The Dark Fable, page 18
“It came to me at a bad time in my life, Evie. Before the dog incident.”
“You make it sound like it’s a curse.”
“It’s brought me nothing but blood and grief.” The tautness in his voice made her throat tighten in sympathy.
“Jase. Is revenge worth all this? The surveillance, the evidence grabs . . . trying to prove to the world that LFS exists?”
“Proving Silence and Night exist. My life depends on it. I’m in hiding now. If they find me, they’ll kill me. The only reason Ciaran hasn’t thrown me to the wolves is because he’s using me as a distraction.”
She looked away, down at her hands, fingers twined. “Jason . . . Ciaran thinks they want you back. Yours is a rare talent. You’re a Traveler—”
“They have Ciaran. For now.” His mouth twisted. “They sent me to my death, Evie. Don’t tell me they meant for only Vero to be killed.”
Her throat ached in sympathy. “I know what it’s like to lose people you love.”
He narrowed a glance at her. “What happened to your parents?”
“They’re gone.” She hunched her shoulders, folding her arms. She remembered what Ciaran had said about Jason’s mother. “What happened to you, Jason? To make your powers manifest?”
With difficulty, he said, “My mom died. My dad raised me after that.” He paused. “I wasn’t a good son. He named me Jason after the hero in the Argonautica, his favorite epic poem. I think he had high expectations.” He looked at Evie and gently asked, “What was your mom like?”
Evie spoke dreamily: “My mom had green eyes and hair like mine and freckles. She told me fairy tales from all over the world. This horrible world,” she whispered, fury in her voice. “I wish I could break it.”
“Evie . . . that rage . . .” He looked out over the courtyard. “It’s the brittle thread that connects La Fable Sombre. It’s what cursed or gifted us with what we can do. You can let that fury carry you forward on a tide that will drown you and everyone around you, or you can leave them. I can help you.”
She looked away. “No. You can’t. Something is making my skin crawl here.” She stood up. “Let’s go get some drinks.”
They strolled toward the nightclub, all sea-blue lighting streaked with goldfish neon. Inside, they wove toward the bar with its Art Nouveau theme. Evie flashed her fake ID. “What’s your poison, PI?”
Jason leaned against the bar. “A whiskey sour.” He took out his wallet. Evie slid a hundred-dollar bill to the bartender and ordered two bourbons. She had a plan. Jason smiled wryly and put away his wallet.
“Jase.” Evie stepped closer to him. As the female singer began a Ragtime-y version of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” Evie reached up, her fingers drifting across his neck, her dark lashes lowered. “Let’s dance.”
His hands slid to her hips. He bent his head, his lips a breath from hers. “Evie.”
She draped her arms around his neck. She wore a gloss that made her lips glimmer like frost-glazed strawberries and smoky kohl around her eyes. As they danced, he whispered, “I’m holding a girl of smoke and mirrors. I don’t know you at all, Evie Wilder.”
She wanted to crack his perfect façade, wanted to know all his secrets. Problem was, he wanted to know all of hers. As they swayed to the music, his hand against her back, the other sliding to her waist, she studied the Cupid’s bow curve of his lips. He held her as if afraid to break her.
She led him back to the bar, where she ordered a bottle of bourbon and pretended to drink more than she actually did, filling his glass every time it emptied. His eyelids were heavy, but this was going to be tough. Like chipping at a gorgeous glacier. “So, Jase, why’d you decide to be a private eye?”
He seemed to be considering how to answer her. He said, “When I left LFS,” again, the wry curve of his mouth, “a three-month fall from grace began, a separation from anything resembling the order my dad taught me. Losing Vero and La Fable Sombre . . .”
She winced a little, guilty about plying him with booze. His past was bleeding from him like a wound she’d unstitched.
