42. Don’t Bleed on the Tile
Don’t Bleed on the Tile
ONE
The smell of a rare, expensive dark roast reaches me halfway across the lawn.
Mother takes her breakfast on the terrace when the weather allows, coffee and a variety of pastries from the bakery on Charles Street arranged on a plate beside a bowl of fruit.
This morning she is already dressed. Navy suit, hair set, lipstick printed on the rim of her cup at seven in the morning. The paper is folded to thirds beside her saucer.
I’m mostly held together with duct tape.
Every breath pulls at the hole in my side, hot and wet beneath the bandage.
My arm throbs from wrist to elbow where the wolf’s teeth sank in, the flesh swollen tight enough to make my fingers tingle.
Six cleaned the bites as best he could, then wrapped everything until I looked less like a man and more like a badly labeled package.
We should have gone to a hospital.
But we don’t go to hospitals when we’re hurt. We can’t have records of who we are, of what we can do, because it would trace back to Queenie.
We’ve lost a lot of blood, Six points out again.
We’ve lost more than that, Three says.
The pain of losing Four is acute in a way the torn skin and bruised ribs are not. Instead of stinging, burning, tearing agony, the pain is a blank, dead space where a vital part of ourselves lived.
I keep expecting Four to shove his way forward with some filthy joke, some inappropriate observation. I brace for it after every thought. Wait for that familiar warmth to roll through us, reckless and indulgent and alive.
Nothing comes.
Four was never quiet. Even when he wasn’t speaking, he was pressure under the skin, a hand on the back of the neck, the part of us that leaned toward pleasure just because pleasure was there. He was want without apology. He made everything more dangerous, more vivid.
And now the places he filled are like a scraped-out chamber inside our shared mind where something keeps echoing because it expects an answer.
I can’t help remembering Snow’s description of Red’s power. How it is a violation, a stripping of a vital sense or a limb.
She was right, and it’s even more. It’s like discovering the body can survive after the soul has been cut into one fewer piece, and somehow that survival feels like betrayal.
Four, Five whispers, so small I almost miss it.
No answer.
I limp across the lawn until I’m standing in front of Mother. She doesn’t look up from pouring her coffee, though she knows we’re here. She doesn’t ask about why my hoodie is soaked in blood, why we look like death.
The men who shot me left me there on her orders. I wonder if they know about my connection to her, or if they just view me as a separate mercenary she hired. One expected to fend for himself. Not the son of Queenie Fairchild.
"Well, my morning has been a nightmare so far," she starts, her lips thin and tight.
"Please tell me at least that dream walker has gone to visit Judge Trainor.
" She picks up her tea and holds it without drinking.
"I need him to sign the temporary closure order for Poison Apple as soon as possible. "
"Yes, Mother. He visited the judge last night."
Though she hasn’t invited me to sit, I take the chair across from her. The cold iron bites into my thighs despite my trousers. Somewhere behind the house a sprinkler ticks through its arc.
Her words slide in one ear and out the other without being taken in as we stare down at the plate of neatly arranged pastries.
We wonder what she would do if we reached forward and took the jelly donut. If we took a big bite, exploding powdered sugar everywhere, as if we belonged at this table. Before Snow, we never noticed all these lines and boundaries that we could cross if we wanted to.
It’s just there. I could just take it. I could just act like I belong. Like nothing is wrong with me.
"Are you even listening to me, The Seven?" Her cup clicks down onto the saucer. I straighten, putting all my attention back on her. It’s only then she looks up, her lips twisting with disgust. "You are in quite a state."
It’s not a question. It’s an implicit command to do better than I am because she is inconvenienced by what I am.
"Yes, Mother. I’m listening."
The Seven. It’s what she calls us. Not by our given name, and not by our individualized numbers.
Snow always knows exactly which part of me she is talking to and gives each of us special individual treatment.
She matches our energy no matter who we are.
I've come to realize it's a luxury I never want to lose.
Even her friends and co-workers seem to do the same.
In that moment of betrayal, Ariel still knew it was Six before her.
Pain burrows into me, and it feels as though I’ve been shot all over again.
We’re doing the right thing, I tell all of us.
But it feels wrong. Snow said it. A recording on a broken record, someone put the words in our mouth. We all feel like a puppet. And for the first time, we are aware of our own limbs and the strength we have in them. It’s weak, atrophied, but there.
