Bleeding Out (15 page)

We purr only in private, not for just anyone. Heavy petting doesn’t always work. Like cats, we sometimes need to be handled delicately. The hand must hover an inch above us, until we feel its warm currents and have to lean in. Bodies will turn toward each other in sleep. Men have been known to embrace this way quite by accident. Both Lucian’s purr and Derrick’s snore make me feel better about all things. I listen and close my eyes. World mending. To go back and hear that sound again. To return to my beloved crystal state. All mourning is a mourning for time travel.

The world hurts you. I realized this early. It hurts you because it can.

We hang over tenement buildings like strange clotheslines, our hearts about to drop—someone must catch them before they sing too far out.

Lucian, shadow, I look for you. In the discreet rustle of paws, the sighing of homeless cats as they burrow into stinking piles of cardboard, and the princely ones staring out from waterfront windows, peculiar in their sadness. Lucian, you aren’t, you aren’t, just null, no code, parentheses closing over. But are you safe? Are you somewhere guarded? Are you eating enough?

I look for you. In the graveyard where the white trains sleep like albino pups. In the puddles with their chorus of worms. In the drinking roots of the high black buildings, their windowed mouths closed to human plea, measuring starburn in cupfuls of lapidary. I look for you, in the words that our old Persian stepped over, the white square of page that her shadow fell across like an amethyst quill, shim shivering and brave enough, even if I barely noticed. Along untranslatable alleys, Dumpsters that hold sleeping roos in their pouch, kanga-like, long snakes of power line that fall across grooved footprints of space, I look for you.

Lucian. Through the cellar door, in rime and brine
,
I look, down all of the epic ways through which objects escape. I redact our papers and take out every name. I cut them out and hold them
,
brave little lines on foolscap. Lucian. Know this, at least. How carefully I peer. How long into the night’s last watch I search for you. Count my mistakes as they wander by. Allow them their ministry. They care about you largely, about us. They like the feeling of doing what they have to do. As inevitabilities go, they’re my personal best.

You’ve no idea—slipping away beneath the weight of our stupid, tired days—that I am saved by you, excavated. Take my hand knowing that I’m a beautiful mess. On my watch, some harm will come to you. Some doubt. Some pointless pain. But at least I carry a knife at all times. If I can walk once more with you through a painting and into the city of the dead, I promise to eat everything there, the fruit spread with its square black watermelons, the cold-cut trays, the scalloped potatoes, the glowworms, everything, even the air, even the verb. My body is all staircases, but it’s yours.

I push open the doors and walk to Yaletown. The patios are alive. Everyone drinks Technicolor cocktails. This whole area used to be filled with dock equipment and factories, and now all that gets made here are people’s reputations. Little dogs wait patiently, tethered to wicker chairs. The smell of global cuisine leaves me craving something bland, like dry toast or oatmeal. I may just have both before bed.

I ring Lucian’s bell. One night, I know, he’s not going to answer. I’ll show up and there won’t even be a note, just bare concrete floors. Like death itself, necromancers know when it’s time to move. At any moment, he could step sideways into a painting and vanish forever. But tonight, he answers the door. He’s wearing a housecoat and slippers. He smiles broadly when he sees me. I kiss him. I put everything that I have into it. When I pull away, he looks surprised, but happy.

“Can I come in?” I ask.

“After that entrance? How could I say no?”

“I need your help. And I need a drink.”

“There’s beer in the fridge, and I can warm you up some leftovers. How do you feel about Sky Dragon?”

“I love it.”

“Then come in.”

We talk until we’re delirious, until dawn bakes the
windows. I tell him about the vampire who turned to water in my hands, about the Pharmakon—sorry, Modred—about my trip to the CORE reference library, which resulted in nada. We move in little pilgrimages, from the couch to the bed to the floor. We drink gin and devour salt-and-vinegar chips. He talks about Madrid before the dictatorship, about the Retiro pierced by sunlight and his wonder at seeing traffic lights for the first time, how he would watch them in silent awe. He tells me that when his
abuela
first saw the army of cars circling the Plaza de Cibeles, she couldn’t believe that each of them belonged to a single person. I tell him about my
only friend when I was a girl, Eve, whose house burned down around me.

