The Calyx Charm

by May Peterson

  His brow wrinkled. “I—”

  “Haven’t seen him. Isn’t that always the way?” I laughed gaily and snatched another full glass. “Off I go again, it seems. My endless search for the divine.”

  The servant gawked as I swirled away, no doubt feeling he’d been trying to be kind and amazed at my flagrance. This was only recently something I was used to being—someone who could take up space, talk like a living person instead of a washed-out ghost. It must have been hard to connect the two people I appeared to be. The depressed, effeminate son of his lordship, hiding behind his mother and not meeting one’s eyes. Then, this elusive, flat-chested, deep-voiced girl, laughing like the world was ending.

  It probably was.

  I hadn’t expected to feel like this coming here. I was a mollyqueen who’d showed up uninvited and walked around like she owned the place, something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. I didn’t have to care about Father’s guests. I could flit among them like an ethereal, epicene butterfly, my feet not touching the ground, and parry their gazes like swords.

  I ascended the stairs, an aura of malice congealing around me.

  Upstairs, large windows exposed the floor to starlight, and low lamps added to the feel that the festivities were suspended in night sky. The water stretched out under the line of the wall. Fewer people gathered here, mostly seated in handfuls with staff eddying about, pockets of conversations like islands in the indigo. A constellation of black garbed men lined the walls and thickened at the other end of the room, near a lit fire. Father’s honor guard.

  And there he was. Father, striking against the glass like a crack in the dark. White from head to toe, austere, mountainous. His hair was so pale it was more ice than blond; his eyes would also be ice, just as his guts were ice and his tongue was ice. Like ice he sparkled, snatching light and breaking it into infinite screaming pieces.

  Panic swept over me, nearly forcing me back down the stairs. Father in his element was inhumanly powerful, a demigod of wealth and torture. I also hadn’t expected how my time away would have sensitized me to seeing him. I was here again after months of hiding, vulnerable and alone. The sensation of his rough hands snaked around my arms.

  But then I remembered different touches. Tibario’s arm around me, Rosalina’s embrace. I remembered Tibario dead in the flower of his youth, never to come back to me. I remembered why I was here.

  It calmed me. I stood in the midst of the flow, staring Father down as if my gaze could kill him. Slowly, I walked over to the window, found a place to lean against the wall. But I kept my eyes on him.

  Father’s attention shifted, and as if by magic, his eye landed on me. For a moment it seemed he must not recognize me. But he did not look away. Gesturing for a swath of men to follow him, he strode across the room.

  They circled me like wolves. I was ready. Men formed a semicircle apart from the rest of the room. Father’s men were stone-faced, automaton-like. Father himself glowed with his ice-captured energy.

  My heart quailed again.

  Father joined me by the window, turned out toward the water. For a moment, all was silent, him and me side by side, and I relaxed a little, like one would limbering up for a blow. I closed arms over my chest and waited. Let him show his hand.

  He slowly drew a cigarillo from his pocket. “This may surprise you. I’m terribly happy to see you again. I obviously didn’t expect you here tonight, but you never need an invitation, son, you know that.”

  I said nothing. A distinct, purposeful nothing that rolled over the space in the conversation in which he was hoping I’d speak. I watched the waves swirl like fire.

  He chuckled. “Right, it’s that ‘son’ you dislike. No, I’m not shocked, honestly. It follows. You probably wanted to be a woman all along, knowing you’d be a damn sight better at it than being a man. Can’t disagree there.”

  Amusement, black and lurid, swept through me. Was that what he thought? That I was molly as some kind of escape plan, a logical alternative to failing as a man? So close and so, so far away. I laughed smokily like a halfhearted hex.

  He didn’t seem to understand what was funny. “What would you like me to call you, then? Tell me the rules.”

  Always in love with rules, rules he could slip through. I faced him, stared right in his arctic eyes. “Violetta.”

