The Mephisto Mark: The Redemption of Phoenix

  Looking at Viorica, I knew this was real. She was real. She’d grown into an amazing young woman. I didn’t know if what had happened to her was good or bad, but I was absolutely certain she’d be the best at whatever she did, and everyone in this house would benefit from her being here. I loved her so much. If I never saw her again after this week, I’d make it be okay by reminding myself that she was happy. And she was. Her lovely eyes lit up when she talked of Kyros. She didn’t know it yet, but she was mad about him. And I already knew he was in love with her.

  Viorica finished telling me about the Mephisto, and Eryx and the lost souls and Sasha and Jax and her relationship with Kyros, then said, “Okay, you know everything about me. It’s your turn.”

  I’d seen the way she and Kyros looked at each other before she came in the room. They were very close. I had no doubt he’d told her everything I’d said to him, which meant she knew why I took her to the orphanage, and what happened after. I saw no reason at all to talk about it anymore, and especially with Viorica. I’d saved her from Emilian – why give her the details of what I’d made certain she would miss? Better to skip over it and move on. “I’m happy to talk about our parents, what I can remember of them, or my life now, but everything in between is best left unsaid, Viorica. I hope you understand.”

  She didn’t. But after considering me for a while, she must have decided not to push. I was relieved.

  “What did our parents look like?”

  “I have some photographs I can show you if Kyros will take me home to get them.”

  Clearly impatient and unwilling to wait for him to return, she asked, “If I take us to the orphanage, can you direct me from there?”

  I nodded, and two minutes later, we stood on the steps of the old church. We held hands and looked across the street for a while at the orphanage, which was now a youth center, before I said, “I live close enough to walk, if you like.”

  Viorica nodded and I led her away from the church and down the street. It was snowing and she pulled up the hood of her jacket. As we walked, I couldn’t stop remembering the two of us walking this way fourteen years ago, except in the opposite direction. Her hand tightened around mine, and I knew she had the same thoughts.

  When we arrived at my apartment, I offered her tea, but I could tell she didn’t want to stay. She was nervous and jumpy. “If I’m caught here, there’ll be no way to explain it, like there was in London. Is it all right if we go back to Colorado?”

  I was disappointed, but didn’t show it. I nodded agreement, then turned to the shelf where I kept a few dishes and Marta’s old toaster. Next to Mrs. Ellis’s book about life in the White House, which I’d saved up to buy when I was sixteen, and between my Bible and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, was our mother’s thin photo book, which I’d found among Nadia’s things when she died. She’d had it all that time and I never knew. Typical of her to withhold anything that might bring me comfort. “The pictures are here, in this album,” I said to Viorica. I turned with it in my hand. “I promised I’d stay for a few days, and I’ve already called Gustav to tell him I’m taking off of work, but I don’t have any clothes in Colorado. Maybe I should get some while I’m here.”

  Viorica nodded. “Good idea.”

  I laid the photo book on the bed and went to the curtain I’d hung across the narrow niche where I kept my clothes. I took out my jeans, a couple of cotton blouses, and the gray sweater Marta had given me for Christmas two years ago. I added two pairs of panties and a T-shirt to sleep in, then rolled it all up and strapped a belt around it. Turning, I smiled at Viorica. “I’m ready.”

  She was moving closer to reach for my hand and take us back to Colorado when the door flew open, startling me, and a guy in blue coveralls came in. I was shaken and unsure what to do or how to protect my sister, but it wasn’t Viorica he was after. He scarcely glanced at her before he turned to me.

  I felt his hands at my shoulders, pushing me back until I fell on the bed. He came down on top of me, shoving my shirt up past my bra. I went completely still. To fight was to make him angry, and it would hurt so much worse. He’d do other things and I’d die of the pain, except I never died. I just kept living, and then he’d come back. He always came back. I tried to go home in my head, but couldn’t, so I stared up at the ceiling of my tiny, shabby apartment, the first place I could ever call my own, where I’d felt safe, but now realized it was all an illusion, and waited for him to be through. And stayed as still as a corpse so he wouldn’t hurt me worse.

