The Last Will of Moira Leahy (9 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

FORSAKEN

I
had to park on the street a block away from Time After Time. I hadn’t once thought,
It’s four days before Christmas, it’ll be busy
, but I doubt it would’ve stopped me if I had. I counted eight people in the front room alone. One part-time assistant spoke to a woman near the pottery while another rang out customers. No sign of Garrick.

In the wide main hall, long tables sat stocked with platefuls of gingerbread cookies and cheese-square towers and crackers and grapes. Two children ran past us and into the raspberry room, home to Nattie the carousel horse and half a dozen trunks piled with dolls and down-filled bears.

My father’s head swiveled all over the place as he filched a cookie. “How big is this store?”

“This is Narnia, Dad.” Something like pride surged in me as I motioned him forward. “Come on. I know something you’ll like.”

I led the way to the weapons room, but stopped short of entering. Something else had captured my attention.

“Go on. There’s a World War II bazooka in there somewhere,” I told my father, leaving him with my
keris
and a hundred other weapons, a mesmerized expression on his face.

I dashed to the end of the hall where light filtered out from another familiar room. The studio. Scent escaped through the cracked door—oil paint and clay and other things I couldn’t name but always thought of as promise. Noel could be in there. He could be home.

My hope withered and died the second I pushed open the door. No Noel. Not only that, but the twin easels stood bare. Tarps were folded. A box on the paint-stained worktable sat closed, and the benches had been tucked away. Paintings and sketches that had once dotted the walls now leaned against one another in a corner like guilty lovers. Maybe Noel had asked Garrick to pack up his things for good. Maybe he’d become so enraptured with European antiques that he didn’t miss home at all. Or me. Maybe he’d decided against stepping on another plane for a truly noble reason: He’d found his mother and decided to stay with her.

I couldn’t help myself. I reached for the paintbrushes—spotless and stored inside an old biscuit jar, not strewn about the room or soaking in turpentine as they should be—and spilled some over his desk. Pushed aside the bench, tossed down a tarp, opened the box on the worktable, and pulled out a handful of pastels. Then I grabbed a large pad off the shelf and put it on a paint-speckled easel. The empty white seemed to taunt me—
Feeling blank?—
so I let my frustration out on it with smears of blue and purple and red, mashing hues together with my fingers. When no white remained for me to cover, I flung the paper up and over to continue my madness. But madness already claimed the next page.

It was me; I stared at myself.

The work, only half painted, showed my eyes luminescent, my cheeks flushed with laughter. I’d never posed for Noel; he must’ve drawn me from memory.
Who’s looking at you?
Though I knew he’d looked on occasion, I’d never before had to face the evidence of that in strokes of black on white, never had to think about what he’d truly seen. My throat closed.

“He cares for you, my dear. You know this.”

I flinched as Garrick stepped up beside me, but I couldn’t make my mouth move to apologize for my bizarre act. He seemed all right with that, just patted my back as we stared at my one-dimensional likeness. I felt the threat of salt behind my eyes.

Why hadn’t Noel finished it? Why had he left me half done?

“Maeve Leahy, you’ve made a mess of yourself. Good.” My father stood in the doorway, looking at me like he’d just discovered Atlantis under the tin top of a trash can.

I couldn’t find my voice, just scrubbed at my face, glad to feel no sign of tears.

“Ah, wait,” Garrick said. He lifted my hand and showed me the rainbow mess I had all over my fingers.

Watercolors
. The word chimed in my brain just as a single tear squeezed its way out and slid down my cheek.

GARRICK LED
us into the kitchen. My father’s eyes bugged again as he took in the cavernous space—the Italian marble console with its ivy-covered mantelpiece and cherub statuettes, the medieval chairs and long mahogany table.

“Please, sit.” Garrick motioned to two leather chairs before the inglenook’s hearth, where a fire crackled warm and homey, and hickory-bark notes filled the air.

“We shouldn’t take you away from your customers,” I said, struck finally with some guilt.

