by Dia Reeves
The twins stared a long time, motionless.
“Where’s your ribcage?”
“Don’t have one. Not like yours.”
A thin, bony plate slid across, hiding her organs, then slid out of sight again. “A cage would get in the way, impede access..”
The twins gave each other a look. And then went to work, snapping photos and sketching Rue’s thoracic cavity.
“What’s that thing?” Sterling pointed to the burning orb between the tangles of vein and artery, floating unconnected, vibrant and swirling with grays and purples, but translucent. A sense of something churning within.
“Some weird organ?” Sterling guessed. “Like the toadstone?”
“It’s not weird. It’s my…” Rue thought about it, but gave up in frustration. “There’s no name for it in English.”
“Say it in your language.”
Her limbal rings flashed and swirled, the same grays and purples as the organ. So bright the twins squinted.
“Did that help?”
They laughed.
Rue tried again. “It’s the place where my soul lives.”
“Some sort of antrum?” Stanton said.
“If antrum means the place where your soul lives.” She thought it over. “Or a place to rest when your soul takes over. When I go away. When my soul takes over and sends me away, this is where I go.”
“Your soul?” Stanton didn’t seem convinced. “Sounds more like a split personality.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Do you really believe a little person lives inside you?” Sterling said. “And that you can disappear inside yourself?”
“It’s not a question of belief. That’s what happens. When my family sent the Mortmaine after me, I hid in there and got better.”
“And that’s why you weren’t making sense. We weren’t talking to you, but to your soul? That was her?”
“She has no social skills.”
“You’re such an absolute freak,” Sterling said, pencil flying over his sketchpad. “If I stabbed you in that split personality organ, would your soul die or would you?”
The slit zipped closed with such force, all three jumped.
Stanton smacked his brother’s head.
“What did I do?”
“We’re not going to stab you,” Stanton said.
“I know,” Rue put her hand protectively over her chest, “but she doesn’t.”
“It was just a question,” Sterling said. “I wouldn’t hurt you.” He spoke to her chest. “And I wouldn’t hurt you either. How could you think that, Rue’s soul? I thought we were cool.”
The slit reopened.
“That’s better.” Sterling grabbed a notebook and wrote several pages of observations before asking, “So what’s your soul do when she’s not possessing you?”
“Many things I don’t understand. Things on a cellular level. She works hard to keep me strong and healthy.”
“Must be nice. Our souls don’t do shit.”
The twins combed through Sterling’s notes and added several more. Worked out the measurements of Rue’s ideal heart. Scrolled through their photos one last time. “Okay. You can close it now. We have what we need.”
“Don’t feel like you have to button up though. You’re among friends here. If you look at it a certain way, this is like a double-date. You and me, and Stanton and your split personality.”
“Don’t be weird, Sterling.”
“If you want me to take my dress off, you have to get naked first.”
“And don’t you be weird either!” Stanton primly zipped the camera bag. “There’s a time and place for that sort of thing. And this doesn’t qualify.”
“Why not?” asked Sterling and Rue.
“What’s going on in here?”
“That’s why not,” Stanton muttered.
Westwood stood in the doorway, furious. He hadn’t looked like that when Rue had returned the twins to him earlier that day, after the trip to the square. Westwood had been waiting by the door like a nervous dad in a sitcom, and when he’d seen that Rue had delivered everyone safe and sound, he’d directed one of the servants to get her aspirin and a glass of water. For her sore tooth, he’d said. As if he hadn’t remembered that the “sore tooth” he’d knocked out of her mouth had grown back the same day. Or maybe he hadn’t noticed since Rue hadn’t been in a smiling mood since the attack on Sterling.
Rue had pocketed the aspirin but drank all the water, and Westwood had patted her on the head like one of his dogs. He was no longer in a head patting mood.
“I can’t believe you’re wasting your time playing doctor when we are supposed to be working. You’re five minutes late.” He checked his pocket watch. “Six minutes!”
The twins gathered their things and hurried away, Westwood berating them the whole time. Rue hurried with them, hoping to get a glimpse behind their otherworldly laboratory door.
“We have a fresh soul that needs testing,” Westwood was saying. “The booji are waiting with the cornea solution. I can’t afford to pay them to wait forever.”
Westwood unlocked the lab door with his silver Porterene key, which he carried in the same pocket as his watch.
Beyond the door stood a cream stone building with House of Pain spray painted across the façade. Dead wasps on the steps—the same gigantic wasps that had nearly killed Sterling!—and a…person? In a mask: a human face with plastic blond hair, painted blue eyes, and a rosebud mouth. A mask that enhanced the inhuman, misshapen lump of a head it was supposed to conceal. This masked person waved impatiently for the Westwoods to come forward.
The twins passed through the doorway first. Rippled, seemed to disappear before reappearing on the steps next to the masked person.
“Shall I come with you?” Rue asked Westwood. “You look like you could use some help.”
Westwood looked her over. “Not that kind.” He passed the threshold and, though Westwood didn’t touch it, the door clapped shut in her face.
Rue buttoned up her uniform and went back to her room to get her coat—she still hadn’t patrolled the grounds today—but there was a package outside her door.
