The Midnight Before Me

by Elizabeth Lo

  I must’ve collapsed while I died in Hanbury.

  Hardwood and bloody red curtains face me. Curtains as red as blood, but too dark to match the fire that had consumed me just moments before.

  The mini flame on my nightstand goes out in a quick blow, leaving nothing but a trail of gray smoke in the air to tickle my nose. Pungent, yes, but not as suffocating as the smoke from Hanbury. That smoke hasn’t quite left my nose yet. Even my saliva still tastes like tar.

  After pulling a more comfortable outfit on, I follow the spiral stairwell out of my room into the main hallway. (Phelix had moved me to the most distant room in the mansion after our meeting, so I could have “alone time.”)

  It’s still nighttime, it seems; the whole estate is still dark.

  There goes my sleep, I guess.

  Restlessness is forcing my every move. Through every step and stumble. Just keep moving, and maybe the fear will recede.

  Memories start flashing in my head, beyond my control.

  Stop it, Midnight.

  But that only makes everything louder and louder in my head, repeating over and over.

  That bloody knife that Felicius, no Phelix, stabbed in my chest—the red mark of the Decomposition spell that I wasn’t supposed to learn—and the red flame of that street. None of the scars are on this body anymore, but I still remember them vividly as if they could still be there. Red blood, red flesh, red fire…

  Red is the color of death, it seems.

  And it’s also the color hanging from every curtain rod in this house, and the color my feet sink into with every step on this carpet.

  I can’t stand this red house anymore.

  If I could just make it outside, there’s fresh, cold air. Fresh air with a blue midnight sky.

  Away from death.

  Away from these memories that fill my head with all those traumas from my past. The chains are back. Chains filling my head and shrouding it in darkness. Those chains that I had thought I had escaped from are always still there, still there.

  My hair scrunches under my fingers.

  Without realizing it, I’ve made it all the way to the front door of the mansion. The tall, rectangular doors imposingly block my way, yet with the click of the handles, they swing open easily and let me trip out into the shockingly frigid night air.

  Hugging my body, I take in the expanse in front of me. A stone path beyond the front step quickly turns into gravel as it descends down the hill. The fresh air stings my nose and tickles my lungs as I take in a deep breath. Trees line the edge of Phelix’s property except for that little road providing a narrow opening through them.

  Up above, the moon, almost a full one, gazes down on me and casts a glow around the darkness. The sky turns a tint of navy blue when it gets close enough to the moon or a star, painting the stretch of the sky a beautiful palette of blues, blacks, purples, and whites.

  Taking in a deep breath, I raise my hand to the sky and imagine every stroke and color I would use to draw this night sky. I imagine the texture of the paper sliding underneath the stick of chalk and the tip of a small white chunk carefully dotting every single star in sight.

  Slowly, the cold sweat on my back dries. My heart and breath calm down. My shaking in fear has turned to shivering from the cold, which, in my opinion, is ten times better.

  “Hey,” says a light voice from behind me. “Getting out the late night jitters?”

  My entire body jerks around. The still scene falls away, back to reality.

  “U-um… yeah…” I respond, trying not to fall off the stone steps.

  “Hmmm? What’s this?” The moonlight catches the glossy white silk of Annabelle’s dress. “Cat got your tongue? Where’s your usual spark?”

  I don’t know how to respond. My mind is still too shocked to be bothered with basic conversation skills at the moment.

  “Uh… mmm…” is all I can make out.

  Annabelle just giggles as she usually does, before fully emerging from the door and closing it behind her. Behind her, Artemis steps out too, the shadows seeming to cling on to him.

  “Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”

  She holds her hand out to me as she steps down from the ledge, but pauses when she notices my hesitance.

  “Anyway,” she says, withdrawing her hand and facing the pathway. “You have yet to see Berningdell in its entirety, have you? You’ve only seen the mansion, Berningdale.”

  “Yeah…”

  “It’s a small town,” Artemis says. “There’s nothing much to it… but it’s a good chance to get a change of scenery.”

  They’ve already started walking, and I leap down from the step to catch up.

  “You know, technically, Berningdale is the house. But Berningdell is an actual town… So if anyone tries to track any of us down, they’ll only go to Berningdell because Berningdale doesn’t really exist on maps of any sort. We’re so cautious because of… you know. Phelix and Artemis. But I still visit the town on occasion to investigate things and go shopping. That’s where I found you wandering about, remember? I wouldn’t say it’s anything grand. But it’s got some perks.”

  Artemis chuckles, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

  “Annabelle always makes it seem better than it is,” he says.

  “I do not.”

  But by the time we make it to the edge of the trees, she’s already listed out more than half a dozen shops and restaurants that she likes in Berningdell, with a detailed description of why she likes each and every one of them.

  We all know she’s not actually trying to get a response. She’s just filling the silence and giving us something to listen to. Which, in itself, is surprisingly quite relaxing.

  “Earlier today, I also heard someone is opening a shop down on Canary Street with some new sweets. I thought we could go into town to scout the location.”

  “At this hour?” I ask.

  “Yup. No better time than now. Anyway… supposedly this shop is…”

  “Um, Annabelle,” I say, accidentally cutting off another paragraph about sweets. “You… were an assassin as a child, right? Did you want to be one?”

