Waking, Cal clutched his chest and began to beg and cough. In his eyes, I saw the realization he’d known it was already too late.
“You’ll give it to me or I will make sure your daughter suffers the same fate.” The Bishop held out his hand, and Cal ceded his gift.
The Bishop turned his back. I could hear Cal fumbling with the revolver, and I braced for a shot that never came. The curtain around the vision closed. My tears fell into the glass below as time jerked me back to my precarious position.
“Now, do you see?” the Bishop asked.
I shook my head. Cal had kept his gift, had helped the Survivors, but the Bishop hadn’t asked why. He’d simply taken a life. “He was going to leave. You didn’t have to kill him.”
The Bishop shoved the broom handle at me. I fell backwards as he returned to the window, looking down over New Charity.
“After those monsters in the City killed my daughter with their reckless disregard for the Spirit and its gifts, I grieved. I grieved for years and years. And when I came here, it was to be the end of my grieving, the start of a new life, a new Sanctuary. Look how the land, the people have flourished under my guidance.”
I shook my head. With the exception of the last few days he was right. But how many others had been terrorized, threatened, killed for his own personal power play?
“You and Len have been willing vessels for the Spirit. Your Foresight has flourished, has it not?”
He knew. He knew I’d seen Syd coming. He knew I’d made a habit of lying. “Yes.”
“Civilization was flawed before the plague. New Charity’s Blessing was meant to protect us, even as the Survivors of the City died out. Starting here, the Spirit decrees a new start, a new world built upon the power of the Blessing. The memory of my daughter.”
This was in no way a part of Sanctuary gospel. This was a god complex, the ravings of a lunatic. How much did the Governor know about this future the Bishop envisioned?
“This is where you come in,” he continued.
“Me?”
“You are of age. I am not yet infirm. With my gift and yours combined, the children we could have would be omniscient. We would be the parents of the Spirit made flesh. We would reign as the king and queen of the world until our days stretch beyond the horizon.”
I looked back down at the glass on the floor. My head pounded. How had this morning gone from may I have that broom to creating omnipotent children? “Absolutely not. No. I’m not ready for that. I’ll never be.”
The Bishop crossed the tiny sea of glass, shards crunching beneath his boots. “You would dare refuse me?”
“I don’t want this,” I said.
“But I did not ask what you wanted, did I?”
“The Spirit asks us to be mindful of our gifts. Even if I were willing, the risks are too much. What if our children are violent or evil? There is a reason the Spirit split the powers of Hindsight and Foresight in two—to make them the rarest of gifts.”
“You refuse me and question my doctrine?” He came close enough so I could smell his bitter breath. I turned my head to the side and he grabbed my chin. I fought against the curtain of backward time, easier than it had been the first two touches. “You will look at me. You will do as I ask. You were chosen.”
“No. This has nothing to do with the Spirit, nothing to do with the land and the sky. Nothing to do with anything.”
“You will regret this, girl.”
I had no idea what his next move would be. It was only in the last few days that I’d been truly terrified, more so than in my entire life. First for New Charity, and now for myself. For my body. For my soul.
“I’m not a girl.”
“You’re no better than one.”
He reached for my waist, and I did the only thing I could think to do. I screamed. I screamed so hard my throat felt like I’d swallowed a rasp. The vacuums downstairs ceased, and I screamed again, the Bishop’s hand coming to my mouth.
“Have it your way, then,” he said, straightening. “You’ll endure my curse all the same.”
“Curse?” My head hurt so badly that my vision turned red and splotched. I could hear footsteps at the stairs, confused voices outside the door.
“Your prophecy, your truth, your words will be meaningless to the ears they fall upon. At best, confused, at worst, the ramblings of a sick and addled mind. You wanted to be more than a voice; now is your time to find a way.”
“Stop. Don’t touch me—” His hand was around my neck and my voice was weak, even as the footsteps outside the door retreated down the stairs.
He twisted his grip to my collar and flung me to the floor. A thousand cuts to my bare arms, my head against the cabinet, and then, mercifully, nothing at all.
CHAPTER NINE
Syd
The morning after the incident at the gate, I find Pi bundled into the couch, snoring soundly. There is a note on the table saying he’d started up the generator before taking a nap. Grateful for the power, I make a pot of real coffee and set it beside him on the end table. He stirs awake, and begins to stretch before the pain comes rushing back to him and he cradles his head with one hand and his ribs with the other. I press a couple of painkillers I’d left in my dad’s medicine cabinet into his hand.
“There was a day,” he wheezes, “when your father and I were scrappers.”
“Looks like today’s not that day.”
“I will admit,” he says, “that before things went to hell, it was a mighty fine sort of party.”
“It was awesome, Pi,” I say. “Can’t wait until the next one.”
“Thank you for reminding me of what music is supposed to do.”
“Are you admitting you forgot?”
“I’m saying that perhaps we’ve gotten a bit narrow with its usage here in New Charity.”
“Glad I could be of use.”
“As a party planner or as a friend of the sprinkler system at the plant?”
“Maybe it’s better if you don’t know.”
“You and your father make a clear case for the nature over nurture argument.” But he isn’t smiling.
