Two Imaginary Boys (2/5)

"What?" Leo asked, much more quietly than he'd spoken about the book.

"Leo," Jonathan said in a low voice, "why does that doll look exactly like our sister? And why does—she have it?"

"It's Jamie," I told him.

"Why don't we talk about this in your room?" Leo muttered before trying to slide past Jonathan.

Jonathan planted his hand on the wall next to the door just in time to stop Leo. "You can't just come in here without asking!"

Leo rolled his eyes. "May we come in your room? Please?"

Jonathan looked at me, then at Leo. "It's awfully messy."

"We won't be long," I said, looking up at Leo for confirmation.

"She won't mind, I promise. Jamie loves books," Leo added.

"Fine," Jonathan grumbled. Once we were all in, Leo closed the door behind us.

Jonathan hadn't been kidding about the mess. There were so many stacks of books on the floor the four of us barely had anywhere to stand.

Yes, that's right. Four of us. Because once the door was closed, Jonathan took another hard look at the doll. Hesitantly, perhaps experimentally, he chanted: "Elodie, Elodie, Elodie."

And then I had to let go of the doll, because she wasn't a doll any more. I remember a sense that it was getting uncontrollably bigger, but other than that, I don't think I could have described what I saw clearly even then. By now, I've forgotten all about it. All I can say was it wasn't instantaneous, but it didn't take long, either.

And then a young woman just a little older than Leo and I stood in the middle of the room, wearing a green prairie-style dress that looked like a scaled up version of the doll's dress. Her hair was the same, too: dark and wavy, but not as curly as Leo's. I didn't really look too hard at the rest of her outfit, but I bet it would have been the same as the doll's, too.

She looked bewildered. Her gaze flitted around the room unseeingly, but eventually, it landed on Jonathan's face and stayed there a few extra seconds. Then she looked at Leo. Then at me.

"You're real," she murmured unsteadily.

"Of course. And you're not a doll."

She smiled wryly at that. "No. No, I'm not. Thanks for getting me here, Jamie." She glanced at the floor, then back at me. "It is Jamie, right?"

I nodded. "Nice to meet you, Elodie."

"Would anyone else like to know what the fuck just happened?" Jonathan said. He was looking at me and Leo.

Leo had no answers for him, only nervous laughter.

"How long has it been?" Elodie asked him.

"Since June," Leo told her, unhelpfully.

Elodie's eyes widened, like she was just remembering something. "Jonathan! Tell me you didn't drink the wine."

"What wine?"

"That wine Orsina brought with her."

"The wine you knocked out of my hand? What was I supposed to do, lick it off the floor?"

Elodie sighed with relief. "You didn't drink it."

"Of course not."

Leo frowned. "Wait, what are we talking about?"

"You don't remember?" Elodie asked incredulously.

Leo took a few seconds, but it didn't seem to make him any surer of anything. "No."

"When was the last time you saw me?" she asked him.

He looked at the floor while he thought. Or at least, tried to. "I don't—I'm sure it was after Aunt Orsina came, but I can't recall a specific time, now that you mention it."

"She made you forget," Elodie told him.

Leo scoffed. "How?"

“I don't know, but she's capable of it, and you don't remember, so it must have been her.” Elodie stared at the floor so hard I wondered if she was feeling dizzy. Then she shook her head. "I remember waking up after that. I think it must have been the next day, I can't recall anything from that night after the wine. But the next day, I looked for the family grimoire in Orsina's room, and I found it. And then she found me. That's the last thing I remember."

Leo quirked an eyebrow at her. "The family grimoire?"

"Yes, the family grimoire! We couldn't find it because Orsina took it with her, Leo. It was real the whole time!"

"Uh. Okay. I'll believe it when I see it, then."

"Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean, family grimoire?" Jonathan asked. I wanted to know, too. Even finding another person who knew what a grimoire was was pretty exciting, not that I hadn't had enough excitement from Elodie's indescribable transformation.

"I mean, we're from a family of witches, and the grimoire was the book they wrote down their magic in for generations," Elodie told him.

