THE HIGH PRIESTESS
A woman sits regally on a throne with pillars on either side of her from the mystic temple. She wears a crown that holds the moon.
Upright: mystery, creativity, intuition, common sense, discretion
Reversed: unwanted attention, obstacles
As Kiyoko is dragged into the back room, to be locked inside as a suspect in an attempted murder, she scans the area for opportunity as keen persons always do. She sees it in a set of bare toes.
She grunts at a column of silk curtains, “Give me eight minutes. Then make as much noise as you possibly can.”
The silent, shoeless boy behind the curtain nods.
The irony is not lost on Kiyoko. She is counting on the quietest person she’s ever met to make as much noise as possible.
The gentlemen grip her upper arms too hard—there will certainly be bruises. The brutes kick open the bedroom door and shove her onto the bed. Oof!
“Rokudenashi!”
Kiyoko hears the click of the lock on the outside of the door, and her panic rises. Here she is, a child of an immigrant, accused of attempted murder of a wealthy heiress, locked in a bedroom in a penthouse, awaiting police.
And now she is expected to meet the others, SOON. Damn Pax, making her the touch.
This plan has gone cockeyed, and she has somehow found herself at the crux of it.
She closes her eyes and takes stock of her panic. She takes five deep, calming breaths, and soon she tames her waterfall emotions into a smooth, glassy pond.
When she opens her eyes, she sees the room anew:
Two large windows.
Two sitting chairs.
And from her knowledge of the blueprints: a very wide ledge that encircles the exterior of the Potter Building.
Okay, this could work.
But she cannot escape in her lovely kimono; it was not made for scaling buildings, after all. She removes the garment and lays it reverently on the bed; she still wears her nagajuban—her undergarments. She shakes her hair loose. She takes off her shoes.
She tests the heft of one of the sitting chairs.
Yes, this will do.
And now, she waits.
CRASH!
In the foyer, Nirav topples the bar cabinet. The noise it creates as it smashes on the marble floor is positively deafening.
Kiyoko smiles—he did it!—and throws a sitting chair through a window at that same moment.
The cold night air pushes into the room and Kiyoko worries for a moment that she might get sucked into the vacuum she’s created.
Kiyoko steps to the window. “Do not look down. Do not look down.” She eases one foot onto the ledge. The ledge that encircles the building, the ledge that defines the Queen Anne and neo-Grec architectural styles, of which that jerk Starkweather was so proud.
She is a waterfall, her heart rushes. She breathes, five deep breaths, and becomes a glassy pond once more.
She eases her other foot onto the ledge and lifts herself, and now she stands here, eleven stories in the sky, head swirling, bile churning.
“Who, me?” she says in a mocking tone of her earlier self, in the powder room with Pax. “I would never do anything drastic!”
She eases right.
She eases right.
She eases right.
A pigeon alights beside her. You shouldn’t be up here, he communicates to her.
“No shit,” she chuckles. “I wouldn’t be out here if it weren’t for my asshole friend Pax, leaving me to be the touch.”
No, Pax. That’s what she should’ve said. I’m not going to do the meetup. You want me to be the touch? Go touch yourself.
Anger!
Yes, she can use anger.
You can anchor yourself to anger in moments of need.
She eases right.
“F.
“U.
“C.
“K.
“P.
“A.
“X.”
She inches to the right with each letter. Escape is two windows away. She knows this from the blueprints; the window to the stairwell is two windows from here. She eases right.
A flock of pigeons is now here, gently cheering her on, rooting for her with small coos.
Kiyoko pauses before she passes the next big window. The window into the parlor of Max Blanck’s apartment. If anyone inside sees her, she’s headed to jail. She peeks around the edge of the window into the room.
What an odd vantage point for a human, to peer into a window eleven stories high.
The gravity of the situation strikes Kiyoko and she sways, grows instantly dizzy, and throws her back against the cold brick to steady herself.
Whoooaaa! the pigeons coo.
Inside, Athena the boxer alerts. Once Kiyoko has steadied herself, she resumes sliding to her right.
