What a Piece of Work is a Man
Charlie didn’t want to see him. From what Wes could gather, she was furious with him for a lot of complicated reasons.
Wes understood that, and stayed away: the last thing she needed was the object of her addiction wading back into her life mere hours after it left her.
Days passed, but they agreed it should be weeks, at least.
Hugo was acting as go-between, since a lot of her stuff was at Wes’s Chelsea flat in boxes, and Wes still technically lived with Hugo. Hugo had elected to go off with Charlie for a few weeks to her parents’ second home in Devonshire, and help her adjust.
He left it alone until Hugo called him back.
“Are you at the flat?” Hugo asked on the phone. “I wanted to call before I came by to grab a few things.”
Wes braced himself. “No. I’m down in Sussex.”
He kept it vague on purpose, but the living room of Fairwood House seemed to take the lack of specificity personally. The smile of the Green Man on the mantlepiece grew colder, the fireplace beneath arched in a frown.
There was a short, disappointed pause, where Hugo breathed down the phone. “Oh.”
“I could come back up,” Wes said hastily. “If you want.”
“No, don’t come up specially. I can’t be more than a couple of minutes. Just wanted to check how you were, that’s all.”
“Uh.” Wes found himself nodding, blinking back tears. “Fine. Good. Yeah. You know.” He paused. “Miss you.”
Hugo made a soft sound, but he didn’t say, ‘miss you too’. He said: “It’s weird, hearing your actual voice. It’s nice. You’ve got a nice voice.”
Wes realised he had to keep his voice steady and forced a smile to lift it so Hugo wouldn’t hear how much this hurt. He stood up and turned his back on the fireplace, facing the large windows and pacing a little.
“How’s Charlie?”
Hugo blew a louder sigh, but a lighter one. “Whatever you did, I really think it worked.”
“It’s only been a few days,” Wes pointed out. Part of him was hoping for a relapse, which would reset everything back the way it had been, and he’d get both his partners back. He shoved that part away as hard as he could. He’d gone sixty-nine days (hah, nice) without a relapse of his own, but he could feel it itching at the back of his skull.
If it wasn’t for Tina’s concoctions at the start, he doubted he would have made it beyond a week.
“How are you doing?” Hugo asked, as if he’d read Wes’s mind.
Wes slipped into the usual easy lies. “I’m all right. Being down here is good for me.”
“Are you with Tina?”
“Yeah.” Wes didn’t want to get into all the family stuff. “Seeing my cousin as well, you know. He’s been ill. Getting better now, though. Think I should stay here a bit longer, maybe.”
“Yeah, of course.” Hugo paused. “So… I think I’m ready to know what you look like. If you want to send a photo or something.”
Wes had been dreading this. “Does it matter? You’re face-blind anyway.”
“That’s not quite how – I mean it’s different to not seeing it at all. You know, to me, sometimes it’s like you’re just not there. It’d be nice to have an actual set of features to not recognise, you know?”
It was meant to be a joke, but Wes wasn’t in the mood for brevity.
“It’s nothing special.”
Hugo’s voice softened. “I would love to remember.”
Wes’s heart sank. He couldn’t say no to that tone, and that was another nail in the inevitable coffin.
Hugo had told him how he imagined Wes looked once, and Wes hadn’t been able to correct him because, technically, Hugo could have been bang on, and nobody would know any different. Wes knew for sure now that he did not live up to the standards of Hugo’s imagination.
“I don’t think you’ll be impressed,” Wes warned him. “I wasn’t.”
“You’re too hard on yourself.” Hugo sounded like he was coaching a child with low self-esteem, but Wes couldn’t blame him for that, not when he’d structured his life on purpose to have less responsibility than one of Hugo’s Primary School pupils. All that was changing now.
“Listen, maybe I should move out for a bit. I’ll – I’ll ask someone to come over and collect my stuff, so you don’t have to bump into me, or Charlie doesn’t need to if she goes back for a bit, it’s your place anyway, not mine.”
Instead of insisting there was no need to do that, that it was going to be okay, Hugo said, “Yeah. That’s a good idea.” He sounded relieved, as if that was the whole purpose of this call and he’d bottled it.
“I have to go,” Wes lied, not willing to drag this out any further. “Tina’s doing dinner. I’ll say hi for you, if you like.” He turned and saw Carrie standing behind him, one eyebrow raised, arms folded. Wes shrugged at her. “Love you.”
“I love you too.” Hugo was about to say something else, but Wes hung up on him.
Carrie stared. “What the hell was that about?”
“What?”
“Why did you say you were at Tina’s?” Carrie stepped out of his way as he made for the door without a destination in mind.
He shrugged. “They know Tina. Seemed easier.”
“Lying to your partners for no reason is easier?” Carrie frowned, eyebrows arching like the fireplace, which, Wes noticed as he glanced back, was perfectly straight and square. He shook himself.
“If they know I’m at Tina’s, they’ll think I’m being looked after. That’s all. They don’t know you, and they do know Ricky’s not the best person for me to be around.” Wes lounged against the doorframe. “Not his fault, obviously.”
