By the Sword

  “Silence, please. We mean you no harm.” When she took a breath as if to scream anyway, he held up his other hand in a stop sign. “Please.”

  She stayed silent.

  Beyond, in the tiny apartment, Hideo heard a cacophony of doors and drawers opening and closing. It lasted less than a minute, and then Kenji was beside him.

  “Empty, Takita-san,” he said in Japanese. “And no katana.”

  “How many bedrooms?”

  “One.”

  Hideo nodded as a sinking feeling dragged on his gut.

  “The closets—any men’s clothes?”

  He shook his head. “Only woman’s. And not much of that.”

  Goro and Ryo appeared, the latter holding up a framed photograph. Hideo took it and saw the old woman with her cheek pressed against that of a dark-haired, dark-skinned young man who looked nothing like Hugh Gerrish. He showed it to her.

  “Who is this?”

  She snatched it from him. “Mi Julio.” Tears rimmed her eyes. “What has happened to him?”

  “Nothing. He is fine. We have made a mistake.”

  “Mistake?” she said, her tone and expression growing indignant. “You break into my home and frighten—”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Since September.”

  Eight months. Gerrish must have moved out last summer. Hideo suppressed a curse and masked his frustration as he pulled a wad of bills from his pocket.

  “We have disturbed you and wasted five minutes of your time.” He peeled off five hundred-dollar bills and pressed them into her hands. “I trust this will help you forgive us.”

  She gazed at the bills as if he’d given her a fortune. Perhaps to her it was. To him it was merely an expense he would charge to Kaze.

  What had seemed so straightforward and easy yesterday was proving digressive and difficult. He had run into obstacles, but none he could not surmount.

  As Americans liked to say: Back to the drawing board.

  10

  Shouldn’t be too hard to spot, Jack thought, studying the face in the photo as he walked west along East 96th Street.

  He’d just left Russ Tuit, his go-to guy for all things computer. Russ had downloaded the photo, cropped out Bobblehead and the inebriated-looking Laurie, sharpened and enlarged the guy behind them, and printed it out. Still kind of blurry, but serviceable.

  Hugh Gerrish had a round, florid face topped by wavy brown hair that scooped down into a sharp widow’s peak. The outstanding feature was a big diamond stud stuck in his left earlobe. Jack wished he had more of a view of his body to help spot him from a distance, but this would work.

  He’d checked the post time at Belmont: first race one o’clock except Fridays when it moved to three P.M. The track was closed today so he’d have to wait till tomorrow.

  “Jack?”

  A woman’s voice. He looked around and saw a slim blonde in her mid-twenties, looking much younger because of her pigtails and her getup. She wore a white oxford shirt with a loose, askew tie, a plaid pleated miniskirt, white knee socks, and high-heel Mary Janes. Only a few of the shirt buttons were fastened, exposing her diamond-studded navel.

  Jack stared, dumbfounded. “Do I—?”

  She smiled and batted her heavily mascaraed, blue-shadowed eyes. “It’s me. Junie. Junie Moon. We met—”

  “Right-right. Gia’s friend. How are you?”

  They’d met last summer when Junie had been a guest at a Brooklyn party celebrating a big sale of one of her paintings. But she hadn’t looked like jailbait then.

  “Fine. Things have cooled down a little, but still better than I’d ever dreamed.”

  Nathan Lane had bought one of her paintings and publicly raved about it and suddenly her canvases were going for twenty K apiece. Jack had never seen any of her work but Gia said she was good.

  “You’re looking…different.”

  “Like it?” She struck a pose. “Marketing. All marketing.” She stepped closer. “I saw Gia last week.”

  “You did?”

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  Jack wondered why not.

  “Must’ve forgot. I finally got the nerve to stop by. I’m such a slut of a friend. I mean, here she’s been like my big sister for years, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop by after the accident. I just couldn’t stand seeing her hurt.”

  “She’s pretty much back to normal now.”

  Junie shook her head. “Not really.”

  Jack felt a sinking sensation. “What do you mean?”

  “Her art, my brotha. Her paintings. They’re…”

  “She showed you?”

  “Well, ya-ah. We’re both artists, you know. Why wouldn’t she?”

  It stung knowing Gia would share them with someone else but not him. Maybe the artist connection explained it, but still…

  “I haven’t seen them.”

  “Oh, shit. You two aren’t on the outs, are you? Because if you’ve hurt her—”

  “Never in a million years. She just doesn’t want me to see them.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I can see why.”

  “Want to give me a hint?”

  “They’re not her.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “They’re not like anything she’s ever painted. They’re…dark. You know how Gia’s stuff has always been sunny, with all that Hopperesque bright light and shadow. Now it’s mostly shadow. I think that accident changed her, Jack. I mean, you talk to her, she seems the same, but those paintings…” She looked uncomfortable. “They aren’t from the Gia I knew.”

  They chatted awhile longer, with Junie monologuing and Jack monosyllabling, barely hearing what she said.

  Those paintings…he had to get a look at Gia’s paintings.

  11

  “Glenn! Glenn!”

  Glaeken stood at the living room window, watching the stretched shadow of his building inch across Central Park’s Sheep Meadow.

