Verity hesitated for a long moment. “It tastes like bees.”
“Hm,” he said. “You have to learn,” he told her. She mouthed the words along with him and sighed.
She was a bright enough child, if a frustrating one. She often complained that a math lesson had been the wrong colour or that the letters of the alphabet were too loud. The doctors added “synaesthesia” to her list, and “schizophrenia.” They gave her more treatments and therapies and pills. She roamed the house like a zombie.
“The words aren’t right,” she tried to tell her mother. “The doctors, um ... sound like charcoal and stale bread.” She sat at the kitchen table with her feet dangling and her fingers steadily ripping apart an orange peel. She was staring at the tile backsplash on the wall. Her voice was little more than a whisper.
Letitia sighed. “That was almost a sentence, dear. Keep trying. And swallow your medicine.”
Letitia was not home very often in those days. She told Rory she had to work. Verity would twitch and stroke her fingers along the wall.
The school phoned again after Verity was found hiding in a supply closet. A teacher dragged her out and sat her in the back of the classroom, where she carved LIES in the top of her desk, wearing away at the wood with the nib of her pen. They sent her home.
There were fights. Letitia would slam dishes on the counter and snarl, “This isn’t working. The school, the calls. That stupid radio. She is crying all the time.”
“She’s talking, isn’t she? She stopped walking into walls. No one said it would be easy.” Rory would go through Verity’s textbooks on the living room couch. Still dressed in his suit, he would flip through pages, looking for something to read aloud. “Stop letting her hide in her room.”
“Stop torturing her.”
Finally came the night Letitia didn’t get home until almost ten o’clock. She shrugged off a scarf as she came in, and fumbled at the buttons of her coat.
“Why is she up?” she said, gesturing to where Verity lay on the floor by the unlit fireplace, gazing at the coals on the grate.
Rory sighed. “She says the blinds in her room are biting her.” He had the television on, but quietly. “Where’ve you been?”
“Working. The Jameson file blew up.” Letitia’s lips were thin, as though she expected a challenge. Her husband only looked resigned. But Verity, on the floor, lifted her head.
“No, Mommy.” The little girl sounded old in that moment—exhausted, exasperated, her patience finally and thoroughly tested. She was a sixty-year-old woman in a fleece onesie. She pushed awkwardly to her feet and walked carefully across the room—a little unsteady, as though the floor were rolling beneath her. Her parents stared at her, but she only reached to wrap her small fingers around her mother’s hand.
“Did you want to go to bed?” asked Letitia.
“No, Mommy.” The little girl looked upward, her grey eyes for once focused and clear. Her hair was tangled like a nest. She spoke in quiet, precise imitation of her father: “Where’ve you been?”
“Having sex with Bill Jameson,” replied Letitia, blandly.
There was a long pause.
Rory turned off the television.
Verity nodded, apparently satisfied, then let go of her mother’s hand. Moving carefully still, she made her way across the living room floor to the hall, then climbed the stairs, one by one, to her room.
She wasn’t looking anymore, or she might have seen Letitia’s widening eyes; her mother’s lips had gone white. It was the moment when resigned indulgence turned to fear and something very much resembling hate.
stop
What am I getting wrong?
everything
This is the story you told me?
i told it to you wrong words are always wrong all of this is crawling across my skin when im upstairs i hear it like a heartbeat
What can I do to make it better?
the house
the tile in the foyer was marble
i used to lie on it when i was a child i would let my cheek press against it i liked the white streaked with black and grey it was a little like my first memories
the fourth tile to the left of the front door was chipped at the corner
i tell you this but it doesnt capture the exact shape of the chip or the size of the tiles i dont know i forget now
The tiles. Okay. Let me go back and work that in.
its not about the tiles
it is but also it isnt
this story is the hardest its mine but its too far away
look
this is how it ends when the judge asks whom i want to live with and im nine years old and daddy makes the world loud and hard but mommy lets me hide in the closet so i say mommy and she sends me away and the hospital sounds like a choir dying
keep going but not this part
20
AGREEMENT FOR SERVICES TO BE RENDERED
The following contract represents an agreement between ________ (client name) and Flâneurs, Inc. for services rendered at_________________________(location).
