Andromeda Klein (14 page)

He asked if she’d show him how to do it sometime. She was about to say “You’re a little young,” but stopped herself just in time. He’d have hated that.

“Maybe one day,” she said, and she asked what he was thinking of getting.

“Maybe ninety-three,” he said, which was kind of cute. “Or one of those ninety-three words.” He made her tell him the words again, and she wrote out
thelema
in Greek letters for him on a page from her Moleskine. Actually, she had to admit, that was kind of a great idea for a tattoo.

“Aren’t you worried about your mom with that?” she asked as he was about to go, pointing to the Scandinavian agony in his hand. “You want me to hang on to it for you for safekeeping?”

Den zipped it up in his coat protectively.

“I have a hiding place,” he said, scampering off, as though worried that she might change her mind.

“Good.” Of course, he would have to, wouldn’t he?

One of the Barbies was missing a head. The two others were randomly and severely mangled. In happier days, Daisy and Andromeda had operated a Barbie hospital in Daisy’s closet that gradually transformed itself into a torture dungeon Dream House. Later on, they had attempted, on the model of the magic described in the
Asclepius
, to draw down powers to animate the Barbies so they could speak secrets. These attempts had been weedgie and rewarding, though unsuccessful.

The Gnome School had banned all plastic toys, and even after Daisy had finally left and begun to go to public middle school with Andromeda, her house remained a Barbie-free home. By that time, they had moved on, but the Barbie-hiding skills they had developed were useful when they had other things to hide. It was certainly possible that Den had missed a hiding place. They were all over in that house, and all over town, too, when she came to think of it. Maybe, she thought, she should check some of their old “secure locations” as well, like the space behind the loose brick at the old, boarded-up Hillmont High tower, or the ceiling-lamp cover at the rec center girls’ vacuum, which could be reached if you stood on the sink and were light enough not to break it and carefully leaned toward the fixture…. She hadn’t been to those places in ages, and certainly not since Daisy had died. It was unlikely that the tarot deck would be in any of them, but they had used both locations as temples for performing magic. Perhaps something, material or not, still lingered.

The blond wig had been Daisy’s. Andromeda didn’t want to get it dirty by putting it on the muddy ground under the tree, so she put it on her head instead. She doubted the sun hat had been Daisy’s, but she put it on too. She seated herself against an elm with the bag between her knees. She pulled out Daisy’s vinyl coat and her studded leather belt-she put those on too, like a little girl playing dress-up. The belt was loose at its tightest and she had to bump out her hip, even while sitting, so that it didn’t slide too far down. It would have been a different story with jeans or if her skirt had had loops.

Andromeda herself had knitted the long, fingerless gauntlets, using small circular needles, as a birthday gift for Daisy several years earlier. Daisy had always worn long sleeves, pretty much exclusively, since Andromeda could remember, no matter how hot it was outside. Initially copycatting her, then as a way to allow more space for secret tattoos, Andromeda had followed suit. Long sleeves and tights, almost always. No one in public, and neither of her parents, had seen Andromeda’s arms, or her legs above her knees, since she was ten. People assumed from this, and from Andromeda’s demeanor, that she was a cutter, but they had that very wrong. Daisy had been the cutter, and that was why she’d loved the gauntlets so much.

Andromeda put on the knitted gloves and tied them at the elbows. She had done a great job on them. Andromeda had learned the basics of crocheting and knitting at the Gnome School, where they called it handwork. It was the only useful skill she had ever learned in any school, though she rarely used it anymore. She was good at sewing, knitting, sigils, and other tasks requiring precision and attention to detail. Daisy hadn’t had the patience or precision to excel at such things.

