by Jes Battis
I exhaled. “All right. Come with me.”
I took Ru into the audiovisual lab, which was empty. I sat down and logged into the computer. Ru frowned.
“Why are you searching for real estate?”
“I’m doing a Boolean search for apartments that may have some of the characteristics we saw. This search engine links to Craigslist and KiJiJi, as well as to private listings. Let’s see. Claw-foot tub. You said there was a window.”
“I did?”
“When Derrick was reading your mind.”
“Oh. I do not remember everything I said.”
“He’s really sorry about that, by the way.”
“I have already accepted his apology, which was unnecessary.”
“Was there anything special about the window?”
“It was hard to open. It—what is the word—became jam?”
“Jammed. Did you push it up? Was it heavy?”
“Yes. The glass was thick.”
“What about around the frame of the window?”
“There was a design. Sculpted.”
“Crown molding.” I added that. “Did you look out the window?”
“Once. I saw a big metal building.” His eyes widened. “I’m remembering more now. There was an arch. And a flying vessel, moving along a stone aqueduct.”
“The cinema in Chinatown. That’s on Pender. We’re definitely in the vicinity of Gastown.” I kept thinking. That was a bit of a shabby area, although the city was aggressively gentrifying the neighborhood. It was close, in fact, to an apartment building I’d visited more than three years ago, belonging to a vampire named Sebastian.
I clicked the search button. Eleven results appeared.
I opened each listing. They all had images, but they weren’t great images by any stretch of the imagination. When I clicked on 29 ABBOTT STREET, I felt Ru suck in his breath slightly behind me. I looked at the pictures. The apartment had faux paneling, original hardwood, and walls with at least fifty years of paint coating them. The kitchen was floored in tacky yellow linoleum.
“This place was put on the market two days ago.” I stood up. “I have to go declare it an active crime scene.”
“I am going with you.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Ru.”
“That place is all I remember about my brother. I need to see it.”
I looked around. “Damn. Where’s Selena?” I dialed her extension. It went straight to voice mail.
“This is Tess,” I said. “I’ve got an address. I’m taking the Denali, and if something attacks me, I won’t think twice about using it as a tank.”
“What’s a Denali?” Ru asked.
I was already dialing Lucian. “It’s like a chariot.”
“Hello?”
“It’s me. I need you to meet me at Twenty-nine Abbot Street in Gastown. And I need you to drive like you aren’t ninety years old.”
“Can you give me any more information?”
“No. But I’ll buy you a drink later tonight.”
“That’s fair.” He hung up.
We took the elevator down to the underground parking. I made sure that Ru was strapped in tightly on the passenger side, then carefully guided us aboveground. It was dusk. Why was it always dusk?
“This part of the city is interesting,” Ru said. “Like a sunken ship.”
“It does feel that way sometimes.”
“There are a lot of people living outside.”
“Not everyone can afford a place to live in a city this big.”
“What is strange,” he replied, “is that you think this place is big.”
I parked across the street from the walk-up building. “How hot was it in the apartment building?” I asked. “Were you sweating?”
“I do not perspire.”
“Fine. Did you feel hot?”
“Yes. It was dry, and the air was full of dust. I also smelled something very pungent. An odor that was like polymer melting.”
“Roof tar. Let’s start with the top floor.”
I walked up to the entrance and rang the manager’s suite. Nobody answered. I pressed a few random buttons. There was a buzz, and the door opened.
“People are dumb,” I said.
We climbed the stairs. I was breathing more heavily by the time we got to the top, which brought me to the conclusion that I needed to step up my cardio.
“You lead the way,” I told Ru.
I followed him slowly down the hallway. He stopped at 304.
“This might be it,” he said.
The door was locked. I took the athame out of my purse and touched it to the dead bolt. I channeled a spike of earth materia, letting it agitate the metal, until I heard a satisfying click. The door opened.
The apartment was empty and had been recently cleaned. The tang of bleach was still in the air. The hallway seemed familiar, but only in flashes. Ru walked slowly around the living room. The moment his foot touched the linoleum floor, I saw a shudder go through him.
“What is it?”
He looked down. “El died here.”
“You’re certain.”
“Yes. I can feel him.”
I grabbed a spray bottle of luminol from my reagent travel kit. I took pictures of the floor from several angles, including a ruler for scale. Then I sprayed the tiles, which were cracked, their edges beginning to curl upward. When every inch of the floor had been treated, I stood up.
“This might be upsetting,” I told Ru.
“You keep saying that,” he said. “But I am past being upset. Now I just want to know what happened to my brother. I want to know what he was doing here in the first place, and what made me come after him. I wish I could remember.”
“Just”—I swallowed—“be prepared.”
I pointed the athame at the window. Strands of earth materia stirred the dust on both sides of the glass, encouraging it, making it fecund. Gradually, the window darkened as earth, grit, and heavy smog thickened on it, until the kitchen was almost completely dark. I turned around, passing the athame over the linoleum floor. Blue light struck the yellow, and dazzling patterns emerged. Markings like frost that glittered blue, forming arcs and glowing satellites.
