I wondered how soon we would be able to do the same for my family.
A woman’s voice rose in song from the corner of the shop, a melody I recognized.
Letting go of Orlando’s hand, I stood up and turned around, the hairs on the back of my neck already warning of danger.
Valerie sat in her rumpled nest of blankets, the soles of her bare feet pressed together and her knees angled away from her body like wings. An unnatural brightness glimmered in her eyes. She sang one phrase over and over; I recognized it as the opening line of “Into the River.” And with the music came a shot of pain. Darkness filled my mind as Zo’s black veil threatened to fall over my memories again.
I fell back to my knees, fighting with everything I had in me to keep the darkness at bay. To hold on to my self and my sanity.
“It’s time, my children,” Valerie sang, her eyes never leaving mine. “It’s time, time, time. The waves are rising. The waters are running. The clock is chiming midnight.” She unfolded herself from the floor, a single sinuous motion that lifted her to her feet. She extended her arm and pointed a sharp finger at me. “You’ve felt his mark, his mouth, his mind. And you’ll never be the same again. Oh, no. He’ll make sure of that.”
And then she threw back her head and laughed and laughed and laughed.
Chapter 12
Make her stop!” I cried, curling into myself and covering my ears with my hands. “Please!”
Dante slipped from the chair and knelt by my side before the words had left my mouth. He covered my shaking hands with his strong ones and the extra pressure against my ears muted the sound of Valerie’s voice until it was nothing but a rumbling murmur.
At the same time, Orlando rushed to Valerie’s side and covered her mouth. Instantly he yelped and pulled his hand away. Shaking his fingers, he looked at Dante and me in shock. “She bit me!”
“Did not!” Valerie retorted, folding her arms in a pout.
Orlando ignored her. “What is she saying?” he asked us, confused. “I can’t understand her.”
“That’s because I’m speaking English, silly. Would you rather I speak something else? Because I can,” she said in perfect Italian. “What about this?” she added in French. “Or this?” she finished in Spanish. “I speak the language of whatever story I’m in, and this story has Italian written all over it.”
Orlando’s eyes bulged in surprise.
Dante turned to me for an explanation, but I shrugged. I didn’t know how it was possible, but then there was so much about Valerie that was strange and impossible. “She can speak the truth in a story. Why not Italian, too?” I murmured. I wondered what else she was hiding in her cracked and broken mind, what other talents or gifts might be at her call.
“Who are you?” Orlando demanded of Valerie. “What are you doing here? Where did you get these?” He grabbed her arm, holding up her tattooed wrist to examine the chains marked there.
“She did those to herself,” I answered.
Orlando dropped Valerie’s arm in horror. “Why?”
“It’s a long story. She’s my friend,” I answered, though it felt strange to claim her as such when she was so very different from the person I’d grown up with. “She also came through the door like I did. But she’s not well.”
Valerie bared her teeth at Orlando and snapped at him again.
“Valerie,” Dante said calmly, “don’t bite people, please.”
“I don’t have to do what you say.” Valerie yanked her arm away from Orlando and smoothed her hair down. “Or you,” she tossed over her shoulder at Orlando before turning away.
Dante frowned. “Fine. Then the River Policeman says, ‘Don’t bite people, please.’”
Valerie turned back, her eyes opened wide. She bit her lip. “The River Policeman?” Her voice lost its high-edged intensity, replaced with a gentle reverence. She took a step toward Dante.
I flinched back in his arms, hating my instinctive reaction. Valerie had once been my best friend, and now I didn’t want her to come another step closer. I lowered my hands but kept them tucked under my chin, just in case. I still felt the darkness hanging over my mind like a guillotine’s blade.
“I need to talk to the River Policeman,” Valerie said. “I need his help.”
“I can help you,” Dante said. “But first I need you to sit still and be quiet for a moment. Can you do that for me?”
In answer, Valerie dropped to the floor, crossing her legs and sitting up as straight as possible. She drew an imaginary zipper across her lips, twisting her fingers at the corner of her mouth. She looked at her pinched fingers, a frown of concentration pulling her eyebrows together. Then she twisted around and held out her closed hand toward Orlando.
He looked over Valerie’s head at us.
Valerie huffed a breath through her nose and wiggled her hand at Orlando.
“What does she want?” he asked.
“She wants you to take the key,” I said, remembering how upset Valerie had been when I had once so casually discarded an imaginary key of my own.
“She doesn’t have a key,” he said slowly, as though he had missed an important detail.
Valerie reached even further toward Orlando, her body contorting in her effort to stay where Dante had asked her to stay, yet still move closer.
“I know. Like I said, it’s a long story.”