The servants still left gifts for her occasionally, and she always got a kick out of guessing what was in them.
She sat on her bed and lifted the sheet of vellum stationery.
Dear Rue,
I’m told you might be a possible ally, the lone beacon of reason in a home run by a madman. Have you learned of his schemes? The unholy abominations he takes joy in creating? I would advise you to trust no one in the house. Not even yourself if you have been blinded by wealth and privilege. Those things will not save you.
I’ll contact you later.
Warmest regards,
“The Bastard”
P.S. I hope you like your gift. Wind her three times, no more no less.
Rue removed a small doll from the box, as tall as a fountain pen. Brown ponytail, white lace dress. Rue wound the key on the doll’s back, and it opened its eyes and sat up in Rue’s hand, its cheeks dimpled, its gray eyes bright as glass. Because they were glass.
“Hi, Rue!”
“Hi?”
“Where’s the floor? I want to go play.”
It had that sweet, plastic doll-smell, and its breath was warm on Rue’s cheek.
She stroked her finger over the humanlike hair and down the sunny face. “Even the skin feels real!”
“It’s not,” said the doll, almost defensively. “But I’m made of high quality material and manufactured right here in the US of A!”
Rue’s finger paused over the doll’s chest. “You have a heart!” Rue could feel the tick against her fingers. One of which the doll suddenly bit.
“Ow!”
“I want to go play! I WANT TO PLAY!”
“Sorry. Of course.” Rue set the doll on the floor and smiled as it gamboled about her black oxfords, skipping and singing to itself.
Before darting out of t
he room, quick as light.
Rue was still smiling. “What game is this? Hide and seek?”
She stepped out in time to see the doll pause before Westwood’s bedroom, way at the other end of the hall. That doll was speedy. And startled when Stanton stepped out of his father’s room, holding a jar of eyeballs.
The doll looked up. Way up. “You’re not John Westwood.”
Stanton stomped the doll flat, twisting his heel into the floor. He looked very like his father in that moment. He lifted his foot, eyeing the broken tangle of plastic and circuitry and little white stockings. Eyeing Rue. “Where did that come from?”
Rue held up the note that was still in her hand. “The Bastard.”
Stanton snatched the note, face blazing. She’d never seen him angry before.
“Where did you get this?”
“Outside my door.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I thought one of the servants left it.”
“Left it to do what? Why was it coming for Dad?”
Rue was silent, imagining possibilities, none of them peaceful. “I guess it was a trap.”
“And you didn’t know about it?”
“Of course not!”
“If you’re lying, I swear to God…”
She didn’t know how to combat Stanton’s suspicions, his sudden distrust, so Rue waited, let him work it out for himself.
Stanton kicked the doll parts, scattering them as though worried they might somehow reform.
“Be ready to go at noon tomorrow.”
“You’re throwing me out?”
“You don’t get off that easy. If you’re not for the Bastard, you’re for us. And if you’re for us, you’ll help us find another soul for Dad. A heartless soul. It doesn’t have to be Nettle,” he added quickly, “or anyone in your family, but it has to be someone.
“So get ready to choose.”
✽ ✽ ✽
The twins led Rue into the dark park, Sterling in front and Stanton behind. She the prisoner in the middle, marching to her doom.
“Why don’t you just admit it’s my soul you want? Give me that much credit.”
“We don’t want it,” Stanton said. “Dad does.”
Sterling hopped over a branch lying across the path. “But Stanton and I think this is a better alternative.”
“Did you tell Westwood about the Bastard’s doll?”
“No!” said the twins. “And don’t you tell. Dad’s already paranoid. We can’t have him thinking you’re a spy.”
Stanton said, “We weren’t going to involve you in any of this, but it’s a good test, just in case you are a spy; and if we capture a heartless, Nettle gets to stay with us.”
Rue froze. “Really?”
“It’s a fair trade.” Stanton had been leery of her since the doll incident, but now he touched her shoulder. Then pushed it, to get her moving again. “Everyone gets something. As long as you’re ready to choose.”
“I’ve thought about it. I told you about my mother’s father, how his soul took over after his mate died, and he ended up rejoined with children he had no memory of because he stayed in the, uh, antrum too long. He ended up leaving us to live on his own in exile. I choose him. What I don’t get is, why does the soul have to be heartless? What is Westwood so curious about? I could just give him a piece of mine the way you do. I’m not scared of the bone machine.”
“Dad doesn’t want a piece,” said Stanton. “He wants it all. And we don’t want to risk you that way. Take us to your grandfather.”
“His name is Thyme. He stopped being my grandfather the day he left.”
“The way you stopped being your parents’ daughter the day you left?”
Rue didn’t answer Sterling’s tacky question, only led them deeper into the forest. To the deepest part where the paths sometimes changed their minds beneath the feet of unsuspecting travelers. Sterling collected specimens here or there, anything he thought unusual or pretty, often veering off the path.
“Mind the groundhog dens,” Rue warned. “They’ve developed quite a taste for human flesh.”
Sterling hopped back onto the path. “Glad Stanton blackmailed you into coming.”
“It wasn’t blackmail.”
