Roses and Rot (8 page)

“I love that idea,” I said. “Like there’s some guiding force here that says, ‘Oh, the artists are sad. Everyone is spilled paint and paper cuts. Let’s have a party.’ ”

Evan laughed. “It’s a lot like that. Though, it’s also an organized randomness. There are rumors just before, to give people time to get ready, and the artists who exhibit or perform always know in advance.”

“There are performances?” I asked.

“There are always artists who exhibit, usually the ones who need a stage. Being invited to show your work here is considered a bit of a coup. There’s a singer tonight. If you want to stay.”

I smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Imogen!”

I turned to see Marin, holding hands with Gavin. The effect of his presence was stronger here than it had been in a darkened bar. There was a wildness about him in the shadowed trees and firelight, a quality that made me understand why glamour used to be thought of as magic, as dangerous.

Gavin smiled, kissed both of my cheeks, and the spell was broken. “A pleasure to see you again.”

“And this is—” I began.

“We’ve met,” Evan said.

“I’m surprised you’re here,” Gavin said. Except that when he said “surprised,” it sounded like he meant “pissed off.” I glanced at Marin, and she shrugged, as puzzled as I was.

“I had some free time. Gavin’s commissioned some work from me,” Evan said by way of explanation. “Though surely you don’t expect me to spend every moment I’m here working on it.”

“We’ve discussed my expectations. I’d thought you understood the arrangement.” As if Evan was a child who needed scolding.

“Believe me,” Evan said, “it would be impossible to forget.”

“Well, since you are here, perhaps I should leave you. I’d hate for your time to go to waste.

“Imogen.” Gavin nodded at me, his arm around Marin, guiding her away.

“What was that?” I asked.

“A very long and uninteresting story,” Evan said, his eyes on Gavin’s back.

It hadn’t seemed that way, but then the music began, and asking Evan for more details became much less important.

Stage presence. Star quality. Phrases you think you understand, until you encounter someone who embodies them. Ariel did. She was a force, electric, and from the first note, we were hers. It wasn’t that we couldn’t look away, it was that no one would want to turn from the bright flame of her to the ordinary pieces of the world. It seemed like everyone at the Market gathered in the center of the Commons to hear her.

We screamed and clapped and cheered. Ariel shouted her song into the sky, and we threw ourselves after it. The song was one I didn’t know, but it was impossible to hear it and not want to move, to celebrate the music. I danced with Evan, and gloried in the feel of his hands on my waist, and the ache in my thighs that was from more than just dancing.

Another hand grabbed mine, and carried on the force of the music, I let myself be pulled away. Another hand, and then another, until I was dizzy and lost, trapped in a knot of bodies.

Somewhere in that panicked lostness, the music changed. It wasn’t Ariel singing anymore, but something that raced my heart
and prickled my skin. Dissonant. I struggled through the crowd, but shoving my way through was like trying to navigate a living maze.

My breath came faster, and I tore away from hands that grabbed at me, turned my eyes from faces gone feral and cruel in the starlight. They were no one I recognized. They were almost inhuman. Bones gone to sharp edges, fingernails to talons, hair to wings and fur and rose petals.

Then a hand—callused and work-roughened—found mine, and Evan’s voice was in my ear. “Imogen. Imogen, I’ve got you.”

I clung to his hand, the realness of it, and closed my eyes against the impossible surrounding me. I could feel myself fall, as if from a great height, back into my skin.

“You’re fine, Imogen. It’s safe.”

Safe. I was quite sure I hadn’t been. “You didn’t see them. Didn’t hear it.”

He couldn’t have. If he’d seen what I had, had heard that unreal song, he wouldn’t be walking so calmly. Every step, I waited for footfalls, for the wild music to restart, for the strangeness to pounce on me. My head throbbed, and I couldn’t quite focus my vision.

Finally, as we got to the edge of the Commons, I could breathe again. The pressure in my head faded from being squeezed by a vise to hangover-level. No more music that hadn’t been Ariel’s voice, only the practical clatter of booths being packed away—by real people, not furred and clawed nightmares. Everything I could see in the Commons looked normal, expected. Still, I stretched my eyes toward the shadows, trying to see what they hid.

“Can I walk you home?” Evan asked.

“I’d like that,” I said, relieved that he had offered, that I hadn’t had to ask. I kept my fingers entangled with his as we walked. The
silence wrapped around us like a blanket, and it was enough that I could pretend things had been normal.

When we got to my house, Evan wished me good night. “I’d like to see you again, Imogen.”

I raised my hand to his face, traced my thumb over the sharpness of his cheekbone, then stepped in and kissed him. His mouth was sweet and dark, the chocolate from the s’mores. I fisted my hand in his hair and pressed my body against his as if I might lose myself again without him to hold on to.

Then I stepped back, savoring the taste of him on my lips. “I’d like that, too. Send me a letter.”

The next day, my head was too full of thoughts from the night before to let me clear out my mind and work. Unfortunately, the almost-dream of losing myself in a crowd of dancers overwhelmed the remembered heat of Evan’s mouth. Every time I relaxed, I could feel myself being pulled into a dance that became a trap.

I had showered twice when I got home the night before, once not being enough to wash the echoes of grabbing hands from my skin. I’d slept with earbuds in, Bach cello suites on repeat, in an attempt to purge the strange song from my brain. I refused to let it stay in my thoughts, but the notes were still clinging to me, and the sound of them curdled my blood.

I wandered down to the kitchen and poured myself an enormous mug of coffee. Helena scuffed in, bare feet pale under black silk men’s pajamas. “Morning,” I said.

“Yes, unfortunately, it is.” She grabbed my mug from the counter and stumbled back out.

I shook my head and poured myself a second mug, then took it to the library before someone made off with that one, too.

