Salt and Iron (16 page)

“Morning, nephew. Coffee on the sideboard,” she says.

James nods and goes over to the long, polished wood cabinet that’s surmounted by a heavy silver urn. There’s a stack of china cups there, old, white, the glaze cracked and discolored in the cracks, the ivy pattern rubbed away near the handle.

He turns the spigot on the silver urn, and coffee comes trickling out. There’s thick, yellow cream in a china pitcher. He pours a little in and then comes back to the table and stands for a minute. It’s a table for four. The Baron and Skinny Mary sit facing each other, and there are two places left.

“Left side or right?” he asks.

The Baron throws back his head and laughs.

“Not dinner,” Skinny Mary says, “don’t matter.”

“But I like your manners,” the Baron says.

James settles in a wooden chair that creaks like an old barn door. The Baron’s looking at him, golden fork still poised above a plate of eggs and bacon and something that looks like mashed potato, and something that might be black beans and chilies.

“What are you going to do?” James asks. “With Gabe, I mean.”

Nobody says anything for a while. The Baron eats with elegant precision, and Skinny Mary smokes a little. James has never been good at silence.

“Gabe was suffering, so I’m grateful for what you did,” he says. “But I know you hate the unseelie, and I know he can’t stay. Whatever it’s going to cost me to get him out of here, I’d better know about it.”

The Baron raises his plucked and perfect eyebrows. He looks at Skinny Mary.

“Making deals he already made,” he says. He’s scoffing.

Skinny Mary sits back and shakes her head at him. She
tsks
a few times, and James feels himself blushing, hot and red. She goes back to her meal, something large and fried, with bread. Then she looks up again. “You put in an order with Miss Brett yet?”

He nods.

“Good, good.”

“What about Gabe?”

“What about Gabe?”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

She looks over at the Baron, and the Baron sighs.

“Well, he’s gonna change over,” the Baron says.

“Yeah, that’s what Brett said, but what does that mean?”

“Ugliness,” the Baron says. “I’m old, son, and I’ve seen big changes before, and this is a big one. Most take one day, maybe two. His is gonna take a while. He’s not going to be anything like he was, you know. Not human, that’s for sure.”

“Is he going to live?”

The Baron smiles around a forkful of food. “What’s your definition of
live
, son? He’ll be unseelie. And if your people don’t bring him down for being a blood traitor, mine will. He’d outlive you, in a fair race. But the race ain’t gonna be fair, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

Skinny Mary makes a little noise. “You’re a van Helsing,” she says. “You’re family, but you hate your own blood.”

He looks down at his coffee, at the ring the oil on the surface is putting on the pale china.

“I didn’t know,” he says. “I didn’t know what I was.”

“You did,” the Baron says.

He swallows, takes a drink of coffee to moisten his mouth. “Yeah, okay, I… I figured it out.”

“Your part of the family is good at double-dealing but not so good at keeping sidhe things alive. You can’t have him back. Leastways, you can’t have him back like that. Not just because he’s unseelie. I won’t stand to see any sidhe in the van Helsing’s keeping. Not after what they did to Skinny Mary’s sister.”

The Baron sets down his cutlery with careful precision, fork and knife at eight o’clock. Then he sits back and pulls a big cigar out from the inside of his jacket.

James swallows. “Gabe is a member of the Firm, and he’s under their pro—”

Skinny Mary laughs. “Oh no, honey. They gave him and his dad to the Thing, threw ’em to it, like they do with us. They wanted him dead, and you know that, just like you knew it was magic you were using.”

He has nothing to say to that. He sure can’t deny it.

“This ain’t Firm business you’re on,” the Baron says. “This is personal.”

He swallows.

Then he turns his head because someone is coming from the shadows, someone moving respectful, diagonal, head turned just a little and lowered, to whisper something in Skinny Mary’s ear. She raises her tattooed head and smiles at the messenger.

“I thought you said you only change once,” James says quietly.

“Well, there’s change,” she says, “and then there’s change. Did your boy have a good sleep?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, pulling a chair out for himself, “but not for want of anything in your power to provide. Thank you. For what you did.”

She inclines her head and looks at the Baron. “See, they taught him.”

