by Liv Olteano
Miss Skazat cleared her throat and reclaimed my attention. “And yet she’s not quite gone, your mother. Is she?”
My breath caught. “Why would you think so?”
“I feel your mother’s loving light all around you. It’s etched into your very being. You feel it too, don’t you?”
Her gaze seemed distant when she looked at me. It gave me the chills.
“I’d prefer we didn’t talk about this, if you don’t mind. It’s the other matter that I need your assistance with.”
“Of course. You’re asking me to take you on as apprentice when Edgar has already asked you to be his.”
I searched her face for some clue, some indication of what she really knew and where she learned it from.
“If you have something to say to me, Miss Skazat, just go ahead and say it. I don’t like this vein of mystery you’re latching on to.”
She chuckled. “I don’t think you want to know what I have to say.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She stretched her lips in a cold smile. “Careful what you ask for and of whom. If you don’t choose wisely, all kinds of truths might come out. Most of them might’ve been better left unsaid. Mystery is almost always better than knowing. You’ll find more solace in the unknown.”
I scoffed. “The unknown doesn’t a stand a chance against me, I’ll have you know.”
Her smile grew even more enigmatic. “Such determination. You’d make a delectable apprentice.”
I frowned so hard my forehead hurt. “You’re mocking me again.”
“Not at all. I’ll think about your proposition and let you know.”
After nodding good-bye, Nana and I turned around and faced the door.
“Are we sure she’s brilliant and not just out of her mind?” I huffed in a whisper.
She sighed and leaned closer to whisper in my ear. “They say both walk hand in hand, Miss. She sure is brilliant, so she must be quite out of her mind.”
We snickered. Just as we got closer to the door, something occurred to me. I took the few steps between us and caught Miss Skazat’s hands as she was turning around. Electricity ran through my arm and up my spine, pooling there for a while before shooting down my body via my bones. A short intake of breath was what betrayed me, and the wild look in her eyes betrayed her. We both felt it, that wonderful and terrifying thing that seemed to crackle with electricity between us.
“What else can I do for you?” she asked with her gaze fixed on my mouth.
My lip throbbed around my piercing. “Do you have any potions to heal a broken heart?”
With a slow and deliberate blink, she ran her gaze back up my face to my eyes.
“Did someone break your heart?” she all but whispered.
I shook my head, cheeks hot. “Oh, it’s not like that. I just… it’s been hard since my father…. Well, I understood you’re a master potionist, so I just thought perhaps….”
She shook her head, bottomless eyes still searching mine. “Potions won’t mend a broken heart, and it’s better to let it heal on its own anyway. Otherwise the break might heal crooked, you understand? Your pain is a part of you. It helps you learn and understand. It proves you’re still breathing even though you’ve lost something you loved. Without the pain, sometimes you can forget you’re alive.”
I shivered as her voice quickened my heartbeat. Thoughts sprouted out with no filter in their way.
“You’ve been following me,” I blurted.
“Have I? And why would I do that?”
“I was hoping you’d enlighten me in that regard.”
“I could enlighten you in many regards. The question is what would make it worth my effort to do so.”
Her grin turned wicked and my pulse sped up considerably. I tugged on my lip piercing and tried to move away.
She gripped my hand this time, a firm hold that seemed to clutch my entire body. “One’s lips feel as if they’re throbbing if things are left unsaid. Not polite to leave a woman with a throbbing lip unless it’s literal.”
Angling my chin up and fixing my gaze on hers, I tugged at my piercing again and licked the sore spot. “There, now I’ve left us both with a throbbing lip. Happy?”
“Not quite. Which means you won’t get your answers today.”
Nana and I said our good-byes to Nikola and went back into the street. I felt her gaze bore into the back of my head until the door closed behind. Nana’s face was more open, her eyes happier—they reflected all the hope from my heart.
