Impostor Syndrome

by Mishell Baker

  We met in one of the Omni’s larger conference rooms; I sat on a raised platform behind the podium where Alvin stood; on the other side sat the King and Queen of the Seelie Court in their human facades, looking like a supermodel and her scruffy bartender boyfriend.

  Seated in the audience were more than two hundred people, in theory representing the Project heads of the nations who were able to attend, along with translators where necessary. A dozen leaders had refused to come, and about thirty more were unable to travel to L.A. for various reasons, but more than three-fourths of the national Project heads were right there, in a single room. One thing that struck me was how alike they all dressed; I spotted two turbans and a hijab, but aside from that it was a sea of suits that might have all come from the same store. Something told me this was Dame Belinda’s influence.

  “We’re going to be doing some reorganizing, obviously,” Alvin said, after he’d summarized the events of the past month and answered questions to everyone’s satisfaction. If he was shaken up from being showered with his boss’s blood and brains the day before, he was damned good at not letting it show. In fact, I was having to struggle to keep from dozing off at what felt peculiarly like a generic business conference.

  “Los Angeles seems like the best location for an international headquarters,” Alvin said, “especially as our fine king and queen”—here he gestured back to them, and Claybriar gave a little wave—“are temporarily living at Skyhollow Estate. So there will be a new international structure. I won’t be the one running it, though.”

  Once the translators had caught up, there was a general murmur of surprise.

  “My goal here was never to supplant Dame Belinda,” said Alvin, “only to remove her. Unfortunately, Caryl Vallo, upon hearing that we were considering keeping Dame Belinda on as a consultant, killed her with Unseelie magic. Miss Vallo is currently in custody at Residence Five.”

  Even though he said this in the same business-conference tone he’d said everything else, it took a few minutes for the tumult to die down. I felt strangely removed from the events he was summarizing, as though I hadn’t been there, hadn’t given the order that ended Belinda’s life. When Alvin had the room’s full attention again, he continued.

  “Obviously it would be helpful to have someone to continue coordinating things between nations. We’ll have a vote later in the month to choose which of you will move to Los Angeles and fill that role. I think it’s best that we keep the role independent of national operations, which is one reason U.S. National will continue to be based in New Orleans. The other is that I don’t want to move.”

  A handful of people were kind enough to laugh at that.

  “But there will be a lot of changes in the way this Project is organized,” he said. “I won’t go into all of them today, because a lot of it will be up to whoever moves into the shiny new office we’re going to build at Valiant Studios. But I’ve already decided one important thing.”

  He leaned closer to the microphone, sweeping the audience with a very serious look.

  “Everything that was based on some neo-feudal system of unquestioning hierarchy, with an Emperor of the Supernatural overseeing it all? That’s done. That’s history. I am an American.”

  He let that word fall; I saw people shift in their chairs uncomfortably.

  “I notice your reaction, and that’s exactly what I mean. I am an American. I am not Nigerian. I am not Indian. I am not French. I toured Europe once in my thirties; I’ve never been anywhere in Asia, and I’ve seen New Zealand exactly once. I know America. That’s what I know. You know your countries, and you know what’s best for them. Maybe the way Dame Belinda ran things was fine for you. Maybe not. Maybe you want to look to a central international leadership, maybe you don’t. If you want help coordinating with other countries, great. If you want to be part of a bigger structure, great. L.A. will be here for you. I’ll be here for you, until we get someone more qualified.”

  “And if not?” someone called from the back of the audience. I wasn’t quick enough to catch who it was.

  “If you just want to be left alone,” said Alvin, “to deal with Arcadia the way your people deal with weird stuff best? Then I don’t ever need to hear from you again.”

  The murmur that swept through the room this time was one of cynical disbelief.

  “I’m not the head of a new empire,” he said earnestly. “I’m not here to tell you how to run your people’s lives and beliefs and faiths. Tell them about the fey if you want. Or don’t. Whatever keeps your people safe. That’s what matters to me. Safety.”

