Bleeding Out (12 page)

“Search for Tessa Isobel Corday.”

“There are three documents and one video.”

“Let me see the video.”

An image of my thirteen-year-old self appears. Meredith Silver is inducting me into the CORE. She asks me to raise my hand and repeat after her.

“In the name of every power and potentate,” I say (through my braces), “I swear to uphold order and defy disintegration. I will keep positive relations with the materia of this world, and never enlist it for selfish means. I will never harm a normate, nor reveal myself or my occupation to their community. I will use my abilities to protect life, ease suffering, and seek justice for immortals who can no longer speak for themselves. This I swear, before every power and potentate, until the darkening of the ways.”

Meredith takes my hand. “Very good. Now you are one of us, and this is a bond that cannot be broken, not even by death.”

But it is breaking, Meredith. It’s breaking every day, and I can’t stop it, because I don’t know what magic is anymore. I have to wander around a dream-fair, asking everyone I love, and their answers are weird and fucked and unsatisfying. You knew, Meredith. You gave me your athame, silver like your hair and sharp like your tongue. You always knew what you were doing, but I don’t. What
world is this, where a vampire can break your neck right in front of me? What world is this, where a girl like Mia is orphaned because she happened to be born like me, raw and vulnerable to those horrifying powers and potentates? To whom did I swear? What do they look like and where do they live? I know nothing about them, save for their genius, their hunger, and their remoteness, like infernal quasars. At least the Ferid reveal themselves to their servants. I don’t know who I was indentured to. I don’t know who or what reached an opaque hand across space, saying:
Awake, little girl, and be ours
.

“Would you like to search for something else?”

I stare at the black screen. “No,” I say. “I’m tired, and I have an interrogation to get to. Thanks, though.”

The computer turns itself off. I leave room eighty-three and head back to the elevator. There aren’t enough search terms in the world to understand the CORE, and I don’t have time to keep trying. I should have figured that out ages ago.

“State your name for the record.”

“Tessa Isobel Corday. Can I have a cigarette?”

“No.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“There’s no smoking in the interrogation room. Just try to answer the questions as best you can. This shouldn’t take too long.”

“It would go a lot more smoothly if I had a cigarette.”

“Tess.”

“Fine. Sorry. I’m ready.”

Selena glances at a folder on the table. Like most CORE folders, its precise contents are a mystery, but I know they’re not good.

“When did you first encounter the avian demon known as the Seneschal? Describe the encounter.”

“Two years ago. Lady Duessa hinted that he might know something about a suit of armor that belonged to Luis Ordeño. I gave him a shirt with a bedazzled kitten on it, and he traded me some information.”

“Did you tell him anything about Ordeño’s murder?”

“No.”

“What did he tell you about the armor?”

“Nearly nothing that was comprehensible. But he did suggest that it had some connection to an old myth, about an alchemist and a Manticore. Which turned out to be true, if you remember.”

“Of course.” She looks again at the folder. “What about your second meeting? Walk me through it.”

“I asked him some questions about an Aikon, which belonged to Ru’s brother. At the time, we didn’t know what it was, but he explained to me that it was an organ.”

“Were you alone?”

“No. Mia was with me.”

Selena frowns. “You took a minor to see a bird demon?”

“He was harmless, and I was trying to get her away from the vampire community center. Nothing happened. He even gave her a teakettle.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. He gave her a brass teakettle as a present. It’s sitting on the mantel in my living room. A bit beat-up, but still pretty.”

“So—” She exhales. “You’re saying that you allowed a demon to give a potentially dangerous artifact to a minor in your care.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not dangerous at all. You could pick up the same thing at any souvenir shop in Gastown.”

“Was Mia Polanski with you the first time you visited the Seneschal?”

“No. Patrick came with me that time.”

“Right.” She scribbles something down, underlining it fiercely. “So you brought another one of your wards to visit. It sounds like you’ve been treating the Seneschal’s cave like a bed-and-breakfast.”

“They were fine. It was safer inside the cave than outside, in fact. It wasn’t until we left that we got attacked by an insane necromancer. That was the first time. The second time, nothing untoward happened. It’s not like I took them to Lees Trail. Both nights ended in soft-serve ice cream, not bloodshed.”

