No Earthly Treason

by Genevra Black

  “Uh … hi,” Edie ventured.

  The man jerked his head to the side slightly to look at her, hair hanging in his face. He looked like a drowned person. It was clear to Edie that he wasn’t human—or, at least, not a living human. She just had to hope that he was supposed to be here and hadn’t done anything to harm Matilda.

  “We’re, uh, looking for Matilda Ardelean. Is she home?”

  The man stared her down for a few seconds. Just when it seemed he was never going to answer her, quick little footsteps echoed from somewhere deeper in the penthouse and a familiar voice called out, “I’m coming! I’ll be right there!”

  It was only another moment before Edie recognized Matilda coming into view behind the man, though she didn’t look quite as glamorous as when Edie had first met her. She’d traded her elaborate hairstyle and diamond-encrusted gown for capris, a simple ponytail, a casual button down over a tank top, and pink latex gloves.

  “Mulțumesc, Antoniu,” she said as she touched the man’s shoulder and gently brushed him out of the way.

  Antoniu lingered for a moment, staring at Fisk in particular, before he disappeared.

  “Edie!” Matilda’s smile was enormous, exposing her elongated canines as she drew Edie in and gave her a kiss on both cheeks and a tight hug. She did the same to Mercy, careful not to disturb her crutches. “I’m so happy that you’re here. I hope you traveled well?”

  “Hi, Matilda. We caught an Uber,” Edie lied. Probably best not to say, Your ex brought us but he can’t stand the sight of you so he didn’t even come say hi. “You’re not that far from my neighborhood.”

  “Please, call me Tilda.” The wight waved an over-sized, rubbery hand. “And don’t mind me, I always ask about the journey. I suppose it’s left over from the days when you could get eaten by a wyvern or impaled by a Catholic while traveling to the next town over. Please, come in!”

  “What is a Catholic?” Fisk stage-whispered to Mercy as the three of them stepped into the penthouse.

  She patted his arm. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

  The penthouse that stretched out in front of them was a bizarre mix of cutting-edge technology and very old personal effects. Three of the four walls featured floor-to-ceiling windows, with giant oil paintings, maps, and tapestries hanging in the remaining space . Unlike Indriði’s place, there were no mazelike hallways, just an open plan that started in an enormous living room. The floors were sleek black wood; couches and a long sectional surrounded a shiny entertainment center, while in the leftmost corner was a white grand piano on an elevated platform. Not an inch of the place wasn’t luxe or lush, whether the fittings were modern or antique.

  Edie looked around as Tilda walked through the living room, into a kitchen-and-dining-room big enough to fit a chef’s dream kitchen and a formal dining table. The table itself, scratched and pitted, looked like it had been hewn from a tree in one slab. Its legs were ornately carved, intertwined in a way that reminded Edie of a Celtic knot. It definitely wasn’t from the last century or two; it might have been even older.

  Paired with those tapestries, the paintings…. Edie had never thought about it before, but Tilda must be ancient.

  “We were just finishing up draining the pool,” the wight said, stripping off her gloves and laying them on the counter. “I’m having some nice boys come and get the saltwater and everything set up tomorrow.”

  Mercy grinned, though her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Tomorrow? That soon?”

  “You’d be amazed what mortal men will do for an extra thousand dollars and a pretty Eastern European accent,” Tilda said, then laughed humorlessly. “Or maybe you wouldn’t. Either way, a saltwater pool! How chic!” She seemed genuinely excited, which was fortunate, considering they didn’t have anything to offer her in return for her help.

  Edie smiled. “Was that your roommate?” she asked politely, nodding to the stairway down which Antoniu had disappeared.

  The wight looked confused for a moment. “Oh! Him? No, he’s just an old friend. He runs errands for me and helps me around the house a couple days a week.”

  “Is he a vampire like you?” Mercy asked, ever-curious about the world into which she’d been thrust.

  “He’s a wraith, actually.”

