Chapter 24
Later that afternoon, after Hexe and I had staged our own private version of Salome, I sat down and studied my checkbook in the cold light of newly acquired penury. The knowledge that once I paid my outstanding bills there would be no further income for the foreseeable future put a damper on my previous high spirits.
There was no way around it-I was going to have to economize. And, as bad luck would have it, Beanie had run out of puppy food. That meant a trek outside of Golgotham to the only pet store I could easily walk to: a trendy, overpriced shop in Tribeca called Baskerville's.
I took the shopping cart out of the hallway closet, threw on my coat, and headed out the door. As I '
Nobody wants to imagine their parents "doing it." That's one of those things we all privately agree to ignore-like the amount of insect droppings allowed by law in our food-if we want to enjoy our lives as relatively functional individuals. We have hard evidence that our parents have had sex, since we ourselves exist, but no one wants to give too much contemplation as to exactly how that came about. Granted, the unexamined life is not worth living, but there is such a thing as Too Much Information.
Yet, despite this willful lacuna, we all want to believe that we were conceived in love. To think that we came into being as the result of a drunken fumble in a backseat and a torn rubber, or a sexual assault, or a calculated power play, diminishes us, as it rewrites our personal mythology from the ground up.
I will admit that I have often wondered why my parents were still together, given that most of their friends were on at least a second spouse, if not in the process of swapping out their third. I had always assumed there had been a time when they were truly in love with one another. But the thought that the only reason I existed was because my mother had sneaked a potion into my father's martini while he wasn't looking was a depressing one.
As I walked past the Emerald Spa, I glimpsed a special afternoon edition of the Golgotham Gazette on the newsstand. The headline read: SOA WITCH-BASHING VICTIM DIES OF INJURIES. Accompanying it was a photo of the slain alchemist, Jarl, taken in happier times. A cold finger traced its way between my shoulder blades as I recognized his face as that of the man with the apricot hair I'd seen in my dream earlier that morning, just before the demon tried to get inside the house.
It's funny how not having enough money makes you keenly aware of things you never noticed before. Like the price of dog food, for example. The last time I'd bought Beanie his puppy kibble at Baskerville's, I didn't really notice how much it cost, and I especially didn't notice the price on the large, twenty-pound bags. I just threw it in the cart, along with an armload of cute squeak toys, and took it to the checkout counter. There was no thinking about it; I just did it.
Now I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time staring at the price tag, then glancing at the slightly cheaper brands. On the one hand, I wanted to provide the best nutrition possible for Beanie, without detrimental by-products, so he would grow up to be healthy and strong; on the other hand, he's just a dog-how would he know the difference? Hell, he licks his own 'nads. But in the end I did the right thing and loaded the huge bag of expensive kibble into the cart. It made sense that keeping him healthy was a good investment, if it meant not having to make a lot of trips to the vet down the line. And if he got tired of this stuff-tough shit. He could buy something else with his dog dollars.
As I headed to the checkout counter, I glimpsed a familiar figure in the cat food section. It was none other than my downstairs neighbor-and fellow human-Aloysius Manto. He was standing in the middle of the aisle, studying the ingredients of a can of gourmet cat food, his thick reading glasses perched perilously close to the end of his long nose.
Mr. Manto was an oracle who, along with his brace of house cats, lived in the basement thding an inapartment of the boardinghouse, amid a jumble of books and magazines that would put most libraries to shame. But instead of being a bibliophile, Mr. Manto practiced a form of divination known as bibliomancy, which involved his taking pages from random books, tearing them into progressively smaller quarters, mixing them together, and then piecing them into prophecy, all while high as a kite. That's how he predicted my using my animated sculptures as an impromptu army in order to free Lukas from Boss Marz's fighting pit.
"Mr. Manto-what are you doing here?"
Instead of pushing his glasses into place, the oracle simply tilted his head farther back so that he could see who had addressed him. He was dressed, as always, in a pair of baggy men's trousers held up by leather suspenders, a frayed cable-knit cardigan, and a dress shirt with a tie so skinny it was anorexic. A dark gray fedora sat atop his head, hiding his balding scalp, so that all that was visible was the fringe of gray-white hair about his ears.
