Ten

A Real Piece of Work

A ghost lurked at the bottom of the staircase. Hood drawn, arms crossed, shoulders shifting ceaselessly under that mercury-colored jacket. “Sideways,” the ghost called with resonant vocal fry. “Do you know we’ve been looking for you for like, twenty fucking minutes? Screw you, I’m going to eat you, don’t vanish like that.”

Thank goodness, holy shit.

“Daisy,” I said. My lungs cleared. I bounded down the stairs four at a time and caught her at the bottom, pulled her into a strangle hug. She was practically teddy bear–sized. Good for emotional support. I crushed her, tucked my chin over the top of her head, and took a few slow belly breaths.

She tolerated the hug. It was clear that she wasn’t jazzed about it but was willing to put up with it for my sake. She looked rough in a different way than she had this morning, veiny and twitchy, without her evil glow. She squirmed in my arms after a moment, so I released her, and she shot up three steps and jabbed a finger at Dominick. “You,” she snarled.

“Me,” he repeated.

I caught her by the scruff of her—my—hoodie. “We worked it out, it’s fine,” I said. My voice sounded horrible. I swallowed, cleared my throat, tried to speak low enough that it wasn’t as excruciatingly obvious that I’d been crying. It probably showed on my face, but I couldn’t do anything about that. “Don’t kill him.”

“I thought killing him was the plan! That’d be the cool thing to do!” She thrashed her shoulders, yanked herself out of my grip, and shrugged her shoulders against the wall. She pouted like a kid, eyes rolling, brows in a tight knot, but the look on her face was a little too grim for me to discount it. “If I can’t kill Madeline and I can’t kill this guy, what am I supposed to do? Calm down? Grow up.”

“I missed you,” I said. “You’re like if a Chihuahua was a person.” I scrubbed a hand over my face, flinched to find it still wet. “We’re going to Chett Madeline. That’s the agreement.”

Daisy bounced on the balls of her feet. “Damn right.”

“Where are Yates and Jing? If I have to wander around this house again looking for them, I—”

“We’re here,” Yates said from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. Jing and Yates lingered in the hallway behind us, shadowed and still glamorous despite all odds. Jing had pulled her hair back off her neck, twisted it into a tight bun. Yates worried her hands together. “If everything is alright, Maurice asked me to bring you back to the dining room. There’s going to be an announcement, I think.” She lifted her gaze a little, looked between Daisy and me up at Dominick. “You, too.”

“Is it news about her?”

Vague. I glanced between the two of them, too worn out to guess anything elaborate.

“He didn’t say what it was about,” Yates said. “It sounded important, though.”

I grimaced, braced myself like I was waiting for a gut punch. I counted backwards in my head. The numbers ticked down, and when I struck one, I nodded at Yates and Jing and followed them back through the house. It washed over me. I wondered how workers here ever got used to it.

Back in the dining room, I jabbed my thumbs below my tear ducts and tried to find five things I could see and five things I could feel and five things I could hear, like the video app talk therapists said. I gave up quickly. The crowd felt weird, but a different weird than dinner. Antsy. Half of the witches around us looked variously restless, bored, or at the right level of intoxication to start making flamboyantly stupid decisions. The other half looked straight ahead. Grave faces, merriment stripped off with acetone. A few of the grim ones murmured to their friends, and those friends flipped, passed the somber along. Solemnity rippled across the flock. We sat at our own table off to the left of the stage. None of us said anything.

The band was gone, and Maurice Delacroix walked across the stage alone. He stopped beside the microphone and lifted his chin. It was like he’d clapped his hands. Chatter died. Without music, the room felt cavernous and overwhelmingly large. It was like being in a warehouse, or a giant’s mouth. Maurice surveyed us all, then spoke. “It’s been a long day and I don’t want to keep you. Rarely do we all gather like this. It pains me that we do so only when we’ve got a tragedy to untangle. The matter of Madeline Kline has been settled between the Sisters Corbie and Scapegracers covens, and anyone with something further to say should seek an audience with them. Our matter is this. A specter hoard was uncovered at a local witchfinder den. The Scapegracers coven recovered those specters and brought them here, where they’ve been held by my house until such time as we could all be present to determine what will be done with them. I am inclined to leave identifiable specter stones up to their coven’s jurisdiction, and to hold the remainder here in the Delacroix House archives.

“I am here to tell you this—I had come to believe that every person to whom those stones belonged had died. I was wrong. We’ve heard word from Molly McNeal, a solitary hedge witch who has described to me the torture she endured at the Chantry family’s hands. The speculation that’s been circulating today is largely true. McNeal is alive, and she has expressed her desire to come to the Delacroix House and recover the soul that was stolen from her nearly three years ago.”

