Vassa in the Night (34 page)

The last piece I need is his head. I don't see it at first, and waves of queasy panic shove through me again. But then I catch a glimpse of dark waves toward the back of a high shelf, barely visible behind cartons that purport to contain walrus milk. I have to fetch the chair from behind the register to get up there, but then he's in my hands and I can't pretend it's not really him anymore. His gray-green eyes stare, blank and stunned, filled with dreams that cut off too soon. If I looked close enough I might see the last instant of his thoughts, caught like a film still. His full soft lips are bluish and sagging, his skin as cold and moist as upturned earth in winter.

“Tomin,” I whisper. “Hi. I'd give anything for this to work.”

No answer. There never is when you really need one. Just for a moment I press my cheek to his. Maybe a trace of my warmth will pass into him, and maybe that will help somehow.

Then I climb down and add his head to the reassembled body on the floor. I can feel Erg's tension where she's perched on my shoulder. “Erg? I guess you're not allowed to tell me the right way to do this, are you? Are those beans you can't spill?”

“I can't tell you,” Erg snips, “how very, tremendously relieved I am. That your comprehension of my situation is
finally
improving. I did hope that if I exhibited truly superhuman patience you might get a clue eventually. And, hey! You did! Good
job,
Vassa!”

Oof. Maybe I didn't need to be so happy about getting her back. And I'll have to do my best with absolutely no idea of what I'm doing.

Fine.

I kneel down by his severed neck, gazing into the tubes, which used to vibrate with his voice, the emptiness where his breath once moved, the white-coiled mouse of a vertebra. I nest his head in place, using more sponges to keep it from rolling around, and fit the sliced planes of his neck together as neatly as I can. It seems important to make sure the arteries and the windpipe line up right, so I spend some time making tiny adjustments.

And then I open the Professor Pepper's. Sea-gray foam fizzles into the bottle's neck. I think this is the very last bottle there is, so I really can't afford to screw this up.

Just in case it might help, I kiss his cold blue lips. Just this once. Gee, Vassa, I thought you were too much of a heartless bitch to cry over a boy you barely knew? I lift the bottle, ready to sprinkle him with foam—and stop dead, paralyzed by the thought that I'll do everything wrong. That I'll waste the gray soda like an idiot and Tomin will stay as hopelessly dead as ever, like Joel and my mom and everyone else who I ever let down.

Brace yourself, Vassa. Be strong. There's a tragic shortage of heroes in the vicinity and nobody will do this if you don't.

As an experiment I let a single drop fall on his staring left eye.

He winks.

My hands start shaking so hard I have to put the bottle down to keep from spilling everywhere. Once I get more of a grip I pour a little of it in my palm, still trying not to waste it. A bizarre electric tingling shoots up my arm and I hurry to spatter him with droplets. Opalescent foam froths where the liquid hits his skin and his muscles jump, knocking his pieces askew again. My breath catches in my throat; I picture him getting up with his limbs sloppily aligned to his body, crescents of bloody sliced flesh still exposed to the air, and I rush to straighten him out. Everything has to be in perfect order before he comes back to life.

The spasms become less frequent then die away completely. I stare for a moment, trembling. “Tomin! Please get up.”

No such luck. Rainbow-gleaming froth slides off his skin and he's as cold and lifeless as ever. The only difference is that his left eye is closed now while the right still gapes, his iris lacquered with silver light. “Tomin? What do I need to do?”

He's the wrong person to ask, though. “Erg, I know I'm not supposed to ask. But anything you can tell me, please tell me now!”

Erg slides off my shoulder and scrambles down my arm, landing near Tomin's rib cage. She rests both her little hands on his jacket, and from what I can see of her face I know she's suffering just as much as I am. “I … really can't, Vassa. Truly really. You need to figure it out yourself.”

“But you know how to do it? There's a way?”

She sighs loudly and turns, leaning against him and looking up at me wearily. “I shouldn't even tell you that. But, I mean, I'm not saying there
isn't
a way. I'm not, like, making any major claims that I
don't
know what you should do.”

“That's incredibly helpful.” She looks so genuinely upset that I can't really be angry with her, though. “Maybe I just didn't use enough of it? Should I try again?”

Erg looks down. “Um, just be sure you save some. In case, I mean.”

That's not exactly encouraging, but I don't see what else I can do. I make sure he's in order and trickle the soda slowly through my fingers, shaking them to scatter the gray drops until they look like jeweled rain. This time the opal froth gushes up in tiny fountains and his pieces shake in what looks like an epileptic fit, his right calf drumming violently until it turns ninety degrees out at the knee. From his neck comes a muffled cry and his eyelids bat crazily. “Tomin!” His pupils roll in my direction. I could swear he's looking at me with terrible longing. His lips move, and I know he's struggling to speak.

But only for a moment. His convulsions wind down, and again he's dead, damp, and sticky. “Erg! It was so
close
.” The bottle's almost half-gone. “I
need
to use the rest of it. He just needs a little more of a kick, and he'll be fine. Or maybe—do I need to glue him back together first? Will that help?”

Erg's blue eyes are wide and thoughtful. “Um, you should put the soda down for a minute, please, Vassa. Really and for real. Your thinking is going squiggly to a quite appalling degree and that is not going to help you solve anything.”

“He was trying to talk! He was almost there!”

Erg bites her wooden lip. “Vassa, can
I
ask
you
something? I mean something that you maybe don't want to think about.”

“Sure.” All I can focus on, though, is the inescapable dream of dousing Tomin with the rest of that bottle and seeing him join back together, stretch, smile at me … “Ask away. I'm not the one with the rules.”

“Put the bottle down first. Like,
way
over there.” She gestures toward Tomin's foot. I hesitate, but then I obey her. Listening to Erg is usually a good idea.

