Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) (30 page)

Meg folded her arms. “Listen to yourself. Come on, let’s go outside, I’ve got a joint in my bag.”

“I don’t want pot! I need the absinthe, I need the…the dreams!” He scrabbled for words, something that would make Meg understand without making him sound crazy—or crazier. “It’s an escape, it’s this other world…”

“You’ve been having more of the dreams?” She glared at him. “You’re not imagining you’re a bird or something, are you?”

Sol got up off the bed, stalking across his room. Meg backed away from him, but he didn’t touch her, just turned around and paced back and forth. “I have these weird dreams and it’s only after I drink the absinthe, and I…I need to get back there. I need to ask something.”

“Ask something?” Meg shook her head. “Jesus, you sound like my parents, talking to your dreams. Forget them. What do you need to ask them anyway?”

“Why…why.” He stared at the corner of his room, at the poster. “Why I’m having them.”

“I’ll tell you why you’re having them. Because you’re drinking and you’re working out a lot of shit in your head. Okay? Let’s go to Clark’s already.”

“You don’t understand!” Sol flattened his ears. “I need the damn absinthe.”

“No, you don’t! You need to chill and talk this out with a real person.” She grabbed his shoulders.

He stared right into her eyes. “I don’t need you.”

Meg froze. Then she let go, and slowly straightened up. Her eyes stayed locked on his for another minute and then she stepped toward his door. “You know what, I’m not gonna just be your absinthe dealer. I’m sorry I ran over here. Give me a call when you get your head on straight.”

“No, wait!” He grabbed her arm, but she shook him off and stalked out to the hallway.

He followed her down the stairs, trying to apologize, but it wasn’t until she got to the bottom of the stairs that she turned and said anything to him, though her words came haltingly. “Listen, I—I know this sucks. You don’t mean what you say. You wanna sit down and talk about it, come find me. But I’m not gonna give you absinthe, and if you can’t think of anything else to say to me, then I’m leaving.”

Sol’s jaw worked. He couldn’t free himself from the obsessive need to figure out what had happened, why the shadow had helped him. If Meg was such a good friend, why did he feel like she’d just laugh if he told her about the shadow? “I…I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

She pointed up the stairs. “You’re going to unpack. You’re going to tell your parents you felt sick and they sent you home. You’re going to delete that fucker from your phone. And you’re going to go to school tomorrow.”

The sick part wasn’t going to be hard. Already his gut felt clenched and twisted. “And then what?”

Meg shrugged. “Then we figure out something else. Right? We got months.”

“Months. I can’t wait months.” Sol sagged against the wall. “I thought he loved me. I thought that’s what this was all about.”

“I told you, boys’ll say anything.”

Sol pressed his fingers to his eyes again. It was all a jumble in his head: the reality of Carcy, the shadow of Niki, the who-cares attitude of Meg. “Go,” he said roughly. “I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” she said.

“Then get me some absinthe!” he yelled, and that did it.

Her expression grew as black as her fur. “See you in school,” she said, and walked out.

Sol’s footsteps echoed in the house, his claws click-click-clicking on the hallway before he stepped on the carpeted stairs. All around him, the stone threw his movements back at him in echoes and air currents, his whiskers twitching. Every time he tried to think of what tomorrow would be like, or next week, or next month, he came up with the same emptiness. Meg had run out on him, taken her friend’s absinthe and her ritual, and he would never get to see the end of Niki’s story. He wasn’t going to move to Millenport, he wasn’t even going to have the hollow pleasure of baseball. He’d be lucky to see any time off the bench, the way things were going. Tanny would torment him every day, and Taric would fight him again, and his father would force him to eat meat.

He took out his phone and pulled up Carcy’s number. It was hard to believe that he couldn’t just text Carcy and tell him all about the asshole who’d just come by pretending to be him, that if he did, Carcy wouldn’t text back with a smile and tell him that it was all okay, that he still loved him. But really, when it came down to it, when had Carcy really been interested in him, or in anything other than a good sexting session? Those had been the times when Carcy was really engaged with him. When Sol told him personal stuff…not so much.

Because those were the times when Carcy would roll his eyes and say to Bucky, “it’s that whiny wolf again.”

Sol selected “Delete,” and hesitated only a moment when the phone asked him to confirm that he really wanted to erase Carcy from his People. Then he shoved the useless phone into his pocket, stomped his way into the kitchen, and threw open the refrigerator door, sniffing inside for what had to be there. The beers, the Cokes, he ignored, trying not to see them. There, on the second shelf: a cold piece of leftover steak. The fat on it was solid white, thick and greasy, and the meat was clammy to the touch. Sol didn’t care; he wrapped his paws around it, brought it to his muzzle, and tore off a hunk with his teeth.

