Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 32

by Kelly Link

  “Tamara, can you feel me? You’ve got to calm down.” I think hard. It’s harder for her to not sense my thoughts than to include them. What little I can feel from her feels like she’s subsumed. Whatever this is, it’s not intentional. Not that it’ll matter if she drives everyone nuts.

  I kill all lactic acid production in my body, super myelinate my leg muscles, and triple my lung efficiency as I start running. It’s a more public display of my skills than I like—including dropping my North Indian face and skeletal structure—but I don’t have a lot of time. Nordeen has a vicious dislike for public displays of power. In another life he’d have sent me to handle an outbreak like this: I’d rather not meet my replacement right now.

  The closer I get to Tamara’s radiating panic, the more twisted metal and screams take over the streets. I want to walk Sam’s path and heal everyone around me, but I’d be exhausted and useless by the time I got to my girl. My old path would leave a trail of dead bodies behind me. Instead, I compromise; healing those with heart conditions and knocking out the rest with prodigious opioid flushes to the brain. But as I discharge my power I feel one area of calm. As London Town loses its collective shit, tranquility and ease radiate from Eel Pie Island, some ten-plus miles away from me. It’s a steady and progressive calm, chilling people out in a far more gentle way than I could. If I didn’t have to get to Tamara, I’d investigate. But my daughter is losing it. And what’s worse, I know she’s at the last place she should be.

  When a Liminal named Alia—a consummate illusionist—killed Tamara’s parents, Tamara got smart and hid in an abandoned tube station that Prentis used to call home. We handled Alia and her ilk, and the girls gave up their “pit of sadness,” as I called it. But when I have to heal ten seizing pensioners at the entrance to that very tube station, I know that’s where Tam is. I hit the tracks and start running toward it, knowing she’s not alone.

  Walled behind an impressive stack of cement blocks, the station usually goes unmolested. I enter to the sounds of combat, those huge bricks being hurled and smashed into dust. Tamara is as impressive as ever in her open trench coat, open-finger gloves, Gore-Tex T-shirt, and baggy jeans. Her target is a diminutive, super-dark Indian man with no shoes or shirt. Every sixty-pound block Tam throws at him with her telekinesis, the Indian either dodges or destroys with one blow. Another Liminal.

  I reach out to give him the Dame’s cancer, but where I should feel a four limbs and a head there is only dense void in the shape of a human body. I’m terrified. This thing was not born; it was made out of cold and absence.

  I push past my fear, cut off any receptive senses my healing usually offers, and infect his . . . its . . . “bones” with a rampant marrow infection. That stops his jackrabbit punching moving sessions. Briefly.

  “Tam, you okay?” I shout, trying to get closer to her, rounding the semi-dazed Indian like he’s a wounded animal.

  “She’s gone, Tag!” she shouts back, using her mouth and mind.

  “Dial it back! You’re too loud.” And like that, London can calm down again. It’s an afterthought for her. “Who’s gone?”

  “Prentis! We were supposed to meet two hours ago, but she’s gone!”

  “The healer.” Never heard such a voice. It’s a restrained maliciousness, a voice to be heard in the dark chill of space. I guess Nordeen’s new assassin doesn’t care much for me.

  “Bring it in, kid.” I tell Tam. I haven’t just been living with the girls. I’ve been training them to fight. And, more importantly, to work in concert with each other and me. Personality clashes aside, we fight in unison. Tam takes the cue, pushing her long dark hair aside. I pull butterfly knives from my sleeves, up my reflex muscle coordination, and lock in on the assassin.

  “What is he?” Tamara demands, lifting two cement blocks behind the man silently while we all circle each other. As usual, Tam thinks we can handle anything. But this . . . entity just incorporated the bone infection into its body in under ten seconds and seems no worse for wear.

  “It ain’t liminal . . .” is all I can say before Tam launches the two blocks silently at the back of the Indian’s head. He responds with perfect backwards weaves that leave Tam and I avoiding those very same blocks. We’re separated, and I launch one knife dead center at the stranger’s head.

