Roses and Rot (33 page)

“I could go tell her Thomas is here. She’d run to meet him,” Ariel said.

But we decided we wouldn’t tell her that. Janet had made everything in Helena’s life about Thomas. We wouldn’t let her make this about him too.

So the five of us stood awkwardly in the mud and the thorns. Then Gavin took hold of one of the plants, and when he took his hands away, the entire garden was in bloom. Pinks and reds and yellows and whites, the air heavy with fragrance and with velvet petals. It was beautiful.

“You think that makes it better?” Ariel rounded on him, and Gavin took a step back. “She’s not even here to see them. You couldn’t bend one of your own rules, help her out, show just a smidge of compassion, and you think flowers will fix it?”

“No,” Gavin said quietly. “I don’t. I don’t think flowers will fix anything. And if there had been a rule it was within my power to break, I would have.” The roses bloomed brighter and wilder as he spoke. “There are things I can’t fix, no matter how much I want to. I hate knowing that I failed to heal her, couldn’t bring her back, couldn’t even make a chain to fasten around her neck.” His glamour
slipped sideways, the too-dark eyes, the curling horns flashing in and out before our eyes. Marin took a step toward him.

Gavin paused, gathered himself, all of his masks falling back into place. And again, I thought he looked tired. Mortal. “There are any number of things I would fix, rules I would break, if I could. I cannot.”

He looked at Marin as he spoke the last, and Ariel looked away. She picked a rose, the same vivid fuchsia as Helena’s hair had been. “She helped me move my steamer trunk.”

Then Marin. “She wore a Santa hat and sang, when we made cookies.”

Gavin. “She was loyal.”

Then me. “She burned like a flame.” I tossed my rose on the ground with the other three, our small, inadequate tributes.

Then Thomas. Who said nothing, only threw his rose to the ground and walked away.

Roses. The rose garden, the riot of them Evan had brought at Thanksgiving. I didn’t walk back to the house with the others, but stepped out of my shoes, and into the mud. Through the Commons and to the studios. To Evan’s. I hadn’t spoken to him in weeks, and that was right, that was perfect.

I ran, almost. Wanting to be there before I cared, before I let myself think. I stepped inside, dropped my shoes, and unzipped my dress, shedding it onto the floor like an old skin.

“Imogen, what are you doing?” His hair was mussed, and there were holes in his T-shirt. I wanted to hook my fingers into them and tear. To tear, and to keep tearing, to leave marks on his skin as proof that I had been there.

“Helena is dead, and I can’t feel anything. You said I made you
feel real.” I unhooked my bra, slid my panties down my legs. “Make me feel something.”

“Imogen.”

My hand on his crotch, the hardness beneath the strained denim, and my voice a haze of fury. “I can tell you want me. And I can’t”— I choked on tears, swollen in my throat—“I can’t breathe, Evan. I can’t fucking bear this. Just make it stop.”

His arms around me, a careful space between us. His hands stroking my hair. “I’ve got you, Imogen. You can breathe. It’s okay.”

He spoke a stream of nonsense words, like you’d say to a child, to soothe them as they sobbed. And I did. Until my eyes were swollen and gritty, my mouth dry. I cried for Helena, who was gone. For Marin, who would be. For all of us, lost.

When I finished, I was shaking from cold and embarrassment. I couldn’t even look at Evan as I stepped away from him. “Let me just . . . I’ll go.” My hands shook as I stepped back into my underwear.

“I owe you an apology.”

I paused, half into my dress.

“For the gallery. For what I did. I want to say it to your face. I am sorry. I was an ass.”

“And a dick.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

The zipper stuck halfway up my dress. Better to walk home looking like I’d just been tumbled than to have his hands so close, to ask for his help. I’d mortified myself enough for one day.

“You don’t have to forgive me. I probably wouldn’t. But I am truly sorry, Imogen. I don’t know if that changes anything between us, but I want you to know I mean it.”

“I should go,” I said.

“All right.”

Halfway home, I realized I’d forgotten my shoes. They were hateful things. I didn’t go back for them.

Thomas stayed, after the memorial, to help pack up Helena’s room. “I don’t even know what I should save,” he said, staring into her closet. “Everything, I guess. Or maybe donate the clothes? Do you two want anything?”

“If you’re not sure, let’s pack up everything for now. Then, when you’re ready, you can go through it. That way you don’t regret anything,” Marin said.

“You mean besides the fact that I had a daughter I never spoke to?” Thomas said. “Because as regrets go, that’s a good one.”

“Look,” I said, setting aside a notebook half-full of poems. “You fucked up. You did what you could at the time, and you thought you’d have forever to fix it, or if it didn’t get fixed then at least you could tell yourself it was her decision not to see you.”

“Imogen!” Marin said.

I kept going. “You fucked up, but when Gavin called, you got your ass on a plane and got here. And no, that doesn’t make you a hero, or even a good dad, but you did it. And it was the right thing.

