28. How We Save the World
How We Save the World
ONE
Iuse the back entrance. The alley behind Queenie Fairchild’s Beacon Hill brownstone is narrow, private, and watched. Cameras blink out for two seconds when I arrive.
I didn’t want to leave Snow there, looking so fragile, so devastated. I wanted to wrap her in my arms forever until her hurt stopped. But with the sirens heralding the arrival of cops, it was time for me to go.
The less people knew about us, the better. Hospitals and cops both came with forms, cameras, questions, and people paid to notice when the answers didn’t line up. We need to stay a ghost.
No one sees me. No one hears the door seal behind me as I let myself in the grand estate.
The house smells like polish and flowers. I move through the service hall without sound. Past the kitchen. Past the framed photo of Queenie shaking hands with the mayor and a wall of framed headlines touting her crime reduction initiatives, youth safety programs, and sweeping public health reforms.
Light spills across the carpet from the slightly ajar door to her office.
Slowly, carefully, I push the door open.
Queen Fairchild sits behind her desk, writing. The pen moves steadily across thick paper. The lamp casts a soft glow over her hair, pinned perfectly in place. Pearls at her throat. Silk blouse.
She doesn’t look up. "You’re late."
I step inside. "What happened to Carolee?"
The pen keeps moving. "Who?"
"The woman I brought in. Will-o’-the-wisp magic. You said you could help her." My voice sharpens. "She’s dead."
She finishes the line, sets the pen down, and lifts her calm, measured gaze. A dark blue sling sets her broken arm tight, the only thing out of place. Recognition flickers.
"Oh. Her."
Heat spikes under my skin. "Her body was dumped outside Poison Apple."
Queenie exhales slowly. "Yes, I just heard and that was…unplanned."
"Unplanned?"
"The subject declined rapidly." Queenie folds her hands on the desk. "We tried to help her, but her disease was resistant to treatment."
She died, Six says and for once there is emotion bubbling under his thoughts. We brought her in to help her, and she died. That is not an acceptable outcome.
Failure happens, Seven cuts in, cold and absolute.
He sounds just like her.
That’s not what we were told, Two snaps, sharper than usual. We were told we were saving them. Not delivering them to die.
We are saving them, Seven insists, pressure building, pushing down on the rest of us. Queenie is the only one who can fix the magic-plague. This is the right thing to do.
And if she’s wrong? Two presses.
Seven surges, furious. She is not wrong.
Then why does this feel wrong? Four whispers, raw and shaken.
Silence ripples through us.
I have always been the next one to back Seven up, along with Six, but this isn't right. A woman is dead. Someone Snow considers a friend.
The look on Snow’s face, the tears pouring down her cheeks as she let us hold her, it rips through us, sharp and relentless. It burns under our skin, crawls up our throat, making it hard to breathe. How could we ever explain to her what we did, what we allowed, and expect her to understand?
We can't, Three says with quiet defeat.
We don’t need her to understand, Seven says. We need her safe. And we are making the world safer for people like her.
She won’t be safe from us if we keep doing this, Four says, his tone heated.
"In the pursuit of great change," Queenie says, watching my face carefully as if she can read what we are thinking, "risks are taken, and sacrifices must be made for the greater good.
Every medical miracle has bodies buried underneath it.
Anesthesia. Blood transfusions. The polio vaccine.
We remember the lives saved because that is what history rewards. This is how progress is made."
My jaw tightens. I've already heard all of her campaign speeches.
"I trusted you to help her. To make her better."
Queenie tilts her head slightly. "You brought her somewhere that could help her, and we did our best."
"So you and your people could dump her on the street?" Anger seethes through my tone in a way I've never dared with Queenie Fairchild before.
Her expression tightens and pinches as she stands up. The fingers of one hand press into the desk while the navy sling keeps her other arm tight against her chest. "You do not speak to me like that." Her words, heavy with command, reverberate through my bones. I fight not to flinch.
The lamp light hits her face in a way that emphasizes the blue bruises that she tried to cover with makeup but failed to completely conceal.
A part of me, I'm not sure which part, wonders if that's deliberate to force people to look upon what a mage had done to her.
Don't talk about her like that, Seven growls. She's been trying to help us, save us. She has done everything for us.
Everything except tell us the truth, Two mutters.
Careful, Six warns, tension threading through him now. We cannot fracture here.
We already are, Four says.
Silence stretches.
The clock ticks behind me.
My eyes drift to her shoulder again. The sling. The bruises.
"Why was her body dumped like that?" I ask in a smaller, noncombative voice.
