Thirteen Mercies, Three Kills

by Liv Olteano

  I smiled and shook my head. “Oh, of course not! However could I?” After you killed my father using them, I added mentally. “It’s simply a matter of curiosity. I find potionism utterly fascinating.”

  “You couldn’t possibly find playing with little bottles fascinating. A beautiful woman such as yourself should be going out and enjoying her long life, not staying cooped up in a lab.”

  “Now you’re hurting my feelings,” Nikola muttered, pouting comically.

  Verner smiled at her almost fondly. “I would never dream of it, Nicky. You know I hold you in the highest regard.”

  “But you consider me unbeautiful enough to spend time in the lab?” Nikola quipped, giving him a chilling smile.

  “What good did it ever do me when I did find you beautiful?” Verner asked, sounding wistful.

  Hoping to break the tension, I chuckled until Natalia’s glare cut my act short. “Thank you for the offer, Edgar, but I feel potionism is my calling. Should I ever change my mind, though….”

  He beamed, looking maniacal again. “Marvelous! I’ll just have to wait for Nikola here to grump one too many times, then. Won’t be too long of a wait, will it, Nicky?”

  The coffee table shuddered, tea cups clattering against their plates. No one’s faces showed any sign of it even happening. Sweet ink and needles, the air was so thick in here you needed to cut it in slices just to draw a breath.

  He focused his creepy yellow eyes on me, glittery and unnerving. It felt like he was waiting for something from me, but I had no idea what it could be. I floundered for a proper topic of discussion. When all else failed….

  “So, Edgar, how’s your work going?”

  He grinned. “You see, it intrigues you. There’d be great advantages to being apprentice to the resident alkemist, you know.”

  None that would interest me in the least. “I trust there are.”

  “Never trust, Cristina Mera,” Verner snapped, suddenly looking furious. “It’s a very high-end commodity in our world. Those who trust fall.”

  I nodded once, decisive. Yes, trust could very easily be one’s end. I didn’t trust Nikola, not really. I trusted the logic of her motives for now. We were predictable creatures when we wanted something. I trusted that.

  “If you’ll excuse me for a moment?” Natalia said as she got up.

  “By all means, my home is yours,” Nikola muttered without looking up.

  I watched Natalia elegantly walk out of the parlor. Since she’d given me no sign to follow, I didn’t. But, then, I thought, if she wanted me to, how could she signal me with Verner right there?

  “Oh dear,” I said, frowning, “I forgot my shawl. I’ll instruct my maid to bring it to me.”

  They both stared at me but nodded tightly. I couldn’t precisely go out. It would look suspicious. But I could send Nana up to look for Natalia, see if she had anything to say. Of course, Nana was waiting right by the parlor’s door.

  “Yes, Miss?” she asked in a subdued tone.

  “Seek Natalia out, see if she has anything to say to me. Tell her I said she can talk to you as if she’d be talking to me in my drawing room,” I whispered into her ear. Then I stepped back and added, “And fetch me my shawl, will you? It’s getting cool in here.”

  She grinned. “Yes, Miss.”

  I entered the parlor and sat down. The alkemists were talking about some tech discoveries, so I looked properly interested in the topic but remained politely out of it. When Nana knocked on the door, I got up smoothly and went out, supposedly to get my shawl.

  “She said to tell you it’s nothing personal, Miss. What in the world does that mean?” she whispered.

  “Thank you,” I spoke loud enough and returned to the parlor with my shawl on.

  After a while Natalia returned too. I looked her straight in the eye and knew clearly that whatever she meant to convey, it wouldn’t be good. I wasn’t useful to her in any particular way right now. Therefore she was dangerous.

  She smiled, a cold and chilling expression on her face. I smiled back, as synth as I could, and hoped whatever might happen wouldn’t be too big of a disaster. But there was no doubt in my mind right now something would. The thought was scary, but also comforting.

  I was a moderately brave creature, I thought. Many people were. And yet when trying to accomplish something, there’d always be that point when you considered going back on your decision, letting go. If that moment came when you still had a way to turn back, you just might. But if you were lucky enough to have gone beyond the turning-back point, then you were forced to be brave until the end. There would be no other options left.

