by Tessa Elwood
My arms half reach to hug my chest. I force them to my sides. “You don’t know what I was thinking.”
His brows flatline in a yeah, right. “It’d be an ugly way to die.”
Which was the problem.
“Do I look dead?” I jump the next three steps, landing on the one past his, and take the rest two at a time.
This is not a conversation I’m having, least of all with him.
He keeps up, reaching my landing just as I hit the door. “Are you okay?”
He sounds so sincere, even honest, and I laugh. “Is this a trick question?”
Which apparently is the key to pissing him off.
“Fine.” He steps closer, knuckles shiny on the box. “Are you going to try again?”
“What’s it to you?”
The air vibrates and me with it, feeding the tension or reflecting it back.
“Because I know,” he says. “Which means not stopping you is as bad as pushing you myself.”
“You want the chance? Then have at it.” I grab the stairwell rail with both hands. We’re only five stories up, so not guaranteed lethal, but with any luck I’ll break my neck on the way down. I plant a bare foot on the central pipe and hoist myself up. I’ve barely cleared the bar when arms wrap my waist and haul. We stumble and almost crash, his back hitting the wall and mine his chest. But we’re still on the landing, still stable.
Except now he’s squeezing me like the world might end if he lets go.
“What the hell?” he whispers, ragged in the quiet. Everything is ragged; our breath, my heart.
“You almost—” he swears, forehead falling to my skull as he swears again.
I know that tone, this hold, that swear. Terror. Fully formed and nothing but. He’s rife with it, the echoes burning through his hands and chest—leaking out and into me. My stomach knots heavy and breathing hurts.
I almost broke him. Scraping me off the stairwell floor probably would have. Seeing me fall, all that blood.
Just like I broke Dee. She retreated. Dee never retreats.
At least Mom killed people outright. Apparently I have other ways.
I curl forward.
“No.” Niles pulls me close, but my legs aren’t stable. Without the wall, neither are his. We sink. The floor’s cold. The colorkit box lies close by.
We sit. His grip doesn’t ease, like he thinks I’ll try again.
He’s right. Wrong? I don’t know anymore.
“It’s all right,” I say.
“No, it’s damn well not—”
“I won’t do anything here.”
“So it’ll be somewhere else?”
“I . . .”
Maybe? Probably? I don’t know.
“God,” he says.
“It’s not on your head,” I say. “I’m not on your head.”
“You have no idea.” He sighs and knocks back against the wall.
I pull away to look at him, and his arms finally ease up. “I didn’t ask you to see me. I don’t know you.”
His eyes are dark and shuttered and close when I look too long. Without them open, he loses years and gains exhaustion. “Promise me something?”
But that’s more than I can give. “I can’t—”
“Not tonight.” He blinks, tries for a smile. It doesn’t last. “Just not tonight.”
As if I could. Today’s courage died when he hauled me back. Or else when the Enactor walked me to freedom.
They should have just mapped me.
“Okay.” I disentangle and climb to my feet. The stairwell is stuffy as hell and I’m freezing, at least in the places his arms just were.
He stands as I retrieve the colorkits. “Promise.” Not a question.
“Fine,” I say. “Promise.”
I unlock the door to the blare of the newsfeeds. Dad has my small wall-screen jacked up to full volume. Some digislate ad. My neighbors probably hate me.
Not that this is half as loud as the earlier show outside.
He’s also lit a mass of air-freshener sticks, which smoke a tangled web of scents from the kitchen counter.
“Kit? That you?” Dad calls from the couch.
“Yeah.” I back-kick the door closed. “Turn it down, Dad. The whole building can hear.”
He half straightens from his slouch to dig up the screen remote, hitting mute just as a newscast switches on. Same one Mrs. Divs had running, full of sleek professionals with practiced smiles.
“Where you been, doll?” He leans up, kisses my cheek, sloppy and wet. He used to do that, hand out kisses, back when he, Mom, and I were something of a unit. Known as a family, even seen in each other’s company. He would sometimes buy me ices; Mom would sometimes braid my hair.