I sucked in a hard breath. Three years.

Beside me, Jing whispered: “So one of Shiloh’s, then.”

Nausea flipped and I shoved my palm against my chin, forced my mouth shut.

“We had been unaware of McNeal before today. As such, she was not invited to flock. I thank the Anti-Edonists for having informed me of her existence, and for the Corbie scryer who helped us locate her whereabouts and contact her this evening.”

Meager applause floated around the room, a few drunken cheers. It died down fast. There was a tightness stretched over us, an itchiness, and it made the hair on my arms prickle. The whole room crawled with gooseflesh. Finding the woman with her soul torn out wasn’t exactly reason for jubilation.

One of Shiloh’s. God, it kept ringing in my head.

Maurice steepled his slender dark fingers. He held them under his chin and was silent for a beat, looked over all of us again. He could’ve been a conductor overseeing his symphony. He pulled our attention taut. He lowered his hands. He said, “Molly McNeal’s organ is in that pile, and none of us will touch them until she can. We will not squabble over her soul. I evoke every power of this house in that determination—not one of us will take a specter from that store until she has seen them and found herself. The consequences for anything else will be immediate and dire. Am I understood?”

Silence, but movement. Glasses were raised and chins were dropped in affirmation.

“Good.” Maurice squared his shoulders. “Molly McNeal cannot be here until this coming Saturday, a week from today. She cannot come sooner. It’s been discussed. I invite you all to reconvene here at that time, or if the travel would prove difficult, rooms can be provided upstairs. Thank you all, adieu, good night.”

He stepped back and calamity broke out throughout the crowd behind us. Some people were clearly furious and made sure everyone immediately around them knew. Others seemed resigned to the delay, or else so seriously affected by the update that they looked outright murderous whenever someone suggested the wait would be inconvenient. A sad-eyed someone, my hero, rolled and lit up in the middle of the room. One witch pushed another witch. Lupe followed Blair out of the room, both looking openly distraught.

The Scapegracers just sat there for a moment. They looked at me. I looked at the ceiling.

I slid down the chair. My heels skidded over the Persian rug, my ass slipped off the edge and dangled in space, legs straight, spine curved like a waning crescent moon. My chin was level with the table’s edge. I was ready for this day to end.

“Scapegracers,” said Maurice, who was suddenly standing at the table’s side. He had his partner with him, a man called Jupiter, and he checked his watch before he leaned forward, peered down at my quickly sinking body. “Sideways.”

“Mr. Delacroix,” I said.

“About Madeline,” he said.

“What about her.”

“Dominick told me that the Sisters Corbie retracts its claim on Madeline’s fate. I accept the retraction, but know that the responsibility of handling her now falls on you. This house suspends its grace from her, and we expect never to see her here again. If she harms another witch, I will expect your coven to handle it personally, lest the Scapegracers be held accountable. You would also be suspended from our grace. I would not recommend being without and outside us.”

“I think that sounds reasonable,” Yates said.

Daisy whispered something in Jing’s ear. Jing frowned, waved a hand at Yates, who waved her hand back, which made Jing look between Maurice and Jupiter with an expression of stern satisfaction. Jing and Yates looked at me. Daisy picked dirt from under her nail with a toothpick.

“Well,” I said after a moment, even lower now. “I think you can count on me to kick her ass into the next dimension if she does what she did to me again, yeah.”

“Good, I thought as much. I expect you worked things out with Dominick?”

“Does anyone ever truly work things out with Dominick?” Jupiter added with an edge that suggested history.

“Yeah,” I said. “I have, I think.”

“Excellent.” Maurice checked his watch again. He and Jupiter conferred about something in quick, low tones. Maurice ghosted a kiss over Jupiter’s temple, then turned back to us. “Will you be needing rooms tonight?”

“I want to go home,” came out of my mouth before I could stop it and think of a more adult-sounding thing to say. I sank a little further. The tip of my nose dipped beneath the table. My boots jutted well between Yates’ ankles across from me. Thank god this corduroy upholstery had grip.

“Thank you,” Yates said.

“We appreciate it,” Jing added.

“We’re gonna need a ride.” Daisy yawned behind a hoodie paw. “There’s that.”

“Hmm.” In a fluid, dancelike motion, Jupiter snaked a hand out and caught a passing witch above the elbow, held them fast. “Andy, sweetheart. Did you come in the van?”

