Elegy

TWENTY-ONE Lineage

It was the first time that Harper had gone to visit Lydia without someone calling ahead, and she felt strangely intrusive as she pushed open the door to Cherry Lane Books. Of course, that didn’t make sense since it was a bookstore, and people were free to come and go as long as the OPEN sign was up.

In fact, this was about the least intrusive she’d been since it was only the second time she’d come here when the store was actually open. That meant that there were customers here this time, including a girl from Harper’s biology class who was perusing the bestseller section.

Harper was starting to think that this might not be the best time. The things she wanted to talk about with Lydia wouldn’t be good with an audience.

Unfortunately, the bell chimed whenever anyone opened the door, and it must’ve alerted Lydia. She appeared around an aisle from the back of the store before Harper could back out.

“Oh, hey there.” Lydia smiled and appeared genuinely happy to see her. “I’m glad you came by because I wanted to show you something.”

Then Lydia turned toward the store and, speaking loudly so her small voice would carry, she said, “Attention, everyone. I need to run downstairs to my office for a few minutes. If you need anything, push the buzzer by the cash register at the front desk, and I’ll be up in a jiff. Okay?”

Her customers murmured agreement and understanding, so Lydia turned back to Harper, grinning. Lydia’s outfit seemed a bit more sedate today, just a pair of skinny jeans and a purple tank top, but she wore glittery pink lip gloss that sparkled when she smiled.

“Shall we?” Lydia asked, but before Harper could reply, she started escorting her to the back of the store.

They went down the most dimly lit aisle of the store, where Lydia kept tarot cards, sensing stones, and all the really old books. And it wasn’t like first editions of Charles Dickens old. Harper had once discovered one that appeared to be written in ancient Sumerian, but many of them were nearly falling apart from age.

Past that, in the back corner, Lydia pushed open a door that seemed too heavy for her. The wood had a marble grain unlike anything Harper had seen before, and as she walked past it, she ran her fingers along the glossy surface. It felt smooth and cool, like glass, under her fingertips.

“It’s snakewood,” Lydia said when she noticed Harper admiring the door. “It helps keep intruders out.”

On the other side of the door was a small landing in front of a narrow concrete staircase. Lydia seemed to be struggling with the door, so Harper helped her push it closed, and it surprised her just how heavy it truly was.

“This is where I keep all the really old books,” Lydia explained as she led the way down the steps.

“As opposed to those brand-new ones we just walked by?” Harper asked.

Lydia laughed, the tinkling sound echoing in the small space of the stairwell. “Well, the really important old books, then.”

The bottom of the stairs opened into a surprisingly warm and dry basement, filled with bookshelves. It smelled distinctly of burning leaves, so much so that Harper began to fear that something was on fire.

“What’s that burning smell?” she asked.

“It’s just the potions,” Lydia replied, as if Harper would know what that meant. “They keep the books safe.”

While the books took up the majority of the basement, there was a small room to the left of the stairs. Lydia opened the door and gestured inside. “Won’t you join me in my office?”

Harper went inside, and it was what she’d expected Lydia’s office to look like. Three of the walls were painted pale pink, but the one behind her desk was wallpapered with a black-and-white fleur-de-lis pattern. Posters of book covers for J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, Roald Dahl’s The Witches, and Ralph Manheim’s translation of The Neverending Story were hung around the room.

A computer and a framed photo sat on the simple black desk, but other than that, and the two office chairs, nearly everything else in the room was books. Books stacked in piles on the floor, on the desk, on overburdened shelves that were slouching on the walls. Three boxes sat on the floor behind the desk, and Harper couldn’t see their contents, but she assumed they were more books.

“Are you sure it’s okay that we’re down here?” Harper asked as she sat down. “I mean, because of the customers. I don’t want to take you away from your job.”

“This is my job, too,” Lydia explained as she moved the towers of books from her desk to the floor so she’d be able to see Harper when she sat down. “As much as I love uniting readers with their new favorite books, the reason I opened the bookstore is to help people like you. Selling books is a front for my real work.”

