dramatic.”
“Are you mad at him?”
“Nope.”
“You’re hiding from him like you hid from me that time I upset you up in the tree fort.”
“Maybe. Or maybe just because, okay? Stop asking so many damned questions,” he snapped.
“Sorry.” Two black dogs were fighting over a dead rat in the middle of a deserted intersection. They stopped and watched Zoe and Valentine intently as they passed, then they went back to their fight.
“I’m sorry,” said Valentine. “I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s okay. Can I ask you one more question?”
“Sure.”
“You’re here, but Mom and Dad never talked about you. You’re not. . Mom and Dad didn’t. .”
“Am I an abortion, you mean?”
Zoe looked down at her feet. “Yeah.”
“A miscarriage. And that’s your last question about that. You’ve got other stuff to worry about.” On a street of derelict garages, Zoe followed Valentine up a fire escape two floors onto the tilted roof of one building. From three stories up, Iphigene was laid out at Zoe’s feet.
Gazing out toward the beach, she thought that the city didn’t look so bad. Kind of old and run-down, but not in a bad way. But the city was stranger when she looked inland. Nothing made sense. Streets bent and buckled and circled back on each other around buildings that lay like earthworms after a rain. It reminded Zoe of an M. C. Escher print Laura had of crazy stairs that ran into each other at impossible angles. Laura, Zoe thought. What would she think if she could see me now?
Valentine called her to the edge of the roof and pointed to a building at the far end of the boardwalk. “That used to be the city hall. Now it’s Hecate’s palace.” It was an ornate, sprawling building of brilliant white marble. She remembered it from her first visit, but like the rest of Iphigene, the building was different now. There were long curved spikes running around the edge of the roof, like cobra fangs. Towers stood at each corner of the palace, topped with a carving that depicted different phases of the moon, from crescent to full.
“It’s beautiful,” Zoe said.
“Old bones,” said Valentine. Zoe looked at him. “They say when you get close, the walls look like old bones.”
“My friend Absynthe would love that.”
“I remember her. Your Goth girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” said Zoe, and she shoved him a little. Without hesitation, he shoved her back. She smiled and for a second everything was normal. She was in a familiar place, high in the air with Valentine teasing her about some silly thing or other. It’s him, she thought. It really is Valentine.
“Listen. There’s something I haven’t told you. The real reason Father didn’t want you here.” Valentine’s voice was low and slow, more serious than she’d ever heard him before.
“Queen Hecate is as crazy as the sea is black. She’s been dead and crazy for so long, she doesn’t even remember that she used to be alive. She can’t leave Iphigene, or she won’t. Maybe she forgot that this is just a way station and we’re supposed to move on. But every day the buses leave empty.” Valentine stared out at the palace. “She hates the living. That means she hates you. You need to be careful every moment you’re here.”
Zoe nodded, trying not to look scared. “What should I do? Is there somewhere I can hide until I can figure out what to do?”
“Of course.” Valentine pointed to the next roof. “My house. It’s right over there.”
Valentine’s house was a sprawling shack made of scavenged wood, sheet metal, parts of buses, and tar paper from nearby buildings. The inside was a forest of tools, old clothes, books, and old comics, all junk washed down from the city above. The place reminded Zoe of their tree fort, and she felt safe and at home. Valentine pointed to a relatively clean cot in the corner.
“It’s not much, but I call it nothing,” he said. For the first time he showed Zoe his face and smiled. He seemed more relaxed on his home turf. He took off his greatcoat and hung it on a meat hook by the door. Zoe finally got a look at his arms. They looked like lengths of rebar and pipe held together by wire and ragged welds. When he crossed the room, his legs moved strangely, swinging at odd angles under his loose jeans. She wondered if all his limbs were homemade, and had to remind herself not to stare.
“I have about a thousand more questions,” she said.
“Everyone does when they first get here.” He took a match and lit a small camp stove by a truck windshield that served as a window. “I’ll answer what I can tomorrow. You must be tired now. Why don’t you lie down while I make some tea.”
“Do all ghosts drink tea?”
“Only the ones that know where to find it or steal it.”
Zoe sat on the bed, not feeling at all tired, and watched Valentine move happily around his little home, getting cups and finding sugar. Seeing him made her happier than she’d felt in months. She lay down and looked out at the stars through the truck windshield. Then, without realizing it, she was asleep.
It was strange, waking up in the dark. It took Zoe a minute to remember where she was. The sight of the tools and old, broken toys hanging from the ceiling reminded her that she was in Valentine’s rooftop home, but the memory didn’t make the place any more real to her waking mind. It all felt too much like a dream. When she sat up and put her feet on the floor, however, the pain in her ankle told her that this was very real.
Valentine was over by the window. “Hey, you’re awake. How are you feeling? I have some food, if you’re hungry.” He brought her a bundle wrapped in a white paper napkin. Zoe unfolded it and found a couple of slices of toast with strips of crisp bacon.
“Thanks,” she said, and bit into a strip of bacon. It was like Styrofoam. When she sniffed it, the bacon didn’t have any smell at all. She bit into the toast and found that it was the same, spongy and nearly tasteless.
“Something wrong?” asked Valentine.
“No, it’s fine,” said Zoe through a full mouth. She smiled and tried to look happy.
“Don’t lie. You can barely choke it down.” He picked up one of the bacon strips and sniffed. “Funny. It smells all right to me.”
“An old woman ghost gave me a piece of candy that tasted like this. It’s not really like food. More like the memory of it.”
“I don’t usually eat, myself. Never got the habit. And this is ghost food from one of the restaurants by the boardwalk. I guess I’m not surprised a live person can’t taste it.”
“It was nice of you to try. Thanks. So, if you live up here away from people and don’t go to the restaurant or the bar, what do you do all day?” She thought about that for a second. “Night, I guess. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know. I scavenge. The streets. The canals. The beach. Wherever.” He opened his hands to his packed-to-the-rafters room. “It keeps me sharp and awake, not in denial like the people in the restaurants stuffing their faces forever. Where do you think I got the things for our tree fort? Where do you think I got the telescope?”
Zoe smiled. Valentine almost looked happy talking about his stuff. Her smile faded when she thought about it and understood that this was all Valentine had. An endless night of picking through the world’s castoffs. She tried not to show how sad that made her. “Where are we?” she asked.
Valentine nodded at the floor. “This building we’re in is where people used to make and fix the buses that took people away. But we don’t need them anymore. No one leaves, so all that’s left are the ones that bring in new souls.” He looked out one of the windows at the apartment buildings that crawled over the hills and disappeared into the far distance. “I don’t know how big the city is. Big. Bigger than the living world, maybe. It grows and changes all the time, trying to squeeze in new souls. It’s pretty modern up here, but over those hills, there are people that speak Latin, and others, I don’t know what they speak, but they write with pictures. I’ll look out for you, so you don’t have to be afraid, but you can’t let down your guard here. Not for a second.”
“Well,” said Zoe, having no idea how to respond.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that at once.”