  Vipers can’t move as fast as this guy. He catches, turns, and re-launches my blade directly into my sternum in less time than it took me to throw it. Off pure instinct I grow five inches of bone at my solar plexus in the millisecond before it hits me.

  “Tag!” Again Tamara with the shouting. Only this time it’s directed at the Indian. She should know I’m okay. I heal quick. But the shock of seeing me caught off guard triggered something in her. She’s given up on bricks and seized the Indian by the short and curlies. She’s literally trying to pull his head off his body, yet somehow he’s resisting.

  “You don’t understand . . . ,” he says in a voice so calm I almost believe him.

  “Well, your powers of explanation suck.” Tam jokes. She feels in control.

  “Go easy, kid. He might know about Prentis,” I tell her as I pull the butterfly knife from my chest.

  She makes a rage-filled rookie telepath mistake and enters the Indian’s mind. Whatever pestilence she finds in there fucks her concentration and balance. She drops the Indian and is out of commission. I square up.

  “Best thing for you to do right now is tell me where Prentis is then go back to Nordeen and remind him of the kindness he extended to me.” The shadow in an Indian body stiffens at Nordeen’s name.

  “I don’t know this Prentis. And Nordeen is not one to extend kindness.” The Indian doesn’t move on me. Instead he sidesteps back and to the remaining sidewall. From the hole in the cement blocks, a younger guy—black with long dreads, in beige and black casual clubwear—steps into the dilapidated station. I don’t know him, but I recognize his smell.

  “Narayana.” His voice chastises the Indian after he sees Tam. “What did you do?”

  “I am the sharp knife the inexperienced cut themselves on.”

  I scan Tam quickly. Physically she’s fine. “If you’ve done permanent damage, death will be a holiday,” I let him know. Right as beige boy tries to speak, Samantha, my Sam, comes through the hole, smelling of her sweet and foreign smoke, the same scent that stranger number two reeks of. Her deep black skin is set off perfectly by her dark purple blouse. She runs to me immediately, wrapping my waist with her arms, her tight cornrows in my face. Part of her ability is a control of pheromones, and, though it rarely works with me, I feel her attempt to flood me with calming doses. Her tight oval face betrays her, though. She’s angry.

  “Mico, get him out of here. His kind and mine never mix well. I told you!” she says in her slight Ethiopian accent, pointing at the shadow of a thing in the corner: Narayana.

  “Tell me you’re okay,” Sam whispers in my ear.

  “I’m fine,” I lie. She holds my face in her hands and stares me into believing my own words. “I’m fine.”

  The Indian disappears without a sound. Beige boy, Mico, is kneeling patiently next to Tamara. I move to intercept him, but Samantha puts a gentle hand right where the blade was, asking me in her own way to wait.

  “It’s okay, Tamara. You can let it all go. He’s gone. You’re safe.” Mico is sincere . . . and more: his voice holds a chorus of thoughts, a low chattering hum. He scans as human . . . and more. It’s that scent. The smoke Samantha venerates.

  “You don’t know anything,” Tamara hisses through tears. “You don’t understand. None of you do. Prentis is gone.”

  “We’ll find her,” I tell her, squatting with the both of them.

  “No, Tag.” She grabs hold of me like a drowning woman. “She’s not gone from London. She’s gone from the planet. I can’t find her anywhere. She’s disappeared. She’s dead.”

  Chapter Two

  Sam co-signed on Mico, claiming she’s been meaning to have us meet. Tam ceded to t
he retreat despite her long-standing distrust of Samantha. She swears I reek of the Ethiopian every time I come back from hanging with her.

  “I did this?” Tamara asked as she surveyed the damage of her psychic tantrum. While the panic was done, the wreckage of people, overturned buses, and destroyed shops was just beginning to come together.

  “I didn’t mean to . . . ,” my girl started.

  “I know.” I stopped her. “Business time, girl. We deal with the guilt later.” Sam noticed my work tone with a distant curiosity but said nothing.

  I half thought Mico was going to walk us to Eel Pie Island until a silver town car rounded the corner by Battersea Park—piloted by the Indian. Mico stepped in like he was expecting it to be there all along. Samantha held the door open for us, but Tam stiffened at moving in.