Jonathan glanced over at Leo, who was visibly holding back a tidal wave of (nervous) laughter. Then he looked at Elodie again. "Really?"

"Really. That was how she killed our mom without leaving a shred of evidence."

"How convenient." He looked not the least bit surprised by that statement. Then he turned towards me. "Are you buying any of this?"

I was, of course, completely unprepared for that question. Which was probably why he asked. "Uh—I mean, I guess if creepy porcelain dolls can turn into humans if you call their name three times, I'll believe anything?" Then I realized that was absurd and corrected myself. "Or at least, I'd give it consideration."

"What month is it?" Elodie asked. She was probably still a little disoriented.

"October," Leo told her.

"October!?"

"And keep it down. She's still here, you know."

"Orsina's still here?" Elodie whispered.

Leo nodded.

Then she looked back at me. "Oh, god, you shouldn't be here."

I shrugged. Since it was a little late for that and all.

"I shouldn't be here, either," Elodie continued. "Damn. October. So the semester already started."

"You were a doll for over three months and you're worried about school?" Jonathan asked her.

Elodie shook her head. "Alice. She lives off-campus. I'll call her." She clasped her hands together decisively and turned to Leo. "Leo, would you be a dear and drive me to Bryn Mawr? I'll need to stop at a pay phone along the way."

"What? You're leaving already?" Jonathan asked.

"Orsina can't know I'm up and about. Neither should Dad, just to be on the safe side."

"He hired people to look for you, you know," Leo told her. "One in the Philadelphia area, one in New York."

"So he doesn't know what Orsina did," Elodie said.

"I guess not," Leo said. "I'll get your coat."

"Get my wallet and address book, too. And my diary."

Leo gave her a mock salute and slid back into the hallway, closing Jonathan's door behind him.

"Elodie, what's going on here?" Jonathan asked.

"We can talk about it in the car," she told him.

A few minutes later, Leo came back with a cream-colored cardigan and a flowing blue coat in his arms, both of which he put around Elodie's shoulders. "Your things are in the pockets. I added some cash to your wallet and grabbed some of your jewelry, too. You can pawn it if you have to."

"Thank you, Leo," Elodie said.

"I'll go downstairs first," he told us. "If anyone's in the kitchen, I'll distract them. If no one's around, I'll leave a note saying I took Jonathan for a drive. My car's in the driveway."

"I'll go last," Jonathan said.

And then we left. Elodie paused at the bottom of the staircase while Leo looked around. Then we heard him chatting to someone in the kitchen about how he'd finally managed to convince Jonathan to leave the house, but he'd only go after dark, but it was still progress and he was glad for that.

We crept down the hall and out the door. Elodie told Jonathan to take the front seat, then I followed her into the back. Leo wasn't far behind us. He asked if I wanted him to drop me back at the park first, but I think we both knew I'd say "no" to that.

No one said anything else until we were on the highway. "You're a brilliant witch, Jamie," Elodie announced, breaking the silence.

In hindsight, it was like she spoke it into reality. Everything I knew before then, I learned from books, you see. I'd never experienced anything undeniably magic before. A few odd coincidences that could have been swept under the rug, some immersion in what could easily be dismissed as nothing more than a highly imaginative state of mind. Nothing else.

If I hadn't met Elodie the way I had, I might have given it up after another year or two and moved on to simply examining folklore and mythology as a historical exercise. Perhaps I would have tried my hand at writing fantasy fiction. I still would have been superstitious for the fun of it. But that probably would have been it.

"Oh am I?" I was trying not to let on how flattered I was.

Elodie winked at me. "If I'd been a demon, I would have been done for."

Leo snorted. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means what it means, Leo." Elodie stared at the back of the seat for a few minutes.

"So where's that explanation you promised us?" Jonathan finally asked.

"There's a pay phone in that gas station," Leo said before Elodie could answer.

"Do you know something I don't, Leo?" Jonathan said once Leo had pulled into the gas station and Elodie had gone inside.

Leo sighed. "I don't know anything anymore, Jon. And I'm not sure I want to."

Elodie was certainly taking her time.