“Pi, I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist or anything, but how much trouble would my dad have been in if he’d been delivering more than horses outside the gate?”
“What are you asking?”
“There was a reference in his diary to someone dubbed ‘M,’ which could have been Mangold.”
“Stop right there. I don’t want to hear any more. I won’t go down this road with you, Cressyda.”
“But what if my dad was helping the Survivors? Nelle said—”
“Enough.” He starts to get up, wheezing. “I’m going home.”
“No,” I say. “Please. Wait. Sit down. I’ll drop it, okay?”
“Syd,” he says. “What I want is for you to be an ally to peace and truth.”
“I know.” He’s starting to sound like Agnes, and my heart gives a pang. It hasn’t even been a week and I miss her and Mina and Doc like I might a limb. Still, I’m not sure I can promise to sit idle.
“Those things Mangold said to you—”
“They didn’t hurt me.” I force a smile. “For a doctor, Mangold has a surprisingly juvenile vocabulary.”
“I see there’s been no damage to your fortress of sarcasm.”
“I just wish the Bishop hadn’t let things get this complicated.”
Uncle Pi shifts with a grunt. I know he’s conflicted. The Spirit is important to him, and the Sanctuary is the place he celebrates the Spirit with fellow believers. But this Sanctuary is different now. He knows it and I know it.
Pious is the sort of believer who makes it easy to believe—his charisma bespeaks pure joy. Even my dried-up husk of a heart wants to believe when he’s the one giving sermons. But the Spirit the Bishop seems to be peddling is a punitive, malicious force—one that reigns by threat and ultimatum. It’s nothing like it was, like it should be.
We’ve both settled b
ack into our thoughts, so when there is a knock, our coffees are almost upended.
“Expecting someone?” I ask. Pi shakes his head, and I pad to the front door. Out the peephole, Troy Willis is fidgeting with a bouquet of wildflowers and a black box with a silver bow. I lean against the door for a moment, all at once glad and crestfallen.
Troy. The things I love about him feel so safe, like childhood when life seemed simpler. I appreciate that he considers my feelings. That he’s not afraid to show them in front of other people, like yesterday when trying to defend me earned him an escort home by his father’s goons. It’s a strange sort of confidence—one he’s kept all these years. He doesn’t seem to care why I am here. He just cares that I am.
While he makes my heart feel things it hasn’t felt in a long time, it’s not fair to start a relationship here when my game plan is to leave and never come back. It’s disingenuous at best. At worst, well, I was called those things last night. All I can offer is my friendship.
And I can’t very well offer him that when he has an armful of romantic tokens.
Pi looks up when I let out a sigh, and I attempt an angelic smile. “Can you answer it for me?”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Pious struggles to stand.
“No, no. Just keep sitting. Tell him to come in once I have the shower running.”
“Who is it?”
“Troy Willis,” I stage-whisper from the stairs.
My uncle shifts the blankets on to the couch. “What’s in it for me?”
“The warm fuzzy feeling that you get saving your niece from mortal embarrassment?” I say.
“He’s a nice guy, Syd. You could do worse, you know.”
“I don’t have to do at all,” I say. “Post-pandemic doesn’t mean prefeminism. I’m not chattel.”
“Might be easier if you were.”
“Moo.”
Troy knocks again and Pious waves his thick paws at me to get out of sight. I take the rest of the stairs two at a time. I turn on the shower full force, but creep out and peek around the landing. Pi is smiling and laughing and gesturing for Troy to sit down across from him. The latter, blush-eared and earnest, hands over his fine gifts and an envelope he fishes from his back pocket. This time my stomach gives a funny little lurch but I swallow it down: it has no say in this particular matter.
When I come back downstairs, once again almost religiously grateful for the miracle of hot water and the generator that provides it, Pi has made his way into a standing position and is refilling his coffee cup.
“We’re going to a dinner,” he says.
“We are?”
Pi hands me the gifts. I set the flowers aside and open the box, revealing an expensive-looking pair of crystal drop earrings. Inside the box, a small note is folded into the lid. I tease it out with a toothpick since I have no fingernails. It reads: Only if they make you happy.
Pi clears his throat, and gestures to the screen door. We make our way out into the sun and slowly past the paddock toward the guesthouse. “The Governor believes we should start a civil conversation about the events of last night, so he’s invited the community leaders to a goodwill dinner.”
“I’m not a community leader,” I say.
“But you are my niece and a Survivor and best friend of the Acolytes.”
“Best friend is pushing it a bit far, don’t you think?” I’m not sure anymore if we’re friends at all.
“Have it your way. It would look bad if they didn’t invite you.”
I raise my eyebrows at him, surprised at his candor. “Too many painkillers, Pi?”
“Who, me?”
“You’re entertainingly blunt this morning.”
He shrugs. “If Priam Willis wants a conversation, then a conversation we shall have.”
“Super,” I say. Though I’m keeping my cards close, I’m rejoicing in the changing tide of his acceptance of the way things are. Even if it’s subtle and for my benefit. Even if it’s the opiates talking.
“We’ll take the car tonight. I don’t feel ready to ride. We’ll leave at five for the Governor’s, hairdo or no hairdo.”