  Edie blinked. If she remembered correctly, wraiths were what wights left behind when they sucked an enthralled human dry, killing them. The last wraiths she’d tangled with had turned into twisted, ghostly humanoids with branchlike limbs—and even before they had transformed, they’d been creepy and animalistic. Antoniu hadn’t exactly been the picture of hospitality, but he hadn’t looked like he was about to kill them. “He just … helps you?”

  “The high-wight that turned him died a long time ago. Wraiths don’t typically last long after their masters die. Most go mad, unbridled, and cause chaos and are put down.” Tilda leaned against one of the kitchen’s black quartz counter tops. “In the early stages of panic, he ran through the village and ended up at my home. I took him in and taught him to live on his own. So, the years go by, and this and this”—she gestured vaguely—”and I move here around the turn of the century. After a while, he wrote me telling me he was moving here, too, and he’s been helping me with little things ever since.”

  It was a nice story, but Edie noticed that Tilda’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. It wasn’t until her next statement that she understood why:

  “He knows I get lonely.”

  There was a period of silence where Tilda turned and carried her gloves to the sink so she could hang them over the edge. Edie watched her shoulders rise as she took a deep breath. Then, she turned around and smiled at Mercy and Fisk.

  “I don’t think we met formally at the party.” She came forward and offered her hand to Mercy first. “Matilda Ardelean.”

  Mercy shook her hand and said, “I love your accent.”

  The vampire smiled, then took a step back to take in all of Fisk. “Wow,” she said playfully, “so many muscles.”

  Fisk managed a smile, gills flaring up a bit. He was looking a lot better now that the promise of saltwater was in his immediate future. In the imperious tone he reserved for people who didn’t yet know what a dingus he was, he said, “You stand before Fiskbein, Matilda Ardelean.”

  “I certainly do.” She chuckled and brushed past them. “I say let’s not waste another moment, eh? Come, come. I have a little elevator just around this corner if you need it, Mercy—I’m happy to see it finally get some use. I have all the latest wards installed on the penthouse, so you’ll be perfectly safe, and your parents are welcome to come by all they like. The pool is downstairs, your rooms upstairs….”

  “You coming?” Mercy asked over her shoulder when she noticed that Edie hadn’t moved an inch from the kitchen.

  “I’ll just stay here, thanks. I have to make a phone call anyway.”

  Mercy gave her a suspicious look, but said nothing more as she disappeared after Fisk and Tilda.

  Edie wasn’t much of a snoop—she didn’t usually feel the urge to unlock other people’s phones or open their bathroom cabinets or look at their internet history—but a special opportunity had just been dropped in her lap. What Indriði had said earlier … she supposed she wasn’t surprised that Astrid might be keeping things from her, but Cal was so frank. Why would he lie?

  She had to know. And if she wanted to know why he was lying and what he was lying about, she had to learn more about him. What better place to look for a clue to his true past than his ex’s home?

  Unsure of where to start, she slowly made her way back into the living room. Besides a few select pieces and the tech, most of the furniture here was antique, ranging from Edwardian to straight up ancient-looking. She opened the drawers of a sideboard that kept a bowl of keys and other miscellanea, but found nothing except letter-writing materials.

  She closed the drawer, careful to make as little sound as possible as she stepped up to the piano and fingered the keys. She wasn’
t Mozart, but she knew how to play a few things—though drunkenly plunking the intro of “The Phantom of the Opera” on a Casio keyboard wasn’t quite the same as tickling the ivories of a grand piano in a millionaire’s penthouse apartment. With her left hand, she worked of couple notes of the bass line of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” which seemed appropriate, considering.

  As she did, she peered past the piano’s cover and noticed a small wooden trunk nestled between a bookshelf and the frosted glass doors of the terrace. Something about it drew her, and her fingers stilled on the keys. A moment later, she hopped down from the piano platform and went to it, testing the ancient lock.

  It opened.

  Inside was a veritable treasure trove of documents. Edie flipped through letters of inheritance, immigration papers, certificates of all kinds—death, marriage, degrees—some so old that they were barely legible. She carefully sifted through the papers, moving them aside until she found something that called out to her. It looked like a thick, leather-bound book, and when she opened it, she discovered it was a photo album.