  Natalia’s gaze told me in no uncertain terms I’d gone beyond that moment. So I thanked her silently and nodded ever so slightly. I was brave.

  After Nikola and Verner’s discussion ended, Verner slapped his knee. “Well, then, we’ll be on our way. Have a pleasant evening,” he said, reaching out to grab my hand to kiss it.

  Guh. I let him, trying to ignore who it was who was touching me. I couldn’t stand him, but I’d bide my time.

  After they finally left, I sat on the sofa and looked out a window. Dark, so dark outside and in. I tried to imagine a world with light in it; I tried to picture it. But I couldn’t. Nothing but darkness made sense to me.

  “You did well.” Nikola spoke from nearby.

  I looked up and smiled. “Thank you.”

  “You seem troubled by something. Having second thoughts?”

  I shook my head. “Not in the least. I’m just shaken by Verner’s eyes. I’ve never seen him without the goggles on.”

  “Ah,” she said, sitting beside me on the sofa. “They’re the mark of the reaper, you know? Those golden eyes mean he consumes souls.”

  I nodded as if that made sense. She took my hand in hers and held it, watching me. I looked into her eyes.

  “It couldn’t have been easy for you this evening. To sit and chat with the one who terminated your father just a short while ago…. You’re very brave, Mer.”

  I blinked at the nickname, my breath quickening. “Thank you. But despair and bravery sometimes look alike. It’s easy to do certain things when you have no other option.”

  “If you want Edgar Verner gone, I promise you he’ll be gone. You can be sure of that.”

  “Because you, a perfect stranger, gives me her word?” I said and smiled.

  “Because I have my own reasons to take him out. You may or may not trust my word, but be sure you can trust my selfish reasons.”

  “And what reasons do you have to want him gone?”

  “What he does here, it’s beyond tolerable. I’m here to stop it.”

  “Because your secret Universal Authority wants you to?”

  She chuckled. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Mer. There is no Universal Authority. There are no real rules or laws. There’s nothing above us, nothing we have to heed except the fear of incurring another alkemist’s wrath.”

  I frowned. “But then why did Senator Herveux look so terrified at the mention of it?”

  “Because he thinks there is. And that it’s ruthless and enforces rules we claim exist. But the truth is there are none. We live under no laws for us, and we are held responsible by no one with real authority.”

  “Then why would you care what Edgar Verner does here and how ‘tolerable’ it is? That means there’s no one who’ll care to stop him or anyone like him on any hovering platform. It means we’re all at their mercy.”

  She drew small circles on my wrist with her thumb. “You mean they are all at our mercy. You’ll be one of us alkemists soon, remember? Some might argue you already are.”

  I looked away, focusing back out the window. “Does that mean I’m not going to be human anymore?”

  She lifted my hand to her face and kissed the middle of my palm once, twice, three times. I looked back at her. My cheeks turned hot at the thought she should have kissed my cheek instead.

  “You take quite a lot of liberties, Miss
Skazat. One might think that cheeky.”

  Her gaze met mine and she kissed my hand one more time, a lingering kiss just like the one she gave me earlier on my cheek. If she wanted me to think about kisses, I’d beaten her to it because I already was, with or without her efforts in that direction.

  She set my hand back in my lap and smiled. “I’ve been called worse than cheeky, I’ll admit. I’d like to play the piano for you. Would you like that?”

  I nodded, secretly thrilled.

  “After you, then,” she said, pointing toward the drawing room where the piano waited.

  I walked there and my heartbeat raced. She waited until I sat down on a sofa before she settled at the piano. Closing her eyes, she started playing and poured her soul out through her long fingers onto the keys. Her song was sometimes peaceful and uplifting, sometimes turbulent and raw, but always mesmerizing. I watched, listened, felt. My heart leaped wildly in my chest. I’d never felt the presence of beauty so close and so real. I’d never felt the thrill I did now. This, I decided, was the kind of magic I’d never be able to forget about. This was the closest I’d ever come to experiencing the true wonders of our world. It felt like a miracle to watch Nikola, sitting there with her eyes closed and bringing beauty into existence. The greatest thing I’d ever known.

