The Virtu (27 page)

I was glad of the dark, because he couldn’t see me, and right then I was glad of how uncomfortable he’d been with me since we’d got ourselves out of the Sim, because he didn’t push. He just said to Miss Parr, “I think he wants to pick the lock. A hairpin, keria, please?”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

She handed me a hairpin.

“Do you need a light?” Felix said, and I thought he wasn’t trying to be snarky, but it was hard to tell. I was pleased in a mean sort of way to be able to tell him, no, I didn’t need a light. Because I didn’t. Lockpicking is all ears and fingers, and Keeper’d used to make us practice blindfolded anyway.

The hairpin made a lousy lock pick, but then, it was a lousy lock. If I’d been a tenant in that building, I would have had something to say about that to the landlord. I got the door open, got the others through it, locked it again—because we didn’t need to be getting nobody in trouble—and then we were in a sort of storage room, and it was just a matter of finding the front door, and we were out on the street, with the lamplighters doing their job, and people walking way wide around us as they went by.

“Oh!” Florian said, at about the same time Miss Parr said, “This is Knot Garden Street.” And Florian said, “We’re only two blocks from home!”

“Fucking marvelous,” I said under my breath in Marathine.

Florian led the way, with Miss Parr hurrying to keep up with him. Felix dropped back to walk beside me.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“There’s something I need to tell you, before we… I need to tell you now.”

“I’m listening.”

He said in Marathine, “Mehitabel Parr wants to come back to Mélusine with us.”

“She wants
what
?” I did remember to keep my voice down, but only just.

“She wishes to travel with us to Mélusine,” Felix said, like if he got his grammar all flash, it wouldn’t mean the same thing.

“You gonna let her?” Let her come all the way across the Grasslands with us, where you can play her and me against each other and sit back and laugh? Because he was already doing it, the same way he’d done in the Gardens, the same way he’d done on the
White Otter
. If you didn’t give him your heart, he found a way to rip it out.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Looks like a pretty basic yes or no type thing to me. You gonna let her, or not?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Then tell me what’s complicated.”

“I know you’ve taken a dislike to her.”

“Then you want to invite her along?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“If
you
didn’t want her to come, you wouldn’t care.”

He wanted to tell me that wasn’t true, but he couldn’t quite do it. He said, “She could cause a great deal of trouble with the authorities.”

“Will she?”

“Mildmay.” He shoved his hair off his face in exasperation. And then ahead of us, Florian broke into a run, and Felix said, “
Damn
,” between his teeth. “There’s no time. I just… I wanted you to know, that’s all.”

And then he lengthened his stride to catch up with Miss Parr and left me behind without even looking back. I guess he trusted me to follow him wherever he went, and I guess he was right about it, too.

About a half hour later, I was sitting outside Mr. Gauthy’s study like some pusher’s hired goon, while him and Felix thrashed out some kind of a deal. Felix had a plan. I knew that, even if I didn’t know what it was, and I figured all I could do was hang on and try to enjoy the ride.

Somewhere else in the house, Mrs. Gauthy was crying her ugly fake tears over Florian, and that was a scene I was just as glad to miss out on. So I sat there with my leg hurting, so tired I would’ve liked to just lay down right there on the bench I was sitting on, and tried not to think about Ginevra and tried not to think about Felix. Which was one of those things where I could manage one or the other, but not both.

Grief is like getting stuck in the same cyclone over and over and over again. And every time, you think, Man, I have got to get out of the way of this fucker, and then the next time you find you haven’t budged a fucking inch. So, yeah, Ginevra was still dead and it still hurt like having iron skewers shoved through my heart, but, I mean, there wasn’t nothing to
do
about it. Except try not to think about her.

Felix was different. Because Felix was there, and we weren’t getting shut of each other this side of the Grasslands, that was for sure. And I was so tired that if I let my guard down, or let my eyes close, I’d be back there in the dark in the river, feeling him against me.

It didn’t make no sense. If it hadn’t been for him apologizing and for the fact that he was so mortified I could see it, I would’ve thought he was just fucking with my head, like he’d been doing flirting with me for a month or more. But it’d been real. He’d meant it. And powers, I mean, he’d had Astyanax and a shot at Mr. Vilker and just about anybody he’d wanted in the Gardens. What the fuck did he want with me?

The part where it was incest—well, it sure wasn’t stopping him, and, I mean, maybe it was just me not being raised right or something, but that part didn’t bother me. Okay, that’s a lie. It
bothered
me, but it would have been way worse to find out somebody I’d grown up with, somebody like Margot, had the hots for me, if you see what I mean. Because me and Margot—even if she still hated me for what’d happened to her little Badgers, she felt like my sister. Felix only felt like somebody I
wanted
to be my brother. It wasn’t the same.

And then there was the whole thing where I wasn’t molly. But that was at least a little simpler, because he knew I wasn’t molly. I figured if he’d had any doubts, he would’ve gone ahead and made a pass at me and found out that way. But he hadn’t, so he knew, and it was pretty clear he hadn’t meant me to know about him. Not like that. And if he asked now—which seemed pretty unlikely—all I had to do was say, no thanks. And if I had to… well, I’d hit him before, and for worse reasons. That I felt like I could handle.

