“I do,” Nan said. “I definitely do. But why here?”
“You fit into this room perfectly. Cool and modern.”
“Ironic,” Nan said, “considering I am apparently ancient.”
“This room captures what you want to be, doesn’t it?” She held up her hand, twitched with sudden purpose, and rushed into the bedroom.
Nan was about to follow when she caught a glimpse of her reflection. She had almost forgotten she was wearing this shapeless dress.
I certainly don’t want to be immortalized in this ugly thing. She glanced at the hall where Sigi had disappeared, hearing rummaging. Nan wasn’t self-conscious, but Sigi might be alarmed to walk back in and find Nan standing in her underwear.
The idea of making Sigi blush was tantalizing. Was it attraction to Sigi herself, or was it attraction to the idea of attraction?
She imagined Sigi’s kiss and the world flooding with color. That’s all I want.
Her skin was warmer now. She ran a hand along her neck, looking back at her reflection. She was more accustomed to her face with makeup on, but Sigi had never known her that way. Her bare face was more androgynous. It was still hard to believe that one guard underground had taken her for a boy.
Nan Davies, she thought. That’s who you are.
She reached for the hem of her dress, crossing her arms to sweep it over her head. Loose as it was, she didn’t have to struggle to get it over her shoulders. It was crumpled on the floor in a moment, baring her thin shoulders to the mirror. She was still wearing underwear from her imprisonment, a plain cotton chemise and drawers, and stockings Thea had loaned her that morning.
“Okay…” Sigi’s voice moved into the hall. “He got a new camera, so—” She broke off when she reached the doorway. “Um—”
“I’m not wearing that ugly old thing for the picture,” Nan said.
“What if my father comes back?”
“It doesn’t show anything.”
“It sure implies a lot.” Sigi was flushed, but she couldn’t stop staring. “You really want me to photograph you in your underwear?”
“Why not?”
Sigi’s eyes clicked over into a mode Nan recognized, from surprise to thinking about the shot. “Sit down on the couch,” she said. She moved to the window, fussing with the curtains. Nan sprawled across the cushions. Even though she had not been nervous about changing for gym in school or wearing a short skirt at work, this moment felt different.
Sigi messed with the camera for a little while, her lips pressed together thoughtfully. She looked up and caught Nan’s eyes.
“Stay like that,” she said softly. “Just like that.” She took one picture, told Nan to look toward the dining table for a profile shot, and took another. “Maybe put an arm up over your head. Lean back?”
After a few more shots, Sigi stopped and regarded Nan for a moment. “I don’t usually take photographs like this. I’m a street photographer. I like to look for the beauty in ugly things, but you’re just…beautiful. I don’t know if I can do you justice.”
“You can certainly flatter.”
“I mean it,” Sigi said. “You don’t seem real. A photograph might ruin you, might turn you into an ordinary girl.” Then she suddenly looked pained. “I’m sorry. That’s actually what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“If you see that in me…I don’t mind. I don’t see it. I see that I’m different, but not the beauty.”
Nan didn’t know how to describe the way Sigi looked at her. The word “hungry” sounded too crude. Closer to awe, but also more than that. She felt as though in giving Sigi permission to look at her so closely and capture her on film, she had offered Sigi some of her power.
“You know,” Sigi said, “the thing about art is that it’s like a quest that never ends. You always have something in your head that is so beautiful, and you never manage to create it. Sometimes you come close. And that moment…is madness. It’s so fleeting. If you’ve tasted it once, you have to keep searching. You look like that moment.”
“Like madness?”
Sigi just looked at her.
Nan stood up from the couch and kissed her hard. She kept her eyes open. Colors flashed in her vision—gold and brown furniture and the blue sky out the window. Her heart hammered. Just let me hold on to this…let me feel.
Sigi’s mouth was yielding and tasted like tears. Her eyes were closed and Nan heard a little catch in her throat. She touched Nan’s back, lightly, like she didn’t want to trap her. Nan ran her fingers through Sigi’s wild hair.
