Velveteen (19 page)

They passed onto a covered balcony overlooking the Latin Quarter and the other districts beyond, a dark rooftop world. Street after street of slate-topped buildings stretched from the hill and into the horizon, and from as far to their right and left as could be fathomed. Chimneys puffed writhing arms of smoke into a night sky twinkling, like with diamonds in a coal vein.

A ratcheting clamor rose from beneath them. Nick leaned over the iron railing to find hundreds of boxy railcars, wooden and caged in filigreed iron, shuttling souls down parallel rails into the depths of the vast city.

“It goes on forever, you know?” It was Luisa, nestling up beside them. “It’s the biggest city ever. Bigger than New York, even.”

“Nah. It don’t go on forever. Nothin’ goes on forever.” Logan blinked. “Goes a long way, though.” He leaned in as if to impart a secret, and whispered, “I hear it wraps around the whole planet, if that’s even what this is.” He spoke as though this were some great mystery of purgatory.

“What do you mean?” Nick asked. “What is it if it isn’t a planet? If not Earth?”

“Don’t listen to him.” Velvet hoisted herself up onto the rail, giving Nick a little startle. He reached out to steady her, but she slapped his hands away. “Of course it’s a planet. It’s Earth. Just a different side of it, is all.”

She sat there a moment, head cocked at an angle, examining Nick’s face.

“Somethin’ wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing. Nothing is wrong. Everything’s just different.”

The boy nodded slowly, and Velvet hopped down from the rail. “We better get goin’.”

She strode back through the door of the landing.

“Yeah, ’cause Velvet will be tired and grumpy after what she’s got to do.” Logan whistled behind her.

“You mean grumpier than normal,” Luisa offered.

Her brother giggled. “Yeah. Right? Hard to believe it gets worse.” He grew silent, serious, as though about to impart some terrible secret. “But it does.”

Then he burst into laughter, Luisa chiming in with her own chorus of giggles.

“You guys are nuts.” Nick shook his head.

Velvet smiled, too, but a commotion mushrooming below stripped the smile from her lips. The crowd surged toward the giant iron doors, souls jumping up to see over the heads of the people ahead of them. A booming squelch blasted through the room as the filigree uncoiled and the doors opened, revealing a wide stone ramp. The whooshing sound of a thousand whispers filled the mammoth room and bounced from the walls, getting louder and louder as Velvet descended the wide stone steps.

“Oh, Lord,” she muttered, shaking off the sight with a cringing shudder. “We better get through there before—”

“Too late,” Logan groaned as the bottom of the stairs was blocked by a wall of spectators.

Nick stopped and leaned over the rail to get a better view. “What?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

Long wheeled racks sped from the opening, black garment bags flapping from their rails like oily tentacles, reducing the souls propelling them to shuffling, disembodied feet. Behind them gray footmen balanced teetering stacks of hatboxes on their heads like those African women on the National Geographic Channel. Another wave of workers, these dressed like Sherpas, in thick furry coats and hats pulled over their ears, heaved massive crates.

“Careful with those, Yang!” a woman’s voice boomed. “Those are the finest peep-toe boots from the 2009 Paris fall season! Do you know how many people I had to glamour to secure that shipment? Imbecile!”

A tall caricature of a woman swept from the opening. Everything about her face was pronounced. Her nose was as sharp as a shark fin, her eyes were narrow slits, and her mouth was huge and belting out orders as loud as a police bullhorn.

“Wang Xu-Wei! I’ll have you permanently lit up if I see even the tiniest frazzle on those hand-knit Givenchy capes. We didn’t raid that sample sale for nothing. Lit up, I tell you!”

The woman sliced through the crowd, almost literally. She wore a gown of concentric blue rings that sparkled on
the edges like the sharpened blades of butcher knives. Her hat stood nearly three feet above her head, wound with tulle and skulls, feathers, and possibly even live rats or something. It was hideous and probably expensive.

Velvet couldn’t stomach another moment of the spectacle. The Cellar called to her like the biggest plate of fettuccine Alfredo ever. She might actually have been salivating. She turned to her team and shouted over the ruckus, “I’ll meet you in the square! Fill Nick in on the rest!”