Representatives of Flâneurs, Inc., agree to appear on ______________(date/time) and perform ___________(service) to the best of their abilities. All necessary equipment will be provided. Any required uniforms will be worn, but will be provided by the client.
_______________(client name) recognizes that the representatives of Flâneurs, Inc. have no formal training and are providing the service free of charge. Representatives of Flâneurs, Inc. are thus indemnified from any damages and fuck it, I’m not a lawyer. If we screw up your stuff, we’ll pay a professional to fix it for you, but don’t come suing us for extra, okay? We’re not MADE of money.
Signed:
____________________ (client) ______________ (date)
____________________ (Jacob Shepard, co-president)
______________ (date)
____________________ (Verity Richards, co-president)
______________ (date)
FEBRUARY
“Oh my god.” Jacob slumps at the foot of the staircase, one hand pressed to his blood-matted hair. “What was—oh my god. What was that? Is she okay? ...Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Verity crouches in front of Jacob; she tries to take his wrist, to move his hand from his head, but he jerks away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“I can’t see if you’re hurt.”
“Yes. I’m hurt. Fuck, Vee, back off.” Jacob closes his eyes, wincing. “And who’s this guy? You know what? Never mind.”
Santiago sits halfway up the stairs with a dead snake across his lap. Its tail coils crookedly at his feet and dangles over the landing. The dimness of the stairwell cloaks him like a shroud, hiding the vacuum of his eyes.
Verity rises, extending tentative fingers again toward Jacob’s matted locks, but he only twists to stare up at her. His face is hollow. A line of blood has dripped from his left nostril and pooled along the line of his lips. He hesitates. They are both illuminated by the flashing red and blue of the lights now revolving in the street outside.
Jacob says, “Did ... did that guy have wings?” His stunned eyes search Verity’s face.
Startled, she tastes antiseptic and mildew; she remembers locked halls and paper gowns, and swallows.
Possibility stretches gossamer and insubstantial between them.
“You...?” Verity manages a shocked syllable before a shadow blocks the flashing colours at the front door. Someone knocks forcefully at the glass.
Jacob blinks, his attention jerking to the door. “What—”
“Answer it. Please. The police will have an ambulance. For your head. I, um ... we’ll go upstairs.” Verity sighs. “Don’t tell them.”
“You want me to lie?” Jacob is patently incredulous. “You?” The knock comes again. They both jump. Only Santiago is motionless.
“I want you to, um ... not tell them. Please.” Verity doesn’t have time for the coriander uncertainty dripping from her own mouth.
She glances nervously at the looming shadow, then ascends the stairs to stand in front of Santiago. Leaning down, she sets her hands on the magician’s; his are clammy, curled around the dryness of the snake. The scents of lilac and coal are nearly ghosts.
The knock comes again, sharp and loud—three times, like a gun fired. Jacob and Verity both jump. Jacob winces, wrapping one hand around the stair railing, pressing his other palm to his skull as he totters to his feet.
“What’s your friend’s problem? Is he high?”
“He is missing half of himself. We—we should go upstairs. I’m sorry.”
Santiago is less bloody than Jacob, but he’s starting to sweat, his face acquiring an undertone of grey. He lets Verity tug him to his feet and push him up the stairs, Ouroboros cradled in his arms.
“Is that a dead snake?”
Verity shoves the magician through into the apartment just as she hears the click of Jacob unlocking the front door. She slips into the upstairs hall and closes the door behind herself as quietly as she can. Santiago stands waiting for her, damp and empty. She pushes him into the living room and says, “Sit,” then, “Wait.”
She leaves the magician on the couch, staring at the wall, the snake looped across his thighs. He fidgets with a playing card in his right hand, flipping the worn cardboard between his fingers. The light that filters through the blinds stripes the wet, stubbled hollows of his cheeks.
