Vassa in the Night (25 page)

Ugh. Just shut up, Vassa. If you're going to be your father's daughter at least have the class not to pretend you're justified.

The tugging at my ankle comes back, more urgently now. I could take that as another excuse, and we all know how I just
love
excuses.

I make myself turn to face the dark again. Those sharp-pointed stars are still there, their jags cycling slowly high up in the dark. In a regular place, of course, I could walk a few steps forward and feel confident that the door was behind me; here it'll probably vaporize as soon as it gets the chance.

When I push off my stomach clenches so hard that I nearly double over. My hand still reaches behind me, clinging to the knob. When I finally let go cold waves of trembling surge through me. But at least I'm not acting like a heartless traitor. I'm doing
something.

Behind me there's a quick scrape of sound: the unmistakable rasp of a match, low down, and then light brushes around my boots. I turn to look. Dexter is there holding the match up; in its jaundiced light he looks sicker than ever. He was the ankle-tugger then, but he sure doesn't seem to have his old strength. He stands limp, his fingers sagging. Incredibly enough, though, I'm happy to see him. “Hey, there, little guy. Do you need something?”

He lifts the match up stiffly, and I realize he's waiting for me to pick it up. I crouch down and take it from him, and he nods his fingers at me, casting enormous bobbing shadows on the door, which is still inexplicably right where it was two minutes ago. Then, with what looks like a really painful effort, he flips himself and walks on two of them, just the way I saw him do once before.

Erg. He's telling me something about Erg. “Dexter? What happened?”

He throws himself palm down with a resonant splat. For a moment he lies there as if the breath had been knocked out of him—not that he has any—then hauls himself back onto two rigid fingers and acts out the whole pantomime again. Much as I might prefer not to, I get it.

“My friend is … down. Is that it? Did…?” I almost can't say this. “Babs didn't
catch
her!”

Dexter twists back onto his wrist-stump and nods his fingers solemnly just as the match burns out.

It might be a trick, of course. Dexter has every reason to hate Erg with a passion, considering that he might be dying from the septic bite of her little wooden jaws. But somehow I can't think about that.

I can't even think about my
own
possible reasons to hate Erg. All I can think is that she needs me, and how much I still, always and absolutely, need her. For just a moment I wobble in uncertainty, then I pivot toward the pitch-black void where the motorcyclist might be desperately waiting for me.

“I'll come back!” I call wildly. “Just as soon as I can, I'll come back for you!” Without thinking about it I reach out in the dark for Dexter; he's way too weak to run.

I hear the sound of him hobbling over, then scuffing indecisively for a moment.

And then he gives a little hop, and holds my hand. I can feel how sick he is by the touch of his skin, ashy and sticky and smoldering with fever.

We're through that door before I can even feel grossed out.

Even after all the distance I covered, I recognize the room in front of me immediately: it's the dim space I wandered through first, the cavernous room with the giant souvenirs. That amber beacon still flickers on the top of the Eiffel Tower, and it must be brighter now because I can see more of those overgrown knickknacks scattered around a gray field: a shoulder-high St. Louis's Gateway Arch, a particularly awful Colosseum sculpted in mint-green plastic; as I run past it I notice tiny model gladiators gutting one another inside it, and I look away before they can start moving. What I
don't
see, predictably enough, is the door back to BY's.

“Don't you get tired of playing the same lame tricks all the time?” I ask the room. “How about something new?”

Dexter give me a little tug toward the vacancy to my right, but I ignore him. There's something just a little bit different about that Eiffel Tower now, a kind of rag hanging from one of its beams. I veer toward it and halt, reaching to touch it with my left hand: a loose flap in red and white checks. On inspection it proves to be the corner of a suit jacket. My first thought is that Picnic and Pangolin were dragged this way and Picnic's jacket caught on the metal and tore, but the scrap is pretty high up for that. And it's hanging from the
inside
of the beam, caged in the metal grid. Picnic would have had to be yanked up inside the tower for his jacket to snag in that spot.

I've been pulling on the scrap for a while now, and it's not coming loose. I feel along the edge where the fabric meets the metal, and, weirdly enough, it seems like it keeps going straight into the beam. Dexter scratches impatiently.

All at once I remember what the singer said:
“Oh, Peek-neek and Pan-go-leen, oh vhere can zey be?”
That horrible phony French accent. Oh,
there's
your answer, Vassa.

Erg might just have to wait.

“Dexter?” I say. “Can you sit on my shoulder for a minute? I need both hands.” The irony of saying that to him hits me as he thumps my palm with his fingers, which I think translates as,
We don't have time for this.
But when I lift him up he obediently disengages and flops over my collarbone like an animate pancake. I wish he wouldn't fidget. “Thanks, little buddy,” I tell him, even though the sensation of him snuggling against me is fairly disgusting. But after living with Babs, poor little Dex probably needs all the positive reinforcement he can get.

I work on freeing that flap of suit. The metal holding it has a narrow slit down the center, and I pry at that as the sharp edges gouge my fingers, then I haul on the cloth again. The tin is starting to bow back and enough of the suit is through now that I can wrap both hands in it. The checks are dotted with blood, presumably mine.
Ooh La La!
I lift my feet off the floor for an instant, dragging on the suit with my entire weight, and I hear a kind of yelp.

From, that's right,
inside
the metal beam. It's maybe an inch and a half square.

“Mr. Picnic?” I call. “Are you okay?”

“Just Picnic,” Pangolin's voice grouses, “if you please.” And at the same time Picnic says, “From self to other to self again creates, by its dizzying oscillation, that dialogic commingling of spirits that we most aptly term
empathy
.…”

I've never heard him say more than a few words in a row before and I'm not sure this counts as an improvement.

