• Scarab: The Gauntlet Before Her
• Kendall Francois: The Killer on Fulton Avenue

mrsmecomber

Jacqueline fidgeted with the objects in her lap. The wrong one felt animate, the Herkimer diamond pulsing -- almost twitching like the Mexican Jumping Beans she bought on vacation when she was ten, not realizing the worms within them were engaging in their death throws and could not be saved. It seemed pathetic that they had let themselves get trapped and became a novelty for kids.

She couldn't sort through the crystal's contents, no matter what Mr. Oswald had told her. She had brought a lethal... something into her father's home in that tiny bit of ancient water. Not another god, Jacqueline didn't think, but something with intelligence and motivation. It had not wanted her to put it to this purpose. That entity had terrorized them hours before, but now pity overwhelmed her for it. Jacqueline and this Whatever had both been duped.

Some aspect of her father was in the diamond as well. It wasn't a pitched battle, but the dark and light had not settled into a uniform sheen. If she could feel her father, he was not within a rock. She tried to summon her toddler memories of her father, but all that she could recall that the odd expression on the jackal's long face. A canid snout had overwritten however little her father had meant to her.

She nudged the remains of the scarab, wishing she could extract a little of the vitality of the crystal and force it into Houdini. Its legs curled in. What had been her guide was now only an exterminated pest. Had it known its life would end this way? Did it care? Was there any other way this could have ended, or was it only the foregone conclusion from the second he snuck into her bedroom? It made her queasy wondering how set on this course the bug had been, as it suggested she was little better.

Mica spoke in hushed, excited tones, leaning from the shallow backseat to reach Wick's ear. He did not respond. The steward didn't mind, more concerned with detailing the last few hours to its only other witnesses. She did not address any comment to Jacqueline, tactful enough to know the bereaved did not need to hear what she had lived minutes ago.

Jacqueline nudged the dead scarab again resentfully. She didn't care how nonexistent its brain had been. She wished it had made a different choice.

Her roiling, uncertain emotions did not have time enough to solidify into something actionable before Wick slowed.

Jacqueline slipped black and white items into her hoodie pocket. She had put the garment over her more somber clothes minutes into the drive, finding it a comfort.

She did not question why they had stopped. She trusted Wick's navigation, for one. For another, she saw the smallest church she had ever beheld, resting on a dock in the center of the water, green with algae. Beside it, on a pile of rocks, was an austere cross looking as tall as the chapel. No side of the humble white building could be more than seven feet. The claustrophobia of a coffin echoed through her even looking at it.

It was not what she imagined when asking for a church, but shame on her for daring to expect something.

"What is this?" Mica asked.

"Cross Island Chapel, on Mason's Pond," said Wick. "We have returned to Oneida. People marry here, though little more than the couple and an officiant can fit. The wedding party must watch from boats or not at all."

Jacqueline walked to the water's edge. The sign read, dedicated as a witness to God and detailed that it could seat two in its 28.68 square feet. "Is this a cult thing?"

Wick shook his head. "Not like you mean. It is non-denominational. Cross Island seemed the best place for so small and potent a ceremony."

Jacqueline's gaze searched the shore.

"How do we actually get there?"

Wick looked with patience. "We row."

Jacqueline turned to question him, greeted by a gaggle of hissing geese, which forced a scream from her throat lodged there since she saw her first agent. Satisfied they had panicked her, they took to the pond, leaving wakes in the muck.

"Row what?" she asked when she saw he would not freely answer. On the shore of the stagnant water lay no boats. She did not need to stand any closer to the chapel to hold a funeral for an insect. If they did their rite while standing beside the car, though, it would somehow be insufficient. What that meant was beyond her, but she could not fight. From the moment she threw Houdini from her window, was she cursed to end up here?

"We can take the boat," answered Wick, walking to his car's trunk. It opened at his touch, though not because of any evident mechanical release. Within was a raft.

Jacqueline had not taken a careful inventory of the trunk when she removed the bag with her clothes, but she did not recollect seeing this blue and yellow vinyl lump.

"Did you magic that up?" she asked, though this seemed too crude for that.

Mica stood next to her. "I found it in the basement at your dad's house. Wick told me to steal it."

