Vassa in the Night (13 page)

“So that leaves me. I could give a damn if you're only fifteen months younger than me, okay? I'm responsible for you, and if you act like you need some heavy-duty guidance I'm sure as hell going to provide it. As in, do I have to
carry
you, Vassa?”

I don't know whether to be grateful that she cares enough to bother or scared out of my wits. “Chels, I really, really need you to trust me on this. If I try to leave…”

“What?” She has what people call doe eyes, round and brown and limpid, but the look in them now reads more wolf. “What do you think will happen?”

“I don't actually know. But it won't be good.”

Beside me a billow of snow stretches its wings and cranes its head to look at me. Its pupils are black and smart. I glance around and realize that there are
swans
standing everywhere, camouflaged by snow but staring our way. Like they're dying to know what's going to happen.

Chelsea snorts with disbelief, clamps an arm around my shoulder, and starts hustling me toward the street. “Tomorrow you can send the owner a note explaining. Say that you're terribly sorry but your family refuses to let you work for a serial killer. Blame me if you want.
Oh, my sister's so overprotective! She just wouldn't listen when I told her dismembering people doesn't bother me!
”

I try to pull away, but she's too strong. “I can't, Chelsea! I'm serious.”

“I'm here,” Chelsea says, “to illustrate the concept of
serious
for you. 'Cause I think it's not entirely clear to you what it means.”

We're almost at the line of rotting heads. I glance back and see a flock of swans following us, their black feet flapping in the uneasy sparkle of the snow. “Chelsea?” I say. “Look behind us. There's something really not right going on.”

“I'm not sure the message is getting through, Vassa. I'm worried about your suicidal tendencies. Indulging your delusions is low on my to-do list.”

We've reached the border. A sharp streak of shadow falls from the nearest pole like a threat. I know for certain that I must not cross it.
“Take wing in the snow,”
Babs said.
“Take wing.”

Chelsea jerks me and at the same instant I twist sideways, spinning myself from her grasp. Her momentum sends her forward while I teeter, legs skidding apart in the slippery-wet mess of slush, and fall facedown with my arms splayed. There's a distinct tingle in my right foot. When I push up on my elbows and look, I see the band of shadow wrapping my boot as high as the ankle. I yank my foot close. My boot suddenly feels strange, constricting.

“Vassa?” Chelsea calls from just outside the circle. She looks more distraught than angry. “What is going
on
with you?”

I might take off my boot to show her, except that I can't bear to know the truth myself. “I don't want to upset you, Chelsea. Really. It means a lot to me that you came here, but I can't leave … until the time is up.
Please
understand.”

She looks at me. And then she turns to look at someone else.

The motorcyclist is three feet away astride his bike, face obliterated by that jet visor. Apparently waiting for something, because he's not moving.

Chelsea looks alarmed. I can't blame her. He makes for an appalling spectacle.

“It's okay,” I tell her. “He's been looking out for me.”

She nods and straightens herself. Chelsea has a knack for dignity and she does her best at it now, extending a hand to shake. “Hello. I'm Vassa's sister, Chelsea Pascal. Do you work here, too?”

He doesn't react. I scramble to my feet, the right one cramping oddly as I put my weight on it. “He … has trouble talking. But he's a good guy. He works as a night watchman here, and he's been really nice.”

Chelsea shoots me a look, which conveys her belief that a giant, frightening man in skintight leather might possibly have questionable motives for being nice to me. I take a stab at making the situation seem, if not normal, then anyway slightly less bizarre.

“There are three of us girls in our family,” I explain to the motorcyclist, “but we all have different last names. Lowenstein was my dad's last name, and then Stephanie has her mom's name, Salvatore. It tends to confuse people who are meeting us for the first time.”

Chelsea isn't playing along. “Vassa…” she says. She tips a significant glance toward the motorcyclist, then raises her eyebrows in a worried question.
Has he been threatening to hurt you, if you leave? Is
that
the problem?
“Are you seriously determined to stay here? Because you don't have to.”

