The Left Hand of Memory (Redlisted)

by Sara Beaman

  “I could easily venture a guess as to where my mother has gone,” Julian says. “But you’re right. It would be unwise to follow her. And I’m concerned about Aya, regardless of whether or not she kidnapped my son.”

  “I’m glad we agree,” Jennifer says.

  “Yes, I am. I’m—“ Suddenly Julian’s voice is strained. “I’m concerned about Aya.”

  “We all are.”

  “I don’t think I shall stay after all. I should go to her. She must be confused. Frightened.”

  “But we just agreed—“

  “Clearly I hadn’t given it enough thought,” he says. “But now I’ve decided. I will come with you. I’ll fetch another driver, someone to collect my things—“

  “Julian, you’re not thinking clearly.”

  A chair creaks as he stands. Then I hear footsteps—he’s walking towards me. I suddenly wish I had a mirror—I’d make myself invisible—but it’s already too late. He steps out from behind a bookcase and catches me frozen with fear by the open door.

  “What are you doing here?” he demands.

  “Sorry! I, uh…” I need to think of a lie. “I was looking for Haruko.”

  “Were you listening in?”

  “No!”

  “How much did you hear?”

  “Of what?”

  He lowers his chin. “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what—“

  I reach for my mantra: The falcon cannot hear the falconer. I don’t hear his command, but I know what it was. Better start lying. I need to make him believe he succeeded.

  “I heard, uh, something about Aya being confused and frightened—then something about how you said you were going, and you’d fetch a driver…”

  Julian relaxes visibly.

  “I see,” he says. “Haruko is in the guest quarters. Shall I take you there?” He gestures to the door.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’d appreciate that.”

  “After this you should go pack your things,” he says as we slip out into the hallway. “We’ll be leaving at sunset.”

  “I don’t really have any things,” I say.

  “That’s right. I apologize. I’ll ask my staff to pack a bag for you.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To visit someone who might be able to provide assistance with our search,” he says.

  I nod.

  “This way,” he says. “Follow me.”

  We set off to the right.

  “Do you think Adam is okay?” I hear myself ask.

  “Given how he looked in the footage…” Julian shakes his head.

  “Do you think he’s… like… dead?”

  “I sincerely hope not,” he says, and he sounds like he means it.

  “Aya was really angry at him and Haruko,” I say, feigning anxiety. “You saw what she did to Haruko’s face.”

  Julian frowns. “I won’t pretend I understand everything about Aya, but I’d be surprised if she was capable of murder.”

  “You’re probably right,” I say, though I don’t agree with him. “I guess she was angrier with Haruko than she was with Adam, anyway.”

  “Why do you say that?” Julian asks, looking at me through the corners of his eyes.

  “Haruko kind of goaded her,” I say. “She, uh, she said Aya was in love with you.”

  Julian forces a laugh. “Did she,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “That was unkind of her.”

  I nod, hoping to look sympathetic. “Was it untrue, though?”

  He gives me a stiff smile. “I’d prefer not to conjecture.”

  I say nothing.

  “I never had any children of my own,” he says. “That is to say, real children, not revenant descendants. Aya… I see her as my ward. I know she’s not a child, but her mentality…”

  He doesn’t finish his thought. We’ve reached Haruko’s door. He raps on it twice, then we wait.

  “I’m not sure she isn’t asleep,” he remarks.

  “Oh well,” I say.

  We wait some more.

  “Julian, I hope this doesn’t sound patronizing, but have you tried calling Aya on her cell phone?” I ask.

  “Yes. She hasn’t picked up. I believe she’s discarded it.”

  “Oh.”

  Julian knocks on the door to Haruko’s suite again, and again we wait. No answer.

  “I understand she’s a heavy sleeper,” he says.

  An idea strikes me.

  “What if you spoke to Aya in a dream?” I ask,

  “How would I do that, exactly? I’m not a Somniac.” He turns away from the door and begins backtracking down the hall.

  I follow him. “I am, I think. If I understand what you mean by that.”

  He lifts an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

  “What if I could serve as some sort of conduit between you and her?” I ask. “If you could talk to her, ask her to come back, do you think she would listen?”

  “I should hope so,” he says, “and if not… I suppose I could force her to do so, but I would prefer not to do that.”

  I nod. “Where do you think she might have gone?”

  “Chicago, perhaps. Her father, so to speak, kept her locked up in a row house in Chicago for several decades.”

  “Wait, but—aren’t there a ton of Wardens in Chicago?”

  “There are indeed.”

  “So, I mean… wouldn’t it be dangerous for her to go back there?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Quite. I don’t believe she understands just how dangerous it could be.”

  “Oh.”

  “Her father worked with the Chicago Wardens, years ago. Maybe she thinks she can seek their protection.”

  I furrow my eyebrows. “Do you think that would work?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t Mirabel control the Wardens?”

  Julian laughs dismissively. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Something Adam said.”

  “It’s a gross generalization,” he says. “I’ll admit there are elements of truth to it, but it isn’t the whole story.”

  “All right,” I say. “What’s the whole story, then?”

