Equinox (Augarten Book 1) Read online

  Solomon paid for the appointment, and I swore to pay him back. We left the doctor's office, waiting until we were out of earshot of passersby. "The police might have a missing person's report on you," Solomon suggested. "Then at least you will be able to track down your family, and they can tell you who you are."

  The thought of going to the police shot adrenaline through me, every muscle itching to bolt. This immediate, unconscious reaction had me wondering whether I had a criminal past. "Solomon, what if the police don't believe me? You said yourself that I don't sound Viennese. They could arrest me for trespassing, or crossing Austria's borders, for being here without any identification or papers. Then I'd be in police custody without any answers or legal right to freedom."

  Solomon appraised me, registering my fear. "We'll be honest with the police and tell them you have amnesia. You can go by Gabriel for now until the police connect you to your real name. Just insist you think your home is here."

  That last statement triggered alarm bells. "What do you mean?"

  He hesitated a moment, as if considering how to word his thoughts. "You speak German like it's a second language, not native. You mis-gendered in the dative case earlier."

  That dropped a stone in my stomach. "I think in German. There is no other language floating around up here." I tapped my forehead.

  Solomon nodded. "That's good enough for now."

  Chapter Three

  No such luck at the police station. My fingerprints and photograph were not in any kind of registry for missing persons. I explained that I had amnesia, but that the only language in my head was German. We gave the officer the name I would be using until more information came to light.

  Solomon bought us cheap sandwiches at a bakery and examined my pile of paperwork while we ate. He frowned. "You have to get an MRI."

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. "Why?"

  Solomon narrowed his eyes at the document, doubt working its way across his features. "It says here that all refugees are required to get one to verify their age. I can see how this might be important if someone was claiming to be a minor—there are way more public welfare benefits to be had that way—but you're too old for that to matter. And I don't know why a policy toward refugees is being applied to you, but I suggest we pick our battles."

  "Okay. If I have to, I'll do it."

  He nodded. "I'll go with you. It says we have to have it scheduled by this week. I know the hospital listed here. It's Jesuit, of course."

  I hesitated. "Why are you doing so much for me?" I'd thought surely he would drop me off at the police station and leave me there.

  Solomon stared at the table for a long moment, a tick working in his jaw. When he finally met my eyes again, I knew I was going to receive a prepared answer.

  "I got a call early this morning, from my boss. A bishop had called him, saying he'd just woken from a dream wherein a man lay unconscious in Augarten and needed help. I have to admit, I was more than a little bit startled when I found you exactly as described."

  My heart raced. "Does this bishop know who I am? Can you ask him?"

  Solomon shook his head. "I'm sorry. We know only that something strange happened, and they sent me to check on it."

  I sensed a lie, or at least a hedging of the truth, but I let it drop.

  Solomon continued. "Speaking of, I need to report in at work. After that, let's go to the library and see if anything triggers your memories."

  "Okay." I pondered how to explain what I had seen the first time I'd woken up, with the hidden pearl-moon, and the towers from another time. "It might have been a dream, but before you found me, I wandered through Augarten and saw the strangest things. I could see the air, and feel the trees breathe. I saw the texture of the sky, like a soft misting rain or grainy paper. It frightened me. When next I woke, you were there."

  Solomon froze, his icy blue eyes narrowed at me. "For someone seemingly not detoxing from drugs, you've sure got some colorful stories. Do you see the texture of the sky now?"

  I shook my head, not sure how I felt about it. "When I was really hungry earlier, it felt as if that vision might return."

  He pushed my sandwich toward me. I laughed and picked it up again.

  Solomon sat back in his chair, deep in thought. "Did you see anyone there?"

  I couldn't believe he actually believed me, yet as a priest, he must hear bizarre supernatural stories relatively often. "No one. Just magical footprints." I still wondered how I had known that white circle would protect me. That feeling had come to me on an instinctual level that I could not explain.

  Solomon pursed his lips in thought. "Thank you for telling me. I'll ask my supervisor about it."