  Father shrugged one shoulder, expression nearly impressed. “It’s a good name. One your mother would have picked.” He raised the cigarillo, and a man stepped out to light it. He took one long puff.

  “Put it out.” He knew I hated him smoking around me. He gawked, perhaps not thinking I’d ever speak so strongly to him. I remained still. Then, sighing, he doused it, handed the stub away.

  “As you will.” Was this the same Father who would have struck me for that months ago? He must know his upper hand was gone. “Tell me, Violetta. Is there any point to me asking you to come home? Because I really do want you to. That may be difficult for you to accept, but I want both of you back.”

  I watched him, unblinking.

  “Is your mother well? You have to know. She disappeared in the height of the day without a trace, like a hole had opened up in the world around her. Not a single man of mine has found hide or hair of her since. There are no escapes that perfect. Not without some very specific help. Your kind of help.” He drew an invisible line down the pane of the window with one finger.

  I balked, but it wasn’t because of guilt.

  It was seeing a father who missed me. I was susceptible to the image of a father that secretly loved me. I would listen to him, change for him, give up for him, as I had done over and over again, with the secret never coming forth.

  I turned to the bay, visions tossed in its waves. It would be so much easier if he openly hated me. “Mother will be all right, because she is apart from you now. Don’t try to find her.”

  Father scoffed. “I suppose your purpose tonight is to tell me that.”

  “No. I am here to ask you what you know about...” I hesitated. “The death in the Gianbellicci household.”

  Father’s disbelief was plain on his face, even from the corner of my eye. “Tibario or Mio? Because it can’t be Serafina. The whole city would know if that old fire-breather had died.”

  So he didn’t know. He wouldn’t have wanted to let me bring it up in my own time. I seized the opportunity. “Both. I prophesied it, didn’t I, that both her children would be taken from her? But I came to ask you, not for you to ask me.”

  Father stared at me. “By which you mean—did I kill them? No. But I can’t expect you to believe that. The only convincing performance would be insistence that I’d never do such a thing, that murdering her brats would be beneath me. Horseshit. Of course I’d go for her brood first. I’m not someone to shoot for the kill when I could shoot for the wound. I wish I had killed them, because that would make it all the more sour to Serafina. Ah, well.”

  His laughter was like hot ash. I felt no surprise. I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t known him capable of cruelty. But his callousness was galvanizing, electrifying in its absolute consistency with him.

  “You were fond of her eldest, I think?” Father took a new cigarillo from his pocket. “That’s too bad. I imagine you would want to see if he’d take you as a woman, but that’s spoiled now. Little fuck.”

  Outrage bloomed in my guts, and I strangled it down. There was only one way I’d ever succeed with Father. I had to not care if he loved me, and not care if anyone loved me. I had to be steel, needing nothing. The moment I was a person of flesh instead of an object, I lost.

  I stepped away, turned to go back from where I’d come. Waste of fucking time.

  “Wait.” Father reached out, grabbed my arm. “I shouldn’t have said that. I know I haven’t been a good father to you. But I need you to know something.” His voice dropped conspiratorially. “I never lai
d a hand on your mother. Not like that. I promise.”

  My eyes widened; I had to grab the windowsill to stay steady. It was like he’d known this was exactly what I’d spent years fearing he’d done. Thank God. I’d persuaded her to leave in time—if he was telling the truth.

  But if he was, the message was clear.

  I never touched her. Only you. You were special to me.

  My insides went still.

  Very well. If steel I must be, steel I would become.

  I pried his fingers off my arm, and leaned in to breathe in his face. “I’ll tell you why I’m not coming home. Home isn’t with you anymore. And I’m too busy thinking about how pleasant it will be to watch you die.”

  Two of his men strode out of the ring, pistols cocking and aimed at me. I had barely spoken above a whisper, but it took nothing for the audience to narrate this as a menacing mollyqueen threatening a head of state. Father’s eyes blew wide; then a faint smile crossed his lips.