“What do you mean?” Harper asked.

Lydia sat down and gave her a knowing smile. “There are just some problems that you can’t go to the police for. There’s no one you can call to help if you’re a troll or a witch. It’s not like the Ghostbusters are real, and even if they were, sometimes the ghosts need help, too.”

“Do I owe you anything for all of this?” Harper asked. “You’re doing so much work for us, and I’m so appreciative, and I feel like I should compensate you or something.”

Lydia had never made mention of any form of payment, but now that she had referred to this as a job, Harper began to worry that she was taking advantage of her.

“No, no, don’t be ridiculous.” Lydia waved it off. “Nana always said that if we did the things we had to do and help those that needed it, then everything else would fall into place. And she was right.”

“Thank you,” Harper said emphatically. “I don’t know what my sister or I would do if we didn’t have you helping us.”

“You’re very welcome.” Lydia smiled. “Now on to what I wanted to show you.” She reached over to pull the lid off one of the boxes, then she stopped. “But you came here. Is there something you wanted to tell me?”

“Mostly just to ask you about your progress,” Harper said. “And to tell you something about the scroll.”

“What about it?” Lydia let go of the box lid and sat back in her chair.

“I brought the scroll to school yesterday to show a teacher, Professor Pine. He said he knew you.”

“Oh, yeah. Kipling.” Lydia smirked. “We go way back. He’s a good guy.”

“While I was talking to him about the scroll—I had it with me, so he could look at it—he accidentally spilled Red Bull all over it,” Harper explained. “It didn’t damage the scroll, of course, because nothing seems to be able to. But the ink began to glow, like a real vibrant crimson wherever the liquid touched.”

“Did anything else happen?” Lydia asked.

“No, it just glowed for a few seconds. Then stopped,” Harper said. “When I took it back to my dorm room, I tried a few other things on it. Water seemed to have the same effect, but milk did nothing.”

“Hmm.” Lydia seemed to consider it for a moment. “Do you have it with you?”

Harper frowned apologetically. “No. Sorry. Gemma was worried about having it out of her sight, so Marcy came by and picked it up this morning.”

“That’s fine.” Lydia brushed it off. “Even if I had the scroll to look at it, it probably wouldn’t matter. What happened with Pine and the Red Bull is normal.”

“Scrolls glow when exposed to energy drinks?” Harper asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No, the writing reacts to different things, especially if the thing is related to the curse,” Lydia said, and Harper just stared at her blankly. “Take Medusa’s curse. You remember her, right? The chick with all the snakes in her hair?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of Medusa.”

“With hers, the paper would get incredibly warm, like scalding hot, when it came in contact with snake venom. I have no idea why or how anybody would put snake venom on it, but according to my research, that’s what happened,” Lydia said.

“So what does that mean?” Harper asked.

“I don’t actually know for sure.” Lydia shook her head sadly. “In Medusa’s case, I believe that venom had been used in the ink or mixed with the papyrus or something. But I highly doubt that Red Bull was used in the creation of the sirens’ curse.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t think so.”

“But maybe something in it was,” Lydia said. “What’s in Red Bull anyway? Water, sugar, caffeine?”

Harper nodded. “Pine said he thought the ink might be made of blood.”

“Yeah, that would be in line with what I know about the sirens,” Lydia agreed. “That could be the connection. Carbon dioxide is a waste product contained in blood, and it’s also abundant in carbonated beverages, too. That would explain why Red Bull affects it, but milk doesn’t.”

“Yeah…” Harper said hesitantly. “But … so it doesn’t mean anything?”

“Like is it some clue about how to destroy the scroll, thereby breaking the curse?” Lydia let out a long breath. “I honestly can’t say one way or the other.”

“Well, what about Medusa?” Harper asked. “Did venom help her destroy her scroll?”

