Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016

by Charlie Jane Anders

  “I’m here,” I tell him. “You found me.”

  He looks at me in awe, and then he caresses the unblemished egg like it’s a living thing. “I can set the others free now.”

  Jakob gently places the egg on a delicate stand and puts it in the center of the cabinet. Then he comes to me and takes my hand. “I was afraid I was wrong, that I’d need to try again if you weren’t a Good Wife. You understand, don’t you? I was always faithful to each wife. I didn’t touch them, though, not after I set them aside.”

  I can’t speak. The others, my sisters in blood and in act, were trapped in glass boxes. Some had been imprisoned for years. I feel sickened at the horror of it, at him, the monster I’d married.

  Silently, we walk to the room, and Jakob releases my hand. He takes the key from around my neck.

  “You are worth every sacrifice.”

  “Every one?” I ask, a bit of temper sliding into my words despite best intentions.

  Jakob doesn’t hear it.

  “May I open it?” I ask, and before he can question me, I add, “I want to help you, Husband.”

  The words are like poison in my mouth, but I need to be the one with the key. My hand drops to the knife I have tied to my thigh. I’m not sure I can use it well enough, but I will try. For the others, I will try. For my freedom, I will try.

  He hesitates, but after a moment of staring into my eyes, he relents and gives me the key. I force myself not to sigh in relief as I take it in my shaking hand. It clatters loudly in the quiet hallway as I slip it into the lock.

  “They don’t matter,” Jakob tells me, as if my nerves are over being somehow un-special, as if the pain of the taken is immaterial, as if the death of my sisters is something I could condone.

  I turn the key in the lock, grateful that he is staring at the door instead of at me.

  Quickly then, I step to the side. “I’m not as strong as you are. Can you open the door?”

  He rewards my implied compliment with a smile before he pulls open the door. I stay back as he steps into that room. I’ve been in it often in his absence—but the very sight of that blood-stained chamber still brings an ache to my heart.

  There are no more prisoners in glass boxes. The floor is covered with the shards of glass, and the taken rest in soft beds elsewhere in the castle. They are safe … as long as I don’t fail.

  He stands in the bloodied room, glass all around him. The shock of it makes him motionless at first. He looks at the empty spaces where the women he’s stolen have been imprisoned. Then, his gaze falls upon me.

  “What have you done?”

  For the first time, I am wholly myself, despite him, despite the terror I feel.

  “Freed them,” I say.

  He turns back to reach for me, but I jerk away and slam the door shut. My hand is fumbling for the key I still clutch in my hand. I need to succeed in this. He is stronger, and if he escapes, all of the girls he stole will die. My sisters will die. I will die.

  “Where are they?” He’s pushing the door, trying to shove it open. “What did you do?”

  I jab the key into the lock and turn it.

  “WIFE!” Jakob roars, his fists pounding the door. “Open this door.”

  “My husband died,” I say firmly, leaning back against the door. My voice is as unsteady as my hands. I shake all over. I count my breaths as the door shakes against my back.

  “There was an accident,” I say a moment later. “My poor Jakob never returned home.”

  “No!”

  “He went on a trip, but he didn’t return,” I continue to explain through the door. “He left me here alone, and I’m waiting still for him to return.”

  I push off the door and shove a heavy wardrobe in front of it.

  “Wife!” Jakob calls again. “You cannot trap me in my own home.”

  “This is my home now. I live here with my twelve sisters.”

  “You may not do this.”

  “It is already done,” I remind him. “I was searching for you, too, Jakob. The others did nothing. They let you steal us away. They let you hurt us. I will not. Not anymore.”

  He says nothing.

  I wish briefly that I could be strong enough to simply kill the man who has tormented my town, who has hurt my sisters, who has trapped and made so many girls bleed.

  “You’ll die before the next new moon passes, Jakob. There is only so long you can live without food or drink.” I put my hand to the door and add, “If you prefer, there are glass shards aplenty that are sharp enough to let you make a choice.”

  “Set me free.” Jakob speaks in the same tone he’s used when he’s disciplined me.

