29. Calliope
Calliope
Thirty-two years old and not once in my entire life have I even stolen a damn thing.
Until now.
I can’t sit in here and read the little book of lies. So I shove it in the waistband of my pants and I walk out. I walk out of Lazarus’s office right to the locker room.
Palms sweaty and heart racing I peek at the clock, nearly three. If I leave now no one will think twice. Just Callie Cantemir leaving early from work.
Nothing to see here.
Except there is everything to see because behind me is that stupid tablet with those stupid glyphs and in my waistband is the full translation book.
I grab my things and sneak out. There are multiple entrances to the museum. Some known, others not known at all. I go up a level, back toward the security office. There’s a door to the garage that I slip through easily.
Once there I press my back against the door trying to remember to breathe when it’s fucking hard to.
There’s this part of me that wants nothing more than to rage at the world.
To scream and demand Lazarus tell me what the fuck this actually is because the harder truth is that he’s been playing me this whole time and I’m not so sure I’m strong enough to survive that.
And I’m terrified I’m not.
My skin feels prickly and hot all over.
The garage is empty, but I have no car. I’ll just go see if it’s ready.
That’s the most logical decision.
Sneaking out of the garage is just as easy. I don’t know why I ever thought it would be hard, impossible even. It isn’t. Then again, I’ve never snuck out much.
Calypso did. I just followed. Sometimes.
The humidity slaps me in the face once I hit the sidewalk, then the sounds and scents of the city wrap around me like a gentle hug. I try not to speed walk to the bus stop but I know I have mere minutes before the next one arrives.
As I round the corner, I see the bus just pulling up and I rush. Not run, running implies someone is chasing me. I rush, speed walk. She’s just about to close the doors when I jump on, swipe my card and settle in on an open seat at the back.
Heart pounding, I look around like anyone gives a shit. They don’t. Everyone here is more concerned with their life. Their moods and emotions and don’t give a fuck about the assistant curator in the back with a little notebook of a translation in her hand. Never mind that she fucking stole it.
Breathe, Calliope.
Except I can’t breathe. I have to and I can’t.
Don’t panic. Not yet.
Read first. Panic later. Or never.
I can react like a normal person.
Hands shaking I open the little book. There’s the transcription I thought I transcribed. I thought it was me. Me. I have to close the book and breathe through the tears.
He made me believe I did it. That I came up with it on my own. And I did, in part because his translation is still wrong.
Fractal blood. Fractals of a goddess.
Like she shattered herself across the universe breaking into a thousand little shards and those shards landed in a human woman.
I open the book again because even if he lied to me, at heart I’m an archaeologist. A historian and I need to know what it says. I have to know, even if it rips out my heart.
Lazarus has the glyphs written out, the translation under it.
I flip to the front.
The Sanguine Agreement.
I’ve heard that before. “The foundation.” My heart thumps even harder, my skin prickling all over again. Prickling and burning and then back again in waves I can’t control.
I want to blame the heat.
The Sanguine Foundation, that’s Hadley’s foundation. Her job. The one that has her halfway around the world right now. The one that stole her from me the one where she can’t even pick up a phone and call me.
I flip to the next page where the glyphs are scribbled above. The words under it.
The Sanguine Agreement.
The blood agreement between a vampire coven and their bride. Bound forever by blood and the whispered promise of a bride to give up her life force in exchange for immortality.
I flip to the next page. “Got to be a story, a love story, a short story.” I scan the page. “This cannot be real.”
A coven cannot detect a bride until they are complete. Three by three, then you see.
I can’t see the words anymore, they blur together. But I have to know if this is real. There’s one glyph I couldn’t translate. One I just couldn’t place. When I look at the previous page, I see it was vampire. Vampire is what I missed.
The bus squeals to a stop. My stop.
Putting the book in my purse I get back off and stand before Vex’s shop.
Did he know?
Is he…
Licking my lips I enter through an open garage door. A small woman in overalls and pigtails on the phone stands behind a desk. She holds up a finger and gives me a warm smile.
I can’t give her one back. I think I’ve forgotten how to smile. The thought of it feels fucking impossible.
“Hey girl.” She sets the phone in the receiver.
“I think my car is here.” I can’t get the words out. They feel broken. Or maybe that’s just me breaking in half.
This booklet has to be a joke.
“Make. Model. Name.” She’s so fucking patient.
“Calliope Cantemir.”
“Oh my god you’re Callie!” She squeals and hops over the partition to hug me. She hugs me.
I have no idea what to do with my arms but pat her on the back with a strained laugh. “Guess he talked about me, huh?”
“He did.” She smacks my arm and grabs my keys off a hook. “Thought you’d pick her up days ago.”
“What do you mean?” There it is, more heartbreak I can feel it coming on.
At least I know what heartbreak feels like. I’m comfortable there. Dare I say I thrive in heartbreak?
“Oh I finished her last week.”
“Oh.” I deflate. “Vex didn’t say.”
And he could have. We sleep in the same building. The same building. Only walls apart. He could have simply knocked on my door. Said my car was finished.
He didn’t.
He chose not to tell me.
Why? So they could continue to have to drive me around?
“I’d like to take my car home now.” I try to breathe through the pain. “Please,” I add for good measure. “What do I owe you?” I’ll have to pay with a kidney but I’ll still pay.