But it was harder to get rid of the memory of it, and harder to get it to make any kind of sense. I kept telling myself to quit already, I was too tired to think straight and I knew it. But I couldn’t seem to let go of it, no matter how much I wanted to.

So I was almost glad when Miss Parr showed up, even though she was mad as a hornet and looking to spread it around, if the glare she gave me was anything to go by.

Felix hadn’t told me why he wanted her to come, but I could guess. He’d looked at the maps and he’d looked at me and he’d figured he didn't want to be stuck with just me for company all the way across Kekropia. I couldn’t blame him for that. But it didn’t make me like her better, and I hadn’t liked her much to start with. I know I ain’t all that bright, but I don’t like people who rub it in.

She said in a high, hard voice, “You may be interested to learn I’ve just been dismissed from my position, with neither a character nor severance pay.”

Oh fuck me sideways, I thought, because there went my last hope of not having to cross the Grasslands with this bitch. But I couldn’t help asking, “What
for
?”

“Immorality,” she said in a growl.

“What? I mean…”

“She found out about Jeremias,” Miss Parr said with a toss of her head. “We were sleeping together. And now Keria Gauthy thinks I’m a ‘corrupting influence,’ and that it’s somehow my doing that Florian went off with Jeremias in the first place.” She snorted. “I’m sure she’d rather fire Jeremias, but since he had the gross impertinence to die down there, she can’t.”

“Oh,” I said. She didn’t look like a lady who was much upset about losing her lover, and I wished I didn’t have to sit there and wonder what she’d made of me going to pieces over Ginevra. Powers, I felt like curdled milk.

She was looking at me kind of sideways. I said, “What?”

“Has Felix… has your brother told you?”

“ ‘Bout you wanting to go to Mélusine with us? Yeah.”

“I, um, I know we haven’t gotten off on the best possible foot, and I know you have no reason to do me any favors, but, Ker Foxe,
please
. He said he wouldn’t let me come if you didn’t approve.”

She knew how pretty her big, dark eyes were, no doubt about that. “I don’t got nothing against you,” I said. Well, I mumbled it, and she made me repeat it.

“That’s good,” she said, although she didn’t sound very sure about it. “I won’t be a burden to you, I promise. I grew up traveling across the Grasslands. I can pull my weight.”

“I ain’t said you couldn’t.”

“Ker Foxe…”

“Look. If he wants you to come, you can come. I don’t care.”

“Thank you,” she said, like what she really meant was
Fuck you
, but she was too much of a lady to say it. She sat down on the bench across from mine—perfect posture, folded hands, the whole fucking ball of wax.

Ginevra’d wanted to have manners like that, but she’d never quite been able to pull it off.

Kethe, you fuckhead, stop thinking about her.

But I couldn’t. It hadn’t been her, down there in the dark. I knew that.

But at the same time, there was still this sick feeling in my chest, like it
had
been her, and I’d gone and left her, left her down there alone and dead and cold. I could almost hear her, still calling for me, her voice thick and wavery and a little hoarse, like she’d been crying and she was scared.

“Ker Foxe?” said Miss Parr. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I said.

“You’re awfully white. Is it your leg?”

“Yeah,” I said. Anything to get the bitch to shut up. “It just needs rest, and it’ll be okay.”

“Are you sure? Keria Dossia, the cook, is a midwife, and I’d be glad to ask if she has a tisane that would help.”

“No,” I said carefully. “Thank you.” Leave me alone, you fucking bitch.

She looked for a second like she was going to push it, but she must’ve thought better of it because she sat back and closed her mouth. And I thanked the powers and the saints because I wasn’t sure I’d’ve been able to keep from saying something really nasty, and Felix wanted to let the gal come all the way across the fucking Grasslands with us.

And then the door of Mr. Gauthy’s study opened, and him and Felix came out. Felix was looking smug as a cat with the key to the dairy. Whatever it was he wanted, seemed like he’d got it.

They shook hands, and Mr. Gauthy said something about letters and credentials and arrangements and scooted off.

Felix turned to Miss Parr and me, and his eyebrows went up. “You look like the last two mourners at a funeral.”

“She got fired,” I said.

“Really?” he said, turning to her like he thought I’d got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

“Oh, yes,” she said, and I could see that it was eating at her, even while she was trying to pretend she didn’t give a rat’s ass. And you know, I didn’t like her, but I knew what that felt like, and I couldn’t help kind of, I don’t know, sympathizing with her. There ain’t nothing worse than getting fired by somebody you hate, because it means they win and you don’t get no rematch.

“My condolences,” Felix said. “What will you do now?”

Miss Parr hesitated, looking from him to me, and I wished I could call him a prick right out in the open like this. Because there was only one way to go, and he’d walked me into it as neat as you please.

“I don’t mind,” I said to her. “If you want to come.”

She looked kind of taken aback, but Felix said, “Splendid! That’s settled then. If you’ll come with us, keria, I’ll give you the particulars of our traveling arrangements.”

There might’ve been things she wouldn’t‘ve done to get out of that house just then, but I had the feeling that the wall Mehitabel Parr would balk at was a lot higher than that one. I was beginning to wonder, even with her manners, whether she was really a lady at all.