Transcendence (32 page)

“Thank you,” Veronique says briskly as she pushes past him into the back hallway.

I stand for a second, taking in the ornate ceiling and wood trim that seems to cover every surface. The place even smells old, and the combined scent of hair tonic and cigar smoke that has worked its way into the building over the past hundred years triggers a pang of familiarity in my chest. I haven’t seen this part of the building in my memories, but part of me deep inside remembers being here.

“Come on, this way,” Veronique says, and turns down a back hallway. For someone who isn’t a member of the club, she sure
seems to know her way around. Somewhere in the distance I can hear soft piano music and the disjointed mumble of several male voices deep in conversation.

“Is there a meeting room or something?” I glance down at the doors that line the hallway and wonder if one of them is where I’d overheard Signore Luisotti seal Alessandra’s fate that long-ago night.

“There are, but that’s so boring,” Veronique says, pulling open a heavy wooden door and gesturing grandly. “We’re going to the roof.”

I stop at the entrance to the stairwell, thinking about what happened the last time I was on the roof of this building. “I don’t think so,” I say

Veronique stops and turns back to me. “Why not?”

“Heights aren’t really my friend.”

“All the more reason you should go. You can’t let one incident rule all of your lifetimes.”

I hesitate. “Can’t I just show you the articles I found down here?”

Veronique’s face droops, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think she was pouting. “You said that you want to start our relationship over again. The roof is the perfect place to start over.” Without waiting for a reply, Veronique disappears through the door, and facing the choice between being left out here alone and following, I take a deep breath and follow her. I want to get this settled once and for all. It’s only three flights up, and we walk in silence; the only sounds are our footsteps on the old, wooden stair treads. I try to calm the fear that’s rising in my heart by reminding myself that,
amid all of the bad things that have happened lately, Veronique has been doing everything she can to help me. I have to believe that, because at this point, I have no other choice.

At the top of the last flight of stairs is another wooden door, much less fancy than the one at the bottom. Veronique twists the knob and pushes the heavy door with her shoulder until it gives, opening onto the gray, overcast sky.

I stand in the doorway, not needing to look over the edge to know how high up we are. My breath begins to come in short bursts as I look around. Where the inside of the building is full of heavy, ornate decorations, the roof is almost bare, with just a few chimneys and a couple of skylights dotting the huge, flat space. In the middle there’s a big open square with light shining up from below and a waist-high stone railing surrounding the roof on all sides.

“Seriously,” I say, “can’t we do all of this on the ground floor?” I cling to the doorway with my right hand, not trusting myself to inch any farther onto the roof. “There’s got to be an empty meeting room down there somewhere.”

“Oh, come on. This is perfect,” Veronique says, throwing her arms to the side as if embracing the San Francisco skyline. “It’s private, so we can talk without thinking that someone’s going to overhear us. You’re not afraid, are you?” She turns back to me. “You don’t trust me. You think I’m out to get you just like Griffon said.” She pauses. “He really messed you up, didn’t he?” I don’t want Veronique to think that Griffon still has any power over me.

“It’s not that. It’s just the last time I was up here, things didn’t go well.”

Veronique drops her arms and looks over at me. “Exactly why
you should come away from the doorway and check it out. Only by facing what happened to us in the past can we participate in our future.” She grins. “Okay, I read that in a fortune cookie, but still, it applies.” She holds out her hand, and after a few seconds I take it, allowing her to pull me out of the doorway and onto the roof. I feel nothing from her touch. She seems almost hyper, but it’s as if her essence has shut down. She tilts her head toward the railing on the other side of the roof. “Do you remember anything else about that night?”

“Not really. But I don’t have to.” I reach into my pocket and pull out the papers Rayne and I printed out at the library. “This is what I want to show you. I can prove that it wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t me who killed you.”

Veronique twirls away from the pages in my hand. “I don’t want to read anything right now,” she says.

I watch her sway to some private music only she can hear. None of this is going the way I planned. Veronique seems so different than the other night, and I feel a creeping fear about my choice to trust her. She spins back around quickly. “Read them to me.”

“Um, okay,” I say. I read the article about the trial slowly as Veronique sways from foot to foot, her back to me the entire time.

