Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) (16 page)

If thoughts were lightning, a plan struck Wolfgang so hard that he could think of nothing else. He felt alive, energized, inspired. It would work. He was sure. “Well, all right,” Wolfgang said. “I’ll come along.” Suddenly commanding everyone’s attention, he jogged a few steps more to the curb where the couple had stopped.

“What do you mean, you’ll—”

“I mean, I’ll take you up on your offer,” he said, interrupting Raphael. “I’ll come along, join MOON.”

“But you’re not even a fae.”

“We can fix that. So everyone tells me. Right?” He flashed them all his best shit-eating grin.

“He’s just making fun of us,” Leonie said.

“No, no,” Raphael said to her with a wave of his hand by means to silence her. Then, to Wolfgang, “I know you’re not serious about this, but fine, if this game you’re playing means that much to you, then by all means, come along. I have orders not to turn anyone away.”

Pilgrim pawed the sidewalk with a hoof. "I hope you know what you're doing, Chief," he said. "I'll see you in the morning." He trotted off, gray and ghostly beneath the orange streetlights. Wolfgang was sorry to see him go.

Raphael slipped Marie a meaningful look. “You coming, too? You’ll be my special guest.”

“If you mean it, why not?” she replied. “You got anything to eat in that house of yours?”

“I’m sure I can whip something out. Up. I said, ‘up,’” he insisted.

Marie gave a little smile, one corner upturned. “I know you did.”

Chapter 11

R
APHAEL TOOK THEM ACROSS TOWN
through the subway. If Wolfgang had not been so tired he probably would not have felt so cold. But the clicking of the subway train only served to lull him to sleep and if he had not been traveling with others he would have missed his stop altogether. Marie’s warm hand woke him like sunshine on his face and she led him off the train. As they walked, she disappeared strategically for as long as she was able so it would not be obvious to others that she was traveling with a member of MOON.

The rich and impressive neighborhood where Raphael’s house stood reminded Wolfgang of the No Man’s Land they had left only a few short hours ago and in fact was not far from it. Wolfgang remarked that Raphael seemed to be doing well for himself, but Raphael did not reply. The large house, by some standards a mansion in its own right, sat hunkered away from the street in a respectable garden beneath sheltering pines. The group entered the house through a back door and ascended a set of narrow stairs immediately to the right. At the top of the stairs was a small kitchenette, complete with table and chairs. "There are guest rooms down the hall,” Raphael said, and gestured to doors on either side toward the end of the narrow passage. Marie spoke up about her and Leonie sharing one, relief visible on Leonie’s face that she had stepped up and volunteered, thus saving her from having to room with a man she didn’t know. That left the one opposite for Wolfgang alone, which he was just fine with. His mind kept repeating the early evening in the Hindernis, his father’s dead face, and the little card, white as the moon. He wanted to examine the card again, but not in front of Raphael. He didn’t want to give him any clues that anything was wrong with SUN, or him, or his father. All he wanted was to eat and go to sleep, and get another chance to convince Leonie that a monster’s life was not for her.

Cans of food lined the inside of a small pantry, and Raphael muttered, “I hope you like beans,” as he found a can opener and worked the lid, beans rushing forth in a sticky river into a pot retrieved from its storage place under the stove.

“I was expecting better,” Marie admitted.

“Expect nothing and never be disappointed,” Raphael said.

“Expect nothing,” Marie said, peering warily into the pot, “and get it.”

“I sincerely hate to disappoint you,” he said, “but there isn’t much in the way of human food around here.”

“At least it’s something,” Leonie said, not the least bit disturbed by the implications of his remark. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank him yet,” Marie said. “You haven’t tasted it.”

“Har, har.” Raphael gave her a glare that Wolfgang took to be amusement.

Wolfgang grimaced. The way Raphael prepared the food reminded him of a pet owner readying a meal for his animals. He was jolted from his thoughts when Raphael said, “Remember when we used to do this, Wolfgang? Your mum would ask us to help her by making our own dinner and I would heat up the soup because I was older.”

“You mean because you could reach the stove better.”

“That too. Now that’s laughable, huh? You’re like a head taller than me.”

“Strange to see you nostalgic. I figured your past was dead and buried and you liked it that way.”

“Yeah, well,” he mumbled. “It would have been stranger for me to forget everything, wouldn’t it? The only way I could forget all of my teen age years would be for me to have amnesia.”

“So why are you letting me join your team, anyway? MOON must be having serious problems.”

“I was never against you becoming eldritch.” Raphael reminded him. “You were the one against it the whole time.”

“Then you’ll take me on?”

There was no more snark, no banter. Raphael was as serious as Wolfgang had ever seen him. It was almost frightening. “We can use every one we get.”

Wolfgang felt his pulse quicken in spite of himself. “I thought that MOON was winning.”

“I thought so, too.” Then Raphael turned his head toward the hall as if hearing something that called his name. Or an unfamiliar sound that warranted investigation. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment. Enjoy.”

Moments after the vampire had left, Marie turned to Wolfgang and put her hand on his shoulder before slipping away invisibly into the dark end of the hall. He knew what that meant. If she said anymore she might be overheard, but he understood she wanted him to stay here. She was most likely going to follow Raphael to try to learn more about what was going on with MOON. That left Wolfgang alone with Leonie. He took over cooking the beans and tried to think of something to talk about that wouldn’t make him crazy enough to be the Wolfgang she had read about on the Internet. He thought about Marie and what he liked best to talk about with her. He decided it was easy enough to be honest since there was so much about the lands beyond the city of Doors that he didn’t know. If only he could muster up the courage needed to tell a total stranger how he felt, and what he wanted most in the whole universe.

