In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  “Vee.”

  “We promised.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I know.” Verity swallows. “I can taste it. But I’ll leave.”

  “Vee.” Jacob takes her hand. She doesn’t look at him. There are red stars spinning in the corners of the room.

  She says, “I know you’re scared. I know it’s strange. But I’m okay and if you try to—I’ll walk out. And I’ll miss you. But I won’t come back.”

  “No.” Jacob’s response is immediate. He squeezes Verity’s hand until she looks at him, or at least at the freckles splattered over his cheekbones. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll be sorry for a while,” predicts Verity. “And then you’ll think of Jihan.” She can hear her own voice gone thin and alien. When Jacob flinches, she shakes her head and pulls her hand away. “I’m sorry too.” Apology tastes like nutmeg.

  The dog hasn’t moved. It sits on the floor with its tail curled around its feet, yellow gaze bright, head cocked to the side.

  Verity says, “The dog and I are going outside.” She walks to the door as though she expects Ouroboros to follow; she is relieved when it does, though its tongue still lolls with some secret joke.

  “Want to be a welder tomorrow? There’s a building going up on Lisgar. And a guy who promises not to let us burn ourselves.”

  She know it’s a peace offering. Verity holds the door as the dog glides past her. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

  Ouroboros doesn’t touch her on the way down the stairs. It walks a few steps ahead, pausing on the landing to wait for her. When she reaches the foyer, Verity sees Santiago’s jacket hanging on the rack and remembers her own was lost on a bloody floor; she pauses, then takes Jacob’s, checking his pockets until she locates the familiar jingle of his keys. His denim bomber is too large.

  “I don’t suppose you brought back my coat. Or, um, my wallet.”

  The dog flicks an ear, which is approximately all the response that Verity was expecting. She sighs, then unlocks the door to the office, entering the front room. Pulling open the bottom drawer of Jacob’s desk, she reaches into a sea of crumpled money and removes a handful of randomly denominated bills, smoothing them against her thigh before folding them into her pocket.

  Retrieving Santiago’s leather jacket from its hook, she steps outside and the dog flows past.

  The day is the sort of pale autumn brightness that brings light but no warmth. The tree in the front yard is bare, its yellow leaves scattered across the lawn.

  Verity sees no dragons, but the magician is standing below, his back against the bottom of the porch railing; he has found a shady spot just where the house blocks the morning sun, slouched in jeans and his Between shirt. He has his head cocked to the side. “That’s quite the drawer of cash.” From around his wrist, the black snake rises up, its own head tilted at the same angle.

  “It’s Jacob’s.” Verity stops two stairs from the bottom, so she’s slightly taller than Santiago. She can see the hair thinning on his head, and the silver strands glinting in it. She offers his jacket. “You couldn’t do that inside?” she adds to Ouroboros. Her tone is resigned.

  “He really couldn’t.” Neither Santiago nor the snake looks particularly apologetic. “Not with your boyfriend watching. Some mundane jerk thinks he’s a dog, he’s a dog for the duration.” The magician accepts his jacket and tugs it on before gesturing with his free hand; conjuring a small red flower, he makes it vanish again. “We can only work it out here if I play like it’s a magic trick. Otherwise it’s like trying to go between and running face first into the wall.”

  “Jacob doesn’t believe me. He knows I don’t lie. But he, um ... thinks that I’m....”

  “Crazy?”

  “Wrong.”

  “Sorry.” Santiago raises his hand, flashing his fingers outward to offer a glimpse of the king of clubs. “Can’t help. Really—tell him it’s a trick and then he’ll believe it. He knows how his world works. No arguing with that.”

  It’s not a lie—it tastes of cucumber and a certain insouciant hint of pepper—but Verity ventures, “You wind your shadow around your wrist like a bracelet. You don’t cast one on the ground. Can’t Jacob see that?”

