by Kit Alloway
“Of Trembuline?” Feodor asked. “I think he has attempted to use philosophy to justify doing whatever he wants. He advocates anarchy in order to rationalize his prepubescent sense of alienation and his thoroughly American desire to be special.” Feodor handed the phone back to Will. “I also think he should be castrated.”
Josh choked on her hot chocolate.
“But didn’t you believe basically the same thing?” Will asked. “I mean, you tried to end the World because you were in so much pain. You put your needs before everyone else’s.”
“My actions came from a place of deep despair and a belief that ending the World would prevent people from continuing to suffer,” Feodor said, “a concept which, in the strictest sense, was not incorrect. I acted out of compassion, albeit in a destructive way.”
“So if that’s what you believe, why aren’t you still trying to end the World?”
Will held his breath after the question, afraid he had given himself away, but Feodor only stared out the window. “I am no longer in a place of deep despair.”
Will honestly didn’t know what to make of that.
They reached Trembuline’s house shortly before ten at night. He lived in a fairly large house, a recent construction, and children’s bikes and pogo sticks were scattered across the front lawn. The lights were on inside.
“All right,” Josh said, “this is it.”
“Do we have a plan?” Will asked.
“Not really.”
“Please,” Feodor said, “allow me to take the lead.”
“Why would I do that?” Josh asked.
“He may take someone older more seriously.”
Josh considered. “All right,” she said. “But no funny business.”
They knocked on the door. A moment later, a little girl in a pirate costume opened it. “Hi,” she said.
“Ellie,” a woman said, following her into the entryway. “You’re not supposed to open the door unless you know who’s there.” She smiled at her visitors while putting her hands on the little girl’s shoulders and pulling her close. “How can I help you?”
Will heard the sound of other children in another room. Not surprisingly, it sounded like a lot of children.
“May we speak to Mr. Trembuline?” Feodor asked.
“Are you selling something?”
“No, no. We are fans of his work and wish to discuss his philosophies.”
“You probably should have called his office,” the woman said, but she shouted, “Aurek!” over her shoulder.
“Hey,” Trembuline said when he walked in and saw Will. This time he was wearing board shorts and an airbrushed tank top that read MINDY’S DIVORCE SATURNALIA! “You came back. Cool.”
“Mr. Trembuline?” Feodor asked. He held out his hand. “It is an honor to meet you.”
They shook.
“What can I do you for?” Trembuline asked.
“We are hoping to speak with you about your work.”
“I’m hanging out with my kids tonight.”
“Please, we have driven several hours. We will not take too much of your time.”
Trembuline shrugged. “Okay, just for a few minutes. Come on up to my study.”
Trembuline’s study had a lot of posters and photos on the walls. The posters were for ska bands, and the photos were of his multitudinous children.
The three of them sat down on the couch, and Trembuline straddled the desk chair.
“What do you want to talk to me about?” Trembuline asked.
“Let me begin,” Feodor said, “by telling you what an appreciator of your work I am. There has been so much talk of government spy agencies and drones that can kill us from out of the blue; your philosophy of decentralized power and complete transparency is refreshing.”
“Thanks. I’ve been thrilled with the events since the dream-walker election. I think we’re heading toward a really exciting collapse.”
“You were not pleased with the results of the election?” Feodor asked.
“I’m not pleased with any election that increases governmental control of private actions.”
“But I am curious—you say that you disapprove of government, yet you endorsed Peregrine Borgenicht during the election.”
“Peregrine is a great man,” Trembuline said. “I rarely meet anyone so willing to go after what they want.”
“Did you know that he staged dreams in order to convince his wife to marry him?”
Will hadn’t known that, and apparently Josh hadn’t either. “What?” she said sharply.
Feodor held up a hand to quiet her, his gaze never straying from Trembuline’s.
“I didn’t know that,” Trembuline admitted, “but I’m not surprised. The heart wants what the heart wants, right?”
“Yes, of course, but what did his wife want? They were quite unhappy together.”
“Every marriage is unhappy in one way or another. Maybe marrying her was what his heart wanted at the time, but later his heart wanted something else. If that’s true, he should have divorced her.”
“That seems to imply that following one’s inner wisdom does not always lead to happiness.”
“Happiness isn’t the goal. Union with the inner wisdom is the goal. The ability to hear that wisdom clearly and act on it without hesitation, without limiting oneself to behaviors that society find acceptable, that’s the goal.”
Delicately, Feodor said, “What if other people’s wisdom tells them to hurt your children?”
Trembuline smiled. “I don’t make exceptions for myself,” he said. “I’m not a hypocrite.”
Feodor let the statement hang in the air before asking, “Why did Peregrine Borgenicht send you to interview Geoff Simbar?”
Will noted the hardness that entered Feodor’s expression as he asked the question, and the anxiety that entered Trembuline’s expression at hearing it.
“I interviewed Geoff for my own research,” Trembuline said.
“And then you reported back to Peregrine,” Feodor insisted.
“I might have mentioned the interviews to him. Hey, you guys want some energy drinks?”
“No,” Will said firmly.
