Redlisted

by Sara Beaman

  I found myself nodding. Of course she was concerned about me.

  “Remember what I told you,” she said in a low tone, leaning in. “I can help you. I want to help you.”

  She placed her hand lightly against my cheek.

  “You really do look like him,” she whispered.

  Like Lucien.

  I felt another surge of loss and regret, and behind it a creeping sliver of lust. I couldn’t sort out which of the feelings were hers and which were mine. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.

  “Adam?” Julian’s voice, behind me. “Mirabel, what are you—“

  “Nothing.” She pulled her hand away.

  “I should hope,” he said, coming to stand next to us. “Adam, if you will be so kind as to wait for me in my office, I will be along presently.”

  I nodded. It was a reasonable request; I had no reason to argue.

  I left without a word.

  It wasn’t until I reached the double doors to the library that I realized what had happened. He had compelled me to leave—forced me to do it with a manifestation of the blood. I should have felt angry, but instead I felt scared; his actions seemed like an implicit confirmation of Mirabel’s warnings.

  He’s killed every one of his sons and daughters before you. He’ll kill you too, once he gets what he needs from you.

  I wasn’t going to wait for him.

  I picked a direction at random and headed off down the corridors, my anxiety building as I walked. I began to feel nervous that he or Aya were behind me, following me. Every third step I took, I looked behind myself, afraid he’d somehow materialized behind me in the interim. I was too scared to stop, too scared to even look where I was going. I couldn’t afford to look, to think, to do anything but run, so I ran.

  Minutes and minutes passed. The vastness of the corridors was staggering. How long had I been walking in the same direction, never hitting the boundary? I stopped, crouched down, and put my ear against the ground. It was still and silent. I relaxed a little, confident that I was alone.

  I took out the cards. The garage card was still sitting on the top of the deck. Could I try to steal a car and escape? It wasn’t the most elegant plan, but I had no idea what else to do. I’d have to wait, though; I wasn’t certain Haruko and Mirabel were gone yet. Where could I hide in the interim? I flipped through the deck. Not the office, not my suite, not the seraglio... The grounds? I could hide in the woods, perhaps.

  The deck sensed my intent, and I felt the pull. I walked down the corridor to a corner. The deck pulled me to the right, but the hallway went left. I frowned. This hadn’t ever happened before.

  I turned left, walked down the next corridor, and found myself faced with another left turn. I turned around. Perhaps if I backtracked? I turned right, walked down the same stretch I’d just covered. At the end was another right-hand turn where the deck wanted a left. Frustrated, I took the right, jogging down the hall to a corner. Another right.

  And after it another. And a third. And a fourth.

  I was trapped in a loop.

  I went around a second time just to be sure. It was just as before, with no forks in the road, no ways of escape. I turned the other way, went around a third time in the opposite direction. No exits. Nothing.

  Maybe if I waited long enough, the labyrinth would shift? Certainly this knot would eventually undo itself. I sat down on the floor by a corner and waited, glancing at my watch every so often. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. I took out the deck and began shuffling through the cards. Maybe if I picked another destination? I could feel the pull change as I changed cards—first for my suite, then for the garage, then for the ballroom—but the landscape stayed the same.

  After an hour nothing had changed.

  Losing my nerve, I stood up and circled the loop counter-clockwise. I was on the verge of trying to kick in a wall when I saw that an exit had finally materialized: the ornate entrance to the seraglio. At the sight of the doors, a metallic taste—the anticipation of blood—hit the back of my mouth, and the tearing sensation overcame my chest. Hunger overwhelmed dread, overwhelmed disgust. I opened the doors and walked inside.

  The seraglio was smaller than I remembered, and darker. No longer was it full of people and the gentle static of their murmured conversations. I saw only a single silhouette among the screens and curtains, and I heard only a single heartbeat.

  I exhaled and let my shoulders relax. This way would be so much easier, so much less humiliating. I could control myself around a single human. I could suppress the feeding urge long enough to speak with them first.

  Slowly I approached the figure, wondering what the etiquette was in this situation. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say? Hopefully they would know. Hopefully they’d understand I’d never done this before.

  “Hello?” I called, my voice wavering.

  Behind the thin curtain that separated us, the figure whirled around.

  “Who is it?” she called back, abject terror resonating in her voice.

  “My name is Adam,” I said, taking a few steps closer. “I’m Julian’s, um... son, or whatever. I’m sorry to disturb you—“

  “Who’s Julian?” she cried. “Where am I?”

  “You don’t know?” I grimaced. “Oh God. Okay. Look, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m trying to get out of here too. Maybe we can help each other escape—“

  I passed through the curtain and found myself face-to-face with someone I recognized immediately.

  “Elena! What are you doing here?”

  She shrank away and cowered in a corner. I could tell she didn’t recognize me, but I was sure it was her. It was her face, her eyes, her bearing. Her hair was even in the same style as she’d worn it over ten years ago: parted in the center, cut to fall just short of her jawline.

  “Elena, please, it’s just me,” I said, extending a hand towards her.

  “Elena? Who’s Elena? Where am I?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  She shook her head.

  “What do you remember? Anything?”