He continued, blurrily, “Then I met an OG private eye. Had a face like a battered lion’s and a quicksilver intellect you wouldn’t expect from his cheap suits and the way he talked. He’d tracked me down after I’d stolen from one of his clients. He gave me a business card and offered me a job.” Jason downed his third bourbon. “I wound up in that cluttered closet of an office, listening to Johnny Cash and drinking tea, and I began to learn just what a private detective could be, what my dad had been. People call PIs when they’re desperate, Evie, when their options have been exhausted. That PI told me, ‘I am hope when everyone else lets them down.’ ”
“But,” she gestured, deliberately slurry. “You’re plotting to bring down my new family. Your friends. I can’t let you.” She propped an elbow on one of his shoulders. “I think I drank too much . . . Do you live far?”
“Do you think it’s a good idea to bring you to my hideout?” he gently asked.
“You won’t try and take advantage of me.”
“That’s not what I meant—”
She began her third act, sliding toward the floor. He circled an arm around her, keeping her upright. He said, “All right then. Let’s go.”
“Why?” she whispered the word.
He looked at her. “Why?”
“Why are you trying to save me?”
“Because I was like you once. And I wish someone had saved me.’ ”
They walked to where he was staying, and Evie kept up the act, laughing breathlessly, stumbling a little. When they reached the Blue Moon Motel, she halted, staring at the kitschy buildings, the doors painted bright blue. The motel’s neon sign was a slinky coquette curved around a crescent moon. “This is where you live?”
“My parents were rich. My London gran is rich. My grandmother in Cairo is rich. I’m not.” They entered a room. She looked around, saw books and a laptop and a blank bulletin board scattered with red push pins. She frowned at the bulletin board. “That is not a good Sherlock board.” She turned to see him shedding his coat to reveal a black sweater that had seen better days. He told her, “You can take the bed. The sheets were changed this morning. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”
She sat on the end of the bed and gazed out of a window with a view of the woods behind the motel. He told her, sounding wistful, “I can see the stars.”
“You don’t have a home to go back to?” This made her sad.
He moved into the bathroom, turned on the faucet. “This is just a war camp. My London grandmother wants to drag me to her terrifying yellow and black mansion—she’s a former Bohemian and listens to Stevie Nicks, so she’s cool—but I can’t. I can’t be anywhere Silence and Night might find me.”
Evie turned her head, staring at the empty bulletin board. She got up and opened the fridge, sighed when she saw a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She grabbed it, found two coffee mugs—one had a smiley face and the other was painted with a unicorn reading a book.
After splashing his face, Jason stepped from the bathroom. Water glittered in his hair, on his eyelashes. He sprawled on the sofa, one arm over his eyes. “How many glasses of bourbon have I had?”
“Don’t know.” She dropped beside him and set both mugs on the coffee table scarred with old cigarette burns. “Did you know you have Jack Daniel’s in your fridge?”
He lifted his arm over his head and regarded her with one eye. “You shouldn’t be here.”
She curled on the sofa, watching him. “Let’s talk some more.”
“I thought that’s what I’ve been doing. Why don’t you talk?”
“Here.” She handed him the mug of Jack Daniel’s. “You’re going to need this, because I’m going to ask some brutal questions. You answer truthfully. And versa vice . . . I mean, vice versa.”
His head drooped. He swiftly raised it. “Do go on.”
She went for the throat. “Did you ever kill anyone?”
His eyes shuttered. He tossed down what was in the mug and set the mug back on the table. “Yeah.”
That wasn’t the answer she’d expected. She didn’t like it. She wanted him to change it. But she continued relentlessly. “Did you and Ciaran ever suspect Silence and Night were a danger to La Fable Sombre?”
“Yes.”
The last question was meant to accomplish something else, so Evie spoke carefully. “Do you really want to destroy La Fable Sombre? Or just Silence and Night?”
He didn’t answer. She shot a look at him, only to find his eyes closed. She’d overdone it with the alcohol. He’d drowsed off.
She got up, moving silently. He’d set his phone beside his laptop. She picked up the phone. Let’s see who you are. It wasn’t locked. She was able to scroll to a pathetically sparse list of contacts. She tapped the gallery of pictures, found a photo of Jason, Mad, and Vero Jordan in front of an ice cream stand on the beach. The next photo was of Jason sitting with Ciaran in a nightclub, both in designer suits. She scrolled through other photos of his life with La Fable Sombre. He seemed different in those pictures—edgy, ready for violence.