When I’m done, she turns to face me. “So you’re trying to tell me that you didn’t push Alessandra off the roof? That it was Signore Barone?”

“Exactly,” I say, wondering why she’s started referring to herself in the third person. “I didn’t do it, and the courts of San Francisco agreed.”

Veronique stares at me. “That’s crazy,” she says, a lock of
hair falling in her eyes. “Why would Signore Barone kill his own daughter?”

“I don’t know,” I say, turning back to the pages in my hand, panic starting to build. This is not the way it’s supposed to go. Veronique was supposed to see the newspaper and realize it was all a big mistake and be grateful to me that I’d finally shown her the truth—that I didn’t hurt her. I try again. “But it says second-degree murder, so that must mean that he didn’t try to do it. That it was an accident.”

For a second, I see understanding in her eyes and I think I’ve done it, but then she waves her hand dismissively in my direction. “Anyone can fake an old newspaper.”

“But look at this one,” I say, the desperation obvious in my voice. It feels like I’m losing control of the situation. “Here’s an article about Paolo.”

Veronique stops moving at the mention of his name. “What about Paolo?”

I hold it out to her. “About his suicide,” I say. “How he killed himself because he couldn’t stand being without you.”

She takes the paper and quickly reads the article, her eyes twitching as she digests the information. “How did you get this?”

“It’s from a newspaper, a few days after you died.”

Tears shine in her eyes as the news that Paolo took his own life registers. She’s about to say something else when the stairwell door opens and Griffon stumbles onto the roof, followed by Giacomo.

“Griffon!” I look from him to Veronique, who doesn’t look surprised at all. Despite everything that’s happened, despite the danger
I know he can cause, despite the lies I know he’s told. I still find my heart pounding at the sight of him. But I force myself back to reality. “What are you doing here?”

Griffon pulls his arm free from Giacomo’s grip. “You texted,” he says, not looking directly at me. “You said to meet you in front of the building at five.” He glares at Veronique.

“I didn’t text you,” I say, feelings of betrayal starting to overwhelm me. “I lost my phone on Friday.”

“Well,” Veronique says, waving a small, blue metallic object at me, “
lost
is a bit of an exaggeration. You really should keep better track of your things.”

“
You
texted me?” Griffon looks at her questioningly. “On Cole’s phone?”

“I didn’t really think you’d agree to come if it was from me,” she replies, walking to the edge of the roof and dropping my phone over the side, watching as it hits the ground after a few seconds’ delay.

Griffon takes a few steps toward Veronique, but Giacomo blocks his way. He’s got ten years and probably forty pounds on Griffon, so there’s not much he can do. Griffon squares his shoulders and turns away from me. “So, what’s this all about? Kind of dramatic dragging us all up here to the roof, don’t you think?”

Veronique looks at the wide expanse of sky in front of her. “Maybe,” she says. “But up here on the roof is the only place that will really work.”

“Because this is where it all started,” I say, realizing what she’s up to, why we had to come back to this spot—so that she can
reenact everything that happened that night and right the wrong that she thinks was done to her. She wants to see my broken body down on the sidewalk like hers was back then. I turn to her. “Why bring Griffon up here? So that he can be some kind of sick witness?”

“Witness?” Veronique smiles in a way that sends shivers down my spine. Her eyes look dead. Emotionless. Unforgiving. “No. If anyone’s here to be the witness, it’s you.”

I look at her, confused. “But I’m the one you want,” I say. “I’m the one you think caused your death back then.”

Veronique starts pacing in front of me, the nervous energy almost visible. “I don’t want you dead,” she says. “Death is way too easy. Don’t you see? After everything that’s happened, do you still think you killed
me
that night? You
are
the one who took everything from me in a few brief seconds, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Alessandra was everything to me.” Veronique stops and walks over to the spot at the railing where she fell so long ago. Her voice is soft as she starts to speak. “Do you finally get it? You took something precious from me a century ago, and now I have to take something precious from you.” She takes several steps toward me and glances at the splint on my arm.

“At first I thought taking your ability to play cello would be enough. But then I saw that there was something even more valuable for you to lose.” She glances at Griffon. “Something that you could never recover from. Like what you took from me. I’ll never recover from my loss. In
any
lifetime.” Veronique stands right in front of me. I can see every individual lash as she stares into my eyes. “Look carefully. Who do you see?”