The grainy texture of the meat and fat were barely noticeable behind the wave of the taste, the rich beef he hadn’t had in weeks. The first taste of it disgusted him, but then its sweet flavor overwhelmed his mouth. “Mmm, God,” he moaned, and ripped off another hunk, chewing the cold, greasy meat only a couple times before swallowing the whole lump. It was terrible and it was amazing. He gnawed at it, sank his teeth into the flesh, swallowed great bites because he couldn’t wait long enough to chew them, and in minutes was left ripping scraps from a bone.

He was licking his paws clean when he felt the churning in his stomach. He’d thought that the twisting, empty feeling would go away when he ate something, but it seemed to be getting worse. Just the meat settling, he thought, but after five minutes and a glass of water, it wasn’t getting better, and after ten minutes, his skin felt very cold and his fur was prickling all over in seemingly random patches. He made his way up the stairs, which was much more difficult than it should have been. The walls of the staircase felt cold even through his fur, and he couldn’t make out any smells from the limestone, though he was sure he was leaving his own scent there. When he stopped to lean against the wall, the reek of meat on his breath accumulated around his nose, feeding the roiling in his stomach, and he had to move on.

Still, he made it to his bathroom with several minutes to spare, which he spent bracing himself on the sink and then, when the determination of his stomach to empty itself became more apparent, on his knees in front of the toilet. It seemed to take him a very long time to vomit; his head felt warm and his breath came in short bursts, and finally he coughed and heaved, and the half-digested steak came up, brown half-chewed masses forcing their way up his throat. He vomited into the toilet, then almost splashed the seat with the next wave when he recoiled from the reek of it.

When he was done, he reached up weakly to flush the toilet, and the remains of the steak swirled away. Then he lay back against the wall and cried. Because now he couldn’t eat meat, he’d ruined himself forever just for this stupid ram who only wanted sex, and the noble thing he’d done in going vegetarian looked like the foolish act of a foolish child. He was not properly a wolf, nor properly grown up, nor properly anything.

Carcy was right. He was going nowhere. He had nothing left; he couldn’t talk to his parents or his brother, had driven away Meg, wasn’t mature enough yet for Carcy. The smell of vomit hung thick in the air, oppressive and sour. His head swam, his stomach lurched, and he threw himself forward in time for the second wave of vomit to land on the side of the toilet. Most of it landed in the bowl, but a brownish-orange smear stained the white porcelain on one side and dripped slowly down to the floor.

Sol watched it dully. He couldn’t even throw up properly. And the jackknife forward had aggravated his ribs, which were now complaining sharply. Probably broken.

He fell against the side of the bathtub and let his head loll to the side, looking down into it. The cooler, damp air there smelled less of vomit than the rest of the room. He could climb into that. His cousin had done that, too, poor “funny” Percy, had just climbed into a bathtub and run warm water and opened his wrists. Patty had told him they found a kitchen knife on the floor. She told him that even her God-fearing homophobic father had cried. Sol’s parents would cry over him, too, would regret the things they’d done. He put his paw on the water tap.

His fur prickled with the feeling of eyes on him again. His head turned the other way, toward the full-length mirror on the door. There he was, a pitiable creature, sprawled against the side of the bathtub—and standing over him, a dark silhouette with ragged ears and bright green eyes.

Sol yelled and tried to jump to his feet, slipped on the tile, and smacked his already-sore jaw on the toilet. Stars danced before his eyes, but through them he saw the shape reach down, and then he felt himself hauled to his feet and thrown roughly against the door, his muzzle pressed sideways against the mirror.

In the mirror over the sink, he saw the ragged-eared shadow holding him to the door. His legs felt like jelly and his heart was racing. “Don’t hurt me,” he whimpered, but although the eyes of the shadow gleamed with a hard, angry light, and he could feel the rage in the room, it just held him there. “Why are you angry? What did I do?” His voice was high, and it kept cracking.

Like a gunshot, the image of himself in the bathtub appeared in his head, followed by a surge of rage.

“I won’t!” he squealed. “I wasn’t serious, it was just…I promise, I won’t, I won’t!”

The pressure vanished. He stared wildly at the mirrors, which showed only a terrified black wolf. The haze of anger that had filled the small bathroom was also gone, leaving only clean white tile and the smell of vomit. He ignored the taste of it in his mouth as he stared into the mirrors, mouthing the words, “Come back.” When no shadow appeared, he screamed, “
What do you want from me?
”

Still there was no answer. Sol rinsed his mouth and then stumbled down the stairs, wrapped himself in a blanket, and sat on the couch, ribs throbbing, jaw sore. When his trembling had subsided somewhat, his heart had stopped racing, and his head no longer felt as if it were burning, he tried to close his eyes and sleep, but he could not get the shadow out of his head.

He pulled out his phone, automatically, thumbed through e-mail, but nothing there would help, nothing meant anything to him. The shadow wouldn’t answer him, and he couldn’t make himself dream. The only way he could reach out to it was to read more of “Confession.” At least then he could see more of Niki.

His fingers fumbled as he called up the reader and skipped ahead to where Jean had taken Niki to the ball. The words sometimes blurred with tears, but on the whole they remained legible. Mostly.