"I did not instruct you to steal it," he replied mildly. "I suggested it might do more good in my car than in the basement. Can we not assume the contents of the home -- those currently falling to Mr. Oswald's assistants -- are Jacqueline's possessions now?"

"When did you decide this?" Jacqueline asked.

"When you Stacy and you were looking for the pitchers."

This was well before her father died, before agents beset them, and before they had sacrificed Houdini.

"How did you know we would need it?" Jacqueline demanded of Wick, glad she had a direction for this brewing outrage at her fate. "Were we coming to this chapel no matter what happened?"

Wick cocked his head a degree. "You gave us the destination."

"And if I didn't want a church?"

"I would not have requested that Mica put the raft in my truck."

The obedience of cause to effect seems abandoned, but she couldn't rally an argument that would have again put that horse before its cart. She didn't have to like it, but she did not see how she could force the universe to behave better.

"I hope you stole paddles as well," said Jacqueline.

The raft was self-inflating, a mercy given the day had been long, and this night didn't deserve to stretch. She wouldn't have liked watching Wick or Mica huff their lungs out, trying to inflate it. Jacqueline wasn't going to contribute.

Wick took the oars without asking the women if they might like to helm the boat. His arms were suited enough to the short journey. Jacqueline did not love the sag when all three were in it, but she didn't worry they would drown. Without knowing for sure, she felt she could have slogged to the chapel without the water touching her bra.

Jacqueline and Mica hopped out when they reached the pier, but Wick did not join them.

"There is room enough for you," said Mica, though this was more a courtesy than a fact.

"Trust it is better I remain in the boat."

Jacqueline didn't argue but cautioned that he had better stay close. If he made her swim, she would pop his tires.

Wick rowed back halfway, then turned the boat so he could see them. "I will wait here," he called, barely raising his voice.

Mica gave him a thumbs up.

"So," said the steward, "what now?"

Jacqueline felt a chill but couldn't tell whether this was physical. "A man died. Maybe a god. I don't know this world like that, but I don't care if a god died," Jacqueline said. "I don't particularly care that he was my biological father, but I've never been a huge fan of sitting beside someone as they died. I resent in the highest that I have been jerked around to get here. How much of this was me, and how much was just some script I didn't know?"

"That's how the world works," said Mica. "Not the magical world, just the world. It jerks you around to get you where it wants you, and it tries to tell you it was all you, your credit and blame." She looked out at the shore, made more apparent by the rising moon.

Jacqueline caressed the dead bug, swallowing back a sob she wasn't sure she felt entitled to heave. Houdini wasn't even a pet. It was a GPS with wings and a tendency to dance its answers.

She sat cross-legged on the pier, her eyes unfocused on the rippling water, the concentric circles of Wick's rowing bouncing off the raft and back.

"You made the right choice," said Mica, joining her in sitting, "rejecting your father, the divinity. It wasn't a fair thing to ask you."

"Your stewardship. If you could have said no to it?"

"I never got the opportunity to say yes," Mica stated. "I can't tell you what I would have done, having some purpose foisted upon me whether I wanted it or not. I wouldn't have died if that were the other option."

"But you don't want to be the steward."

"Ideally, no," she granted. "I have more than enough going on interpersonally to deal with something like this. I don't want someone else to be the steward, though, and not only because it would mean I had been murdered."

"I wouldn't have made a good god."

Mica threw an acorn into the water. "Did he?"

"He was supposed to be this god of judgment. But he chose me, so how good was he?"

"He didn't have any other children."

"That was his choice?" Jacqueline asked. "The gamble of a daughter he didn't stick around to raise?"

"You seem pretty together. He missed out."

Jacqueline hugged Mica around the shoulders, the steward laying her head against her. "You are a damn good liar."

Mica shook her head with the gesture of nestling close. "You'll know if that is accurate when I get around to lying."

"Will his house be haunted?" Jacqueline asked. "Is that a thing that might happen? Like, I took his divinity, but I left his spirit behind?"