“I do,” I tell her. My foot twinges and my toes feel horribly bunched. “It's, like, a point of honor. Just for two more nights, though, and then I
swear
I'm coming home.”

She won't try to force me again. I know that now. All the furious determination has drained out of her and she's left with aching sadness. “I wish you'd come now. I hate this place, Vassa. We're in the presence of something—”

Evil,
I think.
Powerful. And enchanted.
Leave it to Chelsea to be very clearheaded about what we're dealing with: there's magic here, sure, but it's deeper and wilder than you'd ever imagine from a safe distance. Once you step into this parking lot the order of the world goes completely out of whack and everyday logic turns into something dark and volatile. And Chelsea didn't get to be a math and chess whiz by tolerating illogic.

“Don't worry,” I tell her. “I'll be fine.” She looks at me, and I look at her. I'd like to hug her goodbye, but I know I can't cross outside the circle marked by the poles, and I think she's scared to step inside it again. With extremely good reason, of course. After another long moment she raises her hand, wry and sorrowful, and walks away.

The sky has slipped all the way to dark now. It must be time for my shift, and I know I should head back to the store. Instead I look at the motorcyclist. I look at the snow behind his bike. As I'd pretty much expected there are no tracks.

“Hi,” I say quietly. “I wanted to thank you. For helping me last night.”

I'm half-hoping he'll finally talk to me, but he doesn't. Everything has been so strange that it's making me lose my grip on reality. There's a part of me which is convinced that my dream of him was absolutely true, that we really talked, that his motorcycle is actually joined to his body. But now that I'm looking at him again what I see is a basically regular, oversized guy, dressed in black leather, sitting on a regular bike. Of course that's a leather suit, thick leather gloves, and not his own personal skin. What was I thinking?

He's just inside the circle of the heads, so I walk up to him. He doesn't react at all. Right behind me I can hear the bustle of the swans, following me like the train on a long, snowy dress.

“Can you even hear me?” I ask. “I'd like to talk to you. Look, the hands told Babs what you did for me. I'm afraid you might be in trouble.”

No response. Snow is piling like a huge eggshell on his tuberous helmet. Frost-webs pattern his visor. I raise my hand to wipe it clear.

He lets out an awful, rumbling groan—the first sound I've heard from him, but so
much
like his voice was in my dream—and I flinch back. The swans shuffle restlessly, and I hear slow, snow-muted footsteps padding closer. I turn to see Babs only a few yards away, coatless and with crystals clustering on her dress and hair; it's a different dress today, a summery blue gingham, but she doesn't seem cold. Now that she knows I'm watching her all the agility I saw before is gone, and she's reverted to her old interminable waddle. “Impling,” she says, shaking her head. “What a mess you've made.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. And then I see the crimson spatter all over the snow. Dark abstract blotches follow in my footsteps. I can't understand it until I look at the swans huddling together like a feathery iceberg. They're bleeding, all of them are bleeding, but it doesn't look like there are any specific wounds. Ruby droplets weep from their feathers everywhere I can see and rain down, pocking the snow with red holes and then wicking outward into sparkling cherries. “What's
wrong
with them?” I almost scream it, and Babs chuckles a little.

“Such filthy birds,” she says, and then grins. “Like rats with wings. You won't be working the register tonight, will you, imp? Dex and Sin will handle that. For you there's all this muck to clean. How I hate dirty snow.”

The swans twist their necks, scattering blood with every move, and I can't focus on what Babs is saying. “They're hurt! We have to…”
help them,
I want to say, but it seems absurd. It's as if every feather is a needle driving into their flesh.

“Naturally they're hurt. They thought they were about to have a new friend. A downy companion. They came to collect her. They prepared themselves. Then somehow their friend turned
back
. She betrayed them. Wounds such as that don't easily heal, do they?”

“You're blaming me for this?” I'd like to smack her. Her white orb rushes forward like it wants to knock me sky-high. The eye feels immense, an icy meteor swinging straight at my face, and I almost throw my arms up to protect myself. Every cell in my body urges me to buckle, to cringe, and then run stumbling away from here. Which is exactly what she wants, of course.

