The fire was nothing but smoke and water damage by the time I reached the house. It hadn’t spread—neither house on either side looked threatened, but the yard was littered with debris: broken glass, shingles, furniture hurled through broken windows. Styles stood on the sidewalk, a firefighter talking to him.
A few neighbors were still watching, but the excitement had been extinguished along with the flames. More firefighters were coming out of the house, carrying their equipment, ready to pack up and head back to the station.
Eventually the firefighter went back to his truck. I walked up. “What happened?”
Styles turned and blinked at me as if he didn’t remember me. “Jurgen. Tom Jurgen.”
“Yeah. Sorry about your house. What happened?”
He looked at the front door, which hung open on its hinges. Smoke was still settling inside. “The Domination.”
David had mentioned that word. “Uh, what’s the Domination?”
Styles breathed slowly, as if building up his strength. “They cast me out.”
“Out of where?”
His hands curled into fists. “Out of my home.”
“This place?”
He scowled. “The house I ruled. My rightful place. My true home.”
“Where is home?” I asked quietly.
His eyes grew fuzzy, unfocused, as if he was trying to picture it in his mind. “Far away,” he murmured. “But close. Very close.”
“The passage?”
Styles took a step back, his eyes twitching. “Stay away. Don’t go near it. Don’t. You won’t like the other side.”
Something clicked in my mind. So far this case had been normal, mostly. No supernatural stuff. Now? I seem to attract the paranormal like, like—a detective who keeps attracting the paranormal.
“It’s the symbol, isn’t it? That’s where the passage is. The way home.” I stared at him. “What’s going on, professor?”
But he’d already dismissed me. Now he was walking away, as if following a voice in the distance that no one else could hear.
I started to follow him. He didn’t look back, marching steadily down the sidewalk, but before I’d taken 10 steps something hit me. Not hard, but firmly, like a pillow swung by a giant. My butt hit the concrete hard, knocking the breath out of me.
One of the firefighters ran up from his truck. “You okay, sir?” A young, stocky guy. He reached down to haul me to my feet.
“I’m fine, I guess.” Just embarrassed. “Can’t walk on my own two feet sometimes.”
He nodded, probably writing me off as a drunk. “Take care, sir.”
“Yeah.” I turned.
Styles was gone.
I had a theory. But I needed Rachel.
She met me at the hospital. “This cafeteria does not count as making dinner,” she told me as we got coffee.
“I will make dinner for the next three nights,” I promised.
She rolled her eyes. “You’ll make baked ziti and make it last for three nights.”
“You like my baked ziti. It still counts.”
“I suppose.” I paid for our coffee, and we went to the elevators.
Hallie was still in David’s room, looking tired. After spending all day here, I hoped they’d at least go out on a date sometime. Beckerman was also there, leaning against the window, arms crossed, with a frown on his face.
“Jurgen?” He straightened as Rachel and I entered the room. “What’s going on with Styles? Did you find him?”
“His house burned down—”
“Is he okay?” David looked suddenly worried.
“Yes.” I nodded to reassure him. “Actually it didn’t burn down, but it did catch fire. I saw him there. I lost him, though.”
“So why are you two here?” Beckerman asked.
“I’m hoping Rachel can help us look into David’s mind.” I glanced at her. “I have an idea of what’s going on. I just want to see if we can get some more information.”
“I may get nothing,” Rachel said, to me as much as to the rest of them. “But I told him I’d try.”
Beckerman snorted. “We might as well get that Tarot reader in here.”
I shuffled uncomfortably on my feet. “Actually—"
“Hello?” A hand knocked on the half-opened door. “David? Mr. Jurgen? Is the right room?”
It was Madame Olivya. Beckerman stared in disbelief. I waited for him to order us all out, or storm out himself. Instead, after a moment, he shook his head and sighed. “I’m not paying her fee. Whatever it is.”
Madame Olivya wore a dark pantsuit and a long coat. She smiled at David, nodded to Beckerman, and looked Rachel over as if sizing up a rival, or a potential ally. Then she dropped her coat over the foot of David’s bed and opened a big bag. “I’ll do this quickly, since I’m not wanted here.” She pulled up a Tarot pack. “Is this for David?”
“Yes,” I said. “We want to look into what happened when he disappeared.”
She pursed her lips. “We can’t control the cards. We can only listen to what they tell us.”
“That’s what I told him,” Rachel said. “He doesn’t listen.”
She smiled. “But you do.”
Rachel winked. “Sometimes.”
Madame Olivya folded the cards together as I moved David’s dinner tray out of the way. “This is a special deck. My family’s owmn design.” She set the stack in front of him. “Go.”
David focused on the deck, avoiding all our eyes—especially his father. He picked up a card. It showed a long road winding up a dark mountain, with bolts of lightning in the sky.
“You have taken a long journey to a dark place,” Madame Olivya said quietly. “You may have walked. You may have drifted in the wind.”
Beckerman snorted, but David scratched his head, nodding slightly. He picked up another card.
This one showed three white figures floating in a dark sky—angels, or possibly vengeful furies. Madame Olivya cocked her head. “You encountered strange beings you couldn’t understand. Were they friendly or enemies?”
David shrugged. “I don’t know.” He picked a third card.
This one showed the sun and the moon high above a mountain range, with tiny figures in the foreground looking up. Madame Olivya frowned. “I’m not sure . . . this usually signifies God or gods, worship, deities. Sometimes demons or devils.”
He flipped the next card. A stormy sea, with stars falling out of the sky, and a bright like burning in the distance. “War,” she murmured. “Threatening everyone, all over the world.” She shivered. David just shook his head.