  “I give you my word. Narayana won’t harm you.”

  “What good’s your word then?” Tam snapped back in her proper London tough accent.

  “Not the time,” I say, pushing gently past the both of them and getting in the car. Their antipathy is almost biological. Most people conform to Samantha’s desires, unconscious of her sway. Tamara’s telepathy gives her complete awareness of her psychic state and a latent distrust of any influence. Thankfully, her training kicks in. There’ll be time enough for the penny-ante shit once we lay eyes on Prentis.

  Whatever Narayana is gets me sick just by looking at him. And I don’t get sick. But a little girl I promised to protect, a girl Tam and I both call our heart, is missing. Somehow, despite her shit life, Prentis has managed to hold on to the joy of each moment with a kind of reckless abandon—an abandon I witnessed die in Tamara’s eyes the day she sliced Alia in two. That little animal girl shared her joy, her love, with us in a way that made us better, stronger. I focus on her voice, her laugh, her psychotic wardrobe choices as the not-human Indian careens through accidents and open road with the same savage coordination that made him an impossible target in the tube station. We’re at the Twickenham Rivers Bridge to Eel Pie Island quicker than we have a right to be. No one speaks the entire ride, though I feel the power and the eyes of two annoyed women on me. Even Mico hides the muscle twitch of a smirk as I sit between them.

  “Please stay close to me, Tamara,” Mico requests as we’re about to exit the car. “Your . . . troubles didn’t go unnoticed by our community. Some may still consider you a threat.”

  “Insightful folks here then, ennit?” my girl snaps.

  “More than you know,” Mico agrees and exits the car.

  Apparently Eel Pie Island used to be rocker central back in the day. Listen to the island residents and they’ll bore you with this band and that artist that used to live on the island in the Thames. In the late ’90s the seminal hotel on the island burned to the ground, and it’s functioned as a refuge for the financially stable artistic since. Mico says it’s also a seat of ley lines crossing the Red Dragon’s Head, whatever the hell that means.

  Those on the street smile when they see Mico, then glare hard when they see Tamara. Narayana stayed with the car, so only Samantha and I tail behind them. From art houses and mixed-up two bedrooms, groups of humans no smaller than five give our crew a cautious twice-over as we make our way to the remains of the burned-out hotel, now being rebuilt. None of them are Liminal or whatever Narayana is, but they are not . . . typical. They’re breathing like they’re taking turns supplying air to an invisible body. To a one, all their biorhythms are coordinated.

  “Floors three and below are perfectly safe,” Mico says, leading us through a set of wall-sized double doors to a banquet hall on the first floor. A half-room ebony wood table and elaborate window and door moldings are the only hints at the room’s previous ostentatiousness. “We’re still working on construction above. I had folks bring some honey wine and fruit. The bathrooms are at the end of the hall. I’d love the opportunity to talk, answer any and all questions, but I need to calm the community down. Might take a few hours.”

  “Prentis—” Tam starts.

  “Thanks for the kindness,” I interrupt. “We’ll wait here.”

  “I promise we’ll find your friend,” Mico says with a sincerity that makes me want to believe. He leaves, and I notice his swagger and American accent.

  “Taggert,” Sam starts.

  “Can we get some alone time?” I ask Sam without turning to look at her.

  Mico, Narayana, this island; Samantha’s known about all of this and told me nothing. I’ve had enough with lies and mistrust in my life. I hear the double doors close behind me.

  “Skank,” Tamara says.

  “What happened?”

  “Can I show you?” Meaning, can she replay the events in my mind? Between us, and Prentis, we’ve gone days not speaking, using our powers with and on each other in a more effective form of communication than words could ever be. But right now, I need words.

  “Use your words,” I snap.

  “You mad at me?”

  “I’m worried you don’t understand what’s going on. We’re supposed to be laying low, remember? Sight unseen. But you just psychically pimp-slapped all of London. By mistake. Then you launched yourself into the mind of an I-don’t-even-know-what. Now you can’t even say how you got all wound up.”

  “I can, it just . . .”

