For a while I can’t make myself move. The darkness is so profound that it turns every sound, every movement, into another spike of unreality. I hear my changeling still wheezing somewhere, her breath whistling like wind through a cracked window. I only really know I’m still here from the nagging tick of my heartbeat, the dull, deep burning in my hip.
But kneeling on the landing won’t do anything to help Lexi. I force myself up, still half-convinced I might plummet at any moment. Maybe keep falling forever. I lean on the wall, for reassurance more than anything.
And feel something poking into my arm. A switch. “You know, you could have just turned on the light?” I snap. “You’ve been up here in the dark for how long?”
It’s easy to tell her that, but it’s harder to flip the switch myself. I have a feeling I might not want to see what’s up here, in the forbidden second story. As badly as I’ve wanted to get up to this floor, still, now I don’t want to know. So maybe I’m not rocking the rationality—but it’s always easier to want things before they’re in your face. I saw all those broken-mirror Ksenias go writhing out of my hat, jumble and stack themselves and build these rooms. Whatever is up here is made out of me, out of who I am. And that’s always been high on the list of shit I prefer not to know about.
Then I do it. Ordinary-looking lamplight floods a less-than-ordinary room.
It’s long. Sloping ceiling with exposed beams that cradle saggy pink-fuzz insulation, those two windows with the garish red-checked curtains. Gray wood floor, scabby in places with ancient paint. All of that seems fair enough, like a decent effort at normality.
Less normal is the row of pint-sized beds made of pea-green metal; they’re like you might see in some movie set in a Victorian orphanage, but smaller. Maybe a yard long at most. They might be about the right size for the shattered Ksenia-imps, assuming those things ever sleep.
Still more unsettling is the avalanche of dirt that spills at an angle from the far wall, half-engulfs a few of the beds, and scatters crumb across the floor. It’s been there long enough to sprout a few gaunt weeds.
But as I look around I fail to see anything that could pass for a doorway. Was coming up here a total waste? If it was, then how will I ever get over letting Lexi down?
Someone is sitting on the bed nearest to me, doubled over between her spread knees so that her spiky blond hair bristles in my direction. Her legs are awkwardly long for the low bed, jutting up like mountain crags. The fact that I’m standing ten feet from her isn’t enough to make her look my way. She’s wearing a bland, stiff, navy-blue dress printed with these horrible little flowers, definitely nothing I ever owned, and after a second I realize: Mitch and Emma went out and bought it at some bargain basement, just so they could bury me in it. So that my death would at least have the advantage of making me look respectable. I guess they decided they should get what mileage they could out of it.
It’s harder to keep hating the other Ksenia now that I see her, but I wish she wouldn’t act so pathetic. “Would you sit up, already?”
She does. Her hideous dress is unbuttoned to the waist, and as she straightens the ragged red suture bisecting her torso streaks into view. A second crosscut below the clavicle, so the stitches form a capital T. Even now that her body’s unfolded she keeps her head bent, staring down at it.
“Sennie? I don’t know what they did with my heart.”
“Realistically? They probably burned all your organs to a crisp. Medical waste and everything. I don’t think they’re super precious about the crap they yank out in an autopsy.” It would be good to settle this issue. I feel sorry for her, but that doesn’t mean I want to listen to her mooning on and on about her lost entrails.
That makes her look up at me. A perfect copy of my gray eyes, sharp cheekbones, pale skin. Fine. But that wide-eyed, helpless, wounded look is not something I ever would have allowed to go crawling onto my face. Is it? “Burned it? Then I can’t get it back? Sennie? Can’t you make them give it back?”
I wish she’d stop calling me that, but if I say so I’ll probably find myself dropping through a brand-new hole in the floor. It’s not just those stairs that are made from the Ksenia-imps, it’s this whole upper level, and Sennie is the only version of me they’ll tolerate here.
“I can’t get your heart back, no.” I stare at her. “It’s not like you were using it anyway. Did it even beat? Prince made it sound like he just slapped it in you for decoration.”
Prince. He must know I’ve made it upstairs. They always seem to know everything we do and say, like they can spy on us straight through the walls. The eye in my hat was the least of it. So why didn’t they stop me?
The changeling breaks out whimpering. God—that whistling sound I heard before is coming through the gaps between her stitches. Of course, they hacked her lungs out too, so there’s nothing inside her to hold in the air when she tries to breathe.
