Vassa in the Night (28 page)

I eat a few cookies; I know I need to keep myself together, but I'm too queasy to choke down more than that. And I step out into the store's harsh glow and a view of endless evening blue in the window. My heart skips at the sight of the night coming in and my cheeks heat up. Any moment now he'll be here, and the singer's voice is still with me, rippling through my thoughts like slow wind:
who will you find if you open the stars?

Now that I'm awake it all makes more sense. Maybe there's a reason why I couldn't find him in that vast dark chamber where I chased the sound of his voice. He was there, but maybe not in a form that I could hope to reach.

I've stopped in the middle of the store, caught up in my thoughts, and I jump when I realize how close Babs is standing and how she's staring at me. Her eye is darting so quickly that it looks like a flurry of fireflies. She must know me well enough to realize that Erg and I haven't completely given up yet.

“Did the bits sleep nicely?” she asks. By
the bits
she means me. “The little leftovers?”

“Sure,” I say, and then once again I fail to keep a lid on it. I can't resist saying something to unsettle her, knock her awful complacency askew. “It's being awake that's the riddle.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Ah, but when you prattle in your sleep, you answer every riddle there is, imp.” I'm ready to bet that she's lying, just trying to psych me out, so I don't bother responding to that. She's still wearing her gray eyelet dress, blood spatters and all. “Come admire the view.”

I follow her to the window. Everything is spotlessly clean again, not the faintest blood fleck anywhere, as if all the horror earlier was only a hallucination. The store turns, gently waltzing now, and the heads flow by like leaves on a river. The old man drifts past, still gazing wistfully at me. With all the blood drained from him he's as pale as a candle. And then Joel, still sad and dreaming. If he'd grown up, I bet he would have gotten away from here, learned to relate better to people, had an amazing life.

Babs watches me greedily, waiting for me to recoil at the sight of her newest trophy, but I'm too chilled inside to throw my hands over my face, cry out, and go staggering back from the window. All the feeling I have left is with Erg and the motorcyclist—and Chelsea, now that I think of her.

“The sky is a beautiful color, isn't it?” I say. Then as we revolve a second time I notice something. “That's interesting. All the stakes are taken now. I thought you liked to keep one free.”

The observation annoys her, I notice. “Sinister takes the heads up, and Dexter brings them down. Those are the rules, my imp. It will have to wait 'til Dex is feeling a bit sprightlier.” And then she stamps out the code, sharp and staccato. Of course the damn store listens to
her.
As we sink down through the twilight I have time for two thoughts: the first is that I haven't seen Dexter since I left Babs's apartment.

The other is that there was a period sometime today when Sinister was busy—when, if I'd only been paying attention, I might have found an opportunity to save Erg. And I slept through it.

Babs steps out into the parking lot, but pauses long enough to leer at me over her shoulder. She told me about Sinister on purpose, of course—just so I'd understand that I've failed Erg again. I stand in the open door, breeze sighing on my skin.

The motorcyclist is there, perfectly still, waiting for her. I wave to him behind Babs's back even though he can't see me. My breath sharpens with the impulse to run to him, throw my arms around him, and then, as softly as I can, lift his visor. But I can't do that while Babs is out there with Erg still stuffed in Sinister's dead coil—though, now I think of it, I'm not sure Babs's pocket is bulging anymore. Where is Erg now?

I watch while Babs takes the huge helmet between her hands and gives it a little shake. I can make out a trace of her voice on the breeze but I can't hear what she's saying, though I'd guess it's some kind of warning to stay away from me. I hear the rumbling of the engine—and then Babs reaches to turn it on, though the growl of it was already trembling in my ears. She gives him a shove and he starts his interminable circling. It looks to me like he's going more slowly than usual, though.

The violet sky dips to black and the last of the rose fades from the horizon as he drives around. He could be flying through an asphalt sky.

With an airy drumming of wings one of the swans plunges from the roof just above my head—at least my swans haven't abandoned me!—and swoops after him. It flies above his head, a pale shadow on deep gray. It's still wrapped in bandages, though they're starting to unravel like streamers at a birthday party. And it follows him around and around.

“Hello, Night,” I whisper. “I know I blew it before. But I'm going to try as hard as I can to make it up to you. Forgive me?”

Night is everywhere, covering every leaf and window across the entire hemisphere. Why, then, can I so clearly feel Night coming close in response to my words? I feel it perch like a moth made of wind on my lashes. I feel it look for me, search for every secret of my deepest identity, inside my eyes.

I feel it kiss me as tenderly as the blood pulsing inside my lips.
Night sees you, Vassa.

 

CHAPTER 18

Babs doesn't bother speaking to me when she gets back, just gestures curtly to the chair behind the register. I know it can't be as simple as that—she must have something gruesome planned for me—but I don't say anything, either, just take my seat and chew on a stale pretzel. I check out the shape of her pockets as she stalks off to her apartment; as I suspected, there's no lump that could be Erg's jar. And I don't see either of the hands anywhere.

Once Babs slams the door behind her, I'm more alone in this place than I've ever been before—except that Night is all over the huge picture window, and I know it's watching me. Why did it take me so many years to understand that Night is something you can talk to, something that might even decide to watch over you or kiss you just when you're about to crumple from loneliness?

I wait a while after Babs leaves, listening to the whispering song, the piano notes falling through the air and pooling on the yellow floor. The verse about the stars seems to be gone, so maybe it was just a one-time deal; now the singer is cooing about snakes in the marmalade instead.

Babs will expect the worst from me, of course, but there's no way she can guess everything I've figured out. I'd feel better if I knew where Dex and Sin are, though. It seems too good to be true that Babs would leave me completely unsupervised.

