Betwixt (30 page)

“You’re here because you already know what you are. Well, good. It usually takes longer.” A shadow of something passed over
Bleek’s face but he shook it off and crossed his arms over his chest. He started sucking on something between his teeth. “Of
course, not me. I knew. I knew like you did.”

Morgan tried to remain still, though every nerve wanted to bolt. She had not expected this reaction. She had expected to feel
more powerful. Herself, but better. Bleek smelled swampy, and Morgan, despite herself, wondered whether she would have to
become ugly like he was if she were to be a cutter.

“It’s obvious what you want, Morgana.” He sidled close again. “Power, isn’t it? Come on, sweet. You can speak now. Bleek is
listening.”

So this was what he wanted: submission.

“Yes.” The word sounded like a yell but she knew it had emerged a whisper.

Bleek whispered back. “And I will teach you.”

She held her breath.

“You will learn much more, and much faster, than the other
lings in your ring will from that disaster, Moth. Viv’s little charity case.” He whipped around. “I could — and I will — tell
you a few things about him.”

Morgan almost responded but checked herself, and Bleek, infatuated with his own words, moved on.

“But you.” He moved closer, brought his mouth to her bare neck. She felt his soupy breath against her. “You are quite another
creature altogether. I’ve been watching you since you were an itty-bitty thing, Morgana.”

Watching her? Was this how it started then? Had Bleek been there all those nights in the woods?

“And you’ve turned out very nicely indeed.”

She was disgusted by the insinuation. She had been only a child. What had they done to her? Despite her revulsion, she forced
her face to be blank, pursing her lips. “Thank you.”

Bleek laughed. “It wasn’t meant as flattery. We’ll have to work on that. You know” — he turned to her — “cutters aren’t
sex-shual.
Dear, vain Morgana. Your pretty face is as compelling to me as that puddle over there.” He pointed and the water shivered.
“Well,” he smiled. “I should amend that. We can procreate. If that bitch-bot Viv wasn’t running the show, we would. Check
that:
Will.
Will run the show. Power is what turns us on, dear. Power and trouble. Here. On earth. Now. Not in never-never land. But
perhaps you’ve already gotten an inkling of this?”

He traced a long nail down the thin fabric of her sweater and she shivered again.

“I know what makes you tick, Morgan. I hear the same bomb as you. Now.” He paused, clearly ready to give her some instruction.
She was about to ask him about Viv, what made her a scion, but thought better of it. The confines of the relationship had
been settled, the terms agreed upon. Bleek had been seduced — by himself. He would teach her, and in return, she would do
his bidding. She had only to be patient.

Apparently he read as much on her face. He started humming a crooked little tune — where had she heard it before? — and began.

“Tomorrow your idiot of a brother returns from
soccer camp.
” Bleek shook his head. “Unbelievable that you had to share a home with him. And that one! That trailer. I would have caused
an accident some time ago. A pinch of arsenic in those
p-cakes
Kaka is so good at making? A goose-down pillow over the mouth just before bedtime? Eh?”

Despite her dark intentions, Morgan clenched back a scream. How dare he? She loved her brother, as much as she could love
anyone. How did he know about the pancakes? The pillow she’d spent two hundred dollars on as a birthday gift for K.A.’s sixteenth?
He had been spying on her. Drawing her into the forest night after night. Morgan knew she hated the cutter then.
Hated him more than she hated anything. And she knew that this was what he fed upon, this anger. Power wasn’t Bleek’s elixir.
Hatred was.

She stared. He was testing her commitment to him, and though inwardly she rebelled, she stayed quiet and listened to his spew.

“You’re harder than I thought.” He tossed his head. “In any case. You know the little slut called Neve? Your brother’s seriously
misguided choice of a girlfriend?” He smiled evilly. She nodded and spoke.

“Neve. She’s a trashy whore.”

“I’ve got my eye on her. I’ve been trying for years to find a suitable human. Cutters, as you can imagine, aren’t first on
the list for pets.”

Morgan must have seemed confused, though she was trying to conceal any emotion from her face. Bleek’s tone had become sarcastic,
almost infantile. He pursed his lips, sniffed, and continued.

“Viv must have given you the spiel, sweetheart. She did the rest of us.
So long ago
…” A faraway look came into his eyes but it did not last. “The humans, love. The pets? Some of them were used for reproduction.
For more changelings.” He looked at her. She shook her head to indicate that she did not fully understand. “For the initial
change. For the ringing.”