“But—I liked it! I knew I wasn’t whole-me, but I could pretend better with a heart! And it did beat, Sennie, it did! Just in case anybody listened!” Her mouth crumples piteously. “It did at first.”
I wouldn’t call it a nice thought, but it occurs to me that I should stuff a cheap watch or a can of Spam or something in there. Just to shut her up. And then a sharp recoil of pity hits me. She can’t help what she is, not any more than I can. Prince made her and used her for his creepy schemes, and then he ditched her like so much trash.
I consider bullshitting, of course; it’s the strategic thing to do. Tell me how to get back to the real world, and I’ll get right to work on tracking down your heart. But the cruelty of it gives me pause, and so does the thought of where I am. Those Ksenia-imps have made it clear enough that they put a premium on the truth. I doubt they’d let me get away with an outright lie.
But going by what she’s said, there’s another angle I can use. “You said Lexi held you. Lexi was kind to you, and nobody else was. Right?”
So she didn’t put it quite that dramatically, but I guess the exaggeration is passable because I don’t go plunging into some spontaneous abyss.
“Lexi held me in her arms. I knew dying was my whole job, but I was still so scared! And Lexi kept begging me not to die. I couldn’t tell her how angry Prince would be if I didn’t.”
“That’s what Lexi is like. Other people maybe talk a lot of crap about doing the right thing, but Lexi just does it. She doesn’t even know she’s being brave, or kind, because to her those are the obvious things to be.” I let that sink in. “But now I’m the one who has to help her. You know what a vindictive scumbag Prince is, right? He’s going after Lexi, back in our old world, and there’s no way I can do anything about it unless I can get there.”
It’s all true enough, but there’s still something cold, flat, and numb in my voice—even though cold is the last thing I feel. The chill now is thin, a skin of ice over something inside me that’s roiling. My changeling just sits there looking at me, with her long neck sloping over and her fingers absently running up and down the gash in her chest. I get the distinct sense that she doesn’t trust a word I’m saying.
“You’re just worried about Josh,” she finally observes, snidely. “And Josh wanted me to drop dead too. Even though I loved him so much! So why would I tell you anything, Sennie?”
Because if you don’t, we’ll see how many times you can die. Saying that probably won’t help, though.
“Of course I’m worried about Josh. Prince and them are chewing up everything that matters in him, and he doesn’t even know it. He doesn’t stand a chance in hell of defending himself! And now they’re using him to hurt people, so he’ll be wrecked once and for all. They said it themselves. They’re going to rip his humanity out of him.” I pause. That didn’t sound cold. It sounded like the fire is finally taking over. “I can care about Lexi too. You’ve always just been a thing, a shell, so you don’t get it. But I felt like—like they’d made me into what you are. I felt like they’d stolen everything real inside me, when they trapped me here. They stole me from myself. And Lexi—I don’t even know how she did it, but she gave me back—who I really am. I even thought I might be the changeling then. That the real Ksenia was dead. But Lexi made me feel like maybe I could choose reality anyway. I’d do anything for her.”
It’s one of those things you don’t know is true until you’ve said it.
She looks at me, lamplight skewered on her spiky hair. There’s something in her gray gaze that makes it seem to take forever, crossing the air between us, as if her thoughts were enough to slow light to a crawl.
“Who did?” The snap of her voice makes me jump.
“Did what?”
“Stole everything inside you.”
Right. I just said they. I have my reasons for preferring not to be too specific.
“Prince and all his sadistic creeps.”
The floor cracks at my feet, with a sound like a machine gun. For a moment I grab at nothing, expecting to crash all the way to nowhere. It wasn’t the whole truth, and I should have known—I did know—that it wouldn’t fly.
But then the crack stops, its edge toothed in long splinters. Just another warning, then. Still, it’s clear enough that I have to say it.
“And Josh too. But he didn’t mean it.”
They let me get away with including the excuse, at least. But the jagged blonde in the flowery dress just sits there, gawping and stroking her stitched-up wound, not telling me anything I need to know. I’m ready to start screaming: What the hell do you want from me? Are you going to keep dragging this out, until Lexi and her family are dead?
But then I see that she’s pointing. Straight at that pile of dirt.
“You mean, the doorway’s under that heap?” I look it over: dense, heavy, with a smell like turned clay. I don’t have time to excavate the whole thing. “Are you going to help me dig?”
“Not under it.” God—if I really look at people the way she’s looking at me, then it’s no wonder I make everyone uncomfortable. “That is it. Sennie, see? That’s the bottom of your grave.”