  When Edie turned the first page, which was stuffed with more miscellaneous documents, a tintype stared back at her. Though her hairstyle and makeup were much different, Tilda hadn’t changed that much—she still had the small, heart-shaped smile and big black eyes. The frilly get-up she wore made her look like a little doll. Edie peeled back the edge of the picture and found a date: 1857, although, judging by some of the other decor, Tilda was much older than that. A ticket to something called The Rose of Castille accompanied the portrait, along with a pressed daisy and a hand-painted postcard of a river.

  The next couple of pages were more of the same, though the dates changed along with what Tilda wore. A slimmer, less frilly dress in 1882; a bathing costume that resembled a tent more than anything in 1896; puffy trousers and a bicycle in 1901. The page after that featured a picture of Tilda bundled up in furs and grinning in front of the Statue of Liberty. Pictures of her in a World War I nurse’s outfit followed; then dancing in a jazz club, with cropped hair and dark makeup, her mouth open in a gleeful shout.

  Glamor shots with perfectly coiffed hair, smoking in her SS Tourer, the Great March on Washington, kissing another woman in a sparkly pantsuit, Polaroids of clubbing in neon fishnets and hoop earrings. 70s, 80s, 90s … each decade passed. The people in the photos changed, grew older and disappeared, but Tilda’s face was constant, as young and fresh as in that first tintype.

  Finally, Edie found what she was looking for.

  Cal’s face jumped out at her the moment she turned the page. It was a dark photo, and the disposable camera had caught his glamour, but she recognized the eyes even when they weren’t clouded with decay. Tilda was leaning in to him, holding a glass of red wine and smiling. He wasn’t smiling, but he had a playful twinkle in his eye. He looked almost content.

  Edie pressed her mouth into a hard line as she shifted this picture aside to look at the one tucked behind it. Some kind of party was going on. Cal was sitting on a couch with his arms stretched up above his head, shirt riding up a bit. Tilda was standing in front of him, talking animatedly to someone out of the shot. And the look on his face … he was looking at her with the world in his eyes.

  The next page almost made Edie drop the book. Slate eyes stared back at her—a familiar pointy chin, a full goatee, high cheekbones. Dad. Cal sat next to him, glancing away.

  “Edie, what are you doing?”

  The voice startled her so much she nearly threw the book out the window. She shut it and tried to stuff it back into the box, but it was no use—Tilda had already caught her snooping through her things.

  With dread, she looked over her shoulder. “Sorry, I was just….”

  Tilda was looking at her with a drawn expression. “I left Mercy and Fiskbein to explore the upstairs by themselves,” she said carefully, coming a little closer and looking down at the leather-bound book. Her expression evened out a bit, and she sighed. “If you wanted to look at that, you only had to ask.”

  “Sorry.” Edie looked down again. “You have a lot of really awesome photos.”

  “Ha, if you think that’s a lot, you should see all the paintings I have in storage.” Tilda smirked and sat on a nearby settee, resting her arm along the back of it. “I should probably get rid of some of them … but it’s not because I want to look at my own face all day! They let me remember the people who painted them, my friends. If I ever miss this or that paramour or confidante, I can go back and touch their brushstrokes or read their letters.” Her smirk faded.

  “Right.” Edie dared to open the photo album again and flipped to the back. There were other photos of Cal here, too—most of him working on her SS Tourer. The edges of many of them were faded, much more so than any of the others, even the old ones. Edie got the feeling they were well-loved.

  “What made you want to look through my photos? I’m really not that interesting.”

  Edie begged to differ. Still, she answered, “I was looking for pictures of Cal. You know … even though we spend a lot of time together, I don’t know that much about him.”

  “If you wanted to know more about Cal, why not ask him?”

  “I dunno if you’ve noticed, but he’s not very forthcoming.” She sighed and turned to the picture of her father, lingering. “I didn’t know you all hung out together.”

