by Kim Smejkal
In truth, she was nothing more than a thief. She’d stolen the ink from the afterlife and had manipulated with it for a thousand years.
Halcyon, too, could craft illusions that defied all logic, but he was content in his little purple bubble of Wisteria because he’d somehow gained unrestricted access to the afterlife as well. He passed between worlds no one should traverse.
Diavala and Halcyon had both played a game of false gods with their stolen goods.
And all of it came from something that didn’t belong here.
The souls Celia had encountered—Terrin and her shredded body, the mistico with their slashed throats—all of them had wanted the ink. They fought for it, were miserable without it. Terrin had made it sound like the ink would have given her the heaven she deserved, that without it, they were all in hell.
They knew the ink was missing, and they knew who had stolen it.
Celia eyes snapped open.
She’d been so set on blaming Diavala, but Halcyon was the only thief they’d accused. Though they’d all been put there through Diavala’s actions, they hadn’t said anything about her. She wasn’t the one who had stolen the ink. And if Diavala had possessed the ink for a thousand years, but hadn’t stolen it from the afterlife, where had she gotten it?
Not from where, Anya said. From who?
But that would make Halcyon older than Profeta. Older than Diavala herself. Could there be room in the world for two immortal devils?
He uses the ink on the living side to be a beloved ruler, Anya said, But there, he’s the enemy.
The afterlife was a wasteland because of Halcyon.
He was the reason Anya was condemned to an eternity, without the angels she deserved, and why Griffin was so afraid of death.
Celia’s breathing, finally under control, began speeding up again. She was steps away from peeking behind a curtain that shouldn’t exist. It led to a backstage no one should ever see.
And she’d promised to serve the soul who’d stolen from one side to feed the other.
It was all clear to Celia now. Whether serving one devil or another, Diavala or Halcyon, she needed to stop depending on any semblance of truth or purity. Everyone was crooked, and she needed to match them breath for breath.
She put her face in her hands again, tears threatening to spill.
Lies everywhere. Always. Her entire life had been made of a revolving door of people with their own agendas, using her to get what they wanted, big or small. She was a means to an end, a tool to wield. As her breathing settled down from the fright, her body flushed red with rage.
She was tired of being used.
She wouldn’t be used anymore.
“Celia?” Lyric turned the corner and raced over, trying to haul her to her feet. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“You,” Celia said, yanking her arm away. She sprang up and pressed her back against the door to the workroom, digging her fingertips into the doorframe. Why had Lyric wanted her to go through the door? What sadistic pleasure would that have given them?
Lyric frowned, took a few steps toward her, and then . . .
Bent forward and sniffed Celia’s shoulder.
“Hey!” Celia shrieked. “Dia, what is wrong with you?”
Their gray eyes darted up. “You smell like him, right after he comes back. Like ash or dust.” They swore under their breath, and this time when they grabbed Celia’s arm, they pinched hard enough that Celia couldn’t wrench free.
Lyric hauled Celia to a room she’d never seen, shoved her in, and closed the door behind them, telling Xinto to keep watch in the hallway.
As if she’d stepped outside and into a forest, Celia was surrounded by trees, shrubs . . . and birds. So many of them, the room was full of discordant songs—trills, chirps, and cries—and more color—reds, purples, blues, yellows—than could be found in Seer Ostra’s bursting wardrobe.
Celia almost laughed. “This pretty room won’t erase the one just down the hall. I barely escaped with my skin still attached.” Her imagination, inconvenient as always, played it out for her: ripping, peeling, dead fingers raking across her body, scraping away her skin and flesh until the ink inside her was exposed and the dead souls could feed . . .
She put her hands to her eyes, trying to stop the images. If Anya had been there, would she be one of the hungry masses tearing Celia apart?
The idea of being ripped apart for her ink was terrifying, but she couldn’t help but think it was the punishment she deserved. If it would make Anya content in that terrible place, if giving her the ink she needed would make it bearable, maybe that was exactly what Celia needed to do . . . At least a decision would be made for her. All her questions, her wanting, her regrets, they would be out of her hands. Opening the door again and getting swept up by fate appealed to the part of her that was tired of fighting.
