Chapter 32
TESSA
Garrett holds a paper pumpkin up to the camera, and half the table starts laughing.
One eye is considerably bigger than the other. He's cut the mouth crooked too, giving it an expression of surprise that seems appropriate for the first cheerful thing we've had to show each other since the fire.
“You see why I hired professionals,” he says.
Peggy leans toward the screen. “We'll send you an invoice.”
He laughs, and the sound does more for the room than the candles or the food. His bandaged left forearm rests below the edge of the picture, mostly out of view. He's home tonight, healing, with another check arranged. He isn't coming back to work yet.
For a minute, he gets to hear the people who miss him complain about his pumpkin.
I sit beside Bogdan at the staff-lounge table, my knee warm against his. He's wearing the waistcoat I finished yesterday over a black shirt, the sleeves rolled to his forearms. No mask tonight. I get the whole face whenever he looks at me.
He presses a forkful of potato onto my plate without interrupting Garrett.
I steal a piece off his fork before he can take it back, and he looks down at my mouth with an expression that makes me forget the table for a second.
I remember his mouth on my throat last night and feel myself grow wet beneath the gown. I press my knee harder against his.
Then Peggy kicks my ankle. “We're trying to have a wholesome staff dinner.”
“You made the pumpkin biscuits look like breasts.”
“That was the icing bag.”
Garrett hears enough to demand a photograph. Peggy refuses with sudden dignity, which makes him laugh again. When the call ends, I feel the little loss of his voice, followed by relief that we'll be able to hear it another day.
It's a quarter past seven. By now, on an ordinary Halloween, we'd be arguing with someone who believed a mask excused not having a ticket. The club's public doors are closed, and the cancellations have been sent. Everything we promised to deliver has reached its customer.
For the first time in weeks, Peggy's order book isn't on the table.
She's wearing a short black witch dress with a lace collar and the orange bat comb above one ear.
When she arrived, she told me she was tired of letting Ethan decide which clothes made her feel sick.
I helped her fasten the collar without mentioning how proud I was, because she'd have cried and accused me of ruining her makeup.
I've put on the black velvet gown again.
Its skirt brushes my legs beneath the table, soft from the hours I've spent fitting it.
The diamonds rest against my throat, and my patent heels have their red soles turned safely toward the floor.
I left the crown at the hotel. Tonight I wanted to be able to lean my head against someone.
Bogdan notices when I do it.
His hand closes around mine beneath the table.
I can feel the edge of his black ring, cool against my finger.
Last night has left an ache in my chest that has very little to do with the things I expected to miss.
I keep remembering him standing in my finished waistcoat, finally saying the thing he'd been ashamed to admit.
I'm glad he's here. The feeling is simple enough that I let myself have it.
Kirill stands at the open lounge door, talking to Klim. Their radios stay turned low. Beyond them I can see a stretch of corridor and the reserve store farther toward the front, with no cartons waiting to be moved. Our spare rack is tucked into its recess at the other end, near the service turn.
The staff tailcoats around the table have copper bats inside their turned cuffs. After all the work, I almost want everyone to hold out a wrist so I can admire them at once. Instead, I watch one flash when a serving bowl changes hands and feel a ridiculous little swell of pleasure.
I made that. It survived the cancelled party and everything else.
Peggy passes me a biscuit. The pumpkin's smile has slid sideways in the icing, but it tastes of ginger and brown sugar. I catch a crumb before it drops onto my gown.
“I'd still charge full price,” I tell her.
She raises her water glass to me. Beside me, Bogdan's mouth lifts at one corner.
Then something hits the back of the building hard enough to move the glasses.
The sound is deep and wrong, followed by metal scraping against metal. Kirill stops speaking. Klim has his radio in his hand before the second crash.
A voice breaks through it, loud enough to reach the table.
“Loading door. Vehicle hit the door.”
The first shots don't sound like they do in a film. They're ugly inside the building, too loud, with a flat force that makes me flinch into Bogdan. A plate slips off the edge of the table and breaks near my shoe.
His arm comes around me as he stands. “Matvei. Take them forward.”
Matvei is already moving from his place beside the door. Bogdan gets me onto my feet and puts me beside him, then catches the shoulder of a worker frozen in the passage. His voice cuts through the noise, sending everyone toward the main room and the guarded public exit.
I reach back for Peggy.
She has her bag strap caught beneath a chair. She leaves the bag and takes my hand instead.
Klim calls for police and ambulances over his radio, giving the club's name as he moves to the corridor. Kirill heads the other way toward the service turn. More shots come from beyond it, and someone cries out in the loading wing.
We haven't reached the lounge door when I see the coat.
It comes around the rear turn beneath an emergency-exit sign, black tails lifting with the man's stride. He wears a pale half-mask low over his face. His left arm is raised, sleeve pushed back, and the lining shows plain copper from wrist to fold.
There should be a bat there.
I see Lincoln beneath the Bellquay lights, the cheap lining clinging to his trousers. The man in front of me isn't Lincoln, but the cuff is the same empty strip of color.
“Klim. The coat's a copy!”
