Emilia had popped out briefly to fetch supplies from the bakery next door, so there was a bag of cheese croissants amidst the coffee cups. Priya was the only one who had any appetite. She was on her second croissant when the sharp click of Cass’s footsteps sounded on the pavement outside.
Cass was not much taller than Emilia, but looked like she should be. Her hair was a dynamic bottle green, cut in a sharp bob, and her sweeping black eyebrows gave all her facial expressions extra drama, making her look annoyed even when she wasn’t—though tonight she probably was annoyed. She shrugged out of her black brocade jacket and grabbed Emilia’s cup of coffee, draining it in one gulp.
“Right,” she said. Her Irish accent was much stronger than usual, a sure sign she was angry. “Solutions would be good any time now.”
Rieke hunched unhappily in his seat, as though her words had been personally directed at him.
“Do you know anything about creatures like this?” Priya asked, not hopefully.
“What, because I’m from Ireland?” Cass laughed sharply. “When I was little my nan told me not to wear green or the fairies would take me away. That’s the sum total of my paranormal knowledge.” She glared at Emilia. “I can’t believe you didn’t even ask me before you went and signed your life away.”
“Excuse me, you cared? That’s news,” Emilia snapped. “What happened to, ‘it’s your mess, sort it out’? You thought the shop was a terrible idea from the start. Why would I ask you for advice when I knew you’d tell me not to even try?”
Cass flinched, color bursting across her cheeks as if Emilia had slapped her. “That’s what this is about? Tell me, when was the last time you let me help you with anything?”
Rieke looked on in a state of horrified stupefaction. Priya thought about dead crocodiles and eyes that were complacent and hungry at the same time. Maybe the Fate would have called in Emilia’s contract anyway, but why come in person?
She slammed her hands down on the table, startling her employers into silence. “Why does she want to close down the bookshop? It’s making money, and from the look of things, she likes money. Why does hearing someone else figure out her own name matter more than repaying the loan?”
“I—” Emilia hesitated. “I thought it was just malice.”
“This is the supernatural,” Cass scoffed. “Why would it make sense?”
Priya chose to ignore that. “The way I see it, she has other plans for this place. Malice doesn’t pay for crocodile skin bags.”
“She’ll probably sell it off to some other idiot,” Emilia muttered. Cass twitched her hand, as though she was going to reach out, but didn’t.
“Oh, what’s the use,” Emilia said bitterly, pushing back her chair. “I’ve gone through millions of names, literally millions, without ever getting the right one. I’m not going to guess it now. I’m sorry, Priya, Rieke. However you got here, you’ve been fantastic employees. I may not be able to keep the shop open, but maybe the references and experience will help you get a job somewhere else.”
She stood up stiffly. “I’m going home.”
Rieke unfolded himself abruptly, and gave her a brief, awkward hug. Priya came over to hug her too, then Cass, who looked startled at being included.
“Whatever happens,” Priya said, “we’ll be okay. Right?”
They all nodded, but none of them believed it.
* * *
Getting home was a pain. Priya called a taxi just like she’d promised, but despite her specifications the first one that showed up was a regular cab and she had to wait another two hours for a maxi-taxi that could take her wheelchair. Rieke waited with her, slumped gloomily against a wall, not talking.
All the way home, she turned the same question over like it was a kind of Rubik’s cube and if she just looked at it from the right angle she could make the colors align. Why? Priya closed her eyes, trying not to cry.
“What’s wrong?” were her mother’s first words as Priya bumped through the door. The rest of the family was already in bed, but Priya’s mother was waiting up in the kitchen with a cup of tea and the radio turned down low. All Priya wanted was to fall into bed and forget that tomorrow she might not have a job.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Really, Mum, I’m fine.”
“Nonsense. Come here and I’ll make more tea.”
