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My next stop was the bakery.
It’s a strange thing to approach such a nice place all while knowing you ain’t ever gonna be there again. Usually the smell of Fiona’s baking would lift my spirits and fill me with a kind of joyful anticipation, but today, even though those scents were just as delicious as always, they filled me instead with an awful dread.
Cinnamon, roasting apple, melting cherries, the baking of dough from soft into crust... Fiona was preparing tomorrow’s sales, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t smell heavenly.
Add it to the list of things I was gonna miss, I guess.
Fiona’s was closed. Her door was locked, and there was a sign on it telling me to come back tomorrow morning. But given the circumstances, I wasn’t really in the mood for listening to signs.
“Hey! It’s Jackson!” I shouted, hammering on the door. “Open up, Fiona! I gotta talk to you!”
For a moment—a single, awful moment—I was absolutely certain that she was gonna ignore me, or that she couldn’t hear me, or that a million other things might happen, and I’d never be able to warn her to get out of New Alms. But then I felt her presence on the other side of the door, and I stepped back just as she opened it up.
“Jackson?” she asked. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun, and her neck and face was covered with sweat and dough. “What’s wrong?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. There was all sorts of things I could say to her, but it was probably best to just keep it simple. “I fucked up,” I said. “I fucked up bad, and I made myself some mighty powerful enemies. They... They’ve made it clear to me that they’ll be coming for anyone associated with me; friends, family... Everyone. You need to get out of New Alms, and soon. I’m sorry.”
Fiona stared at me. Her face was a mess of emotions, but the biggest two were fright and confusion. “I can’t just leave—” she started.
“You can,” I insisted, and I reached out and pressed a small pouch of Crowns into her hand. It was some of the money I’d saved from the Lugh job. “That’s eight hundred Crowns; more than enough for you and your husband to get out of town and settle down elsewhere.”
“Jackson, what’s this all about?”
“Like I said, I pissed off some powerful people, and now everyone I know is in danger. I’m sorry.”
She looked like she was about to say something else, but I didn’t give her the chance. I turned around and started hurrying away. Fiona called out after me, but I ignored that. I was too ashamed to look her, too angry at myself for uprooting all these lives with my foolishness.
I was already nearing my breaking point, guilt-wise, and Fiona wasn’t even gonna be the worst of it. The knowledge of that particular truth hurt worse than anything. There I was, running off with my tail between my legs, tears in my eyes, and I had an even worse visit coming up.
Eric? Nah. It weren’t Eric. I’d considered it though. He deserved a warning. After all the things we’d been through, giving him a heads up would only be right. But it weren’t safe for me, was it? I couldn’t approach the Etternas now, not after they’d shown how willing they were to sell me out. I could only hope that word would somehow get to them through Miss Nora and the girls.
No, I’m sure most of y’all know who it was I was really making my way to. It was my sister and her family.
Approaching that house was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. It felt like every step I took caused the shame within me to double, and I could feel the weight of it all growing heavier and heavier the closer I got to Therese’s. My heart was hammering in my chest the way it would if I’d been running nonstop for miles, even though Therese only lived a few blocks away from Fiona’s bakery.
But that weren’t the worst of it. There was a fear in me now; a blind terror at what sort of look my sister might give me. The disappointment in her eyes, the anger at how thoroughly I’d made a mess of everything, the certainty that this just proved that Lonnie’d been right about me all along... I was anticipating all of that, and the more clearly I saw it in my head, the more I wanted to turn around and run away and never have to face the shame of ruining my family.
What a selfish, stupid man I was. I was making my way to my sister’s to tell her she needed to take her family and run away, to leave all their lives behind, and that it was all my fault they had to do it. What would she say when I told her she needed to go? To move far away even though little Valerie was still sick with the Ice Flu—
Fuck. What would she say if I told her what the Ice Flu really was? Would she even believe me?
Somehow, I made my way down the streets and to the door of Therese’s home. How I’d found the wherewithal to keep walking there when my whole body felt like it was seizing in terror, I have no idea. It certainly weren’t Ferengris—he’d been quiet the whole way, and there weren’t a single voice in my head but for my own.
“Just run” was what that voice was saying. It’d been saying it all this time, repeating it over and over. “Just run.”
I took a deep breath and tried to calm my racing heart before I knocked. No use. My heart was set on pounding away like a maniac. So I knocked, and I did it with hands that just plain refused to stop shaking.
I knocked and I waited for Therese to answer the door. But when that door opened up it wasn’t my sister standing there before me; it was her husband. It was Lonnie.
He did not appear too pleased to see me.