We lie propped on pillows, seminude and covered in chip detritus. We’ve switched from gin to ginger ale. I burn off my hangover using thermal materia, which I don’t recommend unless you know what you’re doing. Lucian makes a pearl of black flame in his hand. It’s cold to the touch. I translate the monologue of the concrete floor, which mostly involves complaints about our shoes. He promises to go barefoot more often, which I think is sensible.

“So you’ve completely forgotten how to write in smoke,” he says.

“I guess the knowledge is there somewhere. Derrick pulled it out of my mind, after all. But I can’t touch it anymore. It was only visible for a second.”

“Don’t be too hard on him.”

“Geez, that’s what Duessa said. Why is everyone rushing to defend the telepath who broke into my head?”

“Because he probably had no choice.”

“Look—” I shift position on the pillows. “I realize that I can be a monster sometimes. I’m not always the sunniest person to be around. But I would never invade the mind of my best friend.”

“Right. And you’ve never used materia on any of us.”

“Define using it
on
you.”

“To protect us from an attack.”

“That’s completely different.”

“Is it? Derrick and Selena were trying to help you by figuring out what your connection is to the Seneschal. And if they can learn something about his killer, isn’t that worth prowling through your memories?”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

Lucian crawls over to where I’m sitting. He puts his head in my lap. It’s impossible to resent him from this angle. I touch his hair. It’s soft, like how I imagine a black swan’s underbelly would feel.

“You have to forgive people,” he says. “They often do stupid things when they think it serves a purpose. They trespass. They’re careless with the breakable parts of you. But they mean well.”

“People usually shine when given the opportunity,” I murmur. “That’s something that Derrick said once.”

“See? Gay Yoda is wise.”

I snort. “I’m absolutely telling him you said that.”

“By all means.”

“Lucian?”

“¿Sí, corazón?”

“Tell me about your brother.”

He’s silent for a beat. Then he puts his hand on my bare ankle. His thumb describes slow revolutions, as if etching something. “My brother is tricky.”

“Okay. I can appreciate tricky.”

He sighs. “We were always together. My hand was always in his. One day we went to Casa de Campo. This was before you could ride the
teleférico
across the river.
We were hiding from each other. Lorenzo hid so well that I couldn’t find him. We were separated. I was so young. I remember that the trees seemed like giants. I remember how hot the sun was. I felt feverish. I saw something, like a shadow, or smoke. Black and violet. A bee stung my neck, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, I could hear my mother calling my name. She held me so tight. Lorenzo was crying. He kept saying how sorry he was. I told him that nothing happened. A bee stung me, and that was all.”

I touch the lily tattoo. “It was the Iblis.”

“I guess it was. I don’t know what it did, exactly. But I realized that only Lorenzo could see the mark. He was scared of it. After that day, I heard shadows. I saw phasmas and pieces of lost people. And when our parents took us to the Museo del Prado, some of the paintings spoke to me. I saw past their oils and tinctures. I saw a city where death was king. Trinovantum.”

“You must have been scared.”

“Not at all. It was like seeing a beautiful animal. I was too young to realize that it had teeth. I wanted to touch it.”

“How old were you when you first visited the city?”

“Seven, I think. At least, that’s the first time I remember. I fell through a portrait of an infanta. I was staring at her dress. It was so big, it looked like she was carrying an enormous shell. My neck started to itch. Then I was in the gardens of Trinovantum, surrounded by night birds and cats. The House of Lilies took me in. They became my second family.”

He gets up and goes to make coffee. I don’t know if it’s a feint, or if he’s just caffeine deprived, but I approve of the gesture. Derrick convinced him to buy an espresso machine last year. It’s candy red and perches like a bird-of-paradise on his granite countertop. He makes us both strong
café con leche
. Then he sits back down on our makeshift divan of pillows.

