by Jes Battis
Last year, we’d investigated the death of Luiz Ordeño, a very old, very powerful necromancer with entangled political connections. I remembered that there hadn’t been a single picture of friends or family on his walls. No evidence of past loves, no tokens of affection, no mementos. Just a kind of relentless blank where human (or even nonhuman) connections should have been.
When I asked Lucian if he knew anything about Ordeño’s romantic past, his reply didn’t clear anything up. Like most people who’ve lived for more than a few hundred years, I think that he was bisexual, or at the very least open-minded. But I never saw him with a partner of either gender. Was that the only productive way to deal with the weight of all those years? Sexual variety? It seemed to make monogamy impossible. So where did that leave Lucian and me?
Ru was still staring at me. I cleared my throat.
“Sometimes we do mate for life,” I said. “When the right partner comes along.”
“But often you don’t—correct?”
I nodded. “We try. We should at least get points for that.”
“I’m too young to mate,” he said.
The gravity of his tone made me want to laugh, but I managed to suppress it. “How old are you, exactly?”
“I am in my third ecdysis.”
“What’s that in years?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Two hundred thirty-one.”
“Wow. That’s a long childhood.”
“We have a lot to learn.”
“It’s different here. We get tossed out of the nest at eighteen.”
“How barbaric.”
“This is quite educational,” Selena said, “but it might be best, Ru, if you got some sleep. I mean—does your species require sleep?”
“Less than yours. But yes.”
“We’ve prepared a room for you. It’s not exactly the Hilton, but it should do for the time being. The pull-out bed is comfortable enough.”
He looked around the lab, taking in the glass-partitioned rooms and walls lined with various equipment. “Do you all live here?”
“No. We have separate dwelling spaces. Apartments.”
“I live in a house with a lot of crazy people,” I clarified.
“My family and I live together in one place.” His eyes surveyed a dark corner of the lobby. “We all sleep in the same chamber. At night, everything glows red from the hydrogen storms outside. I like to close my eyes and listen to the low hissing of the cloud layers. Then, in the morning, our windowpane is streaked with colors. From all the chromophores. Like the stained glass in your churches.”
“Well,” Selena said, “I can’t promise you—um—chromophores. But we do have satellite TV installed in the room. And there’s a minifridge.”
“Will I be expected to remain here? In this room with the minifridge?”
“You aren’t a prisoner. You can go if you like. But, frankly, it’s not safe for you outside of this building. It’s barely safe for you inside.”
“Maybe you should just put me in the prison cell with the Kentauros. Then at least I can see my death coming.”
“Death’s not coming for anyone tonight,” Selena said. “You’ve got around-the-clock protection. And the Kentauros won’t be leaving its cell anytime soon.”
Ru looked at me. “Will you be going back to your house tonight?”
I felt slightly uncomfortable beneath his gaze. “First I’ll be going to the hospital, to check on Derrick. I may end up staying the night there. But I’ll be back here in the morning. I can even bring you breakfast.”
“What’s breakfast?”
“The first meal of the day.”
“You divide your food into cycles?”
“Basically, yes. What do you do?”
“We just eat all day long.”
“That’s called being a teenager. You and Patrick would get along well.”
“Who’s that?”
“Another person that I adopted. Less officially than Mia, granted. But he still lives with us.”
“In the big crazy house?”
I smiled. “That’s right.”
“It sounds fun. Can I visit?”
I looked at Selena.
Absolutely not, she mouthed.
“Sure. Just not tonight.”
“Okay.”
“Sleep tight, Ru, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Thank you, Tess. I hope that you sleep tight as well.”
“I’ll try.”
“Follow me,” Selena said. “Your suite is down the hall. I think you’ll be pleased by the snacks that we’ve assembled for you.”
“What are snacks?”
“In my opinion, pretty much a reason for living.”
He followed her down the hall. The sight of his bare feet receding into the dark made me suck in my breath.
Then I headed for the elevator.
The CORE clinic resembled a regular hospital, complete with vinyl chairs and offensive fluorescent lighting, only the inhabitants tended to have more creative injuries. Some patients could regenerate on their own, but still needed a little extra help. Others were suffering from materia burns, psychic shock, and other supernatural ailments that Demerol couldn’t really help with. The nurses here had seen everything, from detached souls (a nasty condition called “exospiritus”) to bodies rendered two-dimensional by a flatland curse. That was never pretty.
I wasn’t entirely surprised to find Derrick’s room full of people. Miles had fallen asleep, his legs propped up on a chair. He was snoring gently. Lucian sat in a chair close by, doing a crossword puzzle with Mia.
“I don’t understand this clue,” he said. “ ‘May contain eggs.’ Three letters.”
Mia frowned. “Is it wrong that I want it to be ‘egg’?”
“That seems too easy.”
“I know. But it totally fits.”
“Do you think it’s just screwing with us?”
“Probably. We should have gotten the Metro puzzle. It’s easier.”
There was an empty chair near Derrick’s bed. A small lump formed in my throat as I realized that it was for me.
Lucian looked up. “Hey. We sent Patrick out for coffee.”