Reluctantly, Priya edged into the kitchen, which, with its elderly four-seater table and enormous fridge, was a bit too crowded to maneuver through easily. As she pulled up on one side of the table, Priya’s eyes went automatically to the two framed quotes that hung above the sink. They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them, Mahatma Gandhi said in neat calligraphy, and If you’re going through hell, keep going, Winston Churchill added. They were the sentiments by which Priya’s mother had lived much of her life.
“Did you have a nice evening?” her mother asked, watching her narrowly.
“No,” Priya admitted. Her mother pushed a mug across the table and she took it with a sigh. “Cass and Emilia are in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Their lender is a crook. They might lose everything. It’s so unfair. Emilia put her heart and soul into that shop.”
“What about you?” her mother demanded. “Is there any trouble with the law?”
“No. They’ve done nothing illegal.”
“Can they still pay you?”
Priya shrugged. “I’ll be fine. It’s them I’m worried about. And Rieke.” She remembered what Emilia had said about malice and looked at the quotes again. “Do you believe in fate, Mum? That things can’t be changed?”
Her mother looked surprised. “Never,” she said, without hesitation. “We always have choices. Not all of them will be good, but they are ours to make.”
“Yes,” Priya said thoughtfully. “I think so too.”
* * *
Sunday was not one of Priya’s days at the bookshop. She slipped the white phone under her mattress and spent the morning at a nearby internet cafe, trying to define the nebulous shape of an idea. She needed more data.
When she came home, she heard the soft buzz of the phone and pulled it out. She looked at it for a long time, letting it ring in her hand. Then she fetched her father’s hammer and smashed the phone into tiny pieces.
* * *
On Monday she arrived early to find Rieke compulsively straightening the shelves as though a precise alignment of spines could prevent anything bad from happening. When Priya called out “good morning!” he turned around and stared.
“Good?” he echoed disbelievingly.
“The shop’s still open,” Priya told him. “That’s a start.”
Emilia came out from the aisles. Her eyes were very red. “If you say so,” she said. “I’ve made a sign explaining things—well, what I can—I’ll post it on the door.”
“Don’t,” Priya said hastily. “Please, not today.”
“Today is the last day,” Emilia said tiredly. “Our regulars deserve to know.”
“Please, Emilia. Let’s go about business as usual. The Fate is bound to come back, she’ll want to see the effect this is having on us. So let’s show her.”
“A brave face?” Emilia smiled grimly. “Well, pride I do have. Or so I’m told. All right, we’ll hold it together for one last day. Rieke! Open up. We have books to sell.”
Priya was on alert all morning, waiting for a glimpse of crocodile skin or pastel lipstick. Emilia, her smile so determined it looked slightly dangerous, organized an impromptu poetry recital and for the first time ever Rieke did a reading. Priya applauded from behind the till. The crowd of customers clapped too, pleased but bemused by the strangely defiant atmosphere. At the back, clapping thin, beautifully manicured hands, was the Fate.
Finally, Priya thought.
The Fate was smiling, but she wasn’t pleased. Priya rolled carefully between the tables until one of her wheels bumped gently against the crocodile skin handbag.
“Bac
k again!” she said, before the Fate could speak. “How can we help you?”
The Fate looked, for the briefest moment, unnerved. Then a deeply unpleasant smile spread across her face.
“You can watch,” she said, in a low but clear voice, her eyes fixed on Priya’s, “as this little enclave is shut and its patrons are cut adrift in the world. You can watch me drink down its dreams and eat up its hopes. And I will watch you, my dear. You’ll drift from job to job, never quite fitting in, taken out of pity and pushed out the door when indulging your . . . misfortune . . . becomes too much of a bother. Without my favour, you will become nothing.”
Her words hit Priya like venom. She spun quickly to retreat behind the till, but not before she’d caught a glimpse of the Fate’s satisfied face. Her cheeks were flushed a healthy pink.
“You see, my dear?” Priya heard her say. “You can help me.”
* * *
All day long, the Fate sat in that corner. At closing time, when other customers had made their final purchases and vacated their tables, she remained. Emilia was locking up when Cass arrived. They looked at each other with a taut uncertainty, then Emilia yanked down the shutter and turned on the Fate.
