Phantom Pains

by Mishell Baker

  “You’re going to trap all the spirits here?” Brand’s ears and tail drooped; he looked as though someone had just caught him chewing a table leg. Claybriar surprised me by reaching out to stroke the dog’s head, fingertips gentle on the slightly pointed peak of its skull. Brand and Claybriar exchanged a brief look, puppy eyes looking into puppy eyes. Yeah, I know, Clay’s look seemed to say. Something strange and brief and almost friendly passed between them, but then Brand’s stance shifted.

  “Hey, Champion?” he said to Claybriar.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t ever fucking pet me.”

  Claybriar took his hand away, but the corner of his mouth turned up in a half smile.

  “Stupid Seelie cream puff,” said the dog.

  “Play nice, boys,” I said. “And I agree the harp thing is a pretty fucking dystopian solution. That’s why I’m looking for another way. And I think you’re that way.”

  “Yeah,” said Brand slowly. “I couldn’t give two shits what happens to the sidhe or their estates, but absolutely nothing good can come of this plan they’ve cooked up, so count me in to stop it.”

  “We’re going to need some kind of a promise from you,” I said, “given the whole Unseelie-monster thing.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I promise you that I will do everything in my power to stop the wraiths from destroying the sidhe strongholds—without using that harp,” said Brand. “Beyond that, I think I’m going to reserve judgment about how deeply I want to get involved in this Arcadia Project of yours, at least until I’ve figured out if there’s any way to communicate with my Echo other than using you idiots as go-betweens.”

  “You know, if you ever turn on us,” said Claybriar, “I’ll be obligated to hunt you down again.”

  “Look me in the eye,” said Brand, “and tell me how scared I look about that.”

  “Hey, I might not have succeeded in killing you yet,” said Claybriar in a dangerous tone, “but don’t be under the impression that you’ve seen my best effort.”

  “Pah. You’re tied to the Seelie Queen’s apron strings, but face it—you’re more like me than you are like her, and you know it.”

  The two stared at each other for a long moment, and then Claybriar turned away, pacing toward a window. Brand’s words seemed to have upset him more than I could account for, but I doubted he’d admit why in front of Brand.

  “Tjuan,” I said, “can you keep taking care of Brand while he’s here? I would, but, you know.” I flicked Brand on the ear; for a split second his true form exploded into the room, forcing Tjuan to stagger to the side, pushed out of place. Then Brand was a dog again.

  “Jesus Christ!” said Tjuan. “I see your point. Maybe don’t demonstrate.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Anyway, I feel like I can trust you to be careful with him. And, uh, take him for walks or whatever.”

  “You owe me huge for this,” said Tjuan. “Manticore huge.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. With a growl of frustration, Tjuan grabbed Brand’s collar and hauled him away.

  Claybriar was standing at the window farthest from the door, looking out into the dark. I had never heard this kind of rain on the roof and windows of Residence Four; the water’s onslaught pattered and crackled in surround sound on all that glass, invasive and intimate and slightly frightening.

  I wanted to go to him, but his expression was so dark it made me hesitant. I waited to see if he’d unburden himself, but he just kept staring out at the gloomy weather.

  Not knowing what else to do, I left, brushed my teeth for bed, peed and whatnot, gave him some time. But when I came back he was still standing in the exact same spot, with the exact same expression.

  “All right,” I said to him, closing the door behind me and leaning on it. “Time to talk to me.”

  31

  “Don’t pretend to care,” Claybriar said, his face as impenetrable as the view outside the glass. “I know I don’t matter to you the way you do to me.”

  “What the hell? This sudden complete lack of confidence is the opposite of attractive, Sir Claybriar.”

  He fixed me with a simmering look, not in the least amused. “You think I don’t know?” he said. “You told me, the first time I ever touched you. The magic doesn’t work both ways. I’m just any other man, to you. Any other fey.”

