Vassa in the Night (27 page)

“I don't get it,” I tell him. “You're the ones who are trying to bring BY's down. What's not relevant about that?”

Pangolin ripples his snout incredulously, but doesn't say anything. He offers me a condescending pat on the head and strays off again, and at this point I'm not sure I care what he does. When I glance back at Picnic I notice the fly reviving in a splash of gray froth; I guess it was just stunned.

I go through the motions numbly, hating the coarse light outside, the unctuous song that never stops playing, the store's relentless jerk and sway. It's only now I realize that I didn't feel the floor heaving the whole time I was in Babs's apartment. Now and then I try to think of some way of saving Erg, but my thoughts might as well be shoving their way through wet sand; they go nowhere, mean nothing, scrape along like small dying animals. What plan could I possibly come up with while Sinister has her in that full-body squeeze? And how can I even think about going back for Mr. Night-Doll-Monster while Erg's life would be the price of another attempt, even a hopeless one? I watch the mausoleums on the hill gamboling past, the rooftops, the rotting heads that waft across the clouds behind. Every time I see Joel I feel a fresh twinge of shame and the dull conviction that I've let him down—him and everybody else.

I'll be keeping him company soon. And really, once Chelsea and Stephanie are over the initial shock, what will it matter? If I didn't still have a stubborn speck of hope that I'll somehow rescue Erg, I'd give up caring completely.

I couldn't say how long I go on in this dismal trance, but after a while we stop pitching and start a drowsy plunge. The store must be kneeling, though I didn't notice anyone singing out there. We touch down and the door opens wide, but for a long moment no one comes in. Then I see him: an old man in a tweed jacket, his twisted body propped on a cane. White-haired and scholarly. His smile when he sees me is warm but vacant, and I immediately get the sense that he's not all there.

“Hello,” he says. “I seem to have gotten off at the wrong stop.”

Picnic and Pangolin exchange glances. Fine. I can't think about them while this old man is here, innocently shambling into danger. Picnic takes Pangolin's paw and they saunter out as if they were going on a nice stroll. I get up and dart over to the old guy, hoping to hustle him out of here before the store rears again. “Let's step out in the parking lot, okay? I'll give you directions. Where are you trying to go?”

He gapes at me as if I were a long-lost friend. “I caught the wrong train, but then I saw the store. It was dancing. Like something in a story I read long ago. The words came back to me, and the melody, as if I had never once stopped singing them since I was a boy. I remembered how wonderful it was then, coming here. The song is inside me, and the dance, even if my legs won't follow my lead. Just as the mistake was no mistake, but a true
directive.
How did I know where to find you, Sabine? I knew I'd see you again one day, my darling girl.”

Oh, boy. “That's not my name,” I tell him, as gently as I can. “Please, let's go outside.” As soon as I've said it I see that it's already too late. We're ten feet off the ground and rapidly ascending. The only encouraging thing is that I don't see Babs anywhere, so maybe I still have time to get him out before she has a chance to intervene.

His expression shifts. He lowers his head and gazes at me from below rambling eyebrows, his smile stealthy and dark. “I understand,” he says. “I shouldn't have said it out loud. You had to change your name so that death wouldn't find you. I always said you were too young … And your hair. What an odd choice, but a clever one, to blind it with color! And your mouth has changed, too, somehow. I almost didn't know you myself, but then I saw through … No, I won't call you that again, dear.”

I stamp out the code on the floor. I'll get him out of here if I have to throw him on his ass in the parking lot. I wait for the telltale sinking feeling, for the buildings gliding up beyond the windows.

Instead the store keeps dancing. I try again, rapping the code emphatically with my heavy boots. My swan foot aches, but other than that nothing happens. And I'm positive I have the rhythm right.

The store is deliberately ignoring me.

It must have its reasons, and that is not an encouraging thought.

The old man softly rests a papery hand on my cheek, still gazing at me, and I step back. “My name is Vassa,” I tell him. “We've never met before. I've never known anyone named Sabine. You won't find her here.”

