Julia Vanishes (15 page)

“You've a real way with children,” says Dek.

“You're the one picturing me married off on a farm or something,” I snarl at him.

He laughs, and I'm glad. “Never mind it, if you're happy,” he says.

“As a clam,” I say, drying Theo's wet curls with one end of the towel. “You'd best get going. Listen, if you see Wyn, will you tell him something came up yesterday but I'll be over to see him as soon as I can?”

“I found him passed out in our room last night, waiting for you,” says Dek dryly.

“I know. Sorry.” I feel a pinch of guilt.

“Well, I'll tell him, if you want.” He pauses. “This thing between you two. It's been going on a long time now.”

“If you're worried about me being no good with babies, we're careful, all right?”

“It's not that,” he says. “I want you to be careful in other ways too. I know you care for him, and I've no doubt he cares for you too, but you can't trust him, Julia.”

My anger flares, then fizzles fast. Dek isn't one to make accusations lightly.

“What are you telling me?”

“I don't know anything to tell,” he says. “Not for sure. But he's out a lot.”

“You don't know him,” I say, feeling sick. “You don't know him at all.”

“I know him well enough, though I'll grant you know him better,” says Dek. “I'd like to be wrong about him.”

I hug Baby Theo to me and manage to say, “Fine, noted.”

“I'm sorry, Julia. Here, I'll make it up to you—I've brought you a present.”

He reaches into his coat and pulls out what looks like an odd, twisty bracelet. He fastens it on me while I bounce Baby Theo with one arm and his breathing goes back to normal, the cold bath all but forgotten already. The bracelet winds around my wrist, along my palm, and around my little finger. There is a sliding mechanism on my palm and two tiny nozzles, on the wrist and at the finger.

“You see here, on the palm?” he says. “If you can make a fist, you can push it or pull it. Pull it, and capsicum gas will come out here, at the wrist. Push it, and it'll come out here, at your finger. If you can direct it at someone's face, it'll burn their eyes and throat like you wouldn't believe. They won't be able to see at all for at least a few minutes, and it'll hurt much longer than that.”

“It's brilliant, Dek!” I say, amazed.

“If you can't get your knife, if someone's got you pinned, you should still be able to use this. You just make sure the wrist or finger nozzle is pointing at their face, and be careful not to spray yourself.”

“You made it just for me?” I say. I wish I'd had something like this yesterday, when Torne's men had a hold of me.

“I might make one for myself too—I'm at a disadvantage in a fight, after all—but yes, I made it for you. There are a good six shots in there, and then I'll need to refill it. Anyone that tries to mess with you will get what's coming to him.”

I put Theo down, and he wobbles away naked.

“Thanks,” I say, and I give Dek a hug to show him I forgive him for what he said—or almost said—about Wyn. “Now
please
go.”

He gives me a rough kiss on the top of my head. Baby Theo comes wobbling back and flings his arms around my leg.

“Lala,” he says, beaming up at me with his silly six-toothed grin.

“Clever fellow, he knows your name,” says Dek.

“That's not my name.”

“Don't you go by Ella?” asks Dek.

“Oh.” I look down at Baby Theo in some surprise. He clings to my leg, cackling like a tiny, naked lunatic, and I'm struck by how beautiful he is, how new-looking, with his shining eyes and soft skin. I almost understand the way people get about babies, cooing over them like fools. He's so himself, and such a pretty thing, and he doesn't know yet what a nasty world he lives in. He still thinks it's a good place, that we are all good people.

“Say, what happened to your fetching cap?” asks Dek.

I touch a hand to my hair, which is still loose. “Holy Nameless,” I whisper. “I've left it in his bleeding room.”

I send Dek on his way; I can't risk having him around any longer, and I reckon I can work his magnetic pick as well as he can. I plop Theo in the basket of clean laundry, toss a sheet over him, saying, “Hide-and-seek!” and then dash back down to the cellar. I get to the door and strike a match against the wall. Thank the Nameless, the cap is right there; Theo dropped it before we went into the room. I snatch it up, blow out the match, turn around, and run back down the hall—smack into a body coming the other way. The pick drops out of my hand with a clink as I fall backward onto the floor.

“What's this?”

