Part 25: Worst Bookclub Ever

Previously in the Vines Inquiry— Blevin, the librarian and seemingly part of the Inquiry, showed Frank and Harlow around Offsite, Room 11. Therein, Frank was confronted with wicked generations of his family tree and an ominous truth from Blevin. The Vines family had found something on Carlisle Island all those years ago…and she had a name.

This cave is taken. 

Frank heard the words again from somewhere deep in his brain. Not a memory. Not something rote. An echo from a future he’d prevented. The road and shelter not taken.

“FiFi,” said Frank, stone in his throat.

“Okay, I do regret calling her that now,” said Harlow. 

“They found her here. After the shipwreck, up in the pines.” The room went quiet. Even the hum of the fluorescents seemed to still. A moment of silence for what was to come. “Now what is She?”

Capitalized. Unbidden. Reverent? Frank thought.

“The book,” said Blevin, pointing to the one Frank had chosen before with the fancy canvas cover. It was ‘used—good condition’ with some minimal fraying.

Frank flipped it open to the title page. 

So You Want to Raise Feenuín? Practical Advice from a Practicing Inquirer by Rochester Vines. The title greeted Frank’s eyeballs with a quick licking. The information within felt just as squirmy. He scanned the table of contents and pages within.

Chapters titled ‘Ministering Strangers,’ ‘Discerning Sacrifice Potential,’ and ‘Lesser Consecrations’ were intermingled with ‘Who is Feenuín, anyhow?’ and ‘Compare and Contrast: Lucifer?’ 

“Just for my own rapidly declining sanity,” said Harlow. “Would we count a recruitment manual under Recipes or Family Tree?”

Frank sneered, but did consider the question for a moment. “Family tree,” he muttered through snide lips. “Rochester was my grandpa… Right, Blevin?”

The librarian nodded and gestured for Frank to flip to the front of the book. There, a weather jacket cover held Rochester’s author photo. He had been a small man, with grey-veined teeth and a smile that was doing its level best to appear inviting.

“I think I only met him once,” said Frank. He ran his thumb over the edge of the photo, unconscious at first but unable to stop once he had noticed. “All I remember is him asking my mom if he could have one of my earlobes.”

Frank and Harlow looked to Blevin, waiting for an explanation. The librarian shrugged.

“Guess that reasoning is in Volume Two,” said Frank.

Blevin perked up and shuffled over to a shelf, the pile in his considerable arms growing. 

“Your grandfather Rochester was the first of your ancestors in generations to try and bridge the gap between your family’s branch of the Inquiry and the other branches. But only if they would submit to him and his kids. They had Gifts! Rochester even proclaimed he was the Vessel.” Blevin’s face was red from the fervor of it, the passion. “Until, you know…” 

“What happened?” said Harlow. She turned to Frank but he was somewhere else, trying to figure out why what Blevin had just said grew a question in his mind. 

“Um, cancer? I think… Dick and I were little. It was a closed casket,” said Frank. Blevin tapped one foot rapidly and did his (terrible) best to not look Frank in the eye. “What?”

Blevin pulled both lips inside his mouth and hopped around like he had to pee.

Frank groaned. “Just say it.” 

“Decapitated! By a bowtie!” 

“What is with your family and decapitation?” said Harlow. “How does that even happen?” 

Blevin stopped hopping. “Slowly.” 

“Should have worn a couture scarf. An ascot.” 

“Will you let the scarves go?” said Frank.

Blevin pulled down a folio, stuffed to the maximum potential of its elastic band. Inside, Frank saw hundreds of envelopes. Each was multiple legs of correspondence; letters back and forth between his grandfather and whoever he’d been soliciting around the world. ‘Aug. ’49-Feb.’50, Sen. Joseph M.’ Frank could see stamps from most of Europe, all corners of Asia and Africa.

 “The Inquiry’s huge, then,” said Harlow. She looked to Blevin who gave her a thumbs up. 

“We’re not sure exactly how huge anymore… Nobody loves talking to the Carlisle branch. I chock it up to fear and professional jealousy.”

“They don’t talk to us because my ancestor stole some books?”

“Just to be clear,” said Harlow. “You want to talk to… to the rest of the cult?” 

“I’m jus… They’re not over it? Especially when we’ve made, you know, such…strides. In the summoning sector.” 

“I hate this on you,” she said. “It fits too well.” 

“Blevin. Why? Why still?” Blevin’s face cracked into a 32-tooth salute. 

“That’s an excellent question.” He paused, expectant. The silence was met with more until he continued. “One I wrote my first Inquiry article on. Technically that was ‘not allowed’ because none of your family members would admit to me that the Inquiry exists, but I think I was on to something. They tried to poison me four times after I asked them about it.”

“Four times?” said Frank. 

“So they’re really crappy at being a cult?” said Harlow. Frank stared at her, aghast. “That’s a win for us!”

“The key is to train your gag reflex so that you can turn it on and off at will. To throw up the toxins.” 

“There’s two wins for you, Frank.”

