Armor of Roses and The Silver Voice

by Marjorie M. Liu

  But only while the sun was in the sky. At night I turned vulnerable, mortal.

  The armor on my hand had also changed its appearance. With the boys away from my skin, the metal had been simple, unadorned, bright as polished silver. Now, like a chameleon, it had dulled to match the coal black shadows on my flesh—engravings of coiled delicate lines appearing mysteriously to blend with scales and the sharp etched angles that were bones and hair, and claws.

  Like roses, I thought, staring at my armored hand; and then glanced at the FedEx envelope where I had placed the fragment of leathery human skin.

  Grant followed my gaze. “This is going to be ugly.”

  “Always is,” I said, and reached for the laptop to start searching for flights.

  THE problem with murderers was that they usually took you by surprise. Not just with the act itself (though few ever really expected to die suddenly, violently). It was the actual perpetrator who could be a shock: familiarity, motive, lack of motive, the very fact that this was a person no one would expect to kill.

  Murder was premeditated. Murder was planned. Murder required a commitment—not just to kill, but to live with the killing.

  I had taken lives, demonic and human, but always in self-defense, or in the defense of others. I had learned to sleep at night despite the death on my hands. I could look at myself in the mirror without flinching. Usually.

  In the case of Ernie’s murder, I assumed that someone had been hired to take him out; perhaps the kid found shot nearby, or someone else. The attack on Ernie had been deliberate and vicious. Knives were always vicious. Stabbing someone again and again took a level of resolve and intimacy that pulling a trigger didn’t quite reach. To kill someone like that meant you were used to murder—extremely desperate—or you really hated the guts of the person you were attacking. Sometimes all three.

  Ernie had covered his tracks, though. It would have taken resources to follow him. Or someone who knew him well. The mysterious Winnie had known where he would be. Chances were good someone else he trusted had been in the loop, too.

  I thought about that a lot during the flight. It was six hours from Seattle to New York City. I had never been on a plane. Never wanted to be on a plane. I hated the idea, even though I knew, intellectually, that a domestic flight would not be dangerous. It was international travel that caused trouble—moving from night to day, and back again. The boys might wake up.

  But by the time we landed at La Guardia, I was a mess. Air pressure, air sickness, bad air, no air. No zombies, though. I had been seeing less of them over the past few months. Most of the parasites had left Seattle—run from my presence—but ten minutes inside New York City, I wondered if something else was at work. No dark auras, anywhere. Not even a taste. Far cry from the last time I had been here.

  It was a little after seven in the evening when the cab dropped us off in front of Winnie’s apartment building. It was located on a quiet street filled with brownstone walkups, tilting trees, and the nearby glow of a small deli. Still daylight. I listened to the hum of air conditioners bolted outside windows, and the hush of quiet laughter from the couple at the intersection.

  Winifred’s apartment building, unlike its neighbors, was taller than five stories, a cream-colored concrete block of windows with a green awning over the double-wide glass doors, and an elevator visible at the far end of the small lobby. Red geraniums framed the entrance, overflowing from massive clay pots.

  I watched the street, listening to the rippling sensation on my skin as the boys shifted restlessly in their dreams. Not quite a warning, but close enough. I glanced at Grant, and found him also watching our surroundings; intense, a hint of gold in his brown eyes.

  “Anything?”

  “Nothing remarkable. But something doesn’t feel right.” He briefly nudged my shoulder. “Don’t.”

  I frowned. “Stop reading me.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Who said I was worried about you?”

  Grant smiled grimly. I shook my head. Maybe I had been too hasty in agreeing that he should come along. I was getting soft. Something I had been telling myself for almost a year now.

  I dialed in the apartment number that Zee had given me and hit the buzzer. I let it ring until it choked off, and then tried again. No one answered. A deeply tanned, gorgeous young man—dressed like he was ready for a jog—exited the elevator, and pushed open the glass doors. He gave Grant a lusty smile, and with a lingering backward glance, strode down the sidewalk.