My mind, however, was plagued with wails of pain and the alkemist’s words. Without the pain, sometimes you could forget you’re alive. I glanced over my shoulder and an ominous feeling came over me. Darkness seemed to grow thicker, the alkemic lights not reaching us well enough. The guards weren’t by the door of Miss Skazat’s shop, and they weren’t behind us either.
Before I could manage to open my mouth and utter any words, two shapes came rushing at us. They appeared out of nowhere, as if the shadows themselves had spit them out. My limbs froze as Nana turned toward them swiftly. A wheezing sound cut through the air. One of the figures fell to the ground, sputtering as something dark oozed down his chest. The second attacker hesitated for a moment before he launched at me, grabbed my throat, and squeezed. Nana threw herself at him and struggled fiercely, but her attempts only shook him so the brute just tightened his hand around my neck. I couldn’t breathe, but I shot my foot out with ease into the man’s knee.
“Ye filthy little….”
Nana’s fist connected with his face and I bashed him over the head with my closed parasol. The smack sounded dull and distant. I felt myself being pulled from my body. I could see it from the outside, a frozen statue as Nana and the attacker struggled. Wafts of cherry smoke rose from every corner of the darkness around us while shadows shivered and giggled all around. The two struggling bodies before me appeared bathed in light and calm wrapped around my heart. I watched the cherry-blossom-scented smoke, supple like threads of silk, crawl up our attacker’s legs and slither over his chest, then reach his nose and plunge inside. His body convulsed twice before falling to the ground. I returned to my body as Nana shook me.
“Miss? Are you all right? Miss?”
I watched the blood from Nana’s victim pool on the dirty pavement and mix into a dark sludge with the grit of the street. Nana pulled me away into the night.
“We’ll go back to the carriage like nothing happened, no mention of this,” Nana whispered.
I tightened my grip on the parasol’s handle. “The guards. They should’ve waited for us, but they didn’t.”
Nana looked around. “Those were harvesters, I’ll bet. We saved our lives, Miss. If the guards sold us out, they can’t know we managed to survive the attack. Might harvest us themselves to keep us quiet. We met no one in that alley, understand? Tomorrow I’ll get us new guards, people I can trust. If Cannari has any more objections, I’ll drown him in the pot of soup.”
I nodded dumbly. We were criminals now—we’d wasted two souls and two bodies. That was a crime most assuredly deserving of termination. Being a criminal was exactly the kind of excitement I didn’t need right now.
“What if someone saw?” I hissed.
Nana shrugged. “It’s a dark alley. They won’t be able to point us out. No one was close enough to see well. It’ll be our secret.”
Shivers traveled up and down my spine. “Nice shot with that knife. Didn’t know you had such talents.”
“Sometimes a lady’s got to do what a lady’s got to do, Miss. I still don’t know what happened to the second one. He must have passed out.”
“Must have.”
Except he hadn’t fainted; he was dead as nails. And though he wasn’t dying of the withering, I knew I managed to kill him somehow. Or better said, the death I seemed to keep handy jumped at him. With a shuddering intake of breath, a fact settled into my heart: I had a better friend in Death than anyone would dare imagine. Much better
than I thought myself.
As of tonight I’d done twelve mercies and one kill.
Chapter 8
AS IF the day’s excitement wasn’t enough, there was another dubious honor waiting for me at home in the foyer. In this particular case, it came in the form of one Stanislaw Herveux, my late father’s pride and joy and my own true displeasure: the fiancé. A wedding was going to clutch me in its death grip if action wasn’t taken soon. Most of my hopes rested on receiving changeling status from Nikola, thus rendering any previous human arrangements null and void.
“Miss Richards, it’s a pleasure to be in your company this evening.”
Well, the pleasure was his and his alone. Herveux grinned. He gripped my hands and squeezed them to the point of pain. I shuddered and tried to pull free, but he held on like a drowning man would a lifesaver. He felt like a dried-up bone, clammy and lifeless. He almost creaked and cracked when he moved, like some robot with wooden joints. I fixed the sole of my boot into the tip of his left shoe and I twisted in deeply.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Senator. How clumsy of me.”