Our house’s library was on the first floor, in the back. Three walls were lined with bookshelves. There were two well-worn reading chairs and a long table where people could work. The fourth wall had an old brick fireplace and a mantel inexplicably carved with Tudor roses.

The library’s collection was eclectic. There were worn paperback romances mixed in with Dickens, a shelf of serious-looking physics books next to one full of J.K. Rowling and Stephen King. Poetry was mixed in with graphic novels, and
Gormenghast
snuggled up to
Good Omens.

I was looking for one of the big fairy tale collections—Grimm or Andersen—for reference. To see the way the stories were structured, how the technical elements fit together. And to help keep my mind on work, and not wandering off to think about music that sounded like it was chasing me.

“Enough,” I said out loud, just to hear something that was normal. I pulled Maria Tatar’s
The Annotated Brothers Grimm
from the shelf. I would read them out loud to myself if that’s what it would take to clear my head.

A packet of letters fell out after it.

They were tied together by a green ribbon, and the ribbon sealed with wax. The mark sealed into the wax was some sort of branch hung with berries. It was hard to tell exactly what they were—at some point, the seal had been broken, and the letters read.

Rather than putting them back where I’d found them, I sat down and untied the ribbon, folding it and setting it to the side. The packet of letters smelled faintly like rosemary.

They weren’t dated. The handwriting was neat and elegant, much lovelier than my own haphazard scrawl, but not what I thought of as old-fashioned—which was somewhat surprising, considering
the way they were written. They were all addressed to
My Thomas, True,
and signed
Your own, J
—language that felt purposely stylized, almost archaic.

My Thomas, True,

One year today since you were gone from me, and I walked the river and the bridge, thinking of you. Wishing that the distance between us might grow thin, that I might be where you are.

If I close my eyes, my skin remembers the feel of your hands.

I write poetry, as I have done constantly since you left. I sit before the glass you made for me as I do, and I wait for your return. I know the time of it, to the second, and I will be there, waiting. You are in my thoughts and in my words and in my heart. I trust that I am in yours as well.

Your own, J

Glancing through the rest of them, I wondered if they had ever been sent. They weren’t stamped or postmarked. J made references to Thomas being in an unreachable place, that she would hold the letters and keep them safe against his return, that he could read them then, or simply accept them as a gift, a way to know that she had been thinking of him, always, in his absence. They were narrative, not dialogue, and I couldn’t tell where Thomas was, or why he couldn’t receive letters. Even in prison, you can send and receive letters.

I folded them back up, retied the ribbon, then took the letters and the book of fairy tales back into the kitchen with me. Still distracted, but this was the kind of distraction I could make a story out of, at least once I had more coffee.

Ariel was spooning honey into a mug, last night’s smeary eyeliner adding an air of debauchery to her cutoff grey sweats and well-worn Dresden Dolls T-shirt.

“You were amazing,” I said.

“Thanks.” Her voice was lower, grittier than usual. “You were a good crowd. A show’s always better when people dance.”

“I heard it’s a big deal, getting asked to perform there. Congratulations.” I poured milk into my coffee, passed her the carton.

“I tell you what, the whole audition process or whatever it was felt like something out of a spy movie. There was a letter in my studio one day, on top of the piano. I had to write my response on it, and leave it there. Gone the next day. Three days pass, and I don’t hear anything.

“Yesterday morning, Angelica, my mentor, texts to tell me I’m confirmed, and that she has to walk me over to do my sound check. Which wasn’t at the Commons, but this place in the woods, where I had to sing. Without being able to see who was watching. I’m pretty sure none of them danced. They definitely didn’t cheer.” She passed her hand through her hair, standing it in spikes.

“It was so bizarre. I thought it was a joke. If Angelica hadn’t been there, I would have left.”

“Weird. Did you send in an audition tape or something?”

“Angelica said they liked my application portfolio.”

“That’s so cool. Congratulations again. Send me a link where I can buy your stuff.” I grabbed the book and my coffee.

“Absolutely. I’ll send you the demo tracks for the new songs, too.”

I was almost out of the kitchen when she spoke again.

“Hey, Imogen. Did you notice anything”—a pause, the sound of fingers drumming on the counter—“weird last night?”

An echo of a song she hadn’t sung rang in my thoughts. “Weird how?”

“Like, toward the end of the set, I kept thinking that maybe there were people there in costumes or something?”

“So you saw them too?” I was half-relieved.

“I freaked out. Thought maybe I’d inhaled some smoke that I shouldn’t have. But costumes makes sense.” She rolled tension from her shoulders.

“They do, don’t they. Or secondhand smoke. I had a beast of a headache.” Both possibilities were logical.

“Most likely explanation.”

I nodded, and we left it at that, neither of us making the point that the most likely explanation wasn’t always the true one. It was just the thing that was most comfortable to believe.

Everything that could have gone wrong that day already had, so I wasn’t surprised when the baking did, too. The second batch of still-watery egg whites slithered down the sink, and I clanged the empty bowl on top of the counter. “Fuck.”

“Imogen?” Ariel asked. “What are you doing?”

“Failing at this, too, apparently.” I stared blankly at the counter, covered in the detritus of unsuccessful cooking.

“Too?” She slid into a chair and tucked her feet beneath her.

“I’m having one of those days where I can’t write for shit. I know I’m getting stuff wrong as soon as I put it on the page, and I can’t see my way to fixing it. Which would be fine if it were just today, but yesterday and the day before were also one of those days. Plus I spilled a bottle of ink all over my favorite shirt and I cut myself shaving.”

“And it’s not even Friday the thirteenth,” Ariel deadpanned.

“Exactly. So rather than sitting upstairs and sulking, I thought I’d come down here and make chocolate mousse.”

“Seriously? You can just”—she waved her hands in the air like a wizard—“make that?”