“I have no intention of taking anything from you that you are not willing to part with. Theft has no place on the Elsewhere Express. That’s why I asked you to browse the shop. Go ahead. Choose any scent you want in exchange for yours. I’m always on the lookout for new smells. Scents can get tiresome here. People without a past tend to smell the same. To my nose, they smell sterile. Antiseptic. But you are different.” She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as though savoring a fine wine. “You smell like rain. And tears. And laughter. And fear. And…guilt.” She wrinkled her nose slightly. “Perhaps a little too much guilt, no? But that can be fixed.”
“We’re not interested in any of your perfumes.” Raya clutched Q’s arm. “We’re leaving. Let’s go, Q.”
“Wait.” Manon pulled the mirror open, revealing a shelf with a single unadorned bottle sitting on it. “Not even a fragrance that can bring back any moment you’ve forgotten?”
Raya shot a glance at Q.
“This fragrance can retrieve lost baggage.” Manon took the bottle from the shelf. “I made it for myself in case I was ever tempted to take Mr. Goh’s tonic and erase my past. I love my husband as much as I always have but he is still a ghost and all ghosts are hungry. Theyconsume you from the inside out. If the conductor even suspected that I had such a thing, I would be thrown off this train faster than the thoughts that fly through this train car. I have never offered it to any other passenger. But I am offering the only dose I have to you.”
Q
Manon had promised that the process would be painless. All Q had to do was sit down, tilt his head to the side, and hold still. Manon plucked a white petal from a flower in the Silent Garden and used a golden tweezer to swipe it down the curve of Q’s neck and along his clavicle. A shiver ran over his skin.
“Done.” Manon dropped the petal into a small glass jar and closed its lid.
“That was it?” Q looked up.
“I told you it would be quick.” Manon handed the simple transparent bottle to Q. “Your payment, as promised.”
Q examined the bottle and frowned. “It’s empty.”
“You may not be able to see it, but I promise you that it’s filled to the brim. It may even be a bit more than what you need. The scent is in its purest form, extracted from the rarest memories of discovery. It is equal parts gasps and the most electrified air. A single whiff will restore any memory you’ve lost. A fragrance can flow through you and breathe life into memories in a way no pill, serum, or draft ever could.”
“I hope you’re right.” Q squeezed the bottle. “But the perfume isn’t for me.” Regardless of the lies Rasmus and Lily had told them, the only way he was going to keep his sight was by helping them stop the stowaway. To do this, they needed to remember how they had done it once before. Truth was useless if the Elsewhere Express ceased to exist.
“Perfumes always make lovely presents, but this gift comes with a warning,” Manon said. “Be careful of the memories you exhume. Even the prettiest things, when buried in the damp and dark, will rot.”
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
—Oscar Wilde
“Why is the Archivist’s position still vacant?”
Frequently Asked Questions
The Elsewhere Express
Passenger Handbook
Raya
The cadavers in Raya’s anatomy class looked more alive than the man lying on a foldable cot a foot too short for him.
Though Rasmus’s wall of a chest rose and fell with his breath, his unblinking eye was empty. Had Jace’s eyes been open, Raya imagined they would have looked the same way right before the machines that pumped air into his useless lungs were switched off. Rasmus might have lied about Olly, but he had told the truth about putting the Elsewhere Express above all else. Including himself.
Raya stood over what remained of him, thinking it strange how a bear-sized man could look so small. “Can’t Mr. Goh help him?”
“What the Echoes did to Rasmus can’t be fixed by a tonic or balm.” Lily patted a damp towel over Rasmus’s forehead, her voice as hollow as his gaze.
Raya riffled through her bag and pulled out the bottle of fragrance Manon had given them. She drew a deep breath. “How about perfume?”
Lily wrung the towel over a silver bowl, turning her fingertips red and her knuckles white. Water dripped from the towel and into the bowl, its plips, plinks, and plops resounding in the cavern betweenRaya’s question and Lily’s answer. Lily lifted her eyes, throwing a glare at the perfume bottle that would have shattered it if a look could hold shape and weight. “Where did you get that?” she said, hurling her words with equal violence and velocity.
“It doesn’t matter where it came from.” Raya steeled her jaw.
“What matters is what it can do,” Q said. “We were told that it can restore lost memories.”
Lily tossed the towel into the bowl and stood up, her neck and cheeks flaring as red as her hair. “Going to the perfumery is against the train’s rules.”