“What did Geoff tell you? What was his mental state?” Feodor asked.
“What did you say your name is?”
“I didn’t,” Feodor told him. “How much of what happened to Geoff did he remember?”
“A lot,” Trembuline admitted. “More than I would expect a normal person to remember.”
“More in what sense?”
“He remembered an astonishing number of details, but he had no sense of context. He would tell me the same thing three times. I’m not sure he even realized I was the same person from one interview to the next.”
“How much of the experiments Feodor Kajażkołski performed on him did he remember?”
“All of them, I suspect. But he couldn’t connect the dots. The details of one experiment were jumbled up with another, they were all out of order.”
“And where is Peregrine?”
Trembuline smiled uneasily. “I’m not sure. You know, speaking of Kajażkołski, you kind of resemble—”
Feodor’s voice grew softer but somehow more dangerous. “Where is Peregrine?”
“I don’t know, honestly. We’ve been communicating through e-mail.”
“Before or after you broke Geoff Simbar out of prison for him?”
Will watched Trembuline’s robust color fade.
“I didn’t—that’s not—I think he might be hiding out in his basement—”
“You think?” Feodor repeated.
“Yeah, I think—maybe…”
The pleasant little smile Feodor had worn throughout the interview vanished. “Would you like to know what I think? I think you are a self-centered fool who has co-opted others’ lives to bolster a theory that a first-year philosophy student could knock over with a sigh. I think you are so in love with yourself that you have lost all perspective and all empathy.
And I think that you interviewed Geoff Simbar at the behest of Peregrine Borgenicht, and that you are continuing to help Peregrine because of the mistaken belief that breaking rules will make others admire your independence and nerve.” He stood up, and Josh and Will scrambled to do the same. “I think that you will tell us where Peregrine is, or we will quietly beat you to death.”
Uh-oh, Will thought.
“You aren’t going to beat me to death in my own home,” Trembuline said, but his voice shook. “My kids are downstairs.”
Feodor smiled again. “Perhaps the discovery of your body will bind them together as a family.”
Will flashed Josh a frantic look behind Feodor’s back. Feodor’s own gaze was a steady drill boring into Trembuline’s eyes.
“Feodor,” Josh said.
Trembuline inhaled deeply, and Will knew he was about to scream. Feodor must have seen it, too, because he moved like a tiger. Before even Josh could react, he had Trembuline’s chair flipped backward and his foot on the man’s throat.
“Feodor,” Will said. “Feodor, stop!”
Trembuline made a gargling sound and scratched at Feodor’s boot. To Will’s horror, Feodor removed a small, thin knife from his jacket pocket. He began tossing it from hand to hand, directly above Trembuline’s face.
“As to your treatment of me,” he said conversationally, “I thought it was sloppy.”
“Feodor, stop it,” Josh said, but Feodor’s only response was to begin letting the knife flip a time or two in the air before he caught it.
Do something, Will begged her silently. His own limbs were stiff with panic and uncertainty. Please, do something.
He could see the tension in Josh’s body, the readiness to attack, but she held back. Will didn’t know what she was waiting for, if she trusted that Feodor wouldn’t actually hurt the man, or if she was just hoping his interrogation technique would work.
“Had you bothered to so much as read one of the articles I published on dream ethics,” Feodor said, “you would have found that I abhor people like you, who act only in their own interests with no concern for the welfare of others. They remind me of someone … who could it be?”
Now the knife was flipping too many times for Will to count, flying so high up in the air that it neared the ceiling.
Luckily, Trembuline chose that moment to confess. “Yes, okay, I broke Geoff out of Pryliss.”
“What does Peregrine want with him?”
“He wants his body. He wants to put his own soul in Geoff’s body.”
That was the worst news Will had ever heard.
“Clever,” Feodor said. “And where is he?”
“I swear I don’t know where he is, but I know someone who might. Please don’t drop that knife on me.”
Feodor tossed and caught the knife one last time and held it tight.
“Oh, Jesus, please don’t kill me. I’m sorry. He said he was going to go see someone named Alice Connelly.”
Josh gasped, but Feodor grew as still as a hunting cat. “Who’s—” Will started to ask, and halfway through his sentence Josh and Feodor smashed into each other as Feodor tried to pounce on Aurek and Josh tried to stop him. Aurek screamed, and Will stumbled back against the couch as he scrambled to get away from them.
Josh got her hand around Feodor’s, but not until the knife was inches from Aurek’s throat. “Drop it, or I’ll break your thumb,” she warned.
Feodor’s face was red with blood. His lips snarled and smiled at the same time, and suddenly he was the Feodor that Will had been afraid of for so many months, the fiend who would not only kill Trembuline, but enjoy it.
“I’m warning you,” Josh said. She said something in Polish then, but Feodor didn’t move.
The study office door opened, and a little boy in pajamas said, “Daddy?”
Josh snapped Feodor’s thumb.
Feodor cursed. He did so in Polish, but Will didn’t need a translation to know he was cursing. The little boy screamed. When Feodor dropped the knife, it landed on Aurek’s throat but bounced harmlessly to the side.
