Heartsick

by Dia Reeves

  Before she could ask what he was doing, he touched her face with the “gun”. Pulled the trigger.

  Rue scrambled backward, but not far, trapped against the headboard. She recognized the pain, the same pain she’d felt when Sterling had almost died. She was half-asleep enough to search the ceiling for lumbering green wasps.

  But there was only Westwood, sharply dressed despite the late hour. Karissa, thankfully, was nowhere in sight. But Rue could see her own head from the corners of her eyes, expanding, until her soul stopped the swelling. Reversed it.

  “Regenerative ability,” Westwood said, impressed. “If my wife had had your gift, she’d still be alive. You have no idea how lucky you are.”

  It hurt. Rue couldn’t make it not hurt; her heart wasn’t strong enough to manage both pain and repair. Not simultaneously.

  “Why’re you using that stuff on me? You already used it on Drabbin. You know that it works.”

  “You’re not the same species. And this isn’t an experiment. This is anger.” He shot Rue in the belly, watched it swell as if with a grotesquely misshapen child. “What exactly has Drabbin been telling you?”

  It was a long moment before Rue could speak, but she held her stomach and finally gasped, “That you’re stealing souls with a machine. So you can give one to Grissel.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all.”

  “I would have told you eventually, but to have heard it the way you did, from Drabbin tattling. What must you be thinking?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “That’s a problem, Rue. Family should care. And you are family now; you know too much to be otherwise.”

  “I don’t want a family. It hurts too much.”

  “More than this?”

  He aimed that horrible gun at her again, but it jerked from his hand and disappeared.

  “Karissa! Damn that kid.” He sat next to Rue on the bed as if suddenly tired. He checked his watch. “I couldn’t test this particular venom on Thyme. I needed him for other things and was afraid he was too old to recover. Unlike you.”

  The venom filling Rue’s belly reversed into her mouth and exited in a violent spew that Westwood was too quick to get caught in.

  “Amazing.” Westwood listened to her painful gasps, watched her belly return to a normal size. “Can you heal yourself indefinitely? What would happen if I decapitated you? Would you grow another head or would your head grow another body? Maybe I’ll collect another of your brethren to answer that question.”

  He texted someone, and a few moments later, a servant appeared in her doorway. Helped Rue out of bed and out of her soiled nightgown. The servant then stripped the foul sheets and replaced them with clean ones. Dressed Rue in a fresh nightgown and tucked her into the newly made bed.

  “Leave now,” said Westwood, and the servant did.

  He checked his watch again.

  “The twins care about you, are willing to do unspeakable things for your sake. How do you feel about them?”

  “Fine.” Feverish beneath the mound of bedding.

  “Perhaps that’s as much as you can feel without a heart. Of your own. My sons are dreaming up plots around you and that sister of yours and artificial hearts, even though we have so many more important things to think about.”

  “I’ll go then, if I’m a distraction.”

  “Where? Home? Would they have you back?”

  “I don’t know. If I begged…”

  “Are you the begging kind?”

  “I could go to Louisiana. I heard people are real nice over there. I could go anywhere. What do I get?”

  “Pardon?”

  “For being your guinea pig.”

  “A prize? I wondered why you weren’t fighting back. What do you want?”

  “Stop making the twins eat people. They’re getting sick and losing weight they can’t afford to lose. They can’t help you do important things if they die of malnutrition.”

  “They are dangerously thin. Fine. I’ll find some other way. Which way though? That’s the question. Thyme’s soul, unfortunately, was not the answer. Remarkably uncooperative, you heartless. When we attempted to remove Thyme’s soul with the animus apparatus, it exploded.

  “Thyme’s soul?”

  “No. The machine. Which in turn, blinded and crippled the servant who had been standing next to it.”

  “Which servant?”

  “Not one of ours, Rue.” He pinched her foot under the covers. “One of the booji, a thing that lives in the laboratory. Sometimes I wonder if you have the answer. Sometimes, I’m sure of it.”