Blevin continued while Frank blamed his blushing on the room being warm. 

“The other branches pulled out because of what your even older ancestor…” 

“Let’s skip his name and we’ll all just assume it sounds like someone the Headless Horseman ran down,” said Frank.

“Nailed it,” said Blevin. “But he didn’t just steal a book. He stole the prime research.

“A compendium of all known knowledge on the topic at the forefront of the Inquiry: Beckoning. The invocation of a demon. He’d taken it all. And found a demon lickety split! He took it all. All the keys and all the locks and came to the island, named it after himself….”

“And then he died in some horrible, inexplicable way!” said Harlow. “Your whole family died trying to mess with something they stole. Messing around with things we shouldn’t mess around with?”

“He did die…” said Blevin. “After they found He in the pines. Feenuín. After that shipwreck, there are no accounts of an earthly Her. Some say it was the initial meeting that exiled the Warrior-Queen to the Cold Heaven in the first place. Before, even a partial beckoning, just getting a Piece of a demon… It was almost unheard of. The kind of thing someone does because they’re probably going to die soon anyway.”

 “Very Armageddon, self-sacrifice, why is Liv Tyler wearing chopsticks in her hair?” said Harlow. “I got ya.” 

“And even then, they could only do it for a few minutes; at a huge cost.” 

“Until my mom and dad,” said Frank. “We saw it in the reel.”

“Once your parents beckoned a Gift, your family instantly shot back up in the Inquiry. Everyone wanted them to speak at conferences. Co-author papers. And this was before they figured out how to make your brother a Vessel.

“Once he, you know, well, all that Inquiry enthusiasm sorta petered out. No more calls. Everyone remembered they hate you. Inquirers are fickle. Present company excluded, of course.”

“So they got close to summoning…beckoning, I mean, FiFi,” said Frank.

“How are you following any of this?” said Harlow.

Frank ignored her. Because he didn’t know. Because he didn’t like the explanation that was bubbling to the top of his mind. How did he understand this?

It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it. Through vents in the Big House. Easing through cracked doors and hinted at over voicemails.

“They’d gotten parts,” Frank continued. “But Dick. He was capable of bringing all of Feenuín all the way back to here. To the real world.”

“A real world,” said Blevin. “But yes. Your brother was the culmination. He was the one that was going to usher in the New World…and drowning the Old one.”

Frank nodded. At least it made sense now. Some of it. Some of their childhood. 

“Dick was their key to everything. And he died. Because I couldn’t save him.”

Harlow smacked Frank’s arm. 

“And you kept an actual demon off Earth. C’mon now.” Harlow rubbed her face hard enough to scrub herself from reality while Frank tried to keep the ball rolling on their giant idiot scholar cult Labrador man. 

He’d already done it once, by accident. Foiled his parents’ plans and stopped them from ending the world. But Dick. Had his brother known? He’d obviously kept some thing from Frank, assuming their parents had invited his twin brother into the Inquiry. But could he have kept all this from Frank? The beckoning, the rituals?

The two portraits of Dick in Frank’s mind didn’t match up, not all the way. If only he could ask him, but to do that.

“The rituals. The beckonings. They’re doing them again,” said Frank.

“You’re so good at this!” said Blevin.

“You are…” said Harlow. It was her turn to sneer.

“And they’ll keep doing them, until…. Well, okay, I don’t know. Blevin?”

“Until they have all the pieces. Seven Pieces of Feenuín. Seven rituals.”

Seven resurrections, thought Frank. At least one down with his mother. How many more did they have? He had to race them. To stop stop the world ending, sure, but if he could bring Dick back, if he could fix his mistake….

“Okay, progress,” said Frank. “We get the Pieces to make sure they don’t. Stop some death and make sure they don’t end the world. Ra-pum-pa-pa-pum, FiFi no come.”

Blevin applauded Frank’s Little Drummer Boy wordplay while Harlow considered.

“You’re saying we, what? Take the ball everyone’s playing with and go home?” 

“It works!” said Frank. “Bratty, but effective.” Harlow twirled a braid around her finger while she thought. Her face, from Frank’s perspective, could not be called ‘confident.’ “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I hogging the floor here? Do you have another idea how to stop this lil winter apocalypse?”

She looked at the ceiling, speaking quietly to herself. “I could have stayed home. I could be at Momma’s right now on my third free margarita. I bet Stella would have let me stay on her couch. I could have gone on vacation. Feliz Navidaded it somewhere with a thick-booty-ed man who knew how to dance. But no. It’s December twenty-fourth and I’m not only in a library, but in the basement. Of a library.” 

Harlow clapped three slow beats, touché to the universe. Blevin joined her, his claps slightly late on the beat. 

“She’s got a point,” he said. Harlow cocked an eyebrow. “We’re not gonna get anywhere cooped up in a basement with no food.” Like a paid actor, his stomach rumbled. “Who’s hungry? I’m buying.” 

They ended up in the same booth at McCroy’s. This proved to be their first mistake.