He squinted, and for a moment I thought he’d break a couple of my fingers to take as souvenirs. I twisted the boot into his shoe again and pushed down with all my might. Why wouldn’t the toad let go?
“Perhaps we should go into the parlor?” I said, still trying to pull away.
He finally released me, and I managed to extricate my fingers from the viselike grip of his bony hands. He grinned, an unsettling thing to see, and put one hand on the small of his back as he leaned on his gentleman’s cane.
“Yes, we should. After you, my dear.”
We walked into the parlor, his limp more prominent than usual despite the help of the cane. My odd chemistry with Herveux began somewhere along the line after we met. The veneer of respect and manners was a game we played for others, but we both knew it was a lie. He seemed to dislike me almost as much as I disliked him. Why he insisted on tormenting both of us with his visits and ridiculous courting, I couldn’t even begin to guess. In the beginning I almost felt bad about taking him so lightly, but it wasn’t personal then. One couldn’t have made it personal with Herveux to begin with—he was that unpleasant. But he was like a waft of smoke flitting from one moment in his life to the next and choking everyone around in the progress. Or maybe slippery like an eel. Yes, that suited him just fine. I smiled at the thought.
Nana perched on a chair. Her soothing presence was my last ounce of comfort right now, my pillar of strength. Lucky it wasn’t proper to be spending time alone, just Herveux and myself, or I might feel inclined to throttle him in a moment of weakness. Cannari went about the ceremony of pouring tea for the three of us.
“Senator, to what do we owe the sudden pleasure of your visit?”
Folding my hands in my lap, I became the picture of a good hostess. Mother would be so proud. The thought made my heart sour.
“Well, Miss Richards, we are engaged, after all. Must a man have another reason except wanting to see his beautiful fiancée?”
The disgusting grin that spread his wrinkly face twisted my stomach.
I regarded him and tilted my head. “I wouldn’t know.” Watching him, I perched closer to the edge of my seat. “Tell me, Senator, now that my father is gone, wouldn’t you like to reconsider our… arrangements?”
A veil of shadows fell over his dried-up face and he gnashed his teeth. That was probably a no.
“The fact that your father is no longer here only gives us reason to hurry along the wedding. Did you think I’d abandon you in your hour of need?”
I squinted, took firm hold of the teacup, and drank a couple of sips. They didn’t slide down easily. In fact, I yearned to attack his wrinkled face and the beady synth eyes. My need was to get rid of the toad, not marry him. And he wasn’t going to turn into a prince after the wedding either. Fairy tales wouldn’t help me in that regard. There was something to be said about a situation if not even fairy tales could hold the light of hope.
The measured way he moved was unsettling. The precise motions, efficient and distant, screamed of barely concealed lies. His every breath was a lie, every word and each glance—that much I felt in the pit of my stomach. Shadows fluttered with movement and chattered as ghosts grew impatient in the silence. Perhaps Herveux reminded them of Death. He certainly did remind me of it. Right then the memory of Death perching against a windowsill seemed less disturbing than Herveux and his ridiculous plans.
I studied him carefully, the set of his lips and the coldness of his eyes. There was no shaking the feeling he was holding something back, something important enough to propel him into this ridiculous marriage. I longed to become a keeper of that secret, not only for the sheer joy of knowing it, but also in hopes of becoming toad-free.
“Let’s speak frankly here, shall we? I’m far from the image of an official’s wife, Senator. I make a point of pride in that, in fact. Why would you really want to marry a woman like me? I have no significant wealth, no impressive social position. I can’t quite get your… enthusiasm.”
A malicious glint passed through Herveux’s synth eyes as he settled on the sofa. “Must you ask, darling? You’re a young, brilliantly healthy, fully human lady. A tad petulant and obstinate, I know, but nothing I couldn’t correct. I’m looking forward to correcting you.”