“She didn’t destroy her scroll,” Lydia said. “I think she tried to for a while, which is probably how the venom experimentation came into play. But then she and Perseus fell in love—he liked the snake hair or something—so she stopped fighting it.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same thing?” Harper asked. “I’ve been reading a lot of mythology lately, and I’m pretty sure that nobody loved Medusa. In fact, I thought Perseus killed her.”

“Originally, mythology was spread by word of mouth. In the days before the printing press, that’s how information got around,” Lydia said. “And some of the mouths spreading the word had their own horse in the race, and things got twisted up.”

“How so?” Harper asked.

“Athena hated Medusa, and Athena was a much more powerful goddess, so what Athena said became the truth,” Lydia explained. “Medusa was just a beautiful young girl, and she had an affair with Poseidon. And that pissed Athena off ’cause she had a thing for him, so she turned Medusa into the gorgon. Then, later, Athena sent Perseus to kill Medusa, but he fell in love with her instead, so then Athena finished the job herself.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” Harper asked. “That’s not written down in any of the books I’ve read. Some of it sounds similar, but Medusa’s always described as a monstrosity, and Perseus as a brave hero for slaying her.”

“That’s because Athena was a huge asshole,” Lydia said. “Think about it. She twisted their love story and made it into the exact opposite, so the rest of history would condemn Medusa. It’s pretty sick.

“And as for how I know it, it’s because that’s what my family does,” Lydia went on. “For centuries, we’ve been collecting all the information, all the truths from the supernatural elements of the world. We’re the record keepers for the things in the world that the rest of humanity doesn’t—or can’t—properly record.”

With that, Lydia swiveled her chair and took the lid off the box. As she began to rifle through its contents, Harper noticed the scar on Lydia’s shoulder, red, beveled flesh protruding from around the strap of her tank top. Lydia had told her it was a werewolf bite, and Harper wondered about the price of being the paranormal world’s memory keeper.

“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” Lydia said. She pulled out a green file, worn around the edges with a cracked spine. “Marcy asked me about Audra.”

“Yes, she told me that you were related to her. She was your great-grandmother, right?”

Lydia nodded. “She was my grandmother’s mother. And my grandma never married, and my mom never married, so it made tracing the lineage a bit easier from Panning to Panning.”

“She wouldn’t happen to still be alive, would she?” Harper asked hopefully.

“No, unfortunately, she’s not,” Lydia said. “She wouldn’t be that old, though. I think…” She tilted her head as she did the math. “Audra would be in her eighties, but she passed away about fifteen years ago, and she’d already been in a sorry shape before. Very early onset dementia.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Harper said.

“It’s a side effect of the profession, I think.” Lydia sighed. “I didn’t know her that well, which is why it’s taken me a bit longer to break her code.” She pulled papers out of the file, then she looked up at Harper. “Did Marcy explain to you about the code?”

“She said that Audra kept her journals coded,” Harper said, and Lydia looked back down at the pages.

From where Harper sat, she didn’t have the best angle to see them, but they appeared to be old pages from notebooks, yellowed a bit, but mostly okay. The words were written in very small cursive that she couldn’t read at all.

“She did. If things weren’t important, she’d write them in regular English, but if she needed to keep something especially private, she’d write in a code that only she could read,” Lydia elaborated.

“Nana’s code was a variation of Audra’s, so that helps,” Lydia said. “There’s no one linear code that we go by, again, to make it hard for strangers to break. My own expands on Nana’s, but Audra’s code has a mind of its own, just like her.

“This file right here”—Lydia rested her hand on the green folder—“this is all of Audra’s notes for the summer that Thalia came looking for her. So what I wanted to show is in here, and in fact—”

Lydia cut herself off and reached into the folder, digging around for something, and she pulled out two small black-and-white photos.

“I thought you might find this interesting.” Lydia reached across the desk and handed one of the photos to her.

It showed three people. A woman, probably in her early thirties, with her light hair pulled up in a tight bun. While she was attractive, there was a hardness to her smile, and an almost devious glint in her eyes. Like she was hiding something.