What else was in the bag? A pair of Daisy’s shoes, China flats. She didn’t put those on, because they were a little too big, and she was wearing her boots and wouldn’t have anywhere to put them. Some CDs. An old plastic horse that Andromeda recognized, named Jenny. One of Daisy’s empty birth control pill cards. Some crumpled receipts and other scraps of paper. Some funny glasses or goggles of some kind. (She was going to put them on, but they had a cord attached and were a bit awkward and you couldn’t see through them anyway.) A small notebook, with a bit of scribbling in it: flipping through it quickly, Andromeda noted that there were a couple of spells copied, in the grand tradition of the grimoires, from what were probably library books. “The Hand of Glory,” said one entry in Daisy’s round handwriting: “Step one—get a hand …” Oh, Daisy. Also an account of the barbaric Toad Bone Ritual. Andromeda wrinkled her nose in distaste. Daisy’s tolerance for wicker and the lowest forms of folk magic had always ruffled Andromeda’s refined high-magic Renaissance feathers.

There really was a lot of stuff in that bag, much more than she had time to inventory just then. It was a gold mine of random items, the sort of thing Daisy would have just loved if it were someone else’s bag that she had found somewhere.

She dug further, and pulled out some
ouijanesse:
Daisy’s old Little One from the Gnome School, the one that had originally belonged to Andromeda, looking very much as it had when she had last seen it twelve years ago—that is, the day before yesterday. Megasynch. And at the bottom of the bag, beneath a ragged book of sudoku puzzles, were two other books, a small coverless paperback
Liber AL
and
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
.

“My goodness,” she said aloud. She supposed she must have left the book at Daisy’s house while she’d had it staff-checked, and had forgotten about it. The other reason she said “my goodness” was that when she pulled the book out of the bag she was suddenly aware of Daisy’s scent, quite strong, almost overpowering, that slightly sour, lemony smell with just a hint of cinnamon. It was no big surprise: it was all Daisy’s stuff, after all. Still, it felt weedgie, as it almost always did.

Andromeda put the Little One, the books, and the paper items in her book bag, which was more or less waterproof, and rolled over the paper shopping bag and bundled it into her bike’s front basket, the wig and sun hat still on her head, while the elms and poplars stood by, silently disapproving, it seemed to her, of the notion of a lesser mortal assuming the raiment of Twice Holy Soror Daisy Wasserstrom. She had barely left them behind when she felt the first large raindrop on her nose. Then another. The paper bag wouldn’t last long if it kept up. She stopped under the overhang by the water fountains and took off the sun hat and arranged it over her basket, tying it down with the hat’s green ribbon. That would afford some protection, at least.

By the time she reached Rosalie’s house, the rain was coming down hard. She was soaking wet on the outside and sweaty underneath the vinyl coat, but the paper Daisy bag was more or less intact. She parked her bike under the patio roof in the back. She was torn about whether or not to bring in the Daisy bag. She doubted anyone would be around to steal it if she left it out, yet it was a risk. In the end, though, she decided to leave it in the basket with the sun hat tied around it, because the Thing with Two Heads was likely to be there and Mizmac went to the same church, and Andromeda didn’t want it getting back to Mizmac that Andromeda Klein was carrying around a bag of her deceased daughter’s stuff, especially with all that
ouijanesse
kicking around in there.

The van Genuchten house was huge. The far end of the basement was set up like a second living room, with couches, chairs, and an entertainment center. Rosalie’s mother left it pretty much exclusively to the kids; that is, Rosalie and her little sister and the brother who still lived at home. Rosalie’s mother would even knock on the door before entering, and the door had a lock that worked. The basement room had its own entrance at the back of the house, through a sliding glass door, looking out on the patio and pool.

The pool had been left uncovered. Andromeda paused to admire the beautiful sight, the needles of rain and speckles of reflected light on the water’s surface, seeing quite clearly in her mind how Pixie might have painted it as a backdrop for one of her Swords cards. Then she shouldered her book bag and walked over to the glass and knocked.

She might as well not have bothered with trying to be discreet about the Daisy bag, because as she was knocking she caught sight of her reflection in the sliding glass door and was reminded of what she was wearing. She had meant to remove at least the wig. The door slid open. The Thing with Two Heads was right in front of her, the rest of the company stretching for what seemed like several layers behind it.

