tacos Carlos had thrown together before shutting down the fryers for the night. “These sure were worth the wait,” Clay said licking his fingers.

  “Once the word gets around, you guys are going to be busy like this probably every night,” Tara said. “There’s nowhere to get food this good for a hundred miles—I know, I’ve tried. By the way, I told Onyx I’m going to open a Schröder Gallery in the Pearl District. We should ask her if she’d be interested in hanging a few of her pieces in here, too.”

  “I can’t imagine she’d be interested,” Noah said.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Tara said. “That’s how she started you know, back in the ‘30s—hanging her art in restaurants and coffee shops around New York on consignment. It’s how she met my grandpa Lucas.”

  “Noah, we’re going to need to hire at least three more prep people for the kitchen,” Carlos said. “I can’t run my ass off like that six nights a week. No one can.”

  “My God,” Ellen said as she finished counting her tips. “I made $211—in one night! That’s more than I used to make in two weeks. Do you really think it will stay that busy?”

  “It just might,” Noah said. “And if we get a working sign...”

  “Thank you, Noah,” Ellen said. Ellen leaned over and kissed Noah on the cheek. “For this kind of money, I’ll work every night of the week.”

  Onyx stepped onto the bottom rung of the rusted metal fire escape stairs that ran down the backside of the George Dietz Theater. It was a place she’d come many times in the past.

  From the roof, Onyx could see everyone and everything, yet no one could see her. Like it was atop the lighthouse.

  Several blocks away, Onyx could see the lights through the front window of Noah’s Bar & Grill. She could see everyone sitting in the booths by the window—laughing, eating, drinking beer—enjoying themselves as friends did after a hard day’s work.

  Why had she come there? Onyx wondered. So she wouldn’t feel so alone? Being here only made the loneliness worse. She was consumed by her loneliness. She was drowning in it. Worse still, she was tired of waiting for the happy ending she knew was never going to happen.

  Onyx had grown up believing in fairytale endings. But what ending did she get? Poisoned by a jealous rival, then mauled by a pack of wolves in the heart of a dark forest, destined to continue alone.

  What was it her father used to say? “Everyone who loves us is gonna leave us eventually, Jitterbug. Even our shadows are gonna run and hide when the darkness comes.”

  He was right, of course. As promised, he’d left her. As did Katherine. And Alistar. What made her think things with Noah would be any different?

  Onyx peered through the darkness and watched as the waitress leaned over and kissed Noah, and the emptiness inside her was immediately replaced by something else.

  Onyx had been wondering if she’d fallen for Noah. If she loved him. She was beginning to think maybe she had, but there was no way to be certain. Ghosts didn’t experience love. Or happiness. Or joy.

  But jealousy? Yes, they felt jealousy. Jealousy wasn’t love, of course. But to a ghost, it was the next best thing.

  LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA

  DECEMBER 12, 2010

  It had been a long time since Stan Lee had projected somewhere, but there was no doubt about it. He had traveled somewhere outside his body. Who owned that vineyard? He must have had a connection to it in some way—why else would he have traveled there?

  Whatever the connection was, Stan Lee didn’t have a clue. Wherever it was, it had been real—he had bird pecks and claw marks all over his body to prove it.

  Stan Lee opened the medicine cabinet and looked for the Bactine. There was none. There was no hydrogen peroxide either. When was the last time he’d shopped?

  But there was a small brown bottle of Mercurochrome.

  The memory of Oma putting Mercurochrome on a cut was almost as bad as the memory of having his legs ripped off.

  Stan Lee grabbed the bottle from the shelf, closed the medicine cabinet door, and looked at himself in the mirror. The next few minutes are not going to be pretty, Stan Lee thought. But what choice did he have? He couldn’t take the chance that the wounds would get infected. He’d read about how bird bites and scratches could get infected, spreading to the joints and lungs.
Several of the bites and scratches had a red-blue tint to them already—a sign of possible infection.

  Stan Lee opened the crusty lid and pulled the reusable glass Q-tip tube coated in red liquid from the bottle. Then he took a deep breath and…

  Holy Jesus Mother of Christ that hurt, Stan Lee thought, breathing heavily and fighting through the intense stinging sensation until the pain subsided to a livable level.

  Okay.

  One down.

  Only a hundred more to go.

  Twenty minutes later, Stan Lee dropped himself onto the couch, his entire body covered with red-painted lines of antiseptic from the waist up.

  Stan Lee found himself thinking about the dream again. It was a dream, right?

  It had to be.

  Stan Lee knew he’d never attended high school. Oma and Opa had homeschooled him.

  And if he’d been lured to homecoming and strapped naked to a metal pole on a float dressed like a scarecrow, he’d sure in hell remember that. Wouldn’t he?

  Stan Lee found himself wondering what memories from his childhood were real and which were fiction.

  To what degree was he still in charge of his own mind?

  The thought chilled him to the bone.

  In any case, Stan Lee knew he’d astral projected himself to a vineyard and ended up taking the place of a scarecrow—that much was for sure.

  Okay, that’s it, Stan Lee thought.

  He had to get back in control of his life.

  It was time to get off the ketamine.

  JACKSON, GEORGIA

  DECEMBER 13, 2010

  It took Quinn two weeks to accept the truth—he was never going to see his sister again. The note Juniper left made that clear.