Liam broke their gaze and looked away, busying himself with his water glass.
“Listen, Liam. You don’t have to admit it, and you have a funny way of showing it, but you want me here. You have for years.”
“Yes,” he said quietly, hands folding on the table and eyes dropping to follow them. “I have. Very much.”
“Well, there are conditions! And they’re not hard! In fact, given the alternatives, the bar is at an all-time low!”
“Name them.”
“You can start with mine.” She waited until he looked back up at her. Like hers, his face was a studied blank.
“All right. Evelyn.” He said the name slowly, turning it around in his mouth like he was trying out the syllables.
She didn’t nod, smile, or move, just continued to stare at him, as if still considering. “I’m here for the sake of my family. Not the Turrets,” she said quickly as he opened his mouth. “Rose, Danae and Jack. I’m here to protect them, no other reason. If you want me to go above and beyond whatsoever, and interact with you in any kind of way aside from bare survival…”
“What?” He gave his head a little shake, looking genuinely confused.
“Bare minimum human decency!” Her face flushed. She’d given him the chance to fill in the blanks and he hadn’t. “Realize that this is not all about you, and respect my name and the fact that I am a goddamn woman. You say ‘she,’ you say ‘her,’ you say use those words when I’m here, and you use them when I’m not. Do you understand me?”
“Yes. Yes, I understand. Evelyn.”
She nodded, slowly, and scooted her chair forward again, placing a paper napkin on her lap. Silence stretched on, long and uncomfortable, until Evelyn broke it, clearing her raw throat. “I meant what I said, Liam. Growing up in this family was… more traumatic and dysfunctional than I’d like. But you were a good part. And I hope we can at least be friends, or something like it.”
“Traumatic and dysfunctional,” he repeated quietly, shaking his head with a strange, rueful smile. “You don't know the half of it.”
“You can tell me if you want.” Now, that reaction she hadn’t expected. Curious despite herself, Evelyn watched as her cousin’s expression darkened momentarily, quickly replaced by his careful neutral. It was definitely an effort, however. He was hiding something. She didn’t even need to know him well to know that.
“There’s not much to tell,” he said at last. “Every family has their burdens.”
“That’s always meant the world to you, hasn’t it?” She said, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever lay behind that blank mask he wore. “Family, image, honor—this house. Keeping up appearances. You used to throw fits when we’d get the carpets replaced.” She shook her head, looking up at the mismatched towers and wings, random pieces plastered on with no order or reason. “What happened here?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Automated defense systems?”
“I have to defend what’s mine. Ours. It’s a dangerous city.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“Admirably idealistic. But wishing doesn’t change reality.”
“No, actions do. And what are you doing, Liam?”
“Again, I’m not sure what you mean.”
Evelyn’s eyes narrowed. She started to wring and twist the napkin in her lap with restrained frustration. “Yes, you do. The house. Which now has automatic metal gates and locked doors and an elevator and… medical staff?” She stopped destroying the napkin and held very still. “Are they here to take care of Mama? Liam, has she started to deteriorate? Why didn’t you call—”
“No, no, your mother is fine,” he assured her, before visibly scowling behind his mask. “As ever.”
Evelyn sat back in her chair and enjoyed the relief and the glow of an early lead. “She’s giving you hell, isn’t she?” Liam did not reply. “Good.”
“But surely, you of all people should understand the need to protect oneself.”
“I’m just… surprised, that’s all,” she said, cycling through several adjectives before landing on the most diplomatic one. “Last we talked, you were passionate about helping Parole. Now it seems like you just want to shut everyone out.”
“Seeing as our last conversation was ten years ago, you’ll forgive me if my memory isn’t what it should be.” Liam folded his hands in front of him. “But my motivations have remained the same. I trust you occasionally glance out a window?”
“I listen to a girl on the radio. You should try it sometime; she’s got some great stuff to say.” She’d started to pick and tear at the napkin now, tiny shreds collecting in her lap.
“The city our family built from the ground up is dying, and the Turret name along with it. One day Parole will slip into the fire, and oh, a part of me wants to see it fall…” His eyes slipped out of focus, and he seemed to glare right through her. “Fools. Street gangs squabbling over drops of water, peddling their drugs, fighting for inches of solid ground—they’re slipping into the fire every day and they don’t do anything about it, I’m the only one doing anything about—”
“Liam!” Evelyn cut in, and his eyes snapped back into focus. “Look at me, take a breath. You’re okay.”
“I’m… sorry,” he said, coming back from miles away. He settled back into his chair and tried again. “But you do understand. When the river dried up and the fires started, the entire city blamed us…” Evelyn kept her mouth shut, but he looked up sharply at her anyway. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. That they were right.”
“What do you want me to say, Liam?” She shrugged, spread her hands. “That it wasn’t our family’s fault? That the quarantine barrier wasn’t the worst decision anyone could have possibly made? That bringing in Eye in the Sky didn’t sentence us all to death? That your father—my uncle, the Major, God help me—his hands aren’t stained with—”
“The Major did what had to be done,” Liam cut in, voice flat and nearly a monotone. “It was the only way to save us all. Everything was falling apart around us, our house and our lives, and you know it.”