"Hey, Leo. If you didn't remember the stuff Elodie was talking about, why'd you think Orsina was responsible for her disappearance?" I asked.

What I really wanted to know was what basis there was to her killing their mother with magic, but that seemed like an insensitive question to ask directly. But it hadn't sounded like a new idea from the way the Marchettis were tossing it around in Jonathan's room.

Leo took a minute or two to answer. "I guess I wasn't really thinking. Just going by feeling. I was kind of hoping I was just—I don't know. Making up an explanation for Elodie's disappearance so I didn't have to assume she ran out on us without saying goodbye on purpose, maybe."

Elodie came back before he could have said much more. Once we were back on the road, she took a deep breath. "Okay. That explanation you wanted, Jonathan. I got a glimpse of the grimoire I mentioned. And I think I know what Orsina and Dad are up to."

"So Dad's in on it for sure?" Jonathan asked.

Elodie sighed. "I can't say for sure. But I don't know why else he'd suddenly want Orsina around after all these years."

"We don't know he kicked her out in the first place," Leo said.

"Yeah. They weren't getting along, though, I definitely remember that. Anyway. There's a small chance he has no idea what's going on, but does that really sound like our dad to you?"

"It's not impossible," Jonathan said.

"Anyway. I got a look at the grimoire. And you know what was almost in the very front of the book? All written out in colored ink, with ornamental margins and everything, like it was the crown jewel of the whole thing?"

"What?"

"'Ritualis Immortalitatus'," Elodie said. "A ritual for immortality. Lasts six months. Must start and end on a solstice. You know what else it requires?"

I could just about hear Jonathan rolling his eyes through the tone of his voice. "What?"

"Ten lives per person," Elodie said.

"What?" Leo said.

"To be burned to death at the exact moment of the winter solstice."

"Only ten?" Jonathan asked.

"I'm serious, Jonathan."

"That's pretty out there even for you, Elodie," Leo said.

I wasn't sure what to think about any of it. The possibility of backlash if the ritual went wrong midway through certainly didn't occur to me. But I was starting to want out of Leo's car. Of course, it was far too late for that. Then again, maybe if I'd've asked nicely, he would have turned around and dropped me off, then started the trip to Bryn Mawr over.

"You said it was in Latin? Are you sure you read it right?" Jonathan asked.

Elodie huffed. "Am I sure I read the Latin right. Yes, Jonathan. Come on, you guys. I don't like it either."

"If we believe you, what exactly are we supposed to do about it?" Jonathan asked.

"No one's dead yet," Elodie said. "We can stop this from happening."

"We don't even know who they plan on killing," Leo said.

"We can find out," Elodie replied. "We'll divine for it. Jamie, you read tarot. Let's both do a reading tomorrow at midnight, with 'Who does Orsina intend to kill?' as the question."

"Okay?" I told myself it would at least be interesting to see how our results stacked up.

"We'll figure it out from there," Elodie said. Then she wrote down her friend's phone number for me to contact her at.

We didn't talk much more the rest of the way. Or at least, I didn't. Jonathan still had questions, but Elodie didn't have much more information. Eventually we dropped her off at a house in Bryn Mawr. I could just make out a figure inside the front door, welcoming Elodie in. Leo waved, and Elodie waved back, and then he started driving us home.

"Jamie, I'm sorry," he said, after a few minutes.

"Why?" I asked, still not sure what to make of any of it.

In a way, I wanted it to be true, but I was also ashamed of wanting it to be true. I also worried about who the sacrifices would end up being, if it was true. I couldn't shake the thought that Glauco Marchetti could take anyone he wanted, with no repercussions. Or Orsina could, and Glauco would smooth things over after the fact. I'd never met him. And I didn't want to judge him out loud to his children like that.

I also wasn't sure exactly where Leo was at with all of what Elodie was saying, and was afraid of saying the wrong thing. Our friendship felt incredibly fragile. We'd never spent so much time together before, and it felt like we were both at wit's end.

"I let you get mixed up in this, and I shouldn't have. I should have just borrowed the doll, and then—I dunno. I guess I would have made up some excuse not to return it to you. But you wouldn't have had to worry about Elodie, at least."

