by Duncan, Lex
Everyone was so ignorant to the truth. The real truth. They read those fliers and believed the words written there would save them. They rested their hopes on the backs of the government, the police, the clergy. No one knew about Henriette’s letter. No one knew Elias committed atrocious acts of human sacrifice at the church. No one knew because everyone in this city had been lied to for the past two hundred years by the same people they trusted to protect them. Real history was exchanged for fabrications printed in our textbooks, spoken in our lectures, adapted into our lesson plans.
I tried telling my English class that maybe we should be careful about what we took for the truth. They told me I was being insensitive to the families of all the recent murder victims.
Had I not met Dante, I would have gotten mad, too.
November became December and that strand of anxiety grew longer, tighter. After Thanksgiving, Candace Walker began reporting nightly about the city's demon situation and even called Dante a couple of times for statements. The rest of us did what we could to prepare. Aralia warded the house (again), Max kept his Armageddon Now readers informed with daily “Demon Watch” posts, Vaena learned to shoot a gun, and I tried to go about my life as though the Winter Solstice wasn't a day away. I worked out, trained with Dante, ran with Mo, and since I didn't have anything to wear, went shopping.
“I don't care if we're all going to die, we're at least going to look good doing it,” Aralia said. She held a long red dress up to my shoulders and made a face. “No, that won't do. It clashes with your hair.”
That was the fifth one she rejected for me. “Is this really necessary?”
“This is an elegant affair we're going to, Beatrice, of course it's necessary.” She shook her head disapprovingly and put yet another dress back. Pretty sure it had bows on it. “What about this purple one?”
“Um, excuse me, ladies?” A nervous looking sales clerk skirted the edges of the rack. “I'm sorry to bother you, but is one of you named Beatrice?”
Aralia pushed dress after dress aside, pausing at a green one with frills. I shook my head and she shoved it over. “You're going to have to like something eventually. You can't go to this party wearing the rags you usually wear.”
Hey, now. That was uncalled for. “I don't wear rags.”
“Ladies?” The sales clerk lifted her finger. “Could you―”
“Oh, really?” Aralia scoffed. “What d'you call that getup you've got on now, hm? Gertrude Goth joins the military?”
“Just because I'm wearing combat boots―”
“―And a jacket you no doubt bought from a surplus store. And all that black―”
“―You're wearing black, too! And what’s wrong with the surplus store?”
“Yes, but at least I make it stylish―”
“Ladies!” The sales clerk stepped between us. She batted the wisps of hair from her eyes and huffed. “Your friend is making a mess of our displays, see?”
I followed her accusatory point to the front of the boutique. Vaena sat on the ground cradling a mannequin in her arms. She stroked its bald head, scratched at the hollows where its eyes should have been. The rest of the mannequins were knocked over, their clothes in disarray. A few passers-by stopped to stare in disbelief. One man tapped on the glass like he was observing a shark in an aquarium. Vaena hissed.
“Every time we go near her, she―”
“I've got her,” I said.
You take the demon girl out for one measly hour and she makes a mess of the winter collection display. Dante was definitely going to be hearing about this.
“If you don't get her under control, we're going to have to ask you to leave!”
The horror, the horror.
Rolling my eyes, I went to sit on the platform next to Vaena. The man who knocked on the glass before poked his buddy in the ribs with his elbow and they shared a good laugh.
I flipped them the bird.
“These remind me of kazraach,” Vaena said.
“The mannequins?” I asked.
She nodded.
Huh. I guess they did look a little alike. Tall. Pale. Unnaturally skinny. “Do kazaraach model clothes, too?”
She shook her head. “No. Kazraach hunt.”
“Hunt what?”
“Whatever Papa wants.”
“What did he want this time?”
“I don't know.”
Damn. It was worth a try.
I stood. “Okay, well, that mannequin isn't a kazraach and that angry lady over by Aralia is going to get really mad if we don't clean this up.”
“She called me an animal.” Vaena's lip curled. “I don't like her.”