Nan was afraid to stop because she didn’t want to lose the colors. Or this feeling.
Sigi was the one who pulled away. “Nan…” She looked like she knew it was about more than her.
“I don’t ever want to go back,” Nan whispered. The colors in the room had muted, but they weren’t gone, and Nan couldn’t stop staring. The room was so different now. There was the gold upholstery and a blue vase and a green houseplant. Everything was brighter. “I don’t want to see Ingrid again.”
“I understand,” Sigi said. She didn’t need to say but. It was already in the room with them.
Nan walked over to the crumpled dress, picked it up, and slipped it back on. When she poked her head through the collar, the room was gray again.
“This was one of my old haunts,” Sigi said, pointing at what appeared to be an old carriage house converted into a restaurant, wedged between crumbling mansions that had been converted into apartments. The sign said THE BIRD’S NEST. It was open and appeared crowded and dim inside.
“I didn’t know you lived in the Pinsel-Allée district. This isn’t far from where I grew up. I was just over on the bad side of the university.”
“It’s bad here, too, sometimes. Artists like to fight more than you’d think.” Sigi grinned, shoving the door open so a wash of noise and cigarette smoke came over them. Hardly anyone was sitting at the tables; students and bohemian types were standing around talking about the protests and the workers and criticizing the Chancellor. Some looked roughed-up or even had blood on their clothes.
Sigi waved Nan to the bar. They perched on stools. “Two glasses of wine,” Sigi said. “A decent red. We’re honoring the dead.” She smiled briefly at Nan. “That rhymed. Unintentional. It’s the poetry in the air. I hope you like wine—I think we need something classy for our toast.”
“I agree.” Nan put an elbow on the bar counter, enjoying the atmosphere. The thick air reminded her of the Telephone Club. “They must not have power here either,” Nan commented, noticing candles flickering on the bar. As they had shared an awkward meal with Sigi’s father where he mostly talked about his own life, the sun had climbed down the sky.
“Here you are, ladies.” The bartender put down their glasses.
Nan had no more taste for wine than she had for food these days, but she lifted the glass. Sigi met Nan’s eyes. She swallowed. Nan could see she was just trying not to cry.
“To life,” Nan said softly.
“To sunrise,” Sigi replied, even softer. She took a drink. “You know, we could still stay with my father, if you don’t want to go back to Ingrid. As you can see, he and my mother both like to talk about themselves—he’s harmless.”
“I have to go back. I don’t think they’ll let Freddy leave, and Freddy and I both suspect Ingrid put Thea under some kind of enchantment.” Nan kept her voice low. She didn’t trust anyone, even in the anonymity of a noisy restaurant.
“You didn’t tell me about that!”
“I was going to—I just wanted to think about other things. We don’t know much more than that, anyway. Thea just isn’t acting like herself.”
“Do you think Ingrid has some power to make people forget, the way we did underground?” Sigi asked, swigging more wine.
“I don’t know what Ingrid can do,” Nan said. “That’s the problem with magic. You never know what it can do. Maybe that’s why I seem to have trouble using mine. I don’t like the idea of it much.�
��
“If we got Thea out of there, do you think the spell would fade?”
“But what if it didn’t?”
The door of the Bird’s Nest was constantly opening and closing, with some people popping in just to skim the room looking for friends, while others joined the conversation. One young man who had just walked in suddenly approached them and looked at Sigi.
Then he stepped back as if he’d seen a ghost, his pale face dumbstruck. “Sigi,” he said.
“Helmut? What’s going on?” Another fellow approached the first. Everyone seemed edgy, ready to react at the slightest sign of distress.
“Hel,” Sigi said, quickly putting down her drink and lifting her hands. “It’s all right.”
“You were dead!” Hel pointed at her. “Were—were you underground?”
“No.” Sigi’s eyes darted around the room as strangers turned to look at her. “Hey, why don’t we step outside and talk?”
“You can talk in here,” a girl said. “Is it true what he’s saying? Did you find a way to come back from the dead? They’re lying to us, aren’t they? The Chancellor? About the spell?”
