She didn’t belong to them anymore, the gods with animal faces. She was set free. Jessica finally rested in peace.
59
When Sixtine returned to her hotel, she informed Han that she was retiring; that she should not be disturbed under any circumstances. The old man was very pale, and nervously wrung his fingers. “Miss, you have just received a message from Mr. Hausmann. I think you should read it.”
Two hours later, while Paris was preparing for Halloween, Sixtine ran through the corridors of the Louvre Museum.
* * *
The Louvre had become an infernal labyrinth crammed with all the things that she now wanted to forget. The visions had disappeared, but in their place, a blank abyss of uncertainty had stretched out and swallowed everything. The only thing anchoring her to sanity was the paper she held in the palm of her hand and the words written upon it.
HALLOWEEN NIGHT. WHERE IT ALL BEGAN.
She ran through the Egyptian section, her heart pounding with the urgency that had been spurred on by Max’s revelations. She arrived at the mummified man, where she had met Thaddeus on the morning of her wedding.
He was not there.
As irrational as it was, it had never occurred to Sixtine that, if she needed Thaddeus, he would not be there, waiting for her. Lost, she wandered into the next room, and came face to face with the emaciated bust of Akhenaten.
On a wall behind it, spotlights drew shadows of the pharaoh on both sides of the bust, so that it seemed he had wings. The greatest king of Egypt, the venerator of the sun, looked like an angel.
Sixtine looked into the empty eyes of Akhenaten.
Suddenly she remembered.
60
Golden orbs of liquid wax dripped down the sides of the altar candles, their light barely penetrating the cavernous gloom of the church of the Madeleine. When the sound of footsteps reached Thaddeus, he closed his eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” the voice whispered to his back.
The beeswax hissed and crackled in the yellow flames. Thaddeus did not turn to face Sixtine. A sketchbook rested on his lap. On it, the half-completed drawing of Saint Mary Magdalene. His left hand was smudged gray with lead, and did not move.
A long time ago, he learned to protect himself against all kinds of storms. Especially those that raged inside his head.
“You knew, didn’t you? How long did he have to live?” Sixtine asked.
“Three months,” Thaddeus whispered. “Four, maybe. I promised not to say anything.”
Finally, he turned around and faced her. Standing in the nave, with her back to the altar and the imposing winged figures of the Ascension of Mary-Magdalene raised up behind her, Sixtine appeared both magnificent and somber. The deep rivers of green in her eyes and the flowing locks of her silver hair made the frescoes overhead look ostentatious in contrast. But her chest throbbed and heaved like the flanks of a wounded animal, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Like her light had been dimmed.
“The wedding, the Louvre, the flowers, the big church, it was all his funeral, wasn’t it? And I was just there to complete the picture?”
“No,” Thaddeus replied as he put away his pencil and closed his sketchbook. You were his dying wish, he thought, but couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“Did Seth even love me?” Sixtine whispered, her lips trembling.
“Did you love him?” Thaddeus retorted quickly, his jaw clenched. He knew how heartless it was to ask, but it had to be done.
Sixtine’s gaze dropped. She stared at the floor, her reply barely more than a whisper. “You lied to me.”
“There is a special kind of hell for those who don’t keep promises made to the dying.”
“No,” Sixtine said, her voice once more steady. “You lied to me when you told me you were not in Cairo at the time of Seth's death.”
Thaddeus winced. His carefully constructed fortifications were collapsing more rapidly than he had anticipated.
“How did you know?”
Sixtine walked towards him; her footsteps echoed off the domed ceiling and clattered against the patterned marble. She stopped only inches away from him. Her perfume mixed with the faint traces of burnt frankincense and copal.
In a low voice, she spoke of the house in the shadow of the pyramids, a girl named Naya, a gold mask and a lost helicopter.
“Why did you lie?” she asked finally.
Thaddeus had stayed silent all through her explanation. What part of the truth could he no longer conceal?
“I always knew, if he should ever disappear, that I would find Seth in Egypt,” he said at last. “I went to Cairo to find him. I did go to the house in Giza. But it was a dead end.”
Something rustled above them. A starling had spread its wings and was flying across the central dome of the church. A black feather drifted down through the gloom and settled on the stone floor a few paces from Sixtine.
She looked back to Thaddeus, her gaze silent and dark. “You are hiding so many things from me, but have the courage to answer this at least. Was it Al-Shamy who murdered him?”
Thaddeus heard the note of desperation in Sixtine’s question, as if it had not been a question at all, but more like a prayer.