Jonathan asked the question I wanted to ask but didn't quite dare. "By 'this,' do you mean Elodie having a psychotic breakdown, or an actual mass-murder plot?"

Leo sighed. "Jon, I don't know. We saw what we saw. All I can say is whatever's going on, I've got a really bad feeling about it."

The next day, at midnight, I pulled a card and asked Elodie's question. I got the Page of Swords and my stomach immediately sunk. Someone young and full of ideas, was the impression I got. It could have been me. But I wasn't thirty people. It could have been someone younger. Students, maybe?

I wondered if I should draw another card. Elodie hadn't specified any particular spread. But even if my answer was "students," that was still awfully vague. So I drew another card. Page of Pentacles. Financial opportunity. Wealthy students. Marcus Academy. Made sense. They all lived in dorms. Burn one of those down, and there are your thirty deaths.

"What about Elodie?" I decided to ask. Under my breath, of course. "What's going on with her?"

The High Priestess. She probably wasn't lying, then, but it didn't mean she wasn't crazy. I stayed up for hours trying to work out how to talk about it over the phone. It didn't seem safe to be straightforward. I might have been getting carried away.

"What cards did you get?" I asked her when I called the following morning. She picked up the phone herself immediately.

"Page of Swords," she said. Only the one card.

"Same, and I drew another for clarification and got the Page of Pentacles," I told her.

She exhaled heavily into the receiver. "That sounds about right."

"They all live together," I said, then waited to see if she had a response to that that would confirm for sure we were thinking the same thing.

"I don't know why I didn't think of it myself," she told me. "I guess I didn't want to think they'd do something like that to academy students, of all people. But from a practical standpoint, it does make sense."

I wondered what exactly she meant by "of all people," but kept that to myself. "What next?" I asked.

"Leo's gonna call me tonight after he gets off work. And I'll do some more divining this afternoon now that I've got confirmation from you that I'm on the right track. We'll figure something out."

"Okay. Uh, call me if there's anything else I can do to help," I told her before giving her my number.

"Will do. Or Leo can get ahold of you. You've already done so much, though, Jamie. Thank you."

I still wonder exactly what kind of conversation she and Leo had that night. Specifically, I wonder if either of them knew what was coming. I used to think both of them did, because of something Leo did just before the December solstice. But now I'm not so sure.

I keep coming back to the likelihood of it not being as cut and dried as "knowing" or "not knowing." Leo wasn't analytical like Elodie was. He was more intuitive. In a way, he probably knew since the night we brought Elodie to that house in Bryn Mawr. But consciously, I'm not sure he had any clue. Or at least, not at that point.

My memories of the couple months after that are bittersweet. I've returned to them so often they're probably half made-up by now. Maybe Leo wasn't as bubbly and kind as I remember. The only photos I have of him are the ones we got from the photo booth in the pizza parlor. Just two tiny photos, of the two of us. Sometimes I look at them and wonder what the big deal was because the image of him doesn't compare to my memories. Other times, I remember things I'd forgotten. He comes alive in my mind in ways I hadn't realized he'd stopped doing.

It helps if I don't look at them too often. Took me at least a decade to learn that.

He came into the antique store that weekend, brimming with things he wanted to tell me but didn't dare say within earshot of the other customers (especially considering that one of them was a teacher at Marcus Academy). It was just before my lunch break, so when the time came and he was still there, I invited him to join me in the back room while I ate my sandwich. Tammy put her fingers to her lips and raised her eyebrows at me teasingly when she passed us to go sit at the counter.

"Great, now she's going to tell everyone in my family we're dating," I said once she was gone.

Leo laughed. "You sound so disappointed."

I smiled back at him. "You're beautiful, Leo, but I'm only into imaginary men."

What I meant by that was imaginary men with vulvas, but that wasn't something I would ever have dared say out loud back then, let alone something I knew could exist in reality.

"That's perfect. I'll be your imaginary boyfriend," he said with a mischievous grin. To this day, I doubt either of us could tell whether the other was joking.