Verity enters the bedroom and fishes a soft flannel blanket, patterned in grey and red stripes, from one of the drawers on Jacob’s side. When she carries it out and drapes it over the coffee table, Santiago has dropped the card, which now lies face down on the hardwood, so that he can clutch the dead snake closer, running his thumb over the hard line of the break in its neck. “Here,” she says, and when he hesitates, “It’s okay.” He stares at her for what seems like a long time before he sets Ouroboros down on the blanket, arranging each limp loop, making sure nothing of the long black body slides to the floor. He draws the edge of the blanket over the blank yellow eyes, then drops back, his elbows on his splayed knees and his head drooping. He has already left a smear of blood on the white cushions.
Verity tastes only Santiago’s obsidian grief and the throbbing jade of her fading adrenaline. She looks at the blanket and feels her own sorrow distant and cocooned. She goes back to the bedroom and strips out of clothes stained by Jacob and she isn’t sure what else. She finds a clean pair of jeans and one of Jacob’s shirts. She stands in front of the dresser, the palms of her hands pressed hard to her temples, and imagines she can hear raised voices in the foyer. The world around her is mud. She is subsumed in the dull conglomeration of sirens and snow, corpses and razored dragons. She can taste Privya’s rage and the lingering sour defeat of Colin’s doom. Jihan’s eyes are shards that cut the skin and the incredulous curl of Jacob’s lip blooms heavy and pounding beneath her skull.
She leans her forehead against the closet door, staring down at the handle and thinking of the peaceful solitude to be found behind hanging coats and neatly lined shoes. She holds to the last vision of Colin’s wings and the glimmer of clarity that still haunts her somewhere just beneath her collarbone. Then, inhaling, she straightens and walks back to the living room, where Santiago slouches unmoving. She sits on the couch next to him. She hears another siren approaching, and the increasing growl of its proximity nearly blinds her.
“There’s, um, no one here to see Ouro now—except us. Can it come back?” Verity isn’t in the mood to talk. She has to fight to get each syllable past her lips. Still, she tries, and she touches the back of Santiago’s sleeve.
The magician turns his head, and Verity has a sudden impression of those untamed eyes in a little-boy face. She smells gin and tastes broken springs. Santiago turns his hand over, wrapping his long fingers around her wrist hard enough to crush, and she doesn’t protest because he is a drowning man clutching at a lifeline. It all squelches into the marsh of her perceptions. She knows there will be bruises later.
“You don’t know,” she says, surprised, and the magician’s fingers dig into her flesh. “It’s never...?”
“Never.” Santiago’s voice is guttural. “I don’t—I can’t—” Verity can’t look at him—the shadows of the blinds writhing across him, and the haunted fear that lurks in the caverns of his irises. He says again, “I—they see a snake, he’s a snake. They see a dog, he’s a dog. He’s always mine again, after. He,” and his lips twist mutely around the words he can’t finish.
“Shh.” Verity wants to close her eyes. Instead, she looks down at Santiago’s hand, his nails neatly trimmed, his skin swarthy against her pallid beige. Her wrist has gone white around the edges of his grip. His terror throbs in the back of her throat.
She wonders again what Jacob is saying to the police.
“It’s okay. Sometimes there aren’t words for things.” The room beats dully at her temples. Verity sighs. “How did you—the first time, where did Ouro come from? Um. You should know, people who are touching me—they don’t lie. Which is, I don’t mean I think you—”
“I was a boy. Alone. He was—” Santiago appears to realize the strength of his grip; he relaxes his hand, letting Verity withdraw. His fingers are trembling. “He was the worst thing I could imagine.”
“To protect you.” Verity doesn’t know how she follows that. It’s a flare of clarity. She fights the urge to cradle it in her palm before it dies.
Santiago nods. He looks as though he would say something else, but his throat works in silence. His shoulders are flattened.
“Privya said there was power in blood. Maybe...?”
