Brightly (Flicker #2) (59 page)

“Jeezus.” Nasser tried not to wince. He had known it would be expensive, though it was another thing to hear it aloud. They had always been poor, but it wasn’t so bad, since it was just the two of them. They didn’t need much. They didn’t have any big expenses. At least, that was how it used to be.

“It’s not a one-time deal, either,” Jason added. “Prosthetics wear out. You’d need a new one in two or three years. It would have to be replaced throughout your life.”

“I figured as much.”

“And even if we could pay for it,” Jason went on, “you’d need a prescription to get the damn thing. Really. You need a prescription from a doctor, and any halfway decent doctor would have questions. But what would you say? You clearly lost your leg recently, but it’s not like you can say the real reason why, or who did the surgery. I can’t think of a plausible cover story that doesn’t raise the question of why we don’t have any documentation of what happened—or, better yet, why we don’t have any documentation of
anything
. We don’t even have real IDs. Glamour can only cover for so much.”

It was true. Glamour was tricky to use and trickier to maintain. Nasser could glamour a piece of cardboard into a convincing state ID or enchant someone into accepting his words as fact when he was stretching the truth beyond believability, but he couldn’t maintain the spells for more than a few minutes. His glamours were passable, but brief.

“We basically appeared out of thin air,” Jason said. “I can’t believe I never realized how complicated this stuff would be now.”

Nasser rubbed at his eyes with one hand. “It’s always been complicated.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you were little, I used to worry that one of you would get hurt or sick and I wouldn’t be able to handle it myself. Even if I could get you into a hospital, how would I ever get you back? I obviously wasn’t old enough to be taking care of you, not legally. Somebody would call a social worker, or the cops, and I’d never see you again. I used to wake up in the middle of the night, terrified that one of you would get appendicitis or something, and you’d die because I couldn’t take you to a hospital.”

Jason was quiet for a moment. “I never knew that.”

“You were never sick enough for it to matter—knock on wood.” Nasser sighed. “That’s the worst thing about being like us, I think. You have each other, but sometimes, no matter what you do, that’s not enough. And when it’s not enough, there’s nowhere else to go.”

“You have somewhere to go, though,” Jason said quietly.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“But it’s true. You can go to the Guild.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t be like that,” Jason chided. “We can’t get you a leg ourselves. Some people get on fine without prosthetics, but the way we live…” He shook his head. “It’s not realistic. If Amelia can do that for you, on top getting you into the Guild and away from all this—”

“We have no reason to trust her,” Nasser said quickly.

Jason blinked, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “She saved your life!
And
she warned us about the Guild expansion. If she wanted to screw us over, she had ample opportunity. But she didn’t. Did you get a bad vibe from her or something?”

“Well, no,” Nasser conceded. “I didn’t sense any deception. But even if we can trust Amelia, we still can’t trust the Guild. To join the Guild, you have to pledge your life to it, Jason. Do you understand how huge that is?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then you understand that we don’t know nearly enough about the Guild to agree to something like that.”

“So we’ll do some digging and learn more before you completely write it off. What if the Guild isn’t what we thought? What if you could really have a life with them?”

“I already have a life!” Nasser insisted, though a nagging voice in his head reminded him that it wasn’t the life it used to be, and never would be again.

“How much longer will this last?” Jason challenged. “When the Guild comes, you’ll get caught up in it with the rest of us, when you don’t have to. What good would that do?”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Well, you should!”

“Do you want me to abandon you?” Nasser asked. “Is that what you want? How selfish do you think I am?”

Jason slapped his hand against the table. “I want you to think about
yourself
for once in your life!
That’s
what I want.”

“I already said no, Jason. I’m not changing my mind. Discussion’s closed.”

“Nasser, I just—”

“Discussion’s
closed
.”

For a second, Jason looked like he was going to argue. Then he exhaled sharply through his nose, grabbed a knife off the worktable and started carving runes into another wooden charm.

Nasser was in the kitchen when the pain came on. It felt like a lit match was being held under his right foot, close enough to scorch. He’d jolted at the sensation, instinctively trying to move away from the source of pain and almost falling over for his trouble—but he didn’t have a right foot anymore. He couldn’t move it out of the way.

“Hey…” Filo said uncertainly. He was sitting at the worktable in the living room, eyeing Nasser carefully. “Are you okay?”

“I’d be better if everyone stopped asking me that,” Nasser said, more sharply than he’d meant to, as he adjusted his grip on the crutches.

When Lee stepped out earlier to run an errand, Filo had stayed behind, ostensibly to help work on a batch of potions. Nobody actually
said
that he stayed also, in large part, because Lee didn’t like Nasser to be alone in the apartment if she could help it. Nobody had to. The look Lee and Filo had exchanged before she left was enough to confirm it.

Still, when Filo got very quiet, Nasser felt guilty for snapping.

“I’m sorry,” Nasser said, as he crutched toward the worktable and tried to ignore the burning. The pain would go away, he reminded himself. He just had to wait. “I get mean when my leg’s bothering me.”

Everything would be more bearable if it weren’t for the phantom limb. While the pain in his stump had decreased steadily, the phantom pain hadn’t. Nasser couldn’t sleep through the night without being startled awake by cramping, burning or shooting pain in the missing part of his leg. Though it usually faded within a few minutes, the pain left him on edge. He never knew when it was going to come back.

The phantom sensations didn’t hurt, but they were maddening. At times, Nasser felt like his right leg was in an uncomfortable position, but he couldn’t correct it. More than once, he had moved to stand up, thinking his leg was whole and exactly where it was supposed to be, only to remember that it was gone. That moment of realization was worse than the physical pain.