  I nodded at my sandwich.

  We stepped out of the café and over to the crosswalk. Out of nowhere, Solomon slung an arm in front of me to the tinkling of a bell.

  In a whoosh, a bicycle flew right in front of us, pulling a trailer that looked too heavy to be hitched on the back. A handsome man pumped the pedals, his khaki-covered ass high in the air as he lunged into his bike. The wind swept his bangs back from his forehead, and in that split second, he locked bright hazel eyes with mine.

  My breath caught.

  I stood frozen as he barreled past us, then sat up on his seat and waved. "Enstchuldigung, Father!"

  Solomon panted, clutching his chest. "Is a simple 'excuse me' really enough here? He almost ran over a priest."

  "How many Hail Marys would that incur?"

  Solomon looked at me like I'd grown a second head. "Did you just make a joke?"

  I shrugged deprecatingly, still windblown by that attractive man.

  After a moment of hesitance, Solomon smirked good-naturedly, and I grinned.

  We crossed a canal and made it to a huge, ancient cathedral in a matter of minutes. Solomon explained that Saint Stephen's was Vienna's most famous cathedral. The area in front was packed with tourists taking photos, newspaper hawkers, and concert ticket salesmen dressed in white powdered wigs reminiscent of Mozart. I didn't bother trying to get out of people's shots, instead searching for a place to wait while Solomon checked in at his office. A good place should have been an easy find, since I stood a head taller than nearly everyone else, but I came up empty. Crowds pushed past me, making me feel claustrophobic.

  Then something pricked my ears, something so deeply familiar that it comforted me subconsciously, as if I were slipping into a favorite old shirt. My stomach flopped when I realized why: I was hearing pieces of words I actually recognized, words that were not in German.

  I swung around, searching for the source. "Wait."

  No one reacted to me. I pushed through the crowd, desperate for one more word, another sound, a single utterance from my real home.

  Someone gripped my upper arm, trying to keep me in place, but I fought. "No, please—"

  "Gabriel."

  Solomon stood next to me, his brows furrowed in concern. A pair of beat up canvas shoes dangled from the fingertips of his free hand.

  "I heard my native language," I told him in a rush. "People from my native country are here. Help me find them."

  His eyes flew wide and he whipped around. "Where?"

  I clenched my jaw, praying for just one more snippet in the cacophony of sound. "I don't know, but I heard it just now."

  "What did it sound like?"

  I tried to recreate the sounds, but without words to put them to, I felt stupid and stopped. Gritting my teeth, I forced down my frustration as tears stung my eyes.

  Solomon turned to me, a deep sadness in his eyes. "Let them go, Gabriel. We'll find another way."

  I swallowed an agonized growl, jamming my hands in my hair and pulling. People passing by gave me a wide berth.

  Solomon grabbed my shoulders and squeezed. "It's okay. You're okay. Let's go to the library and search for anything that feels familiar."

  I nodded, my eyes squeezed shut. I focused on Solomon's hands on my shoulders and forcefully pulled myself from my desper
ation and anger, my despair at not understanding anything.

  "Come on," Solomon said. "Let's get out of here."

  We got on the subway and exited at the Burggasse-Stadthalle station. We took one flight of stairs up, but before exiting the station did a hairpin turn onto escalators that carried us directly into the library. I breathed a sigh of relief—the library stood literally on top of the station, so I knew I would be able to find it again. Stepping inside, I froze just past the door as Solomon made his way toward the collections on the main level. A thrill ran through me as I learned something about myself: I loved books.

  We wandered through the shelves of the main floor in the foreign language section, Fremdsprache. My heart picked up its pace. I walked through the section slowly, scanning the spines to see whether any of them felt right. English was the first section: I could read it, but it felt foreign, like German did. On to French: another ping of familiarity, but nothing gut-wrenching like a native language. It was as if I had been forced to study these languages years ago, against my will. On to Italian: no. Russian: no. Hungarian, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian: no, no, no, no, no. Whispers of my life before, but nothing solid, no substantial indications. I still did not know my native language. The library had all the major European languages here—not just the countries from the former Holy Roman Empire—yet nothing rang a bell. No choir of angels singing. How could I not be from Europe?