  “The Wardens and Mirabel are locked in a sort of dance,” Julian says. “They rely on each other, and that reliance grates on both of them. They constantly seek out opportunities to overcome one another, to slip a rope around the neck, a knife between the ribs.”

  I nod.

  “In recent years, I might say Mirabel has gained the upper hand over Christopher Carlyle, but it has only made his struggle against her more desperate.”

  “Who’s Christopher Carlyle?”

  “The President of the Watchers of the Americas.”

  “So he’s the President of the Wardens?” I ask.

  “Not in name. Theoretically there’s a body that supersedes his authority, the International Coalition of Watchers. In practice, he has made himself the president of all of it. Desmond and a few others like him were fighting a losing battle against the tide, but now that he’s gone…”

  I feel a momentary pang of guilt, and panic, and once again I wish I didn’t have to go up against vampires with thousands of years of collective experience in the political arena. Julian glances at my expression and shakes his head.

  “Desmond’s death was the last nail in the coffin of the resistance. There was never a collective leader. There weren’t many who could have risen to that position, and the few who might have managed it are all gone, hiding or co-opted or dead…”

  “I see,” I say. “So…why does he need Mirabel?”

  “How much did Adam tell you about what my daughter does with her company?” Julian asks.

  “Aside from the kidnapping, and the brainwashing, and the creation of zombie militias via mass murder?” I say. “She’s in charge of suppressing knowledge of revenants within the human world. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Exactly.”

  “But it’s not like she’s th
e only Mnemonic in the world,” I say. “Why can’t they get someone else to do what she does if she’s such a problem?”

  “My dear,” Julian says, “no one else can do what Mirabel does. At this point I doubt even Mnemosyne herself could.”

  “Why?”

  “Consider the technological advancements we’ve seen in the last fifteen years. I am considered to be an expert in the field of Compulsion, and I have little to no understanding of how she manages to regulate a global and virtually instantaneous network of communicators.”

  “But she does. Don’t you think you could figure it out?”

  “Perhaps I could if she explained it to me at length over the course of decades, but do you really think she’d be willing to do that?”

  “All right,” I say. “I get it. So… what would they do if Mirabel was gone?”

  “I haven’t the slightest. The Watchers simply can’t afford to lose her,” he says. “Why do you ask?”

  Why did I ask that question? I shouldn’t tell him she’s missing.

  “Because…” I think of something else to say. “I’d like to kill her.”

  He laughs. “I imagine you would.”

  “Sorry. I know she’s your daughter and all.”

  “There’s no need to apologize,” he says. “There was a time I would have killed her myself. Still, I’m not sure killing her would be wise.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wonder if we could ever go back to the way things were without her,” he says. “Hiding from the world. Skulking about in the shadows, the alleys, the sewers…”

  “It’s what we deserve,” I say. “We’re monsters. And humanity deserves to know that we exist.”

  He shrugs, smiling wryly.

  “Don’t you agree?” I ask.

  “No,” he says.

  ***

  Julian escorts me back to Adam’s suite, where I climb in bed and go back to sleep, back to Mirabel’s office. I search for Adam. I open all the doors and look around, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I wander through the building, searching, looking through familiar rooms and corridors as well as areas that used to be off-limits to me. I check the building floor by floor, down to the atrium, but I find no sign of him.

  Thinking of his suite, I step through the revolving door, and I find myself there, just a few feet away from where I lie sleeping outside the oneiroxis. I look through each of the four rooms of the suite: the sitting room, the office, the bedroom, the bathroom. He’s gone.

  Why did he leave so suddenly, without explanation? Shouldn’t he be asleep and dreaming? It’s daytime. And doesn’t he still have a hole through his head?

  I wake myself up again, frustrated and anxious.

  ***

  I lie on the couch in the sitting room, reading the abridged version of Great Expectations in the British Literature textbook I found on Adam’s bookcase. I’m not enjoying it much, but I need something to focus on to keep me from losing my mind, and I’ve given up on trying to break Julian’s basement labyrinth illusion. I’m not sure it’s possible, at least not for someone like me.

  I hear footsteps and a heartbeat approaching the door to the suite, then a knock. The strong smell of blood and the faint smell of sweat fills my nose. My teeth sharpen. Time slows, or I speed up. Everything is amplified—the clarity of my eyesight, my awareness of my body, my hearing, my sense of smell. The book spills from my lap as I stand up. I can smell the human on the other side of the door; it’s a man, I think, just from his scent.

  I take a deep breath. Does Julian’s compulsion to follow the rules of feeding on redlisted still apply? I have no way of knowing. But it isn’t my fault a human is at my doorstep. I didn’t ask him to come here. I can’t be held responsible for what might happen.

  I open the door. On the other side is Alan, the thin black man with the pretty eyes, the man whose wrist I bit into just hours ago. I want to lunge at him and tear into his throat, but I don’t. Julian’s admonition must still have power over me.

  Alan smiles politely. “Hi, Kate.”

  “Hi Alan.”

  “How are you?”

  “Just fine.” I grip the moulding around the door frame, digging in my fingernails. “What is it?”