  Suddenly, he collapsed, and the weight of him pressed all the air from my lungs. I heard Viorica mumble something in English, then she asked in Romanian as she shoved the man off of me, “Do you know this guy?”

  “No, I’ve never seen him before.” She had smashed his head with Marta’s toaster, so hard there was a dent. And the stranger’s head was bleeding. Remembering she’d said Mephisto have superhuman strength, I smiled up at her. “You’re really strong, aren’t you?”

  She returned my smile, but her eyes were filled with anguish. “Yes. Very . . . strong,” she whispered. “Let’s go home now.”

  I didn’t remind her that I was home already. I sat up, tugged my shirt down, reached for the photo book and my bundle of clothes, and accepted Viorica’s hand. “Maybe we should drag him out into the hall.”

  “I’ll get Key and come back for him, Mariah. He’s a lost soul.”

  I almost looked at him to see if he was different from someone whose soul still belonged to God, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I shoved the stranger into a box, slipped him onto a shelf, and mentally turned away. I would dream about this, but while I was conscious, he didn’t exist.

  Chapter 5

  October 6, 1888

  London

  It’s past ten o’clock before we’re done with tonight’s takedown, especially difficult because there were more than the usual number of Skia; all trained swordsmen. Two managed to escape, infuriating Jax, who’s still in Afghanistan with Zee, searching.

  I return home, quickly eat to renew my energy, bathe and change into clean clothes, then transport to London, to the musicale held at Mrs. Mangrum’s, cousin to the Earl of Longbourne. Her familial status is the only reason Jane and her family are in attendance. Otherwise, they are still in mourning for Georgiana and don’t attend social events.

  From where I materialize at the back of the drawing room, I look around and don’t see Jane. Backing out, I walk around the townhouse, cloaked, searching for her. I find her in the solarium, in her trolley chair, reading a penny dreadful by the light of the gas lamp next to a bank of orchids, her eyes wide as she reads. It must be a scary part.

  She looks up and smiles. “I’m a horrible person, aren’t I? But honestly, Phoenix, listening to Miss Davenport mangle Mozart becomes tiresome.” She folds the paper and neatly tucks it up under her hat, then wheels her chair closer to me. “How did your takedown turn out?”

  “Fine.” I don’t tell her what happened. She doesn’t like hearing details of what we do because it reminds her of Georgiana, and it’s still too raw and painful. I glance at her chair and revive our only disagreement. “Jane, please let me fix you.”

  Ever patient, denying me the argument I’m spoiling for, she shakes her head. “This is why Georgiana sold her soul, so I’d be able to walk, and she never knew until it was too late that her sacrifice wouldn’t make a difference. Your brother tricked her into believing I would walk, and now she’s gone to a horrible place with no chance of Heaven. I know you don’t understand. You’ve said so. But I can’t walk, knowing what she gave up for me.”

  I’m frustrated past the breaking point, tired of dancing around the truth to spare her more pain. She needs to know. I walk behind her chair and begin to push her through the solarium, talking to the heather pinned to the top of her hat as we go. “The day after the fire, I talked to my father about Georgiana. I needed to know why she handed her soul to Eryx.”

  “He said it was for me to walk. Why a
re you telling me this again?”

  “Because I didn’t tell you all of it. Georgiana didn’t sacrifice herself because she cared about you. It was vanity and nothing else. She imagined that the two of you would debut together and hold London in the palm of your hand. She hated that you can’t walk, was embarrassed by your infirmity. You want so much to believe she was as noble as you, but she wasn’t. Georgiana was spoiled, selfish, and angry at you because of what you are.”

  Jane says nothing. We’re on our second go-round of the solarium before she finally speaks. “You wouldn’t lie to me to get your way, would you?”

  “I did lie to spare you from hurt, so it’s not as though I can claim any high moral ground, but I’m not lying now. Your sister looked like you, but any resemblance ended there. So your refusal to let me fix you because of some sense of equitable justice is misguided and wrong.”

