Chapter 35

The Getty Museum & Library is a white monolith of modern architecture perched over one of the worst freeways in LA. Accessible only by an electric tram, Killian and I sat in our silent little car, looking out at the view as we rose up the hillside.

The museum is absolutely gorgeous. You feel like you’ve died and gone to Buck Rogers heaven. It is several white, utopian-esque buildings made up of hundreds of square, marble slabs flown in straight from Italy. You stroll between tended gardens and sparkling fountains as you make your way from one art gallery to the next.

It’s all a front.

The place was built on one of the most active magical sites in Los Angeles. The carefully laid floor plan with its perfectly spaced perpendicular lines and postmodern style is to keep the energy flowing like water in a drainage ditch instead of flash flooding all over the city. The Powers That Be threw a couple of random paintings on the wall to keep the normies from getting suspicious and called it good enough.

But the real magic happens behind the scenes and that’s where we were headed.

We made our way over to the library. It is built in a spiral shape from the top of its domed roof to a circular clay sculpture embedded in the floor of the atrium. Rumor has it that on the summer equinox, the light shines through the skylights to illuminate the bottom of the sculpture.

We were greeted by a curator/wizard who could have been Frank’s long lost twin, give or take an eyeball and some general hygiene improvements.

“Bart?” I asked with my hand out to shake his.

He totally left me hanging.

“Father Killarney said I should show you around,” he grunted back at me.

“We’re really grateful---”

Bart cut me off, “This library is not for public use. Some of these books are irreplaceable treasures. I was told there would only be one of you.”

I looked at Killian, “Father Killarney sure has a knack for surrounding himself with charismatic, helpful fellows, doesn’t he…”

Killian gave me a little salute as he left, “I will meet you outside.”

Bart watched him go, as if to make sure Killian didn’t double back to steal some knowledge while no one was looking.

He let out an ox-like huff when Killian was finally gone and waved for me to follow him.

We wound our way up the circular flights until we finally reached an indistinguishable row of bookshelves. From their perfectly matched spines and cloth covers, I could tell this was going to be about as entertaining as browsing law books for laughs.

“I have to leave at 5 o’clock,” Bart grumbled. “Don’t plan on staying any longer than that because I’m leaving. Five-oh-oh, I lock the front door.”

“Thanks, Bart. You’re a peach,” I replied, dryly.

I grabbed the first book entitled China: A Complete History through Time and started flipping pages.

Many, many, MANY hours and bookshelves later, I found something.

It was in a little, fictional book with a faded cloth cover. The book jacket was probably lost last century, but there it was – mention of a jade and diamond lion and the possibility of inter-dimensional travel.

So the two lions - one was to be rightfully stored on Earth, one on the “Other Earth”, which I knew to mean the Other Side. There was a little black and white etching of the lions, along with some squiggly notations on size and identifying marks.

I looked at the diamond lion and read the caption, “Last known protector, Father Juniper Serra.”

I thought back to the day that my dad disappeared. We had traveled out to Mission San Gabriel, which is this historic adobe compound built by Father Serra, the Spanish missionary largely responsible for settling California right around the same time the east coast was putting together its Bill of Rights.

My dad and I hadn’t found our skips that day. There were rumors these ogres were posing as taco cart vendors and pushing street meat that even the undead wouldn’t touch. But they were gone by the time we got there, so we decided to kick back a little and walk around the gardens.

Dad had excused himself to take a leak, but when he came back, he was carrying a bag from the gift shop. He said that it was just a little present for Mom. The bag had been torn and this thing that looked like a rounded shard of quartz had been sticking out of the bottom. I had teased my dad that Mom didn’t need to start collecting crystals. He had laughed, but I remember him putting his hand over the hole so that no one else would see.

I looked back at the etching of the diamond lion.

What if he had been carrying the statue? What if he had found it and was trying to get it somewhere safe, not knowing that the lions couldn’t travel between worlds? What if the lion had been sitting in the mission’s museum collections and no one had ever noticed?

Had Dad known? Had he known that if he took it into the boundary, it would collapse on him?

I felt a chill run up and down my spine.

I flipped the pages and suddenly found a bookmark.

Written in a hand that I recognized, it said, “Don’t look for me, Maggie-girl.”

I held that bookmark and stared at it in disbelief. It was like my dad had come back from the grave and there he was, right in front of me, knowing that I would eventually end up looking through this book.

He had known.

He knew he would die.