  He checked his watch.

  “I’m as bad as the twins, wasting time with you when I should be working. Such a distraction.” He gave her a long look from the doorway and then left.

  The window swung open and Karissa tossed the gun out into the darkness.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” Rue said into the pillow. “I guess it’s not safe in here either.”

  “That’s okay.” Karissa joined Rue beneath the covers and yawned. “It’s not safe anywhere.”

  This time Karissa fell asleep first. Rue couldn’t sleep at all.

  Because her heart had stopped beating.

  Chapter 22

  After school, the twins picked up Rue and drove to the square, a much less eventful trip than their last one. No monsters this time, only workers clearing rubble and repairing building facades. After dropping Karissa at Adele’s apothecary, they drove to Ducane’s Department Store, to the penny arcade down in the basement. A dark windowless space full of middle schoolers shoving coins into huge beeping machines, and a lunch counter way in the back.

  “Sorry to bring you here with all these dumb kids,” Sterling said after he came back to the table with food, “but I’ve been dying for a Bitsy bun. I always start craving them in the spring.” He hadn’t touched the bacon Drabbin had prepared awkwardly with his bandaged hands, but ate the meat-filled pastry he’d just bought with gusto.

  Stanton was less ravenous, playing with the straw in his ginger beer.

  “I can’t believe you stayed after what happened last night.”

  “Love hurts.”

  “That wasn’t love!”

  “How do you know?”

  Stanton opened his mouth, then closed it, uncertain.

  “Love hurts,” Rue repeated, thinking of Westwood’s decree that she join his family. “But if something good comes of it, then it’s okay.”

  “What good came of Dad torturing you?”

  “You don’t have to eat people. Unless you want to, of course.”

  “Are you hungry?” Sterling asked. “You still haven’t eaten anything, have you?”

  If Rue had been welcome at home in the dark park, she’d have eaten by now, eaten herself sick. “I’ll eat later.”

  “You should be pigging out with us. You deserve it.” Sterling took a huge bite of his bun. “You got Dad to stop making us eat people. Even we couldn’t do that.”

  Rue was barely listening. Over the computerized bleeps and pings, over the ching of coin changers, over laughter and screams of encouragement. The beating of hearts. Even Rue’s hunger had been buried beneath the growing silence within her chest.

  “Her limbal rings are so gray,” Sterling said. “Probably because she’s sad about what Dad dudthudthudthudthud.”

  “Could be a side effect of the venom. She feels warm. Rue? Rue. Drink this. You can drink ginger beer, right?” Stanton waited until she took a cautious sip from his straw.

  Cool and good. Even the burn in her throat was good. Much better than the goopy chocolate goop they’d tried to feed her at the Basin.

  “Kissy likes toys okay,” Stanton was saying—why was he saying that? “But she loves reptiles, so that’s what we’re gonna get her for her birthday. “We’ll go to the pet studthudthudthudthudthudthud.”

  “I think I’ll get her something, too,” Rue said loudly. Trying to drown out the beating.

 
“Kissy likes paper dolls.”

  “There’s nothing I could buy her that would be better than what you could make. How about an anatomy chart with the sexual reproductive organs clearly labeled?”

  “Poorly thought out tasteless gift ideas are a result of extreme dehydration. Have another sip. No.” Stanton handed her Sterling’s glass. “Drink from his now.”

  Rue did and then Sterling toyed with the straw for a moment before putting it into his mouth.

  “You’re worried about my germs?” said Rue.

  “I probably should be. Is that why your limbal rings are gray? Not because of Dad, but because you’re sick.”

  “How old is Karissa?”

  “She’ll be seven,” said Sterling, frustrated. “Are you sick?”

  “What would a seven-year-old like?”

  A busboy clearing the table next to theirs said, “Get her something like this.”

  The golden box, only about a square-inch, fastened to his wrist opened and a wee mechanical mouse peeped out and squeaked, “It’s 5:32 p.m. Don’t forget to pick up Larry at 7 tonight!”

