In Veritas

by C. J. Lavigne

  It’s the truest thing she’s said to him. His sapphire gaze flares with the force of her need—as though she had come to him with a tumour, or a gaping chest wound. Colin sucks in a breath. “Christ.” There’s no vitriol in his tone—only sadness and the terrible grace of his forgiveness. He’s already turning. “Then let’s go. God only knows what they’re up to now.”

  “Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.”

  -Arthur Conan Doyle

  22

  [FOOTAGE FROM PRE-CONCERT FOR THE BETWEEN;

  LANSDOWNE PARK EXTERIOR, MARCH 5 2014]

  [TRANSCRIPT BEGINS **NOTE HAVING A REAL PROBLEM WITH

  THIS FOOTAGE; CAMERA BATTERY ISSUE?]

  JAMES ST JOHN: --you seen the band before?

  GIRL IN BLUE SHIRT [**NOTE WHY DO WE NOT HAVE INFO FOR

  INTERVIEWEES; THINK JILL WAS FIGHTING WITH CAMERA]:

  No! Their concerts are super rare. That’s half the—not even

  sure—before

  [**NOTE FOOTAGE IS CHOPPY; SKIPS HERE]

  ST JOHN: -- band before?

  MAN IN RED HAT: Oh sure, totally.

  GIRL IN BLUE SHIRT: Oh my god, you liar!

  MAN IN RED HAT: I have! You wouldn’t—was—before they were cool.

  [STATIC]

  ST JOHN: Seriously, are you getting it this time?

  CAMERA OPERATOR (offscreen): I’m trying, but this camera is for shit.

  ST JOHN: Okay, let’s—the

  [STATIC]

  MAN WITH BRAIDS: My cousin’s ex-girlfriend’s sister said she saw them one time, and it was amazing, you know?

  ST JOHN: When was this?

  MAN WITH BRAIDS: Uh, let me think, when did he break up with her ... I was in college, maybe ’98? And—saw—ago

  [STATIC]

  ST JOHN: —freaking useless—piece—tell Evelyn—goddamn equipment—we’re not paid—just shut it—

  [VIDEO ENDS]

  MARCH

  The between is humming.

  The lights in their sconces gleam brighter than ever, casting their illumination across spotless floors. As always, the walls in the narrow hall rise to darkness above, but even that endlessness overhead seems charged with possibility that shivers across her skin like the promise of a coming static shock.

  Verity has never seen this hall before and has to breathe it in. She has followed Jihan and Colin through the side of an older house across the park from the hospital, and she is trying to settle the knowledge in her veins before it fades—the precise way Jihan opened the door that wasn’t, twisting it perhaps left instead of right, duplicating Privya’s tricks with casually perfect intricacy, a fall of sand echoing.

  This between is lined with the same faint lights that illuminate the inside walls of McLuhan’s, but the long space is ramshackle and eccentric: wooden boards turn to faded brick become crumbling stucco, each patchwork section of wall holding its own mismatched door. Many doors are marked with neat white chalk letters on fading paint—a tall red set of double doors reading CHTEAU LAURIER, a doorknob jutting from a narrow plank of flaking blue paint that says BYWARD, a rich mahogany door displaying SPARKS. Verity tilts her head at a wide oak door with only a rough winged figure scrawled across it. “Is this...?”

  “The one we came through, from the theatre. Far as we can tell, this is what Alan was talking about. Doors leading all across the city. Keep going—I’d like to find Stefan.” Colin is a little breathless. When Jihan strides silently forward, he hobbles at speed to follow, balanced between his cane and the sleeve of Verity’s borrowed coat; he is careful not to touch Verity, but his wings keep opening, half flapping to boost him along, black feathers escaping his coat to brush at closed doorways.

  They follow Jihan down the hallway’s length, past doors both tall and short, small and wide, plank and painted. They pass a door that says MANOTICK MILL and another reading NOT THIS ONE.

  “How far does it go?”

  “Got me. I’ve had all of five minutes in here. Hoping there’s a later when we can explore it, if her majesty will bring us back here again.”