“Tell me that it was Al-Shamy who killed Seth and put me in the pyramid. Thaddeus, you have to tell me what you know.”
Suddenly Thaddeus realized what he had detected in Sixtine, that sudden darkness. She had exacted her vengeance. It had depleted her light. Of all people, he knew all about it, what vengeance did to a soul.
“I don’t know,” he lied. The defences he had built inside of him were about to give. He couldn’t stand her questions any longer. And yet, he wanted to stay here more than anything in the world.
“You do know,” Sixtine cried out, tears of rage in her eyes. “You know, but you choose to lie!”
“If I have any choice at all, it is only to spare you!” Thaddeus bellowed, in spite of himself. His defenses were now breached, but not demolished. He only had enough strength left for a whisper. “I only wanted you to find peace. First in Mexico, and then here, but I see now that it was a mistake. I'm sorry, Sixtine.”
He raised a hand to caress her cheek, but something in her eyes made him stop short. His hand dropped to his side as he turned and walked towards the church door. With each step, his chest became more constricted by the weight of a promise unfulfilled.
He was leaving behind something that he had sworn to protect in an impossible pact, the consequences of which he would have to bear for the rest of his life.
“Thaddeus,” Sixtine pleaded. “I need you.”
Her voice was faint, swallowed by the church and drowned out by tears. Thaddeus’ gaze was fixed firmly on the door. His painful heart beat furiously in his chest.
“Coward.”
Sixtine’s whispered sob seemed to fill every nook and cranny of the church, its acoustics amplifying the sound. Thaddeus, his fingers already clasped around the handle of the massive door, gasped for breath and turned. He could not help but feel that all eyes, from the painted faces on the ceilings to the carved figures in their niches, were bearing down on him.
Sixtine was standing there in front of him, as lonely as the day of her wedding, her clenched fists, her face writhing with exhaustion and fury.
He marched towards her, grabbed her with both hands and almost lifting her off the ground.
“Can’t you see why I didn’t say anything? Can’t you see that I was the only one who had any real reason to kill Seth, my best friend, my brother? How can you not see?”
Her face, only a breath away from his, was clouded with fear and confusion. He looked down and saw that his fingertips had made crescents of charcoal on the bare skin of her shoulders. All of his rage melted away, and his voice cracked in hopeless frustration.
“I didn’t understand why he chose you because… because you are meant for me.”
He heard himself utter these last words and he knew all that was left of his carefull
y constructed barricades now lay in ruins. Slowly, as if afraid that he had broken her and did not want the pieces to scatter, he let go of her shoulders and gently closed his palms around her neck. They moved closer to each other as if drawn into an invisible vortex between them.
The tension between resistance and longing made every sinew in her body tighten as the green rivers of Sixtine’s eyes were drawn toward the gray light of Thaddeus's gaze. The air between them became dry and crackled in anticipation; their lips were so close.
Then in one, last, desperate breath, Sixtine whispered.
“Was it Al-Shamy?”
Time stopped and the chasm that had opened up between them, drawing them both towards each other, suddenly closed.
Thaddeus pulled away. “No, Sixtine. it wasn’t.”
The word had come out as a hoarse whisper, caught in his throat and cruelly strangled by a love that would not relent but which, at the same time, remained tantalizingly out of reach.
He turned on his heels and fled out of the church and into the black and orange tinged streets. He tried to escape the painful memory of her touch at the tip of his fingers, and the smell of her alabaster skin.
He ran. Daylight slipped away. The lengthening shadows of night crowded around him, the atrocious paradox sharpening even as the clarity of day gave way to the ambiguity of night:
By loving Sixtine, he was condemning her.
All around him, he saw Halloween revelers, figures dressed as skeletons with gaping black maws. Soon, he would be in Mexico City, and it would be the Day of the Dead with its gruesome masks and careening dances. The demons would all come out of their houses and dance the waltz of Santa Muerte under a moonless night.
Death amid us.
The night reminded Thaddeus that he was mortal, after all. Thaddeus, the fragile vigilante, crusading against the living who put too much faith in death, couldn’t help but love. He, too, would die soon.
Until then, there was so much to do.
Under the faltering light of the complicated constellation of life, love, and death, he thought of his mother and the name she had given him.
Death amid us.
I AM THADDEUS.
* * *
TO BE CONTINUED…
THE SKELETON KEY
SIXTINE #2: THE SKELETON KEY
is available on pre-order on Amazon.
* * *
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