by C. M McCoy
“Hello, Hailey,” said a familiar, velvety voice.
Hailey turned to find Asher approaching. And he looked angry.
“Hi,” Hailey breathed, and Giselle whimpered.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tied in Knots
“It’s necessary to have wished for death
in order to know how good it is to live.”
- Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Asher flicked his stormy eyes at Hailey. “Would you excuse us?” he asked. It was more of an order than a request.
Hailey swallowed hard and nodded. “Of course,” she said with a shaky voice, and Asher grasped Giselle by the arm, pulling her to her feet.
“Asher!” Hailey cried, her heart sinking horribly, and he hesitated without breaking his gaze at Giselle. Hailey shook her head, desperately searching for the words that would spare Giselle from his wrath.
“It’s my fault! Giselle didn’t do anything,” Hailey begged, as a tear rolled down her cheek, and Asher shoved Giselle to the sidewalk.
Very slowly, he turned to Hailey, his eyes squinted and churning, and Hailey knew not to run from him, even as terror washed over her. She stood her ground and met his eyes as he squared up with her.
“Are you well, Hailey?” He gently brushed the tear from her cheek.
Hailey nodded, relieved he didn’t direct his anger at her. “I’m just afraid for Giselle.”
“You care for her, but she doesn’t deserve your affection,” he said tenderly. Then he smiled briefly and turned to Giselle, again snatching her up, this time by her ugly gray hair. “I’ll return her in one piece,” he promised, and then they both disappeared into thin air.
Asher sensed Jaycen’s anxiety before he opened her door. Sure enough, Jaycen was there, wringing her hands inside her dorm room as she nervously paced in a three-foot square, no doubt rehearsing her petition. When Asher and Giselle stepped across the threshold, Jaycen fell to her knees at the Envoy’s feet. She quivered there, all but dry heaving in terror until he addressed her.
“You’ve betrayed me, Jaycen. You’ve been consorting with the wicked humans. What do you have to say?”
Asher waited for her to regain her composure. He would hear her petition before he destroyed her. Seeing Hailey covered in plasma had ignited his rage, and though he yearned to rip Jaycen to shreds, he would honor the agreement he had with all non-humans at his university and give her a chance to defend herself.
“Jaycen,” he said gently, “I’ve allowed you to remain here under my protection from them, and this betrayal is how you repay my kindness? You lured her into a place that would have killed her before I even knew she was in danger.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jaycen cried without looking up. “Those DOPPLER men—they lied to me—they tricked me—it was supposed to be a benign in-between, I swear—they said they just wanted to get a bug on the girl—they just wanted to listen, that’s all—she wasn’t supposed to get hurt! It almost killed me too—please don’t punish me . . .”
“I have no intention of punishing you, witch,” Asher said calmly. “Your time on Earth is done.”
“No!” Lifting her head, Jaycen glanced at Asher. “I can’t leave my sisters with DOPPLER—they torture witches, Asher, please!” Jaycen looked to Giselle, who stood with her head down.
Asher shoved Jaycen’s face to the floor. “Your sisters are wretches, and your soul is as black today as it was the morning you came to me on your hands and knees, begging for my protection.”
“Hailey would understand,” she sobbed. “She wasn’t hurt—I pulled her earworm out—I saved her life, Asher—and you would have known if I meant to hurt her—you would have seen it coming,” she tried, and though she was correct, Asher remained unimpressed, and Jaycen babbled on in desperation. “It doesn’t make sense, they didn’t want her dead—they wanted her alive and bugged so they could spy on you.” She shook her head against the floor. “Someone . . . Someone changed the plan—switched the barrier breaker,” she breathed. “I can find out who did it—I can find out who tried to kill her,” she offered quickly, and Asher lifted his head.
Finally she’d said something he found valuable. The humans at DOPPLER would not have provoked Asher with such a blatant attack—Jaycen was correct, and they risked much in recruiting her to spy for them. Someone undoubtedly leveraged that risk to harm his girl. Such a scenario reeked of Cobon, but Asher had to be sure before confronting his oldest friend.