I can't manage to be completely brave. I flinch, and Babs leers. But at least I stand my ground.

The swans leap fluttering into the air, spraying wide fans of red across the snow, then settle again in a dense mass at my legs. They snake their necks around my waist and stroke me with their blood-streaked bills. Babs turns downright gleeful at my discomfiture, which is admittedly intense. “You'd best get started, then, hadn't you? I'll expect to see it all pristine and gleaming by morning.”

“Fine,” I say; it might be better than working that lunatic register. The air out here is fresh and free, even if I'm not. I can feel swan blood seeping through my clothes. “Got a shovel?”

“Now how would you clean snow with a shovel? Better a small brush … a speck of fluff from your friends here … a hair from your own head.
That's
the way it's done, my girl.”

The meaning of this escapes me at first, because it's incomprehensibly crazy. Babs stands smiling patiently, but at least her rolling eye is minding its own business for now, sticking in her head like it ought to. Then I get it. “You're asking me to clean
individual
snowflakes? One at a time?”

“Mind you don't break them. They can be fragile at the tips.”

“You do know that's impossible.” My voice has gone flat with disbelief.

“Oh? Then Sin and Dex can terminate your employment here right now. Would you care to step inside?”

I suppose I could freak out. Start screaming in hysterics. Erg saved me before, but this is beyond insane. If I'm doomed, though, then I might as well crack up as stylishly as possible.

“Oh, I'll get it done,” I hear myself saying insolently. “Is it okay if I take cleaning supplies and stuff from the store?” I look at the swans, still squeezing around me like pillows on legs. “Maybe some first-aid supplies?”

That catches Babs off guard, I can tell. “Certainly you may. Take whatever you need. Just so nothing leaves my parking lot.”

“Great!” I say as cheerfully as I can manage. She's looking almost worried now and I have to admit I enjoy it, even if that makes me a bad person. “You'll tell Dex and Sin, then? Not to get all jumpy if I come in and collect a few things?”

“I'll tell them that you have permission to carry our things as far as the border.” Babs hesitates, glowering, and opens her mouth to say something else, then lowers her eyes and bunches up her ashy lips.

“Yes?” I say. “Something on your mind?”

“
Everything
is on my mind,” Babs retorts. “That's why your ilk is spared the burden of having anything at all in yours.”

“And we do
so
appreciate that,” I snap, but she's already dragging her feet through the blood-mottled snow. It takes me a moment to realize that she's not heading back to the store, but toward the motorcyclist. He hasn't moved at all. I have a sick sense that, whatever is coming next, she wants to make sure I see it.

“Which came first,” Babs hisses to him, “night or day? When the first eye cracked open the first egg what hatched from it, morning or evening?” He doesn't try to answer, but to be fair I wouldn't, either. She raises a bony hand and takes hold of his visor. “Shall I show you?”

From where I'm standing I can't really see his face, just a sliver at the side where Babs is holding him. She lifts his visor partway, still staring at him.

He gives an unbearable wail. It begins low and guttural then careens higher, turning shrill and frenzied. His right hand shoots for the sky in a gesture of appeal. I try to get to him, to help him somehow, but my legs are squeezed by swans and I stumble.

Babs lets him keep screaming for several long beats then lowers his visor; his howling fades into a whimper. His outstretched hand drops limp onto the handlebar. He's so big, so strong-looking; I can't understand why he would let her torment him.

“Remember,” Babs growls, “you've already lost. But loss is, let us say, a process. Don't assume you're done.” With a few deft motions she starts the bike's engine and the loud growl trembles across the dark. “Go!”

He goes. Obediently, weakly, he follows orders, his motorcycle accelerating into its familiar loop. Around and around. When he passes by again I have to fight the urge to pummel him with bloody snowballs. He could have flattened Babs with one swipe of his hand and instead he waited patiently while she tortured him.