Chapter 20 Resurrection #2
“Yes, but what can we do? I don’t read Aramaic. None of us is schooled in demonology. Well … maybe the twins,” I say facetiously.
Her smile is careful, practiced. “Your magic will feed the spell, kitten.”
“How?” I question.
“Let me figure that out,” she insists, but her avoidance of specifics breeds unease in me.
“Your plan to remake the spell, strengthen it—does she know that?” My gaze casts downward to the thing brooding beneath our feet.
Arla rolls her eyes. “I’m not stupid.”
But I wonder how much she can really keep from her, how safe Arla’s secret really is, if the Fathom already knows so much about each of us. My thoughts plummet to the club and its revelers. “Medusa…”
Arla looks at me then. “Yes. All that energy, all that heat and chaos. The sex. The need. The hunger. People disintegrating and being reborn over and over. She feeds the club and the club feeds her.”
I take another long drink of water, absorbing the truth along with the liquid into my cells. There’s a catch somewhere that I know she isn’t pointing out. There always is where magic is involved. “What now?”
Arla smiles and takes the empty glass from my hand. “Now you go home. You get some sleep. You dream. In the morning, you wake up, you go to work, you carry on as usual. But everything is transformed. Everything is new. Including you.
“What I give—it’s resurrection. You understand? I’ve made you over. And now, like the rest of them, like the Fathom itself, you are mine.”
Her words are grandiose, but I see truth in them. They are coated in oil to get them down. The mask is slipping ever so slightly, and behind it she’s covered in scales.
“Arla, I don’t know if I can be a part of this.” I lay my palms on the counter, reeling.
Her hand snatches out and latches onto mine, fingers curling over my wrist, hot and searing. “You don’t have a choice, kitten. You gave that up in the basement. The genie cannot be put back into the bottle.”
It is a chillingly poignant metaphor.
“Now, go home and get some rest,” she says, releasing me. “I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
I cradle my wrist against my chest and leave, but as the elevator doors close, I look down and see it is red and angry, ringed with burns.
I’M COVERING MY eyes, squinting through split fingers, as I stumble into Orman Used & Rare Books.
I couldn’t possibly go back to work in this condition, so I came to the only other place I could think of.
The drive here was excruciating, the late afternoon light wreaking havoc on my sight, my head pounding more with every mile.
I considered waiting for nightfall, but I need to see Levi, to feel engulfed in him, to be steadied.
I need something to lean against as my center of gravity recalibrates, something I can trust. And right now, the only thing in this world that feels safe is this man.
Levi takes one look at me and drops the book he’s holding, rushing to my side. “Judeth, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”
He leads me toward the counter, but I clutch at his arm. “Please, the back room. Get me away from the sun.”
Without hesitation, he guides me toward the nearly hidden door and unlocks it, resting me against a table as he drags a chair over. “What happened?”
A demented laugh gurgles in my throat, hollow and sick. How would I ever find the words? “I wish I could say.”
I understand Brennan’s reluctance now, the gaps he couldn’t fill for me. He’s right: It doesn’t work that way. You have to see. The absurd language of the poster makes more and more sense— Come and See for Yourself! IF YOU DARE.
Levi’s lips purse anxiously. He looks me over for damage. When he doesn’t find any besides the first-degree burn circling my wrist, he straightens, crossing his arms. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“I’m trying,” I insist, squinting up at him.
“What do you need?” he asks. “Food? Medicine?”
I remember Arla’s command to hydrate. “Water, please. And aspirin. Dim the lights if you can.” This room has softer lighting to protect the contents, but I’m still ready to crawl under the table.
He does as I ask and scurries, returning with a bottle of water, a couple of pills, and a granola bar. “From my personal stash,” he says as he sets everything in front of me. “Stay here, let me ring up these last few customers, and I’ll close the shop.”
He leaves the room, worriedly leaving the door open a crack.
I gulp the water and swallow the pills as my eyes slowly adjust, hoping this reaction passes soon.
The pain is too much. I tear open the granola bar wrapper, famished the moment the smell hits me.
