Path of Smoke (15 page)

Fel told her about what they'd seen at the necropolis. When she reached the part about Eumachia dressed in boy's clothing, Drauca raised an eyebrow. Fel kept talking. She stopped short of describing the kiss. That probably wasn't relevant.

Drauca considered her words for a moment. Then she shook her head slightly. “The girl has lost faith.” Her eyes seemed to darken beneath the mask. “There is nothing worse . . . then being b-betrayed by one's own . . . mother.”

“What do you think of their plan?” Felix asked.

“Foolish and . . . sh-short-sighted. They are defenseless. Not even . . . a company.”

“Actually,” Fel said, “we are.”

For the first time, she actually believed it.

“You . . . are but two.”

“There's an archer in your atrium,” Babieca said, “and an artifex who's building us an army of toys. That makes four.”

Drauca looked at him closely. Recognition sparked within her eyes. “I . . . have seen you before. At the black basia. You were with . . . another.” She frowned, turning to Felix. “He was slight . . . his eyes danced. What was his name?”

The house father said nothing. It was as if he couldn't quite pronounce the word.

“Roldan,” Babieca said, after a moment.

“Yes. An auditor. Was he not . . . of your company?”

“He passed beyond the wheel,” Felix said.

Drauca looked first at Felix, then at Babieca. She nodded slowly. “The wheel must turn. Sometimes we are above . . . sometimes, below. It never stops. But one day . . . all of our sh-shadows may come back to us.”

“Perhaps,” Babieca murmured.

Unexpectedly, Drauca touched the trovador's face. “Even y-yours,” she said.

He reddened slightly but said nothing. Her hand lingered on his cheek. Then she withdrew it and turned back to Felix. “They want an audience with . . . E-Eumachia?”

“That is their hope,” he replied. “Of course, it will be difficult to escape Latona's gaze.”

“Difficult . . . but not impossible.”

“Can you do it?” Babieca asked. “I don't understand how.”

“Simple.” She smiled. “The girl may have lost f-faith in her mother . . . but she still trusts her aunt.”

I
NGRID
LANDED
IN
A
patch of blackberries. A few of the ripe ones burst, and the smell reminded her of summer. Instinctively, she put one of the berries in her mouth. Its silken hairs teased her tongue as she bit down. Sweet. She could almost forget the dull ache in her limbs and the pain behind her eyes. To live in a blackberry bush, under the stars. That would be her fairy tale of choice. Sleeping among the darkest of the hillside thickets, with the taste of summer in her mouth, like goblin wine.

She could barely make out the shapes beside her. One of them swore. That was Carl. Next to him, Shelby was dusting herself off. There were thorns in her hair.

“Rough transition,” she said. “Kind of like being spit out.”

“Maybe we're using the—thing—too much,” Ingrid replied. She was a bit groggy, as if she'd just woken up.

“What thing?”

“The—” Ingrid searched for the word. “You know what I mean.” Her brain felt like it was smothered in wet cotton. “Placey-place. With the smudge.”

“Do you mean the house by the wall?” Carl asked.

“That's it.”

She felt a hand on her shoulder. Not Shelby's hand—Carl's. Had he ever touched her before? It was so strange that she almost laughed. He was still naked, after all. They all looked as if they were in the middle of a postmodern porno. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw that he was frowning at her.

“Everything okay in there?”

“There's no brain damage, if that's what you're getting at.”

“Sorry. Just checking.”

She leaned against a tree. “Does anyone else feel incredibly hungover?”

“Well—” Shelby grimaced. “My head is a bit wonky. Carl? What about—”

He was throwing up behind a bush. Once that was over, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, then turned to Shelby.

“What was the question?”

“How are you?”

“Oh. Well—a bit better, now.” He examined the bush and made a face. “I guess you really can't bring anything from Anfractus. Not even dinner.”

“Gross.”

“I'm just stating facts.”

“Could it be the house?” Shelby asked. “Felix did warn us not to use it too much, right? Maybe it's messing with our equilibrium.”

“I think we left too early,” Ingrid said. “The transition is supposed to occur with the rhythms of the sun. But we were only on the other side for a few hours. Our bodies were still adjusting. When we leave unexpectedly—it's kind of like jumping out of a moving car.”

“It feels worse this time. I've never seen Carl purge before.”

“I put some leaves over it,” he said guiltily.

Ingrid reached for her duffel bag, which was hidden in the tree. “Let's just get dressed. I think better when I'm clothed.”

“Really? I'm the opposite.” Carl pulled on his boxers. “If it were up to me, I'd only wear shoes. And—maybe some kind of fanny pack, to hold my cards.”

“That image is going to stay with me,” Shelby muttered.

“I like my body.”

“Yeah. You like it too much. That's the problem.”

“Excuse me for having self-esteem.”