It was so exhausting, to survive all the time.
If she were ripped apart, all this would be over. There would be no Celia left for anyone to lie to.
Lyric rounded on her, snapping her out of her daydreams. “I never for a moment thought you’d go in. Not without protection. That amulet around Halcyon’s neck is the only thing that keeps him from being devoured, and last I checked, you don’t have one. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Why wouldn’t you think I’d go in?” Celia shouted, close to laughing. “You all but told me to! I had no idea about the pendant!” The matching swirls on Halcyon’s chest of ink and his pendant made more sense now: both were tied to the afterlife.
“This is one of the most private places in Wisteria,” Lyric said through their teeth, “but not if you keep shrieking.”
Shut up, Celia Sand. Shut up before this is all over for both of us.
Celia pressed her back against the rough bark of a gnarled oak tree, settling in, trying to hold her temper in check. Above her, a messy nest of fledgling ravens peered at her curiously, the rest of their family scattered on branches, sending up the occasional caw. A black feather fluttered down gently.
Zuni would have loved everything about that room. She would have collected as many feathers as she could, patiently waiting until they floated into her palm.
And that one thought made Celia square her stance. “What I saw there . . .”
“Look,” Lyric said. They stepped forward as a starling alighted on their shoulder and began nibbling at their ear. With exaggerated calm, their hands casually trailed a gentle path over the soft leaves of a shrub alive with birds. They stilled, allowing a small, unexceptional wren to peck at their fingertips and hop onto their hand for a closer inspection. It sang happily, as if calling its friends. Lyric was turned toward the bird, the bush, but they watched Celia carefully. “I know this is a lot to take in. I didn’t want to distract you before you met your end of the bargain with him—”
“So you wanted to ease me into it with riddles?” Celia said, interrupting. “Lie to the inkling until she has no choice, is that it? Hint about the door, pretend to be her friend. Don’t tell me you stayed quiet for my benefit, Lyric. You’ve always been open about looking out for yourself.”
A defiant chin tilt. “You’re right, I do look out for myself. The only reason I’m tangling myself up with you at all is because you’re the first one who’s come along who I think can help me.”
Celia barked out a laugh, startling the starling on Lyric’s shoulder. “What could I possibly do for you?”
“You’re more naturally talented with the ink than even Halcyon,” Lyric said. “I’ve been trapped here my whole life, and I want out.”
That sounded so familiar, but where Celia’s imprisonment was on Diavala’s hands, full of water torture, daggers, and screams, Lyric’s was at Halcyon’s hands, full of wisteria flowers, happy people, and sunshine.
Celia snorted, fighting the surge of resentment. “You know what, Lyric? I’m not really in the mood for this. If you want anything from me, you’re going to have to stop with the bullshit. Fully and
completely and without convenient gaps. And whatever you tell me, know I probably won’t believe you.”
“Damn, but you’ve gotten under my skin,” Lyric said with appreciation. They smirked, but it was an expression without humor. “My entire life has been serving him, running errands, spying, which would have been bad enough, but I have something even worse waiting for me.” They paused to collect themselves, their teeth rattling, as if this was the first time they’d dared speak against him and they were preparing to face their biggest nightmare of all. Too bad Celia’s sympathy had disappeared in a depressing fog of dead people. “Halcyon’s a fan of apprentices, so when Rian dies, I’ll take over her position. He likes having his lines nice and straight.”
Celia gritted her teeth. Lyric’s problem wasn’t even a problem.
“Rian isn’t a healer,” Lyric said. “Halcyon calls her that only because she takes care of the illness and ugliness of life so he doesn’t have to look at it. She’s very much the opposite of healer; she’s the culler, the butcher, the disappearer. He makes poison, and she administers it.”