This barrage of questions seemed to paralyze Sigi. Nan stood up. “Everyone, please, calm down. It’s a simple mistake. She’s fine. I’m not sure who you are”—she looked at Hel—“but she isn’t, nor has she ever, been dead. I’ve been with her. Who is this, Sigi?” She shot Sigi a dramatic, accusatory glance, hoping everyone would see this as a case of misunderstanding, that Sigi had lied to an old lover or something.
“She was dead,” Hel said. “I saw her body. Margie—her roommate—rang me up when she found Sigi dead in her apartment.”
Sigi seemed to snap into awareness, snatching up her camera bag, grabbing Nan’s arm, and rushing for the door.
“Hey, wait!” Hel cried. He grabbed Nan’s arm, trying to stop them both.
Nan shoved him back, knocking him into the people behind him, then she kept running with Sigi. They darted down the closest alley before the bar crowd could rouse themselves to follow, and then turned again from there.
“Taxi,” Sigi said, spotting a cab. “Taxi!” She flung out her arm, running into the street to stop the driver. They rushed into the backseat and told the driver to return to Sebastian’s headquarters.
“We should have thought of that,” Nan said. “Old acquaintances.”
“I did think of it,” Sigi said. “I wanted to see old friends and explain. I didn’t think they’d be afraid of me—at least, not once I told them.”
“Well, we don’t know how the situation in the city must look from the outside, with the workers appearing last night and the Chancellor’s story. People must be terrified. I’m sure once things calm down, you can explain.”
“That makes sense. But seeing Hel look at me like that…” Sigi brought the camera bag into her lap and put her arms around it.
“Was he a good friend?”
“I had a lot of good friends. Hel and I have known each other since we were kids; he was practically my brother. Margie was a good friend, too. Hilarious, and she’d take good care of you. And Hilda, and Helena…”
“You have a lot of friends,” Nan said, feeling suddenly aware of her own isolated life.
“I did. They’d love you, too.”
“I don’t know.” Nan tried to keep the conversation moving, unsure if any group of people would truly “love” her. “Maybe you could write them letters explaining—it might be less shocking for them that way.”
“You’re right. It was careless of me to hope I’d run into them and think they wouldn’t question what happened. I just yearn for normalcy.”
“You and me both.”
On his fourth morning at the Hands of the White Tree headquarters, Freddy woke to gunshots.
When he came downstairs, a small crowd had gathered, watching as Will and a wiry man named Johan dragged a limp body into the house.
“Anton and Roger were on guard duty,” Will said. “Roger’s nowhere to be found, and Anton’s dead.”
“Roger shot Anton?” Sebastian hurried into the center of the commotion, wearing clothes he looked like he’d slept in. “Did anyone see him?”
“Max, Werner, and Keller went out to find him.”
“Bring Anton to my office.” Sebastian ruffled his hair and then looked at Freddy. “Can I talk to you?”
I knew this was only a matter of time. “You can talk to me,” Freddy said. “From there, we’ll see.”
“I don’t force people to use magic,” Sebastian said, walking with him down the hall to the stairs. “Let me make that quite clear.”
“I assume this is the introduction to some heavy persuasion, then?”
Sebastian threw up a hand. “I do want to know why one of my men would shoot another.” He stopped at the door of his office, nodding at Will and Johan. Ingrid had come up behind them, and Sebastian shut the door once she’d stepped in, leaving the men outside.
“This is what your magic was meant to do, Freddy,” Sebastian said, “allowing this man to have his final say.”
Freddy half-listened, feeling his power pulse in the presence of the dead man. He had never noticed the change that came over him when his magic had an opportunity. He had never gone without it.
Ingrid cocked her head at him. Her eyes were dark in her pale face. Yet, she didn’t seem sad. Freddy wasn’t sure what she was thinking.
His fingers itched.
“Arabella said I had to stop working my magic, that it was making me sick.”