  This time, however, I am the one with the key.

  “I am setting all of us free,” I promise him. “You’ll be free of this world soon.”

  Then I walk away, leaving my husband-no-more to his death and returning to my sisters who have found life again. Some cannot yet speak, and others are barely awake. I don’t know that they’ll all live, but I have hopes for them—for all of us.

  One by one, I visit each of the bedrooms where they are recovering from their years of imprisonment. They’ve been fed through tubes, kept calm with herbs for so long that they were shocked to learn how much time had passed. Slowly, they will grow stronger, and then we will set our house to rights.

  I tell each one, “It is done. We are free.”

  I’d figured out the Maiden Thief’s test, and I’d trapped him. Together with the others, I will figure out how to disable the traps he’s set on the grounds. For now, the larder is well stocked, and my sisters need time to heal.

  There will be no Maiden Thief when the leaves turn next autumn. In his place, there will be only invitations to women seeking solace and peace. He’s left behind a home and gold aplenty.

  His many wives will turn it into something better now that there are no more glass coffins to imprison us.

  About the Author

  As a result of teaching university for over a decade prior to writing, Melissa Marr has an ongoing weakness for writing short stories and editing anthologies. However, she is best known for her folklore, myth, or fairy tale based novels, including the internationally bestselling Wicked Lovely series, the award-winning Graveminder, and recently, The Blackwell Pages (the latter co-authored with Kelley Armstrong). Melissa’s 2016 release, Seven Black Diamonds, is the first of two books in a new YA faery series. You can sign up for author updates here.

  Copyright © 2016 by Melissa Marr

  Art copyright © 2016 by Rovina Cai

  The meeting with Miss Erish started earlier than scheduled, in a room other than the one arranged. That meant they were all late, even Evelyn Simmons, who had flown in the day before and, unable to properly sleep owing to the time difference, risen long before the dawn.

  She lingered in her room barely an hour, then took an elevator down to the lobby. It was empty but for the night manager, who dutifully inquired as to her needs and then left her to herself, to wander restlessly from chair to bench to sofa in the cold and quiet predawn.

  Evelyn pored over emails, sent texts to her still-sleeping daughter back in the home time zone. Eventually, she watched the sunrise through the glass walls fronting on the parking lot as she chewed on a bagel from the continental breakfast table, slathered with most of a bubble packet of peanut butter and a dollop of strawberry jam. It had snowed the night before, and the dawn light made bright orange rinds of the frosted car hoods.

  Unbeknownst to her or any of the others, the meeting had commenced at that moment, in its new room and on its new schedule, absent nearly all of them. By the time she sorted that out and arrived ten minutes early, reckoned against her understanding of the schedule, it was too late.

  The skin of Evelyn’s forearms contracted in premonitory gooseflesh as she opened the double doors to the meeting room on the fifth floor, and she shivered as cold air from within washed over her. The room was empty but for its furnishings: eight black leather
chairs, a conference table, and a dry-erase board, fringed with half-erased pictographs. The middle of it contained a note, written at some length in the cramped, antiquely cursive hand that Evelyn had come to recognize.

  The note was accusatory: the tone was not as angry as it might have been, but nevertheless quite clearly disappointed. Evelyn stepped out of the room, and checked her email. But there was nothing, certainly no indication as yet of a rescheduling. She had not yet finished keying in a text message to the rest of the group when Leslie Hunter—of course it was Leslie Hunter—stepped off the elevator. He had cropped his hair short to his skull and gained some weight around his middle since the last time.

  “Morning, Evie,” he said. “We the first?”

  Evelyn started to explain about the rescheduling but Leslie shouldered past her into the room before she could finish. He read the note himself, shaking his head as he went.

  “I should have known,” he said, “when I saw the note on the door.”

  Evelyn had wondered that too when she read that first message taped to the door of the Cumberland Suite, where they were to have met: this one not handwritten but printed on hotel stationery, advising of the relocation.

  What else had changed?

  “Well, it’s too late,” she said.

