Phantom Pains Page 7

  “I have never seen him upset before this,” said Caryl, looking up at me with tranquil eyes. “So I cannot predict his behavior. In the past, I always felt he was trying to give me the benefit of the doubt. But now? The evidence against me is overwhelming.”

  “You’re innocent, though,” I said. “Right?”

  She took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, too deliberate to be called a sigh. “I cannot imagine how or why I would do this. Tamika was planning to replace me, which looks like motive, but I’ve had Elliott this entire time. When I am in this state, rash action, even in self-defense, is impossible. I might stand and watch a train come at me, if I didn’t logically know I ought to get out of the way.”

  “That’s a little horrifying.”

  “My point is, I fail to see how I could commit an ill-considered crime of passion when my passion is not currently accessible.”

  “Earlier you said Elliott was malfunctioning.”

  Caryl’s gaze drifted over to a cardboard box where Elliott must have been perched. “He’s behaving normally at the moment,” she said. “Which is to say, he’s curled into a ball weeping.”

  “Dragons can cry?”

  “He isn’t a dragon. He’s—”

  “A construct, I know.”

  “He’s what I thought a cuddly pet would look like when I was seven years old.”

  “Caryl, could you try to go five minutes without breaking my heart?” I messed up my hair with the palm of my hand. “All right, we need to think. What else could possibly have happened?”

  “I cannot begin to imagine. To tell the truth, the evidence against me is so strong that even I feel flickers of doubt. So there is no chance that anyone at National or World Headquarters is going to take my side. The man most generally forgiving of me, the man in complete command of every agent in this country, is now doing his best not to kill me with his bare hands. We are past exile; this will lead to my execution.”

  “What? They can’t just kill you. That can’t be legal.”

  “The Arcadia Project is a law unto itself, even more than the military. Our man Adam at the Department of Homeland Security would ensure that my execution could be carried out without incident even if a mundane law enforcement agency were to somehow become entangled.”

  I turned away for a moment, rubbing my arms as I suddenly felt the chill in the air. “Unless we prove you innocent,” I said, turning back. “How do we do that?”

  “For now, the best we can do is delay the proceedings until we can figure out how to assemble a defense. How, I am not certain.”

  Claybriar cleared his throat. He’d been so still and quiet, I’d almost forgotten he was there.

  “Something you want to say?” I asked him.

  “I don’t really want to say it,” he said, shifting his weight onto the heel of one hand. “But there aren’t many options.”

  “What is it?”

  “You want to throw a wrench into things, I know a good wrench.”

  “You want to involve the queen?”

  “If she raised a fuss,” he said, “they couldn’t carry out the execution without dealing with her, no matter how clear-cut the case was.”

  “Pardon my disrespect,” said Caryl dryly, “but Queen Dawnrowan is unlikely to pry her spectacular bottom off of her throne for an Unseelie changeling.”

  Claybriar tilted his head with a good point sort of frown.

  “What if . . . ,” I started. But then thought better of it.

  Caryl tilted her head slightly. “What is it?”

  “A terrible idea.”

  “A terrible idea is better than none,” she persisted.

  “I just thought . . . Would King Winterglass be upset if he knew they were going to execute you? Would he make scary noises at people? But then I remembered you told him to fuck off years ago, so . . .”

  Caryl tapped at her lower lip with a gloved forefinger. “You’re right,” she said. “It is a terrible idea. But it’s a rope, and I am drowning, and so I don’t see that we have much choice but to grab for it.”

  “How would we even get in touch with him?” I said.

  Caryl frowned slightly. “That is the difficulty. Even if sending a message to the Unseelie Court were as simple as it is with the Seelie, Alvin would likely guess what we were planning and block the usual channels. To complicate matters, there is no Gate where King Winterglass lives, not so much as a lone Project agent in the whole of Russia, not since the time of the tsars. We’d have to find someone in Helsinki to cooperate, then they’d have to travel the remaining distance overland in Arcadia—”

  “Not true,” blurted Claybriar.

  We both looked at him.

  “There’s a portal,” he said. “In Her Majesty’s private quarters. Leads directly to the king’s palace. I’m pretty sure it’s still functional.”

  “I did not know that,” said Caryl slowly.

  “It’s ancient, and fallen into disuse,” he said. “I’m probably not supposed to be telling you about it, but I’ve never been specifically forbidden, so—” He shrugged. “There’s also a much better-known portal between Duke Skyhollow’s estate and the White Rose. The home of the Seelie High Court,” he elaborated for my benefit. “So assuming I get permission once I answer Her Majesty’s summons, I could get a message to the king in a day or two.”

  “Can you get permission?” Caryl asked.

  “I believe I can.”

  I turned to Caryl and beamed. “Do I have the most amazing Echo, or what?”

  “This is a sound plan,” said Caryl. “If a fey witness testifies to the king’s displeasure, that should be enough to put fear into Dame Belinda’s heart and slow things down. Better yet would be if you could get the king to write a letter of rebuke in his own hand. His letters are so very stirring.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Claybriar.

  “Meanwhile, I need some time to myself,” said Caryl. “If I do not dispel Elliott soon, he will rupture, and then there will be no getting him back.”