“Is that Daisy’s kibble wing?” said one of the Thing’s two heads, the female one, Siiri Fuentes. “Chemo wig,” she meant. It wasn’t really. Daisy had liked to wear wigs even before being diagnosed with leukemia; this one probably predated her chemotherapy by at least a year.

In the confusion, Andromeda forgot to keep her hip cocked to the side to keep the belt up, and it snaked past her hips and down her legs like an inexpertly managed hula hoop. Someone took a cell-phone picture. “Not good,” said Altiverse AK in a Groucho accent, mimicking the dad.

The Thing stepped aside and Andromeda pulled up the belt and walked in, taking off the dripping wig and hanging it on the corner coatrack as she went by, as though it were a hat. No one thought this was as funny as it actually was. There were way too many people in that room, and she instantly regretted having come, but at least Jesus Truck wasn’t one of them.

“You really know how to make an entrance, Man-dromeda,” said Rosalie, holding an enormous jug. “I made a pitcher of martinis. You can have one if you behave yourself. What is up with your hair?”

“Seriously,” said Amy the Wicker Girl.

Rosalie poured her a drink in a large coffee mug with Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet on it.

“I want you in me,” said Rosalie van Genuchten, addressing her martini glass, holding it up before taking a quick gulp.

Andromeda Klein was still cringing inwardly at “Man-dromeda”—a new one that Rosalie had probably been preparing all day, waiting to spring on her; that could indeed have been the sole reason Andromeda had been invited to this session of Afternoon Tea. Or perhaps
Man-dromeda
was just a comment on the way Daisy’s studded skull belt had dramatically highlighted the accursed narrowness of her hips.

Two boys were on the couch in front of the TV playing a zombie video game. One was Rosalie’s brother, Theo, and the other was one of the monkey boys who had helped with her bike the other day. The Thing with Two Heads ambled over to sit down next to them, Siiri on Robbie What’s-his-face’s lap: her hands were on his knees, and his hands were on her hands, making them look even more like a single creature. Amy the Wicker Girl and two girls Andromeda didn’t know were standing by, waiting to be introduced.

“Bethany and Stace, meet Andromeda,” Rosalie van Genuchten said. “She can’t drive, she dances like a boy, she’s got no ass, and she’s a teenage witch.”

“Oh, brother,” said Altiverse AK.

“I’m just kidding,” Rosalie added. “And you all know Elisabeth,” she continued, slapping her stomach. The summer before last, they had all named their stomachs, though Rosalie seemed to be the only one who still kept it up. (Daisy had, in fact, mischievously named hers Rosalie.) Rosalie was always talking about how she needed to “get rid of” Elisabeth, or at least get her under control, but in fact Rosalie looked great and Andromeda would have traded anything for a body even remotely like hers. No one would ever call Rosalie Flat Chest-a.

“And Charles is here too,” Rosalie finally said, blowing a kiss at her laptop, which was open on the table. She turned it around, and Andromeda saw Charles Iskiw’s face looking out of a video chat window. Charles was Rosalie’s dime soda boyfriend. He was away at college in Southern California and was now touring with his rock band back east, but evidently they still kept in touch through video chat.

“He’s having martinis too,” she added. “A small and sensual get-together, coast to coast. We are Afternoon Tea, and we are awesome.”

Rosalie pressed some keys and Charles’s face grew to full-screen size. His pixelly hand raised a paper cup, and the crackly, metallic voice coming out of the laptop speaker said something Andromeda couldn’t quite make out over the sound of the video game, the scattered conversation, and the throbbing machinelike music coming from the stereo speakers. As she always did when entering a new room, Andromeda identified the exits. Even a slight increase in chaos could quite well push her over the edge into an anxiety attack, and she paused to make certain she knew the quickest way out, just in case—it would have to be the sliding doors, rather than the door to the stairs up to the main house, because she would need to get her bike before she could escape. The rain was really coming down hard now. The strip of sky just visible through the glass door above the curtain was extremely dark for the time of day, late afternoon.