“No. Not a hundred percent.”
“But you still called the cops.”
“Better to do it and be safe, than not do it and wish I had,” I said. “I don’t think it was easy for anyone there to say they wanted to leave, and the cops, maybe they made it possible. Please get out of my way.”
I moved my arm to push past. He grabbed it.
He wrestled me down onto the bed.
He was stronger. We’d done the same work, but he had ten years on me, and his build was just somehow stronger.
He pinned me down.
I very nearly succumbed to panic.
“A small part of me has wondered, since all this with the practitioner stuff started,” I spoke, trying to disassociate, to distance myself from this, “Were you an Other?”
“No,” he said.
“But you’re a reflection of me. If I didn’t know-“
“You know,” he said. “I’m just a person. Well, I’m your Shadow, but Carl was only ever a person.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice very small. I struggled, but I couldn’t break his grip, or even move.
My eye moved to the door, then back to Carl.
“No,” he said.
I couldn’t even speak.
“No,” he said, again. “You don’t get to skip it this time. This ends one of three ways, like I said.”
Banish him and become a monster, set him aside, or…
I waited.
Chronologically, if time didn’t work differently here, I’d have doomed myself, waiting. The door would open, and I’d miss my window.
“I’m supposed to beg,” I said, my voice a hush. “To beg you to take me back. To promise to apologize, and make amends.”
“By the script,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because-“
“No,” I said. “Time works differently here. I’ve had time to think. Why? Isadora asked it. Ms. Lewis asked it, or something like it. Pretty much every powerful being I’ve talked to has asked it. Including Conquest, who talked to Rose, who apparently knows more than she’s letting on.”
“You’re not afraid,” Carl spoke.
“Which is an answer unto itself, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“It keeps coming down to why. Just like me and piecing things together with your cult. The fact that we were hungry. There weren’t any big huge warning bells. Lots of little things. I… it’s a strong hunch, but I have to trust it. I gotta trust my gut.”
“You-“
“God, I don’t even want to look at you,” I said. “Alexis, come in.”
The door opened.
Alexis, moving in silently.
She was armed. Something hard in a sock.
The Shadow knew it was coming. He only had a blank look on Carl’s face.
He disintegrated as Alexis clubbed him over the head.
“Come on,” she said. “Go, go, go.”
Old Blake had, according to the script, gone with her. He’d then gone borderline catatonic after the fact.
She’d talked him through it. Answered every damn question. Agreed as he slowly put the pieces together, about the little tricks, the behaviors. Had come back from the library with lists, about how cults liked to keep the food supply short, so people were more tractable. Keep people working… Had answered questions like was Carl maybe stronger because he’d been eating?
Why?
Why?
Why were the people that weren’t Carl or Alexis just blurs?
Why was I the heir, and not Paige? If Grandmother could set up a vestige, couldn’t she set up a heterosexual Paige?
Why was practically everyone convinced that I was going to die? Except they didn’t say die.
What the fuck was up with my tattoos? Why did I get ‘possessed’ so easily?
Why was I good with glamour?
Why were my injuries so transient, so easy to remove, my spiritual damage so hard to shore up?
Why did I remember everyone?
Why didn’t the details add up?
The room in the shelter was gone. There was only darkness. Not even a solid surface under me, or air to fall through.
I spoke to the darkness. “I feel like, if I get this wrong, I’m done.”
Only darkness answered.
“I’m probably fucked if I get it right,” I said. “But that’s my situation, isn’t it? Perpetually fucked.”
I could have done with anyone, even a Carl, to be there, to speak to.
“I can’t believe that I needed a Rose,” I said. “Easier to believe that Rose needed me, a little warrior. Someone to stall the inevitable. You cobbled this together, grandmother, my story included, to make it so I couldn’t get touched… because when I did, I got hurt. Not always right away, but my shoulder hurt after Tiff slept with her head there, and my hand, after I held Rose’s hand and even in the beginning, when I saw the visions, they said something moved… the connections aren’t real connections…”
I trailed off.
“I’m the vestige, aren’t I? Rose is the second Thorburn heir, I’m just the custodian. The sacrificial pawn.”
The darkness broke away, crept in. The tattoos reappeared, the feathers, the birds. The branches crawled across my skin, my neck and chest, as the Shadow around me found its place.
“That’s the situation I need to accept,” I said, making it a statement, not a question.
I stood in the middle of the Drains. An Other.
“Fuck,” I said.