  Santiago and the snake both watch Verity for a moment, flat-eyed and considering, before the magician says, “Ouroboros winds himself, and you’ll notice I’m standing in the shade. It’s a risk, Ouro and me being separate out here. We usually just do it for sidewalk shows, and we only do that when we need the cash. Look, Feathers gave you the rundown, didn’t he? It’s the way it is. Out here, a snake is a snake. A dog is a dog. A snake can’t turn into a dog, unless it’s just a magic act. Everyone casts a shadow in the sun. And maybe some freak kid can be born with wings, but he sure as hell can’t fly with them. It’s all about what people know. Just common sense, right? We can’t prove what honestly isn’t real to them, and if we try ... well. There are plenty of doctors and drugs for that kind of thing. Lot of us learn that the hard way.”

  Verity flinches.

  The magician, she suspects, pretends not to notice. “We got caught outside when I was about twelve—Ouro and I, I mean. Sun came out and I was in the middle of the street with my black dog and no shadow. Next thing I knew, a bunch of kids came around the corner and when the first one looked at me—just glanced my way, even—it was like some giant hand started stretching me out, yanking Ouro away. It’s hard to describe.”

  “What happened?”

  “Not sure how it came to me but right in the moment I stared down that first kid, dropped my jacket over Ouro and yelled ‘abracadabra!’. It was the first time he was the incredible vanishing dog, meaning he slid right up my sleeve and out onto the ground, so it looked like I had regular old darkness at my feet and they bought it. Otherwise I’m pretty sure I would’ve been standing there with a new shadow on the dirt and some empty husk of a dog running off down the road. Some idiot can ruin us just by looking. So we try not to take chances anymore. What we have, that’s for the dark, and the between. It’s a chain around all of our necks.” Santiago shakes his head, dropping his hands as Ouro vanishes into his sleeve. “And, P.S., if Ouro comes in to get you again, do not draw extra attention to him. That was a stupid move. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Some stuff I want to show you.” The magician considers, then adds, “I’ll see if I can get your ID back. No promises.”

  “You heard me say that?”

  “Ouro did.” Santiago turns to glance up the street; it’s a quiet day. The sidewalk is empty and so is the road.

  When the magician begins to walk, Verity falls in beside him. She keeps a safe distance. The wind is chill. As the magician steps out of the shade, his shadow stretches out along the ground, lengthening to eclipse Verity’s. It winks at her once with a gold eye, and then settles into an easy mimic of Santiago’s stride.

  “Who is Jihan?” she asks.

  “She doesn’t talk, so we don’t really know. She’s older than she looks. She’s got a weird way with knives—sorry—but she comes with the kid, and the kid is worth it.”

  Verity considers that. “She wrote my name on a wall in blood,” she says, slowly, “and you came to fetch me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Yes.”

  “So I think there’s more.”

  If Santiago were the dog, his ears would flatten. Instead he goes silent, jaw tightening. When he lengthens his stride, Verity has to walk a little faster. It’s difficult, with the little flashes of his irritation along the ground, red and a cascading blue that wraps around her ankle. Its soft cling carries an air of hope.

  “Colin asked me,” says the magician abruptly. “What he wants, he gets. He helps us and we’re going to help him right back. Make his life a little better. You know truth, right? Tell me if that’s true.”

  Verity sees in him, suddenly, the hint of vulnerability—something pugnacious, vicious, lethally un
certain. She is sorry when she says, “The future isn’t truth or lie. It’s only fog.”

  Santiago tosses his head. “We can help him, then.”

  “I think that’s ... it’s not a lie.” Verity shakes her own head, sliding silver sparks from her hair. “Words are imprecise. How will you?”

  “Hell if I know. Not yet. I follow his lead.” Santiago’s irritation has passed, brief and light as a summer storm; he pauses for half a step and glances down at Verity beside him. “Okay, first thing today. You saw me open the door between in the closet at McLuhan’s. You did it from the other side. Think you can do it both ways?”

  “Maybe. It tasted—there are things I understand, now that I know.”

  “Huh.” Santiago sounds dubious (a prickle on her skin) but he veers right, dodging between two of the street’s older duplex homes. They are tall, narrow, turn of the century. He runs his fingertips along worn wooden siding as Verity follows. Grass gives way to gravel beneath her feet.