“I think she's stuck on the fanny pack,” Ingrid said. “I have to admit, that's creeping me out, as well.”

“Then where will I put my change?”

“I can think of one place.”

“Okay, even if I had the square footage—and I'm not saying that I do—”

“Be quiet,” Ingrid whispered. “Both of you. Listen.”

Something was moving, beyond the trees. Ingrid looked around. Several pairs of glowing eyes looked back at her. The ducks were listening, as well. They knew that something was wrong. Could ducks sense evil? Was that a thing?

“What is it?” Carl asked softly.

Ingrid put a finger to her lips. All she could hear was the wind. Then a plane moaned overhead. It was so loud, she nearly screamed. When the sound of the engines had receded, they all looked at each other. Shelby tried to stifle a laugh.

“I really did hear something,” Ingrid said.

“Yeah,” Carl replied. “It's called a 747.”

“There was something else. I swear it.”

“We could ask the ducks. They seem pretty chill.”

Ingrid threw the duffel bag over her shoulder. “Fine. Let's just go. I need some tea and a hot shower.”

“That sounds great.”

“You can use your own shower.”

“It has shitty pressure. Yours looks—”

She glared at him. “Have you been staking out my shower?”

“You've got a great bathroom,” he said. “Is dreaming a crime?”

“No. But it's profoundly unsettling.”

They walked past the gazebo, whose peeling gray floor was outlined by the park lights. The nearby wastebasket was overflowing with cigarette butts. In the distance, Ingrid could hear the occasional car as it crossed the Albert Street bridge, with its stern façade of Queen Victoria looking down on motorists. A wind was blowing the sulfur smell of Wascana Lake toward them, and it burned her throat. Who knew what was living down there, in the radioactive depths of the constructed underdark? This whole place had once been a windswept ossuary. Human and buffalo bones together, asleep beneath the surface. Ingrid imagined them in their silence, turning to yellow glass over the course of nearly two centuries.

In the 1930s, the government had hired workers to dam the lake. They would have been desperate for any kind of job. Did they realize that someday the resulting park would be a green shadow within Regina, a strange mirror image of a royal wood? Aside from the occasional coyote, there wasn't a great deal of wildlife. Rollerbladers had replaced the fauna. The grasslands of Saskatchewan were gradually being parceled off to developers, with little thought for how this might impact provincial ecology. Paul had told her once that the grasslands were some of the quietest places on earth. He liked to go bird watching, although his teammates ribbed him about it, mercilessly. Sometimes they'd steal his Audubon guides and replace them with
Maxim
.

Ingrid was happy to see her dented gray car waiting for her across the parking lot. She wasn't sure how Sam was getting home. Maybe she'd call a cab. She thought about leaving some kind of note for her—
Text me when you get back, and I'll pick you up
—but Sam's duffel bag was back in the clearing. She didn't have the strength to turn around. The comfort of the couch was too close. She could already smell the vanilla air freshener in her hallway, and lingering over that, an echo of whatever Paul had cooked for dinner. There would be leftovers wrapped in neat tinfoil packets. If she was quiet enough, she could make herself a plate in the semidarkness of the kitchen, without waking them up.

Neil could sleep through anything. She'd brushed his teeth while he was unconscious, and he'd simply sighed, trembling beneath some rich dream. But Paul was a light sleeper. Often he heard her struggling with the screen door. He'd come stumbling down the hallway in his pajamas, rubbing his eyes and asking if she wanted him to throw something in the microwave. Her sweet brother, who could fix any problem with the correct seasoning.

Ingrid herself was a survivalist cook. She ate what was required to avoid fainting, but she'd never moved past the one-pot meal. Paul made his own pasta and seemed genuinely happy when he was deboning a chicken. It hardly mattered if his fingers were slick with blood or bread crumbs. His natural state was to be covered in something. Ingrid wasn't sure where he'd learned to cook—certainly not from their parents—but she was grateful. If not for him, she would have subsisted on hash browns, guacamole, and tofu crumbled up into a bowl of instant noodles.

“It's not too late,” Carl said. “Would anyone else vote for waffles at Humpty's?”

“It's two thirty in the morning,” Shelby clarified. “Do you really want to deal with the clientele at this hour?”

“Drunks can be funny. They have such bad reflexes.”

“I'll pass.”

“Ingrid? Can I interest you in a vinyl booth?”

She laughed. “That has to be the strangest proposition I've ever received.”

“I call it brunch after midnight. I think it's going to catch on with the academic set.”

Ingrid turned to him. “Carl, why don't you want to go home?”

His crooked smile faded. Then his eyes clouded, and he shrugged, in the way that you do when you're holding something back. “I live on the second floor. My apartment is like a toaster oven, and the sex shop below me is open all night. It's hard to sleep when there's a dildo-related dispute going on right outside your window.”