Whether it's a trick or not, I've got to take advantage while my solitude lasts. Oh, so Babs neglected to assign me one of her psychotic tasks tonight? She doesn't have some impossible mission for me, some job designed to do me in?

That's okay. I can give
myself
a mission. See, Babs? As an employee, I'm learning to be a real self-starter.

I bang out the code on the floor, nails in my palms while I wait to see if the store will obey me this time.

It does. We sink through the ocean-deep sky and land with a delicate shudder. For a few moments I hesitate. As usual the motorcyclist seems completely oblivious, and I have no way to guess if he's aware, on some half-conscious level, of what I'm planning to do. Then, like I'm pulling up something from deep in my own heart, I walk out the door and across the parking lot. There's only one way I can think of to stop his orbit, but without Erg as an intermediary I don't know if he'll realize I'm here before he runs me down. I could get crushed for real this time.

“Hey,” I call just in case. “It's me. Vassa. I have an idea about … about something that might be causing your problems. About the stars.”

He burns around the same circle, not even flinching at the sound of my voice. The whole flock of swans has taken to shadowing him in a cloudy brush and whisper not far above his head, white bandages whipping in all directions and corkscrewing wildly in the wind. Stepping in his path worked in my dream, but the rules were probably different then.

Then something occurs to me. Erg may be gone, but I do still have friends here. “Swans?” I call. “Can you stop him for me?”

Wings pound the air as the flock circles lower, half-loose bandages catching on his handlebars and tangling with the wheels. Soon his glossy black suit is zebraed in writhing white, the swans towed after him now like so many winged balloons. His engine gives a kind of strangled sound as the bandages drag the swans lower and lower, hiding his head and shoulders in the throb of white wings.

And then he isn't going around and around anymore. His wheels grind at empty space. The swans have hefted him up, bike and all, so that he sways a few inches off the ground. Brilliant, amazing birds that they are, my swans are deliberately flying in different directions from one another to keep him suspended in a more or less stable spot. Their stretched-out necks stripe the dim buildings around us, and I love them so much I want to cry.

“That is
genius
!” I tell them, and I hear a laugh that sounds angelically bright and pure until I realize it's mine, which kind of ruins it. “You guys are absolute visionaries!”

It's got to be hard work, though. That motorcycle can't be any joke to keep dangling in midair. I'm already running over, already bracing myself for the shock of his scream. I stand a bit to one side, feathers sweeping across my body, and his half-hidden face is closer to mine than it's ever been. My hair flies in the pulsing wind of those huge wings.

“I'm sorry to do this to you,” I tell him. “Except I think in a way you've been asking me to. Right?” And I reach to lift his visor. It's terribly cold and as slick as ice. By the time I've lifted it half an inch he's moaning like there's a knife in his guts.

It'll be easier on him if I get it over with as quickly as possible. With a sharp flick I send the visor sailing up. His scream slams at my ears and I rest a hand on his cheek, trying to comfort him. His face looks naked in a way no human face ever should. His skin is glossy black from the bottom of his nose up—not black like somebody from Africa, but black like an oil spill—and bloodless silvery white below.

And a pair of gleaming stars is stabbed right into his glossy jet eyelids, pinning them shut. The stars look like they're made of metal except that they're too radiant for that, more like gold glazed with flame. His mouth is open, his scream shaking out of his dark throat, but his eyes are sealed in the most sadistic way imaginable.

Please don't believe that the shadow dropped far …
Is this what it meant: the shadow fell just as far as this parking lot?
Who will you find if you open the stars?

I'll find a friend I've known since I was born. Someone who enfolded my mom and me on our walks across the Williamsburg Bridge, who held the moon in place above us; who cared for us then, and who cares more now.

I reach to pull out the star on my right. It will hurt him terribly and he'll probably bleed, but at least he won't be blind anymore.

Before my fingers come within two inches my skin starts to smoke. I yelp and jerk my hand back. The swans are thumping wearily now and I know I can't expect them to keep this up much longer, or I'll be as cruel as Babs.

I hurry to strip off my army jacket and wrap my hand in it. Chelsea would say that the simplest solutions are the best.

I reach again to grasp the right-hand star, its light unbearably rich and deep. Even though it's stabbed into his flesh the points seem to rotate and the color takes on a hypnotic flash, tangerine and blaze and azure …

I seize hold of the star with my fabric-swaddled fingers.

And my jacket bursts into swirling fire.

Everything seems to bend, to refract into disjointed images. A sphere of rolling flame is wrapped around my hand and I fling it desperately onto the pavement, but not before sparks leap onto the bandages that tether my swans to the motorcycle. Panicked, they lunge skyward. Then as the bandages yank back at them they go rolling up into the night, wings battering in whirligigs. Snaking ribbons of fire pursue them and then come tumbling in windborne scrolls back to earth. At the same moment the motorcycle crashes down and its still-spinning wheels connect with the pavement. It jolts and takes off on its old course, burning bandages flapping behind it. The streaks of blaze blur from speed, painfully bright against the darkness. And I go stumbling backward, screaming and clutching my ash-smeared hand.

The swans pummel the air, their necks lashing in fear. Higher and then higher still, chasing the darkness—chasing the
anywhere but here
in all directions, out of the parking lot and beyond the ugly buildings, until I can't see them anymore. Only a few charred feathers drift down. The motorcyclist is still shrieking and his voice tears up and down the scale as he circles. Then at last he swerves a little and his visor flops back over his wounded eyes. He falls silent again apart from the engine, which sounds like someone groaning in pain. I used to feel a kind of weird sympathy for Babs—for no good reason, I admit—but now that I understand what she's done to him I'd happily throttle her.