“You call that mean?” Filo asked. “That’s nothing. Moody, at best. I would know.”

Nasser smiled faintly as he sat down, gripping the edge of the worktable to maintain his balance, but it felt forced.

He’d been short with Jason lately, too. In the week since their conversation about Amelia, Jason had kept trying to convince Nasser to reconsider. By the time Jason came home at the end of the day, though, Nasser was tired and frustrated and usually in pain. He had trouble keeping his composure. The pain weakened his restraint. It was easy to let the arguments start, easy to be angry with Jason, and increasingly hard to apologize later.

“Is it true?” Filo asked abruptly. “What Jason said about Amelia wanting you to be her apprentice?”

“He told you about that?”

“So it
is
true? She can really get you into the Guild?”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Why’d you turn her down?”

Nasser frowned. “Did Jason put you up to this?”

“No,” Filo said, and Nasser could sense his sincerity. “I just don’t understand.”

“What, you think I should’ve said yes?”

Filo shrugged. “I think it’s worth considering,” he said diplomatically. “You don’t get an offer like that every day. If Amelia is on the level, it would be good for you.”

Shaking his head, Nasser said, “I thought you’d be the last person to try and make a case for the Guild.”

“A month ago, I would’ve been. But it’s different now.” Filo’s gaze flickered away, like he was embarrassed to be speaking like this. “It’s senseless, what happened to you. You don’t deserve it. If this is as close as we can get to making it right—”

“That wouldn’t make it right, though. And it wouldn’t be fair to any of you for me to just take off like that.”

“Who decides what’s fair?” Filo demanded. “I think it’s fair that you get a prosthetic leg so you can walk on your own. Does that not count?”

“The four of you are more important to me than that.”

Filo made a frustrated noise. “You always do this!” he said crossly. “You always take the beating when you don’t have to. You think it’s right to suffer when we do, but it’s not. It doesn’t make us feel any better to watch you get hurt.”

Nasser froze. “I’m not trying to—”

“You’re almost worse than Alice, you know,” Filo interrupted, sounding weary. “Instead of going to Otherworld, she wanted us to just leave her on Siren and forget the whole thing. She thought that was
fair
. But what seemed fair to her was unthinkable to the rest of us.”

That gave Nasser pause, but only for a moment. He set his shoulders. “This is different.”

“How? How is this any different?”

“Nobody will die if I don’t go!”

“You can’t know that!” Filo blazed. “We have no idea what the Guild will do to us, which is why you should leave while you have the chance!”

“No,” Nasser argued. “It’s why I should stay.”

For a long moment, Filo just stared across the table at Nasser, looking confused and upset. In a low, unsteady voice, he said, “If you care about us, you won’t do this to yourself.”

“I care about you,” Nasser said quietly, shaking his head. “So I have to.”

Filo couldn’t go home looking like this. His lip was split, his nose stubbornly refused to stop bleeding, and he could practically feel the black eye forming. That Jack-in-Irons had done a number on him, and he needed to hide the worst of it from Lee. Her reflexive mother-hen behavior was bad enough when it was only directed toward Nasser; Filo wanted to stay well out of her way. He had to clean up before he went home, and there was only one place he could go.

When Rodney opened the door, his expression remained neutral as he looked Filo up and down. “If you need help moving a body,” he said finally, “you’ve come to the right place.”

“I just need to use your shower.”

Rodney’s tail flicked in amusement. “I suppose I can help with that, too. Come in.”

Filo had only been to Rodney’s apartment a handful of times. The place was small and sparsely furnished, giving the impression that Rodney wasn’t here all that much.

Rodney didn’t ask any questions, just pointed to the bathroom and left Filo to his own devices. The questions would come later.

In the cramped bathroom, Filo peeled his shirt off, turned on the faucet and scrubbed as much blood out of the fabric as he could. Then he hung the shirt on the towel rack to dry, finished undressing and stepped into the shower.

As he washed the dirt and half-dried blood from his skin, Filo tried not to notice the bruises that covered his arms. Some were from being thrown around by the Jack-in-Irons, but many were his own doing.

He’d thought he was done pinching himself. It had been a few months since he had needed to hurt himself in order to feel okay. But in the two weeks since they returned to Bridgestone, the urge had come back, and he didn’t fight it.

Filo knew all about pain. More than anything, he knew it could be useful. Hurting himself in little ways kept his mind off the enormity of his other problems: the Guild’s impending arrival, and Nasser refusing both Guild standing and the prosthetic leg that would come with it.

Life as they knew it had already ended. Everything else was just dread and waiting for someone to put out their eyes. The weight of it would crush Filo if he let it, so he did what was familiar, what he knew would hold the rest just far enough at bay for him to keep breathing. The small pains were familiar, easier to deal with, so he focused on them.

When he emerged from the bathroom, Rodney was standing in the kitchenette, smoking a pixie-grass cigarette. He offered one to Filo, who shook his head. If he came home half-stoned, Lee would probably notice, and that was the last conversation he wanted to have.

“So what was it?” Rodney asked.

“Jack-in-Irons,” Filo said simply, sitting on the couch. “Out by the highway.”

“Ah.” Rodney peered at Filo through the thin haze of sweet-smelling smoke. “You look tired. More than usual, anyway. Have you been sleeping?”

“Yeah,” Filo lied. “I’ve just been really busy since we got back.”

Truthfully, he was avoiding sleep as much as possible. Since returning from Otherworld, he’d been having troubling dreams of an empty house, a garden, and a faceless woman with long, black hair. The little girl in the pink raincoat sometimes darted through his dreams. When he woke, sweating and shaking, Filo could still hear the echoes of a thin, crying voice that hit a spot deep in his chest:
Don’t take him! Please don’t take him!