I shrink back from the force of her energy. As I look into her eyes, her features blur, and for just a second I see a bright white smile and shining dark hair. I look up at the tiny birthmark over her right eye. It’s in the same place a distraught boy would have put a gun to his head centuries earlier—just before pulling the trigger. My heart races as I recognize the essence I knew so long ago. It can’t be. “Paolo?”

“Ha ha!” Veronique claps her hands and steps back. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

I stare at her, trying to see the handsome boy she once was. I’ve thought of her as Alessandra for so long, it’s impossible to think of her as anyone else. “But I thought you were her. Alessandra.”

Veronique shrugs. “You obviously assumed wrong. When I was Paolo, you took away the most valuable thing in my life, and I’ve spent every moment since looking for Alessandra’s essence. When I recognized you at the conservatory concert, I hoped that maybe her essence had been drawn to you in this lifetime.” She looks down at the gravel rooftop. “But I didn’t find her.” She looks up again, a cheerful expression on her face. “But I did find the next-best thing. The essence that
you’re
drawn to above everyone else.”

I hear a metallic click as Veronique pulls a thick black gun out of her coat and aims it at Griffon’s head.

“Veronique!” I yell. “This is crazy. We’re friends. It’s me, Cole. Whatever happened in the past doesn’t matter now. Griffon has nothing to do with this.”

“I love that you think that,” she says, not taking her eyes, or the gun, off of Griffon. “Such wonderful naiveté. However, I totally
disagree. What happened in the past matters a lot. It’s the only thing that does matter.” I don’t even see her hand move as the gun explodes to life, my heart racing with the deafening sound, and I can’t help but flinch.

The bullet kicks up tiny fragments as it ricochets off the railing behind Griffon, but he keeps staring at Veronique as if he’s daring her to do it again. “You missed,” he says calmly.

Veronique narrows her eyes at him, her teeth flashing in a half smile as she steadies the gun on him once again. “I never miss.”

Giacomo grabs Griffon by the arms and shoves him roughly forward. “That isn’t necessary,” Griffon says, looking at Veronique with hatred in his eyes. His voice wavers only a little as he speaks. “I’m not going to fight you.” He turns to look at me for the first time, and the total honesty in his eyes makes me catch my breath. Despite everything that’s happened the past few days, the thought of living the rest of this life without him is unbearable.

“I’ll do anything for you.” Griffon is speaking only to me, as if there’s nobody else on the roof with us. “If it means that I have to end this life to save yours, then it’s fine.”

Veronique laughs, and I see nothing but cruelty in her smile. “Brave words. Let’s see if you can match them with even braver actions.” She motions the gun toward the edge of the roof. “Whether you go over on your own or need a little ‘encouragement’ makes no difference to me.”

Griffon stumbles on the gravel as Giacomo pushes him toward the edge where Alessandra fell so many years ago. It feels as if everything is happening in slow motion. This can’t be real.

As they walk, Veronique follows them with her eyes, the gun firmly gripped in her outstretched hand. “I hope you really understand what you’re about to lose,” she says, not looking at me. “Any last words for Griffon? Everyone deserves the mercy of a proper good-bye. That’s more mercy than you showed to me and Alessandra.”

“You can’t kill him!” I scream, watching Veronique aim the gun at Griffon’s head again.

“Oh, but I can,” Veronique says flatly. “I have to. It’s the only way to even things up so that we can all move on. I think popular psychology would call it ‘closure.’”

I’m even more unprepared this time as the sound of the gun echoes off the buildings around us. Griffon jerks back as the bullet hits him and he falls back over the waist-high railing. My screams rush through my ears as I lunge forward, knowing it’s already too late. “No!”

Veronique grabs my left arm as I try to twist away from her toward the railing. The pain is blinding, and I can feel the newly attached nerves and tendons straining and tearing where her hands are holding tight. Just as I feel like I’m going to pass out, everything seems to move into slow motion. I feel energy flowing between us where our bodies are touching. I’m slipping into a memory, but this time, I’m not alone. Somehow Veronique is with me.