  “Hmm… I wouldn’t say I wanted to… However, after doing it for a while, I came to appreciate the art. But no, I wouldn’t say I wanted to be an assassin. I mean, what infant wants to be an assassin?”

  “Isn’t that kind of frustrating, though? Not having a choice.”

  “Maybe… I guess you could see it that way. I mean, I had my moments, but overall, I don’t really see it that way. It’s more like… it just gives me a starting place. Something I can always go back to yet always move forward from.”

  I think this over as we walk.

  “Do you think my eyes were a starting point in my life?” I ask the night. “Was it because I idled around for too long without a purpose that the world decided to assign me one?”

  Up ahead, the trees start to thin and reveal a small town, still asleep with barely a trace of light on its darkened roads.

  “Well… In this world,” Annabelle responds, “I don’t think there’s a meaning of life that just gets handed to you, don’t you think? You could spend eternity asking other people this stuff—like what the point of everything is—if there even is a point. But in the end, you should decide. So, Midnight…” She looks directly at me. “I’m not going to give an answer on how you should see the world when we have two different pairs of eyes.”

  “Hmm…”

  By now, we’ve entered the town.

  The first street we walk through is lifeless as we pass house after house as everyone is already asleep or preparing for sleep. A couple of chimneys in the distance puff smoke into the air, but that’s about the only sign of movement.

  I sigh.

  “But… I… don’t know anymore. Everyone keeps… telling me what they think. What they think I should think. I feel frustrated but Sucre tells me I shouldn’t. I fear death, but Phelix says I shouldn’t. I don’t know how I should make my d
ecisions, because everyone makes them for me and every time I get a chance… it’s… ripped away from me. It’s… hard to come up with my own opinion when everyone keeps flooding me with theirs.”

  “Hmm… Well, then you should just decide,” Artemis says. “Which answers do you like the most? What do you want to do the most? Things like that.”

  A cold laughter echoes the empty streets. A laughter I’m surprised actually came from me.

  “I envy you, Artemis,” I say with a tight smile on my lips and a sigh in my eyes. “I wish I could just pick an answer.”

  He goes silent. Annabelle also stays oddly quiet, and a hint of guilt tickles my stomach.

  Oops…

  Sure, in a simple math problem, there’s only one right answer. But there will always be problems that might have two or more answers or answers that don’t even exist.

  However, the world isn’t a math problem. In some questions, to say both answers are right is a contradiction. And to answer with “no solution” is an impossibility.

  “Oh, look,” Annabelle says, finally breaking the silence. “Here we are. Canary Street. Let’s stop talking about bitter things, and focus on… sweets!”

  She leads us down the street to a small little bakery crammed between two larger buildings. It doesn’t even have a sign to indicate what it’s called, but its window is filled with fluffy-looking pastries on racks of three.

  “Mmm…” Annabelle murmurs at the sight of them, almost drooling. “They look delicious.”

  The bell of the little shop opens, and a large man exits, wearing a white apron dusted with cocoa powder and flour.

  “Would you like to try some?” he says, with a rumbling voice. “You would be my shop’s first customers.”

  “Really?” Annabelle says, elated.

  “Sure. I don’t have much right now, but it’d be nice to get some feedback before my big opening day.”

  He holds the door open for us, and Annabelle trots in without a second thought. Artemis and I follow after, and the scent of powdered sugar fills our noses.

  But I can’t help but feel claustrophobic again.

  What if Glorieux smashes down onto this building? What if she rampages past the door and blasts the entire storefront apart? How can I escape the fastest? What if I can’t escape?

  A small poke scatters my buzzing thoughts.

  “What’s wrong?” Annabelle whispers.

  The man has gone to the counter to retrieve some confections.

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, don’t ‘nothing’ me,” she says, sitting down at the table closest to the window. “Go on. You can tell us over the sweets. I’m also a good listener.”

  Small plates clatter in front of us. The baker mumbles brief descriptions of them and quickly walks away, but he can’t hide his excitement as he starts fluttering about the shop occasionally tossing us a glance.

  “Do you think… it’s safe to be eating sweets at night like this?” I ask cautiously.

  Annabelle smiles and pops a chocolate truffle in her mouth.

  “Hmm… Let’s see… Nope. It’s not poisoned. If that was what you were worried about. If it’s about getting fat, then…” She eyes my physique and tries to hold back a smile. “I think you’ll be okay.”

  “Okay…”

  She giggles.

  “Relax, you two. You have me. The ex-assassin turned bodyguard. And look…” She nods at the man now at the cash register. “That is nothing but opening day jitters. Wouldn’t you feel excited when your dream is that close to your nose?”

  I see what she means. How nice it must be.

  “But anyway, Mid. Go on. Tell your story.”

  I take a deep breath and wait until the man disappears to check on his food.

  “Hanbury has been burned down.” I feel a bit sick just saying it, and tragically, even the allure of the sweets can’t appease my stomach.

  Annabelle and Artemis indulge themselves without me.

  “Really?” she says, mouth full of chocolate. “That Hanbury—the Walled City—burned down? Isn’t it mostly made of stone?”