Or anywhere, and you used to understand that, didn't you?
But then I remember the way I searched the faces of those miniature dancers for some vestige of my mother, and I don't even have senility as an excuse. This poor old man is peering into my eyes as if they were the windows of a dollhouse, hoping that everything he's lost might miraculously be preserved inside. Suddenly disillusioning him seems so cruel that I can barely breathe.

“You're obliged to say that,” he tells me tenderly, and I don't have the heart to deny it anymore. “I understand. Death is a crafty old fellow, isn't he? It takes all your wit to slip his clutches, even for a bright girl like you. Shall I call you
Vassa,
then?” He says my name like we're sharing a joke and maybe he's right about that: a joke name for a half girl.

One good thing about Sinister being occupied: it buys us some time. The old guy can probably wallow in his delusions for a little longer without getting offed, at least I hope so. I try stamping the code again, just in case. No response.

“I have a message from
her,
” I try, and he smiles in delight at our complicity. How charming it is, I can see him thinking, that she's pretending not to be Sabine! How witty to refer to herself in the third person! “
She
needs you to wait here by the window, and don't touch anything. Keep your hands tight over your pockets. As soon as the store goes back down to the parking lot,
she'll
have a very important mission for you. There's something you need to bring her from home. Can you do that?” I'm betting that once he leaves he'll forget all about me and never find his way here again.

He nods and covers his right pocket, but he can't cover the left since he needs that hand to clutch his cane. I'm pretty sure Dexter's on my team now, but I still don't like it. “Hang on,” I tell him. “Let me get you a chair.”

I'm just heading toward the back of the counter to drag that filthy chair out for him when I hear it: the tap of his cane, the scuff of tired feet. I spin around. He's just reaching out toward the nearest shelf for something small and sparkling, something I can tell at a glance doesn't belong here.

“Her ring,” he says vaguely, holding it in front of his eyes; golden and gleaming. I see the cherry flash of a ruby. “
Your
ring. It must be here for a reason.…”

“Put it back!” I yell at him. “Please put it back!”

He doesn't seem to register my voice. His hand drifts, drowsy as a cloud, toward his pocket. By the time I've run three steps I hear the faint
chink
of the ring hitting loose change.

By the time I've run four steps Babs has him down on the floor. I never saw her coming, but she's kneeling on his chest and looking up at me with a cold, steady smile. He's wheezing loudly, fumbling at her, but she's way too strong for him.

“He's an old man,” I say. “He's not right in the head. He didn't know what he was doing!”

Babs doesn't say anything, just keeps on smiling as she reaches to rattle the jar in her pocket. I hear the clack of Erg's wooden shoes on the glass and the muffled thud of Sinister's flesh.

The old man looks at her with a strangely peaceful expression. “You,” he says.

Her white eye spins small circles in the air above his face.

I never saw the axe coming, but Babs whips it out from behind her as if it weighs no more than a tuft of grass. I remember how it dragged in my hands and I can't help realizing: Babs isn't just stronger than she looks, she's a whole lot stronger than I am. The blade flashes brightly colored reflections, beaming back images of detergent and the gaudy yellow linoleum. Babs must have known what would happen from the minute he walked in the store; she must have fetched the axe while I was busy talking to him and waited for her chance.

“Babs,” I try, though my voice flaps absurdly in my ears. “I think what you're doing is against the rules. Is that ring even yours?”

“Of course it's mine,” Babs says softly. “I only set it down for a moment, imp. It was a gift from an old friend of mine, or should I say a friend of
ours
?”

She means Bea. And something about the way she says it makes me understand: she set up this old man as my punishment for violating her space, for freeing her prisoners. He's about to die, but it's got nothing to do with him. It's between her and me.

“Babs, he's innocent! He didn't understand. You know this is wrong!”

She grins at me like I've just given her a million bucks. “Ah,” she muses, “you presume to tell me what I
know
of right and wrong, Vassa? And after I warned you not to say such words in my presence.”

