Vassa in the Night (14 page)

Babs looks from him to me with leering satisfaction. “He doesn't enjoy that, does he? Well. I'll be off to bed, then, my imp. We'll speak again in the morning.”

The blood has spread into wider blotches, near black against the snow's glimmer whenever the store has its windows averted then brightening into rosy outbursts as the light sweeps by. Babs is waddling away with her arms spread. As long as she was in front of me it was easy to act brazen and confident. I was so angry at her that all I wanted was for her to squirm, to doubt that she really had me cornered. But now that she's gone I'm left with nothing but blood-ribboned swans and breathless dread.

I feel the delicate slide of tiny lacquered hands climbing up my shoulder. There's no one around. “Erg?” I whisper. “What do I do now?”

“You get started,” Erg says from under my jacket. Completely matter-of-fact. As calm as a bar of soap.

“The swans are still bleeding, though. Every time they move there's more blood spattering around. It's hopeless.”

“Well, why don't you start there?” Erg suggests. “Poor swans. That's got to hurt, right?”

Start there,
I think.
Here's your new calling. Go be a swan doctor.
Instead I wander over to that old cracked stump, moving carefully so I don't step on the swans' webbed feet, and collapse. They follow me in tight formation, my own private swan-cloud. I can feel tears crowding just behind my eyes, shoving to get out, while the swans bundle themselves around me in feathery heaps. They're warm and soft and I don't even mind the blood anymore because it's so comforting to have them pressing close. A long neck wraps like an arm around my shoulders and wing tips brush the tears from my eyes. My lips taste tart and metallic from the smears of their blood. I hug the white bodies nearest me, and then all the final scraps of my self-control flurry away and I'm crying so hard I can't breathe.

The motorcyclist whizzes around and around. Apparently the hands were lying about him helping me before because he sure doesn't seem to care now. He won't help me anymore than he helped himself when he stood there like an empty shell while Babs reduced him to squealing pain. He could be a robot programmed to be maximally pathetic.

It's his bland dull silence, I realize now, that let me dump all my fantasies onto him and pretend he was somehow interesting. As I cry I'm shaking and I don't know if my body is buffeted most by cold or fear or rage.

“Vassa?” Erg says. “I can see you're upset. But it's time to get up and do something.”

I feel like pulling her out from under my clothes and flinging her across the street. “Really, Erg? You think I should start polishing snowflakes? I'll get right on that.”

“Cool!” Erg trills excitedly. I guess her wood must be extra hard since it's clearly impervious to sarcasm. “I'll help! Though really you might want to take care of the swans first.”

Right. Their feathers are still wrapped in curving rivulets of fresh blood. Just because they don't have voices it doesn't mean they aren't in pain. If this is really my last night and my last moments are jangling like coins in my pocket, then I might as well spend them on wishes. Throw those moments into the darkness always rising like the jets of a fountain and whisper,
I wish that all of us together in this night could stop hurting. I wish we'd finally cease to bleed.

 

CHAPTER 8

When I get up the swans come with me, covering the snow in webbed prints and blurred red stars. An eddy of white wings swishes out and then squeezes close again with every step I take. With my baggy blood-blotched clothes and snarled purple hair I know I must look like an axe murderer, but the swans swirling at my feet make me feel more like a princess dropped from the moon.

As I approach the store it stops dancing and kneels down. I don't even have to sing the jingle. The privileges of being an employee, I guess.

“All right,” I tell the swans, “you guys wait out here, okay? I'll be back in like two minutes.”

They ruffle their feathers and stroke me with their bills, pressing closer. I get the impression that they're not keen on being left alone. They'll make a terrible mess in the store if they come in, though. “Really,” I tell them. “I want to take good care of you. Just be a little bit patient and I'll come back as quick as I can. Please?”

The biggest of them stands as high as my waist even with its head tucked down. Now it steps back and stares into my eyes. It has a look of disquieting, distinctly unbirdly braininess, which tends to support my theory about these swans and also about what might have happened to my pinched right foot. After a moment it actually nods, human-style, and steps aside to let me through. The others look like they just can't believe it, but then they follow suit. “Thanks,” I tell them softly, and walk through the wide-open door. They stretch their necks out to keep touching me for as long as they can.

The hands are on the counter. One of them, Dex I think, is giving the other a manicure. They've chosen a smoky-lilac iridescent polish this time. I liked the glitter better. It doesn't seem like they're paying attention as I turn down the second aisle; I have a vague sense that I noticed a first-aid section on a bottom shelf the first time I came in here. It takes a while to find—it's down the third aisle, not the second—but it's not as bad as looking for lightbulbs. Eventually I come across brown bottles of peroxide, and, tucked behind them, rolled gauze bandages in small red boxes. There are a lot of them, but no matter how many I load onto my arm I probably won't have enough. My flock might consist of a dozen birds, all scary big and spangled with wounds from head to tail.

I keep digging along the back of the shelf, finding more bandages. Once they're spilling out of my arm I start taking them out of the boxes and stringing the rolls on the cords dangling from my jacket. Then I grab a pack of paper towels, too, to try to mop the swans clean, and a candy bar for Erg, and head back to the door. The store has considerately stayed kneeling for me, which I appreciate. As I go the bandages start unspooling. White wispy streamers trail off me and tangle in my long hair. Dex and Sin are spread flat waiting for their enamel to dry, but as I walk by Dex can't resist clicking out a menacing staccato on the counter and then grabbing a loose twist of gauze. It unravels with a jerk and lands in an airy mess on the floor.

“You smudged your polish,” I say, and step back into the night.