  “I can stay with you,” I said. “If you want.”

  “I truly do not.”

  My hands curled into fists, but I nodded. “All right then. Come on, Clay.”

  I preceded him up the stairs and opened the door for him, then took the time to replace the padlock so that Alvin didn’t think I was trying to facilitate an escape attempt.

  As I rotated the combination back into disarray, from behind the door I heard the muffled, hoarse sound of Caryl crying.

  9

  When Claybriar reached for my hand, I moved away. In one of the random mood shifts so common to people with my disorder, I suddenly found Claybriar’s presence virtually unbearable. Caryl was crying alone in a basement, and I could do nothing for her; meanwhile some guy I barely knew was hanging around wanting to comfort me?

  I knew he didn’t deserve the sudden intense desire I had to shove him away. One of the first things you learn as a Borderline is that the only way to keep any friends is to act as though you’re not feeling what you’re feeling at least 30 percent of the time.

  I took a deep breath and moved to a window at the front of the house, looking out across the street at the nicer homes, lovingly-cared-for dollhouses with fish-scale shingles and oriel windows. I tried to practice mindfulness, to sink my consciousness into their lovely pastel colors, to the bright blue of the October day above them.

  Once I’d tricked my mind out of the death spiral it was trying to dive into, I had at least a vague idea of what I wanted to do.

  “Can you wait here?” I said to Claybriar. “I want to talk to Alvin.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead; I’m good.”

  Grateful for small blessings, I climbed the stairs in my painstaking half-speed fashion. I could hear Alvin talking on the phone up there, though I couldn’t make out the words. As I got closer to room 6, where he was pacing, I heard him imploringly address Belinda, “Dame” and all. I glanced at my phone—Good God, by my mat
h it was nearly one in the morning in London. Someone was not going to be happy. Also, I had two hours to get to my Thursday group therapy. It was too late to cancel without getting charged two hundred bucks for nothing, but how was I supposed to spend an hour with a couple of concerned mental health workers and not mention that I just witnessed a murder? Or that the prime suspect was one of my individual therapist’s other patients?

  “I’m not saying Gav isn’t qualified,” Alvin was saying in a placating, sycophantic tone. “He’ll do fine until I get back. But this is a demotion, and I’m just wondering if I’ve done something to— I know, I know. Just, if it isn’t too much trouble, could you continue to look for other options? I’ll pay someone’s moving expenses out of my own pocket if it comes to it. I— Yes, Dame Belinda. Of course.”

  I lurked in the hallway waiting for him to finish, looking over the balustrade onto the first floor. There was the sound of a key in the front door, and after a moment the Residence manager Song entered, phone pressed to one ear, black-haired baby secured against the opposite hip with a fabric wrap. I instinctively stepped back toward the wall.

  “I’m here now,” Song said into her phone, then ended the call and jammed it into her pocket, freeing her half-fey offspring from the wrap and setting him down on the floor. What was his awful name again? I couldn’t remember.

  I was somewhat surprised to see that he could stand, not only because of what that told me about the passage of time, but because his little jellied legs looked as though they didn’t have any bones in them. Looking at his drooping cloth diaper and its bleach-faded greenish stains, I felt a sudden surge of relief that I’d be going home to Manhattan Beach later.

  As soon as I heard Alvin sign off with London, I approached the half-open door and rapped on it lightly.

  “Yes?” said Alvin. He’d calmed down and now just looked weary; his eyes dull. Their color—a warm, toasty hazel—was part of what had made them seem friendly at first, but now they reminded me of the dead leaves that choked the roof of the house.

  “Do you have a minute?” I asked.

  “If it’s crucial.” His jaw worked a little; he was not in a good frame of mind, but it wasn’t as though I had the luxury of cornering him sometime when his coworker wasn’t dead.

  “It is,” I said. “I want to help out with what’s going on, try to get to the bottom of it.”

  He turned away from me, walking farther into the room. “Aren’t you working full-time at Valiant Studios?”

  He hadn’t explicitly invited me to follow, but I did anyway. “Yes, but if I tell Inaya what’s going on, I know she’ll give me the time to look into this.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I think that would add to our problems.”

  “How so?”

  Alvin put the conference table between us and gave me a steely look I felt in my solar plexus despite his being about an inch shorter than I was. “It’s obvious you’re not unbiased in this situation.”

  “And you are?” I said.

  His eyes’ hardness went from steel to diamond.

  “I’m just saying, it’s not possible to be calm about any of this, so let’s not pretend anyone is. Even before—before this happened, you came here prejudiced against Caryl, and I’m going to hazard a guess that I’ve spent more time observing her directly than you have. If we have different opinions of her competence, what makes you so sure yours is correct? You and I are informed in different ways; we could help each other.”

  “How exactly do you think you could be of help?”

  “I can cancel magic by touching it. You know that, right?”

  “Yes, that’s one of the things Caryl did bother to include in her reports—when they finally came in.”

  “There’s nothing I can do for Tamika, of course—”

  “She’s long gone.” His words were as flat as Caryl’s, he’d apparently found some nonmagical place to store his emotions for the time being.