“Manners like my brother likes. Manners but no sense.”

“Family fuck-up,” James says, smiling as if it doesn’t hurt to say the things he knows they’ve all been thinking for years. “Pill popper, drunk. Useless in a fight. Totally undependable. Too fucking drunk even to….”

He stops. Skinny Mary and the Baron look at each other.

“He was going to say ‘save,’ wasn’t he?” the Baron says.

“Well of course he was,” Skinny Mary says.

“Family fuck-up.”

“A thing to call himself.”

“A thing to be called.”

They both look at him, and he realizes the word missing from their statements wasn’t
that’s
. It’s
what
.

“Think I’m hearing old Abraham’s voice.”

“No, Baron, you’re hearing Bloody Mary.” She looks at James and nods. “She’s the one who called you that first, and it was fresh, so it stuck.”

He stares at the two of them. “What?”

“Your mama, Bloody Mary.” She smiles. “She called you that first. Maybe not in words, maybe in silence. Maybe she said, ‘Oh, boy, if only you were a little more like your brother.’”

“Oh, boy, if only you didn’t let me down all the time.”

“Oh, boy, what would Granddaddy van Helsing say?”

“Stop,” he says, because it’s sharp as glass.

“Oh, boy, why’d you go and do that thing? Don’t you know better than that?”

“Stop,” he says, a little louder. They’re smiling, skull-faced, tattooed, but this is not funny. It’s not a joke. He’s not encased in armor, and he can’t defend against this.

“You worry too much….”

“Got a big imagination….”

“Too bad you’re not clever….”

“Like your brother.”

He’s on his feet. “
Stop
!”

They do. They look at him, both of them, and then at each other again. James looks down. He didn’t realize he’d risen. He didn’t realize he’d shouted, but his voice has left a crater of silence in the room. Skinny Mary looks over at the Baron.

“But there’s some fight in him.”

“Yeah, a little fight in him.”

“And monsters in his blood.”

“Heh.”

“Came here for a fight, didn’t he?” She looks at him, standing there, muscles bunched and trembling. “What you want to fight for?” she asks.

“I came to get Gabe. And take him home.”

“You want him? You want to
save
him?”

“What do I have to do?”

The Baron’s smile is golden. “Nothing you can do. He has to want it himself.”

Skinny Mary leans back in her seat, eyes drooping and heavy and her mouth exuding a little smoke as she laughs. “I’m keeping him here as a favor to you, you know. He’s not welcome out there anymore,” she answers. “You know that. When he’s done changing, then he can choose.”

“And when he wants to be human again, you can change him back.”

Skinny Mary glances at the Baron, and the Baron shrugs. She looks back at him.

“I can let him change himself back,” she says.

He shakes his head. Doesn’t care about the distinction; the point is it’s in her power.

“Then let him. And let me take him home.”

“Sure,” she says, smooth as good whiskey. “You do me a favor if I do one for you.”

“Deal,” he says, before she can withdraw the offer.

She laughs then, bright and feral. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you not to make deals with the sidhe?” she asks.

That makes him smile, and that makes her grin.

“Sure did. I never listen to anything anybody ever says,” he says.

“Maybe you should. I want three favors from him. Now you make that happen.”

He stares at her. “No, you wanted something from me.”

“Three favors from him. You make that happen.”

“I can’t command him to do something.”

Skinny Mary smiles.

“Can’t you?”

James goes cold. “No,” he says softly. “No, I won’t. He gave me his name in good faith. I won’t use it to make him do anything. I’ll never use it to make him do anything.”

She laughs again. “You keep telling yourself those lies, son. One day you might even believe them.”

ALL THE
curtains are drawn, and the foyer and the hall are fully dark by the time he goes back up to the room. The darkness is softened by a yellow sort of light coming from old-fashioned incandescent bulbs that fill up sconces and chandeliers and spangle the ornate, blue ceiling. It doesn’t occur to him to knock at the door. He just pushes it open and goes in.

Gabe is standing. Standing to one side of the room, one foot up on the chair James had been sitting in earlier. He jumps and whirls to face the door.

“Hey,” James says softly, “you’re up.”

