Chapter twelve
Josephine
After I saw the old storybook in Aedon’s house, I had a realization. The story near the middle had always been my favorite, but not for the reasons I remembered. It’s because Kate would get excited when she read it. She would infuse drama and make Magic sound enticing.
Kate would always get excited when Magic was involved, but she never directly said it. Even in our home, she was always worried about if someone would hear, just like I was quiet about my skin. Killian never spoke on the matter, but I could always tell it made him uncomfortable.
So much has happened, and I’ve been too fucking stupid to put it together. I see why Killian never let me in on the secrets. I don’t think he knew them all himself. Turns out Kate kept heaps of things from me. That’s why she hid me away. If I can open the Grimoire, I’ll bet the answers to the rest of my questions are kept there.
As I walk home, I find myself fidgeting. Aedon didn’t seem thrown for a loop when I barged through his house and then just left. I like that. Do I think he’s psychotically obsessed with me? Yes, I have no doubt about that, but he let me walk away again. Not in a ‘thank the Universe you’re leaving’ way, but in a ‘not again’ way.
The manuscript in his apartment definitely wasn’t intentional, but it has the Fates written all over it. I know there was only ever one copy. The story of Pandora’s Box flips through my mind. The box was always real. It’s sitting in the museum, which is curious. Somehow, I’m connected to it and so is the book.
The Tartarian exhibit in the museum is too coincidental. It was a slap in the face. The drawing of The Leviathan isn’t Nyx and Erebus. It’s the Dav?s Hōyas, the king and queen of the fucking monsters. I smile to myself at the revelation. I’ve finally managed to figure something out. In my mind, monsters were myths, but every day that passes they become reality. It’s honestly exciting.
Kate read me a depiction of them in the damned story over and over again, almost wisping it in shadows right in front of me. I didn’t recall it until I saw the papyrus book. Killian would always get uncomfortable when Kate would speak about the Mondurians. He always said she was filling my head with nonsense.
Even though I still have a zillion questions, I’ve found out more than I even thought possible. It’s a relief from the constant loneliness that’s plagued me, even though Vivian never left me alone. Aedon hasn’t given himself up. He said he wasn’t an orphan, and I don’t think his entrance into my life is a coincidence. It’s another act of the Fates, but I don’t understand their end goal.
The night that Killian and Kate died they were protecting me and their secrets. Even Killian admitted they were there for me, but they must have been there to take something else, too. If the two of them were willing to sacrifice their lives, it must be pretty fucking important.
It isn’t even here, Kate had said.
Whoever is looking for this grimoire doesn't know who has it, and that gives me the upper hand. I need to tell Stafford about it all, but one thing that I need to know before I approach him is the truth about that night we ran. The only person that saw it was Vivian. We never mentioned it again, and now that is going to change. It’s time we talk about the past.
The streets are busy. I pass the infirmary where she works, and there is a line outside the door. Someone always needs healing. She should be off work today. I walk up to her flat and catch a glimpse of her laying out on her deck, basking in the sun.
She pulls down her sunglasses. “Jo?”
“Hey, Viv.”
“You haven’t been at your apartment for the last few days. Are you back at work?” Her brows furrow. She’s worried, of course. Always a sister first.
“Not exactly. I’ve actually been trying to enjoy myself.” I blush without meaning to, and this elicits an immediate reaction from her. She bolts upright.
“What kind of enjoyment?” She leads me inside and pours me some concoction from the fridge with fruit floating in it. It won’t hurt to tell her. Good news first, bad news later. The rest can wait.
“Remember the guy from the club?” I know she does.
“The romantic one? He came to my work looking for you. I told him to take a hike,” she admits.
I grin wide. “I know.”
“It killed me, literally killed me. I was dying inside. I’m going to guess he found you.”
I blush. “He did.”
“Did you have sex with him?!” she squeaks. My blush turns from pink to red. “You did! Tell me everything.”
