The Midnight Before Me

by Elizabeth Lo

  “Yes. But I think I can still form an idea of him based on what you guys are saying.”

  I frown.

  “Maybe…”

  “Well, why not? Like you said, I’ll never meet him. The past is in the past, but we all know what he did. I can decide what I think of him on my own just from that.”

  My mouth tightens.

  “What? Are you getting worked up about how I view your brother? It’s not like it matters; it’s just my opinion.”

  “Artemis,” Annabelle hisses.

  “Why?”

  “That’s… maybe your problem,” I murmur quietly.

  “What was that, Mid?” Annabelle asks.

  “I said,” I say a little louder. “That what you think of my brother reflects more on you than it does on either me or my brother.”

  His eyes narrow.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean… I guess… What I’m trying to say is… your opinion doesn’t really matter…?”

  Artemis’s magic jumps in anger. I flinch but continue, forcing myself to face him and not the Glorieux I see in him.

  “I think you’re a bit pampered,” I say, almost a little too bluntly. “Just from the way you think…You seem like…” My voice steadies out finally. “You’re still living in an illusion and only see things from the inside of your own world.”

  “Oh? Is that a bad thing?” he challenges.

  “No,” I say, breaking eye contact, my heart starting to pound again. “It’s neither a good or bad thing… it’s just an observation. I don’t know… I guess to me, it seems like you’re not really making decisions on your own as much as you claim to.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then—”

  He suddenly shudders, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. Annabelle promptly stands up, a half-eaten chocolate abandoned on her plate.

  “Arty,” she says, her voice lowering in worry.

  He jerks forward, shaking the table. The baker gives us a strange glance, and Annabelle smiles innocently in his direction but quickly drops it when he looks away.

  “Arty?” Artemis says coldly. “What am I? Just a kid to you?”

  “Six,” she responds.

  “What?”

  “Let me guess. That’s how old you are right now?”

  He blinks in surprise, those silver eyes shockingly expressionless.

  “How’d you know, miss?”

  “I just knew,” she says, smiling sweetly.

  He glances around wildly.

  “This… isn’t a dream, is it?”

  “N—” I start, but Annabelle shoots a silencing glare.

  “Dream?” she says. “What are you talking about?”

  He relaxes.

  “So it isn’t one…” he mutters.

  Annabelle breathes a sigh of relief.

  But before she says anything more, he glances up at me in the middle of lifting a teacup to my lips. The entire table clatters as he shoots straight up. “Demon…” He mutters. “It’s the demon again.”

  “Demon?” I ask, carefully putting my cup down. The tink it makes on the saucer is enough to make him fall backwards, knocking the chair down in one loud explosion of noise.

  “It’s a dream…” he mutters. “Yes, yes… it’s just another dream…”

  He backs up, finding another table to pull himself partially up with, his breaths uneven and shallow.

  “I just… I just have to defeat it,” he says to himself. His mouth closes, and he takes a deep breath. When he reopens them, they’re the same eyes as Glorieux in the burning city all over again. Determined. Uncaring. Lost. He smiles to himself and lets out a happy little laugh. “Defeat it, and I can see Mommy again.”

  His hand finds the vase of flowers behind him. In one swift motion, he shoves himself off the edge of the table towards me, throwing the vase at my forehead.

  Or… he would have. Had Annabelle not clapped loud enough to wake all of Galviton in his face the moment his muscles tensed. His hand goes limp, and she deftly catches the vase and places it back where it was.

  “And… halt,” she says, smiling sweetly but her breath had also sped up.

  Artemis’s face goes dark.

  “Six?” he asks breathlessly.

  “None other than,” she says, helping up from his slumped position on the table. “Ah, sorry for the commotion, sir!” she calls over, putting Artemis back in his chair.

  The poor, confused store owner nods silently and turns back to what he was doing.

  “Six the Dreamer,” Annabelle says absently, sitting down again. “I didn’t expect you to be so affected by Mid, Arty.”

  Six the Dreamer… That was one of the ones Annabelle warned me about.

  The present Artemis sighs and shakily takes a glass to his lips. Those silver eyes, though not as lost and determined as before, flick to me like an invisible throwing knife.

  “Pampered, huh?” he says after regaining his breath. “Then do you want to know what I think of you?” he says, those cold eyes once again striking me down. “You’re indecisive too—like you said, you let everyone else take the reins of your life and then you blame it on them for how your life turned out. How about it? Am I right?”

  “Yeah, I suppose you are,” I say, chuckling.

  I shakily take another sip of tea. Is that a berry tea? It’s good. Yeah, it’s good…

  But inside, I feel the arrow tip of his words strike through my chest and hit straight into my heart.

  “I guess I’m not like you…” I pick up a tiny fork and study its reflective properties. “I’m not as sure of my place in the world.”

  Annabelle frowns.

  “Your place in the world… can’t you decide that?”

  I twirl the miniature utensil in my fingers.

  “I wish…” I say quietly.

  “No, don’t wish. You ought to find your place first, don’t you think?”

  “Well… no. I think that would make it even worse. Better a person like me, versus someone… say, like you break the curse. You have someone to protect—plus you’re an ex-assassin turned bodyguard. You’re important.”