  I stuck my foot in the doorway before we could be locked out. “Dude. You were just totally undressed.”

  “Try not to be jealous,” Grant replied dryly, limping past me into the building. “I can’t help my unbridled sexual magnetism.”

  We rode the elevator to the tenth floor. Seemed like a nice enough place. Quiet, clean, modern. I was no expert on apartment buildings, though I had inherited a place uptown, along Central Park. No strong memories of it, except that it faced the southeast, had a view of the trees, and had been bought by my great-great-grandmother during the Depression. I doubted seriously that I would be stopping by for a visit, though part of me wondered if some of my mother’s things would still be there, covered in dust after more than a decade of absence.

  Winifred Cohen’s door was near the elevator. I lingered for a moment, simply listening, but heard nothing from within but the faint caress of soft music: violins weeping to Mozart.

  Grant knocked. I nudged him aside. Safer than standing in front of a door when you did not know what was on the other side. Might not be Winifred. Maybe Winifred wasn’t Winifred. People were never who we thought them to be.

  No one came to the door, though I sensed a presence inside that apartment; like a mouse hiding in a hole, whiskers quivering just enough for the big bad cat to hear.

  I knocked again, and leaned close. “Winifred. My name is Maxine Kiss. I’m here because of Jean, my grandmother. And Ernie.”

  Nothing. I shared a long look with Grant, and reached into my back pocket for the lock picks I had brought with me. “Winifred. If you’re in there, please say something. Or else I’m coming in.”

  The music kept playing softly. No footsteps. No whispers of movement. But I felt something. She was there—or someone else was. I hoped it was not the latter.

  It took me only moments to open the main lock, but there was a deadbolt on the other side, and probably a chain. No good way of undoing those without kicking in the door, and that was too much attention to bring on ourselves. I was ready to suggest that we wait another hour—until the sun went down—when I finally heard a faint shuffling sound on the other side. I stepped away, as did Grant, leaning against the wall beside the door while I stared at the peephole.

  The locks clicked. Five metallic rasps as bolts and chains were thrown back. Then, nothing. Grant gave me a long look, and I shrugged. If she—or whomever—wanted to play games, then fine.

  I opened the door. Found shadows in a long hall. Nothing but darkness, and the soft mournful keen of violins shrouding the air. I held up my hand to Grant, motioning for him to wait, and walked inside. Zee, sleeping between my breasts, began tugging gently on my skin. I ignored him, listening hard, but all I could hear below the music was my own pulse and the near-silent scuff of my cowboy boots on the hardwood floor.

  Until cool air moved against my cheek and someone reached from the darkness to stab me in the throat.

  The blade snapped instantly. I smelled perfume, heard the harsh rasp of someone breathing, and turned toward the darkened closet door that now housed a small hunched figure that swayed so unsteadily that I reached out, and brushed my fingers against a wrinkled elbow. My skin tingled beneath my tattoos; or maybe that was the boys, reacting. I felt strange, touching her. Light-headed.

  The old woman began to back away, and then stopped, staring
down at the broken knife: better suited for steaks than throats, though she’d had good aim. It took strength to cut into the cartilage of a human neck, but not if you stabbed at the soft part. Which she had. More knives, I thought, peering into eyes so dark they were almost black.

  “Winifred, I presume,” I said quietly, as Grant entered the apartment and shut the door behind him, watching her warily.

  “You really are her granddaughter,” replied the old woman, staring up at me with no small amount of wonderment and unease—glancing briefly at Grant with an even more troubled gaze. She had an American accent, though her vowels were tinged with the faint coil of another place and time. A stout woman with long gray hair and a round stomach that pushed against her blue housedress.

  “Some test.” I took the remains of the steak knife from her hand. “Were you expecting someone else?”

  Winifred Cohen gave me a profoundly bitter look. “I was expecting not to live out the night.”