I tell her as much as I can while excluding the museum.
“So he’s rich?” She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively.
“So am I,” I point out.
“No one would ever know it because you won’t move out of that disgusting apartment.”
“What is it with you and Stafford? Always complaining about it. I like living there. I’m comfortable in Remnant territory. Everyone leaves me alone.”
She rolls her eyes. “Because they’re afraid of you.”
I’ve never openly discussed the work I do. I didn’t think Vivian would approve. She doesn’t ask, and I don’t tell.
“We all know what you really do. It doesn’t take intelligence to figure that out. Don’t look so shocked,” she continues. “I know what Bella does late at night, too. It was only a matter of time before I figured out how you two really know each other.”
“She told you what I do?” I make a mental note to punch Bella in the face.
“I’m not stupid, Jo. Even before that, Remnant women gossip, you know? Jealousy can really make a bitch talk.”
“You never said anything.”
“What was there to say? I’m your sister not your keeper. We all have our ways of dealing with our shit,” she sighs. “So back to Aedonaeus.”
“There isn’t much else to say. He’s obsessed with me.”
“Of course he is. He looked like a serial killer trying to hunt you down when I saw him. It was borderlining an interrogation.”
“I think I like him,” I tell her.
“Finally.” She slams her drink down, splashing sweet purple liquid onto the counter in little drops. “All this time I thought you would die miserable and alone.”
“I’m not miserable.”
“I thought Bella and I were going to have to buy a bigger place and move you in.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“You would do the same for me.” She gives me an adoring look. One I give her every time I see her. In another Universe, things aren’t so complicated, and we’re all genuinely happy. I just know it. Her kindness is an atmosphere, and it’s giving me that warm cozy feeling, like when we would have sleepovers.
“You look good. Vacation looks good on you. Speaking of, have you heard any more from Stafford?”
“No.” I hesitate, calming my nerves before bringing up the dreaded subject. “I came here to talk to you about something.”
“This sounds bad.”
“I need to tell you the reason I’m technically on vacation.”
She takes a deep breath and nods, ready to hear it.
I launch right in. “That night Kate and Killian died. Someone came to kill them.”
“Obviously,” she says dryly.
“Killian told me that the danger was real. Remember that?”
“I do.” She shivers, as if we’re back in that frozen wasteland.
“Stafford said that people have been coming around asking for some book that Kate allegedly had.”
“Okay?”
“Remember how Killian packed our shit?”
She inspects her nail beds. “Is this going to be a play by play of the worst night of our lives?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just…apparently Kate was a witch.” I wait to see how my words fall on her ears. I’m not sure if she ever knew.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“You knew?”
“Of course I did. She was best friends with my mom.”
Vivian and I have never spoken much about her mother. She has made comments here and there, but it was never anything substantial.
“Your mom was a witch?”
“Yes, she was, but she had different views. When I was a kid, Kate would always rant on and on about prophecies and monsters. My mom didn’t know that I would listen to them at night when I couldn’t sleep. When she would hear me creeping around, they would speak in Mondurian. I asked her about it once, and that was when she called it the Tartarian Tongue. Said that it was an old way of thinking. I loved Aunt Kate. It was always fun when she came over, but my mom didn’t share a lot of her opinions. Called it a heretical way of thinking.”
“So your mom did Magic?”
“No, she laid it down after The Burning. It was something she argued with Kate about. She was worried if anyone found out that we would burn, too.”
“Stafford said all witches had books.”
The fact that Vivian is an unpracticed witch doesn’t escape me. As close as we are, I've never known that about her or her mother. I didn’t realize her connection with Kate was so complicated.
“Not all of them had one. It was just one. The Grimoire. It was burned with Nyx’s temple. It was full of ancient Magic. Only Nyx’s priestess could call on it. One of her gifts. I heard about that during a particularly nasty argument with Kate.”
“I can’t believe your mother was a witch.”