  “Clay. What? Hold the phone a second.” I moved closer to him, reached out instinctively, but kept my hand back at the last minute. “You’re not just any other man. Just because I don’t get high and go make Reservoir Dogs when you shake my hand, that doesn’t mean you’re nothing to me. You’re gorgeous and talented and sharp and—deep and passionate and—you kiss like a shot of fucking whiskey. Your magic doesn’t work for me, but you work for me.”

  If my words had any effect on him, it wasn’t evident. Which annoyed me, because I thought they’d been pretty good words. I wasn’t sure I could find better.

  I exhaled slowly and moved to the air mattress, lowered myself down onto it. A hard thing to do in a skirt without showing Claybriar my underpants, but I was in this conversation for the long haul, so I might as well get comfortable. Maybe a little too comfortable. I didn’t quite think about what I was doing until he turned and I saw his face change. I’d already released the suction on my right prosthetic and eased my shin stump out of the socket, as casually as I’d slip off my shoes.

  I almost stopped when I realized I had an audience, but something new had streaked across the mix of emotions in his face, and new was good. So I just kept going, massaging the circulation back into the skin and scar tissue that covered the asymmetrically tapered dead end just below my right knee.

  “I still believe,” Claybriar said into the silence.

  “Believe what?” I said, moving to my left leg and pushing the release pin on my AK to lift it off my liner-covered thigh.

  “In the spirits,” he said. “The fauns’ . . . gods, or whatever.”

  “I didn’t know you had gods.”

  “It’s what I was talking about before. The old superstition Winterglass taunted me about. I feel like touching you should have cured me of it, the way it lets me—choose, when I see someone I want to—” He raked a hand through his hair, pacing again.

  “Slow down, Claybriar. It’s all right. Just talk.”

  He took a deep breath, stilled. “At home,” he said, “when I wanted to fuck, it was just, that was everything. I never forced anyone—the Seelie don’t. I don’t usually have to. But if I ever wanted someone who didn’t want me back, the feeling just completely consumed me until I couldn’t see them anymore or smell them. It was misery.”

  I reached for the little bottle by the mattress, slathered up my skin with goo to help peel the silicone liner off my left thigh. “Believe it or not, I kind of get it.”

  “Since I found you,” he said, “it’s different. It’s a choice; I can choose what to think about. I’m in command of my own mind; to me that’s magic. And I thought everything would be like that, but I can’t—with the spirits, what I grew up with, it’s gotten into me somewhere so deep I can’t tear it out of me.”

  I looked into his face as I towel-dried and massaged my thigh. I was baffled by his manner; he spoke as though he expected me to spit on him, send him away.

  “So you have faith in something most people don’t believe in anymore,” I said. “So do Naderi and Inaya, and they’ve done all right. I don’t judge them. I’m just . . . one of those people who can’t make myself truly believe something unless everybody agrees that it’s sitting right there.”

  “That’s sensible.”

  “No, it’s necessary. Because my brain is so fucked up, I can’t afford to argue with other people’s perceptions. It’s all that’s kept me between the lines of normality most of my life.”

  “I envy that,” he said. “I wish someone could make me see the truth, so that I wouldn’t keep clinging to this—whatever it is.”

  “Relax about it, okay?” I said. “It d
oesn’t bug me, so try not to let it bug you.”

  Lightning flashed, briefly revealing the shuddering shapes of trees, and then a harsh clap of thunder sounded. It was such an impossible and almost supernatural sound in Los Angeles that I really wished I’d could go back and say something amazing right before it.

  “I mean,” I went on lamely, “you’re not entirely wrong. There’s the wraiths. We still don’t know exactly where they come from, or if there are more things like them. Maybe there are good ones too, who don’t go around possessing people.”

  Claybriar turned away, flinching as though I’d struck him, and it sounded a genuine chord of sorrow in me.

  “I think that’s what’s making it worse,” he said. “Dealing with the wraiths; they’re like a parody of everything I used to believe in. The spirits I imagined weren’t like that; they weren’t so calculating. They weren’t just—Vivian without a body. They were wild. Innocent. Pure. Drifting through the world waiting for something to entice them. Every time we cast a spell, we thought we were reaching out to them, offering something, and when one ‘accepted,’ it was such a thrill. Spell casting was—well not to be a horny goat about it, but—”

  “Kind of like making love,” I finished for him. “No, it’s a beautiful thought, and I see no reason why you shouldn’t keep thinking of it that way.”

