Chapter Sixteen The Nova
Chapter Sixteen
The Nova
Nonstop ringing.
Not just the tinnitus in my ear, the doorbell. Ringing, ringing, ringing.
I felt around me. The pillow was soft, just the right coolness of the fabric as I turned my face into it. The blanket swept around my body, the cushions of the sofa holding me.
The light from the window made the instruments on my workbench glow in the haze of my morning vision. My face had been pressed into the pages of my father’s journal. The late-night reading had caught up to me in the end.
Something in this book was important, that was clear. What it was, precisely, would remain a mystery until I’d read it all, but the journal wasn’t thin.
The small clock on my wall said exactly eight o’clock.
Just one more minute, I told myself, sinking back into the couch.
More ringing, delayed chimes echoing throughout the house.
I slipped out of my reclined state, not even static catching my skin as I gathered on my robe. Absinthe and Tonic zipped between my legs, racing across the floor and in among the banisters. Their energy was high. I could swear if they touched me, they’d zap me with electric currents.
After so many days of low, somber energy, this change of pace was nice.
More ringing at the doorbell, even as I opened it.
Maxim was at my door, his finger ready to press the bell again in his eager state.
“Lucia!” A sigh of ease. “Look what I found.” He smirked and pulled a folder from under his arm.
“My proposal.” My fingers lunged for the papers, as if they’d run away again. The weight from my chest was lifted, like being reunited with a lost child. “Where was it?”
“At the front desk! Though, it was mixed among some other returns as well.”
“That witch didn’t even check for me like she said!” My tongue snapped against the back of my teeth. “She’s a terrible secretary.”
“She’s a librarian.”
I waved my hand dismissively while clutching the folder to my chest. “Thank you,” I uttered, my shoulders slumping as I looked his way.
“Of course.” He had that sad look, like a puppy’s. Always wanting to be helpful.
“What is it?” I pressed. “What is that look for?”
“Nothing,” he said, shrugging it off, “but since I have you . . .”
“Here it comes.” I crossed my arms over the folder.
“Will you check on Papà today?”
“Where’s Mom?”
“She has to run some errands.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I told her I could watch him, but something came up at work. And I’ve already been absent helping with the funeral arrangements—”
I cut him off. “I’ll stop by. I’ll head over now.”
“Lucia?”
I glanced up at him.
“Are you all right?”
I took a deep breath before I considered my answer. Something about the air was different. “Yeah,” I said thoughtfully. “I will be.”
Luckily today, my father was quiet. We set up a game of Scopa and some good food for bored minds. The minute the coffee dripped from the siphon pot, the entire room filled with the scent of a toasted dark roast.
Father was in his chair facing the street, absently picking at the blanket over his legs. Despite having a book in his lap, and his spectacles low on the bridge of his nose, he didn’t end up opening it.
Assembling the tray of coffees before bringing it over to the parlor table, I collected a cup, saucer, and spoon and placed the tray on the drink table beside his chair.
He was mumbling, mostly to himself. Maybe he thought he was talking to someone out on the street, or even just commenting on what he was viewing.
Among the room were visitors, just as before.
Shadows crept forward, ready for something.
Hidden behind paintings, inside shoes, tucked behind keyholes or under carpets.
They would always give themselves away, because unlike real shadows, they couldn’t stop moving.
How could you when you were made of pure energy?
One wiggled from under the tassels of the area rug. I stepped on it. The thing squeaked like a floorboard before disappearing under the weft.
A potted palm plant in the corner shivered, little shadows moving between the stalks.
They were bold today.
One dripped from behind a frame and decorative chair. Whispers began to gather, first a dribble, then a wave of them. The voices bounded off the walls and hit my ears, near and far, disappearing and reappearing.
“Papà?”
He made a gruff noise to acknowledge me. His glasses hung low on his nose, enough where he tried to lift his chin to see rather than just pushing his glasses up.
“What do you know about the shadows?” I asked.
His wiry brows furrowed, the grays catching the afternoon light easier than the others. “Shadows,” he muttered. “Ombre?” he clarified.
My throat clenched, like the words were already reluctant to come out.
“I fantasmi,” I insisted. “You can see them, too, can’t you?”
My father smacked his cup onto the floor, where it shattered, flinging smaller chips across the room along with his beverage.
“What happened? What is it?” I fell to my knees beside him, trying to steady him. I clutched my hands over his knees, keeping him from standing up. He nearly hit me with his book, and then he finally smacked it atop my head.
“The fire! I can’t stop it!” he cried, his eyes wide and darting. His head was whipping around so fast I thought he might suffer strain in his neck. I hadn’t seen him move with such quickness since my teen years.
“You are safe, sit!” I grabbed his arm to steady him.
He grabbed my hand with both of his, his shaking hands clasping tightly over my fingers. “He is coming. Malocchio.”
