Roses and Rot (37 page)

I smiled back. “It’s good enough. You’ll do those things anyway.”

It got worse, the interference from the Fae. The feeling of being watched, haunted, chased. The sound of footsteps echoing mine, even when I wasn’t walking. The hillside that developed lumps and holes to turn an ankle or send me falling as I ran on it. A hissing of snakes sent, slithering, across my path.

Pebbles buried inside the sheets of my bed, and milk that curdled in my coffee. A thousand tiny cruelties. We wanted different things, the Fae and I, and I would be opposed.

I couldn’t write. Not because of anything so simple as writer’s block. Files disappeared from my computer, only to show up days later with new names and rearranged contents. Notebooks went missing from drawers and showed up in the oven, or on the shelves in the library, or outside on the porch, the wind riffling their pages.

My pens ran out of ink, the battery in my laptop wouldn’t charge. I couldn’t write.

It was easy enough to brush things off at first, to tell myself that none of this would be happening if the Fae or whatever it was that governed the tithe didn’t see me as a threat. But the little things accreted—the nights of interrupted sleep, the aches and bruises from yet another fall while running, this one that tore the skin from my palms and made trying to write a white-hot agony. It became exhausting. There were two more weeks until May first, the night of the tithe, and I didn’t know how I would get through them.

Marin was still furious. Not speaking to me, walking out of a room if I walked into it. If Gavin had a house on Melete’s campus, I’m sure she would have moved into it, but he didn’t, and he was spending more and more time in Faerie besides. She was probably angry with me for that, too.

I ran through the studios, around a corner, and straight into Evan. I cartwheeled to a fall, wiping out completely. Staggering back to my feet, I brushed the worst of the grit from my legs and burning hands, half-expecting him to be another thing sent to torture me.

“Imogen, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, rolling my ankles to test them, blood sticky on my hands.

“You look terrible. Like someone’s been beating you up, like you haven’t been sleeping. Come on, I have a first-aid kit in my studio. That’s not much, but it’s a start.” He slid an arm around my waist, taking my weight, and after a couple of staggering half steps, I let him.

He opened the door. “You should know that they can’t get in here. The Fae. It was part of what Gavin did, in getting me temporarily out. This studio was my place to recover. There’s an extra key.”

He rummaged through a drawer, and set the key on top of a series of sketches of new work. “If you want it, it’s yours. Come here anytime.”

“I won’t be interrupting anything?”

He knew what I meant, but met my eyes as he answered. “If it makes it easier for you to come here and take care of yourself, I’ll stay out of your way. I’ll even leave when you get here. But think of this place as yours.”

I nodded.

“Also, there are things you can do to protect yourself from them. They can’t cross a threshold if there’s rowan over it. None grows here, but you might be able to order some. Wear your shirt inside out, and it will force them to drop their glamour to see you. If you pass through running water, it will wash away any enchantment that has been cast on you.”

“How do you know all of that?”

“Gavin. Some of the Fae didn’t think I should be out, even if my being in Faerie was hurting them. They’d try to take me back to Faerie, or to torment me while I was here. So he gave me ways to protect myself.”

Which was probably part of why he couldn’t protect Marin. I shoved the thought from my head. It might be true, but I couldn’t think about it.

“You’ll need the protections, Imogen. Things are going to get harder for you.” He took the bandages from my shaking hands and fixed them over my palms for me.

“You should know that she’ll fight you, too.”

“She’s already pissed.” I flexed my hands, testing the bandages.

“No, I mean actively fight you. That day.” He leaned against the edge of his worktable.

“I wouldn’t have asked anyone to try to break the tithe for me, so I don’t know how the fact that you are changes things. But I remember, in the days leading up, being less than sure about my decision.

“Spring was beautiful here that year. Everything bloomed early, and the weather was perfect and green. I was doing work I was proud of, starting to change my style, and really feeling like it was mine, you know?”

I did. “Like finding your voice.”

“Exactly. I missed Tania, but was beginning to think that agreeing to run away to Faerie for seven years to grieve her hadn’t been my best idea. Besides”—he smiled—“I knew I was good enough to be a success on my own, and more and more, I wanted to see how good I could be without their help.

“But when I woke up that morning, I wanted to go to Faerie like I had never wanted anything in my life, and the feeling only increased as the day went on. By the time the ritual started, I was nearly blinded by it.

“What I’m saying is she might be pissed now, but it will be worse then. And even if she does change her mind and ask you for help, don’t rely on her. The tithe doesn’t want to be broken.”

“She won’t ask,” I said. “She hates the idea. Hates me for trying this. But Gavin.” I pulled in a breath, then shuddered out the words. “Gavin thinks she’ll die if she goes.”

The relief at finally telling someone was like a fever breaking—hot and cold and shaking all at once. “He’s afraid she’ll die, and he’s told me to stop her from going because he can’t, and I’m terrified that I can’t either, and that she’ll be gone, I’ll lose her, and she’ll go and die, and the last thing I will have done will be to fail her.”