  Glenn…he was glad Magda had forgotten his real name. Wouldn’t do to have her calling “Glaeken!” a thousand times a day. Glenn, Glaeken, Veilleur, and all the other names he’d adopted down through the ages. Sometimes he lost track of who he was supposed to be.

  Used to be he could always return to “Glaeken,” but no longer. In his mind these days he’d become simply Veilleur.

  “Coming, my dear.”

  The voice had come from the kitchen, as were sounds of rattling cookware now. He headed that way and found Magda standing by the granite-topped island, staring at the open cabinets in confusion.

  Her white hair was neatly combed, thanks to the visiting homemaker who had just left. Her weight loss over the past few years or so accentuated the stoop of her shoulders. She wore a sweater as usual, because she was always cold.

  “My kitchen!” she cried, her Hungarian accent thicker than before the decline had begun. “Glenn, what’s happened to my kitchen?”

  “Nothing, Magda. It’s just as it always is.”

  A vision of a younger Magda took shape before him. Soft, smooth skin; long, chestnut hair; dark, gleaming eyes so full of wit and intelligence. That Magda was gone, but his love for her remained. He heard echoes of her voice as she sang, of her mandolin as she played, the sight of her bent over her typewriter as she wrote.

  Another vision…Magda facing down the greatest evil…defying everything Rasalom could throw at her…terrified, horrified, repulsed, yet holding out, blocking his way until Glaeken could gather strength enough to take her place.

  The memory of her courage and her unyielding trust that he would not let her down constricted his throat—now as much as then.

  But two years ago her memory began to fail. She noticed it first. Then he noticed her making notes about the simplest things. He knew what it meant. And it crushed him.

  The one woman across his eons with whom he could grow old was failing, becoming less and less the woman he’d fallen in love with. He ref
used to allow the splendid life they’d lived, the glowing love they’d shared to be tainted by her decline. He would never leave her, never give up on her. He would be with her until the end.

  And perhaps that end was not too far off.

  For both of them.

  For everyone.

  “But how can I cook dinner?”

  He stepped to her side. “We’ve already had dinner.”

  She looked at him. “No! We couldn’t. I’m still hungry.”

  “We had lamb chops, roasted red potatoes, and string beans. You cleaned your plate.”

  “No, I—”

  “I cut your meat for you, remember?”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. They were moist when she opened them.

  “I do remember.” She squeezed his forearm. “Oh, Glenn, I’m making it so hard on you.”

  He patted her hand. “Not at all, my love.”

  “But why am I still hungry?”

  “Perhaps you didn’t eat enough.”

  Her eating habits had become bizarre. She would be famished after a big meal, and then go most of the following day without eating anything—needing to be talked into sitting down for dinner.

  “How about some ice cream? We have chocolate, your favorite.”

  She shook her head. “I need something more…more…” She frowned, searching for the word.

  “Substantial?”

  “Yes!” She brightened. “I’ll have Miranda fix me some scrambled eggs.”

  Miranda had been their housekeeper six years ago.

  “Miranda’s not here, but I’ll fix them.”

  She clapped her hands like a delighted child. “Wonderful! And you’ll fix them the way I like them?”

  He nodded. “With grated asiago. Of course.”

  He pulled out a frying pan and began melting a pat of butter. He’d cooked countless meals down the seemingly endless years and had become skilled at it.

  He knew if Magda followed her usual pattern, her appetite would be gone by the time the eggs were ready. And then he’d eat them. He’d have to. He’d been hungry too many times, sagging against death’s door more than once from starvation, ever to throw away food.

  But that was all right. He made excellent scrambled eggs.

  12

  What the—?

  It had happened again.

  Jack sat at his round oak table and stared at the page he’d bookmarked in the Compendium of Srem. Nobody knew the book’s age. He’d heard it was from the First Age, but no one could prove that, and the people with the credentials to do some sort of backgrounding on it believed it was a myth. After all, only one copy existed, and Jack had it. He’d been told it was indestructible, that Grand Inquisitor Torquemada had tried everything—fire, sword, ax, and anything else he could think of—but had been unable to destroy it. Finally he’d given up and buried it beneath a monastery. But it hadn’t stayed buried.

  All very odd, but the oddest thing about the Compendium was that everyone who opened it found it written in his or her native tongue.

  Jack had bookmarked the section on the Seven Infernals the other day and decided tonight would be a good time to check out a weird-looking contraption he’d seen there that looked oddly familiar…displayed in a sideshow, long ago. But now, when he opened to the page, he found himself in another section.

  Impossible that someone could have moved the bookmark, because he was the only one in the apartment, the only one for weeks.

  He started paging through, looking for the Infernals again, but could find no trace of them. Instead he found pages he’d never seen before. He’d read a lot of the book—understanding little—and had flipped through it a number of times, but now he was finding whole sections he’d never even glimpsed before.

  This wasn’t the first time. What was this thing? Could it be sentient?

  He slapped the book closed and pushed it to the center of the table. Damn thing was heavy.

