Chapter 25
Aster had always wondered what might it feel like to feel death close at hand.
She had gotten her closest taste in starvation, back in the weeds outside Bucharest, lying hand in hand with Sylvia in the field as they listened to the vampire hunters a few leagues off, crossbows cocked, stakes in hand. Two predators, reduced to prey.
What had been most surprising to Aster was how sweet the air had tasted then.
When your body is reduced to nothing, when you’ve been wrung like a rag, everything — the air, the taste on your tongue, the thoughts on your head — takes on a faint cotton candy feeling.
Nothing feels scary anymore. It just feels floaty — it feels funny, like a cosmic joke God is cracking at the end.
She remembered the way Sylvia’s hand had tightened around hers then, and how the last thing she’d said, before Aster blacked out, had been a joke. A stupid one, about bees. They both laughed at it like schoolchildren, silly with the delusion that everything would be okay.
Aster remembered feeling her heart swell so big, it was a miracle she survived it.
Now felt different. But it also felt the same.
Because no matter how much she wanted to be angry at Sylvia, all she could do was watch her lips, and wait for the joke that it would make it all better again.
“Before we begin, I have to lay a few ground rules,” Sylvia huffed, because even in the face of maybe her greatest personal sin, she still had the audacity to be annoyed at logistics.
“One, you can’t ask me anything about any of the memories until it’s over.
Completely over. And two, you can’t die on me.
Graveyard slots in New York City are way out of our budget, and Willy’s money supply has already run as dry as the Sahara. ”
And there it was. Sylvia’s favorite coping mechanism – making light of an incredibly non-light situation — but Aster didn’t have the energy to engage with it, her lips heavy like dumbbells.
Believe her, she tried; she got halfway to opening her mouth and saying His name is Wallace, and the reason that money is gone is because you spent it on shoes, when she got another flash of black, and she winced, pressing her hand to forehead.
Sylvia immediately grabbed her shoulder.
“Fuck, okay, okay, fuck,” Sylvia repeated out loud, apparently trying to center herself by using as many expletives as humanely possible. She began to mutter to herself again. “Don’t kill her because you can’t keep your big fucking mouth shut for two seconds. Concentreaz?-te.”
Sylvia squeezed her eyes shut, and blew out a slow breath.
When her eyes snapped open again, they were burning bright, lava red. Lava being the apt word — because a red current was swirling around her pupils, clockwise. Like a serpent.
So this is what unwinding looks like, Aster thought.
The process of un-thralling the thralled.
Peeling back duct-tape wrapped around the subconsciousness.
She’d only seen Sylvia do it a handful of times, all within a week of their first meeting. Once Catrina was dead, Sylvia insisted on freeing all her long-time servants — all except for one.
The doorman.
Aster had asked why. It seemed a strange decision, given that Sylvia had been especially close to him.
She had insisted that he and their late maid, Elisabeth, had raised her more than her own mother had.
But back then, Sylvia had refused to meet her eyes when she answered the question, “He’s buried too deep.
” Sylvia had instead left him the keys to the castle, given him a kiss to the cheek, and a simple final instruction — Live, or at least try to.
As Sylvia’s gaze latched onto her, Aster wondered if she was the same.
Buried too deep.
Sylvia didn’t give her long to contemplate it, snapping her fingers in front of Aster’s face to grab her attention. Aster startled. She hadn’t realized she’d faded out, gone somewhere else. From the worried look on Sylvia’s face, that somewhere probably looked a little too much like death.
“Listen up. When I begin, you will experience the memories as if you are living them for the first time. They’ll feel like dreams, but more visceral,” she instructed. When Aster arched her eyebrow, as if to say, how do you know, Sylvia muttered, “I tried it on myself once.”
“You did? When?”
Sylvia shook her head. “We can talk about this after, Aster.”
“I’d like to know now,” Aster breathed, realizing with a quiet rush of urgency that she wasn’t ready, “Actually, not only that. I’d like to ask a few questions before you open me up.”
“Aster, we don’t have —” Sylvia raised her voice, then paused, realizing, most likely, that she did not want to spend her last moments with Aster yelling at her, even if it was tempting, “Yasmine’s magic isn’t infinite.
She’s distorting the space inside of your brain to slow down the deterioration.
