Stray

by Evan Fuller

  10.

  Impasse

  “The soundproofing in the hideaway really needs an overhaul. If I’d had to listen to that Carla girl for another minute, I might have blown our cover just to beg her to shut up.”

  Lydia could only assume Oliver was exaggerating his annoyance with Emery’s party guests for her benefit. Emery was at class now; for the time being, she intended to do as much of her work as possible when he wasn’t at the house. Less proximity to him might be help her get her head straight. “Well, it’s good you didn’t. I’ll add it to the list for today.”

  The list for today was a lengthy one. First, she made lunch for the younger children and at the same time prepared a herring dish for dinner (she left it covered and uncooked; it would take mere minutes to broil, and Emery could do that much himself). Then there was the delight of scrubbing spilled wine from the living room carpet. She did her best to minimize the damage, but traces of the spills would remain, along with Green’s boot prints, until the carpet was bleached or replaced. She washed the sheets of every bed—who knew what use they had received in the prior night—and returned the last of the residents’ clothing and toiletries from Emery’s room to their owners’ respective bedrooms. She returned to the kitchen to wash the dishes and sweep up the remains of at least two broken wine glasses from the party.

  “Are you goin’ to stay for dinner?” asked Geneva, who was still seated at the kitchen table, staring down the remaining half of a ham sandwich. She’d been leaving a lot of food unfinished, recently.

  Lydia shook her head as she stooped to sweep the glass into a dustpan. “Not tonight, Geneva. Emery and I…” she trailed off. She didn’t know how to explain to a nine-year-old a situation she was having trouble understanding herself.

  Geneva completed her sentence. “Emery and you are never here. You’re always at your uh-partment, and Emery is down digging that dumb hole. Oliver is always reading and Miren only talks to the new boy, and Carrot wants to play but he’s always like a crazy person.” She flipped her sandwich over a few times on her plate. “I’m bored.”

  Lydia wondered if lonely might be a more accurate word. It was true, no one had spent much time with Geneva recently. Lydia herself, who used to count looking after the girl among her most important household duties, had spared less time as Emery grew more obsessed with his tunnel and more of the household duties fell to her. The whole atmosphere of the estate had become more goal-driven, less familial. Lydia couldn’t imagine it was good for such a young child, much less one who had already lost both her birth parents.

  “Well, hopefully once the tunnel is done, Emery will have more time.” Lydia wasn’t even sure why she said it; she knew the opposite would be the case.

  By the time she got around to checking the soundproofing of the hideaway, Oliver was down in the tunnel with Salvador. Lydia climbed the stairs and knocked on Miren’s bedroom door. There was a conspicuously long silence, but then, Lydia found everything about Miren conspicuous. The outsider girl struck her as manipulative and flattering and she didn’t like the way she spoke to Emery. They knew too little about her, too; it was also disconcerting how little Emery seemed to mind that.

  Finally, the door opened. “Sorry, I was changing. What’s up?”

  “It’s fine. I need you to come help me check the soundproofing in the hiding place.”

  “Oh. I guess Oliver told you, didn’t he.”

  That didn’t sound good. “Told me what?”

  Miren shrugged. “I mean, just that we could hear everything that girl Carla was saying to Emery last night.”

  Her errand forgotten for the moment, Lydia stepped past Miren into the room and took a seat on her bed. She didn’t figure Miren would mind: her “slip” in mentioning Carla seemed intentional. “And what, exactly, was Carla saying?”

  Miren came to sit beside her. “She was nagging Emery about you—about you and him. It sounds like there are rumors that the two of you are involved.” With the time Lydia spent over here, it was unsurprising. It had been the same with her previous employer in Ambler, except that here, rumors probably couldn’t match what went actually on inside this house. Then Miren asked, “You aren’t involved anymore, are you?”

  Lydia felt her eyes narrow. She could picture the face she was making, and it was a scary one. “That’s not really relevant, is it?” Why do you want to know?

  Miren got the signal that she’d overstepped a boundary. “You want to go take a look at that soundproofing?”

  “Don’t make a move on Emery, Miren. You live here; there are hundred ways that could go wrong.” As if she was saying it for Miren’s benefit.

  The wide-mouthed girl shrugged, blue eyes glinting in the yellow lamplight of her room. “I didn’t make the move,” she answered.

  The moment she heard that, Lydia needed a moment to herself. She rose, dizzying herself with the speed of the motion. “I just remembered that I left some dishes in the sink.” She hadn’t. “We can check that soundproofing thing a bit later.”