Santiago’s nostrils flare. “Privya’s power. Jihan’s. Mine was ... I just....” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “How can you think?” he bursts out. “When there’s only one of you? My head echoes. No one answers.”
Verity is quiet for several breaths, then she says gently, “My thinking screams at me. Like the city, or the air. Words with textures and scents. Half-complete. In a different way.” She has his attention. He is staring at her. She shifts uncomfortably. “I imagine silence, but I can’t really ... I would envy you but your eyes are like an out-of-tune piano.” She can’t actually see his eyes anymore; she sees only the quivering textures of her own voice, melting the air between them. She remembers, though, the jangling caverns of his need.
Verity sighs. “Tell me,” she says. “How you called him, or how he felt to you. Maybe we can—I don’t know if a shadow can die.”
“Why does it matter?”
“All I taste are the sirens. I want to help you but I’m, um, selfish, too, because I need something true. One thing that’s clear. I want to—my head hurts. Yours is empty. Mine is full.” Verity shakes her head; her words are tripping over one another as she forces them past numb lips. “Tell me. Ouroboros is perfume in a mine shaft to me. Like flowers, but ... smoky.”
She has to close her eyes. Against her lids, she sees the slack face of the dead boy in the camouflage jacket. She can feel the fleece blanket brush her knees and can’t escape the long chill stillness its folds contain.
It seems that Santiago won’t speak, but eventually, he offers, “It was spring. But it was night. There were no flowers. I called him from death and terror.”
Verity swallows. “Was he ... the first time?”
“Shadows have always whispered to me. Black things. Possibilities. He was the one who took form. He—people don’t understand. He isn’t a servant or a trick. We share the same eyes. The same thoughts. You touch him, and I feel you. You take my hand, and you take his.”
Verity pauses. “He winds himself in my hair. You...?”
The curve of Santiago’s mouth shudders at the corner before the shiver of amusement dies. “Yes. No. Sorry. It isn’t—not like—he likes you. We share the same thoughts, but not all the same. He does what he wants. More as we both get older.”
“Was he the only one? The only shadow, I mean.”
“Lately, I
can play with most of them, a little.” Santiago gestures with his free hand, a graceful waterfall of fingers that leaves him staring with bemusement at the lines of shade falling from the window and across his skin. “At least, I could.” His throat works. He is staring at his knuckles. “Nothing speaks to me now without him,” he adds, absently. “But to answer your question: he was the strongest and the best. Nothing else has ever stayed.” He curls his fingers inward and looks at Verity again. “That girl—Privya—told me in the market that I made her sad, that all I had was a remnant of a memory of power. But Ouro was real. Now she has taken him. I’m half a man.” Sweat beads at his temple, running down.
“What did it feel like?”
“What?”
“When your shadow died.”
At Santiago’s incredulous glare, Verity shakes her head. “I’m not trying to be cruel. I’m only trying to understand.”
The magician says, shortly, “Like being decapitated. He was fierce and then scared. And then gone.” He almost reaches for the blanket on the table, then curls his hand against his chest. “Colin’s okay?”
“Jihan took him.”
“We’re not going to make it. The Chalice. This concert, or whatever bullshit it is Privya is planning. We’re falling. Colin can’t save us, and he’s going to die.” Santiago grinds the heel of his hand beneath his eye, exhaling. “That lunatic—what is she doing? She’s never threatened us. She didn’t have to kill Ouro. She threw her own people against Jihan like she was dropping them into a blender.”
“I don’t think she wanted to. But she’s running out of time. She really thinks Jihan will destroy the world.”
“Maybe she’s right.” Santiago drops his hand and stares at the bare white blankness of the living room wall. “What does it matter?”
“It might matter to billions of people?”
“They’re not—” The magician cuts off, then grimaces. “I can’t say they’re not people. But they’re just—they don’t see us. They’re not real to me. Just faces watching card tricks. Or your boyfriend downstairs. What’s he going to say?”
“I don’t know. If they come upstairs, there’s—the window in the bedroom goes to the roof. If you drop down the back—”
In Veritas Page 32