“Ru,” I said slowly. “These are signs of arterial blood loss. Someone’s body exsanguinated on this floor.”
“He couldn’t get up.” Ru’s voice was soft. “But I put my head in his lap. And he touched my hair. He said, You’re my partner in crime. He said, I love you, even though you are an ill-bred puppy. And then he showed me.”
“Showed you what?”
“How to recover the Aikon. How to save the memories.” Ru extended his hand, fingers hovering in the air. “There was a hole in his chest. I reached inside. He said, Lower. I reached lower, until I found it. Then I pulled it out.”
I felt all the color leave my face. “He was alive when you took the Aikon?”
“Every body is different. He needed to tell me. So I took it, and I carried it into the bathroom. I saw myself in the mirror. That must have been when I noticed the blue all over my fingers.”
I walked into the bathroom. There was a tiled floor and a claw-foot tub, just as Ru had remembered. The vanity was a full-length mirror, like the kind my mother still has in her closet. As soon as I got near it, I felt strange.
“This is not supposed to be here,” I said.
The edges of the mirror were gilded, but the more I tried to look at them, the less defined they grew. I felt a pain in my head.
“Go downstairs,” I told Ru. “Take my phone. Dial one for the lab.”
“I have no wish to leave you.”
“Something’s not right here. Go downstairs.”
The mirror was getting darker. I could no longer see myself in it. I felt the floorboards beginning to vibrate.
“Tess—” Ru pointed to the glass.
It was steaming.
“Get out of here!” I shouted.
“No! I want to stay with
you!”
I pointed the athame at his feet. I closed my eyes, channeling a braid of earth and air materia. The power formed itself into a curtain of light, hazy, like smoked green glass. Ru stared at me in disbelief. He yelled something, but the barrier absorbed the sound of his voice. It was for his own good. If it protected him.
I turned to regard the mirror. Now it was a pane of blackness, hanging like a mineral scar in the air. I took a step forward, raising my blade.
The steam condensed. It turned red, until it looked like a spout of whirling embers. Somewhere in the shifting flames, I saw two steady points, which were fixed on me. The cloud drifted forward. I stood my ground.
“Arcadia,” I said.
My phone started to buzz. I knew it was Lucian, but there was no time for anything but this moment. I turned. Ru was gone. He must have run downstairs. I silently thanked whatever power might be listening.
“Tessa Isobel Corday.”
I turned at the sound of my full name. Arcadia was about a foot away from me now, hovering at eye level. Her form was like a vermilion nebula compressed into a trembling water spout. She had no discernible mouth, but her eyes were unmistakable.
“Arcadia,” I repeated. “What do you want?”
“The question is, really, what don’t I want, Tess.”
She hung in the air before me. She was kind of a dark miracle, floating, and she didn’t actually have a face, which made it difficult to judge her expressions. But her eyes grew brighter when she was emphatic.
“You look like the water spout from Loom,” I said. “The one you have to unweave using your distaff.”
“I am a Vapor. My touch will atomize you.”
“Right. Kind of like what happened to Blq.”
She drew into herself. “That was not supposed to be. The Bercilak was unyielding and refused to see reason.”
“I don’t understand your connection to Mr. Corvid.”
“Mr. Corvid. Is that what the demon went by?” The debris of energy that swirled within her rippled, contracting slightly.
I kept looking for something like a heart, since I had no face to fix my eyes on, but there was only a kind of glowing ribbon that moved within the cloud. I wondered if she had a wandering soul.
“Blq was a Mound-Dweller. An old one. Blq had a contract with the Senate, but failed to honor a clause.”
“Which clause?”
“The promise of his psychic essence to be held in receivership by the Senate.”
“Well. To be fair, I wouldn’t want to fulfill that end of the agreement.”
“The Invictus lent the Mound-Dweller a favor. The gift increased the demon’s business, but it came with a price. Blq’s time was up.”
“So Blq’s execution had nothing to do with Ru.”
“Wrong. It has absolutely everything to do with him.” Arcadia flowed over to the mirror, which was still dark, still humming. “The Senate authorized an incursion into your world. The goal was to retrieve Blq’s essence. But when the rift was opened, the two Ptah’li escaped.”
“Were they really involved in a coup?”
“They are subjects of interest.”
“To whom?”
“The Senate.”
“And what is your relationship to this Senate?”
Arcadia flowed closer. I could feel her electromagnetic field raising the hair on my arms. The heat of her eyes was strong on my face. This is what it feels like to have an intimate conversation with a spinning barbecue.
“I am a Senator’s daughter. As are you.”
Those three words knocked the wind out of me. I took a step back.
“We’re sisters?”
“Half sisters.”
“Half sisters.” I spread my arms. “You’re a homicidal water spout. What the hell does that make me?”
“The Ferid are part of you. But the rest of you is human.”
“Right. The fucking Ferid are part of me because your father attacked my mother. I never asked for this.”
“He did not attack her. She is not telling you the truth.”
“I’m supposed to trust you over my own mother.”
“Has she not deceived you before?”