  “But without firm oversight,” spoke up a woman in the audience, “how will you control those leaders who choose to put their people in danger?”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  At that, a few gasps.

  “Look, friends,” Alvin said, gently but firmly. “It’s not going to be me anyway. If you want someone more hard-assed than me, that’s part of what you get to decide. But since you’re asking, my opinion is that the desire to declare yourself God, to unilaterally help people who never asked for your help, never led anywhere good. Of course the new Project will have rules. But they’ll work more like rules in the mundane world: arrived at by consensus, imperfectly executed, changed as needed. Any rules that require flawless worldwide compliance—for example, absolute secrecy—they’re just not tenable. I’ve seen what it takes to enforce flawless worldwide compliance, and I’m not okay with it. Bad things will happen sometimes. We’ll deal with them as they come, but we will not abandon basic human decency.”

  Everyone was talking to one another now; some people seemed on the verge of firing their translators. Alvin waited for the hubbub to die a bit.

  “All I ask,” he said then, “is that you let me know by the end of April what your nation intends to do, so that we can count heads and work on restructuring. I hope that many of you will join us in an international structure, because I think we’re stronger together. But if you have trouble trusting a foreigner after what you’ve just found out about Dame Belinda, I don’t blame you.”

  There was a long pause, and then someone started to applaud. It caught on quickly, and soon the room was filled with the sound of approval.

  We were actually doing this. Less than a year after I’d even heard of the Arcadia Project, we were remaking the whole thing from scratch.

  “Before we take a break,” said Alvin, “and have some drinks and start networking and all that, there’s one more person I’d like you to meet.” He turned back to me and smiled.

  Oh shit.

  Alvin beckoned, and I got up to stand next to him at the podium. My hands were distressingly moist.

  “The fey call her Ironbones,” said Alvin, “because she had a terrible accident, and her doctors had to put her back together with steel. She can destroy any spell she touches with her bare hands. This has caused all sorts of problems, but it has also allowed us to accomplish all sorts of wonders.

  “But more valuable to us than the accident that makes her a weapon is the intelligence and courage that cooked up a plan to win back the Arcadia Project for its employees, for the people who work every day for its success. She won the Arcadia Project back for the spirits of Arcadia, powerful living creatures who have been used as slaves by the sidhe.

  “No one believed her when she tried to tell us about the spirits, because we’d been brainwashed by tradition for so long that we never even questioned the way things were done. This young woman does nothing but question. She mobilized a small team to utterly shatter the status quo, and to take back control of all of our lives from a woman who had been keeping our blood in storage just in case she needed to exert control over us.

  “Please allow me to introduce Millicent Roper, Echo to the King of the Seelie Court. Millie, would you like to address the people whose lives you’ve given back to them?”

  He stepped back, and there I was, in my worst nightmare. How the hell was I supposed to live up to that introduc
tion?

  I stepped forward, opened my mouth in front of the microphone . . . and nothing came out. I searched myself and tried to find the director, the bullshitter, the heist planner, but she was gone. I was just Millie, the girl with one pigtail who didn’t want to fight anymore.

  The silence got awkward.

  “This is like a bad dream,” I finally said. “Except in the dream I’d have no clothes on.”

  After a pause for translation, there was enough of a ripple of laughter to give me some confidence.

  “Look,” I said. “That was nice of Alvin, all that, but I didn’t really give you anything. I’ve been gut-feeling my way through this, tripping over things. I set loose the Beast Queen; that was me. I lost us King Winterglass and the Medial Vessel. It’s my fault the White Rose fell. There’s a civil war brewing in Arcadia, and that’s my fault too. I’m more of a shit stirrer than a hero, pardon my F—uh, my profanity.