“You will find out,” he told Jaycen through clenched teeth, “and then you will go to the cage. If you disobey me, if you even look at her, I will finish what I started here tonight.”
“Thank you,” she said eagerly, and Asher grimaced.
“Don’t thank me, wretch.”
“I’m not a wretch,” she argued. “I still have my soul.”
“Your soul barely clings to your body. Your wickedness has not abated; you’ve done nothing to rehabilitate yourself. Soon, your soul will flee, and you’ll be a wretch like your sisters.”
Jaycen listened unmoved, and Asher turned to Giselle.
“You know what to do, demon.”
Giselle gnashed her sharp teeth, plunging her hands through Jaycen’s chest and holding her soul down while Asher broke it and bent it and twisted it until it resembled something like a square knot.
And Jaycen screeched until she couldn’t force air. Her soul writhed in agony that threw black bruises across her skin and pin-pricks of blood through her pores.
“You will live in agony,” he told her as he moved to the window. “Maybe in a few centuries, your soul will work itself loose, and if it does, I will—I promise—tie it tighter.”
When he was through listening to Jaycen’s intermittent sobs, he grasped Giselle by her stringy hair and left Jaycen lying on the floor of her room, alive but just barely.
Hailey left the bookstore with an armful of books, a lump in her throat, a box of vibrating crystals, a knot in her stomach, a pair of wellies, heartburn, Bear Towne sweat pants, and a horrible feeling that Giselle was being tortured. Aside from needing clothes, bedding, and every toiletry except for soap, she was ready for her first day of class.
Walking painfully slow and trying not to stick her tongue out as she moved, she managed to carry her stack up the Eureka Dorm stairs without dropping a thing. Even when Fin’s latest concubine accidentally bumped her as she sashayed up to Fin’s door, Hailey recovered and rebalanced her leaning tower of school books. She did however divert some of her concentration to survey his second girl of the day. This one had bright blue eyes and foot-long eyelashes. After the girl disappeared inside Fin’s room, Hailey could hear her giggling through his door as she lingered in the vicinity, pretending to read his whiteboard, which showed:
Dinner then LOED – Back at 8pm
Balancing her stack of books on her knee, she freed a hand to unlock her door then bumped it open with her bum, scooting carefully inside as her crystals teetered precariously on the edge of the heap in her arms. Smiling proudly as she turned into her room, she was enormously relieved when nothing had fallen. It all looked so breakable.
“Oh my goodness!” Hailey jumped back and dropped the whole mess on the floor. In the corner of the ceiling over Giselle’s bed hung a thick cocoon of spider webs. The blob inside stirred when Hailey’s crystals shattered, and Hailey yelled louder, “Oh my goodness!”
Fin slid to a stop at her side almost instantaneously, while the eyelash girl waited several paces away, twirling her hair with her finger.
Hailey pointed to the web.
“L-Look!” she said, backing away in alarm. Surely the spider that created this web was huge and probably still inside her room, but Fin rolled his eyes.
“It’s just Giselle,” he said over his shoulder as he swaggered off. “Take a shower, Hailey, you smell like cat pee.”
<
br /> “My roommate’s a giant spider,” Hailey whispered to herself as she watched every step Fin took. Giant spider. He offered his arm to the eyelashes, which she of course took—giant spider—and he escorted her toward the stairs. Giant spider. Hailey stepped back and craned her neck—giant spider—to watch him walk for a half-second longer. GIANT SPIDER!
Hailey whipped her head around and looked at the cobwebs inside her room.
“Giselle?” she said, wrinkling her nose. “You alright?”
“No,” came a stuffy-nosed, unalarmed voice from the corner, and Hailey hesitantly stepped over her broken, but still vibrating crystals, ducking and checking the ceiling corners as she crossed the threshold.