“That is true, to a point,” Ingrid said. “But this will be a mere fraction of the effort the Valkenraths put you through, and there are herbs that help offset the ill effects.”
He wanted to believe her, wanted to give in. She would say anything to get him to work for them.
“It isn’t any healthier to suppress your magic than it is to use it too much.” She came closer, looking up at him—she was quite small, barely reaching his shoulder. Her face was plain, and her dress was simple and longer in the hem than was fashionable. She had to be twice his age. Yet the word that flashed into his mind when she looked at him was “seductive.” If he listened to her speak for too long, he might do anything she asked.
He thought of Thea. He had seen little of her the past few days. She helped Ingrid tend to the injured, and she seemed more interested in chatting with Sebastian and his men than seeing him. She danced to the evening music and didn’t pester him to join her. She still hadn’t checked on her mother.
I can’t let her get to me.
He turned on his heel. “If I revive one person, it will lead to more and more. And soon you’ll have someone you don’t want to let go.”
“Freddy, one thing I swore I’d never do,” Sebastian said, “is force a magic user to work. But don’t you want to know, too? What if Roger brings word of you back to whoever he works for?”
“We could all be in danger,” Ingrid said, “including your girl.”
Sebastian’s expression was brooding as he gently checked Anton’s pockets. Freddy thought he must be casting for a way to convince him. I’d do the same thing, if it were someone who died working for me.
“I’ll do it,” Freddy said. “On one condition.” His whole body was growing warm with power, though he knew this was an illusion; he was a slave to his magic more than it gave him power.
“Yes?” Sebastian said.
“I believe Ingrid put a spell on Thea, a spell that was meant for me. If you’re really working for a righteous cause, you don’t have to enchant us to have our help.”
Ingrid regarded him with such a dark look that he felt a chill of fear. Her look went far beyond her fragile appearance. Those eyes belonged to something ancient.
“All I did,” Ingrid said, “was show her Yggdrasil. When Thea saw Yggdrasil, she forgot her human suffering. It may seem like she has become a little heartless, but she has simply connected with the greater love of the entire universe. She’ll grow stronger and s
tronger because of it.”
Sebastian stood like a statue as she spoke, until the last moment, when a small frown tugged at his mouth.
“Do you have anything to say, Sebastian?” Freddy asked.
Sebastian looked at Ingrid, briefly. Then he said, “No.”
“No?” Freddy threw up a hand. He realized he should probably be more delicate for the sake of his friends, if not self-preservation, though he was too frustrated for delicacy. “I don’t know what madness you have him under,” he said, pointing at Sebastian, “but I have gone through too much to see Thea forget all about her mother.”
“I’m not under any madness,” Sebastian replied, but the response was oddly delayed. “What are you accusing Ingrid of?”
Ingrid came closer again. She touched Freddy’s hand in a familiar way. “So suspicious, Freddy…” Why didn’t he stop her? “I understand, seeing you spent all those years with the Valkenraths. You don’t trust other people. Give Thea time: She will remember her mother as soon as she’s ready.”
“And when will that be?”
“It’s her decision. I haven’t put anything in her mind that wasn’t already there.” Ingrid turned Freddy’s hand over, like she was reading his palm. “Such power in these hands. You’ve never known what it is to do good. Wouldn’t you like to find out? I can feel the magic burning inside you. You don’t have to hold back.”
Freddy felt short of breath. Trying to resist Ingrid and his magic at once…it was too much.
“I just want to prove that I can hold back,” he said.
“You can’t,” she said. “Can you?” She nudged his shoulder, pointing him toward Anton. His skin itched, his hands burned, and he knew he couldn’t walk out of this room and leave the dead man behind.
He placed his hands on Anton and kept them there until the man’s eyes opened, the magic coming in a tingling rush of relief. Anton looked at the three faces hovering over him. “Roger,” Anton said.
“Yes? What happened?” Sebastian put a hand on his arm.
Anton stared glassily back at him for a moment and then said, “God, I thought maybe it was a dream.”
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