  And a small pesky voice inside my heart said Nikola herself was the greatest person I’d known.

  Chapter 12

  THE DAY finally ended and we retired to our rooms. I changed into my nightgown, got the hair rollers in my hair for the first time ever, dived under the covers, and quickly fell asleep. Moments later, though, my eyes shot back open. My head hurt as the hair rollers dug viciously into my scalp, regardless of how hard I tried to not lean on them. How could one sleep without leaning their head on pillows? I had to practice the art of sleeping in a sitting position. That or I’d soon throw the hair rollers into the lively fireplace.

  I sat up, overcome with thirst. The pitcher of water sat on the vanity, beckoning. Nikola’s home was unnaturally chilly. I couldn’t sleep without a fire started, yet it made me horribly thirsty and dried up the air in the room without actually making it feel warm. Darkwillow seemed determined to impress its reign upon me, thriving on the discomfort it produced. Ghosts particularly enjoyed it, probably for that reason. It felt like we were all tolerated by the house, not at all as if Nikola mastered it. But then again, she didn’t seem the mastering type. I liked that, to be honest. Senator Herveux was the mastering type. I cringed.

  With that sour thought, I poured myself a glass of water, looked up, and froze in place. A shape materialized out of thin air right there in front of me—a woman with long wavy hair that moved as if alive, her lips sewn shut, and her eyes wild. She slapped the glass out of my hand. It shattered against the floor but my daze did not break. The water pitcher floated toward the fireplace, drips falling out of it. It shattered into bits under her crazed stare.

  My whole body throbbed. I wheezed air in and out of my lungs. When she reached for me, I propelled my feet into action. The smoky body followed as I dashed down the stairs, frantic to ask for help, but from whom, I had no idea. The golems? Nikola? Where was she? Light, I needed to find some light. Ghosts shied away from it. This one didn’t seem the shy type. I studiously ignored whose ghost she seemed to be. She kept following in my trail, gathered others in her wake. I was running barefoot in my nightgown, hair rollers jumping on my head as a posse of ghosts loomed behind.

  I couldn’t scream. I was too terrified to scream. After running around like a madwoman in the hallways, I bolted back up the stairs. I closed my eyes and ran with a heaving chest and a giant cloud of dread and horror on my trail. My mother. There was no doubt about it—her hair, the beautiful eyes, though she looked frantic now…. The ghost who attacked me in my room was my mother’s.

  I threw myself past the doors, ran into my room, and quickly locked myself inside it. The wood felt cold and slick under my sweaty forehead. My heart threatened to beat out of my chest. My mother’s face loomed at the edge of my thoughts, her see-through body floating on my trail, her beautiful mouth sewn shut—the most horrific image I could’ve ever imagined. I thought it was the memory of her death and not her ghost that was following me. That was just proven wrong. The ghost’s eyes were wide and panicked.

  My breath was ragged for a good few minutes as I leaned there against the door, feet trembling and unable to properly support me. I felt ashamed and relieved to have escaped the torturous image of my mother, yet a part of me longed to throw open those doors and fling myself at her, to embrace her even if it would mean embracing my death. Did she think me guilty of her death like I did? Was she seeking revenge? Air proved elusive and I slapped my hands against the wood, fingers splayed wide on either side of my head.

  A deep sigh rose from some corner of the room, and I froze stiff, the gallop of my heart increasing.

  “Interesting contraptions, I must say. Your head looks like a meeting of octopuses, hot-pink octopuses with happy squiggly tentacles.”

  My backbone shot ramrod straight and I froze in place. I breathed in deep, allowed air to slide back out. She was in my room, basking in the darkness—and my hair rollers, apparently. Everything else fell out of my mind with a whoosh. My face burned so hot I felt the piercing in my lip might begin to melt. Sweet ink and needles, she was in my room in the dead of night! I would be calm, composed…. Inhale, exhale.