It’s gone in a few bites. As my eyes relax and my headache eases, I get up and walk around, reading aging spines, awed by the more elaborate covers of the books shelved face out.
Many are not in English. Several are so thick they could double as doorstops.
There are other things too. A small but ornate reliquary with a fragment of bone inside, labeled EX OSSIBUS / ST. CONCORDIA.
An oval silver container with Hebrew lettering and little embossed fruits that reads SILVER ANTIQUE ETHROG BOX.
An iron wheel set into some kind of vise and box contraption that looks like a Victorian torture device but is tagged CAST IRON BOOK BINDER.
Under glass, an ancient brown book marked 1600S EDITION OF THE BABYLONIAN TALMUD, ORIGINAL BINDING looks exceptionally well preserved.
I can only imagine how much value this one room holds as I move around it.
A black spider the size of my fingernail, fine hairs shimmering violet like the slime mold on Arla’s well, catches my eye when it scurries across a book cover facing out, melting into the shadows beyond.
Myths & Legends of Ancient Egypt the title reads when I approach, the dull and worn cover printed with hieroglyphs.
I remove it from the shelf and let it fall open on the table.
It lands on a page with the names Naunet, Kekuit, Hehut, and Amunet in bold, and I hear the whisper of Anneli’s shadow woman—áhce?eatni.
The smaller type describes them as the feminine half of something called the Ogdoad, a set of eight primordial deities who represent the waters of creation, chaos and vastness, passivity and invisibility, as well as darkness, night, and obscurity.
But according to the book, their attributes are so vague and their functions so ambiguous, it’s apparent the ancient Egyptians were unclear themselves as to the nature and visage of these mysterious beings.
Instead, a drawing shows the goddesses rendered with the heads of snakes.
Brennan’s dragon ring flits across my mind, followed by other things—reindeer antlers, tentacles, the hooves of musk oxen.
Cloaked in animal parts, Anneli had said.
The way an octopus covers itself in shells.
The image of black water parting as a razor-sharp fin—too long to belong to any known species—slices through it, glides through my brain, followed by hair as silky as in a shampoo commercial.
I shudder and close my eyes. I don’t see Levi enter.
“Feeling better?” he asks.
I reflexively slam the book shut. “Sorry, I probably shouldn’t touch the things in here.”
He looks at the cover but doesn’t move to take it. “It’s all right. No harm done. You looking for something in particular?”
I swallow, unable to explain what I was looking at or why. Words are failing me in the wake of seeing the Fathom for myself. Ineffable, the voice whispers in my head. “Not really.”
“Okay.” He gestures toward the chair. “Maybe you should sit again. You look kind of pale.”
Nodding, I do as he asks, grateful for the wood beneath me.
He drags another chair over, taking a seat in front of me, elbows against his knees, hands clasped between his legs. “You want to tell me what this is about? Did you go out geocaching again? Did you find something upsetting? Or toxic?”
I take a long breath. “No, nothing like that. Physically, I’m fine. At least, I think I am.” But my sudden photosensitivity and the trembling of my hands would suggest otherwise. “Do you have any more of those granola bars?”
He produces one from his shirt pocket, and I fall on it like a bear after hibernation. “Slow down,” he says. “I can get more.”
I chew and sigh and try to figure out what to tell him. “I just needed to see you.”
He reaches out and squeezes my arm. “I’m here, but I need you tell me where you’ve been.”
He’s right. I have to give him what I can.
I can’t keep turning up like this, distraught and full of secrets.
It’s not fair to him or anyone. And after what he told me about his ex-wife, I don’t want to invite comparisons.
“A club near downtown,” I begin. “In a historic building over the underground.”
“You mean the areaways?” he asks.
“Yeah, but a part that isn’t open to the public.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’m listening.”
“I know the owner. She’s a friend, sort of.”
He gives me a questioning look.
I finish the granola bar and crumple up the wrapper. “I’m not doing this right. It’s hard to say where it started.”
He laces his fingers through mine, attempting patience. “You were with your sort-of-friend in her old building.”