“Fine. So, you and the Seneschal never spoke about anything other than the cases that you were investigating.”

“No. He was a bird of few words.”

“You’re going to have to return that so-called kettle, you know.”

“But it was a gift!”

“We’ll have to analyze it.”

“You mean break it into pieces and immerse it in weird solutions. No way. It’s Mia’s. He gave it to her.”

“You’re being unreasonable.”

“What’s unreasonable is wasting money to probe a kettle.”

“Don’t worry about the money. Just bring it to the lab. Most of the Seneschal’s items were destroyed or damaged irreparably. What you call a kettle might be the only surviving artifact from his horde, and we need to have a look at it.”

“Fine. Mia’s going to freak, though. She loves polishing it.”

Selena leans forward and steeples her fingers. If she were a Great White, this would be the equivalent of charging. “All right. We’ve compared video of the Polybius letters to other exemplars that we have on file. The lab has no experts on smoke magic, unfortunately, but we were able to subject it to handwriting analysis.”

“And?”

“It’s your writing, Tess.”

I stare at her. “Get out of here.”

“The directionality of the letters, the loops, the hesitations—they all accord with exemplars we have of your writing. The only difference is that the composition is shakier. This could be because of the medium, or because the text was written when you were younger. It more closely resembles samples of your writing that we collected when you were first admitted to the CORE.”

“How many of these samples do you have?”

“How many forms have you filled out since you joined?”

I blink. “A lot.”

“Tess, I can’t think of a gentler way to say this. I don’t know how, or why, but at some point—maybe years ago—you wrote your name in smoke and left it in the Seneschal’s cave. The handwriting doesn’t lie.”

“I don’t know the first thing about smoke magic.”

“Maybe you did at one time.”

“Selena—”

The door opens, and Derrick walks in. He looks uncomfortable. I give him a small wave.

“I think we’re almost done,” I say. “Then we can go for coffee.”

“I—” Derrick swallows. “Tess, I’m not here to take you to lunch.”

There’s a catch in his voice. I look at him strangely. Then the reason for his presence hits me. I go cold. I turn to Selena.

“No way.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, “but it’s the most efficient method of interrogation available to us. At this point, we need all the answers we can get.”

“But why does it have to be Derrick?”

“I think you know why,” she murmurs.

And I do. Even as the question leaves my mouth, I know exactly why he’s been chosen for this job. I can’t lie to him. Of all the telepaths in the world, he’s the one most likely to carve through my defenses.

He sits down next to me. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

I can’t look at him. “Just do it,” I say. “Quickly.”

Derrick puts his hand on mine. At first, I feel nothing but a tingle in my scalp. Then I feel heavy. The room darkens. I try to pretend that I’m at the dentist, but it doesn’t work. He’s my best friend, my rock, my
person
, and now he’s sifting through my memories with draconian efficiency. I want to throw up. I close my eyes and let his power carry me forward, inch by inch, until the room is mostly gone, until my resistance melts and he can read me completely.

I see a little girl, about nine years old, sitting on a fur rug. Candles burn in stone alcoves, shedding multicolored wax. The Seneschal sits cross-legged on the floor next to her, preening his feathers.

“Again,” he says mildly.

The little girl reaches out with her index finger. A nimbus of smoke collects around her small hand. Slowly, carefully, as if writing on a lined page, she traces her last name in seething calligraphy.
Corday
. It hangs on the air.

“Well-done!” The Senescal reaches out and snatches the autograph. Then he places it in a jar and seals the lid. “Should keep. Names tend to.”

“Is it bad magic?” the girl asks.

He shakes his tail feathers. “Magic is not human. You, me, we can be good, can be bad, can be stupid—magic
is
. It reflects. Like fire, or cats, all depends on what direction you approach from.”

“I think I understand.”

“Sweet girl.” He touches her face lightly. “Go find your mother.”

The vision collapses. I’m back in the interrogation chamber. I’m sweating and pale. Derrick touches my hand. I recoil.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I say nothing.