Lyric paused. Swallowed. The look on their face was pure shock, as if they’d never believed they would say these words aloud. “I nicknamed her the Spectator when I was little. Because all she does is watch, and poison, and watch some more. Always on the lookout to complete Halcyon’s bidding, whatever it is. Completely detached. Like a shadow on the wall.”
“A killer is a hard person to have sympathy for,” Celia said. The way Lyric described Rian now felt exactly like the mistico: aligning with a warped sense of duty rather than individual conscience.
Celia didn’t doubt for a minute that in this, Lyric was telling the truth. When they’d first arrived, Garuld and Rosetta had debated whether to send them to the inn or to Rian’s; they must have been weighing whether the newcomers could stay or had to be disposed of.
“You can’t walk away from Wisteria,” Lyric said. “Neither can I.”
Some of Halcyon’s first words to her—It’s not a courtesy I offer just anyone, to be able to simply walk away—had never been far from Celia’s mind, but with Lyric’s blunt sentence, other hints screamed into focus. Her mind bees—who’d so far spent their time flying in a tangle and had been easy to ignore—had now become more organized. They stood in a soldier’s row in her head, at attention, each one in charge of a particular oddity.
The first bee reminded her that visitors didn’t come to Wisteria, and if they did, they didn’t stay long. Despite its access to this beautiful lake country, despite the fact that it was a gorgeous destination for the Illinian rich to vacation in the sun. No one Celia had talked to could name someone who’d been born outside of the town.
The second bee saluted and mentioned the sharp, stabby feeling Celia and Griffin both had when they’d first come. How frightened she’d been of the wisteria bunch they’d plucked from the vine.
The third ticked off some boxes about Halcyon himself: his obsession with his dead lover; the absolute loyalty everyone showed him, to the point of hiding their children; the way he disguised his face from even his own people and talked about them as if they were a gaggle of Kids rather than freethinking adults.
Few came to Wisteria, and no one simply walked away. Halcyon curated this town and its secrets like a museum.
Meeting Celia’s eyes, Lyric crossed their arms and squared their stance. “You’re right, Rian’s a hard person to have sympathy for, unless you understand that she’s spent years living with someone who can make nightmares come true.”
Celia laughed. “You’re simultaneously telling me that Griffin has been at her mercy for days and that I should feel sorry for her? Bold of you, Lyric. Bold as hell.”
One of the ravens fluttered to a lower branch, staring at Celia with an inquisitive head tilt. Then it cawed and fluttered back up toward the high branches, making her notice that all the birds in the room had stopped their fluttering in order to stare at her. Dozens of sets of eyes and beaks pointed her way. The starling she’d scared off of Lyric’s shoulder was downright glaring.
Celia met Lyric’s worn, weary eyes. “Stop making the birds do that!”
“They’re reacting to you,” Lyric said with an impatient huff. They turned to the quivering, glaring starling and held their finger out, trying to coax it back to them. “They’re ink, and you command it. You tell them to piss off.”
The birds behind her had erupted into a flurry of wings and screeches, mostly drowning out Lyric’s words.
“You’ve had a knife to your throat since you came,” they said bluntly. “Griffin’s life has been leverage, in case you refused to cooperate. All Rian’s been waiting for is the order, and she’ll pour him the tea that will send him to the other side for good.”
Celia couldn’t stop laughing, the birds around them making a discordant symphony. Lies, lies everywhere, but it was refreshing to hear the sharp truth: Celia was alone there. She’d come for help but had stepped into a hornet’s nest.
Lyric hesitated only a moment before adding, “Rian also has a slight soul confined at her place—freckled, frowny, with a bag of skulls. A second knife to your throat that you don’t even know about, in case one wasn’t enough.”
Zuni.
Celia’s laughter stopped abruptly, and the birds quieted. Stray feathers floated around, and in another life, Celia would have grabbed at them. She would have tucked them into her pocket like the treasures they were and saved them for Zuni.
Zuni, who worked in the crypts at the temple, who rarely saw the sun and never saw birds. Zuni, who’s wings had been clipped when she was old enough to remember freedom but too young to appreciate it.