She hefts the axe over him. I look wildly toward the window hoping that by some miracle dark will be falling early, hoping that I can beg Night for help. But hazy sunlight is whistling off the roofs, battering the parked cars, and Night is still on the far side of the earth where he won't hear me. I'm on my own. And fighting Babs physically means that Erg will almost certainly die—but my muscles are tensing anyway, getting ready to leap at her.

“I understand,” the old man wheezes out behind my back. “For Sabine. I'll take her place. Truly, I'm happier than I can say.”

It was only an instant, just one razor-fine flash of time, but by the time I turn back to Babs the axe is already falling. Then the head. Blood radiates like the beams of a crimson sun.

Babs hauls up the pale old head by one ear and swings it experimentally. His eyes are white and stunned, his face crimped in fear. No matter what he said, he doesn't look like he was all that thrilled. Against the intolerable yellow of the floor the blood trails gleam scarlet black, writhing across the linoleum like long, emaciated arms. Maybe they're Sabine's arms coming to catch him as he falls.

Maybe.

I feel something hard clap against my knees and then hit my chest. My eyes swarm with yellow, and it dawns on me that I've fallen. The colors are dimming, ocher and violet in long slanting shades.

“Oh, drag her off to bed,” Babs orders someone or other. “She'll need all her strength for tonight.”

*   *   *

At times I'm aware of the cot underneath me. At times there's a pale and painful intrusion of walls on my retinas. This haze can't really be called sleep, but it goes on and on. “Erg?” I hear my voice calling out. “Doll, they can't take you from me!”

Oh, but they did, Sinister and Babs. They took her and now I can never leave this place unless I can get her back.

Soon enough it will be dark again, and I'll have to confront whatever nasty tricks Babs has planned for me without Erg's help. Night will be back, but after the way I ran out on Mr. Night-Doll-Monster in Babs's apartment I'm ashamed at the thought of facing the darkening sky again. After everything Night and the motorcyclist did for me I let them both down, I know it.

What was that I saw spinning high up in that vast chamber just before Dex came for me? Two toothed golden disks that gnawed at the darkness. Twin stars. The memory of them keeps eating away at my thoughts, those sharp teeth cycling around and around. I'd seen something like them before somewhere, is the thing, and if I can just remember where—I don't know why, but I feel like that might tell me what I need to know.

Night sees you, Vassa.
People like to compare stars to eyes, but if you really think about it what we actually use to see is
darkness
: the dark inside our pupils. Is that how it is for Night, is interstellar space the way it takes us in? Stars in your eyes would be too bright. They would blind you. Is that how it is for Night? I guess I'm drowsing because the words repeat, a singsong chant in my mind:
You can't see when stars are in your eyes, you can't find your way home
.
…

I remember Babs flipping up the motorcyclist's visor right in front of me, making sure I saw how he suffered and heard his pitiful screams. If I hadn't witnessed that, I might have tried to look in his eyes myself; really, Babs did a fabulous job of making sure I'd be too freaked to try it.

And then I sit up so fast the cot squeals. I remember now where I saw those stars before, and I have the barest hint what they could mean.

I'm sick at the thought of how much it will hurt him, but I know all at once that I
have
to lift his visor. No matter how cruel that it is, no matter how he shrieks. Slick and black and opaque as that glass is, a sudden intuition stabs through me all at once: it isn't the motorcyclist's visor that's blinding him.
Please don't believe that the shadow dropped far, or who-oo will you find if you open the stars?

That's how the song went right after I got back from Babs's apartment. And I'm pretty sure that in all the thousand times I've heard it lilting in the background, it never once had those words in it before.

*   *   *

I wake to a rap on my door. “Rise and shine, Vassa,” Babs calls, too cheerfully. “How can you dim down to oblivion if you don't shine first?”

“Good question.” I haven't slept without Erg beside me in the last six years. Waking up to the knowledge that Sinister still has her in a strangling grasp leaves me heart-chilled and sickened, and it also leaves me with no choice. For a moment I consider trying to sponge off at the sink, but it doesn't seem to matter anymore how filthy I am.
Just get out there, Vassa. You sure don't stand a chance of getting Erg back while you're hiding in here!