Page 54 of Persephone's Curse
Outside, I exerted both physical and emotional effort not to look up at Evelyn’s window, simply marching east down the street with my head down and my hands crammed in my pockets (there was about a 50 percent chance I would set off the pepper spray accidentally). I almost plowed into someone at the next intersectionbut thought it was safe to look up again, then, and as I crossed into the park I quickened my pace, because it was cold and dark and past nine o’clock and really I had no business going anywhere, but I needed to walk, I needed toget out.
I wasn’t looking for my sister, not really, but I wasn’tnotlooking for her, either, and I found myself studying every stranger I passed, looking for Evelyn’s blue eyes, looking for Evelyn’s slender nose, looking for Evelyn’s face, a face I loved so much I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I ended up at Bethesda Fountain. In the tunnel beyond it, someone was playing a violin (there was always someone playing a violin here—I mean, the acoustics, can you blame them?). It was eerily quiet other than the music. Of course it was New York, and it was a touristy spot, so there were plenty of people milling around, but they were all subdued, almost reverently hushed. I didn’t know what piece the violinist was playing but they were very good. Evelyn would have known. Clara, too, maybe. Our father would have said, “Do you know the difference between a violin and a fiddle? Absolutely nothing! You just call it a different name depending on the music you’re playing! How wild is that, girls?” Our mother would have tugged my arm and pulled me aside and said, “Status report?” and I wouldn’t have had the faintest idea how to answer her. What would Henry have done? Gotten a faraway look on his face and remembered when he was alive, maybe. Bethesda Fountain was completed in 1873. That was eleven years after the reservoir. Had he ever seen this? Or was he dead by then, firmly stuck in our attic, forfeiting a life outside for a life firmlyin.
But instead nobody said anything. Instead it was just me, and I sat down on the lip of the fountain and closed my eyes and let themusic surround me, entering my body, traveling through my veins, replacing my blood with melody.
In Greek mythology, Orpheus played the lyre, a stringed instrument that predated the violin by thousands of years. He went all the way to the Underworld to bring back his beloved Eurydice, dead from the bite of a viper. Was that where Evelyn had gone? All the way to the Underworld to find her beloved Henry?Ourbeloved Henry?
But no. That was just silly.
Something nudged me, then, something almost real and very cold, and I opened my eyes to find a Farthing ghost sitting next to me.
She was as solid as they come, almost as real andhereas Aunt Bea, and she wasn’t looking at me, seemed almost not to even notice me, but she was sitting so close she was touching me (if ghosts could, you know,touch).
It was normal for them not to see me but to be drawn to me, something in our blood connecting us through years and slightly different planes of existences. I scootched a little, to give her some room, then watched the violinist until they stopped, sometime later, put their violin away, and began their journey home.
I stood and followed them out of the park, just until Central Park West, where they descended into the subway station and were presumably lost to me forever. I carried on until Columbus Avenue and turned north, starting toward home.
The ghost didn’t follow me. They rarely did.
On Columbus Avenue, all the stores were closed or closing but there were restaurants and bars that were open and just like anywhere in the city, I wasn’t alone. I walked a few blocks fingering the pepper spray in my pocket, imagining a complicated robberyscenario in which I fought off my attackers and left them reformed and apologetic, and then I crossed another street and found myself in front of a small store with a sign over the door that saidDARK MAGIC.
It was one of those New York stores I’d probably walked by a thousand times (I was just a few blocks from home at that point) but had never really seen before. It was sort of corny looking, with lots of red velvet and black candles in the window, books on magic, lots and lots of crystals, and thick, heavy-looking journals Bernadette would have loved. From the looks of it, it was half actual magic store for practicing Wiccans and half tourist trap (a necessity: cast a wide net and try and make those exorbitant NYC rents). I’d almost moved on when I saw, in the back corner of the window, something I suddenly wanted.
I pushed into the store, slipping past a man and a woman browsing crystals (tourists) and a woman examining different Tarot decks (resident). Toward the back of the store I found them, a stack of slender cardboard boxes. I grabbed the one from the top and brought it straight to the counter, where the bored employee did her best to look mildly pleased to see me.
“This it?” she said.
“Yes, thanks,” I said, pulling the pepper spray out of my pocket, putting it away hastily, pulling my wallet out of my other pocket.
“Need a bag?”
“No, thanks.”
“You should be careful with this,” she said then, her voice changing for dramatic effect, her eyes narrowing slightly as she took my credit card from between my outstretched fingers. “A lot of people think it’s just a game, but…”
“To be fair, it literally says Hasbro Gaming on the side of it,” I said, pointing.
“Commercialization of the spirit world, baby.” She handed my card back to me.
“Do you really, like… believe in this stuff, though?” I asked. “Or are you just pretending? For the job?”
“I could have worked at Zara,” she said. “They pay more. But here I am. And I think the better question is, doyoubelieve in this stuff? You’re the one buying it, after all.”
“Do I believe in this stuff?” I repeated, sliding the Ouija board toward me, running my fingers over the photo, two hands posed jauntily over a cream plastic planchette, the tips of their fingers just barely grazing the vaguely heart-shaped piece. (On the forum I would have asked—Can you commune with the dead? Do the dead want to be communed with? Are they peaceful and resting until we go ahead and ring their big undead telephone?)
Do I believe in this stuff?
Well, I had grown up with a ghost in my attic. I had sat next to a ghost in Central Park just a few minutes ago. I had walkedthroughghosts on my way to get a seltzer water from the corner store (a horrible experience; it left you almost sticky with cold).
The answer might have been something like,—Yes, whether I want to or not.
“Or is it, you know, a gag gift?” she pressed, when half a minute had passed and I was still silent. She tore the receipt from the printer and handed me a pen. I signed my name and handed it back to her.
“Winnie,” she said. “Cute.”
“It’s not a gag gift,” I said finally. “I’m going to use it.”