  “No, drop your arms.” He raised a hand, and after a moment, his men obeyed. “She doesn’t have that kind of power. If she did, she’d have used it by now.”

  The scent of danger was oddly invigorating, as if my instincts for survival were being reversed. “Think about that, Father. What kind of power do you think prophecy is? I think I’ve called a rather formidable series of dooms down on this country.”

  That appeared to give him pause, but he didn’t have time for a response. Energy ran through the room like current. Intuition sent premonitions down my back, too quickly to be interpreted.

  Then I saw it. Behind him, like a knife wound in the skin of the world, a tear was opening.

  It looked like a piece of a nightmare, as if space were being ripped apart. A dark mouth in the air, breathing chill on my face. But the feeling I had at seeing it wasn’t fear.

  It was excitement. I felt bizarrely like my intuition had led me to this moment, and not only to face Father. To be present for this.

  A figure slipped through the mouth, more devil than human. They wore a leering lacquer mask, white and red with black eyes. Dark clothing swathed lanky limbs, and blades gleamed in their hands. An animalistic tail lashed at the figure’s back.

  For reasons I didn’t understand, the sight turned my excitement into joy.

  The next few moments had the slow power of a glacier. Guests were catching sight of the devil figure, gasping and panicking. Father’s men dispersed, strained in curbing the flow of startled guests. Some of his soldiers gaped in shock.

  The masked devil streaked across the floor, as if made of motion rather than flesh, blades swinging toward Father. A word rose in my mind: assassination. They were going to kill him. Panic flared on Father’s face.

  Then he became ice once again.

  Something surreal happened right before the blades struck. Sparks of pale pink light sprang across Father’s body. He did not move. It was as if he knew what to expect. A sensation of magic churned in my guts.

  The blade hit him—and clashed off a bubble of light. Violet power wreathed Father. The blade struck again, and again, each time deflecting harmlessly off the barrier.

  No. Nausea flooded my consciousness. The magic protecting him—

  It was mine.

  The calyx charm that I had lost years ago sung around Father in full force, and the assassin was no match for it.

  Father surged forth, as if to grab his assailant’s weapon, but the masked devil dodged. Bullets shot through the din, leaving acrid signatures in the atmosphere. The assassin pivoted, flipped into his hands. Guests began shouting, panic mounting at the sound of gunshots.

  I almost fell to my knees, gripping my stomach. Was I causing this? How?

  Or had Father stolen my power from me?

  Father ignored me. He gestured at the assassin, who was nimbly evading a hail of bullets. “Enough games. Kill him.”

  The guests’ shrieks appeared to mean nothing to Father. The ring of men focused fire. The devil danced with superhuman agility, but whoever they were, no one could evade such an assault for long. Two shots found purchase, ripping through abdomen and chest.

  No. Terror thickened in me. The assassin sank to their knees, hands covering their wounds. Dark blood spouted out on the carpet.

  Father’s chuckle was like a surgical knife. “Since he seems to have a bit of spirit left in him, let’s do away with this mask and see who’s come to visit. My money’s on—”

  He didn’t have the chance to place a bet. The devil heaved briefly, blood dripping down the underside of the mask. Then his hand came away from the wound in his abdomen, and it wasn’t only blood in his palm, but a bullet. A bullet he had pulled free, and tossed to the ground.

  Snatching back his blades, the devil rose slowly to his feet.

  Father’s eyes narrowed through his patina of gossamer. “Interesting.”

  And it was enough for me. My heart was stretched between beats. I reached out to the future inside myself.

  Who are you?

  Conviction flared to life in me. Without thought, without any plan in mind, I surged at him, arms outstretched. Burning with naked intuition, I cried, “Fly!”

  And slammed him and myself into the window.

  He reacted with supernatural grace, arms closing around me. It felt eerily, impossibly familiar. Natural. Then, our forms tangled together, we pitched out into the night.