  She is quiet until we’re on the third lap. “I thought she had changed,” Jane whispers. “I hated what she did, but held on to believing she did it for a selfless reason.” She pauses. “For me.”

  I wait for her to agree to allow me to heal her spine, but minutes pass and she says nothing. I’m about to ask her thoughts when she says over the squeak of one trolley wheel, “That day we went riding, after my horse threw me, she confessed she’d sabotaged my saddle so I wouldn’t be able to ride with her and Robert. He liked me, and she couldn’t stand it. We were thirteen and far too young to be socializing, but old enough to be intrigued by the opposite sex. He was the son of a tenant on the estate, a boy neither of us could be seriously interested in, but it didn’t matter to Georgiana. She craved attention and admiration, and resented any I received, unless it was for the both of us, as a set, like a pair of perfectly matched Staffordshire dogs up on a mantel. She hadn’t known the mare would throw me, and she cried and begged me to forgive her. And to not tell our parents.”

  I grip the back of her chair to keep from cursing. “This is whose memory you’re trying so desperately to honor. Why, Jane? Don’t you see, walking again is where you’ll find equitable justice. Agreeing to join us and do what we do is how you even things out.”

  “My parents just lost a child, Phoenix. I can’t do this to them.”

  “I can wait. In the interim, I want you to walk and gain your strength back.”

  “If I walk again, there will be expectations.”

  “They’ll want to marry you off.”

  “It’s certain that they will. How will you feel to see me betrothed?”

  “Unhappy.” I stop pushing the chair and go around to kneel in front of her, taking her hands in mine. “But if I know you’ll eventually be with me, I can stand anything.”

  She smiles, but her cornflower blue eyes are forlorn. “Will you love me, Phoenix?”

  “I want to.”

  “I’ve never had that. My parents favored Georgiana, and I see the way they look at me, as if they wish it had been me who died in the fire instead of my sister.”

  I don’t argue. She’s not wrong, but I don’t know what to say to reassure her.

  She leans forward in her chair and kisses me for the second time. The first was a week ago, after I brought her a new supply of penny dreadfuls. I drop her hands and grasp her shoulders and return the kiss, wishing she wasn’t wearing the hat, wondering how soft her hair might be. I remember what M said about kissing, that to begin her metamorphosis into Mephisto, there has to be an exchange of saliva. I tentatively touch her lips with my tongue and she pulls back quickly, eyes wide with surprise. I say, “It’s what a man and a woman do, Jane.”

  Leaning forward again, she allows me to kiss her more deeply, but it’s awkward and we stop rather quickly. She sits back and smiles at me. “Come to my room at one. We’ll be home by then and Rose will have put me to bed. What do I need to do to prepare?”

  “Nothing,” I say, getting to my feet. “It will be a while before you can walk because your legs have lost so much muscle, but once your spine is healed, if you’ll exercise every day, the strength will come back.”

  “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  A voice drifts into the solarium from the central hall. Jane’s mother, talking to Mrs. Mangrum. “Yes, Louisa, I’m aware we tend to indulge her, but can you blame us? Crippled as she is, with no prospects, it’s not as though she misses opportunities when she steals away like this.”

  “Such a pity. She’s so lovely.”

  “A dreadful waste, yes. If only Georgiana . . .” She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t need to. Her meaning is clear.

  Jane looks up at me with sad eyes. “I’ll see you at one.”

  I squeeze her hand in farewell before I disappear.

  ~~ Phoenix ~~

  I spent more time in Yorkshire, standing in the place where our house had been before Lucifer built the one in Colorado and made this one disappear, walking the streets of the nearby village, sitting on the garden wall of the Longbourne estate to stare at the clipped, leafless rose bushes. Jane loved roses.

  Staying made no difference. As hard as I tried to keep Jane front and center in my thoughts, Mariah intruded over and over. What had happened to her? Why had Jordan been adopted, but not Mariah? How had she wound up working in a pub?