“James?” Gabe asks, voice thin and taut.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

Gabe shakes his head. “No, no you should leave.”

All around Gabe time is fractured like a broken pane of ice, growing smoother and more clear as he comes into the room. “It’s okay. We’re… we’re guests. Skinny Mary… and the Baron… I guess. Anyway, the sidhe are looking after you. Looking after both of us. You won’t hurt anybody. They sedated you. You’ve been sleeping through the worst of it.”

“The worst….” His voice gives up. He breathes in a big breath. “You should
leave
, Jamie.”

“You’re not going to hurt me, Gabe.”

“I’m not what I used to
be
.”

He ducks his head, and James can see the sticklike things that are jutting from his back. They’ve grown, expanded. He comes forward, and time smooths out a little more.

“Get
away
,” Gabe snarls. He looks past James, through him. He’s not seeing anything anymore.

“You’re scared. I get it. It hurts still, doesn’t it? It’s—”

“Leave me
alone
.”

Gabe moves his hand and sweeps the empty bourbon bottle from the table, and then he jumps, startled, and turns, and James can see. James can see his back.

The wings are out now. They hang tattered, sagging like they’re broken, or exhausted, or covered in oil. They’re brownish, maybe black, webbed with thin skin and nubbed with feathers that are just breaking through.

James hears his own startled gasp, and Gabe cringes back like he’s been threatened.

“Shit, fuck,” Gabe whispers. “I didn’t want you to see.”

James can’t stop staring. The wings are everywhere. They sprout from Gabe’s head, just above his ears, small and dark and as screwed up as his rumpled hair. They sprout from his ankles and his wrists. But those are small. It’s the wings on his back that are big, enormous. And there’s more than a pair of them. There’s three pair, upper, middle, and lower.

He should say something. He should say something that’ll take away Gabe’s panic and make it okay.

“It’s…,” he starts, but there’s nothing he can say that’s going to do what he needs. He flounders. “Does it still hurt?”

Some of the fractures in time smooth away. Gabe shakes his head, hard, silent, and James steps forward and steps into something soft and warm and wet. He looks down. It’s a bloodied clump of feathers on the floor.

“It’s going to be okay,” James says, because it’s what he’s been saying, and it’s almost been working, or it feels like it’s working, a tiny thing, a little spell. It’s making time settle out like water; it’s smoothing away the lines. His voice is shaking, but maybe Gabe won’t notice. “It’s going to be okay.”

“They’re not me,” Gabe says. He reaches down to the wing on his ankle and grips it, pulling, pulling at the wing that’s sprouted there until he gasps and sags a little, panting. “They’re not me,” he says again. He looks up, in James’s direction. “But they’re in tight, and I can’t get them out. I can’t get them out. They’re stuck. I need a… I need a knife or something.”

James goes cold. “Gabe, stop. You’re hurting yourself.”

“I have to get them out,” he says over James, voice getting louder. “I
have
to. I can’t be… I can’t be this. I can’t
be
this.”

“Gabe, listen, it’s going to be—”

“
No it’s not
!” he screams. “
It’s not. Look at me
!”

They stand silent, James staring at him, Gabe looking sightlessly down at his ankle, the wing that’s wrenched and twisted. Then Gabe gulps and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I yelled. I just…. I have to get them out. I have to—”

“Gabe, stop. Please.”

He does. His head hangs, his shoulders roll, the wings on his back hang cockeyed like they’ve given up, like they’ve been forgotten. The wings on his head cant to the side. Gabe makes a noise. A small, animal sound that rises and falls, and then rises and falls one more time. James goes back to the door and throws the lock, then passes over the old carpet, footsteps soft. He touches Gabe’s shoulder and sees the way his skin ripples—no, not ripples. There are marks on his skin that move when they’re touched.

Thin, delicate, irregular, or patterned here and there. Words, he realizes with a jolt. Words on his skin that move when James touches them…
“What is your name?” And he said, “Legion,”…. Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind…
it’s scripture. There’s a ton of it.

The text on his skin moves like a boat on a river, not squirming anymore.
There shall no evil befall you, neither shall any plague come near your dwelling…
and
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
and
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death….