His hand, soft, on my shoulder. “I wondered why you were trying so hard. Imogen, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” I said. “So am I.” Stupid small words. Overused ones. Tiny things, hardly any letters. We expect them to do so much, and when it comes down to it, they’re nearly empty, all their color leached away, all the meanings that should have been there hollow and inadequate in the face of the weight they’re meant to carry. We know, and we say them anyway. “So am I.”

“Also, this doesn’t really have anything to do with that, but since you’re here, I have something for you.” Uncertainty in his voice now, in his bearing. He opened the drawer again, took out a necklace. A chain, the leaf of an elf maple hanging from it. “I made it. Before. But it’s for you. So if you want it, it’s yours.”

Our pasts always haunt us. But sometimes the ghosts are friendly, and the memories they bring with them sweet as well as bitter. “It’s beautiful,” I said. “I would love to have it.” I held out my hand, and he dropped the necklace into it.

“And I meant what I said, Imogen. Use the key. Come here. Take care of yourself. If I can help you, I will.”

“Thank you,” I said. Small, tiny words.

I turned my shirt inside out before I left Evan’s studio, and for the first time in almost three weeks, didn’t feel watched as I walked home. My shoulders uncoiled, just a bit.

A box of rowan branches—thin green leaves and clusters of orange-red berries—arrived that afternoon. I hung them over my windows, and over my door, and fell, exhausted, into a dreamless sleep.

For two days after, I thought I had gotten lucky. That Evan’s advice had been the silver bullet.

But then I slept with the windows open, and woke, shivering, in a bed that had been the target of an extremely localized rainstorm, the orange berries of the rowan floating in the puddles on the floor.

I had forgotten that I had a sister who wanted to go to Faerie as badly as I wanted to keep her from it. She had taken down the rest of the rowan, leaving the house unprotected. My dreams were full of her dying in Faerie, with me there to watch, and I couldn’t wake myself from the visions until dawn broke.

The sky’s cold grey light was comfort after that. Shivering from the nightmare, I shrugged into my robe—worn brocade in a pattern of roses, the threads going out at wrist and hem—and went downstairs. Coffee brewed, and brewed again after the milk I’d poured in had proved to be curdled, I sat at the table and pillowed my head in my hands.

“How are things?” Ariel said, as she poured herself coffee. “Or should I not have asked?”

“We’re still at the same levels of armed truce,” I said. “Though be careful with the cream—they’re spoiling it again.”

“And that’s why I’ve been taking mine black. Do you have a second to talk?”

“Sure.”

She leaned against the counter. “I got an offer from a producer. Cynthia Dickinson. She wants to stage my Thomas the Rhymer musical, but as immersive theatre.”

“That’s where the audience interacts, right? Like that
Macbeth
that was on multiple floors of a hotel?”

“Exactly. She’s got some great ideas, too, like that people can get True Thomas to tell them their futures, and then you go to different parts of the performance based on what they are. Some really cool ways to work the staging. She built mini-sets as part of her proposal. Hang on—I’ve got pictures on my phone.”

They were photos of what looked like an elaborately staged dollhouse, full of detail.

“These are gorgeous, Ariel.”

“Right? I got chills looking at them. She really gets what I want to do with the project.”

“And it would give you the audience interaction you’ve been wanting,” I said.

She nodded.

“That sounds great. Congratulations! We should celebrate.”

“Thanks, but that’s the thing—I’m not sure if I want to do it.” She slid the phone back into her pocket.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know if I want to think about this place anymore, once we’re done with it. I mean, I wrote this as a fuck you to the Fae, but now Helena’s gone and Marin’s going, and that feels more like getting screwed over.”

“She’s not going,” I said. “Marin.”

Her voice softened. “Sorry. You’re right. Of course she’s not. But it’s not just you guys. It’s everything associated with the place.
With the Fae. I don’t know if I want to keep dealing with the bullshit, or turn my back and walk away clean.

“Because, honestly, Imogen, I might be the only one who walks out of this house in June. I know you have a plan, but look at the odds.”

“I can’t look at the odds,” I said. “I understand what you’re saying, but if I start doing that, none of this works, because I curl up under my desk and never come out.

“But, Ariel, no matter what happens, none of us get away clean. This year, this place, it’s always going to be in our art. Even if we decide to walk away from art completely, and take up law or sell real estate, this will always be in our past.”

“Like a graveyard of fucking ghosts,” she said.

“That’s what it feels like, sometimes,” I agreed. An entire life as a haunted house.

“You know, I remember the first time I heard you sing,” I said.

“At the Night Market,” she said, and smiled. “That was a good show.”

“It was, but that’s not when I meant. It was our very first day here. You were singing Puccini on the porch, and I thought it was one of the most perfect moments I’d ever experienced.”

Ariel shook her head. “God, we were naïve. I still thought this whole place was perfect, then.”

I laughed. “I thought the same thing. That it was like magic.”

“We were idiots,” Ariel said.

“But we weren’t wrong.”

“No, I guess we weren’t. Here’s to our past selves, and all the ghosts that we are,” she said. “May we haunt the Fae forever.”