  Dejected, I was jealous of the other people walking around, browsing. These people knew their identity and were looking for a captivating story to sweep them away to another world. They wanted to spend time as someone else, when I couldn't even find myself.

  Solomon rounded the corner carrying a stack of books. On the top of the stack sat the Bible in German. I picked it up and held its weight in my hands. A hefty book to be sure, but it summoned no sense of relief within me. Surely a Christian would be conditioned to find comfort in these teachings. Next, I picked up the copy of the Torah and leafed through it. I'd woken up in the second district, and as Solomon had explained, it was the Jewish district. No feelings of recognition here either. Yet if I loved books, surely I would have bothered to read the foundational texts of my belief system. Next was a German copy of the Koran. Was I Muslim? I flipped through it. Nothing.

  Suppressing a sigh, I propped my hands on my hips while Solomon put the holy books on a cart. Was I really an atheist if I could see the texture of the night sky? Surely being able to see magic was the result of significant investment in meditation and prayer, of drawing closer to the divine. A holy longing. I simply couldn't imagine declaring that the physical world was the only realm that existed, not after what I had witnessed in Augarten. I had to believe in something.

  Suddenly, a book fell off the shelf beside me, even though I hadn't bumped into it. I picked it up and read the cover: A Cosmic Doctrine, by Dion Fortune.

  Solomon leaned in and read the title, then his expression became guarded. "That's written by a famous occultist. Even I have heard of her. Steering faithful Christians out of harm's way of such things is part of the duties of a priest."

  I hadn't thought about that. Could I really have been possessed by a demon, like he insinuated? Was that why Solomon looked at me with such concern, and why it felt like he was hiding a thousand secrets from me?

  We made it back to Augarten and entered through the main wrought iron gates. Unlike the terror of the night before, now the garden brought a sense of calm reflection on the scent of fresh leaves. From the front, I could see how the compound had served as an imperial summer palace. Long rows of trees led to a white mansion that connected to a network of buildings, and somewhere in there was the lounge from before. Surrounding the buildings were the public park, the city farm, and the fenced-off forested areas.

  Andrea found us. "Are you looking for a place to sleep tonight, Gabriel?"

  Solomon's eyes flew wide as he regarded me.

  "I still don't remember my address—I'll sleep out in the park again."

  Her kind green eyes turned sad. "That won't do. We have a guard who patrols at nights. I don't know how you weren't discovered until Solomon happened upon you this morning."

  Solomon turned to Andrea. "Could he stay here somewhere?"

  I jumped in. "I would much rather sleep out in the garden again than impose upon you any more than I already have."

  The two looked at me with expressions sad enough to break my heart, but I didn't want their pity.

  Andrea crossed her arms. "I am the full-time staff for the Augarten city farm, but my jurisdiction is just a small part of the buildings here. I manage the apartments on the perimeter of the complex, but all of them are currently rented out. Assuming you don't want to sleep out in the open lounge, I'll go see if I've got a side room big enough for you."

  Solomon then announced that he was leaving for the day—he needed to report to his boss once more on everything that had happened that afternoon. "Gabriel, walk me out?"

  "Sure."

  He smiled and bid Andrea goodnight. We made our way out to the garden and I paused a moment to breathe in the fresh air.

  "Was there something you wanted to ask me?" Solomon said beside me, having stopped to admire a hollyhock reaching for the sun.

  I tried to put my thoughts together, since this priest was something of a mind reader. "I think I can see more than other people can, at least compared to Andrea." I cocked my head back toward the lounge.

  Solomon straightened from the hollyhock and cocked an eyebrow at me. "See more?"