“I feel like you guys have still deceived me a lot more. Your father’s the reason I’ve had nightmares since I can remember.”
“No. I am the cause of your nightmares.”
“What?”
Arcadia’s form contracted. She moved almost fractally, her vague insides glowing as they shifted. Suddenly, a young girl was standing in front of me. She was dark-skinned and had green eyes.
“I remember you,” I whispered. “You were in my dream about las meninas. You were the menina I didn’t recognize.”
“I gave you all those dreams.”
“Why?”
“So you would hate him as I do.”
“Well, you could have saved yourself the trouble, because I already hated him without having to endure creepy nightmares about him.”
“You hated him because you thought he forced himself upon your mother. I believe you will discover that he did not, or at least not in the way you surmise.”
“You just admitted that you’ve been mentally tormenting me since I was a little girl. Why should I believe anything you say?”
“Because I have also helped you.”
“The dreams weren’t all premonitory.”
“But they made you think about things differently. They allowed you to harness your own creativity as an investigator.”
“What am I supposed to say? Thanks for the nightmares?” I gestured to the apartment around me. “His brother died here. Did you kill him?”
“I meant to wound him. But he moved suddenly. He moved to protect his brother, and my presence grazed him.”
“Well, your presence gave him a penetrating chest wound. He bled to death on that ugly floor. And for what? What was his life worth to you?”
“Next to nothing.”
I swallowed. “I think I’d like to officially become estranged from your side of the family. That’s effective immediately.”
“El saw something he should not have. The Senate needs his memories back.”
“That’s tough. His memories are gone.”
“Not completely. Some of them were transferred to Ru when he carried El’s remembering organ to the beach. El must have told him to destroy it, and the water is close by. Possibly, he tried to drown the organ, or smother it. But finally, he thought of burning it. As you’ve seen, it’s highly combustible. The blast would have knocked him out, scattering the fragments of the vessel.”
“But why did the two of them go through the rift in the first place?”
“Because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. When it was realized that they had breached your world, the Kentauros was sent to extract them.”
“And then you were sent. To extract the Kentauros.”
“I never left. I remained here after settling Blq’s debt.”
“Watching me?”
“Pitying you. Wondering if I should put you out of your misery.”
“Do it, then, you fucking cow. Atomize me.”
“Why do you seek disambiguation?”
“Because I’m tired of talking to Mound-Dwellers and Vapors and purebloods. I’m tired of talking.”
“If you wish to die,” Arcadia said, “by all means, approach.”
I took a small step forward. The cloud did not move. I could feel thrills of electricity moving along my body now. I inched forward again. Her heat was burning my face now, but it felt good, somehow. Like steaming water from the bath that was too hot, but only just.
That was when I remembered the bathtub. It was made of solid porcelain. If I gave it a massive charge, I might be able to disrupt her electromagnetic field. I might even be able to leech power from it.
I didn’t draw my athame. I just stood there.
Arcadia’s form seemed to exhale slightly. I felt stings go down my body.
My cheeks and my neck burned, and I could feel blood welling up in the cuts.
“Ru is under my protection,” I said.
“A lot of people seem to share that honor.” She drifted back slightly. The cuts throbbed. I bit my lip. “One vampire. A half vampire. An addled telepath.”
“Derrick’s not addled.”
“He thought he touched Basuram’s mind, but he was wrong. It was my mind the psychic touched, as he was blindly fumbling about.”
“What did you do to him?”
“I accelerated his potential.”
“He’s not going to become a zombie-king for the Ferid.”
“He will become whatever we wish him to become.”
I sighed. “Give me one thing, at least.”
“What do you wish?”
“Tell me the bastard’s name.”
“Is that your only question, Tess? It’s unoriginal.”
“Arcadia. Please.” I felt a strange pressure leave me. “Whether we like it or not, we’re family. And you owe me.”
She was silent for a moment. Then her eyes became two points of light, so brilliant I could barely look at them.
“You have always known it,” she said.
Then Arcadia flowed back into the mirror. Its edges gradually softened, until it became a regular vanity again.
I was shaking violently. The curtain of materia I’d thrown up had dissolved a long time ago. As I slowly made my way out of the bathroom, I saw Lucian.
“Hey.” He put his hand on my face. “What did this to you?”
“A falling-out.”
He put his arm around me. “Let me help you.”
“I won’t say no.”
Ru and Selena walked through the door. Ru immediately crossed the room and stood next to me.
“Now you’ve seen them,” he said. “Now you understand.”
“No. I absolutely don’t understand. I do know one thing, though.” I reached out and grabbed his hand. “We’re going to become better friends.”
“Will we? That’s exciting.”
“Yeah. I kind of thought so.”
Selena gave me a tired look. “This is the part where I give you the speech about not following protocol, borrowing the Denali, endangering a subject in an active investigation, et cetera. But I think I’m going to save it this time. You look beat-up.”
“I am beat-up.” I took out my gun and laid it on the sofa. “I’m tired of telling everyone how tired I am. But mostly, I’m unhappy. And life’s too short for that.”
