Heartsick

by Dia Reeves

  After Stanton left, Sterling rubbed Rue’s belly. “You look like a puking Buddha.”

  Rue decided that was a compliment. “It’ll go down in a few days, and it’ll all get turned into fat.”

  “Your pillow talk needs serious work.”

  “You wanna mate again?”

  “I take that back. Your pillow talk’s excellent.”

  Rue picked up the rope Stanton had abandoned near the pillow.

  “I can’t tie you up again. Stanton said not to.”

  “He said not to tie me up. He didn’t say I couldn’t tie you up.”

  Sterling lay back, hands behind his head. “The most excellent pillow talk of all time.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Rue awoke because someone was shaking her foot.

  “Okay, okay.” She rolled out of bed and slipped her nightgown on. She hadn’t rolled over Sterling, so he must have gone to the bathroom or to check on Karissa; the twins often took turns getting up in the middle of the night to make sure she was still alive.

  “Where is it? What is it? And did it eat anyone already?”

  “It’s not a monster, not this time.”

  “Frida?” Rue turned on the lamp. Marveled at the sight of Frida, standing with all her limbs in tact and functioning. The glasses, the part in her hair, everything in its right place.

  “But…you were in pieces. Robotic pieces.” Rue couldn’t resist stroking Frida’s skin, feeling the pulse in her throat.

  “The good thing about robots is they can be reassembled. Or remade from scratch in my case. It’s not the first time Walter’s had to put Humpty Dumpty together again. So? How’ve you been?”

  “You could have killed everyone! The twins, Karissa, me! Don’t stand there and make small talk.”

  “I only had one target, and I had him. God. John must have good luck charms sewn into his underpants or something.”

  “He wasn’t that lucky. The Mayor threw some lightning at him. Blew his underpants to smithereens.”

  Frida laughed. “I love the Mayor.”

  “Why do you want Westwood dead?”

  “Are you kidding me with that question? Do you know what he’s planning? What all of his little experiments have been leading up to?”

  “Yes,” Rue said, her outrage fading.

  “If you think for one second Walter’s going to let those sadists get their hands on Elnora again—”

  “Karissa and the twins are nothing like their dad. They’re not sadists.”

  “Then get them to see reason! Convince them to leave Elnora in peace. Walter should never have let her leave.”

  “Let her? He threw her out when he found out she was pregnant.”

  “Elnora went back to Westwood because he threatened to kill the twins if she stayed with Walter. That’s the only reason Westwood wants her back; he can’t stand to lose. Can’t stand that she loved Walter and not him. Can’t stand that he’s raising Walter’s child. Raising her to hate him. All of them hate Walter. Sorry, ‘the Bastard.’ They’ve been brainwashed.”

  “It’s less terrifying than hating Westwood,” said Rue.

  “If you want to psychoanalyze something, how about analyzing the fact that Elnora never liked it here. To force her back would be wrong.”

  “Wronger than murdering someone at a ball?”

  “I only do what I’m programmed.”

  “Well, that’s very convenient, but you have a soul—Grissel saw it. If you have a soul you should know better. Unless Walter enslaved your soul and is forcing you to do his bidding?”

  “I’m nobody’s slave. I can leave anytime, but I like to be needed, and Walter likes to surround himself with things he can fix, so we’re good for each other.”

  “Stanton thinks they can fix it, everything that’s wrong in this house. The scary thing is, he might be right. What’s my role in a happy home?”

  “Your role is whatever you want it to be. I was a spy, but you? You’re a cuckoo. Cuckoos don’t leave the nest, Rue. Cuckoos take over.”

  Frida removed a wrapped package from her backpack. “Walter sends his regards.”

  “Another bomb?”

  “You’re more use to Walter alive than dead. Open it. You’ll see.” She leapt through the window.

  Rue uncovered a tin box with a note attached.