“Nothing, babe!” She smiles. “We got ya.”
This woman. This precious saint smiles. Doesn’t even notice I’m shattering inside. And that’s what I got used to after James, after I lost… After my world fell apart.
She doesn’t notice.
Either she has her own shit going on or I’m that good at hiding. Either way I let the thought go because it isn’t her job to help me through my emotions. She did her job, she fixed my car. That’s what was expected of her.
“She’s right around back.” She leads the way and I follow silently behind her.
“So you work for Vex?” I ask.
She snorts. “More like Vex works for me. I’m Ophelia Callahan,” she throws over her shoulder. “Vex’s sister.”
Ophelia.
I wished to meet you. I want to say to her. I do.
But I’m lost in my own feelings. I wish I’d met her under different circumstances. Where we could get to know each other. Where I could ask a thousand meaningless questions just to know him more. Know him better. But I don’t. Because if I’m right, then he lied too.
How did I miss this?
“New tires too, Vex wanted those.” She goes on. “Gave her a bath.”
“You made 2010 look new.” I swallow my emotions again. “Thanks.”
“Of course, stop by anytime.” She smiles. “Maybe we can get coffee, I mean if you’re dating Vex, I’d love to know everything about you.”
“I—yeah. We can do that.” I lie because if Vex and I don’t work out I’ll never see this woman again.
“Oh!” She snaps her fingers. “Go right home, looks like a nasty storm is rolling in.”
I look at the dark sky, only growing darker. East Coast storms aren’t pleasant. “Noted.”
“Okay bye,” she chirps taking off toward the front of the shop when someone pulls in.
A part of me wished she lingered and yet I’m glad she didn’t. I feel like I could like her. She’s spunky and kind. And I could use more friends in my life.
I open the door to Joy and sit on the cushioned seat. I look in the back seat finding the car seat anchored in. Right where it belongs.
For the first time in a month I feel okay, probably because I’m sitting in my own car and I don’t have to rely on a single fucking person to get anywhere. Not even public transport. And now that I have this power back in my hands, I don’t know where to go, or what to do.
And with a storm rolling in?
I put the key in the ignition and drive.
Partially hoping it’ll come to me, that I can find a quiet place to hide and read and not be bothered by the world until I figure this out.
And I want to run. I want to run so fucking bad, but I know that sometimes things can be just a miscommunication.
This could all be a miscommunication and I’m just overreacting.
But I won’t know until I know more.
So I go to the only fucking place no one will come looking for me. Not the guys, not my twin, no one.
My parents’ house.
The older home is nestled between a row of single homes that all look the same. Sunroom, large house that always had a creepy haunted feel to it.
I park in the alley out back, just in case anyone is looking for me and I enter through the back door still open even though Calypso and I have begged our parents to keep it locked.
They don’t listen. They never listen.
I toe off my shoes in the mudroom and open the door to the kitchen finding Mama at the stove mixing what smells like pudding.
“Calliope.” She smiles when she sees me, actually delighted by my existence.
“Hey, Mama.” I kiss her on the cheek, everything feeling like I’m just rolling through the motions until I can sit in my old room and read this damn book.
“What are you doing here?” She wipes her clean hands on her apron before washing them.
“I needed a place to hide for a sec.” I swipe the spoon she set down and give it a lick. “If that’s okay.”
“Now I need a new spoon. Oh no,” she says dramatically with a damn wink. “Of course. Daddy is out with the gentlemen at his club.”
“What does that even mean?” I lick my spoon clean and set it in the sink.
“Well now, Daddy and his friends get together and call it a gentlemen’s evening. Though it starts at two in the afternoon.”
“Ah, a geriatric evening.”
She giggles. And it lights up her whole face. Greek by ancestry, sun-kissed by the east, my mama is a beautiful woman. Though she’s nearing sixty she doesn’t look a day over forty and Calypso and I look exactly like her. Maybe we got Daddy’s nose.
“Go on, I’ll bring you some snacks.”
“Thanks,” I kiss her cheek and enter the dining room. Then the large open living room and follow the creaky stairs up to my bedroom.
The second floor is mostly the master bedroom. Long and lean it’s an apartment inside of a bedroom. I walk past that, the bathroom and guestroom and head to the third floor.
Much like the master this one is another massive bedroom broken into apartment like rooms. Walking in my old bedroom it looks exactly the same it always has. The same as it was the last time I hid in here.
When James left me.
The squeaky day bed still squeaks. The old AC unit still sits in a window. The other open to the street below.
Boy bands line the walls intermingled with sunflowers.
Maybe I’m here because it’s the only place that felt like home. This house that built me. That held secrets and sneaking out and laughter I shared with Calypso before the world went to hell.
This space was ours before the world hurt us. Before the days felt too long and the nights for sleeping off a sadness that never seemed to disappear. Home.
And fuck I’m lucky I can even show up here and sit on this bed with a mama willing to bring me snacks. And I know if she sees me crying, she will just sit here and sit with me. Not saying a gods damn thing because that is who she is.
When everything always felt like it was breaking apart, I could come home and exist and break while someone else took care of me.
Because no man ever did that for me. Never gave me the safety my mama could.
And that is why I open that little book and start reading.
Because I know everything is about to fall apart. I feel it in my bones, and I need to do it somewhere I’m okay enough to let go.
So I do. I wiggle back on my bed, and I read.