“I know you don't,” I said, “but we have to clean this up. You don't want your brother to hear about this, do you?”
The threat of Dante's disapproval was enough to get her on her feet.
Mumbling something in demonic, she helped me reposition the (now naked) mannequins. I gathered the clothes she'd torn and tossed them behind a particularly large potted fern. We'd be long gone before anyone noticed they were there. Hopefully.
“Gertrude Goth reporting for duty.” I saluted Aralia as Vaena and I joined her at the racks.
Aralia grabbed my shoulder. “What about this one?” She pulled a dress out and held it up to my chest like she had the last. “It's black. Your favorite.”
“And it'll match my ward,” I said, pulling the dark fabric around my waist. It was long enough to be appropriate but short enough that I wouldn't be tripping over myself. A layer of black lace covered the silky body of the dress and a thick black ribbon cinched the middle. The lack of sleeves was great for all the nervous sweating I'd be doing, too.
“You simply have to try it on,” Aralia said, shoving me in the dressing room, which was really just closet sectioned off by a curtain.
I checked the time on my phone. Dante asked before we left to pick up his suit at the dry cleaners. “Wait, don't we have to―”
“No talking,” she pulled the curtain shut. “Put the dress on. I'll go find you some shoes.”
“Yippee,” I said, suddenly coming face to face with myself in the smudged surface of the mirror. Same Beatrice. Same red hair. Same nose. Same freckles. New calluses on her hands. New fire in her eyes.
And then there were the things the mirror couldn't see. The confidence. The determination. The fury. The hatred. Months ago, I looked at myself in a mirror and saw a zombie. Now I saw something different. I saw a fully realized human being who struggled and loved and lost and fought with everything she had.
I liked her much better than the zombie.
Begrudgingly peeling my clothes off, I stepped into the dress and pulled the straps up over my shoulders. I checked the mirror again. Straightened my skirt.
The Apocalypse might have been upon us but at least I looked good for it. Better than good. I looked great.
“Well?” Aralia said.
I pulled the curtain back and struck my best Sylvie Karlov pose. Smoldering femme fatale meets awkward eighteen year old with coordination issues. “You like it?”
She grinned, clapping her hands as she did when she got excited. “Oh, darling, it's perfect!”
“Yeah?” I turned to look at myself again.
Vaena appeared in the mirror behind me. “Very pretty, versmaash.”
My smile faded. She was wearing her brunette wig today. Clothes she stole from my closet. They were too big for her, hanging off her still scrawny body in dark folds. She usually wore sunglasses to conceal her eyes but she'd taken them off for this. If she hadn't, I might have mistaken her for Rosie. The real one.
The dead one.
“You're sad,” she observed, chewing her nails. “Why?”
I shook my head. “It's nothing, Vaena. I'm fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” she backed out of the dressing room while Aralia pushed her way in.
She waved a pair of heels in my face. Tall on
es.
“I can't wear those,” I said. “I'll break my neck.”
“Oh, Beatrice,” she put the heels on the floor. “Go ahead. Put them on.”
“Didn't I just say I can't wear those?”
“You shouldn't limit yourself like that.”
“I like to think of it as self-preservation.”
“Just try them on. Once. For me.” Her tone was light but her expression was sharp. She wouldn't be taking no for an answer.
Sighing, I squashed my sock covered feet into the heels. They lifted me up a good three inches. I wobbled unsteadily, grabbing onto Aralia's arm for support. “See? I told you I can't wear these.”
“Don't they make you feel powerful? Like you could stab a man with them.” She fixed her hair in the mirror and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Look at you, Beatrice, you're almost as tall as me now.”
That much was true. I only had to look at her at a forty degree angle as opposed to a ninety degree one. “That's nice, but I'm still not wearing them.”
Her wistful smile crumpled at the edges. “You can't wear your boots to this party. I won't allow it. And neither will the dress code.”
