American Goth (31 page)

“Seven,” she answered as she wrapped an arm around my shoulders and drew me down for a kiss that left me light-headed, “and then my initiation, and then we’re fine.”

“Well,” I growled against her lips, and teased my fingers against her, barely inside her, then just a little more, making her breath catch and her fingers dig into my shoulder. “It’s gonna be a long night, then.”

*

Fran was the first to note that the crime clusters preceded my birth by about three years and lasted for about three after.

“Look,” she said, when we sat in the library after another hours-long session of meticulously combing through the notes my Da had left.

I was reviewing the observations he’d made, she was creating a graph with the newspaper clippings he’d included as reference points.

There had been a tremendous rise in drug use, not just in the States, but in Europe as well, along with an increase in crimes involving pregnant women and infants—young women murdered, newborns poisoned in hospitals, babies being stolen from their prams on the streets by desperate addicts.

When arrests were made, some didn’t know who’d paid them to do the deed, they just wanted the money for the fix; others had heard that such and such person or group would pay for a young child. A few arrests had led back to cultlike family-structured units with drug ties.

I noted as well that this period coincided with my mother’s death, and that it wasn’t until a year after these sorts of crimes seemed to disappear that I’d been brought back to the States.

Cort whistled low under his breath when I drew the pattern out for him. “Oh shit,” he said softly, “I thought…I thought he was paranoid, grieving. These things have happened before, rises in certain crimes, certain events. There was no reason to think—”

“What?” I interrupted and looked at him sharply. He met my gaze. “That there might be a link? Other than the obvious, of course, that as Wielder, he and his family were vulnerable to begin with?”

“I’m sorry. He’d lost his wife and child, and the one child he’d left was an ocean away for safekeeping.”

“With you.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“I don’t remember,” I told him, my eyes steady on his. “I remember
you
, here and there, but it’s vague.” I thought back to that flash I’d had the night of my first hunt, when Elizabeth had laid her hand over mine. Perhaps that
was
a memory. “I’m not entirely certain I remember Elizabeth, or anything else.”

He dropped his eyes to the table and pulled the notebook to him. “You’re not supposed to remember anything at all,” he said quietly, then sighed.

“Why?” I was irrationally angry. Rage flowed through me, hot and heavy in my blood, and I swallowed it, choked on it, even as it tried to suffocate me. I felt played with, used, and some of that was directed at the man who sat before me, my appointed guardian.

“The last known avatar,” he said heavily as he scanned along a page with his finger. “No one is completely certain of who she was, her real name, her birthdate—the Romani don’t keep records—and she’d been lucky enough to avoid all but the last sweep. Your grandmother died, was killed, August of 1944 in France, just outside of Drancy. Her body was found by a member of the Circle, hers and that of the girl, the avatar, maybe ten or eleven years old.” He laughed, a harsh barking sound, and in that laugh I heard the same rage that burned under my skin.

“Your father was barely a year old. One bullet—one bullet that drove through Wielder to avatar. That’s all it took.”

When he looked at me again, the flame in his eyes wasn’t as bright, and for a moment, his face seemed to sag. He seemed old, immeasurably, impossibly old, with eyes that I suddenly realized had seen and suffered through much, too much. My anger drained away as I understood what I saw.

“Forgive me…forgive us all. We failed her, we failed the avatar, and I failed your father.”

“That’s…that’s not possible,” I said through the churn of images and thoughts in my head. “You were a child.”

He stood and turned away from me. “I was
there
—I raised your father.” He walked over to the fire in the grate, poked and played with it until it burned brightly. “Well,” he said heavily, “the Lords of Light will not make the same mistake twice—we’re done for tonight.”

I stared at his back, his shoulders as they worked under his shirt, stunned at what he was asking me to believe. “How can you tell me something like that and then tell me we’re done?”

He shrugged as I rose and walked toward him. “You already know more than you should.” He kept his focus on the flames that danced before him. “You know more than all but a very few ever have.”