  “Because it’s not true!” he blurted, whirling around and suddenly so angry I shrank back from him, even given the distance between us. I must have looked frightened; I saw the guilt flicker over his face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, not sure what I was apologizing for.

  “No, no, I—” He let out a stormy puff of breath, scrubbing a hand over his face and then raking it back through his hair. “It’s just—lies are such a casual thing for you. To others, to yourself. You can just tell yourself whatever makes you feel best, and I wish I could do that, but I can’t.”

  “That’s just the thing,” I said. “You’re a fey; you can’t lie. If you were absolutely a hundred percent sure that spirits like the ones your people believe in don’t exist, then you couldn’t lie to yourself about it, right?” I wasn’t sure that was true—Shock had claimed that the king was lying to himself about various things—but Clay was listening with something like hope in his eyes, so I went with it. “And if it might not be a lie, then you might be right and everyone else, even your fucking perfect queen, might be wrong. And wouldn’t that be a kicker.”

  There was a softness in Claybriar now; I’d worn away the jagged edges of whatever had been lacerating him. But he also looked weak and shaky, as though he’d confessed to a murder. My heart went out to him, and I didn’t know how to make him feel better, how to take away his shame.

  “Want to see me naked?” I said.

  He blinked.

  I turned my face away with a little shrug. “I don’t show people, usually. Which is to say, not ever. It’s always lights-off with Zach. But I can show you, right? It’s you. I sort of—I wonder what it would all look like to you.”

  His eyes on me were steady; a strange calm had settled over him. “I could draw you, and then you’d know.”

  I laughed, unbuttoning my shirt. “Oh, no. I’d be too worried about the drawing falling into the wrong hands. I’ll take your word.”

  I was careful not to prolong it, not to make it a striptease. I took off my clothes as though I were at the doctor’s office, shrugging off the shirt and glancing up at him as I reached back to unhook my bra.

  His expression wasn’t at all what I expected. He was so still, every muscle slack except the ones required to keep him standing. His eyes weren’t hungry at all, but touched with something almost like sadness. Not pity though; that would have buttoned me right back up in a hurry. No, there was a kind of humility in it.

  I took off my bra, then leaned back on my elbows and hooked my thumbs into elastic, wriggled out of my skirt and underpants at the same time. I used the remains of my right shin to gently kick the rest of my clothes to one side, and there I was, naked on my air mattress, a crazy quilt of scars with three-quarters of a right leg and a quarter of a left one. Drastic weight loss hadn’t been kind to my breasts; they sat a little lower than they ought to for their size, and me not even pushing thirty very hard. Below them, slightly asymmetrical ribs were visible—a good portion of the steel in my body had gone to putting them back together—and the skin of my torso was painted, especially on the left, with pale pink whorls and knots and stripes of scar tissue.

  Also, I hadn’t shaved in months.

  “Ta da,” I said weakly.

  Claybriar walked toward me as though I were a wild bird who might fly away. I wondered if he was going to touch me, and decided that I was okay with it. I hadn’t meant for this to be a sex thing, but I was surprised by my lack of disgust at the idea.

  He lowered himself to his knees next to me. His expression reminded me of a consumptive from some nineteenth-century novel: eyes all fire and light, cheeks flushed, but dying inside.

  “I’m starting to think this was a bad idea,” I said, but it came out husky.

  Claybriar made no move to touch me, simply knelt there, letting his eyes move over me as though he were, in fact, planning to draw me. Which he probably was, the sneaky bastard.

  “If you tell me I’m beautiful,” I said, “I will bona fide slap you.”

  “If there’s a word for what you are,” he said, “I don’t know it.”

  “Disaster?”

  “That’ll do,” he said. “Hurricane and aftermath, all at once.”

