Page 22 of The Deer and the Dragon
“What does that do?”
“It should help in turning up your clairabilities. Give it a shot, and call me back if you fuck it up.” Xuân disconnected before I could ask further questions.
The religion-resistant parts of me revolted as I lit candles, played relaxing music, and sat cross-legged in front of my door, looking directly at the spot Silas had glanced at so many nights ago. I told myself that this was nothing like praying. This was different. This was meditation.
But it didn’t feel different.
I did my best to relax. I closed my eyes and pictured a dial.
Nothing happened. The sigil became another god to pray to, something that neither existed nor answered when I called, no matter how badly I needed it. It was childhood all over again. And just like when I was a kid, no matter how ignored I felt, I didn’t give up.
May became June, July, then August. Time faded into the final days of summer.
“Come on, fucking comeon,” I’d pleaded, frustration obliterating any hope I had at peaceful meditation. If I had conjured him from my imagination, then I would have been able to poof him into existence now. The longer he stayed away, the more convinced of his reality I became and the more desperately I needed to speak with him.
A man had vanished. There were multiple invisible things out there. I’d spent years with him. And the answers were at my fingertips—or, they should have been, had I not commanded him to stay away. But if I could get him back, I could fix this. And then together we could cast everything—everyodd comment, every coincidental bout of good luck, every curious childhood memory, every odd piece of my life—under a new lens.
I cleared my mind. I stared. I meditated. I read. I researched. I reached out. I texted. I scanned. I watched documentaries. I cannibalized books on ghosts and fae and curses and witches. I pored over texts. I video-chatted. I scoured forums. I filled notebooks with deranged excerpts and sketches and theories. I developed deep, purple smudges from sleeplessness. I lost four pounds in my reluctance to eat. I sobbed.
But no matter how hard I cried, Caliban did not return.
Chapter Nine
AUGUST 17, AGE 26
“A man called Richard Montague…”
“Oh my god!” I waved a hand at the dinner party of three. The smell of fresh-cut onion, hot peppers, and the spice of stir-fried meat filled the home and accompanied the static hum of the television. My head snapped up at the mention of the familiar name. Nia squeezed Darius’s arm to silence him while the tacos sat on the table, untouched. It had taken invitations, then coercion, then threats before I finally agreed to abandon my cave of solitude for a get-together. They’d been kind to invite me to their house in the suburbs, and I’d given them every reason to regret it. I sprinted to the counter to fetch the remote and cranked the evening news while the reporter showed the face of my attacker.
“Who is it?” Nia whispered behind me.
I motioned for her to wait, and I knew she would.
I stood in front of the TV as if the anchor were speaking to me alone. As soon as they flashed to footage outside of Richard’s now-abandoned residence, I whipped around to Nia.
“Write down the address! Oh my god, write down the address!” My hand moved on instinct to the piece of paper I’d kept tucked in my back pocket in the months following the attempt on my life, but I would not mar it with his information.
She fetched her phone from her back pocket in hasty compliance while her husband grumbled something about the tacos getting cold. I remained glued to each word as if my life depended on it. The story ended, and I released the breath I’d been holding. I punched the downward-facing arrow repeatedly once the anchor transitioned into a fluff piece about the high gas prices.
“What is it?” Nia asked.
“I knew him,” I said.
“From…” she prompted.
She knew of my previous line of work and knew I wouldn’t be comfortable talking about it in front of her husband. If Darius couldn’t be patient enough to wait for tacos, then I didn’t have the energy to explain my years of escorting to him. To be fair, he was a good man—one of the few I tolerated, particularly now that I considered him my brother-in-law. He’d probably be fine with my covert career, but the fact remained, it was my story to share. He loved his wife deeply, and for that alone, he received a free pass for any and all minor faux pas. I nodded, and she understood.
Nia Foster had forced her way into my life like a bulldozer, and I’d let her.
She’d seen my rather public fallout with my family in the wake of the firstPantheonbook. My mother’s novel-length rejection of my blasphemous lifestyle and romanticization of heathen gods on her publicly available social account had made the news. It was a little less dramatic than a six o’clock anchor reading about my attempted murder, but a few online magazines had taken screenshots of my mother’s social media posts about the destination of my immortal soul and the tearful videos I’d made in the heat of my emotional state as I’d reacted to my abandonment.
But as P.T. Barnum once said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
My fuckups had captured an audience, whetherprospective book-buyers, opinionated pundits, or the online community who I’d come to know and love as friends.
Nia had sent me a direct message informing me that she was my sister now.
I’d left her messages on read as days turned into weeks, watching the updates roll in as she spoke to me as if we were family. She told me things like how my new brother-in-law was fixing the sink, how my new mother loved my book and spent their entire barbecue telling the neighbors about it, how my new uncle was also pansexual and was very proud of me, and sent me a few funny pictures of cute animals with the hopes that I might see them and smile. She told me that we shared a city. She sent her messages into the void, never expecting an answer. Day after day she checked in on me until one vulnerable day, six months after the release of the firstPantheonnovel, tears free-flowing and in the fetal position on the kitchen floor, I opened the thread and messaged her back.