“Wha . . .ummm . . .” Hailey breathed heavy, her heart racing as she looked around the room. “Is there a giant spider in here?”
“No!” she answered loudly, and Hailey heaved a great sigh of relief as Giselle wriggled inside the cocoon.
“Do you need help getting out of that?”
“No!” Giselle yelled, becoming more agitated as Hailey lobbed questions at her.
“What did this to you?” Hailey asked, half-expecting her to say “Asher,” and Giselle thrashed angrily inside her silky shroud until it ripped open. Coming loose from the ceiling, she floated gracefully down and sat, shoulders hunched on her bed.
“Nothing did this to me,” said Giselle irritably with her back to Hailey. Then she sniffled.
“Are you crying?” Hailey moved to Giselle’s bed. Tentatively, she reached her hand out, only hesitating for a moment before she softly patted her shoulder.
Giselle angrily shook her off and jerked her head up. “Don’t touch me,” she barked, and Hailey gasped.
“Are you crying cobwebs?” she said with a mix of shock and horror.
Giselle pulled a long string of silk from her eye, balled it up, and threw it on the floor.
“Oh, Giselle,” Hailey breathed, stepping back. “You’re crying cobwebs.”
“Duh!”
“Sorry,” Hailey said quickly. “I’ve never seen anyone cry cobwebs before,” she told her roommate apologetically, and then she plopped on the bed beside her and threw her arm around Giselle’s shoulder. “You want me to find you a hanky? . . .or one of those cobweb dusters? We’ll need a big one,” she said lifting her eyes to the ceiling, and she could have sworn Giselle let out a single giggle.
“Get away from me,” she said, but not in her angriest voice, and Hailey slouched back to her own bed.
“I was afraid that I got you in trouble,” she told Giselle.
“You did worse than that.”
Hailey’s heart sank. “What happened? Where did you guys go?”
“To punish Jaycen—he made me hold her soul down while he tied it, so I could feel her pain and her fear—he thinks it keeps me in line,” she told Hailey, pulling another string from her eye. “He makes me help him with all his punishments—that’s why everyone’s afraid of me.”
“How do you hold down a soul?” Hailey asked, mortified. “How do you tie a soul?” she said, with her hand to her heart, unable to imagine the agony.
Giselle didn’t answer.
“I’m really sorry, Giselle,” Hailey told her. “Is Jaycen alright?”
“Jaycen?” Giselle spat. “Who cares? She deserved it—she almost killed you, Hailey.” Giselle wiped a ribbon of web from her chin and threw her hand out. “She’s been here for years, and she doesn’t even try to rehabilitate herself.” She put her nose in the air and sniffed.
Hailey had no idea what she meant by “rehabilitate herself,” and she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask.
“She didn’t try to kill me. I jumped into that in-between, and she actually helped me get rid of a tunneling earworm.”
“She lured you, dumbass. She used a barrier breaker—
“What’s a barrier breaker?”
“It’s a bomb, you idiot. It tears the veil a little—it creates a temporary in-between. She opened a lethal one, knowing you’d come in after her. She only pulled out your earworm, because she’s dead scared of Asher.”
“Oh,” said Hailey, clutching her stomach. “Why would she do that to me?” Taking a great breath, she tried not to think about suffocating inside a jellied in-between.
Giselle studied Hailey.
“I know why Asher claimed you,” she said, her face softer than Hailey had ever seen it. “You ring with goodness. I can hear it over your broken crystals. It must remind him of the serenity inside the Aether—and you can’t even imagine the wickedness inside Jaycen,” she told her almost kindly. “Anybody can pretend to be a good person some of the time, but to rise like you do with nothing but good in your heart—it’s very rare, Hailey. Even though everyone here avoids you, they all want to know you.”
Giselle’s crystal eyes sparkled beautifully, and Hailey could have sworn her hair showed flecks of gold.
Expecting the insult that was sure to follow all that, Hailey sat in silence for a good ten seconds before she realized that Giselle had just paid her a compliment.