“I don’t know that.” She folded her arms and crossed her legs, slid back away from him. “And I don’t really know what to say to you right now either.”
“I’m not a monster, Evelyn.” His eyes traced the path of a black helicopter, and hers stayed fixed on his face, hard and narrow.
“No, you’re not,” she said very quietly, slowly, and deliberately. “I don’t believe in monsters. Or if I did… you wouldn’t be one. But him?” She stopped, quelling a surge of nausea and something worse, something sharp and hollowing that twisted and ate away at the inside her rib cage. For the briefest of moments, her control slipped, and Liam did not miss the split-second of fear in her eyes. “I take it back. Some monsters are real. The worst ones look just like us.”
“Parole looks up to him with respect instead of blame!”
“You’re confusing respect with fear.”
“How can anyone tell the difference in all this smoke?” He turned and gazed out over the smoldering ruins a million people called home. The only clear sunlight came from the trails of black helicopters that perpetually crisscrossed the city. “It’s awful, it clogs up the view. Blocks out the sky. Coats the lungs black. And everyone stumbles around in it; no one can see an inch in front of his nose—no one but the Major, and myself.”
Evelyn gritted her teeth and tried to hold on to reason amidst her aggravation. “I’m sure I’ll regret asking, but what do you see?”
“Hope.” Liam gave her an expression she didn’t expect and almost didn’t recognize. A smile. “Our exile in this city of the damned is almost at an end.”
Evelyn shut her eyes briefly. He’d always had more than a slight fondness for the dramatic. She had to admit, it ran in the family, but at least she tried to save hers for the stage. “Please, Liam, you must tell me how.”
“Just give me a chance and I’ll save us all from the fire.”
<
br /> “And how’s that?”
“By putting it out, of course.” Liam didn’t seem to notice her expression of incredulous surprise. His eyes were shining, and for the first time since she’d seen him, he lost the pinched, haggard tension. Years melted away from his face, and at last she caught a flash of the cousin she remembered. “Once the fires are out, once the Styx flows again, we’ll have our name back! This city will be saved, and some of the blood…” he faltered. “The blood spilled, will begin to be washed clean.”
Evelyn studied him for a moment, tapping her elbow in thought. She couldn't remember the last time he’d actually been optimistic about anything; even when they were young he leaned far more toward mood swings and angst that bordered on performance art. So far this brunch had been a fair-to-middling display, but now the tone was shifting. “How?”
“What?”
“How are you going to do it? Just practically speaking. Parole’s been burning for eight years. That fire’s huge, no amount of water could put that out.”
He stopped, seemed to realize he’d gone too far. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be home longer than a day to learn the family secrets again. Just know that I have everything under control and, as soon as the fire’s out, we’ll be out too, and back to normal life.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t really… see the connection?”
“If we have a fire burning beneath us and a wealth of sins around us, wouldn’t a logical first step be to extinguish and address them?”
“So just put out the fire, and everything will be fine? Parole will be released, we’ll be welcomed back into the United States, and life goes on like nothing happened?”
“An oversimplification.” He took a sip of water. “But yes.”
“You really think this is about the fire?” Evelyn stared. “The barrier went up two years before the fire started, it was never about that. Putting it out won’t bring that barrier down.”
“Then what is it… about?”
“The people inside. Even if we had a flood tomorrow, they wouldn’t let us out of this prison. It’s us and our identities they want to destroy! They won’t stop until every last one of us is dead!”
“I see you haven’t lost your flare for dramatics.”
Evelyn gritted her teeth and resisted retorts about pots and kettles. Her hands jerked and the remaining bit of napkin ripped in two. “So that’s it? Just telling me ‘I’m putting out the fire,’ but nothing else?”
“I just wanted you to know I have the situation in hand.”
“Is it your hands though? Or your father’s?”
He let out a long sigh. “You don’t trust the Major at all, do you?”
“You call your own father ‘the Major.’ You don’t think that’s kind of a red flag?” Liam didn’t answer. After several awkward seconds, Evelyn stood, clenching the shredded remains of the napkin in her fists. “Anything else I should know?”
“Just stay out of my way—and keep a leash on your friends—and we should have nothing else to say to one another.”
She stared at the bows on the tops of her shoes. They hadn’t helped as much as she’d hoped. Finally she made herself look back up at her cousin, not wiping the tears threatening to spill from her eyes. “Does it really have to be like this? I did miss you—you, not all the… all the rest.”
“I’ve… I’ve missed you too.” Liam’s blue-grey eyes slowly traveled up to meet hers.
“I don’t know what happened.” Evelyn managed to keep her voice from shaking, but just barely. “You always wanted to do good. Back when we were kids, all you wanted to do was help people. What knocked you off course? Was it your father?”
“I’d be a fool to deviate from any course my father designed.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Then ask me a better question.”
“The Liam I know, did he actually exist?”
“He did.” He paused, nodded slowly to himself. “He does.”
“Then show me. It’s not too late to chart your own course.”