Carrie’s frown deepened. “He’s doing better.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Wes ignored the prickling in his shoulder where the wood objected to his casual leaning. “I’m not my best around him.” He ignored her eye roll, too. “I’m more aware of a lot of things now.”
“Glad you’ve seen the light,” Carrie said dryly.
Wes thought of the glowing funnel web in the well, the bulbous arachnid-fae creature with its exquisite powers of pleasure and pain, and smirked.
“I saw the light all right.”
“It’s not that I’m not grateful for what you did,” Carrie said. “And I know you didn’t only do it for me. I’m just – I just think, if you want your life back, or you’re serious about building a new one, you could start by being honest about the little things.”
“With my partners, you mean?”
“With anyone.” Carrie put her head on one side. “With yourself, might be the best place to start.”
Wes pushed off from the door jamb and thrust his hands into his pockets. He realised that was a Ricky thing to do, and stuck his thumbs through his belt loops instead. “Honestly? All right, you want me to be really fucking honest?”
“Hit me.” Carrie was solid, unflinching.
“Okay, here it is.” Wes took a breath and let it out slowly, heart pulsing hard and fast. “I used to like working for Uncle David back in the day. That crack when you break bone? Fucking – the best sound ever. Got me off every time.” He bared his teeth at the memory. “Only lasted six months, and then our Soothsayer predicted the winning lottery numbers and I never looked back. Turns out I’m only really good at two things: parties, and seriously hurting people.” The irony of this wasn’t lost on him. “It’s why I prefer parties, these days.”
Carrie evidently hadn’t expected that. There was a faint look of disgust on her face she was trying to mask, but it was still there.
Wes bristled, lapsing into Granny Wend’s natural accent without meaning to. “Oh, come on. He shoved someone’s heart up your fucking chimney, don’t pretend you’re all shocked and repulsed, he’s allus been worse’n me. He ripped open puppies, for fuck’s sake. At least I know how to have fun.”
“We had words about that,” Carrie murmured, arms folded.
“Good for you.” He was simmering with years of pent-up energy he’d had nowhere truly satisfying to put. “You know what? Charlie needs to focus on herself and Hugo needs to focus on her, not on whether I’m relapsing. They definitely don’t need to know I’m getting myself caught up in apocalyptic bullshit that could lead directly to their deaths and the end of the fucking world. So, yeah, I lied. Sue me.”
Carrie raised her eyebrows, plaster-smooth forehead cracking in two thin lines.
Wes nodded decisively, head buzzing. “Honest enough for you?”
“So that’s what you look like when you tell the truth,” Ricky said, appearing in the doorway. “I’d have said the real problem is the fact there’s a cult running around who want to bring the old sire through with my blood, but that’s just me.”
“Hey – wait a minute. If I’ve lost my glory, does that mean the idea of me dies out for everyone? It might just sort itself out.”
“Not unless you started the cult in the first place,” Ricky said, and stopped. He and Carrie stared at Wes.
Wes licked his lips. “Uh – oh, right. Yeah. Look. About that—”
“Are you serious?” Carrie’s eyes grew wide and square, glinting with the sharpness of moonlight on a jagged edge.
Wes rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t on purpose. Obviously. I didn’t even know how out of hand it was getting until Jem—”
“No wonder you was so upset about them sacrificing each other,” Ricky said, cutting over him. “That makes sense now. The guilt.”
“Unbelievable.” Carrie shook her head. “All this time, this was your fault? They’re going to kill him, and it’s your fault?”
“That isn’t his fault,” Ricky said before Wes could say anything. “If that’s how I go, it’d be that way somehow. Just how it is.”
“No, it’s not ‘just how it is’,” Carrie snapped. “What the fuck?”
“It was an accident,” Wes said miserably. “I didn’t – I sent a video message to a group chat when I was pissed. Told them all to kill themselves. I was so fucking angry. At everything. And – they heard it like a divine mandate. Or, some of them did. And now…”
“You started a fucking death cult.” Carrie was seething. Purls of steam rose from her rosy surface like from a kettle.
Wes rolled his eyes, guilt roiling inside him. “I’m very aware.” He hesitated. “Look, I – don’t hit me, but, you know the, um. The ointment your parents got from Gran?”
Ricky pressed a hand to his side briefly, and Carrie put her hand on Ricky’s shoulder.
“What about it?” Ricky asked, as Wes put a few more paces between them, gearing up for the truth.
“Um. Look. I didn’t know they’d try and make more, and botch it like that.” He gestured at Ricky’s torso, wincing. “I just… I was on those pills, and I saw myself take it. It was like, remembering things forwards. I saw myself do it, so I did it. I’ve got it.”
Ricky lunged forwards, and Wes put the sofa between them. “Whoa, hold on. Listen, listen. I’ll give it to you. Then they can’t subdue you. Right? In my visions of you dead, they’d used it on you. But if you have it, they can’t, right?”
“How would they do that, if you didn’t give it to them?” Carrie demanded.
Wes didn’t want to mention the fact that in all three visions, he had been there, handing Ricky over. “Maybe they stole it. How should I know? I didn’t see the foreplay, just the moment itself. Look, it’s at Hugo’s, I can go and get it.”