“If I’m needed, I’ll be found.” He turned to my father. “Coffee, Jack?”

“Ayuh, thanks.” The men had obviously made their own introductions when I’d left to clean myself up.

We sat as Garrick walked into the kitchen’s heart and poured coffee, then pulled a copper pot off a carefully disordered arrangement of cookery hung from an old ladder.

“Don’t go to any trouble for me,” I said when I recognized cocoa preparations, though my mouth watered. Garrick really did make a mean mug of hot chocolate.

“No trouble at all. And I have something extraordinary to share with you!” He hurried back, gave my father his coffee, then sat on a nearby bench. “Someone came to Time After Time yesterday,” he said in his best storyteller’s voice. “I spoke with him. A Javanese
empu.”

“An
empu?
God, really? An
empu!”
My mind spun.

“What’s an
empu?”

“A
keris
blacksmith,” Garrick told my father. “Maeve’s
keris
was made hundreds of years ago by such a man. But there are very few
empus
still around today. You should’ve seen him. Simply regal in his black cloak and hat, somewhat short and—”

“Wait!” Something clicked. A short person with a black hat. “Did the hat look like a pillbox wrapped in a scarf?”

“Why, I suppose so!” Garrick said. “You’ve met him?”

“No, but I think he was at the auction the night I won the
keris
. I think he bid on it.”

“Well, of course!” Garrick said. “He would have!”

“Where is he now?”

“Over the Atlantic, I suspect. He’s flying home today.”

“I don’t suppose he lives in Italy?” I asked. “Rome? Trastevere?”

“Temporarily, I believe. Let me find his card.”

“Wait, I have a note,” I said as Garrick made to stand. I dug out the Trastevere address as he plucked a pair of reading glasses off a side table and settled them onto his face.

His eyes widened as he read. “You have met him!”

“I haven’t, but”—I bowed to instinct—“I think he’s been following me.”

“Following you?” my father asked, but I pressed on.

“And I think he might’ve left that book for me, and later some notes. What’s up with this guy? Is he crazy?”

“Well, no.” Lines on Garrick’s forehead deepened. “He seemed very honorable, polite, learned. We spoke at length. He hopes to teach at university.”

“That’s why he was at Betheny U? Looking for a job?”

“He didn’t say, but that makes sense.”

“What was he doing here at the shop?”

“Shopping.” The ends of Garrick’s mustache peaked. “He purchased the straight
keris
I showed you. He said it, eh …”

“What?”

“My memory, my dear, I’m trying to recall—it was so interesting how he put it.” Garrick stared into the fire as an ember leaped onto the marble floor. “He said it was a shame to see a snake with a dead will. That’s what he said.”

“What’s this about, Maeve?”

“Hold on, Dad. Did he mention me, Garrick, or my
keris?”

“No, though I said I’d seen a stunning blade recently that I wished he could examine. I even tried to call you, but there was no answer.” He shrugged. I’d been home yesterday, torturing myself with relaxation. Why hadn’t I heard my cell? Maybe I’d left it in the car. Lost it. Let it molder in its usual blind spot by the front door with a dead battery. “He just asked if you were happy with the
keris,”
he continued, “and I told him you were. He seemed pleased to know that.”

“Can I see the business card? Unless he nailed it to your hand?”

“Nailed it?” Garrick blinked.

I smiled. “Just kidding. I’d love to see that card.”

My father hunched forward after Garrick left, his forearms on his thighs, the
keris
still in his hands. “So this blacksmith guy’s the nailer?”

“I think so, Dad. For some reason this
empu
took an interest in my
keris
and left me a book and a bunch of notes. Now I find out he lives in Trastevere.” I drummed my fingers on the chair’s leather arm, heard a corresponding play of notes in my head and didn’t even care. “And now I might never find out what this guy knows and why he wanted the
keris
, or even if he
did
want it—but of course he did because he’s the one who bid against me in the first place.”

