He was a monster. The things he’d done, nothing could shrive.
He shook open his wings and lifted himself into the night. It was wrong, his being there at the window, a lurking threat while Karou slept so peacefully. He retreated again across the street to let himself sleep, too, and when he did at last, he dreamed he was on the other side of the glass. Karou — not Madrigal but Karou—smiled at him and pressed her lips against his knuckles one by one, each kiss erasing black lines until his hands were clean.
Innocent.
“There are other ways to live,” she whispered, and he woke with bile in his throat, because he knew it wasn’t true. There was no hope, only the executioner’s ax, and vengeance. And there was no peace. Never peace. He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes as frustration built in him like a scream.
Why had he come here? And why couldn’t he make himself leave?
26
A SOFT WRONGNESS
Saturday morning, Karou woke up in her own bed for the first time in weeks. She showered, brewed coffee, scavenged in the pantry for something edible, came up empty, and left her apartment with Zuzana’s presents in a shopping bag. She texted her friend en route—Peekaboo! Big day. I’m bringing breakfast—and bought some croissants at her corner bakery.
A text came back—If it’s not chocolate, it’s not breakfast—and she smiled and doubled back to the bakery for some chocolate kolaches.
It was then, turning around in the street, that she began to feel that something was off. It was a soft sensation of wrongness, but it was enough that her steps stammered to a halt and she looked around. She remembered what Bain had said about living like prey, always wondering who was tracking her, and it raised her hackles. Her knife was in her boot, hard against the knob of her ankle, the discomfort giving her comfort.
She got Zuzana’s kolaches and continued on, wary. She held her shoulders stiff and several times looked back, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Soon enough she came to the Charles Bridge.
Icon of Prague, the medieval bridge crossed the Vltava between Old Town and the Little Quarter. Gothic bridge towers rose on both sides, and the whole span — pedestrian-only — was lined by monumental statues of saints. This early it was almost deserted, and by the slant of the young sun, the statues flung their shadows long and lean. Vendors and performers were arriving with handcarts to stake out the most coveted real estate in the city, and in the very middle, before the photo-perfect backdrop of Prague Castle on the hill, was the giant puppeteer.
“Oh my god, it’s amazing,” said Karou to no one, because the puppeteer sat alone, ten feet tall and sinister, with its cruel carved face and wooden hands the size of snow shovels. Karou peered behind it — it was clad in an immense trench coat — and no one was there, either. “Hello?” she called, surprised that Zuzana would have left her creation unattended.
But then, “Karou!” came from inside the thing, and the back seam of the trench coat parted like the opening of a teepee. Zuzana darted out.
And snatched the bag of pastries out of Karou’s hand. “Thank god,” she said, and fell to.
“Well. Good to see you, too.”
“Mmph.”
Mik emerged after her and gave Karou a hug. He said, “I’ll be her translator. What she is saying, in the language of Zuzana, is thank you.”
“Really?” asked Karou, skeptical. “It sounds kind of like snarfle snarfle.”
“Exactly.”
“Mmph,” agreed Zuzana, nodding.
“Nerves,” Mik told Karou.
“Bad?”
“Terrible.” Stepping up behind Zuzana, he bent down to enfold her in a spoon-hug. “Ferociously, dreadfully awful. She’s unbearable. You take her. I’ve had enough.”
Zuzana batted at him, then squealed as he buried his face in the curve of her throat and made exaggerated kissing noises.
Mik was sandy-haired and fair-skinned, with sideburns and a goatee and the kind of knife-blade eyes that hinted at ancestors invading across the plains from Central Asia. He was handsome and gifted, he blushed easily and hummed when he concentrated, and he was soft-spoken but interesting — a good combination. He actually listened, rather than pretending to listen while waiting a suitable interval before it was his turn to talk again, the way Kaz had. Best of all, he was entirely dopey for Zuzana, who was dopey right back. They were cartoonish, the way they blushed and smiled — all they needed was hearts for eyes — and watching them made Karou both deeply happy and exquisitely miserable. She imagined she could practically see their butterflies—Papilio stomachus—dancing the sweet tango of new love.
For her own part, it was harder and harder to imagine anything fluttering to life inside herself. More than ever, she was the hollow girl, the emptiness seeming like an entity, malicious, taunting her with all the things she would never know.
No. She banished the thought. She would know. She was on her way to knowing.
Her smile was real when Mik began kissing Zuzana’s neck, but after a moment it began to feel a little like a Mr. Potato Head smile, plastic and stuck on. “Did I mention,” she said, clearing her throat, “that I have presents?”
That worked. “Presents!” squealed Zuzana, disengaging herself. She jumped up and down and clapped. “Presents, presents!”
Karou handed over the shopping bag. In it were three parcels wrapped in heavy brown paper and tied with twine. Atop the largest one, a letterpress card on vellum announced, MME. V. VEZERIZAC, ARTEFACTS. The parcels were elegant, and somehow consequential. As Zuzana took them out of the bag, her eyebrow did its thing. “What are these?” she asked, going serious. “Artefacts? Karou. By present, I meant, like, a stacking doll from the airport or something.”
“Just open them,” said Karou. “The big one first.”
Zuzana opened it. And started to cry. “Oh my god, oh my god,” she whispered, gathering it to her chest in a froth of tulle.
It was a ballet costume, but no ordinary ballet costume. “It was worn by Anna Pavlova in Paris in 1905,” Karou told her, excited. Giving gifts was so much fun. She’d never had Christmases or birthday parties when she was little, but once she was old enough to leave the shop on her own, she’d loved to bring back little things for Issa and Yasri — flowers, weird fruit, blue lizards, Spanish fans.
“Okay, I totally don’t know who that is—”
“What? She’s only the most famous ballerina ever.”
Eyebrow.
“Never mind,” sighed Karou. “She was famously tiny, so it should fit you.”
Zuzana held it up. “It’s… it’s… it’s… it’s so Degas….” she stammered.
Karou grinned. “I know. Isn’t it awesome? There’s this woman at Les Puces flea market who sells vintage ballet stuff—”
“But how much did it cost? It must have cost a fortune—”
“Shush,” said Karou. “Fortunes have been spent on stupider things. And besides, I’m rich, remember? Obnoxious rich. Magic rich.”
One upshot of Brimstone’s provisions on her behalf was that she could afford to give presents. She had given herself one in Paris, too, also an artefact, though not of the ballet. The knives had gleamed at her from a glass case and the instant she glimpsed them, she knew she had to have them. They were Chinese crescent-moon blades, one of her favorite weapons. Her own set, the ones she’d trained with, were still in Hong Kong with her sensei, where she hadn’t been since the portals burned. In any case, these put that set to shame.