  I went home to change out of my bloody clothes – it was beginning to be a habit today – then, without a plan or even a reason, I popped myself to Bucharest, to the oldest district, which was recently enjoying a revival, a lot of the buildings being renovated, shops and restaurants and living spaces cropping up on every street. I cloaked myself and swiped a cup of coffee from a cart because I didn’t have any Romanian money, then sat on a park bench and Googled Gustav’s.

  I finished the coffee while I watched women with strollers and men in suits walk past. Children played in the snow, squealing when they slipped and fell. A teenaged couple made out beneath a tree. It was lunchtime. Despite the snow, some people sat on other park benches and ate. Gustav’s would be crowded. A good time to go, I decided.

  After I tossed the coffee cup in the trash, I disappeared, and seconds later, landed on the street where Gustav’s was located, instantly struck by oppressive gloom. This was one of the poorest districts in Bucharest, some of the streets unpaved, most of the buildings from the Soviet era; giant gray boxes of depressing unimaginative sameness.

  This street was paved, with a sidewalk, and I decloaked to walk north. The sign was fairly new, which meant Gustav hadn’t been in business all that long. Inside was less crowded than I’d expected, but there were a respectable number of patrons eating cabbage soup and sausages, drinking a pint before they’d head back to wherever they worked. Every one of them was male. A waitress hurried between the tables, looking frazzled. Pushing forty, with bleached blond hair and too much make-up, she wore something similar to Mariah’s clothes, but they hung from her rail thin body like a tired dishrag. The customers never looked at her.

  The bar was dingy and smoky, and the tables and chairs were ancient, mismatched and chipped. I supposed Gustav bought the place as-is, renamed it, and carried on. An eighties pop song played from a boombox at the back. Zee would have heart failure.

  Imagining Mariah coming here day after day, I became more depressed. No wonder Key didn’t want to bring her back.

  I took a seat at the bar and ordered a beer from a burly thirtyish guy with a gap between his two front teeth. When I handed him a credit card, he said, “Cash only.”

  “All I have is American money.”

  “That’ll work.” He took my twenty and didn’t give me any change.

  He didn’t appear to recognize me as someone who looked like Key, which meant Key must have erased his memory of him the night before.

  While he worked the bar, I asked, “Where’s Mariah today?”

  He jerked his head up and narrowed his eyes at me. “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m an old friend of hers and thought I’d see her while I’m in Bucharest. Somebody told
me she works here.”

  Back to washing beer mugs, he shook his head. “Bad luck, then. Had something come up and she took off the week.” While he rinsed, he added, “How’d you say you know her?”

  “I didn’t.”

  He looked up again, even more suspicious than before. “You’re not with the police, are you?”

  The police? Why the hell would he ask if I was with the police? “No. Is Mariah in some kind of trouble?”

  “Not that I know of, but if a policeman walks in, she usually takes a break.” He looked me over. “Are you somebody who knew Emilian?”

  With no clue who he was talking about, I lied. “Yes.”

  He added more mugs to the soapy water. “Were you friendly with him?”

  Picking up on his tone, I shook my head. “Not really.”

  “Makes sense. You look to be twenty, twenty-one, so you were what, sixteen or seventeen when he died?”

  “Sixteen,” I said with a nod. So Emilian had been dead four or five years. Who was he? I took another drink of the beer. “I did some work for him.”

  “And that’s when you met Mariah, eh?”

  “That’s right.” Was Emilian her father?

  “After the fire, she came to live with me and my mother, but I don’t remember ever seeing you around.”

  “We moved away before the fire. I didn’t know about it.”

  “Bad business. I never got on with Emilian. Nobody did. The guy was a drunk, a mean bastard who got what was coming to him. We lived across the road, and after Nadia died, my mother wanted Mariah to live with us, but he wouldn’t agree. Said we weren’t family. But he wasn’t either. Nadia was Mariah’s blood, and once she was gone, he had no reason to make her stay with him except she was free help.”