“I don't see why I'm supposed to care,” I said. “Bishop isn't worth these heels. Or this dress.”
Aralia patted me on the shoulder. “Bishop isn't worth the air he breathes, but we're all making sacrifices today.”
Hopefully not in the literal sense. “Can I take these shoes off now?”
“Fine, but we're finding you some decent flats.” She withdrew a credit card from the pocket of her jeans and passed it to me. “Pay for the dress and I'll get your shoes. Then we'll go get Dante's suit.”
“And food?” Vaena asked, examining a bra she found on the return rack.
Aralia sighed. “Yes, Vaena. And food.”
Her chapped lips curled in a pleased smile and she put the bra on over her clothes. “Good. I want this. I like it.”
The sale's clerk, passing by us on her way to the cashier's desk, stopped so fast that if we were in a cartoon, she'd have had her own sound effect. “Um, excuse me? Are you planning on buying that?”
“Yeah,” I said before Vaena could start hissing again. “And this dress.”
Aralia appeared from the shoe section of the boutique with a box. “And these.”
“Wonderful,” the sales clerk said. I imagined the relief rolling off her in little squiggly cartoon lines. “I can ring you up right over here.”
I changed back into my usual clothes and brought the dress up to the desk. Aralia swiped the card she'd given me and when she did, the sales clerk gasped.
“Dante Arturo?” She looked at us, then looked at the card. “What―”
“We're friends of his, darling,” Aralia said. “May I have my receipt?”
Star-struck by a piece of plastic, the sales clerk ripped our receipt from the dispenser and handed it over. “Here you are.”
Aralia and tucked both the card and the receipt away in her pocket. “Thank you.”
“Is he really going to that party tomorrow?” The sales clerk asked as we headed out the door.
I stopped. “How do you know about that?”
“Everyone's talking about it. They say it's supposed to be the party of the year!”
The party of the year. The party of the century. The party to end all parties. This woman had no idea. “Do they? Huh. Cool.”
“Is he going?” She pressed.
“Yeah,” I said, “he's going.”
“And so are we,” Aralia grabbed me and whisked me out the door. “Goodbye, darling. Thank you for all your help.”
A fresh batch of clouds chugged across the already dour sky. Cars buzzed down the cobblestone streets and the wrought-iron lamps flickered on in preparation for the storm. We were on the east side of the city, a few blocks from Cromwell University. Where the rich people sheltered themselves from the rest of us. It looked nice, like a life-sized model of a quaint Victorian village, but demons lurked here like they lurked anywhere else. They writhed in the shadows, searching for new victims. To believe otherwise would be stupid. Foolishly optimistic.
Especially now.
Optimism brought us this far, but it was realism that would get us through. The chances were good that this party tomorrow would be a trap. An elaborate scam constructed by Amarax to throw us off guard. We had to accept the fact that one of us could get hurt. That more people could get killed.
If we didn't, we'd be rushing in blind. And blind was the last thing we needed to be.
Depositing our purchases in Aralia's car, we headed over to Florian's Bistro across the street from the boutique. The owner, a kindly Italian man who reminded me of Mr. Zarcotti, flirted endlessly with Aralia while he poured her glass after glass of expensive wine. Vaena scarfed down her spaghetti and I picked at my Parmesan chicken. My appetite waned the closer we got to the solstice. Aralia was drinking more. Vaena was...being her usual self. We all had different ways of coping with our possible impending doom. Some healthier than others.
We got back to the house about ten minutes before the storm hit. Big, fat snowflakes took the place of rain, covering the landscape in the space of an hour. I hung my new dress up in my closet, then watered our Christmas tree in the foyer downstairs. It was a misshapen thing, spindly and crooked, but it was ours. Dante scrounged up some old ornaments that were packed away in a box in the basement and Aralia bought some string lights from the store. Together, we decorated it to Ella Fitzgerald records and had cider afterward. One big fucked up demon family. It was a shame we didn't have time to really enjoy it.