“God. I think I’m coffee’d out for one night.”
“But it’s almost morning.”
“Well. You’ve got a point there.” I collapsed into the chair. “Has he woken up at all? Said anything?”
Lucian shook his head. “He’s pretty doped up. The nurse said he’ll probably sleep for another few hours. Maybe more.”
I looked at Derrick for the first time. His face was bruised from where he’d struck the ground, and he had a split lip. A cut on his forehead had been hastily stitched up. His right arm was in a sling. They’d shaved a patch of his head, which was now covered in gauze.
“He’d be horrified if he knew what that gown looked like.”
Mia laughed. “I know, right?”
“When did Miles finally fall asleep?”
“Just a few minutes ago. He’s out like a light, though.”
“Did anyone check him for injuries?”
“Just some bruises,” Lucian said. “Derrick definitely got the worst of it.”
“Yeah.” I reached out and held his hand. It was cold. “I tried to deflect the blast. It was just too powerful.”
“We know.” Lucian stood up and walked over to my side of the bed. “You did everything you could. And we all survived. He’ll be fine.”
“He went swimming inside the brain of a pureblood demon. We don’t know if he’s going to be fine.” I squeezed his hand. “There could be scars. Invisible ones. Has anyone examined him for psychic trauma?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did you call anyone? Did you even let them know?”
“Tess.”
“I’m sorry. This has just been the longest night ever.”
“Actually . . .” Mia pointed to the window. I could see a weak, grayish light seeping through th
e blinds. “I think it’s morning.”
“Great,” I said. “Now it starts all over again.”
“That’s the good part, remember?” Lucian smiled at me.
“Sometimes I’m not so sure.”
Patrick appeared in the doorway. He was holding two paper bags and a tray full of coffee cups. “Hey, Tess. I brought you a muffin.”
“What kind?”
He peered into one of the bags. “Um. Carrot. I think.”
“Butter?”
“Yup.”
“Gimme.”
“See?” Lucian patted my hand. “Starting over isn’t so bad.”
“No. Not as long as there’s butter.” I took the plastic knife and fork that Patrick offered me. “And chromophores.”
Lucian raised an eyebrow. “What?”
I was already spreading the butter. “Nothing.”
5
I woke up in a condo on the beach.
I was in a vast living room with high-beamed ceilings and polished hardwood floors. The room was an oval with wraparound bay windows, and sunlight streamed through them. I rose from the couch where I’d been sleeping, stretched to relieve the kink in my neck, and walked over to the nearest pane of glass. I could see a long, empty beach that gave way to turquoise water. There was no wind to stir the surface.
Two figures were sitting at the edge of the water. I squinted and realized that it was Derrick and Miles. They were both in shorts and appeared to be building a sand castle. Derrick had a bright red pail and shovel, and Miles was gently molding the edges of a tower with his hands. He said something that I couldn’t hear, and Derrick laughed. Then he pointed to the castle’s unfinished drawbridge, and Miles began working on it, kneading the sand as if it were soft dough.
I turned and walked to the middle of the room. There was a beautiful Persian rug laid across the floor, patterned in woven mandalas of red, green, and gold that danced before my eyes.
I noticed that a corner of the rug was turned up slightly, and there was a lump underneath it. I nudged the lump with my toe. It didn’t move. Gently, I kicked the folded corner of the rug, and it fell away to reveal a pile of bones.
They were old and yellowed. Even the toughest tendons had rotted away, and they smelled of moss and earth. The skull was quite small. Possibly a child’s. It looked Caucasoid in shape, but I lacked the expertise to tell with a glance. The eye sockets were deeply worn, like something that had slept for ages in a riverbed.
I looked out the window again. Derrick and Miles were gone, but their sand castle remained. Miniature sand knights on sand horses were gathered at the entrance to the keep, along with sand ladies, offering handkerchiefs and keepsakes. As I watched, the horses began to prance in their jeweled caparisons, and the knights lowered their visors, preparing for the tourney.
There was a long hallway next to me. I could hear something, a very faint something, coming from it.
The walls were clean and white. The floor was warm against my bare feet. I started walking down it, passing closed doors on either side. I walked and walked, but the hallway just kept going. I counted ten doors, then twenty, then thirty, all shut tight. Finally, I came to a door that was slightly ajar.
The sound was coming from beyond it. A gentle tapping.
I opened the door and stepped into a spacious bathroom, floored in marble. There was a pedestal sink in one corner, and a window dominating the entire south wall, which looked out over the water. I could see two shapes floating in the distance. Was it Derrick and Miles? They must have been swimming very far out. Derrick wasn’t a particularly strong swimmer, which worried me. Perhaps Miles was.
A claw-foot bathtub sat in the opposite corner of the room. The brass faucet was dripping. I leaned over to tighten one of the knobs. As I stared into the empty tub, I noticed a smear of something red against the porcelain. A bloody handprint.
Something clattered in the hallway.
I could feel my pulse rising. I left the bathroom and saw that the door facing me had also been left ajar. I heard the clattering sound again.
“Hello?”