He looked up then, expression hardening into something guarded, something distant. “We don’t all have that option.”
“I took that ‘option’ because I had to. Leaving was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but it was also one of the most important.” Now she wiped her eyes, as they hardened into a glare.
“You turned your back on us. You walked away from your family, your house, your responsibilities—”
“The atrocities I saw committed in my uncle’s name every day. That was the final straw, that erased any guilt I ever might have felt. I left because I had to, and because after I saw what—”
“And me! You left me behind! After telling me how you’d always be beside me, one day I look up and you’re gone! You have a new life—”
“You wouldn’t have come with me! You’d never leave this place!”
“You could have asked!”
“I did! Maybe your memory isn’t what it should be, but mine is! You wouldn’t move, you still won’t! Do not lay this guilt on me, Liam! I did what I had to do to survive! And now if you won’t be there for me, I’ll—”
“You left me, not the other way around!”
“I had to get out of this place before it killed me, and I don’t owe you a thing!”
They were both breathing hard. Liam hadn’t risen from his seat, but his hands were clenched into fists resting on his knees, and a red tinge crept into his pale, thin cheeks. He glared up at Evelyn, and slowly pulled off his cloth mask. Without being entirely sure why, she did the same. It just seemed right to have this conversation face-to-face.
“You always were the survivor,” he said quietly, voice shaking with quiet fury, and something else, an old lonely pain that never healed. “But so am I, in my own way. I’m tired of watching what’s left of us die, and I’m tired of watching this city burn.”
Evelyn stared back into his eyes. “You don’t save yourself by throwing someone else into the fire, Liam. That’s rule one.”
“A lot of things have changed,” Liam said quietly after a very long pause, expression unreadable. “But I take back what I said before. You haven’t. Not one bit.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I’ve heard what they say about you down there,” Liam slowly turned to stare down at the smoking city. “Evelyn Calliope. Defending the streets. Upholding the weak and punishing the wicked.”
“Only between shows.”
“A heroine? Is that what you are?”
“Not if I don’t act like one.”
“And what am I?”
She tilted her head, never breaking their held gaze. He held his breath as she considered. “I really don’t know anymore, Liam. And I don’t think you do either. Tell me when you know for sure.”
A thin smile tugged at the corner of his pale lips, and as before, Evelyn couldn’t tell at all what was behind it. It didn't come close to reaching his eyes. “Welcome home.”
“Thank you.” She un-clenched the hands she’d balled into tense fists, and realized they were filled with shredded napkin bits. “Ah, guess this is for the homecoming party.” She raised her hands and tossed the impromptu confetti into the air, letting out an only slightly nervous laugh as the tiny white flecks fell. Liam sat still as the confetti littered his hair and fluttered down around him, not moving to brush himself off. He didn’t look up, lost somewhere very deep inside his own thoughts. Her smile faded, but when she spoke it didn’t have a hint of her previous uncertainty. “No more trouble if we stay, then?”
“Of course not. This house is yours, as it’s always been.” Liam still did not meet her eyes, and his tone remained low, pensive, and faraway. But somehow these quiet words sounded a hundred times truer than his fiery declarations about family names and obligation. “As am I.”
Evelyn stared at him for a moment, unable to resolve the contradictions that made up her cousin. She’d never known what to make of hi
m, and couldn’t begin to now. Finally, she turned to go, and gave him a last nod. “See you around.”
“Yes, you will.”
❈
“Turn left.” Hans floated just ahead, always in the corner of Regan’s eye, flickering out of reality and popping up somewhere else every time Regan tried to look at him straight on.
“I don’t like this,” Regan muttered. Once Hans had led him to a steel door that opened, the hallway beyond it started to look more like a hospital than an actual house. He fought the feeling of claustrophobia as he followed the ghost in the corner of his eye through mazelike, whitewashed, windowless tunnels, only differentiated by the numbers beside more locked doors. The glare of the fluorescent lights on the bright tile floors gave him a headache.
Hans gave a thin smile. “You don’t like anything anymore, do you, Chimera?”
Regan gave him a sideways look, trying to decide whether he liked that name better or worse than the one he knew. He still couldn’t decide. “I don’t like what I don’t trust.”
“You don't trust me?” Hans asked, looking wounded. “I’m the only one who can help you.”
“You wouldn’t have to help me if you hadn’t messed with my brain in the first place.”
“Would you have listened to me if I’d just asked? No, of course not, you always have to do everything the hard way.”
“Yes, I’m the one doing everything the hard way.” Regan rolled his very mobile eyes, then kept rolling them. “Why not just tell me what you want, instead of manipulating and blackmailing, or whatever this is?”
“Because we’re here now.” Hans said stopped in front of a white door just like all the others. “And I can just show you.”
Gritting his teeth, Regan pushed the door open and stepped inside—then stopped dead. In the room stood an immaculate hospital bed, an EKG machine, and a chair. The bed was occupied. So was the chair—by the strange person with the patchwork, stitched-together skin Regan had seen leaving the building the day before. They stared directly at Regan, unblinking, sitting very straight, very tall, and very, very still.
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