“So no, you never had a conversation with her, and yes, that sucks, and yes, it’s something you never get to fix, but she wasn’t alone at the end because you were there. You never spoke to her, but you were the one who bothered to show up, and it’s not enough, but it’s also not nothing. Because at least two of us tried to drag Janet over here, and she couldn’t even be bothered to walk across campus.”

“I’m sorry,” Marin said. “My sister—”

“Is right,” Thomas said, setting his hair on end with his hand. “She’s right.”

He huffed out a breath. “Let’s donate the clothes. Pack the rest of her things. Unless either of you want something. I’m going to go outside to get some air.”

“What is wrong with you?” Marin said after he left.

“I’m tired,” I said. “I don’t just mean lack of sleep, though I mean that, too. But I am tired of walking on eggshells. Of not saying things. Do you know where I went after Helena’s memorial?” I sat down in a heap of semi-sorted clothing.

Marin shook her head.

“To Evan. Evan. Because I didn’t think I could count on you for comfort, and I needed it from someone.

“I feel like I’ve lost you already,” I said. “When I’d do anything to keep you here.”

“You can’t, Imogen.”

“Actually, she could,” Thomas said, windblown, the scent of cigarettes clinging to him. “There’s a way.”

“What are you talking about?” Marin asked.

“The tithe can be broken. By love strong enough to wrest the intended sacrifice back from the collected desire of Faerie. Or at least that’s the poetic way of putting it. Basically”—he looked at me—“you have to want Marin more than they do.”

“What do I have to do?” I asked.

“Imogen, no.” Marin’s voice was sharp. “I’m going. I want to.”

“What would I have to do?” I asked again, ignoring Marin. Because why would Gavin have told her now, now when her presence there was guaranteed, that he worried Faerie might kill her? Speak a thing and make it happen.

But if I still had a chance to undo my failure, to protect my sister, I would take it.

“I don’t know the exact details, being as it’s not something I ever
contemplated, but when the tithe goes, it isn’t like popping over to the neighbor’s to borrow a cup of sugar. This is the Fae we’re talking about, so there’s a ritual. If you can interrupt the ritual—pull your sister down from the horse she’ll be riding, hold on to her as some variety of batshit weird stuff that I imagine will be unpleasant for you both happens—do all that while Faerie flings its might against you—and it will, it won’t be happy about you taking what it wants—then she stays. The tithe is broken.

“Of course, if you fail—and you will fail, Imogen, almost everyone who has ever tried has—you go to Faerie with her. And while she will only have to serve the seven years, you won’t get to come back. Ever.”

“That’s why Janet hates you,” I said. “She wanted you to save her.”

“Got it in one. And there was no way in hell. I had just gotten back—even if I had loved her, there was no way I would have risked it. Faerie is not a nice place if you’re human, and seven years there is a prison sentence, not a vacation. I wouldn’t have been strong enough, and I didn’t love her.”

“Imogen, you can’t,” Marin said. “It’s too risky.”

“Not any riskier than what you’ve signed up for, not really.”

“You’re assuming I want to be saved. You don’t get to make that decision for me.”

“Marin, I—”

“No. This is not a subject that’s up for discussion. I want this. I want to go. I am going. The only thing you have to think about is whether you support me or not. I’d rather you do, but even if you don’t, Imogen, I am going.”

I tried, then. I tried to force air through my lungs, force words from my mouth. To tell her what Gavin had said. That this wasn’t
about keeping her from what she wanted, this was about keeping her alive.

I tried, and nothing came out. Magic wrapped my throat like vines, choking off everything but silence.

“I’m going,” Marin said, and I couldn’t tell her no.

“I was going to speak to Marin about it after the selection,” Gavin said. “The rules that govern the tithe require the opportunity to be given. But then . . . Helena.”

The sun streaked down through fast-moving clouds, and the wind stole pieces of my hair from the ponytail I had pulled it back in before running. I had escaped my thoughts for five miles, only to come home and find the reminder of them on my front porch. That was fine. We needed to talk.

“Were you going to speak to her? Really? Because when I tried, I couldn’t. Gavin, you took my voice.” My hands fisted at my sides.

“I did. Before. I needed to be sure you wouldn’t speak with her about it. I would do it again.”

“Undo it. Now. You had no right.”

“Of course. But once you know the truth of it, you won’t require magic to keep your silence. You’ll choose it on your own.”

His left hand a fist that opened, and he said a word I didn’t know. The sensation of a necklace snapping, of something sliding down and away from my throat. I swallowed hard. “Explain.”

“Yes, Thomas is correct that the tithe can be broken, and I am required to tell Marin that she may ask someone to risk themselves for her. But not of the reasons I think she should avail herself of it.”

“Right. Because that would fall under influencing. Some other easy wiggle word for why you can’t do anything that’s actually useful.”

“Imogen, I’m—”

“Sorry. Yes. I know. Easy for you to say when you’re not the one Marin hates. So, fine. Tell me how this works. Thomas said the odds weren’t good.”

“Faerie has existed for longer than Melete, and the tithe had always been a part of Faerie. Perhaps once every hundred years, someone has tried to break it—to save the father of their child, or to make a grand romantic gesture.

“I can only think of two times in all of our history that it has worked.”