With a tight line for lips, I inclined my head to the side. “Why, thank you. Warms my heart to know you think so highly of me. It is intriguing though that our engagement was arranged a few years back. I could have been less than fully human by now on several counts. Would you have still wanted to go along with it?”
“Of course,” he answered tightly.
That was a lie. As with many older people, Herveux had a deeply ingrained disgust for any tech. It was obvious because he was one of the few who kept live horses on his carriage, no matter how enormously expensive, and employed no tech help except when in dire need, like his severely failing eyesight.
Why did he want to marry me? I needed to solve that mystery.
“Could there be anything I might say to change your mind about the engagement? Anything at all?” I ventured.
Scrunching his eyebrows, he leaned forward. “Miss Richards, I’m sad to say I anticipated you’d get… jittery. You must know that your home and all your assets have legally become mine the moment your father passed. I reckon that will help you acclimatize with the idea sooner rather than later.”
My blood froze in my veins and Nana’s face grew grayer than her skirts. “I beg your pardon?” she squeaked.
“Weren’t you aware, Mrs. Herran? Max and I signed that little understanding a while back. In case he… couldn’t be with us for the wedding, he wanted to make sure Cristina Mera’s interests were well guarded for the duration of the engagement.”
I shook with barely contained rage. “Are you blackmailing me, Stanislaw Herveux?”
He chuckled lightly as he fixed a cold and lifeless gaze on me. “I’m giving you friendly advice, Cristina Mera, to go ahead as planned. You’ll marry me, and the house and everything else will be yours again. Or you’ll try to annul our arrangements, in which case I’ll report your crime of honor against my person and leave you without one credit at your disposal until your early termination. Simple, really, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Simple, yes.”
Quite simple. My apprenticeship had to start as soon as possible. I’d take Edger Verner mastering my apprenticeship before marrying Herveux.
“Well, then, now that we understand each other, I’ll leave you for the evening. But I will see you tomorrow. Don’t worry, all your expenses will be taken care of during our engagement. You’ll receive more social calls, of course, seeing as you’ll be a senator’s wife soon. I’ll expect you to be the exemplary hostess I know you can be. Do I make myself clear?”
I nodded tightly and looked into my teacup. Social calls. I’d be damned before playing the role of the toad’s wife, that much was certain,
or my name wasn’t Cristina Mera Richards.
After Cannari escorted the man out, Nana and I sat still in the parlor. Candles flickered and the glow of light poured softly around us. It did nothing to appease the fidgety shadows, murmurs, and whispers still reaching me even in my deepest thoughts. They never quite settled down, the ghosts of New Bayou. And they seemed to enjoy taking revenge on those who could hear them. I supposed there were few of us, so haunting me all the time was one of the ghosts’ few pastimes.
They weren’t malicious, in truth, just chattered and whined, and sometimes if Death brushed by them, they whimpered or wailed. It couldn’t claim them, though, not anymore. The souls were now lingering in an odd in-between sort of state. Not quite of our world anymore, but not quite of the next either. Verner had terminated them all, extracted their souls like sore teeth. Once the soul extractor was used, the souls not destined for the floating fuel couldn’t be destroyed either. Not unless the reaper consumed them. Maybe he was saving a few, making sure there’d always be a supply readily available. Maybe he just enjoyed witnessing their endless suffering. I shivered and tried to ignore them, hoping they’d settle down.
My favorite chair hugged me perfectly, sustaining my arms and cradling my back. I ran my fingers through my tresses. Nana had fixed some of my hair up in a fluffy silk bow, leaving most of the curls to fall freely. It was Mama’s favorite hairdo. I didn’t have her black-cherry hair, but our resemblance increased once I went with hot pink for my hair. I’d inherited mother’s almost-translucent skin and delicate bone structure, but my eyes were just like Father’s, a gray that was sometimes stormy skies, sometimes morning mist, but always crowned by long lashes and deep shadows. He was a handsome man, my father. He and my mother made a gorgeous couple. My gaze drifted higher and higher above the fireplace, all the way to Mother’s dazzling portrait.