  The busboy snapped closed the box. “Cool right? I was about eight when I got it andUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD.”

  Rue caressed the busboy’s wrist, thrilled at the strength of his pulse. “I bet Karissa would love something like that. Where’d you get it?”

  “Walter’s Repairs. He’s this great clockmaker. I mean he comes from a long line of them.” He tweaked the heart bobble holding her hair together. “You look cute with braids.”

  “Thanks,” said Rue. “Is the shop close by?”

  “Nope, but I get off in an hour. I could walk you down—”

  “She doesn’t need you to walk her anywhere!” said Sterling. “Especially not to any fourth-rate repair shop.”

  “It’s not fourth-rate,” said the busboy. “The Hill family is a legend around here. Back in the ‘60s, Walter’s great-aunt and uncle saved the whole town from—”

  Stanton said, “Look, busboy, go scrape gum off a table or something and let us eat.”

  He backed away from the natural authority in Stanton’s voice, but not before swiping Rue’s phone from the table and leaving his number inside it. “If you change your mind, hit me up.”

  Rue watched him escape and tried to go after him, but Stanton was holding her hand. Tight.

  “I’ll be right back,” she pleaded.

  “You’re delirious.”

  “Too much noise,” Sterling agreed. “Too many dumb little kids. She’ll feel more like herself upstairs.”

  They dragged her to the elevator and when the doors closed, Rue could no longer hear the busboy’s delectable heart. But she could hear the twins’. Very well. She tried not to listen.

  Twenty minutes later, the twins had bought suits for themselves and a dress for Karissa, but were still trying to find the right dress for Rue.

  “We can buy you anything,” Stanton said. “A new wardrobe, if you want—it’s on Dad. After what he did last night, you more than earned it.”

  “I prefer my uniforms,” Rue said from the dressing room. “I like not having to think about pleasing ways to arrange my clothing.”

  “How low-cut is that one?” asked Sterling.

  Rue drew back the curtain and showed them. The layers of froth that didn’t reach her knees, the severely truncated bodice.

  “That’s...a lot.” Stanton seemed impressed by the overall effect though. “Definitely shouldn't wear that in public. Not unless you’re gonna jump out of a cake and strip. Which would be totally inappropriate at the spectacular.”

  Sterling grinned. “After the spectacular however….”

  “Hand me that one.” Rue pointed to the clothing rack behind them, to the red dress sparkling on it.

  Sterling did and she closed the curtain in his face. As she bent over to shimmy out of the cake-jumping dress, her silent heart slipped out of her chest. Bloodless and so dry it crackled when she accidentally kicked it under the bench.

  “Why’d you squeak like that?” Stanton asked.

  THUDTHUDTHUD

  No.

  She pressed her hands to the open slit, willing it to close. It wouldn’t. It wanted to be filled with one of the hearts so near to her.

  THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD

  But she couldn’t. Not Stanton. Not even Sterling.

  Close!

  “What are you boys doing in the ladies’ changing room?”

  A startled silence, and then:

  “No one’s in here but us, ma’am,” said Sterling. “And our sister. Who has…special needs.”

  “Well then I’ll help her. Y’all wait outside.”

  Rue held the dress over the slit as the woman drew back the curtain.

  “Hi, there,” she said gently. “Your brothers said you need help? Do you like that dress?”

  Rue shook her head. And the woman pried the cake dress from her fingers.

  The slit had closed, but Rue didn’t dare relax, not even in relief. She pressed her hands to it, and the woman misunderstood the gesture.

  “I have a scar too.” She put the dress away and grabbed another from the rack outside. “A friend asked me once if I wanted to get a tattoo with her and I said why would I want a fake pretty scar when I already have a real one.” The woman raised her skirt and showed the twist of scar tissue on her upper thigh. “A battle scar. If it wasn’t for the dress code here, it’d be on display 24/7. When I’m on my own time, I pretend it’s jewelry and find ways to showcase it. You should do the same.”