“Uh.” Andy smiled a little warily. “Yeah. D’you need me to pick something up for you?”

“I need you to make a delivery,” Jupiter said with a smile.

Andy was a pretty good sport about it, I’d say. Reacted better than I would’ve given that he’d been asked to carpool a bunch of shitty grouchy traumatized high schoolers who lived an hour away when he’d clearly been on his way upstairs to crash. His van was enormous and seemed remarkably 1970s, and the inside had been carved to death, Sharpied and nail polished and sigiled with park bench love and density. It had marvelously tacky leopard-print seating. Aside from a few water bottles and a silvery leg that I assumed was part of a drum kit, it was cleaner than I’d expected. Nobody spoke much on the way home, directions aside. He’d played music that I’d liked, and maybe Jing liked, because I’d successfully dragged her into my sludge metal hell. He noticed when I had a minor car-related freakout twenty minutes in and pulled into a gas station, where he’d gone inside and bought me a Coke, and turned a blind eye to Daisy stuffing a small bag of Doritos up her sleeve. He dropped Jing off first, which made me sad in a way I couldn’t parse, then Yates, then dead-eyed Daze. When I was the last person left, he turned the music down, cleared his throat.

“So, you’re Sideways.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It was cool that you caught Kline yourself and let her go yourself. Inanna is super impressed with your coven. If ever you all need help, reach out. Bashing back is our whole shtick.” He shot me a smile in the rearview mirror. “You okay?”

“I get carsick.” Simplification seemed the move. “Long day.”

“You’re telling me.” He shook his head. “Being around other covens for a week is going to be a lot for all of us. Feel lucky that you’re local. Speaking of, is there anything to do around here?”

“Drink.” I yawned. “I mean, there’s a gay bar and a few like, rave type things, if that’s your scene. The Delacroix House is as cool as it comes. I don’t know how to one-up that. I mean, do you like antiquing?”

“You seem a bit young for bars.” His brows shot up. “Witches as a class love weird old shit. You should see the Anti-Edonists’ safe house. It’s like a museum.”

“Well, you’re in luck. Turn here.”

He turned here.

There it was in all its glory: ROTHSCHILD & PIKE, my midwestern Elysium. I unbuckled as the van pulled to a stop and swallowed a flash of bile, pressed my palm against the van’s tacky door. “Voilà,” I said. “Best antique shop on earth. They’ve sold some pieces to Maurice, actually. Part of why the Delacroix is cool is because my dads are.”

That’s a thing I got to say because right now they were not in earshot.

“Your dads own this shop,” he repeated. “Cool. Fuck it, okay, I’ll spread the word. There’s a gay bar and a gay-owned witch-approved antique shop. This is gonna be one hell of a week.”

“Welcome to Sycamore Gorge.” I nodded, pawed for the door handle. “Say, what’s the time?”

“Quarter til ten,” he said.

That felt both radically early and unforgivably late. How was I so wrecked at ten on a Saturday night? This time last week, my evening was just getting started. The Scapegracers would say out until like, six in the morning sometimes, mischief willing. Fuck, being old was going to suck. “Thanks for the ride,” I said, opening the door.

“No problem,” he said.

One foot on the pavement, and I glanced over my shoulder. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Your fight with Dominick, earlier.”

He slammed his head back against the headboard and stared up at the van’s slashed-up roof. “What about it?”

“Is he like, bad news? He’s not a serial killer or anything like that, yeah?” I blinked. “Are you a tankie?”

Andy made a strangled sound. He broke into a grin, rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Oh, fuck me. Okay. Here’s the thing: I don’t remember what we were really fighting about, but the thing about witch infighting and leftist infighting is that it’s all the same infighting. I straight up could not tell you what we were arguing about. We are all very possessive of our niche opinions. Plus, Dominick seeks out conflict. He is the most self-righteous, condescending, belligerent jackass I’ve ever met. Think what would happen if a cartoon wizard decided to ruin everything by transfiguring a prickly pear into a dehydrated Satanist skater boy. That’s him. He’s just a wretched ex-twink, Sideways. Anyway, he’s that intense all the time, he never unclenches, but he’s not a bad guy. He’s a good organizer and a good caster. You learn to think it’s charming.”

I put both soles on the asphalt. “Right. Thanks.”

“See you in a week,” Andy said.