  Dear Rue,

  Frida told me about you, that you might be a possible ally in my quest to ensure that John never gets Elnora into his abusive clutches ever again. I hope you like the gift; it was a fun project to work on. The only payment I ask is that you do the right thing and sabotage any and all of John’s psychotic schemes. I’m unsure if heartless are capable of pity, but you have a heart now—use it well.

  “The Bastard”

  P.S. My friends call me Walter

  Rue popped open the tin box and saw a bright red heart on a bed of white tissue paper, life-sized and as fresh looking as if it had just been stolen. It even smelled right, like blood and life.

  Rue turned the heart in her hands, admiring its heft. It was clearly hand-made—she could see the wiring inside the valves—but an excellent simulation.

  A simulation that would piss off the Westwoods in ways she couldn’t even imagine.

  Rue should be the pissed one. A stranger thought well enough of her to make her needs a priority while her own boyfriends—

  Rue couldn’t follow such a ridiculous thought any further. She wasn’t a priority to the Bastard. He wanted revenge on Westwood, and she was his second bite at the apple.

  Someone in the hall. Running. She closed the tin. Managed to shove the box beneath the bed, just before the door opened.

  “It’s Stanton,” Sterling said, frantic but quiet since it was after two in the morning. He was wearing the violet-lensed glasses, and had the look of a mad scientist.

  She followed him to the family room where Stanton sat on the couch, staring at the portrait of their mother over the fireplace.

  Sterling removed the glasses and handed them to Rue, but she already knew.

  “Stanton?” He was cold and unresponsive to her touch. She felt for his pulse, hand shaking, and when she felt his heartbeat, she threw her arms around him, relieved.

  “Me too,” Sterling told her. “I thought for sure he was dead but he’s just sitting there. Not moving or talking or—”

  “What’s the point?” said Stanton, startling them. His breath was freezing against Rue’s cheek. “I’m basically dead. May as well play the part.”

  “You don’t have a soul, do you?” said Rue.

  “Dad took it,” said Stanton. “Said he was tired of waiting. Said Lazarus may take years to deliver. Said pieces here and there weren’t giving conclusive results, so he took what was left. Unraveled the whole thing in the bone machine.”

  “Did it work? Did he find a piece of Elnora’s soul?”

  “Won’t know for a while.”

  “So why don’t you share your soul with him,” Rue asked Sterling, “like you’ve been doing?”

  Stanton said, “I never have to do anything except be near him. Problem is he doesn’t have enough left to lend me. Not without becoming like me.”

  “You can see my soul? Without the glasses?”

  “The tiniest spark, hiding from me. Like a curse, seeing what I’ve lost. Grissel is always hugging or kissing us to get close to our souls. That fire. I always pushed her away, but now I understand.”

  Rue exhaled a bit of her soul into her hand, just as she’d done for Grissel. Held the glowing tendril out to Sterling. “Breathe this in.”

  He did, before she’d finished speaking. His face reddened immediately, but it was his brother who spoke.

  “It’s coming back!”

  Rue put on the glasses, watched not only Stanton but also Sterling fill with light stippled with orange and gray and violet, traces of her own soul threaded with theirs, so bright her eyes began to sting.

  “Can you still see our souls?” Sterling asked his brother
, who no longer looked like a corpse that had been forgotten on the couch.

  “No. Thank God. That was so bad. Like being shut out of the world.”

  Sterling gave Rue a big squeeze. “I should chop you into little pieces and charge crazy money to feed you to sick people.”

  Stanton said, “Or we could nominate her for sainthood. How many people can say they’re literally good for your soul?”

  “I’m no saint.”

  They pulled Rue down to sit between them. “You’re better than that. You’re part of us now.”

  “Is this love?” she asked, watching the way their souls had knotted around hers. “Like being tied up, but from the inside?”

  “Knotted feels right. But now you can’t run away when Mother returns. You’ve made it impossible.”

  Rue thought of the box in her room. Thought of her sister.

  I’ll leave it with Mr. Beardsley.