“I didn’t want to talk about it. I was angry at her for a long time for never teaching me, but I get it now.” She shrugs. “I think Kate never taught me anything to respect her wishes.”
“Stafford is looking for the Grimoire,” I admit. Her head snaps up.
“What would he want with it?”
“Apparently, he knew, and or knows now, that Kate was a witch, and he thought she had it. He says people want the book, but he is trying to find it first to keep it out of their hands,” I explain.
“It doesn’t matter. Even if she did somehow have it in her possession it would have burned with the house,” she grits out.
“That’s what I said.”
“I can sense a ‘but’.”
“But I was doing some spring cleaning,” I lie obviously. “And decided that I should finally remove Killian’s things from my closet. I took out the duffel bag and emptied it…” I take a deep breath to prepare myself. “I found it.”
“Found the Grimoire?” she asks slowly.
“I’m pretty sure. It has weird thing on the front and locks. I can’t get it to budge open a centimeter.” I leave out the part about the symbols matching mine. This doesn’t feel like the time.
“Sounds like that’s exactly what it was. Did you give it to Staff?”
“No.”
“Don’t,” she urges me. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Stafford. He’s really done a lot for us, but if it remotely gets mishandled we have no idea what is in, there and the kind of Magic Kate was capable of if she had it. If she was reading the spells in there…Ancient Magic is beautiful, but it’s also dangerous. Like I said, it was a gift from Nyx, and she’s not really the do-good type.”
“Then what do you suggest I do?”
“I don’t know, but you can’t keep it. You have to destroy it.”
“Why?”
“Hello? Did you not hear me? Danger. Ancient Magic. Dark Magic.”
I let her words sink in. Fuck me. Of course I would end up in this situation. Maybe whoever killed Kate that night knew what they were doing. They killed her before she could get rid of it. But why keep it in the first place?
“There’s more,” I continue.
“Fucking hell, Josie.”
“Do you remember that story Kate used to read to us?” I blurt out. We’re too far down the path to stop now.
“Those dark tales?”
“Yes,” I quickly reply.
“Kinda. I liked the way you interpreted them to me since Kate was insistent on reading them in Mondurian. I remember Killian hated them. When he walked in, he would always blare music and force us to dance instead.” The memory of living room dance parties becomes tainted just like anything else involving him seems to. Everything is dripping with new meaning and it’s tearing apart my insides. The truth will do that.
“I found that manuscript today.”
“Impossible.” Vivian’s mouth gapes open. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, but I know she’s in as much shock as a person can be in without going into literal shock.
“I found it in Aedon’s library.”
“Josie.” She grips the counter. “He could be trying to kill you.”
“No. He genuinely had no idea what it was. He would have already killed me by now. He’s had plenty of chances.” Wouldn’t he? Am I telling myself lies? “I was reading through it, and I was reminded of your favorite story. Pandora’s Box.”
She bristles. “My mother would roll over in her grave if she knew we read that blasphemy.”
“I found the box.” The silence that descends between us could murder a nation with how it sucks the oxygen from the air.
Her response is simple. “No.”
“We can’t ignore this, Viv,” I continue. “It’s real and it’s at the museum. That note Staff sent. It had a ticket to an exhibition on Tartarus. They have proof that the Mondurians existed. If that was real, then what about the rest of the stories? I saw things in that exhibit that are too similar to pretend there isn’t truth in it all.”
“That may be, Jo, but this has nothing to do with us. We need to be as far away from all of this as possible. We can thank the dead for our lives and that’s as far as we should be involved. We’ve moved on. We don’t stop and look back. Whoever and whatever happened that night has no place here anymore,” she warns me.
“What exactly happened that night, Vivian?” My question is loaded.
“People died, that’s what.” Her voice rises in trepidation.
“You and I both know that’s not what I’m talking about.”
Vivian looks like she could pass out. Then her eyes glaze over as she’s trying to process what I’m saying.
“Did you see anything weird?” I ask.