"I've never been to the human world," Wolfgang confessed. His excitement bled into his voice—the excitement of potentially having a human friend again, and she was so real and pretty, her winter clothes shed and her T-shirt gray and fitted, showing off her curves. After adjusting her glasses, Leonie smiled at him with lips like a thick rosebuds.

"Never? Not even for vacation?"

Wolfgang chuckled, not sure if she was joking. He stirred the beans thoughtfully with one hand as a way to quell his nervousness while holding the pan over the gas flame with the other. He supposed he just wanted her to like him so badly that he needed to get that energy out. Her eyes were drawn briefly to the stirring spoon, then back to him, but her smile did not change. Maybe she just liked him, too, and wanted to show him. He hoped that was the case.

"I’ve never gone on vacation, either."

"Me neither. Not really. My parents never had time." Her glasses shrunk her eyes, but just over the rim Wolfgang could see them arching, broad and sparkling like new sapphires. Her voice reminded him of the little birds that peppered Doors with chirping, not lyrical and silky like Marie's voice. Marie's voice was deep and rolling and soft like ocean waves, whereas Leonie twittered and tinkled, little bells that rang in his ears pleasantly, tumbled but punctuated, little chips of stone clattering down a cliff side. “So, that guy on the Internet, that other Wolfgang Schäfer, you don’t know him?”

"No. The Wolfgang that was in your world is a changeling. I was switched at birth. Well, I guess you could say we were switched at birth. With each other."

"You're kidding," she said. "Like in the stories, you mean? Faerie tales?"

Wolfgang didn't know what she meant by that. Too embarrassed to show his ignorance, he said, "Changelings let human parents raise their children," hoping to better make his point. "And usually, they do this by switching a baby with theirs. Like a newborn baby, too young for the parents to realize there's been a switch."

"Oh, now I see," she said, taking off her glasses with both hands. She kept watching him even though he imagined he was just a blur to her now, and she shook back her night-dark hair before settling the glasses on her slender ears and nose once more. He got a better look at her eyes for a brief moment, and they gleamed a navy blue, like two ripe berries, or the deepest stones in the earth. "How does he look just like you, though?"

"A changeling baby needs to look like the people they're living with." He’d never had to explain this before, so he hoped it made sense. "They take on the form of the first baby they touch. The parents need to be careful that they do this correctly, or it could ruin the child's entire life."

"You mean, they could look like the wrong child?"

"Sure. They could even end up the wrong gender." Leonie stared at him blankly for a long moment, and Wolfgang worried that he'd rubbed her sensibilities the wrong way. "But most changeling parents are more careful than that."

"This magic stuff is a lot more...serious than I thought."
Everything here is probably more serious than you thought
, he told her in his head. He hated and loved at the same time what he took for her naivete. It was attractive in its innocence and repulsive as it took so much for granted. In her world, peace and comfort were a given. The only thing given here to humans was hardship and lots of it. "I have an idea. Ask me something and I'll answer as best I can." He figured she wanted to change the topic and he decided it was a good idea to take her up on it.

"Why do you want to become a monster?"

She looked as if he'd slapped her. "I...thought you were going to ask me something about the human world."

"I know about the human world. My father is human. He told me lots of things about it. So have the other eldritch who have been there." That wasn't a hundred percent true, but he figured she wouldn't know that. It was important to change her mind, and to do that, they needed to talk about her or he couldn't show her the folly behind her reasoning. He realized he hadn't smiled at her at all. That was probably not good. Wolfgang was not used to smiling, but it was probably a good idea to smile at the girl you liked to let her know how you felt. "What I don't know much about is you," he said, and pulled the corners of his mouth up as naturally as he could muster. He wiped his brow with the back of his arm. She smiled back, but hers was better than his. Hers looked so natural, like a part of her, like it was something she did often. Wolfgang hoped she had reasons to do it often. He hoped that he would become one of them. "Do you want to tell me why? Or is that too personal?" He began to look around in a cupboard for a bowl to put the beans into while hoping that looking away would make his questions and attention less intense.

Her smile fled quickly and he was sorry to see it go. Turning off the heat, he poured the beans into a bowl he’d found and kept his eyes on what he was doing to give her time to talk. "Ah, well, it...it didn't seem real at first. I met Raphael, and he said he was a vampire. I didn't believe him, and he said that he would show me proof if I followed him." As her words trailed off, Wolfgang was surprised how easily Raphael had trapped her in Doors. Just how many humans had MOON recruited over the last few weeks? And all as easily as Leonie had been? Wolfgang's feelings must have shown on his face, because she hastily added, "I didn't know he was taking me to another place. I just thought we were going to the TV Tower because he wanted show me something there."

"So you've changed your mind? About becoming a monster?"

"I'm not sure," she said, but he was sure that was just said to appease him. Her eyes, her dark blue eyes, shining like mica, told him something else. They said no, she didn't change her mind, even though she was afraid to say it. "What do you know about the monsters?" she asked, her voice lilting with excitement. "What can you tell me about the vampires here? Or the changelings? You must know everything about this place."

"I know enough to know that I will never become a monster." He found several more bowls to use to divide up the beans. He wanted to slam each bowl against the wall but he knew that nothing good would come of it. Control of yourself, of your feelings, was the best counter anyone could have against the creatures of Doors, human and not. "I would rather die first." The way the corners of her mouth turned down disappointed him. He wanted to see that smile again, felt like he would do anything to make it happen. But she needed to understand how wrong her desires were, how misguided and dangerous. "Most times, that's the way it happens. You have to die first to become a zombie or a vampire, or any other undead. Not as romantic as you thought, I guess."