  “What exactly is it that you’re doing in this house, Nikola? I was chased up the stairs by a mob of angry ghosts, leader of the pack being my mother’s. What is this, a ghost asylum? Are you experimenting on them?”

  I shuddered at the mental picture and she walked closer. The carpet muffled her steps, but I heard the fabric of her clothes rustle as she moved. Why wasn’t the fireplace full of lively licks of warmth as I’d left it? And the candles were all put out.

  Most importantly I hoped Nikola wasn’t here to do what the evidence pointed at. The very notion she might want us to become lovers…. My skin tingled with the fear and excitement of it, adding to the rush of being chased around the house of darkness. I was sure I should have also felt something else, something more like outrage, but I couldn’t quite convince myself to feel it. Perhaps I wasn’t as averse to the idea of us becoming lovers as I should have been this early in our interaction. We’d just met, of course, so it was entirely improper to even contemplate it, and she was a woman despite her unusual attire… and New Bayou didn’t encourage couples who couldn’t produce children. But then again I wasn’t human anymore, was I? So nobody would expect me to produce children from now on… and she was so intoxicatingly beautiful, and so maddeningly interesting, and smelled so incredibly good….

  “I think you’ve noticed,” she whispered as she got near enough to stir the fine hairs on my nape, “ghosts tend to flock around alkemists. We hear and see them, and they know it even if we pretend otherwise. We’re probably lucky. So many terminated positives have no ghosts since they’re processed for float fuel or consumed by Edgar—just like the negative float factor ones. Or the ones he claims to be so. He leaves few souls free to roam about. But the fact they are few doesn’t make them any less angry, that’s true. They can’t hurt you, Mer. They just have no place else to go to be heard or seen.”

  They couldn’t hurt me? She had obviously never met my mother’s ghost. If she could do what she did in my room, she could definitely hurt someone.

  “Sad fate to haunt the very ones who killed you, isn’t it?” I said on a shaky breath.

  She chuckled, the sound sticky and ticklish as it traveled down my spine. “Riveting as the topic is, I’d like to know what your intentions are here, tonight?”

  My intentions? “Isn’t it obvious? This is a bedroom, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  The warmth of her body a fraction of a step away from mine burned through my nightgown. When had she gotten so close? I pushed harder against the door, desperately seeking its coolness to balance
me. My heart pounded, and my ears rang. My palms still splayed out on the door on either side of my head, I wished this moment to either never end or to never have existed at all. I was torn, struggling over which of the two would be a better choice, when I felt Nikola rest her palms over my hands.

  A gasp escaped my lips as the hotness of her flesh touched mine, shivers traveling up and down my body. Was she truly going to take advantage of me here against the door? Excitement buzzed all my nerve endings to life. I’d never felt more alert than right now, on the edge of both despair and delight.

  “I assure you of my most rapt attention, Mer.”

  Gulp. “Were you such an attentive and thoughtful person, you wouldn’t be pressing me against a door in the heart of night.”

  The warmth of her body came a fraction closer. A sweat broke out over my whole back. A few drops trickled down the middle of my spine, raising my skin in goose bumps.

  “I seem to recall you pressing yourself against the door, though,” she whispered. “In my thoughtfulness, what else could I do but assist you in such endeavors?”

  Cocky, impossible…! “You could, for instance, not spend the night in this room,” I snapped.

  Though considering what I’d just gone through, I was deliriously happy to be with her instead of by myself. Finally I felt the contour of her body pressing against mine, her ample bosom pressing against my shoulders. Oh, sweet ink and needles, she accommodated my shape so perfectly I could barely breathe.

  “Is that an invitation to spend it in yours? Because I’ll let you know I can’t refuse a lady’s invitation. Especially when it’s delivered in such a way, and right to my bedroom.”

  What? “If you mean to say that because Darkwillow is yours, all rooms are yours, believe me, I’m well aware of the fact. I don’t own my room, but I do inhabit it, so therefore it is mine.”

  “Sweet Mer, whatever are you on about? Of course your room is yours, but what does it have to do with our current situation?”