It is Mr. Darius's voice. Or, Sir Victor Penn Ostoway's, rather. He bends down toward me and grabs my face in his big hand, squeezing my cheeks. I grope behind me in the dark for the pick. My fingers find it and close on it as he pulls me to my feet.

“Ow!” I squeak, and get the pick into my apron pocket.

“What are you doing prowling about here?”

“I'm looking for the wine cellar!” I cry. “I didn't think it would be so dark. Mrs. Freeley wants a white for the soup.”

“The wine cellar is at the bottom of the stairs. You must have been there before.” His voice is terrible, nothing like his usual voice. A sort of feral growl.

“Why would I have been there before?” I protest. “I never come down here. Please, sir, you're hurting me.”

“What are you up to, girl?” He squeezes harder. Fear is pouring through my veins now, burning in my throat, and I am horribly conscious of the bundle of letters in my stocking. I think of the weapon Dek gave me, of using his real name, but both options would mean the end of my cover as Ella.

It is not easy to speak with his hand on my face, half covering my mouth, but I cry out, “Mrs. Freeley is waiting on the wine, sir! Please let me go, sir, if you are a gentleman!”

He releases me suddenly, as if he hadn't realized he had my face in a viselike grip. I can't see his face well in the dark, but some of the menace in his voice is gone and I can feel his uncertainty.

“I am that,” he says.

“I'm sorry, sir,” I say, allowing a half-real sob. “I wasn't trying to go to your room—they told me not to—I just want to find a white for Mrs. Freeley. Please don't be angry with me.”

“Get your white, then, go on,” he says roughly, stepping aside. “Do not let me find you here again.”

I push past him and run down the hallway, pausing only to grab the first bottle of white that I find in the wine cellar, and then dash back up the stairs. Theo is still contentedly hiding in the laundry basket. “Lala!” he crows when I pull him out, and I am laughing with relief until I find he's pissed all over the clean bedsheets.

“Oh, you monster!” I moan. “I'm going to have to do it over. Bleeding Kahge. Well, let's get you into a fresh diaper and some clothes and have a look at your mama's things while we're at it. I've got a list to make.”

He throws his arms around my neck happily, and I surprise us both by planting a kiss on his cheek.

S
he slides the needle into the vein.

He tries to speak. His eyes are held open with clamps, and he is strapped to the bed with strong leather bands. He cannot turn his head or his eyelids will be ripped off. So he stares at the lamp swinging in slow circles from the ceiling and at the ghostly dancing girls around it whom he cannot blink away, kicking their stockinged legs in unison.

The serum gathers in his chest like a fist, or so it seems to him. A poison seeking out his secrets. He forces his tongue and mouth to make the sound he wants them to:

“Shey,” he says.

Shey steps back against the wall, her eyes hooded. They have been here for hours today, and she is tired, but she does not flag. She waits.

“Please—” But it's no good. If he were free to speak to her, free of poisons and bindings and sleep and the dreams she forces out of him. If he had time, if he could take a breath, clear his head for just a moment, he could speak to her, and perhaps she would listen. For months, her subtle potions, her dazzling lights and sharp needles, have become the whole of his life. Parts of him cut out, cut away. Bound in ways he hadn't known were possible. He clings to the only thing he needs to remember: not to tell them…not to tell them…what? And who is it he mustn't tell?

“It hurts,” he says.

“What hurts?” asks Shey. “Her name?” Softer: “Does my name hurt?”

She steps forward, her black hair tumbling, eyes dancing, her shoulders bare, soft and brown. She is smiling, and it is dark outside the dance hall, the streets of Nim quiet under the sharp glittering stars. They can smell the sea from here.

“Yes.” Her name, burning in the place he has locked it away.

“Then we must get it out, and the pain will stop,” says Shey from a great distance. “Then you can rest. Then you can close your eyes.”

Sympathy brims in the dark eyes and he reaches for her, but no, he cannot, his arms are bound. There is something important, something he should do or should not do, but he cannot remember. Best to stay silent, do nothing.

“I'm afraid,” he tells her.

She laughs, and he feels something like peace. She always gave him that.

“Nothing to fear,” she says. “I'm fine. Aren't I always fine? Can you really imagine me any other way?”

“That's why,” he says. “That's why I chose you. Forgive me.”

“There's nothing to forgive.” She leans in close, and tears fill his eyes, but he cannot blink them away. The clamps.