  Nettle had lied to her. Had forsaken her, but a heart of her own? One that always worked? Nettle wouldn’t be able to resist that.

  Knots could be untied, but a sister, even a pissed off sister, was forever.

  Chapter 33

  Rue watered the east lawn with a few gallons of vinegar to kill off the red clot that had overtaken the grass. When the orangey-red vegetable matter had disintegrated, she disposed of the empty jugs, headed back to the house, and came upon Karissa in the garden.

  She sat in a familiar spot—the lap of the octo-woman. Rue suddenly understood what Sterling had meant when he’d come upon her in a similar position the day of the spectacular, when he’d made the crack about how she’d looked like a love deprivation experiment. Watching Karissa try to comfort herself against the unyielding stone sent Rue rushing to her side.

  “What happened?”

  Karissa didn’t raise her head from the statue’s breast; instead she placed the lilac hatbox she’d been cradling at Rue’s feet and removed the lid.

  Peppermint was coiled inside, nestled against white fleece, his body sliced into two almost equal pieces.

  Rue scooped up Karissa and gave her the hug the statue couldn’t, despite a plethora of arms.

  “When it’s warm, Peppermint likes to lay on that rock right there in the sun. I’m glad it’s warmer now. He hates being cold.”

  Rue sat on the warm rock with Karissa. “Your father killed him.”

  Karissa shook her head, and tears flew this way and that. “Adele has books in her shop and I read one and it said how to make a sick person, like Daddy, feel better. There were all these things, herbs and spices. And shapes. Different circles and triangles. And a sacrifice. That was the last thing.”

  Rue remembered being questioned about sacrifice that day at the museum. She’d clearly given the wrong answers.

  “Someone I love to save someone I love. Like a balance. That’s what the book said. So I thought about the twins and you, but the feeling was too big. And I thought about Grissel and Drabbin, and it wasn’t big enough. But when I thought about Peppermint, it felt just right. Balanced.”

  A snake for a snake. Of course it was balanced.

  “What did Westwood give in return?”

  “Mama. He can’t bring her back if he’s dead. She’s the only thing that really matters.”

  Rue set Karissa on her feet and snatched up the hatbox. Karissa chased her as she marched into the house, awfully worried about a dead snake that, according to her, didn’t really matter.

  Westwood was in his bedroom, which had changed drastically since the last time Rue had seen it.

  The circle rugs and cherry bedspread were gone. So were the heads. Including Ethan’s. Everything Grissel had added had been stripped away, and the room was as black and white as an old film. Except Elnora’s portrait—the one splash of life and vibrancy—hanging alone on the wall.

  For the first time in a week, Westwood was out of bed, dressing before a mirror, though the results so far were less thorough than usual. He was slightly palsied, as though electricity still pulsed through him.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Much.” He knotted his tie, clumsily. “Thank you for asking.”

  “Know why you feel better?”

  “Time heals all wounds?”

  “Because Kissy traded Peppermint’s life for yours.”

  Rue shoved the hatbox at Westwood. He stared at it, then at Karissa peeping in the doorway.

  “Why such drama? We’ll just bring him back.”

  Karissa burst into tears. “We will?”

  “If snakes have souls, then yes.” He held the box to Karissa. “Take this. Tell Drabbin to put it on ice immediately.”

  Karissa stepped forward, wavering in and out of visibility, Rue ready to spring forward at the first sign of danger. But when Karissa grabbed the box, Westwood turned back to the mirror.

  Karissa ran off.

  “You seem deflated.” Westwood fastened his pocket watch to his vest. “What did you think would happen?”

  Rue said nothing.

  “Why are you so determined to make me the villain?”

  “You killed your wife, you nearly killed Stanton, you have a God complex, you’re selfish.”

  He laughed.

  “You have an evil laugh.”

  He stopped, hurt.