Orlando took a cautious step forward, extending his open hand toward Valerie’s. A red crescent bite mark bloomed on the heel of his palm. When his hand was directly beneath Valerie’s, she opened her fingers. Orlando folded his fingers into a fist as though he had caught whatever she had dropped, and Valerie relaxed, a smile lighting up her face.
Edging away from her, Orlando returned to where we sat by the fireplace.
Dante helped me to my feet and into the chair he had recently abandoned. He hovered behind me, his touch never far from my shoulder, my neck, my arm.
“So, will you tell me the story?” Orlando sat in the other chair. “I think I deserve to know what’s going on. And what I’ve agreed to.”
I took a deep breath and told Orlando the abbreviated version of who Valerie was and why she was the way she was and how she had ended up here, Dante chiming in as needed. I hadn’t been kidding; even just covering the basics, it was a long story and my throat hurt by the time I was done. My heart hurt, too, as I relived the events of the past few months. Had it really only been since January? Since Dante had first come into my life and everything had changed?
Through the entire retelling of her history, Valerie leaned forward like an attentive pupil, her eyes moving in an endless circle from me to Dante to Orlando and back again.
Orlando leaned back in his chair, his fist still holding the invisible key. He turned his thoughtful gaze to Valerie, and when her focus was back on him, he held her eyes. “I’ll keep it safe for you until you need it back,” he said. “I promise.”
Valerie nodded solemnly, crossing her finger over her heart, first one way, then the other.
“What does that mean?” he asked me in a low voice.
“She wants you to promise—cross your heart and hope to die.”
Orlando looked at me oddly, but he mimicked Valerie’s motion.
Dante cleared his throat and stepped around me, kneeling down in front of Valerie. “Thank you,” he said. “You have been very still and very quiet, just as I asked. I’d like to help you now. What did you want to talk to the River Policeman about?”
She twitched her lips back and forth but didn’t say anything.
Dante reached out and touched her knee. “It’s all right. The key is safe. And the River Policeman says you can talk now without it.”
She exhaled as though she’d been holding her breath the entire time. “Oh, good. I knew you could help me.”
“What can I do for you?”
Instead of answering, Valerie tilted her head until it almost touched her shoulder. She waved her hand in front of Dante’s face. “Can
you see me?”
Dante didn’t blink. “The River Policeman can see everything.”
She hiccupped a breath, and suddenly tears filled her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. She pressed her hands to her chest. “Then you can see my broken heart?”
Dante nodded gently.
“It’s not fair,” she said, her voice small and sad. “I did everything I was supposed to. Everything he wanted. But it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. In the end.” She twisted the edge of the belt of her bathrobe into a knot.
“On the contrary, I think you might have been more than he could handle.”
“It’s been forever since I’ve seen him.” She frowned, and the twisting motion of her hands turned to ripping. “He only comes to see me now when he needs something from me. I don’t like that. I don’t like that he just takes and takes. He used to give me gifts, you know. Bring me special things.” Her face brightened through her tears. “He once gave me a doll. It was pink and silver and it had the letters L and A on the chest. He told me it stood for l’ amore, which means the love. I loved it so much I didn’t even care that the dolly didn’t have a head.”
I felt myself turn to stone. That had been my doll once upon a time. Zo had stolen it from me and returned the head as a horrible surprise gift. He had given the rest of the doll to Valerie as a token of his love? A shiver ran up and down my arms like tiny spiders.
“Go on,” Dante said, though with a slight quiver to his voice. “What else?”
“He used to sing to me all the time, but now he hardly even talks to me. I miss hearing him sing,” she sighed. She hummed a few bars of “Into the River,” and I whimpered in pain. The darkness drew a little tighter inside me.
“Valerie,” Dante warned.
The music stopped and she sat up even straighter. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll be good. I promise.”
“Thank you.” Dante took her hand in his. “Tell the River Policeman exactly what you want him to do.”
She looked down at their joined hands and a tear slipped down her cheek. “I want him to fix my broken heart. I want him to make everything all better.”
“How can he do that?”
“By arresting the Pirate King.” A scowl of hate pulled at her face. “You must make him pay,” she growled, squeezing Dante’s hand until her knuckles were white. “Make him hurt. Make him leave her alone”—she jerked her head in my direction, but Dante didn’t move—“and make him come back to me.”
Dante lowered his head. A stillness surrounded him, spreading wide to include Valerie, Orlando, and me. When he spoke, his words seemed to echo through the small room. “I promise you, I will stop him. I will keep him away from Abby.”
“Oh, good—” Valerie began.
Dante interrupted, holding up his hand. “But—”
Valerie bit down on her lip.
“But I will not allow him to return to you either.”