  He leaned back and tried to let his mind go blank, but an aching need popped Gia into his head. He saw her…he heard her…the sounds she made when they were in bed. She wasn’t a wailer, not a screamer, not an ohgodder…just soft little moans, almost like whimpers, from way back in her throat. He felt her nails raking his back when he was in her, heard the rasp of those nails as they raked the sheets when he was down on her.

  He had to go back. He couldn’t stay away any longer.

  WEDNESDAY

  1

  Usually Gia avoided mention of Emma and rarely visited her at St. Ann’s. But every once in a while she felt the need to stand over her daughter’s grave and speak a few words to her.

  Jack understood that—all too well. What he’d never understood was why she had insisted on this particular cemetery. St. Ann’s was in Bayside, way out in the far eastern hinterlands of Queens. Practically in Nassau County. The reasons had been cryptic: Because Emma had communicated during Gia’s coma that she wanted a view of the water…and wanted to be here to comfort someone. Who that someone might be, Gia couldn’t say, because Emma had never told her.

  And now Gia had forgotten the dreams and that she’d ever said those things. The memories were gone but Emma would remain at St. Ann’s till whenever.

  Other memories…of the burial…crashed around him. The snow-covered grass, the hard-frozen ground, the cutting wind, the tiny white coffin…

  And no Gia. Although she and Vicky were recovering from their comas and injuries at what every doctor and nurse in New York Hospital had called “a miraculous pace,” they remained in the trauma unit. Emma needed burial but no way could they venture out of intensive care. Which left all the funeral arrangements to Jack.

  Looking back now he recalled little of his meeting with the undertaker, or arranging the burial plot out here in Bayside. He’d been too numb. He vaguely remembered Abe, Julio, Alicia Clayton, Lyle Kenton, and a few others at the graveside. Father Edward Halloran had somehow heard about Emma and showed up, insisting on saying a few words over the grave.

  And so whenever Gia wanted to visit, Jack would take her. Because he needed a visit now and again too, and didn’t like the idea of her alone in a cemetery.

  He’d been planning to call her this morning when the phone rang and there she was, asking if he’d drive her.

  Perfect.

  She sat on the ground now, running her hand through the new grass over Emma’s grave. Her lips were moving in silence. Jack wondered what she was saying to her unborn child, the daughter she’d known only from within her.

  To give her some space, he wandered off across the grass with no particular destination. St. Ann’s Cemetery was small and old, crowded with headstones dating back a hundred years or more. As he wound among them, reading the inscriptions, he heard a male voice cursing in Spanish. He’d never studied Spanish, but a few years working for a local landscaper had taught him how to curse and swear in the language.

  He headed in that direction and found a gardener kicking at the dirt of a bare patch near the high stone wall. When the man realized he had an audience, he stopped and flashed Jack a sheepish, gold-flecked grin.

  “Excuse my words, señor.” He gestured at the headstones. “Especially here among the dead.”

  Jack shrugged. “I haven’t heard any complaints. What were you kicking there?”

  “This ground…nothing will grow on it. I mix in the finest topsoil, I seed it, I water it, yet no grass will grow. I put sod down, it dies. I become very angry.”

  “I saw that. Ever think of trying some ground cover?”

  “I have planted periwinkle, pachysandra, and ivy. They all die. I think the soil is poisoned, so I dig down six inches, bring in new earth. Still the same. Nothing will live here. Not plants, not even ants. Nothing.”

  Jack stared down at the four-foot oblong patch of bare ground. It looked like normal topsoil. The grass around it was in beautiful shape. Just this one patch…

  He spotted a beetle scurrying through the grass
toward the bald spot. He watched it veer left just before it reached it. The bug walked around to the far side of the patch, then continued on its way.

  A chill ran over Jack’s skin. What the hell was wrong with that patch of ground that even bugs wouldn’t cross it? Had something been spilled there? Or more unsettling, was something buried there?

  “I’ve got your solution,” Jack said. “Astroturf.”

  The gardener shook his head. “No. I shall win. This dirt will not beat me.”

  Jack waved and headed back toward Gia and Emma. “Good luck.”

  He found Gia waiting for him on a rise.

  “Ready?”

  She took a deep shuddering breath and nodded. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do I have to come here to be with her? Why isn’t she with me? Why did this have to happen?”

  “I wish I could tell you, Gia.”

  And that was true to the extent that Jack found himself unable to speak the words that would answer her question.

  He still hadn’t found the right time to tell her the truth. Maybe he’d never find the right time to say, Because of me, because of your importance to me, because some cosmic something beyond knowing thought it could better use me if you and Vicky and Emma weren’t around.

  As he took her hand and they started back toward the car, he remembered how Gia had said the dream-Emma wanted to be here at St. Ann’s “to comfort someone.”

  He looked back at the gardener raking up the soil of the bare spot.

  Could it be…?

  Nah.

  “I want to come home with you, Gi. Vicky’s at school so I was hoping maybe we could…”

  “Talk?”

  “Yes. Talk. And do other stuff.”

  “Other stuff?”

  “Other stuff.”

  “I am in need of other stuff, Jack. Especially after being here. I need to lose myself for a little while.”

  “Me too.”

  She smiled that smile. “Goody.”