She averts her gaze to the counter, notices the spilled drink, and rushes to clean it up. Vivian distracts herself with manual labor when she doesn’t want to talk about something. I’ve pushed the envelope, but now I have to tear it open.
“Like what?” she briskly asks. “Like a snowstorm in the middle of the hottest time of the year? Or maybe an entire village being iced over in a matter of minutes?”
“Like the earth cracking beneath my feet, and then creating a blazing fire, and burning everything in my path including the entire house.” She meets my gaze. “It’s time we talk about it, Viv.” I want answers, and she is the only person that I know that can answer them.
“That could have been anything,” she reasons.
“Vivian.”
“I mean we live in the Underworld, and the place resettles all of the time.”
“Vivian.”
“Whoever killed them probably put flammable liquid through the place and trailed it out, trying to cover their tracks. Then they spooked. You used to secretly smoke cigarettes with Killian, so embers probably—”
“Vivian!” I pull her from her rambling.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I don’t know what I saw, Josephine.”
My full name. She never uses it.
“I did that, didn’t I?”
“Why are you asking about this now?” she asks with caution.
The only thing I can do is be honest with her. She was there, and we’ve been bonded by that wretched night more than we already were. It’s our darkest secret.
I rip off the bandage. “All of these things are related. The box? Littered with the same symbols etched into my skin. The Grimoire? Back cover. Same as my fucking skin. Whoever came after us that night is back. We’re in danger.”
Vivian shudders. “How do you know?”
“After asking me about the book, Stafford was worried that someone might realize I was connected. I need to know what happened that night, Viv.”
After a long pause she speaks. “That night was so crazy that at first, I thought I was actually having a nightmare. It was so cold. I couldn’t breathe. When Killian hugged me and told me not to let your hand go, that’s when I knew it was all real. That’s when I knew they were going to die. That he wasn’t coming with us.”
I feel angry tears welling up in my eyes. “Killian said that?” He lied to me. He acted like he was right behind me, and when I saw him still at the house I tried to tell myself he went back. But the entire time Vivian knew he was staying behind. “You lied to me.”
“No, I was scared, and the only person I have is you. I knew he was going to die, but I also knew if I said something you would leave me, too.”
“I wouldn’t have.” I would.
“Quit, Josie. You’re hardheaded and you’re brave. You would have been right there with him trying to save the boy who told you he loved you.”
I want to argue and say she’s wrong, but she’s not. “I’m sorry, Viv. You’re right. You did the right thing.” I look into her eyes. I want her to know that I mean it. There was no way I could have saved them. I didn’t know what I was capable of until it was ripped out of me.
“We took that tunnel, and all I could think was ‘They’re going to die. Don’t stop. Don’t look back’. Then you did because you’ve never listened to anyone except yourself. I’m not angry with you. It’s just a fact.”
I nod in agreement.
“I was so horrified and sickened when Kate’s throat was slit, but I’ve already lost the person I loved most. I watched my mother die. So when I saw that Killian was going to be murdered, I was desperate to keep you from seeing it, too.” Tears begin to slip from her eyes.
“You fought me so hard. When you looked at the aftermath, I did, too. It was so gruesome and disturbing. I tried to get a grip and bring myself back to reality to console you and urge you on. Then you started laughing. Grief does weird things to people. I know that. But your laugh was so unnatural, ethereal, even. The earth started shaking, and the ground beneath you cracked. I covered my ears because I didn’t know what to do, and it was all too much.” Her voice is full of anguish, and her tears drip onto the counter.
“When the fire started, I knew it was you. I screamed. I begged you to stop, but you couldn’t hear me. Then you…When you turned to look at me… I saw…I saw a monster,” she admits, losing her resolve. “Your eyes were just two shiny black holes in your head, and blood was streaming from them like tears. Your scars had torn open and were bleeding. When you collapsed, I thought I’d lost you.”
“Are you sure that’s what you saw?”
“Yeah,” she sneers. “I’m sure.”
