Infatuate (26 page)

We made our way over the gate easily, familiar with it now.

“I didn’t get to look around last time,” he whispered, as if issuing a détente, as he ran his fingers along the chipped façade of one of the tombs. He stopped before a smooth, white pyramid-shaped crypt. “No two look alike here.” He petted it like it was a large animal at rest. It had to be at least nine feet tall and seemed to shine, reflecting and amplifying what little light there was.

“Yeah, they’re like snowflakes. That’s a good one. I think there are only two people in that huge thing.” He moved his hand away, as though he might be leaning on a body. “It’s okay. We’re not bothering them.” I smiled, though I felt hollow and joyless.

“So these are all pretty shallow, none of that six-feet-under stuff? Too swampy, right?” He bent down to touch the gravelly ground and expected it to be wet.

“Yeah. I guess people get buried in here and after, like, a year they take ’em back out and burn what’s left and then they shove their remains back in there.”

“Nice use of space,” he observed.

“Yeah, it’s pretty economical. They can jam whole families into some of these.” I trained my pocket-size flashlight on the darkened path ahead of us and led the way between a series of crypts about my height. Eventually the alley opened up and we came out at that circular marble monolith, at least sixteen feet tall, a sleeping giant in the darkness. A carved arch in the center housed a statue of a woman in draped dress who appeared to be keeping watch over the whole cemetery. Lance walked the perimeter, checking it out from every side.

A filing cabinet for dead people, it probably housed dozens and dozens of bodies. Around the entire circumference, neat rows and columns of rectangles had been precisely spaced out. Each appeared to be large enough for a casket to slide in and all were decorated with a door-knocker type of handle.

“I’ve got a good idea,” Lance said, arms folded across his chest, sizing up this beast.

“Use the handles as footholds and climb and swing up on them?” I proposed.

He looked at me as though he’d just set up a joke and I gave the punch line. “Yeah, actually.”

We scoped out our targets: we would ascend columns on either side of where the sculptured woman sat.

On my first try, I crashed, falling so fast and hitting the earth with enough force to kick up a cloud of dust. I landed on my side. Everything from my right shoulder to my right foot felt like it had been flattened.

But my muscles would have to ache later. We powered through, and by 11:45, we had both reached the top, dragging ourselves up at nearly the same moment. That was how Lance and I were: every time one of us figured out how to conquer something, the other one couldn’t help but shift into overdrive to master it too. We were equally matched in skill and strength and ambition. I felt a pang of regret to think about that now, when we otherwise seemed to be so terribly out of sync. We lay on the lumpy stucco of the tomb’s upper reaches, catching our breath. I stared into the opaque sky, no stars penetrating through tonight but just a sliver of the moon. We could see over the few nearby rows of graves, straight through to the lawn area blanketed by the soft glow of the security lights. Lance shook his wrist, straightening his watch for a good look. “Fifteen minutes to spare. Not bad.”

We settled into place, crouching behind the small dome that the unknown saint was perched upon. This felt like us; we were in our element. I wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline or the time alone with Lance, listening to his breathing in the darkness, or if I was just feeling a little bit more myself again, but I wanted to set things right with him.

“Listen,” I started. “About earlier this week and . . . everything.” My voice, whispering, carried with it the white flag of disarmament. “I’m sorry. Things have been a little . . . out of control, right?”

“Yeah,” came his soft voice, finally. “I know. It’s been a lot. I think we need to focus for the next couple weeks or months, or whatever, while this is going on.”

“Focus . . .” I repeated, gauging where this was headed.

“Right. On, you know, not getting killed?”

“Of course. Yeah.”

“And maybe forget the extracurricular . . . stuff.”

I sensed it, this turn, and the feeling settled in my stomach, making me ill. No. I wasn’t going to let this happen to me. “The drama. Right.”

“Right.”

“So we should just kind of . . .” I was searching for the word; I didn’t want to say it but I really didn’t want it said to me. Those being my only two choices, I went ahead as though we were in some kind of awful agreement. “Pause?”