  Santiago stops just beneath a windowsill, paused beneath lace curtains and glass warped with age. “There are spaces all through this city. There’s one here. Can you feel it?”

  It takes Verity a few seconds to figure out what he’s talking about. She glances over her shoulder, looking for neighbours, then tilts her head at the house’s side. She touches her tongue to the back of her teeth, parsing the taste of dust and the hum of some distant energy. “Here,” she says, and she raises her own hand, letting her palm hover over the spot where olive paint has just begun to chip and flake from the wood beneath.

  “Good. All right, new trick.” Santiago taps the siding lightly, just above the spot Verity has chosen. “You feel the door on the other side?”

  Verity nods.

  “Right. Open it.”

  Verity pauses. Her brow furrows. She presses her hand to the flaking paint and tries to look beyond it, but sees only green and the sunlight on the back of her hand. “It was easy,” she says, “after Colin ... he made everything clear.”

  “He’s got a gift. Still—you’ve seen it now. Just do it again. The trick is knowing. Don’t doubt; don’t overthink it. You know the door is there, so open it.”

  Verity frowns at the wall. Then, closing her eyes, she draws a breath, casting back for the sensation of impossible space. Remembering, she reaches (through the wall to the other side to the door that doesn’t exist) and—the world twists—and then they stand in darkness. Nettles sting her throat but when she takes a breath, she inhales only dust.

  She chokes and feels Santiago’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Wait,” he says. “There’s usually a lantern on the left. If it’s still working, it’ll light when you touch it.” Light blooms from a single flame in a glass-sided lantern that hangs from a hook. One of its panes is broken.

  Verity coughs, blinking. Puffs of dirt fly with her breath. Three feet in front of her, she sees a brick wall. To her left, the wall seems to have fallen in, filling the space with crumbled clay. To her right is another slim hallway, extending with no ceiling or end in sight. There is at least an inch of dust on the floor. “Who made this?”

  “No idea.” Santiago stands with his arms folded. The snake is back, larger this time, draped across his shoulders. Both study the cramped space with an air of pained resignation. “Holes like this are mostly in older buildings—like, Victorian at least—and this isn’t the city for it. I’ve heard Europe is riddled with hidden mazes. I don’t know what they do in places without walls. A woman from Colorado once told me she found a little between in the side of an old army tent. This space isn’t much but it’d be useful in an emergency—just don’t try to use a door if anyone’s watching you who doesn’t belong.”

  “It won’t work?”

  “No. All right, now. Back outside.” Santiago lifts the latch on the impossible door. It’s just a rough slab of wood, really, notes Verity. There’s nothing mysterious about it at all, until the magician touches her elbow and the world shifts. They stand in the bright autumn sunlight, blinking, and she pulls Jacob’s coat closer around her shoulders.

  “If someone—not one of us, I mean—had been standing in front of the door, it just wouldn’t open. Sometimes, if they aren’t watching, we can slide by.” Santiago tilts his head back to squint up at the sun. Its glare deepens the lines around his eyes and casts his shadow in sharp contrast at his feet. The snake is gone again.

  Verity studies Santiago’s cracked leather boots and the puddle of shade, but she sees no sign of Ouroboros—the magician’s shadow is, to all appearances, mundane. Still, the air carries a hint of cindered sweetness.

  “All right,” says the magician. “We have some walking to do. It isn’t too far.”

  Verity means to watch the shifting darkness at Santiago’s feet, but the butter-ripple of a passing car distracts her. By the time she adjusts, he is already at the sidewalk, waiting with one eyebrow raised.

  She says, “Sorry.”

  “I don’t get you.” Santiago calls a rose to one hand, then ripples his fingers, replacing it with the queen of spades. “You live in that house above those computers, and you’re pretty quick with a cell phone, and you take the bus without puking. But you’re weird in your own way, huh.”