“We'll take those off,” she promises. “You need to rest. It's all right. It's over. Who am I?”

The name slips out of him like a sigh upon waking: “Bianka.”

“Yes. That's right.” She strokes his cheek. “They have you, my love. They have you. There is only me now, protecting your shadow. You must tell me where it is, so I can keep it safe.”

Dancing girls spin in the sky; stars catch at his skin; yellow smoke fills his blood. She takes the clamps from his eyelids so gently, and his tears fall, washing everything away.

“Tell me, love,” she whispers. And he tells her.

A
fter lunch I overhear Bianka and Professor Baranyi agreeing that she will come to his study as soon as she has washed up. I intend to make it there first, but Sir Victor Wolf Man stops me on the stairs.

“Ella,” he says gruffly.

“Yes, sir.” I avoid his eyes, bob a curtsy.

“I want to apologize to you,” he says. “I behaved very badly when we met in the cellar. I was surprised, and rather out of sorts.”

“Of course, sir, I completely understand,” I say.

“You're a good girl,” he says. “I wish I could explain it, truly. I am not myself these days.”

An understatement if ever there was one.

“I am sorry to hear it, sir.”

I want to get up the stairs, get to the professor's study before he does, but Sir Victor seems to want a heart-to-heart all of a sudden.

“I was not planning such a long visit here. I have a daughter, you know.”

“She must miss you very much, sir,” I say.

“Yes, yes, I expect she does. Her mother died when she was a baby, and we have had only each other. She is your age now, and a very fine violinist. She studies with Bartole.”

Oh, by all the holies, is he really going to start telling me about his daughter's musical talent? I wonder if this is Elisha from Agoston Horthy's letters. I hear Professor Baranyi giving Mrs. Freeley some instruction in the kitchen, which means he is on his way.

“Sir, I must hurry, I've got to fetch something for Mrs. Och. I am so sorry!” I cry.

“Of course, of course, I do not mean to hold you up,” he says, flustered. “I only wanted to…to apologize to you. And here, here you go.” He thrusts a coin at me, and I take it. A copper. He's no cheapskate when apologizing, anyway. “You are a fine girl, a good girl. I hope I did not frighten you.”

Only half to death, monster.

“Only a little, and I quite understand,” I say in a rush. “Thank you, sir; you are very generous, sir.”

He gives me such a lost, unhappy look then, half reaching for me from a few steps below, as if he's going to take my hand. “I am not who I mean to be, Ella.”

“I suppose none of us are,” I say. “We must pray to the Nameless One to make us better. Thank you, sir.”

“Of course, yes.” He steps back, away from me, his face falling into shadow. “Go on, then. Good girl.”

“Thank you!” I say, tearing up the stairs and dashing into the professor's study. I make myself comfortable on the divan at the back of the room, carefully vanishing mere moments before the professor and Bianka come in together. It is the first time I have vanished since getting caught in Mrs. Och's reading room, and I do it with some trepidation, but it is just as it has always been, an easy step back, a slight blurring of the world. Bianka has Theo with her. He waves at me, delighted. Blasted hounds of Kahge, the little rotter can see me! I am tiring fast of the occupants of this house. I give him a stern look, and he laughs.

“That's right, an owl,” says Bianka. At least she doesn't see me, however strange and strong she may be.

“Come back here, Strig,” says Professor Baranyi. “Keep us company.”

The owl tilts his head and looks at me, as if asking permission. I glare at him, and he flutters over to his master and sits on his shoulder. Theo is more interested in the owl than in me now, thankfully.

“I wanted to speak to you because I know Mrs. Och is holding back,” says Bianka. “I hope you will be more candid.”

The professor looks startled, takes his glasses off nervously and cleans them.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “She has been very kind—you all have—and I understand that you are protecting me. But she tells me nothing beyond that she is working to find a safe place for me and Theo. I want to know what is
happening.
I want to know
why
it is happening. I want to know about Gennady.”

Professor Baranyi puts his glasses back on and smiles wanly. “Surely I cannot tell you anything that Mrs. Och cannot. As for Gennady, I have never met him.”

Theo fights his way off Bianka's lap and hides under the desk.