I shut the door, the van rolled out, and I was alone on the sidewalk. Cold air felt good in my lungs, felt clean. The silence felt good. Fuck, I’d been way too overstimulated. I wanted to lie facedown on the floor of my bedroom and shut down. I’d tell my dads about college some other time. The morning, maybe. I wasn’t ready to let them down. I couldn’t handle that tonight. Maybe Shiloh would be out, and I wouldn’t have to bring up what was happening on Saturday or breach the topic of witchfinding with them yet. I needed tonight to be simple from here on out. I needed not to make friction with the people who loved me. I couldn’t afford for them to stop.

I unlocked the shop’s door, relocked it behind me.

I waded through the creamy darkness with my eyes half shut.

The shapes of my dads’ shop in the dark pulled some of the grief off me. The silhouettes made noble monster shapes, those ever-shifting assemblages of mannequins and parasols and Martian globes and surgical straws flowing together with odd, chimeric harmony. The air smelled golden, like resin and tobacco, mass market paperbacks, shafts of light. I fit here. Nothing expected anything of me here. I moved through the shop without flipping a switch in perfect thoughtless peace. I knew where to step, where to sway my head to avoid being sideswiped by wayward taxidermy. I knew who I was, which was to say, I was finally smart enough to not be a person with the burden of a personality, bullshit problems, aspirations and philosophies and whatever the fuck. I was an animal body slumping to the apartment door. I unlocked it, relocked it behind me, simple mechanical motions, and I trudged up the stairs with one palm flush against the wall. The paper dragged against my skin, felt nice. Everything would be fine.

I opened the door at the top of the stairs and stepped into clementine-colored lamplight. Home smell walloped me. I pitched forward against a wall, pressed my forehead next to a picture of dumb little eight-year-old me without any front teeth, and shut my eyes.

It was not silent.

There was conversation being had.

A war jolted to life between the big ugly lobes of my brain: investigate or lie facedown right here in the hallway and sleep immediately. The second option seemed much sexier. But also, fuck, I ought to tell Dad and Dad that I was home safe, right?

I resented my own inclination toward being a good kid for them.

I peered down at the floor between my feet and whispered, “Soon baby,” then kept walking, one arm slung over my stomach, mushing the Scratch Book against my abdomen like it’d keep me upright.

If my sonar capabilities were even slightly functional, the sound was emanating from the living room. Which, like. Duh, where else would audible conversations be had in this apartment? I rolled my shoulders, fantasized about sticking my head under the kitchen tap and drinking water right from the spigot for a few minutes, and trudged down the hall into the living room with Julian’s and Boris’ names already half-formed in my mouth.

I rounded the corner and my eyes almost popped out of my head.

Four people sat around the coffee table. Julian perched in an armchair, beaky and sleepy-eyed in an elbow-patch sweater, and Boris sprawled on the floor beside him in jeans and a white undershirt, one knee pulled under his chin, his slick back shiny to the point of being reflective. On the couch, beside Shiloh, was Madeline fucking Kline. She had Schnitzel the bastard tabby cat in her arms like a human baby. It looked like she’d been crying.

There were cards in their hands and cards on the table.

They were playing rummy. Motherfucking rummy.

Madeline looked avoidantly at the ceiling.

Shiloh looked avoidantly at their cards.

Dad and Dad were having a side conversation about best restoration practices and acknowledged my entering only with a polite nod and smile, as their antique stool talk was apparently all-consuming.

If I didn’t scream it’d just burst out of my ears like teakettle steam. I stared daggers at Shiloh, who was loudly not looking at me, and tried to beam a giant flaming question mark into their mind. I was about to have an honest to god temper tantrum. I was about to become a werewolf. I was going to eat my family and jump out a window and run into the woods and never be seen again. I stared down Madeline fucking Kline. Madeline Kline! Holding Julian’s cat! Playing rummy with my dads! I shook my head, unable to process. “Are you winning?”

“Julian’s winning,” Boris said. “Want me to deal you in?”

“No,” I said. I walked past them, ducked into the kitchen, numbly went through our cabinet and got myself a glass. I slammed it down. I got our water filter from the fridge and poured myself a glass. I downed it. The living room, adjacent and extremely within earshot, was silent, light furniture chatting aside. I poured myself a second glass. I walked back into the living room, startled to find that Madeline Kline was still there. I stood across from the coffee table and sipped my water. I tried to incinerate the rummy cards with my mind. It didn’t work.

Boris paused mid-furniture remark, glanced my way. “Did you chip your tooth?”

Madeline and Shiloh were making such a show of not looking at me that I thought they might physically seize up. Schnitzel was purring like an overheated electrical appliance. He kneaded his white paws against Madeline’s sternum, tipped his head back, shoved his whiskers against her cheek. He never got cuddly with me. Traitor.