  “Carla said something else too,” Miren said to her back, catching her in the doorframe.

  She slowly turned. “Yes?”

  Miren looked nervous for once, unsure of how to phrase herself. “She said to Emery that lots of people sleep with their housemaids, even of different circles, and it was only a big deal if someone got pregnant.”

  “And?” Lydia managed.

  “Outside, we always thought purebloods can do pretty much whatever they wanted. I was just wondering, does what Carla said ever happen? And what do they do?”

  Slowly, Lydia lifted a hand to the doorjamb. She fixed her gaze on Miren’s enormous eyes. “This is what they do. They take you to the main gate of the city—not the man, because the man always denies it was him. Just you. Your parents come, and if they want to recover some dignity, they disown you from your family and your circle where the whole community can witness it. Then they, your mom and dad, help open the gate. Exiles get a backpack with a water bottle, a flashlight, and three days’ dry food, just so the city can’t call it an execution.” She barked a laugh. “If you’re lucky, the child doesn’t make it to term, so at least it’s gone before you have to lay eyes on it.

  “And if you’re very lucky, you find someone who can sneak you into another city with fake papers. And with no baby to account for, you’re free to start another life, the closest anyone ever gets to a clean slate.” She turned to leave the room. “I was very lucky.”

  –

  Emery met Juliet in the lobby of her apartment. Sander hadn’t yet arrived, which gave Emery a vital moment to say, “I managed to keep Sander from finding out about Deion the other night. But won’t him coming with us make that a wasted effort?”

  She laughed. “Sander knows I’ve chewed gum a couple times, socially—it’s not that big a deal unless someone is already attracting suspicion, like you. Anyway, it’s not even my biggest danger legally. Being involved with him wins that contest.”

  “I just don’t want him thinking I’m an addict or a dealer or whatever everyone else thinks.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. He likes you, and I’ve already told him you’ve never even done a drug before.”

  Emery was sure that didn’t sound very convincing, given the evidence, and especially given their errand tonight. Then he remembered his discussion with Sander at his party, the talk of secrets. “What did you tell him I am doing with my time?”

  Juliet gave him her annoyed eye-roll. “I didn’t tell him anything. I just said that you have your secrets the same way we have ours, and since it’s yours, I can’t say what it is. Of course he’s curious, but he was totally cool that.”

  Emery nodded, swallowing back his nerves. He liked Sander, but too many of his secrets were at the mercy of the Engal siblings. Their proximity to Dr. Hanssen made him hope they wouldn’t learn anything more.

  “As far as tonight is concerned,” Juliet continued, “he just thinks we’re hanging out
. So enjoy yourself, or pretend to enjoy yourself, and I’ll take us to the place Deion mentioned. Try to be cool.”

  “Of course.” All Emery did recently was try to be cool.

  Sander arrived a few minutes later, looking far more comfortable in the cold than Emery felt. “Glad you could make it!” Emery said brightly as he retied his scarf over the lower half of his face. “Let’s try to get there before we all freeze to death.” He had hoped that by this week of February the cold might begin to abate; instead, it had pressed the attack. He shuddered as he pulled on the steel handle of the double doors.

  As Locust Point was only a few blocks from Juliet’s home, they made the trek on foot, but the river of taillights that greeted them as they approached suggested that many had opted to travel by automobile tonight rather than to face the bitter cold. The host of gleaming black sedans marked Locust Point as a playground of the affluent: few in Rittenhouse could afford to frequent the famous strip. “So,” Sander asked, sounding a bit bewildered, “where do we begin?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t come here much, to be honest.” To be more honest, this was Emery’s first time visiting the Point as a customer. He had seen it, sure, but never stayed.

  “Boys. You’re really gonna make me choose for all of us? Come on, then.” Juliet strode ahead in mock derision, leaving them to follow.

  Juliet’s conversation with Deion hadn’t turned up anything about Jacob’s Ladder, nor had he divulged exactly what Redemption was. But she had gotten him to tell her where to go if she wanted more product. Juliet hadn’t told Emery the name of their destination, only that it was somewhere on the Point. He found himself glad he wasn’t the one tasked with the finding the place: merely walking through the strip was overwhelming enough without the added responsibility. Locust Point was a towering open mall of Rittenhouse’s most extravagant restaurants, casinos, and nightclubs, stacked one upon the other to form gaudy columns of light. The buildings stood ten stories at their tallest, and never less than five; sheer cliffs of flashing bulbs and neon displays snarled, each challenging the last for dominance. And if one fixed his gaze upward while traversing the street, it meant near-certain disaster: the street and walk were as overrun with people as the rest of the block was with electric light. More than once, Emery stared too long at a finely choreographed dance of neon pint glasses or a sequence of flashing blue arrows as tall as himself and collided with an unhappy pedestrian. “This is a lot to take in,” he breathed. Excess aside, the scene had an aesthetic beauty all its own—that was to say, a nauseating, positively mad aesthetic beauty.