"Hello, my dear-good to see you again," he said in a sepulchral, Midwestern monotone. "As to what I am doing here, I frequent this establishment once a month to buy provisions for my krewe of feline confederates." He turned and dropped the can he had been studying into the shopping cart beside him, where it joined at least a dozen others. "They can be quite insistent when it comes to being fed." He smiled and gestured to the wolf-sized bag of kibble in my own basket. "I am pleased you've been reunited with the errant Beanie."
"How did you know-?" I rolled my eyes and gave my forehead a slap. "Duh."
"I'm afraid I didn't divine that particular bit of information," he said with a chuckle. "I know your puppy ran away because Scratch came knocking at my door in search of him. By the by, I was curious as to whether the rest of the prophecy has come to pass."
"What do you mean 'the rest of it'?" I frowned. "I thought it had already come true. You know, the part about the woman-forged army freeing the beasts."
"You mean 'rise shall a fire-born army forged of woman to the bestiarii free,'" the oracle said aloud in a stentorian monotone loud enough to make other shoppers look in our direction. "That was but a portion of what I divined. The rest goes as such: 'Drown will the streets the usurped in blood no mercy for his flesh show. From two will be one turned three. The hand is in the mind.'" As he recited the remainder of the prophecy, our fellow pet owners began casting sidelong glances at us as if we'd escaped from a loony bin.
"I don't know if it's come true or not," I replied with a shrug. "But I'm pretty sure I'd remember streets full of blood, so I'm going to say it hasn't. But to tell you the truth, I haven't really given it much thought."
"It is the nature of prophecies that one often does not remember or understand them until it is almost too late. That is because Fate resents attempts by mortals to pierce its veil, and is always trying to snatch back its mysteries by clouding the minds of man. But when the time comes, Apollo willing, the words of the prophecy will come to you, and you shall understand their meaning."
As I turned to go, leaving the old oracle to his shopping, a thought suddenly crossed my mind. "Mr. Manto . . . how can you tell the difference between a dream and a vision?"
"That's a good question," he said, tapping his upper lip with a bony forefinger. "In my experience, dreams come from wms ers loithin, and are triggered by something you have experienced or are concerned about. They are the result of your subconscious speaking to you, using symbols that hold special meaning for you, and the outcome of which you control on a certain level. A vision, however, comes from without, and you have no power over when it begins or ends, or the symbolism it uses to communicate its meaning. Dreams are often a rehash of things that have gone before, while visions give insights as to things yet to come, or attempt to reveal knowledge otherwise hidden from you."
"Does it mean anything if I see dead people in these dreams or visions?"
The oracle raised an eyebrow. "Have you lost anyone recently? A family member or close friend, perhaps?"
"I know three people who have died in the last week or so, actually. One of them quite horribly. I barely knew two of them-but, yes, I would call them friends." I then described what I had seen in both of my dreams. When I'd finished, the oracle nodded sagely.
"It makes sense that your friends were capable of talking directly to you the first time, but incapable of speaking in the second," he said. "The longer the dead are departed from the material world, the harder it is for them to speak directly to the living. When they try to do so, it usually comes out garbled. That's why most people have to use a spirit medium to communicate with those who have been deceased for more than a couple of days. Tell me-were you prone to such dreams before you moved to Golgotham?"
"No, never."
"Very interesting. When we first met, I thought perhaps you had a touch of the uncanny in you. Many artistic types do, you know. That's why people like Picasso, Mozart, and Fellini were fascinated by Kymeran culture-it resonated with them. It's also why humans with abilities such as mine-oracles, mediums, dowsers, and the like-have made our homes here. Being surrounded by magic strengthens our gifts. My powers are far stronger here than anywhere else I ever lived, including New Orleans. And that's saying something."
"That's all very interesting, Mr. Manto-but what does it mean?"
"Isn't it obvious, my dear?" the oracle replied, blinking his rheumy eyes in surprise. "You're being warned that whoever murdered your friends is trying to kill you, too."