The Replacement (17 page)

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Authors: Brenna Yovanoff

BOOK: The Replacement
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I turned my face into the grass and wondered if this was how people felt when they knew they were going to die.
PART THREE
THE RESTLESS DEAD
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE AFTER PARTY
I
lay on the ground for way too long, with my face against the wet grass and the rain soaking into my clothes. I knew if I stayed, Tate would come back with Roswell, and then they'd want to take me home or worse, to the emergency room.
I had to get up and get moving. It was a painful and multi-step process, but I did it. The street was empty and the rain made everything disorienting. I was wandering through patches of light and deep shadow. The streetlights hummed so loud that my joints ached each time I passed one. I was on Welsh Street, then Orchard, then down the slope of the ravine and crossing the footbridge. My knees felt weak, and all the times I'd thought about my condition or the chance that I might die, I hadn't understood what it meant. I hadn't understood how much I wanted to live.
The ground was slick and muddy, but I made it, sliding on the steep path down to the bottom of the ravine. The slag heap was a vague, looming shape. It had never looked so welcoming.
I slumped against the base of the hill, resting my head on the loose gravel. There was nothing to show me where the door had been, nothing for me to catch hold of or grab onto.
I lay in the shale and the fill, trying to think what to do. I was starting to lose feeling in my hands when I heard the crunch of footsteps, not in the ravine but from inside the hill. The gravel slid away and the door swung open, showing a yellow rectangle of light.
It was Carlina.
"Decided to come after all?" she said, holding a lantern up so that it cast a circle of light over both of us. "You look a little out of sorts."
I nodded and struggled into a sitting position, trying to catch my breath. "Please, do you think I could get paid now?"
Carlina stood in the doorway. The lantern was so bright that it was hard to see her face. "What have you been doing to yourself? No, never mind. You'd better come in."
I got unsteadily to my feet and followed her inside.
She closed the door behind us, then turned to face me. "What's the matter with you? Don't you keep anything on hand for first aid?"
I shook my head.
With a sigh, she took a tiny bottle out of her pocket and uncorked it. "Okay, deep breath."
She held the bottle in front of my face and I breathed in, feeling my lungs expand. It wasn't the analeptic, but the green smell of leaves rushed over me and then the huge, shuddering relief of finally getting enough air.
When I'd gotten my breath back and was standing upright without using the wall, Carlina took me by the elbow and started to lead me down toward the lobby. "Is that better?"
I nodded, still a little stupefied over the difference between breathing and suffocating.
Carlina led me down, talking under her breath, shaking her head. "What is it about boys? Why do you always have to push things as far they can go? Just because you're not completely ragged anymore doesn't make you invincible."
I nodded again and followed her along the tunnel and through the main lobby into the huge, high-ceilinged room where the floor was covered in puddles and water welled up from the ground.
The entire room was full of people, talking and laughing. Some of them were playing cellos and violins, and over in a corner, a girl with long, stringy hair was tuning an upright harp, but mostly they just stood around in little groups, looking happy. The floor was covered with intermittent puddles and drifts of bright autumn leaves.
The Morrigan was sitting by one of the dark pools. She'd taken off her shoes and socks and was trailing her feet in the water. She was playing with a folded paper boat, pushing it back and forth across the surface with a stick.
Carlina put her hand on my shoulder. "Here, sit down. I'll have Janice grab you some more of the hawthorn and we'll get you sorted out."
I sank onto the floor, careful to pick a dry spot, and leaned my back against the wall. It was nice to be able to breathe again, but I was exhausted.
The Morrigan glanced over her shoulder and saw me. She jumped up and ran across the room, clambering over my legs and scrubbing her wet feet against the cuffs of my jeans.
She gave me a huge smacking kiss on the cheek and settled down on my lap to watch the milling crowd. I leaned back against the wall and let her hug me around the neck. I was still wet and cold, and she was very warm.
Some of the dead girls were splashing around over by the Morrigan's pool, laughing and trying to push each other in. The little pink girl from the Halloween party scampered between them, still wearing her princess dress and waving her star wand.
In another pool, farther along the room, a blue-faced girl surfaced slowly, rising out of the water in ghostly silence. Her hair was the powdery-green color of mold and her nose had started to rot away in places.
The Morrigan squeezed my face between her hands. "Aren't you pleased with yourself?
You
did this--you and the other players--you've made everyone so pleased."
I didn't know how to respond to that. There was something disturbing about being responsible for partially decayed girls going swimming.
The Morrigan rested her head on my shoulder. "They're happy," she said. "The performance was a success, and everyone feels quite merry right now."
Out in the crowd, a girl with a ragged hoop skirt and no skin on the ridges of her collarbone raised a glass above her head. Her hair was arranged in a braided crown around her head and the hoops showed through the frayed fabric of the skirt like bones. "A curse on the House of Misery! May God strike down the harridan and let her rot!"
That made the other girls laugh and shriek, tossing handfuls of red and orange leaves, splashing each other. "Let her rot," they sang. "Let her rot in the House of Misery!"