“What!” Valerie shouted, recoiling back, her fingers snapping into claws.
Her anger rolled off Dante’s calmness. “He is dangerous. And when I stop him, I will send him to prison. That is what a policeman does. That is my job.”
“But we belong together! I belong to him—”
“No!” Dante’s stillness shattered. “You belong to no one but yourself. His claim over you is broken. You must not give in to him again.”
“But I miss him,” Valerie said uncertainly. “The last time I saw him, he asked me to tell him a story.” She rubbed at her eyes. “The stories are so loud in my head, and they don’t all have happy endings anymore.” She leveled a serious look at Dante. “I don’t like stories that don’t have happy endings.”
“What story did you tell him?” I asked. “Was it a story like you used to tell to me? Maybe one about the Pirate King and the River Policeman?” I knew Valerie’s stories were a strange blend of fantasy and fact, prophecies within plots, because it had been partly her stories that had helped me save Dante from certain destruction.
Valerie ignored me and directed her answer to Dante. “I wish it had been. I like those stories the best; they are exciting and adventurous and bloody. No, the last story I told him was about the Pirate King and the Flower Girl. I didn’t like her story.” She shook her head. “The Pirate King didn’t like it either, but I can only tell the stories that want to be told.” Valerie twisted her fingers together in agitation. “It’s the saddest story I know.”
“And you don’t like sad stories,” Dante said gently.
“No, I do not,” she agreed regally.
“Will you tell us the story?” I asked, leaning forward.
“I’m not going to tell you anything,” she sneered in my direction.
“Will you tell me?” Dante asked.
The look she gave him was soft and humble and happy. “Oh, yes. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” She patted the floor next to her. “Come closer. This is a story that wants closeness.”
Dante slid forward, but when Valerie sighed in exasperation, he moved even closer.
Jealousy nibbled at me at the sight of the two of them together. I knew it was silly to feel that way, but I still left my seat and knelt next to Dante on the floor.
Valerie glared at me and pressed her lips together.
“She stays.” Dante’s voice left no room for negotiation. “Now, tell the story.”
Valerie shifted on her seat, her hands flitting from her lap to her knees and back again. She bowed her head and mumbled something under her breath.
“What was that?” Dante asked. “What did you say?”
She turned away, her gaze traveling over the glass bottles and sealed containers on the shelves surrounding us. Her fingers twitched and trembled.
“Do you need your dollies?” I asked quietly. “Would that help you tell the story?”
She whipped around to stare at me, hot smears of red on her face. “I don’t need your help at all! I can tell the story all by myself.”
Orlando stood up from his seat and walked to the counter, rummaging through the boxes and bottles that were still scattered on the surface until he found a small something he folded into his palm.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Dante tilted his head at the sound of Orlando’s activity.
“Helping,” he said. “I hope.” He pulled out a square of gray fabric from a cupboard and wrapped it around a short, stout bottle filled with a dark red liquid. As he returned to the fireplace, he pulled out the cork and dropped whatever had been in his hand inside the bottle. He handed the bundle to Valerie, who took it from him with shaking hands and wide eyes.
“What is it?” she asked, breathless.
“It’s a doll made of glass. But you must be very careful with it or else it will break.”
Valerie clutched it to her chest. “Oh, I will be ever so careful. I promise.” She began swaying back and forth, rocking her doll like a baby, her eyes closed and a smile appearing on her lips.
“What did you put in it?” I asked Orlando in a low voice.
“A packet of dried apothecary rose petals. When mixed with the liquid inside, the scent will help calm her mind.”
“I remember when you used to make that for me,” Dante said quietly to his brother. “For when my dreams were unusually bad.”
I nodded to Orlando, grateful for his quick thinking and for his ability to help Valerie now and Dante then.
Valerie’s eyes fluttered open. “Even though the Flower Girl lived in a sad story, she wasn’t always so sad,” she began in a soft, rock-a-bye voice. She tucked the cloth tighter around the bottle, holding it up to her cheek. A kindness entered her face, softening it back to the familiar features I remembered. “When she was young, she was yellow and gold and light. She was as fragile as a wish made on dandelion seeds, as quiet as clouds across a summertime sunset.”
I leaned against Dante’s shoulder, lulled by the ebb and flow of Valerie’s story. Unlike the tales she told of cunning pirates and stoic policemen, this o
ne felt gentle. The cadence reminded me a little of how I felt when I listened to Zo’s music or Dante’s poetry, but instead of summoning a dangerous darkness or a healing light, this rhythm made me think of standing on the edge of the ocean and watching the waves roll in.
“She was a mouse. Happy to be hidden, happy to nibble at the edges of life. But even though she was small, her heart was full of love, love, love.