“Right. So you know how I tell you not to ask me stuff? Because I'm not allowed to give you the answers anyway, and it just makes me feel terrible when you keep bugging me, but you won't ever stop?”

My lips purse. “I know that's what you keep saying.”

“So what do you think would happen to me? If I did break the rules. Say, if I broke them too many times, which is not very many times at all, if we get right down to it?”

“How am I supposed to know that?” I sound a little sharper than I mean to, but she's slowing me down. Tomin could be moments away from a brand-new heartbeat, from breathing, from laughing.

“
Vassa,
” Erg snaps. “You do know. You just would quite emphatically prefer
not
to know. So you're inventing a whole twisty whirlwind of not-knowing. In your own head. But you're not fooling anybody!”

That gets my attention, I admit, because in an unnerving way it sounds kind of true. An answer drifts into my mind, and she's right, I don't like it at all. I want to say,
Nothing would happen, silly. Words are just words, and you can tell me whatever you want.

But I can't. Because that's not the case. My heart pounds so fast the beats slur together. “Maybe I know. Oh, Erg. You're my doll and I love you, and I could never imagine…”

Erg just looks at me, somehow tender and grim at the same time.
You love me, but you'll still trade part of me to get Tomin's life back. Won't you?
She doesn't say it aloud, but I know we both hear it.

There's a long silence. Erg's gaze falls into me, and mine falls into her, and the echoes become a kind of thrumming music made of both our thoughts.

“So you understand now, Vassa?” Erg says at last. “I can tell you about Tomin. But then it's absolutely and forever the
last
thing I can tell you. Because I already slipped up once, and this will make two. So as-long-as-we-live type forever. Unless you want me to completely…”

“I don't,” I tell her, fast. “I
never
want that to happen. I couldn't stand it. While Babs had you trapped it felt like I was being ripped apart.”

Erg stares a moment longer, making sure I mean it. “Then maybe you need another flavor. Before you use the shadow-flavored soda, you should really try another kind first.” Suddenly she looks sick, washed-out, and she grips Tomin's jacket with clenched fists.

What flavor?
I think, but I don't say it.
Please, Erg, tell me!

“Vassa,” she says firmly. She's so pale that if she wasn't leaning I'd expect her to fall. “What comes before a shadow?”

I look at her and then up at the cooler—and there in a high corner is a bright gold-white bottle that I never noticed before.

“The sun,” I say breathlessly. I can't make out the label from here, but I already know what it says:
Professor Pepper's Sippable Sunlight
.

I'm leaping to my feet when I hear a shuffling step. Babs isn't here yet but her white eye is roaming far from her head, already weaving around me. A pallid sentinel, here to stop me before I go too far.

 

CHAPTER 22

There's no way Babs won't figure out what that pile of pink goo and glass on the floor means, but still my first thought is that I have to hide Erg. Keep her safe, hold her against my heart where Babs can never touch her again. I double over Tomin's body to cover her and reach my arm down so that Erg can scuttle up my sleeve.

I don't feel her. When I look she's gone. Gone
somewhere,
when she should never leave my side again. But I can't call to her because Babs is standing a yard away from me, examining Tomin where he lies like a broken doll. His head rests inches from her feet. Her gaze rakes back and forth, searching for something.

She wants the Sippable Shadow, waiting where I set it several feet to my right. Grabbing it would be no use when she's so much stronger than I am. She's going to dump it out in front of me, smirk while despair hammers into my chest. Why didn't I think of hiding it while there was still time?

“Impling,” Babs says at last. “I thought my instructions were clear enough for even you to understand. Was there some eensy trouble with your attention span? Does your comprehension leave something to be desired?”

What's the point of answering? I stare at her as hard and as coldly as I can, hoping to delay the moment when the last of my hope for Tomin is gone. Why doesn't she leap over his corpse and seize the bottle? She's probably toying with me, prolonging my suffering—but on the remote chance that she really hasn't spotted it I'm careful to avoid glancing in that direction.

“Not only are you neglecting your duties as an employee,” Babs continues, “but you've invited a pack of feathered vermin into my store. Must I really wake up to find those filthy birds heaped like so many old mops all over my register and counter? Sleeping so sweetly and spreading their dander and contagion every which way I look. It isn't sanitary, imp. No amount of scrubbing will ever purge the stench, I fear.” Her rolling eye strokes around my bare throat as she speaks. I smack it away, hard enough that I can see her lips pinch.

“The swans are here because they care about me,” I say. “We're looking out for each other.” I'm surprised to see Babs grimace. I didn't tell her that to hurt her, but of course she couldn't say the same about anyone and maybe that's been true since she and Bea had whatever kind of weird falling-out that happens between witches. “Babs, look, I'm taking care of everything out here. Why don't you just go back to bed?”

Babs responds to that by giving Tomin's head a vicious kick that sends it flying through the air. It smacks into the far wall with a thud, hits the floor, and then rolls to a stop by his leg. Automatically, my gaze turns right to follow it.

And now I understand why Babs hasn't lunged for the bottle of Sippable Shadow. It's gone. I wasn't fast enough to hide it, but it looks like Erg was. I could cry from sheer relief.

“Go back to bed?” Babs asks dryly. “And leave you to play your pretty games with the pork chops and bacon on my floor? Ah, you'll bring down the health department on us, and then where will we be?” She bends down to pick up Tomin's torso, dangling it in one hand while with the other she dabbles at the holes in his neck. “But seeing the meat out here reminds me. I used up my very last heart, making that soup for our poor misguided Dexter. If I'd known what a bad path he was on, I would have saved it for a worthier cause. How lucky that fate has delivered me a fresh one! I'll be ripping it out now, impling, shall I?”