  “But now, mostly by accident, with the help of Alvin and the king and queen here and everyone at the Los Angeles Arcadia Project—even Caryl Vallo—I’ve tasted what it might be like to be a hero. And I think I want to try it. I want to help, any way I can. If you need me to come where you are, I will. Just, uh, understand that I get pretty bad jet lag, so give me a day or two before you ask me any hard questions. And . . . that’s all I have to say, I guess. You should probably all have some drinks.”

  There was some scattered laughter, and then the applause started again.

  I don’t know who stood up first. It seemed to be several people. Maybe they were just eager to get drinks, or maybe my legend had preceded me. But then people started standing up because their neighbors were. Some of them clearly weren’t sure why they were standing but went ahead anyway.

  Before long I was looking at two hundred people from all over the world who were on their feet applauding me. So I stood there and I let them do it, even as their faces blurred and smeared into one brownish glob, because I knew that the display was as much for them, to chase hope and drive away fear, as it was for me.

  50

  They let Caryl come see me. I don’t know if she did it on purpose, but she wore the same suit as on the day we met: a trim, lightweight beige number with a shell-pink blouse underneath. She even had the same flats on. The only difference was her shorter hair: sleek dark waves with tarnished-brass highlights framing her indescribable face.

  I memorized every line of her as we stood in the living room of Residence Four, the shadow of her lashes as she failed to meet my eyes, the nervous way she pulled at her gloves.

  “Alvin says they’ve decided to send you to Arcadia after all,” I said. “After all the times you fought it. He says we’re not even allowed to contact you.”

  She sighed softly, still not looking at me. “Better it should be execution?” she said. “Barker was right about one thing. That I’m—”

  “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t say it.”

  “Then you say it. I think you need to say it.”

  “I won’t, because I don’t believe it.”

  She looked up then, met my eyes, grave. “Millie. You saw what I did to her. A human being.”

  “It’s no worse than what she did to you.”

  “That isn’t how being human is supposed to work.”

  I had never been more aware of her humanity, her frailty, the blood coursing underneath her skin. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” I said. “I’ll never believe you’re dangerous.”

  “And that,” she said, stepping forward to lay a hand at the scarred side of my face, “is why I am more dangerous to you than to anyone.” She traced a finger over my cheekbone, and my insides were a cold soup of helpless longing.

  “This is your fault,” I said around a sudden blockage of tears. “I didn’t want things to go this far between us. You kept pushing.”

  “You were right,” she said. “I shouldn’t have, and I am sorry. You were right, and Barker was right, and many people were right. I was a stubborn adolescent who refused to listen to any of them. But that stops now. I will make it right.”

  “How, by abandoning us?”

  She gave me a strange look, withdrew her hand. “Do you think everything that leaves a room you are in ceases to exist? Have you no sense of object permanence?”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” I said. “Not right now. Just tell me what you’re going to do.”

  She turned away, took a few steps toward the front window, gazing out.

  “I’m going to the Unseelie High Court,” she said. “I am not dangerous there. I’m going to advise King Winterglass, and I’m going to try to bring the Unseelie back to the Arcadia Project.”

  “Caryl—”

  She pressed onward without looking at me. “We’ve seen that the Unseelie can have productive relationships with humans. I believe that eventually I can find some way to bridge things.”

  “You’re walking into a war zone, and I’m supposed to find this comforting?”

  “I am a war zone,” she said calmly, turning to look at me again. “But my hope is that together, I and the Unseelie Court can find some sort of peace.”

  “The Unseelie Court is what broke you.”

  “The one who rescued me will be there, looking after me.”

  “He’d better,” I said. I held back tears until my head throbbed; I didn’t want her last sight of me to be a blubbering mess.

  She came to embrace me, and I held her close as long as I could stand to, then pulled away.

  “When it’s done,” she said, “I’ll come back to you.”

  She was still human, after all, at least for now. She could still lie, when I needed her to.