“Well, I mean, what
is
he? He's not some kind of man-witch, is he?” asks Bianka, slipping her foot out of her shoe and wiggling it at Theo. He grabs her toes.

“No, he isn't that,” says Professor Baranyi cautiously. “But he is a very unusual man.”

Bianka sighs and slumps back in her chair. “You're all so blasted secretive,” she says. “He was too. I wish I knew what happened to him.”

“We all do,” says the professor.

“I knew he wasn't going to stay,” says Bianka. “Of course I knew
that.
But I didn't think he'd disappear so completely. We went to Sirillia for a holiday right after Theo was born. He changed our plans midway, put me on a train and went to get something from the dining car, and he never came back. I've had no word of him since. You don't think…well, with all the death following me around, I can't help but fear he's dead too.”

“I am as certain as I can be that he is not,” says the professor.

“How can you be certain?” says Bianka. Then she throws up her hands. “Mrs. Och said the same thing. But then what has happened to him? Why would he disappear without a word?”

“Gennady has enemies,” says Professor Baranyi. “He may have gone away to protect you.”

“It didn't work,” she says sharply. “Now I have enemies too, it would appear.”

“Yes. We are working on that. Tell me again about the man you mentioned to Mrs. Och, the one who was looking for Gennady.”

“I'd lost my job at the dance hall. They replaced me while I was pregnant, and then after Gennady disappeared, I had to tell Magdar that Theo was
his
son. I didn't know what else to do. Magdar took good care of us. He got me a nice house by the sea to share with his lover, Kata.”

“Magdar was the banker, the second victim, yes?” asks the professor. “And Kata—this is the dancer who was killed? The first victim?”

“Yes. Magdar had a taste for dancing girls. Kata and I were friends, even though she was Magdar's new lover and I was his old one. She didn't seem to mind any of it—my being there, Theo. I suppose it might have been a relief to her to see Magdar took care of his castoffs. It's something girls like us need to worry about.”

The professor looks a bit uncomfortable at this. “And the man who came to see you?” he prompts her.

“Yes, so then this man turned up at the house, well-spoken, handsome, except he had an eye patch, and his other eye was yellow. Quite ruined his looks. He sat in my parlor and asked me all these questions. I didn't tell him much, but he knew a fair bit about the two of us already. He knew about Theo too, and seemed very interested in him. He snipped a bit of his hair without asking me, pricked his finger so it bled, and I kicked him out then. The whole thing scared me witless, of course. I wanted to get out of town, and I'd heard about a troupe doing sort of avant-garde circus performances in Falleri, up the coast. I went to look for Gennady, or to see if any of them had heard of him. It was a long shot, of course: he wasn't there, they didn't know him, and when I came home, Kata was dead. You know what happened. I saw it, and I
knew
somehow it was my fault—that it was meant to be me. I packed my things and had Magdar take me to the train right away. I met the governess at the station, just by chance. I didn't know, how
could
I have known just how unlucky it was for her, meeting me that way? Her name was Jani. Magdar put me on the train—we waved to him from the windows—and not long after I got to Spira City, I saw in the papers that he was dead as well. Then the governess, Jani, and the cabriolet driver who took us from the station, and the innkeeper, and the messenger boy. Everyone I meet seems to turn up dead in the same horrible way.” Her voice is rising now. “Mrs. Och didn't seem terribly surprised by that. Are you?”

Professor Baranyi's face is stony now. “Someone is hunting you,” he says. “That is all.”

“But why also hunting my friend, my old lover, the woman I share a blasted cabriolet with?”

“I believe that before he disappeared, Gennady must have done something to protect you, to hide you from the killer. But still he searches, hoping those who have met you can lead him to you.”

“Is it the man with the yellow eye?”

“No. But I'd wager that they have the same employer.”

“But who? Why? What do they want with me?”

Tiring of his mother's toes, Theo is making toward me now, crawling across the room. Very slowly I lower myself to the ground and settle myself in a plausible position for having fainted, in case he draws attention to me. Luckily Professor Baranyi is far too engrossed in his conversation with Bianka to notice the movement, and Bianka has her back to me still.

“That is what we must find out,” says the professor. “My own best guess is that they want Gennady, and they hope you will either know where he is or, together with your son, serve as bait to lure him.”

