Chapter 11 Medusa #2
I see my mother standing at her bathroom mirror, stroking the mascara onto her lashes with a trembling hand, the clattering when she smudged it, dropped the wand, and had to start over.
The lights were so bright they made her eyes glow, made her hair shine like a halo.
They also made the red splotches across her face hard to miss, the purple marks on her neck striking.
I was nearly eleven, and I lurked behind her, waiting for the harsh word, the bark for me to go, get out of sight.
But this time—this one time—it didn’t come.
Instead, her eyes met mine in the mirror.
“I’ve given up my very soul for you,” she whispered. “Be worthy of it.”
Instead, I ran from that room. How could I ever be equal to such a charge?
“And as for asking for it,” Arla says now, giving me a disdainful glance.
“No one would ever accuse you of anything so aggressive, I’m sure.
But privilege isn’t draped over the shoulders of the most eager or even the most deserving.
It is simply leveled on those who found themselves standing in the right line at the right moment.
It’s a lottery, kitten. And like it or not, you’ve won. ”
My mouth gapes, wordless, but before I can muster a response, a familiar voice cuts through the din. “I knew we’d see each other again!”
I turn to find Brennan leaning against the railing of our booth, a black tuxedo shirt making him look every inch the well-groomed little boy, his eyes laughing more than his mouth.
“Brennan, pet,” Arla chimes, putting out a hand.
He kisses it and winks at her. “Your Majesty.”
It sounds part jest and part deference, but there’s something acute and acerbic behind it, like a beesting. “I didn’t know you were here,” I say to him.
He gives a nod to the stage where the woman is flogging the man with dramatic sweeps of her arm. “Oh, honey, I’m always here.”
“Brennan is my right hand,” Arla says to me. “I’d be simply lost without him.”
He smiles, angelic. “That’s her way of saying I’m in the dark like the rest of these poor fools. The right hand never knows what the left is doing.”
She laughs, coquettish and ringing with charm. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just sore because we didn’t take him to the cemetery.”
“Or because you didn’t even tell me you were going.” He crosses his arms. “I had to find out from Cadence, who coincidentally you also didn’t tell.”
But Arla is unruffled by his accusations. “Secret ingredients make the sauce taste better,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Mm,” he says with a frown. “I’ll take it up with the cook, then.”
She grins like a macaque baring its teeth. “You can try.”
I’m caught in the cross fire of a cold war, bitter and fatigued as it rages half-heartedly on. But all the bullets are zinging over my head, leaving me uncertain who fired first, from where, and on whom.
Brennan opens the gate of our booth and holds out a hand. “Come, let’s dance. Arla has hogged you long enough.”
I look at her, and the implicit need for permission troubles me as soon as I register it, but she shoos me away with a perfectly manicured hand. “Go. Have fun. Enjoy yourself, kitten. We’ll talk later.”
I let Brennan pull me away, my maiden’s prayer still sloshing in one hand.
He tugs me back through the keyhole toward the crowded dance floor where a heady beat is pumping beneath brass horns and another instrument I can’t make out.
I feel out of place, still in my T-shirt and trench coat, but no one seems to notice or care.
The twins are already dancing, I realize.
They must have come in after us, after stowing their cemetery loot elsewhere.
An involuntary quiver runs along my extremities.
Far be it for me to chastise anyone for stealing, but making off with your great-aunt’s cremains is next level.
Twig slithers through the crowd, an impish smile on her face as she reaches up with her snake whip, curling it around my neck to pull me close.
I should be afraid of her, I think. I am, actually. But the music and the booze are coursing through my system, dragging me away from reality. Shaking my head, I say loudly into her ear, “I thought you didn’t like me.”
She shrugs. “I’m not the one who has to like you.”
“What do you mean?” I shout above the music, Brennan at my side.
Twig giggles like a little girl. “She decides who comes, who stays…”
“Who?” I press. “Arla?”
My question causes her to erupt in a fountain of giggles that settle more abruptly than they began. “The dragon tries by fire,” she says, a deadly glint in her gaze. “I thought you knew that.”
My eyes narrow, but Brennan is tugging her from my neck, pushing me deeper onto the floor before I can ask something else. “Relax, Jude,” he says as I resist, my eyes following Twig even as she disappears into a cluster of people. “Tonight is for celebrating. Tomorrow is for questions.”
We start dancing, several people shifting nearer to me, grinding against my side or twirling around me like I’m some kind of celebrity.
Brennan laughs, lost in the rhythm, and I finish my drink but keep holding the glass because there’s nowhere to set it.
The cocktail must have been stronger than I realized because the riddles swirling in my mind drift further out of reach until I can’t place them at all.
In their stead, there is only the thump of music and feet and a slide show of images I no longer understand—a hole gaping in the earth, Arla grinning in the pale firelight, the serpentine coil of a scaled body, circling back on itself, glinting in the dark.
At the center of them, the dim recollection that I should be afraid, but I can’t remember of what or why.
I can’t stretch my consciousness beyond this dance floor, beyond this moment or these people.
At one point I spin to see Arla leaning over the bar, whispering to the bartender.
He looks my way and nods. I wonder what she’s on about.
I want to ask. But Brennan has me by the waist and is turning me around, and Twig, on her tiptoes, is kissing Rock and a young woman with long silver waves and white headphones is beaming at me like we’re old schoolmates.
The floor pulses with bodies and music and suddenly my glass is no longer empty.
I drink it back, again and again, only to find it mysteriously refilled.
I want to ask the gray-haired woman her name and I want to tell Brennan what happened in the cemetery and I want to find Arla and demand some real answers.
But those wants turn fuzzy. And all I can manage to do is keep dancing.