  “Any rescheduling email? A text?” Leslie didn’t bother with his phone but motioned to hers, which dangled in her hand at her side. “A call?”

  Evelyn shook her head no.

  He rocked back on the balls of his feet and forward again, rolling his shoulders and puffing his cheeks—as though bracing himself or readying for a sprint.

  “Nothing to be done,” she said.

  Leslie swallowed and nodded.

  “Didn’t see you at the bar last night,” he said.

  “I got in late. Went straight to bed.”

  “And woke up at four, am I right? Evie, Evie, Evie.” Leslie stepped nearer, touched her forearm. His hand was warm. Was it damp also? Or was she the one sweating? “You have to power through the jet lag. Just stay up as late as you can when you get in. Only way.”

  And that was as close as they got to the nut of it before Andrea Retson and Bill Allen and the new one—amwilson7@gmail.com was the only name that Evelyn knew her as—got off the elevator in a group. Leslie told them what had happened and pointed to the board, but no one wanted to go inside to examine it.

  “What the fuck?” amwilson7@gmail.com was a thin slip of a girl, with black hair grown past her shoulders and swooping down over her left eye … her right eye, peering out in a sleepy drawl of indifference. She’d underdressed, Evelyn thought, showing up at her first meeting in a loose off-the-shoulder sweater and black tights, dirty white winter boots with a ruffle of faux fur. The cursing didn’t aid the cause any better. “I’m supposed to read minds?”

  “Nothing to be done,” said Evelyn.

  “Well, fuck,” said the girl, and kicked at the carpet with one boot, a gesture that recalled the manner of a horse.

  Because no one else would, Evelyn went into the meeting room, found the marker where it had been dropped on the floor, and used the cloth on the back of it to erase the note. She flicked the lights off, and without looking back, slipped out the door and pulled it shut.

  At the elevator, they each of them checked their phones again to see if there were a message indicating how to proceed, then tucked the devices in purses and pockets when it was clear none had yet arrived.

  “We shouldn’t go far,” said Andrea.

  “Where would we go?” said Bill.

  They made their way down to the hotel’s bar. It overlooked the river, which was not entirely frozen over, and a freeway on the far side. The bar was closed, so Andrea stepped away to arrange for coffee service.

  Evelyn’s phone chirped from her purse, and she checked it. Her daughter had texted her back, finally. STOP, it read. Evelyn slipped the phone back into her purse.

  “Any news?” asked Leslie, and Evelyn said, “Nothing.”

  Andrea returned, empty-handed and flustered.

  “They won’t bring it,” she said. “The complimentary breakfast ended an hour ago. The bar doesn’t open until three. Until then, they won’t bring coffee.”

  “That’s not very hospitable,” said Bill.

  “It seems deliberate,” said Andrea.

  “Why are we—”

  “You know why.” Andrea fell emphatically on the sofa and scowled at Bill.

  “Excuse me a moment,” said Evelyn, and rose.

  In the restroom, she set herself in a stall and keyed in the passcode to her phone. The text from her daughter hung there on the screen

  STOP

  Evelyn considered that word and, with her thumbs, typed in a reply:

  IN A TELEGRAM STOP WOULD JUST MEAN PUNCTUATION

  Her thumb hovered over the SEND button as she considered deleting her reply and composing a new one. But in her consideration, she trembled, and her thumb brushed near enough, and just like that, the decision was made.

  Evelyn stood and adjusted her skirt, slid the phone away in her purse. When she finally left the restroom, she found Leslie leaning against one wall of the narrow corridor.

  “I thought we should talk,” he said, his voice low. “About Amy.”

  “Amy?”

  “The new girl,” he said, and Evelyn got it. amwilson7@gmail.com.

  “Amy,” she said. “What about her?”

  “She left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Leslie rested his hand on Evelyn’s shoulder and drew her nearer so he could speak in her ear. “She’s gone. Andrea went after her. Maybe she’ll convince her to come back. But for now, she’s gone.”