Then, just for kicks, she looked at his playlist: Joy Division. Bauhaus. The Cult. Led Zeppelin. Guns N’ Roses. Leonard Cohen. She put in his earbuds and listened to a song or two. Jason was now sprawled on the sofa and sleeping as seriously as he moved through life.
She picked up a few books on the table. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. A graphic novel—Batman: The Court of Owls—that brought a quick, sharp laugh from her. A small book with a worn red binding, the words “Argonautica” stamped in gold on the cover. She opened the book to find a black-and-white illustration of a boy in a fleece cloak, its hood adorned with ram horns. She leafed through the pages and found a scrawled message: You were a wild child. You have become a good man. I’m proud of you. Love, Dad.
She set the book down. She lifted his eyeglasses, examined the minuscule camera. She set the glasses down, touched the earpiece she’d seen him wear. It was made of a pearly black material like seashell, like the bugging device she’d found in her medallion.
She opened his laptop, was delighted by the screensaver: the Greek hero Jason on his ship with his Argonauts. It was a painting by William Russell Flint—one of her dad’s favorite artists because of his Maxfield Parrish style. All Jason’s files were neatly lined up, and all had mysterious names: November Rain. Heart-Shaped Box. Kashmir. House of the Rising Sun . . .
They were named after songs. Which one would hold information about the Dark Fable? She scoured the file names, tapping her teeth with one black-painted pinkie nail. She grinned.
She clicked Paint It Black.
Old-fashioned photographs appeared. Newspaper articles. Paintings. Words written in Latin. As she scrolled, illustrations of strange creatures appeared with descriptions beneath. A stag-headed man. A catlike creature wearing a crown of stars. A woman with talons for feet.
One painting was the portrait she’d seen in Silence and Night’s basilica, of the founders of La Fable Sombre in their medieval gear. The caption beneath read: “Medieval Paris. First members of La Fable Sombre. A university student. A highwayman. A courtesan.”
Next was a black-and-white photograph of a group of slinky young people. The couple in the center were straight out of a silent film—a girl with a cap of black hair and a devilish smile; a young man with a mesmerizing gaze and slicked-back hair. The caption beneath read: “Zoe Becker from Chicago and Kaden Idrissi from Morocco. The Stars. Joined in 1920. Became Mother and Father in 1930.”
“The Gilded Age”: A photograph of a young man in a tux, leaning against a column. Seated in a chair beside him was a girl with long pale hair, her gown dark and sweeping. “The Elegants. Oruko Musa from Nigeria and Astrid Ehrling from Denmark. Future Father and Mother.”
Evie became lost in the La Fable Sombre history Jason had puzzled together. How had he tracked down all of this? She wanted to steal it. She skimmed bits and pieces, devouring the information. There had always been eight crews, since fifteenth-century France: La Fable Sombre, the flagship of the Kingdom, and seven others—the names of these crews varied throughout the centuries. Every ten years, the Father and Mother changed. Two of the best in La Fable Sombre became the next Father and Mother. Ten years later, that Father and Mother retired and were replaced.
She scrolled to a photograph from 1950, of seven glamorous people who could have been extras in a movie she’d once see with Mad. This photo was tagged The Hunters. And the couple in the center—the clever-faced young man with hands in the pockets of his three-piece suit and the girl with the arch look and the flared dress . . .
“Ava?” Evie whispered, peering hard at the picture, thinking she must be mistaken. But the arch girl was definitely Ava Dubrowska, and the leonine boy, Ava’s husband. She even wore the mermaid necklace.
Jason stirred. Evie threw a glance at him. She mournfully closed the laptop.
She moved from the room, closing the door gently behind her.
As soon as the door shut, Jason glided up from his false sleep. He hoped she’d found what he’d wanted her to.
A different Evie strode confidently up the steep stairway of the Pink Blight. She passed a group of guys without incident, the invisible veil cloaking her. The men shivered and looked around, one commenting, “What the fuck was that?”
She still had her keys, the ones Ava had given her. Because, of course, Evie realized with sudden clarity, Ava owned the Pink Blight, which had been something back in the day.
When Ava answered her door, sheathed in a purple wrap dress patterned with nightingales, she smiled. “Evie!”