Then Dad started bringing over people who weren’t Mom, and swore me not to tell. He’d smile when I promised.
He’s smiling now.
“How did Dee know you were here?” I ask.
He shrugs. “She called while you were out. I didn’t know who it was.”
“Then you shouldn’t have answered,” I say.
“But what if it was you?” He sinks into the couch, retrieves a flask from some hidden pocket and stares at the newsfeed. “You’ve been gone all day, what if you needed me?”
I needed him when I was nine.
“You’re leaving tomorrow,” I say.
He looks up, face open, eyes huge. “Kit—”
“Dad.” Yonni’s tone, a warning.
He sighs, reaching up to rub my hip. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
I don’t want to talk about it tomorrow. I don’t want to talk about it now.
On-screen, the newscasters have switched to a new interview feed. Not Lady Galton this time, but a man. Brown-haired, sharp-eyed, and without being blatant.
The Enactor from the interview room.
A red caption floats below: Prime.
The Prime? I was interrogated by the freakin’ Prime? The man who controls the Enactors. The only House Official with almost bloodling-level power, without actually being a bloodling. I might as well have been questioned by Lady Galton, or Lord Galton’s ghost.
My chest empties, and I sink into the couch beside Dad.
The Prime doesn’t play to the cameras, like the Lady, and it’s not like I memorized his face. Why would I? I’d have as much chance of running into him as I would a bloodling—or a lordling come to that, with the exception of Missa.
The Prime wants to map me.
I curl over the colorkit box—now in my lap, I didn’t drop it—and proceed not to feel. Anything. Like a heartbeat.
The Prime knows about the Accounting.
Which means it’s real.
“Kit?” Dad scoots close and rubs my back. “What’s up, baby doll?”
I shake my head. There’s no air in the room and too much under my skin.
What’s up, baby? Dad asked, leaning over Mom’s shoulder as she sat at the kitchen table and built algorithms on her digislate. She could always make the numbers dance, and the letters, and the little symbols in between. I sat one chair over with my sandwich and juice, little hand sticky from both.
Mom didn’t lift her head or slow her fingers. Years, it’d take years. The prep alone, the focus—it’d be this, it could only be this.
She’d said that before that night, more than once, to herself and to me.
This what? Dad asked.
She paused, looked up, her smile a slow incredible thing. The Accounting. I’ve cracked it.
“Baby?” Dad brushes my hair off my temple and gently raps my skull with his knuckles. “Hey, you still in there?”
I yank away from his hand, the couch.
From Mom at the table and me with my sandwich. From the beauty of her grin.
“Kit?” Dad asks.
That’s wonderful, baby! he’d said.
Mom turned serious. I’d have to dedicate everything to it; there could be nothing else.
He rubbed her neck. You do what you need to.
Thank you, Ricky, she’d said, and disappeared the next day. No note, no goodbye. One day she was there, and the next she wasn’t.
He reaches for me. “Don’t block the screen, baby. Here, sit—”
“Watch your show, Dad.” I bolt into my bedroom and lock the door. I dump the colorkits on the bed and lock myself in the bathroom. It’s tiny, with a box shower and scuffed white tiles, though larger than the half bath off the living room. But the real difference between them is the mirror. Yonni splurged on the mirror. It stretches from wall to ceiling, rimmed in woven tube lights that glow orange.
I’m orange. Cheek swollen. Lip puffed but not quite busted. Hair frizzed, shirt sweat-streaked and a little askew. I might have been in a fight, or three. But under it all, despite the mess and the tangles, I’m still Mom.
Heart-edged jaw, sharp nose, jet hair. Mom was never unkempt, never not perfect, and still—still, I’m her.
No wonder the Prime wanted to map me. Except he didn’t. Maybe he thinks it too risky, that my brain would break before he extracted whatever he thinks I know.