“Empathy,” I say. “Right. That's why I'm here to get you out. Because I'm pretty sure it must suck to be jammed inside a metal beam like that.”

As I talk I'm twisting the tin back, using the flap of his jacket to keep my hands from getting cut any worse. There's a thin squealing sound and something comes flopping through the opening.

A tail. Cow-style and covered in what looks like freckled pale skin, with a luxuriant tuft of ginger hair at the end. Neat confirmation of the whole not-human thing. I keep tugging on the suit and twisting my fingers into the gap in the tin, and it spreads wider and wider. One of Pangolin's conical claws sticks through, and then with a rapid drubbing sound Picnic gets a foot out. The metal's giving way more quickly now, and soon impossibly large limbs are dangling out of that narrow beam. Then, with a wild thrashing, Picnic pulls himself all the way out and lands on the floor with his arms fluttering vaguely. We each get hold of one of Pangolin's clawed feet and work him loose as well. Sheepishly, Picnic tucks his tail back inside his checked pants.

“Have you any parasites, miss?” Pangolin inquires courteously once he's standing square on the floor. “Lice or other vermin?”

“Excuse me?” I can't honestly say I saw that coming.

“I thought I might devour them. As a small token of our appreciation.”

“I'm cool for now,” I tell him. Just like in my dream, he seems to have lost his glasses and his beige suit is torn and bloodied. “Maybe later there will be something you can do for me, though.” I don't know if they can help rescue Erg or the motorcyclist, but it's worth asking.

Dexter twitches impatiently on my shoulder and tugs a lock of my hair. Pangolin eyes him suspiciously. “No parasites, you say? That one might be too bulky for the orifice available, but he could be minced.”

“You can't eat him,” I insist. Apart from how totally nauseating the idea is, I feel a weird twinge of protective loyalty for the live-dead thing perched on my shoulder. “We're friends now. I mean I think we are.”

Dexter gratefully nuzzles me. I'd prefer if he didn't.

Picnic leans very close to my shoulder, peering at Dexter from all sides. “Five fingers,” Picnic observes sagely, “but only one points to the heart.”

“That's great,” I tell him. Now that I've finally done something useful I can't keep the impatience out of my voice. “Look, I'm really happy that you're both okay, but we need to get out of here.” Erg is back in my thoughts like a shooting pain. “I … another friend of mine might be in trouble.”

Technically we're all in trouble, really. It suddenly occurs to me that Babs will be under-thrilled to see me stomping into her store, through her private door, with her prisoners in tow. I'm not in the business of making Babs happy, but this seems extreme—and since she's got Erg in her clutches it's not an ideal moment to be driving her wild with rage.

Dexter yanks my hair hard enough that I start walking in the direction indicated, and Picnic and Pangolin trail along with me. A door asserts itself out of nowhere, a charcoal smudge on the dark, and Dexter prods me to go faster; Pangolin skitters to keep up, claws clacking like an old typewriter.

“You'll be pleased to hear, I hope,” Pangolin tells me breathlessly, “that there has been considerable progress made on the case.”

I stifle a hacking laugh. Being imprisoned in a model of the Eiffel Tower isn't my idea of progress, but it seems rude to say so. “Awesome,” I tell him absently. An image of Erg on fire flashes through my mind, and I'm half-running. “What kind of progress?”

“That is to say,” Pangolin intones emphatically, snuffling just behind my shoulder, “some very significant motions have been entered. In the court of possibilities.”

“How cool that you could still enter motions,” I say, trying not to reek of sarcasm, “while you were stuffed in that beam.”

“
I
did not enter them, miss. You of all people should be aware of that.”

This would be interesting if I had any damn time for it. We're almost at the door and I pause; it might be a truly stupid move to just barge through. Dexter jumps off my shoulder and vanishes into the shadows; of course, he doesn't want Babs to know he's been helping me. That's fine for him, but I can't think of any good way to hide the fact that I seriously invaded her space.

“I guess we just have to wing this. Look, Babs is holding a friend of mine hostage; it might get ugly.…”

Pangolin makes a noise that I think is a chortle. Personally I don't see what's so funny. I hold the doorknob, pondering my options: leaping out shouting, sidling furtively. I decide on Zinaida-style entitlement, turn the knob, and stroll out into the store, fake-confident, pretending I'm not blinded by the scream of citrus light.

 

CHAPTER 16

I almost smack into Babs. She's standing very close, facing the door. Obviously she knew I was in there and she's been waiting for me.

“Half Vassa,” Babs hisses as my eyes adjust, her crinkled face emerging from the glare. “Half Lisa, half Lowenstein. I told you I would find the missing part, you broken plate of a girl. I have that leftover shard of you screwed up in a jar.”

I can hear Picnic's shuffling feet behind me and the heavy clack of Pangolin's claws. “Then you should give it back.” My voice jerks as I speak. What exactly does it mean to say that I'm broken, to call Erg my missing piece? I'm not about to correct Babs, though I think it:
You're wrong; Erg's not some leftover part of me. She's all that's left of Zinaida.

“Name
it,
” Babs suggests suavely, not even glancing at her escapees, “and I'll hand it right over to you.”

I may have mentioned in passing that I am not quite as stupid as I look; telling Babs anything at all about Erg is clearly a horrible idea.

“Not happening. It's mine no matter what name it has. You've got no right to ask me anything about it.”

There's a sizable bulge in the right-hand pocket of Babs's dress, this one a shabby gray eyelet number with big pink buttons. There's a subtle clunking sound like a small wooden foot kicking at cloth-damped glass. I fake a bit in the opposite direction, pretending to gaze out the window, but actually getting ready to lunge for that telltale bump.