  She sighs and puts down her cup with a clatter.

  “Then take it from an ex-assassin, Midnight: You could die at any moment. But you haven’t died yet, so before your time is up, it’s better you run after what you can instead of wishing it was to be.”

  “But that’s the thing, Annabelle,” I say, a hint of frustration creeping into my voice. “What I want… is something impossible for me to attain.”

  “And what is it that you want?”

  I press my lips together.

  “A purpose?” Artemis poses.

  I shake my head.

  “No. No, it’s not that…”

  What do I want?

  A humming comes from behind the counter, playing the tune of an old folk song. The baker is smiling to himself and shuffling around, organizing his materials, finally settling into a steady rhythm.

  I remember what Lafayette and I were talking about on our way to Hanbury. About good memories.

  Ah… isn’t that what I want?

  “I want to enjoy life again,” I say.

  Annabelle follows my gaze to the content baker.

  “I see…” she says.

  “But if you don’t have a purpose, how are you going to enjoy life?” Artemis says. I still can’t look at him directly.

  “Artemis,” Annabelle cautions.

  “It’s okay.” I focus on the swirls of the small button-like meringue. “Having a purpose and enjoying life aren’t the same thing, you know.” I smile and nibble the little meringue. “And I do have a purpose—breaking the curse. It’s because of it I can’t fulfill anything else in my life. Dreams… wishes… that may be all they’ll ever be to me from now on.”

  Annabelle pauses.

  “You can break the curse later, you know. You don’t have to do it now.”

  “That’s not possible, Annabelle.”
r />   “Why?”

  “Remember? Crazy, town-burning queen?” I giggle, almost hysterically. “Yes, yes… that’s right…” My face falls to a complacent smile. “I don’t think I’ll be here for very long.”

  A shadow drops over the shop. The baker drops his notepad in surprise, but none of us at the table flinch. We both look up and see Sucre’s golden eyes glinting outside meters above the shop.

  She’s right, he says. And because of that, Midnight, we’re leaving tomorrow.

  My smile stays on my face like a plastic mold.

  “Oh. Am I…?”

  Yes. You’re breaking the curse. His eyes narrow. And so, yes, you’re dying tomorrow.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Glorieux

  She can’t breathe. She can barely see.

  Glorieux can feel it, unexpectedly. This consciousness. She’s present again. She’s her.

  The people she killed—their faces are flying in her head over and over. She can’t shoo them away—not in her disoriented state. She’s not used to being in control of her own body, yet she yearns for control over the world.

  She’s in the middle of a street she burned in Hanbury after wandering about for quite a bit of time. She barely remembers anything that’s happened. She knows what happened. But she can’t remember what it looked like or sounded like. She can’t remember.

  Her vision is blurry. A raindrop slides down her cheek. No, not rain. A teardrop.

  If only it were raining now…

  If only it weren’t her who did all those things. If only someone else could take the blame.

  She wants to claw her eyes out, pull out all of her hair, and deafen her ears. Her legs ache. Her chest hurts with every breath…

  But she still wants it badly. That freedom taunting her. She could be free from those who control her. She could become free from everything.

  As sickening as it is, she can’t stop.

  She will free herself. She will knock down every little domino herself, even if she has to do it one by one.

  And so, she keeps walking until she collapses from exhaustion. The hard road meets her cheek, smearing dark, gray ash over her pearly skin. Her body, her mind, her soul… Her magic has been drained as well from all the work she did last night, smashing every building in sight.

  She doesn’t even know where she is anymore. It doesn’t matter to her anymore.

  She shudders on the ground, trying to get up and keep moving, to walk just a little bit further… But her body is too pampered and spoiled from all those royal meals and thrones to go any further.

  Her shoes, which were too big for her in the first place, have fallen somewhere along the way, though she didn’t care for them anyway. Pain courses and inches its way up her body, suffocating her and grasping her in its relentless hand.

  She’s feverish despite the cooler Galviton air. So cold, and yet so hot…

  Let go… they whisper again.

  Let go, let go, let go…We’re going to the Summer Palace…

  There’s a train of people waiting for her. In the pandemonium caused by the fire, she was able to track down the many wandering zombies of the night. The cursed Hanburians who, like her, have long lost their capability of individual thought. All in all, she ended up with about twelve bodies, twenty-four souls in all. It wasn’t what she was hoping for, but it’s good enough.

  Like any city, Hanbury has its underground crime, hidden from the public eye. But in this city, especially, where the powerful flaunt their wealth in broad daylight, all forms of imperfection were eradicated as quickly as possible through executions. And of course, through the curse, regardless of who holds actual love for whom, executions lead to more double-souled.

  And see, that’s another loophole with the curse. “Love” itself cannot be a condition, just how death itself cannot activate a curse. Instead, it’s the thought of caring for another person enough at that exact moment that activates the curse. Because, if humans haven’t yet figured out exactly what love is, then how could a curse differentiate? Even those incapable of love, like her father, can still curse anyone.

  That’s the sort of world this is, right? Curse or be cursed. Kill or be killed. It’s her turn now—to curse and kill.