“That’s where we’re from?” Morgan whispered.

“Some of us.” He frowned and looked away. “Not you. You were born into a
real
family, and the change had to be done later, in secret. In the forest.” He gestured grandly to the green canopy above her.
Morgan had almost forgotten where she was. “Don’t even try to remember. You won’t yet. You were out of it and the ringer wasn’t
a very good one. But you remember afterward, don’t you? The little games you used to play? With the animals? Remember that,
Morgy?”

Bleek folded his hands over his chest and regarded her.

“That’s why you kept coming here. To be with your kind. A baby ling trying to learn how. It was almost … sweet. If you hadn’t
been so cruelly
abandoned.
Viv was busy playing patty-cake with her favorite, Ondine, and didn’t have time for you. And your human family …” He inched
closer. “They certainly sucked ass, didn’t they? But that’s all right. All of that is gone now.” He reached out a yellowish
finger and trailed a sharp nail down the mound of Morgan’s wet cheek. “Uncle Bleek’s here now.”

“Don’t touch me.” She choked. Was she — crying?

“Don’t speak until spoken to. And wipe those tears off your face.” She tried to swallow a low whimper. The show of weakness
obviously irritated the cutter, for he stepped back, wiping the hand that had touched her on his leather jacket and tucking
it into his side. “Not me, of course. I was born to a stinking pet in one of the scia’s hideous little corpa factories. But
you. You
were raised by loving Yvonne, the Rose Queen, and doting Phil Jr., the prince of paper products. That’s where he stocked,
didn’t he? Aisle ten? Burnside D’Amici’s? Quite a
provider,
that Phil.”

“Fuck you.”

Bleek ignored her. “At least you had plates to eat off of. Clean sheets to wrap around your pretty corpus. And what a lovely
one, too, eh? A perfect ten. Too bad none of it is yours.”

He scowled and wagged another long-nailed finger in front of her face.

“You didn’t think that you actually
looked
like this, did you?” He was close to her and she could smell him again. She breathed shallowly. “You aren’t human, Morgana.
Get this through your shallow fay reflecting pool of a brain. This —” He grabbed a bit of flesh at her hip and tugged. “This
is just temporary. Your costume. Your cocoon, pretty butterfly …” Morgan pulled away and Bleek laughed bitterly. “I know I
disgust you. You really need to work on your acting skills. Unfortunately, dear, if you’re going to be a cutter, you better
get used to looking and smelling like one. Invest in some deodorant. Teen Spirit, perhaps? In the human world, we take human
form. And humans rot. Especially if something’s in them.” He blew at her and Morgan could smell his putrefaction. She remembered
the girl with the dreads from the parking lot at the Ring of Fire, sniffing her. Was she already turning?

“Soon everything will be ours. Novala, too.”

Bleek unfurled his hand — his wrist marked by that same little blue X, Morgan noted, the same that she had seen on Moth, the
same on the girl in the parking lot, the same on Viv — and a spinning sphere of blue and yellow sparks almost a foot across
emerged from his palm and whizzed past her, shearing her left shoulder as it spun by. She watched it bounce through a tree
trunk and into the dark woods till she couldn’t see it anymore. When she looked at her sweater, it was brown from where the
ball of lightning had skimmed her, and the air smelled like burned wool.

“We are of the greater sphere, love. And that’s where we’ll return.” He waved a hand around majestically and Morgan followed
but could only see darkness, and the barest outline of an even blacker darkness. “We inhabit the larger universe — the one
that humans can feel only the lightest pricks of. When they are afraid of the night. When the hair on their arms stands up.
When they walk in the forest and understand that they are not alone. We are fay. We come from the holes — in the earth, in
the trees, the graves, hurricanes and tornadoes and storms. The black holes that swallow stars.

“Cutters, too.” His voice lowered. “The invisible world makes room for good and evil and everything in between.”

For a moment he almost seemed sympathetic. Morgan eased.

“Cutters … what are they?”

But speaking before she was spoken to was not welcome, so
instead of answering, Bleek coughed and shook his head, sighing.