It guilted me to know that my first reaction was to think these ramblings were merely part of his condition. But in fact, he was mentally more present than he’d been the past couple of years. His eyes were straight on mine, stern and insisting upon his dire tone.
Another shadow dropped from the wall, and my father’s eyes caught it.
He could see them.
By now, I’d noticed his book splayed open on the floor, resting by my knees after its impact with my head. Small typesetting, disfigured by the deep scratches of a pen.
Florescentia
I flipped the page again.
Florescentia
“Papà . . .” My throat was almost too tight to let the word through.
The next page.
Florescentia
Florescentia
Floreeescent
Florescia
Fluica
Then nothing legible past those pages.
He’d been trying to invoke the Otherside while his mind was clear.
“I need you to focus.” I pulled him forward, and he leaned over, still gripping my hands like I was his last prayer. “What did you do?”
His lip trembled, and one hand touched my face, tracing along the patterns like he always used to. A finger over my eyebrow, along my cheek and lip. “My star”—his words as delicate as his current state—“forgive me” was all he said.
Then his face relaxed again, his brows creasing slightly.
“Father?” I waited, as if there was more to say. I knew there had to be more.
“I’m going to be late for work,” he said slowly, looking back out the window. “I didn’t polish my shoes.” He sounded distressed now.
“I’ll do them, take a minute to relax,” I assured him. There was no point arguing when he became confused. “I can get you coffee.” I gathered the small dustpan, sweeping up the chipped cup with unsteady hands.
He was summoning something. It didn’t seem like his ritual had worked, even if it had stirred the Peculiars in his home. What would drive him in such a panicked state to try summoning something?
Then, as I leaned down to sweep chips from under his chair, something caught my eye.
Carved into the underside of his chair was an eye. An arrow crossed through it, head pointed inward.
He’d tried to catch something.
The house was quiet again, and the light fell from natural to candlelit. His last fit of brain congestion was bothering me more than usual. The more I thought about it, the less it made sense.
To open a door and summon something, you needed a peculiar, or water, as his journal described.
Neither of which he’d been using when he’d attempted summoning from his chair.
I could’ve written it off as an outburst of lunacy, not understanding how to do rituals any longer, but something in the back of my brain told me that wasn’t it.
My mother’s footsteps were soft on the stair runner as she returned to the bottom floor.
“Is he well?” I rubbed my temple. “I didn’t know what to do.”
She waved her hand, dismissing my worry. “He has been having a hard time lately. His fits have become more frequent.”
“I thought he was doing better?”
“He was . . . for a while.” She rubbed her palms, sitting adjacent to me at the parlor table. Her body physically sank into the plush chair. “What is that?”
I glanced down at the tattered book in my hand, my father’s attempts at incantation within. “He threw it at me.”
“I swear, it’s the books these days,” she scoffed, her eyes heavy. “They’re making people paranoid. All these stories, the debauchery they publish nowadays.”
“Depends on the story.”
“He used to read those things all the time. The old books with their archaic rituals. I believe they were warnings, not instructions.” She chewed at her nail, though the smile on her face looked almost wistful, nostalgic.
Her eyes far off. “He was infatuated with them, so passionate. But one must not take comfort in fictional things—they jade you for the world we live in.”
“Did Father ever”—I paused, not knowing how to ask—“believe that the constellations were real?”
“They’re in the sky, we can see them,” she laughed. “Of course they are real.”
I shook my head, scooting to the edge of my seat. “No, like how they appear in the Everie. The creatures that serve as their patrons.”
“He did. We all do to some degree. Though it wasn’t something to speak about, unless you wanted to attract attention from entities we had no business in. We didn’t even speak their names unless in ceremony.”
“Which one was he most fond of?”
“You never took such interest in Astrium before.”
“A knowledge-based curiosity,” I assured her.
“Altair,” she finally said. “Bright, powerful, and even during the darkest time of the year, a glimmer of hope. I suppose that is what drew him; he’s a sickly hopeful. The will of that man was stronger than any I’ve ever known.”
“I’m no stranger to the feeling.”
“I see a lot of him in you,” she laughed. “I suppose that’s a good thing, considering where you are now.”
“We can agree it is a blessing and a curse.” I smiled, glancing at the books on the wall, the empty slot where the one in my hand belonged.
Her brow furrowed, and her mouth opened to say something more, but I had already left my seat.
I faced the books, my nose nearly touching them as I looked through the titles, the worn spines and the smell of bibliosmia pulling my attention.
My mother collected her robe, then the faint sound of steps back up the stairs.
Next to the empty slot were a few books of interest, many of them more worn than the rest. It was clear this area of the library was the most used, according to how the books had settled. Even the colors on some of them were worn away to a pale drab from the years of hands caressing them.
I returned the ruined book into the empty spot.
The library was nearly whole again.
If he couldn’t tell me what he was so afraid of, I would bet my last dollar that it would be in that journal.