“Pause. Exactly,” he said, sighing, as though he had put a bookmark in and closed up this chapter of us. “And then you know, figure stuff out afterward.”

“After the whole survival thing is resolved?”

“Yeah. Okay?” He looked at me for the first time in this whole exchange and it was so quick, no more than a courtesy. But at least then he couldn’t see the mist in my eyes. I was grateful for the darkness.

What choice did I have? I nodded, steadying my voice. “Sure, it’s better than trying to multitask right now.”

“Hey,” he said now, even quieter. “Do you hear that?”

I hadn’t. I had to struggle to turn up the volume on the rest of the world, on the things I needed to pay attention to in order to continue living and breathing. But right now I didn’t feel like I was doing either of those.

I had been hurt that night I kissed Lucian. Part of it may have been a secret thrill, I suppose, but a larger part was surely retaliation. I didn’t want
this
to happen. Lance felt so far away from me, like he wasn’t mine. And now all the good flooded back. Escaping the flames of the Lexington together, that kiss in the alley after we survived. Or even here, before we became so engrossed in the madness of this place. I didn’t understand when or how this slipping away had happened. I wish I had asked, but how do you ask something like that? And is it worth it when the answer won’t change the outcome?

But this much was certain: I didn’t want him if he didn’t want me. I deserved to be wanted, didn’t I? I wasn’t going to convince someone to be in love with me. Much as it hurt, I had too much pride for that. And I couldn’t afford to feel so weak in my relationship at a time when I needed to be so physically strong in order to live. To guard my soul, I had to first guard my heart and my mind.

And so right now, I would have to be strong. I would have to tuck Lance and all of this away somewhere deep inside. I needed to be fully awake and alive to absorb whatever it was that was about to unfold before us on this cruel night.

21. The First of Many Soul Captures

At midnight on the dot, we heard the first sounds of stirring below: footsteps, so faint, falling like a soft rain. We had been leaning against that pedestal and now we sat straight up, attuned to every noise and movement, even though so much remained shrouded in darkness.

Within minutes, they started trickling in, coming from every direction. Some dropped over the walls of the cemetery, alighting to the ground gracefully. But many others crept out of the crypts. I heard the slow scrape of rock against rock and felt the slightest vibration from beneath where we sat. I looked to Lance, who wore the same confused expression. A few seconds later, I spotted one of them directly below us: he had emerged from this very tomb. A shiver swept over me.

There were at least two dozen of them in all, floating over to the lawn area silently, as though everyone knew his or her role and performed it effortlessly, the cogs in a perfect machine. They abandoned their shoes in neat rows, like parked cars. They peeled off layers of street clothes so that the women were left in either white dresses—from long flowy ones to short wispy ones—or tank tops and camisoles with skirts. The men wore white T-shirts and white linen pants. Everyone’s attire shared a looseness, beachlike and free. As a whole, the group had an incandescence, their clothes picking up what light there was and reflecting it at a higher wattage. Two men laid out a woven tapestry in a swirling array of colors that glittered even in the dim haze. It stretched nearly the entire length of the lawn, roughly the size of a tennis court. A pair of barefoot girls in billowing skirts and tank tops knotted up above their navels set candles out along all four sides, the dancing flames fencing it in.

From the darkness came a drumbeat, and then a long, low hum, so soft at first I thought I had imagined it, until it grew louder, stronger, more guttural as the beats echoed with greater force. Below, everyone stood perfectly still surrounding that tapestry, then slowly began swaying, raising their hands, as the hum evolved into a chant, though the words weren’t in any language I had ever heard. Another drum sounded in the distance, playing a game of call and response. Slowly all the bodies turned to face the direction of this drum. Lance and I craned our necks trying to find the mysterious source of this sound.

The man with a drum stood beside a tall, boxy crypt at the far end of the cemetery, with a straight path to the gathering. It was one of the crypts that I had recently painted. Slowly the passageway in front slid open and a cloaked figure emerged. Only delicate ivory hands and feet were exposed beneath the gauzy black floor-length covering, sheer enough to reveal her knee-length black slipdress underneath. A hood concealed her head and face. She glided, accompanied by the drum, to that spot where they all stood waiting for her, chanting to welcome her. The closer she got, the faster the tempo of the chanting became. As she approached the group, those lined up closest to her split their chain in half and moved with such precise coordination it looked like two sides of a gate opening. All the while, they swayed and clapped and waved their hands in the air, keeping their music going.