  “You’re telling me.” A moment ago, Sander had very nearly knocked over a petite Farsi girl while dodging a life-size luminescent automobile, its front facing downward, that rapidly ascended and descended on a huge metal arm. “How is that even supposed to be an advertisement?” He glanced back at it. “It’s called The Drive. How about let’s never go there.”

  “That one looks like fun.” Emery motioned to a fifth-story establishment whose entire front face was a neon sea scene, with a centerpiece of bare-chested mermaids circled by yellow fish against a deep rippling backdrop.

  “The Fine Catch is a fisherman’s bar,” Juliet replied. “We could go there, but chances are they’d beat both of you senseless and carry me off.”

  Sander didn’t seem to like that prospect at all. “Let’s pass on that one too.” A minute later one caught his eye: its facade was a series of metal rings arranged in a pillar, the white bulbs of each ring flashing in turn to create a descending pattern. Inside the pillar was a faceless but otherwise convincing human figure, suspended upside down with its arms stretching outward like wings between two of the rings. A sign beside the display read CLUB ICARUS, and there was a line outside its doors. “If people are willing to wait in this cold,” Sander reasoned, “it must be an impressive place.”

  “I’m sure it’s great, but you guys are getting hypnotized by all the pretty pictures. The real excitement around here is for people who look a bit harder.” Smiling, Juliet led them past the main doors of Icarus to a stairwell set in the side of the building. The small sign over the door was wooden, illuminated by a single blue light. CHASM. Emery would never have noticed the place.

  “Ten rai apiece,” the weaselly bouncer greeted them as they stepped from cold into dark.

  “You’re kidding.” Emery glanced past him into the club; it looked like a dive, not something warranting that sort of expense.

  “I’m not,” the man replied flatly. “Pay or go; you’re holding up the line.”

  Emery couldn’t help but notice there was no line. He turned to Juliet and took her nod to indicate that this was indeed the place. “Fine. Here’s for the three of us.”

  “Are you sure?” Sander interjected.

  “Everything’s on me tonight.” Emery smiled. “Consider it my attempt to buy your forgiveness for not hanging out with the two of you more often.”

  He handed over six five-rai stones and they were admitted entrance. Emery took a seat at the bar. “Whiskeys all around. Rocks.”

  The bartender was a Roccetti girl with buzzed hair and a split lip. She raised a narrow eyebrow. “What kind?”

  “I don’t know, your most expensive one.”

  Clearly awed by his extensive knowledge of spirits, she fetched a bottle from the top shelf and poured three glasses. Emery parted ways with another twenty rai, remembering Juliet’s advice when they’d planned the night: spend a lot of money and don’t ask any probing questions. Trouble would find them soon enough.

  Trouble, it turned out, was easy to spot. Emery saw him through the thick haze of tobacco smoke that danced in the low light. The other customers were all in their late teens or early twenties, of age to attend the collegio; the Vorteil who leaned against the wall, scouting the scene with rampant eyes, was at least thirty years old. Once Emery had identified him, he didn’t look at the man again. He bought a few more rounds for himself and the others, talking loudly enough to be overheard but trying not to sound conspicuous. He smiled at the girls at the bar, tipped exorbitantly, and bantered with Juliet and Sander. After an hour, he stood up to use the bathroom, passing within a few feet of the man. On the way back to his seat he felt an arm against his shoulder. “You can get more than drinks with the kind of money you’re spending. If you’re interested…”

  Emery feigned a moment of indecision. “Can my friends come?”

  The Vorteil gave a curt nod. Emery locked eyes with Juliet and gave a little jerk of the head; she nodded, rising and leaving her drink unfinished at the bar. She and Sander fell into step behind Emery as their escort led them to a doorway in the back wall. They passed through one heavy curtain into a corridor where another doorman collected another ten rai for each of them. They passed through a second doorway into what Emery had expected would be a back room. The space they found was more expansive than the little front area, though just as dimly lit. The Vorteil led them to long sofa across a low table from what Emery assumed were some other customers. “Evening,” he said.