"How many times must I tell you to call me Queenie?" She exhales through her nose and smooths the napkin across her lap in one pass.
"You said that only matters in public," I say quietly. Not that I ever talk to her in front of other people. It's not necessary when I live across town and keep out of sight.
Mother...Queenie pinches the bridge of her nose. Something pinches under my sternum. The gesture is exactly how I do it. Such a familial resemblance, and yet we aren't even allowed to call her Mother.
"Yes...well…" She trails off.
She doesn't have a good answer for the correction. I've never noticed that before. I've always found her word to be good enough, but now I'm on edge, wanting her to give me more. I've been spoiled by attention and explanations. From Snow.
"On top of that," Queenie continues, "two weeks after I’ve announced it, and suddenly the mayor can't be photographed at our rally with so many radicals present.
I reminded him that these are not radicals, they are supporters of the cause.
Of course I don't always agree with their methods.
God knows they went through that phase of setting houses on fire all those years ago to get rid of the unwanted element, but I assured the mayor... "
A roar kicks up in our ears. Her mouth keeps moving, the sprinkler keeps ticking, and I can no longer match the sounds to each other.
"House fires?" I ask. Why does that ring a bell?
Because it’s how Snow’s parents died, Three offers without pause. In a fire.
She waves a hand. "Oh yes. I mean, it was only because our city started to get overrun with magic-kind, rather like now," she muses, before snapping back into her podium voice. "We needed to be drastic in our cleansing, but that was just a vulgar way of doing it."
"When was that?" I ask Queenie. "Did they accidentally hurt normal humans?"
"A couple of decades ago," she says. "And of course not, they only went after magic-kind." The cup pauses an inch above the saucer. Then it completes its trip down. "Why are you asking me all these questions? This is beside the point."
Despite all the burning and throbbing in my stomach and arm, a more painful stabbing sensation builds in my stomach. What if they were responsible for Snow’s parents’ death? The timeline fits.
Do we think this because we are obsessed with her? Two asks.
You mean in love with her, Five says with an edge that has never been there before. It appeared after we took Ariel.
The timing fits, Six points out. Not to say there is a connection but...
Don’t be stupid, Two interrupts. He’s also more on edge since we took Ariel even though he agreed it had to be done. Snow is human. Her parents were likely human.
"I don't know why you're interrogating me, but I need you to focus." Mother rises, cutting off our thoughts as she collects her cup and plate and walks through the French doors into the kitchen, the sound of her heels changing on the tile.
My legs carry me inside after her without thinking.
The kitchen is dim after the terrace and the smell of citrus cleaner permeates the air. She sets her dishes in the sink, rinses her fingertips, and dries them on the towel folded over the oven handle.
"I need the one who dream walks to visit the mayor this time. Just a little push, that tiny nudge we need, and the mayor will come around on the rally."
She doesn’t even know which number I am, Three says with dark resentment. I’m just the tool she wants to use today.
We need to focus, we are closer than ever to helping Snow’s friends and becoming normal ourselves. Right Seven?
Strangely, he doesn’t answer. He doesn’t back me up. With a push deeper, I can tell he’s remembering Snow’s face where we left her on the ground next to the werewolf. The betrayal, the heartbreak, the pain tears through him over and over again.
Queenie turns to face me across the white island. "More importantly," a glitter comes into her eyes that is new to me, "I need you to pick up someone and drop them off at the facility."
I struggle to focus as I realize how affected Seven is. I’ve never seen him like this, but he’s also been quieter since we took Ariel. Like he too is unsettled by what we’ve done. Even as we know it will bring us back to mother.
"She works at that dreadful, disgusting magic bar. Poison Apple. You can't miss her. She’s the Black girl with white hair and blue eyes, very striking features."
The floor tilts under me. Cold races from my palms to my elbows, leaving my hands stiff and useless. "What? Why do you want her? She’s not magic."
A brow arches. "Oh right. I forget you’ve been spending a great deal of time in that place, bringing us test subjects."
"You mean people who can still be saved," I correct, uneasiness lurching in me.
"Yes, of course," she says absently. "But no, this one is human. And that is exactly why you need to bring her to me."
I shake my head before she's even finished. "Mother, no. We don't take humans."