But I’m not sure by how much. Or for how long. So time is, well, of the essence.”
“And yet you seem very comfortable wasting it by arguing with me.”
Sylvia blinked at her, utterly speechless, enough to just shake her head, then make a defeated fine gesture with her hands.
“Even in death you’re insufferable. Fine, out with it, quickly.”
“Answer my first question,” Aster said adamantly, refusing to let her own indecision show.
Because she knew Sylvia was right. That she was wasting time.
But the truth was she’d never been in a position before where she knew that she could ask Sylvia something, and she’d answer with the truth.
All of the truth. The woman was a closed book with a lock and a picket fence.
Sylvia sucked in a breath, and looked toward the fridge as she said, “Fine. I – When I used Suggestion on myself, I was trying to forget the memory of what I did to Elisabeth. It didn’t work.
Big surprise. You can’t suppress your own shit.
I would have been better off ramming my head repeatedly against the wall or letting Catrina give me a concussion. Next.”
Aster’s gut twisted. Even though a part of her was mad at Sylvia beyond belief, betrayed and tender, she still couldn’t resist saying, “You didn’t do anything to Elisabeth. It’s not your fault that Catrina suppressed her so deeply that she couldn’t handle coming out of that shell.”
Sylvia laughed coldly, and Aster could tell her attempt at comfort had slid around Sylvia’s body like oil to water.
“Your unending empathy is as flattering as it is concerning, but it was my fault. It was my decision. I could have just left her alone. She seemed happy enough as she was. But I couldn’t resist. I wanted to make her whole.
It was selfish. All because I can never keep my stupid, insatiable fingers off of something, even if it means ruining it completely. ”
“Is that how you feel about me? Like I’m something you’re scared to ruin?”
Sylvia’s face faltered.
“I —” She frowned. Aster could see a hundred different masks threaten to shove their way into her expression. In any other situation they would. But in this one, Sylvia just breathed, “Yes.”
Aster laughed, and the movement in her chest caused her whole body to shudder in pain, but she still managed out, “And you call me insufferable. You’ll kill an innocent man for an gift card, but in other regards you hold yourself to the moral standards of the Pope.”
Sylvia huffed. “Sue me for considering you more important than a man.”
“What do you consider me, Sylvia?”
Sylvia frowned at the question, and picked up the tea she’d set aside for Aster. “This is getting cold. You should drink it before it’s freezing —”
“Sylvia.”
“Aster.” Sylvia inhaled sharply, desperately, meeting her eyes with a fierceness. “We’re being reckless. Opening the wound ahead of the unwinding… It’s a bad idea. You need to be in the right state of mind. And you’re already deteriorating.”
“For the love of God, Sylvia, stop trying to protect me!” Aster snapped. “I could die in a minute. Just tell me. Let me in.”
Sylvia’s jaw tightened.
“I’ll answer any other question.”
“No. That’s my only one.”
Sylvia’s foot had begun tapping erratically on the carpet. “You’re going to die if we don’t hurry this along, Aster. Are you suicidal?”
“Not yet, but I’ll get there if you don’t give me a straight answer for once in your goddamn life.”
Sylvia’s hands were shaking, trembling.
“Fine, then, I consider you a royal, aching, pain in my ass —”
“Sylvia.”
And then, like a shaken bottle exploding from the cap, Sylvia screamed, covering her head with her hands, dragging her fingers along her cheeks.
The tea mug collapsed onto the rug, green liquid spilling like a tide.
Aster’s mouth fell open in surprise. Because Sylvia had completely lost her cool — had abandoned it on the side of the highway, left to fester.
Aster had never seen her look so reckless.
Her facial expressions so rabid and unschooled, her fingers trembling.
Then, a moment later, Sylvia’s shoulders slumped. Her hands slowly descended down her face, revealing her jaw, clenched back in place, her eyes hollow. The only hint that she was still undergoing anything at all was the way her neck bobbed—the way her voice was thick and salty.
“I’m sorry,” Sylvia said coldly, then inched forward on the couch.
Her hand wrapped around Aster’s leg, then slunk up to her thigh, bracketed her hips, and suddenly Sylvia was on top of her, knees on either side of Aster’s thighs, head looming over Aster’s like a gargoyle.
“But I’m going to take away your agency, one last time, because you talk too much. ”