The twins tossed off some obligatory waves, but Nick just gaped after her, his expression quickly turning into the kind of frown you reserve for the departure of a loved one. It was at once confusing and sort of hot, and forced Velvet to stop dead. When he noticed her reaction, though, he shook his head, squinted, and went back to witnessing the madness of the parade.

What the hell?

Either the boy was on the top of his game at manipulating girls, or Velvet was losing her mind. She tried to shake off the weirdness and made a beeline for a gap between the Collectors’ parade and the bystanders shouting for cast-off garments. But just as she rounded a column, Isadora and Shandie planted themselves directly in her path like they
wanted
to be beaten.

“Oh, hi, Velv,” Isadora drawled. Shandie crinkled her fingers in a cutesy wave that made Velvet want to break off the hand and feed it to her. “And kudos … I guess.” Isadora rolled her eyes at her lackey.

Velvet sighed and peered around the stockade of bitchy, to
see a tall gangly figure poke his head from behind the next column down, and then disappear just as quickly. Quentin. So creepy. She tossed a sneer Isadora’s way. “So you enjoy shadowquakes, then. I didn’t need to protect you two clothes whores? You were good with the whole tentacle thing.”

“There’s no need to get vulgar,” Isadora chided, then added to her friend, “She’s so common.”

Before Velvet could utter another word, the two were off, meandering through the racks of clothing, snatching prized items and holding them up for the other to judge. Stunned and irritated, all Velvet could do was glare after them and try not to vomit at their wretchedness.

Finally Velvet huffed and darted toward the hidden door to the Cellar.

The Cellar guard was a burly gray soul with a lisp, named Rancho Cucamonga. The first time Velvet spoke to the man, he told her the story of his name. Apparently, when Rancho was alive, he was accident-prone and particularly predisposed to head injuries. Motorcycle accidents, falling chandeliers, fly baseballs, whatever, Rancho was sure to connect with a nasty case of amnesia at the drop of a hat, or an anvil. He ended up in the emergency room with great frequency. On one of these visits, he was laid up next to a tattoo artist named Mook. (Velvet didn’t have a clue as to the derivation of said inker’s name.) Mook nonchalantly asked for his clinic-mate’s name, and when Rancho couldn’t recall, he simply told Mook the first thing that came to mind. Mook laughed and laughed and told Rancho how much he loved the name, and since he, being a tattoo artist, carried his needles with him, and since the emergency room was busy
on that particular day and they had plenty of time to commit the moment to indelible art, Mook freehanded Rancho’s name on his forearm so he’d never forget it.

The fact that Rancho’s real name was Franklin Norbert didn’t make one bit of difference, because from that day forward he was never known as anything else but Rancho Cucamonga. And the tattoo was awfully pretty, if Velvet did say so, drawn in a scrolling cursive with gardenia blossoms instead of Os.

The weird thing was, ever since that day—ever since the tattoo—Rancho never again had an accident with his head and never again had amnesia. He had some close calls, like the time he fell off a ladder while putting up Christmas lights and ended up in the soft cushion of the hedge, just inches from the sidewalk. The tattoo became his good luck charm, until he was hit by a bus in 1992, which wasn’t very lucky at all.

“Velvet!” Rancho threw open his arms and rushed toward her, enveloping her in a soft squish of a hug that, had her friends seen, would have registered with a haughty scowl—on principle.

“Hi, Rancho,” she said, muffled into the thick ruffles of the powder-blue tuxedo shirt he wore, so it sounded more like “My, Mantho.”

He pushed her away and beamed with pride, the reason for her visit becoming clear. “You got your fifty-seventh soul! Congratulations on the record!”

She grinned, nodded proudly. “Absolutely. I always get my ghost.”

“That you do, sweets.” His smile faded, and he glanced
nervously toward the weighty iron gate behind him. “I’m afraid whatever it is you’ve sent me isn’t nearly as happy for you as I am.”

As if to prove Rancho Cucamonga’s point, a shuddering bellow escaped the Cellar and echoed about them. “Release!” it exclaimed, and then unleashed another scream so earsplitting, the travelers in the station must have been able to hear it, and stopped dead in their bustling. Velvet slapped her palms over her ears, whereas the guard merely grimaced.

“Been yelling like that for an hour solid. I’ve a mind to go down there and give it the what for.” He held up a fist the size of a pie plate and flexed it so his knuckles popped up like gnarled teeth fighting their way through some frighteningly hairy gums.