“I don't know where he is, and I doubt he would come to our rescue,” she says bitterly. “So the killer is wrong on both counts. If you know who it is, can't you stop him?”

“We are doing what we can,” says the professor again.

“Mrs. Och said the man with the yellow eye probably wanted to test Theo's hair and blood to see if he was really Gennady's son. Is it possible?”

“Such tests do exist, yes. Is he…you're sure, then, that he
is
Gennady's son?”

I can't see her face, but her shoulders slump a bit. “Yes, quite sure.”

An uncomfortable silence follows, interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Ah,” says the professor, leaping to his feet, clearly relieved. “There is Mrs. Och.”

My blood turns to ice. She'll come right in and see me, as she did before. As quickly as I dare, I crawl behind the divan piled with books. I can't see them now, but I hear Mrs. Och's voice greeting Bianka. Theo joins me behind the divan, batting at my apron string like a kitten.

“We'd like you to give us a little demonstration,” says Mrs. Och. “Just to see if there might be something unusual about you besides your association with Gennady—something that might be drawing all this unwelcome attention.”

“There is plenty unusual about me,” says Bianka. “As you know. I haven't hidden anything.”

“Mrs. Och may be able to recognize something you cannot,” says the professor. “Have you heard of transmogrification?”

Silence from Bianka, and the professor supplies the answer: “Turning a living creature into another kind of creature. I thought we might try it on Strig here. Owl into cat. Do you think you can do it?”

“I've never tried any such a thing,” says Bianka. “It seems rather cruel. But if it will tell you something you need to know, give me pen and paper and we'll see.”

My heart starts to pound. No wonder she is so strong. I peer over the top of the books. Mrs. Och is facing Bianka, not me. Professor Baranyi is fetching pen, paper, and ink for Bianka. I watch her dip the pen and sigh. Everything seems to slow down.

“I do not often write anything down,” she says, almost dreamily. “Not unless I need to. When I hold a pen in my hand, I feel the whole world tremble before me. I want to follow the trail of ink to a thousand places. The temptation of it frightens me. The power of it. And so I do not write letters, or lists, or anything else. Because I might find I am writing something different altogether. I hold the pen and do not know which of us is master.”

The professor and Mrs. Och are watching her closely, tensely. It would serve them right if she turned them both into toads, if you ask me. But I find I am a little afraid myself, riveted by the sight of her with the pen in her hand. She twists the pen in her fingers and begins to write. Then she stops, and blood gushes from her nose. I force myself to keep still, not to clap a horrified hand over my mouth. The professor rushes over, proffering a handkerchief, which she presses to her face. The room pulses, once, filling with the smell of rotten flowers, and I feel as if I am seeing everything anew, eyes washed clear.

“There!” cries the professor. “It's working.”

Strig has fluffed up his feathers and is leaping about on the floor, blinking furiously.
“Hoo!”
he cries.
“Hooo hoo!”
Then all at once he lengthens out, forepaws extending from his chest, talons growing into hind legs. He looks up at them, and they look at him.

His size has not changed, only his shape, and so he is really the size of a kitten. His beak has become a little brown cat nose, but he still has great big yellow owl eyes, and an odd blend of feathers and fur. His face is a strange, squashed, wide-eyed sort of face for a cat.

“Meow?”
he tries out hesitantly. A second time, with more confidence:
“Meow.”

All right, he seems to be saying. So I am a cat. Meow, then.

“Are you all right?” Mrs. Och asks Bianka.

“Rather dizzy,” she says. “Was it helpful?”

Mrs. Och shakes her head. “I did not see anything unusual in it,” she says.

For heaven's sake. Only in this house might turning an owl into a cat be considered the usual sort of thing.

“Impressive, though,” says Professor Baranyi. “Most witches could not change a living creature so completely.”

“No?” asks Bianka, her voice muffled by the handkerchief. “I've never known any other witches. I don't even know what I can do. I'm afraid to find out.”

“You are strong for a witch,” says Mrs. Och. “But you are no more than that. It does not explain your situation.”

Professor Baranyi strokes Strig's head. Strig purrs.

“Shall we undo it?”

Bianka hands him the pen somewhat reluctantly. I notice that although she is holding it out to him, he has to tug a bit before she loosens her grip and lets him take it. He snaps it in two, and the cat yowls, fur and feathers standing straight up.