With ethereal poise, she passed through them onto the candlelit tapestry. The human gate closed, reuniting the chain of revelers, as the hooded woman took her place at its dead center. As she settled into that space, the abstract patterns of the silky lawn covering glowed red and transformed into a mammoth pentagram around where she stood. It looked as though embers had risen up from the ground, singeing this symbol into the material.

Her drummer joined the chanting masses, and the woman slowly raised her arms up into the sky as though conducting all these unified voices. She stood frozen there for a few seconds, then, she spun around slowly, then fast, faster, spinning and spinning until she leapt out of her spin and launched into a dance. The layers of her draping cloak trailed behind her movements, like a shadow, as she pranced and whirled across the entire space, filling it up with her motions. Arms waving in grand and graceful sweeps, legs kicking and swooping into the air, she leaned and swayed, carried away by the music. I couldn’t look away. I was aware of nothing but her until stinging waves washed over my scars. Every few moments they would dissipate only to flare again. I tapped at that spot above my heart and then felt for my charm necklace as though grasping those pieces of metal could soothe anything.

The chanting picked up into a frenzy of clapping and foot stomping. The hooded woman began spinning once more, this time ending as abruptly as the music did, back in the center of that tapestry. The silence came so suddenly, it made my heart lurch. I felt as if I had been the one dancing and needed to catch my own breath. I imagined this was how everyone on that lawn felt, as if she had tapped into each of them and was living this out on their behalf, taking them with her through her movements.

Through it all, somehow, her cloak had managed to stay put, that hood never exposing her face. But now she carefully unfastened the ties in front and held out her arms straight on either side of her. As she stood there, without a word, two women stepped forward out of the line. Flanking her, they delicately pulled down the hood and slid off the sheer drape, taking it away.

It was Clio, barefoot in her slim dress, gazing at her loyal subjects. The light shimmered off her skin. She said something I couldn’t understand, arms outstretched toward those in front of her. I noticed now that the fleur-de-lis tattoo on her wrist burned bright, glowing to a crimson shade, as though it had been newly branded by a hot iron, matching the pentagram on the ground. The entire group answered her with another mysterious word. Then, as if that had been the cue, several of the onlookers stepped forward, placing ceramic bowls and urns of all shapes and sizes around her in a circle and then sitting at her feet. I didn’t know where they had gotten these, but it must’ve happened while I had been transfixed by her dancing. It worried me that I had managed to get so swept up that I had stopped paying such close attention to the full picture. There was something hypnotic about these proceedings. I looked at Lance out of the corner of my eye and wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

At last, Clio spoke and in words we could understand.

“Welcome,
mes chéries,
” she cooed, in a slow, sweet voice. “We have been harvesting for weeks, far and wide, around our fair city and its surroundings, as you know. We have been cultivating much-needed ingredients from the strongest of sources: the recently departed.” That phrase gnawed at my mind—did that mean what it sounded like? But she went on and I had to listen. “It is from these glorious building blocks that we are synthesizing some particularly potent toxins, as we speak.”

She held her arms out toward the urns at her feet and one by one, beginning with the woman seated directly in front of her, each pulled out whatever lay inside the vessels. First came a bone—it didn’t look like one of Mariette’s, but more substantial . . . human. Another produced scraps of clothing. A few had small jars of a dark liquid that I knew, even from where I sat, had to be blood. Some had jewelry—one bearing a ring that still had a finger attached, which was so gruesome I had to look away. Another had an ear. And the last held a blood-splattered baseball cap. At that, Lance averted his eyes and found mine. He leaned toward me. “Jeff. That was Jeff’s,” he whispered in a shaky voice. “It was in your photo.” He shook his head. When all of these items had been presented and displayed, those manning the urns slipped back into their spots in line.