Vassa in the Night (33 page)

And bursts into beating wings. I gasp as I feel myself rising in my unearthly cradle. A swan twists its head free and gazes into my face with wise black eyes. It's only now I realize that those snaking roots are actually their necks, crisscrossing my body from below. They carry me up, and the air whooshing from their tightly gathered wings swirls through my hair. Where are they taking me? If they carry me beyond the boundary, I'll change into one of them. The windows of Brooklyn glow gold and the cemetery rises in dark curves. An elevated train rattles across the horizon. My hands shine a feverish orange as we draw closer to BY's, and then I understand that they're not flying away with me at all.

They're taking me back to the same awful place, but it's the place where I need to be. Erg and I came here for a reason and we're not done yet. Or
I'm
not done, and that's even more important.

We burst through the door like a feathered storm and the swans unwind, letting me gently tumble to the linoleum. They look much bigger in the narrow aisles of the store than they did in the cavernous night. One by one they settle in snowy heaps or begin to stalk through the aisles, their feathers ruffling as they turn and examine their surroundings. I'm so sore and dizzy that my first effort at standing only gets me as far as my knees before I lose my balance again. Some of the swans are probing the store's contents with evident curiosity, their long necks coiling between stacks of boxes and sometimes knocking a few random objects from the shelves. I make another effort and this time I manage to get to my feet, though my eyes swarm with green blobs and my head feels like Jell-O on a roller coaster.

Prof Pepp,
Dexter wrote.
Undie him.
Chances are excellent that it's meaningless blather, but what if it's not? I stagger to the aisle where Tomin was butchered and find Sinister there with a rag and a small bucket, sullenly smearing Tomin's blood and my vomit across a widening swath of floor. Tomin's dismembered body and the Dexter-chunks are gone. The air reeks of tart iron and acid and some sickening chemical cleanser. Sinister is doing a terrible job on purpose, I'd guess, but if he was in a bad mood before it's nothing to the expression on his chipped lilac nails when he sees me. He rears in fury and then stops, his nails undulating with icy rage.

“Well hi there, Sin,” I say. “That's so nice of you to clean up! It'll make things so much easier for your replacement.”

He bristles, but there's something unconvincing about it.

“Well, you heard what Babs said, right? Tomin's pieces are going to come in
handy
? You don't really believe she'd want an unmatched pair, do you? That would be aesthetically displeasing.”

Aesthetically displeasing
was a phrase that Zinaida liked to throw around, usually to describe anyone who wasn't maximally fabulous. When I was first introduced to Iliana I repeated it when my dad asked what I thought of her.

Sinister jabs forward as if he wanted to impale my ankle with his talons, though with my thick boots I'm not too worried. My memory's still shaky, but I think Babs said something about keeping Tomin in the fridge.

I turn the corner and see the long bank of sliding glass doors; behind the nearest one is Tomin's light brown hand and forearm, fingers drooping forward like the fronds of a palm tree. It's standing among bottles of beer and seltzer, lonely and defiant, still in its blood-soaked sleeve.
Tomin? Are you waving or drowning?

I make myself stop and take in the sight, though I have to clutch the nearest shelf to do it. Near it I see a shoe and ankle poking up above a forest of cans, the foot tipped to pedal away at nothing; I see a thigh laid sideways like a denim-cased sausage in front of the energy drinks. My knees seem to turn into falling water.

“Vassa,” I say aloud. “
Deal
with it. You have to!”

I'll have to handle those pieces, press them together, arrange them back into the semblance of a guy who was way too brash and naïve and caring for his own good. But first I have to find a bottle of Professor Pepper's Sippable Shadow. I start in one section of the refrigerator that doesn't have any Tomin in it, putting off touching his dead skin for as long as I can. But after I've rattled though every last bottle of lemonade and tub of greasy-looking pudding I realize I can't escape it any longer. I open the next glass door and force myself to lift his torso out of the way—God, so cold and sticky, his dead flesh compressing under my fingers like mud—so that I can look behind it.