  I hesitated, then, "Not just the dream I told you about from last night…I can see colors radiating off the trees at Augarten. Even you…you're surrounded by this faint grey light."

  "Hm. Any flashes of color, seemingly out of nowhere?"

  "No, but the sky has that texture to it that I don't think I should be able to see when I'm not dreaming. It wasn't there this afternoon, but I can see it now."

  Solomon followed my gaze. "Indeed, other than the clouds, the sky does not appear to have texture to me. Though I can't say that I've ever asked anyone about it, so I couldn't be sure what others see."

  Gratitude filled me that he did not immediately assume I was crazy. "What do you think this is?"

  Solomon motioned to one of the less-crowded paths leading to the gate. "These are all important clues, if you ask me. If you think you might have an eye injury, we could always visit a specialist. But if you think you're really seeing these things, then other than keeping it between us, I think we should consider it another card in our deck that gets us closer to figuring out your situation."

  Relief flooded through me. "Thank you for believing me."

  Solomon's smile with his icy blue eyes made butterflies dance in my stomach. "And now, since I am keeping your secret, let me tell you one of mine. Then we'll be on even footing."

  "I swear I won't tell anyone," I said with mock fervor, because whom would I tell?

  Solomon clasped his hands behind his back and regarded the brick wall by the gate, on which were painted colorful wings. People posed for pictures, pretending they owned the wings themselves.

  "You might have noticed that I am rather young to already be a priest," Solomon said softly. "In truth, I have already been a priest for nearly a decade."

  "I admit my ignorance, to be frank."

  "Fair enough." He tilted his chin at the painting. "I can see them."

  I looked between the painted wings and Solomon, not daring to voice what my mind was coming to.

  He answered my unspoken question. "I can see, and hear, angels. When they wish me to."

  I had no idea how to take this revelation, and my immediate thought was to see if he could contact an angel to help me. "Is that rare?"

  We continued walking. "It is among adults, these days. Most children can see celestial beings, but by the time they enter the school system, the teachers and other students convince them otherwise, and they lose the ability. I am the only person I know who ke
pt this ability through to adulthood, and it is rare enough that once a priest learned of my sight and believed me, I was fast-tracked into seminary."

  "That's…Thanks for telling me."

  He smiled again, and I ached for a hug, just any kind of human contact, but I knew that would be asking too much of someone who had already been so generous and gracious with me. "See you tomorrow, Gabriel. Keep this between us, but I want to hear about anything more that you notice."

  "Great. See you tomorrow."

  Andrea cleared space in an old storage room. Down the hall was a sink and bathroom, so I would have water and facilities if I needed them. In the washroom I found a dusty mirror, fogged at the edges and in need of polishing. I saw my face for the first time: dark brown hair, lightly tanned skin and muted grey eyes, dark stubble along my jaw. So this was what I looked like.

  Although I was grateful to Andrea for the storeroom to sleep in, ultimately, I grew antsy. I found myself propelled outside by birds beating their wings in my chest, instilling a sense of wonder. Just like in my dream, the sky glittered with stars, even in such a big city. The magic this night felt different, less menacing, but still present. The trees watched me, sensing my emotions and observing, like a cat perking her ears up in curiosity. Knowing I was alone, since the park had long since closed, I walked among the trees and spoke to the spirit who surely lived there. "Good evening, Augarten. Do you know why I woke up here? Could you tell me why I can see magic?"

  Chapter Four

  At first, I thought the voice was someone singing to me in my dreams, as soft as a lullaby. In my arms was the familiar warmth of a beloved person that faded upon waking. Then my hip bumped into a rock and I jerked awake. I was in Augarten, predawn. But this wasn't the dream vision: nothing glowed or shimmered. Yet the singing was real.

  Carefully—the voice was very close by—I sat up, stretched and looked around for the source, then gasped and held my breath. A man walked the perimeter of the circle that had protected me in my nightmare. He held his hands out, palms to the sky, but eyes downcast. He was far enough away that I could not make out individual words, but the language he sang in was not German.