“Seems he’d be interested if he makes them, right?”

“Well, right, but what did he want with
me?
Why’d he leave all those notes, and why does he live in Rome?”

“Why does anyone?” my father asked. “I don’t see the attraction, personally.”

“You’re kidding, right? I mean, the Pantheon’s there and the Forum, the Colosseum, Michelangelo’s dome. It’s Rome!” My hands flew all around me as I spoke. “The city’s oozing with culture, and the food! There’s pizza all over the place, tiramisu, gelato—”

“What’s that?”

“Gelato? Just the best ice cream in the world,” I said, but he wrinkled his nose. “And Trastevere is this amazing artists’ community. Lots of, you know, hippies and art shops and quaint restaurants and mangy dogs and laundry hanging from windows.”

“Laundry. Like the picture in your hall?”

“Yeah, yeah, like that.
Empus
aren’t supposed to live in Rome, though, they’re supposed to live in Malaysia or Java. What if this guy is some quack
empu
impersonator?”

“What if he is?” He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“It does matter. It matters because if he’s real, then he knows things about
kerises that
no one else knows, and I want to know all of that.”

“Why? You going to start making blades? Is this about Alvilda?”

“Alvilda? No, the here and now, Dad, because suddenly I buy this sword and things start happening. Aren’t you listening?”

He scratched his head, but before he could respond, Garrick returned with the business card.

“Check both sides,” he said, handing it to me so that the first thing I read was the familiar handwritten address of Via della Scala in Trastevere.

“It’s the same address,” I said, then flipped the card. Here, a symbol like a snake coiled alongside the script, indicating an address in Java and the man’s name:

Empu Sri Putra

“No phone number, no e-mail. Why don’t any of the men in my life live in this century?” I looked at Garrick. “No offense.”

“Oh, none taken,” he said cheerily. “But not all answers can be found with the click of a rat. Some need to be uncovered the old-fashioned way.”

“Mouse,” I said.

“What’s that, dear?”

“It’s a mouse. Not a rat.”

“Ah, well. Vermin all the same.”

I stood and stared at the fire, the flames licking the brick.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” my father said. “No school until January, right?”

“Late January, right.”

“And you know the language.”

I faced him, incredulous. “You don’t mean—”

“You have his name and address. Go find him. You’ve done crazier things. Think about it, Mayfly—all the hanging laundry and gelato you could handle.”

“Right.” I laughed. It sounded a little maniacal.

“You always wanted to travel,” he said. “You’ve got a passport you never used.”

“The passport’s probably expired.” I thrummed my fingers against my leg, made more notes. This time they bothered me.

“They last for ten years,” chimed Garrick, scooping cocoa into a pot by the stove.

“Ten years,” my father said. I waited for him to puzzle it out, though I knew damn well when it expired. “Sixteen when you got it, twenty-five now. Just enough time for a trip.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not? Name one good reason.”

“I can name several. One: I don’t look like the same person”—I grabbed a handful of my choppy achromatic hair—“which means I’m probably breaking some passport rule.”

“I don’t think—”

“Two: What if the guy’s crazy? I just told you he’s been following me around. You want to send me off to chase after a potentially insane person? What if I end up hacked into little bits and left in a suitcase somewhere?”

“He really did seem like a good man,” Garrick said.

“See there, Maeve. I don’t think—”

“Three: I don’t care enough about this to uproot myself.”

“Now there’s crazy.” He stood. “You used to yammer on about all the places you’d go, but now here you are, a full-grown woman, and you’ve never even stepped on a plane. Look how fired up you are over this thing you say you don’t care about. I haven’t seen that storm in your eyes in ages.”

“Chops away soul bonds, lets a person live how they should—that’s how a
keris
works.” Garrick stepped close and handed me a mug. I hugged it to my chest as chocolate steam rose into my nostrils. His voice lowered to lore-telling levels. “That
keris
, with its little man and the hole in the blade, is full of power. I knew it from the start.”