“I mean the eyes.” The dread has twisted through my chest and is creeping up my neck. The man’s eyes that have always been in my nightmares. Terrifying eyes. The same sharp beady eyes in the drawing of the Leviathan.
“Yes, it haunted me for a long time after that.”
“Was that…” I hesitate but decide to push on. “Was that Magic?”
“I’ve seen witch Magic, Jo, and that wasn’t it.” She reaches across the counter, and instead of taking my hand she traces the scars on my arm. “All those nights I overheard my mother and Kate. Their arguments were almost always the same. I was a little kid and kids don’t understand the shit they overhear.”
“What did they argue about?” I prod her. She pulls her hand away and sags against the counter, looking into my eyes with worry.
“I think it was you.”
“Why?”
“She said the Hōyas would return and give us Hope. That they would bring about a new age and save our people. Kate insisted that the last oracle told it.”
“What did your mom say?”
“She would tell Kate that we were better off leaving them in the deep.”
“That’s what she said?” My mind has snapped back to reality, erasing every thought about Aedon or anything else for that matter.
“She said it a dozen times. The Lethe, Jo. The deep. You came from the deep. Maybe…”
Vivian’s mother clearly had her own interpretation, and it wasn’t good. This just proves that Kate knew what she was doing all that time. I have a feeling Viv will dress it up. She’ll romanticize it. I’m nothing more than some sort of key to the box, and I don’t want to open it.
“Don’t you see?” She implores me when she sees I don’t agree. She can develop her own ideas and feelings. Who am I to control her mind? But it doesn’t mean that I have to join her.
“I am no Hōya, Vivian.”
“Then why are these mysterious people trying to kill you?”
“They aren’t going to kill me. They have it wrong. Killian was wrong. If what you say is accurate, they wanted to take me,” I realize. “I put myself in the Lethe. I can feel it in my bones. I know how to bring the Hōyas back, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t do it. Whoever it is probably doesn’t know the full truth. They’ll keep me alive trying to make me talk. Kate may have believed that this prophecy was a good thing, but I think your mother was right. It’s best to leave it all alone.”
“They will save our people and give them equality,” she argues. I see wheels turning in her head. She lived through the last plague, and it affected her. Viv is open minded and accepting, but I can see her softening to this ideology, and that’s dangerous.
“But what about the rest? Maybe they save our people, but there is always another side of the coin. What about the rest of the inhabitants of the Underworld? We have no idea what the oracle actually said.”
“Maybe it’s about destroying the crown, and the ones who supported things like The Burning. The erosion of Magic. It doesn’t have to mean everyone.”
“You can’t pick and choose, Viv. Prophecies are full of loose explanations that are up for interpretation, and the oracles were the only ones able to do so.”
“Well, they’re all dead, so I guess we’ll never know.” She takes a deep breath. “You need to open the box.”
“That’s easy for you to say when you aren’t the one doing the fucking opening.”
“Remember Pandora’s story?”
I do. Pandora’s idiocy ended up damning the rest of the Universe. The claim is that when she opened it, she let all of the evil out into the world and ended up shutting it, leaving Hope inside. While there’s truth to every story, I’m not about to be the next Pandora. There could be horror in there. Is that a chance we really want to take?
“Say I wanted to. I don’t even know how. What if I unleash the worst thing possible? Shit we can’t even dream of?”
“You just said it yourself that the stories Kate read us from that book spoke truth. Look in there.”
“There is a missing half.”
“What?”
“Half of the book is fucking missing,” I whisper angrily. “When I was looking at it in Aedon’s library, I realized it was gone. The pages were torn right out.”
“Kate?”
“No,” I shake my head vehemently. “When she used to teach me Mondurian it was there. She just never let me read it. The last pages that I was allowed to see were about the disappearance of the Hōyas. I was never left alone with that book. Someone gave it to Aedon, and by then the pages were gone.”
“Who gave it to him?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”