  Verity steps carefully; the floor is like the walls, alternating brick and wood and cracked old tile, though she notices it’s free of dust. She curls one hand in the air in front of her, trying again to recapture the exact motion of Jihan opening the door to this place. “It’s clean,” she murmurs. “The chalk....”

  “Yeah, someone’s labelled the doors. Gotta figure Privya’s people have been all through here. Haven’t seen any, though. I’m itching to try some of these knobs.” Colin’s hand flexes briefly on Verity’s sleeve. Ahead of them, Jihan has pulled a leather strap from somewhere and uses it to bind the end of her hair as she walks, before she flips the braid back over her shoulder.

  Verity wants to breathe the texture of this new impossible place—to run her fingers along the walls and taste each door, but Jihan is striding quickly, or at least paced just carefully enough that Colin can follow, though his breath huffs with each step. “Has she been able to ...” she shakes her head, redirecting the question to Jihan’s bobbing braid. “Did you know how to come here? All this time?”

  She is not surprised when there is no response. Colin chuckles breathlessly at her elbow. “I asked that too.”

  “Should Jihan even be—” Verity doesn’t get very far with that thought because Jihan has shot a look back over her shoulder, one eyebrow nearly raised.

  “Good luck with that, also.” Colin shakes his head. “I told her we’d be safer if she’d stay away. Didn’t get very far with that one. She came with me to the hospital, and now she’s doing whatever the fuck she wants.” He stops, holding Verity in place just long enough to tilt his jaw back, exposing a small nick red and raised against the pale line of his throat. “That was her.”

  Verity’s spine goes stiff. “She wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “Doubt it. But it’s only her gracious attitude that keeps her doing what I ask. Look,” Colin adds to Jihan’s cool stare, “we’re hardly fighting you. And thanks for getting Vee. But slow down a friggin’ half-second if you can.”

  Jihan holds for three beats with only a muted air of impatience before she resumes a pace that is just on the low end of hurried.

  Verity looks down at the top of Colin’s head. “It’s dangerous for you, too.”

  “Privya hates me, but she won’t hurt me as long as I’m helping anyone else. It’s not us she’s at war with.”

  “What do we do when we get there?”

  “I’d say find that idiot Alan before he finds Privya, but judging by those tickets, we’re too late. I don’t know. We just ... we stop her. And no one gets hurt. Especially not that little girl.”

  Between Colin’s persistent glow and the sharp insistence that marks the between, Verity finds the world almost achingly clear—blurred only by the crimson-copper edge of Jihan’s slim form, or the despair and the terrible compassion bound in equal measures between the angel’s pinions. She ventures, “Do you think it’s possible?”

  “I don’t know.” Colin’s voice is tight. “We’ll sure as hell friggin’ try. How much has gone this far because of people trying to help me? Not Privya—Jihan. Stefan. Hell, maybe you. Stefan wants a way out, but more than that, he wants a way to get me out. And I’ve let him, but we’re done.”

  Their pace doesn’t abate, but Verity reaches her left hand across and squeezes Colin’s shoulder, lightly, through the worn fabric of his voluminous coat. In the space between hops, he finds the breath to sigh.

  Jihan stops by a broad wooden door with an old-fashioned cut-glass knob. The panelling is scratched, fire-scarred at one corner, but a faded ‘5’ is visible in smeared chalk.

  Jihan doesn’t look back before she slips through; a few steps later, Verity reaches for the knob and brings Colin through with her. Tonight, the transitions are easier than blinking.

  She is prepared for the bitter onslaught of the city outside, but with Colin beside her, it’s easier; even the streak
s and wails of Ottawa in the winter night are little challenge to Verity’s senses. She knows she’s drawing on the angel, but when she moves to step away, he says, “It’s all right. Use it. I’m good for something tonight.” His light is dimmer outside of the between, but he still glows. His eyes are sparking with inner fireflies.

  They are back in the Glebe, on the treed leafiness of Fifth Avenue. The street is lined with townhouses similar to Jacob’s: tall, narrow, with wooden steps and fading paint. Night has descended, and the streetlight that illuminates the block dies almost before Verity registers its presence.

  “Any way for you to stop that? Damp it down, or—we can’t walk into a crowded area if you’re going to nuke every piece of tech in sight.” Colin’s hair is in his eyes. He lets go of Verity’s arm long enough to brush it back, glancing down the street.