Still no Professor Pepper's. My heart seems to start an icy roll into oblivion at the thought that Picnic could have gulped down the last bottle—and that I was the one who sold it to him.

One of the swans thumps against the back of my knees so that I stagger. He, or she, is rooting through the shelf immediately behind me with a determined clatter, knocking jars against one another. The glass clinks like muffled bells. I wish the swan wouldn't get underfoot when I'm in the middle of something so important. “Do you mind letting me work?” I ask a bit curtly. “This is about as serious as it gets.”

The swan kicks me, hard, with a backward swipe of one webbed foot:
No,
you
let
me
work!
And it lifts out a sickly pink jar with its bill stretched wide around the lid. A few other jars crash to the floor and shatter, spilling pickled snails and foul-smelling orange syrup. I wait for Sinister to appear and start cleaning, but I guess he's sulking too hard for that. Maybe for the swan the whole point is to make the biggest mess possible, because it arches its long neck back and then whips the jar violently forward.

A thick, gummy glob of strawberry marshmallow butter spurts onto the linoleum in a corona of glass shards. There's something lumpy in the middle of it. I barely notice when the swan wanders off because I can't look away from that lump; I can't let myself hope too much, but I can't believe it's
not
her either.

The something tries to move, though the pink sludge is so stiff and gluey that it barely shifts position. I see what appears to be a tiny arm struggling to break free, gum ropes dragging it back. My heart seizes up and it's all I can do to stop myself from screaming her name. Sinister is still close by, and naturally he'll be listening.

“It's you,” I say instead. “Oh thank God, it's you.” I've dropped to my knees, and now Erg's goo-encased little figure is in my hands, kicking and squeaking. I manage to sort of peel a mass of it off her face and her azure eyes and black spit curls emerge, still wrapped in rubbery pink threads.

“Gosh,” Erg squeals at last. “That was just dreadful, Vassa! I couldn't breathe!”

That makes me smile, though my view of her is blurred by tears. Just hearing her complain seems to heal everything in the world that was ever broken. “Why would you need to breathe, silly? You don't have lungs.”

“So just because I don't
need
to breathe, that means I'm not allowed to have any personal preferences? Maybe I like to have the
option
. Ugh, they stuffed me in that goo and I couldn't move at
all,
and no matter how I yelled you couldn't
hear
me. I couldn't even move my jaws enough to
eat
my way out! Oh, Vassa, are you still angry at me? I can't believe you thought I cared more about Bea than about you!”

“All I am is so, so happy to have you back! It was just that—you won't
tell
me anything—and I didn't know you had anything to do with Bea—so when I figured out that you did I got paranoid.” Now that she's curled in my palm it really does feel like I was being insanely suspicious and distrustful. I'm still working on pulling pink gunge off her tiny body. The stuff is so viscous that it rips a few traces of azure paint off her dress. Poor Erg!

“Well. I can tell you a teeny bit about that if you want. Don't ask me
questions,
though!” She glares at me sternly for a moment, daring me to say anything; how I missed her impudence! “Bea made me, Vassa. She carved me and painted me and everything. So, I mean, that is a connection. But she made me for you, to be yours forever, and that's what
really
counts!”

It's news to me that Erg was made for me specifically, though I could have figured out that my mom didn't pick her up at Toys “R” Us. “But when you said, like, that we're here on some kind of mission—is that something that Bea told you to do? I know that's what Babs thinks.”

Erg pouts. “I've been restored to your company for
two entire minutes,
and already you're failing to respect my wishes regarding not asking me totally stupid questions? Gee, Vassa, I'm just blown away! What a great way to welcome me back!”

I've been so absorbed in cleaning Erg, and listening to her voice, and feeling overwhelmed with happiness that we're together again the way we're supposed to be, that Sinister has completely slipped my mind—until I hear a soft scuffling a yard away. His posture is completely different than it was a few minutes ago; suddenly he's hunched and cringing. He watches us with a single trembling nail. His other fingers are tightly curled into his palm.