“You stink,” Giselle said, wearing her normal look of disgust again.
There it is, Hailey thought, and she shuffled off to the shower, careful to avoid the shards of vibrating crystals spread across the floor. Before bed, she gathered the pieces back into their box and pushed it into her closet. Giselle was already snoring on a bed of silk—on the ceiling—when Hailey reclined on her naked mattress. She shivered twice and drifted off.
In the morning, on the floor at the foot of her bed, Hailey stepped on an envelope someone had slipped under her door. Inside, she found her schedule and a note.
M-W-F 0800
ParaSci 110 – An Explanation of Strange – Olde Main Auditorium
M-W-F 0930
ParaSci 120 – Weights & Measures in 3 Realms – Olde Main R210
M-W-F 1100
ParaComm 100 – Human/Non-Human Interaction – Trinity Ctr R3
Tues 0800
ParaSci Laboratory – First Year – Olde Main Lab 1
Section Lead: Asher. Office Location: Observatory.
Thurs 0800
Music 101 – Harmony and the Aether – Edge Labs R1
That liar, she thought as she read her schedule. Fin knew exactly where to find Asher—he had an office inside the observatory. It was written in black and white on her schedule. Not that she would ever venture there without an invitation, but she wanted her photo of Holly back. She hastily unfolded the note:
My dearest Chowder Head--
Come find me in the a.m. Jaycen is asking for you.
Yours, Fin
She thought about what Giselle had told her the night before—that Jaycen was wicked and had tried to kill her. It would have been great to ask Giselle if she knew why Jaycen would want to see her, but she’d already gone. She must’ve tip-toed—or floated or maybe she just crawled across the ceiling for all Hailey knew, but she never made a sound when she left the room that morning before Hailey woke up.
She’d just have to rely on Fin’s assessment.
Hailey had slept in her Bear Towne sweat pants, and after she opened her closet, she decided she’d wear them for the rest of the day too. There was no other option.
Her jellied jeans popped up to attention as soon as the closet door opened, and then they began pacing back and forth as if they were on patrol. Her jellied t-shirt had folded itself into a swan and cooed sleepily on its shelf. Meanwhile, her other pair of jeans, which had fallen into Alaskan bog water, had come out of the washer and dried into otherworldly cement. They now resembled a stone carving, and they were just as flexible as one too. Hailey couldn’t bend them enough to get a foot
inside and left them standing against the wall. She was afraid to put on her muskeg-jellied shoes, which quivered in the corner.
Thankfully, rain poured on Bear Towne that day, and Hailey grabbed her wellies while Tomas fixed her hair.
Outside Fin’s door, Hailey listened for any suspicious giggling before she knocked. He answered straight away and closed his door quickly behind him, before Hailey could see inside.
“Morning,” she said more like a question, and he nodded, grabbing her by the hand and practically dragging her down the stairs.
“All the clothes that went into the in-between with me have come to life,” she told him right before she tripped down the stairs.
“Careful!” he yelled as he caught her.
“You’re pulling me too fast, Fin, my legs can’t keep up with your lightning speed,” she said, smiling brightly as he held onto her.
Fin laughed heartily and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“What are we running from?” she asked as he steadied her back to her feet, and then her face darkened. “Did your clothes come to life too?” Maybe he knew what to do about autonomous jeans.
“No, goofball. There’s just an angry woman in my room.”
“Oh,” said Hailey, her playful smile vanishing.
Fin looked at her sideways, smiling as they made their way out the door and across the Bowl to Chinook for breakfast.
Neither of them said a word until they sat down to eat.
“Was that your girlfriend?” Hailey blurted, bursting the silence, and then she imagined slapping herself in the forehead.
“Who?” Fin asked, looking mighty smug as he shoveled a spoonful of scrambled eggs into his mouth.
“The girl . . .” Hailey sighed, dipping her head. “You know, the girl you were . . .with last night . . .” She couldn’t even look at him as she said it.