He is something out of the past but wholly here in the present too. He is my Grant. Not the old man he should be after fifty years inside this curse. Especially since he had fifty years of debt when he left.
I narrow my eyes at him and call down from the window, “What do you want?”
He shoots me one of those aw-shucks shrugs, his shoulders high, his smile broad, his hands doing a mea culpa. And there it is. He did this. It was a plan. He knew, probably from the very moment he walked into my curse, that he was somehow… immune.
“I knew she would come,” Grant says.
“Who? Pie?”
“Who else?”
I huff. “You couldn’t have known that. The bloodline—”
Grant chuckles, cutting me off. “The bloodline? How are you so stupid? After all these years, Pell? How?” His laughter is bigger now. Louder. “You’ve had two thousand years to figure it out, and still—here you are!” Now he guffaws. “I mean, dude! Get a fucking clue!”
This is where I would usually say, What are you talking about? Please explain. But I don’t need to. Because for some reason I cannot fathom, this is the moment when I realize I’m wearing a veil.
Not a literal one, of course. A magical one.
Someone—maybe Grant, maybe not—has put a spell on me the way he put a spell on the town.
I have been made to forget things. Or unsee things. Or maybe just not know things.
And this conversation with Grant—who is most definitely not a human boy called Grant—has broken the spell.
So I already know what he’s talking about when he starts explaining it.
“You’re a joke, Pell. Don’t you get it? Satyrs? Are you fucking kidding me? No one takes you seriously. You’re entertainment. We made you for parties. So we could parade you around with your giant, always-erect cocks to amuse guests. That’s all you are. Just a fucking joke. Do you really think I need your help to get that book?” He nods his head towards the cemetery. “Pie is getting it for me right now. And the best part of that? You sent her in there!”
“You.” I don’t say it, I growl it. “You did not make me.”
His face goes still. And suddenly, all of the sunlight in the sky is gone. There is nothing but darkness over the lake. His voice booms with anger. “I made her. She made you. Therefore, I made you.”
“I see the logic,” I say. Because he’s talking about Ostanes. “Saturn.” I snarl the old god’s name. “That’s who you are, right? And that’s fine. I give no fucks at all who made me.” I hike my thumb over my shoulder and his eyes once more dart to the cemetery. “And you might be in charge of shit outside, but this place? This place belongs to me.”
The sun is still shining very bright in the sanctuary sky.
He has no power here.
And now it’s my turn to laugh. “I didn’t figure it out. So maybe I am stupid. Maybe I am a joke. But you spent fifty fucking years in here and still you had to finally walk out with nothing.”
“Nothing?” He guffaws again. “I didn’t walk out with nothing. I took what was mine. And in my stead, I left Pie. She is mine too, didn’t ya know?”
I don’t answer him. Of course I didn’t know. There was a magic veil over my eyes. But I should’ve seen this coming. Especially after that romp in the hallway forests.
A wood nymph chimera.
My type. Hell, I practically spelled it out for her that day in the apothecary.
I’ve always been partial to the nymphs. Willowy girls with evil intentions lurking in the forest.
You like bad girls?
I do.
I’m not bad enough for you?
Not even close.
And there it is. Well, she’s bad enough now, I guess.
“Sorry for that,” Grant says. Saturn. Whoever the fuck he is. He shrugs again, another mea culpa. “If it makes you feel any better, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She really does think she’s some poor, crazy girl from Philly who conjures up imaginary friends and stumbles into monsters and curses because of one bad decision to party on Halloween.”
“Wait.” I think I stop breathing. “What?”
Grant sighs. Then frowns. “She’s not real. She thinks she’s real. She thinks she lived that life. She thinks she is that girl. But her life started the moment she woke up in the Grotto Our Lady of Lourdes at Mount Aloysius College. She’s a phantom, Pell. Just one of my magical ghosts sent in to do a job.” He nods his head in the direction of the cemetery. “And that’s exactly what she’s doing.”
My own words come back to me again.
It’s a paradox.
I can enter, but can’t see the doors.
You can see the doors, but you can’t enter.
And none of them can come out. Trust me. I’ve been here two thousand years and not a single monster has found his way out of those tombs.