“Did I say that it was question-and-answer time? No. I didn’t. Listen to me. Wipe that pathetic little frown off your mouth
and listen to me. That crying of yours —
puh-lease.
Must have taken some energy to do that. We don’t cry, Morgana, in case you hadn’t noticed. Since that first time in the forest,
have you cried? No. The inhabitation dries us all up.” He snorted and laughed. “But why am I letting you waste my time?”

And then, as if to show her that she’d be sorry if she allowed the kind of softness she’d always, in a sense, longed for in
her life, as if to show her that yes, he did survive on hate and cruelty — he scratched her with a long nail, just on her
cheek. Morgan felt wetness, and after putting her hand there, she drew it down and looked at it. There was a black, thick
substance coated with phosphorescence that she recognized as whatever had seeped from that girl she had scratched at the Ring
of Fire. Just as quickly, it disappeared. Had she never seen her own blood before? No, never. She had never been hurt. Her
period hadn’t yet come — something she had just chalked up to being thin —
amenorrhea,
it was called, though she still told her mother to buy her tampons so that Yvonne, the nosy bitch, wouldn’t ask.

“Corpa do bleed, my dear. It isn’t easy, but they do bleed.” Bleek moved closer again. “Nasty, stinky things, aren’t they?
Our human bodies? Especially when they get old. I mean, look at
me.” He pulled a particularly saggy bit of flesh from his jowls and wiggled it. “I used to be quite handsome. I used to get
all the girls.”

He continued, pacing in the small clearing. “Cutters don’t want to leave. We like it here. We have power on earth. In Novala
we’d be just one of many. At the ring we decide,
nah,
why take what power we have
there
when we can use it right here on earth?”

“What kind of power?”

“You like the sound of that? Never mind. Soon enough you’ll find out. In any case, it’s verboten to stay, Morgana. Changelings
are required to join the exidis, even though she pretends like it’s a ‘choice.’ Problem is, Viv wasn’t lying when she said
that the inhabitation — it wears on us. To put it lightly.” Bleek opened his mouth and bared his horrifying muzzle. “My poor
teeth, for example. Our human corpus — it can’t handle it. We break down starting at eighteen. I’m twenty-two. And how old
do I look?”

Morgan started, but Bleek waved a slender, long-nailed hand.

“Don’t answer that. I’ve even considered a face-lift. They’re much less invasive these days….” He sighed and shook his head.
“But what I smuggle in dust can’t pay for it. And though I’m a good dealer, a man’s gotta eat. So I’ve lit on another …” He
paused and looked at Morgan directly, as if to suss out her trustworthiness. “
Avenue.
Much tidier. Much more
fun.
But I’ll
tell you about that all later. No need to spoil you so soon. Of course, this little tutoring session we’ve set up, it’s not
free. You realize that don’t you?”

She said the words deliberately, fighting her dizziness. “What do you want me to do?”

He paused again, retreated and turned away, then began reciting his instructions.

“That darling little tinfoil-for-brains Neve Clowes is close to becoming my pet. I have been feeding her dust now for long
enough; she is my slave, or close to being so.” He turned, looked at Morgan. “It’s not easy getting a human to become one’s
pet. Don’t let Varicose Viv fool you. They have to want it. And your farm animal of a brother is my main concern here, since
she must be alone, and while he is around, they seem to be attached in a most inconvenient way. I suggest, then, that you
occupy him or otherwise distract him over the next few days while I snare this particular prey.”

He snorted and shook his head, almost mournfully.

“She is really second-rate, this one. The first girl … Evelyn. Much better — would have given me a strong corpus to inhabit,
but she was terribly” — he paused, searching for the right word — “stubborn, and there was that insect, Finn, and I lost her.
And that other one.
Ugh.
I had to eliminate
her
right away.” He drew a line across his throat and widened his eyes. “Who knew she’d be such a bleeder?” He shook his head.
“But I am really not well
and must do something about it. Neve is almost
too
easy, unfortunately. Not much fun at all.” Bleek eyed the shivering Morgan. “But I am talking too much. You turn your brother’s
head for me.” He smiled evilly. “But you know how to do that already, don’t you, darling?”

She felt heat creep up her neck.

“Of course you do. It’s so — exciting that the two of you aren’t
really
related, isn’t it? I mean, tell the truth, Morgana. You’ve always thought he was a little cute, huh? The perfect guy.” Bleek’s
voice raised in imitation of a teenaged girl’s. “Smart, handsome, nice,
funny.
Shucks, too bad he’s my
brother.
”