Tell me about the Accounting.
Vengeance. Simple as that.
The late Lord Galton gutted the independent planets. Seized, evacuated, and/or killed every living soul there in order to split the planet and suck energy from its core. They never stood a chance, not against the force of our House. He destroyed their homes to fuel ours.
Mom was from one of those independents, born and raised there until she was seven or nine. She wasn’t the only survivor, and she’d meet with the others at night sometimes, when I was in bed or supposed to be. They had two refrains: Galton must be held to Account and They will know our loss.
I tug my hair out of its ponytail and comb my fingers through. It falls to my elbows, unremittent black. Just like hers.
“‘Unless we understand how to start afresh,’” I quote, soft, “‘we’ll never be effective. Unless we begin as if we’ve never existed before, we’ll never exist afterward.’”
I stare at the Mom in the mirror.
“You don’t exist, but I will.”
The colorkit doesn’t do anything.
The guy on the front of Sunset Luminescence beckons from under vibrant mahogany, but my black hair is still black. The mirror fogs as I lean close, my scalp a ropy, damp mass. Maybe a bit orange, but in these lights everything’s orange.
I sort through the colorkit’s used gloves and tubes for the included digisheet—a thin, flimsy screen smeared from my fingerprints. Its glossy text reads, after thirty minutes, rinse the color and prepare for the new you.
“I don’t get it,” I say, but disposable digisheets aren’t programmed to answer questions.
Perhaps my hair is too dark for this. I need something lighter.
I retrieve Mrs. Divs’s box from the bed and dig through shades of red and blonde. One girl’s head is pure white, skin nearly light enough to match. Ghostfire—a dye and lightening treatment. Sounds right. I dump the contents on the counter, unscrew the tube labeled #1 and dump the contents on my head. Cold, slimy goo slinks everywhere—in my ear, down my neck, on my shirt. I tap the digisheet for the process time.
One hour. I have to stand here and drip for an hour. I screw up Yonni’s bedroom carpet and she’ll return from the grave to gut me.
Nothing else for it. I strip out of my clothes, fill the sink with water, and soak my shirt. Might as well salvage something. Then I slide back the opaque glass door to the shower and step inside. It’s tiny—I have to pull my knees up to my chin in order to sit—but safe. Even I can’t ruin EverClean tile. This stuff would stand up to acid.
I close my eyes and wait.
Buzzzit, buzzzit.
The flipcom won’t stop. High vibrations with cracked ends. My neck cramps, my back hurts, and my butt sticks to the tile.
Shower tile. I fell asleep.
The flipcom falls silent for three full seconds, then starts again.
No one ever calls twice in a row—unless Greg’s got himself in city lockup. He has this thing about not asking Dee to bail him out, something about pride, which somehow doesn’t extend to me.
Buzzzit.
I de-stick myself from the floor and crawl out of the shower. Dig through my discarded clothes for the flipcom, and press it to my ear. “What?”
“Franks?” asks the phone voice, confused but fast on the ball.
Not Greg, then.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Jallon Remmings.” My former boss, official head of the Gilken Museum.
The man who fired me.
I grab my shirt and cover myself up. “Mr. Remmings.”
He coughs, clears his throat. The silence stretches and he coughs again. I don’t know what he’s hoping for, but I’m not about to fill in.
“We’ve missed you on the rotation,” he says.
“I thought I was a detriment.”
That’s what he’d said, a detriment. The daughter of a murderer. You understand why I can’t keep you on.
“No, no,” Mr. Remmings says. “Not you, yourself, merely your connections.”
“I thought there wasn’t a difference.”
He doesn’t pause. “Would you be available to come on shift tomorrow? Early?”
I run the words through my head twice over and still come up blank.
“What?” I ask.
He sighs. “I’ve no one to take the shift. Joan is out sick, Henri has a family event, and Denze is still mastering tour-level knowledge.”