I point before the stranger reaches the lounge. Klim turns, bringing his gun up, and the man ducks close to the wall. A second figure appears at the rear turn behind him. A shot chips the lounge frame, and Klim pulls a worker behind the wall with him. Kirill's men shout from the loading wing.
Matvei pushes me forward, toward the main room. Peggy follows with her fingers locked around mine. Bogdan is farther ahead, driving the workers through the opening. I can see the back of his black waistcoat between two copper collars.
The stage lights go out.
The emergency lamps stay on, white and harsh above the doors. I can still see where we're supposed to go. I take another step, gathering the heavy skirt above my heels, and Matvei jerks against my shoulder.
A shot cracks close enough to leave my ears ringing.
His left sleeve darkens.
He shoves me into the fitting-room doorway as plaster spits from the wall farther along. Peggy's hand slips out of mine. I twist back, reaching for her, and see the man in the copied coat catch her from behind.
His arm closes across her chest. The gun in his other hand presses into her side.
“Peggy!”
She makes a sound I've never heard from her, a short furious cry that stops when he pulls her against him. The half-mask catches on her hair. It tilts, exposing his mouth, and the face beneath it becomes horribly ordinary.
Ethan.
I know that mouth. It smiled across our workshop table. Peggy kissed it while I looked away to give her a little privacy.
Matvei gets between me and the corridor. His gun is up in his right hand, but Peggy is in front of Ethan. For one terrible second nobody moves, and I can see her trying to keep the barrel from digging farther into her ribs without touching it.
“Back,” Ethan says.
Matvei stays in the doorway. Blood has reached the elbow of his sleeve. I grab the edge of the fitting table because I can't tell whether the room is moving or I am.
Ethan drags Peggy toward the rear turn, backing past the lounge. She stumbles over the long tail of his coat and recovers. Her eyes find mine over his arm.
She's alive. She's looking at me. I hold on to that so hard it hurts.
Matvei shifts me farther into the room, behind the solid wall beside the door. A crash comes from the loading wing. Ethan disappears behind the edge of the doorway as I lose my view, taking Peggy's face with him.
I try to move back out. Matvei stops me with his shoulder.
“Stay here.”
“He has her.”
“I can see. Stay beside me.”
His voice is rough, and he's keeping his injured arm tight against his body. I pull a folded towel from the fitting shelf. It's one of the clean ones we use under steaming work, absurdly soft when I press it against the wound high on his left arm.
Red spreads into the white cloth. I keep my left hand over it, afraid to let go. I want to ask how bad it is, but another shot sounds beyond the turn and he brings his attention back to the passage.
The radio clipped to his belt knocks against the doorframe. He uses his left hand to unhook it, wincing, then lets it drop into my free hand. His gun stays pointed out toward the corridor.
“Tell them where we are.”
For a second I look at the radio as though it belongs to another life. My free hand trembles around the casing.
“The button on the side,” he says.
I press the button.
“Bogdan. We're at the fitting room. Matvei's hit. Ethan has Peggy.”
I let go too quickly and press again because I don't know if I've done it right. Matvei nods without looking away from the opening. His breath comes hard through his nose.
Klim's voice answers, telling us to hold cover. I hear other voices behind his, then a crash that sounds as though something heavy has been pushed across concrete. I can't see the men fighting in the loading wing, and I can't tell which of the sounds belong to people who are ours.
The corridor smells of dust and spent shots. My mouth is dry except for the ginger caught behind one tooth, and the taste makes me want to cry. A minute ago I was choosing the least ridiculous biscuit on a plate.
I crouch as Matvei lowers himself against the frame, keeping the towel against his arm and the wall between my body and the gun. From down here, past his leg, I can see a narrow strip of floor toward the service turn.
Something orange drops into it.
The little bat comb skids once and stops beneath the light. Peggy's fingers vanish above it as Ethan pulls her farther back. She took it out herself. I saw the open hand.
The short resin teeth point toward me.
I remember the lace collar catching it, how easily it slid free when she turned her head. The room at Bellquay seems to exist beside this one for a second, both of us worrying about a stolen design while the man with the camera waited for us to finish.
Now she's leaving me something I know.
I keep myself behind the wall and lift the radio.
“Rear turn,” I say. “He's taking her to the service turn. Beside our spare rack. She dropped her comb there.”
The words shake, but they come out. Matvei looks down at me once, briefly, as though he wants me to know he heard every one.
I don't go after the orange thing on the floor. Peggy didn't drop it so Ethan could have both of us. I press my back against the wall and wait for a voice I know will come.
Bogdan answers through the radio.
“I'm coming to you.”
I shut my eyes for the length of a breath. The relief nearly makes me careless. I want to stand, to look out, to do something that lets me believe those four words have already happened.
Matvei settles farther down beside me, still covering the opening. His good shoulder blocks more of the view, and I stay behind it.
At the rear turn, Ethan's shoes stop moving.
“Tessa?”
My name carries down the corridor in his voice. He heard me on the radio, or through the room, and now he knows exactly where I am. I look at Matvei. He lifts his gun a fraction, but the shaking has reached his forearm.
I can see Peggy again through the narrow gap. She's trapped against Ethan's chest beside the parked rack. His mask hangs from one ear, pale plastic against his black collar.
He turns her with him toward the fitting room.
“There you are.”