  Yet, she feels ugly. Dirty. Seeing the blood on her hands, the scorch marks on the town. Why? Shouldn’t she feel free? Isn’t this the freedom she wanted? The revenge? Why?

  Why, why, why?

  When she looks around, she sees people running from her, screaming. Wasn’t that couple in the café just enjoying their coffee the other day? Oh, and that woman… wasn’t she talking about how she wanted to become a novelist in the future? Or that boy who was bragging about how fast he could run. Now, they’re all running, screaming, covered in soot and sweat.

  There’s a satisfaction in seeing their happiness destroyed. But it’s an ugly satisfaction. Is this what she wanted? This feeling… this feeling that consumes her… It’s familiar. They all remind her of Marigold.

  Never mind that.

  She’ll bring her puppets to the Summer Palace, so she doesn’t have to face this ashen landscape anymore. After all, it’s only a mile or so away from this city… And insanity can force feet to walk for much longer.

  There’s a faint tug on her soul. The others are calling for her, telling her they’ve recovered their magic again. And so finally, she lets go and sinks back into the mish-mash of spirits within her. They all become one again. All one person now. All nine of them.

  They’ll be free soon. They just have to lie in wait at that white castle on a hill for their prey to fall into their trap. That cat will surely arrive there to try and defeat Glorieux and the rest.

  See? Individual thoughts are not needed. Glorieux’s barely in charge. She’s barely in the copilot seat; no, she’s barely in any seat. She’s just the plane now.

  Shhh, darling Glorie, Soren whispers to her. I’ll take over from here. I’ll take away your pain, your exhaustion, your emotions. I will make you happy. Just keep going… It’ll get better. Let’s go fetch the marionettes and then get going now, shall we?

  Chapter Twenty

  Lafayette

  Rage fills him as he looks at the charred remains of Midnight’s body. The smell of burnt flesh is still putrid in the air. He only knows it’s her because bits of her slowly turn into glowing pink particles and float off into the air as he watches, and he waits there, by her side, until all the lights are gone and her body is no more except for the leftover ashes shaped like an inky flower bed.

  It was like a light going out. One moment he felt her, pulsing and alive—a surge of magic echoing through the roads and singing in his ears as he ran through the blazing city trying to find her. The next, it was silent, cut off mid-song.

  It brings him a strange pain to look at her. Which is even stranger, considering a couple mornings ago, he hadn’t even hesitated to strangle a man to death.

  Lafayette, Orion says, cutting through the buzzing noise in his head. Watch out.

  There’s still someone here in the street with him. There are dead people littering the street, and even more, hidden inside buildings. But there’s someone else here. Alive.

  Standing up, he runs through the street, ignoring the protest coming from Orion telling him to go the other direction. There isn’t any time. He can’t afford to stay in one place for too long. Not in these conditions.

  It was no ordinary fire—stone and concrete were as flammable as wood to it. Few things were spared. Not all of Hanbury was burned down. Just a strange crisscross of streets and buildings that left a large burnt mass in the middle where he eventually found Midnight. He was both lucky and unlucky to have taken so much time to get out of the city—he was going to stay the night in a small inn right next to the wall and leave in the morning, when the fire started and something in him made his feet run into the flames.

  Gritting his teeth, he decides to follow that other person he sensed somewhere in the street with him. Orion
takes over the magic part. As he runs, Orion Teleports, traveling maybe thirty feet with every step. At first, he almost stumbles over his own feet. But he’s soon used to this disorientation, and it doesn’t take long for him to adjust.

  What he’s not used to is the extraordinary anger boiling in him from Orion, like hot lava threatening to pour out at any moment. All this death must be making Orion uncomfortable. Lafayette should be careful with him—emotions are dangerous in a dead spirit.

  And, to his surprise, he, himself, has an uncontrollable emotion boiling inside him. As if someone’s shot a hole in his chest. What is this feeling? It’s strange and foreign…

  So what? He thinks quickly. It’s just another death. I’ve passed countless dead soldiers that I don’t even remember the faces of.

  But that’s the thing. He does remember her face. He knows how she smiles and how she always fiddles with her hands when she’s nervous. He knows her story—the complete version of it. And she knew his.

  Oh… but wait. There’s that. Her ability. Can’t she just come back?

  She can’t be fully dead. It’s not possible, right? She must be somewhere.

  No, think this through. Look at the scorch marks on the buildings. The entire block was burned out, and Midnight’s body was smack in the middle. If she did come back, wouldn’t she have just burned to death again? Except… there was only one body. And he watched her disintegrate right in front of him.

  If that’s the case, Orion cuts into his mind. Then that must mean she has another body.

  But how? Lafayette thinks, jumping over the burnt remains of a flower pot.

  The only way would be… if she duplicated… Hmmm… I’m going to have to think about this. But regardless of how, there’s a chance she might still be alive.

  He didn’t realize how drawn together his shoulders were until he finally lets them go.

  No. He can’t do this to himself. He shouldn’t wish for things like this.

  She’s quite important to you, isn’t she? Orion interrupts into his thoughts. A person who will listen to you should always be important.