“I’m La Fable Sombre.” Evie watched Ava’s honey-sweet gaze darken until it was as if something taloned and winged watched Evie.
Ava stepped back, ushering Evie in. “So you know.”
As Evie sat on the turquoise sofa, surrounded by the butterfly-gaudy stained-glass lamps and tasteful tchotchkes that were probably the real deal and worth a mint, Ava moved into her kitchen, calling back, “They recruited you.”
“Did you know?” Evie demanded.
Ava reappeared with a tray holding a teapot and cups decorated with blue shepherdesses. She made a performance with the tea, pouring it, adding a bit of cream and sugar to each cup. “We can sense each other, our kind. Although my power left me ten years ago. When I saw you disembark from that Greyhound bus as I sat in the diner . . . I knew. And I knew they would come looking for you. There is always someone who can travel the spirit roads, who will lead them to new recruits.”
Ciaran and Mother Night. Jason. Evie frowned. “And you didn’t feel it important to tell me this?”
“Oh, Evie, really.” Ava cast her a knowing glance. “Would you have believed me?”
Of course Evie wouldn’t have. She remembered stepping off that bus and seeing Ava crossing the street in the rain, holding a lavender umbrella. When Evie had come to Silver Cove from Los Angeles, Ava had been her first friend—because she’d recognized something in Evie.
“You own this building.” Evie couldn’t help the accusatory tone.
“With two others of my crew, when we retired. It was different then.” Ava wistfully stirred her tea. “This place.”
“You fixed up the attic.”
“You didn’t seem the type to accept charity.”
“You were going to boot out the Brute.”
“I was. I am not management, unfortunately, or he wouldn’t have gotten in. His fall out of a window hastened his exit.” She arched a knowing eyebrow, and Evie saw that girl from the photograph on Jason’s laptop.
“You joined LFS in 1950,” Evie noted.
“And how did you discover this?”
“I have my sources.” A gorgeous and difficult source with a shady past, she thought.
“Hmm.”
“How did you meet your La Fable Sombre?”
“My father and I fled to Romania when I was eight.” Ava flicked her fingers against her teacup. “And that’s where I met, ten years later, a young man like a beautiful lion. An American.” There was laughter in her eyes. “Then I met his friends. I was the new one. Our Silence and Night were the Rebels—they’d caused chaos during the war, in the countries that had fallen. Chaos for the Nazis. Our Night was a pilot, a girl from Idaho, freckles and all. And our Silence, an archaeology student from Cairo.”
Evie whispered, “And then you figured out what you could do.”
“Yes. When the power left me a few years ago—it didn’t like that I was old and frail—it was an abandonment. But it was also as if a darkness had lifted from my spirit.” Ava leveled a direct gaze upon Evie.
Evie stared at the woman who had never appeared more than seventy and a youthful seventy at that. “Old and frail” is not how Evie would describe Ava Dubrowska. “You must have killer genes or miracle makeup, Ava. Or is that . . .” A shiver crept up from the tail of her spine to between her shoulder blades. “Is it because of the power?” She leaned forward. “What is our power? Do you know?”
The troubled look that flicked across Ava’s face was not encouraging. Ava gently asked, “What can you do?”
“Be invisible. What could you do?”
“I could sing and lure people to become docile. It was very useful when we were stealing from vicious men who’d robbed the people they’d murdered.” Evie saw the steel beneath Ava’s gentility. “As for what it is . . . I could see it sometimes, my power. It looked like a little white-haired girl in a pinafore, only she had a bird’s talons instead of legs. What shape is your power, Evie?”
That image swam up from the darkness in Evie’s mind, a pale girl with slit-pupiled eyes and serpentine twists of hair. A girl who whispered to Evie in a language that sounded Greek. A girl who had visited her in a nightmare when she’d been thirteen, who had crouched over her, chanting, pressing her clawed hands into Evie’s chest as her black gown slithered over Evie’s legs. Evie would wake drenched in sweat, sick and pale and parched. The nightmare girl had gone away when Evie had begun to surf the red tide of puberty. “A girl. Like Medusa.”