He stares into his cup. “I was always telling Lorenzo stories. How Lord Nightingale taught me to speak glowworm. How I fed crab apples to nightmares and ducked beneath the questing legs of spider demons.
Take me with you,
he’d say. But I knew it would be too dangerous. Then one day, when we were both teenagers, Lorenzo got into a fight with Papa.
I’m running away,
he said. I was scared for him. I didn’t want to lose him to some American city. So—” His voice trembles slightly. “So I showed him the way.”

He starts to cry softly. I’ve never heard him cry before. “I told him—
don’t eat anything
. I told him again and again. But he wouldn’t listen. I turned around for one second, and there he was, biting into a fig.
It’s so good,
he said.
It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted
. And then—his whole face changed. I grabbed his hand, but it was already cold. He felt it. He knew. He could never leave.”

I hold him until he stops shaking. I kiss him.
“Cariño,”
I whisper, “it wasn’t your fault. You can’t stop curiosity.”

“I should never have shown him the way.”

“You were both young. You would have told him sooner or later. You can’t hide anything from family.”

“I should have tried harder.” He’s regained his composure. He’s no longer naked to grief. But I still hold him.

“Does this mean,” I ask, “that Lorenzo is alive?”

“I know I said he was dead. But he is. He died that day. I had to tell my parents—” He shakes his head. “I lied to my mother. I told her that Lorenzo ran away. I forged postcards from European cities. But it was useless. All of the light went out of their lives when he disappeared.”

“Is he still in Trinovantum?”

“He can’t pass over like I can. I mean, it’s possible, but he’s like a ghost. I hardly ever see him. I don’t think he ever forgave me for what I did. He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“He was the one who ate the fruit. You did nothing wrong.”

“I should never have shown him the way,” he repeats.

I think about the message that I saw on his phone. I almost say something, but after all that he’s just told me, it seems cruel to press. Maybe ghosts can send text messages. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of.

“Does he, like—” I make a pointless gesture. “Does he have an address? Are there addresses in Trinovantum?”

“He wanders,” Lucian says. “Sometimes Lord Nightingale would see him, and he’d let me know. But now she’s gone, and I doubt that Lorenzo cares enough to check in with Deonara Velasco. The city is in shambles. They’re trying to pull me back, to give me some new title
with new responsibility, but there’s nothing in that place for me anymore. My life is here. With you.”

I kiss him. “I’m happy to hear that. But I’m not sure it’s that easy to forget the place where you grew up.”

“I grew up in Toronto.”

“The place where you really grew up.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“I think I have to go there.”

He stares at me. “Have you not heard anything that I’ve just said?”

“Of course. I’m glad that you’re telling me this finally. And I understand that Trinovantum is a scary place. But whoever killed Lord Nightingale—Theresa—is probably the same person who killed the Seneschal. In a situation like this, the CORE doesn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. They aren’t going to go knocking on doors in the city of necromancers.”

“And you don’t work for them anymore.”

“I still work for them. I’m just on vacation.”

“Tess.”

I take his hand. “I need you to come with me to visit this person that Duessa calls the cook. I have a feeling that these killings have something to do with Pharmakon. Isn’t it always about drugs and money?”

“In your line of work, it’s more often about souls.”

“Souls are just another form of currency, and I don’t say this to many people, but mine belongs to you. I’m
making a deposit. One soul. Please keep it safe, because it’s all I’ve got.”

He touches my face. “You’re trying to seduce me with metaphors, and it’s working like gangbusters.”

“Come with me,” I say. “If this thing is killing necromancers, then you’re involved whether you like it or not. Come be my muscle and my conscience. Then take me to Trinovantum. I need to talk to the new Lord Nightingale.”

“It’s a terrible idea.”

“I know. But some small part of you agrees with me.”

“I’m so bad at saying no to you.”

“I realize that. And I appreciate it.”

“Selena’s going to—”

“Kick my ass, yell at me, call me a child, and threaten to cancel my pension. The usual dance. That’s just how we talk.”

“And Derrick?”

“What about Derrick?”

He stares at me levelly.

“Fine. I’ll talk to him.”

“Today. Promise.”

“I promise to make up with Derrick.”

“Because he loves you beyond all reason. As do I.”