“Well, the thief returns,” he said. He didn’t open the door all the way—just about a foot or so—and he stood in the crack and frowned at me.
“Hey there, Lonnie,” I said. “Therese home?”
“Why do you insist on bothering her, Jackson? I feel like every week you stop by and intrude on our lives. Ain’t you got better things to do than get in my wife’s hair? Y’all ain’t kids anymore.”
“Don’t I know it,” I muttered. “But listen, we’re still kin. And this is important, Lonnie. I gotta see her. Please.”
He glared at me, and he said nothing. He glared at me and said nothing for such a long time I started worrying that the conversation was already over. Then he said: “I never liked you, Jackson. I don’t think I ever kept that a secret.”
“You didn’t,” I agreed.
“I’m an honest man. I work hard. I do whatever I can to build a good life for myself and my family. But you? You ain’t honest. You ain’t a hard worker. You’re a criminal. You cheat your way through life and I can’t stand it.”
“Not like I had many other options.”
“Didn’t you? You got a brother with the Cerenites, right?”
“And a fat lot of good his joining up did for our family,” I replied, surprised by the bitterness I heard in my own voice. “You ever ask your wife who it was that kept us fed, with a roof over our heads, after our daddy died? You ever ask her who it was that supported the family, and how? No one ever chooses a life like mine, Lonnie. You just fall into it, because every respectable option is already denied you, because at the end of the day, life must live—”
I stopped talking. Hearing Ferengris’ words coming out from between my lips was not a pleasant thing. It reminded me that my time was growing shorter and shorter, and that I hadn’t come here to waste it by arguing with my brother-in-law.
“Yeah,” Lonnie said. “Yeah, Therese told me. Don’t think I’m ungrateful, Jackson. I know my wife only lived long enough to meet me cuz of you.”
“But you don’t have to like knowing it,” I finished for him. “I understand.” And I did. I really did. Standing outside my sister’s house, having that tense discussion with her husband—that was the most clear I ever understood Lonnie. And something told me I’d probably never understand him that well again for as long as I lived.
Therese survived, and then Lonnie met her, and they got married. And now it was his job to take care of her, and he was gonna do it right, and he was gonna show me that the right way, his way, was the better way. But he was still struggling. Every day was a fight to make enough to feed his family. The wages he earned with his honest work were too low. Then all he had to do was look around to see dishonest folk like me, working dishonest jobs, and he could see how a man might be tempted by it. But he still had his pride, and he wasn’t gonna shame and debase himself by sinking to our level.
He was a man trying to live, and trying to do it the best way he knew how. There ain’t anything more you can ever ask of a fella, is there? For all our fancy machines and our high-minded philosophies, we’re really just beasts at the end of the day, fighting for food and comfort and a life well-lived in this great confusing wilderness.
“I reckon that’s so,” said Lonnie. “I don’t like knowing it. I reckon you understand a lot, Jackson, and I reckon you’ll understand this as well: I don’t want my kids growing up like you. I don’t want you around them putting it into their heads that your sort of path through life is one they might follow. My kids are not going to become criminals like you.”
Let it never be said I can’t pick up what a man’s putting down. Lonnie didn’t want me in his kid’s lives at all. He’d never wanted me in their lives. He was just taking this opportunity to finally say it, to finally make it clear to me. And he was saying it now because any other time he could’ve...
“Therese ain’t home, is she?” I asked.
“She ain’t,” Lonnie said. “She’s taken Valerie down to the doctor’s. The other kids are playing with their friends across the street.”
That news made my heart skip a beat. “Is Valerie alright? Has her flu gotten worse?”
“She’s hanging in there,” Lonnie said, and I saw his shoulders slump a bit. The door had opened gradually during our conversation, and now I could see him more clearly. Lonnie was exhausted. He’d spent his whole life trying to do everything right, doing what a man’s meant to do and staying on the right side of the law. And now here he was facing down the possibility that his little girl was too sick for him to help, that tragedy was gonna strike regardless, even though he didn’t do anything wrong. “She’s a fighter, Val is. She’ll get better, especially once the doc has a look at her.”
I nodded. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk with Therese about, in a way.” I held out a pouch of coins in my palm. Lonnie eyed it like I was holding up a coiled up snake that might strike out at him any moment.
“You’re right about a lot of things, Lonnie,” I told him. “I ain’t no good. I’m a thief, yeah, and I’m a crook. But worst of all is that I’m a damn fool. I’ve gone and gotten myself tangled up in business I never should’ve, and now I’m paying the price. You ain’t gonna be hearing from me again, Lonnie. You have my word on that, whatever that might be worth. I’m leaving New Alms, and I really think that y’all should do the same.”