Denze Remmings, a nephew, has three years of tour-level knowledge pounded into his skull. It’s amazing the detail of random Gilken info he can dish out when a bet’s on. Even more amazing is how it all evaporates the moment work might be involved. If you need a hand, you count on Denze to be somewhere else.
“So you’re letting Millie Oen’s daughter back in?”
His voice creaks, as if the words are hard to pull. “You are not your mother.”
“And you have no one to cover the shift.”
The silence of admission.
“So you’re giving me my job back,” I say.
Another pause. “Potentially. You’ll have the day’s wage. If all goes well, we can discuss it further.”
Which isn’t a yes, but it’s something.
I won’t be able to cover power for the suite without work for long, little less buy food. And it’s not like anyone else will hire me.
“You’ll be here tomorrow?” Mr. Remmings asks.
“I’ll be there.”
“Good,” he says and hangs up.
I stare at the flipcom.
A job. I have my job. Possibly.
My whole body exhales, and I lean into the shower door. My head crunches against the cold glass. Literally. I explore my scalp and my hair crackles.
The colorkit gel. Right.
I crawl back into the shower, wipe myself up off the floor, and get the water on. Scrub until the mirror fogs and I’m 90 percent sure I’m clean.
I gather my clothes and hurry into the bedroom, opening the closet door with its full-length mirror. Yonni’s stark white head bobs in the glass.
I scream, clothes flying, towel crashing to the floor.
“Kit?” Dad, muffled and faint through the bedroom door. “What are you doing in there?”
My face stares from under Yonni’s hair. She always had long hair, even at the end, and dyed it white until the grays took over. A pure, soft powder, like light caught and distilled.
My hair is almost translucent, at odds with my black eyebrows an
d overwide cheeks. I don’t look like Mom anymore.
I look like hell.
“Kit,” whines Dad from the door, close enough to be right outside it. “You up? I thought we could do breakfast.”
I thought you could make me breakfast, he means.
I used to do that, cook for him, when Mom wasn’t home. He’d hand me down the pans and plates I was too little to reach, then I’d half burn something semieatable, and we’d watch old feedshows together.
“In a minute,” I call. Add a second, softer, “In a minute.”
My “new soul” drips water over my shoulders in ghost-white glee, the opposite of Millie.
“Well, Mom, I said you wouldn’t exist.”
Look at me, keeping my word. And I’m still breathing, so that’s Niles covered, too. I show up at work tomorrow, maybe the universe will give me a medal.
I grab a handful of what Yonni used to call my “crowning glory” and stretch it out.
So not worth it.
I throw on some clothes and wrap my new disaster into a tight bun. Grab an old gray hat of Yonni’s, with the thin plaid brim, and stuff it on. A few flyaways escape, but for the most part it hides the evidence. I don’t look reborn, but at least I’m not a ghost.
I close the closet door and go face Dad.
“There’s my baby.” He’s on the couch, of course, but on the floor by his feet lies a much scuffed digibook—its cover open to reveal a text-filled screen.
A limited edition manufacture of Gilken’s collected works, engraved on the back with the old Archive’s original seal, annotated by the best scholars of the day.
The digibook that never leaves my bedside table.
I snatch it up. “You went into my room?”
Dad shrugs. “You were gone all day and I never read much of him, and I thought we could—you know—” He smiles as if we’re bonding. “He’s a pretty interesting guy. Didn’t turn out to be such a bad gift, after all.”
Right. Because when Mom gave it to me for my seventh birthday, they didn’t have the fight from hell over it or anything. He didn’t spend three hours screaming about how she wasted money we didn’t have on a stupid digibook when I could barely even read. Had she even looked at my school reports? And Mom didn’t scream back that she got me the book for exactly that reason—because Gilken had trouble with his letters, too, before he became our House’s most renowned Scholar. And, of course, I didn’t hide under my bed for hours, until snotty tears crusted my skin, because I thought I was getting a puppy.