  “Hm.” Tilda shifted. “I wouldn’t say I hung out with your father. I just wanted to be where Cal was, and mostly, he was with Richard.”

  “Right.”

  Edie turned the page back and fingered the plastic over her dad’s face. He was smirking. Had Mom known where he was when he was going to these parties or doing whatever necromancer stuff he did? Had she known about Cal? For that matter, did she know about the supernatural at all?

  Edie hadn’t seen her mom in a long time. No one had even called to tell her Edie was in the hospital, and maybe that was for the best. Edie didn’t know why, or what she’d done wrong, but she and her mother didn’t speak anymore. There hadn’t been a falling out or a fight, they had simply parted ways and not spoken for over a year. They weren’t even friends on social media. Not that Edie had time for social media these days.

  After a while, she looked at Tilda and asked, “What was he like, to you?” She hadn’t had the balls to ask Astrid in-depth questions about their relationship, and she already knew full well how Cal felt on the subject. It would be interesting to know what Dad had been like in the eyes of other attuned beings. There must be a reason everyone had been so scared of him.

  “He was….” Tilda sighed, humming as if searching for the word. “He was different. He had many sides to him. He could go from friendly and caring to calculating and focused in a second, but whatever he was doing, he was intense about it. Those eyes pinned you where you stood and demanded the absolute truth from you.”

  “He sounds scary.” Edie didn’t remember him like that at all, but she knew better by now.

  Tilda nodded. “He was intimidating. And I was 600 years older than him! You never really knew what to expect because of his … self-serving nature. He might do something wonderfully generous and good one day and then something dreadfully evil the next—as long as it suited his needs.”

  Edie closed her eyes for a moment. She knew he was bad, but the reality still stung every time she heard it again. It hurt partially because, even though she now knew he’d been a garbage human being, she still loved him. She still found herself missing him.

  She was, apparently, the only one. Even Astrid, whom he’d been close with, didn’t seem particularly broken up about his violent end. After what Indriði had told her, Edie almost found herself wondering if the Reach had caused his death, not the Gloaming.

  “I’m sorry, Edie,” Tilda said genuinely, her voice soft. “I know it’s not easy to find these things out about someone you care for.”

  She shook her head and flipped the subject. This wasn’t what she was here for, anyway. She needed to learn
more about Cal. “What about Cal? What was he like back then?”

  The vampire shifted in her seat, frowning. “Hm … he was quiet. Somber. He wasn’t permitted to smoke or drink, but he sometimes did secretly. When he first started fixing my roadster, he didn’t say much to me, even though I really did want to make friends. There was something about him.” She smiled wistfully. “I could tell there were big things going on inside of him; huge, complex thoughts. It made me ache that he couldn’t express them. I tried to be a refuge.”

  Something Cal had said to her a while ago came back to her: You don’t know the things your father made me do. He was right, but he’d never expanded on it. Edie looked up at Tilda. “What exactly was Cal’s job, anyway?”

  Tilda shifted again. “Ah … a servant, I think. Probably other things. I couldn’t tell you the particulars.”

  “But didn’t you date him for a long time? Like, five years?”

  “He didn’t like to talk about it.” Her tone was harsher. “Like I said, I was a refuge.”

  “Do you know who he was before he died?”

  “No idea.”

  Edie could see that Tilda was getting uncomfortable, but she couldn’t stop now. She had to gather as much information as she could. “Did he know about me? Did I ever meet him before?”

  “Your— your father kept you very secret, far away from everyone else. I knew he had a child, but nothing more. I’m not sure if Cal ever knew you.” The wight crossed her arms. “I really think you should ask Cal about these things, not me.”

  “Maybe.” Edie chewed on her lip. “But I don’t think he’ll tell me the truth.”

  “He takes time to open up.”

  No, I mean, I think he’ll lie to me. And I think you’re lying to me, too. She doubted Tilda was lying out of malice—she was probably just protecting Cal—but Edie didn’t mention it. Best not to anger the only person who could keep her friends safe.

  She risked one last question. “Cal … he had to have some kind of income in Vegas, right? Do you know where he gets his money?”