“What did you see?” Selena asks.

I stand. “Let him tell you. I’m going.”

“Going where?”

“To find my mother.”

“Tess, we’ve been calling her for days. Nobody knows where she is.”

“It sounds like she’s got the right idea.”

“Tess—” Derrick tries to touch my shoulder.

I punch him.

It’s the first time I’ve ever hit Derrick. The first time I’ve ever wanted to. He staggers back, pressing a hand to his cheek, which is reddening. His eyes are shocked. He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.

“You should have said no,” I whisper. I’m so angry, I can barely get the words out. “You should have recused yourself, or said it was a conflict of interest. You should have found a way. But you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice, and you made yours.”

“It’s not that simple, Tess.”

“It was. But it’s not anymore.”

I walk out of the interrogation chamber. I manage to get to the elevator and wait for the doors to close. Then I lean against the metal wall and cry, not just for Derrick’s betrayal, or for Selena’s apathy, or even for my mother’s glorious deception. I cry, in the end, for the memory of a feather touching my cheek, and the tremulous voice of an old bird, assuring me that I am lovely and good.

I don’t know where I’m going, which is nothing
new. I let anger and momentum carry me down Burrard Street. I run into a protest, which has reached critical mass on the steps of the art gallery. People wearing Al-Awda T-shirts are yelling in a variety of languages about the Palestinian right of return. A girl raps in Arabic. Every tongue is charged with anger. I am an imbecile who knows nothing of this conflict, save for what I’ve read in
Drinking the Sea at Gaza
. I give myself up to the crowd. If I close my eyes, it’s like a west coast version of
Beautiful Losers
, with everyone lifting their feathers to reveal their politics. Oh, F. Where were you when I was growing up magical next to the ocean? Where were you when I was dumb and horny and cruising Derrida at house parties, trying to fit in with the UBC brats? F, you
delectable layabout, why did I never learn to be careless with my mustard or methodology?

Derrick’s interrogation has shaken loose memories, which cascade like cherry blossoms and sinister maple leaves. I give my body to the axis of evil, primeval, and penultimate evil. I give my body to Vulcan’s hammer; I bare my soft skin and my terrible curls to the witch hammer.
Folla, folla, fóllame Vulcan
, you bastard smith, you beautiful hunchback, you ancestor to Alexander Pope’s metrical bitchiness. Your body
Quasimodo
, a double-dog-dare knot, impeccably tied and removed from view like the cold vetiver breasts of the
enana
Mari Bárbola. She wanted nothing but a pile of snow to cavort in. I should really learn to stratify my desires in this way. I should donate my organs to magic so that I can finally look my driver’s license in the eye.

Derrick, what have you done? What have you uncovered? The curtains spread as the crowd pushes me toward the water. The only thing that bleeds worse than lost time is memory. I’m bleeding out. I’m a speck on a monstrous, flea-bitten narrative, an innocent shred of heme, a pink-eye rhyme. I exsanguinate, I dream, I make my way to the ocean with the rest of the bleeders. I understand for the first time that to recall is to be called violently when you’re in the middle of something, like masturbating or taking a bath. To recall is to leap out of the water, to drop your hands, to open the door naked, dripping, and say:
What the hell are you doing here, memory?

And memory breaks the chain on the door. Memory strides in, reeking of insult and ambergris. Memory sets fire to your afternoon. Bleeding out, burning, all you can do is ride the hyphen between now and then, a hyphen with no seat belts, no holy-shit handle, no brakes, a malicious wooden horse that drags you screaming through the ionosphere like Quijote on a bender.

My yellow bedroom. In photographs, the wallpaper has an unremarkable stencil but the carpet is steady-state and pleasant to the toes. I’ve arranged a scene in the royal chamber of Castle Grayskull. Evil-Lyn avoids the trapdoor and adjusts her headpiece. She and the sorceress have a colloquy. Drinks are served. My dresser always felt empty, but my bookshelf groaned. I would read anything. I would read for the sound it made. I would read under siege. I would read until I was dry. A numbered carpet and the press of others. We sing.