I smiled uneasily at the way the girls howled and danced, but the Morrigan just sighed and fidgeted with her stick.
"The what?" I asked. "What are they talking about?"
"It's properly called Mystery," the Morrigan said. "My sister's venerable house, which they ought to speak of with reverence. Instead, they mock and make jests at her, but it's only because she frightens them."
"Why are they scared of her?"
"Because she earns it." The Morrigan's head was heavy against my shoulder and she was talking around her thumb. "She frightens me too, come to that."
Janice wound her way through the crowd and over to us. She was still barefoot but had changed out of her romper suit, or at least put a dress on over it. Her hair was up, and she was carrying a wide, painted fan. She looked rumpled and sleepy. The bottle she held was much bigger than the tiny vials they'd given me before.
"Here's to wild nights and the maddening crowd," she said, handing me the bottle. "May you continue to put that bass to good use. And you," she said to the Morrigan, "you leave him alone until he's had a chance to get his breath back."
The Morrigan gave me a quick pat on the cheek. Then she jumped up and went skipping back to her pool and her boat. "Feel better," she called over her shoulder, waving the stick.
I cracked the seal on the analeptic and took a long drink.
My obvious relief made Janice laugh. "If you lived here like a proper ugly boy, this wouldn't happen to you."
Luther and Carlina came over together. They were holding hands, leaning against each other as they walked.
Janice shook her head at them. "Have you talked to this one? He lives up in the town like a local."
Luther rolled his eyes. "
Why
, I have no idea. It can't be pleasant or easy. You're as bad as that lunatic, Caury."
I stared up at him. "Kellan Caury? The guy from Hanover Music?"
Luther nodded. "He was a strange one. Thought he could live topside if he just drank his restoratives and played nice with the locals. And look where that got him."
I looked at the bottle. There was no denying that whatever Caury had believed, it had gotten him someplace messy.
Over by her pool, the Morrigan and the star girl had dropped their toys and were hopping around in a circle, holding on to each other's hands.
Janice watched as they spun and then fell down. "She's a sweet little thing. Petulant to try the devil sometimes, but she never misuses us or asks for more than we can give. She cares for us."
"Why does she use us for music?" I asked. "I mean, does the town really need it?"
It was Carlina who answered. "When we play for them, we give them something rare and wonderful, and in return, they give us their admiration. I know you felt it tonight. You must know you that belong here, with us, playing for their admiration and helping to keep the peace."
Luther slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, leaning down to kiss her.
I looked away because it seemed impolite to watch them. When they kissed, it was completely unselfconscious, holding on like they loved each other. It bothered me to realize that in my own experience, loving anyone, even my own family, just made me feel sort of awkward and shameful.
In the House of Mayhem, it was different. It wasn't shameful to be strange or unnatural because everyone else was too.
When I felt better, I got up and crossed the room to sit at the edge of the Morrigan's pool, watching the paper boat. It was painted with wax to make it waterproof, but it couldn't last forever, and the bottom was starting to get soggy.
The after party wound down and people began trailing out, leaving the room in twos and threes. Others lay tangled together on the floor or pinned each other against the walls.
The blue girls didn't seem to be included in the fun, though. Even in the House of Mayhem, the dead ones weren't popular at parties.
Over in a corner, Carlina still had her arms around Luther's neck. She kissed him hungrily, pulling his mouth down to hers, and his bony face and jagged teeth didn't matter because she was beautiful enough for both of them.
The initial wave of euphoria from the analeptic was wearing off and I started to wonder about Tate. What she'd thought when she'd gotten back to the side of the road with Roswell and found me gone. I hadn't had a choice. It was get myself someplace where someone could help me or stay on the side of the road until I passed out. Even now, I remembered the pain, the terrible weight in my chest, like I was never going to be able to breathe again.
I didn't want to be so invested in what happened to her, but her eyes were hard to forget. Her grief seemed almost like a solid thing, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
I looked down into the water, trying to see the bottom. The pool was too dark to see much, but there was a series of shallow steps cut into one wall, leading down.
"Why are there steps?"
The Morrigan gave me a puzzled look. "For going up and down."
"Why would you want to climb up and down in the water, though?"
The Morrigan turned her paper boat with the stick, making it wobble and spin. "The water wasn't always there. My noble sister has been punishing me with a flood. The lower floors are unusable now, except by the restless dead because they aren't troubled with the inconvenience of breathing."
"Where does it come from?" I said, watching the boat as it wavered and spun.
"From everywhere. It falls from the sky and seeps up from the ground."
"Aren't you worried that she's going to flood you out?"
"She'll relent soon and tire of abusing us. Perhaps she'll even regret her fit of pique. Until then, we're quite adaptable." The Morrigan smiled and kicked her legs, slapping the soles of her feet against the surface of the pool. "My sister makes the mistake of assuming that because we live one way, we're bound to it, but that just isn't so. Give us the corpses of children and we raise them. Give us water and we learn to swim."

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