In front of her stood a young girl, no more than nine or ten. Her long hair was in two braids, and she wore overalls. Her smile was bright, and it actually looked just like Lydia’s.

The third woman, standing with her hand on the child’s shoulder, Harper recognized instantly. It was the same radiant blonde she’d seen in all the pictures she found at Bernie’s house.

“That’s Thalia,” Harper said, tapping the photo.

“I know. The other two people are Audra and my grandma,” Lydia explained.

Harper flipped it over, finding an inscription on the back that said just as much—Audra, Delia, and then simply the letter T. She turned it back over, searching the black-and-white photo for clues.

“Where was this taken?” Harper asked.

“I’m not sure,” Lydia said. “I don’t recognize the background, and I haven’t found anything in Audra’s notes.”

The picture was taken at fairly close range, so she couldn’t see much behind them. There appeared to be a flowerpot beside Thalia, overflowing with large roses. A building was behind them, but Harper couldn’t see anything of it, really, other than the peak of the roof.

“What’s the other picture of?” Harper asked as she handed the picture back to Lydia.

“It’s a nephilim that Audra helped that summer, too.” Lydia held it up for her, but Harper didn’t look that closely at it, only noticing that it was a black-and-white shot of a handsome young man.

“So Audra definitely helped Thalia,” Harper said.

“She did. From what I understand, she initially tried to free Thalia from being a muse … it’s not really a curse, but it wasn’t exactly a blessing, either. I don’t know what you’d call it.” Lydia wagged her head. “Anyway, Audra tried to help her but couldn’t.”

“You’ve been able to decipher that?” Harper asked.

“No, that part she just wrote out in regular English in her notes,” Lydia said. “She didn’t have anything to hide about trying to help someone. But then Audra went on to say that she needed to help Thalia find someone who needed her privacy respected.”

“And you think that’s Diana?” Harper asked.

“I think so.” Lydia nodded. “I don’t think that either Thalia or Audra knew exactly where Diana was, but working together, they found her.”

“So where is Diana?” Harper asked.

“She’s in the U.S. They drove to see her.”

Harper’s heart skipped a beat, and she asked, “Who are they?”

“Audra, Thalia, and I think even Nana went with them.” Lydia squinted down at the papers in front of her.

“But they drove. So it can’t be that far?” Harper asked. “Do you have any idea where?”

Lydia inhaled through her teeth. “I can’t say yet. But I’ll know soon. Very soon.” She rustled through the papers. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t have very much time, but I had to find Audra’s things and go through them all to find the right folder, and now I’m having problems because Audra’s being very cryptic to protect this Diana’s privacy.

“But that’s actually part of the good news,” Lydia said.

“What do you mean?” Harper asked.

“If Audra’s going through all the trouble to protect Diana, she has to be important. I’m not a gambler, but I’d put my money on Diana’s being a goddess,” Lydia said.

“And even if she wasn’t, she still knew how to set Thalia free,” Harper said. “So it stands to reason that she’d know how to set Gemma free.”

“I don’t want you getting your hopes up too high, but yes, I do think that Diana will know something that can help Gemma break the curse.” Lydia smiled at her. “And I’m struggling now with trying to find her, but I will find her. This is top priority for me. Which also brings me to my next question.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve been focusing most of my attention on the journal and Audra’s notes,” Lydia said. “Which means I haven’t been working on the scroll translations. Is that how you wanted me to do it? Or would you rather me work more on the scroll?”

“Um…” Harper furrowed her brow as she weighed both the options. “I guess … let’s find Diana. Pine sent the scroll to some of his colleagues to translate, so since he’s already working on that, I’d rather have you looking for Diana.”

“That’s what I thought. I did have some thoughts on the scroll, but I can keep in touch with Pine,” Lydia said. “I’ll pass my notes along to him, too.”

When Harper left Cherry Lane, she felt an odd mixture of hope and trepidation. Lydia seemed to be on the right track, which meant they were closer to breaking the curse than they ever had been before.