“Yes.”
“Was this today?”
I nod. “I went to see an artist on my lunch break, and I went there after. I had questions. For the artist, not my friend. Well, that’s not true. I had questions for both.”
Levi looks like he’s trying to follow a cat through a rainstorm. “Judeth, what happened in the building? Can you tell me that? I’m worried you may have been exposed to something—natural gas, hydrogen sulfide, radon.”
“I was exposed to something,” I tell him. “But nothing like that.”
“It’s clearly something that hurt you. You can’t stop shaking.”
Did the Fathom hurt me? I don’t think so. It turned my guts to jelly and cracked my mind open like a coconut. It changed me, just like Arla said it would. “I—I can’t tell you.”
He releases my hand and a heavy exhale. “Why not?”
“Because I’m not supposed to. Because I don’t know how.” He’s hurt, the apprehension and suspicion he’s trying to push aside out of concern visible. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
This encounter has reordered my entire being. Me—a woman born to magic, born to legends, born to curses. If I tell him what happened in Arla’s basement, what I saw—What did I see exactly?—he’ll think I’m having a psychotic break. I’ll lose him. He’s a kind man, but everyone has their limits.
But if I don’t tell him … No secrets. No drama. Will I lose him anyway?
He rubs one thumb over another. “Let me be the judge of that.”
I bite my lip, considering. Then, try again. “There was a locked room.”
“Underground?”
“Yes.” I reach out and squeeze his hand. “In the basement. And in the room was a locked well.”
He looks confused. “Why would a well be locked?”
“Because of what’s inside,” I manage. The words seem to slip around the image in my mind, sliding off it the way oil skims water.
I wonder if it’s the binding spell, if it addles the brain or befuddles the tongue.
Arla said she’d only translated a portion.
Brennan seemed equally unable to speak of it.
“Judeth.” Levi’s concern is growing with every passing second. “What did you see in the well?”
My eyes stare at the cover of the Egyptian book, unable to meet his. “I’m not supposed to tell.” I don’t even know if I know. Demon? Dragon? Oracle? Mermaid? Anneli’s run-in on the glacier trumps them all.
He takes my chin in hand, turning it toward him.
“Listen to me. Nothing you can say is going to scare me off. Do you understand? I’ve seen a thing or two in this business, and I’m here for you.
But if you don’t tell me, we have no trust. And without trust, there’s no us.
I know this is new, but I promise you that whatever happened, I can take it.
What I can’t take is lies and withholding, not again. ”
Nodding, I take a breath, start over. “There’s water in the well. And in the water … something lives.”
It’s clear this wasn’t what he was expecting. His eyes round and his jaw slackens. “An animal?”
I want to laugh. I want to cry. Hard as I try, the words won’t stick. “Not like any you’ve seen before.”
Frustration edges in. He tries to hide it. “Then what is it like?”
My eyes bulge. Everything and nothing. A beast. A being. “A monster.”
I watch this word wash over him, expecting disbelief or disdain, maybe even humor. But he doesn’t display any of those. Instead, he is quiet, thoughtful.
“But it isn’t a monster,” I continue. Because I know that word doesn’t do the Fathom justice. I know, like Anneli with her shadow, that the Fathom’s more than that. “At least, that’s not all it is.”
“Tell me more,” he says. “What is it, then?”
I cast around, flailing, Anneli’s pale, glimmering eyes and the Fathom’s dark, watery pit encircling me.
I see the spines, the mottled skin, the school of fish.
I see the poster in the tunnel, a mermaid on a rock, her tail multiplied many times, her eyes bright and horns curved in contradiction.
I see the shadow as Anneli described it, flowing over the mountain, full of wind and fury.
And I see the painting, Thalassa bold on the water, a sea at her command.
Then I see the encrusted mantel at Solidago, and above it, the portrait of a woman who even in death infatuated one of the world’s most powerful men.
At last, the word I’ve been needing, searching for, but resisting at the same time, materializes on my tongue. I speak it so he can hear. I tell him the truth.
“A goddess.”