"Oh," said Mica. "Every house is haunted. Not necessarily by ghosts -- sometimes by ghosts -- but by the people there. My grandmother's house had this grasshopper on an outside wall. Someone had coated it in this green paint. No one ever came near it -- it seemed spooky and sad to me -- but it lasted. I don't know who did it. My grandfather, maybe, was just too lazy to fix it. It haunted that house through multiple owners. And, in my bedroom at home, there are these scratch marks on the floor. The landlord put a carpet over it, but it didn't last. I look at the ghost of some kitten who wants to get into the living room every time I open that door. It's still there, in a way, this cat."

"When my mom died, I inherited her house. I don't think there is a day she isn't there with me," said Jacqueline. "There is this dig in one of the walls from where I slammed my shoulder into a bookcase storming out. My mother had lectured me about a boy, and I wanted to make a scene. So, it isn't just the ghost of the bookcase, then. It's the ghost of that fight, that boy, and that day. I look at it, and I remember stomping down the street for an hour until I was miles away and Mom found me. It's the ghost of the ice cream we had where we talked it through. If I spackled that hole over, if I painted it, the ghost wouldn't be gone. Someone wouldn't necessarily know, but it would be there. But I don't fix it. I want to be haunted."

Mica nodded. "And you aren't the first one to live there, right? We accept these eccentricities from people before us, plugs halfway up the wall or confusing stains on the garage floor. We can't know all the ghosts we pass on our way to the bathroom."

"So, my father will haunt that house even if it won't be as a ghost."

The steward said, "The new owners, whoever they will be, will make up their mythology for ruts he left behind, but it won't be the mythology of some god—just a man. Just the same ghost we all become when we become a part of somewhere. They won't know about today just like we don't know about the children who stood for the growth chart barely painted over in the kitchen."

This answered the question Jacqueline did not know to ask. She felt a sense of resolution bubble up from the pond. She took the beetle and crystal from her pocket, laying them on the wooden railing. They were specks, really. They would leave no ghost, no matter the glitz of the rock.

Jacqueline and Mica collected the spring leaves on the pier around the chapel, on its roof, and in the water, seeking the most seaworthy vessel.

"Are you sure a Viking funeral is the right look?" asked Mica when Jacqueline picked one and demanded the steward's lighter and matches.

"I am not well-versed on these things, but I don't see why this is inappropriate."

Jacqueline laid the scarab on the leaf with tenderness enough that no water touched him. She broke the lighter, covering the dead bug with the flammable liquid.

"I don't know what to say," said Jacqueline. "I hardly knew my father -- today hasn't changed that -- and I only feel bad for Houdini. What eulogy am I supposed to have?"

"I can do it," said Mica.

"From your book?"

"No, but I always have things to ramble about," said the steward. She straightened her back for her oration. "Eat all the French fries and cake first. Never read only one book at a time -- three is a respectable number, and you'll see connections between them. Talk to strangers because they might have something for you. Fall in love, then out, then back. Try it every day if you can help it. Throw paint around the room. Throw tantrums. Question authority and yourself, and realize you are not an authority on yourself. If you think you can come back from it, kill yourself to know it isn't the end. Don't worry about being insane but worry if you think you aren't. Give your all fucks in due time. Lick things. Ask first, then do it anyway. Work on your breathing. You won't always have it to fall back on. Don't be nervous about being an imposter. We are all imposters. Sing or shut the fuck up. Never think sex is more sacred than the other person's body. Cry laughing or cry because it's all so tragic that you can't laugh. The point of making art is not because you are good at it but because it is the only way to know you are still human. Spiders don't have to ask if they are making good webs. They weave."

Jacqueline blinked at the torrent of words, looking at Wick in the raft for contradiction. "Amen," she finally said.

The son of Anansi echoed from halfway across the pond.

Jacqueline exhausted two matches setting the leaf aflame, then urged it into the water to burn. It made it ten feet, the fuel spent and the leaf black, then sunk below the algae.

The glinting beacon of the crystal on the railing dimmed, though it did not snuff out. Jacqueline would not return with this and saw no reason not to leave it here. She found a hole in the wood where the chapel met the pier, nestling it within. It would not last hidden, but that was the point of it. The crystal was meant to pause in its journey here -- not end it but await the next stage -- a small gear in the clockwork of the universe.

Jacqueline motioned for Wick to return, ready to go home.