  And with that, she turned and shuffled down the dark hall.

  4

  “YOU have to understand that we were children,” said the old woman some time later, nursing a cup of hot tea in her hands. “We knew there was a war raging, but to some degree we were insulated from it. Jewish refugees in Shanghai were tolerated, even encouraged to be enterprising. The Japanese thought our industry would help support their troops. We had school and synagogue. We had music. We had each other. It was, for that time, as good a life as could be expected. Especially compared to what the Chinese suffered.”

  “My grandmother,” I said, perched on the edge of a pale blue sofa. I had been offered tea, and turned it down—as had Grant. No time for pleasantries, just patience. More patience than I could spare.

  Winifred gave me a long steady look. “You resemble her. Uncannily. Even if I had not. . . . tested you . . . your face would have convinced me.”

  “But you chose violence.”

  “Survival,” she replied without remorse. “Hit first, ask questions later. I’m meant to die, and I’m not ready.”

  She said it with a dull hard tone in her voice, eyes dark and pitiless; but it was her blunt acceptance that chilled me. Death was coming. She knew it. No whining, no bargaining or depression. Merely resolve.

  I had so many questions. Grant took over with the most basic. “Who wants to hurt you?”

  Winifred hesitated. “Ernie?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I could lie and tell her that he was still alive, charming hotel clerks and enjoying the sights of Seattle with his bundles of cold hard cash.

  Winifred closed her eyes, and suddenly all that hard strength seemed to melt out of her. She set down her tea, hand shaking so badly that dark liquid splashed over the rim into her saucer. “I told him not to go.”

  “Ms. Cohen,” Grant said again, his voice rumbling and persuasive. “Why did he die? Why do you fear for your own life?”

  “Because we helped her,” said Winifred softly, with more than bitterness; melancholy, maybe, a profound sadness that was bone deep and weary.

  Images from those old photos flickered through my mind. Save them all, if you can. “My grandmother?”

  Winifred shook her head. “No. Another woman. She was called the Black Cat because in the late thirties she had been a hostess in a nightclub of the same name. A white Russian among Koreans. All the women who worked in that place had a black cat tattooed here.” Winifred patted her backside and gave me another long look. “By the time your grandmother met her, she had many more tattoos than that.”

  I was holding my breath, and released it slowly, painfully. I had been more afraid than I cared to admit of hearing that my grandmother had somehow contributed to this old woman’s trouble, and Ernie’s death.

  I considered the human skin in my backpack. “She can’t still be alive.”

  Winifred stiffened. “Of course not.”

  Grant studied her with a great deal of thoughtfulness. “What did you do for this . . . Black Cat . . . that would be worth your lives? Especially now, after all these years?”

  Coldness returned to her eyes. She stood slowly from her chair. He politely began to rise with her, as did I, but she waved us back with a faint hiss of her breath and left the room with a slow shuffling gait, as though her bones ached. Grant and I stared at each other.

  “What do you see?” I whispered.

  “Fear,” he murmured. “Guilt.”

  “She believes she’s going to die.”

  “It’s more than that,” he began, and then shut his mouth as Winifred returned to the room. She held a linen parcel, folded into a tight square, which she tossed down on the table in front of me. I unfolded it quickly, inhaling scents of lavender and something older, meatier, like death; and found myself looking at another block of thin delicate leather, tattooed in a pattern that resembled roses.

  Grant made a rough sound. I stared long and hard at the skin before turning my gaze on Winifred. She had fallen back into her chair, wrinkled hands resting in her lap; posture boneless, limp, her gaze so distant and empty, she might have been dead.

  “This is human,” I said, “but you knew that.”

  “All of us took a piece of that woman,” she said quietly, as though speaking only to herself. “We were told to by your grandmother.”

  I sat back. Grant cleared his throat. “How many of you?”

  “Just the four. Ernie, me, Lizbet, and Samuel.”

  “And where are the last two?”