  He hands me a card face down. I turn it over. The seraglio.

  “Julian thinks it would be best if you visited once more before you leave,” he says.

  “Sure.”

  “Anything I can do for you?” he asks,

  “Depends,” I say. “Will you let me feed on you again?”

  He laughs nervously. “I really shouldn’t. I can only lose so much blood at a time…”

  “Then no.”

  “All right,” he says.

  I close the door. I listen to Alan’s footsteps as he retreats down the hallway. When I can’t hear him any longer, I step outside and head for the seraglio. No reason to wait. This time I will not behave like I did before. I can control myself. I will control myself. Adam did. I can do the same. Keep myself in check. Keep myself human. Maybe I should ask for a girl this time. Alan was too much, all sultry-voiced and forward. I didn’t like it. Other women might have, but I didn’t. I don’t want to start conflating this vampire shit with sex. It might be sexual for the people in the seraglio—why else would they work there, after all? If I were alive, Julian couldn’t possibly pay me enough to do it. But it isn’t sexual for me. Not yet. I won’t let things slip in that direction. I will not.

  I’m close enough to the seraglio to hear hearts beating when Haruko rounds a corner ahead of me and places herself squarely in my path.

  “Kate! I need to talk to you.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes now. What else are you doing?”

  “Going to the seraglio.”

  “Can it wait?” Her tone suggests that it should.

  “I guess…”

  “Come with me,” she says, taking my arm and leading me against the pull of the seraglio card.

  Soon we arrive at her rooms. She looks up and down the hallway behind us before closing and locking the door.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  She pulls her smartphone out from her back pocket.

  “This,” she says, thrusting it into my hand. “I assumed the Wardens had cut me off, given what happened in Red Hook and the fact I went AWOL—but just now I got this.”

  It’s an email: All hands in SE US Division report to SCHQ for an audit, 0300 EST. CC

  “Okay,” I say, utterly lost.

  She grabs the phone. “The Wardens are raiding SpiraCom HQ at three o’clock in the morning. Tonight. On direct order of the President.”

  “Are you going to go…?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “I don’t think you should,” I say, frowning. “They could be doing this just to lure you out.”

  “Well… yeah, I guess.”

  “Do you really think they’re at the raid-her-corporate-headquarters stage of the game?” I ask. “Don’t they have other things going on? Like Red Hook?”

  “Maybe they got wind that she’s out of the country.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know, Haruko. It just seems too convenient.”

  She runs a hand through her hair, staring at the screen. She sighs.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “It’s just… if this is really happening, I want to be there,” she says.

  “Why?” I ask. “You already raided her headquarters yourself. With Adam and Aya. Remember?”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “Is there anyone in the Wardens you can call about this?” I ask. “Anyone you trust?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t know, then it seems like the answer is no.”

  Haruko glares at me. “Why are you the one giving me advice?” I can’t tell if the irritation in her voice is genuine or a joke. “The hell do you know?”

  “You asked me—”

  “No, I didn’t. I didn’t ask for your opini
on.”

  I shrug. “Okay.”

  “I had someone I could call,” she says. “Someone I trusted.”

  She’s talking about Desmond.

  “I’m sorry, Haruko,” I say.

  She shoves the phone in her back pocket. “Whatever. What’s done is done.”

  “I just want you to be careful, that’s all.”

  “But don’t you want to see what happens?” she asks. “Don’t you want to see Mirabel’s dirty laundry?”

  “I am her dirty laundry.”

  “Come on.”

  “You come on! I can’t go. You know that,” I say. “For you, going would be risky. For me it’d be suicide.”

  “You owe me,” she says.

  “I owe you? For what?”

  “Killing Desmond.”

  I blink at her, dumbfounded.

  “I’m kidding,” she says. “Sort of.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder.

  She starts crying.

  Cicatrix

  After leaving Haruko’s suite and visiting the seraglio, I return to Adam’s suite. I find my jeans, underwear and socks folded on the edge of the bed. I peel off the grey dress and put my own clothes back on. They all smell and look clean. I wonder if Julian’s staff got the blood stains out, or if Julian’s illusion is still in effect.

  At seven-fifteen Julian knocks on the door. He hands me a little army-green duffel bag and informs me it’s time to leave. I follow him to the garage, where we get back into the van. Inside, Haruko and Jennifer sit silently, one on each of the bench seats, not looking at one another. I sit down next to Haruko in the back, putting my bag on the seat behind us. She drums her fingers against her leg.

  “Our driver will be here shortly,” Julian says.

  “Matthew?” Jennifer asks.

  “No. He’s still recuperating,” Julian says. “This one is a woman. Her name is Elizabeth. Liz.”

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “To a rural spot on the South Carolina coast, not far from Charleston,” Julian says. “To visit a friend of a friend.”

  “The one that might be able to help us find Aya?” I ask, then hastily add: “And Adam?”

  “Yes,” Julian says.

  “What kind of friend?” Haruko asks.

  “An unusual one,” Julian says. “A Son of Orpheus.”

  Haruko laughs. “Are we having a seance?”