  “Yeah. But guess whose fire can burn through stone.” I smile grimly. “Yup. The White Queen.”

  Artemis stiffens at the mention of her.

  “Why…?” he stammers.

  “I mean,” I say, “if I wanted to make a national disturbance, Hanbury’s a pretty good place to start.”

  “Well, yes, I got that. I just… don’t understand…”

  “Yeah,” Annabelle chimes in. “Sure, there are some dead people in her mind, but dead people were still people. In other words, what’s her motive?”

  “I think they’re all feeding off of her desire to be free and mixing it with their own desire. That, and dead souls break down and decompose, just like a dead body would. Which corrupts them… and therefore corrupts her.”

  “So… the dead spirits are the ones making her act this way?” Artemis says, a strange blind hope twinkling in those exact replica eyes of his. I can’t hold eye contact with him.

  “Well…” I roll a blueberry around my plate. “I don’t think so, actually. At first glance, it would just seem like she’s just gone completely insane. But… I think Glorieux Frost is still there. She’s still dictating the situation, even if it doesn’t seem like it. I mean… the way she planned out Hanbury… if she was completely out of control, I don’t think she would’ve been able to…”

  “You keep talking as if you were there,” Annabelle says.

  My hand tightens on the small fork.

  “I was.”

  “Really? How?”

  “You know how I said when I die, I immediately resurrect into a copy of myself? Well… there was this incident where I thought I was going to die, and I ended up making a copy while I was still alive. This body went on to meet you guys here, and the other stayed behind. That other me decided to go to Hanbury to investigate Glorieux, and… died there.”

  “Oh, how interesting…” By now she’s eaten a handful of chocolates and is moving onto some meringues, while I have yet to touch the little raspberry mousse on my plate.

  “Interesting, yeah…” I finally pop the blueberry into my mouth.

  “So…” Artemis sparingly eats a cookie as he speaks. “You only have to think you’re going to die to duplicate?”

  “I have to believe that I’m going to die. Which… only happens in that split second before death. You can’t consciously activate a curse, but neither can death. According to Sucre, for curses set on people, they’re activated by either the subconscious or extreme emotions.”

  “I wonder if there’s a way around that… Like… if someone shot you, would it be fast enough to kill before you can ‘believe’ you’re going to die?”

  “Maybe…”

  Annabelle starts to eat my cake for me while Artemis uncomfortably stares me down.

  A bullet is too fast for a brain to even react to… So I’m sure it’s possible to surpass a curse activation…

  They all said something like they were already dead or they remember dying—like really, really insisting they were dead, which is strange for so many people to suddenly start claiming all at the same time.

  Maybe for me, it’s possible to surpass my own reflexes, but what about that one? The Memento Mori curse.

  If it’s the witness that activates the curse, then…

  “It’s possible,” I mutter.

  “What?” Annabelle says, sipping some tea that I didn’t realize had arrived.

  “It’s at least possible for the Memento Mori curse to activate even from instant death like a gunshot.”

  “What about for you and your eye curse?” Artemis cuts in.

  “For me…? I don’t know. I’d… rather not find out right now,” I say, chuckling. “It’s not like it’ll matter anyway, right?”

  Annabelle stills, teacup halfway to her lips.

  “No… don’t say it like that, Midnight,” she says. “That makes me sad.
”

  “How so?” I laugh.

  “Because… after you break the curse and I have to kill you… you’ll be gone. Forever.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’ve accepted it—the fact that I’ll really be dead.

  I haven’t.

  “And, I’m okay with dying.

  I’m not.

  “After all… I… don’t really have a place in this world anymore anyway.”

  Well, at least that’s true.

  “You really like to lie about yourself, don’t you?” Artemis says, his eyes slicing through me. “How you feel about things, what you actually want to do… I almost feel like you just say what we expect you to say.”

  “I suppose I do. But… sometimes it’s better for everyone if they don’t know me. Don’t you think?”

  He glances down at his plate.

  “Then… if you’re only going to lie about yourself, what about your brother?”

  I blink in surprise.

  “What… about him?”

  “Can you tell me about him? From your perspective. Like… for example… what would he think of this situation?”

  “What would he think… I’m… not sure. Maybe he would be disappointed at the country. Or maybe he would be angry at Felicius—er, Phelix.”

  “But he cared about you, didn’t he?” he says. “From the sound of it.”

  The sides of my mouth rise on their own.

  “Yeah. He did. Maybe a little too much at times… but I never doubted that part of him.”

  “If he cared about you so much, then I think you should value yourself a little bit more. For your brother’s sake.”

  “Hmm? What’s this? I thought you thought of him as a murderer or a maniac or something.”

  Artemis goes a little red in the face at that.

  “Well… I still don’t want to doubt Phelix that much… but if the Ruined Boy—your brother—mattered to you, then that’s what matters.”

  “I’m at least glad you consider my brother as another person now.”

  “Actually… I’m unsure what to think now…”

  “I’m sure. You only have my versus Phelix’s words on Black. You can’t draw your interpretation of a person without seeing them yourself first… and, of course, you’ll never be able to meet him.”