“Why’re you defending him? He gets to act like a dick, but not me?”
“There’s a difference between acting like a dick and embodying its very essence.”
Stanton said, “Did any of the staff ever talk to you about the Bastard?” Still suspicious.
“No.”
“Because there probably is a spy in the house. It’s just the sort of thing the Bastard would do. That doll was actually the world’s cutest dirty bomb. Dad would have been killed. That’s how the Bastard is, you know? He’ll say anything to get what he wants. Do anything.”
“That’s so gothic.”
“More like medieval when we find out who left that doll at your door.”
“Maybe there is no spy. Maybe the Bastard snuck in himself. Or even—”
Rue tripped over a corpse. A corpse with its ribcage visible, broken open. A corpse with no heart.
“Thyme did this.”
Sterling helped her rise. “How do you know?”
“Because it’s so sloppy and disrespectful. This is what you become when you’ve been away from people a long time; you stop following the rules of basic civilization.” She dragged the corpse into the bushes, out of sight, near a spot where the groundhogs could get to him and pick his bones clean. “Thyme’s nearby. I smell him.”
“I see him,” said Stanton.
Rue and Sterling turned in his direction.
“Is that him,” said Sterling, squinting, “or is it a transy?”
Transients, newcomers to Portero who had no idea how to live in a town overrun with monsters, almost never stayed around very long, because they did foolish things like take walks in the dark park while wearing brightly-colored come-eat-me clothes. Much like the person staggering toward them.
But what looked like a red shirt at first glance was actually blood on a pale, haggard body. Thyme’s body.
“Rue?”
She waited as he ventured closer, unsure what to say to him, this man who had sired her mother, but was nothing to Rue. A stranger. That had been decided a long time ago.
Though Thyme seemed to have forgotten. “Well look at you! All grown up. And you smell so wrong. Very wrong.”
Talking to her aloud. Like she was a human. Words instead of his eyes, which were colorless, dead to her.
She was dead to him.
“You smell like humans. These humans. Hi, humans!”
The twins waved, awkwardly.
Thyme licked blood off his fingers. “There’s so much tastiness this season. Such abundance.”
Rue’s stomach rumbled.
“But it smells very family, and it’s affecting my appetite.”
“I keep thinking I smell Nettle,” Rue admitted. “Like she’s close, but it’s coming from everywhere.”
“Senses go awry in the dark park. I can smell my own corpse. I can see it too, lying over there.”
“Is he drunk?” Sterling whispered as Thyme stared blankly into the distance.
“Not the way you mean. It just feels…you get…emotional.” Rue felt like Nettle struggling with English, but there were no English words for that feeling of not only shoving a heart into your chest, but of life itself—it left you giddy. Vulnerable. “Heart drunk. Fresh hearts are intoxicating.”
“It won’t last,” Thyme said, startling them. “Nothing does.”
He joined them on the path. Rue hadn’t noticed because of the blood, but Thyme’s slit was splayed open. Exposing him to danger. The antrum within as cold as his eyes. Gray as a stone and just as lifeless.
She averted her eyes, deeply embarrassed.
“The heart I took before this one only lasted two days. But I lost that one while I was searching along the paths for food and had to get this one. Some
times my soul rejects my hearts for no reason.”
“Because he’s tired. Are you tired, Thyme?” It was the only thing that made sense. Disrespecting corpses was one thing, but exposing himself? Heartless didn’t do that.
“Very tired. You shouldn’t be here, even with all the yummy food.”
“I know.” Before Rue could speak again, Stanton stabbed a hypodermic needle into Thyme’s antrum.
It was painful to watch his collapse, the boneless, lifeless quality of his descent.
“He’s dead,” Rue said.
“This was to knock him unconscious,” Stanton explained. “To get him back to the lab with no trouble.” And then to his brother, “He’s not too big. We can take turns carrying him.”
“To the lab,” Rue repeated. “Where you will, eventually, kill him.”
“Dad,” Sterling said, “not us. We only—”
A sharp yelp silenced them. They looked up, toward the sound, and Sterling was knocked to the ground, as a girl landed heavily on him.
Nettle had cut her hair since Rue had seen her last. Because Nettle was joined now and had no need for enticements like long hair. What remained puffed and swirled about her face, dark and mischievous. But Nettle’s eyes weren’t as playful as her hair. A worried blue rimmed her irises.
I knew I smelled you. But in a weird place! An animal den, so I crawled inside thinking you were hiding, even though I told you to wait for my text, and then I fell. And here I am. Stupid doors. I hate doors.
As she was speaking, Stanton hurried off as fast as he could down the path, Thyme a heavy weight over his shoulder. Rue was sure she could keep Nettle distracted enough not to turn around.
Rue said, It led you to me. How is that stupid? And why didn’t you text? I’ve been waiting.
We’ve only just gone hunting today. All of the family. And Dodder’s family. I guess just one family now. Dodder doesn’t want me to have a phone anymore, so I had to wait to ask Heath to do it.
Tell Dodder to mind his own damn business.
You shouldn’t be here, Rue. I told you. What if someone smells you like I did?
I can take care of myself. I have to; I’m not the one with the huge extendo-family.