  The already broken windows were probably what saved us; no shards to slash or confuse or slow us down. We rolled as we fell, and the devil angled so that he kicked off the wall on the way down. How he’d had the wherewithal to move at all amidst such a plummet, I couldn’t guess. But the dark of the bay expanded, and before we hit, he cried, “Hold on to me!”

  That voice. How could it be? I buried my face in his chest.

  The water slapped into us like an angry god. The cold was blinding. Somehow it was both more painful, and more painless, than I’d expected.

  Then, I was flailing, trying to keep afloat as sensation returned—but I wasn’t drowning. His arms had not parted from around me, and his heavy breathing sounded in my ear. In a few moments, words clarified: “Hey. Are you all right? Look at me. Can you hear me?”

  He spoke softly, gentle as his fingers cupping my shoulders, and his voice was muffled through the mask. But there was no other voice this could be, rough and worried and engulfing me like a fragrance.

  I was crying. That fact came to me without transition, by the sound of my sobs. I was crying, breathless, and absolutely certain of who this was.

  He held me so close to his chest it was almost intimate, tender. “Tell me you’re not hurt.”

  In the space between us, something began to throb like a coal. My necklace. The strand of my hair could once have called out to me from leagues away. Now it pulsed with prophecy, as if I was waking up.

  I couldn’t tell him I wasn’t hurt, because it wasn’t true. And it mattered little to me now.

  My hands regained their strength before my lungs did. Fumbling, I reached for his mask. It was smooth, thin, and clasped around the back of his head. He gasped when my fingers touched the clasp, but he did not resist.

  I pulled the mask free.

  Behind it, Tibario looked back at me, eyes bright with sorrow.

  He was alive.

  The moonlight seemed impossibly bright off the dark water. Perhaps a witch, a ghost, a face-stealing fox-soul, could imitate him. But the raw, boyish expression was true. And my intuition screamed, screamed and wailed and sang, that he had come back to me.

  His mouth opened as if to speak, but before he could, bullets rained down on us.

  Chapter Five

  Tibario

  I was trapped in a thought: I have to get her to shore.

  My mask rolled away on the curve of a wave. My weapons were gone, and Casilio still li
ved. Having witnessed our gambit, he was more dangerous alive now than ever before. Worst of all—my senses said that it had been the calyx charm protecting him.

  The implications of that made me sick. But that was for later. All that mattered to me now was her.

  Bullets struck the water, and I rolled with her in my arms, pushed into the dark.

  Mercurio. Who are you? He’d always been so tense, when it was me and him alone with the weight of our separate lives, something secret and hungry growing in the breathless shared space of that loneliness. A secret he had never seemed ready to speak.

  She was still clinging tightly, gasping with tears, and I wound my arms close without hesitation. Only one way of escape lay open now.

  My memory opened the way to the Deep. A starlit and shining gulf, snatching us from the water and sending us through the void.

  Maybe now I could understand. The part of him, of Mercurio, I’d never seen.

  Not him. Her.

  The cold expanse of the Deep was worse than the water. I secured her waist, cupping her head more intimately than I would ever before have dared. “Close your eyes. Don’t open them, no matter what. This part will be over soon.”

  By now I knew, with the shaky confidence of new muscle memory, how to pick my destination. This was the first time I’d brought someone with me, and the recklessness of that struck me. What if I could survive this, and she couldn’t? Urgency to push through to the other side again overcame me.

  The Deep opened, and the warmth of the material world penetrated. In moments, I was holding her, gasping, on the sand of a beach. She seemed frighteningly still in my arms, but the villa and its accompanying gunfire were gone.

  This girl had stood facing Casilio when I appeared, her features so familiar it was like the lost essence of a childhood dream. Reason and instinct told me this girl and Mercurio were the same person, but she must have hidden from me for a reason. And the trip through the Deep may have killed her—I had no reason to believe anyone but a cat-soul could endure the jump. I hadn’t thought of that when I escaped.