It was the night of the ball that ruined everything, father. Had you remained longer, I have no doubt that your wise and even temperament could have prevented the events from degenerating as rapidly as they did. Alas, we cannot always foresee where our presence will be most useful, nor even when as simple a decision as not attending a ball may affect two lives. I do not blame you for it; the fault lies equally with Niki, if not more so.

It all began so splendidly. The Justines had decorated their mansion as befits the season, with dried flower garlands as pleasing to the nose as to the eye, with the latest works of art, with concert pianists paid to provide chamber music for we privileged guests. Of course, those trappings perfectly accented the venerable oak and brick walls and the Firenzan marble floor of the grand ballroom and reception room, and even if one looked up, the reliefs that adorned the ceiling gave the eye no respite from beauty.

The service prior to the ball, impeccable as always, brought the most delightful delicacies—the Justines still employ Frederic deGuigne, whose hors d’oeuvres are as transcendent as his tenderly cooked entrees. His pâte de foie gras, his braised duck breast in raspberry glaze, his spanokopita…each one is like a small morsel of heaven melting on one’s tongue. And yet, the most delectable morsel at the ball was the fox whose paw sat lightly on my arm.

He wore the clever contraption made for him at the cabaret, to increase his chest to a respectable size. Over that, the crimson fabric of his dress flowed like water over the curves of his body, in silken ripples down his chest, gathering in at the waist before breaking like a wave over his slender hips, cresting in elegant whitecaps at the hem of the dress. His dark-furred legs were not visible, but his paws set off the crimson fabric perfectly, as did the flow of his perfectly-groomed tail (I insisted he spend an hour brushing it out). And of course, his muzzle was brushed so neatly that not a hair was out of place, his emerald eyes matched by an emerald brooch at his throat. Even the black ribbons on his ears had been replaced by ribbons from our own household; Mme. Roche was kind enough to sew a set that covered the full ear, less visible and less likely to be remarked upon.

I make no exaggeration, father, when I tell you that for the first two hours, all eyes were upon my fox. Bertrand and Charles had brought consorts who paled like the moon at sunrise before the work of art I had created. The two of them spake courteously to me and to Niki, but in private I could see their eyes on him, nearly as green from jealousy as his own beautiful eyes were naturally. I took full advantage of every opportunity to parade him nearby, and I did not conceal the glee I took from their humiliation.

You would think, would you not, that any consort would take great joy in bringing such happiness to his—or her—companion. But Niki kept his cool expression all evening, as though all this were beneath him. This suited me, as I had introduced him as Tsareva Sveta Romanov, second cousin to the tsar himself, and his naturally high voice and native command of Siberian served him well in that role. Only once did I fear that our charade would be uncovered, when the former ambassador to Siberia introduced himself with a deep bow and apologized for his unconscionable lapse in forgetting the name of such a remarkable young thing. Niki carried himself well, very loftily forgiving, but then the ambassador asked where her retinue had been housed in the city as he wished to call on them.

I endeavored to change the subject, but Niki answered him with a neighborhood and a name that I am certain he invented on the spot. Such a bright, quick mind; alas, had I but known then that something so sharp can cut the wielder as well as the opponent, I would surely have ended our evening after that near-disaster. I reprimanded Niki afterwards, telling him that the ambassador would surely attempt to find the Siberian traveling party in that area, and he told me that it did not matter because the ambassador was not about to do so this very night, and so it was not worth worrying over.

I should not have allowed him to quell my worry so easily, but his seductive manner charmed me into staying longer. Besides, I believed that when the dancing started, there would be no further use nor even opportunity for conversation. He would have no role other than to look attractive.

For the first hour of the dance, he did just that. If his body and his muzzle had attracted eyes, the elegance of his dance attracted twice as many. We spun through waltzes, danced formally to minuets, and Niki even accepted dances from both Bertrand and Charles, the first time either one of them has requested a dance with my consort. That meant that I had the opportunity to dance with their consorts, and I enjoyed that greatly—more than the young ladies did, but the dances are not for their pleasure, after all.

Bertrand requested a second dance, and this is where the trouble started. I was not present for the beginning of their discussion, but as I understand it, it began over a comment he made regarding one of the paintings the Justines had acquired, something to the effect of “it is a passing fancy, a placeholder for next month’s placeholder.” (This is Bertrand, always trying to sound rather loftier than he is; he has no knowledge of art.)

Niki inexplicably took exception to this. I suppose that he thought he knew something of the world of art, as a mouse nibbling rinds of Edam in the corner of a cheese shop may fancy itself an expert on the noble art of cheesemaking. He challenged Bertrand to find beauty in the painting, and Bertrand tried to distract him with the compliment that he need not look for beauty in the painting when it was staring into his eyes. I might have been offended at his attempt to steal away my consort’s affections had I not been certain of Niki, but as it happened, Niki was not put off. He gave Bertrand quite the lecture about the role of art and the duty of the observer, and it was from this moment that I became aware of what was transpiring.