“And you’ve told me I can do things you haven’t even taught me. So tell me more, and I’ll tell you what I think about the avatar.” I crouched down next to him. “Fran found a six-year window, so let’s say ten to give it room, someone as much as five years older or five years younger than I am. That’s what all those crazy murders and baby stealings were about—finding the avatar. But if the pattern is holding, and something new is brewing, they never found him or her. No one has, and they’re looking even harder.”

He was so quiet, so still, it was only the fact that I could feel his focus on me that let me know he was listening.

“You just said,” I continued quietly, “that the Lords of Light will not make the same mistake twice. What if
this
avatar doesn’t even know who they are yet—not all of them do—and that keeps them safe for now? It makes it crucial for Dark to find them before they find themself, hence the stepped-up activity, the new cult, my father’s”—I swallowed, then finished—“murder.”

He craned his head up at me, the gleam back in his gaze. “I think…I think you might be right.” He put a hand on his knee, then straightened to tower above me. “And I think it’s time you met some of the others. Let’s go.”

I followed him down the stairs and out the door, and he spoke over his shoulder. “This’ll keep your mind off the enforced celibacy, anyway,” he said, then grinned at me, a quick gleam of white over his shoulder.

I couldn’t believe he’d just said that to me, but I had to laugh as I grabbed my jacket off the hook and followed him out into the night.

*

We took my Vespa and went to crummy little dives, to tiny little offices in warehouses off the docks, we visited churches and schools. I met policemen, retired teachers and professors, truck drivers and laborers, old reverends and gardeners, housewives and bank tellers, and in the flat of one those in the East End, I met Graham, because as it turned out, he lived with his aunt Lydia, or Lyddie, as she invited me to call her. She was reed slender, but her handshake was solid and strong, the hair that skirted her collar was as unruly as Graham’s could be, and she had the same bright eyes.

“How’re you swinging?” Graham asked with a cheery smile after we gave each other a hug and smacked each other up a bit. Our affection for one another was rough, but it was palpably genuine. Literally.

I smiled just as widely back. “To the left, to the right, you know how it goes.”

He laughed. “Knowing you, you’re swingin’ it in one direction—Fran’s a good woman.”

“She is, I know,” I answered shortly. I did know and I didn’t want to think about how much I missed her now, never mind how much I’d miss her in a few weeks’ time.

It was at that moment Cort turned around and said, “Well, since everyone’s so well acquainted, and Lyddie and I need to catch up, why don’t you show Graham your new mode of transport?”

“Yeah, c’mon,” I told him, “let’s go.”

“Would ya look at that?” he said as I unclipped the helmets and passed him one. He ran his hand over the chrome of the rack, the seats, stroked the handlebars. “How’d you afford it?”

I shrugged, more than slightly embarrassed. I knew my friends worked and worked hard for everything they had, and I’d grown up like that myself, had expected that I would live paycheck to paycheck too, after college. The way I lived now, I didn’t do laundry, or clean things, or any of the million daily tasks that had once made up my life; someone else, someone I barely even saw, did all of it. I didn’t even have to cook if I didn’t want to; all I had to focus on were Fran, my studies, my investigations, and my instrument, in any order I preferred.

It was something I couldn’t help but feel guilty about; maybe when things calmed down a bit, I could do something, work with my uncle maybe, or teach music, anything to feel…useful, normal, maybe. Not so different.

“Uncle Cort,” I said finally, “he rebuilt it for me. C’mon,” I said and slapped the seat. “Where to?” I popped on my helmet.

“Well, since you’re driving, let’s go…” and he named a spot I’d not been to yet, known for “bad attitude, good coffee, better eats.”

I didn’t ride terribly fast, but at one point, we did have to take a rather tight turn and Graham held on to me for balance.

“Nice hips!” he said as we pulled out of it.

“What?” I asked, not certain I’d heard him. We’d only a block more to go, and as I found a spot, then cut the engine, Graham finally let go.