  The woman bent to straighten her skirt, and Rue raised her claws.

  hudthud…thud…udthudthudddudthu

  Rue’s claws retracted.

  The woman said, “Now how about this? A scar like yours needs a dress like this.”

  Rue tried on the champagne-colored evening dress and was stunned by her reflection in the mirror. The keyhole neckline that exposed Rue from her throat to the bubble of bright jewels on the sash at her waist, an unexpectedly elegant frame for her “scar”.

  “Wow.”

  The woman smiled. “I think your ‘brothers’ will feel the same.”

  “What’s wrong?” Stanton asked when they left the store. “What did she say to you in the dressing room? Was she mean to you?”

  “I lost my heart.” Rue leaned against the blue Dauphine.

  They regarded her, stunned, and said, “Why are you still alive?”

  “I don’t need hearts to live. I need them to live well. To move, to function, to heal. To move! God. I feel like I have rigor mortis.”

  “Why didn’t you take that woman’s heart in the dressing room when you had a chance?”

  “Something was wrong with it. It sounded sick. Anyway, a male heart would be nicer. They’re bigger and last longer. Like that busboy. I bet his was huge.”

  “Bet it wasn’t.” Stanton carried the purchases to the trunk of the car.

  “Why didn’t you say that’s why you wanted to go with him?” Sterling said, opening the back door of the car and climbing in after Rue. “We thought…never mind.”

  Rue played with the buttons over Sterling’s chest.

  “You want my heart?” He put his hand over hers.

  “I could make it so that you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind.” He reclined, eyes closed.

  “I mind!” Stanton yanked Sterling out of the car. “Drive.”

  “Where?”

  “That’s up to her.” Stanton leaned into the backseat. “Where do you normally go to get hearts?”

  Rue put her head on her knees. “I wasn’t really going to hurt Sterling. I know how to keep it from hurting.”

  “Rue, focus!”

  “I’m fine. I don’t need a heart yet. I’ll wait until you make me a heart.”

  “You can’t afford to wait that long.”

  “We’ve never done anything so complex,” said Sterling from the driver’s seat. “And…neces
sary. Other people could—”

  “Screw other people! We’ll do it, Rue, but we need time. Take one more heart; it’ll be the last one. We’re nearly finished helping Dad, and after that, we can concentrate on creating something really great for you.”

  “What will I owe you?”

  “Nothing. Like when you let me have the toadstone. It’ll be just because.”

  “Then can I have the busboy? Just because?”

  Stanton’s thunderous frown was hard to withstand, but she managed.

  “Please?”

  “You want him so you can kill him. Right? That’s the only reason?”

  When she nodded, Stanton squeezed her hand.

  “Fine. Take him.”

  Chapter 23

  Small groups of high schoolers dressed in black sat in clusters around the sandbox and merry-go-round on the playground of Torcido Park, smoking. A thick cloud overlay them, like crows in a fogbank. The busboy sat off by himself, crammed into a swing seat much too small for him, wrapped in a jacket the color of blood. Rue sat in the swing next to his.

  “Where’re you from?” she asked.

  “Castelaine. After my sister died, my folks sent me away. Wendy was the good one. Me they never had any use for.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “I have use for you.” She had to hurry. If she sat still for much longer, she wouldn’t be able to move at all. “Did you come here to find a recreational drug to help ease your pain?”

  “What are you, a cop?”

  “Do I look like a cop?”

  He looked her over. “Not at all. What’s your name anyway?”

  “I’m Rue. I’d give you my last name, but I don’t have one. My people don’t use them.”

  “Who’re your people? Indians? India Indians? American Indians?”

  Rue, used to such human questions, said, “You’re not one of those horrible racists, are you?”

  “No! I’m Polish. My great-great-grandpa killed a Nazi with a rock.”

  Rue had no idea how that proved he wasn’t racist, so she just shrugged and said, “Cool.”

  It seemed the right response because the boy relaxed. “I’m Peter. I’m—”