  “Dead,” Winifred whispered. “They married, later, after their families came to the United States in ’47. Lived in Florida for the past ten years. Police found them shot to death in their home more than a week ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as gently as I could. “But what made you and Ernie think their murders had anything to do with the both of you?”

  Winifred tore her gaze from the scrap of dried human skin. “Because their killer mailed Ernie and me the . . . mementos . . . that Samuel and Lizbet had kept in their home safe. A warning, you see. A promise.”

  Her wrinkled mouth tightened with bitterness. “And because Jean told us what would happen for playing with the devil.”

  SUNSET. I fled to the bathroom. Waved along in the right direction by an old woman whose eyes were haunted, knowing. When I walked away, I felt naked, like there was a target drawn on my back.

  The bathroom was small and simply decorated in white tile and a white fuzzy rug on the gleaming floor. Sparkling clean, a faint scent of shampoo mixed with bleach. I shut the door just as I felt the sun slip beneath the horizon—so much a part of my senses that it was easy as breathing to know the time. Survival instinct.

  I leaned on the sink, staring at myself in the mirror, counting down the seconds. Watching my eyes. Remembering countless evenings watching my mother’s eyes, or trying to, at that exact moment of the shift. She had never shown pain. Just smiled and laughed, and acted like it was a game, the old hard game, which would be mine one day, after she died. She had not wanted me to be scared of that future, even though I should have been terrified. She had wanted to keep me innocent for as long as possible—and she had, best as she could. I hadn’t realized then what a gift that was, but I understood now. I understood too well. And there was no repaying that kindness except to pass it on, one day.

  The sun ticked down, swallowed into my body. Zee and the boys woke up.

  I had tried once to explain the sensation to Grant, but there were only so many ways of describing what it felt like to be skinned alive with acid and knives, before a girl felt like a whiner.

  It hurt. It would always hurt. From my toes to between my legs, to my fingernails and nipples and scalp, to the very top of my neck. No part of me unscathed, except for my face. My hands tightened around the rim of the sink. I closed my eyes, unable to look at myself
.

  The boys dissolved from my skin in a cloud of smoke and silver shadows, red lightning flickering through the ghosts of their bodies as they flowed from beneath my clothes and coalesced inside the bathroom. I smelled burnt hair and a whiff of something stiff and cold, as though a tunnel had been opened to some cavern miles deep below the earth, where the air was so pure that a person could grow drunk on just one breath.

  My eyes were still closed. Muscles quivered and sweat rolled. Strong arms wrapped around my legs, while two long bodies coiled over my shoulders.

  Zee whispered, “Maxine.”

  I forced a smile on my face and drew in a long quivering breath; several, before I found my voice. “Hey, bad boys.”

  Dek and Mal licked the backs of my ears. I patted their heads. Raw disappeared into the shadows behind the toilet and reappeared moments later with a giant bag full of M&Ms and a six-pack of beer. He handed those to Aaz, and then disappeared again—returning with a bucket of fried chicken, a nail gun, and a plastic bin full of dirty syringes, plastered in orange BIOHAZARD stickers.

  I sat on the edge of the toilet, scratching behind Zee’s pointed little ears as he grabbed a fistful of individually wrapped packages of M&Ms and shoved them, paper and all, into his mouth. Behind him, Raw had picked up the nail gun and was shooting studs down his brother’s throat. Aaz giggled, swallowing each one. Dek, watching them, made a small sound of protest—and I opened a beer, which he fitted his entire mouth over and then knocked back with a sigh. Mal, who had disappeared from my shoulders, poked his head up from within the fried chicken bucket, too much like some crazed demonic gopher. He licked his chops and gave me a toothy grin.

  I nudged the container of used syringes toward Raw. He cracked it open and began popping each one into his mouth like candy bars. Over the crunching sounds of plastic, chicken, paper, and aluminum, I said, “Tell me about the Black Cat.”