  “Hurts. I know, kid. But you run from the hurt it just gets worse. Words force your brain to make meaning. And that’s what we need now, meaning.”

  She nods, breathes deeps, squats to the ground, and then stands again, her eyes only slightly wet. I pull up a large, puffy green upholstered chair, and she does the same.

  “We were doing our hide-and-seek practice, you know?” Her first lesson was to hide in plain sight. Tamara taking advantage of people’s peripheral blindness, Prentis blending into what she called the primitive musk, the general sense of humanity that lacks definition.

  “Was hiding down by the wharf. Going for a challenge given all the rats and gulls, yeah? But I’m so focused on them, the rats, I miss this stray dog just staring at me from one of the ships. So I call it, figuring she got me. So I go public, let all the dogs, rats, birds, everyone see me, yeah? Nothing. So I call and that’s when I felt it . . .”

  “No connection.”

  “Not a thing, Tag. I’ve felt her on one level or another since we all linked up. Even masked, even hiding, there’s a Prentis-shaped hole. Same with you. But there was nothing. Looked as best I could through every set of eyes in London . . .”

  “Look through eyes here?” I ask.

  “Say again?”

  “You get any Eel Pie eyes?” She thinks about it then shakes her head, no. “Think she’s here?” Tam asks.

  “Doubt this bunch would be able to hold her if she didn’t want to be held. Plus bringing us here would be dumb.” I go silent, so she continues.

  “I look best I can through as many eyes as I can. Nothing. I know I should’ve checked with you first, but I got scared. I listened to the world, every thought, just trying to find mention of her. Nothing. No one. I freaked. I’m sorry that I lost it, but I fucking lost it. I’ve never felt someone just go like that. Not even Mom . . . I didn’t realize I was projecting. I just went to the place I knew she’d go if there was a problem. I was there maybe ten minutes before that—what was that guy?—came.”

  “She seeing anyone?” I ask.

  “What? Like, shagging? Piss off.”

  “New friends? Old enemies?”

  “We’re her only real friends, and you know what happened to her old enemies.” Tam pauses, goes to the gigantic red stained-glass windows, and looks out at the Thames. For a second she looks like her mother.

  “She dead, Tag?”

  “No,” I say, standing and going to her. Much as Prentis’s disappearance is getting to her, I know where the look of concern comes from, and I won’t avoid it. “You never told me you felt your mom’s . . . death.”

  “It wrecked me.” She chokes.

  “It wasn’t the ab
sence,” I tell her, standing behind her, bearing witness to the same low-hanging sky going gray. “It was the fading of her . . . self on the mental plane. That can’t be replicated. Dead is dead. I don’t know what happened to Prentis, but you didn’t feel that fade. She’s not dead.”

  It doesn’t last long. It’s brief, strong and swift: she hugs me. For a few seconds, I feel like a father.

  “Right, so who are these hippies then?” Tam viciously massacres all the tears on her light brown face.

  “Fucking mystery.” I exhale, grabbing a bottle of honey wine, and pour two glasses. “But a synchronized one. The rank and file outside breathe together like a well-coordinated machine. You notice how Mico knew where the car would be?”

  “Why don’t you ask your girlfriend?” she taunts, taking the glass.

  “Quiet now. Listen. We both know these folks can’t hold us. Samantha probably knows as well, so shut up and listen. We hear anything we don’t like, I hit them all blind. You psyche them all out and we rabbit.”

  “We could take them all. They’re just . . .” She stops herself.

  “Question marks,” I say softly. “Human or otherwise. We don’t know what we’re dealing with. And the last thing that Narayana is . . . is human. Gain info, that’s the plan. We’re not here for slap-boxing. We’re here for Prentis, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she agrees. “Do you think it’s him? Making his move?”

  “Smells like him. But it’s too early to tell.”

  Nordeen’s obsession with Liminals is pathological. His predilection is to attack with another’s powers, making his angle of assault and egress always a mystery. He wanted Prentis and Tamara when I broke away three years ago but stayed his hand out of what I assumed was affection for me. Still, he is the boogeyman I trot out to the girls when they complain about training.