  “Stanton was never in any danger. Not with you around. Grissel told me you shared your soul with her. Of course you would share it with Stanton. That’s the kind of person you are, the reason you fit in so well here. I only wish you had the same esteem for me as I have for you. In attempting to right past wrongs, I’m having to make my own rules. Rewriting the laws of the universe would give anyone a complex, God or otherwise.” He slipped on his suit jacket.

  “And my laughter is sensuous. Not evil.”

  “They aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  “I’m not the villain! How can I be the villain in my own story?”

  “Heroes don’t rewrite the universe. Heroes don’t force the dead to come back.”

  “And I should do what heroes do? Only that? How like heartless are you?”

  The sting of his remark was unexpectedly painful.

  “If you’re allowed your deviations, Just Rue, then so am I.”

  He reached for the pomade, then laughed at his bald head. “It doesn’t need any extra shine, does it?”

  “What will you do when Elnora returns? Ask her forgiveness? What if she doesn’t forgive you? I wouldn’t.”

  “I told you this is my story. The hero always wins the girl.”

  “What does the girl win?”

  “Her life.”

  Chapter 34

  Rue left Westwood’s room, defeated, and had only just wandered down to the opposite end of the hall when the twins came bursting from their room. They accosted Rue and danced her in a circle, talking both to her and over her head to each other, spinning her faster and faster.

  She freed herself. Tried to leave.

  But they blocked her way, dancing with each other since she wouldn’t participate. “We figured it out,” they kept saying. “We know how to get her back. We know how to open a door to eternity. We figured it out!”

  “What good is that, without part of her body?”

  “You were there when the Lazarus snake said he’d grant our wish.”

  “Did he say when?”

  “Stop trying to kill our joy, killjoy.” Sterling kicked his heels together. “We figured it out!”

  “We looked over all the info we got from Runyon’s brain—”

  “—the stuff that we could comprehend, which wasn’t a hell of a lot.”

  “—and there’s only one thing we need to get her back. Just one thing. Aside from her teeth.”

  “What?”

  “An hourglass beetle!”

  “That’s insane.” Rue backed away from their disturbed enthusiasm. “That’s dangerous. I knew a heartless woman old enough to be my mother who caught one and regressed so far back, she looks about Karissa’s age. Y
ounger even.”

  The twins waved that off. “You just have to know how to handle them.”

  “Hourglass beetles can be very reasonable if you know how to bargain: one beetle for something of equal or greater value.”

  “Like what?”

  They grinned at her.

  Rue was astounded not only that swapping her for a beetle could make them so happy, but that being the cause of their happiness should please her so.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The clock tower atop the courthouse in Fountain Square had four clocks. The one facing north had the correct time. The one facing south ran backwards; west’s clock displayed random times from one second to the next and east’s had stopped completely.

  It was because of the beetles. Hourglass beetles had infested the clock tower a hundred years ago, and it hadn’t been the same since. The Porterenes were unsure how to get rid of them; they couldn’t be killed because the beetles, like time itself, were eternal.

  Rue and the twins went into the courthouse, which was closed on Sundays, but the tower remained open, mostly because no one was dumb enough to go up there while it was infested with hourglass beetles. Until today.

  They climbed the circular tower stairs, opened the trapdoor at the top, and climbed up into a dreamlike scene. Gears floated in midair, cogs drifted past their noses like pesky insects. The beetles themselves, quarter-sized and colored a shiny gold, skittered along the floor and over the clockwork mechanism.

  Rue’s phone beeped at her, and she almost didn’t hear it over the flutter of wings and the ceaseless ticking. As the twins stalked the beetles, glass jars with holes punched through the lids at the ready, Rue received a text so absurd, she dismissed it as a cosmic anomaly, the result of being in the presence of so many hourglass beetles.

  As she put the phone away, Stanton scooped one of the beetles into a jar, and as soon as the lid was screwed on, a huge baseball sized beetle flew before Stanton’s face. So huge, it could only be the queen.

  “What will you give me in exchange for my daughter?” The queen beetle didn’t speak, exactly; the hive spoke, fluttering their wings in a way that imitated human speech.