“No,” I said again. “My teeth are normal.”

“Is that blood on your trousers?”

“It’s fake. We were filming a movie,” I plucked from nowhere. Boris looked at me hard but didn’t press. It was something we’d do, after all. We’d made little Ghastly parodies semiregularly. I would give Scratch these clothes as soon as I’d pulled them off. Let him suck them clean.

“I’d love to see the movie. I’ll manage if it’s scary.” Julian yawned. He put down his hand and waved his hands over all the hearts he’d gathered. “I just can’t justify mixing stains like that. I like my walnuts a healthy ash blond, and I’ll be damned if we put a walnut stool in the shop and pass it off as mahogany. I’m a man of integrity.”

Boris hummed, scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “What am I, then? A liar?”

“You are my moral counterpoint. Order and entropy. Our marriage provides universal balance.” Julian touched Boris’ shoulder. He glanced at Shiloh and Madeline. “I’m stunned that we are not boring you. We can leave you kids to do something that isn’t rummy.”

Shiloh coughed into their sleeve. “Always a pleasure,” they said thinly.

“Didn’t know you were having friends over, Shi,” I said. “If you’d texted me, I would’ve brought snacks.” That was a lie. If they’d texted me I would’ve blacked out and who knows where we’d be.

Shiloh used to be an adept stoic. When they first came here, their expression hardly ever changed, their tone never varied, and their mood was all but a mystery. Either they’d gotten softer, or I’d grown to know them better, but it seemed crystal clear to me that Shiloh was downright mortified. Mortified and intractable. They looked at me and I knew that there’d be no fighting them on this. Their eerie blue eyes flashed. They said, “Madeline’s staying the night. I took it up with Boris and Julian.”

They got to ask my dads for things. They got to go over my head like this, because this was their house, too. The anger I felt didn’t account for that. I was undergoing my werewolfication. My skin was starting to split.

I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Boris,” I said. I looked away from Shiloh before I said something I’d regret.

Dad glanced up at me, still shuffling, gave me a smile.

“Can I borrow you?” The water jumped in my glass. My hand must be shaking. “My room.”

The smile fell, but his eyes stayed crinkled. Wordlessly, Boris stood up, stretched his arms over his head. The tattoos on his arms were faded; he’d gotten most of them in bars, and I focused on them instead of how completely I was melting down. Anchors and flowers, real old-school stuff. I wondered if he’d ever want to get something matching with me. I couldn’t hold the thought in place. Warm ideas kept slipping into panic.

He jerked his head toward my room, and I took off as slowly and as coolly as I could. I stuck to the plan. When I trudged down the hall, I didn’t kick anything, and I didn’t slam the door. I flipped on my light and sat on my bed.

Boris leaned against my doorframe. He lifted his brows.

“Dad,” I said.

“Mm-hmm?”

“I’m not going to college,” I said. “Not next year, at least.”

Boris considered. He didn’t blink. “May I sit?”

“Yeah.” I pulled my knees to my chest and tried not to hyperventilate. I’d almost died today. I could’ve never seen him again. Ugh, I hated thinking about shit like that. I like being reckless but I hate consequences. “I’ve been offered a piercing apprenticeship. Even if I don’t take it, I’ll work a year or two first, I think. I could work here, or maybe,” I searched my ceiling, “I can get a job with one of your friends. Be a PA or something. Get a trade. I don’t know.”

“Slow down,” he said. He sat on the foot of my bed, hands on his knees. He had paint on his knuckles. “You don’t want to go to school this year?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Not this year.”

“Alright. Piercing, that sounds like something you’d be good at,” Boris said. “You’ve got the right temperament for it. You’re good at keeping people calm and you’ve got a good material sense, and an artistic eye. No tremors. Look, all’s well with me. College isn’t going anywhere. If you want it later, you know where to find it.” Boris cracked a smile. “Would you give me a nose ring?”

“Yeah.” I pressed my head against his shoulder. “Is Julian going to cry?”

“About this? No. He dropped out of his own program, I’ll remind you. He wants you to be happy. It’s all that really matters to him and me, alright?” Boris clapped my back. “You look really tired.”

“I’m really, really tired,” I said. “I can’t remember being this tired.”

“You should sleep, then. Nothing more to do tonight.” He kissed the top of my head. “Get some shut-eye. You can deal with the girl you hate in the morning.”

“I don’t hate her,” I protested as he stood up. I waved my hands in the air, like that’d convince him. I kicked off my boots. “It’s just—”

“You hate her alright.” He flipped my light switch. “See you tomorrow, kiddo.”