“Well,” she said, “you want the shop? You’ll have to take it from me.”
The Fate stood up, carefully brushing down her jacket. She was smiling indulgently, as if Emilia was a recalcitrant granddaughter.
“I did so hope you would say that. Invitations make it so much easier. These silly rules!” She gave a light, almost girlish laugh. “You painted dreams into the walls, dear. All those things you’ve wanted for so long and been told you couldn’t have. They smell delicious. You will chase chance all your life but never taste them again. They’re already gone.” The Fate’s voice dropped to a stage whisper. “After all, what do you love that you have left to lose?”
Cass looked at Emilia urgently, as though waiting to hear that refuted, but Emilia didn’t look at her. She had her hands over her mouth and tears welling up in her eyes. Emilia, who never gave up.
Cass rounded on the Fate instead. “Fuck you,” she spat, disgustedly. “What are you going to do? Use your great and terrible powers to throw us out? All I’ve seen are cheap tricks and mind games.”
“The best tricks are the ones you don’t see coming,” the Fate said confidingly. “And you never do, do you! Always blindsided, always left behind. You pretend you want to be different, but that’s not true, is it?”
“How can you live with yourself?” Rieke stepped forward, his fists balled. The Fate looked at Cass for a moment longer, with the air of someone licking the last dregs of cream off a spoon, before turning her pastel smile in his direction.
“A rhetorical question!” she cried jovially, as if Rieke had made a good joke. “Perhaps what you’re really wondering is how it’s done? You’ve never been very good at living with yourself, have you, Frederik? Not even your own name! You know that everyone you meet is only ever putting up with you, don’t you? And when they get tired of tolerating those awful little quirks of yours, it’s your own fault. That nice young lad—Kabir, isn’t it? He’s been so polite, putting up with those strange tics that you think pass for flirting, but you know that won’t last.”
Rieke’s face had gone grey. The Fate, by contrast, was practically glowing with health as she watched him, her skin visibly smoother. Inside Priya’s head, the last squares of the Rubik’s cube slotted into place.
“Actually,” she said, “that’s not true.”
The Fate began to say something about misery and cripples but Priya talked over her, raising her voice. “My brother has had a crush on Rieke from the day they met. You’re not a Fate at all, are you? You’re a sort of vampire. And those silly rules count for something. That’s why you made Emilia sign the contract. You can lie about everything else, but not—”
The Fate brought up a finger and leveled it like a gun at Priya’s head. “You,” she said, sweet as poison, “shall. Be. Silent. This is my ground. It was where my maker drank my soul and where I woke, immortal. I was here when carriages rolled in the streets, not pathetic little girls. There have always been broken souls like you, looking for a place to call their own, and there always will be. You know, they say your appetite wanes as you get older, but I am so hungry.”
She turned back to Emilia, smiling again.
“Who would have thought I would find such a feast?”
Priya shrank back instinctively from those teeth. Her hands tightened on the arms of her wheelchair, but the fight or flight instinct was one she was used to overriding. She chose a third option: think.
“We all signed your contracts,” she repeated, doggedly. “Which means they matter. So I name you. I name you . . . ” Priya hesitated, then shrugged. It was already too late to help herself if she was wrong—she might as well enjoy the moment. “I name you Spot.”
The color drained from the woman’s face, her skin collapsing into wrinkles as if unseen hands were crumpling her up. She looked stunned.
“You have no power over this place,” Priya said firmly. “Or anyone here.” She raised her hands in dismissal. “Begone, foul Spot!”
The woman whined, a wordless sound of entreaty, while her eyes blazed with rage. Priya wanted to look away but didn’t dare. The creature crumbled, drifting apart like burnt paper until all that was left was dust on the floor.
There was a long silence. Emilia was the first to move, nudging the sad pile with her toe. “How did you do that?” she breathed.