I pushed open the door. This seemed to be the master bedroom. The floor was carpeted, and a four-poster bed stood in the center. A window above the bed had been left open, and the casement moved slowly back and forth, banging against the wall. Wind stirred the sheets on the bed, and I realized that there was something underneath them. I took a step forward, and then stopped. My breath caught.
There was blood on the sheets. Blood on the pillows. Wind teased the edges of the top sheet, and I could see indistinct flashes of what lay underneath. I took another step forward, until I was standing at the foot of the bed. The bloodstains were still wet. I looked up at the walls. They were clean and bare. No parent stains and no spatter. All of it was passive blood flow. I stared at the carpet, but couldn’t see so much as a stray drop. It didn’t seem possible, unless someone had been killed in a vacuum. But it also wouldn’t have been the strangest thing I’d ever seen.
Slowly, trying not to disturb any of the stains, I lifted up the sheet. A cold shock passed through me as I saw the body lying underneath.
It was mine.
I was wearing the same clothes. My jeans were soaked in blood, and my feet were bare. My hair lay across my face, obscuring one eye. The other eye was open, staring blindly. My lips were parted, my mouth flecked with blood. My throat was slit from ear to ear, completely transecting both carotid arteries. The cut was clean, and I could see where the fat and muscle tissue avulsed to reveal bone.
“Even dead,” a voice said, “you’re still beautiful.”
I turned around, struggling to breathe.
A tall shape stood in the doorway. It seemed almost too angular, a piece of perverse trigonometry. It was made partly of smoke, but I recognized its eyes. They stood out against the darkness of its plastic face. Two burning pinholes. They were the color of dirty ice.
And they knew me.
The force of that knowledge slammed into me, devouring me, and I almost doubled over from the pain of being comprehended so perfectly. Its knowing seared me black from the inside. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I had no breath. There was nothing inside me, no blood, no torsion or fibrillation, just a dry puparial casing. It had sucked out everything I was with a single look.
I couldn’t look at it anymore. I turned back to my body on the bed. I reached out with my fingers to brush my own flesh.
It was cold. I was cold.
“Not even necromancy will bring you back from that,” it said. “Oh, it could bring back a few pieces of you, held together with willpower and a bit of duct tape. But never all of you. That’s gone forever.”
“Did you do this?” I asked.
“No. You did.”
He was standing directly behind me now. The smoke of his limbs curled around me, his impossibly long fingers hesitating, just an inch away from my neck and shoulders. I turned. His eyes were level with my own. I looked deep into them, searching for something recognizable. All I could see was a crystalline structure, perfect, endlessly replicating itself. And beneath that, something dark and liquid, older than the first nano-bacterium, but far from primitive. A radiant hunger.
“Why did you do it?” I asked.
“I told you. I didn’t.”
“Not the body. I mean me.” I refused to look away. “Twenty-eight years ago, you attacked my mother. You left her broken and alone, bleeding in a parking lot. And you made me. I want to know why.” “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Tell me.”
He smiled. “Because it was fun.”
I screamed at him. I screamed every obscenity that I knew, in every language that I could think of. I screamed until my throat burned, until I was moaning, crying, choking, until I tasted blood welling up in my throat.
“I made you,” he said, “so that I could own you.”
I sank to my knees, bawling. He w
as shadow, and he was all around me. I couldn’t breathe without taking him in. I couldn’t smell anything except the putrescence of his satisfaction.
“Tess. I love you. I love you.”
It was Lucian’s voice.
“Get out!” I screamed. “Get out get out get out!”
“I love you. I love you.”
I felt the bite of his love against my throat. I felt the blood.
Then nothing.
I woke up again, for real this time. I was in Derrick’s hospital room, folded into one of the uncomfortable chairs with my feet propped up. My neck was killing me. It felt as if I’d slept sideways, or maybe upside down. Light was coming through the open blinds, and I could hear the rain outside. I checked my watch. Six forty-five a.m.
Great. I had about twenty minutes to get to work if I wanted to avoid a reprimand. Selena was interrogating the Kentauros demon, and I had to be there.
The remaining chairs were empty. Miles must have finally taken my advice and gone home to get a few hours of sleep in an actual bed. I glanced down at my cell to see if Mia had texted me. There was a message: at home and P bought groceries (strange i know!). see you after work.
I shuddered to think what Patrick might have bought. Last time I sent him out for food, he came home with cereal and a jar of Nutella. But if Mia was there, at least she’d able to push for milk and bread. Derrick was the one who usually bought fresh pasta and produce. Ever since the day I brought home a slightly bruised avocado, he maintained that I wasn’t discriminating enough.
Stifling a yawn, I looked up, expecting to see him asleep. Instead, he was wide-awake and sitting up, surrounded by pillows.
“Wow,” he said, smiling. “Your hair looks like shit.”
I stumbled out of the chair and ran over to the other side of the bed.
“You’re awake! How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough to hear you snoring like a hockey player with a busted nose. It’s actually quite impressive.”
I kissed his forehead, then both of his cheeks. Then I grabbed his hand and kissed each knuckle for good measure. He laughed, pretending to swat me away. But he didn’t let go of my hand.