“You’ve very nice hips,” he said, removing his helmet and running his hands through his hair to make certain it sat right. “Not that I’m, well, you know.” He gave me an embarrassed grin, then hit me with his elbow.

“Thanks,” I said dryly, returning the shove. “Fran likes them fine.”

“I’m certain,” he agreed as we walked into the little eatery with its orange curtains trimmed in tiny brown puffs in the windows.

I enjoyed hanging out with Graham; it was so much like hanging out with the guys back in the neighborhood, and I felt relaxed, my uncertainties and even some of my fears gone because I didn’t have to hide them, didn’t have to be anything other than myself.

That’s what it was. I didn’t know what I was or even
who
I was sometimes, but with Graham, I didn’t have to be anything I wasn’t, I could just kick back and be; there were no testing questions, no mysteries to be solved, no heartbreak waiting to happen, ready to pounce and eat me. I could sit, say, do anything I wanted, and he was all right with that. In fact, he encouraged it—there was something, I dunno, akin to a likeness, a core that we shared, where we were the same. It wasn’t simply that we were musicians… I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that it
was
.

We ordered coffee because tea was what we drank at home, and got cress sandwiches to go with it. They weren’t nearly as good as the ones Elizabeth made, although they were decent, but the coffee was better than decent and the conversation even better.

Graham agreed that Paolo was a cipher, but he was enjoying the new band he was working with and in fact they were hoping to start performing within the next month or so. He grew concerned when I told him about my stop in the studio and the run-in with Kenny and Paolo. I even told him about the stuff on the counter in the studio kitchen.

“I’d hate to think Kenny was going back to that shit,” Graham shook his head and muttered almost to himself.

“What do you mean?”

“Kenny…well, he used to be a cokehead,” Graham explained. “I’d hate to see him getting back into that.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that—it wasn’t anything I had any familiarity with. “I don’t know what to say. I wouldn’t know the first thing about it.”

Graham nodded sagely over his cup. “I wouldn’t think so. But,” he picked up his sandwich, “get used to it. You’re in the music scene, you’ll see it a lot. See it a lot most places, in quite a few of the gay bars, to be honest. Best not to let yourself get tripped up with it if you can avoid it.”

I thought that went without saying, and we were quiet as we ate our food.

“So,” Graham asked into the silence, “how
is
Fran? She’ll be leaving after the year end, right? How’re you doing with that?”

I swallowed my last bite hastily because the taste had gone flat in my mouth, and toyed with the rim of my cup.

“I’m doing,” I answered finally, then gave him a small grin over my mug, “I’m doing.”

“Uh-huh,” he answered, “I can see that. What exactly is it that you’re doing?”

I measured him, his face, his eyes, the energy that surrounded him, the acceptance and comfort he radiated. Graham had guided me, brought me by the hand almost literally, to a place he thought would be comfortable and appropriate for me, just so I could find the dick I used with my girlfriend, had introduced me to people he cared about, had given me advice about something so intimate, so personal, and he’d asked for absolutely nothing in return. It was a pleasant little jolt to realize I not only liked Graham, I trusted him, instinctively, completely—he had a very generous heart.

“We’ll be friends, then, that’s all, that’s what I’m—we’re doing. That’s what we’re doing.” I couldn’t completely hide the way I felt from my voice despite the bland expression I was almost positive I wore, and would have been angrier at myself for it had it not been for the expression on Graham’s face.

“Tell me you’re joking,” he set his mug down with a thump and demanded. “You must be. I’ve seen you together—you can’t
possibly
or seriously want to do that.” He shifted in his seat and called for a waitress as he reached into his back pocket. “Bill, please,” he asked as she passed. He pulled out his wallet, threw a few bills on the table, then jumped to his feet. “On me,” he said, “no arguments, and we’re going for a drink. We’ll call my aunt Lyddie, let your uncle know you’ll be a bit. I’ll even talk with him,” he said over my protests that I was my uncle’s ride home.