Athena sees this and realizes a distraction is needed for that sweet woman Kiyoko, the one with the smiling soul. Athena knows that Kiyoko needs to pass the window undetected.
Athena growls. Raises her hackles. Runs to the elevator shaft, and barks barks barks.
There is nothing there, of course, but the frazzled guests turn their attention that way, and it gives Kiyoko the distraction she needs to slide past that window.
She eases right.
She eases right.
She eases right.
You’re there, the lead pigeon sends to Kiyoko after a few more slides to the right. The window you need is behind you.
Kiyoko tries to kick in a lead glass window backward, barefoot, numb from cold, standing on a ledge eleven stories in the air.
She is not surprised when it does not work.
She can hear, even this high in the sky with the roaring wind, the zealots protesting loudly below, the paparazzi shouting and snapping photos. Thankfully, with this new moon, she still has not been spotted.
The pigeons coo, gently reminding her she must focus, and quickly.
Kiyoko inhales, exhales. Five times.
The one bracelet that she pickpocketed that she didn’t place in the paisley pillow, JUST IN CASE. It’s on her wrist. It is a ring of diamonds.
She eases it over her hand and down into her fingers, telling herself, Do NOT drop this.
She almost drops it.
Kiyoko pinches the bracelet and etches the window. One tiny scratch after another. The diamonds don’t cut through the glass, but they score it enough to weaken it.
She is patient.
She is a glassy pond.
A glassy pond that needs shattering.
The diamonds make awful screeching noises that irritate her pigeon friends. Kiyoko feels ill. What if this doesn’t work?
She eases the bracelet back onto her wrist and removes the cotton sash from around her waist. Her garments flow free and wild in the wind, whipping around her already unsteady legs.
She wraps her hand in the sash, chances a glance over her shoulder, sees the markings where she’s weakened the window, and she punches.
It only takes one punch to drive her hand through the glass. A few more punches around that to widen the hole. Her knuckles burst apart in pain. Blood is immediate.
Glass rains around her bare feet. She has one shot to duck inside, into this gaping mouth of sharp glass. She will certainly be sliced deeply as she eases through.
But if she miscalculates this movement, she plummets to her death.
Five deep breaths.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
FIVE!
Below, on street level, Sergeant Mullany and Officer Hoogland burst through the front doors of the Potter Building, shoving Blanck about in his handcuffs. Blanck is writhing, spitting mad. He quite resembles a cobra.
The duo with Blanck stops short when they see how many NYPD officers have gathered on the street, alongside the zealots and the paparazzi.
The officers were called to the scene after a chair curiously crashed to the street moments ago.
They look up to trace the path of the chair, but the building exterior is dark, particularly just above the ledges, which cast shadows up onto the facade.
And Friends, if I were human again, I wish I’d have the chutzpah to pull off what these two do next. Sergeant Mullany puffs up his chest, twists his neck, and winks at his partner, Officer Hoogland. His demeanor says, Follow my lead.
Sergeant Mullany strides up to one of the officers at the scene. “You! Precinct?”
“Uh… Fifth, sir.”
“Good. This-here suspect?” He grabs Blanck by the scuff of his jacket and slings him at the young cop. “Take him to the station and book him.” Sergeant Mullany briefly details the charges: theft, attempted murder, poisoning.
Blanck howls as if wounded. The paparazzi captures every bit of this anguish with a barrage of popping, sizzling flashbulbs.
The young cop nods eagerly at his superior officer. “Yes sir. Will you meet me at the station?”
Sergeant Mullany clasps the cop on his shoulder. “Absolutely. We have to enter his haul as evidence.” He jangles the bag of jewels, including the heavy Hope Diamond. “Right behind you, brother.”
The young officer, beaming with pride at being selected for this important duty after only two weeks on the job, shoves a spitting, cussing Blanck inside the back of a paddy wagon. He slams the door, locks it, and drives away, the paparazzi’s flashbulbs fizzing like lightning.
Sergeant Mullany and Officer Hoogland slip away from the chaos. They walk one block, two, then burst into a full sprint, tossing their copper costumes into a dumpster behind the Municipal Building five blocks away.