Ricky stared at him. “You slippery bastard.”
“Thanks.” Wes pulled a face and shook his head. “God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I really fucked this up, didn’t I?”
“Just a bit.” Carrie glared at him. “You needn’t think you’re staying the night. Get back to London and sort this out. I swear to God, Wes.”
“What if I bump into someone who wants to kill me?” Wes looked at Ricky, appealing. “Come with me.”
“They won’t know who you are,” Carrie pointed out, before Ricky could reply. “But they will recognise Ricky, so he’s staying right here.”
“Right.” Wes breathed out slowly. “Right. I’ll, ah. Go and sort this out, then.”
“You’d better.” She wasn’t about to thaw, and he knew better than to appeal to Ricky twice.
“I will. And, you know, I’ll get used to this. Just need some time.”
Wes reminded himself that change was always rocky at first, but he’d work things out. He’d learn to live differently, and maybe even thrive without it.
“I’m just – going for a walk around the garden.” He couldn’t bear the house anymore, the walls closing in like a cage. She was everywhere, surrounding him, watching him, absorbing his flatness into her boards and bricks, and he couldn’t stand it. “Need to think.”
He headed outside to breathe and clear his head, fighting the tremors in his limbs as the dark shadow of dread clutched his heart.
Wes was out of the house, Ricky headed down to the cellar, where he kept the leather-bound journals Gran had never wanted him to read.
The mistress joined him. “What are you doing now?”
Ricky allowed himself a smile, and pulled out one of Grampa Nathan’s tomes. “Here we are.” He flipped the book open and squinted at the fussy handwriting. “Terrible day. Ulysses has exploded.” He paused. “Oh, that’s 1938, sorry, not that.” He put it back and looked for another one.
“Who’s Ulysses?” Carrie asked, and frowned. “Oh, wait. No, I remember, he was here. He was in my cellars…” She trailed off with a shudder.
“That’s right. Guest of Sir Jack Sauvant, back in the day. Now. This one.” He grinned, finding the soft leather bookmark and turning the delicate pages. “1953. The old harridan cornered me this morning as I was taking my morning walk. I warned her she could not touch me. She said she had no need; she recited a poem, and the words seemed to slice into my abdomen with every syllable in that barbarous, incomprehensible language. Now, I feel decidedly queer; it has been some hours, but my stomach pains me, and my glory is shifting inside me like a snake.”
Ricky looked up, grinning, to find the mistress confused.
“He means Eglantine Pritchard. She cursed his glory off. It shrivels up to nothing in the next few pages. He was pretty upset.”
Carrie narrowed her eyes. “All right, I’ll bite. Why did she do that?”
Ricky giggled, relishing the chance to be petty, to hold something over Wes for once. “Oh, that’s not important. What matters is, she did it, and he lost it, and then…” He paused for effect, a slow grin spreading over his face, “He got it back.”
Carrie let out a bubbling hiss, like a radiator bleeding. “Oh, you’re joking.”
Ricky shook his head. His insides squirmed with vicious delight. “I can do it, I think. There’s a way to get it back, but only temp’ry. He’d have to go through the Changes again to get it back for good, and I’m not sure Grandad would let him unless he had something worth—” A thought cut him off short.
(He said it was like remembering things forwards.)
“What?” Carrie took the book from his hands. He wasn’t aware his grip had slackened to the extent it was at risk of dropping to the floor.
“He remembers the future. He don’t see it, not like I do.” Ricky licked his lips. “An’ now he’s seeing possibilities of things he hasn’t seen yet, or hasn’t done…” His breath caught. “I can’t see my own at all. But what if his own is all he can see?”
“Well – that would mean he… he was there,” Carrie said, catching up. “He was there at the end of the world, and he was there, or will be there, when the cult…” she trailed off.
“When the cult kills me,” Ricky finished for her, chest cold and tight. The prey-feeling strayed over him, wrapping his insides in thorn-tipped hoarfrost.
“So we don’t tell him,” Carrie said, and embraced him unexpectedly, throwing her arms around his chest.
She crushed him against her, and Ricky didn’t fight it. The comfort of her closeness helped, grounding him in the certainty of the present moment, where he had her, and she was his, and nothing else mattered.
“We don’t tell him there’s a way to get it back,” Carrie repeated. “Or, or, you promise to help him, and then he will need you alive.”
Ricky wrapped his arms around her in return and stroked her spine, that stiff, flexible pipe up the middle of her smooth back, inhaling her scent of warm brick and book-bindings, sun-soaked wood and breeze-aired fabric. There was another set of notes now, beneath this – he hadn’t noticed them before, so they must be new, ever since she’d been restored to him. He could smell grime and decay on her, just under the surface. The tell-tale sweetness of animal rot, putrefying under her perfect porcelain.
You’re not her master.
The phrase flickered back into his mind, scratching into his brain, but instead of tormenting him, now it tasted like a lie.
Ricky grinned, cupping his hand against her cheek.
“Oh, don’t you worry my love. I’ll let him stew a bit longer. But I think I just might have a plan.”