The Fortune Teller(86)
She took in the family crossing the street, the little girl holding her father’s hand, and the two men on bikes whizzing past her, bringing a fresh breeze in their wake. Then her eyes landed on the man reading a book at the table next to them. He was wearing a Geiger watch.
“The watch,” she whispered. “That’s it.”
If synchronicity was life’s way of sending messages, it had just delivered several. She looked down the street and found the shop right away. There was a reason this street, and this corner, looked so familiar. When she was nine, her father had bought his Geiger while they were here on vacation. Semele remembered waiting outside the shop, eating ice cream with her mother. Afterward they had toured the library at Admont Abbey.
This city was the place she had dreamed about that night back in New Haven. She and her parents had been in the car heading here when they saw the accident. Her heart began to race with urgency. “I need to go to the library.”
Theo’s eyebrows rose, but he stood up with her and they quickly left the café.
The library was only meters away. All day, she had been walking in circles around the one place she needed to be.
*
The Admont Abbey Library was an exquisite masterpiece of Baroque architecture and the crown jewel of the city. The moment Semele stepped through the doors, a wave of calm descended on her. Every stone and piece of marble had been laid for one purpose—knowledge. Semele could feel its light shining all around her.
She remembered her visit to the abbey as a child with crystalline clarity. She had broken away from their tour to go look at the books.
One particular book had drawn her attention, and she’d pulled it off the shelf. The text was in German so she hadn’t understood the words, but the pictures of children from World War II had mesmerized her. They were black-and-white photos; the children dressed in old-fashioned clothes that were ratty and torn. Aid workers, nuns, and nurses stood hovering in the background of each of the pictures, but it was the children whose images broke the heart. They stared straight into the camera lens with eyes that said they had suffered too much.
Her father had found her sitting on the floor next to a bookshelf.
“What are you doing?” he whispered. When he saw what she was holding, he took the book away. “Darling, this is a historical archive, very precious. We can’t touch.”
“What is it about, Dad?”
He glanced at the title with raised eyebrows. “Orphanages in Austria During the War.” He returned the book to the shelf and led her back to the tour. Semele had thought about those pictures for weeks afterward. It was as if every image had been imprinted on her mind.
The moment returned to her with a strong feeling of déjà vu, showing her a memory carefully preserved within these walls. In that book was a picture of Nettie standing with the children in front of the Engel House Orphanage in Vienna.
Semele had found her grandmother twenty years ago, and she knew without a doubt it was the place where her mother was being kept.
Ten of Wands
They were en route to Vienna when Viktor called again.
“Semele, I grow tired.”
“We’re coming! We’re on our way to Engel House. Is my mother all right? Let me speak to her!”
Viktor ignored her. “Your words fill me with profound relief. Your little field trip took longer than I expected. We are almost done with this phase of the experiment. Now don’t let us down, dear girl. And come alone, just you two, or you will never see your mother again. You have until sunset, and then she dies.”
He hung up. Semele began to shake.
Theo looked over at her in concern. “What did he say?”
“My mother’s there. We don’t have much time.”
*
The next few hours were an intense whirlwind. Theo chartered a helicopter to take them to Vienna, brushing off Semele’s lingering concerns about the cost. “Your family is my family,” he insisted.
Semele was choked with gratitude and could only nod her thanks. It was true that Nettie and Liliya had become sisters at Makaryev, bonded by something stronger than blood. It was a bond that would survive well beyond their deaths.
Semele looked out the helicopter window at Vienna, a sprawling city of over a million and a half people, where her grandmother had spent her years after the war. This was where her mother was born.
Another feeling of déjà vu enveloped her.
The dream.
She knew this moment—had experienced every second before—a moment so powerful, the memory had imprinted itself in her mind before it ever took place. Just as she had in the dream, Semele leaned over and kissed Theo.
He pulled away, their lips inches apart, and whispered, “You know you’re not going to get rid of me after this.”
She kissed him again as her answer, for the first time understanding her gift. Her intuition had been her shadow all her life, always there, always a part of her, speaking to her in dreams and thoughts and inklings. Because of the darkness surrounding her now, she could finally see.
*
The Engel House orphanage and the Academy of the Blind stood side by side, and when she saw them, Semele felt like she was meeting her grandmother and grandfather for the first time.
The orphanage was boarded up and had long since shuttered its doors. Several buildings on the block had construction signs posted outside them, and the four-story building that had once housed the orphanage would likely soon be refurbished.