I'm finding the relentless darkness less oppressive than I used to. Night is beginning to feel like my own heart dissolved into a black solution, a tender medium holding me close. The swans flutter in greeting, more outflung blood speckling the snow, though at this point it hardly matters. Crimson spreads in plumes; it feathers into shapes like smaller scarlet birds as if everything the swans have ever lost will rise up and live again. If my survival depends on restoring the snow to papery blankness, I may as well get resigned. I still have the option of breaking the border and, I'm pretty sure, living as one of them, white and winged. We'll be a kind of family.

The flakes have stopped falling. The night is one thick mass of shadow only disturbed by the distant streetlamps and a few gleaming windows. I lead the swans back to the stump and take the nearest one into my arms, stroking the sleek white head to calm it. The peroxide is going to sting, but I don't want to risk the wounds getting infected.

Once I've moistened a paper towel I start dabbing as gently as I can. The swan I'm cradling bristles with discomfort and snaps at the air while its feathers streak a slowly paling pink.

“It's okay,” I croon, “you'll be okay.”

I'm not used to being this sweet, but right now I can't help it. Once the swan is reasonably clean I take a bandage and start wrapping, doing the wings separately so it won't feel trapped. Once the first bird looks well swaddled I move to the next. The motorcycle growls by like the hand of a clock with no time left to tell and I tend to the swans until I forget everything beyond white snow and white feathers, the cold stiffening my hands and the darkness surging above.

“Miss Yagg?” a brusque voice demands. The swans scatter in a panic and I look up, well beyond annoyed. Whoever he is he's wearing a beige suit, he has a long tapering snout, and his visible flesh is covered completely in pointy scales colored a nasty cockroach brown. Not human, obviously. But after everything that's happened I may have reached the point of terminal
whatever,
and I give the shocked recoil a pass.

“What are you thinking?” I snap. “You scared the swans!”

He doesn't take that up, just peers through small round glasses at a sheaf of papers bristling from a folder. “Miss
Babs
Yagg?”

“She's
asleep,
” I snarl. “It's the middle of the night, or hadn't you noticed?” Maybe once he leaves the swans will come back to me; at least five of them still need their bandages.

He raises one clawed hand, or maybe more accurately paw, and taps a long conical nail against a plaque that hangs on a heavy chain around his neck. It's a large mahogany oval topped with a layer of brass, and on the brass is engraved:

P
ICNIC AND
P
ANGOLIN

A
TTORNEYS AT
L
ARGE

“Night or never,” he grumbles, “to me it's all
business
hours.
At large
encompasses even the most eldritch obscurities, does it not?
Large
takes it all in. So you can see that the dim hours, like all others, fall within my purview. I have a matter to bring to Miss Yagg's attention, if you'll be so kind as to fetch her?”

“Look,” I try, “Mr. Picnic—”

“It's Pangolin.”

“Mr. Pangolin—”

“Just
Pangolin.
” He practically grinds out the words. “If you please.”

I could swear there are more papers in the folder than there were a moment ago. The pile thrusts forward, and now a single page slinks free and flutters to the ground. “I'm sorry, Pangolin, but I'm not going to disturb Babs this late. If you'll tell me what this is about, though, I can give her a message.”

He shuffles closer, his long tail gouging the snow, and leans in to snuffle at me. The end of his snout is moist and pinkish, and he examines me through his glasses with bright black eyes. “Am I to understand that you are currently in the employ of Miss Yagg?”

“Of course I am,” I tell him curtly. “That's why I was bandaging her swans that you scared away.”

He's shorter than me, maybe five feet tall. His nose traces an arc two inches from my shoulder, sniffing methodically. “And would you perhaps characterize yourself as a
trusted
employee?”

I'm getting curious, I admit. “Oh, I'd say Babs trusts me
absolutely.
She's even been encouraging me to open my own BY's franchise.”

Pangolin's free paw jerks up and then starts scrabbling nervous circles in the air as if he was trying to burrow through it. “Oh! Dear girl, that would be most inadvisable! Don't consider it for an instant, please!” He snuffles again. “You smell too nice for such an unsavory business. And then the legal difficulties … you don't want any part of all that, I assure you!”

“Thank you for your advice,” I say carefully. “What are the legal difficulties? Babs—Miss Yagg—she really wants me to open a store, so I'm not sure…”

“Don't listen to her,” Pangolin snipes. He draws himself to his full height, such as it is, and sticks his snout in the air. “My partner Picnic and I are serving papers. A class action suit brought against the whole BY's chain on behalf of the denizens of…” He stops and shuffles his papers and they fall like tears, skating away on swirling currents in the air. “The denizens of Kings and Queens counties, Staten Island and the Bronx … Newark, Baltimore, and much of Pittsburgh … Detroit, certainly … There may be other districts implicated in this scandalous exploitation of circadian vulnerabilities as well, before the matter sorts itself out. Such an association would taint your prospects irreparably, I'm afraid.”

“Circadian vulnerabilities?” I say. “Are you by any chance talking about how crazy the nights have been getting?”

Pangolin isn't looking at me anymore. His tail scrapes a fan in the snow as he turns to watch the motorcyclist in his endless loop. “And who would
that
ungentlemanly apparition be?”

“Him?” I say. “He's the night watchman. I'd introduce you, except he doesn't talk, so chatting with him is pretty unfulfilling.” That's putting it mildly, of course.

“He looks coarse,” Pangolin observes. “An ill-favored reprobate. Can you tell me his name?”

“I don't know it,” I say. “So you're bringing a lawsuit against Babs because you think she has something to do with what's been happening to the nights around here?”