His gaze hardened. “You think I’m just gonna pack up my life and leave just cuz you—?”
“There’s three-thousand Crowns in this pouch.”
That shut him up real quick. His mouth hung open, and he just stood there gawking at me as if I’d gone and grown a second head.
“It ain’t stolen,” I went on. “Granted, I was paid to steal something, and I was paid quite a bit to steal it, in fact. But that’s where the trouble began. And now I’m leaving, and where I’m headed, there won’t be much need for money. So I’m giving this to you—to your family—to my sister. Y’all should take the money and go up north, settle down into a cozy new life somewhere nice. Somewhere with clean air, I think. I reckon that’d help Valerie’s sickness too. They don’t get the Ice Flu much outside the cities, you know. There’s something in the machines that causes it. And besides, you know well as I do that New Alms is a city defined by its criminals. If you want your kids to be living honest lives, well... I’d say there’s a better chance of that happening elsewhere than if you stayed here.”
“Jackson, I...” Lonnie trailed off. Whole time I’d known the man, I ain’t never seen him at a loss for words like that.
“Take it,” I urged him, and he did. He reached out, and I pressed the pouch into his hand. His arm nearly went down from the weight of all those coins.
“What did you do? Why are you so...?” He froze. I could practically see the gears turning in his head. I ain’t the only one who can put two and two together. “Are we in danger, because of this trouble you’ve found yourself in?”
I nodded. I didn’t want to admit it to Lonnie—I didn’t want him to think he’d been right about me all along—but I couldn’t see any alternative. “Afraid so.”
“Damn it all!” he spat. “I should’ve known! I should’ve known that one day you’d drag us into some awful mess!” He was glaring at me mighty fierce, then that glare of his fell down to the pouch in his hands, and a puzzled sort of frown came over his features. “What’d you mean by that? That where you’re going, you ain’t gonna have any use for coin?”
I smiled, and shook my head. “Goodbye, Lonnie,” I told him. “Give my love to Therese and the kids, will you? And please, get your family out of New Alms as soon as you can.”
Having spoken my piece and delivered the money, I turned around and started walking away.
“Jackson!” Lonnie called out when I’d gone only a few steps. I paused and looked over my shoulder back at him.
“Thank you,” he said, even though saying those words to the likes of me looked like it made him physically ill. He closed the door.
I walked down the street, past all their neighbors’ cheap homes, and turned the corner. There I leaned against a wall, closed my eyes, and gasped for breath.
In a way, I think I was relieved. I’m not sure how I would’ve handled that conversation if it’d been Therese. But at the same time, I was also keenly aware that I’d missed my one chance to say goodbye to my sister, and to my nieces and nephew.
If all went well, they’d be leaving New Alms soon. And me? I’d be off somewhere out on the bayou, breathing my last breath as a man and thinking my last thoughts as Jackson Balor, before my body finally became the full property of the Wild God.
But damn it all—I didn’t want to die!
I wanted to stay as myself, to live as myself. I wanted to keep eating Quinn’s breakfasts with Miss Nora and Rita and Lilly. I wanted to buy more baked goods from Fiona, and make new stories with Eric, and visit my sister and her kids. By Perdition, I even wanted to try and patch things up with Lonnie.
But what I didn’t want was to lose myself to some god’s will. What I didn’t want was to die. And yet there I was, staring my death in the face and severing the last connections I had to my old life, to the only life I’d ever known.
I slid down the wall, to the ground. The tears I’d been fighting to hold back all afternoon flowed freely down my face. My body shook and convulsed, and I held my knees to my chest and sobbed.
“For what it’s worth,” Ferengris’ voice whispered in my ear, “you’ll still live, just as a part of me.”
“But I won’t be me,” I snapped. “Might as well be dead...”
My sobs subsided for now. The pain and the fear seemed more bearable somehow, now that I’d let off some steam so to speak. I stood, wiped my eyes, sniffled up my snot, and realized that I weren’t alone.
A black cat was sitting just a few feet away from me, flicking her tail from side to side like she was impatient about something. Three green eyes regarded my sorry display.
“Hey there, Syl,” I said, and I found myself smiling at the little creature. It’s a hard thing to stay down when you’re confronted with a kitty-cat’s face. “Did you come by to collect me?”
The cat closed her third eye, then stood and stretched. She turned round and walked away a few steps, then stopped and looked back me, like she was beckoning me to follow.
“Of course,” I said. “Lead on.”
And lead on Syl did. She led me through the streets of New Alms all the way to my final destination: the manor home of Lady Imogen Lugh, where all of my present troubles began.