“The clubs are still open. Why not go out?”

“I'm not in the mood for rejection tonight.”

“Oh, come on. You must clean up.”

“He has a weakness for the unattainable,” Shelby said, putting an arm around his shoulder. “That's a taste that we both share, I'm afraid.”

“I'm better with a wingman. Or wing-lady.” He frowned. “Scratch that.
Wing-lady
sounds like a demented superhero. Let's just go with
copilot
.”

“Tell you what,” Shelby said. “Come back to my place, and I'll have one drink with you. It's going to be a gin and Coke, because that's all I've got.”

He brightened. “You're on.”

“Just one. I'm tired, and I don't want you dragging me anywhere.”

“I swear it, on my honor as a grad student.”

“That oath is worth nothing.”

“Well, it's all we've got.”

Shelby turned to Ingrid. “You could get in on this action, if you wanted. I've also got some pretty flat cream soda in the fridge.”

For a moment, her laconic expression changed to one that was hopeful. Ingrid knew what she was really asking. Her stomach did a bit of a flip. It was late. She already felt bad for leaving Paul and Neil. Part of her wanted nothing more than to sink into clean sheets, to forget entirely about the basilissa and what she might do to them. It wouldn't take long. The hot shower would speed her toward a sweet oblivion. But at the same time, she wanted to know what just one drink would lead to, after Carl went home. The possibilities multiplied within her mind. It had been a long time. Maybe she'd forgotten it all. She would need to consult an instructional website before getting into bed with another human being.

“I'm not sure,” Ingrid hedged. “Hard alcohol does a number on my stomach. It's been years since I had tequila, and I still remember—”

Shelby was staring at her. At first, Ingrid thought that she was trying to look disapproving. But her eyes were too wide for that. She seemed horrified.

“Okay, I know my gastro issues aren't exactly the classiest topic of conversation, but Carl once threatened to put his—”

Then she realized that Shelby wasn't looking at her. Instead, she was looking at something over her shoulder. Ingrid didn't want to turn. She really didn't. A part of her knew, already, what Shelby had seen. There was no sense in denying it. The hairs on the back of her neck and arms were already standing at attention. But for a moment, she clung to the bliss of ignorance, as if it were a blanket that she could pull over her face.
Let me keep dreaming,
she almost said.
Don't force me to wake up.
It was no use. Time to open her eyes, and face the horror.

Ingrid turned. Shelby stood very still beside her, saying nothing. Carl had moved into an odd position, sort of adjacent to the two of them. It was as if he wanted to step forward, to interpose himself between them and whatever was coming, but his body refused to cooperate. He stood at a curious angle, fused to the pavement. More statue than savior. Ingrid could feel the adrenaline setting fire to her heart and lungs. Her hands trembled.
We're rabbits,
she thought.
This is how a small thing feels, before the teeth, before everything goes dark.

A silenus was making her way across the parking lot. At first Ingrid thought that she carried a spear. But then she realized that the wood was grayish and peeling. She must have torn it from the floor of the gazebo. Not that she needed a weapon. The contours of muscle were visible, even beneath her dark pelt. She could pull off their limbs, one by one, as a bored child might pluck daisies. Her eyes reminded Ingrid of the park lights, sodium-yellow and flickering with excited vapor. She moved with slow assurance. Her hooves lifted sparks from the uneven pavement, as if buried power lines were somehow responding. It wasn't the
clip-clop
of a prancing horse. It was a hammer, breaking through stone. Ingrid half expected to see glowing hoofprints, like something out of a Washington Irving tale, but there were only spiral cracks in the ground. The world was her windshield, and she was a collision, a nightmare of velocity and hunger that would kill them in a moment of exquisite calculus.

Ingrid could feel an older part of her brain, something prehistoric, slowly taking control. This was a mammoth, and she was a bug caught in its shadow. Running wasn't an option—they were in the middle of an empty parking lot. It might as well be a concrete safari. The silenus would overtake them in a moment. She needed a weapon. All she had in her pockets was a phone, a ring of keys, and some loose change. In the old Celtic stories, magical things were afraid of iron. She could pummel the creature with toonies. But this wasn't a storybook monster. This was Grendel's mother, a homicidal satyr with nothing to lose. Nothing short of a grenade would slow her down.

Then Ingrid realized that she did have a weapon.

“Everyone in the car!”

Instinctively, she grabbed their hands. For a moment, it felt like she was running through the park with Neil.
We are stars, Mummy,
he would squeal in delight.
Look at mine feet—they aren't even touching the ground!
But they weren't sailing over puddles, or letting the tall grass whip against their bare ankles. They were stumbling across a deserted parking lot. The silenus didn't break into a run. She kept her pace indifferent. After all, there was nowhere for them to go. She could close the distance between them in a moment.