Feodor looked at Josh then with an expression Will remembered from the first time they’d met in Feodor’s universe, an expression to shrivel flowers. A dangerous black hatred strobed out of his eyes. Will began to tremble.
But Josh appeared to be immune to it. She stared back just as hard, and then she said, “You looking for round two?”
Feodor muttered something in Polish and stormed into the hallway.
* * *
“You can sit up front,” Will told Feodor when they got back in Josh’s car. He was afraid of having Feodor at his back.
“Where did you get the knife?” Josh demanded, tearing out of the Trembulines’ driveway.
“EBay,” Feodor said.
“I told you no weapons. I made that very, very clear.”
“I live in a bad neighborhood.”
Although Will figured that was probably true, Josh brought the car to a screeching halt—only three doors down from where they’d started—and grabbed Feodor by the chin, forcing him to look at her.
“You listen to me, Fedya. If you think I would hesitate to kill you, think again. It’ll be cathartic.”
“I have no fear of Death.”
Josh put the car in park. “Do you have a fear of prison? Because I have no doubt that Trembuline’s wife is calling the cops, and we can just sit here until they arrive.”
Will was glad he couldn’t see Feodor’s face.
“You wouldn’t,” Feodor hissed.
Josh crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her seat.
“Without me, you’ll never get your friend back,” Feodor said.
She laughed. “You have an astonishing ability to underestimate people, Feodor. Do you really think I’ve been sitting around, letting you return your measly three souls a month? I figured out how the collection device works. I built a second one, a much more powerful one. I’ve already used it to return more than forty souls to Death.”
The explosion of happiness in his chest stunned Will.
Haley, he thought.
“I’ve kept you around because you’ve been helpful with prophesies and figuring out my abilities, but don’t think for a moment that I need you. I’ll have Haley home by the end of the month.” She grinned. “I’m not the stupid little girl you take me for.”
Will was so proud of her in that moment. He’d been so terrified that Feodor was playing her, but she was the one playing him. Whatever else was distracting her, she hadn’t lost sight of the most important thing: bringing Haley home.
“You cannot perform the ritual to enter Death without assistance—”
“You mean somebody to play the singing bowls?” Josh asked, a laugh in her throat. “I built a machine to do all that. Designing a recliner would have been harder.”
Even though he couldn’t see Feodor, Will could feel the waves of fury wafting off of him.
“You aren’t here at the pleasure of the Lords of Death,” Josh said. “You’re here at my pleasure. It’s time you figured that out.”
The car windows were steaming up. Feodor’s resembled frosted glass.
Sirens broke the silence.
“Please start the car,” Feodor said, his words clipped.
“Are we clear?” Josh asked.
A long silence. The sirens grew louder.
“We are clear,” Feodor said.
Josh smiled and started the car.
Twenty−one
Feodor wanted to drive to Alice’s house immediately, but Josh insisted they have his broken thumb treated first.
“Peregrine could be there at this moment,” Feodor said.
“If Peregrine went to see her, he’s long gone by now.”
Feodor finally convinced her to buy a disposable cell phone and use it to call Alice’s house. One of her grandchildren answered, and Will pretended to be the police and gave a phony story about having received a tip that something was wrong there. Th
e grandson said everything was fine.
“Satisfied?” Josh asked.
Feodor said nothing.
Because he had no ID and no insurance, Josh had no choice but to drive him back to Tanith and take him to a dream-walker vet who sometimes helped other dream walkers with injuries. Especially when they didn’t want to risk police involvement.
The vet’s name was Philo, and he didn’t seem surprised when they showed up on his doorstep at midnight.
“Hi, Philo,” Josh said.
Feodor held up his hand, from which his thumb dangled grotesquely.
“Looks like a pretty bad sprain,” Philo said, and laughed.
An hour later, they were back on the road.
* * *
Feodor continued to insist that they go immediately to Alice’s, and Josh was more than certain that if she left him at the chair factory, he would find a way to get there on his own—chip on his shoulder be damned.
“You want us to drop you off at home first?” she asked Will.
“In for a penny,” he said.
He hadn’t stopped smiling since she’d revealed how much progress she’d made toward getting Haley back. Will hadn’t smiled at Josh like that in a very long time, and it made her happy and confused at the same time. Did she want his approval? Did she need it? And was it worth having damaged her working relationship with Feodor?
Josh didn’t know.
Alice lived eight hours away by car. They decided to drive as far as they could before finding a hotel. Feodor, of course, wanted to drive all night, but Josh refused to make any promises.
“It never occurred to me that Alice was even still alive,” she admitted as they got onto the highway. “She must be close to a hundred years old.”
“Ninety-eight,” Feodor corrected sourly.
Turning to look into the backseat, Will said, “How do you know where she lives?”
Feodor had his hand, complete with cast, cradled in his lap. He wasn’t in a great mood. “I Googled her.”
Will laughed, and Feodor’s eyes narrowed.
“Sorry,” Will said. “I didn’t realize you knew how to Google things.”
“I never should have let you get the Internet,” Josh said, shaking her head. “So tell me, what did you find out?”