  Jihan looks at him; her face remains inhumanly smooth but she lets one shoulder rise and fall.

  “Christ, well that’s terribly reassuring. Let’s go. I don’t think it’s far.”

  They walk down Fifth toward Bank Street; Verity is relieved when the next light they pass below dims but holds. Colin says, “Thanks,” but no one is surprised when Jihan fails to respond.

  This door has brought them only a few blocks from Lansdowne Park; they turn left on Bank, where a pub in a low mall is marked by a hanging sign that declares ‘The Blade and Goose.’

  “That’s probably us. I’m the goose.” Colin is talking to Jihan again. She does glance back at him, then she stills, glaring at a passing car. She waits for Colin and Verity to pass her before she stalks them down the sidewalk.

  “She’s got no sense of humour, is her problem.”

  “I’m not sure that’s, um, the whole problem.”

  “Yeah. Well.” This stretch of Bank, farther south of McLuhan’s, is lined with small storefronts, most of which are closed. They pass a stone-fired pizza parlour; through the window, a group of young men is clustered around a table, laughing. The men don’t look over as Colin and Verity pass, though one of them shoots Jihan a bemused stare.

  Lansdowne Park is set off from the main street; the stadium looms, seats jutting on either side of a football field, the sloping rows covered by a single long roof that gives the building a jagged, precariously balanced appearance defying its concrete solidity. Beside it, a series of mid-rise rectangular buildings are darkly shining, close together and close to the street. Their windows glitter. Verity thinks she sees a neon restaurant sign struggling bravely, half its letters dying. A traffic signal on the street has burned out, and a man in a police uniform is directing a slow trickle of cars, some of which turn downward into the underground parking lot. As Verity, Colin, and Jihan approach, a car dies on the ramp. Someone blows a horn.

  Verity shakes her head; the block’s slick modernity slaps at her. Beside her, she feels Colin shiver.

  She says, “Really?”

  He shrugs. “This is the place. Got a poster in my pocket if you really want to check.”

  They turn inward, away from Bank and between the close rectangular buildings, walking toward the plaza. Jihan passes in front of them, weaving unhesitatingly around other, slower pedestrians. There are signs: a movie theatre, a bar, a restaurant. Verity swallows logos like seeping tar.

  A block in, the looming glass of the new buildings opens; a broad, flat area paved with walkway tiles serves as a wide courtyard before the entrance to the Aberdeen Pavilion. Verity feels Colin suck in a breath beside her and realizes she has been holding hers. The exhibition hall’s Victorian curves are brightly lit. It’s a long, low building that would have been tall in its day; it has the general shape of a large barn, with a stately dome rising at its centre and smaller silver domes gracing each corner. In comparison, the surrounding buildings are a sleek glass wall, setting the small, pale yellow length of the hall somewhere out of place and time. An excitedly chattering crowd mills around the central double doorway.

  “All right, well, here’s the bad news.” Colin draws to a halt, Verity beside him. “I don’t know what we do now.”

  “Here.” Santiago emerges from behind a crochet-wrapped couple much more interested in each other than in him; he glides through the small crowd, his blackness dull in the growing night.

  “Glad you got out,” he tells Verity, “though surprised you’re here,” and he’s looking at Colin but he holds out a hand to her, as if in greeting; puzzled, she accepts. As she does, she feels the odd, rough weightlessness of Ouroboros enter her sleeve, wriggling its way up her arm. The snake slides down her back, outside the worn hospital gown, and winds its way around her ribs; she feels it getting longer before it comes to a rest. She presses a palm against its slender bulk and feels it contract ever so slightly around her.

  “Look at that,” observes Colin, pleased. “She does smile. Yeah, she’s here. It’s all right. The others?” His sparking gaze scans people nearby.

  “Most are by the entrance. I sent Rick and Stacy inside.”

  “I thought you were going to watch out for them?”