“Manny wants me to interrogate it,” Velvet said.

Rancho shook his head sympathetically. “Well, good luck with that. I don’t see as how you’re going to get much information out of that one. All he seems capable of is disrupting my morning reading.” The guard picked up a book from his stool and handed it to Velvet.

“
Relaxation Techniques for the Stressed and Distressed
by Dr. Callus McKellar,” she read aloud. She looked up at Rancho, and saw the worry around his eyes, the clear skin there creasing like an old jellyfish left to dry on the beach. “Are you stressed?”

He snatched the book back from her. “Well, of course I am. Who in their right mind wouldn’t be? Why, if you heard half of what I do echoing up from the Cellar, then you’d be
climbing the walls with hypertension. Why …” Rancho paused, tensing up.

“Why what?” Velvet asked.

He looked around her, past her to the hall where she’d entered, and, satisfied that there were no souls lurking in the shadows, leaned forward conspiratorially. “They say the departure is coming soon,” he whispered. “They say purgatory will empty out and the living will be their shelter.”

“Could they be vaguer?”

“Apparently not.”

Rancho straightened, and fear creased the skin around his eyes deeper than before. The spirits in the Cellar had convinced him that the revolutionists were capable of getting their way, whatever that meant.

She reached out and placed her hand over his. “It’s not going to happen. Manny is aware, and so is the council. And so am I, Rancho. The station agent has a theory, and I think it’s a good one, and soon she’ll have a plan. We’ll put the screws to the revolutionaries soon enough.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Until then, I’m going to be following my deep breathing regime set forth by Dr. McKellar.” He sat down on his stool again and opened the book. “In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth.”

Velvet chuckled as Rancho wheezed in a breath as hollow as a dog whistle, slumped loosely in his exhale, and then repeated, again and again. He was a good guy and the only soul in the City of the Dead she’d ever considered telling her secret to. She really needed someone to talk about it
with, especially now that Bonesaw had taken another girl to the shed. She imagined the girl’s eyes upon waking in that charnel house, the sounds of metal scraping against metal rousing her from her chemical slumber.

Velvet shook off the memory of her own abduction.

Of course she could never tell him. She’d never do that to him, make him an accomplice to her treachery.

“You’re doing a good job there, Rancho. Lookin’ real relaxed.”

He nodded, breathing all the more deeply for her benefit.

Velvet turned toward the gate. Without realizing it, she’d clutched the key in her fist while they’d been talking, the velvet ribbon digging a groove into the back of her neck. She opened her hand and saw the marks from its teeth denting her palm.

She hunched over and slipped it into the lock. The mechanism clanged and clattered, the gears grinding inside, scraping. The gate swung open with a groan, and Velvet descended the wide stone steps into darkness, pausing a moment to light a wooden torch off a nearby gaslight. Her shoes scraped against the loose stones, which skittered downward in near constant tiny avalanches. About halfway down, she stopped dead in her tracks.

The banshee screamed.

It was louder in the bowels of the Cellar, and once again she shielded her ears from the horror. “Shut up, banshee!” she yelled. “I’m coming for you!”

She hoped she sounded menacing.

“Looking forward to it!” he shouted back.

Not so menacing, then.

She sucked at her teeth. If the banshee’s shouting wasn’t enough to grind on her nerves, his insolence certainly was. Damn him. Didn’t matter one bit what the revolutionary and body thief thought. He was going to talk. She’d make sure of that.

She was not above torture.

“Good,” she mumbled.

Velvet descended in the slim circle of light from the torch, squinting to see beneath her. She could never shake the fear that a prisoner might be out of its cage and waiting in the shadows, reaching toward her with its glistening fingers dewy with condensation from the Cellar’s gas deposits.

She’d been down there enough that you’d think the prisoners’ taunts wouldn’t bother her, but they did every time—not that she’d ever mention that to anyone. No matter what happened, Velvet had to be strong for her team, stoic.

“You comin’, body thief?” the voice asked.

Velvet steeled herself at the base of the stairs. The torches were lit among the cells, and so she tamped out her torch and trudged onward. “That I am, banshee.”

“Sure are taking your time, little girl. I don’t have all day to wait for you.”