“Well?” I ask. “Aren't you going to run and fetch Babs? She'll want to know about this, right?”

Sinister twitches back as if I'd poked him with a burning stick. Really, he's so abject that if it wasn't for Tomin I might start to feel sorry for him.

“The more you put it off, the pissier she's going to be,” I say encouragingly. “Seriously, you better get scampering. I'm sure she'll think it's bad enough that you did such a sloppy job of guarding your prisoner. If you try to hide it from her, it will just make your punishment that much worse.”

Sinister already knows perfectly well what his punishment will be, and so do I. He flicks a resentful glance toward Tomin's severed hand in the cooler. Ah, rivalry!

“Those new hands are
so
strong and young and handsome, aren't they? Really attractive. Of course, if somebody put that boy back together—if somebody was able to
undie him
—then Babs would be fresh out of luck. She wouldn't be able to use his parts after all. And you'd at least get a reprieve. Maybe then you could think of some way to persuade her that you're not useless and obsolete and revolting after all!”

I've never been so cruel in my life, but it's pretty effective. Sinister's aspect has altered from craven to brooding.

“It's really a shame that I can't find any more Professor Pepper's,” I remark dreamily. “I've searched and searched, but it just isn't anywhere! Well, I guess my plan isn't going to work after all.”

Sinister probably knows I'm mocking him. I don't get the impression that he's a whole ton of bright, but he's not a complete idiot, either. He scrunches his fingers in irritation as if to say,
All right, already!
Then he crawls toward the door of a nearby cooler—the one displaying Tomin's calf and foot—pries it open, and vanishes behind the sodas. For a while nothing happens, though I can hear some dull clinking noises. Erg's still sticky but she's a lot cleaner than she was and she climbs onto my shoulder to watch, wrapping her little arms around my hair. I can't stop smiling at the feeling of her tiny wooden feet swinging against my collarbone.

Then I see the cuff of Tomin's jeans; the denim is maroon and rigid with dried blood, and it's beginning to distend, bow, and squirm. My stomach curdles at the thought of Sinister's clammy fingers crawling over Tomin's skin. Even if he can't feel anything now, it still strikes me as obscene.

Sinister hooks his pinkie through the loop of Tomin's shoelace, the rest of his fingers still hidden inside the jeans, and gives a particularly foul-looking wriggle. He pops out with a bottle of foaming gray soda clutched in his palm, hoists himself onto the sole of Tomin's upturned sneaker, and wags the bottle at me in triumph. It was actually hidden
inside
Tomin's jeans?

I open the glass door and put out my hand for it. Sinister gives a single twitch of hesitation and surrenders the bottle. He grapples his way back down the leg, disappears, and then comes crawling out of the cooler and inches down the aisle. I'm perfectly willing to see him go.

“Do you already know everything that happened while you were crammed in that jar?” I ask Erg. “I bet you do. Dexter said—maybe Tomin doesn't have to stay dead. I know it sounds like the dumbest wishful thinking ever, but I have to try, right?”

Erg is quiet for a moment. “It's always a good idea to
try,
Vassa,” she tells me at last. “I think that sounds just fabulous!”

Knowing Erg that might be her way of telling me this could actually work. I pluck her off my shoulder for a moment to kiss her curls, still crossed by filaments of pink muck, and put her back. I have to take a few deep breaths and straighten my shoulders before I can bring myself to start fetching Tomin's chopped-up segments out of the fridge. I try to tell myself it's not really his dismembered body, that it's just a clever copy made of clay and construction paper, so I won't heave all over again. I try to look at his pieces as something abstract, lumps of a three-dimensional puzzle, and not as slabs of someone who was warm and brave and beautiful, and who definitely deserved a lot more kindness than I ever gave him. I arrange a simulacrum of the boy he used to be, there on the yellow floor, squeezing the cut planes together as closely as I can. It doesn't work that well. The store seems lazier now, but there's still enough swaying to unsettle him. The calves tend to roll outward and the upper arms slide away from the shoulders. I get around that by grabbing piles of sponges and using them to prop everything in place.