  It had happened very quickly. Amy—her name was Amy—had been gnawing on her thumbnail and, after a moment, began to breathe rather heavily, and as Leslie frowned and started to ask what was what, she’d stood up, shook her head violently so that hair spread to the side and for an instant revealed both her eyes. “Fuck this!” she shouted. And then she turned away from them and ran, across the lobby and out the front door into the snow.

  “Andrea followed her, but I don’t know how far she’ll get,” said Leslie. His hand moved to the nape of Evelyn’s neck and slid down the flesh of her back. “She’s not wearing boots. Not like Amy.”

  Evelyn took Leslie’s hand, lifted it away, and Leslie sighed.

  She let her fingers intertwine with his and drew him back down the hall in the direction of the bar.

  “Not today?” asked Leslie, and Evelyn said, “Not now,” and as they emerged into the bar, Leslie agreed: “Especially not now.”

  “Oh,” whispered Evelyn.

  Bill had not moved from his seat in one of the easy chairs. Miss Erish had positioned herself on the sofa at his right-hand side. She wore a dark green jacket over a snow-white blouse, a matching green skirt. Her hair was bound and tucked beneath a small red cap, from which descended a funereal-black spiderweb veil that provided only nominal concealment. Her skin gleamed in the low light, like carved mahogany: sanded, stained, and nearly as hard. She saw them immediately and with one hand waved them over.

  “Mr. Allen was explaining to me about Miss Wilson’s escape,” she said, and motioned to the empty sofa alongside her. “You will sit.”

  Leslie sat at the far end—coward!—and so Evelyn sat between them. Miss Erish was scented with clove oil and cinnamon this morning, a favorite of hers. In her lap rested a tablet, screen glowing softly yellow around the edges of its burgundy folio. She patted Evelyn on the knee and returned her attention to Bill.

  “She was frightened?”

  “Yes,” said Bill. “Or that was my impression.”

  “I wasn’t here when she left,” said Evelyn, as Miss Erish glanced her way.

  “Well, no matter. Miss Retson shall fetch her.”

  “I’m sure she will,” said Leslie.

  “Do you want to know what I think?” Miss Erish looked to each of them, as
though it were a question with more than one possible response. “I think that the Spheres have realigned.”

  “Have they?” said Bill. Leslie nodded.

  “Don’t all look so worried,” continued Miss Erish. “They have not slipped. No no. The heavens will not tumble on us any more than the sea will rise to consume us. The realignment is a blessed adjustment. It is a return to order. But one might feel it, were one sensitive to the deeper movements.”

  Miss Erish paused, her mouth hanging expectantly. Evelyn was the one who asked.

  “Do you believe that Amy—Miss Wilson might be sensitive in such a way?”

  “It scarcely matters what I believe,” said Miss Erish. Her hands settled on her tablet case. She opened it, and her fingertips made a clicking sound as she entered the passcode on the screen. An email then appeared … one from amwilson7@gmail.com, but not one that Evelyn had seen before. Miss Erish didn’t appear to mind, so Evelyn started to read it over her shoulder.

  “You may read it aloud,” said Miss Erish.

  Evelyn nodded, and went back to the beginning.

  “Dear Miss Erish,” she read. “Thank you so very much for everything. I have just got internet up and running in the apartment (Amy had abbreviated to apt.), and this is the first email that I am sending using it. I am looking out at a view on the Park, which I never thought I would see from my own place!!! It is so beautiful. Classes start in two days, so I have to finish unpacking. But I wanted to thank you Miss Erish. I could never have afforded this by myself. Love XO Amy.”

  “I was rereading that note just this morning,” said Miss Erish, “as I waited. I had been looking forward to seeing Miss Wilson, you see. She had seemed grateful for all I have done for her.”

  “We’re all grateful,” said Bill, and both Leslie and Evelyn nodded and agreed until Miss Erish appeared satisfied. She shut the folio on her tablet, and as she did, it seemed to Evelyn as though the light dimmed throughout. It was, of course, coincidental, and Evelyn saw that as she looked up and over her shoulder. Clouds had moved in and brought more snow. It was falling fast enough that the freeway across the river was now only visible by the stream of headlights.