  “I don’t know.” She started to cry. “I woke up here just a few hours ago...”

  I closed my eyes and pressed my pointer fingers to my tear ducts. “Jesus Christ...”

  “Are you going to drink my blood like the other one did?” she whispered.

  “What other one?”

  “The brown-haired man with the green eyes.”

  Julian.

  “No,” I spat. “No, I’m not going to.”

  She shielded her face with her arm. “Please don’t hit me! I’m sorry—“

  “God! No, I’m not angry at you. Please don’t be frightened. I’m nothing like him. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to do whatever I can to help. Okay?”

  Slowly she turned back towards me, took a deep breath and forced herself to stop crying. I took her hand and helped her to her feet. She looked at me with dread; my touch made her shiver. Her mind was a wasteland, desolate, empty of anything but fear. I had to say something to fill the void—something that would bring her back to herself. I placed my hands on her shoulders and gazed into her eyes until mine lost focus.

  The words wouldn’t come.

  Suddenly something in my mind snapped into place. It wasn’t just her hair that was the same, I realized; nothing about her appearance had changed. There were still only the most delicate creases around her eyes and mouth. Her hair was the exact same color, black and peppered only slightly with gray. If anything, she looked younger than she had before. Impossible. Twelve years had passed and altered nothing?

  This wasn’t Elena at all. This was some composite of my memories of Elena. Something superimposed on another woman, or perhaps even a complete illusion created in the whole cloth of my consciousness. I could feel the warmth of her skin against my hands, smell the scent of her hair, but even that could be an illusion, a false impression of contact. What if this was all some elaborate delusion—the loop in the labyrinth
, the deserted seraglio, all of it?

  I stumbled backwards several paces. The lamps and candles dimmed to near-blackness. A spectral figure emerged from the shadows, collecting all the light in the chamber into itself, eclipsing the illusion of Elena.

  As the room went black, the figure came into focus: a woman, with white-blond hair and translucent alabaster skin, naked and emaciated.

  Mnemosyne.

  She reached her left hand towards me, gesturing; not beckoning, but pulling, siphoning my consciousness through her bony fingers. She consumed it as she’d consumed the lamplight.

  I crumpled to the floor and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  23

  Exsanguinated

  {Kate}

  Adam nudges my shoulder until I wake up.

  “I’m sorry, Kate, we need to go. You can sleep in the car if you want.”

  I groan and force myself to sit, rubbing at my eyes. What the hell just happened? I wonder, thinking of the bizarre vision with the spectral woman.

  “What do you mean?”

  I was in your memories again, I explain. You were in the seraglio, and you saw your ex-girlfriend, but then this ghost lady appeared, and you passed out. I’m confused.

  He makes a face. “That’s not something I like to think about.”

  Shit, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bring up a sore subject—

  “No, it’s fine,” he says, then he mumbles to himself, “she’s probably not listening...”

  Who’s not?

  “Don’t worry about it,” he says with a dismissive shake of his head. “My experience in the seraglio was a hallucination Mirabel created. She wanted me to drink the blood of a particular victim, someone she’d... infected, sort of. She can use blood to create very deep-seated compulsions. Fortunately for me, Mnemosyne was watching, and she intervened.”

  Mnemosyne? You mean the headless corpse in Julian’s backyard?

  “Yes.”

  She can see things?

  “Yes, and hear them, and use manifestations,” he says. “Nothing like she could before she was beheaded, but...”

  Right, but isn’t she, you know, evil?

  “A better word might be amoral. And she absolutely despises Mirabel.”

  I think about this for a second.

  “It’s gotten colder,” he says. “I pulled a coat out from your bag.” He hands me the black jacket Haruko bought for me.

  I climb out of bed and pull it on.

  We walk out into the late autumn air. It’s early enough in the evening that the sky hasn’t gone entirely black; the moon hasn’t yet risen. The lights in the car are on. Haruko is in the back seat, slumped against the car door. She has a winter hat on her head that obscures her head wound. It’s not impossible to imagine that she could just be asleep. Aya sits in the back seat next to her.

  Let me drive, I tell Adam.

  “Are you sure?”

  Yes.

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  No. I feel awesome. Ever since Tara healed me, I’ve felt great.

  He shrugs and hands me the keys. “All right,” he says. “I want to talk to Tara again for just a moment. Could you get in the car and turn on the radio? Listen to a news station.”

  I’ll come with you! I want to thank her—

  “Please? I’d really appreciate it.”

  I frown. Well, okay...

  “Thank you.”

  I get in the driver’s seat and wait, playing out in my head what we’ll need to do next. We’ll need gas again soon—maybe we can stop some place where I can eat and pee. Then we’ll need to get back on the highway and drive north as fast as we can.

  Why didn’t he want me to come with him? I don’t get it.

  I put the keys in the ignition and turn on the radio. I adjust the tuner until I find a public radio station playing a news program. The commentators report on a bunch of stuff I don’t care about: the results of some football games, a movie review, some grisly details about a senatorial sex scandal. Why aren’t they talking about the murders in DC? Aren’t they sensational enough? Maybe they’ve stopped, and that’s why all this stupid trivia is getting airtime.