“I’m not my mother,” I say, though the ghost of a memory settles over me: Pi and my dad noisily folding their newspapers and exasperatedly checking their watches until my mother came down the stairs, mesmerizing them both.
“Look, Syd. Don’t think I’m buying a ticket on your conspiracy train, but be careful what you say tonight.” He sounds like he’s trying to chase the doubt from his own mind. “I don’t know what the Bishop and Priam are up to with this dinner, so it’s probably best to give them both a wide berth.”
“Maybe they can sit together. Hot air plus bullshit can cause spontaneous combustion.”
Pious touches his forehead. “Spirit, intercede for us,” he says. But there’s a smile beneath the reprimand.
Around noon, someone else knocks. I half expect it to be Troy again, maybe even Cas coming to smooth things over. It’s a Willis outside the peephole, for certain, though this time it’s Len. There are bluish circles under his eyes, and he’s got dried blood all over his shirt.
I throw the door open. “What happened to you?”
Len shoves past me into the kitchen, lighting a cigarette. “She’s okay. I got her home and resting. It’s this damned dinner. I looked through her closet and there’s nothing with sleeves. My mom. She buys her these dresses and they’re all . . . like something you would wear.”
I let the insult slide, because I need to get him to calm down enough to tell me what has him so worked up. “You want a glass of wine, maybe? Hair of the dog. Calm your nerves?”
“No!” He shakes his head and tries again less forcefully. “I mean, no thanks. Do you have a dress that will work? I can’t ask anyone at the house because our mother will ask questions.” He ashes into the sink, then runs the water. Repeats.
My attempts to calm him down are failing. “Len, look at me. Right this second. I will give you a dress, but you’re going to have to tell me what the hell is going on.”
He puts his free hand on his forehead. “I was there this morning, and she was fine.”
“Where?” I pour a glass of wine anyway and set it in front of him. If he’ll breathe, maybe I can drag a complete thought from his head.
He gestures to the east, toward town. “The Acolyte apartments. The Governor must’ve taken her there after her vision so she’d be ready for another this morning. He probably thought I’d been sleeping there, too, since I haven’t been home in a few nights.” He pauses, rakes his hair. “But I wasn’t there. I was at Al’s. He’s my . . . I don’t know, Syd. My friend. And more. I just wanted to be somewhere else. Someone else for a minute, you know?”
“Okay.” Len never really talks much about his relationship with Al Truax. He never talks about himself at all, come to think of it. Too busy hiding from himself.
“And when I got there, I ran, Syd. Like a coward. I mean, she covered for me, she wanted me to go, but I should’ve stayed. If I’d been there . . .”
I put my hands on his shoulders so he’ll focus on my face. “Slow down. She had to do the vision thing last night, right? Then your dad took her to the Acolyte quarters, and you weren’t there?”
“The Bishop and the Governor were there this morning, looking for me, but she broke something to distract them. When I stopped by later, she was out cold in the middle of a bunch of broken glass. She won’t tell me which one of them did it or what happened.”
“Maybe she’ll tell me?”
“She needs to rest right now. And Syd,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose, “there’s something else.”
“Anything,” I say. “Name it.”
“Look, she told me to tell you to go.”
“Go where?”
“To get out of New Charity.”
This is far worse than being called a whore. It feels like Len is using my heart as an ashtray instead of the sink. “I know she’s mad at me, but . . .”
I’m angry and anxious and desperate all at the same time. How could she really want me gone and not tell me herself? Cas Willis—the angel, the optimist—has written me off? It doesn’t seem possible. “Look, Len, you have to believe me. I’m going to make things right.”
“You say that, but you keep making things worse.”
I recoil, and he shakes his head.
“You know what I mean. You’re always fighting. And whatever she saw in her vision last night really messed her up. I wouldn’t tell you if I didn’t think she was serious.”
“The visions of the future aren’t set in stone, right? At the power plant, she thought I’d get hurt, but we were fine. What about being better than all of this, better than your father, better than the Bishop? What about making New Charity the place that rebuilds the world, instead of the place that holds its rebirth hostage?”
“That’s more of your pie-in-the-sky bullshit, Syd. I didn’t think your being here could hurt anything, but now . . . I don’t know. Maybe the best we can hope for is some semblance of the way it used to be before you and Nelle got your mitts on things.”
The comparison with Nelle hurts. Maybe I was a scheming monster at one time, but not anymore. “This Blessing thing is ludicrous and you know it. You of all people. What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter with me? Fuck you, Syd.” Len picks up the bunch of wildflowers Troy left earlier and brandishes them at me, pollen and petals flying. “Everything. Everything is the matter. We could start with my despot of a father or my deeply unhinged mother. Or Perry, who got sent away and involuntarily returned bereft of all emotions except an obsession with a Survivor who just happens to be an engineer. Troy is still straddling his childhood devotion to my father and you. My sister has a concussion and she’s sliced up from hell to breakfast and she won’t tell me why. And to top that all off, no matter how much I drink or smoke or screw I can’t keep my own head from conjuring up some of the strangest horror I’ve ever seen. So if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me the damn dress and pack your shit.”
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