  “Some new faces.” A smiling Roccetti leaned across the table to extend a hand. He had long limbs and curled hair much shorter than Emery’s. “Call me Ben. I see you got Dogeye to let you join the party.”

  “Dogeye?”

  Ben motioned toward the Vorteil, who was leaving the room. “People say he’s sly as a mutt. You’ll hear a lot of names like that around here. I’m sure you can guess why.”

  Emery smiled. “Names are for people you trust.”

  “Exactly. So. What brings you here?”

  “The same thing that brings everyone here, I guess.”

  “But of course.” Ben opened a small tin and extracted a pinch of what looked like grayish wax. He rolled it delicately between two fingers until it had taken the shape of a rough ball. This he impaled on the upturned point of a paper clip resting on the table’s center. He lifted a glass object off the corner of the table but frowned upon inspecting it.
“That’s filthy.” He nudged the man sitting beside him; when this produced no result, he followed with a sharp kick. “Go get a clean glass. Only the best for our new friends.”

  The man sluggishly arose and returned a minute later with a book of matches and a similar glass object, shaped like a bell with a straw protruding from the side. “That’s better.” Ben struck a match and held it next to the ball of wax until the ball glowed. He offered the glass to Emery. “Guests first.”

  Emery had been hoping to avoid this, but he turned to Juliet and she nodded. He set the glass over the ball of gum, waited until a silky cloud had formed inside it, and took a drag from the straw. He tried to keep from inhaling without attracting notice: he’d always avoided poppy gum in any of its forms, and he needed his wits about him tonight. He passed the glass to Sander, who took it after a moment of hesitation and mimicked Emery. He wondered again how Sander perceived him. “Good stuff,” Emery said to Ben when the glass had gone around twice. “Where’s it from?”

  Ben chuckled. “The hell you think? We’re all righteous men here. Everything comes straight from Redemption.” He made Jehovah’s sign, touching his forehead with two fingers and then raising his hand skyward.

  Perfect. “Funny you should say that,” Emery said, trying to keep his tone casual. “I’ve been seeking Redemption myself.”

  Ben had been making to pass Emery the glass, but his hand stopped when he heard that. “Really,” he said after a long pause. “And why is that?”

  Emery blinked. He felt as though he was floating in a body of warm water, and he wondered how much of the poppy gum he’d inhaled. This should probably have frustrated him, but he found it hard to summon much frustration. He searched for words. “I… I have a little operation that I mean to expand. Small stuff right now, but there’s a demand for more, and if I could get access to more product…”

  Ben nodded. Ben put a hand to his chin. Ben said something about being right back and slowly rose from his seat. Emery leaned back, dizzy, and sank into the sofa. He looked to Juliet to see what she thought of his arrangement, but her eyes were closed and her head was nestled between Sander’s shoulder and chin. For a moment Emery thought this was a bad idea, but as he looked around the room, he saw other couples on other couches, many of whom were of separate circles as well. And some were being far more intimate—out of sight of the law, pleasure took priority over circle allegiance. Emery couldn’t help but wonder whether even these lawbreakers might object, if they learned that Juliet and Sander’s bond wasn’t strictly physical. The room was spinning. He was running his fingers through her hair.

  Minutes passed and then Ben returned with Dogeye. One of them made a sound. “Follow me,” the sound said when Emery replayed it in his mind a couple times. He rose, stumbled, rose again. He followed. He tried to keep his eyes open. Everything stopped swimming when his eyes were open. The lights all had halos around them, pulsing slowly. They led him into what looked like a storage closet and turned on a much brighter light. Emery squinted. It was too much for his eyes to take in.

  “So you’re looking for Redemption,” Dogeye said.

  Emery nodded.

  “Tell me about this operation you have going. Ben here was explaining it but he didn’t get many details.”

  “It’s nothing major, really.” The light was giving him a headache. “I just move some stuff at the collegio—”

  “Give me a name.”

  “Um, I was buying from this guy Deion…” What was his last name? Emery couldn’t recall.

  Ben knew the name. “Deion doesn’t deal to dealers, he’s a bottom-tier guy. Your operation doesn’t exist.”

  Dogeye took Emery’s jaw in his hand. His fingers were warm. Emery tried to think of something to buy time. Dogeye drew his other hand back. Emery came up blank. Dogeye’s knuckle collided with Emery’s lip. There was no sudden shock of impact; pain blossomed slowly, half-mute. That light was so damn bright.

  “Ben?”

  Ben was lifting a heavy-looking box. “Let me make myself very clear,” Ben said—no, it was still Dogeye talking. “I don’t want to see you in Chasm again. Don’t go asking around about Redemption either. If you do make it there, I’ll make sure you don’t get back out.”