The next card was a golden tower looming over a white city, gleaming in an unseen sun. David leaned forward, squinting. “That’s—that was there. I think—I must have dreamed it. This morning, or maybe before. It looks real.”
“A tower can mean vision, the ability to see a vast distance,” Madame Olivya said. “It can also be refuge, a place of safety. High above the wild crowds.”
Even Beckerman was listening, trying to put the pieces together. David gulped some water.
The final card was a tree. Like the tower, it stretched high, but it grew under a night sky, casting a long shadow from a distant moon.
“Home,” Madame Olivya stated. “Roots in the soil. The end of the day. The time of rest.” She crossed her hands on the table next to the stack of remaining cards. “The end of the journey.”
I glanced at Rachel. She nodded. Madame Olivya was legit, as far as she could tell. It was one of the reasons I’d asked her to be here.
The hospital room was silent, until Beckerman spoke: “So what does it mean?” He sounded skeptical, but no longer hostile.
“When Styles came here this morning, you didn’t understand him,” I said. “But then later you did. I was hoping we could jog your memory.”
“With these cards?” Beckerman snorted.
But David looked at Madame Olivya. “Yeah. That sort of made sense, even if I don’t . . .” More water. He looked past his father, through the window, into the night. “I sort of feel like there’s something there, like when you don’t remember a dream when you wake up? Like that.”
I looked at Rachel. “Rach?”
She sighed, then stepped toward David’s bed. “Could I, uh, touch your head?”
“S-sure. I guess.” He started a glance toward Hallie, then turned his head back and closed his eyes. “Go ahead.”
Rachel reached out and pressed her fingers to David’s scalp. She looked at me, as if reminding me that I owed her something big, then looked down at David.
“There’s something that wants to get out,” she said after a moment. “Not like a demon,” she said quickly when David’s eyes flashed open. “People repress traumatic memories, but that makes problems. Emotional, even physical. I’m a shrink, not just a psychic. I know about this stuff.” She pressed her palm against his forehead. “But I can’t read minds. You have to do it yourself. Or with a therapist, maybe. Not me.” She backed away. “That’s not why I’m here, okay?”
“Thanks,” I told her. She punched my arm.
“Why are you here? Why are we here?” Beckerman was getting annoyed again. “What has all this got to do with Quentin Styles?”
Everyone looked at me. Nervous, I glanced at Rachel, but she was just as expectant as everyone else. Oh, well, I’d done this to myself.
“Here’s what I think.” I felt a little like Hercule Poirot about to reveal the identity of the murderer. “That symbol in the cemetery opens a passage to somewhere else. A pocket universe, or something like that. I think Quentin Styles came through it 20 years ago. Maybe he doesn’t remember—or maybe he’s pretending not to remember.” I shrugged. “Either way, he’s been searching for a way back ever since. He enlisted David to help him find it. He’s probably not the first. But David finally did find it, and he accidentally went through, and whatever happened to him there is hidden somewhere in his memory. And Styles wants to go back.”
“But he knows where it is,” Rachel said. “Right? Why hasn’t he gone back already?”
Good question. “Maybe he did. Maybe he came back—like David.”
“So where is he now?” David asked, worried.
“I don’t care.” Beckerman pushed himself away from the window. “I’ve had enough of this. David—” He leaned over his son’s bed. “I can’t run your life, I don’t want to run your life, all I want is for you to have a life. A good life. Can’t you just—do that, okay? For your—for me?”
David reached for his hand. The rest of us checked out the floor, or the ceiling, or the windows. Hallie looked at her phone.
After a moment Beckerman straightened up. “Okay, I have to go. Jurgen, call me in the morning. Hallie—” He turned. She flinched, but he managed half a smile. “Help him get some rest, okay?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
He turned to Madame Olivya. “Well, it’s been interesting. Good night.”
She chuckled softly. “And to you.”
I took out my wallet to pay for her reading, but she pushed my hand away. “I don’t want your money, Tom. We understand things, you and I. Maybe I will call you for something one day.”
“What things?” Rachel asked. She gets territorial about me. Or maybe she was just hungry and eager to go home.
“A knowledge of the dark.” She cocked her head at Rachel. “I think you do too. “
Rachel looked at me. “If I do, it’s all your fault.”
I nodded. “Probably.”
We walked to the elevators, but Hallie’s voice caught us from down the hall as the doors opened. “Mr. Jurgen! Just a second!”
I hid a groan. Rachel waved to Madame Olivya to go ahead, and we turned.
Hallie was holding her phone up. “There’s a fire. In the Classics Building. Where Styles has his office.”
Rachel and I looked at the phone. It was a local news site, with only a few sentences and a photo of smoke pouring out a window. A small fire had broken out on the fifth floor of the building—where Styles had his office, I remembered—and everyone was evacuated. No injuries. Firefighters didn’t know the cause of the outburst yet.
Hallie looked worried. “Do you think—is it connected to the fire at his house?”
“Yeah.” I looked at Rachel. “Something’s hunting him.”
“What about David?” Hallie looked back down the hall. “Will it come after him?”
“So far it hasn’t,” I said. “So, maybe not. Just be careful. Let me know if he remembers any more.”
She bit her lip. “Okay. Thank you.”
Rachel watched her walk back to David’s room. “She’s got it bad.”
“Does he like her?”
She grinned. “Yeah. He’s just shy.”
“Young love.” I pressed the elevator button.
Rachel nudged me. “Married love isn’t so bad either.”
I smiled. “Let’s test that later.”
She poked my stomach. “Dinner first.”
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