  I shivered and felt his stillness pass over me like a cloud; his reverence was infectious. I felt the same cognitive dissonance I had when I’d seen the portrait of me he had dropped at the train station in June: a sudden flood of love and respect for someone who was also, somehow, me.

  But there was no magic this time. Just the nearness of an otherwise sane man who was genuinely, thoroughly weak-kneed with adoration. I would have let him have me, horns and all, if he could have.

  “I do love you, you know,” I said. He closed his eyes.

  There was nothing but the sound of rain for a little while. It would have been a good time for a thunderclap, maybe a quiet one rumbling along the horizon, but the weather did not oblige me.

  “I want to sleep here,” Claybriar said.

  “Okay.”

  “Just right here on the floor, at the foot of your bed.”

  “Okay, Crazypants,” I said more hesitantly.

  “I’m a faun,” he said. “I’m used to sleeping on the ground.”

  “But you know, this does kind of hinder my masturbation plans.”

  Claybriar let out a gunshot laugh. “It—doesn’t have to.”

  “We’re not quite there yet, Clay.”

  “Okay. Gotcha. Well, good night then.”

  “You don’t need to . . . wash your face, brush your teeth?”

  “Nope.”

  “Oookay then. Uh, good night.” I found the wadded-up mess of my sheet at the foot of my air mattress, straightened it out a little, and then pulled it over me, curling awkwardly onto my side and listening to the rain.

  The weirdo actually fell asleep, almost right away. I could tell by his breathing, audible but not quite a snore. The last few days had been exhausting for everyone, and our conversation must have untied some knots that had been keeping him from proper rest. I waited a little while, then whispered his name a couple times to make sure he was really out. He just kept right on breathing.

  And so, because there was no way I was going to sleep otherwise, I quietly carried on with my evening plans.

  32

  By the time my alarm went off in the morning, Claybriar had already slipped out. Remembering the previous evening, I felt a queasy, hope-laced embarrassment. I got dressed for work and went downstairs; Claybriar was in the kitchen with Tjuan, who had apparently made him a smoothie.

  “What are you up to today?” I said to Tjuan, suddenly too shy to even l
ook at Claybriar.

  “Writing,” Tjuan said. “Now that I can.”

  “Where’s Brand?”

  “Still asleep in my room.”

  “In the afternoon, do you think you can bring him by the studio?”

  “No problem.”

  I had to practically straddle Claybriar to get to the coffee cups behind him; he didn’t move away, leaving me to keep the necessary half inch of air between us.

  “Hey, Hurricane,” he said quietly. The warm smile he gave me washed all the queasy away. “Am I invited to the big intro?”

  “Sure.”

  I grabbed my usual coffee and banana, and when my cab showed up I gave Claybriar an air-kiss good-bye, smugly uncaring of Tjuan’s thoughts on the gesture. Claybriar seemed so much happier this morning, more serene. It pleased me to believe I was a big part of the reason for it.

  At work, too late to matter, I utterly nailed everything Inaya asked of me. It almost made me wonder if I could have stuck it out there for real, but I knew myself better than that. My competence tended to come in irregular streaks.

  What pleased Inaya more than anything, though, was when I told her I was about to solve the Naderi problem permanently, and that the two of them were going to be closer friends than ever when I was done. I didn’t tell her exactly why and how, though—I had no idea how long it would take Naderi to adjust to the massive paradigm shift she was about to experience.

  Getting Naderi to stop writing and come meet me at stage 13 for some Really Important News was about as difficult as getting a teenage boy to stop mowing the lawn and come make out with the prom queen. I’d already let Brand and the boys into the soundstage where they wouldn’t call any more attention, so it was simply a matter of waiting for Naderi to show up. I stood outside enjoying the autumn sunlight, watching for her, wanting her to see me before she saw them. She came alone in a golf cart, parked it crookedly, and then vaulted up the steps toward me in a way that made me envious.

  “Hello,” I said with a dopey grin. “Allow me to introduce you to some people who are going to be very important to you in the near future.” I opened the door to the soundstage and let her in.