  “They’re fine. I waited for you.” The magician conjures a playing card, dancing the four of clubs between his fingers as he turns to look back at the pavilion. “I bought tickets a few weeks ago, thanks to Vee’s petty cash, and Alan left us more, but let’s be honest; if we could stop anything by going in legit, no one would let us, and we certainly wouldn’t be invited. We’re trying to check the building, but there’s security everywhere. We’ve made the lights flicker a couple of times. No sign of—does she even have a band? What is she doing? Why are all of these people even here?”

  “Jacob says it’s, um, on the internet—all these rumours about The Between. People saying they’ve seen them, that they’re great.”

  “Guess we’ve been laying the groundwork.” Colin shakes his head. “We made a rumour, and now it’s some indie music legend. People just want to be in on something, I guess.”

  Santiago looks at Verity. “He tell you about Alan?”

  “Yes. Why would—”

  “Don’t know. We need to find him, fast. No one’s seen him, or Privya, or the little girl. Don’t think I’m not terrified this isn’t one giant distraction and they’re all the damn way across town.”

  “This doesn’t feel like—” Verity wraps her arms around herself and feels the snake curled around her torso; she looks at the stadium, then at Colin. “It’s all grey,” she tells him. “It’s based on a lie, but not all a lie. I don’t know how to ... Jihan wants you to be here.”

  Their attentions turn to the tall woman in the ragged pastel sweater, who is somehow positioned with ample space between herself and any passing would-be concert-goer. She stands with her arms folded; by all appearances, she is watching the crowd. Her hair is still neatly braided, in contrast to the thready mess of the scarf tied around her bicep.

  “Do you?” Colin asks her, his feathered brows drawing down. “We’re not helping you, either. What are we doing?”

  In response, Jihan turns—her gaze rakes them all without recognition—and then walks confidently across the courtyard toward the bright pavilion. A group of teenagers scatters in front of her like startled pigeons.

  “Right.” Colin reaches for Santiago’s arm this time, gripping the magician at the elbow as they take off after the striding woman. Verity follows, holding the coat closed, conscious of the snake, and her bare legs in the cold, and the uncomfortable pinch of too-small boots.

  They find a thin spot in the crowd, or Jihan does, and cross the remaining swath of smooth concrete squares toward the pavilion’s curving roof. A few steps further, though, and Santiago slows. Security guards with matching green jackets and folded arms are stationed at regular intervals along the wall, blocking the way.

  “The hell?” The magician has paused, the angel and Verity with him; Jihan continues forward.

  “Look,” says Verity, who points upward. This close, the roof of the pavilion is alive; dragons slither. Spotlights have been p
ositioned in a distant ring to illuminate the building walls—a pale yellow, with white trim—and the long roof curves in a smooth arch, covered in a layer of snow, lit by lights cast down from the stadium. The creatures on it are visible in barest glimpses as they peer off the edge, eyes bright with reflected halogen. As Verity watches, two more flap in to settle somewhere above.

  Colin says, “There,” and gestures toward a cat with too many legs that is just vanishing around the building’s corner.

  “I thought I saw a hippogriff circling. Not many of those left. Hope no one looks up. Okay, where is she going?” Santiago is impatient, his motions uncharacteristically jerky, though Verity notices that when he steps after Jihan, he is still careful to choose the clearest path through the gathered crowd so that no one will jostle Colin.

  She feels Ouroboros wriggling upward just enough that it can position its head at the edge of her collar. “Can’t you use Santiago’s eyes?” she asks it, bemused, but it only squeezes around her. Glancing again at the glint of a dragon at the roof ’s edge, she follows Jihan. It’s difficult to move quickly—the crowd of people is a blur of sound, rippling conversations that bring with them tastes and touches and a mess of odd smells. Verity still has a hint of Colin’s peace in her chest, though, and she lets the last of it buoy her past the flash of a boy’s golden arrogance and a man laughing like smoke. A girl in a paisley coat is jabbing at the dead screen of her phone, muttering.

  Jihan ignores the ticket-takers and the line at the main entrance; instead, she heads for the corner of the building, following the path of the many-legged cat. She stops and narrows her eyes at a spotlight positioned to beam down from a restaurant roof; it flickers, but doesn’t go out. She chooses her path more widely instead, tracing the edge of illumination. Along the wall, security people watch her but say nothing.