  The box spat a blinding light that hurt worse than Dogeye’s hand had. It emitted a small, blank photograph from a slot at its bottom. “And I’m telling you now. If Unity comes down on this place or any of us, you’ll burn in your bed. We have your face, and we can find out real easy where you live. Like I said, it’s a small city.”

  Emery cocked his head as the photograph slowly developed. Did he really look that bad? They dragged him out of the storage room and into the corridor. He was relieved for a moment to be out of the light, but then another door opened and he was forcibly ejected into the snow outside. He found his footing slowly. The sounds of Locust Point were muffled, and it was dark. He must be behind the building. It was deathly cold.

  Halfway through the train ride home his head began to clear, and he realized that he’d left Sander and Juliet behind in the club. Seeing as he was now barred from entry, he had no way to rejoin them; he cursed himself for being so careless. He hoped they were safe, but with no way to find out, he realized he would need to wait until morning to call Juliet and make sure she had arrived home unmolested.

  When he made it at last to his kitchen, Emery found that Salvador had beaten him to the refrigerator. “Evening,” he said.

  “Mmm?” Salvador glanced sluggishly over the refrigerator door. “Oh, ‘ello.”

  “Lydia cook anything good tonight?”

  Salvador didn’t respond for a long moment. Finally, as if remembering Emery was present, he turned to face Emery again, careening as he did. His eyes were glassed over, and it only took Emery a moment to realize that he’d just seen a roomful of those eyes. “Salvador, come sit with me for a moment.”

  Salvador slowly retreated and slumped into a chair by the glass table opposite the refrigerator. He left the door open; Emery closed it before taking another of the seats. “We went over the rules with you when you first arrived, correct?”

  Salvador nodded.

  “And have you been following these rules?”

  Salvador blinked. Emery remembered giving Dogeye a similar response just an hour ago.

  “You’re on gum, aren’t you?” Emery asked. He sighed: he wasn’t in the mood to give a lecture.

  Salvador shrugged. “Didn’t think ye’d get back so early,” he explained.

  His earlier suspicion returned, now vindicated. “You and Miren, I take it?”

  He offered a lazy nod.

  Emery probably shouldn’t be too hard on the boy; it was his first offense, after all. He was more upset with Miren; he wasn’t sure how he’d broach this with her. “Well, to reiterate, that’s not allowed here. I assume you brought it inside with you; I’m going to need you to give me whatever’s left.”

  Salvador considered this for a long time. “I don’t think I will,” he finally replied.

  Emery was taken aback. “I suppose I was unclear. This really isn’t up for discussion.”

  “Well, ye’ won’t likely find it.” The boy exhaled dismissively. “I sure won’t help ye’. It’s my own property, see.”

  “And the house where you’re living, if you haven’t noticed, is my own property. You’re going to show me up to your room, which is ‘yours’ only because I say it is, and give me the rest of that gum.”

  “I don’t think I will,” he repeated.

  The suddenness and intensity of Emery’s rage surprised him. “You snotty little son—”

  “I really hate to break this lovers’ quarrel up,” a bleary-eyed Oliver interjected from the kitchen doorway, “but I think someone’s throwing rocks at the windows out back.”

  That wasn’t good. “Don’t leave this room,” Emery hissed at Salvador. He turned to Oliver. “Throwing rocks?”

  “Yeah. I think they cracked a window,
actually.”

  Emery shivered, recalling Dogeye’s threat to burn him in his bed. He hadn’t expected them to come after him tonight. “Oliver, fetch me the revolver.”

  “Way ahead of you.” Oliver backed into the dining room and returned a moment later with a walnut-handled steel pistol. Vorteil-made, Abel Arms No. 664. The serial numbers on the rifles were four digits; there were fewer of these.

  “Okay.” Emery checked the cylinder; the gun was loaded. Its weight in his hand was a small comfort, at least. “Let’s go.”

  As they entered the rear foyer another stone collided with the window, prompting Emery to jump. Oliver took a step back, letting Emery and the gun go first.

  Emery flipped a light switch and threw the bolt on the door. The cold produced an immediate shudder. He pointed the pistol into the night.

  As his eyes adjusted he began to make them out: two black-skinned children, a girl of about thirteen years and a much younger boy, huddled and trembling. “‘Bout time,” the girl said through clattering teeth, dropping a stone and stepping past the raised revolver. “C-can we come in now? It’s damn cold out here.”