  It takes Verity some time to arrange the words in her mouth. By the time she is ready to speak, she has negotiated a block of screaming sidewalk and she’s gratified to realize that Santiago has waited for her response. She offers, “Jacob sometimes thinks I am trying to make a metaphor—like I could describe the city as a fire, maybe, with smoke and ember and the taste of coal, and our house like the low blue flame of a match. Or maybe it could be an ocean and the glass of store windows could run in waves.”

  “But it’s not a metaphor?” Santiago is shuffling cards now as he walks. The shadow at his feet is a perfect mimic of his movements, utterly normal.

  Verity skirts a shallow pool of the magician’s curiosity and tries not to step on Ouroboros in the process. “The licence plates of the cars that drive by are a sort of, um ... brittle peppermint, but the card in your hand has a high-pitched whistle and,” she considers slowly, “the wind tastes like ... apple? It’s everything all at once. I feel the traffic lights cool on my skin.”

  “That sounds confusing.”

  “Maybe if it were a metaphor it would be a tornado.” Verity shakes her head. “True things are clear. Most things are grey. A lie is a hole or an oil slick or—” She nearly runs into a lamppost, then realizes Santiago has pulled her to a stop. He drops his hand from her elbow. Regrouping, she forges forward again, swallowing back the vaguely bitter windmills of brown leaves skittering across her path. “I don’t know why.”

  “Huh.”

  Apparently that is all Santiago is prepared to say, because they walk in silence for several minutes. Bank Street is long and straight, and the sidewalk is relatively empty, though Verity flinches from both the creeping whine of window displays and the honking rumble of traffic. The slow incline of the ground ripples beneath her feet. “Where are we going?”

  “The bus station. Since those new posters have gone up, I try to check for stragglers.” Santiago adds, “Hold up. Here.” He extends a hand, curled around something. When Verity moves to take it, he drops another pin for The Between into her palm. “We’ve got a few of these still floating around. Think of it like an ‘ask me’ button. We’re out of shirts.”

  Verity stops and looks down at the little pin, then fixes its coal-mint needle to the lapel of Jacob’s coat. She makes sure it’s secure before she keeps walking. The magician stays just a little behind her; his sinuous languor reminds her of the dog, or the snake, though he lacks his creature’s silence. She can smell his footsteps on the pavement.

  “I’ll be honest,” says Santiago, and Verity wishes he would, but she doesn’t interrupt, only works on picking her way through the swirl of the magician’s words. He continues, “I’m taking you with me today because we hope you might start doing runs to the tr
ain station. It’s a hell of a walk from here and it’s hard even on those of us who can take the bus to get there. More specifically, it’s hard on Colin—he’s the one who ends up patching us up when we come in puking.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Those posters—the ones that say the concert’s a go? Apparently they’re in other cities. Fredericton. Montréal. One guy came in from Baltimore. We’re all crap at travelling—if we have to, we take buses or trains, but it’s a lousy ride. If we’re really unlucky, the thing breaks down just because we’re riding in it. Even if not, we come out wanting to ralph. But word’s been spreading, and we’ve had a few people trickle in. So I try to wander by in case anyone needs to be scooped.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Toronto. Few months back. I had it relatively easy; the train made my skull want to crawl out my ears, but at least I wasn’t coming over the border. Not many of us have passports.”

  Verity thinks about that. She tucks her hands into her pockets to protect her fingertips from the pricking of a cola advertisement on the side of a passing bus. “Colin said the posters—they just started going up, though?”

  “Here, they did. A kid who came in from Winnipeg yesterday said they’d been up a few weeks.” The magician shakes his head. “There aren’t many of us here, but more than I’ve seen in one place before. Me and Ouro, it was gut instinct. We got up, I had breakfast, we skipped town. I figured it was something about Colin, calling us—something bone deep. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Verity considers, but doesn’t answer; she is concentrating on the slow uphill walk toward the city centre. Ottawa is painted in whistling swirls around her. The logo on a discarded burger wrapper smells faintly of battery acid, and the mailbox she passes tastes like lukewarm pickles. Santiago is just behind her, both like and not entirely like the dog, a centre of tenebrous quiet that keeps her pace without complaint.