Zuni, who’d left the temple weeks ago and had, apparently, made it to Wisteria just in time to land in a new prison. Dante hadn’t said anything about Zuni’s destination. Maybe he hadn’t known she’d gone looking for Celia.
Lyric jumped forward and grabbed Celia’s arm, but when Celia tried to yank it away, Lyric held on tight. Their eyes blazed, and for the first time, it didn’t look like anger. It was desperation: toxic and full-bellied. “You need to concentrate on only one thing right now: your end of the bargain. That’s it. That’s all. You know how to act, so do it. Pretend everything’s going according to plan. Pretend you’re still on his side completely. When he trusts you, he’ll leave, and you’ll have free run of this place.”
Lyric’s eyes begged Celia to listen. Their grip tightened. “Don’t ruin what you have here by being rash. All he wants is a puppet for when he looks for Martina in the afterlife, so for now, just continue being a puppet, Celia. It’s the only way any of us can get out of this.”
Celia managed to yank her arm away and made for the door. “Stay far away from me, Lyric.”
The birds erupted in a cacophony of shrieks and caws, tossing the branches around in the wind they produced with their frantic wingbeats. When Celia opened the door, Xinto joined the fracas, thinking it was a game.
“Disguise your smell, Celia!” Lyric called after her. “Unless you and your friends want to join the souls on the other side of the door, he can’t know that you went in.”
Celia gritted her teeth. Smell would be her undoing in this place, whether it was because she couldn’t mimic it properly or because she smelled like hell itself. Just as she’d done with the stew, she covered the offending smell by layering over the scent of the first herb she saw in his garden: rosemary.
She raced toward the main square, disheveled and full of fire, making people stop and stare. With her quill clutched in a tight fist, she jabbed into her skin, sending fireworks up over her head, bursting in a million bright colors but all melting to black and red. She added a gargoyle to the peak of each roof: ugly, misshapen things, twisted up, clawed, and snarling. The clouds above her turned gray and angry, the wind kicked up. She moved the quill along her arm in nonsense strokes, activating the ink to listen to her inner thoughts and become real.
All the time she and Anya had covert
ly messaged each other, they hadn’t had to worry about images or words: the ink responded to what they wanted, not what they drew.
Even their devil and angel act with the Rabble Mob, where Anya had walked through the crowd under scrutiny and inked commands to Celia, who’d been trapped under a bell jar, hadn’t been a measure of their artistic skill. Anya hadn’t been overly clever with her images.
Even that, in the end, had been a lie.
The ink always listened to intent. It had heard what Anya wanted to draw and had made it real.
And just then Celia’s intent was a jumbled mix of ugly and beautiful, of chaos and order.
Her footsteps boomed on the cobblestones, the same echoey sound as that of a mistico hunting her down in the bowels of the temple.
She created a sloth, born from the image she’d once seen in one of Lupita’s books, and had it hang from a window upside down, smiling at her lazily as she ran past.
The fireworks rained down in sparkles of red and black, coating the streets in colorful dust.
Celia could undo it all, and would, but for the time being, she needed to let her insides out or risk exploding.
Being a puppet is something I’ve always been good at! She screamed it in her head, shouting her mind bees down until they settled enough to stop shrieking.
Celia forced herself to slow to a jog, and with a thought, she undid all her beautiful chaos, restoring the serenity of Wisteria all at once.
No one had borne witness to her tantrum; she’d done it all behind a false curtain, shielding it from outside eyes. She knew how to hide illusions too.
So easy.
Everything with the ink was so simple for her.
And that’s when she knew she could mimic scent. She had only to believe she could do it, and the ink would acquiesce.
“Beautiful day!” Celia said, tipping her hat to Garuld as she loped past where he sat on his front stoop. The sun was too high in the sky; she’d been behind that door only a few moments, talking to Lyric a few more, yet hours had passed. It should have still been early morning, but Garuld himself was a late riser; she’d never seen him out and about until well past noon.