Maybe we'd get to it later. Merry Post-Apocalyptic Christmas. Have some fruitcake.
Dread stayed with me the rest of the day and well into the night. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. I just kept creating these terrible scenarios in my head of everything that could go wrong. Death. Sacrifice. Pain. Loss. I lost Rosie. I lost Mr. Zarcotti. How much more could I lose before I broke? How many more people would die because we didn't act fast enough? Why me? Why was I having these doubts now?
Unable to stand the quiet of my bedroom, I got up in the middle of the night and went to find Dante in his study. Predictably, he sat in his chair with the Cromwell’s diary on his desk. His eyes flicked back and forth as he read the words we'd pored over dozens of times. I rapped my knuckle on the doorframe.
“Hey,” I said, stepping inside. “You busy?”
“No, no,” he murmured, turning the page. “Come in.”
I pulled my usual chair out and sat down. “Doing some light reading?”
He flipped the page.
I folded my arms on top of his desk and rested my head on them. “I just needed someone to talk to, I guess. You don't have to talk back if you don't want.”
He didn't.
I sighed. “I'm scared. Are you scared? I'm scared. I feel like none of us know what we're doing. You, maybe, because you always know what you're doing, but me? Nah. I'm sad little orphan girl with the dead friend. I'm not you. I'm not Aralia. I'm not Vaena. I'm not even Max. I'm just―”
“Beatrice,” Dante looked up from the book. “You're being too hard on yourself.”
“Maybe,” I said, chewing on the inside of my cheek. “But I'm not a superhero, you know? I'm not like you. I'm just someone who keeps inserting herself into this situation because I'm stubborn. What if that isn't enough?”
His expression softened and he closed the book with a barely audible thud. “You wouldn't still be here if it wasn't enough.”
I guess he had a point. My stubbornness got me this far. Giving up now wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.
“Beatrice,” he said again, this time more earnestly, “we can win this.”
I screwed my eyes shut and took a breath. “Do we even know what this is?”
Aaand…silence. That’s what I thought. We didn't know what this was. We didn't have a clear picture. We knew the mayor and Amarax were one in the same. We knew dozens o
f innocent people died two hundred years ago at the church. We knew the solstice was tomorrow. We knew there'd be a party. But we didn't know why.
“You know what would be nice?” I asked.
“What?” Dante replied.
“If we've been wrong about all this. If this is just a nightmare we're all going to wake up from here soon.”
“If that's the case, we've been having the same nightmare for a very long time.”
“How do you do it?” I asked, opening my eyes and looking up at him. “With your dad, I mean? How the hell do you cope with something like that?”
He smiled weakly. “Because I know I have people I'd do anything to protect.”
My stomach flipped and I knew in that moment I was one of those people. “That’s my line, Arturo.”
“Yes, well,” he said, “it's a good line.”
Feeling a little bit better about the situation, I got to my feet and stretched the remaining tension from my body. I felt Dante’s gaze on me, and immediately stopped, for some reason embarrassed. When I looked at him again, he cleared his throat and grabbed his coffee mug so quickly that a bit of its contents sloshed onto some papers, narrowly missing Elias’s diary.
Oh my God. He was…totally checking me out.
I never thought I’d see the day he would dare do something that could even be remotely considered impolite. I had no problem ogling him, but for him to ogle me…
Warm from head to toe, I tried to play off my pleasure as nonchalance and leaned over his desk to kiss him on his scruffy cheek. “Goodnight, Dante,” I said.
I turned and began to walk away, but Dante grabbed my hand before I could get very far. I looked down at him. He looked up at me. My pulse quickened. Sylvie Karlov scenes played in my head once more.
But instead of feeding me a line, Dante smiled, rising slowly to his feet. He was so damn tall and I never loved it more than I did now. “Goodnight, Beatrice.” He said quietly. He let go of my hand, though our fingers still touched until I forced myself to pull away.
My hands trembled all the way back to bed, and a heat unlike anything I’d felt before burned me straight through.