  Perhaps fifteen minutes later Adam emerges from the house, walks to the car and gets in the passenger seat. As soon as he sits down, he cuts off the radio.

  “Where are we going now?” Aya asks.

  “We can’t make it all the way to Red Hook in a night,” he says, pulling a map out from the glove compartment, “so we’re going to a safe house in Erie, Pennsylvania. Eight hours from here.”

  “I see,” says Aya.

  I pull out of the driveway in reverse and turn onto a road that leads back into town.

  “Did you hear anything about the murders?” Adam asks me.

  No.

  A thought pops into my head.

  Adam, do you think Mirabel is suppressing the story?

  “I don’t see why she would...”

  But why else wouldn’t they be talking about it? It’s kind of a big deal!

  For a moment he doesn’t respond.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” he concedes.

  Something even more horrible occurs to me. Oh God! Do you think she orchestrated the murders?

  “I don’t have any idea,” he says. “I don’t know what she could accomplish by killing a bunch of people at random.” He turns his attention to the map.

  I narrow my eyes. You know something you’re not telling me.

  “I don’t know anything,” he says. “And there’s not much of a point in speculation.”

  That’s not true! If we think of possible scenarios, we can come up with contingency plans.

  “Well... all right. There’s the possibility that this whole thing has no connection to her. It’s also possible that the killings are the work of another revenant, and she’s suppressing the story as a matter of course.”

  But what if neither of those things are true?

  “I don’t want you to worry about what might happen in that case. If she’s collecting bodies, there’s not much either of us can do about it.”

  Whatever. I snort. Speak for yourself, but don’t underestimate me.

  He blinks at me silently with an expression that makes me want to backhand him.

  “All right,” he says. “I suppose it’s possible that she needs a huge amount of blood for a ritual.”

  I nod, trying to be strong and take this information in stride.

  “However, if it’s something that requires that much blood—the blood of thirty or more people—we’re fucked,” he says in a level tone. “It’d be different if we knew where she was holding the ritual, or what her intentions were, or if our Warden wasn’t in a coma—but none of those things are true. So there is nothing we can do,” he says, placing special emphasis on the last six words.

  I clench my teeth. Fine.

  He stares out the windshield, his eyes blank. He doesn’t seem at all pleased that he won the argument.

  I try to focus on the road.

  For a long time, no one speaks. Aside from the hum of the engine and the gentle bristling of our tires against the road, the cabin of the car is silent for at least an hour and a half. Aya has said nothing since we left Tara’s house, so it surprises me a little when she’s the one who breaks the silence.

  “Adam, I...” She pauses, sets her jaw, then continues. “Adam, why are we still going to Red Hook?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Warden is unconscious,” she says, her voice deepening.

  “And?”

  “And we should use this opportunity to get the head back to Julian.”

  “No. That won’t work.”

  “It could work! It might work. We have to at least try.”

  “Julian’s estate is the first place Mirabel will look for the head, and he’s not a match for her any longer,” he says in a gentle tone. “You know that.”

  “I don’t see why you have so little faith in him,” Aya
mutters.

  “Besides. Say we were to turn around. What would we do if and when Haruko wakes up? It’s a long way back to Georgia.”

  Aya’s eyes shift to the side; she takes a deep breath.

  “Aya, no. No. That’s not an option.”

  “We can leave her somewhere safe!” Aya argues. “She’ll be fine!”

  “Jesus, Aya! She’s a human being,” Adam says. “We can’t just stash her in a basement somewhere.”

  Aya doesn’t respond.

  “At least in Red Hook, the head will be adequately protected. The Wardens will keep it out of Mirabel’s hands.”

  She shakes her head.

  “If you have a question,” Adam says, “go ahead and ask it.”

  She folds her arms across her chest and stares out the window.

  “Suit yourself,” Adam says.

  The rest of the evening proceeds without incident. We stop at a big, busy gas station, where I find food and a bathroom and Adam disappears for twenty minutes. Aya does not; she stays in the car. I realize I’ve never actually noticed her go off to hunt. Perhaps she did while Haruko and I were in the warehouse store, but since then it doesn’t seem like she’s had the chance.

  We get back on the road. Within hours we’ve reached the shelter: an unoccupied model home in a suburban housing development. I feel weird pulling up to the driveway. It doesn’t seem like we should be here, but with dawn quickly approaching I’m not about to suggest we go elsewhere.

  Using a code provided on a sticky note on the map, I retrieve a key from a little lockbox beside the garage door and let myself in. Inside, the house has been staged to appear as if it were someone’s home. The end result isn’t very convincing; the furniture and decorations are all so clean and new and placed with such naked calculation that it precludes any pretense that anyone could actually live here.

  While Adam and Aya unload the car, I poke around the house, opening several identical doors in my search for a basement. I open to an empty pantry, a half bathroom, two empty coat closets, and the garage before finally finding a staircase leading underground. I leave this door open and walk into the family room. Hoping for some news from Washington, I pick up the remote and try to turn on the television. After a few futile attempts, pushing the power button more and more emphatically, I realize that the TV is a fake—nothing more than a prop made of cardboard. I flop over on the couch, tossing the remote away.