  I tried to read him before continuing. Numb and tired was about as close to “fine” as he was likely going to get in this situation, so I ventured onward.

  “On top of my potentially useful hardware, I also have personal experience working with Caryl, and she cares for me. If she needs to be talked into something, I’m your woman.”

  “Can I ask you about that? When you say she cares for you . . .”

  “We’re not—involved. She has a crush on me, but it’s the sort of crush a child would have.”

  “It still makes me uneasy.”

  “Please tell me you’re not one of those people who classifies same-sex attraction as a weakness of character.”

  Alvin gave me a long look, his jaw working as he weighed his response. “You don’t know me,” he said finally, “so I’ll just let that one slide.”

  “You’re right; I don’t know you. For all I know, you could be a raging homophobe.”

  “Not that I’m obligated to defend myself, but among the many hats I wear on a daily basis, I’m on the Outreach Committee for the LGBT Community Center of New Orleans.”

  I felt suddenly shy, my face flushing. “Oh. You’re gay?”

  “I’m trans.”

  “Trans?” I blinked, looking him up and down. My face went from warm to hot. “You—used to be a woman?”

  “That’s debatable. But I do have a sash full of Girl Scout badges.”

  “I—wow, I—”

  “My point is, Caryl’s sexuality, or yours, doesn’t enter into this. It’s your working relationship and her PTSD that concern me.”

  “Okay, but—” I’d had another point, but it was gone now. I didn’t know how I was supposed to react to the information Alvin had just given me. I suspected that I wasn’t supposed to react at all, but I was failing at that and was preoccupied with that failure. My brain was a snake eating its own tail.

  Alvin smoothed a hand back over his silver hair, looking twice as tired as he’d looked at the beginning of the conversation. “Okay but what?”

  “I don’t remember. I’m sorry. I’ve got brain damage, so if we switch topics . . .”

  There was a barely perceptible softening around his eyes. “All right,” he said. “It’s okay. We were talking about why you thought you could help. You mentioned that you can cancel spells and that you have influence over Caryl.”

  “Right!” I must have smiled pretty huge with relief, because he smiled back a little, as though involuntary. “Whatever’s happening right now?” I said. “Dollars to donuts this has something to do with the shit that went down on stage 13 in June. Everything has been screwed up around here since then, and I don’t think it’s coincidence. Tjuan’s had a relapse, the soundstage seems to be haunted, a manticore’s trying to eat the duke, Caryl’s familiar is on the fritz—”

  “On the fritz how?”

  Shit. I hadn’t meant to rat her out. “I don’t know exactly,” I said. “It might not be broken at all; she may just be feeling some very strange emotions that are manifesting visually, the way the spell is designed to do.”

  “What exactly did she tell you?”

  I considered my options. I hated to betray Caryl, but Alvin’s objections seemed to revolve around the idea that I was on Caryl’s side and not Dame Belinda’s. If I was going to help Caryl, I needed the Project’s goodwill. As much of an asshole as I was for thinking it, I knew I could get Caryl’s forgiveness a lot easier than I could get Alvin’s permission.

  “She said Elliott was frightened around Tjuan or something. And sometimes becoming aggressive toward Caryl herself.”

  Alvin stroked his goatee. It was closer trimmed than Claybriar’s, more distinguished than hipster—wait, he had a goatee. Now my brain was considering hormone treatments and hair plugs and wandering way, way off into the weeds while Alvin was continuing to talk to me.

  “It’s ambiguous,” he said thoughtfully as I struggled to focus. “It could be a manifestation of Caryl’s discomfort about Tjuan’s condition, and the aggression could be from
some form of externalized self-recrimination.”

  He was starting to sound like Caryl, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Could well be,” I said instead. “But I haven’t even finished getting to my third point, which may be the most important. If all this links back to what happened with Vivian, I’m the only person left you can work with who was actually there.”

  Alvin lowered his hand from his chin and gave me a long, steady look. “We’ve been following up on Vivian at the international level,” he finally admitted. “Looking for conspirators at Cera. Do you know of Cera?”

  “I feel like I’ve heard the name, but it’s slippery.”

  “Exterminators,” he said. “An international company, but Vivian held a controlling interest. We assumed Cera’s COO, Garcia, might be carrying on with the plot you uncovered, but all our investigations made him look completely ignorant of whatever she was scheming. And yet there’s still odd activity among the lower-level employees that we can’t understand and can’t dismiss.”

  “Like what?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, but then a wary expression crossed his face. “I think I’ve told you enough, unless you want to sign a contract with us.”

  “That would require me to live in a Project Residence, and there aren’t any near where I work. Among other problems.”

  “Then you’ll have to make do with what I’ve told you, most of which I shouldn’t have. I have to draw a line somewhere. If you prove yourself helpful, maybe I’ll tell you more.”

  “All right,” I said. “For now then I guess I just, what, go home and wait?”

  “Home,” said Alvin. The weight of it all seemed to crash back down on him in that single syllable. “I’m not making it back in time for my anniversary, am I.”

  “You’re married?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Been with my girlfriend a year next week.” He rubbed at his forehead as though trying to erase the lines on it. “I fucking jinxed it by making reservations.”