“I didn’t expect that to happen,” Priya confessed. She realized her hands were shaking and squeezed the arms of her chair tightly. She felt horrified and elated at the same time, and rather sick.
“It’s like Cass said,” she added, “that . . . whatever that was, was all about mind games. If she was really a Fate, she’d know how Kabir felt—and instead, all she had were lies. Saying those awful things was feeding her somehow. She was feeding off all of us. Particularly you, Emilia. This was your dream, and she wanted to eat it whole.”
Emilia jerked back from the dust. “She almost did. She almost took everything.” She looked at Cass uncertainly. “I suppose that’s my fault for not asking for help.”
Instead of agreeing, Cass seized Emilia’s hands and pulled her into a ferocious hug. “Fuck,” she half-wailed. “Did that really happen?”
Emilia hugged her back hard, burying her face in Cass’s jacket. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she chanted, her voice muffled. “I dragged you into all this—” She twisted briefly to look over her shoulder. “Priya, consider yourself employed for life, okay?”
Priya laughed shakily. “Is it too soon to ask for a contract?”
Emilia shuddered. “Way too soon.”
Priya heard a door open and jumped nervously, but it was only Rieke, returning from the storeroom with a vacuum. They all watched in silence as he ran the nozzle repeatedly over the same patch of floor until long after every speck of dust had to be gone. Then he stripped out the bag, threw it in the sink behind the counter and pulled a box of matches from his pocket, setting the thing on fire.
“Vampires have to be burnt,” he said flatly.
Emilia walked over to stand beside him and turned on a tap to wash the ashes down the drain. “And drowned,” she agreed.
Later that night, meeting her at the station, Kabir told Priya she looked tired.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, smiling at how the words sounded in her mouth. “Just fine. Call Rieke and ask him out tonight.”
Kabir blinked. “What?”
“I’m your inside woman on this,” Priya reminded him. “Tonight’s a good time.”
Kabir pulled his phone from his pocket and dithered over it for a moment with his finger on a speed dial he’d never used. “Are you sure about this? Won’t he think it’s weird, me just calling out of the blue?”
“Maybe,” Priya said. “Then he’ll say yes.�
�
Kabir hit the number.
The train was pulling in. The platform streamed with people who didn’t know about a Fate who was a vampire in disguise, who didn’t know there was a bookshop called Nightingale and Priest with dreams painted into the walls. Who had no idea how big the world really was.
It wasn’t Priya’s job to tell them. Her job was to sell them books.
The Box Wife
Emma Osborne
If you run your hands over me you’ll be pulling splinters from your palms for days.
I am in a room bare and dark.
“Melissa, oh oh,” it says, thrusting. “Kelly, my dear, my love, Kelly.” Sometimes I am one or both. Three nights ago, it called me little one, though I am bigger than it by half. I have many names. Each of them, I remember. Each of them is an identity that drapes over me like a mask.
It made me one night from boxes and springs. My joints were screwed in and locked into place with bolts. My boxes were nailed together; each hammer blow like a gunshot. I will always remember the thrill of the drill as it punched through my rough planks to make gaps for the hoses. I have painted toenails, red on the left side and black on the right. My front is covered with a woolly sheepskin. The rest of me is skinned with rubber gloves. I worry that I may crack in the cold.
My room has a window dressed with lace that restrains any errant snowflake that may fly to me. The walls are the pink of new flesh. There is something bundled up in the corner that has the colour and smell of burned hair.
“Madison,” it says, choking. “Belle, my sweet, my heart.”
It is heavy and stinks of lust. When it rolls on me I flex and shift. I turn my head but it always moves me into its preferred position. I am slick in patches and moist in others. A hank of hair birthed from a hairdresser’s garbage bag has been slapped atop my pate and fastened with tape. The lock is of many colors and red.
It built me from flat pillows and rusted clockwork. It painted on eyes so that I may stare at it and glued in teeth so that I may smile. I contain wires that squeal when it lifts my arms. I am voiceless, but for the creak of my parts.
The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5) Page 8