Her gaze flicks down, then back up.
"Some of my people made a rash decision to send a message to the owner of Poison Apple. Seeing as her place has become a hub, verily an invitation for fae and mages to gravitate toward Boston, to reveal themselves and act with their powers out in the open is a problem. A problem I’ve been trying to deal with via more diplomatic means.
I did not sanction what happened and I find the display distasteful," she says.
Her gaze drifts past me, distant for a moment, the soft office light catching the powder settled too thick beneath one eye.
She looks fragile for half a second. Bruised.
Human. Then her chin lifts, pearls gleaming at her throat, and the softness leaves her face. "But perhaps effective."
My hands curl.
"That little stunt, however, is beside the point.
If we stop trying to help the infected, the disease wins.
" Queenie's gaze sharpens, "Most people would say we are on the verge of a war, but you know better than anyone this war has been raging for years.
Humanity itself is at stake, and that," she sticks a finger into her desk with an audible thud, "is what we are trying to save here. "
Her eyes hold mine, daring me to defy her. After a long moment, my gaze buckles first, dropping to the desk between us.
My lungs burn.
She watches me carefully now, measuring me the way she does her political opponents when no one is watching.
"You’re upset," she says, an observation.
"She didn’t have to die," I say quietly.
"I said we tried to save her." Her voice raises abruptly, and I can’t fight off the flinch this time.
"And we will keep trying until we have unearthed the cure.
And it's never been more important that we push for this.
If we succeed, we change everything. We give people their lives back.
We remove the danger, secure my position in the senate, and one day the presidency. "
Her expression softens ever so slightly. "Don’t you want that?" she asks quietly.
I don’t answer.
"Don’t you want me to continue my work? Don't you want me to find a way to lead us to a cure for the world? So you can be cured?"
The question burrows into me, hooks into something that’s been carved into me since childhood. Ever since I've known that I'm wrong, that I need to be fixed and a cure is the only thing that will make me worthy, lovable, safe.
My throat closes.
"You could be a person again," she says, coming around the desk to stand in front of me. "You could be free of it. Free of your disease."
For once, we aren't just split seven ways, we are split in two. Between what Queenie is saying and the voice of Snow telling us we are perfect as is.
She’s wrong, Three says, quieter now but steadier. We are a real person. We are real people. Snow sees that.
My hands clench into fists so tight my bones ache. His reaction shakes me to the core. I’ve also secretly been beginning to think that, but I never dared let it surface.
Before I can fully absorb the idea, acknowledge it, Seven rears back with a deafening blow inside us. Like a sonic boom, it’s so intense I have to close my eyes and steady myself to stay standing.
I swallow hard and meet Queenie’s gaze again. Her expression is hard, unrelenting.
"You’ve seen what happens when this disease goes unchecked," she adds, glancing briefly at her injuries. "You’ve seen the damage."
Rage and pain pour into my chest on the heels of Seven’s reaction.
That mage at the rally had abused his powers and would have killed Queenie if her security hadn't taken action.
We are just like him. We are possessed by that darkness, that evil. That mutation lives inside of us.
"I am trying to kill the magic," she says just above a whisper. "He tried to kill me." She lets that land, and it enrages me all over again. "We are so close. I need you to trust me. Believe in what I’m doing for Boston, the world...for you."
Queenie is the only one working to fix the disease, Six says, resigning to the logic of it. She’s our only hope at being whole again.
I feel Three and Five’s hesitance, but it’s a pale shadow, like it’s always been when Two, Six, and I are firm in our conviction, in our loyalty to Queenie’s mission.
But for once, Four, who usually falls in line, remains unconvinced, torn.
But in the end, as we stare at the results of the violent magic effects left on Queenie, as we think of the blood on our hands, of the way we have to hide ourselves, he relents.
My jaw relaxes as I drop my head in acknowledgement.
Having made her point, Queenie settles behind her desk again.
"You've been doing your job of bringing us the right kind who need our help, now leave me and my people to do our part," she says, her voice hardening even as her gaze returns to her papers.
"If only we could find a subject more permeable between the magic and not magic states.
It would make all the difference." She is talking to herself now.
Then she looks up at me. "I need someone who can move between forms... "
"Like a Were?" I ask, trying to get back on board. To focus on what must be done despite the internal conflict that has left us exhausted.
Queenie shakes her head. "No, the beast is always present. We need something else." Realization dawns in her eyes as they lift to meet mine. "We need a mermaid. If you could bring us a subject like that and we can put an end to this war, this disease, this pain."
I lower my head slightly.
"Yes…Mother."