  • • •

  Alvin drove Tjuan’s car to pick him up, so that he could have the option of driving himself back. That’s the kind of thing Alvin always thought of. I stayed and waited in the passenger seat when Alvin went in, thinking of a thousand things I could say, epic things.

  What would Tjuan do? Would he hug me? Would he cry? It seemed plausible, but unimaginable. If he did cry, what would I do? How could I prove that I knew exactly what my partner needed? Because I was racking my brain, and I honestly had no idea.

  When I saw the two of them approaching, my gut clenched in fear, and I wasn’t even sure why. From their trajectories, it appeared that Tjuan had decided to drive. I was riding shotgun, so that meant Alvin had to get in the back.

  “Hey,” I said when Tjuan got in next to me.

  “Hey,” he said, and started the car. Once he was driving, he had a pretty good excuse not to look at either of us or say anything.

  I secretly checked him over for bruises. If he had any, they didn’t show. I was on fire to know if anyone had hurt him, if he’d been scarred by the experience, if I was supposed to treat him any differently. I couldn’t tell. He was distant, but not that much more so than usual. He drove with his usual care, never exceeding the speed limit by more than five miles an hour. I knew because I was watching the speedometer.

  I nearly choked on all the unsaid words I’d rehearsed in my head. But they all felt wrong. He wasn’t talking, so he must have needed silence. I gave him that, not knowing what else to do.

  When we got to the Residence, Alvin got out; his rental car was parked on the street. He clapped Tjuan on the shoulder. “Give me a call if you need anything,” he said, and Tjuan nodded. So easy. For Alvin, anyway. Tjuan headed for the house.

  Alvin came around to give me a hug.

  “I’m going to miss you,” I said.

  “I’ll send you annoying texts at three a.m. Pacific time,” he said. “And remember, until we sort out who’s the new regional manager out here, I’m still the boss of you.” He gave my arm a squeeze, then walked to his car.

  Tjuan was already opening the front door. I hurried to catch up. If he went into his room, shut the door, I might not see him for days.

  “Tjuan,” I said. “Wait up.”

  He held the door open for me, then clo
sed it and locked it behind us. All the locks. There were a lot of locks.

  I’d half expected Song to arrange some sort of welcome-home party, but I guess she knew Tjuan too well. The living room was suspiciously deserted. Everyone was giving Tjuan space.

  Everyone except me.

  He ran a palm over his hair; it needed cutting. “Look, Millie,” he said. “I don’t know how to write scenes like this. I always just leave ’em out.”

  “I know,” I said, wringing my hands. “I know you probably just want to be left alone. I’m sorry I can’t just—I’m bad at subtlety. I don’t know how to be stoic. I know I drive you crazy. I’m sorry.”

  “No,” he said. “Don’t be like that. This is me, too. You and I . . . aren’t well suited. And it’s not all because of you. I’ve got shit too. Everybody’s got shit. Our shit just doesn’t—” He gestured vaguely, lacing his fingers together.

  “Should we—you’re a senior agent; you can work without a partner. Alondra doesn’t have anyone. I can—”

  And then I started crying. Jesus fucking Christ.

  He came over, quick, and hugged me. It was the hug of a man who knows a hug is called for, but has no fucking idea how it’s supposed to work. But he did hug me, promptly, and for a decently long time. Then he held me out by the arms and looked me straight in the eye.

  “Just because we don’t get along,” he said, “that doesn’t mean we’re not partners. You’ve got my back. Now, half the time I don’t want to know what the fuck it is you’re doing behind it, but I know you’re there, at least. That’s not nothing.”

  “I just—I wish you liked me better.”

  He laughed and let me go. “I wish I did too,” he said. “But liking isn’t everything. I’d rather have someone I can count on.”

  I nodded, wiping my eyes. “That’ll do,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

  He started off toward his room, but then he stopped, turned.

  “You know you can count on me, too, right?” he said. “You don’t have to . . . hover all the time the way you do. Like you think I’m going to disappear. You know I’m not going anywhere, right?”